That I Must Appear So Small
If there is one thing that the pampered pony despises, it is waking up early. To the average creme-de-la-creme layabout, noon is considered an ungodly time of morning, and 7 AM is a bedtime story told to terrify you into staying up even later. Had Princess Luna not found the aristocracy insufferable, then the incessant revelry of rambunctious stallions may have been enough to prevent the Nightmare Moon incident. Or at least, such was the theory put forth whenever said nobles found themselves detained by the guard for intoxication and disruption of the peace.
Regardless of all of this, Prince Blueblood found himself wrestling Morpheus into submission as the first rays of his beloved aunt's sun played over his still-closed eyelids. His eyes fluttered open, and for perhaps the billionth time he cursed this incurable early rising. Never mind that his metabolism could handle it, it took a lot longer than three hours to sleep off a hangover the size of the Undiscovered West, and every cell in his body knew it.
But today, as with all days before and most likely all days after, Blueblood's passionate attempt to sink back into slumber amid the silken sheets was cut short by the intrusion of the morning maid, pulling the curtains open with a smug flick of her magic and drowning his innocent head in the damnable glare of the Unconquered One. Blueblood mused, as he often did, that he might have been permitted to sleep in had he not said all of those things to her. And to her mother. And her grandmother.
In retrospect, funding a family reunion for the palace servants might not have been the best move.
"I biddest thee awaken, O sleepy-eth one!" Her Old Equish was atrocious, and Blueblood hoped it was deliberate. That a maid might get this far without knowing the basics of language was a harsh possibility that the prince would forever refuse to confront. One of these days, the seal would be broken, and the common folk would not even be able to understand Nightmare Moon's threats, much less defend themselves. That was a special embarrassment that Blueblood felt should not be wished on the aristocracy. Of course, there were a great many things he did not wish on the aristocracy.
Regardless of his inner lamentations on the decline of public education, Blueblood's body was stirred into its familiar motions by the far-off chiming of a tiny silver bell, which might as well have been a thousand-pound warhammer on a drum the size of Manehatten. He remembered, in the far-off way of those less than half-awake, that the bell was stirring the earliest of the castle's cooks to action, assembling Auntie's morning cherries jubilee. He knew it was the cherries jubilee bell from the slight tinny reverberation, a soft tonal shift that marked it apart from the black forest cake bell, which sounded more like painted brass.
He let out a yawn that one would only call un-princely if they had been raised to put all of Canterlot on the same pedestal as the Princess, and mused that a raging hangover did wonders for sensory enhancement. Perhaps he might write a tell-all book about how his life had been improved by the countless early mornings spent writhing in agony as a feather brushed against a speck of dust somewhere above Trottingham.
Then it occurred to him that such a book would have to include the reason why he drank so abundantly, and Blueblood put the notion out of his mind.
Having finally slid out of his bed, landing on his legs out of sheer force of habit, the prince began to go through the motions of his morning exercise. Admittedly, this consisted of little more than a few stretches, but Blueblood prided himself on being one of the few aristocrats he knew who even bothered to pretend they had an exercise routine.
First, he stretched his legs, and a small part of him searched for a rhythm as his ancient joints popped into place. He was rewarded with 'shave and a haircut'. It certainly wasn't the opening notes of J.S. Beak's Partita No. 1, but it almost entertained the prince enough to bring a smile to his face. Next, he rotated his neck, snapping it quickly this way and that as he opened his jaw at various obtuse angles. Once his face had produced a satisfactory number of unpleasant cracking sounds, Blueblood arched his back like a cat. The muscles along his spine seemed to pop to life in a delicious escalating sequence, racing upwards towards his neck, but first to...
Ah. Yes.
The pleasant ripple of infused vitality concluded at the base of the prince's skull, never having deviated from his spine. The small satisfaction rang hollow, and Blueblood turned his head to look over his back. As with every morning, it was matted and uneven. As with every morning, it still maintained some ghost of its alabaster luster in spite of the night's revelry. And as with every morning, there were no wings. Not so much as feather nor down existed to mar the prince's back.
