“I’m starving,” Rosewater muttered. They’d cleaned up again, not with a full bath, and the scent of sex pervaded the house. For the first time in nearly two months, another’s beside her own solo masturbations greeted her with every breath. She could have eliminated the odor easily, but… it filled the space with more than emptiness and made it feel more…

Full.

The house was full of life again. Hers and Collar’s, and lunch, since breakfast had been skipped, was breakfast. Or what had been planned for breakfast. Strips of carrot seared in the olive oil, pancakes piled higher than she’d had in nearly a decade, and a rich maple syrup that she’d had to buy from a trader who’d claimed the bottle came all the way from the eastern edge of the continent near a place called Horseton.

Collar was preparing something he called ‘Eggs benedict’, a new word for her and a new look to what she usually passed over for breakfast, smelled heavenly. A surprise for something originating from Damme. Supposedly.

“Just another minute. The sauce is almost ready.” He flashed a grin at her over his shoulder, his expression clearer than it had been that morning, when they’d first made love. She’d been worried that they’d made the jump too soon, and the second time just a few hours later was…

It was beautiful. Even with her brief panic attack that the Cards were pushing Collar to do something he wouldn’t normally, and maybe wouldn’t want… making love to him so slow and passionately had filled her heart and mind with dreams of what might be. Their quartet of loves, their children, their ponies living in harmony with each other.

It can be that. It was what she’d hoped for when she’d first made her foolish, foalish plans for attracting his attention, as if she’d forgotten all about social niceties in her six years of near solitude. They were coming back to her. What it meant to love, to have a lover. What it meant to have hope for a future she dreamt of.

“I… I want to talk about…” Rosewater cleared her throat and prodded at the pile of fluffy pancakes, and renewed the spell on the plates keeping them warm. “Children. Ours. The future.”

Collar glanced over his shoulder at her, an ear cocked, and nodded. “I do, too. But we can’t talk much about that without Cloudy and Rosemary also here. It’s a group decision.”

“It is.” She was already half-certain that Cloudy wanted her to go first. Little hints in their conversation. Her worry about being a good mother. Her worry about being a mother when, as she’d known most of her life she liked mares, she’d decided she likely wouldn’t be one. But… it wasn’t Rosewater’s place to speak for her. “We can talk about the gala.”

Collar paused, then turned around and finished whisking the light golden sauce. “We can talk about the gala. That… worries me more than the Commoner’s Gala. It won’t be gossip Wing and Roseate are hearing. It will be right before their eyes.”

He tapped the whisk and poured gold on top of the white, fluffy eggs, sprinkled parsley on it, and sat two plates on the table. A full course brunch. “Enjoy, Rosewater. This is… mother said it came from a Saddle Arabian ally some sixty years ago. This is a pancake variant.”

“And the carrots you had me sear?” Rosewater asked, lifting up the edge of the fluffy white egg. She cut into it with a knife, sniffed it so her muzzle marks glowed, and chuckled. “That’s where the cayenne went.”

“It adds a bit of bite to the crunch, otherwise the carrot can be bland. It’s very good.” He winked and sat down beside her. “Your fluffy pancakes gave me the idea, and it’s been quite a long while since I’ve had them. And never so flavorful to nose and tongue.”

“We… like to liven our spices.” She took a bite, crunched through the thin, crispy carrot, the light, fluffy sweet pancake, and let the sauce flow over her tongue, interrupted only by the light fluffiness of the egg white. “Stars…” she murmured around the mouthful. “It’s so… is that…” she knew all the ingredients, she’d smelled them all, but together, they brought out an entirely different flavor profile. Lemon juice and cayenne wasn’t something she’d have thought would go well. They were so at odds with each other scent-wise. And the light mustard powder…

She hadn’t even known she had any left, but in its cork-stoppered glass bottle, it had kept well for at least the year she’d had it hidden away.

“The egg yolk helps bind it all together. Or so I’m told. I’m just following the recipe mother has in the kitchens.” Collar tucked into his breakfast and practically melted as he chewed the first bite. “But… the spices from Merrie…”

“I can send you home with what’s let in my kitchen,” Rosewater said around her second bite. “There’s not much left, to be honest.”

“That was the last of the cayenne, and the last of the pepper is on the carrots.” Collar gave her an apologetic smile.

For a few minutes, the clatter of fork and knife filled the kitchen while Rosewater catalogued what was left in her mind, checking the cupboards with spells between bites while Collar watched her and ate.

“Other than what Dazzle and I bought, there’s nothing perishable left.”

“Rosewater, just eat,” Collar said gently, closing the latest cupboard. “Relax and worry about your cupboards later. We have time to decide what to do with the spices.” He grinned as he speared the next chunk of pancake. “But Cloudy and Rosemary would likely jump at the chance for Merrie spices. It’s subtle, but there is a difference in the scent profile at least.”

