DON’T LET THE PRINCESS DRIVE THE CELESTIAL PHAETON!
by Ponydora Prancypants
***
An Unofficial Tribute to the Cadance of Cloudsdale Cycle
Created by Jeffrey C. Wells
***
Each and every day for unreckoned decades, somepony—perhaps one of the Sisters, or my Lady before she passed on, or lately, Aunty, or one of the innumerable ponies in her service—somepony—has told me that I am beautiful, or lovely, or radiant, or even perfect. I cannot remember every instance, of course: without my hoofmaidens to bring me my little golden shoes, I would forget them and leave my chambers unshod each morning, which would be entirely unacceptable to the royals and nobles and very fancy ponies who regularly appear in the Court of Day, not to mention Aunty.
But I do remember some things. After all, being told you are beautiful is a Thing of Significance to a filly, even if it is repeated daily over the centuries, and even if she has no little to no context by which to evaluate the truth of the claim. I remember that, for some ponies, an exclamation would bubble up spontaneously, upon the mere sight of me, like some irrepressible instinctual reaction, perhaps to the novel sight of a little pony with wings and a horn: “Que bella!” I remember that Sister Carnation would reserve the word beautiful until she was satisfied with her work on my mane, often uttering a quiet bellissima after defeating a particularly uncooperative snarl. I could even tell that some ponies who called me beautiful really meant something genuine by it, like Lady Prismia. Aunty, too, maybe.
So I was more or less brainwashed into accepting as indisputable fact that I was perfect and pretty, and would always be perfectly pretty. I was utterly content with my little pink body and my multi-colored mane and my stubby horn and my tiny pink wings with purple tips, even though I could scarce perform magic and could not dream of flying any more than a kiwi bird can. Then, after centuries of endless foalhood, without needing to be resized for anything, without once calling the farrier, Aunty brought me to Canterlot, and I began to change.
Where in Reduit I was a happy, grubby little larva of an alicorn, in Canterlot I have pupated. Now I am writhing jelly life, trapped inside a fleshly chrysalis of stretched limbs and awkwardness, changing for the first time after a larval near-millennium. Like every crawling caterpillar that never gazed skyward, I cannot fathom my gossamer imago.
Growth is terrifying. Change is terrifying. For centuries these things were to me symptoms of death, of the transience of flesh. Generations of Sisters of the Abbey appeared to sing me to sleep and tell me legends and stories that their grandmothers and great-grandmothers had passed down to them, and which I had learned when they were new. Then the stories themselves changed and grew old and faded until they existed only in my memory. My playmates grew into big ponies, into old ponies, and then died.
Now it is happening to me, and though Aunty finds it tremendously interesting to observe the growth of the only other extant example of our kind, I detest every aspect of my interminable metamorphosis. Even if I should someday stand as tall and great as she, I would trade heartbreaking majesty for the promise of a body that I could trust to still be with me when I wake in the morning. Aunty tells me that growing up is part of becoming a true Princess of Equestria, which she unilaterally decided I am to be. But I would trade that too.
I have lived in the castle for nearly a decade now, and I am taller than I have ever been, gangly and disproportionate. I am skinny, even for the grammar school-aged filly I appear to be. My horn is longer than it used to be, and tapers to a much finer point; I am constantly getting it caught in things, or banging it painfully on overhangs because my centuries-honed spatial awareness is now all out of whack. My wings are just a little bigger, though they are still as useless as they have ever been. I am not happy with my body. It does not do what I want it to do. I am clumsy and scrawny and I cannot fly. Some Princess.
“You’re so pretty,” the orange earth pony filly says to me, her bright blue eyes open and full of unwanted sincerity. “Thanks for playing with me and Poe. You’re a really nice Princess.”
“Thanks!” I respond.
The filly’s name is Lovingcup, like the golden, two-handled trophy that is her cutie mark. She comes from a very old and noble Canterlot family, so much so that her parents have been invited into the castle as Aunty's guests while a vitally important matter of state—or some other really important stuff, probably—is being discussed and decided in Court.
Lovingcup is very pretty in her own way. She is short for her age, but well-proportioned, with a marten's squat power and liquid speed. She can run faster and jump farther and higher than I can. She never trips over her legs, and never gets her wings caught or nicks her horn on anything either, since she has neither.
We are sitting together in a large patch of grass at the center of the spacious Vernal Mall where the palace ponies stretch their legs and take in sunshine and fresh air, and where Aunty takes her morning constitutional - a ritual the apprentice gardener confided to me he calls the “Princess promenade.”
