* * *
Indiscretions, Part One
by Jeffrey C. Wells
* * *
It was cold.
This was nothing new. I live in a mountain fastness, thousands of feet above the unquestionably deadly forest floor below. And when I say "fastness", I mean "hole". And when I say "hole", I mean "cold hole". And when I say "cold hole", I mean "desolate grey rockweed-choked semi-habitable glorified rabbit-warren with attached parade-ground whose night-time ambient lows will positively freeze your teats to blackened nubs".
I misspoke.
But, I am being rude. Welcome, welcome to the National Redoubt, the last habitable zone in all Equestria, clinging precariously at and carved rudely into the top of the Celestia Pinnacle. My name is Cadence, titled First Scholar of Unicornia after the last First Scholar of Unicornia plummeted to his death several months ago in our desperate attempt to achieve this place ahead of the burgeoning Forest; for your reference, he had held his position for a bit over a week, commencing when the last First Scholar before him was throttled to death by assassin vines in her own study during the fall of Everfree. You are, hypothetically, standing in a place where no earthbound pony was ever meant to be, a pegasus war-camp founded by Commander Hurricane herself in the early days of Equestria. Stout-hearted and stout-winged centurions-to-be once came here to test their mettle against the elements and train in some of the worst conditions our then-pastoral country had to offer. It also was, and still is, the bastion of the Solar Throne, a thing that we must keep safe; with the ruination of the Elements of Harmony, it is the last remaining artifact supporting the tattered shreds of the Equestrian borders, now encircling no greater territory than this one bleak mountain. The Redoubt is the most defensible point in all Equestria because – in the words of my friend Auric – you would have to be a common barking idiot to even think of trying to come up here in the first place, much less attack it. It is a place of last resort. It was never meant to be a home.
Nevertheless, there are five thousand of us ponies – the last remnant of an entire species – who are trying to call it that.
Why did you even, hypothetically, come here, again? You'd be better off in your reading-lounge, or wherever it is you're taking in these words. Though I do not like to presume, I would wager you have warmth and food in comparatively abundant supply where you are. All we have to offer you is rockweed. Boiled, it is tuberous, starchy and bland. Pan-seared, it is tuberous, starchy, bland, and somewhat carbonized. It is, quite literally, all that we eat. I detest the stuff, have always detested it, and yet am forced to consume it in even more vast quantities than usual, as I am eating enough of it for two.
I was staring at the moon to-night, as I do every night, out on my little balcony overlooking the endless cloud sea. As First Scholar, I was afforded a relatively choice apartment in these ancient barracks, and my little suite of rooms was probably the lodging of a quite high-ranking pegasus official, back in the day. Even so, it's not luxurious – nothing in the National Redoubt can be considered that, not even the Princess's day-rooms – but the tiny private flight-deck is a godsend inasmuch as standing on my balcony looking at the moon is all that I seem to do, anymore. I once was a stargazer, an astrologer, and I have even retained a tool of my old trade; at great personal risk to myself, I salvaged a single telescope from my observatory in Everfree before the timber wolves took the place. I might have traded any number of books from Clover the Clever's now-lost archives for its weight, but I was determined to save at least one astronomical instrument from the doomed city. For all I know, it is the last extant telescope in all Equestria. I nearly perished on two separate occasions during the ascent of the Pinnacle trying to keep it safe, its mirrors and lenses un-cracked, and through a series of miracles, I managed to bring it whole and sound to the Redoubt, whereupon I installed it on my balcony and proceeded to never again touch it, save for a little oiling now and again. I have lost interest in stars, their names and colors. I only look at the moon. And I will look at it, every night, until the day that I die.
For whatever reason you decided to join me, you came to-night (as opposed to any other night) because it is an anniversary, or at least, because a certain individual will presume that it is an anniversary, even when it is not. At the time you see me, I had been standing on my windy little balcony for hours, moongazing. My back was clenched, my ribs ached, and I badly needed to make water, as it seemed I could not go even a few minutes between-times anymore. But I would be damned if I let being great with foal change my habits; my habits are all that I have left.
The door squeaked. The scene begins in earnest.
"How may I assist my Princess Everfree?" I said, not turning around. I'd been waiting for her to come through that door all evening, and had left it ajar for that very reason. I knew full well who it was. She is nothing if not predictable.