Rosewater pushed her thoughts away from planning again, sighed, and settled back in to eat.

“I want to kiss you at the Gala,” Collar said after another few bites and a fresh drizzle of syrup on his remaining pancake.

Panic froze her thoughts for long seconds. Roseate would see. She would see and she would… She can’t take him. Chills like a summer frost ran over her skin, hot and cold, too intense to keep from showing.

“I know.” Collar scooted closer and leaned into her, sharing his warmth through the contact, his solidity, and the surety that he was not going to be taken from her. He took another bite, slower, and stared at the breakfast nook window and the sunlight streaming in through a crack in the curtains. “It’s a risk, Rosewater, but we’re going to need to take risks, and I’ve been thinking about it since… our second date, if I’m being honest, even if I didn’t know what I was really considering.”

“I want to kiss you, too. I want them to know.” Rosewater pushed back the fear in her heart, pushed it back into the box with her father and the reaching claws of the monster that told her she couldn’t have anything worth loving; the monster that wore her mothers’ face. “Let’s do it, Collar. It will be the next big step, but Lace said we would need to show our ponies a progression. The Gala is in three weeks. What do we need to do to make it to that point? Where wondering about our relationship is the gossip of both cities? What…”

It would be provoking her mother. Stars, it would be jabbing an ursa major with a sharpened stick and daring it not to react. And she would. Maybe not in the open, but she had loyal daughters, and enough leverage, to…

“You’re going to be okay,” Collar murmured, setting his hoof to her shoulder and rocking her gently side-to-side, breaking her out of her spiral. “I promise you. You have ponies who will stand with you, Rosewater, if you stand with them.”

Briefly, annoyance flared, then fell, and she sighed. “I know. I’m going to stand, Collar. I won’t let her be the monster under my bed any longer. I… I just don’t know what she’s going to do.” She might try to take you again. Horror rose up in her at the idea of him falling like her father, her taking away that bit of…

“She’s not taking you,” Rosewater growled. “She’s never touching you again, Collar. I won’t let her.”

Collar flinched, nodded, and sidled closer, wrapping a foreleg over the back of her neck and pulling her into his chest. “She’s not. I’m not leaving you, Rosewater.”

Fears roiled through her mind, various fates delivered by invisible hooves, death from a dragon’s breath, long in coming. Poison in a cup, masked by wine so her nose could only find it too late. She pushed each aside as it tried to encroach on her. The latter, she reminded herself, hadn’t been common since the bloody days of the war, and the former… He was doing his duty.

One by one, she pushed them back into the dark corner of her mind where they seemed to be breeding with each other, fostering more, and set up walls as strong as she could make them in her thoughts. She could address them later, rationally, and put each to rest or at the top of her watch list.

Murder was not something she would put past her mother, however risky and dangerous enacting such a plan would be for her long term survival.

“Better?” Collar asked after several minutes of holding her close.

“Better,” Rosewater said with more control in her voice than she thought she had left. Everything was going perfectly. Something her experience said could never be. There was always a disaster just over the horizon. Stop it. Today is special. Think about the future, not the past. “What… else can we do? To make your ponies see me as… not a monster? My ponies, I think, won’t care about the polyamorous part, but yours will.”

“They’ve had five centuries to get used to the idea that polyamory is not only valid, but can be stable,” Collar said with a sigh. “Not that that’s stopped them, and me, admittedly, from thinking it wouldn’t work out. Or… honestly, thinking that there wasn’t room in my heart for all of you.”

“The heart’s room is as big as it needs to be for each pony,” Rosewater said gently, reciting a bit of philosophy from Rosencart, “from just big enough for two, to an entire village. Rosencart Rosedown said that. He was… progressive during a time when the war was still going on with hot blood being spilled. It’s been argued whether or not he accepted that the Tussen Twee could be valid, but didn’t openly say it, or if he thought two was a transient number that was open for discussion later.”

“I’ve read some of his work, and I agree with his sentiment, but I don’t like his views on marriage being an unnecessary yoke.”

“Not many generally do. Marriage, to most, and to me, is… a statement. I love you, and I want to bring life into this world made of both of us. And… it is to a lot of ponies. And not just for taxes.”

Collar chuckled and pulled her briefly more tightly against him, then let go of his embrace and settled in to finish his last piece of pancake. Before he took a bite, he paused, seemed to briefly consider what to say, and sighed. He chewed slowly, his eyes flicking back and forth, and swallowed.