It is a warm early Summer’s day in Canterlot, with just a few puffy clouds scattered about for the benefit of the local pegasi, but still the sky above is filled with color and motion. A rainbow of enormous kites like great birds of paradise, and shining balloons in silver and gold are tethered to foals and adults alike all throughout the city. Ponies everywhere are buzzing, unable to contain their excitement at the grand airship regatta scheduled for the following week.
Already the ships are practicing: at this moment a long, sleek grey-hulled vessel, resplendent with huge, stark-white sails on either side like wings, and with a great blue gasbag above, is scudding past the castle. Young pegasi crowd the air around the ship, performing loop-the-loops and other tricks to the applause of the unicorn crew. Theirs is still a world I have never known.
Here in the grass, Lovingcup’s unicorn friend Pellucid Poesy is sitting with us, forming one corner of an irregular triangle. Poe is the daughter of Equestria’s long-time poet laureate, popular with everypony who cares to read or listen, and especially with Aunty. I’ve technically known Poe since she was a swaddled foal, but she’s finally caught up to me: today is the first time we’ve played together as fillies the same age. Poe is undeniably beautiful in the traditional sense, and she walks, speaks, and generally goes about the easy business of life as a privileged filly with a natural grace lacking even a trace of my gangly unsteadiness.
“It’s nice to get out!” I say.
“I’ll say it is!” Lovingcup agrees. She springs to her hooves and begins stretching each stout little leg in turn. “I was stuck inside the castle all day yesterday while mom and the rest of the Privy Council were meeting with the Princess. And I practically had to beg to get her to let me outside today!”
“It’s pleasant here,” Poe remarks dreamily, in her mellifluous voice that always seems half-whispered, but manages nevertheless to come out perfectly clearly.
“Yeah, pleasant,” Lovingcup says, bouncing up and down on the tips of her hooves. “Perfect for a gallop around the castle grounds! Who’s up for a race?”
I am not up for a race. Trying to keep up with Lovingcup would be an exercise in futility, and quite probably humiliation. Fortunately, I can rely on Poe to demurely decline the invitation.
“Oh, that sounds nice,” Poe says, callously betraying me by accident. She smoothly rises from the ground in a fluid motion that captures the slow elegance of a flower unfurling its petals to greet the sun and condenses it to a second. Her long aquamarine mane cascades over and onto her snow-white shoulders like a waterfall exploding into a spray of foam. Poe is beautiful.
“Well, then I’m in,” I say, and stand up on my wobbly spindles. “Um, once around the Mall?” I ask hopefully.
“I meant a real race. Onto the wall, through the Gardens, all the way to the overlook at the top of the Envoys’ Tower, and back!” Lovingcup is stamping her hooves, clearly ready to take off any moment now.
“Wait,” I protest. “There’s no way to get to the Envoys’ Tower through the Royal Gardens. That way leads to the Pinnacle Spire, and then we’ll either have to go all the way around, or through the Castle to get to the Tower. Somepony will stop us if we go that way. Maybe a shorter course—”
“Nope,” Lovingcup interrupts me, forgetting I am a Princess because in this moment I am not. “I found a super secret shortcut straight from the gardens to the tower this morning. Just follow me and try to keep up!”
A moment later, I am watching her short golden tail whipping in the wind as she charges away across the Mall, and Poe and I can do nothing except to dig our hooves into the grass and take off after her, and do our best to keep close.
One might presuppose that a functionally immortal pony would have infinite reserves of stamina, but I get winded, and I tire out. I am made of flesh and blood. I bruise, I break bones, and I get sick and need to be cared for. I am like any pony, save that I do not age, at least, until recently, perhaps, and now only incrementally. Maybe this will change someday—I admit I have never seen Aunty hurt or fall ill, though I think she might just be better at hiding it—but for now, I am like any pony.
I gallop after Lovingcup, gulping lungfuls of air, pushing my muscles as hard as I can. The Vernal Mall is absolutely filled with ponies, some resplendent in the sheer silk robes that are so fashionable among the nobility today, some bedecked in the shining armor of Aunty’s guards, some dressed in the customary uniforms of their servant stations, and some wearing nothing at all. As usual, I have on only my surprisingly comfortable golden shoes, and my one really treasured possession: the crystal amulet my Lady gave me many years ago. It bounces against my breast as I gallop headlong.
