The Center is Missing

Chapter One hundred twenty-one

Falling Apart

When Celestia exploded out of the sky sometime in the deep night and, without greeting a single pony she passed, thundered to her boardroom, Twilight was already there, red-eyed and waiting on the summons that had woken her an hour before. The princess wasted no time, speaking before the door had even swung closed, yanking out her chair and then changing her mind to pace the table’s length.

“Storms, my pupil.” She tightened her wings against her back and adjusted her cloak, shaking condensation onto the floor. “You’re aware of storm magic?”

“Yes, your highness, and that it’s forbidden.”

“In most circumstances, it is, but if Chrysalis wants to leave her ships just outside our waters… Twilight, you’ve shown great promise as a magician. I have all confidence that you will not fail me.”

With a sinking feeling, Twilight asked her what it was she wanted.

“Let us.” She turned and, without waiting for Twilight, teleported them both into the royal library. In the dead of night, there was no one to see them pad across the carpeted span except the librarian, paging through a book with a cup of coffee at her hoof. She barely glanced up at the princess and her student as they went to the northwest corner, to a nook of arcane reference materials half hidden behind the eyeless granite statuette of a young magician, horn tip a cut emerald. First looking around in a rapid, almost careless motion, Celestia cast a spell that Twilight could not identify, and the shelves and their books shifted and swam, remaining perfectly in place but changing in title and binding before re-forming into references of another sort.

Twilight knew that there were books of forbidden magic hidden in the library, but had never gone looking for them. Having an entire set suddenly presented to her, she couldn’t help the gleam that awoke in her eye as she took in the subjects. There were books on the soul and the magic needed to replicate it, on overcoming death, on changing one’s shape and composition; books to help one recreate the vacuum of outer space in a jar, books to help one navigate the abysses of Tartarus, books to help one trade identities with another; recipes for irreversible love potions, maps to locations from which there was no return, charts of the heavens and directions for their upkeep.

Celestia selected a tome and held it out to Twilight: The Strongest Wind that Blows. Twilight did a double-take.

“Discord wrote this?”

“It’s a compendium of his teachings on the subject.” Without ceremony, Celestia cast her spell and whisked the books back to their ordinary, safe topics. “He was very erudite, you know, a visionary. Before he lost his mind.”

“He was overcome with his own magic, right?” A dizzying flash, and they were back in the boardroom. “I believe you told me that once.”

“The mechanics of managing chaos will destroy even the most steadfast mind if proper steps are not taken. Discord’s mistake, one of many, was lack of caution. Had he given himself a surrogate consciousness, he may have stayed sane long enough to discover a wiser way of conducting his… research.” Celestia shook dust from the book and flipped through it, taking a seat at last. “This will tell you everything you need to know about the summoning of a storm, how to shape and direct it, and most importantly, how to dispel it when you’re done.” She smiled. “Have no fear for its author; these teachings are tested and verified already. Discord knew what he was talking about, at least here.”

“And…” Twilight did not reach out to accept the book as it slid to her. “Why do I need to summon a storm?”

“If the changelings think they can menace us in our waters, then we shall answer in kind. I think a hurricane should show them that we are not to be toyed with.”

“A hurricane.”

Celestia nodded slowly, eyes closed for a moment to evince her sorrow; but whether it was genuinely felt or simulated to put Twilight at ease, there was no telling. “These are the times. Rest assured, I wholly authorize you to exercise your abilities to this task. I can give you that in writing if you’d like.”

“You want me to summon this near—”

“In the middle of their fleet. On top of them.”

“Your highness.” She looked at the book, its simple blue cover, its vague title, its dangerous parent. Evil was not a force that could be isolated or imbued into objects, but to look at the book’s stately face, innocent save for the secretive hour at which it was shown, Twilight felt her skin crawl. “Your highness, I don’t know.”

Celestia bowed her head, still wearing her thin smile, horn tip arcing down to point directly at Twilight’s face. “I don’t like it either, but…” She tapped a hoof on the table.

“Do you know something I don’t? Are they—are they trying to invade us? Are they headed for the coast? Last I heard, they were just going to occupy neutral waters.”

“And you trust them? You know what Queen Chrysalis told you.” She held Twilight’s eyes for a second, the mute accusation in her pronunciation of Chrysalis’ name. “You two have been talking so much, but you dare to question me?” A second of frightened confusion passed in which Twilight realized that the imaginary thought she ascribed to her princess could have, in fact, been projected into her mind. For Celestia did have that power.

“Have you looked at the fleet yourself? Have you verified the queen’s claim?”

“Not yet, no.” And like that, she knew she had lost. Whatever point she might make, the princess could say that Twilight didn’t truly know.

“I, for one, am not willing to take her on her word,” Celestia said. “You can give them twenty-four hours of warning, if you like.”

“That wouldn’t be enough time to get everyone out of danger.”

Celestia sighed.

“I just don’t know, your highness. This feels wrong.”

“My dear, I love you like a daughter.” Celestia stretched to take Twilight’s hooves in her own, and in her eyes, Twilight saw the residue of feeling—sadness and fidelity and love, beaten flat by millennia of responsibilities, of victories and losses, of lessons painfully learned, of family and friends and prized students gradually feeding the grave. “Please don’t make me order you to do this.”

“I can’t—” She forced herself to break eye contact with the goddess. “I can summon the hurricane close to them, close enough to scare them, show them that we mean business.”

“A meaningless gesture.”

“But we—”

“It’s not an argument, Twilight.” Her voice became disappointed. “If I have to command you to do this, I will. I don’t want to.”

“We—I mean.” She looked back down at the book. “We’ll be at war. Or maybe not, maybe it really will scare them into backing off.”

“Do this for me, and I won’t ask you to do anything else,” Celestia said. “Your final task. I promise it.” She tilted her head to the dark window, the white spidering of Lower Canterlot and the pale yellow smudge of Ponyville lost somewhere past it. “You’ve been here so long, my student. Instead of resting, you have given your services to the throne—all I ask is this last favor. Your home awaits you, one step away, so close. You and Rainbow Dash both. This can be all that’s left.”

A drizzly Wednesday morning, pumpkins and squash glistening in the palace gardens under their knotted vines, crowns of heather nodding beside the white walkway, steam rising from a pair of teacups on the balcony three stories up. Six-thirty, time enough for a leisurely breakfast before heading to the office, though what work remained for them was threadbare and unsure. The threat of war was heavy on their minds, both of them inadequate to stop or divert it, but established in the halls of power to see its advance, not in leaps as the citizenry would but in the minute-to-minute, a turn of phrase here, a look in royal eyes at the mention of a name or date there.

“I did some preliminary reading this morning.”

Rainbow knew that Twilight had met with the princess prior. “Did you get any sleep?”

She shook her head. “Princess Celestia wants me to conjure a hurricane for the changeling fleet. She doesn’t want it to scare them, she wants me to summon it in the middle of their ships and tear them apart.”

In Twilight’s employ, she had heard many a shocking thing, and this was just one more; so when Rainbow asked why, she did so without the theater of revulsion.

“Because she wants to send them a message.”

“Some message. Won’t that start a war?”

“If I were Queen Chrysalis, I would want to go to war for it.”

Rainbow stirred another sugar cube into her saucer. “That’s stupid.”

“The princess ordered me. Royal decree.” She shuffled through her magical space, empty for so long after carrying their luggage, their sundries, their personal treasures, and produced the signed orders. “Under penalty of immediate termination and discommendation from Her Majesty, Princess Celestia. I don’t have much choice, Dash.”

“You ever see a hurricane, Twilight?”

“On nature documentaries.”

“You learn about ‘em if you spend enough time on a weather team, even in little ol’ Ponyville, not sure why. Regulation, I suppose. Let me tell you, those changelings are dead if you summon one.” She rolled the decree up and shoved it back. “Why is Celestia making you do her dirty work?”

Twilight looked into the glassy distance and shook her head. After the meeting, walking back to her room with the damned book, she had been frightened. The fear was of nothing specific: not her royal teacher, not the ghost of Discord, not the scorned changeling queen, not telling Rainbow the latest fell news. Then, reading on the mechanics of building a storm, of starting with a gust of air and feeding it until it had grown to a cyclone with its own life, and realizing as she read that it was within her grasp, fear was replaced with disgust. In the prideful daytime, with work to be done and ponies to lead, endless coming chances to prove herself smarter and more capable than her superiors, a hurricane is not so difficult to create and release; alone at five in the morning, reading by lamplight and then waxing dawn, a hurricane is a monstrous weapon that should never be wielded against someone. Blue waters shredded by wind, waves heaved tall enough to pluck an airship from the sky, lightning forking black clouds: all that power should not be contained inside a glass bottle or in a sprawling sigil painted on a ballroom floor.

The rain had cleared in time for her lunch break, and Twilight met with Celestia once again. Her cloud of thoughts was churning, disquieted by an idle question Rainbow had asked, an open-ended query on how she thought the ponies in Hoofington were doing—the Astras, Lumb, Octavia’s former servants, the nice doctor and her nurse at the hospital, and more as the cloud recalled increasingly obscure strangers, faces seen and never met. While the cloud analyzed everything it knew about the city, filling Twilight’s conscious mind with information for which she had no use, she trudged to the meeting room and tried to go over what she wanted to say.

“You needed to see me.” Celestia offered no smile, and neither did Twilight.

“About the hurricane.”

“Please.” She signed for them to lower their voices.

“Sorry. I just had a question, something I didn’t think to ask last night.”

