Collar leaned against Rosewater as the fire’s final embers started fading into the muted red glow that said their ‘date’ was over. The fears that she would have been too distraught to participate in the date had long before faded. Her strength and resilience continued to amaze him, and the fact that she’d traded stories with him all night until the flames died to flickers…

He’d learned more about her tonight than he had in the months before, trying to suss out bits and pieces from histories and speculations. Stories about growing up in the garden, growing up with Carnation before Rosemary, and after, things that had shaped the mare she had become.

A defender.

A fighter.

And falsely maligned by her own mother for doing what she had grown up to do.

She also wanted desperately to be loved, and though she didn’t know she’d let it free, she was deadly scared of losing more of the family she’d grown to love with a fervor that Collar could well understand.

“This has been…” Rosewater murmured before a yawn broke in over her. “Stars above. It’s well past midnight.”

“It is.” Collar drew in a deep breath and shook his head slightly. He pulled the cheesecloth-wrapped package out, a collection of candies, mostly strawberry, that Cloudy had insisted he help her look for. They were another part of the story of Rosewater he hadn’t known before just a few days ago.

The vendor, one Spun Sugar, had still remembered Carnation and the gangling white filly with the silver pond cutie mark.

“When Cloudy and I found these,” Collar said softly, setting the bundle on the blanket between them, “Spun Sugar was happy to hear that you still remembered her candies, even though you were only six or seven at the time. She even remembered the exact flavor you liked, even the ones you claimed not to.”

“Th-that was her name?” Rosewater’s eyes darted from him to the bundle and back again. “You went with Cloudy to find them?”

“She asked me to, and when she told me why, I wanted to.” He untied the loose knot of waxy cloth and spread it open, showing the wax paper wrapped hard candies, a lump of gray and white in the moonlight. “She said Carnation would chat with her about Canterlot—where she was born—while you sniffed out your favorites. ‘Always a shy child, too rigid, too hidden,’ she said. ‘The weight of too much responsibility on shoulders too young.’”

For a moment, he could see that filly in the way she tried to hide the ache the memory of the shop must have brought her. “I’m… surprised she remembered that far back. It was more than twenty years ago.” Delicately, she used a spell to pull up one candy, the center glowing pink in the highlight of her magical aura. “She still wraps them the same way. Three twists left, two twists right. So…”

She bit down on the thicker twist, closed her eyes, and pulled away an empty wrapper, the double-twisted side open and crinkled. Tears escaped and trickled down her muzzle as her jaw moved.

“What is it?” Collar whispered to her, leaning closer, almost pressing his cheek to hers.

Rather than answering right away, she shook her head. Her jaw moved and she raised her head to look up into the night sky, clear and starry. “Memories of Carnation. When I was her daughter alone. When it was… when…” She swallowed. “Life was almost simple, then. It feels awful to say, but before Rosemary, I could almost see her as my mother. She’d always been there in my life, helping my father raise me when Roseate couldn’t be bothered.”

“I’m glad she was there for you,” Collar said softly.

“As her pregnancy grew, and I grew, I began to detach. Not much. But I knew, in my young heart, that everything was about to change again. It scared me, Collar. I didn’t know what would happen when the foal was born, but I was too scared to try and run away.” Rosewater’s smile grew bitter as she glanced at him. “I was afraid of change before she was born.”

A feeling unknown to him. He drew in a breath and rubbed his foreleg against hers, supportive, listening.

“Then… she was born. She was born, and I was there.” Rosewater’s voice quavered as she went on, her jaw moving as she continued to suckle on the candy. “I saw this life emerge from Carnation, start crying, and something in me changed. ‘That was me. That was me, and she needs love. She will need all the love in the world.’ All the love Carnation and my father had given to me, I had to give to her, so she wouldn’t grow up in a world where half of her parents didn’t care.”

“And you’ve given it to her,” Collar murmured. “I’ve seen it between you. You succeeded. Roseate did not win.”