We three fillies dodge and juke our way across the Mall, and, though it goes against my age-honed better judgment, I follow Lovingcup as she dashes up a stone staircase that leads to the top of the inner courtyard wall. There are always guards on the walls, and there is precious little room to maneuver up there, so we are sure to be stopped. By now, though, I am finding this whole exercise thoroughly exhilarating, and I am thrilled that I have kept up with the others so far, even on my spindly, wobbly legs. It feels good to run, and I smile as I glance over my shoulder and see that my metal shoes are striking sparks against the hard stone of the wall.
We are lucky, and no guards are patrolling this section of the wall. I watch Lovingcup tackle another set of stairs leading down from the wall in just two sure-hooved bounds, but I do not try to emulate her. My cautious approach allows Poe to pass me, and I suddenly find myself lagging behind. Last place is much less satisfying than second place, and I push myself even harder when I reach the bottom.
We are coming upon the Gardens now. The golden gate is open wide today, inviting guests of the Princess and castle regulars to serenely stroll the cobblestone paths, and view fantastical plants and creatures collected from the corners of the known world, and probably from the unknown as well. The Gardens have long been one of my favorite places in Canterlot, because so many of the wonderful living things within existed only as pictures in my books during the centuries I spent with the Sisters in Reduit. Now they are real and alive, and I can know what the booming call of the least bittern sounds like, and can see the brilliant neons on the toucan’s ponderous bill.
But I have never raced through the gardens, until this moment, and it is an altogether different experience. The agitated cacophony of a thousand birds and beasts unused to galloping hooves crowds the air, and the fan-like ferns and broad green leaves of tropical plants are now obstacles to dodge instead of beautiful things to observe and admire.
I still wonder how Lovingcup aims to get to the Envoys’ Tower from the Gardens, but I have my answer soon enough, after she abruptly turns off the main path and toward the portion of the Gardens reserved for native Canterlot flora. There are huge boulders and small portions of exposed cliffside there, left in place by the ponies who long ago carved this part of the Castle Grounds out of the mountainside with powerful blasting spells.
The Gardens themselves are situated relatively high amidst the twelve tiers of the Castle Grounds, and it is a poorly kept secret that climbing atop the highest boulders affords one a panoramic vista of the castle, the fertile floodplains of the River Canter far below, the little riverbank hamlets, and even the vast and dark Everfree beyond.
Also, as I now observe for the first time, the midpoint of the spiral walkway that wraps around the outside of the Envoy’s Tower is no more than four pony lengths distant from the edge of the largest, flattest boulder. If one were so inclined, one could skip a long, tedious circumnavigation of the Castle Grounds by making the jump, but one would have to weigh the time saved against the certainty of death by plummeting to the lowest tier if one could not, in fact, traverse the gap. Somepony had apparently already conducted that balancing test, and decided the risk was worth it.
As Lovingcup and Poe begin climbing the boulders, and I stupidly follow them, I reflect on the ludicrousness of a winged, immortal alicorn Princess, adopted niece of Celestia the Undimmed, the Sun-Bringer, mightiest in all the world, afraid of falling.
While I have been reflecting, Lovingcup has already reached the top. She is barreling across the flat top of the boulder, not slowing down as she nears the edge and the sheer drop beyond. I can see the muscles ripple in her hindquarters as she pushes off with her back legs, and then she proceeds to sail through the air like a squat little deer before alighting on the Envoys’ Tower walkway. Poe is next, and she completes the jump without apparent difficulty, though she comes down with perilous little room to spare.
I gallop after them, but as I get closer to the edge of the boulder I realize that my flimsy stick legs are not going to get me across: there is absolutely no way I am going to make the jump. I also realize that I am going to try anyway. In this moment, it seems somehow more reasonable to fall than it does to appear a coward in front of two ponies who are more than nine centuries my junior.
Just as I reach the edge, I plant my rear hooves, and push. As I leave the earth, I picture myself arcing across the gap with all the strength and power of Lovingcup, and all of Poe’s effortless grace, and in the furthest corner of my imagination, I see great pink and purple wings.
Foolishly, I glance down. I am not going to make it.
“You’re gonna make it!” Lovingcup shouts excitedly and optimistically.
But I don’t make it.
I scream like the little filly my body appears to be as I stretch my forelegs and reach for the walkway. Really, I’m not even all that close, and it strikes me what a terrible idea this was. I am disappointed that I am never going to learn the answers to so many of the great mysteries of my life: where I come from, who I am, and what I will become. My corporeality has betrayed my spirit. My scream dies off as I realize I am more irked than afraid.