“Proceed.”

“I was wondering why you had selected me to perform the magic. That’s all.”

A small smile, patient and joyless. “Because you are my most capable student, my dear.”

“But I—”

“And because a princess cannot be seen to cast such magic herself. I trust you understand that?”

Twilight looked at her.

“Consider the political side of this, Twilight. I have a war council, but they are slow and unwieldy—a sentiment I’m sure you appreciate.”

Fearing to say the wrong thing, Twilight only nodded.

“An act made by that council, or by any other agency under my rule, carries certain political implications. To the queen of the changelings, it would seem an open declaration of war. What I am looking for is not an open declaration, but a statement of intent. Such a statement is best, well, made by a free agent.”

“But I’m under orders. Not free.”

“The queen doesn’t know that.”

Twilight thought, her cloud still running on its own, distracting. “Queen Chrysalis will think I’m acting on my own?”

“If one single pony can rain destruction on her navy, what might an entire nation do? You and I both know that you’re the most powerful mortal in the country, but she does not—don’t hide your face, dear, you know it to be true. Come.” She gently touched Twilight’s hoof. “Look at me. There’s no shame in power.”

“She’ll be so disheartened from the storm, she won’t want to see what else we can do to her,” Twilight finished. “But that still… But why do I have to be the one to do it?”

“We all must make difficult decisions in our lives, my student.”

“But…” “But I’m not the one deciding, you’re forcing me,” she wanted to say. In Celestia’s eyes, solemn with matriarchal pride, Twilight felt her objections wither away as before.

“My student, I would not ask you to do this if we were not in the deepest need. I truly fear that a display of power is the only thing to keep their hordes away from our borders.”

“I just don’t think it’s that bad,” Twilight said, shaking her head.

A subtle darkening in the room told her that she had said too much. The walls groaned and the air grew chill, and Celestia, as calm as ever, averted her eyes only for a second before pinning Twilight again. “What do you know about it?”

“I’m sorry, your highness. That was out of line.”

Celestia rested her chin on a hoof, her great wings draping to the floor. “You’ve impressed both of us, Luna and me. Your work restoring our nation has been incredible, to say nothing of your struggle with Discord. Before that, even. I was your age once, Twilight Sparkle, and I had not accomplished half as much—and I see greater things within you still. Under my guidance… I have sired more Elements of Magic than I can count, and of them all, you are the closest to becoming the new godhead. You realize this?”

“I don’t know what to say, your highness.”

“What you lack most terribly is wisdom. Do you know what wisdom is?”

Twilight recognized the tone of voice, the contracture of brow, the slight tilt of ear: a lesson being offered. She shook her head, knowing that whatever conventional definition she may recite would not impress the princess.

“Wisdom cannot be given, taught, or gotten for free. Wisdom is more than life; there are those who are young, but find wisdom in everything they do. There are those who die without once knowing wisdom. Wisdom comes to those who are ready, but you cannot prepare yourself. One does not go searching for wisdom, and one does not anticipate its coming, notice its arrival, or remark on its passage.”

“And you’re saying that I lack this, your highness?”

“Yes.”

“O-okay.” She endured a minute of eye contact with the princess before clearing her throat and looking to the window. “I’ll try to be better.”

“There is no trying. It will find you or it won’t, that is the truth. In four thousand years, that is the truth as I have discovered it. The great mystery of life, which scholars have pondered all their lives, which has baffled the brilliant and the dull alike, which your friend Applejack will pursue until her permanent death, and which I now give you freely, one pathetic sentence. Wisdom will find you, or it will not. It is without definition, for it comes in more guises than there are stars in the sky, its mark instantly recognizable but never predictable and never repeatable. Four thousand years, and this is what I offer you.” She rapped a hoof on the table. “This wisdom you must accumulate, or you will be left behind. I have been asked a million times and more, what is the most fundamental difference between a goddess and a mortal? Why, in the history of the world, are there but two of us? Wisdom, of course—this is what I will tell them. Wisdom! And here I sit, facing my most worthy student, my most capable successor, this mortal—here I sit, and I question myself, Twilight. Five thousand years have passed, and I sit here in doubt and confusion as if I had wandered into this palace off the street.”

“…Five thousand?”

Celestia blinked. “Four. Excuse me.”

“Your highness, what happened when Discord trapped you?”

“Would you like me to show you?”

“Not—could I handle it?” She had not expected the offer, or a straight answer at all. “Can my mortal brain comprehend it?”

The princess smiled humorlessly. “You got me, Twilight. Very well. I believe you’ve already gathered that it was a dream. For the first century, I was able to hold that in mind; I tried to fight it in those terms. You know, when we were teleported from the throne room, it was his intention to trap all of us in the dream. I spared you that.”

“Thank you.” Feeling wildly insufficient, Twilight blushed and looked down.

“In the dream, the Elements had been scrubbed from existence. They were a memory, which he used to taunt me. Discord, he was in the dream, and more powerful than in life. He had achieved godhood, had moved past the half-baked status of demigod that he forever exaggerates. For the first century, I ignored him and tried only to escape. As it went on, I lost that wisdom, and we began to fight in earnest. I tried to rule the country and only engage him in secret, in desolate places where we would not harm anyone. My sister would rule for decades on her own while I fought Discord around the world. We exchanged blows like prize fighters, Twilight, in the skies over mountaintops, in the trenches of the arctic oceans, in underground oil deposits. For a year or more, I chased him through a sea of sludge and rock, no vision, crushed under the earth’s pressure, not even enough oxygen to burn the oil away and reveal my foe. And I couldn’t drain it, he held it in place by some mechanism. I never discovered how.” She stopped for a minute, eyes glistening, but did not turn from Twilight. “Eventually, he came for my cities, and I would face him there, outside. Innocent ponies watching in horror as their peaceful ruler breaks an entire mountain over her enemy’s head. Yes, Twilight, a mountain; I mean what I say. Nothing was enough, he always came back. I… by the seventh century, the cities were gone.” She had grown deathly quiet, but still held Twilight in her eyes, locking her to her seat. “The forests were burned or ripped out of the ground, the lakes and rivers were boiled off. Worse. The seas were sucked into the sky for an unending downpour. In the ninth century, Luna and I dissolved the atmosphere, and every particle of air was effaced. Still he remained.” She sighed with a self-conscious grimace, breaking her gaze and coming back to herself. “I woke up at some point after that. Re-adjusting to this life has not been very pleasant.”

Twilight could only regard her, not sure what to say or what was expected of her. Eventually, she asked who else her princess had told.

“My sister knows the details, of course. I couldn’t hide them from her if I wanted to.” She tapped her skull. “Some of my psychiatrists. Yes, we goddesses have them too.”

“I know.”

“And you. You know, Twilight, it was not an easy thousand years in that dream. One might think it cathartic in a way, being able to expend all one’s strength and power like that. A safe little cage in the middle of the desert.”

“I don’t think that, your highness.”

“You are afraid. You have faced the storm in your book, and you have found that it is within your power to manage, and it frightens you.”

A second passed before Twilight realized that Celestia was asking for confirmation. She nodded silently.

“It should. I tell you what I experienced, not to discourage you, but to inform you. In restoring our lands, you have tasted true power for the first time.” Gone was the motherly softness in her eyes, the recognition; Celestia looked at Twilight with blunt fascination, intrigue clouded with intent. “Magic doesn’t become easier with experience, quite the opposite.”

* * * * * *

Big Mac did not think much of Versus anymore; when he did, his mood would darken and frost over, and he was no good to anyone, least of all himself. A mere thought of her, remembrance of her voice or her smile, or worse, the dance they had shared, would take his purpose from him, and he would be left in the middle of whatever he was doing, indecisive and overcome with the feeling for which he had no articulate name.

To actually hear her voice, her laugh mingled with Applejack’s in the room next to his, was a pain so exquisite that he longed for its return the instant it had faded. When he chanced to hear her through the walls, he would lose himself to the saccharine feeling; if she casually asked how he was doing, he would feel as though he could implode on the spot.

Not one to speak of it, he quietly changed his routine, staying out late and finding household occupation when he could, trying always to avoid his room and its thin walls. For the first months of summer, it had seemed that Versus was determined to follow him into the trees, but he put his head down and ignored her sweet memory until it lost its edge, then its shape, and finally became a patina of longing that he chose to acknowledge instead as a sign of having grown older. He had gone into the world one way and he had come back another, simple as that.

It was no shock that her suffering plied at his heart. As her life unfolded through Applejack’s narration, powerless anger would stir in him; thoughts of heroic action would inflame his imagination and stoke his memories until he had worked them back into the ground, until he had returned the best and most indulgent of himself to the soil in broad strokes of the shovel or in the thick ruts of a wagon wheel. His Element he kept wrapped in tissue paper and hidden in his bedstand, safely tucked under a frilly hat that he liked to wear when no one was around to see.

On that same drizzly Wednesday morning, he skipped breakfast and went to the orchard’s edge to watch Ponyville wake up. The mayor waved to him on her morning walk, the graveyard shifters at the hospital trudged back to their homes while the early workers trudged past them in the opposite direction; then the roadside stalls came up, one by one, ponies appearing with baskets of fruit, bolts of fabric, bouquets of flowers, bottles of tea or honey or perfume; and then the school bell rang, and the weather workers thickened in the sky to pull Ponyville’s rain closer to the forest; and without noticing when they had first come, he wiped tears from his eyes.