“Thank you.” She lifted the wrapper and untwisted it to lay flat. “These were the only part of my childhood I allowed myself after she was born. I studied, trained, and found new duties to take up around the house to make sure that Rosemary would be comfortable, and Carnation could take care of her in the ways I could not. But these…”

“They’re your childhood.” Collar turned to select one of the candies from the packet. “Can I share that with you?”

“Of course.” Rosewater sniffled and smiled at him, then down at the wrapper. “I realize now that my… obstinance was a child’s stubbornness. A surety of how things would happen that didn’t come true. I still worry, too, that if I’d done things differently, if…” Her eyes raised to his. “If I’d reached out sooner, if I’d not listened to my fears that you would reject me out of hoof, if I’d made the effort…”

Then we might not need to go through this pageantry. Collar swallowed and met her eyes briefly before the intensity of her hope became too much. “Look to the future,” he said to her worries. “Friendship. Allies.”

“Yes,” Rosewater said, looking aside, the hope not quite fading from her eyes, but withdrawing to be like the embers of the fading fire. She took a deep breath and some of the fire seemed to come back to her. “Our next ‘date?’”

“When is your next with Cloudy?”

“I’m seeing her three days hence. You have a date with her four days later, yes?”

“I do. Our first planned one that appeared on both of our social calendars. It’s the next step in our courtship and formalizing our bonding in the eyes of our ponies.”

Rather than the expected reaction of uncertainty, she looked excited. “I do hope that day goes well for you. Shall we plan for afterwards, then? Or before?”

“Before, I think,” Collar said, frowning down at his hooves for a moment, thinking through the reasoning. “I want to remember you for all the help you’ve given her in whatever she’s planning. She’s been positively giddy these last three days, looking forward to our date in a way she hasn’t before.”

“After my date with her, then?” Rosewater asked softly. “Unless… does my being intimate with her bother you, Collar? Honestly?”

“Honestly?” Collar tried to find the upset he should have as a Dammer, but any sense of outrage that his future wife was lying with Rosewater on a regular basis, even if they didn’t always have what he would consider sex, didn’t take hold. Cloudy was a Merrier, and though it’d taken him a while to get used to her desires, her free spirit, the fact that she was willing, if not happy, to give that up for him…

Rosewater was watching him calmly, seeming to expect the answer he’d already arrived at. At first, he had wrestled with the idea that a mother and daughter could share a love for the same pony, but their family was already an oddity. But now, he could see them as distinct ponies, each capable of arriving at love from different directions and for different reasons.

“No.” Collar shook his head deliberately. “I won’t shackle her, nor expect her to be shackled. So long as she obeys the letter of Frosty’s Law, I don’t foresee any issues, and I don’t expect her to give up her heritage any more than she has already been forced to.”

A tension that had been in her vanished, only noticeable to him now for its absence. “The day after my date with her, then?”

“Your turn to bring dinner?”

“My turn,” she agreed, and bent her head to study the small pile of candies, selected two, and searched out two more of the same shade, then picked out two different ones. “These two are for Rosemary,” she said of the last. “These four are for you and Cloudy to share. Rosemary can tell you the significance of the flavors. They’re little stories in themselves.”

“Thank you.” Collar held them as he rose. “We’d better get your saddlebags and get you on your way home. And I had better make a stop by the prison to make good on my promise to visit Glory again.”

“Thank you for looking after her. I’m sure she’ll be happy to have quarters in the palace.” Rosewater followed him up and doused the fire before letting him lead the way back around the hillock towards their first campsite.

“She’s been a model prisoner,” Collar said casually, trying not to think about how often and much time he spent with Poppy. That she wasn’t with foal was a testament to her own spells controlling her fertility. He shook his head faintly and glanced at her. She was paying more attention to the spine underhoof, watching her step as he should have been, but her ear flicked an acknowledgement. “We’re moving her, during the day, tomorrow. It’s going to cause a ruckus, but less of one than if a Rosethorn raid broke her free while she was being transferred.”

