The daughter of Everfree Plantations heard an eerie cry overhead. She glanced up, trying to see through the boiling haze and through her own cascading sweat.
As the phoenix screamed and soared across the disc of the sun, Solar Wind wiped her brow and dug the shovel deep into the earth. She winced as the handle jolted between her teeth, and paused to wipe a tangled lock of hair out of her eyes so she could stare up at the lonely blur of fire.
The barn far behind her was silent and still. Her parents had gone to town to prepare their stall for the Spring Market, and to her left on the far hills were rows of drooping ice trees with only one or two snow apples left hanging. Truly, this is an all-year job, she thought, and she tried a small smile.
She dropped the shovel and hobbled over to the sacks in the wheelbarrow. She wasn’t sure how the swelling on her hoof had gotten there – probably when she’d tripped over an unseen burrow last week, as it was the same leg – but it was nothing to that moulting sickness that had been going around last year.
At least she had the other three legs this time, which was more than could be said for the year before that. Hopefully, her father would have gotten over it by now and would let her go logging later this summer. He’d let Clumsy Cloverleaf come back from worse.
Solar Wind shook her head free of the wandering memories and heaved a sack out of the wheelbarrow. She tasted the muddy clumps as they came off the lip of the sack in her mouth. When she let go, the seeds tumbled out. She sighed quietly to herself and wearily scooped the spillage back in.
It took her hours to sow them all, and she was still digging up the earth and planting the seeds deep into the night. Only a few seconds at a time were allowed for anything else, and she spent all of them staring up at the moon.
One day, she thought to herself every single time. One day.
When the sun rose, her parents came out to check on her. They were chewing their lips and exchanging wide-eyed glances.
She awoke to find their faces close, and she found herself curled up within the shelter of the upturned barrow. She waved them off, and as she turned away from them, she sighed and treated herself to a smile.
Now, the daughter of Everfree Plantations slept in another bed, and Everfree Town’s agricultural representative yawned and lifted her head from the pillow.
Both curtains were wide open, moonlight streaming through the glass and shining over the foot of the mattress. From the wall behind her head, there was a clicking and a tapping and the muffled murmuring of a few low voices.
Solar Wind never bothered with duvets or covers. Her skin never seemed to get cold enough, even in winter. A slow yawn rolled out from her lips, and she stretched forelimbs and backbone with feline grace before leaping onto the floorboards and over to the door.
Before her hoof even touched the wood, it swung back and her smirking secretary stood aside for her. The chinks and clicks of typewriters tapped into her ears. Colour blurred before her as hooves rumbled across the carpet.
“There’s another dispute over in the marketplace,” said the secretary in a rush. “Blueberry Blitz and Yellowhammer are disputing the placements of each other's stalls, claiming the other one is encroaching –”
“Blueberry Blitz is almost certainly moving hers,” said Solar Wind looking out at the room beyond. “I checked the consultation notes last night after the previous dispute, and she has a history of it. If it’s near the fountain side, then Yellowhammer has the relevant permit.”
“The Apple clan report an increase in unauthorized beaver damming across Sea Serpent River. Coronet Charger has also registered a complaint since their activities upstream affect her territory –”
“The beavers have been authorized for the Froggy Bottom tributary only. If it’s the main river, send out a cease and desist, and if they don’t move their dam, bring in Mother Fly. She’s good with animals. And sea serpents too.”
The secretary nodded with an even wider smirk on her face. “Mayor Lucksworth also invites you to a consultation this afternoon at six.”
For the first time, Solar Wind was wide awake and looked right at the smirking face next to her. “Mayor Lucksworth?”
“Something about the drains in Hack’s Lee.”
It took a moment, but Solar Wind recovered herself enough to bow, head almost to the ground. “I am honoured. Please tell the Mayor that I’ll bring cupcakes from the Gourmand Confectioner’s."
She saw the secretary raise an eyebrow at her.
"Out of my own pocket,” she added quickly.
A smirk rose up on the secretary's face. She nodded with a wink and vanished into the rush of bodies, snorting something about money that even Solar Wind’s ears blushed to hear.
She strode out across the rows and columns of typewriters, ducking and dodging as ponies rushed past, and trying not to stumble while also fighting to keep her eyes open. Dealing in paper and words was not all that different from dealing in earth and seeds. You sowed, you reaped, you paid for the harvest with your life.
