“How was my time there?” I pondered under a shower of lavender petals, themselves falling from a windy night sky. Looking back I admired my Crystal Heart shining amongst some silver-lined clouds, a myriad stars twinkling in their mysterious yet elegant constellations. “They will lead me far…” came a whisper, and I turned forward – to be greeted by a mirror whose doubtful reflection melted into a scene of oases and shifting sand. A soft voice mimicking my own but echoed within my head answered my prior question.
I found myself all but hemmed in there by mystical creatures and serenading legends, hypnotised through snake eyes into serving as erotic djinn and advisor to the almost belligerent sultan. A few questions were thrown at me: “Are you talented at love?” “Do you have other, supplementary magical skills?” “Have you ever hated anypony?” Love must express truth to be worthwhile, so I gave the diplomats long and charming stories and their exuberant smiles shot arrows through my heart. Everything finished, they brandished a container – it looked much like the volumetric flask of chemical laboratories but was gilded – no, that resembled an incense burner more. With ten or eleven of their strange words I felt runny at once, my body rubbing and flowing all over itself into the bottle… I was powerless against its binding force.
Later in their grand palace they rubbed that burner and I condensed before them. I couldn't “push” or “pull” or teleport from my confinement and the lowly servants snickered at these attempts, so I resigned to my fate and acclimatised to Saddle Arabian culture. After all, my transformation into that graceful being had also gifted me with the local tongue. Reciprocal love it was – I helped with ravaged relationships and they bestowed on me lavish jewellery alongside flattering titles. Within a fortnight though unfettered boredom seeped into my cardiac crevices, and one moonless night I staged my personal perilous sultanate escape, shattering my “master bottle” in its execution.
There the vision of a faraway land lost its raison d'être, bringing down its frame like a sandcastle with too little water. I was left wondering: “Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake, clap your hooves, do a little shake… why didn't they understand it? Why did they treat me for granted and not as another common friend like themselves?” A slight tingle registered in my consciousness. “Perhaps I should reserve it for another day. I've frayed my nerves just pondering about it, exploring all its nuances, and now I should calm down with the serene, inspirational music of Horseshoe Bay. Maybe a quote from days crystallised as well: Bûter, brea en griene tsiis. Wa't dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries…” [Butter, rye bread and green cheese. Who can't say that is no true Frisian…]
“Aww…” The phantasmal visual feasts my eyes cooked up for me retreated as a dream to reveal what could be even more titillating, a reality of luxurious swamps among undisturbed, tranquil forest communities, creepers and climbers intertwining with each other as if they had the wisdom and conscience of a mare at her prime. Firefly lights scintillated all around, accompanied by the frequent howls of timberwolves returning to their dens as well as cicadas singing mating calls. There was also the occasional high-pitched cry; it sounded muffled and indecipherable to my ears, and I merely let it sublime into pure feeling, though I found comparing it to the legend of the headless horse a little tempting. Sticky natural mud, beads of water condensed from the humid ambient air and wetted soil, all matter of organic materials had gathered upon my pleasing pink coat. I didn't mind, however, as this was the wild side of my fascination with critters and their habitats, set free where I would cause the least disturbance. I also had a simple spell to wipe everything off, similar to what Canterlot unicorns use for Winter Wrap-Up.
Kicking out my hooves, I did a couple of stretches – traversing unstable grounds requires more than horseshoes and a wooden twig of course – before starting on a long trek back to Royal Halls to rejoin Celestia and Luna for a discussion on the relationships between their respective guards. I had stayed overnight in the Everfree to evade the Saddle Arabian “desert flies”, two- to three-pony infantry units usually assigned as missionaries and explorers, and along the way I suffered a cramp in trying to reopen my wings after what felt like an eternity in that incense burner, whose fragments kept rattling at my saddlebag's bottom (I had salvaged them in hopes of reconstructing it and contributing the masterpiece to some cultural museum), so embedding myself in a cloud was impossible. All that effort spent sidestepping and circumventing obstacles had also drained the magic from my horn. Hope stayed within me and the collective light of the crystal ponies that I would return safe and sound.
From my resting point near a clearing I estimated a distance of eight kilometres before encountering Fluttershy's secluded fields, which is often considered Ponyville's boundary with the Everfree. There I could refresh myself with tea and then teleport straight to the Crystal Palace on the stroke of noon, where I'd receive a… how would I describe it? Yes, a shining ovation. Thereafter I would attend to my more Equestrian duties. That aside, I found it more comfortable to sing all manner of romantic music on my journey instead of just admiring the variegated scenery lining a narrow, faint path out of the forest.
What music can be called romantic? Definitely not the music found at discothèques or nightclubs, their dissonant melodies unsettle your ears and rile your head into submitting to the deafening beats. I don't love DJ Pon-3 much mainly because of this, although as the Princess of Love I still support her latest endeavours and remixes whenever I have spare time. Love is a mutual, meaningful understanding and romantic music must therefore possess these same qualities, which may be expressed in ways as diverse as interstellar voyages and transformation magic, the same kind which crowned Twilight as a princess. As for more down-to-earth means, I remember there's a place of pure bliss visible only to the pure-hearted like me, revered in songs both classic and modern. It's like Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, the Bahamas, every place in the Caribbean and beyond woven into one amazing destination, and always I see colts lounging or walking on its beaches. I know the name now. Kokomo.
