Cadence half-listened to petitions half-daydreamed while sitting on her throne. She suspected her chamberlain of screening out all the difficult cases; all the ones she had heard so far had needed nothing more than common sense. She planned to thank him later.

As a pony argued his obviously fraudulent claim to a piece of property, she wondered when Twilight would return.

With a few stern words, she delivered a ruling. The other pony, who had been sweating throughout the ordeal, smiled, and her coat regained its luster and transparency. The stallion scowled and said nothing more, his coat becoming opaque as he left.

Few things held Cadence’s attention as well as romance, and having a prospective suitor again left her feeling as if she were soaring high above the ground. She pondered ways to subtly ply her trade, thinking of herself as the target of affection more than as herself. After a few more decisions, she had a plan for how to signal to Twilight that she would welcome a relationship. Most importantly, she had to talk more, as she suspected Twilight’s language of love to be words rather than touch. Every time she wondered if she truly wanted to foster a relationship, an inkling of how to do so occurred to her, and she fleshed it out.

Blinding light filled the room, and Cadence shielded her eyes with a wing. “Twilight! You’re back!” When the light faded, she lowered her wing. “And you look… awful.”

A blackened Twilight stomped up the few stairs to Cadence, turned around to face the doors, and sat down, fuming. Curls of smoke rose from her partially chewed mane as she ground her teeth. “I didn’t know that. Thank you very much.”

Cadence flinched. “I’m sorry. A-are you okay?”

“Fine. I’m fine,” she said, head whipping around to look at Cadence. “Is this court? Let’s make some decisions.”

With a motion a forehoof, Cadence told one of her guards to close the doors. “This is my court, and I just decided that you need my help.”

A choked gasp came from Twilight’s throat, and she crumpled against the throne. Cadence ran a hoof through Twilight’s mane and brought her experience of saying soothing nothings to bear on the situation while Twilight sobbed into her barrel. Minutes later, she pulled away and wiped her eyes. Where her mane had touched, a black smudge stained Cadence’s coat and horseshoe.

“Sorry.” Twilight sniffed. “I got parasprite soot all over you.”

Cadence’s face screwed up. “I didn’t know they made soot.”

“They do when I incinerate them.”

Cadence blanched. After taking a moment to compose herself, she asked, “Do you want to talk about it?” She expected a nod and received one immediately. “Let’s get you cleaned up, too. You’ll feel better when you’re not disheveled like this. I promise.”

At another nod from Twilight, Cadence led them back to her quarters, Twilight leaning on her for support the entire way. They removed their dirty — and in Twilight’s case, partially eaten — regalia and left it in the hall. Cadence rang a bell to let the servants know to collect it then gave Twilight a little nudge toward the other side of the room. She followed her into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Twilight stepped in first and seemed to sag under the inconsequential weight of the water pouring down.

A second later, Cadence joined her and bent to nuzzle her cheek. “Need more time to compose your thoughts?”

With a shake of her head, Twilight sighed. “They weren’t normal parasprites. They’ve been getting nastier over the years — I’m sure it’s my fault from way back. And this time, since there was a town-wide concert scheduled for tonight, all the instruments were in the same place…”

Cadence brought a hoof up to the side of her face and blinked slowly. “They didn’t…”

“Eat all the instruments? Yes, they sure did. I had to stop to commandeer The Canterlot Orchestra. The only thing I got lucky with today was that they happened to be practicing.”

“I don’t know about that,” Cadence said, and Twilight cocked her head. “Getting a kiss from the Princess of Love seems pretty lucky.” The smile that flicked across Twilight’s face filled her with the warmth of making somepony happy and the satisfaction of a plan working.

“Anyway, I teleported myself and the orchestra to Ponyville, and we were swarmed instantly. I got really scared when they started nibbling my mane, and when one took a bite out of my tiara and spit out another one the same color as the sapphire it had eaten… I lost it.”

She looked up at Cadence, the water hiding her tears but her voice betraying her. “I must have burned a hundred of them. You should have seen the looks the musicians gave me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” Her eyes went wide, and her voice came out shrill. “What if I snap and do that to a pony?”