She did not speak, at first. Her boots clicked against the naked stone floor of my quarters as she approached the balcony and then joined me on it. Her "hair", visible in the corner of my eye moments before the mare herself was, was a corona of teal and rose and cobalt and cerulean blue, and it flowed in the ethereal currents of the Stream, which, as always, have no relation to any earthly wind. It had been months since I'd seen the elder Princess's true mane, which would always reappear at night when she passed charge of the skies to her sister – under the circumstances, I did not expect to see it again, ever. Pity, as it was always Sola's most attractive feature. Then again, I've always been partial to pink, which is fortunate, considering that pink is all that I am.
"How long will I wear that title, I wonder?" mused the Princess, joining me at the black iron railing of the flight-deck. "Now that Everfree is gone, how long will I remain 'Sola, Princess Everfree'? Rather than merely 'Sola'? Or perhaps 'You there'?"
"As long as Everfree exists as a concept in ponies' minds, Highness, you will be princess of it," I said, diplomatically.
"And how long will that be?" she said. "Do you suppose?"
I shrugged, resting my hooves against the rail. "Anypony's guess. I am an empiricist, Highness. Speculation is not in my nature."
"Mm," she said, breathing in the night air as though she were trying to track some half-remembered scent. The Princess smells things, with an intensity that borders on obsession. It is a strange habit, a holdover from her primitive roots, perhaps. Her long-ago childhood, I understand, was spent amongst the savage dawn ponies of her father's country several universes away, and there is always a suggestion of animalistic wariness about her actions. Her sister Luna was always more prim, and reserved, and cultured, and above all, careful. Luna had always been so much more desperate to fit in…
"Two years ago this day," said Sola, "I distinctly recall taking a rather marvelous bath. I had just acquired some wonderfully aromatic lavender salts, and so I fixed myself a cup of chamomile, ran the water good and hot, and just let myself melt. Then I put on white terry, climbed to Everfree's observation tower, and commanded the sun to set over the grasslands beyond the city wall, flooding the land with gold. It was sublime, Cadence."
"Two years ago on this day I expect I had my muzzle stuck in a book," I said. "Odds favor it."
"It has been a long two years."
"Yes," I said. "It has."
"I have a gift for you," said the Princess, producing a coal-black ball with a glimmer of golden-pale telekinetic energy. "We found a firesphere nestled inside one of the chests we saved from the treasury. I believe it once belonged to one of my accountants. He likely used it to keep warm when delving into the vaults."
"There's a large free-standing crucible near my alchemical table," I replied, diffidently. "You may deposit it there on your way out. I may use it."
"You ought to use it," urged the Princess. "It's absolutely frigid in your room, and that's no state for a young mother-to-be to be in. Your foal is twenty days overdue already. It's not natural for a pony to be gravid for more than a year. You need your health."
"I enjoy the cold," I said, lying.
"It isn't a question of what you do or don't enjoy," said the Princess. "This is your unborn foal we're speaking of. I'm certain you realize that this will be the first unicorn our people have produced since we lost Everfree?"
I see. "Produced". Thank you, Sola.
The Princess continued, heedless, blessedly unable to read my thoughts – Mother Sky help us all should she find that power some day. "This is a question of duty, Cadence. Your tribe is counting on you to bring a healthy colt or filly into the world."
"Filly," I said, automatically.
"You are certain?"
"A mother knows."
"I see," Sola said. "Have you picked a name?"
"Cadence," I said. "The name of my dam, and her dam before her. A tradition of my family's."
"A good tradition," said Sola. "Naturally, there will be a celebration when the happy day arrives. Our people must know that all three tribes will pass this crisis, not just the comparatively fecund ones."
"How nice," I replied, gazing out over the cold blue cloud-layer. "Not even born, and already hoof-chosen as a beacon of hope for the future. I had hoped that perhaps you would wait until she was out of my belly to begin loading saddle-bags on her."
"Keep your tongue civil," chided the Princess. "I permit your disrespect because we are alone, and because your scholarship provided a great service to us during the war, but my patience is not endless."
"Forgive, Highness," I murmured.