Fluttershy and Rarity waved at him too, but the angle was wrong and he did not see them. Rarity was due in Canterlot later that evening, dinner with a fashion executive and then an appearance on the daytime news the following afternoon. She planned to be in the big city until next Monday, relaxing in the palace and catching up with the others. For this, she and Fluttershy had moved their weekly spa visit up.

First thing in the morning on a Wednesday, they were the only ones there when the spa opened. Aloe and Lotus were still in Canterlot, with no word on when they would be coming back to what many still considered their rightful place. Instead, Ponyville was attended by Cloudchaser and Limestone Pie, who had taken Flitter’s place in the spa’s management. On the massage tables, Cloudchaser worked with Rarity and Limestone with Fluttershy—for one was surprisingly gentle with wings, and the other was surprisingly not.

They had heard Cloudchaser refer to Limestone as “Lime” for most of their visits, and only very recently the full “Limestone.” Neither had yet made the connection that it was Octavia’s final sister who poured water on the hot rocks in the steam room, who scrubbed mud from the baths, who sliced the cucumbers for their eyes, who quietly worked at the grime and matted fur at their hooves. They would eventually, but, like the telling of Octavia’s story itself, time would have rendered it immaterial by then.

Settling in, the two exchanged contented sighs and made small talk with their masseuses. Limestone was never much for conversation, and Cloudchaser only sometimes.

“We got our invitations today,” Fluttershy said. “For the reception.”

Cloudchaser hummed assent. “I got mine.”

“Do you know what day it’s on?”

“Thursday, I think.”

“Thursday,” Limestone affirmed. Thursday, November eleventh, a reception over Greater Canterlot, a formal celebration for Equestria’s restoration. Invitation only. How Cloudchaser had secured a place on the guest list, Fluttershy was too polite to ask.

“I’m already stressing on what to wear,” Rarity chuckled.

“I’m sure you’ll be gorgeous whatever you choose,” Cloudchaser said.

“I like to think so. Oh, dear, a little lower, please. Perfect.”

Cloudchaser worked in silence for a time before speaking again, her voice hesitant as though she were not sure it was proper to tell a client. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it, if I’m honest.”

“The reception?”

“Mm.”

“Why ever not? I hope there’s nothing wrong?”

“Not exactly. I’m, well, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be in Ponyville.”

“You’re leaving?” Fluttershy sighed, eyes closed.

“I don’t know when, it depends on a couple things. Sooner rather than later, I hope.” More crisply, she said, “I’ll be moving to Fillydelphia. There’s a position there for me already, and all I need to do still is find an apartment.”

“Fillydelphia, oh, how exciting. Do you have family there?”

“I’ll be on my own, which is how I want it. I don’t know, Ponyville isn’t the same anymore. Not since Flitter.” It was known that Flitter had passed away suddenly; and in a sense, it was true. Cloudchaser had gone up to Canterlot for the funeral and not come back some days after, pretending to have shed her grief and fooling no one.

“I understand,” Rarity said.

“Thank you.”

“Truly. If moving to another place is what you need, then I’m behind you all the way. Will you—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to put you on the spot—if you need anything, you need only ask.”

Cloudchaser didn’t respond.

“You’ve been good to us,” Fluttershy said. “What, um, what’s going to happen to the spa?”

“That’s the other thing it depends on. I’m trying to find someone to replace me. No luck yet. But yeah, if I’m still here by the eleventh, then I’ll be at the reception. Probably wearing one of your pieces, Rarity.”

“Stop by anytime, darling. She’s right, you have been good to us.”

It was an unexpected blessing that Apple Bloom and her friends had learned so much in the farm’s management; it freed Applejack for her avocation, which had grown around her like moss coating a stone, slow and apparent to all but herself. It had started in the early summer with her books and her studies, her conversations with Versus, but had escaped the confines of her bedroom as her curiosity grew more potent. What were, at first, friendly questions to passers-by became full and vested interests; and her unique status in town made it so that very few were unwilling to divulge themselves to her. She was no gossip, but Applejack came to know ponies’ secrets and trials just as intimately as one, and before long, found herself wiling away the sleepless evening hours worrying problems and questions that were not her own.

Thus, in the afternoon, while Ponyville’s eaves dripped with the morning’s rain and the wind blew with the fresh scent of clover and wet stone, Applejack walked among the headstones with her second confidante of the day, the second of four that were scheduled. If the other pony had no specific place they wanted to talk, Applejack usually took them to the cemetery or to the fields west of town; the emptiness of those spaces made them feel farther from civilization, and it helped her keep a respectful distance from those who sought her.

“I don’t want anyone to think I’m a bad pony,” Rose Luck said. “But I can’t kid myself anymore, you know? I don’t care about their birthdays. I want to, it would make my life a lot easier, but I can’t make myself care. You know?” She was speaking of her nieces and nephews, and her fear that her family would be angry if she failed to display an appropriate level of excitement at their numerous functions.

“Had anythin’ specific happened lately that makes you bring this up?” Applejack asked. She rested a hoof on a weathered gravestone, as serious as if Rose had told her she had an inoperable disease.

“I mean, my nephew’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks, and I’m supposed to help put it together. I just can’t bring myself to care about it.”

They had talked about the problem a couple times before. From what Applejack could tell, Rose lived in constant fear of being found lacking. If she was good, she was not good enough; if she went out of her way for someone, she did not go far enough; if she said something impolite, that pony would never want to speak to her again. Applejack had already tried telling her to trust herself, that goodness was immaterial and could not be measured, and that fear was a poison she could do without, but Rose came back the next week with the same problem, and a third time days later. Applejack believed that she did not seek any permanent solution to her problems, and only wanted immediate encouragement to get through the latest crisis.

She had reflected on it for three nights, lost sleep and forced herself to till earth until she was too exhausted to even cover herself with the sheets, whether it was just to provide temporary relief for what was obviously a deeper problem. Ultimately, Applejack decided that it was: for it was not her place to dictate how quickly, or in what fashion, someone fought their demons. If Rose Luck wanted less substantial council, then Applejack had to have faith that it was for good reason, and that she would seek greater wisdom when she was ready. Thoughts like these buoyed her while Rose re-stated, for the third time, what she was afraid of and under which very specific circumstances it had almost come to pass years ago.

“I know,” Applejack wanted to say. “You can move past it, you’ve told me this story enough times I could tell it back to you.” But that would be hurtful, so Applejack just listened quietly, waiting, savoring the cool, fresh air and the feeling of hewn stone.

Rose’s problem humbled her, for it was airtight, too simple to be solved by any combination of lofty insights. “Just lighten up, dammit,” that was the true extent of her advice, and finding ways to dress it up, knowing nothing would get through until Rose changed first, was the exact sort of fruitless task that Applejack grudgingly welcomed—a petty reminder that she lived in the real world, not her own mind. Still, her patience was finite, and when Rose had been discharged back into town, saying she felt much lighter, Applejack could only press her head against a mausoleum’s brickwork and gradually breathe out her frustration.

She had a meeting in half an hour with someone new, and he had not been forthcoming with what he needed help with; whatever it was, she only hoped the need was genuine.

Later that evening, instead of talking with Versus, Applejack spoke to the blue sigil from which Twilight’s anxious voice came in rapid bursts. Big Mac was in the other room, ear pressed to the wall, as the most eminent mortal in Equestria poured out her problem.

“She’s a totally different mare, Applejack! Totally different! You’d see it in a second if you were here with me. Small wonder—you know what she told me today?”

“You know Ah don’t, darlin’. Are you in yer room, or are you in that darned office?”

“My office.”

“Are you workin’?”

A huff. “No, not at the moment.”

“Get off this sigil, go to yer room, drink some water, an’ call me back. You been stressin’ all day, Ah can hear it.”

“Applejack.”

“Ah mean it. You’ll feel better, Ah promise. Then call me back, from yer room, an’ we’ll hash this out.”

Applejack had surrendered to temptation in August and gotten a personal coffee machine for her room. It saw nearly as much use as the family one downstairs, seeing her through late nights with difficult texts, long conversations with Versus, exhausting sessions with Twilight or Rainbow Dash. She began brewing a cup from across the room, enjoying the secret twinge of magic, and when it was ready, Twilight was back.

“Okay, I’m relaxed.”

“Ah can tell you ain’t, but Ah have faith you will be if you take my advice. Drink water, Twilight.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Drink water. Gives you somethin’ to do with yer horn, if nothin’ else.”

Twilight sighed in acceptance.

“So the princess has changed, fer the worse by what yer sayin’.”

“She told me what happened when she was in Moondrop today.”

Applejack pursed her lips. “Now my ears are standin’ up. Was this told to you in confidence, or can you tell me?”

“I’ll tell you. She was dreaming, or trapped in Discord’s dream, I’m not sure which. The point is, she thought a thousand years had passed for her; by the time she got out, she felt like she was a millennium ahead of us.”

“That ain’t good.”

“In those thousand years, she was fighting Discord the whole time, wound up destroying the planet in the process. She doesn’t see it, or she didn’t tell me anyway, but it’s left her in a bad way. It makes sense, doesn’t it? She spent a thousand years fighting a battle she couldn’t win, and that’s why she seems so intent on starting something with Queen Chrysalis. She’s stuck in that mindset, that ‘at war’ feeling.”

“An’ we’re payin’ the price.”

“She wants me to conjure a hurricane and dump it on their ships. Not near them, right on top of them.” Twilight gave off a hysterical laugh. “A hurricane! Applejack, she ordered me to do it! There’s a royal decree!” Paper rustled behind her voice. “I thought I could do it at first, but I can’t. I mean, I can, but I—I can do it, Applejack, hell, you wanna know the worst thing? I can do it easy. After everything else I’ve done, summoning this hurricane, I can do it and make it look like nothing.”