“Twilight.” When that got no reaction other than hyperventilation, Cadence placed a forehoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Twilight. Don’t worry about that. There is a huge difference between an infestation of bugs you’re afraid could eat you and a pony, and you know that.”

With a yawn, Twilight cast her gaze away. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So, how did everything end up?”

“The music worked like it always does, so it went fine… discounting all the property damage. It’s a mess.” She said nothing for a while before shaking her head and slinging sooty water everywhere. “Sorry. I zoned out. It’s so far, and there are lots of ponies in an orchestra — I could sleep for a year.”

Cadence picked up a bottle of shampoo. “Just close your eyes, and let me take care of you. Okay?”

“I doubt I could keep them open much longer if I wanted to.”

Twilight’s neck drooped as her eyes closed, and Cadence worked a lather up in her mane and coat. Her magic contained the suds to protect Twilight’s eyes. Before the water ran clean, her breath had slowed, and her legs had locked. Cadence held a wing over Twilight’s head to shield it from the water while she cleaned herself off, which took far less time, then turned off the water. By running a magic field over Twilight’s body, she removed most of the water without disturbing her rest.

While she carried Twilight to the bed with her magic, she thought of what she could do to help. And idea occurred to her. She laid Twilight on the bed and reflexively placed a light kiss on her forehead as she had so many times when Twilight was a foal. She smiled at the memories as she left to find her chamberlain.

Twilight dozed, random neural firings bringing her to a dream world. She, Shining and Cadence, and her friends walked through the streets of a place that blended Ponyville and Canterlot. The dirt road beneath their hooves made walking pleasant, as did the flowers that sprouted up around them. They laughed and sang as they passed block after block of alabaster architecture. Clouds moved in to cover the sky, and it began raining. Twilight and Cadence raised magical umbrellas against it, while the others continued dancing in the rain, their merriment unabated.

They left bloody hoofprints where they stepped. Rivulets of blood ran down their flanks.

She and Cadence stopped and cried out, but their friends continued frolicking despite what was happening. Twilight found she could see individual drops of rain, which transformed into tiny knives as she watched. Each had a date inscribed on it. Slowly, ever so slowly, the rain of tiny blades sliced through her friends and brother, yet still they danced.

As they distanced themselves from her, Twilight expanded her shield, but it crept forward only a hair’s breadth per second. Meanwhile, her brother and friends flesh hung in ribbons, but they laughed and sang even as their muscles and tendons parted under the onslaught. Shining turned back to face her and grinned, blood trickling down his teeth, as his hind legs gave out.

With a shriek, Twilight sprang from the bed and landed on the floor. She stumbled and fell into a heap, where she curled into the fetal position. “Not real, not real, not real…” She repeated it, a mantra. The rest of the dream faded, but the grin remained, tormenting her.

Cadence entered a few minutes later and stopped halfway through the door, staring at Twilight, who rocked back and forth on the floor. A brief trip through the air brought her to Twilight’s side.

“Twilight? What happened? Are you okay?” She raised a forehoof but hesitated to extend it.

“I-I had a nightmare. Something about calendars and knives and blood and that… that awful smile.” She shuddered. “He didn’t deserve to die! If anypony deserved to become an alicorn, it was him, not me. I got lucky and figured friendship out once I’d already grown up, but he understood what it was all about since he was just a colt. You two would—”

Cadence placed her forehoof over Twilight’s mouth. “You stop that right now. You’re being irrational… and I would know. A few nights back, I considered throwing myself off the balcony, but then I just broke down into tears when that reminded me of him.”

A sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh left Twilight’s throat. “That did happen, didn’t it?”

“It did!” Cadence said with a laugh.

The two devolved into helpless laughter mixed with a few tears, and they leaned on one another for support. As the last few tremors of giggles swept through her, Twilight rose and hugged Cadence’s neck.

“Thank you. I really needed that. I feel like… like I’ve just released all the rain and lightning and wind a storm wants to let out, you know?”

Cadence’s lips pulled to the side, and she looked the other direction.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ We’ll have to do that some time. It’s a huge rush followed by relief that leaves you feeling pure and like you’ve done something right.”

“Oh, is that all?” Cadence asked with a little laugh.