This is what I want. It was then, at least. Discussing philosophy with her lover, the only downside to all of it being that it was a singular lover. And they couldn’t leave. Couldn’t go anyplace else, and she couldn’t leave without a full bath and de-scenting, or she’d be found out when she crossed paths with any one of her sisters. A stallion’s scent on her, the musk of the rut, of seed spilled so recently and still lingering on her thighs despite the cleaning.

They might not know whom it belonged to, but the fact that she had been supposed to be alone with her fears… and they knew where Dazzle had been. It wouldn’t take long for them to figure out whom had been in her home, and for what purpose.

Knowing that she was not only courting, but actively in bed with Collar wouldn’t necessarily be traitorous, but it didn’t need to be for it to be a potential disaster at this stage of their courtship. All Roseate would need to do would be to whisper in the right ears to get the word to Wing, and the moralizing, monogamy promoting traditionalists would come out in earnest to protest against Collar’s ‘affair’ with Rosewater. No matter if Cloudy thought of it as cheating or not.

“Can… you ask Cloudy to find someplace along the old highway in the forest for our next date? Someplace far to the north that we can still get to in a day if we follow it.” They didn’t need curious or suspicious Primfeathers venturing northward to scout out where they were camping to ruin their next date. “Someplace back in the trees, where it’d be hard for a pegasus to get a downlook.”

Collar’s ears ticked and he drained the last of his glass of grape juice before answering. “I can. Going too far north runs the risk of running into the Crystal Range foothills, though.”

“They’re not haunted, Collar.”

Collar’s ears twitched. “I wasn’t suggesting they were. But the Deerkin do run the foothills, and they’re not…” He licked his lips and glanced at her. “Known for their gentleness in playing pranks on ponies that wander into territory they claim as theirs.”

“They don’t claim territory, Collar. That’s not in their culture. They use it. And as long as they use it, they’ll consider it theirs. Trails, grazing grounds, thickets. If we do run into any that haven’t already started the migration south, I can talk to them. If they have an Equestrian speaker in their group, it will be easier. I can only speak their tongue poorly. But enough to manage, most times.”

“How did you even manage to learn that much?” Collar asked, brows going up. “I didn’t think they even liked interacting with ponies.”

“Well…” Rosewater started gathering up the plates and dishes from brunch and sent them off to the wash basin. “That’s a story about when I was growing up. When Great Aunt Rosefire was still alive, albeit retired and scandalizing ponies in Canterlot.”

“She sounds interesting. I’m sure Princess Celestia was happy for her company in court.” Collar chuckled and followed her to the basin, bumping his flank against hers. “So… tell me how you learned… what’s their language called?”

“It… doesn’t have a name. Unless it’s ‘Voice’. When they speak, it’s in their Voice.” She shook her head and started filling the basin with cold, barely sun-warmed water from the cistern. “When I was a filly, and learning Dammerlandic from Carnation, I… liked to wander while I was speaking to myself in the old tongue, practicing the syllabic intonations and trying to get my hooves to follow the cadence of the sentences I was trying to say.

“Somewhere along the way, my hooves gained an echo, a softer thud from behind me every time I touched the ground…”

It sounded again, the faint echo, off-cadence from her four-part harmony, but glancing behind her said nothing was there, only the dappled light of the noonday summer sun breaking through the canopy above as the wind tossed the higher branches about.

It was hard to hear much beyond the wind sighing above. Not that her ears weren’t sharp, but that there wasn’t much more to hear. The birds, of course, and the occasional rustling of a woodland creature in the sparse undergrowth, but no voices, no sound of hooves on the path behind her.

For an eight year old filly, it should have been frightening. She knew that it should have been because her other friends her age, Moonrose and Emberose didn’t like to walk the paths beneath the cliff bordering the Rosewine territory, nor the forests that spread from the cliff’s edge to the west, east all the way to the territory’s namesake tributary, and north in a scraggly line that made it almost all the way to the garden paths that her friends liked to walk.

They were spooky her friends said, and even the older ponies that came by, Rosy Glass being the eldest of her friends at almost thirteen, wouldn’t go with her.

Or they would, but they’d scare themselves into a panic and run back to the Villa, their tails flagged high alert.

But Rosewater would stay until Carnation inevitably came looking for her.

The woods were quiet, and peaceful, and not full of ponies asking her if she was okay even two years later. Only Carnation seemed to understand, and Budding, Tempest, and Blue seemed to be coming around to understand, that she was going to be okay. They didn’t need to ask her every Moon-starved day if she was yet.

So, after lessons on every third day, days when daddy would take her out to the countryside half her own age ago, she would walk the woods and practice whatever it was she’d learned that day. Language. Mathematics. History. Repeating figures, words, and dates in a cadence with her step.

Today… she wasn’t alone.

“Moonrose?” Rosewater called out.

When no answer came, she called out the boldest of her friends, “Glass?”