"Granted," said Sola, primly. "And to answer your concern, symbols are important to the people. Starvation will not kill our race, nor will cold, nor disease."
"No," I said, "what will kill our race is something called 'lack of minimum viable population'. We are hovering on the brink of Death by Biological Fact, Princess. It hangs over us like a hammer and will destroy us as surely as any timber wolf."
"Be that as it may," said the Princess, "What will assuredly kill our race is the lack of hope. And hope comes from symbols."
"Yes," I said, "I'm certain this came as a great consolation to the team of ponies you assigned to haul an entire statue up the side of a mountain."
Sola paused, measuring her words. "You have always been so practical, Cadence," she said, eventually. "I do not expect you to fully understand."
"I am science, you are philosophy," I quipped, bitterly. "Whatever I say bounces off you and sticks again to me."
"The statue of our adversary, Discord, stands in mute testament to the fact that we have conquered greater foes than the ones that now face us," said Sola, impatiently, "and yet have survived."
"But we haven't!" I exclaimed, turning toward her for the first time to-night. "We haven't conquered anything! We were obviously completely wrong!"
"How do you mean?" asked Sola, her eyes narrow.
"Discord and the draconequus are not one and the same, Sola," I said. "You've turned part of him to stone. An important part, yes. A physical manifestation that he put perhaps too much of himself into. Neutralizing that creature has hobbled him, perhaps for centuries. But look down into that deadly living forest at the foot of the Pinnacle and you tell me that you don't see Discord's hoofwork in it, in every wooden predator, every bloodthirsty creeper-vine. And that's just the start of it! You haven't seen some of the samples the long scouts have brought back. Did you know that there's a new little blue flower in the mix that can actually change ponies' shapes, whose only apparent governor is how funny the end result will be? Does that sound like anypony you know?"
Sola had the grace to remain silent.
"Discord is this land, Sola," I continued. "The truth is, plants do grow by themselves, animals do feed themselves, and weather just happens. Chaos is reality. Equestria was merely a thin sheet of order that we laid over it." I turned away from her, struggling, as ever, to find the perfect words. "No, not even so durable as that," I continued. "Equestria was a soap-bubble, Princess. A pleasant dream of control that we woke up from the moment you banished Luna to the moon."
My back was turned to the Princess, and I was unable to see her face; but her voice, when it came, was a portrait of grim composure.
"You speak of Equestria in the past tense," she said.
"Look at us!" I shouted. "Look at our proud country! It's dead, Sola! You're not 'Sola, Princess Equestria' anymore! You're not 'Sola, Princess Everfree'! You're the princess of a tiny band of survivors living on a barren finger of rock! You're 'Sola, Princess Celestia Pinnacle'! That's all! Mighty sovereign of a single military fortification where nopony other than particularly masochistic pegasi ought to even go, much less live! We used to be light and culture and learning, Sola, stretching our vision in every direction. Now there are five thousand of us left, and the farthest we can see is the length of a dusty parade-ground."
I squeezed my eyes shut. "So there," I said. "I've said it. You're no longer Princess Everfree to me. You're the queen of a trotting-yard, a cantering-lot. Are you happy with your kingdom?"
"My sister is lost to me, forever," said Sola, evenly. "Her foalish decision to let the demon Envy into her soul nearly destroyed our world. When I used the only power at my disposal great enough to banish the thing my sister had become, I inadvertently broke it. And the borders, which we had so carefully drawn with that same power, fell in an instant, and the Forest rushed in, and hundreds of thousands of my people perished. My hoof was forced at every step, Cadence, and every decision I made caused yet more death and suffering. You dare ask me now whether or not I am happy?"
"The Elements were always fueled by the sisterly harmony the two of you possessed," I said, clenching my chewing-teeth. "You used them to break themselves, you stupid bitch."
"I could end you," said Sola, with odious dispassion. "I will not, as I am kind, but please remember that I could."
"You should have known," I muttered, turning away and shaking my head. "I could have warned you, had you thought to ask me."
"And what would you have had me do?" asked Sola. "Let Nightmare Moon walk free? We cannot exist without land, but we cannot exist without light, either. And no earthly prison can hold a thing of smoke. It was the moon or Tartarus, Cadence. I chose the merciful option."
