Seashell

by Winston

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance, Original Character, Rainbow Dash
Length: 21876

Can Sunburst, a pegasus who's a loner by nature, bring together two other ponies who love and desperately need each other but can't admit it?

My name is Sunburst, and I live my life alone, because I prefer it that way.

Not everypony does.

For some ponies, in fact, that's more like a long slow death sentence.

I've received orders to a posting as a royal guard. My duty as a member of the guard is to protect the princess. Traditionally, that's taken to mean against physical threats. Less traditionally, I'm coming to a realization that it may mean assisting in other ways - maybe even in ways she's not aware that she needs. Normally I would say it's not our place to intervene in personal matters. But when you see as plain as the hoof in front of your face that something is wrong, sometimes it finally brings you to the point at which standing by and doing nothing is simply no longer an option.

Day by day, I'm getting closer to that point.

I may have to make a hard decision. I don't know if this is right or wrong. All I know is that watching my princess suffer is impossible to bear when I'm supposed to be protecting her.

Approved by Twilight's Library on July 26, 2014!
Featured on Equestria Daily on February 5, 2015!

Published 2014-04-12 22:50:04 UTC
Last updated 2014-05-03 20:05:29 UTC

Excerpt I

Author's Note

For reference: Season 1 of MLP:FiM began in the year 1310 YS (Year of the Sisters)

Excerpt I

Seashell
I

From the journal of Sunburst, November 22, 1328 YS:

Here I am at the Seawall. Other ponies think I'm crazy to volunteer for this duty, and they've told me so.

It's understandable, and maybe they're right. A posting to the Seawall is really only one of two things: it's either a punishment for somepony who screwed up, or it's the opposite, something requested as an opportunity to earn a great mark of honor and a chance at doing what few are willing to.

I'm not being punished, and there are easier ways to earn recognition and a sense of honor. The only explanation that leaves, I suppose, is at least some kind of crazy.

I can't explain exactly why I volunteered when the posting came up. I suppose I just thought maybe it could help quell, at least for a while, the sense of restlessness that I've always felt. Maybe it would help bring me closer to understanding what kind of place in this world it is that a mare like me really belongs in. I'm not sure why I thought that, it was just a gut feeling that came over me. So here I am.

Well, whatever somepony's reason for ending up here, it's a job best suited for those who are comfortable with solitude and austerity. That much is obvious to anypony. The Seawall is on the extreme west of our continent, well outside the bounds of Equestria proper but not inside any other formally claimed or recognized territory. It's a lonely curiosity more or less in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town or settlement of any kind is many days of travel away.

The distinguishing feature here, more than anything else, is a sense of sheer loneliness. There's only one other pony around, and she seems as content with silence as I am. I'm alone, more alone than I've ever been in my life, and knowing me, that's saying something. I don't say that in a bad way, either. I love it here.

Anyway, what is this wall?

I suppose who would build it is a good question to start off with to understand it and the reasons for it to exist. It's thought to have been built by the old unicorn kingdom, maybe two thousand years ago, long before we all lived together. Why they did, I couldn't really say for sure, myself, nor can many other ponies. The theory, as best as is preserved in history, is that it was the result of fear of an invasion by way of the sea (though it's unknown by who or what). There is also the equally possible, if more sinister, suggestion that it would be very effective at keeping any ponies from fleeing to the sea to escape the powers that ruled the land in those days. For my part, I think it was probably used for both at different times, given how unkind (to put it mildly!) we know that the old separate kingdoms could sometimes be towards other races. The unicorns did basically consider the earth ponies their property at one point, after all.

That's ancient history, though, and those dark days are long over. It's not used for much of anything now except for keeping two ponies at a time here, waiting and watching the sea.

The wall itself is not a very large structure. Most of the northwestern coast of the continent is mountainous, and the edges of the land eroded by the water drop away to form cliffs so high and sheer that they're impassible. The Seawall was built to block the only substantial gap forming an easily usable pass between those mountain ranges and into the mainland. It only really stretches about a few thousand feet from one rocky embankment to the other. There were fortified access doors through the bottom of the wall, once, probably when there was a permanent garrison here to guard it. In later years, as the wall was abandoned, they were plugged up with stone and the particularly excellent strong concrete ancient unicorn construction was known for, cutting off access to anypony who couldn't fly or use magic. Whatever purpose it served, it wasn't built to control pegasi at least. I have no trouble at all getting back and forth over it.

The beach that the wall cuts off from the inland is sandy and actually quite beautiful. I like to walk along it sometimes. It would be even more beautiful, though, if it got more sun. One of the odd things about this place - you wouldn't believe how cloudy it is here. It seems like every day is overcast, with Celestia's sun invisible under thick steel-grey clouds. They form constantly from the moisture carried in the air rolling in from over the ocean. The weather is unregulated, and as much as I would like to help the sun shine at least a little more sometimes, it's much too big a job for me alone. It's also not why I'm here, so I try not to get drawn into interfering with it too much.

I've learned to seize the few times that the sun pokes out, because they're not often. When they happen, they make an untouched and already generally beautiful land absolutely breathtaking, for those few minutes the clouds break. I suppose I should just consider myself lucky for those times. Besides, I don't so much mind the cloudcover. It keeps the heat down. It makes flying easier, at some times of day. There's a certain kind of charm it adds by giving a darker, more washed and faded aspect to the colors of everything. The feel of it is mysterious. This land is full of silently held secrets, but it invites you to explore it and discover them in the course of time, one by one. It's a place with an appropriate sense of being a far-flung edge of the world, one of the few remaining "away from it all" refuges. Sometimes there's little treasures to find, like the large beautiful shell I came across washed up on the beach not long ago. Its intricate spirals and gleaming ivory iridescence are more spectacular than anything I've seen the artists of Equestria make.

For those reasons, though it's the kind of place many others would call bleak, I have to say that I enjoy it. This kind of thing has always suited me - the solitude. Maybe they sensed that in me, scrying out in an unspoken way the true reason why I would volunteer. There must have been some reason I was picked, despite the hoof-full of possibly more promising candidates with bigger careers to advance that I would have thought would edge me out.

Certainly I also sense it in my partner on this posting. She's a unicorn. That's how this posting is always assigned, one pegasus and one unicorn. Her name is Morning Mist. I'm not sure what her story is, but she seems to handle being here well. She seems somehow relieved, even, to be so alone.

As such, we don't talk very much, even when we're together. Most of our time is spent apart, anyway, performing our respective duties here. Mine consist mainly of flying the Seawall and the coast and observing, and hers of recording and sending back reports.

I'm not even sure what I'm watching for in particular. Orders are to "remain vigilant, report anything and everything not usual in the coastal environment". That's pretty vague, isn't it? I wonder if Celestia expects something to come from over the waves someday. Maybe we're here just to be here when it happens. I suppose it's possible. Nopony really knows for sure what's out there past the oceans.

There's a pair of watchtowers, on tiny islets out in the distance in the water. They're a long way out, and somewhat nerve-testing to fly to. If something happened on the way, or while you were out there, and you couldn't fly all the way back, you'd be stranded and drown in the waves. There's nopony here to help you. Still, though, this tradeoff, paying for the freedom of wings by living with the risk of falling, is part of being a pegasus. I've chanced it a few times. What's the point in life if you don't feel alive, right?

The towers are of stone, heavy blocks - more old unicorn construction. They're still mostly standing but long ago abandoned and sit in ruins. When I've flown out to them, I've landed on their tops and used them as vantage points to look out even further over the sea, into the west. On very clear days, sometimes I think I can see something out there ... almost. I can't quite tell, even with the sharp eyes I was gifted to be born with. It's not so much seeing something, exactly, as it is seeing the signs - the way there's maybe a kind of the slightest unevenness in the horizon's white haze, a raggedness disrupting the normally smooth gradient it forms on the edge where the sky meets the sea. It's as if there's something, a secret, hidden there, just barely below the line of sight blocked by the curvature of the planet itself. But no matter how hard I look I can't quite tell, even with the eyes of a pegasus, sharper than most other ponies and trained in the army as a flight scout to observe over long distances and spot the subtle hidden things.

What may be more unusual than anything I've seen out here native to the area, though, is the partner who came with me. Once, when I flew out to one of the towers, I was surprised to look over at the other and spot her standing on top, also observing the sea to the west. The islets the towers are on are not far from each other, and it's easy to see to one from the other once you go all the way out to them. I couldn't have been mistaken. I saw her plain as day, and when I did, she looked over and saw me, too. We've never spoken about it, directly. She just turned away from me and went back to scrying the horizon quietly. She was expressionless except for a sense of seeking, as if longing almost in sadness for something she hoped distantly to see out there. I saw something in her eyes, for that brief moment, as restless as my own heart sometimes feels. Maybe that's why we were sent here together. I think we're more alike in some strange way than one would think a pegasus scout and a unicorn messaging scribe would be. Maybe we're here with one another because being here together is better than being restless and lonely alone.

I don't know what it could be that she searches for. Although I wish I did, and I feel like we've made our best efforts to be friends and trust each other, she hasn't chosen to share much about herself with me. I understand that, though. I'm that way myself. I always have been. We both instinctively live behind veils.

Still, though, sometimes I can't help but wonder. To get to the tower, she must have teleported herself. That's not unusual for a unicorn, but at such a distance she must possess great power and talent to do it, although she's never shown it off to me otherwise. She seems to modestly hold many secrets. I don't know what else she could be capable of. For that matter, I don't even know if her posting here is a punishment, or an honor, or maybe both somehow. That isn't my business, though, so I know I shouldn't dwell on it. My job is to watch the Seawall, not to watch her.

Maybe someday we'll be comfortable enough with each other to talk about ourselves. Until then, some secrets will just have to remain secret, or at least unspoken other than the tiny glimpses we chance to catch.

Enough writing for today.

Excerpt II

Seashell
II

From the journal of Sunburst, February 1, 1329 YS:

Royal guard duty is an assignment I didn't expect to get directly from coming off the Seawall. It came as a shock to find out, to be perfectly honest.

Then again, it was hard to know what to expect at all after an assignment like this, since I couldn't get my new orders until after I was back in civilization. They did say it would be something fairly easy, but being stationed in Canterlot itself? I didn't see that coming. Not that I wasn't happy!

I got two weeks of leave on top before I had to report for duty, too. Since I was already in Canterlot reporting back from the wall, I decided to just stick around and use the time to get a little bit of a feel for the city. I felt like I owed it to myself to relax for a while, so I spent a fair amount of time hanging around being lazy and watching the aristocrats with more money than they know what to do with walk around in funny hats and other such items. Clothes and fashion aren't big interests of mine, but it's entertaining to be a fly on the wall and ponywatch. Some have good taste, some are just comical in their pretense. One way or another it never really fails to be interesting, sitting by myself at an outdoor table at a corner cafe with a cold drink and watching it all drift by.

I'm guarding Princess Twilight Sparkle. That's a good job to have, as it turns out. I'd always pictured the royal guard as being a formal and ceremonial job at least as much as a functional one. It seemed like a lot of work maintaining an uncomfortable suit of plate armor in picture perfect polish just to stand there and look pretty in it all day. As a scout trained to fly light and move fast, that wouldn't seem an ideal task for me. It seems like it should be mostly pegasi from the heavy combat fliers and unicorns from the Dawn's Hammer paladins, maybe. Those are closer to the kinds of big muscular armored ponies I always see guarding Celestia and Luna.

Princess Twilight seems to think different of her approach to her protectors, however. There aren't that many of us, and we're not a showy presence standing in rows wearing polished steel and magically color-shifted to have uniformly white or grey coats. We're allowed to keep our natural coat colors, and we only wear chainmail armor that doesn't restrict our movement. We mostly patrol instead of standing around in place, except for a few door guards who have to be stationary. The intention is that we should be a mostly invisible but fast-responding minimally intrusive presence rather than a big show of force.