Twilight tilted her head and thought, not about what else it felt like — she had long ago built a mental list and had recited only half of it — but about what leaving Cadence behind would mean, especially given the new information they had laughed about. She needed to be able to reciprocate the gesture for Cadence if something similar happened again.

“No,” Twilight said at length, “it also feels electric, too, now that I think about it. You know… Ponyville needs a lot of help, and if I remember correctly, we have a storm scheduled for late tomorrow. Maybe you should come back with me. I could teach you how to do weather work on the way!”

Cadence recognized the request as an appeal for quality time and extended conversation. She knew that, if she accepted, it would send Twilight an unmistakable signal. She did not know if it was a signal she wanted to send. With both of them in such a fragile state, the chances of something going horribly wrong were high. Cadence considered telling Twilight about how she had arranged assistance for Ponyville — giving her some good news seemed like the smart thing to do.

“I’d love to go,” she found herself saying. Her eyes widened at her unthinking response, and a rush of adrenalin shot through her, giving her tingling chills. She particularly liked the way she’d worded her response; Twilight picked up on subtle things like that.

Twilight grinned, and her wings flicked out from her sides. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Even an egghead like me ended up liking it.” A grimace crossed her face as her stomach growled. “Let’s eat before we go, though. I was too busy saving Ponyville and then napping to have eaten a lunch.”

“Sounds like something Rainbow would say,” Cadence said with a laugh, but Twilight gave her a look. “You’re right — Dash would definitely have found time for lunch.”

They put on their freshly cleaned — but still partially eaten, in the case of Twilight’s tiara — regalia and made their way to dinner. This time, they walked while Cadence informed Twilight of the relief workers she had ordered her chamberlain to organize for a same-day departure. Twilight thanked her multiple times as they ate and on the way to the train, where she gave the work crews a rousing three-minute speech about the virtues of helping their fellow ponies.

After entering the royal car, Cadence said, “Good job with that speech.”

“Oh, it was nothing; I have to give those types so often that Luna’s complained I do them in my sleep so often it’s annoying.”

“Still, it impressed me how few odd looks you got for…” Cadence inclined her head.

A glance into one of the many mirrors hanging on the walls left Twilight cringing. “Brushing isn’t going to fix that… especially the tiara.”

The noise from the train’s whistle knocked their ears flat, and the train began moving. Cadence made her way to an opulent bed in the corner of the car and lay on it. “You’ll need to visit a jeweler and a hair stylist when we arrive.”

Twilight took a seat near Cadence and nodded. “So! Let’s go over the theory behind weather production, particularly producing precipitation.” She smiled. “It’s not narcissistic to say I liked how that sounded, is it?”

“No, not nearly narcissistic,” Cadence said, and she felt another small rush of cold and tingles at Twilight’s smile widening. “You were saying?”

“You know the feeling of how to hold water in your telekinesis?” Cadence nodded, glad that she had an easy frame of reference. “It’s nothing like that at all.”

“Oh.” Cadence’s face fell.

“Instead, you should think about using your magic for gathering things” Twilight looked around and frowned. “That’s the problem with nobility… and us, too many nice things and too few objects to use for potentially destructive demonstrations.”

She concentrated and conjured a dozen blocks and touched her horn to each one. A glow remained around each one, and they hung suspended in the air, floating towards the walls.

“Now draw them all together at the center of the car,” Twilight said.

With a shrug, Cadence pictured herself at the center of the room and pulling them all to herself. She insisted to her magic that she really was there and held that thought as she sent energy through her horn. The blocks floated back together and clacked against each other in a loose ball.

“Perfect!” Twilight said. “Though, I didn’t expect anything less from you. Keep how you did that in mind for the next part. I’ll be back with a cloud.”

“Hurry back.”

Twilight smiled. “I will.”

A rush went through Cadence at the reaction and another followed when Twilight looked back at her before leaving the car. Cadence shook her head to clear it. She knew what she was doing — trying her best to let Twilight know she was loved. She knew why she was doing it — she lived to spread love. She did not know one crucial fact — if she was ready to be loved or to love again.

