One day, when I was little more than a filly, the mysteries of love revealed themselves to me. I looked up into the sky and I saw strands of light reaching across the world, linking ponies together. They were beautiful, but it was not the strong lights that drew my attention, but the weak: feeble, struggling lights that I could barely see, and to think of them made my heart ache.

So I flap my wings and I set out to help them.

In Canterlot, I gave a colt the strength to tell his intended how he felt.

In Fillydelphia there was a mare who longed to leave her husband and pursue her foalhood sweetheart, and with my help she did.

In Baltimare I mended the pain in an old stallion's broken heart in time for him to visit his old flame in the hospital and make amends before it was too late.

In Manehattan I left a lone rose lying at a certain table at a certain time, not knowing why.

The lights do not always appear to me. Over time, they have tended to come less and less.

Every action casts ripples across time and space, moving at the speed of beating hearts. Unbidden, my mind's eye shows me some of where it will lead. I do not control them. I let them carry me where they will.

One by one the lights grow stronger.

At some point I look back and I see my cutie mark for the first time.

I think of that day as I put Dawn in the ground. I wonder if it would ever get any easier, whether the pain would diminish or if I would grow stronger, and if so how long and how many times it would take.

“How are you feeling?” Auntie Celestia asked me in my chambers after the ceremony.

“As well as can be expected,” I said, my voice still weak.

“She was a wonderful mare,” Celestia said, and I nod.

Celestia stays with me and comforts me as best as she is able. She offers to bring ice cream. I laugh softly at the unexpected offer, but decline.

Eventually, after many courtesies and pleasantries and condolences, she works her way around to the real reason she is here.

“That's the second time,” she begins, and I wince.

“Auntie...”

“Do you mean to continue doing this, Cadenza?”

I turned my face away, and that was all the answer she needed. She sighs. “This is not healthy, my niece. I need you for the good of the realm. Equestria needs her Princess of Love whole and sane.”

“My entire family is of excellent health,” I tell her, “in both mind and body.”

She looks at me in silence, her face inscrutable. “I cannot persuade you to abandon this scheme? You mean to continue with your 'special project'? You still aren't ready to let go?”

I then thought to myself that my aunt, for all her many fine qualities, knows nothing of love.

“I love them, auntie,” I whispered. “I can't just throw them away. I wish you'd understand that.”

“So be it then.” She sighed. “I am sorry, my niece. I cannot support you in this.”

And then she left.

– – –

Beacon had married a lovely mare from Trottingham and had a great family with many foals. Even when they were too old to need a foalsitter I continued to follow their lives with great interest. In time I saw each of them bonded to good ponies, and they had many foals of their own for me to sit for.

Beacon's youngest grandson was named Shimmer Song, and he studied music at the Canterlot Royal Conservatory. While he was there he met a young unicorn dancer named Light Step. Light Step was from Los Pegasus, but she had come to Canterlot when she won a scholarship at the Conservatory.

An accident of scheduling had placed Light Step in Shimmer Song's classes even though they were above her level at the time, and she was in danger of flunking out. Shimmer was always a kind and giving colt: he did his best to help her out, and they became the best of friends.

So it was that when Shimmer's not-so-special somepony left him for a stallion with a bigger horn, Light Step was there to mend his broken heart.

The bile still rises in my throat at the thought of it all these years later. How in Equestria that floozy ever thought she was worthy of a pony as amazing as my Shimmer I will never understand. I knew she was trouble from the moment I laid eyes on her. I could see she didn't appreciate him, and as soon as she caught sight of a piece of dumb girth she threw him aside without a moment's hesitation, that vicious heartless flank-stabbing feather-biting nag.

Deep breaths, Cadance. Deep breaths.

The thought still terrifies me even now, how a simple mistake could have destroyed everything forever. Had Pokey the Long-Horned Stallion not been there, she would have married Shimmer for a life of comfort, using his heart for her own vanity and greed until he was all used up, fit to never love again. Had Light Step not been there to show him what real affection is like he would have chased after her, fought for her, and either won her or been broken in the attempt.

It was pure luck that I found Light Step in Los Pegasus while working on an assignment for Celestia, and that I was able to get her into the Conservatory in Shimmer's classes. A month later she would have been working in the Los Pegasus Ballet as a fresh cadet, and Shimmer would have lived a life without love.

So often ponies just don't know what's good for them.

It was a lesson I took with me for the future.

– – –

Shimmer Song and Light Step went on to have a happy marriage until time and nature tore them apart. They had just one foal together, a lovely little filly they named Sunbeam, who used to love exploring the gardens of Canterlot with me and playing hide and seek.

She met her soul-mate at a conference in Canterlot at the museum where was working: a mare from Manehattan. They fell in love, had a whirlwind romance, they travelled across Equestria together, and then they settled down.

I had gone to Celestia ten years earlier with my proposal for a magical research program concerning fertility, aimed at permitting two mares, or two stallions, to conceive foals. Celestia had approved the plan, and had given me a budget of two million bits. I'd searched all of Equestria for the greatest midwives and OBGYNs, spoken to the leaders in physiological arcane studies, and had finally gotten a use for my long-neglected academic training as I began to write my own scholarly work, simply titled On Love.