They say that the sound of ultimate suffering is a scream that carries over hills and valleys and chills all creatures to the bone. They are wrong. It is a sigh, one that evokes an image of swords cast down by a once-eager warrior tribe, one that laments the passing of spring and wishes for nothing but the halcyon days where candy seemed to flow like fountains. It was such a sigh that Blueblood made then, as he looked at his bare back and wondered whether it was blessing or curse that made him wake every morning having forgotten that fateful day.
He caught the gaze of the maid over his shoulder, and turned around before he could linger long enough for her to ask any embarrassing questions. Instead he proceeded into the dressing room, where a butler waited to create a playful and aloof socialite out of whole cloth. Blueblood hardly felt the tug of the combs or the cascade of water as his mane was shaped and conditioned to face the day. The cravat hardly registered at all, even when one of the pins scratched lightly at his skin. His mind was a thousand years away from the dressing room, on a tartan battlefield where toffee cut like daggers and he wielded an astrolabe for a sword. The echo of that insane creature's cackling still rang in his ears, and his back prickled with pins and needles as he remembered what it had felt like.
After an hour and seven minutes that seemed to pass like a splash of cold water to the face, the prince took a few more steps forward, then turned slightly to meet his reflection in the mirror. As always, he was the epitome of sophistication, as well as being the poster boy for insufferable old money and the irresponsible rapscallions who inherited said wealth. It hardly took even a thought for Blueblood to make the switch from his nihilistic thousand-yard stare to the confident grin of a stallion who knows he can buy the world, but won't bother because he'd get mud on his hooves. It was as fake as the tapestries in the Upper Crust Opera House, but only he could even come close to spotting the tells.
Blueblood nodded to his butler, flashing that confident grin that assured his bed would be warm whenever he managed to drag himself back to his chambers. With the superficial courtesies that kept razor blades out of his pillows taken care of, the prince stepped through the next door and into the vast, empty halls of House Caeruleus. Though there was not a speck of dust in the air, Blueblood still felt as though he might choke with every breath in that ancient corridor. It was not the sort of place where he wished to linger, so he trotted down the hall. As he did so, he passed beautiful portraits of white stallions with flowing golden locks. To the odd tourist who stopped by, those paintings showed thirty-four generations of the Blueblood bloodline. To those in the know, it was the humiliation of the high school yearbook multiplied by a billion. From underneath their period hairstyles and through all-too-familiar eyes, Bluebloods I-XXXIII stared down at the prince, the only difference a few hundred years of life and far too few changes to the status quo.
The line of portraits started at the opposite end of the hall, so that the most recent painting was the one closest to Blueblood's chambers. With every step, he was able to see the mistakes and wisdoms of the past laid out in equal measure. Mostly, though, he used it to compare various styles of hair and dress. He smiled wistfully at the golden teeth of pirate Blueblood the Nineteenth, cringed in regret at the perm unsuccessfully pioneered by Blueblood the Fifteenth, and shifted into a canter as he passed far too many ruffled collars and powdered wigs. What had become a mad dash was only slowed as he reached the final portrait, the only surviving painting of the alicorn Caeruleus.
Caeruleus. The Great White Alicorn, the father of aristocracy, and according to history, the first of the Blueblood bloodline. A secret known only to four ponies in all of Equestria - five if you counted the lawn ornament - was that Caeruleus was the only one of the Blueblood bloodline.
Blueblood looked up at his past, a perfect moment captured in ancient oils and carefully maintained over the centuries. There was a world-weariness to his own eyes that was absent from this one painting, even though Caeruleus had already lived through several hundred years of history at that point. The smile was kind, and heartfelt, and seemed to be inviting its audience to bare their souls without any fear of judgement. Blueblood's eyes were inexorably drawn to the record-setting wingspan, and he looked at his own back again. He held back a sigh this time, if only because it was easier to let out a few tears.
An hour later, the prince finally managed to tear himself away from the cruel reminder of his former magnificence. He emerged from his house into the bustling streets of Canterlot, and took a deep breath of the filtered air. Every tiny impurity, every natural non-oxygen ingredient was held on the borders of the capital by a number of privately owned spells that received regular stipends from every silvershod that smarmed their way along the streets. The locals claimed that the purified air tasted like champagne.
To Blueblood, it tasted like disinfectant and earth pony dentistry. He made a mental note to acquire and liquidate the filtration businesses as soon as possible. There were more than enough exclusive features of this city for the nobility to keep themselves entertained, they didn't have to sip their air out of golden chalices like they did with the water.