"No," I said. "You did not. I am the world's foremost authority on the Elements of Harmony, Sola, and I know more than anypony what they are capable of. Auric Turncoat and I were there from the start, helping you and Luna with them, every step of the way."
"Please don't utter the name of that flip-flop of a griffin," said Sola. "He is distasteful, and remains among us squandering our limited resources on my hair-thin forbearance alone. And the foremost authority on the Elements is, and will always be, my father in Eohippus. He showed us where to find them, provided the notes that you used to quicken them."
"Your father left us bread-crumbs!" I said. "Only I truly understand the Elements! And I understand them enough to know that when used by a being with no malice in her heart, they can be used to drive out demons, not just banish their vessels!"
"It was not an option," said Sola, briskly. "You were not with us on Twin Skies. You cannot understand."
"What I understand," I replied, "is that you have malice in your heart. And that you likely used the Elements in anger, not love. And that decision stole Luna from us, sundered the borders, and destroyed your kingdom. Congratulations, 'Princess Celestia'," I finished, spitting the name.
Sola, Princess Celestia, shuddered. "I came here to you on the anniversary of my sister's banishment, Cadence, because I thought you would be vulnerable, and that you might need my comfort. I see now that this was a mistake."
"The anniversary of your sister's banishment," I said, "was eleven days ago. If you wanted me vulnerable, you should have shown yourself then. But I knew that you would come to-night, instead. Because I know you."
Sola blinked.
"I see," she said, coming to the proper conclusion commendably quickly. "I've… come on the solar anniversary."
"Yes, the sun," I said. "On which you decreed our calendar should be based, I might add. We had to go in and drop little piles of days all over it, like cupcake sprinkles, just to make the lunar months match the sun-cycle. Had you shown up eleven days ago, as any astronomer would have advised you to do, I might have been weak. You might have broken me. But you came to-night, because no matter what you proclaim, it has always and ever been about you."
"I should go," said the Princess, walking back in the direction of my dusty and utterly untouched alchemical equipment, holding the black firesphere in her telekinetic grip.
"Yes, you should," I said. "Please do, in fact."
"I haven't asked, and you've never said," Sola remarked, hovering the sphere over the crucible-stand, her face turned away from me. "I've never seen you with a stallion, with your foal's sire. Which means that my decisions were probably the end of him. And you must hate me for that."
"Yes," I said. "I do. I always will. And I will tell my foal, in no uncertain terms, why she has only a dam in this world, not a sire, and who exactly is to blame."
"Cadence," said Sola, her voice weary and aching, "I… realize that I have never apologized to you personally for that. There were so many monumental apologies I needed to make, for Everfree, for the country at large. I have never once told you that above and beyond an entire nation of woe, I am sorry for your deep and personal loss."
"No," I said. "You have never."
"An oversight which itself requires yet more forgiveness," said Sola. "I am… a thousand times sorry for what I've done to you."
"Mm."
Sola sighed, heavily. "I suppose I deserve no better," she said. "If I may ask, who was he?"
"Your sister," I said.
The firesphere dropped into my crucible with a heavy thunk.
* * *
Indiscretions, Part Two
by Jeffrey C. Wells
* * *
"Your sister," I said.
The firesphere dropped into my crucible with a heavy thunk. It began, quietly, to sizzle.
"Excuse me?" said Sola, her haunches still turned.
"Pardon, Highness," I said. "Did I not enunciate well? The father of the child is your sister, Princess Luna. You didn't render my foal sireless when the Forest claimed Everfree, or in the hegira that followed. You rendered her sireless the instant you lit this dread fire that now consumes us. You banished my child's father to the moon, Sola. And I will never forgive."
Sola was silent for some time.
"Disgusting," she eventually said.
"Ah, so now the enlightened and liberal monarch shows her true colors," I sneered. "She who delivered the much fawned-over 'Love is Love' proclamation from the steps of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters once upon a time. When it comes to her own sister, though, how quick her airy words turn to accusations of abomination and fillyfoolery."