“But yer not gonna.”

“Oh, Celestia.” There was something between a laugh and a sob, and her voice became meek on the other side. “I can’t. Those changelings out there, I can’t do this to them.”

“Then don’t.” In that second, Applejack was thankful for her friendship with Twilight, that she could say something so terse and have it be understood, not have to worry about bruising Twilight’s feelings.

“Ah, yes, how simple. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“What Ah mean, Twilight, is that you don’t have to do it if you don’t wanna. What does that royal decree say if you disobey it?”

“That I’ll be fired, basically, and discommended by the throne.”

“All right. Well, yer basically done with yer job anyway, an’ you’ve hated it fer some time. Bein’ fired, that ain’t so bad, is it? ‘Discommended by the throne,’ Ah don’t know exactly what that means, but if this is a throne that orders you to summon a natural disaster on another country, then you probably wanna distance yerself from that anyway.”

“Princess Celestia said this would be the last thing she asks of me. Rainbow and I could go home if I just do this one thing.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I… don’t know.”

Applejack contemplated her response while blowing on her coffee. She could point out the evil of using a storm against an unsuspecting target, she could pressure Twilight to quit and retreat to Ponyville, but she knew that Twilight had come to her for more than that. With some ponies it was not the case, but Twilight would have come to the obvious conclusions long before reaching out to Applejack.

“What else did Celestia tell you?”

“She went on this weird rant about wisdom and being a goddess. She said I’m her most worthy successor.”

“Say that again?”

“She said that I am her most worthy successor, Applejack.”

“Fer bein’ a goddess?”

“I would imagine she meant ruler of Equestria. She wasn’t clear. She did praise my power a lot.”

“As well she should.” Applejack sat back and thought on it. Power: not simply one’s ability to throw a spell or bludgeon an obstacle away, but one’s will to do what others would not. The smartest pony in the world might not restore Equestria so well as Twilight, and the pony with the strongest will might bend backwards in the face of such a challenge if they could not invent a good solution.

“You’ve achieved greatness,” Applejack continued, thinking out loud. “Undeniable.”

“Yeah.”

“Most worthy successor. Hm. You reckon she’s groomin’ ya?”

“Grooming me for princess-hood?”

“Bein’ a ruler is all ‘bout makin’ hard decisions, decisions that affect more lives than you can count. You’ve done it once, bringin’ us down, an’ that was a positive thing. You fixed a lot of wrong in the world by doin’ that. Now she’s givin’ ya the chance to do the opposite. She’s givin’ you free reign to hurt on a greater scale than most anyone ever could.”

“She wants me to refuse.”

“That… Ah’m not so sure. Could be. Could be too, she wants to see if you’ve got it in ya to take all those lives. Don’t delude yerself, you know rulin’ fer as long as she has, she’s had to do some unspeakable things. If you succeed her, you’ll have to do ‘em too. Maybe this is yer first one.”

Twilight shuffled in her room and did not speak for a long time, and Applejack was able to drink her coffee. From the sounds coming out of her sigil, she was making her bed, hiding from the statement she was not prepared to receive. When the bed was finally made, comforter fluffed and patted down and fluffed again, pillows arranged to her liking, Twilight spoke in a small voice. “I don’t want to rule. I never wanted to.”

“What is it ya do want?”

“You know what I want.”

“Say it.”

Twilight got up and adjusted something else. “I want to go home, that’s all. I want to turn my back on everything I’ve done, let it stay in the past, and start fresh.”

“All right.” She considered herself. “You may not like what Ah’m ‘bout to say. Ah think you need to get out of Canterlot as fast as you can, get away from the princess. Fer the sake of yer soul, Twilight, you need to get out of that city an’ find a way back to yer old life.”

* * * * * *

That same evening, Twilight crept back to her office with the intention of reading more on the storm and looking at the patch of ocean where she was expected to summon it. The library below was quiet, lit softly from electric braziers, and the offices she had passed on her way were all dark. In the nighttime, the work spaces clustered around the library regained some of their former function, reverting to parlors and storage rooms, desks and filing cabinets and rolling chairs at odds with their plush surroundings with no workers inside to draw attention to the transformation. Then she would look away from the dark offices and see the gentle play of starlight across gilt designs in the marble floor, luxury again. On her way up, Twilight lingered by a pilaster and watched a sliver of night through an arched window, nothing to see but always pulling her attention when she found herself wandering the sleeping palace offices.

She sat with her book, but instead of opening it, she was drawn to another window. The sky had cleared but for a little group of blinking airships flying north, their balloons blushing with torchlight, their backs and sides aglow with red beacons. It had been just over three hundred days since the Elements got home, and a year and a half since being called away. The retreating airships in her window reminded Twilight of the wonder she had shared with her friends at first. How it had all slipped away then, from rakish adventure to anxious furlough to grueling duty, and finally back around to adventure, though of a much crueler sort.

She checked her divination spells, looked at a few places of import, and went to the roof, where her sticking sigils allowed her to walk without fear on the underside of the tower’s lip. She could look down the sheer wall at the inner courtyard and at the mass of palatial turrets and dormers that formed an uneven checkerboard in the moonlight, hung pennants shuddering nearer the ground and batters embossed with curling streaks of gold flake toward the palace’s main roof. Looking to the sky, she saw the bridge connecting the solarium and observatory on the palace’s other side, that slender walkway she had run across too many times to recall. She watched the palace, as much of it as she could from her dizzy vantage, and like Big Mac that morning, and for reasons not so dissimilar, she found herself crying, tears running the wrong way out of her eyes and spilling all the way, five stories, to the ground.

None of it did she reveal to Rainbow Dash the following morning, when she, strong and stable with a fresh plan in mind, clocked in and went straight to the attic. Rainbow asked whether she was needed and was dismissed for the hour.

Then, seated at a wide, shallow pan of golden oil, Twilight began weaving her magic for the day. A spell to give herself true sight, that she could divine multiple locations at once without having to deactivate those that she was not using immediately; an enchantment on the walls to continuously cycle the air, so she would not pass out from smoke inhalation when the oil got too hot; a spell to connect all of her viewing implements, so she could switch aspects from one to another whenever she wanted; and then the spells to show her the locations she wished to see. Every day she re-cast her web of magic, not wishing to let it stagnate and risk anything breaking down at a crucial moment.

When she had one magic eye on the changeling fleet, one eye on the swath of ocean between it and The Hive, and one eye on a sanctioned location outside Chrysalis’ palace, she activated the old communication sigil for the queen and waited. An attendant answered and told Twilight to wait, that the queen would be summoned urgently. Twenty minutes later, wrapped in a monogrammed jade bathrobe and with duck slippers loose on her hooves, Chrysalis stepped into frame and greeted Twilight with a chilly “hello.” Simply meeting over a communication sigil, there was no need for the queen to take on a respectful shape.

“Your highness, thank you for your time. I’m reaching out to you on a matter of grave importance.”

“Let’s see,” the queen said, sitting on a bench of cut coral in one of the palace’s outermost courtyards.

“And I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen to me after this. I may not be able to speak with you again.”

The differences in changeling intonation were more subtle than in ponies, but Twilight thought that Chrysalis sounded concerned when she asked what was wrong.

“The royal princess of the sun has…” She lowered her voice, though there was no need. “I am under orders from the princess herself to use deadly magic against your naval fleet, your excellence.”

Queen Chrysalis shifted inside her robe, unseen limbs and pieces of shell melding and twisting in agitation. “This is a warning? A threat?”

“I don’t want to do it at all, and I’m not going to, I think it’s ridiculous. If I don’t, though, her royal highness of the sun might.”

“What sort of deadly magic?”

“She wants me to conjure a hurricane on top of your fleet.”

The queen looked thoughtfully out at the crashing waves, which Twilight could hear but not see, and the magic in her spell rippled. It had never happened before, but she knew what it portended.

“Ah! Your excellence, I think someone’s listening in.”

Celestia spoke. “I am, Twilight Sparkle. You can wipe your communication sigils from the floor now.”

“Your highness, uh.” She was saved the indignity of struggling for a response, for all at once her divination went blank and the sigils died. In an instant, the room was emptied of its humming power, the oil began to cool, the pendulums that swung in magical arcs were coming to a slow halt where they hung over empty designs. The noise from outside became a presence again, subtle breezes and birdsong, the sound of Lower Canterlot seeping in and asserting itself.

Twilight was shaking when she quit the attic and shuffled to the bathroom, where she stared at herself in the mirror and tried with splashes of cold water to get a grip. Being caught was not part of her plan, though losing her job was. She had envisioned a few days between her speaking with Chrysalis and Celestia finding out, days during which she could tell Rainbow what she had done, pack their bags, and get ready for the disgraced march out of the palace.

When she returned to the attic, every sigil was burned away, every device was inert. The bowls of oil and chalk outlines that let her see the world responded to no magic she knew, and up on the roof, the same—not even her sticking sigils remained.

There was no time to mourn them, however, for back in her office, Celestia filled the doorway with Rainbow confused and frightened beside her, likely teleported from wherever she had been without a word of explanation. The princess crossed to face Twilight in three great strides, looking her in the eyes the whole way and then standing over her, intimidating and knowing it.

“Your highness—”

“You are done. Both of you.” She closed her dry eyes. “How could you betray me? My most precious student.”