As I am falling the hundred lengths or more to the lowest tier and my destiny as a cautionary tale, a curious thing happens. I feel a prickling sensation, and then a sort of sharp pain as the dead limbs affixed to my back awaken of their own volition.
My wings unfurl in an instant, and I know the sensation of a new magic that I have never felt before, flowing through my whole body. I am overwhelmed by explosions of alien feelings, as though an entirely new sense has been opened to me. There is a voice amidst the strangeness, something like the air itself whispering secrets in my ears, and a ringing admonition to get up, away from the onrushing ground.
I am slowing down with every length, but still falling, and when I do hit, it hurts.
************************************
By the time Aunty arrives at the royal healing house, I have a patch of shaved hair on my right foreleg and eleven stitches to show for my valiant leap, an injury inflicted by a well-placed shrubbery that helped break my fall. Of course, I must be covered in bruises under my pink coat: I am sore all over. Either the analgesic tonic the physician’s helper gave me is not helping, or I am going to feel that much worse when it wears off.
In any event, the physical pain is secondary to the dread that is like a minotaur sitting upon my breast. Lovingcup and Poe stayed for a time, but they have since been claimed by their respective parental authorities, and I am alone in the private room the healers provided for me, guards stationed outside when Aunty comes.
She fills up the room. Her horn reaches nearly to the ceiling, and her presence spreads out to occupy what space remains as quickly as air fills a vacuum. Her face is as expressionless and imperious as a tiger's, and there is a stillness about her even as she moves. Despite all outward signs of serenity, I am certain she has come from some important state matter, that she is very cross, and that she is with words shortly to make me feel so much worse than the physical discomfort does.
Aunty moves to stand beside the bed where I lie, and she looks down from so high that it seems as if the sun itself has turned its attention to me. I cannot look directly at her, and inside, I shrivel.
“Mi Amore,” she says.
My tongue is dumb and I have no response. I want to tell her that I am furious with myself, not for the poor choice I made, but for my incapableness. For close upon a thousand years, I, Mi Amore Cadenza, the good little Princess-Goddess of Reduit, spent each day of my existence secure in the knowledge that I was the most charming, magical, beloved, and blessed being in the land, if not the world. Now, in this strange big world Aunty stole me away to, I have grown, not into a more perfect Princess, but into a physically below-average, awkward child with a wing-related developmental delay.
I am not going to say any of that, because Aunty never understands my frustrations, or never shows that she does, which is the same thing from my perspective. Her empathy exists in words that hang in the air and fade to nothing, but not in feelings that I can touch and take and store inside me. She treats every infinitesimal change that happens to me as something curious, fascinating, and wondrous. Her love, at least, I can feel, but love is a different thing altogether from sympathy. In any case, I am pretty sure she is about to chew me out something fierce.
“I am informed you almost flew today,” Aunty says.
Even my near-death experience she finds fascinating, because it is something new.
I wonder when I will no longer be an experiment to be contemplated. It is no coincidence that she decided our relationship was to be that of aunt and niece, and never proposed so much as a pretense of a mother and daughter bond. Of course, though we are the only two of our kind, Aunty is not my mother, and I am not her daughter.
“‘Almost’ is not good when it comes to flying,” I respond, unable to keep from visibly pouting.
“‘Almost’ was enough to save your life,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Yet you have a point. Rather than attempt to prevent you from ever acting recklessly and otherwise behaving like a normal child, I believe for your own good that it is time you learned to use your wings as more than a convenient place to store art supplies and interesting leaves.”
I did not expect this, but I rarely am correct in guessing what Aunty will say or do. However surprising, her sudden turn as life coach does little to mollify my self-criticism, especially since she is demanding the impossible of me.
“You know I can’t fly, and I don’t want to fly!” I say, raising my voice. “I can’t even keep up with other fillies and colts on the ground. I can't gallop at all without hurting myself!” Painfully, I sit up straighter and stretch my wings out to either side of me, displaying their short span to Aunty. They are nearly as small as they were when my appearance was that of a toddling foal in Reduit, even though the rest of me has grown. “They don’t even fit my body anymore!”
“You are an alicorn Princess of Equestria,” Aunty says calmly. “You are at once unicorn, earth pony, and pegasus. The sky and clouds are your birthright, and too long have we both permitted you to shun them. Once you understand your wings, no longer will you ever have to fear a fall like that again.”