It's the opposite of Celestia and Luna's guard, and perfectly suited to me. I wouldn't have thought of this had I been given a choice of where to go next, but I'm lucky to have this assignment.

The Captain of the Guard for Princess Twilight is a pegasus named Rainbow Dash. Apparently she came here to Canterlot with the princess expressly for the purpose of serving as the head of her security. They came from some small town, Ponyville, where the princess used to live and work. Why a princess was in such a place, I'm not sure. It seems ... odd. There must be an interesting story behind it. Maybe in due time I'll find out.

Anyway, clearly the two know each other. Princess Twilight personally commissioned Captain Dash as an officer, and a personal commission straight from a princess is rare these days. It seems Captain Dash was too good to pass up, however. At one point she was almost a Wonderbolt, and then she was an Advanced Combat Flier with front line time during the Northern Griffin War. If anything proved who the best soldiers of our generation are, that was it. I suppose that if I was able to personally pick and choose whoever I wanted to permanently run the team guarding me, I'd also grab a pony exactly like Captain Dash and make sure she stayed around.

In keeping with the general idea of how this guard is supposed to work, most of the other ponies on the guard team are a bit like me - trained to be quick and mobile, I mean. There's some pegasi scouts, a few Cloudsdale lancers, and some unicorn fast skirmishers. They're not on the bulky side, but they're quick with their horns' magic. There are a few pretty big stallions and mares, but even they emphasize speed and maneuvering over being tanks and taking bruises. There's even a couple Advanced Combat Fliers, like Captain Dash used to be. They're the whole package of incredibly fast and brutally tough. I've heard about the training program they go through. Scout training was hard enough for me. I don't think I'd last a week in their horseshoes. Well, alright, maybe not even a day. I'm kind of a wuss. I can admit that to a journal. Just don't tell anypony else, right? Right.

So, in short, it's a good group.

The work schedule is kind of strange, but not bad at all. Shifts are only six hours long, meaning there's four shifts a day - midnight, morning, afternoon, and evening. We're split up into five sections. Which shift a section has rotates once a week, then once a section's gone through all four shifts there's a fifth week set aside just for training. Those training days are pretty exciting. We spend an hour or so working out, a couple hours at the range for weapons practice, and then a couple hours in either classroom instruction or tactical teamwork exercises. After that we have the rest of the day off to hang around Canterlot and enjoy the city.

As I said, I end up spending a lot of time watching ponies in funny hats walk around with their snouts in the air.

This is kind of awesome.

Well, enough for today.

Excerpt III

Seashell
III

From the journal of Sunburst, March 28, 1329 YS:

It was the distance, from everything and from everypony.

That's why I loved the Seawall so much.

There was so much freedom in that. I never had to worry what anypony would think. There weren't any social rules because there wasn't any social anything. I never had to be polite or rude to get what I wanted because those things don't exist when you're by yourself. All I ever had to do was be me, just perfectly me.

I never had to feel awkward.

I sure did today.

Our shift was over, and we'd just been relieved by the oncoming section. Everypony went to the locker room, where we took off and stored our armor. I really like only having to wear chainmail, it makes the process so much faster and less cumbersome.

It didn't take long before I was done and walking out with most of the rest of the ponies on my shift. One of the other mares walked alongside me. She was a unicorn with a cobalt blue coat and a mane streaked sky blue and white, cut on the medium-short side. Her cutie mark was three white stars. She was pretty slender and kinda shapely, and had a nice flank. Most of the guards do, though, we work out a lot... Anyway. I'm pretty sure her name was Starry Night. I'm not great with names. I could have it wrong. Come to think of it, that's another thing I liked about being out there alone, not having to remember names.

We'd spoken a few times before, just casually. We were acquainted but not very familiar. From the way she was walking close to me now, though, I started to get the idea that she wanted my attention for something, and I was right. She said there was a really nice bar she knew of just a few blocks away, with good food and even better drinks. She asked if I'd like to drop in there and try one of those drinks with her.

That didn't sound very interesting, so I told her no, I don't usually drink. That was my knee-jerk response because that is the truth, I really don't. Maybe once in a while I'll have one... I just, you know, don't drink in bars, is what I meant. It's never been a thing I've thought I'd enjoy. They're loud and always play bad music. They're smoky. They're always either so empty you feel way too visible because there's only a couple ponies in there, or so crowded it makes me uncomfortable because there's too many ponies too close.

Well, of course, I didn't explain all that on the spot, I just told her I don't drink and left it at that, and we parted ways. She seemed kind of put off, which I didn't really get at first. Then one of the other guards, a stallion, pulled a bit closer next to me, once she was out of earshot.

"You know, the drinking itself wasn't really so much why she was asking," he pointed out.

Didn't I instantly feel like the jerk. Maybe I've just been gone too long at the Seawall, where I didn't have to think about how not to hurt anypony's feelings. It should have been easier to see, but I didn't consider her perspective instead of my own - that it's a smack in the face, when somepony shoots you down based on what seems like rejecting an aspect of you or something you like. There's a more elegant way to turn down a date, as my mother once explained to me back when I was in high school. Make it about yourself and why you can't say yes right then, not about pointing out the reasons they gave you to say no. Don't make it their fault.

I think my mom felt the need to give me such advice because she was hoping I'd turn out more girly than I did, more like her. I think she had dresses and finding a perfect stallion and giving her a couple grandkids in mind for what she'd have preferred to see me do with my life. Of course, then after I was done with school I went and enlisted in the army on a contract to go to flight scout training, which kind of smashed that hope into the ground (ironic for a flier, right?). I think she forgave me, though, because at least I followed her advice when I explained why. I told her it wasn't anything to do with her or rejecting those things she wanted, it was about me and my life and this just seemed like something I'd enjoy. It was easy to say that. It was true, after all, so I didn't really have to think much about it. Anyway, our relationship wasn't damaged by it. She's still my mom and I'm still her kid. I guess it'll always be that way. It takes a whole lot to break that.

I never did use that tactic for handling being asked for a date, though, because back in school I never got asked out. Well, alright, except for one time, when a dorky earth pony with acne and a slightly greasy mane and bad fetlocks asked me in a mumbling voice while I was at my locker if I would go to some dance or something (dances are another thing I don't do, by the way, I've never been to one). I don't think that counts, since technically I never answered one way or another. It caught me off-guard and I didn't know what to say, so I pretended not to hear over the noise in the hallway. I grabbed my stuff, then I shut my locker door and just walked away as quickly as I could without responding. He didn't try again.

I feel bad about it. I always have. It was a callous thing to do, I know, and looking back at it he was a lot braver for finding it inside himself to ask than I was for running away. But the truth is that it also taught me a lot about myself.

I learned I didn't want to be asked out.

I didn't ask for the attention. I never have. All I've wanted is to be left alone.

Maybe if I'm honest about it, I resent being asked out today, too, just as much as I did back then. Maybe that's why I shot it down so thoughtlessly, because I hate having to think about how to respond nicely. It feels like I'm playing a game when I try to maneuver words like that. It feels like I'm lying. It's a mask that's not me and I don't like feeling as if I'm being put in the position of not having a choice but to wear it. The truth is usually pretty blunt, not finely pointed and sparing of our feelings, and my instinct has always been to just say it, not find an angle on it. What we want doesn't change what is. That's kind of just common sense, isn't it?

But still, that wasn't fair to Starry Night, because it's not her fault. When I put myself in her horseshoes, I can understand her disappointment. I can understand how it must feel to be brushed away without any thought of being polite. Not that I would have said yes, but I could have said no in a different way. It tears me in two, between saying what comes naturally to me or what's easier on them, and that unpleasant feeling of being torn is just another reason why it's easier to be alone.

I'm making myself miserable. Enough of that for today.

Excerpt IV

Excerpt IV

Seashell
IV

From the journal of Sunburst, April 27, 1329 YS:

I don't think that Princess Twilight actually likes her palace all that much. She'd never say that out loud, I'm sure, but it seems to be getting more and more apparent now that I've been here for a little while.

The other day, several of the large paintings from one of the main halls were removed for some restoration work. Temporary replacements were going to be hung. When the princess was asked which ones she preferred, she would only say that she didn't care, they could put up posters of the Great and Powerful Trixie (whoever that is) for all it mattered. She sounded annoyed to even have the subject brought up.

After that, out of curiosity I started paying a little closer attention to what decorations do matter to her. The answer seems to be none of them. She never really looks at the paintings or the statues or whatever other artifacts line the hallways. I think they're just so much clutter to her.

I wonder how this princess got here. She seems so out of place. Not on the surface, of course, but the sense of it is growing in the subtle things I see the longer I'm here.

Every day that I stand guard and end up watching her during official business or even during what should be her personal time, she seems so distant from every other pony - very alone.

She watches other ponies. She studies them. I can see her doing it, and feel somehow as if I know exactly what's going through her head, when she looks right through the ponies who come to her court like they were made of glass. She watches and she sees and she understands. She's very, very smart, anypony can see that.

But she is alone.

It's like she's a sculpture made of ice. She's the centerpiece of the table, everypony can see her, but nopony would touch her. They know and she knows that some sort of barrier of cold makes it impossible, or at least too damaging to endure.

It's a little like an accusation my own mother teased me with, in the past, when I continually failed to ever have a date or hang out with any other ponies from school.

"If you're going to be an ice queen," she said, "you'll never have any friends."

I stopped myself from impulsively answering completely honestly that I thought that would probably be fine with me. It would have upset her. She wouldn't understand.

I think she was just worried about thinking I was having social difficulty. Oh, I'm not so inept as all that, though. I can talk to other ponies without much trouble. I've had friends, and I know how to make friends, but they haven't been a center of my life, is all. They've always just been the sort of friends that are a peripheral feature of the place I happen to be. The kind that get left behind when you leave, I suppose. I just never really met anypony I stayed in touch with across the distance. I don't know why, exactly. The bond was just never all that deep.

The princess seems personable enough. She's polite and everypony who comes through here seems to take away a good impression of her. I like how she can talk about anything and make it relatable, and she can make decisions and make them understandable even if they're not what you wanted to hear. Most importantly, she's always honest, not just a politician with a silver tongue.

She would easily make a lot of long-lasting friends, I think, if she was anypony else but the princess. I suppose the demands of her office don't really allow it. She stays here, they move on, and that's that. The only lasting fixture is that constant movement enforcing detachment.

The one exception might be her personal student. She's a little unicorn filly, with a white coat and powder blue mane, named Azure Sky. I made her acquaintance soon after I got here when our paths crossed in one of the hallways. She spotted my cutie mark and apparently took a keen interest in it.

"You have a sun cutie mark!" she smiled up at me with her big pale purple eyes. She's such a cute kid. "Like Celestia."

That was a little uncomfortable of a comparison to just come up off the cuff. "Oh... Not really," I said. "It's smaller and the design's different. I think Celestia's is a bit more important. I just got this one by clearing away clouds over my mom's garden when I was a kid. She needed more sunlight for her flowers, that's all."

"Hope you didn't fly too high toward the sun," she giggled. "You wouldn't want to make Icarhorse's mistake."

Icarhorse, the ancient story about a pegasus who flew so close to the sun that the feathers on her wings burned up, whereupon she fell to her death. It was a pretty geeky joke, but I got it. I laughed a little. "No, I'm not worried," I assured her. "No pegasus can fly that high."

"Nah, I guess not," she agreed with an enthusiastic nod. "Hey! Speaking of stories, were you in the war?" she asked suddenly.