Still no answer came, and her eyes darting from shadow to shadow in the forest did her no good.

Not until a small piece of the forest… moved. What she’d thought was dappling and sunlight on the bare brown of the earth… wasn’t.

A… creature, not unlike herself, four-hooved, but with two hooves to each hoof, stepped out of the shadows on the side of the path she’d been walking, seeming to detach from the surrounding like a patch of loamy forest floor.

“Deerkin,” Rosewater breathed as she recognized the dappling on the fawn’s flanks and back, trailing all the way up their neck and even to their face. Not much older than she was, or younger even. Carnation had taught her of her and her mother’s tradition of leaving out offerings for the kin, and even taken her along on the latest trip east of Merrie.

But she’d never seen one, let alone met one.

“Hello,” Rosewater called out. And tried again in Dammerlandic, thinking maybe the language lesson had called them. “Hallo?” She’d thought she got the stressing right.

Instead of replying the fawn glanced behind them, just as another deerkin, taller than Rosewater, taller even than her father had been, it seemed, stepped out of the woods, his antlers swaying as he maneuvered them free of the trees, and placed himself between the fawn and Rosewater.

He glanced behind him, and another deerkin followed, this one a doe, smaller and more delicately built than the buck standing between them.

“Hallo?” Rosewater tried again. “Hallo mijn naam is Rozenwater,” she tried, introducing herself formally and with a foreleg stretched bow that fillies and colts used.

The doe nudged aside the buck gently and spoke to him in a softly liquid tongue that Rosewater didn’t recognize, instructions that seemed to mean ‘Take the child home,’ because in the next moment, fawn and buck vanished into the wood, and only the sound of hooves on the loam even betrayed their presence aside from moving shadows.

When even the sound had passed beyond Rosewater’s hearing, the doe seemed to relax. Rosewater, daring not even break her observation of the doe for a second, lest she vanish, too, wanted so much to… ask her questions that she likely wouldn’t understand.

“You…” The doe hesitated, staring.

“Wander?” Rosewater asked.

The doe startled, considered, and nodded. “You wander trails moons number—numbered three,” the doe said in heavily and strangely accented Equestrian, missing words . “Loud. Fawn stalk. Learn being loud.” She took a step closer, her head bobbing, ears perked. “Why… wander lands? Fear you being...” Her hoof raised, then lowered, scratching the trail lightly. “Help word.”

“Lost?” Rosewater asked, and after a pause and the shake of the other’s head, she went on, “Taken? Tricked? Hurt?”

At the last, the doe stamped her hoof and nodded. “Fear… you being hurt?”

“Because… I’m not scared. I want to know things. I want to learn. I practice learning here.” Rosewater took a hesitant step forward, her ears flat to her skull. “May I continue? I like it here, Lady Doe.”

One of the doe’s ears flicked, and she gave Rosewater a more considering look, as if deciphering what she’d said. “Continue wander. For learning. Why learn… this place?”

It seemed a challenge, so Rosewater drew in a breath and stood her ground. “My daddy took me to the forests east of Merrie. He taught me the sounds, and what to be afraid of, and what not. He was a good pony.”

Both of the doe’s ears flicked back, and she cocked her head to one side, and then the other, and seemed to take a closer look at Rosewater, her bright purple eyes darting from point to point, and settling at last on her hooves, and tapped her own hoof in front of her. “Come.”

Hesitant, Rosewater came forward, staring down at her hooves for long moments, at the shallow cleft in her otherwise pristine hoof that her father had also had. That he said was special to their family, then at the doe’s hooves. Hers were split entirely, so it seemed she had two hooves, each rounded at the tip, but flatter, and the fur on her fore and hind leg ran further down and closer to the ground.

Rosewater sat down in front of her and raised a forehoof, surprising the doe again, who nonetheless gently raised the proffered limb with the back of hers. Her coat was softer and thicker than Rosewater’s, warmer, and she could only imagine how hot it must be during the height of summer.

But she was also smaller than most adult ponies.

“Hoof is…” The doe let Rosewater’s drop and raised her own.

“Cleft?”

“What is… cleft?”

“Split. Like yours.” Rosewater raised both of her hooves up and waggled them like they were separate parts of a whole… and to her surprise, the doe did the same. With one hoof. They were split. Two hooves?

“Not cleft.” The doe again raised one of Rosewater’s limbs, but this time sat and traced her other hoof over the dimple. “No cleft. Almost cleft. Who… no who. Where father? From. Was. Grief?”

Not here. Rosewater flinched from the thought that even here she wouldn’t be able to escape the question. ‘Are you okay?’ All she could say was no and be truthful, and they would coddle her and ask her what was wrong, and she could never answer all the way. She didn’t even know. But she didn’t want to lie. Not to her new family.