Now I am pretty steamed, so, cringing with every movement, I gingerly get out of bed and stand on my four hooves to face Aunty and her infuriating serenity. “I told you: I can’t fly and I don’t want to fly.” I sniff indignantly and raise my chin in imitation of the local aristocrats. “Besides, when I am a true Princess and have my own kingdom, getting about under my own power will be beneath me. You never fly!”
I feel my point is just: I can count on my four hooves the number of times I have seen Aunty soaring freely, other than for ceremonial occasions like the Grand Galloping Gala or the Summer Sun Celebration. Still, a slight, uncertain forward-and-back movement of her left foreleg tells me I have accidentally struck a nerve, an accomplishment even more rare than the Sun Princess taking to the air.
“I fly perfectly competently,” she says. “It has simply become customary over the centuries for me to travel by means of the Celestial Phaeton. Moreover, doing so permits me to keep my most trusted and capable guards close at hoof.”
“You just like making those stallions pull you all over Equestria,” I declare, momentarily intoxicated with elation for supposing I have scored a point. “Well, if you get to ride everywhere, then I should be able to drive the Phaeton too!” In fact, it strikes me that I could obviate all the problems caused by my awkwardness simply by having a team of guardsponies pull me everywhere I wish. I would not have to walk, or fly, or even stand in public without it being my decision to step hoof outside my carriage. “So that settles it,” I conclude. “You shall have to provide me my own Celestial Phaeton.”
Aunty does not say anything for a long while, and am beginning to doubt whether I should have pursued my supposed advantage in the first place. “Do you truly doubt my flying?” she finally asks, inscrutable as a sphynx.
“Um,” is all I manage. I shift my gaze to the scuffed and scratched marble floor.
“I understand,” Aunty says. “Go home, Cadence. We shall speak further about your flight training over supper.”
I find my shoes beside the bed, and collect my precious amulet from the top of a small table. I am clasping it around my neck when I feel the wind on my back and see that the light of a new star has suddenly filled the room.
Quickly, I wheel around and raise a defensive foreleg to my eyes, for Aunty has become the noonday sun and the golden incandescence of her magic is all that I can perceive in the world. A final flare of light, and the far wall of the room is gone, vanished as if it had never been, and the healing house is open to the wind and the sheer drop that marks the far side of the cantilevered city. There is a vertical league or more between the precipice that now marks the edge of the room and solid rock below.
Perhaps there are words for this spectacle, but I cannot find and trap them in my gaping mouth in the fleeting moment between the wall’s sudden banishment and what I am now witnessing, as Aunty takes one step forward, and then another, quicker, and then she is over the edge and gone. As she goes, I race to the edge as though tethered to her, but there I stop.
I see her, already far below, accelerating away from the castle with her wings held close to her sides, like a falcon descending on an ignorant dove, or a falling star streaking to earth. Then, her white wings snap open to their full span, wider than four pegasi flying abreast, and her feathers catch the light and flash like an airship’s signaling mirror relaying a message.
She pulls out of her dive and begins to ascend, banking steeply and approaching to within a length of the cliffside below before pulling away and continue to spiral upward, upward, until she has slowed and all her lift is spent. She does not fall, but simply tilts up, back, and then spills backward in a rolling display of shimmering feathers and flowing pastel hair like churning ocean foam in the sunlight. She dives again to gain speed, then loops back up and begins to flap her great wings, maintaining her velocity even in a near-vertical climb.
She passes me in a flash, and continues upward until I know that all of the city can see her ascending like a second sunrise, until finally, far beyond the highest spire or parapet in Canterlot, beyond the kites and balloons and airships, she vanishes in a golden nova of magic.
I know she will be home, waiting for me, when I arrive.
And now I must grant that Aunty can fly, at least when the right mood strikes her.
************************************
I am swiftly discharged, as the healers are now primarily concerned with arranging for a replacement wall to be installed, and my own appointed guards, Aethon and Squamish, are waiting for me in the lobby. They are my protectors when I am outside the walls of the Castle, and while they are strong, sure agents of their true Princess, I can tell there is a devoted sort of love for me in them too. I can tell because I knew the truth about love once, and I may learn it again someday, but for now it is safe to say that there are probably none better at sussing it out. That sort of thing is, after all, my talent.