"No," I shook my head. "It was just over by the time I was old enough to join the army."

"Oh," she looked a little disappointed. "Sometimes I ask ponies what happened, but mostly they won't talk about it with me. The other guards say maybe they'll tell me when I'm older. Except Captain Dash. She won't say anything at all. She just kind of freezes up a little bit and goes to do something else. Isn't that weird? And Princess Twilight seems really sad but she won't tell me why. She just tells me to keep studying..."

"Azure?" The voice of Princess Twilight was suddenly nearby and she rounded a corner and found the two of us. "Come on, kiddo. Time for today's lesson," she smiled warmly at her student.

"Okay!" the little filly smiled back. "I just met... Uh..." she looked at me blankly.

"Sunburst," I told her my name. "Pleased to meet you."

"I see," the princess nodded at me briefly. "I hope Azure Sky here wasn't any trouble." She turned and started walking. "Come on, let's not bother the guards anymore," she said while her student fell in next to her.

"No, princess," I said. "She's no trouble at all."

"Did you see her cutie mark? It's the sun, like Celestia's!" Azure said to the princess. I cringed a little bit. Being compared once again to our illustrious solar princess, and to another princess of all ponies, was embarrassing. "I hope mine is something cool like that. When do you think I'll get one?"

"Well, you're about that age," the princess smiled down at her student while they kept walking away side by side. "It'll be soon..." Their voices faded down the hall as they got further away.

It was pretty clear that the princess regards her student warmly. Maybe there's even a permanent bond solidifying between them, probably, seeing as how the princess is basically raising that filly. Even that, though, I think is no substitute for a truly personal friend. There has to be a pretty clear delineation between student and teacher, and aside from that there's things you can't just talk about with a child. At the end of the day she still seems alone.

I guess we're the same, in that way. How we got here is the difference. I know that I chose this because I'm comfortable with it. This is where it's easy for me to be. But what about her?

Is this who she is, or is it who she's made to be as the price for being Princess Twilight Sparkle?

My kind being the exception among most ponies, I have to think it's the latter.

I almost wish I could just ask her without that being a horribly inappropriate affront to the decorum of subordinance that must, of course, be kept between the royalty and her guard.

Maybe it's a chicken-or-the-egg problem that even she doesn't know how to solve - nopony can really be close enough to ask why she doesn't like her palace, and that's why she doesn't like her palace. I think she came from somewhere smaller, where she was smaller... Somewhere she misses. I can only guess that maybe there's some ponies she misses, too, because in a smaller place they could get closer. Moving into here just meant moving into a big cage, with bars that don't keep her in so much as they keep everypony else out.

As a guard, maybe I'm one of those bars. It's a strange feeling, and not really a good one. If I am I don't want to be, but the job is what it is.

Day by day it's increasingly clear that princesses are not necessarily the creatures they seem on the surface. I wonder what else I'll discover before I'm done here.

Enough for now.

Excerpt V

Seashell
V

From the journal of Sunburst, May 30, 1329 YS:

Today, as I write, I'm feeling somewhat confused. I've seen something I know was not meant for my eyes. It sheds a good deal of light in some ways, but raises more and stranger questions in others.

What would a palace be without all the little extras to make it elegant on the outside just as much as the inside? A well-groomed and maintained garden would be essential to that, and of course this palace has one. It isn't terribly big, since this isn't a really huge palace with particularly extensive surrounding grounds, but it is very nice. It's a good place to just think about things in the quiet splendor of nature for a while, and soak up some of Celestia's sun. That is, if you have the time to spare for that kind of thing.

The morning shift starts at 6am, about when the sun rises. In the first light of today's particular morning, the rosebushes in the center of the garden revealed that they'd opened a profusion of fresh new blooms, the first ones of the year. The new flowers showed that all those central bushes were white roses. They shone brilliantly and cleanly. Morning dew glittered on their petals like little diamonds.

I was also surprised to find Captain Dash and Princess Twilight out there in the morning, enjoying the same sight. The two of them were on the ground, standing side by side in front of those rose bushes. I'm sure they thought they were alone. The gardens have some pretty good hedging around them. From the ground it's about impossible to see in from outside.

Of course, I was observing this from the air, flying around on a grounds security patrol, so the hedges didn't stop me. Me being a scout trained to spot and observe didn't help their privacy either.

Captain Dash is pretty consistently confident and outspoken with a tough skin. Nothing seems to get her down. It really threw me, then, to see her staring so sadly the way she was at those roses. Even at that distance I was from her, I could tell she wasn't her usual self, but I couldn't understand it at first. It seemed to have to do with the flowers, because the princess was staring at them too, also seeming pretty somber. Was something wrong with the roses, I wondered? They were so beautiful, the response just seemed out of place.

But if that seemed strange, what happened next was downright shocking. The princess said something quietly into Captain Dash's ear. Captain Dash looked at her and nodded, and I swear, tears filled the captain's eyes. Yes, Captain Rainbow Dash, the Advanced Combat Flier, toughest of the tough, fearless, invincible - and she was on the edge of outright crying, in front of our princess no less!

The princess hugged the captain and nuzzled her cheek, then kissed the side of her head, in a gentle way. They embraced for a long moment, while the princess cradled the captain's head against the side of her neck just above the shoulder and softly stroked her rainbow hued mane, then released. They stood side by side again, close together, and the princess put one wing over the captain and rubbed her back comfortingly.

My blood almost ran cold, it was so unexpected. The princess is, as far as I'd ever seen, supposed to be this high, isolated, distant figure. Nopony touches her, and she doesn't touch them. The only exception I've ever seen is maybe occasional brief contact with her personal student, momentary hugs of comforting or affection. Nopony else. Especially not a mere member of the guard. Yet here it was, happening.

That moment triggered something in me. I think it drove home in a real way, beyond a mere superficial intellectual book-fact kind of way, that she's flesh and blood like all of us. She's a real pony after all. I guess she's not always made of ice, at least not in the few short moments when there's nopony around that demands that she be. A moment of empathy for her washed over me for the way she has to hide her real self. It must be hard on her.

After a minute or two, the captain said something to her, quietly. The princess reluctantly withdrew her wing and folded it. The sun was getting higher in the sky and the morning was getting brighter. The day's business would be starting soon, and it was almost time for Twilight Sparkle to turn back into ice and go be a princess for the day. I'm going to guess that the captain was reminding her of that, because she begrudgingly nodded slightly in agreement, then they parted from each other and walked out of the garden in opposite directions. I immediately understood why. Nopony would see them leaving together that way. It wouldn't be dignified, after all, for a rumor to spread of any undue familiarity.

I blinked a few times, once they were gone, and shook the surprise out of my head. There was still work to do, whatever I'd just seen. I kept on with the security patrol, methodically searching around the perimeter of the palace grounds.

I tried to get through the watch without being too distracted. It was tough. The rest of the day wasn't eventful, fortunately.

After I was relieved by the afternoon shift, I took a walk in the city, thinking about what I'd seen. I do a lot of my best thinking when I can pace around aimlessly by myself. That's another virtue of the life lived alone, I guess, plenty of time for reflection.

At some point along the path of my wandering, I saw a little flower shop at a streetcorner. It was more of a stand than an enclosed building. It had an open storefront and there was a pale pink earth pony with a deeper pink mane standing behind a wooden counter. She was surrounded by an immense multitude of all kinds of flowers. Among them I noticed that roses were the most numerous, scattered around in all the various colors they come in - red, yellow, pink, oranges, lavendars, and white.

I walked up to the stand. I stood there for a second and looked around at all the different varieties.

"Hi! How can I help you?" The pony behind the counter welcomed me cheerfully. I noticed that she had pretty jade green eyes.

"Your roses are interesting," I said. "They sure do come in a lot of different colors."

"Oh. Yes," she nodded. "Almost all of 'em, except black and blue. The growers haven't quite figured those out yet. I think those are a pipe dream, myself, but ... you know. The gardeners will keep trying just so somepony can say they were the first to breed a truly black rose." She shrugged. "I'm not sure what we'll ever do with them once somepony does, though. I can't see it being a very attractive flower, honestly."

"I'm guessing there's more demand for red," I noted the most abundant color.

"There definitely is," she nodded. "Red roses are pretty much the classic standard for saying 'I love you' in that special somepony kind of way. We sell a lot of those, the most out of any of our flowers."

I'd suspected as much already, partly because it's a well known stereotype and partly because it's just logical. Red is a strong color, after all. It's the color of blood, and the heart that pumps it, and the feelings of passion and strong emotions and lusts associated with those things.

White, though, seemed so quiet and reserved by contrast. It was almost a contradiction for a flower like a rose.

"What about white?" I asked. "What, or who, do ponies buy those for?"

"White?" She thought for a moment. "Well, a couple different things. Sometimes we do them for funeral arrangements. It's a mourning color. But it's kind of funny, because on the other hoof, we also use them for lots of weddings. It's... You know, like the reason a bride wears a white dress. It's a pure color, it's clean and fresh. It's supposed to be more innocent. I guess it's not always totally platonic like 'let's be friends', but also not like how red is more direct and kinda says 'I'd like you in bed with me'. It's more subtle. Love but not lusty."

I stood there pondering the roses, white and red and all the other colors, in the stand.

"Anything else you'd like to know?" The pony behind the counter asked politely, after a few seconds.

"No," I shook my head. "That's alright, thanks. You've just given me some things to think about."

"Not a problem," she smiled at me. "Come by anytime, I'm always here. Me and the roses."

I nodded and walked on, thinking about the language of flowers and the vocabulary of their colors.

I drifted my way on down the street and considered what she'd said about white. Subtle, was it? The color was, maybe, yes. The things it reflected, though, those certainly were not necessarily so. It was muted on the surface, but underneath there was a strong undercurrent of feeling. Captain Dash hadn't completely broken out crying, but the tears - those were in her eyes, sure as anything. Her response to those white roses was like the flowers themselves.

What was that response about, though, exactly? That was tricky to tell.

Mourning. Pure, high love. Either one of those could fit.

Either one, or both. Sometimes the intensity of one emotion tends to fuel another.

Princess Twilight seemed to know what it was, in the way she was comforting Captain Dash. I began to wonder just how close the two of them were.

They came from the same place before they came here, after all.

Maybe the princess isn't so completely alone as I'd thought. I hope not, anyway, for her sake. I guess hoping is about all I can do.

I thought about all these things for a while, while I walked. But then not too much later, I passed a pair of elegant-looking unicorn mares in funny hats walking side by side with their snoots in the air, chatting back and forth, something about how dreadful the hors d'oeuvres were at last week's high society parties. Giggling inside and trying not to let it show sort of broke my concentration on more serious subjects.

Canterlot sure is an interesting town.

I guess that's interesting enough for today.

Excerpt VI

Seashell
VI

From the journal of Sunburst, June 2, 1329 YS:

It's been a couple days since the thing with the roses, and it's still bugging me.

I may have done something a little foolish in that regard. I couldn't help asking the question. I'm still on the morning shift, and this morning I was on door guard duty. That didn't help me resist temptation, being by far the most boring of the watches. Seriously, I have to just stand there literally doing nothing.

For six hours.

There was another guard next to me to talk to, which makes the time go by more easily, though if I'd been alone I wouldn't have had the chance to poke something I probably shouldn't have. As fate would have it, the other guard on the door with me was Rolling Thunder, a long-time Advanced Combat Flier. He's always intimidated me a little bit. He's not very big, but he's got muscles and tendons like steel cords under his sand-colored coat. A wedge-shaped chunk that looks suspiciously like a griffin bite was torn from one of his ears at some point, among other scars he carries. I also know he saw the Northern War firsthoof, something that by all accounts hardens anypony.

