“Uuuuuhh…” Ultramarine said awkwardly, hurriedly covering the tiny blue sphere hanging from her neck.
“What the heck are you doing?” Ember demanded.
Ultramarine turned her head to avoid the regal pony’s gaze. She continued doing this all the while Ember Stone glared at her with demons in her eyes.
“Practicing magic tricks…?” Ultra tried, knowing it wouldn’t work anyway.
Ember simply looked at her, full of hatred a disbelief. “You don’t know any magic tricks. You aren’t even a unicorn.”
Ultramarine still kept her head low.
“ANSWER ME!” the fire pony shouted, no doubt her anger coming from the fact that she found a mostly-stranger in the lower chambers of her house.
The truth was Ultramarine had come here in search for something that would extinguish the rising hunger for power and the sea. The only thing that seemed to stop the painful wish for the waters were unbearably hot conditions. That hunger for the sea meant that, for some reason, Ultra wanted to take away all of the crystal-blue water for herself. Last week she had attempted to douse that feeling by diving into the ocean, which didn’t work very well since Ultramarine, nicknamed the “Wonder of Water” due to her color, ironically couldn’t swim. It turned out in the end to be extremely useless and wet.
“I won’t take silence acceptable,” Ember Stone said.
“What would you do if I told you that there is a place where ponies like us are all connected and accepted?” Ultra asked slowly.
~|~
“And yet you still want me of all ponies to do this one favor for somepony as insignificant as you?” Ember hissed, although Ultramarine could still single out the excitement in her voice.
“I...yes...but...not exactly ‘do me a favor,’” Ultramarine said, somewhat nervous, “it goes more like ‘guard this secret with your life or so help me I will kill you myself even though it wasn’t my choice to trust you in the first place.’”
“Alright,” Ember said, giving me a cold stare, “just do what I want for the next two months, or else.”
Before she completely understood how rebellious it sounded, Ultramarine said, “Or...else what, exactly? ‘Or else’ the fact that I could ‘accidentally’ kill you in nine different ways?”
She glared at the blue pony long and hard. “Or else I spill the beans to everyone I know and I convince the Princess to banish you to the Moon for two thousand years or worse.”
“Hmm...There’s also the fact that if this gets out, we might as well both be screwed for life. Just look at yourself, how have you been able to keep it secret? What have you been doing to protect yourself, chaining yourself or living under a rock?”
Ember narrowed her eyes to burning golden slits. “That doesn’t matter right now. Let’s not be screwed for life and you become my slave for two moons. What would you do then, nitwit?”
I fliched slightly and shook her head. “First, if I’m a nitwit, you’re a bastard. Second, I would go straight to Princess Celestia and accuse you of assault and holding unwilling slaves. What would you do then?”
Ember Stone winced as though I had hit her, her eyes going wide with realization and fright.
“Now,” Ultra said, managing some authority in her voice, “are you willing to listen to what I have to say?”
Ember Stone sat down with her ginger mane hanging over her face and stared silently at the burnt ground beneath her for quite a while, then looked up at Ultramarine with pity and meaningful understanding.
“This...really matters...doesn’t it, Ultramarine?” she said slowly, the low growl in her voice practically gone. The usual intimidating shade of gold in Ember’s irises was still there, but had become slightly dull and the glow had diminished. She seemed sorry for the first time in her life as a small tear ran down her cheek and turned to steam halfway to the floor.
Ultramarine looked down at her, somewhat overjoyed. “More than you could know,” I said softly, lending her a hoof. “More than anypony could ever imagine.”
Ember Stone took her hoof and got up, mirroring her smile in an awkward way, as though she hadn’t done so that often. Too be honest, Ultra would have to say that she may have never smiled in her life before this.
“So,” Ultra said after a few seconds, “where do you wish to begin?”
“Wherever the Tartarus you want to,” Ember replied, struggling to hold her expression.
The blue Earth pony snickered in her mind for a few moments, wondering if she knew which specific words weren’t supposed to come with a smile.
She switched from grinning to smirking. “You’re from Tartarus. It’s your decision, based on what you just said. I’d assume you would know that by now.”
The copper pony’s smile faded and she stared at me for a long minute, her gaze still piercing through my mind, no matter how subdued her anger was right now. It was the kind of look that said You’re so freaking ugly I’d think you were a Changeling.
“I...you know fully well that I most certainly am not from Tartarus,” she said, shocked, “I was simply born as a fire sprite.”
“A rather vertically challenged one, at that,” she teased
“Hey!” she protested. “This is a juvenile sprite’s normal size!”
“I wish to argue,” Ultra said mockingly, deliberately flaring her sorta-friend’s temper.
Ember Stone hissed and whipped her tail dangerously. It didn’t take an expert to know what the whites of a sprites eyes turning dark meant.
“All right, all right! You have anger issues and we all know it! There’s no need to make it so ridiculously obvious.”
She straightened herself and set her shoulders back, looking as tall and excessively death-like as possible. The once diminished glow of her gold eyes had now returned, burning ever brighter than before.
“You were saying?” she snarled, her voice full of disgust, disapproval, and anger.
Ultramarine crouched down and looked up at Ember Stone, terrified. “I...I was saying you’re perfect in every way possible, Ember! In every way there is! Just look at yourself, you’re... you’re…” Crap, she thought, NOW what am I supposed to say? She’ll kill me if I don’t do this right, perhaps literally. “...You’re absolutely divine!”
“Good,” she said.