Her parents would be waiting for her reply to their invitation. They always sent one at the slightest mention of a hoedown, as though she never heard a thing from the chatter going on around her in this office, from breakfast to bedtime, over and over and over.
Perhaps she'd go to one after this month's report. Yes, she'd said that last month, but the papers and scrolls just kept piling up. The tide had to ebb sometime soon. Her parents seemed to think any work other than farming was easy-peasy.
She hadn’t seen them in weeks.
The portrait on her desk had been turned face downwards long ago. If she hadn’t done it, then she’d never have kept working on her own typewriter. Yet no sneering or wheedling from her secretary would get it off the desk altogether.
A few funny looks followed her to her desk. Trying not to wince, she eased her rear down on the upturned crate that passed for her seat, and drew herself closer with a whining scrape.
A phoenix feather she’d once salvaged was laid across the desk with the reverence of a royal sceptre. Someone had left her a mug of hot chocolate. She leaned forwards and took a sip. Really hot chocolate.
She ignored the ache in her back and raised her calloused forelegs. The moonlight shone through another window and cast its silver over her desk.
Soon, she thought.
Once more, the daughter of Everfree Plantations saw the light fall on another desk and reared up, and the Mayor of Everfree Town placed her hooves on the wooden surface.
She looked from her papers to the sea of wide-eyed faces before her. If anything, Solar Wind’s hair was now even more tangled, knotted, and wildly spiky than before, but none of the faces were seeing her mane. They were focused on her lips as she eased them open for her speech.
“As I look out at my fellow ponies on this beautiful winter’s day,” she cried out, “I see not just the sweltering fur and the red eyes of pride and passion, not just the shaking hooves of untold harvests and the small smiles of first loves found. I see an Equestria where my little sister, with no special stars over her birth and no wizard spells over the hills where she used to leap and scurry and dream –”
She swallowed back something hot and choking that had made a bid for her throat. Nothing but the breeze wafted over the staring crowd. A few tears were already sliding silently down wrinkled cheeks, and she could see her parents near the front holding each other tightly, their mouths fighting to keep it all in. She quickly looked away from the pair, but something in her chest constricted her heart for doing so.
“Where my little sister could one day raise no rage against the heavens, no cries against the rushing shadow sea, but a light. Equestria… is where a foal from a barn can show the closed eyes of a castle how to raise the day and raise the night, how a court of the sun and the moon needed no titles or blood, but pure heart.”
Behind her, the Town Hall gleamed with paint and its windows sparkled with polish. There were the odd creaks and groans from within, but a year ago it was one stomp from collapsing into sawdust and nails. Meadow grass flowed around their hooves and was dotted with nothing more threatening than the odd daisy. Snow had been swept up and piled along the sides of the square. Beyond the ribbon-like twirls and elegant knots of the cottage-flanked streets, only the churned-up orchard hills and iced-over stumps marked the memorials of the old forest frontier.
Beside the Town Hall, a carriage waited patiently. It was a Canterlot carriage, bejewelled, blooming with garlands, and shining with a rainbow sheen across ivory whiteness. It put even their new hall to shame. She glanced down at her own hooves, and suppressed the shaking.
“We do not guide the sun or the moon, but we guide lights of our own. We keep the fires that shine all around us and within us. We feed them with love and devotion. We tend to them and keep them burning bright. We –”
“Yeah! You do!”
Solar Wind didn’t see who shouted, and she didn’t have a chance once the entire crowd began to nod and murmur and clap and cheer. A flurry of noise and colour was all she could see, and she knew she’d never finish her speech now. She blinked and tried to endure it. She’d already embarrassed herself once by stumbling sideways months before during her inaugural speech.
“Thank you,” she said with a sinking heart, and she turned and strode as proudly as she could down the steps and towards the open carriage door. From inside, her smirking secretary waved to her.
She peered up at the setting orange sun – a dark speck crossed its disc and flapped its wings over and over – and she took a deep breath before entering velvet and gold.
The onetime farmer of Everfree Plantations forced herself to wait until the driver had swung the door aside. Fresh, cool air greeted her as she hopped down onto the moonlit snow.