Neither of us were very inclined to talk much at first, so I thought for a while that things would be okay. I made it almost two hours in silence, at least.

Of course, though, eventually it gnawed inside me too much and it finally got out.

"Hey... You know those white roses, in the middle of the garden?" I asked.

"Sure. What about 'em?" Thunder responded.

"Is there anything special about them?" I asked.

"I dunno," he shrugged. "I heard Princess Twilight had them planted when she first moved into the palace. Didn't change the rest of the gardens, but she wanted those pretty specifically."

"So do you know if they mean anything?" I continued.

"Well, I saw that in the middle of all those bushes there's a round white stone," he pointed out.

"Yes, I noticed it. I don't really know what it means, though," I said. I'd always thought it was just a regular plain old rock.

"Heh. Right, you weren't there, you wouldn't have seen them," he thought for a second. "It reminds me of the memorial stones we used to make and set out in the field for the soldiers we lost during the war."

"What about Captain Dash? Has she ever said anything about them?" I asked. "The roses, or that stone, or anything like that?"

"Why? Did you see something?" He got serious all of a sudden.

"... Yes," I admitted.

"I need to tell you a story." He looked straight ahead, not at me. "Not one that I like to tell, but you'll get the picture when you hear it."

"Okay," I nodded.

"Alright. Well, I was in the Combat Fliers when the war started. The first objective of the war strategy was to secure Equestria's border. We decided the best way to do that would be to eliminate the griffin border towns to stop them from being used as jumping-off points into Equestria, and at the same time we also wanted to scare the griffins into staying on their side." He was quiet for a moment.

"So the way we went about doing both of those things at once in one particular border village was like this," he continued. "We flew in waves from every direction. We surrounded the town, and we pinned down the griffins from the air. When a griffin would take off, that griffin would die. We'd smash 'em down by bashing them with chainweights or by breaking their wings. After a couple hours or so, the griffins stopped trying to fly. They just hid in their houses, trying to wait it out.

"But we didn't let them off that easy, either." He paused. "We smoked them out, building by building, and killed them one by one once we got hold of 'em. Didn't take too long. By the end of the day, the village was cleared. We didn't take any prisoners. There was just... Just this pile of dead griffins."

"Whoa." I was taken aback. "I never heard about anything like that happening."

"You think any of us would want to talk about it?" He asked. He had a point, I suppose. "We were all upset. Griffin raiders had been killing and eating ponies and we knew it. Still, though, that's no excuse for what we did. It gets worse, too. We piled up those bodies, on top of whatever wood was left from all the buildings in the village that we could heap up. We set all that on fire. It was one big mass cremation. I'll never forget the smell. It was like nothing else before or since. I won't forget it as long as I live. It was horrible.

"After that fire was finally out, there was nothing left but a pile of ashes and bones where a village used to be. I mean, nothing. We erased it from the map. And after we did, we went back through those bones in the ashes and we found all the skulls. We flew in some wooden poles, and sharpened the ends. Those poles got stuck upright in the ground. We took the skulls, and impaled them on the poles, one skull on top of another.

"Those were what we left behind for the rest of the griffins to find: stacks of skulls and a pile of burned bones. That was the warning we left them to stop the raids and stay out of Equestria. Those are the kind of things that happened in that war. Most of it wasn't on the same scale of outright slaughter as that, but there was brutality everywhere. Ponies were killed. Griffins were killed. Usually more griffins, but too many of both."

I found myself with a lot to think about. The war was just before my time, I've never been through it. I realized that if what had affected Captain Dash was something like this, something from the war, maybe it was better if I didn't know what it was. How would I ever really understand it, anyway? At best, knowing what had happened wouldn't get me closer to really comprehending her and the magnitiude of whatever she'd experienced. At worst, it might be something that would make her seem like an absolute monster, and I know she's not a monster. I don't want to think of her that way.

"Everypony who was out there, especially the ones on the front line doing the worst of the fighting, saw death and loss. Everypony has somepony they wish they could have saved, or something they wish they could have done differently and they wish to God they could take back but they can't because you can't give back lives. Maybe not just one thing, either, maybe a lot of them. They hurt, Sunburst. They hurt a whole lot. The things we did out there, and the things that happened... They haunt you forever," he said.

"Alright. Yeah," I nodded. "I get the picture."

"It isn't a pretty one, is it?" He asked.

"No," I thought for a minute, but there wasn't much else to say.

"So you'd better leave it alone." His voice was a bit on the strong side, but at the same time he didn't seem angry, just sad. "Just... Just forget about it, whatever you saw. I don't know what she did or where she was, or the things that happened to her. But she was an Advanced Combat Flier like me, and she's got the marks of that. I know that whatever it was, she doesn't want to think about it and dredge it all back up now. I can promise you that. I've never met any of us who do. It is what it is and you can't change the past. She's moving on the best she knows how. Let her do that."

I was inclined to agree very much by that point.

That story's gonna give me nightmares and I wasn't even there.

Enough bad memories for today.

Excerpt VII

Seashell
VII

From the journal of Sunburst, August 7, 1329 YS:

Despite my tendencies for preferring to be alone, sometimes I think that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to have a daughter some day.

Not that I think it'll ever happen, of course, if I look at it realistically. There's two ways to get a foal: get a suitable partner with the appropriate parts that compliment your own to help make one, or adopt one.

I don't see myself going through the process of making one. I hear the first step is pretty fun but then it tends to be unpleasant for a while after that. I've never heard particularly good things about pregnancy and childbirth as life experiences to go through. Besides, stallions don't really catch my eye, if I'm honest with myself about it (although neither do mares, most of the time), so I'm not sure if even that first part is much incentive.

As far as adopting, would they ever give approval to a single mare already in the army who'll probably be moving from posting to posting every couple years or so and maybe going out on special duty assignments in-between those? Yeah, good luck.

So it's not a serious thought. It's just an idle fantasy, one of the many that I'm sure goes through the head of everypony at some point.

I guess what brings this one up is the youngest resident of the palace.

Princess Twilight's student is smart as a whip and cute as a button, and it's so adorable sometimes to see such a tiny filly levitating an old book as big as herself out of the library. Most unicorns her age aren't in the habit of using magic very much yet and a lot of them barely even know how to make their horns glow, but she's doing stuff that could put many adults to shame. I suppose that kind of rare talent is why you get to become the personal student of a princess.

She got her cutie mark a little while back, I suppose I should mention. It's a purple crystal with several stars representing magic surrounding it. Apparently she was able to not only find and magically produce the right harmonic frequency to make a sample of amethyst shatter explosively, but then she was also able to gather all the shards and put it back together again into one solid piece, as good as new.

Impressive as that is, though, she's still just a little kid. Her innocence makes her all the more adorable.

And don't you know, kids say the darndest things.

Early in the midnight shift a night ago I found her wandering in one of the hallways in the dark. She seemed nervous and scared, looking around and moving from shadow to shadow, ducking and cowering behind the suits of armor lining that particular hall. I was a bit concerned to see her that way, and especially to see her out alone at night.

"Azure?" I called out to her. She started at my voice, though I was trying to talk softly. "Are you alright? What are you doing out of your room at this kind of hour?"

She froze and stared at me with wide eyes while I walked up to her.

"I... I... Just..." She mumbled and looked down at the floor worriedly. "... Sorry."

"No, it's alright. You're not in trouble," I said. "I just need to know if anything is the matter."

"I wanted to see Princess Twilight," she said shyly. "I was scared. I had a nightmare."

"Oh. Well, I'm pretty sure the princess is asleep right now," I said. "I think you'll have to wait until the morning to talk to her."

"I know. I just wanted to sleep in her room," Azure said. "It's always safe in there, with her."

"Hey, the whole palace is safe," I smiled and tried to reassure her. "Me and the other guards are here to make sure of that. I'm not going to let anything happen to you. C'mon, I'll give you a ride back to your room." I knelt down in front of her.

"Okay," she climbed up onto my back. She was laying flat on her belly, with her forelegs hooked around the bases of my wings. I was a little surprised, she's even lighter than she looks. I stood back up and started walking back toward her room.

As I was walking, I felt one of her forehooves stroke one of my wings hesitantly. Pegasi don't usually like having their wings messed with, but I didn't say anything. I kind of understood. It's easy to be curious about the things other ponies have that you don't. I've always wondered myself just how a unicorn's horn works and what it's like to have one.

She must have ruffled one of the feathers a little. It didn't feel exactly right. I'd have to preen it later, but for now I just stretched my wing a bit and gave it a quick shake to see if it would move back into place. I kinda had a feeling it wouldn't, though. It fell, instead, slowly drifting its way down through the air and onto the ground. Even in the dim moonlight the yellow feather contrasted with the deep red tone of the carpet lining the hallway floor.

Azure gasped a little. "I'm sorry, ohmygosh I didn't mean to..." She worried.

"It's fine, you didn't do anything," I said. "If it was that loose, it was ready to drop on its own anyway. That happens, don't worry about it. They grow back in no time."

"Oh," she sounded relieved.

"Could you do me a favor, though?" I asked.

"Sure," she said.

"Could you pick that up for me? I can't just go around leaving moltings lying all over the palace, you know," I said. "If all the pegasi did that, pretty soon the place would look like we'd had the mother of all pillowfights in here."

She laughed. A faint aura of sky-blue magic surrounded the feather and it floated up into the air. Azure carried it with us while we walked.

A minute later, we were back at her room. I carried her inside and let her down off my back. The room was pretty clean and organized, except maybe for the stacks of books. They randomly rose in haphazardly constructed little towers, mostly clustered around the bed against the middle of the far wall of the room.

"So... I guess you read a lot," I commented.

"Yep!" She nodded vigorously. "It's my favorite thing."

"I like reading too," I agreed. "It's a lot of fun. Good for your brain."

"Yeah," she said. "Only... Well, Princess Twilight says I should never stop reading to learn more but she also said I have to remember that books can't teach me everything. I think she's right. Sometimes there's things I can't find in books."

"No. I guess not," I said. "Like flying. I read about flying before I could fly, but I didn't actually know what it was like until I learned how and I did it myself."

"And magic!" she said. "There's lots of books that tell you how to do magic, but you don't know how it really feels until you can do it with your own horn. Then you know what the books are talking about when they say you'll feel a certain thing when you do a certain spell."

"Exactly," I nodded. "Experience is very important."

"But there's some things..." she said hesitantly. "Some things are just confusing. You're a grown-up and grown-ups know a lot of things sometimes because they have more experience, right? Maybe you can help. Can I ask you about one?"

"Uh..." I was hesitant, but I couldn't see much harm. "I guess so. Shoot."

She looked up at me expectantly with her big pale purple eyes and a little smile. Her face was so innocent.

"What's a fillyfooler?" she asked.

Ooooooh boy. There it was.

I just about choked. A little feeling of panic hit me inside. I thought she'd just ask me to take her on a flight so she could know what it was like to be a pegasus, or something like that. Not this. I was sorely tempted to pawn off the standard cop-out answer of 'you'll understand when you're older'.

"Er... Well, it, uh... Ermmm..." I fumbled around for a second or two without really saying anything.

I felt like I was between a rock and a hard place. On one side, I was a kid once and I also asked questions like these. I usually asked my father because he was always straight with me about the things I asked and I always appreciated that. I respected the honesty a lot more than being told to just wait until some undefinable 'when you're older', and it's not like having my curiosity answered ever hurt me. But on the other side, Azure wasn't my filly. How much should I say? Did I really have any right? Would saying anything be unwanted interference?

There was sort of a realization, though, in a moment of clarity that came over me. I knew that now that the question was out there, I was answering it one way or another no matter what I said or didn't say. The only choice I had was in how.

