The spires of Canterlot were festooned with fog, glowing pink in the fading light. I raised a hoof against the glare as I stared into the sunset, pretending briefly that I was just another awestruck tourist set agape by the beautiful architecture, and not an anxious stallion, straining to filter a single set of hoofbeats from the quiet rumble of the city at night. When those same hoofbeats stopped behind me, I dared not move a muscle.
"Hey there," came a soft, singsong voice.
I fought to keep my demeanour casual as I spun around, heart suddenly racing as my suspicions – and hopes – were confirmed. A caramel earth pony trotted across the street to greet me, grinning as though I was a secret joy known only to him.
"Hey Axiom," I returned, wrapping a hoof around his neck in a brief but fierce hug. I wouldn't describe myself as short, but my head fit neatly under his chin, which he was wont to lay across my ears. All too soon, we separated, and I tilted my head to the nearest doorway. "This the place?"
"I still can't believe you've never been to the Three Crowns." He pushed open the door and ushered me through with a grand wave of the hoof. I put on my snootiest trot, complete with nose in the air and hoity-toity voice. "Thank you, kind sir."
As I lowered my snout to a level less likely to cause offense, my ears were bathed in the low hum of half-a-dozen conversations all cancelling each other out. The room was small, and mostly filled with small groups of older stallions and what looked to me like young couples. Before I could suggest we find somewhere emptier, Axiom waved me toward a hallway I'd overlooked. We passed a few more rooms, the crowds growing thinner the further we went, before emerging into a patio lit whimsically with fairy lights. Only one table here was occupied, crowded with students celebrating the end of term; I recognized one pegasus mare as Antiquity, a historian who lived on my staircase, and waved. The dusky purple unicorn next to her followed her gaze and waved enthusiastically in our direction, passing a hairs-breadth from knocking over the pintglass before her. Antiquity moved to steady her, but succeeded only in reducing the pair to a giggling tangle of limbs.
I tapped Axiom on the shoulder.
"I'll get us some drinks if you grab us a table. Elderflower and daisy?"
"Cheers." He flashed me a grin and I trotted merrily back inside. The atmosphere in each room I passed was different, but all were lively and energetic - this one crackling, that one bubbling - and by the time I re-emerged into the patio I was nearly skipping, with the drinks balanced carefully between outstretched wings.
Axiom was by now chatting happily with the student table, so I joined him there. With a very careful bounce and a flick of a wing, I presented his drink on a white-feathered platter. He accepted it with an equally dramatic bow, and the students burst into applause at my theatrics. I bowed in return, ever happy to amuse. A tall, bespectacled stallion at the opposite end of the table called, "Who's your friend?"
"Everyone, this is Flourish." As Axiom introduced me, he set a friendly hoof on my shoulder, and I waved at the rainbow of ponies before me. "Flourish, these are—" he gave a series of names I had no hope of remembering, closing with "—they're all MMP postgrads." MMP, or Maths, Magic and Philosophy, was the oldest department of the University of Canterlot, and the one for which we were most famous.
"Ahem," said Antiquity, glancing pointedly at her cutie mark: a simplified painting in the type of antique frame one finds at museums. Her drunken unicorn friend – Violet, I think – ruffled her mane affectionately, with far less aim than she probably intended. "Ahh, you know you're secretly one of us."
"No, you see," began Antiquity loftily, though she was unable to hold back a teasing grin. "I think for my degree."
Sensing that we were audience members intruding on a well-worn stage, I caught Axiom's eye and nosed towards an empty table in the corner. He nodded, and we slipped away as the table as a whole erupted behind us.
I picked a small corner table, and we finally sat down. "Here's to the end of exams," I toasted. Axiom raised an eyebrow as he clinked his glass against mine. "Don't you have another submission next month?"
"Shhhhh." I waved a hoof dismissively as I took a long sip. "Deadlines don't exist inside pubs. Them's the rules."
"Right, I wouldn't know."
"You spend plenty of time in the pub for a teetotaling logician."
I worried that my words might've been a shade too harsh, but he didn't seem to take offence. "Logicians drink plenty – but I do not."
"Isn't that a contradiction in terms?"
"Oh-hoh!" Axiom was animate again, that characteristic sideways grin masking a hint of – pride? "You have been paying attention. Yes, I meant that most of the logicians I know drink alcohol, but I do not."
To catch Axiom out on his own subject was a rare prize, and my head quickly clouded with conceit, but I resisted the urge to gloat. Instead, I shot him a conspiratorial glance. "The better for you to remind me what's done and forgotten."
"Oh, like on Hearts and Hooves day, when you—"
"I remember that one, thank you." My cheeks grew warm. "Wasn't my fault she wound up in the emergency room."
I have never felt so judged by a single eyebrow. "You mean A&E – and it was your idea."
I narrowed my eyes. "You know perfectly well what I meant. And how was I supposed to know that she was allergic to eggplant?"
"Aubergine."
He murmured it into his glass, so it was a moment before I realised he'd even spoken aloud. "I'm sorry, what was that?"
Never have I known anypony who could look so smug and yet so sheepish as Axiom. "I think you mean, 'allergic to aubergine'."
"Oh, for pity's sake!" I began, slamming my hoof onto the table as he chortled into his soda. I'd scored a point on him earlier, but he was a master of this game, and had a clear advantage when it came to the local dialect. But this game is not played to win, and I was only too happy to take my usual role, hitting just the right level of indignant as I railed against prescriptive linguistics, ruffling my wings to underscore my point. Carried away by my own momentum, I shouted, "Let's see how you like it when you're out of Canterlot and—"
I realised my mistake even before the words had left my tongue, but it was too late to pull them back. I could have pressed onwards, pretended I didn't make the connection, but I paused, startled by my own daring – and thus fumbled that opportunity as well. Our eyes met in breathless silence as the real cause of our mock-celebratory meeting crept up to the table like an unwelcome guest, each of us waiting to see if the other would acknowledge its presence.