Wrapped in the enchantments that are the true armor of the guardspony, Aethon and Squamish appear alike, though I know better. Few are the spells that can hide the truth from an alicorn. Beyond the veil that presents a pair of tall white pegasus stallions to the unseeing world, Aethon is tall, dark-coated, and grim as any caribou chieftain or griffon lord, while Squamish is peach-colored and small, and I can tell he is always smiling on the inside.
“How do you fare, Princess?” Aethon asks, staring at the bandage which covers the shaved and stitched portion of my foreleg.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Aunty has decided I need to learn to fly.” I continue walking, and they fall into step on either side of me.
“Finally!” Squamish says, and Aethon fires a critical look across his bow. “I only mean, it will be an honor to fly alongside Your Highness when the day comes.” Aethon nods.
“Aww,” I say. “Thanks, you two. But I can’t fly.” I waggle my stubby wings. “Even when I needed to today, I couldn’t do it. That’s how I ended up with stitches in my leg. Maybe someday.”
Most likely, long after you are both gone, I do not say.
“Flying is more than just wingspan, Your Highness,” Squamish says. “Otherwise we pegasi would never get off the ground.”
“I’m sure the Princess has carefully considered her decision to have you trained,” Aethon says. “It is important that you be as capable as possible, for safety’s sake. There will not always be a guardspony by your side to keep you safe.”
I think of Aunty and the wall that was, and is no longer, and I remember my own pitiful body tumbling helpless into the void. I wonder if the gulf between us is one of decades, or centuries, or uncounted ages of this world, or if it will ever be closed or even narrowed. Will there be a time when I will not need protectors? Of late, I feel less capable than ever.
“For now, I am glad I have you both,” I say. At the very least, my guards are less intimidating company than other fillies. They demand no performances of me.
We walk the rest of the short distance from the healing house to the Sunrise Gate of Canterlot Castle in silence, and I hang my head in the face of a hundred stares and glances, each a mix of reverence and curiosity. I know every pony in the city has heard of their young Princess’ misadventure.
Inside the walls, I bid my guards farewell and trot into the Castle, up the grand staircase, down the hall of portraits to my quarters, and into the waiting hooves of my chambermares. I still have nothing to say, and so I keep quiet, but my mind is spinning all the while.
I am to fly, Aunty has decided, all because I could not convince myself not to leap. And now, we shall all be made to participate in a grand exercise in futility. I can already see the inevitable disappointment she will hide so well behind her tranquil mask, and the fury and frustration writ in block letters all over my own visage.
I am not Aunty, nor like her, no matter how much she wishes. I am not ready to fly beside her, or lead a country, or command soldiers.
Nor am I the ageless, changeless Princess-Goddess of Reduit, perfect and beloved for all her incapacity. Not any longer. I am imperfect, and incapable, in a body I do not recognize, because it is never the same twice.
If I am a pupa now, then Canterlot is my chrysalis, along with this castle and my guards and hoofmaidens and chambermares, and every pony in this city and this strange, vast country of Equestria. I see Aunty, but I cannot dream my own future, for I was a caterpillar happy in my cloistered ignorance, and I know nothing of butterflies or of alicorn Princesses in their full flower, and maybe I never will.
As my mane is being combed, I think on what Aunty has decided for me, and try to picture how she means for me to be trained to fly. Perhaps some worn and grizzled pegasus veteran of a forgotten conflict will try to push me from a cloud and order me to start flapping, or perhaps I will be assigned a brash young upstart, fresh into his tenure in the guard, brimming with inborn talent and arrogance bred of inexperience. All to teach an ancient child who is called royal simply because she is almost, but not quite, unique. It is all absurd.
The bell rings and I go to the terrace where we share our supper on evenings scheduled for fine weather, and I find Aunty already seated, waiting. The meal is placed as soon as I join her: a simple summer repast of crusty bread and tart melon soup accompanying a dense salad of greens, with ripe nectarine wedges and little tomatoes warmed to bursting, topped with a mixture of pomegranate arils and roasted buckwheat groats, and lightly dressed with a berry vinaigrette. It smells wonderful, but I let the food sit.
“Are you going to eat, Mi Amore?” Aunty asks.
“Groats are for goats,” I say, barely mustering a petty gripe because I feel I must fight back with what tiny blunted needles I can, after having been so thoroughly vanquished by Aunty at the healing house.
“Eat your supper, Cadence,” she says. Having made my feeble protest for the record, I am fain to dig in, maintaining just a semblance of Princessly daintiness.
“I can’t fly now. I can’t even race. I’m not going to be like you,” I say, after my soup is gone. “Not in a hundred or a thousand years. Maybe never.”