Sure, I could get all awkward and give her the wait 'til you're older excuse, but that would tell her that fillyfoolers were an awkward and embarrassing thing that ponies don't want to talk about - that they're abnormal, they're that thing we sweep under the rug. Did I want to set her up with carrying that stigma about them? Not really. That would be a disservice to her and to a lot of other ponies, seeing how she'd probably be in a position of leadership and government some day. And what if she grew up to find out that she had those feelings herself? Her sense of self-worth might not do so well in the face of that.

I guess my dad had the right idea and I appreciate his understanding even more now. I was just going to have to hope this didn't blow up in my face, because there was only one thing to do.

"Well... A fillyfooler is another word for a lesbian," I explained. "Have you ever heard of that?"

"I... Think so? Maybe?" she still seemed lost. "But I don't know what that means either."

"Alright," I sighed. "You know how ponies sometimes fall in love with each other in a 'special somepony' kind of way, right? Like when a mother and a father pony decide to... You know, have a foal?"

"Sure!" she said. "I learned about that. They use sex to fertilize an egg cell inside the mother pony. The stallion uses his--"

"Aahhemm!" I cleared my throat, loudly, interrupting her. "Right. I think you've got that idea down. So, a lesbian... A fillyfooler... Is a mare who's attracted that way to other mares, instead of to stallions."

"Oh!" I could practically see her eyes light up in comprehension. "So that's it? That's not such a big deal. I guess I already kinda know ponies like that. One of the other fillies I know has two moms instead of a mom and a dad."

"Right," I nodded. "It's just the way some ponies are, that's all."

"And..." she hesitated. "And that's okay, isn't it?"

"Sure," I nodded. "Of course it is. There's some ponies who get uncomfortable talking about it sometimes, so it can be difficult. But there's nothing wrong with it."

"So then why can't a princess be one?" she asked.

"Uh..." I was a bit stumped. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Captain Dash said so," she told me. "She was talking to Princess Twilight. I heard her. They were alone together. Captain Dash said, " - at this point she did a cute and childlike but respectable imitation of Captain Dash's scratchy voice - "'I think we both know there's some things we can't have. A fillyfooler princess would never be accepted. It'll always just be too much of a controversy and just get in the way of everything'." She returned to her normal voice. "And after the captain said that, the princess sounded kind of sad but she said she thought so too." She looked up at me. "But why would it be like that, though? If it's okay to be one?"

My jaw almost dropped to the floor. I was stunned, I couldn't say anything for a few seconds.

"Hey... Uh... Look..." I finally managed. "This really, really sounds like it's turning into personal business. I think it's something you and the princess are going to have to talk about some time, later, maybe, when she's ready. Sorry, Azure. I just... Really don't have any answers for that one."

"Oh. Alright," she shrugged.

I stood there in uncomfortable silence for a moment while she furrowed her eyebrows in thought.

"Hey, I just thought of something," she finally said. "So if sex needs a stallion and a mare to work, then how can two mares work together? I mean, how could they have sex together and where would they get the sperm cells anyway?"

I realized we were at the point where I really needed to draw a line. Explaining the ways lesbians make love, and how they might go about obtaining sperm to get pregnant, were things way out there on the wrong side of that line for her age and for my position as a guard.

"Well, there's answers to those questions, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to be telling you those particular things yet," I explained to her. "You'll be taught that when you get older, at the right time. Okay?"

"Okay," she sounded disappointed, but she nodded.

"Right now, though, it's way past your bedtime, I'm pretty sure," I said. "You should get some sleep. You're gonna need it to keep up with school and with Princess Twilight's lessons, right?"

"Not really," she giggled a bit. "Tomorrow's Saturday. There's no classes."

Right. Of course it had to be. I bet I looked really smart.

"Regardless," I shook my head. "You need your rest, and I need to get back out there and keep guarding. How about it?"

"Alright," she finally cooperated and climbed into bed.

I pulled up the blankets and tucked her in after she laid down. "Goodnight, Azure," I said.

"Goodnight Sunburst," she yawned.

I exited and closed the door to her room and went back to my watch, until I was relieved by the morning shift.

I'm still reeling from the information the kid just dropped on me. I'm nervous about even writing it down. Maybe this is another one of those things I should just... Forget.

But I don't think I'm going to be able to, not today.

Excerpt VIII

Seashell
VIII

From the journal of Sunburst, August 21, 1329 YS:

Here's a little bit of an interesting thing I've learned: the princess likes veggie burgers. She loves them. I mean in a serious way. They're her favorite, especially with a big pile of hayfries, fresh out of a deep frier. The greasier and more ketchup slathered, the better, too, both the burger and fries. A frosty cold chocolate milkshake more often than not rounds it all out (if you consider that a 'rounded' meal).

Captain Dash likes that kind of food, too.

I know this because maybe once a week or so, if there's not too much else keeping them busy, the princess and the captain get together and turn the daily security and logistics report from the usual brief few notes into a working dinner where the two of them get more in-depth into things, usually over a meal of those burgers and fries bought take-out from a fast food joint not too far from here.

Tonight was one of those nights.

I was on the evening shift. It's a quiet time of day, and not too bad. It's not as good as the midnight shift, when literally everypony but the guard is asleep so there's not much to have to worry about, but nowhere near the noise and commotion of the morning or afternoon shifts with all the day's business going on. The random timer we use to make security sweeps less predictable had just gone off, so I was walking through on a hall patrol. I try to be as unobtrusive about them as I can. I'm pretty good at it, my presence usually goes unnoticed. As a result, once in a while I catch bits of certain conversations that perhaps I wouldn't if the participants knew I was in earshot. I don't worry about it, I'm not the kind to go blabbering.

Who would I tell, anyway? Except maybe this journal, I mean. You don't count, journal. Sorry.

I went through the big assembly hall first, but the princess doesn't exactly hang out there after the day's business with dignitaries and whoever else needs attention is finished. She doesn't like the official areas, the big dining room or the ministerial offices or anything. Unless she has to do some sort of official entertainment like a state dinner or something, she prefers to eat in one of the smaller personal rooms off in some corner of the palace. It's more private that way, I suppose, something that's hard to come by for a princess. That makes me feel somewhat more guilty about intruding, but it's my job, being a guard. I can't always help it.

I was walking down one the corridors and I caught that smell, greasy fast food. I suddenly felt hungry myself, because it smelled good. I admit it, I'm fat. Or I'm a wannabe fat pony trapped in the skinny body of a pegasus who flies too much and works out a lot. Something like that. Anyway, the smell. That's how I knew it was burger night, so it didn't surprise me to find them together in one of the viewing rooms. They were sitting at a table just big enough for two ponies, in front of the huge windows looking out into the gardens and creating a fairly breathtaking scenic view of the flowers glowing in all their bright colors in the last of the day's sunlight.

I only took a quick look at them and I didn't hear all that much, just a few sentences passing between the two. I wasn't there to eavesdrop, I just happened by pure chance to see and hear what I did. Captain Dash said something funny. I couldn't hear all of what it was. Princess Twilight did, however. She swallowed her bite of veggie burger and let out a tiny laugh in response. That intrigued me. It's usually so rare to actually hear her laugh that I couldn't help but have my attention captured by it.

And... I'm not sure I even feel comfortable writing down what I'm about to. As stated before, I don't mean to spy. If it's only for myself, though, just for this journal and nopony else will ever see it, what harm can it do?

The princess said something after she laughed. "Oh, Rainbow, that's just too funny," those were her exact words. She didn't say "Captain Dash". She wasn't formal because it wasn't a superior and a subordinate having a structured professional exchange. It caught me, the way it was two friends - old friends, best friends, the kind of friends who knew each other better than some ponies know their own families.

It wasn't just the words themselves, either. It was the way she said them. I'm not sure how to describe it other than that it wasn't the voice we always hear at court. There's a certain kind of voice that goes with the public face a princess wears. This was something else that fit her somehow in a deeper, truer way.

It was her real voice, undisguised.

It seems strange - because how can a pony have more than one voice? - but I've been around her long enough to know it's true. That real voice comes out in rare fleeting moments once in a while. Sometimes it's with her student, for example. Tonight, it had something in it that I will never forget. It had a lot of genuine happiness in it. It wasn't hiding any feelings and it wasn't restrained to remain detached. For that one moment, right there, she was truly happy and it truly showed.

I think it had everything to do with who she was with. It was in her eyes and the way she looked at Captain Dash. There was something in her smile and her body language. She was relaxed and comfortable and letting herself slouch just a little, and not worrying one bit about holding her posture up in the supremely perfect poise of a princess. She was a whole different pony.

Once again, with Captain Dash, I caught a glimpse of the real flesh and blood Twilight Sparkle.

The whole thing lasted barely a few seconds while I was walking through the hall, passing by the doorway to the room. That was enough. In what I saw and heard in those few seconds, I knew that to the princess, this wasn't just a meeting to receive some report, it...

No. I'm being silly. I should scratch all of this out, maybe burn the page. Nopony would ever dare to call it anything else, not even the princess or the captain, because of course it wasn't anything else. Proper separations of personal life and professional duty need to be maintained, and propriety must be strictly enforced, and no one knows that better than ponies like them. As far as what could be happening, it was all business, nothing more. Certainly it would never be suggested that anything personal could be taking place.

I'm sure that everything I've written is all just in my head, and all just overactive speculation and reading too much into tiny imagined things. I must be crazy, to be basing all this on just a few seconds I happened to catch. You know what? Yes. Obviously, I'm mistaken about all of this. All I was seeing was a very dry discussion about the security and logistics report. I have to be wrong and there was no sense of deep-running bonds, no feeling of warm friendship, no intimacy, no closeness, no sense of joy in just the presence of the other pony. No, none of that at all.

I know there was no way that, on at least some unspoken and maybe even partly unconscious level, the princess was on a dinner date with Captain Dash. It's plain as the sunlight on a clear day that this is impossible.

I shouldn't be writing down such obviously untrue things. Should I?

But how else... How else can I explain now what I heard from Azure? I admit, I held out on completely believing her at first. She's a child. Misunderstandings happen, ponies can be misheard. There could have been any number of reasons not to take what she said at face value, even if she is simply curious and well-meaning.

Once you see it with your own eyes, though...

Enough dangerous thinking for today.

Excerpt IX

Seashell
IX

From the journal of Sunburst, September 7, 1329 YS:

As sharp as my eyes are, they can't see until they're open.

It took a while to finally do that, but now that they are, I've had to make some decisions about this and some of my previous journal entries. I had to decide whether to keep them around, or get rid of them for good and forever hide and forget what I've written. It wouldn't be hard, I could just tear them out and toss them in the fireplace. I tried to convince myself that this would the safest thing for everypony.

In the end, though, I couldn't do it. I think I have to give up pretending to not see what I'm seeing. The lie won't work, it never has for me. It can never feel right, because that's not who I am.

I've experienced this the hard way.

One in particular comes to mind when I think about the situation I'm watching happen.

A few years ago, during a training exercise, I was flying low and evasive using tree canopies as cover. My right front leg didn't clear one of the limbs in a big gnarled old oak. It caught and wedged in a fork while my body weight kept moving forward at my pretty considerable (if I can say so myself) full speed. Two bones instantly broke. Actually, there's a better word for it - they didn't just break, they shattered. They snapped into long sharp little pieces, like icepicks and daggers inside my flesh. At least two of them broke the skin and stuck out at weird angles.

I remember falling to the ground but not much else, other than that I was severely incapacitated by the sheer overwhelming impact of the pain. I couldn't think, I couldn't see, I couldn't hear. That pain was my only reality. I was delirious with it. It was all I knew because it crowded everything else out completely.