"You are a dolt, Cadence," she replied. "I expected so much better from that mind. Love is still love, although in these dark times I would certainly encourage any prospective fillyfoolers to have a fruitful dalliance or two with a stallion on the side first. What disgusts me is that these are the depths to which she'd sink." Sola began pacing through my workspace. "Shapeshifting," she uttered, as though the word were an oath. "The very apex of Discord-magic. Turning herself male, and for what? Was endless night not enough for her? Did she need an heir as well, need it so badly that she would sleep with the enemy in such a way?"
"Thank you," I said.
"Not you, you foal," Sola said. "I mean to say, 'throw in with the dark arts of our adversary'. Wholeheartedly."
"It's not what you think, Sola," I said.
"Then tell me," said Sola, rounding on me, "what it is."
I paused, willing my treacherous jaw to cease its trembling.
"She looked at me," I began. "For years, she looked at me. Ever since I entered marehood. I don't expect you even noticed. At first, I thought that they were the affectionate glances of a patroness of science toward a skilled pupil of the discipline. It would be vanity to think otherwise, blasphemy. Even when she invited me to come adventuring with you, back when Auric and I served as your retainers while the two of you went off questing for the Elements together, I thought it was the height of folly to think that there was anything more to it than that.
"For years, I was so convinced. Until one night at the Everfree Gala, the last one ever, in fact, though we were oblivious of it at the time. I used to always dress in my Academy formalwear for the occasion, remember? But that year, my good friend Exquisite demanded, just demanded to fit me with a proper ball-gown for once in my life. So she created this… thing, with silk, and pearls, and crinoline."
"Yes," said Sola. "It was striking."
"It was ridiculous," I said. "Never again, I promised myself, and how true that ended up becoming. But my tastes are not the world's tastes, and I was afforded some measure of celebrity because of my gown's perceived beauty, and I would be a liar if I said I did not enjoy the attentions. I was even approached by your sister, the Princess. And she was shy and recalcitrant, as always, and she masked it by using that thunderous voice and formal manner of hers, as always. And then she requested we quit the party for a time, to 'catch up'. We were all so close when we were questing, just her, and me, and you, and Auric. Do you remember?"
"I remember."
"We quit the ballroom for the Salon of the Constellations, and we sat on a divan together beneath the starlight, and we talked, for what seemed like hours. At first it was trivia, what had happened to us since those days on the road, our triumphs and setbacks. And then it became more… intimate."
There was a long pause, of my own making.
"Details?" said Sola, eventually.
"No," I decided. "They are not for your ears. What you must know, though, is that at the end, she asked me to dance with her. Out on the ballroom floor, in full view of everypony. And I was terrified, Sola. To be seen dancing with a Princess of the Realm would be a thing of incendiary scandal, the height of indiscretion. I would be devoured by the Court, eaten alive by gossip. But I was a loyal servant of the Crown, and to refuse her request was anathema. So I was taken by panic, and I blurted out the first thing that came to mind."
I swallowed, hard, trying vainly to move a lump.
"I… told her to ask your permission, first."
Another silence.
"That was the end of it, I wager," said Sola, quietly.
"We did not speak again," I said. "Not until Night Eternal, when she was already half-gone, and I could not tell for certain which words were hers and which the Nightmare's. She came to my tower in the final hours before Twin Skies; if my understanding of the timeline is correct, it was her very last act before going to meet you there.
"She gloated, or the Nightmare did. She boasted of her inevitable triumph over you. She said she had 'special things' in mind for me and that I would rule at her right hoof when she returned. She offered me half the sky, Sola. She told me that as Princess of the Realm, I would no longer have need to fear the silly courtesans, that I could dismiss or even execute any of them at my whim, any that violated my tiniest pleasure. Then, she said, we could finally have our dance."
I closed my eyes and turned back to my balcony. "And when she said those words, a softness came over her. Perhaps she remembered the night of the Gala, how close we almost were, before I ruined everything. I thought for a moment I could sense Princess Luna again, underneath the sneer and purr of the Nightmare.
"She lifted me, bodily, with her magic, and carried me to my own bed. She told me that, inevitable triumph or no, all things must eventually pass, and she would need something of herself to carry on into eternity when she was dust, and it was then that I knew that she feared you, feared you more than anything. She set me down, and lay with me, hide to hide, and I felt… something pass between us. It was warm, and light, and it felt like a dram of distilled joy.