“We do not know who you are, or where you come from,” Aunty says. “There are only the two of us present in all this world, and one weary old Princess is not a sufficient sampling to know where you will be in a hundred years, or a thousand, or tomorrow.” She takes a sip from her cup of sweet plum wine, and then sets the silver vessel back down with her magic. “Actually, I do know about tomorrow. You are going to visit a friend of mine, and you will learn to fly.”
What friend can Aunty have who would teach me, I wonder. Aunty has no friends whom I know. How can the sun befriend a spark, no matter how bright it burns? The spark will flicker and fade in an instant, while the sun burns on until the end, and all becomes ash. I like to think that I’ve had friends, but then, I am not the sun, not even a reflection glimpsed through a pinhole.
“I won’t fly,” I say. “If I could fly, my stupid wings would have worked today and I wouldn’t have needed eleven stitches. My body told me to jump, and look what happened.”
“I believe your body is trying to tell you that you are ready for something new,” Aunty says. “In any event, we will soon know whether you are ready or not.”
“No!" I declare. "I am not going to trot around the castle, jumping off stuff, so that everypony can laugh at me behind my tail when I fall!”
“You will be a fair distance from Canterlot, and from anypony who might mock you,” Aunty says, then smiles. “Perhaps you will take some joy in the opportunity for a ride in my Phaeton, and that your own guards will accompany you.”
My ears prick up of their own accord, and I cringe at the obvious tell. I love riding in the Celestial Phaeton, and it has been over a year since Aunty let me, but I try to play it cool. “You should just let me have my own flying carriage, and I won’t ever have to waste both our time learning to fly.”
“Even if I were so inclined, there are none left with the spell-artistry to craft enchantments such as are weaved into the Phaeton. The one who made it is gone near a millennium.” I see that Aunty is looking at something far away, and not here with us on the terrace, but then she catches herself. “And, lest you forget, three times now you have abused the privilege of riding in it.”
“The first time I just got excited!” I protest.
“Let me test my own memory: in your exuberance and with the aid of that crystal of yours, your magic accidentally undid years of my best guards’ training in an instant, and left their natural passion for speed unchecked by discipline, so onward they flew, as fast as their wings could carry them, and you seated behind them in my Phaeton. By the time the Wonderbolts caught up to you, you all had violated international airspace. I had to grant the griffons new fishing rights as reparations to avoid a public incident.”
“The second time was a fluke," I say. "I thought the spell orb on the console was just decorative!”
“You activated a highest priority royal distress enchantment in the middle of the Winter Solstice parade, and set every communications gem in every barracks and on every airship within five hundred leagues of Canterlot to chiming and glowing red, because the Princess was in grave danger.”
“Everypony thought it was great when the fleet showed up and all those ponies started coming down on ropes. I bet it was the best Solstice Parade ever!”
“And what about last time?” Aunty cocks an eyebrow.
Right. Well. The noodles were my fault. I could argue that the new spells that had to be developed to fix the whole thing were a valuable contribution to the culinary archives at the Library of Magic, but I decide to leave it alone and remain silent.
“Cadence,” Aunty says, and there is a slight crack in her voice. “You cannot ride forever. You are growing up. You will fly, and when you can hear the reel the wind plays and you know how to dance to it, and your blood flows in time with the currents in the air because your pulse and the sky’s are one and the same, and you can soar so high the air is too insubstantial to inhale and the atmosphere traps no heat, but still the fire in your heart warms you, then you will know what the pegasi know and cannot describe, and you will be glad for my decision to have you trained now, rather than later.”
I have never heard Aunty speak reverentially before, and her practically pious expression robs my throat of any words that might have been burbling around in there. For the first time, I wonder if the reason she rarely flies is not that it is difficult for her, but because she feels like an infidel violating a sacred space. She knows, as I know, that she is not a pegasus and never will be, despite her wings. We are aspects of the three, but we are not truly any of them.
We pass the rest of our supper pleasantly, filling the remaining empty spaces with barbless words about wingless topics, and then I retire to my chambers. Aunty never tells me where I am to travel on the morrow.
Around the time the moon is approaching its meridian passage, I find myself unable to turn my thoughts to anything else, and I decide to try to find out anyway. I trot blithely downstairs to Aunty’s study, and the hall guards do not challenge me, for I am a Princess after all. Besides, Aunty has never given me a curfew, and I am not even sure she understands the concept of tucking in, or bedtime stories, or so many of the other everyday routines of childhood I enjoyed over the centuries. I have free reign of Canterlot Castle at night.