Then I remember being in the hospital, waking up in post-surgical recovery. Everything was a fuzzy haze that would have been confusing, except that I felt too good about everything to care. My leg still hurt very badly, of course, and I could feel it, but the pain's ability to grab my attention so completely had all of its sharp edge taken off. It faded into the background, and nothing... Nothing really seemed to matter, because everything just seemed so damned fine and dandy. I was happy as a clam to just lie there and stare at nothing, or sleep all day.

That lasted a while, during which a unicorn doctor would show up at intervals and do something to my forelimb with her horn. After that haze started to lift off a little bit and I could think enough to ask her just what my situation was, she told me all about my bad break. She was working to monitor what was going on with all those pieces of bone and keep them in the right places so they could heal back together again. She also told me why I felt so good. They'd had to put me on a very powerful opiate painkiller, something many times stronger even than morphine. Apparently when I came in I was screaming and crying in such agony they couldn't do much else until that painkiller and sedation were able to take effect.

Because of that, I got to spend a few days high as a kite on the best narcotics the science of modern chemistry has to offer.

I hated it.

It seemed nice in a superficial blanket sort of way, a coating that smothered over everything. Underneath it, though, there was a sense that the feelings it created and the pony it made me into weren't me. It felt unsettling because the kind of good it had wasn't genuine and I knew it. It wasn't feeling good about something, it was just sort of there, forced on me and warping my baseline of who I was. For whatever it gave me, it also took away a lot: I couldn't function, I was slow and hazy and thoughts wouldn't hold a coherent thread.

Part of the really messed up thing of being in a state like that is that it's so easy to just go with. It's not a conscious process for the most part, and not a real choice. Just becoming what the circumstances dictate without much fuss is so much simpler that sometimes it's the only option a pony can see, even if it's not something true to what that pony really is.

I just laid there and they shot me up through my IV, and sweet Celestia, everything felt like lying on warm silk in the sunshine. I just let it happen, it seemed the inevitable course of things at the time.

I'm sure that the same kind of inevitability of circumstance making her somepony else is what Princess Twilight feels when she has to be the kind-looking but untouchable sculture that constitutes the public face of a princess, too. She has no choice, so she believes. I don't think she even knows it happens. For the most part, nopony else does either.

My eyes are open and I see it now. Am I the only one?

Most significantly, by contrast I see why that's not her real self. I see it in the little things where Captain Dash is involved. I saw it in the roses, and I saw it in the way they eat dinner together when they can find the time and privacy. I'm starting to see it just every so often in the tiny split-second glances in morning briefings, when the captain delivers them to the princess. I see it in passing in the hallways, in quick looks back over the shoulder.

It'd be easier if I didn't see it, but I do, so there's the truth about the princess. She sobers up around Captain Dash. In little glimmers another more real pony comes through - a much happier pony.

It's subconscious, she has no idea... But it's there.

What about Captain Dash, for her part?

It would be easy to chalk this up as just an unrequited longing by the princess, but I don't think it's simple and one-sided like that. Captain Dash's part in whatever is between them seems more complex and harder to figure out, but I can't say I think she's oblivious or not participating.

It's unambiguous that in her moments alone with the princess, she does sometimes tend to get pretty close. She drops her mask of being just a guard and opens herself up as something else instead.

Out in the open, there's the same little things as with the princess, the glances, but it's harder to catch - faster, sneakier, and even more hidden. She's good at it. Even with my scout's training to observe and pick out all the hidden details I'm hard-pressed to even say it's really there. Honestly, I'm not always sure. Sometimes I think so, sometimes I think I'm just imagining it.

I can't help the feeling, though, that she seems scared of it. She fights and resists revealing anything as hard as she can. I suppose that's necessary. A princess can get away with a few things here and there, a blind eye turned in an unspoken due paid to her status as royalty. If Captain Dash's very well-shaped flank happens to catch her eye for just a second, well... She can be forgiven. We all look at other ponies once in a while. It's a reflex, really, she can't help it.

The captain of the guard, on the other hoof, has no such luxury. She has to have discipline. She's the key that has to set the primary example for all the rest of us in the guard, and that means no unprofessional lusty eyes on another pony she can't have. It means nothing unbecoming or unsightly to her position, ever.

There's something so obvious she could never hide it, though.

Just her presence here and her service says it the most and the loudest, enough to overpower any amount of caution and secrecy and render them a moot point.

I know that she loves the princess.

The more I think about it, the more it begins to become obvious. Whatever life and home and ambitions she had in Ponyville, she left them behind to follow the princess to Canterlot. She accepted the princess's personal commission to serve, and pledged her own life to defend that princess against anything that might threaten her harm. She's made it clear to us all in her dedication that this isn't just her job, it's her personal calling. She gave the princess her life, to do what she would with it, just so that she could be here and stay with her. If there isn't love in that, of the highest kind, we might as well just all give up and stop looking because I don't know where else to find it in this world.

In all the little things I've seen and all the puzzle pieces that fall into place now that I know what I'm looking at, I'm realizing that Princess Twilight and Captain Dash bring out what's most real and most essential about each other, from deep down in their hearts under the masks they have to wear in public.

That's love.

I think... No, I know... They don't even see it themselves, because they can't afford to, not in their positions. But that's love.

I suppose this journal entry is my confession - my admission that, although I may not know much about love being as solitary as I am, I know what I see in them and I can't deny it any more. I'm ready to be honest with myself about it now.

That's enough about love for today.

Excerpt X

Seashell
X

From the journal of Sunburst, September 11, 1329 YS:

When my section is on the midnight shift, trying to sleep during the day is an interesting, and sometimes challenging, pursuit. Getting rest in the daylight hours was tough at first, but I've gotten more used to falling asleep with the sun in the sky and waking up after it sets. A good set of thick black curtains on my bedroom window also helps a lot with that.

Still, though, no matter how dark I can make it, the psychology of just knowing by the clock it's day and not night makes the experience of sleeping (or trying to) different. I toss and turn more. My brain wants to be awake, so it resists shutting down into a less active state. That may be why the dreams during those daylight hours are more intense and more real feeling than the dreams that come at night. They're not as fanciful or imaginative, but in some ways they're still no less bizarre and the impact is often stronger.

I dreamt yesterday that I was back at the Seawall.

It was everything I remember. It was more. There was more beach, the wall was longer, so long it seemed endless. The fields of scrubland, with sandy soil and short stunted grasses and spiky ground-clinging shrubs, stretched out forever.

It was so empty, so completely empty and alone, under the overcast sky of rolling steel grey clouds.

I was so happy there. I've missed it so much more than I even realized.

This seemed like heaven at first. I flew to the beach and landed, and just walked and enjoyed the feeling of sand under my hooves. I looked back over my shoulder now and then to see the trail of hoofprints stretching away behind myself.

After a while, I reached a rosebush, growing along the wall. They were white roses. I went closer to them to investigate. I felt unsettled and apprehensive. Roses shouldn't be growing here.

Then again, Captain Dash shouldn't have been there, either, yet she was. Actually... Actually, I think it was just Rainbow Dash, not Captain Dash. She wasn't wearing any armor or any of her on-duty equipment. She was completely naked, a state I rarely ever see her in. It made her seem so exposed, down-to-earth and vulnerable. A chain came from in the rose bush, somewhere in the middle of the wickedly thorny snarl of thick stems. It was attached to an iron collar clasped around her neck, which was locked, keeping her leashed here near the white roses. She sat with her back turned to them, trying not to look. Her eyes were closed and she was hanging her head. She looked sadder than any pony I've ever seen.

I walked up to her. "You don't belong here," I said. I couldn't think of anything else.

"Can't get away. I've been trying for years. I just can't." She looked at me, briefly opening her eyes. They had more pain in them than I've ever seen. It hurt me to see her suffer so. I wanted to hug her and tell her it would be alright, and let her cry on my shoulder however long she needed to.

I couldn't. All I could do was watch in silence while she suffered. I felt intensely upset about that.

That was too much to stand and I couldn't stay there, so I had to move on. I started walking again.

Soon I came to another bush, red roses this time. Princess Twilight was there. Like Rainbow Dash, I think she was just Twilight Sparkle now. She wasn't wearing any of her regalia - once again she was totally naked, and once again, an iron collar locked around her neck was attached to a chain. The chain led away from this bush instead of into it, disappearing into the sandy soil a short distance away. It kept her just a little out of reach of those beautiful deep crimson flowers. She stared at them with more longing than I've ever seen.

I was suddenly reminded of Morning Mist, the unicorn I'd been posted here with, when I'd seen her staring off into the ocean, hoping to see something there. Except... Except there was no hope in Twilight's longing, only sorrow.

"Princess..." I approached her hesitantly. She looked at me and I kneeled in front of her.

"No need for that here." She shook her head and turned her stare back to the roses. "No point. I'm the one who doesn't belong here. This place is yours. I should be the one bowing to you instead."

I walked up to the bush. I wanted to pluck one of those roses and bring it to her, so that she could finally have what she wanted so much. The importance of it seemed paramount. I knew suddenly that if I could just get one of these flowers to her, it would break the lock on her neck and she'd be free. Then she could take another one back to Rainbow Dash, and it would break her free, too.

They would be free and they could leave together.

I opened my mouth to bite off one of the stems. I hesitated. The thorns seemed so huge. They were everywhere, more and more dense the longer I looked. I tried to find a spot where I could work around them, but there was nothing. I had visions of those thorns piercing my tongue, scratching me in the face, getting in my coat and ripping at my skin and me getting more and more entangled in them like some kind of hellish living barbed wire.

I panicked and backed up a few steps from the bush.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"It's alright," Twilight said sadly. "It's just something I can't have. That's not your fault."

"I'm sorry!" I said again. I ran away. I ran and ran, down the beach, down the endless sand and scrubland, along that endless wall, but no matter how far I ran I couldn't escape the feeling that Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle were still nearby, out there with me in a place where they don't belong.

I woke up after that.

I cried with tears of frustration and shame because I can't do anything. I can't help them. I'm a coward, and I can't do anything.

For a long time, I laid in my bed wide awake and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Every detail has run through my head a million times. I'm sick of it by now, but it won't leave me.

It nearly ate me alive from the inside out over the midnight shift I had to work. I thought about it for hours, patrolling the palace hallways in the dark. At least I was alone. Trying to pretend everything was fine in front of another pony would have been impossible.

What I realize is that solitude is a wall. When a pony hits that wall, and finds they're on the far side of it, they find one of two things. Some ponies find complete freedom. Some find a cage, made of open space instead of bars.

It's the worst thing in the world, watching the wrong ponies end up here at this wall. Captain Dash and Princess Twilight and myself all have in common that we've given our lives to service. We all volunteered for duty on the wall, each in our own ways - the different ways in which we serve Equestria. But those two are not like me. Those two... I hurt just watching them.

I'm watching their hearts crying for each other, so distant when they're so close every day. That kills me a little bit every time I see more of it. The princess and the captain are going through life alone, while the pony that they love is right here next to them. Princess Twilight lives and works every day in a palace she cares nothing for because all it is to her is empty lonely space. Captain Dash waits forever, haunted by ghosts from her past and serving in silence because she can't have the pony she loves, but she can't leave her, either. They haven't done anything to deserve to suffer, they're just... On the wrong side of a wall.

I want to tell them they don't have to be here. Sometimes I think I'll be driven crazy by it. I want to go to one of them, either one would do, and grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. I want to shout it right in her face - how can you be so blind? Don't you see that you hold the heart of an amazing, smart, beautiful mare in your hooves, and it could be yours if you would just say something? If you would just talk to her and confess it? In fact, scratch that, you wouldn't even have to talk, just gaze into her eyes and kiss her the next time to two of you are alone together. She would kiss you back. As sure as I know anything, I know she would kiss you back.