Her secretary took her time rising off the velvet cushion and putting down the glass she’d been sipping. Once all hooves were crunching between the fences to the cottage inn, Solar Wind turned to look across the iced bridge and frozen stream to the distant mountains silhouetted before the stars.
Dark towers stood out against the high peaks, and lights that rivalled the stars lit up across the palace walls. If she squinted and waited for her sight to adjust to the night, she could make out the slight shimmer of a bubble around the city.
“They still have the shield up,” said a wavering voice beside her. “Poor Princess. Always fighting just to keep the throne.”
“I’m not surprised,” she whispered. “You should have seen what it took for her to earn it.”
Both the secretary and the driver jumped through the inn door, but Solar Wind stood sizzling slightly in the wind. Her companion blinked through folds of wrinkled skin and peered up at her.
Even as they watched, blasts of magic streaked across the darkness. Shooting stars of enchantment pummelled into the shield, but it only shimmered, and it stayed firm. An answering column of white streaked upwards, and they both gasped and rubbed their eyes from the flash. The boom was muffled.
“Most of the towns near the palace have curfews and guards at all hours now,” wheezed her companion. “Don’t be surprised if your carriage is searched before you reach the mountains.”
Solar Wind bowed her head twice. No one had spoken of much but the pending war on all fronts. There were whispers of a crystal menace from the Frozen North, sightings of two strange creatures from the barren lands of the west, and now changelings were being found lurking across the green villages. Even the loyalists were pining for the reign of chaos, on the grounds that at least those had been much simpler days.
A tree in the night rustled as a large bird shook itself down.
“Come inside, my friend,” said the innkeeper, and Solar Wind shuddered at the hoof gently guiding her shoulders to the sound of music and laughter. “You must be desperate to try seeing the Princess at this difficult time.”
“Yes,” said Solar Wind to the welcome sign. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
Tomorrow, she thought as the warmth washed over her.
“I don’t know,” muttered the innkeeper as she wiped her hooves on the mat. “I thought the days of chaos were over. Never dreamed they’d be lurking on the horizon again.”
The days of chaos ARE over, Solar Wind thought. They're not coming back. Not if I can help it.
As the winter peered through the windows of the cottage and she stepped into the light, she made a mental note to check on the draconequus statue before entering the palace. Perhaps it would put her mind at ease. Until then, some fermented grape juice should do the trick.
Behind her, the door slammed shut. She was in another world.
Solar Wind shrank back as the grand portal swept forwards, and the chill bit into her face.
The Great Hall was dark. Beams of silver light poured through the stained glass, lighting only the edges of columns and the bouquets of black lilies held in their torches and crystal baskets. Royal armour glinted among them. She stepped forwards, her heart thumping and life rushing to escape from her skin as her limbs stiffened. Aches wormed through her muscles, lines wrinkled across her face and forehead, and the breath came from deep within her lungs.
Narrowed blue eyes opened in the depths. She stared into them and was lost at once. Those eyes had haunted her dreams for years, and now she saw them alive above her.
Solar Wind had waited in the corridor until the mass of ambassadors, chiefs, and envoys before her had gone from a crowd to a smattering to a pair to a single pony, and finally to an empty corridor listening to her breaths.
A one-on-one, they'd been told. The Princess always insisted on greeting each ambassador personally before any conferences began. Even when the shield pulsed and the battlements echoed with the orders of captains and commanders, she was reading the scrolls of a thousand years and saluting the dictates of noble ghosts.
Always the traditionalist. Solar Wind let the smile live for a moment before reality drowned it once more.
It was the blessing she had dreamed of, the curse she had feared, both drawing closer, neither relenting. She tried to will her heartbeat to calm itself, but she may as well have tried vanishing it on command. Her hooves itched to gallop. Both ears stiffened.
The Mayor before her had come out from beyond the grand portal, shivering slightly but still stiff-backed with forced stateliness. Mouth suddenly dry, Solar Wind had run her gaze over her predecessor for any better idea of what she could expect, and when their eyes had met, she saw her own eyes in the stranger's, wide and unblinking and darting back and forth for escape.
And now I'm here, she thought. I'm really here. It's not a dream. It's real.
Noise exploded and echoed through itself around her. Her limbs were thrown into spasms before she recognized the trumpet call of the herald.