Rosewater nodded faintly, stepping more lightly as they descended from the ridge of stone and sand to the broader beach, the setup of their camp hardly disturbed in the near distance under the moonlight and thin veils of fog that drifted across the sandy shore. “Will I be allowed to see her? Or would that be too much of an affront to my stated purpose?”

“We’ll see. Primfeather Wing is going to bring enough of a stink about housing two Rosethorns in the ancestral seat of Prim power, even if the Primfeathers haven’t held it for more than three hundred years.”

Collar shook his head, sighing, and started breaking down the camp. What he would do with it, he wasn’t sure just yet. Dragging it to the prison would make it extremely obvious where he’d been. He hadn’t exactly hidden, but advertising where he’d been wasn’t a great idea.

“Let me take it,” Rosewater said as he sat staring at the thing. “I’ll bring it on our next date and use it to set up for our next dinner. It’s a very handy set, I admit.”

“And the pot of stew?” There wasn’t much left after they’d both had seconds, but there was enough to fill a bowl.

“Give it to Glory. She’ll enjoy it, and unless I’m misremembering, she has a small kitchen hearth there for reheating her own food, yes?”

“She does. She won’t when she moves to the palace. She will have a hearth and wood, but not the kitchen station.” He glanced at her to see if she’d known that as well, but she merely nodded. “I can see about getting something for her. I should for Rosemary as well, I suppose, but she’s never been barred from asking for things from the kitchen.”

“I just hope this is over soon and neither of them needs to endure much more,” Rosewater said, sounding tired. She checked the saddlebags, chuckled, and showed him empty pouches. “Cloudy came by, it seems. I was wondering how she was going to handle the pickup… but it seems like she planned for that with the second site, huh?”

He stared at her for a long moment, then at the bags. “You mean… it was all a setup?”

Rosewater winked, smiling. “I didn’t know how she was going to do it. I just knew that she was going to do something to get the ‘contraband’ I ‘smuggled’ over the bridge. I even have a writ for it.”

He nodded, sighed, and hefted the pot. “Let’s do that. I hope it’s nothing really illegal.”

“Nothing for lures or subverting wills. It’s something she asked for, and I trust that she’d know what’s ‘truly’ illegal.” She winked again. “She said it was for something special she and Rosemary were going to do together.”

A return to cultural sexual mores, then. He sighed, nodded, and watched while Rosewater considered the contraption, pranced around it, finally sighed and wriggled under the arms of the secondary tripod and took the weight on her back. “This is going to be a tight fit…”

“Take care of yourself. Don’t be alone, Rosewater.”

“I won’t be,” Rosewater said, drawing power into her horn and disappearing a moment later in a pop and flash.

“Evening, sir,” Quill said, bowing briefly as Collar entered the Prim Prison. He eyed the pot for a moment, then pulled out the log book. “We have only one other prisoner at the moment, but I presume you’re here to visit the Rosethorn?”

“You presume correctly. I had some extra stew and wanted to share it with her as a sign of good will and behavior.” Collar raised the pot briefly in his spell and with another signed his name to the line. “She has no visitors?”

“None sir, save Lace earlier today, explaining what happens tomorrow.”

“What’s the other prisoner here for?” Collar asked as he set quill back to pot.

“Drunk and disorderly conduct, sir. We’re letting him stew until morning, and we’ll slap him with a fine and let him go.” Quill shrugged. “Nothing unusual.”

Collar nodded and made his way up, finding the cells dark, as any sane pony would be this late at night. Still, he had promised to talk to her ‘soon’ and ‘before she was transferred.’ Since she was being transferred tomorrow…

And he wanted to know if Glory had any insights into Rosewater. He deactivated the wards and pushed open the door, closing it behind him.

Almost immediately, a candle lit in the bedchamber part of the cell and a muzzy looking Glory glided out to stare at him. “My lord? Do you know what time it is?”