Blueblood sighed, and tried to focus on more pleasant aspects of the outside world. Outside of the insulated mansion, he could feel the leylines crackling all around him. While every unicorn was constantly aware of the background magical field of the world, it was usually little more than a comforting warmth at the base of their horn. But to an alicorn, and one whose talent was navigation on top of that, the leys were a pulsating network of lightning arcs. It was like having a gallon of coffee, a liter of rainbow and a teaspoon of that new-fangled soda pop poured and shaken inside of his head, every single second.
The searing pain of total spatial awareness was almost enough to blot out the hangover, and definitely enough to make the prince's vision more than a little blurry. He put a hoof wrong, stumbled on a loose cobblestone, and suddenly his right hoof was settling on a patch of grass. That all-invasive sense of comfort and belonging that every earth pony had managed to find the volume control for burned its way up through his legs, and a billion indecipherable sigils about soil pH and ideal fertilizer scrolled over his mind's eye. Blueblood's earth sense met his magical awareness at the halfway point, and he fought the urge to scream in pain at the searing heartburn. To make matters worse, the wind chose that moment to pick up.
If Blueblood's wings had still been attached to him, this would not have been a problem. Somewhere in the middle of all of these sensations, there was a natural equilibrium. He knew it happened, and had distant memories of not being filled with dread at the thought of frolicking in a field, but days like today made it seem like a fever dream. As the wind swept over him, Blueblood lifted his head as if to nuzzle the passing breeze. Unlike the earth or the leylines, wind did not force itself upon him; it was perhaps the only advantage to not having his wings. No, the pain the wind brought was carried in his heart.
The wind caressed Prince Blueblood as if they were lovers, leaning into him if not for support, then simply to be near him. Despite their centuries apart, it did not feel as though a moment had passed. Whatever face the wind might wear, it was not specked with tears or screwed up in rage. It was soft, and accepting, and would gladly take the prince back at the drop of a hat. Blueblood often wondered if it might have been easier to live with this impaired immortality if the sky had utterly rejected him. Now, though, he simply looked up into the sky and yearned.
It wasn't unusual to see pegasi overhead, especially this early in the day. Canterlot had enough small investors throwing away bits on sunny days that you could almost always find a weather team if you were willing to look up. It was however, more than a little out of place to see a pegasus flying low, especially in this district. The only reason they weren't currently being pelted out of the sky with rotten tomatoes was because the vegetable market was ten minutes' smarm away. Blueblood sighed, caught between pitying the pegasus for the insults hurtled their way and envying them for their wings.
Then the pegasus drew nearer, and Blueblood caught sight of their mark. He sent up a flare, painting his own mark in the sky. Swift Retribution caught sight of him, and accelerated with a single beat of his wings. The prince scarcely had time to blink before the messenger was at his side, visibly panting from exhaustion. Swift Retribution tried to speak, but could only cough at first. Blueblood sighed.
"Save your breath until you have it, fool. Surely you have at least a moment to spare." For the prince, subtlety and the niceties of social convention had long ago fallen out of favor. It was all he could do not to clamp Swift's mouth shut with a spell until the fellow could manage to get through two breaths without falling to his knees.
"Apologies, my lord. I merely thought you would wish to hear my message as soon as possible."
"Look around, Retribution." Blueblood gestured at the streets, and the baker's dozen of ponies that counted for bustling in Upper Canterlot. "I have literally nothing to do today. The closest thing I have to a pressing appointment is an unconfirmed invitation to have tea with Fancy Pants in three months. I think I can spare a few seconds for you to get your breath back." Blueblood took a deep breath for himself, pushing out the last of his annoyance through his nostrils. "Now, what was it that you wanted to tell me?"
"Misty Fly is giving birth in Ponyville."
Swift Retribution had just enough time to see the prince's face twist into an unholy visage of rage and horror before a blinding flash of light sent him hurling into the upper stratosphere.
Back on the ground, Prince Blueblood reached out for the leylines, plotting the most efficient course to Ponyville. Numbers tied to latitude, longitude and the top speed of unicorn teleportation raced through his mind, and the cobblestones at his hooves began to rattle and float loose of the street. More than a few ponies started staring, but Blueblood could care less. He focused on the leys, on Ponyville, and let himself melt into the aether.