“I… I…”

“Forewarning our greatest enemy behind my back, in my own palace. Is it your intention to wound me? Because you have.”

“Maybe she doesn’t wanna commit atrocities in your name,” Rainbow said. “Ya think? Maybe, instead of escalating with this Chrysalis lady, you two should sit down and work something out.”

“That time has passed,” Celestia sighed. “That I should have to do this… Twilight Sparkle, for revealing confidential information to our enemy, you are hereby relieved from your duty to the throne. You too, Rainbow.”

Twilight nodded solemnly, but Rainbow’s face was spreading with a grin. “I guess it’s back to Ponyville, then.”

“You’re not going to Ponyville. You’re not going anywhere.” Celestia shook her head. “You’ve committed treason, my student. No, you’re both staying in this palace until I can figure out what I want to do with you.”

“Wait, are we under arrest?” Rainbow asked.

Celestia gave Rainbow a pitying look. “No. Go to your… Do not… You will stay inside the palace until you hear from me.”

She was gone before they could respond, head curled in under a wing and body tense with the feelings she only barely expressed to their faces. The two looked at each other, Rainbow dumbfounded and Twilight angry.

“What do we do?”

“Such an idiot,” Twilight murmured through her teeth, turning to pace around her office, still stacked with books and materials. “How could I have not seen this coming?”

Rainbow watched, holding her tongue, aware that it was not the time to ask Twilight what exactly she had done.

“How?” With her hoof, she kicked a beaker into the window. “Yes, Twilight, it’s obvious that your plan constitutes treason! Good going, now you’re—”

“Hey,” Rainbow snapped. “Enough. We’re in this together.”

“You shouldn’t even be with me. You had nothing to do with it.” She went to her desk and slouched there. “I bet I can get you out of here, at least.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Twilight looked up at her and looked away a second later, sighing.

“I take it you told Chrysalis about the hurricane?”

“Yeah. I warned her, told her I wasn’t going to do it, but that Princess Celestia might. That’s when she shut me down.”

“All right. All right.” She was nodding, looking around the office for some clue, some recourse to their sudden problem, and, finding nothing, settled her eyes on Twilight once more. She knew Twilight would take it poorly, interpret it as though the onus of escape were entirely on her, but Rainbow did not know where else to look. “Maybe we should figure out exactly what kind of trouble we’re in first?”

“Sounds about right. Go down and grab as many books as you can find on the Canterlot judicial system. I’m going to see if there’s anything to salvage from upstairs.”

Even as a perpetrator of treason and her accomplice, the privileges for the Elements of Harmony were generous; neither of them was locked in their rooms or assigned a guard, and they were promised that no news would reach the public. However, they were not allowed outside the palace walls without Celestia’s personal accompaniment, and Twilight was barred from all further divination.

It took her until the following afternoon to invent a way around her magic restriction. While Celestia had destroyed all of her work in the attic and on the roof, she had not erased Twilight’s cloud of thoughts, and it was in that magical construct that all the details of her setups lingered. Recreating them would take work, but it would be rote, and not as much trouble as concealing them.

She sat in her office with a pile of books open on her desk and a snow globe on the corner, the innocent object her selection to become a conduit of her far-reaching sight. Twilight was too intent on her research to notice Luna’s entrance—through the door, not rudely appearing out of thin air—and the princess observed Twilight for a minute before clearing her throat and making Twilight nearly jump out of her chair.

“Your highness! I was—”

“I’m not here to pry or to pass judgment, Twilight. Is Rainbow in?”

“She’s flying.”

Princess Luna folded her dark wings and cleared a space for herself on the floor. “Celestia told me what happened, of course.”

“Did she tell you what she asked me to do?”

“What she ordered you to do,” Luna corrected. “It’s one of the reasons I wanted to speak with you in private.” She smiled sympathetically. “Don’t worry, my sister’s not eaves dropping. She’s attending to much more mundane duties at the moment.”

Relaxed, but only slightly, Twilight asked, “What do you think about the hurricane?”

“I think it’s a good idea that was approached poorly. The changelings, and Queen Chrysalis in particular, are not friendly with us right now; having a tropical storm up our sleeves would even the playing field, if not give us the advantage for any potential conflicts. That’s just the problem, though, this is a potential conflict. Ordering you to summon the hurricane straight away was foolish, as you have shown by your refusal to comply. She should have told you to research them only, eased you into the idea.”

“I like to think I would have figured out why I was reading up on storm magic.”

“I’m positive you would,” Luna said. “But you might not have acted so rashly.”

“Then again, I might.”

Luna laughed. “I admire your backbone. No matter what happens, you did what you thought was right, and no one can take that from you.”

She had not said whether she thought Twilight was in the right, and Twilight was reluctant to ask. “It might not do me any good in the next days. I don’t know what she’s going to do with me.”

“Neither does she. This isn’t a problem either of us have seen very much, you understand. I only wanted to come up and let you know before she did, so it wouldn’t be such an impersonal shock: you and Miss Dash are going to take a trip to The Hive soon.”

“We—” Fear, and a touch of exhilaration, colored her cheeks. “Are we being exiled?”

More laughter from the night princess, loud and good-natured. “Nooo, not at all! You’re traveling with Celestia to meet Queen Chrysalis, there’s going to be some final negotiation to get them to withdraw their ships. She requested you specifically.”

“The queen?”

“You left a very interesting impression on her, and she wants to meet you. Celestia, less so.”

“Great, so Princess Celestia can keep a close eye on us while we’re flying up to their islands,” Twilight said. “That’s fantastic.”

Luna stood and went to look at Twilight’s reading, which Twilight instinctively moved to block.

“Relax, I already have an idea what you’re doing. I’d do it too.” She glanced at the titles and the snow globe. “You’re going to transfer your divination magic to the glass’ inside surface and use that to keep an eye on the country without her noticing.”

Twilight could only blush, sour that Luna should discover her intent after but a few seconds of casual investigation.

“While I agree that it was needlessly punitive for her to take away your divination, are you sure you want to get straight back to it? If she sees you with that, it won’t be long until she figures out what you’re doing with it.” Luna thought. “Why do you even want it back? Your work around the country is done.”

“There’s a few ponies I’m watching over, friends in other cities. That mare, Versus, she’s the most important one.”

“That’s the only reason? There’s no need to prove that my sister can’t force you to do something you don’t want to?”

Twilight’s blush darkened.

“Be careful, Twilight. This kind of magic can lead a pony to some very difficult places.”

“I know, your highness.”

“No you don’t.” Her mirth, suddenly, was gone. “I know what you’ve done because I was doing it too, when I was mortal. I know what you’ve seen, and I know where your studies have taken you; I’ve seen it as well.”

“Some believe you saw it first,” Twilight added, hoping a bit of flattery would curtail Luna’s speech. Her mind was on her books, her cloud on the divination designs it had absorbed, and she was in no mood to be lectured.

“And I know what stops you, what problems you haven’t yet overcome, which tantalize you, for they were once my problems. Divination starts with the senses, with seeing and listening, and as you’ve discovered, you can project yourself wherever you want. You can project falsehoods too—ah, but that leads us to the magic of illusion, doesn’t it? Follow that thread, you run the risk of finding where the metaphysical and the tangible begin to overlap. A pony can lose herself there. Lose her corporeal form. Never come back.” Luna paused, thinking, smiling. “How many have lost themselves? Can you encounter them still? What would they tell you? What can they show you?”

“And you start to question the fundamental nature of reality,” Twilight said. “I know. I’ve read your essays on it.”

“Would you say you have understood them?”

“I’ve… tried my best.”

Luna shook her head knowingly. “Caution, Twilight. All I advise is caution. Too much divination—too much of any school of magic, really—can be dangerous. You get to a point where the power involved is not so easily contained, and the knowledge becomes frightening. I believe my sister advised you in much the same way not long ago.”

“She told me magic gets harder, not easier, with experience.”

“She was right to say so.” Luna nodded to herself and gave Twilight a wink. “Caution, that’s all.”

“I appreciate it, your highness.”

Luna chuckled. “Your tone. You’re going to pursue your divination anyway?”

For a second, Twilight considered lying, but she knew there was no point. “Probably.”

“Then at least let me help you streamline your process. Your enchantments are inefficient in a lot of places, I’ve noticed. I bet I can help you hide it from my sister too.”

Toward day’s end, Celestia entered Twilight’s office to tell her the news, that she and Rainbow Dash were to fly with her to meet Queen Chrysalis, departure in three days’ time. Pinkie and the diplomats would be there as well—news she added as an afterthought before zapping herself out of the room, leaving Twilight and Rainbow to debate what to pack, what to expect from the meeting, what to say to Pinkie or whether to contact her at all.

The first step, they agreed, was to move Twilight’s project to her bedroom, where she felt more sure that Celestia would not spy on her. Luna had helped her inscribe her magic on the snow globe’s inner surface and given some pointers on keeping the magic obfuscated from Celestia, but Twilight still needed to figure out how to move among the spells in such a tiny space, as well as one thing that she did not share with Luna, and which she could only hope the night princess had not pulled from her mind.

“Rainbow, do you know where Vinyl is? She’s in town, right?”

Rainbow was rustling in Twilight’s closet. She had an engagement that evening, but Twilight had insisted on her help before leaving, so Rainbow made the best of it by searching for an outfit in Twilight’s room. “Saw her for drinks a couple days ago. Why?”

“Do you think you can get her to meet me tomorrow?”