“Actually, I do.” Collar came a bit closer and hefted the pot. “It’s well past midnight, and I wanted to bring you some food I made myself.”

Glory stared at him as if he’d gone insane, then sighed, shrugged and brought the candle out to light the hearth. When there was faintly crackling fire going on the embers, she added another log and took a lounging seat on the sedan chair. “Very well, set the pot on the hook. I may as well…” She sniffed, frowned, and slid halfway from her seat to sniff him. “By the stars, you were with her tonight.”

“I was.”

“Openly?” Glory shook her head before he could answer. “No. Not so close and for so long.” She watched him for another moment as he fiddled with the iron arm and position of the pot. “How is my sister?”

“She seems to be doing…” Collar thought for a moment before sighing. “She’s become a friend. I worry for her. I worry that she’s going to get herself hurt.”

“If she’s your friend now, then she’s doing better than she was.” Glory waved a hoof at him, either a dismissive gesture or a request to sit down and pushed herself back up on the long chair. “She’s stubborn, but I’m glad she’s starting to break out of her shell. How many times have you seen her in the dark of night when nopony else was meant to see you?”

“Twice, now. And a third time in four days.” Collar hesitated, glanced at her, then the pot. “I truly believe her to be a friend.”

“That makes my heart glad.” Glory yawned and rolled on the couch. “I hope you don’t expect me to eat dinner with you. It’s very late and I’ve already eaten. I’m barely awake as it is.”

“The stew will keep, but it should be kept warm. I…” Collar cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about Rosewater.”

Her eyes flickered briefly, surprise or annoyance, he couldn’t be sure. “I won’t break any confidences.”

“I don’t expect you to. I’m… concerned.” He finished fiddling with the pot and sat beside the hearth, letting the flames warm his back and side. “How do I get her to open up?”

“My lord, it is far too late for me to engage in the supposition that would require.” Glory flopped her head into the pillows at the foot of the couch and flipped her tail. “Please ask me again tomorrow, when I am not three hours past sleep and exhausted.”

“That’s… fair. I promised her I would visit you.”

“And you have.” Glory gave him a sleepy smile. “Now hush and let me get back to sleep. I’ll give this stew of yours a taste in the morning before the move.” She waved a hoof at him and let it flop. “Have a good night, my lord, and dream sweet dreams of the mares in your life.”

He gave her a half-hearted glower before rising and opening the door. “Sleep well, my lady. I hope your accommodations are more satisfactory tomorrow.”

“Oh, I’m sure they will be.”

“It’s a lovely city,” Glory said for the third or fourth time since they’d pulled her out and handled the official paperwork releasing her from the custody of the prison to Collar’s.

Collar smiled and glanced to the side at her. Cloudy flanked her other side, and Note, Platinum, and Poppy formed the bulwark of the escort formation, and two corporals bringing up the rear. It was an entirely too large and complicated procession for moving a prisoner who’d been more than cooperative, but it wouldn’t do to seem like they were taking the possibility of her attempting an escape lightly.

“I would like, within our lifetime, to let you walk it freely, Glory,” Collar said genially. “When the war is over and the cities united.”

“And Damme victorious,” Glory said with a frown. “I don’t like that part.”

“And neither do I like the idea of Merrie being victorious,” Collar said, playing his part in the play she had decided to put on. “But until we are able to amicably meet at the negotiating table, it will be war.”

More and more, the idea of the ‘war’ seemed like a farce to him. A play put on by ponies playing their parts with varying degrees of sincerity, with only few true believers making the entire thing more earnest and giving it the punch it needed to keep the audience and other actors engaged.

Take away Roseate, for example, and it was unlikely the play would go on for much longer. Not even Rosary was supposed to be as bad as her mother, and might be coerced into seeing reason.