I want to tell them the painfully obvious, that all it would take is one spark, but somepony has to start it. Somepony has to start it, otherwise that fire that could be the greatest warmth will always just be cold kindling waiting but never coming to life. It will never become what it should.

I don't know how much longer I can take it.

I'll hold out as long as I have to, I suppose.

In a strange way it reminds me how lucky I am. I find joy in being alone and have no suffering to do for myself, leaving me with the luxury of suffering for them instead.

That seems silly and narcissistic, I know, but they're good ponies. They deserve better. After all they've given to Equestria, wouldn't it be more than fair for them to just be able to be happy together?

It frustrates me to no end. Why can't they?

There's nothing more to be said about it for today.

Excerpt XI

Seashell
XI

From the journal of Sunburst, October 2, 1329 YS:

I'm going back to the Seawall!

Actually, the posting opened up for application almost a month ago and I put in the request for it then, but I didn't dare to hope that I would actually get it. I don't know why I did get it, for that matter. Maybe they were just so surprised they decided to call my bluff. After all, I've never heard of anypony going back around for a second tour there. Once in a lifetime seems to have always been enough.

Captain Dash pulled me into her office at noon today, after the morning shift I was on ended. That's when I found out. The orders had just arrived at the palace by courier a little earlier. I think she was even more surprised than I was when they showed up.

She stood behind the desk in her office, while I stood in front of it across from her. "Let me get this right. You actually requested to go back?" She asked me incredulously.

I told her I did.

"Well, Sunburst, you're an odd duck," she shrugged and shook her head. "But if this is what you want... Who am I to say anything? Congratulations. You must have impressed somepony. I hear the Seawall isn't a very easy posting to get."

"Thank you, Captain," I grinned like a fool. I was just so happy to get that news that I couldn't help it.

"Gonna miss you here in the guard. You've done good so far," she reached up with a forehoof and pushed some papers across her desk to me. "Your copy of the orders are right here. They're effective in two weeks. Is that enough time for you to be ready? You need any help with anything before then?"

"No thanks, Captain. That should be more than enough," I assured her. I meant it. Two weeks? Too long, really. I'd probably leave tomorrow if they'd let me. "I don't have much stuff. I'll just toss what I do have in storage somewhere and prepay for the six months 'til I get back. That's what I did last time. Never had any problems."

"Heh. Sounds like you've already got it figured out," she nodded.

I suppose I did.

I suppose I've had my exit from this guard posting figured out for a while, at least in the sense that I need to make one. I just didn't really know how it would happen or where I'd go next until now.

The feeling I have right now is a combination of sheer joy that it's the Seawall I'm going to because there's nowhere else in this world I'd rather be, and simple relief to have that piece of the exit puzzle solved because I know I can't really be here much longer.

I know what Captain Dash said, that I've been doing good here, but I've been struggling with exactly that thought. It's been very difficult lately for me. Am I really doing so well? I can't see how.

I've come to feel that the truth is I'm no good as a guard. I mean, sure, I can see how it could look like I am from outside. On the one hoof, I could just write it in and say that my responsibility is ensuring Princess Twilight's physical safety and I've done that, so mission accomplished, let's just call it good on that note and not think any further about it. On the other hoof, though, I can't lie to myself. My princess and my commanding officer are suffering. What use am I if I'm going to stand here, day after day, and just watch this happen? What good am I if I can't help either of them?

Everypony around would tell me that that's not my problem and not my responsibility. I know that as far as anything I'm actually on the hook for, they're right.

None of that changes how I feel.

I keep having dreams about it - dreams of all kinds of places, it doesn't matter whether it's somewhere as far removed from everything as the Seawall or someplace as close and crowded as downtown Canterlot. A common thread runs through them. Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash are trapped and somepony just needs to bring them a key that would free them... And I can't do it. I try and I try, but I can't, something I'm terrified of always stops me. They always tell me it's not my fault, and that only makes me feel more pathetic.

I wake up in tears, cursing myself.

I should say something but I'm too scared. I should do something but I don't know how, not without feeling like I'll just screw things up even more. My confidence is just... Not there. It's wearing me away. I know it's only a matter of time before it makes me ineffective in other ways and I become a liability more than I am a value to have around as a guard.

It's time I admitted I'm a coward and I can't be the pony they need here. Best to just stand aside and hope that there's somepony else with the courage to do that who can come take my place.

It stabs at me in sharp little jabs day by day to watch them, the way I see all the little things now.

I have an old seashell I brought home from my previous tour at the Seawall. It's big, half the size of my head. I found it half-buried in the sand on the beach, long since emptied. I dug it out of the sand with my hooves. It was dirty at first, but I rinsed it off in the salt water of the ocean and when it was clean it shone brilliantly, with opalescent mother-of-pearl in delicate rainbow hues of green and pink over silky smooth ivory white underneath. It was beautiful, and I kept it as a souvenier to remind me of the wall in case I never saw a place like that again.

I listen to my seashell often, when I'm home and not doing anything else. When I hold that shell up to my ear, there's a sound, faint, so faint it's just barely but unmistakably there, of the ocean from which that shell came - the ocean on the far side of the wall. The sound is soothing, and calming, and having it nearby at hoof eases some of the pangs of my longing to see once again the place that it came from.

The sound of that shell takes me back to the lonely shore that I realize now I fell in love with while I was there because me and that place, we're the same. It's the sound of myself, what I really am.

This sound is part of why I can't stand to be here any more around the princess and the captain. In that softly rushing noise of the ocean surf, I hear them, too, because it's the same sound as me. In that sound I hear the silence of things they're not saying to each other because they can't. I hear their loneliness. I hear the mourning song of how things have to be for them because they think they can never have what they really want, not without losing everything. I hear the sound of complete solitude.

It's the sound of what I love but they can't escape.

It's wonderful but it's heartbreaking, the sound in that seashell.

That's enough to know that I need to leave here.

Excerpt XII

Seashell
XII

From the journal of Sunburst, October 16, 1329 YS:

It's over. Today was the last day I was a guard.

Tomorrow, in the dark of the early morning before the sun rises, I'll leave the city and follow the road until it fades away into nothing. Then I'll travel the trackless wilds beyond Equestria until I finally reach the Seawall, days from now. I and whoever the unicorn is who gets sent with me will relieve the ponies currently there waiting for us to send them home. They'll leave gladly, as quick as they can. They have families and friends who've been waiting a very long time to see them again.

Then there's six months of pure isolation. Six months of being alone with my thoughts.

That's right, just you and me, journal. Just you and me.

No more watching them. That will be a relief.

I suppose it's true that I'm running away, and I admit that. I do wish I was stronger, better equipped to handle this. At the same time, though, I feel that I can take my exit with dignity and at least a little bit of pride in myself. I'm not running away without any resolution, and that's what's important. My one major loose end is tied off, as much as I'm able to do so.

I've realized that part of what makes this so difficult is that a pony can be helped only so much as they realize that they want to be. Sometimes most of the battle isn't as much about intervention on your part as it is about getting them to that realization - when a pony has a smudge on their face, they don't need somepony else to clean it off for them, they just need a mirror held up so they can see things as they are and then they'll clean themselves. To that end, I developed a plan. I was scared I would chicken out and not execute it, but I did it somehow, and that... That's what counts.

It's a longshot, but it's the only shot there is, and I took it.

Before I came to the palace for my last day, I found my way back to that little flowershop where I'd probed at the differences between white and red roses. It's a little out of my way, but I couldn't think of a better place to do this. This felt like where my inklings about the captain and the princess began all those months ago, so it seemed... Poetic, or something. I don't know. Maybe I just don't know where else to buy flowers right off the top of my head.

The same pale pink coated earth pony mare was there behind the counter. The same explosion of colors in fresh, vibrant blooms still surrounded her.

"Hi!" She greeted me with that same cheery voice and a morning-fresh smile. Again I noticed her pretty jade green eyes, colored in perfect compliment to her coat and mane. I actually think I got lost in them for just a second. I don't usually find myself getting drawn to other mares like that, but I realized she's really attractive to me. It didn't last too long, though. I couldn't really afford much time before my last shift was supposed to start so I shook it off.

"Good morning!" I nodded back to her. "I think I'd like to get some roses, please."

"Great! And, umm... Well, what is it you're hoping to say with these roses, if I can ask?" she inquired.

I gathered that she was really asking, most essentially, what color I wanted. The answer to that was obvious.

In my dreams the key they always needed was always the same color.

"Red," I answered her. "I need to say what it is that red says, to... Well, to somepony I've known for a very long time and I... Haven't been able to say that to before. And I need to say how strongly I've felt it, and I need to say it loud enough to make up for a lot of lost time feeling it without being able to tell her. I need to say I should have done this a long time ago, because I need this... Because I know we both need this... And how I feel is deeper than the ocean and higher than the sky. We can't pretend it's not there and I can't keep living without this anymore."

She stared at me for a moment with wide eyes, taken with surprise.

"... You don't have anything like that, do you?" I asked hopefully.

"Wow," she said quietly. She thought for a moment. "I think... You're gonna have to say that from your heart, 'cause as nice as flowers are, even I have to admit they only go so far. But maybe I can get you a good running start." She turned to some of the many flowers filling her little shop and scrutinized a variety of roses. She started sifting through them. "It'd have to be... Ahhh... Yes. Yes, here. These." She pulled out a particular selection of a dozen red roses, then laid them on the counter. "These are the best of anything I can get you, for what... What you want to say."

She said they were the best and they looked it. I don't think I've ever seen a more saturated, vividly dark intense crimson. They were deep burgundy red like rich wine... Like the lifeblood straight from a vein. The petals of every bloom were perfect, flawless in their delicate curves and smoother and softer than the best satin or silk. Their scent was a gentle perfume that spoke of the fondest days of spring sunshine, with an erotic undertone of warm nights, in a subtleness that paradoxically made it seem even more emphatic because of the attention it quietly but unmistakably commanded.

I don't even know anything about flowers, but I could tell anypony without hesitating that these... These were pure sex appeal on long elegant thorny stems. I suppose that being the reproductive organs of the plant, that is an apt way to view flowers generally, but these were just above and beyond. These were elite supermodels.

These were the kind of flowers you give a princess.

"These are just... Amazing. Perfect," I said quietly. "I'll take them." I didn't care what the price was. Money has little meaning where I'm going for the next six months anyway.

The shopkeeper wrapped them up carefully in tissue paper, tied together with a little string, and I paid. I gently packed them into my saddle bag, where they would go unseen.

"So who's the lucky mare?" The flower selling pony behind the counter winked at me and smiled. "She sounds pretty amazing."

"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you..." I think my voice was a little unsteady.

"Don't wanna say, huh? That's alright, I understand," she nodded. "Nervous?"

I nodded.

"Well, don't worry about it, a lot of ponies get nervous," she reassured me. "Don't be, though. She'll love 'em."

"I hope so," I nodded. "Thanks for your help. I gotta get going. Gotta be at work soon..."

I started to walk away.

"Good luck!" She called after me enthusiastically.

Yeah. I thought to myself. They're gonna need it...

When I got in, I stashed the flowers in my locker and changed into my armor. Slipping on that chainmail coat is something I can't tell yet if I'm going to miss or be kind of glad to not have to do for the next six months. I'll bring one out there to the wall, of course, just in case. It is still a military posting and I can't get caught unequipped, but I can't honestly anticipate needing armor. I doubt it'll get worn.

I said a lot of goodbyes throughout the day. Most of them were the other guards in my section. I haven't gone out of my way to ever really hang out outside the job or get particularly close, but I guess looking back at it a certain kind of bond just naturally forms when you're around a group of ponies working and training with them for this long. I think this day was probably a personal record for the most hugs I've ever gotten.