“I can ask.” She poked her head out and eyed Twilight’s spread. “What’s the plan?”

Twilight had the bed covered with empty mason jars and plastic-wrapped ingredients from the palace apothecary, and as she studied them, Rainbow dipped into the closet momentarily before emerging with a cream and magenta peacoat, its buttons the shape of Celestia’s sun emblem.

“I want to keep an eye on Canterlot while we’re away, and the palace if I possibly can.”

“Dare I ask why?”

“A safety net.” She sniffed at a pouch of dried tarot root. “Princess Luna said it won’t happen, but just in case Princess Celestia decides to leave us with the changelings, I want to have vision in the capital.”

“You don’t think you’re being a little paranoid? She’s not gonna ditch us up there. Not us.”

Twilight was shaking her head. “Just in case. It seems to me, if we can have our movements and magic use restricted, we can be left in another country.”

“I don’t think that’s likely.”

“Me neither, but if I can keep some magic in Canterlot, that’ll go a long way toward securing our passage back.”

“Nah, you’ve got it reversed.” She twirled once in her peacoat, shrugged, and started sorting through the trousers. “She’ll think you’re planning something nasty, which… you aren’t, right?”

“Nothing as bad as what I’m supposed to be doing.” The pair lapsed into silence as Twilight began unwrapping her powders and tablets, sorting them into jars and onto glass plates, pushing and coloring them with her magic, sometimes rewarding herself with a tuft of smoke or a bright flash as something combusted. Rainbow paused to watch, rapt, unable to follow the movement of magic across glass and through dusty air. She looked away when Twilight told her to, and through her eyelids saw a brilliant afterimage of raspberry light that was accompanied by the smell of cordite.

“I think that’ll work,” Twilight said, “if I can get the concentrations correct.”

“So you’re okay now?”

“Go, have fun. Call Vinyl.”

“I’ll take care of that first.”

“Awesome. Good. Thank you, Rainbow Dash.” She paused while Rainbow laced her boots. “I’ll get us out of this. I’ll get us home.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Oh, one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Tell Vinyl to be sober tomorrow.”

Rainbow snorted and took her leave, going to her room first to give Vinyl a quick call and then heading to the ground floor, where she waited uncomfortably for Leaf Blower to appear. When she did, the two waited another ten minutes in awkward quiet before Rarity showed. Together, the three walked out into the palace courtyard and traversed the grassy pathways and hedged corridors, making small talk about the night, the moon’s beauty, the quality of the air, how Rarity’s time in Canterlot had been so far. Stopping at a phiale and seating herself on the fountain’s concrete rim, Rainbow held out a wing. What she had been looking for in their walk and what she finally found under the moon-frosted arcade was not clear, but the two pretended it was no trouble, that the worry mounting in them both was of no consequence, that their dinner date had been hastily canceled for no serious reason and they now found themselves walking the palace grounds simply for the pleasure of the clean night air, the cold starlight, the liquid voice of water falling in a shallow basin, and the smell of damp grass.

“Sorry, first of all,” Rainbow said, and Rarity and Leaf Blower assured her all was well, that they understood. “I can’t really think of a good way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it flat-out. Twilight got us arrested.”

“She what?”

“We’re not allowed to leave the palace without Celestia there to watch us, and Twilight’s had her magic use heavily restricted—which, she’s already broken that rule, she’s trying to use her magic sneakily now.”

“Let’s back up,” Leaf Blower said. “How did this happen?” She shivered and looked at Rarity as if to ask “how are you not cold?”

“I don’t know how much I can tell you. Ugh, let’s see. Celestia ordered Twilight to do something kind of… objectionable, and instead of doing the thing, Twilight went behind Celestia’s back and warned the pony she was supposed to do the thing to. With me? Celestia caught her in the act, and now we’re under… palace-arrest, I guess you’d call it. Treason.”

“Why both of you?” Rarity asked.

“I’m an accomplice,” Rainbow said with a mild shrug. Before Rarity could respond, she added, “I would have stayed anyway. If it was just Twilight, I’d have stayed in the palace until she was free.”

“Good friend,” Leaf Blower mumbled, and Rainbow nodded at her appreciatively.

“And like hell I was gonna ask Celestia if she could join us tonight. So, again, sorry for the change of plans.”

“Forget that. What’s gonna happen to you? And is there anything I can do to help?”

“Twilight says she has a plan.” Noticing Rarity roll her eyes, she said, “Yeah, I know. It’s better than nothing.”

“Is it?” Rarity asked.

“This whole thing happened ‘cause Twilight was trying to get us fired. She’s fed up with working for the princess, and she figured this would be our ticket out.”

“Question,” Leaf Blower said. “Why not just quit? If she wants out that bad, why not just, you know, resign?”

“No way Celestia would just let her quit, is the thing. I actually agree with Twilight on that, Celestia would never let her go quietly. She’d guilt Twilight into staying on with the palace.” She glanced at Rarity. “And you know how Twilight is.”

“She can’t say ‘no’ to Princess Celestia,” Rarity said to Leaf.

“So she tries to get you both fired instead, and ends up being charged with treason,” Leaf Blower said. “That’s rather overshooting the mark. How did it get to be such a big catastrophe? Couldn’t she get caught stealing pens or something?”

“Ask Twilight,” Rainbow said. “Personally, I think she was stupid, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.”

“Well, if she was desperate to get out, maybe she wasn’t thinking.”

“I think you hit the nail on the head. Look.” She lowered her voice and threw a furtive look at the palace, though of all the lit windows, she could not tell which was Twilight’s. The sick fantasy ran through her, of Twilight watching them through a magical circle on the bedroom floor. “Well, if so, this is stuff Twilight should hear anyway,” she thought. “Twilight’s wanted out for a while, and you can see it in the way she acts. She doesn’t care anymore. She’s become, I don’t know, more brazen. It’s like ever since she learned how to start doing stuff without leaving her tower, she thinks she’s queen shit of turd mountain.”

“Eww.”

“She doesn’t act this way to me, but you can tell she thinks she’s above ponies. Well, maybe she is, but that doesn’t entitle her to act like it. Look at Vinyl, Twilight orders her around like a chambermaid. She’s got ponies in Hoofington and Roan, all over the place, like big government ponies, that she can just call on and boss around.”

“That magic can be a real bitch, huh,” Leaf Blower said. Rubbing her temple nervously, she added, “Maybe it’s turned Twilight into one too.”

“That’s the only explanation I can think of. She hasn’t been acting like herself, not for a long time.”

“So she gains power and insight, but hates her job,” Rarity said, “and so she decides one day to scrap the whole thing, get you both fired, and just go back to Ponyville.”

“Except it doesn’t occur to her that losing our jobs might not be the worst thing that can happen,” Rainbow said.

“Just think, this could have been averted if Twilight just stole a bunch of pens,” Leaf Blower said.

Rainbow gave a smile, haunted-looking in the dark. “Now I’m stuck in the middle, waiting for her to figure something out.”

“You said she had a plan?” Rarity asked.

“Twilight doesn’t even go to the bathroom without a plan. Ladies, I’ll be honest, I don’t have much faith in her right now. Case in point: she’s trying to get some more magic set up in the city.”

“The same magic that got you into trouble in the first place?”

“Yes! It’s like the only thing she can think of. In trouble with Princess Celestia? Better get more magic! She’s completely focused on this one thing, and it’s like, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to get us out of this mess, so I’m totally reliant on her.”

“Have you told her that?” Leaf Blower asked, shifting over to rub Rainbow’s back.

“She’ll just get mad, it won’t do anything. I don’t know if there even is a solution, if it can be solved. We might just have to wait for Celestia. We’ll have plenty of time to talk to her about it—that’s the other thing I wanted to say tonight.”

Leaf stretched her neck to sneak a kiss on Rainbow’s cheek.

“She’s taking us with her to The Hive in a couple days.”

“Both of you?”

“Queen Chrysalis wants to meet Twilight specifically. I don’t know why I’m going, I assume it’s just ‘cause I’m her assistant.”

“When are you leaving?” Rarity asked.

“The tenth. This Monday.” She rubbed her eyes with a plaintive groan. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do on an airship with Celestia all that time. Twilight has some damn project, I don’t know what, something magical. I don’t know how she expects to hide magic from the freaking princess, but there we are.”

“Maybe she wants to be caught,” Leaf Blower suggested.

“That would be so stupid. Oh, I shouldn’t say anything, maybe that is the plan. Who knows with Twilight anymore?”

“It’s so strange, because last time I was here, you both seemed fine,” Rarity said. “Did I simply not notice the changes?”

“Aw, she’s been festering for forever.”

“I assumed she was kind of a nasty pony all the time,” Leaf Blower said. “No offense.”

“She’s not nasty,” Rainbow said, covering the vehemence in her voice, for Leaf Blower had never known Twilight before. “She’s a good mare, just in over her head right now.”

“So are you, but you’re not turning,” Rarity pointed out.

“All right, hey, let’s not go there.” She glanced at Leaf Blower, who looked back innocently. Rainbow was not fooled; Leaf was incisive enough to see that there was history in what Rarity said.

“But you’re not gonna be arrested or anything?” Leaf Blower asked. “You’re not gonna get put in jail?”

“No, nothing like that. Still Elements of Harmony, after all.” She puffed out her chest, though her Element was back in the palace, hanging from a hook in her closet. “But we’ll be in the palace indefinitely. No going out unless it’s with a princess. I’m sure Twilight will try something ridiculous, maybe even before we head for The Hive. If so…” She sighed.