"And that was it," I concluded. "She told me she loved me, kissed me softly, once, and then left my chambers. I never saw her again."
The firesphere crackled in its crucible, filling my rude apartment with warmth. I took little comfort from it.
"Did she request this act of you?" said Sola. "Or command it?"
"I was a loyal servant of the Crown," I whispered. "Absent you, they were one and the same."
"I see."
After a time, Sola joined me at the balcony again. "You realize," she continued, calmly, "that you should have told me that you were carrying the child of the Nightmare long before this."
"It's not the Nightmare's child!" I snarled, the tears coming at last. "It's Luna's! It's your sister's! This is your niece, Sola, and if you so much as lay a hoof on her, so help me, I will destroy you, or die trying!"
"That… was a very uncivil thing for me to have said, wasn't it."
"Yes," I said, trembling.
"Forgive me."
"No," I said. "Again, no. A thousand times, no, no, no."
"I will say another uncivil thing, then," said Sola. "The child of my sister, even diluted with mortal blood, may have enough of a command of the Stream that she could sit on the Solar Throne. I will make good on Luna's promise to you, Cadence. I will give to you and to your descendants half of the sky, as she offered."
"And who would teach her to use your artifact of power?" I said. "You, of course. I will not have my child become a student of yours, Sola. You will not touch her."
"Consider, Cadence. I offer you and your descendants a great gift."
"You offer them a great burden," I said. "This isn't benevolence. This is you, staring down the abyss of ages, unable to comprehend the task of managing both the Day and the Night for all eternity. Are you tired already, Sola?"
"Yes," she admitted, her voice small.
"Good," I said. "We'll both suffer together, you and I. We can be Suffering-Friends. As the world's foremost authority on the Elements of Harmony, I should inform you that you have not imprisoned your sister 'forever'. Years from now, a particular stellar conjunction will disrupt the harmonic energy of the binding spell you cast upon her for long enough for her to break it, if she is clever, and prepared. Luna is both. Mayhap she will have been chastened enough by that time that you can give her half the sky back. Or mayhap not."
"How long?" asked Sola. In all my years of knowing her, I had never once heard that pleading note in her voice. "How many years?"
"A thousand," I said. "Nine hundred ninety-nine, now."
Sola shook as though struck.
"I shall never last," she said.
"No," I said. "You shan't. And neither will our race. We will all be dead and gone by then, and Nightmare Moon will be queen of the insects that remain."
"I will not believe that," said Sola, mustering her resolve. "I cannot. I must begin making preparations, even now."
"Go, go," I said, reaffixing my bored and cynical mien, leaning my elbows on the railing, my ponderous belly nearly pulling my spine out of alignment. "Do what you need to do. Occupy yourself with games. I'll be here if you need to alternately threaten and cajole me further."
Sola crossed to the door. "Cadence," she said, at the last, "what am I going to do with you?"
"Endure me," I said.
"Indeed," replied Sola. "Good evening to you."
I heard her footsteps cross the threshold, her ponies-at-arms – doubtless posted on either end of the hall leading to my quarters – snapping to attention as they did.
"Thank you," I called out, abruptly, "for the firesphere. I… don't actually enjoy the cold."
"You are welcome, Cadence," said Sola. And then she was gone.
I gazed out over the cloud sea in silence for a time as the steel-shod hooves of the Princess's guards retreated into the depths of the National Redoubt.
"I need to wee," I said, to nopony in particular.
A shadow dislodged itself from the rocks outside my window, flitted down to my balcony, and lighted upon it.
"What an absolute cock that mare is," said the shape, coming into the glow of my lamps.
"Hello, Auric," I said, to my best friend in the entire remaining world. "You heard, then?"
"Every word," he said, vainly inspecting a wing, then knitting up a single frayed primary with his beak. "Odious."
"She called my foal a child of the Nightmare."
"Oh, yes, quite outrageous of her," said Auric, yawning. He began counting points off on his aquiline claws. "I mean, all you did was tell her that the Nightmare came to you moments before she was banished, made some cryptic statements about how she was going to endure forever no matter what was to come, then held you down, had her way with you, and impregnated you with dark magic. Why should she be concerned?"
"Don't say that. I was a willing participant."