One in particular meant the most to me. I haven't been able to help but get a little attached to Princess Twilight's student, Azure Sky. I guess the feeling is mutual. When she hugged me goodbye she threw her forelegs around my neck and clung to me with a grip that seemed several times stronger than should be possible for a little unicorn filly her size. I'm still suspicious that it was magic assisted, whether she was conscious of using it or not. Unicorns have been known to react with surprisingly forceful bursts of reflexive telekinesis and other effects at emotional or distressing times, and she's already very powerful as it is even when she's calm.

"Why can't you stay here and keep us all safe?" She asked sadly.

"Got new orders. I'm sorry, Azure," I felt like kind of a heel even as I said it, though. I didn't know how to tell her that I'd requested those new orders, and I could have foreseeably still been here for a very long time if I hadn't. But how do you explain this, all of these circumstances pushing me to it, to a child? I just don't know.

No, I'm not entirely proud of every aspect of how I'm running away and leaving. I just don't know another way.

"Will you at least come back to say hi sometime?" She asked.

"In six months or so, when I get back to Canterlot again, I suppose I can," I told her. "If it's alright with Princess Twilight."

"It will be. She says friends are as important as books and reading," Azure told me. "And that means really, really important. So I know it'll be fine."

I didn't tell her I've never been so much of one for friends, exactly. Maybe she's right. Maybe some friends are important, or should be more important at least than I've made them. I suppose I could try it out. I guess we'll see if that notion sticks by the time I get back half a year from now.

"Alright. I'll see what I can do, when the time comes," I finally told her.

"Good," she nodded. "Goodbye, Sunburst."

"Goodbye, Azure," I gave her one last squeeze. She kissed me on the cheek and then let me go.

Eventually the shift was finally over. In the locker room I took off my armor for the last time, and put on my saddlebag. I stepped out into the hallway.

Captain Dash's office was only one door down. I waited until every other pony had gone on ahead of me, and I slipped in and closed the door behind myself silently. I opened my saddlebag and took out the flowers, and unwrapped them from the thin veil of tissue paper protecting them until now. This was it, the moment of truth. I left the roses on Captain Dash's desk.

I wrote a note to go with them, and left it lying on top of the bouquet where she would easily find it:

Captain Dash,

I know that this must seem strange, but I felt like I had to do this. These roses are beautiful, but they'll wither away quickly and before we know it they'll be gone. The memory of what they meant and how special they were will be all that's left. The lives of ponies are like that, too. You know that it doesn't do to waste the time that you have wanting something but being too afraid to ever take your chance.

Please, take these and give them to her. Tell her how you feel before it's too late. She feels the same way. I've seen it in you both. I've been watching it all this time. Don't let that slip away from you.

You both deserve to be happy and you can be, together. I believe that more than I've ever believed anything.

Goodbye.

I snuck back out of her office and I left the palace for the last time, and that was that. It seems such a simple, small thing, leaving behind some flowers and hoping it's enough to strike a spark, but it's the only thing I can think of. I've done all I can for them. The rest is up to them... As it must be.

What'll happen to me for this? I don't know. I know that the captain will know it was me, the first thing she'll do is put two and two together with the flowers just happening to show up on my very last day. Maybe I'll get chewed out. Maybe nothing will happen. Either way I'll very shortly be out of anypony's reach for six months, so it'll be a pretty cold issue by the time I can possibly get yelled at anyway. Besides, I didn't mention any names in that note, only pronouns, so I didn't expose anypony to any real risk of scandal or embarrassment. Plausible deniability, always keep it handy for things like this.

Besides everything else, Captain Dash isn't the kind of pony who flips out about this kind of thing. She'll understand that it was meant in good intention, even if she doesn't decide to take the suggestion and act on it. No, something tells me it'll all be okay.

At the end of it all, it's worth whatever risk there is. I'm glad I walk away with my head held high.

And with that, I'm done here.

My saddlebags are packed, and I'm ready. Enough writing. Time for me to grab a few hours of sleep, then grab my stuff and go.

See you in the fashion pages, Canterlot.

Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle

Seashell
XIII

Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle,

I received your letter, waiting for me upon my return to Canterlot from duty on the Seawall. I regret that I was not able to respond any sooner, but of course the Seawall is too distant and isolated for mail service to be available there. It is a very lonely place.

I'm extremely happy for both you and Captain Rainbow Dash, and deeply pleased to hear that you're finally able to pursue a romantic relationship in the open in the same way any other couple would be able to. Hunting through old newspaper issues in the Canterlot Library to get myself caught up on things here in Equestria after my return, I did note that in the first days after your public acknowledgement of your relationship there was the expected controversy and public hesitance about the idea of a princess romantically involving herself with another mare, especially a close member of her staff. I know that your situation must have been difficult, and that it must have been exactly these kinds of hazards and issues both you and Captain Dash feared so much. I'm sorry that those kinds of things helped keep you apart for so long. However, I was also highly satisfied to see that any such problems were largely quenched after Princesses Celestia and Luna put their hooves down firmly in your support.

I was also humbled to learn that you had put in your recommendation that I receive a decoration. Your gratitude is very flattering to me, but no special thanks are necessary.

It is the duty of any protector to look after her master's well-being, and of any soldier to do what her nation and its leaders need her to. That's really all I did, if perhaps in a way not strictly considered conventional.

A few roses may have been an unusual choice of weapon, but I found that they were just the thing called for in helping you achieve this victory.

I did of course face a difficult decision about how far the scope of such a duty extends. I worried for a very long time that to do or to say anything would be overstepping the bounds of subordination and obedience. I was scared of doing more harm than good. I'll be honest and tell you that I doubted myself. I had difficulty in admitting to myself what I was seeing. I thought at first that it would be for the best if I simply kept your secret silently. I found in the end that I couldn't do that - living a lie, and seeing the two of you living in suffering for it, is something that my conscience just wouldn't let me accept restfully.

As to the question of how I knew about you and Rainbow Dash and why I was finally driven to act as I did... I've wondered that at times myself. It still seems like a dream in some ways, and a little unreal even to me that I would be caught up in such a simultaneously wonderful and frightening thing as bringing about a realization of true love. It all seems very much like something out of a fairy tale, doesn't it?

All I can tell you with certainty right now is that I heard it in the voice of a child and the song of a seashell.

If that seems esoteric (and I know it does, I'm sorry), a better and more detailed explanation might be in the things I've already written over the course of the time I was in that situation. For that reason, you'll find enclosed with this letter copies I've made of some selected entries from a journal I kept while all this was going on. These excerpts are all numbered and dated and in the proper order, of course, for your convenience.

I hope that these will help make everything clear. I feel greatly honored to have been able to play a part in all this.

Proud to have served you,
Sunburst

PS., Please tell Azure Sky that I said hello, and that I hope she's not staying up too late at night, even if it is understandable for a worthy cause like reading to pursue knowledge. Little ponies need their rest!

Dear Sunburst

Seashell
XIV

Dear Sunburst,

Thank you, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU so much for what you did for Princess Twilight and Captain Dash!

They're a lot happier now than they were before. Princess Twilight laughs all the time. Captain Dash smiles at her when she does. They never used to do that. They're so happy now that they told the whole world they love each other - they told their old friends from the town they lived in before, and the newspaper reporters, and the other princesses, and everything. And a few ponies said they didn't like it at first, but guess what? You were right, it's not a big deal. It turns out a princess can be a fillyfooler and it's okay!

When I asked them what changed to make this happen, they told me that you helped them see things the way they really are. Captain Dash said you gave her a kick in the flank that she couldn't give herself because when she saw the flowers you left and read your note, she realized that if it was so easy for somepony else to see, it was time to just give up and stop pretending not to feel like she does. She gave Princess Twilight those roses that night and told her everything about how much she liked her, and Princess Twilight felt the same way. Then they kissed. I'm not too sure what's so great about kissing, but it seems to make them very very happy. I guess it's a grown-up thing.

Captain Dash said she'd been waiting so many years for that kiss, and she thought it would never happen, but now they can because of you. I think you're the best guard ever. You really did just what Princess Twilight needed to save her from being sad and lonely when nopony else could.

She said she felt like she'd been dying slowly for a long time, but now she feels alive again. I think you saved her life in a kind of way.

Do you think you'll ever come back and be a guard at the palace again? I hope you will someday. If you ask the princess I bet she can get them to give you the orders for it.

You should, because it would be awesome to see you again. That's what Captain Dash would say - awesome. I sometimes think she likes that word almost as much as she likes Princess Twilight.

I have to go to class soon, but I'll write you another letter later. I hope you write back. Bye!

Your friend,
Azure Sky

PS., I am NOT staying up too late reading!

The End

Author's Note

Afterword:

Well, it's done, and I couldn't be more pleased with how the process of writing this story went.

After the multiple-months long tortuous ordeals that Scent of Roses and Born in Equestria proved to be, writing this story flew by at what was an incredible pace to me - most chapters were substantially written in about a day, then took a few days more for revision and cleanup to be in shape for publishing.

It's amazing how much you can get done when you actually feel good about yourself instead of being depressed and drained all the time. Ever since I finished Born in Equestria, in particular, my mood has picked up a lot. That story really needed to be finished being written before I could have ever been ready to write this story, or continue making progress with the story of my own life for that matter.

But it's all done, and the good results I've found in my efforts here are an important validation of my success in starting a new chapter, so this story is pretty significant to me. It's also significant in that it's the first romance I've ever written (even if maybe from an oddly indirect perspective), so that's been interesting too. Exploring Sunburst's personality and her character is pretty fun.

To tell the truth, it's been a great source of inflection, there's a lot of myself in her.

In particular, the Seawall is directly inspired by a real place that I've been: San Clemente Island. While I was in the Navy I had the opportunity to visit San Clemente Island for three days. It was sort of an odd and surreal thing, being there, because it was, even in the middle of an otherwise completely awful experience in the surrounding time, three of the best days of my life. I loved it. I was alone, almost completely, for those three days. I was pretty much on my own to explore, and I did just that. I walked. I walked for hours every day. I walked along the roads, then I left the roads and picked my way through the thorny low growing bushes and cactus patches until I found my way to dunes of fine white sand, which is the closest thing that island has to a beach of sorts. Once I reached the shore, which is mostly jagged rocks, I walked along that for a while, watching all the sea life, which has always fascinated me. In the sand I did find a couple of good sized seashells, which I still have.

And yes, there was a wall there. It wasn't literally a seawall, but it was something close enough. It was a lonely concrete and rebar barrier in the middle of nowhere, used for (as far as I can tell) tactical exercises and training, probably by special forces candidates. There was no one around for miles while I was there, though.

You can actually see it yourself via satellite photo. Take a look at this link:
The wall on San Clemente Island

Yep. That thin black looking line running at about a 30 degree angle from lower left toward upper right? That, in real life, is where the Seawall came from.

In fact, the very first journal entry that starts this story was written as a stand-alone short piece, basically me recording some of my feelings about being on San Clemente but through the lens of the experiences of a pony original character instead. Only much later, nearly two years now, did I realize that through Sunburst's eyes and her experiences with this kind of thing would make for an interestingly unique perspective from which to tell the TwiDash story that I wanted to do now that I was finally done with Born in Equestria.

Thus, Seashell rapidly evolved from that fusion, an asocial military pony seeking her place alone in the world intertwined with two ponies whose positions make them alone even while they can't stop themselves from loving each other and trying not to admit it.

I guess all I can say is, I hope it worked. I hope you have enjoyed this. I know I had fun writing it, at least, so that's something worthwhile.

Thanks for reading! :)

Oh, and...