A gaping hole in her knowledge of love yawned before her. She had never encountered a situation quite like hers before. The widowing of young ponies happened rarely, and elderly stallions and mares had never come to her in their search for love. She had no experience in this area of her field. She wondered if she should start thinking about her specific case or the situation as a whole. Cadence wanted to figure it out for herself, but she needed to know the different ways to approach it and had no idea how to do so.
It felt as if something was going to pounce on her, and her skin crawled. Feeling a panic attack coming on, she counted to three and extended a foreleg.

Twilight walked in with a tuft of cloud tucked under each wing, took one look at Cadence, and rushed to her side, leaving the clouds floating unattended. “Cadence, are you okay?”

“I… No.”

The more she thought about what she needed to say, the worse and more self-centered it sounded. When she had taken so long to respond that Twilight had sat back on her haunches, Cadence made herself continue.

“You’ve been in situations where your knowledge of friendship isn’t complete, haven’t you?” she asked, and Twilight nodded. “Well, you see,” Cadence said, tapping her forehooves together, “I was thinking about this whole… situation, and I realized something awful — I don’t know how to help ponies going through loss find love or if I even should or if there are special considerations I need to make or—”

“Cadence,” Twilight said, placing a forehoof on her shoulder and taking a few seconds to coax Cadence’s wings back to her sides. “Are you more worried about yourself or the situation right now?”

“The situation.” How Twilight could interpret that occurred to her, sending slimy tendrils of worry through her gut, and she reflexively amended herself. “Myself? I don’t know. It’s so confusing. I’m lost.” She rested her head between her forehooves.

Slipping a whisper of magic under Cadence’s chin, Twilight applied a gentle pressure to bring their gaze together. “Since you can’t change the former now, let’s focus on the latter, okay? Maybe you can find something in it you can generalize. And in the meantime, I’ll listen and think of a way to help.”

Cadence nodded and took a breath. “When Shining d—” She swallowed hard and tried again. “When I lost him, it hurt, and it hurt a lot.” She put her right forehoof over her chest. “But it wasn’t all from here. When the bond between us snapped… it was like getting cut.”

“I know what you mean. When Rarity’s mind broke down, it was gradual, but with Fluttershy and now Shining—” she inhaled, clicking her tongue “—gone like that. It’s disorienting in a way, and especially for us, because our destinies are so tied to being with others.”

“Exactly. I wondered if anypony else would understand, but of course you do,” Cadence said. She turned away and sighed. “Before he passed, Shining made me promise that I would find happiness. And for me…”

“Happiness is finding love.” Twilight pictured Cadence as an anion longing desperately to bond to its cation but lost. Her heart went out to Cadence, and she planned to do whatever it took to help her find her cation — even if that meant not getting a minute’s sleep.

At Twilight’s remark, Cadence felt a shift in the composition of the love between them; filaments of deeper passion stretched between them. She filled with warmth better than that from lying before a roaring fire and after a particularly cold day. Through it, she found it difficult to care that her guess about Twilight had been wrong. As if buoyed by an updraft, she felt lighter.

After waiting awhile for Cadence to respond, Twilight tipped her head. “So…?”

“Hm? Oh. I got lost in my thoughts. I think I need more time to work through this, okay? Can we do other things?” she asked, looking to the cloud that once been two distinct clouds.

“Of course we can. Take all the time you need.” She stood and went to retrieve the cloud. “Remember the way you did that unicorn magic? Well, now you need to do that but with your wings and your pegasus magic.”

“Am I allowed to touch it?” Cadence asked. “That’s how weather ponies do it, right?”

“Of course you are,” Twilight said haltingly, giving her an odd look.

In a flowing motion, Cadence rose from the bed and unfurled her wings. She stepped down and crossed to Twilight, who moved aside slightly to give her room. Picturing a miniature version of herself at the center of the barrel-sized cloud. With a twitch of her primary feathers, she sent a hint of magic through her wings and tapped the cloud with a forehoof.

Three drops fell from the cloud and into a shallow bowl of Twilight’s magic, a bowl that could contain a enough water for a pot of soup.

Twilight opened her mouth to say something but closed it soon after. A range of confused and conflicted expressions ran over her face before she settled on a carefully neutral one. “Well,” she said, “it looks like this will take a few hours.”