“Loss,” the doe said gently, and raised a hoof to stroke Rosewater’s mane and ears lightly. “Hard loss. Time heals. Mean not… meet. Mean. Where from.” The doe sidled around to sit beside Rosewater, one foreleg holding her lightly against the larger’s barrel. Not trapping, but comforting. “We.” She leaned briefly on Rosewater and drew out a sketch of the triangular portion of land. Then she drew a snaking line in the dirt that looked like the Merrie and leaned far forward to tap at the dirt with the tips of her hoof. “Kin of we.”

Comprehension dawned. “Canterlot. Daddy… was from Canterlot. Princess Celestia?”

The doe nodded sagely and spoke something in her tongue, sidled away from the drawing and drew Rosewater gently with her. She tapped out a trail from the Rosewine to the east, then south, then tapped many times.

“Ponies.” She spoke another word, then said. “Ponies.”

The word she’d spoken in her own language was ‘Ponies.’

Then… She spoke the name she’d heard the doe speak at first, then “Princess Celestia.”

“Yes! Yes. Dawn Rising Bright Pony. Meaning. Name.” The doe touched her breast with her free hoof and spoke another word.

“Your name is…” Rosewater repeated it. “My name is Rosewater. The flower. Rose. And water. Rose Water.”

“And… that’s how I started learning. I learned my own name. She taught me hers, and… that was all for that first day.”

Throughout her tale, Collar had barely paid attention to the words and let his mind form the imagery, form what it must have been like for a young Rosewater to meet a near-mythical race, to talk to them and not feel intimidated. Even he’d heard the stories when he was a foal, told to him by the young colts and fillies in the classes that he attended, mostly noble, though also a number of merchant-class ponies. His mother had been quick to tell him the truth of their sources when he’d brought them home to her.

His first lessons in everything not being as it seemed.

After a moment’s more silence, he took a deep breath, straightened, and let it out. “I remember stories… my… classmates told them to me. Haunted woods. Ponies that disappeared for generations and came back unaged, unaware of the passage of time. Ponies that never came back, lost as spirits wandering a wood that led them in circles forever.”

Rosewater chuckled. “So did, I, honestly. I just didn’t think… they had any sway over me. That it might be nice to wander away and come back a century later.” Her eyes still held that humorous glint despite her darker meaning. “But those were on my dark days following…”

Following your father’s death. “I understand. And… you got used to it. Realized the stories were just that?”

“That, and when I asked Carnation if they were real after my first… angry walk through the woods, looking for something to shout at that wanted to take me away… she told me they weren’t real.”

Collar could well imagine that had been immediately after. But… Anger? He almost asked her, but her eyes were distant, lost in thoughts he wanted to hear if she wished to tell them. He swallowed the question and hoped he’d get an answer when she shared what was bothering her so much. “Why did you keep going when they didn’t show up?”

“I was a filly, Collar. And curious. I… also had a hard time learning with distractions. It was easier for me to practice when fillies and colts my own age weren’t constantly asking me to play. And adults checking in on me constantly.” Rosewater shrugged. “So… I practiced my lessons as I walked the trails. After I met her, over the years that I taught Leaf Dancer, I learned bits and pieces of history of her tribe.”

Collar nuzzled her neck gently. “That reminds me of dad teaching me little bits and pieces of Merrie to distract me from mom struggling against the political forces of the city. I was always interested in helping her, but… in those days, I was a reminder that the bloodline of Damme’s leadership had been ‘tainted’ again. I… didn’t understand, and they didn’t want me to understand. Not yet.”

“They loved you very much,” Rosewater murmured. “They protected you from intolerance.”

“They did. Dad…”

The raised voices reached Collar even in his study room, even despite the baffle of the door.

“...marriage prospects are limited for his pedigree!” The voice was familiar. Collar thought it sounded like it was Primfeather Whirlwind, Matron of the Primfeather’s main clan.

“He is not a bargaining piece on a chess board! I will not…” His mother’s voice dropped below the level it could be heard through the door.

“Collar,” his father said, tapping his hoof in front of the book he was supposed to be studying.

“Who’s mom talking to?” Collar asked, knowing the answer already.

Dapper opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, the voices rose again.

Whirlwind’s voice was closer, and moving, “It’s important for him to get to know his future wife for that reason. Love can bloom as long as they get to know each other at an early age!”

“He’s eight!” His mother’s voice roared down the hallway. “Out! Get out of my office. Get out of my palace. I’ll not listen to more of your attempting to sell your granddaughter’s future! Nor my—!” His mother’s voice cut off abruptly, followed shortly after by the loud woosh and crack

They’re talking about me. He knew it even as Dapper’s face twisted into a rictus of pain, as if the words were hurting him.