“But I will be able to see so much more of it from my window than I was from the stone walls of my cell.” Glory slowed briefly, then caught up, her nose in the air. “And the smells! Ah, so good to smell clear, clean air unburdened by walls and barred roof. So many cooks in so many kitchens. It’s wonderful!”

That much, he was certain, wasn’t a ruse or a play, and he let himself smile at the simple joy she was exuding at being able to smell more than the jail and the regular, infrequent visits to the prison yard with its latticework of wooden bars overhead, wide enough to let in sunlight and fresh air, but not so wide as to let a pegasus attempt an escape.

Collar spared a look at the ponies going about their daily lives to his right, and the whispers that were surely already starting regarding the transfer of so high-profile a prisoner from Prison to Palace. They’d made the transfer a secret for as long as they could to prevent any attempt at organizing a protest in the streets, or any sort of confrontation that would have left too much up to chance for how it would play out.

If the Primfeathers had gotten word, or the Manes, or their allies, the would surely be following along on either side, disrupting daily life even further and shouting their displeasure at the very least, if not attempting to actively attack the mare, or incite somepony to throw something.

The trip from prison to palace was a relatively short one, and Glory offered a tourist’s commentary on the few streets they passed before they arrived on the palace grounds and Collar allowed himself to relax more. From there, the grounds and the palace itself were in his and his parents’ control, and wholly protected by the Dammeguard.

“You were expecting trouble,” Cloudy said from the other side of Glory.

“I was.” Collar let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding for the last few seconds. “Stars know the Manes and the Primfeathers are busy enough with the harvest and wrangling the weather as much as they can over the farms, but I wouldn’t have put it past them to organize an impromptu demonstration against treating Glory like a pony.”

“For that matter, you’ve been busy with overseeing and tallying the harvest and gala preparations,” Cloudy said, not a little hint of disgruntlement in her voice.

“So have you.”

“Yeah, but my tasks take me out of the palace on hopping flights hither and thither. Yours see you locked up in your office for hours on end.” Cloudy snorted and gave him a little smile. “You could delegate quite a lot to your staff, you know, and only review the end results. It would give you more time to act like a noble stallion.”

Collar snorted derisively. “Please. I have seen what road that goes down in the past. I don’t want to be the idle noble, Cloudy. I wish I could be more like you. Running hither and thither as you said. I wish I could see the world more.”

“Then do that,” Cloudy said, glancing at him and ducking her head briefly, a small smile on her lips. “Delegate and get out. Be seen more. Interact with your ponies. Be a leader who’s seen helping.”

“I agree with Cloudy,” Glory said, sounding half-surprised. “Why do I agree with her?”

“Because she’s not always a hothead,” Collar said softly. “She thinks, she’s smart, she can work around a problem, and that combined with her passion… it’s the reason I first fell for her.”

Cloudy’s ears flicked back, and she smiled more brightly. “I can think with my brain and my feathers.”

Glory chuckled. “And when a certain pony hasn’t startled you half to death, I’m sure.”

“Yes, well… fighting an invisible foe is… terrifying.” Cloudy coughed and flicked her tail against Glory’s flank. “Anyway, I think that apology is well worn. On both sides.”

Glory pretended, obviously, to hem and haw, before she giggled and nodded. “Agreed.”

The giggle drew a fleeting look from Poppy ahead of them, his cheeks coloring and providing a little glimpse into what he saw in the mare. She could tease. Collar knew that, but it was interesting to see it play out in an echo of what their private play must be like.

At the gate, half their company peeled off, with Note heading deeper into the palace to report to Priceless, and the two corporals saluting and returning to their duties of the day.

Collar, Cloudy, Poppy, and Glory made their way to the second floor of the palace’s Heir’s wing, Collar in the lead now, with Glory and Poppy bracketing Glory between them as the guard on duty, Sunrise, came to attention in front of Rosemary’s door, her cheeks flushed pink as she darted a look from Cloudy to Collar and then straight forward.