“Presenting!” shouted what sounded like a hundred heralds. “The Mayor of Everfree Town, Solar Wind!”
There was a gasp from the darkness where the blue eyes lurked. Solar Wind felt the smile warm her lips at once.
“Presenting! Her Royal Highness of all Equestria, She Who Brings Forth the Sun and the Moon, Princess Luna!”
Luna! Luna! Luna!
Solar Wind wasn’t sure she could move another step. Her sister’s eyes once gazed up at her, absorbing her every word and watching and learning how to plant seeds and water sprouting stems. These were threatening her.
She wanted to turn and run. She couldn’t say anything right. She couldn’t move closer to the darkness where those eyes seemed utterly comfortable.
Her legs heard nothing from her mind and jumped forwards on their own. She fell to her knees and almost buried her face in the red carpet. They smelled faintly of meadows and – here, her nostrils stung – strange perfumes.
No one spoke for a long while. Solar Wind took a chance and rose to her hooves.
“Selena –” she began.
“When you address Her Highness,” bellowed the herald, “you address her as Princess Luna!”
Solar Wind’s face burned. She swallowed and her throat was scorched and dry. How could that creature in the darkness be her sister? Behind her tiny, pinprick pupils, she was burning as her old memories were slowly immolated.
Princess Luna’s eyes in the darkness frowned at the herald. There was a glint of a slippered hoof as she waved for silence.
“We are pleased to see thee,” rang the tones of royalty across the grand void and the echoing silence. “Sol – Mayor of Everfree. Thou hast come bearing a message from one of our proud towns of the south. Speak.”
Speak. Speak. Speak.
Solar Wind tried to pull the past out of her mind. Childish giggles under the apple tree canopy, soil wiped off a tiny muzzle, a book between them, one head resting against her shoulder…
Hoof-fights over slices of cake, impulsive curses and cold mockeries of conversation, whimpering cries from behind a locked bedroom door, mangled woodcraft broken on the rug…
“Mayor Everfree?” said the Princess.
Solar Wind blinked and straightened herself from tense jaw to stiffened neck to ramrod limbs. She took a deep breath that echoed slightly in the gloom.
“Apologies, Your Highness.” She inclined her head. “I come as the voice of a thousand. We pledge our loyalty to the Princess in these dark times. Our food for the strength of your soldiers. Our homes for the wounded. Our lives for those of our fillies and colts.”
She saluted and tried not to pay attention to the guards around her. She was already burning at the thought of them chuckling about her crude attempt later.
“I also want to join the army. If I can save but one of my fellow ponies, then I will. I feel I can do more for my friends on the front than I can do here.”
But the eyes were going from side to side, and Solar Wind knew her sister was shaking her head. She even shook it in that slow, graceful way she’d once done as a filly, when they’d played dress-up and she’d pretended to be a dark overlord.
“With all due respect, S… Mayor,” boomed the voice of the Princess, “you are no fighter. As you stand before us, you have other roles to fulfil. Everyday roles, no less important.”
Portant. Portant. Portant.
Solar Wind wondered if she was being patronized, and bile rose up in her throat. She’d never been forward with Selena, had she? Was Luna remembering something her own treacherous mind had forgotten?
“Important, Your Highness?” said Solar Wind.
“Yes, important. It is not grand, nor is it illustrious, nor is it vainglorious, foolhardy, or fatal. Equestria must fight off enemies, as any one pony in the wilderness must, but Equestria must live too. It has to remember why it is fighting. That is what you all shall now do. You will remind us of why we fight and why we live.”
Solar Wind could see, briefly, her sister warming her hooves by the fire on a cold winter night. It could have been any of the hundreds of nights they'd spent together. Wolves howled beyond the locked front door.
All this time, Solar Wind had only remembered how she herself had felt, how warm the bundle huddled against her chest had been. Selena had snuggled within her braced forelimbs, sometimes squirming in order to get comfortable. How had she felt? Had she been this warm, this relaxed, and this frightened too, curled up between two older pairs of legs and feeling the tremor of an older throat as it sang lullabies?
“Yes, Your Highness. Anything, S… Princess.”
Within the shadows, Princess Luna’s mane flowed and twinkled, but nothing else moved. “Such brave words. Thou hast gone to a lot of trouble to deliver them to us today.”