“Merrie’s first Rosethorn ruler was Silver Rosethorn,” Collar said quietly, reading from the page in front of him even as the argument moved down the corridor. “She was considered strong for her generation, but the Rosethorns were new to their civil power. Their first regime was fractured, and Silver married her closest rivals in order to consolidate power. Their first child, Lapis Rosethorn, inherited a Merrie that was more orderly, saw new prosperity from the overland routes to newly founded Canterlot.”

“Very good.” Dapper’s ears were flat, but popped up at every sound from outside, every murmur. He wanted to be with mom while… she was talking with the Primfeathers’ matron.

“Do you think they won’t try to pair that tainted filly with him? They’re the same age. They already pushed her at him last year!”

“And they barely talked! Stars, not everything that little filly does is suspicious. She was grieving. They were trying to get her to see that the world was bigger than her grief.” His mother’s voice was strained, softer, almost too quiet to hear. She didn’t want him to hear.

He thought, for a moment, that he remembered the filly. At a busy event, standing along in a room with a filly, his parents and a young mare not too much older than they were standing with them. She already had her cutie mark, but she didn’t seem interested in talking. She had, instead, stared at her hooves, her ears flat almost the entire time. Not quite pouting, but neither responding to the young mare’s encouragements.

The words were mush in his memory already, even her name was lost. She was a Rosethorn. He knew that much, but… she hadn’t been with Roseate.

What that had to do with anything, though, he didn’t understand. He liked Sunrise well enough, but she was four, and his interests were much more mature than hers. And he barely remembered the filly a year later. She did have her cutie mark, and his parents seemed interested in talking with her mother. Or the pony he thought was her mother.

“Think on my offer. Wing is amenable, so long as they become playmates soon. He has other prospects for alliances.” It was the last thing he heard before their hoofsteps passed.

Seconds later, the front gate of the palace opened, then closed.

“Keep going, son,” Dapper said.

“In those first days, when the Primlines regained control in Damme, and the Rosethorns were getting their hooves under them, tensions ran high, but further bloodshed was stopped by the occupying force of Royal Knights until tempers cooled enough.” Collar looked up to his father. “What… why did they hate each other so much?”

“That, dear boy, is hard to say. Two hundred years is a long time for hate to twist and convolute into nonsense. Long enough that it might take that long again to untwist.” His father’s ears twitched to the door as the sound of hooves came up to it, paused, and started down the hall again. “Lace?”

The hoofsteps stopped, returned to the door, and this time it opened, and his mother came in, her cream white coat and charcoal dapples on her shoulders still flushed with her disagreement over him.

It wasn’t the first time he’d overheard a conversation he likely hadn’t been meant to hear.

“Love?” Dapper asked, rising.

“She didn’t consent to the silence spell,” Lace murmured. “She wants witnesses.”

“Don’t ask next time,” Dapper suggested just as quietly.

“Not now, Dap,” Lace replied, resting her chin on her husband’s head. The red flush faded from her coat. “We can discuss why later.” Her eyes turned to Collar, trying his hardest to pay attention to the book in front of him. “How are history lessons, going, Collar?”

“I learned about the treaty and how it was started,” Collar said cautiously, glancing between his mother and father. “Why would I marry Sunrise? I like her, but… she’s…” He tried to mime playing hoofscotch with only one hoof. “Young,” he said lamely, realizing it looked like he was moving pieces around a chessboard.

“She is,” Lace said gently, glancing at Dapper, dipping her ears in apology. “I’m sorry you heard that, Collar. It wasn’t meant for your ears. You can be friends with her, if you want, but who you love…” His mother’s eyes slipped from him to his father. “Who you love is who you choose. I chose your father. Who you choose… will never be somepony I tell you to. Your heart, my child, is known only to you, and never let anypony tell you otherwise.”

She said it in the solemnly grave tone she used when she wanted to make sure that he understood a lesson. Something vital to his upbringing.

“It is a lesson,” Dapper added in the same kind of quietly grave tone, “that has no age limit on it. Nopony should be forced to try and love somepony they don’t.”

“Who I love…” Collar repeated softly. “Is… who I choose.” For his eight year old mind, that seemed a wholly simple equation. “I love you,” he told his parents.

“And we love you,” Lace replied, her voice tight. “One day, this lesson will mean more to you. But for now, that is all you need worry about. We love you.”

“A good lesson,” Rosewater whispered into his ear. They’d finished cleaning up after brunch and moved to settle into the sitting room, a fresh pot of hot tea filling the room with aromatic delicacy. “Thank you for sharing it.”