Cloudy and Sunrise were lovers. Maybe they still were, in secret. As pegasi, finding a secluded place would be as easy as flying. A moment’s consideration of last night, of Rosewater’s question, settled the momentary discomfort.

He glanced aside at her and nodded briefly. “At ease, Sergeant Sunrise,” he said softly. “Thank you for keeping Rosemary company this morning.”

“Y-yes, my lord,” she said in an equally soft voice, lowering her eyes. She knew he knew, it seemed. He would need to talk to her soon, and let her know he wasn’t upset. Another thing that was complicating his life. Rosewater, Rosemary, Sunrise… maybe even Platinum. The latter, at least, seemed to not give a whit if he knew, but Platinum was as blunt as a brick when she had a mind to be.

The three room suite two doors down already stood open, Prim Coat standing there with a servant at his side, discussing the disposition of the room and the cleaning and food schedule.

“This is already more comfortable than my previous residence,” Glory murmured softly. “I can hear the world around me. I won't be in a silent box almost the entire day.”

“I apologize again,” Collar told her, stopping in front of the room and waving her inside. “It was never my intent to keep you there for a month. I never thought your mother would prevaricate and delay and even just ignore you for so long.”

“Nor did I,” Glory said, bobbing her head in greeting to Coat and the servant, a stallion in the uniform of a staff person. “Thank you both for this lovely suite. I promise I will take care to not cause you too much grief during my imprisonment here.”

Coat raised his brows and gave Collar a questioning look, as if to say, ‘Are all the daughters this polite?’

Collar shook his head briefly. “I have your word that you’ll behave?”

“Of course, my lord.”

“Good.” Collar glanced at Cloudy. “Cloudy, stay. The rest of you are dismissed to your regular duties. There are some conditions that I have to discuss with Glory before I meet with my mother to formalize the transfer.”

Glory’s brows rose as she glanced from Cloudy to Collar and back.

The door closed, and Collar spread a silence throughout the room.

“I take it, my lord, since you briefed me before we ever left the prison, that this is more about what you asked me last night and not anything to do with the formal movement of my place of residence?”

“Very perceptive,” Collar said genially, and adopted a more relaxed posture. “Last night was… different. And I need advice on how to proceed from there. I worry that Rosewater may view my actions as more than merely supportive.”

“But they weren’t ‘merely’ supportive, were they, Collar?” Cloudy asked from beside him.

“Why don’t you tell me as much as you can, my lord, and I will do my best to aid you in romancing my sister.” Glory winked at him when he startled and sputtered a protest. “Oh, protest all you want, but nopony comes straight from a date to talk to their date’s sister when the first words off their lips are How do I get her to open up?’”

“Those were not the first words from my lips.”

“They were the first interesting words from your lips,” Glory countered with a smile, and glanced behind herself at the bed. “Ah. Freshly laundered and not trekked halfway across the city and halfway through the dirt to get to me.” She scuffed her hooves dutifully on the scratchy rug before the hearth and leapt up to flop unceremoniously on the bed, her shorter, stockier frame still reminiscent of Rosewater’s, though it was hard for Collar to imagine her laying so lazily. “Tell me how your dates have gone thus far.”

Collar glanced at Cloudy for confirmation. She’d spent more time with the mare than he had.

At her desultury nod, Collar resigned himself to partaking in yet another Merrier tradition. The sharing of one’s dating life with confidants. At least here, Glory couldn’t spread gossip like a crowing rooster or a clucking hen.

Not that they do so in Merrie, anyway.

“Our first date was… tense to start.”

Author's Note

The parting of the date, and Glory makes her move (literally).

This is a connecting chapter, and resolves a couple of threads while expanding more. Glory, and some other characters, will have expanded roles now that she's more easily in communication distance, and without needing to sign into the prison log book.

Next week, intrigue and the wildlands. We get a look at what it's like in the far interior of the Equestrian continent, and just what Crown has been up to for the past few days, and Rosewater deals with two of her sisters and their mission from mother.