She is inside, but she is speaking to somepony, so I do not barge in. I know there is a service door in the passageway for accessing the large dumbwaiter that serves Aunty’s study, and I know magic enough to overwhelm the simple locking spell on it. Inside, there is a ledge wide enough to rest without worrying about falling down to the kitchens, and I can snoop freely.
It is immediately clear to me that Aunty is speaking to my guards.
“You will take the Phaeton, along with two more strong flyers from your company, and you will transport my niece to Lady Vista’s estate near the Snowmanes as soon as she has breakfasted with me.” So, Aunty is sending me nearly to griffon country. At least I will not have to worry about humiliating myself in front of anypony I know.
“Once she is safely ensconced, the other two will depart, and you will remain with Princess Cadence,” Aunty says. “You will not be able to leave until they return, because there are old enchantments in place to prevent the Phaeton from being pulled by just two."
“Your Highness, what cause is there to strand us?” Squamish asks, perhaps too innocent to realize he is challenging his ruler’s will.
“If you are not stranded, she will leave before she has learned anything,” Aunty says. “She could convince the four most black-hearted foalnappers to send their mothers flowers and then turn themselves in if they had the misfortune to abduct her. She can convince my best soldiers to abandon their orders and fly her back to Canterlot, or to Las Pegasus, or even to the jungles of Zanzebra. You will want what she wants, and now I am not even speaking of her magic, but of her nature. My niece is love; you two are already lost to her, or you will be soon, I suspect.”
“Your Highness, our loyalty—”
Aunty does not let Aethon continue. “Without four guards to pull the Phaeton, she will be unable to leave until she learns to fly, or I decide the experiment has ended. At least, that is my design. You already know that my niece has a unique form of magic at her disposal: believe me when I say that hers is a power the likes of which is beyond my abilities, perhaps even beyond my comprehension. Even against spells that have lasted through a thousand years of tests, she may find a way. Your role is to ensure she stays with Lady Vista, and help her with her training. Do not forget your duty, and whatever you do, don’t let the Princess drive the Celestial Phaeton! That’s an order, Lieutenants, and also an important safety tip. I’m sure you heard about the noodles.”
In the process of stifling my indignation, I make a breathless sound that echoes in the dumbwaiter shaft, and the ensuing pause informs me that I had better vacate the area. As I return to bed, I am left to ponder the fact that Aunty means to throw me out of the nest in the hope that I will decide to flap. I should be troubled at the thought of interminable exile, but I am strangely eager. If Canterlot is my chrysalis, after all, then this may be my emergence as something new. Perhaps I will earn a better form than the skinny little, stretched thing I am—or at least a more capable instar.
************************************
If Aunty knew I was there, listening, she makes no sign of it at breakfast, and soon I am packed and ready to be sent away. What few possessions I care to travel with are stowed securely beneath the Phaeton, and I am stowed safely atop it, perched in Aunty’s plush high-backed seat. Aunty’s flag has been removed, and my pink one with a blue crystal heart now flutters on the little mast above the seat, just below the flag of Equestria. The purple spell orb into which all of the Celestial Phaeton’s wonderful enchantments are imprinted is in front of me, resting atop a scepter-like rod embedded in the dash. It glows visibly with inner light, even during the day, and I purposely stay far back from it, even though I know Aunty must have worked in a new charm or two to keep me from getting into more trouble.
Four armored pegasi are hitched in front of me, each of them appearing to be a big, white, broad-winged, brute of a stallion, though I see through the facade: Aethon and Squamish stand side-by-side at the front, and the rear two are both big blue-coated sorts, who amusingly enough do look similar to one another, even under their uniform magic. I have little time to think on it before we are off, without any pomp and circumstance beyond Aunty’s raised forehoof oscillating in a farewell gesture.
We climb quickly away from the Castle Green, past the kites and shining balloons. There is now a small flotilla of colorful airships parading around above Canterlot, each festooned with masts and bright sails, and uncountable pennants fluttering madly in the breeze behind them. Some of the sailors wave as I pass.
I rise away from it all. Seated comfortably in Aunty’s plush seat, I stretch out my little wings under the shining sun, and wonder if they will dry and grow and become strong enough to carry me someday. Maybe they will carry me all the way to where I come from. I wonder if some caterpillars dream of flying, even as they cling to their leaves.
END OF PART ONE (OF TWO)