“I… spent years gnawing on the idea,” Collar said, staring down into his milky tea as he stirred it, as if the pattern of swirls in the honey spinning off the spoon could give some insight. “I had suitors. Mares my age who were pushed at me by parents hoping either their children or themselves would get a hoof at influencing Damme. I liked them, some of them, but… there wasn’t that click. The snap of…” He raised the spoon, letting the golden honey drip tea into it, then inserted it again, the tip tapping the bottom of the cup. “Connection.”

“You were worried I was another suitor.”

“You were another suitor,” Collar said, his ears flattening. “When I’d already made my choice.” He grimaced and started stirring again. “When I thought my heart had made its choice. In Cloudy. We connected. We snapped together in all the thousand little moments when we were both off-duty. I’m convinced now that everypony must have seen it except for me. She wasn’t trying to get into my kindly regard. She just did, and it was so natural that…”

Rosewater watched as he continued stirring, felt his shoulders tensing and relaxing, and leaned lightly against him, quiet and letting him work out his memories.

“That I didn’t realize that I was falling in love with her until she asked me to come home with her. She wanted to ask me something.” Collar’s shoulders tensed again, then relaxed as he leaned against her. “It was a moment of instant realization. Like… it wasn’t with you.” He didn’t look at her as he went on. “With you, I knew you were trying to court me. And that… made me resist. Because I knew my heart had settled on Cloudy. But… as we had dates, as you actually courted me… that lesson kept coming back to me. Not consciously. But…”

“But it was there. You decide.”

“My heart decided before my head did,” Collar said with a little laugh. “The rest of me…”

“I have a confession,” Rosewater murmured. “I didn’t love you at first. I respected you. I liked you for what you and your mother stood for. But love… I was nervous, Collar.”

“You don’t say.” He laughed, and laughed louder when she nipped his neck. “That… I think was the first chink. Seeing you nervous, Rosewater, it told me you didn’t have a plan, and weren’t playing a game.”

“I could have been playing nervous,” Rosewater said, all-to-aware that she had almost decided to wear a mask before she’d thrown it away.

“No. Rosewater, I’ve seen ponies play at being nervous. It’s different. No matter how good of an actress you might be, there are always signs.” Collar nuzzled her cheek, sending a bloom of warmth under her coat. “I knew the moment I saw you that you were trying to be calm.”

“Poorly.”

“But you managed it. I saw you trying to be calm. That’s how I knew I was seeing you try to find yourself, Rosewater. Trying to reach out to me. To us, and to Damme. To respect us and still find a way to…” He waved a hoof, seeming to gesture at their current situation.

Rosewater raised her hoof to join his in the air, raising it so she could kiss the back of his ankle. “Love.”

“Love,” Collar agreed with a soft murmur. “I admit, finding my way has been hard. Stars, I should have told you so many times before. I had every opportunity, but…” He paused to take a sip of tea, his eyes distant.

“You wanted to take this time,” Rosewater murmured. “You wanted time to adjust to the idea, and to…” There was more, but she wasn’t sure. She’d been so certain so many times that he was going to tell her, so many times she could see it in his eyes that he wanted to, but every time, there was a hesitation, a need to take time to explore.

“I wanted to recapture the feeling I had with Cloudy. The feeling of clicking. I… I had no experience. I had no idea that it was different for each pony.” Collar’s eyes found hers, and he slipped his ankle under hers, raising it to brush against his cheek. “I didn’t know that falling in love with another pony could be different.”

“I worried that…” Rosewater trailed off, searching for the words to say what she wanted to. “I worried… that you might not realize that. It’s always different. Every pony finds love in their own way, and every love I’ve ever had has been different even for me. You were different. Stars, falling in love with you was… I was terrified that you’d see my courtship as… political.”

“It wasn’t ever that?” Collar asked softly.

“It… started that way. I started to act like my mother. I started to plan how I would seduce you. It was wrong. Talking with Rosemary about her loves, and the latest of her interests, and her day, and how everything for her was so very ordinary and free of machinations… and doubt settled in. And worry.” Those days, after the battle that had seen Crown taken and paid for with the city’s taxes, had been tense for her, but Rosemary had been largely unaware of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering, seemed so far away. “Before she was taken, even, I felt my plans falling apart even as I tried to think of them, but… I’ve always planned, Collar. It’s how I do things. It’s how I know that everything is going well.”

“I know.” Collar sipped his tea again and settled more heavily onto the couch, leaning more against her. “I’m the same, most of the time. I like plans. They help me know what else I need to do.”

“I’m trying to learn how to handle not having a plan, but I feel lost when I don’t. I don’t know what to do next when I don’t have one. Cloudy is helping me. She’s always been impulsive and leaps for every decision…” His voice trailed off and his eyes unfocused as he stared of into the past. “Even deciding to ask me to her home. I don’t think she planned it. I certainly didn’t plan anything, but thought she had one.”