“Thank you, Your Highness, but the journey through the mountains was happily uneventful.”
“We speak of a different road, Mayor. One it has taken thee years to travel along. And yet, tired as thou art, thou hast insisted on travelling further and pushing harder. We have much to talk about, S… Mayor.”
Solar Wind bowed her head once more, but inside she was bleeding.
How can I talk to you? A Princess, yes. My sister, yes. But you’re too much. I don’t want to be here anymore.
Then she saw a flash inside those eyes, and she saw her sister, surrounded by Canterlot finery and solid guards and booming heralds, and there was nothing but an echo. There was, now that she dared to focus, an outline of bags under the eyes.
And now you’re alone. I left you alone. How could I have left you alone? If I’d just gone with you, all those years ago…
“Proceed,” said Luna.
Her voice carried through the spiel, haltingly at first, but after a while it was no different from talking to her friends, family, and fellow ponies, and she almost saw all of Everfree Town laid out before her. She wondered if those blue eyes hid a taunt, but that thought died at once. They were only tired, and older, and wiser.
Two wings flapped in the darkness. Princess Luna was making herself comfortable.
Darkness rose up in Solar Wind’s mind while her mouth moved on. She wanted to kick someone, but then the light of Luna’s horn glowed below a black tiara, and suddenly she saw her for the first time and felt like she herself had been kicked.
Beyond the stained glass, the shield flared. The whole hall surrounded her and loomed out at her, and she saw Princess Luna the winged unicorn, and the earth pony looked away before the light died. Her voice broke off for a moment.
“Be still,” soothed the Princess. “You are safe here.”
Solar Wind peered back, and as the rest of that godlike form melted back into the night, the blue eyes were suddenly the same she’d always known.
“Please,” said her sister, “continue.”
Solar Wind did so, and new strength crept into her voice. Outside, the shield flared once more, and she could see for the first time that her sister’s eyes were not threatening.
The white earth pony shuffled down the gravel pathway. Chains creaked and groaned behind her, and the palace drawbridge slammed shut.
Her secretary and the carriage stood to attention before her. The secretary was buried under jewellery and lace, and grinned at her before jumping through the open door.
Solar Wind waved to the driver and shook her head. The driver raised an eyebrow at her, but once she dumped her saddlebag beside herself and tossed him some golden coins, he shrugged and led the carriage away behind a plume of dust. She waited until it had crested the hill. She’d follow it later.
The palace loomed over her, casting the shadow of orange dawn over her face. Shimmers of the shield framed the shady peaks of the towers. The wall stood to attention around it, and the waterfall crashed down from the tops of the mountain beside them all.
“Goodbye, Sis,” she whispered.
The hills here were firmer under her hooves, and the grass tickled her sides as she strolled through them. Her eyelids were straining to stay open. Days… no, weeks of talks and negotiations… and trying to juggle facts and figures while other mayors… and delegates… clamoured around her… and then she was outside, almost sleepwalking… she stopped to yawn… sleepwalking down the corridors.
She found what she was looking for. Over her head were the lonely branches of a bent-backed tree. Below her hooves were the damp shores of a lake. Around her were the silent hiss of hidden grasshoppers and the buzz of young flies. They had wrapped up winter during her stay, even during the assault, and the shield now shimmered within the lake as a reflection.
Her sister had only seen her once after the ascension, on a night when the whole town had played and danced and listened to the music of a dozen instruments. For a moment, it didn’t matter that the new Princess, the new Selena, towered over them. The wings were just something she happened to be carrying, and the horn was just something that had turned up.
The two of them had left the punch and the tables of bewitching bakery, and had stolen a night among the stars and over the countryside. She had seen it all from the air, on the back of her young sister. She’d felt the wonderful rush of the breeze. For a moment, it was as if she'd had wings.
Above the branches, a distant phoenix screeched across the sky and vanished into an upper window, but Solar Wind paid it no heed. Trembling, she lay down, curled up, and forced her eyes shut.
Once more, she could finally let go… drift off into another world…
Three. Two. One.
She opened her eyes.
She was standing on an old hill from long ago. The stars shone down on her once again. From a slight ember glow on the horizon came songs and laughter. And when she heard the flutter of feathers and looked back to check her own withers, she knew she was dreaming.
Overhead, the mare in the moon smiled.