What other romantic songs are there? Maybe I should consider entire symphonies as well, in which case the archives show Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1 or maybe Glass's seventh to be reasonable tunes for a honeymoon. A symphony is less suited for romance than a simple song, I think, as the latter's meaning can change somewhat depending on context while the former—
The earth beneath me then never gave any indication of its instability. My hard shoes pressed against it and within seconds a sharp pain was riveting itself into my horn, squashed between my head and an invisible ceiling. For a moment I believed the Saddle Arabians had framed me, and then I noticed the lack of mechanical devices or gems: “Must be an animal trap somepony primed out here – how cruel!” I murmured, these words descending into silent musings. “Should this prove rather strong I'll have to force my way out like I did against that changeling queen…”
Though I was without Shining for this vacation – he was doing all my roles as leader of the Crystal Empire on top of his own – my first love, the love for nature, had now deepened to the point where I could request for animals to help with my complicated situations, and this restored some of my strength. With a pure light circling my horn I pleaded to the wild rabbits and beavers; they arrived without hesitation and within ten minutes had burrowed a wide escape tunnel. A peck on their cheeks, a dusting down and I was back on course.
Where was I? Ah, entire musical and operatic cycles for love, and even though they're discrete arrangements instead of fluid tones there still abound old masters and new talents. Listen to Tristan und Isolde… Wagner deemed it more like an individual act than a complete saga, which I guess broadens its meaningfulness to ponies as compared to some epic like Der Ring des Nibelungen. Closer to our time we have the upbeat Lollapalooza, the red pony of Copland, Fanfare for the Common Mare. It seems that romantic music does not have to explicitly deal with love or relationships. It only needs to be what I posited earlier today, an understanding stretching across levels both external and internal, between the listeners and the harmonies. (I have an eidetic memory for music which I use when mending broken hearts, and I often find myself bothered by the breadth of Canterlot and Crystal Empire discourse, because the sole way I can forget them is to imagine their words as the speech of changelings.)
After an hour basking in the unification of my tones with those of the forest, tame hummingbirds and squirrels leapt across my path, a cobblestone road leading to where Twilight's library once stood – Octavia had moved there to take advantage of the resonance inherent in what remained of the tree walls. A small breeze caressed my taut cheeks, blowing from the general direction of Fluttershy's cottage on my left whose sheer quiescence led my heartbeat set to set a tempo andante for itself. The stepped Whitetail Woods spread across distant mountains with Canterlot protruding over its highest reaches, their figures and contours reduced to bluish outlines by atmospheric scattering. Clearer structures stood in the foreground: Carousel Boutique, a spa, the schoolhouse of the travelling Cutie Mark Crusaders. Ponyville's town hall protruded above their roofs, bringing back to mind that memorable time when Derpy pronked on a thundercloud – some residents were infuriated but everypony was smiling at sunset. I blushed at moments like these, since they only came by once in a blue moon, and yet made both Equestria and my empire all the more vibrant and colourful. In particular, the crystal ponies would emerge more transparent for a day or two, almost like stained glass.
From a copy of the popular inter-communal newspaper Ponydisiac delivered to the veterinarian's doorstep I knew the pegasi were to bring thunderstorms in the afternoon here, so I was not at all surprised at the uniform greyish sky shifting above my head. The river adjacent to her house had carp and salmon vaulting graceful arcs above its polished surface and I knocked on her front door hoping to spark a conversation from this topic, besides my original purpose of having some tea. Instead Angel appeared and shook his head; I beamed my response of acceptance into his mind and he closed the door to show he understood. A direct teleport to Canterlot was now in order and I took off, throwing myself mane and all into a spatial vortex emanating from my horn which pulled me straight to those spacious, grandiose chambers once reserved for high royalty and their temperamental voices. Unicorns often find this sudden transport uncomfortable or haphazard at first, sometimes landing on their backs or even teeth, but practice sure makes perfect and my hooves landed gently on a yellow carpet.
“Celestia?” I inquired. “Celestia!” Where I was now was where the two other elder crowns and I were supposed to meet, but I stood alone and no response echoed across the long, long room. My inner tempo quickened to an allegretto and I walked through several more neighbouring rooms and hallways, plotting my route so as to cover as many rooms as possible with minimal walking distance. Each time I cried for company. “Celestia! Luna! Where are you? We're supposed to meet up now!” Allegro. Each time the only voice returning was my own. Vivace. Thorns of anxiety wrapped around my heart, and then they stabbed their searing forms all the way through it. Prestissimo!
I crashed into the floor as if my hooves were made of sand, tired again from two hours of running and looking and shouting, but now also depressed and frightened at the possibility of never seeing my aunt again. My senses told me my heart was failing even though it still beat fine – no valve malfunction, no cardiac arrest. Hyperventilation had made cognition difficult and reasoning impossible, while hallucinations floated across my field of view. Despite all these maladies I recovered and was soon gazing upon Canterlot, but then I found a most disturbing sight.
The sky's current colour doesn't seem like the grey associated with gloomy days, but a more exotic kind of grey. I could even say it's an unnatural grey. Sunny skies are pure blue all day long, dawn and dusk share a brilliant orange. Cloudy times call for a blue tint, snow and gale are just slate-coloured. The night is dark violet and white, but it's pink if love is in the air. This one I don't know, I can discern some blue. Or is it pink?
Dipping my head down, I was greeted with unnerving patches of red among the sophisticated shops and cafés. “Red on the ground and this heliotrope sky…” the words rang out.
“…no way, no way! This is a tragedy!” And I sank to my hocks, a lovelorn princess.