Finally, Axiom said, "I'm sure it won't be as difficult as you're making it out to be..."
I could hear the forced lightness in his voice, and I knew exactly what he was doing. On any other day, I might have done the same: quietly swallowed the frustration welling up in my throat, let it be soothed away by friendly chatter and good company, sweep my concerns into some dark corner until it quietly went away.
But not this day.
"Don't change the subject," I said, with slightly more bite than I intended.
Axiom's eyes dropped to the table; he knew exactly what I was doing, too. "Flourish," he warned, but I had started us down this path, and I was determined to see it through.
"You know, it doesn't have to be like this—"
"Flourish."
"Other ponies come up to Cloudsdale all the time, it's not so different from—"
"Flour-ish..."
"I can still apply in Manehattan—"
"Flourish."
I was grasping at straws now, and he knew it; the decision had been made before we'd even entered the bar, and the pleas and plans that had sounded so sure in my head a moment before withered and died in my throat. Manehattan theatre apprenticeships were hugely competitive compared to those in Cloudsdale, and the chances of me finding a job there were slim to none. Even if I was... Axiom was staring fixedly at the tabletop, but his eyes were unfocused, and I could tell his thoughts were similar to mine: being forced to move from his beloved Canterlot to the unknown city of Manehattan to continue his studies weighed heavily on his mind, and I berated myself silently for bringing it up.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, still facing the table.
"Me too," was all I could offer, bitterly regretting my choice to drag the subject out into the open. We sat there in silence as I tried desperately to think of a way to return to our happy denial, wishing that time and space and distance were not the obstacles they were.
"Just you try to make the magic without mathing the... without doing the mathemagics first!"
We both jumped and turned to the table of postgrads, from which Violet's voice had just pierced the quiet din. She and the bespectacled stallion from earlier were practically nose to nose as he shouted back, "Yes, but until the theory is applied, it's meaningless!"
"They've been at this debate since Christmas," explained Axiom, staring at the pair locked in a passionate struggle of theory versus application. "He just likes to wind people up."
"They should just make out already," I mumbled into my tankard. The look of horror on Axiom's face, complete with twitching eyelid, nearly caused me to choke on my drink as I laughed aloud. "Can you even imagine? One of them would end up dead in a week..."
"Yeah, but which one?"
The lanterns lighting the bar burned low as we speculated on the disastrous hypothetical relationship, which became a discussion of childhood trips to their cities of origin, which segued into a reflected on the relative merits of their respective hoofball teams. We were deep in debate over whether Etherball – a sport that required unicorn magic to play – should be added to the Equestria Games, when a freckled mare shouted, "Last call!".
"Goodness!" I said as I stretched, staring down at the collection of empty glasses scattered across the table. I didn't feel the slightest bit tipsy, but as I got to my hooves, I swear gravity shifted under me. "Have we really been here that long?" I was not so much standing as slumping upright; Axiom offered a steadying hoof, but I waved it away. As we headed for the side exit, our conversation went on, but the words which had been flowing easily felt suddenly hollow and forced.
The air outside was refreshingly cool after the crowded bar. Most of the other patrons were now spilling through the main doors out onto the road; for the moment, we were alone in the alley, save for a charcoal-grey stallion who was clearly more interested in his walk home than either of us. We stood there, not quite making eye contact, for a breathless moment – neither of us knew what to say, just that something had to be said.
"Right," said Axiom at long last, punctuated with a slight nod.
"Right," I responded, more softly; then, in a rush, "Will I—"
"See you—"
We both stopped again, and our eyes met. There are no words for what I saw in his.
"I'll be back next summer," he offered. My throat closed, and I could barely keep the tremor from my voice as I choked out, "I won't—"
—and suddenly we were embracing, hooves wrapped around each other as though we would never let go. A part of me was dimly aware of the door opening, of the last few patrons stumbling out, and of a voice insisting that she could make it home just fine on her own, but Princess Celestia herself could have walked past with the sun in tow and I could not have been compelled to care—
—until Violet slumped over Axiom's flank and murmured, "Have I ever told you how much I appreeeeeciate you as a pony?"
Axiom's eyes darted back and forth between the two of us as he stepped back to prop up the nonsensical mare; I could only shrug, baffled by this new development. Across the alley, the older stallion glanced briefly in our direction, then hurried past. The light from a streetlamp caught a white streak in his otherwise dark mane.
"Nosy parker," I muttered once he was safely out of earshot, at the same moment Axiom said, "Isn't that our node theory tutor?"
At the words "node theory," Violet shot up with such energy she nearly fell right back over. "I haven't appreciated him as a pony, either! I'umma dooooo that," she announced, lurching after him.
"Violet, no, not your supervisor!" Axiom caught up with her almost immediately and she slumped back onto his shoulder, burst of drunken energy gone. He seemed about to lead her home, but first he paused, and turned back to face me.
"Take care of yourself, Flourish," he said, with a tight smile.
"You too." My face was relaxed, but my heart was breaking.
As I turned and began the journey home, I heard Violet attempting to wax poetic about cobblestones and managed a dry chuckle. Soon, the pair of them would be starting new lives – one here, one elsewhere – and shortly afterward I would be leaving for even further afield. A new start, with new opportunities; a chance to metaphorically and literally spread my wings.
I buried my face in my hooves and sobbed.