Once Cadence’s brain had finished processing that, she staggered, and Twilight caught her in a magical grip. Cadence barely heard Twilight’s yelp — the memory of Shining saying exactly the same thing to her when he had taught her shield spells haunted her. She didn’t know how long passed before she noticed Twilight’s embrace. Cadence knew Twilight intended the magic to do more than physically support her; it was warm on her coat, a magical equivalent of a hug.

Twilight’s lips were parted, and she had extended a forehoof halfway to Cadence before hesitating, ears tilted forward.

“Sorry, that reminded me of something. Let’s just keep working on this. Please?” Cadence asked.

“Of course. I’m happy to teach if you want to learn,” she said and gathered the cloud into her hooves. “Maybe we should work a little more hooves-on than usual.”

She hummed to herself, thinking about how much Cadence needed to improve. It impressed her how poor Cadence’s abilities were; it spoke to how well the Crystal Empire managed to do without affecting the weather. It also gave her an opportunity to spend hours teaching a friend, and she expected that to be a pleasant distraction for them both — provided Cadence didn’t have any further flashbacks.

Squeezing the cloud, Twilight pressed a mist out of it. “Now you try,” she said, passing it to Cadence.

Over the course of a few more attempts, Twilight gathered that Cadence had as much experience as she had possessed in the field of weather work in the months following her ascension. She taught her the common pegasus methods of focusing magic as well as some techniques she had developed for herself, which drew from experience with unicorn magic. Twilight grumbled at how those often went over Cadence’s head, as she knew less than half the types of magic to which Twilight compared producing rain.

It took nearly three hours for Cadence to generate a fair amount of rain. She had been using a visualization technique that used the concept of attractive things to provide direction to the magic. Magnets, the earth, and static saw widespread use, according to Twilight, and Cadence tried them each in turn. Another option occurred to her, though, as Twilight sprawled on the bed, lying on her back and watching her struggle through yet another of her seemingly endless series of failures.

Cadence pictured Twilight as being directly below the cloud then flared her wings, sending out a wave of magic. It curved through the air and passed through the cloud and accreted water to itself on its path toward Cadence’s visualization of Twilight. What precipitated was more a stream of water than droplets of rain. It splashed from Twilight’s bowl and onto Cadence and the floor.

“Whoa!” Twilight said as she rolled over. “You don’t mess around when you figure something out! You’ll have to work on spreading it out, but now that you’ve got the idea, it should be easy.” Her horn glowed as she got up and made her way to Cadence. A second later, her magic opened the door, and a towel hurried in, suspended in her aura.

As she dried Cadence, Twilight said, “It seems like you envisioned the object at a specific point below the cloud. That can be useful if you need to, say, fill a water tower, but typically, you should picture it uniformly distributed across a wide area. That’s why the earth or static are often used; one’s wide, and the other is nebulous. So you’re going to have to picture a magnet that is — instead of horseshoe- or bar-shaped — like a flat sheet,” she said, moving her forehooves horizontally to illustrate her point.

Cadence bit her lip. “Well, um…”

Twilight’s eyes lit up. It appeared that Cadence had pictured something else entirely, and that meant a learning moment now and potential teaching moments down the road. “If not a magnet, then what? Something difficult to mentally flatten, apparently.”

Cadence motioned with her head to a mirror, which Twilight looked at as well.

“A mirror? But those are already flat, and they’re not attractive. Well, I suppose they are insofar as everything with mass is, but I don’t see wh—” She dropped the towel she’d been using to dry Cadence. “Oh.” She turned back to Cadence and pointed a forehoof at herself, tilting her head.

Cadence nodded. Twilight sat quietly for a moment. She knew Cadence too well to mistake that for a joke, and she wondered if Cadence simply needed somepony, anypony, to fill the void left by Shining. She liked the other possibility far more. Her mouth felt dry as she said, “I think it’s a little more important to talk about that than improve your form.”

The lack of change in the love between them confused Cadence. In her experience, an admission of that sort had a large effect on nascent romance. She had misjudged Twilight before, and with this development, Twilight grew more interesting

“I think a nice, long talk would be a good idea, yes. Join me?” she asked as she made her way to the bed in the corner.

Twilight nodded and followed.

Author's Note

Thanks to my editor, Cynewulf.