“Hang in there, dear,” Rarity said.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, you just gotta let me know,” Leaf Blower said, rubbing her back again.

“Ugh.” Rainbow stood up from the fountain. “We’ll see. I haven’t felt this powerless in a long time.” She shook her head at Rarity, who was about to respond. “Whatever happens, right now, I’ve said what I needed to say. Can we just enjoy the fresh air?”

From the phiale they moved back into the night, onto slick grass and among the statues and the topiary. Small talk resumed, mostly Rarity and Leaf Blower getting to know each other, their jobs and their experiences with the princesses. In Rarity’s speech, buried in her inquiries and polite laughter, was a constant point of scrutiny, the veiled concern of a protective friend, which Rainbow picked up on eventually and which she was sure Leaf Blower had noticed as well. As they turned from the garden to an inner courtyard, where the moon and stars made bird baths into icy coins suspended over fragrant earth and where the statue of a renowned scholar prevailed with a time-scarred, paternal air, talk went to Rarity’s side, and she described for Leaf Blower her own experiences in the world of fashion and business, her grievances at how infrequently she was able to practice the one for need of managing the other.

Rainbow listened to their voices, not caring about the topic, trying to take her own advice and simply enjoy the night. Bats caromed in and out under the palace’s lit eaves, too far off for her to see clearly.

“This is nice, though,” Leaf Blower said, and Rarity agreed heartily, and Rainbow felt a pang of self-consciousness. Neither would say she was disappointed that their outing had been ruined. That morning, Rainbow had canceled their reservation at an exclusive restaurant and then given their tickets to the opera to a lucky guard, but neither mare was willing to concede that the change was any inconvenience. The politesse was too much for Rainbow, who was tempted to stop them both and force the issue. “Hey, this sucks, and I’m sorry. Can you just be honest for a second and agree with me?” But they would hasten to defend her from shame, all assurances and gracious understanding. She stung with imagined condescension even as they went on without her input, Leaf Blower telling Rarity how she had come by her name and what she thought her cutie mark, a generic hourglass, meant. It was a problem the more obscurely-marked all faced, never knowing for sure what their ordained talent was. Worse still for Leaf Blower, whose inglorious distinction was being an earth pony in a place mostly populated by unicorns.

Another fountain met them at the end of a white marble peristyle, glassy water spouting from the princesses’ crossed horns and falling six vast feet into an ornamented disc where it was lit from below in ghostly cobalt blue. Columns of pallid stone and black ivy guarded the floor, their inner faces a weaker shade of blue from the fountain’s bottom, rising tall and blank to spandrels hung with sleeping flowers. Beyond, the shapes of walls and colonnettes, posts around gardens, shoulders of walkways shrugged up like bent pages over the next layer of inscrutable night. The three of them waited there in the unaccustomed light, all silent as if stricken at once by the scene: the fountain’s vigil, the clean-swept marble, the columns; all of a piece, hardly different from the phiale where their walk seemed to have begun. In the daytime, these architectural flourishes were living sites, secluded areas for sitting, for dalliances, for workers to relax and breathe of the restorative mountaintop air; for Rainbow’s group, themselves displaced and anxious, the sites seemed to belong to another palace, one long abandoned and left to molder over with the spreading gardens it once oversaw. No one to tend the land anymore, no one to clean the floors, no one to weed the spaces between stair and flagstone; and this impression in opposition to the flawless white marble, the cobalt light, the black ivy. Alone and strange, but obviously not really, obviously just a product of an overwrought imagination. What Rainbow saw, doubtless it was different from what Rarity and Leaf Blower saw, what their content expressions declared that they saw. Peace free of colorful strangeness, free of the details that gave her such anxiety, and she then seeing her folly and wondering whence it came—for it was not her way to make more of a thing than there was, so what was all this? A fountain surrounded by columns. She looked to her friend and her marefriend, said she would be back and not to follow her, and took wing into the chilly night where she could be alone with her anxiety, where she could sort herself out without fear of overbearing questions or embarrassing offers of comfort.

Those who lived and worked at the palace were used to seeing Twilight with all manner of projects and supplies floating in bulky clouds around her head as she hurried about. When she barged past a group of servants with what looked like half the kitchen’s glassware jangling over her, long cables of dried chiles trailing behind and packets of metallic powders shimmering like fish scales, no one gave it a second thought—and no one reported it to Celestia, who was certain she had not quashed her student’s drive to experiment with magic and who was clinically curious to see the depths of Twilight’s disloyalty. If she truly wanted Twilight to stop using magic, she could strip those faculties from her, and it had been a temptation at first; but the object quickly transformed to seeing what Twilight would do when opposed by her own mentor. If she refused to rise against a foreign enemy, then perhaps a domestic one would suit her better.

Twilight met Vinyl in the boardroom and set up a row of jars while Vinyl watched, her distaste not hidden.

“That I even agreed to meet you for this—”

“Shows your quality,” Twilight interrupted. “You’ll be in town for at least the next week?”

“Sure, but I’ll be too busy to run errands. I’m working on an EP and doing promo stuff with the radio stations in Lower Canterlot.”

“That works, I need you in Lower Canterlot too.”

“I don’t think you heard me.”

“It’s easy, Vinyl. Let me show you. This jar here,” she shook a small jar of gray and red shavings, “I need these placed in certain, key locations all around the city. I’ve got a bunch of them. You’ll place them, add this liquid.” She produced a smaller jar of strident, orange fluid. “And that’s all. The potions are easy, but it’s the timing that’ll be a challenge. I need these all done at very specific times in the day.”

“What are they gonna do?” Vinyl asked slowly.

“Canterlot is protected from remote viewing, but these potions, when activated, will temporarily blow a hole in those defenses, and I can slip a spell in. Once it’s in, it won’t be easy for them to kick me out, not if I have a ton of these in place by the time they discover me. By my calculations, you can place all forty-eight in—”

“Forty-eight? All over town?”

“And in Greater Canterlot too. If you start when I specify, you can get them all done in approximately twenty-six hours. I’ve already researched the local traffic patterns, and I’ll draw you a map tonight to go with your checklist.”

“All right, let’s stop there,” Vinyl said, horn alight in the same garish orange as Twilight’s magical liquid. “Twilight, I said I don’t have time.”

“It’s just twenty-six hours, that’s nothing.” Her color was rising, as it always did when Vinyl tried to back out of a project. “Do you have any idea how important this is? I’m leaving the day after tomorrow, I won’t be here for… I don’t know how long. It’s imperative that I get these placed so I can keep an eye on the city.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“Yes, Vinyl, it is! Excellent observation!”

“And I told you a long time ago I wasn’t gonna run errands for you anymore.”

“And if I remember correctly, I told you that you were done when I said so, not the other way around.” She pushed a row of jars toward Vinyl. “Please. I need you to use your head and work with me on this. If we can get my vision set up in Canterlot—”

“Just how legal is this, Twilight?”

“You won’t get caught.”

“Not what I asked.” She slid the jars back to Twilight. “Find someone else, ‘cause I’m not doing it.”

Twilight scoffed. “Yes, you are.”

“No I’m not! What do you even need this for?” She batted a jar away as Twilight shoved it at her. “You’re done with restoration! What more—why are you even here? Can’t you just go home?”

“Go home,” she hissed, slamming a jar on the table. She took a moment to master herself, glaring at Vinyl’s face, which Twilight had always thought her goggles made look clueless more than anything else. “That is not an option right now,” Twilight said with exaggerated sweetness.

“Then I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not doing this.”

“You can’t—” A pin prick of magic flashed on her horn tip, anger finding its way into the room. “A stupid, blanket refusal, Vinyl? Really?”

“Twilight, I hate doing magic chores for you.”

“And I ask so little of you…”

“Little? You have me running all over town in the middle of the night.” She glared at Twilight, knowing what Twilight would say, that if only Vinyl knew what Twilight put herself through for her magic, she would never complain, she would fairly jump at the chance to help, for Twilight’s burden was so great, and Vinyl’s so small. “Selfish” was the word Twilight liked most to use, which she had used like a charm all those times when Vinyl was on tour, calling her away from her hotel when she was trying to sleep, sending her out into the rain to carve some repetitive glyph into the base of a tree on the other side of town, ordering her out into the darkness to find a taxi already waiting, sometimes inexplicably paid for. Vinyl would always fold then, resenting herself for allowing Twilight to command her from the other side of the country; and here, from the other side of the boardroom, she could see Twilight’s lips parting on that hateful S, selfish.

“Stop it, I know what you’re gonna say,” Vinyl snapped. “You’re not gonna bully me into this one, Twilight. I quit.”

“You quit,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes. “Who do you think you are? This is the easiest thing I’ve ever asked you to do, and you’re talking like it’s—”

“I’m not breaking the law for you!”

“I wrote you a list!” Twilight flourished her parchment, threw it across the table. “I was going to have a map ready, and your stupid list, and everything, it was going to be easy!”

“Make Rainbow Dash do it.” She grabbed her things and made for the door, freezing at the sound of shattering glass. Twilight, clutching a jar in her magic, had unconsciously crushed it in a vice of telekinesis, and Vinyl watched as she realized what she had done and gently deposited the shards on the tabletop.

Looking from the broken glass to Vinyl, Twilight sneered. “No wonder your Element never took with us. You can’t even—”

“Yeah, insult me, that’ll do the trick,” Vinyl breathed, turning haughtily and flinging open the door. “Never contact me again.”

“What?”