So it was that after several years of marriage, when Sunbeam and her mate had burned up much of their youthful energy and began to feel the need for something more to fill their lives, I could offer them the possibility of bearing their own foals, without the need to find a stallion donor.

And so it came to be that Sunbeam had three little fillies, and life went on for another generation.

– – –

I have my own royal duties in Equestria. They are not like my auntie's. There is no Court of Love where I sit in judgment while petitioners come before me to press their claims.

Even so, I have my own offices in Canterlot's crowded governmental buildings, where my employees do the bureaucratic paperwork of love.

Marriage certificates and birth records fall under my domain, as do much of the florist, chocolate, and greeting card industries.

As an inescapable consequence, my domain also includes mortality records, funeral arrangements, divorce proceedings, and the machinery of protecting foals, when it is necessary, from the very ones who should hold them dearest.

The wheel turns, and all things have their time.

– – –

Moonbeam, Sunbeam's eldest, had two sons. The eldest was a soldier. His brother was a scholar.

It was hard to choose between them, I'll admit. Sadly I didn't think I could get them to work together: they were always rivals, those two, in everything they did, and I was no exception.

“Are you going to go down this road again, Cadenza?”

“I know what I'm doing.”

“So you always say.”

I took the scholar, Dewdrop Prism, under my wing, and then under my sheets. His older brother became a decorated colonel of the EUP, fell in love with a guardspony mare who could match his every move, and had two lovely foals.

After Dewdrop died, I spent a month in my chambers. Celestia came to me again, with a giant bowl of ice cream and two spoons.

– – –

What had begun with my simple volume On Love had grown into a thriving field of study before splitting apart into smaller disciplines, which over time had been folded into various branches of medical-magical studies. I had withdrawn from active research, but continued to write my own thoughts and discoveries in private volumes that nopony has ever read but me.

One branch of Equestria's government that Celestia has placed in my care interested me greatly however: the Equestrian Genealogical Society.

It's mostly just me and some elderly archivists, and nothing very exciting usually happens there. But it does give me a lot of control over Equestria's genealogical scholarship, which has allowed me to cover my tracks and ensure that my special project isn't discovered. I place little smudges at strategic locations, and make sure that only the most proficiently unreadable of academics are entrusted with studying certain lineages, to ensure proper commitment to rigor.

It's also allowed me to effectively search all of Equestria for suitable prospects for my darlings.

– – –

It is a summer day in Canterlot, and I am lying on a parapet in the sun by myself. To anypony watching, Equestria's younger princess is just peacefully enjoying some free time in the lovely day her aunt has brought forth.

I am on the rooftop above the entrance hall of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, waiting and watching. Beneath me unicorns of all ages are enjoying the beautiful day in the few minutes they have to spare before it's time to run off to the next class.

One of the unicorns is a scrawny colt, carrying a pack overloaded with books, his eyes focused on the cobblestones beneath his hooves.

On the other side of the square is a young mare, barely more than a filly, in gold armor. Her eyes are focused, even more intently, on a particular spot of the horizon directly in front of her.

As the colt passes he notices her, looks up, smiles nervously. For a split-second she breaks instructions and smiles back. I take note of this, and unlike her I do not let it show on my face but only enjoy the warmth of the sun. Inwardly I am grinning at the satisfaction of a job well done: I moved her cadet deployment to the School. I gave him the scholarship he needed to attend. Now they have met.

Her name is Twilight Watch, my grandfoal, who has the steel will of the royal guard running strongly in her blood. His name is Velvet Heart, a colt with a warm and loving spirit.

Ten years from that day they have a filly together.

When that filly grows up I introduce her to a young stallion who works in the publishing industry: he's clever, handsome, witty, and caring, and she falls in love on their second date.

– – –

I look back at centuries of waiting and watching, while my children die one by one. No matter how much I try to keep them safe, I can't. In my dreams I see my darlings shifting over the ages, taking on new bodies, shifting in the brief flashes of light before they are gone again. I see sunsets, funerals, last goodbyes and long waits, I hear music in the distance that plays for only a short while and then falls silent before the song is over.

I wonder how many times it will take before I grow strong enough to bear it. I do not truly believe I ever will. I plot and scheme through the ages. Auntie sees the world in terms of decades and centuries. Her schemes move slower than glaciers, and are much harder to stop. It is a skill I have tried to acquire.

I bring together lovers who would not otherwise meet, and drive apart ponies who bring each other pain. I move ponies like playing pieces, and sometimes I think I am forgetting that is not what they are. Sometimes I think I am forgetting myself.

One day I am not sure I can possibly go on like this for much longer. Then the word comes: my Twily has given birth. I rush to the hospital to see her. She glows with love, Night Light at her side, and they smile at me as I enter. That's when I see him for the first time, and all my troubles are banished.

There in Twily's arms is a newborn unicorn colt. He is white with a blue mane and blue eyes, and he is perfect and he is beautiful and the moment I see him I fall in love all over again.

Author's Note

Next time: Reunion.