Canterlot burned. Smoke poured from the scorched wounds of shattered buildings. They had managed to put out some of the fires, but many persisted, most deeper in the wreckages and rubble than even the unicorns, with all their purported power, could reach. The sky should have been black like the smoke, or at least darkened, but the clear blue expanse remained—a contrast and a mockery. The wails of grieving ponies filled the air; the echoes lingered too long in the ears, as if slowed to a funereal march. From the palace, the bells tolled in their steeples. It had been a gay sound not so very long ago, before the changelings struck. Now those wedding bells were but more knells summoning the forever lost to the black parade.
The streets might as well have been a graveyard. White-shrouded figures lined the cobblestones, too still, too silent. The sun would never rise for them, nor the moon. Ponies who had survived the attack wandered as if in a daze or sat and stared into nothing, frozen. Some wept beside the dead; a few screamed for them to wake up. It was all Long Song could do not to go to them and tear them away, beg them to let the dead sleep. But what good would that do? There was no good left, not here. There was nothing now. Only death and sorrow.
Long Song walked on—it did not matter where. She just had to keep going. She watched the city plod by, the ponies with their haunted faces, the soldiers with red smeared on their once-gleaming armor. She passed a crumpled heap that had been her friend’s favorite antique shop. The café beside it only had a few scorch marks on its too-bright façade, coated all over in the dust of its ruined neighbor. There were ponies standing or sitting at the tables in there, steaming mugs in front of every one, probably as the café owner’s attempt to soothe everypony’s wracked nerves. They were still alive, for whatever that was worth now. Had there been anyone in the antique shop when the shield fell?
“The Captain says the wedding’s still on.”
Long Song stopped. She glanced back to where a pair of Royal Guards stood—an earth pony and a pegasus, both stallions—just outside the café. They were both singed and scratched from head to hoof. One of the pegasus’s wings hung limply at his side, some of the primary feathers ripped off to expose the bare skin underneath. The other soldier sported a burn along one side of his neck. Neither of them appeared to even notice their wounds.
“Are you sure, Silver Flame?” the earth pony soldier asked. “So soon?”
Silver Flame nodded. “A messenger came straight from the Palace not five minutes ago. It’ll take a few hours to set everything to rights, of course, but—”
“What?” gasped a unicorn mare, trotting up to the soldiers. She had a cut on her face that had two tiny strips of white stuck over it like a pair of large stitches—a medic pony must have seen to her already. “They can’t possibly mean to go through with it now!”
“What’s going on, Morning Glow?” A stallion with his foreleg in a sling hobbled out of the café. At his side walked a small foal, sticking so close to her father that it was a wonder he did not trip over her. More ponies inside the café had come to the window and leaned out the doorway, eyes fixed on the two soldiers.
“The wedding, Allspice,” answered Morning Glow, “it isn’t canceled, or even postponed!”
Allspice paused near Long Song. He glanced from Morning Glow to the two soldiers. “Is this true?”
“Yes,” Silver Flame replied. “Captain Shining Armor sent word to all the Guard companies in Canterlot. Now that the threat is gone and the real Princess Cadence has been found, the Palace will be restored and the wedding will proceed later this afternoon.”
Something inside Long Song grew cold and brittle. Her head sagged a little more, her ears drooping. The already impossible weight burdening her shoulders seemed to increase tenfold. What were they thinking, going ahead with the wedding? Had the Princesses not looked out their stained glass windows and seen their great capital burning? Had they not counted the white-shrouded bodies? Long Song had. She had also counted the ones that had not yet been covered. She had counted the stallions and the mares. And the foals. So many foals…
“How can they?” Morning Glow pressed. “Don’t they know what’s happened out here? How can the Princesses allow this?”
“The changelings attacked the Palace, too,” the earth pony soldier reminded her, his voice remarkably steady. “From what I’ve heard, their queen assaulted Princess Celestia herself.”
Silver Flame nodded. “Legacy’s right. If it weren’t for the Captain and Princess Cadence, there wouldn’t be anypony left to have a wedding.”
“But it’s absurd!” Morning Glow exclaimed. “Ponies are seriously hurt, and some are missing—maybe they’re all dead. By the Princesses, ponies have died!”
“It just doesn’t seem right,” agreed Allspice, shaking his head. “Canterlot is in ruins. We haven’t even had a chance to bury our dead. How can there be a wedding now?”
The cold inside Long Song was spreading, numbing every inch of her. The whole world seemed to bear down on her back—how could she hold herself up beneath it? Rivers of fire seared her face; the tears splashed against the cobblestones, mixing with the ash and dust. The funeral dirge from the palace bells rang out again. Each knell shook Long Song to her core. She was broken inside. Everything was broken, and nothing could possibly fix it. Not now, not ever.
A small hoof softly brushed Long Song’s cheek. She looked toward it and found Allspice’s filly standing beside her. The filly did not say anything. She just reached up and tried to wipe away Long Song’s tears again, though Long Song felt as if the flow would never stop. Then the filly stepped closer and wrapped her forelegs around one of Long Song’s in a tight embrace. Fresh tears, hotter than the first, spilled from Long Song’s eyes. Her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. She slipped her other foreleg around the filly and leaned close, eyes squeezed shut against the shattered world.
“Miss?”
Long Song looked up. The others had grown silent, their gazes fixed on her and the filly. The earth pony soldier—Legacy, Silver Flame had called him—had stepped nearer. He had a kind face, one more suited to laughter than tragedy. It was difficult to make out through the grime and soot, but the compassion was there despite the death and smoke all around them.
“Who did you lose?” Legacy asked quietly.
Long Song did not answer immediately. She glanced down at the filly, who offered her a tiny smile. To Long Song’s surprise, the corners of her own mouth lifted in response. All that terrible weight seemed to vanish in an instant. The cold and emptiness inside her remained, but she was not drowning in it anymore. “Silent Sky,” Long Song said at last, in little more than a whisper. “My daughter.”
“I’m sorry.”
Long Song shook her head. “She loved weddings, my Silent Sky. She told me once that she wanted to be a wedding singer when she grew up. She said weddings made her happy.” She drew back from the filly and returned her gaze to the others. “Silent Sky would have wanted the royal wedding to go on.”
“But look around,” said Morning Glow, gesturing to the crippled city surrounding them. “This isn’t any time for a wedding.”
“But we’re still here.” Long Song looked to the ponies in the café, still watching through the window and door. Raising her voice so they, too, could hear, she continued, “The changelings tried to beat us down, but they’re the ones who were beaten. They were cast out, and we are still here. Yes, our city is broken, but we will rebuild it. We’ve all lost loved ones, but we will remember and honor them. The changelings came to destroy us, but we are not defeated. We stand together, all of us, despite the pain and loss and fear.” Long Song shifted her gaze to the filly. “We’re alive, and life should be celebrated, especially when the hour is darkest.”
For a while, no-pony made a sound. Then Legacy stepped forward and stamped his steel-shod fore hoof against the cobblestones loud enough to ring through the street. “We stand,” he said, eyes locked on Long Song.
Silver Flame repeated the motion. “We stand.”
The filly stamped her fore hoof as well, saying, “We stand.”
One by one, all the ponies around Long Song stamped their fore hooves and added their voices to those two, simple words. Some ponies darted out of the café crowd and galloped off to spread Long Song’s words to the other ponies on the street.
Long Song smiled. Tears still trickled down her cheeks, but the wedding bells did not sound so mournful now.