Vinyl paused, debating whether Twilight truly had not heard her. She turned again and faced the Element of Magic, staring her down as best she could with eyes obscured, and repeated herself. “Never reach out to me again. Poisonous… nag.” This last, muttered to herself as she went into the hall and tried to remember the way out of the palace.

* * * * * *

Half a world away, Pinkie and the diplomats received a variant of the truth that called them from their hotel on the capital island, Closed Eye of the Ocean, to a rocky islet in neutral waters that they knew as Open Ear of the Ocean. There was no word on the hurricane or on Twilight’s personal contact with the queen, or even the fact that Twilight would be in attendance, but of the fact that it was to be both countries’ final attempt at negotiating peace there was unending emphasis. Pinkie was not worried, and in that respect she was alone.

Having less distance to cover than the princess, they were still packing and preparing while Celestia, Twilight, and Rainbow boarded one of her personal airships and experienced once again the steely light of cold dawn on a tarmac, blurry eyes and scratchy throats still waking up while engines thrummed and torches chuffed. No comfort there, and not on the ship itself: for all its commodities and regal decorations still just an airship, for all its sumptuous food pre-packed and the multitude of diversions available for the long empty hours still taking off at the weary hour of four in the morning.

These, the final-feeling days of nerves and nostalgia that marked Pinkie’s tenth month abroad. In the hotel where Queen Chrysalis had put them up, they were allowed anything that could be brought into and enjoyed within the building’s walls, but were not permitted to leave. For its air of the iconic tropical paradise, for the salty wind and gorgeous ocean view, for the exotic food and colorful music and beautiful clothing, the cultural oddities that could not be gleaned from their books but that filtered in from hotel patrons, The Hive was never able to unfurl into a real country for them. They were restricted to the best views, the best impressions, the most courteous service. They dined on the best food every day, prepared by stiff professionals for whom the wonder in a lustrous mango syrup over roasted red peppers and imported cheese was work and only that; for whom the coral light of sunrise over whispering ocean was nothing but an enhancement to the wide-windowed lobby restaurant’s atmosphere, no cause to gasp or wonder at the world’s beauty even amid dark times at home.

Closed Eye of the Ocean was a towering volcanic mound that could be seen from most islands in The Hive, developed and mastered until its natural beauty had been sapped and replaced with the imitation of beauty, and their hotel was nestled in the center of the pearl that was the tourist quarter, set between beaches of searing white sand and perched on the lip of a postcard-ready tropical rainforest. Only twenty miles away at the greatest, they could find the fisheries, the canneries, the tract homes, the disenfranchised and dispossessed; then the suburbs farther away, the shopping malls, the offices, the gray cement bridges over canals, the jewelry shops with nary a coconut or palm frond in their displays; then, farther still, the slopes of the volcano where they steepened to reveal that one may have climbed above half the city without realizing it; and the walls, the wires, the gates, the guard towers, and then the inner walls, the courtyards and gazebos, the belvederes overlooking that same rainforest and those same beaches that from a greater height become platinum cavettos to the ocean’s mass; and then into the volcano, the queen’s palace, nothing tropical there save the oil paintings of the outside world as it once was, sagging huts and wooden piers crusted with barnacles, racks of fish drying in the failing afternoon sun, a bleached canoe sleeping in a patch of sedge. Theirs was an illusion of perfection, worn thin and mundane with their time spent at the hotel, and which was their only impression of The Hive: hardly an impression at all, but an isolated piece of land with a foreign aesthetic and inequine visitors. But for these most basic of signs, they could have been staying anywhere in the world.

On the eleventh of October, under a sky of perfect photo blue reflected in their infinity pool, Pinkie and Sweet Impression were able to enjoy the result of having packed early. While the other diplomats scrambled and bickered, and while Celestia’s ship streaked, invisible, over the yellowed plains of northern Equestria, the two of them lounged in the top floor pool of their luxury hotel. Where palm trees terminated in dark fireworks off the pool’s sill and the deep end’s glass bottom revealed the hazy impression of an oblate grass walk turned pink and orange by the mix of sunset and wicker torches, where water licked itself up against smooth white walls, where deck chairs reclined atop their domino shadows and the day’s last vacationers folded towels, stowed water bottles, squeezed out bathing suits, and made to repair either to their rooms or to the waking city below, Pinkie floated on her back with eyes closed and Sweet Impression lay on a rock formation with her tail draped and lazily swaying before an underwater floodlight.

“What was the humidity today?” Pinkie asked suddenly.

“Only seventy.”

Pinkie giggled. “You coulda never told me I’d be so used to it.”

“I don’t know, it got to like fifty in some parts of Equestria.”

“I never saw it.”

“Ah. So you looking forward to it?”

Pinkie knew she was asking about going home, and part of her was excited, but she could not say for what. She had no friends waiting for her there, no family to speak of. She didn’t even know whether her parents on the rock farm knew what had happened to their daughters; for her part, she had not contacted them on returning home. She could not imagine that Octavia had either.

Sweet Impression patted the water with her hoof. “I know I am. I haven’t been on a long trip like this in a while. It’s nice in a way, but it’ll be nicer to get back. Maybe I’ll transfer to another department.”

“I think you should.”

Sweet Impression gave her a smile, which she did not see, for she had drifted the other way.

Life in the hotel had not been so bad for Pinkie. Yes, she had grown tired of the same couple restaurants and bars every day; and the views, no matter how stunning, had lost their charm in a few months; and they had all swam in the infinity pool, walked the flower-strewn paths, admired the wild macaws that sometimes landed on a wall or the back of a chair on the restaurant’s patio; and they had all sighed and dreamed on the balconies while waves crashed under a watercolor sky. They had tried everything on offer in the waking illusion, every elaborate cocktail, every delicious meal, every celebration that turned rooms into crypts and the conference hall into a gleaming ballroom suffused in the chittering changeling tongue. They had known temporary friends in the hotel workers, in repeat guests, in Chrysalis’ attendants. They had all of them been surprised and frightened by the emotional toll prolonged changeling company took, the sensation of one’s feelings leaving the heart and knowing where they were going: being able to look at the drone sharing the elevator, those glaucous insect eyes, and knowing that one’s trepidation or one’s elation was being taken and transmuted to the magic that fed their queer power, not maliciously or even intentionally, but simply because that was the way of changeling life. There had been fights in those months of adjustment, out-of-nowhere crying sessions, aggression and passion that would flame up for a night and be gone the next. It was natural, and as they felt themselves becoming inured, their interactions lost meaning, became as real as the totemic margarita glasses that grinned with offset wooden teeth and lolling mahogany tongues, as flat as the spiraling vines and crimson birds of paradise painted on the conference room ceiling. One loud, humid night, Pinkie and Soft Breeze stumbled away from the thumping hotel bar, drunk on rum and kombucha, up to their room where they exchanged increasingly forceful slaps to the face, first laughing at the brutal physicality made numb from too many Jungle Slam-Bams, but then weeping openly in each other’s embraces and retreating to the bed to confess old doubts, reopen old scars, relive healed tragedies, both of them snot-faced and blubbering into each other’s fur until the first morning’s light crept through the blinds and reminded them to go to sleep. Neither mentioned it after; it was understood that they all had experienced aberrations and could expect more to come, that nothing meant anything and an hour’s unburdening might come undone by its exhausted speaker dropping the whole thing in a gust of laughter. Most surprisingly, it had been Queen Chrysalis herself who sat them down and explained it in clear terms, told them that shapeshifting magic depended on the siphoning of emotions, and that this siphoning was no more hateful or aggressive than the tropical winds that swelled the tides.

It had taken three months, but Chrysalis was proven right in the end: their reactions did diminish. The last feeling to vanish was the nameless worry, ennui that at all times threatened to overtake them and call forth a torrent of the irrational behaviors they had since put to rest. No more the fear of wild and unpredictable explosions of emotion, but the fear that any one of them could at any time give in, just a little bit, and choose something horrible or untoward—for a conscious choice was much worse, it bespoke things that a random interaction, no matter how outlandish, never could.

Illusion on top of illusion, Pinkie’s world had shrunk tighter until her only recourse seemed to be to turn her back on herself, or else face the well of deep thought and personal philosophy which she had found unrewarding at a young age. With the ponies who were not really her friends, but who had by that time seen her worst and most intimate, she resigned herself to a life of meaningless function and empty rewards. Each day the same as the last, the pursuit of something interesting to divide her new life of colorful monotony, or at least to mark the days. Where the diplomats had an endless stream of problems flowing from Canterlot, Pinkie had chairs to set, glasses of water to fill, jokes to crack, a team-building exercise to conduct only once; and at all other times, while they worked or argued politics and the nuances of etiquette, she had the ocean to stare at, the pool to luxuriate in, the sun to toast her fur, the food and drink to distract her from the passage of time—but no matter how many strange combinations of activities she tried, ten months was still ten months. In those final days, in the haste and worry of packing and last-minute preparations, in the calm water bobbing up and down and watching the sky turn to deep plum as the first stars appeared and the moon made the horizon into a thin line of robin’s egg-blue, Pinkie could not muster the urgency that drove her companions and that made Sweet Impression, lounging on the rock formation and dangling her tail in front of the floodlight, resonate with ready excitement.

As she could feel their dread, she too could feel it wash over her, and thoughts of return with it. Her time in The Hive had become empty, completely wasted, and in the depth of her wilting spirit, she recognized that she did not, but should, feel shame—unless she should not, unless it didn’t matter. After all, she had nowhere else to be.