"Impossible," said Auric.
"I gave my consent!"
"She was royalty, no matter what demon lived in her. You said it yourself: your consent was a meaningless act. It was rape, Cadence."
"Droite de seigneuse," I said.
"Potato, po-tah-to," replied the griffin, boredly. "An unimportant distinction, since all you eat is rockweed, and there's only one way to pronounce that. You're certain I can't interest you in some lovely fresh hyraxes? They're quite delicious, I assure you."
"The child is Luna's, Auric. Not Nightmare Moon's."
"I know, love," said Auric, his voice turning serious. "You've known the child for a year. The rest of us haven't even met her. If she comes with your recommendation, that's good enough for me."
"Thank you," I said. "So what was 'odious'?"
"Hm?" he said, looking up from his inspection of his improbably-impeccable manicure.
"If you mock me for calling Sola's reasoning baseless, what was 'odious'?"
Auric gestured flamboyantly. "The tiresome fact of her, in general. She doesn't need to do anything special to be odious, although I am increasingly put out by her use of the words 'hair-thin forbearance' when describing me. Me! The first griffin to desert Team Discord for her camp! I even brought a gift from the horde when I broke rank! That giant three-headed… dog… thing!"
"Cerberus," I said. "I never asked how you secured that beast's loyalty."
"Venison," replied Auric. "Lots and lots of dry-aged venison, from my private larder, now lost along with the entire rest of the country, damn this unstoppable Forest." He shook his head. "Imagine! Calling me a 'flip-flop'!"
"The Princess is a simple creature," I said. "Like an animal. Doubtless she feels that if you betrayed your masters once, you have the capacity to betray again."
"'Flip-flop'," said Auric, stuck in a rut of umbrage. "I think she's the flip-flop. Psychotic one minute, patronizing the next. I must admit, I wish you'd reconsider letting her teach your foal the secrets of the Solar Throne. Then we'd at least have a choice of Princesses."
"Spoken like a true and loyal subject," I said, imitating Auric's laconic drawl. "Oh yes, calling you a 'flip-flop'. Quite outrageous of her."
"Don't be a loon. I'm not going to add 'civil war' to our laundry-list of hardships. But I hope you know there's going to be some serious foal-worship among the people when the child comes and she spreads those wings of hers for the first time."
"Feh," I said. "The foal will be a unicorn, Auric. Nothing more."
"Poo," he replied. "I was so hoping you'd let me be her first flight instructor."
"You haven't studied immortal metagenetics, Auric. The chance of any random pairing between deity and pony producing a mortal alicorn is minific, infinitesimal. My family line could continue for hundreds of generations without seeing such a thing."
"Luna knocked you up with unknown and arcane demon-sorcery, love," said Auric. "Not science. In my book, that means all bets are off."
I know when I am beat. I turned away from the griffin and stared back out over the clouds at the now-setting crescent moon.
"I'm intruding on your sky-watching time," said Auric, joining me.
"Yes," I said, "but it's fine. You're a friend, Auric."
"Nevertheless," he said. "You need your time alone with her. I'm going to hie me back to the aerie, and incidentally, that makes me a poet when I didn't even know it." He gave me a quick peck on the cheek, more-or-less literally. "I'll be back at moonset, with a jug of rockweed moonshine. We can pretend it's claret."
"I'm pregnant, you bastard."
"More liquor for me, then," he said, spreading his wings. "Ta-ta, Cadence the Elder. And say hello to little Princess Cadence for me, next time you're talking to your grotesquely distended abdomen."
"I hate you."
"You love me."
"Yes," I said.
He grinned rakishly at me, gave his wings a few quick flaps, and was gone.
I returned my attention to the moon. My back was clenched, my ribs ached, and I needed to make water even more urgently than before. But I would be damned if I let being great with foal rob me of my last few minutes of moon-gazing to-night. Because moon-gazing is all I have left of her. I have lost interest in stars, their names and colors. I only look at the moon. And I will look at it, every night, until the day that I die.
I took one shallow breath of icy air, a mouthful of wind from the top of this forsaken mountain, and used it to shape words that Luna had never heard me speak, knowing full well even as I did that she could not now, and would not ever, hear me say them.
"I love you, too," I whispered.