“She didn’t?” That didn’t sound quite like Cloudy. She usually had some idea of what she was going to do, even if she hadn’t broken it up into steps.

“She did. Sort of. She explained it to me later as, ‘Have dinner, confess my feelings… and see what happens.’”

“That does sound like her. Rosemary is like that. It’s what attracted them to each other at first, Rosemary said. Leaping at each other, not really knowing what would happen, but coming down together.”

Collar flicked an ear. “Didn’t the two of you meet when they became lovers?”

“We did. Briefly. She was… twenty at the time. Three years ago?” Rosewater tried to dredge up the memory. “We met… here.” She waved a hoof at the couch opposite her. “Rosemary did most of the talking, telling me how they met, what they’d been doing since, and that she wanted to let Cloudy be one of her lovers. She had a few lovers in those days, most she’d maintained connections with from before Carnation…”

Collar watched the grief wash over her, the memories plainly crawling through her on what must have been a terrible day. “It’s okay.”

“After I started being called The Terror,” Rosewater went on doggedly, “she was more careful with choosing lovers. She didn’t choose ponies that called me that. She chose ponies that… were kinder. More understanding. Cloudy was scared, but she sat there across from me and answered my questions. It was maybe ten minutes. I don’t remember everything. I was… in a fugue for most of the last six years, with only Rosemary being what I remembered.”

Six years? The fear from her duel had lasted so long… Of course it did, it was fresh and she magnified it. Or did she? Collar didn’t actually know much about how her talent worked. He knew she could project emotion, even distill it and refine it with the right reagents and components.

Even now, as she watched him, waiting for a reaction, her eyes liquid pools of need for him to understand, he could see the traces of it. She was afraid he wouldn’t understand any of her fears, and wouldn’t accept them.

How can I tell her that I do?

Hesitating no more, Collar turned on his seat and cupped her cheeks with his forehooves. “I love you, Rosewater. All of you. Whatever you’re afraid of, we can all face it together. You, Rosemary, Cloudy, and I. And even more than us, love. You aren’t alone, and your friends, your lovers, your loves aren’t going to leave you.”

“I didn’t remember her,” Rosewater said, going on, her eyes brimming with tears. “I didn’t remember her when I saw her, Collar. What else did I lose by locking myself away? What don’t I remember? What else is there?” She raised a hoof to her lips, her jaw trembling. “What if she got hurt and I didn’t know it? What if somepony I allowed her to take as a lover hurt her? What if I failed her as a mother?”

That was the heart, he saw. The core of her fears.

“You would have remembered,” Collar told her with a surety that came from knowing her. Rosemary was everything to her, and had been more than that for six years. “You are not your mother, Rosewater. You love her with every part of your heart.” He held her cheeks still as she tried to look away, the guilt in her eyes spilling free as tears. “Let go of fear, Rosewater. Let go of what you used to fight your mother. You’re not going to lose her, and she’s not going to hate you.”

It was a stab in the dark, guessing that Rosemary had been the heart of the fear she’d clung to, that she’d instilled in everything she’d used.

Rosewater nodded weakly. “I have…” She trailed off, her eyes darting away from his, then back. The tears were still there. “I’ve tried to.”

“What can I do to help, Rosewater?”

He could see the words ‘you can’t’ forming on the tip of her tongue before she swallowed them and pushed his hooves to the sides with a shake of her head… then leaned into him. “Hold me,” she whispered. “Just hold me, Collar.”

It was more and less than he’d hoped for. Less, because she was admitting she was still unable to let go of her fears. More… because she was letting him help her. Even if all she could accept was him holding her, it was enough.

Collar let his forelegs fold around her back and guided her to rest her cheek just below his jaw so he could hold her with more of himself, let her feel his presence there comforting her and pushing back against the fears that threatened to swallow her every day, that she fought against, and had been fighting against, for… most of her life.

Plans let her define her world. It was how she kept those fears at bay, by defining the world on her terms. She had planned to wear blue ribbons. She had planned to defy her mother’s wishes for the sake of Merrie. She had not planned this date. She hadn’t planned making love to him, hadn’t planned spending the day cooped up in her house with him.

So much of this was unplanned for her. Untrod ground. Undefined world.

It scared her to move forward without a plan.

“I’m here,” he whispered as the realization seeped through him. This… right now, was terrifying for her. Not knowing what to do next.

I can help more. I can help her plan. If she let him help. She was… stubborn at times. Secretive at others. Skittish with her feelings.

But… later. For now, he held her close and let her know he was there. She needed calm right then.

Reach out to me, love, or I can’t reach you.

Author's Note

More glimpses of both of their pasts. More connecting, and quiet time with each other after some passionate moments and explorations earlier in the day.