Here. Here was bliss. Lost in the impossible, the mind-bending landscape in which only the greatest of mages could dance. There was no earth, no wind, only magic. For the brief window of time where he hurled towards his destination, Blueblood was happy.
Then he appeared out of nothing with a flash of gold, and amid the shocked gasps of the farmers, all of the pain and panic of the moment came rushing back. The prince looked up, and thanked his own skill that he had found his way right to the door of the local hospital. He rushed through the doors, only pausing briefly to bark orders at the nearest nurse. A small part of him knew how rude that was, but the rest of him didn't care. He was going to be there when it happened, and if he had to buy this entire hamlet then so be it.
The nurse seemed to understand, and pointed him in the direction of the maternity ward. Blueblood charged forward, teleporting every other step as his magic bubbled up and his heart rate rose. He peered in every door, shouted Misty Fly's name at every doctor or nurse he came across, and listened for that distinctive voice twisted by the pain of childbirth. After two seconds that felt like five hours, he heard it.
"BLUEBLOOOOOOOOOOOD! You get in here right now, or I will TEAR YOUR MANSION DOWN BRICK BY CRUMBLING BRICK!"
She had once told him that he was so insufferable that he actually distorted the air pressure of a room through pure unpleasantness. He had laughed at the time, but this certainly led some credence to the idea.
Blueblood teleported the rest of the way, appearing in the doorway just as Misty's screaming peaked, then faded to nothing. Time seemed to stop as the nurses withdrew, the doctor stepped back, and a wet cloth passed over the newborn. The sweat-stained face of Misty Fly slumped down, and Blueblood gave a tentative little wave. She looked up, and chuckled dryly.
"I thought I told Swifty to get you as fast as he could." The balance of disdain and relief in her voice hit a special chord for the prince, translating into just the right amount of respect to keep her on his good side.
"I wanted him to wait until he could actually talk." Did his excuses always sound so weak, he wondered, or was that just the effect she had on him? Her laughter didn't help matters.
"Prince Blueblood, showing concern? Say it ain't so."
"It ain't so," he fired back in his best imitation of her Manehatten accent. She chuckled again, and Blueblood decided to join in.
"You've practically ruined my career, you know that." The words seemed angry, but her tone was conversational at worst. "It's not easy to be a reserve for the Wonderbolts when you're pregnant." Blueblood could only shrug.
"What can I say? I'm a sucker for mares in uniform. Even if you had just barely worn it in." Any further banter was cut off as the babe was passed from the doctor to Misty. She pulled back the swaddling, and adjusted herself as best she could. Blueblood peered close, and felt the tears gathering.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. The foal had the same stunning coat of brilliant white that he had, and the mane was a beautiful golden blonde, same as his. But the muscles beneath that coat were swollen, an earth pony's strength trying to blend with a lightweight pegasus frame and feeding off the strong magical signature of its unicorn genes. The poor child looked like it was on steroids.
"You don't have to keep him," he muttered, not caring who heard him. "There's a lot of empty space at the mansion. I have servants to spare. You don't have to live with this if you don't want to."
She kept staring down at the child, and she folded her wings in to tickle its stomach. The baby giggled, and wiggled its misshapen legs. "If you take him, will you love him?"
"I am not a promising pony," he admitted. "But I would try." He wrapped the child in his magic, and lifted it up a little closer to his face.
"What are you doing?"
"Looking into his future." Celestia had taught him this trick, centuries ago when he still cared about ponies. Just like the earth and the air, ponies were bundles of magic, with leylines running parallel to their veins. Just as he might chart a course for a distant island, Blueblood focused his magic and tried to make out the shape of what the child would become.
He could not see events. He could not see friendships. Cartography seldom involves abstract things, after all. But Blueblood could see what his son would grow into. He could see every moment from tomorrow to the end of the boy's life. He saw the muscles migrate, and stabilize, and grow even stronger. But there was one thing he saw that made Blueblood feel, made him hope for the first time in centuries.
"He has his father's wings."
Author's Note
When you write a sentence like "The searing pain of total spatial awareness was almost enough to blot out the hangover", it's time to admit that you're just writing schadenfreude and hoping nobody catches on.
So, this was a fun little romp. I know I enjoyed it. I hope you did, too.
