House of Gold

Chapters

Breakfast with Blueblood
Step Lightly
You Will Know
What Is Best
The Colt In the High Castle

Breakfast with Blueblood

Everything in the house was dictated by rules, and it was from this Orion got his first lesson in ruling. Rules ruled, and there was simply no other way it could be done.

On Sunday mornings, the holiest of days because it was named after the Sun, the rules stated everypony in the Blueblood Manor must be up by six o’clock and dressed for breakfast, which started sharply at seven thirty and it was shame unending if you were even a minute late. Some five or ten hundred years ago, they used to dress for Sunday Blessings, where ponies stood out in the sunlight until they baked or fainted. Sunburns were a mark of honor—this was back when they still believed Celestia was a goddess. She put that to rights, and nowadays fancy ponies just ate fancy meals on Sunday. Much of Equestria's high society still clung to these vestiges of ancient worship. Orion himself was named after a venerated demigod of old, who wrestled the constellations and bound them in the sky with his golden harness.

Getting out of bed also had rules. The young master Blueblood, as everypony who was not his parents called him, had to quickly and quietly slip out from under the covers, neatly tidy his bed, brush his teeth forty-seven strokes on the right and forty-nine on the left with time left over for the tongue, wash and rinse his pelt, condition his mane, let it dry for precisely four minutes, comb it with three hundred strokes of the brush, fluff it, airblow it, and then allow servants to place finishing touches on every contour he had missed.

He never questioned the whether and how so of dressing up just to eat breakfast, because if he did he was given a flick on the horn and told not to question. He liked dressing up anyway, because his mother and father dressed up and he liked how it looked. His favorite Sunday dress was the black neckpiece with the red bowtie, because it went well with his white coat and made him look like he wore a fancy white suit without actually wearing one at all.

At breakfast he sat on the third chair down from the head of the table on the right side, to the left of his mother, if she were here, which she wasn’t due to feeling ill, because he was the firstborn son. If he had ever had siblings they would go down his left side all the way to the end, for a full table of children was a sign of good luck. Orion liked to imagine the other chairs filled with ponies of every size and shape, from princely brothers with dash and gallantry, to demure and beautiful sisters who were the picture of grace and charm.

“Ah, some more of that stew, please!” Count Grey Goose chortled, passing the bowl to himself and hitting Orion's horn with it as it flew by.

“And then, he said,” interrupted Earl Sweet Crumble, “well let’s just toss it, good mare, toss it! And she tossed it, she did, right out the ruddy window!”

The entire table, filled with counts, earls, dukes, barons, duchesses, sheriffs, mayors, majordomos, princesses, magistrates, hobnobbers, brown nosers, elbow rubbers, and hangers-on, burst into tightly controlled laughter. It sounded like a chorus of swans trying to honk without disturbing the neighbors.

The young master Blueblood imagined the other chairs filled with different ponies very, very often.

“I say, Duke Blueblood, sir,” said the Baron Goldegg, his bushy mustache all aquiver, “a splendid Sunday bruncheon you’ve gathered up here, and I say, if I may, that I much prefer these early gatherings so business may be done before croquet, what. But I do say, if you’ll permit, it’s rather odd timing given the Big To-Do isn’t until next week.”

The Duke Blueblood, ninth to bear the name, was the young master Blueblood’s father, so the younger said nothing. Orion watched his father scrape butter over a slice of bread, considering Goldegg’s implication. Though he was a unicorn, he held the knife and the bread with his hooves. The Duke preferred to do almost anything with his hooves, and though scurrilous rumors said it was because his magic was weak in his advanced age, Orion knew it was in fact because the Duke simply loved the feel of a thing in his hooves. All the better to keep it under close watch.

It was Orion’s second lesson in ruling: Never let anypony do anything of yours themselves. Only you knew how to do it right.

“The house was quiet,” the Duke said slowly and deliberately, as if he were starting a bedtime story. “I felt that we could stand to use the company.” Scrape scrape went the knife over bread. “The Big To-Do can wait. It’ll be more business than pleasure there anyway.”

Goldegg’s mustache trembled, but Orion found the strength to speak first. “But father, did we not just have a great get-together last Sunday?”

The Duke placed the buttered bread on the empty plate in front of the empty space where Blueblood’s mother would go.

“The house,” he intoned, “was quiet.”

“The Big To-Do!” the Baron puffed like a wisher over a birthday cake.

“Don’t worry,” the Duke said placidly. “You are all invited, of course. Such a day cannot pass without allowing everypony else to witness it. Remember that, my son, what you have done means nothing if you are the only one who sees it.”

“Yes, Father,” said Orion.

“She’s a beautiful ship, the new skiff,” the Duke murmured. “Clean lines, a shallow, narrow keel. The latest engine on the market. Everything a sailor could want.”

“Oh, don’t spoil the surprise too early, my lord Blueblood!” tittered Lady Canterton. “As they say in that rustic pub on Third Street: A mare must leave something to the imagination!”

She threw her head back and whooped scandalously, while the rest of the table chuckled behind their napkins. Orion had no idea what they were talking about, and pushed his broccoli around on his plate. He had already eaten the main course, an entirely too salty dish of steamed lettuce and assorted grasses all the way from Trottingham, and wanted only to dig into dessert. He hoped they brought out apple fritters. They were a favorite of his mother, who sometimes even cooked a few herself.

“May I be excused?” asked Orion.

“No,” said his father.

He waited until one of the guests had told a particularly funny joke before trying again, whispering beneath the laughter.

“I want to go see Mother.”

The Duke stiffened visibly, and his mouth twitched, but not towards a smile. He gave Orion a tight nod and sat up ramrod straight.

Orion hopped off his chair, hooves clattering. In earlier days, before the sickness truly took hold and settled over his mother and the household like a cloak, he would be afraid to even go near her, and had to be coaxed and goaded with the switch. But now he knew and understood that her illness wasn’t catching, nor was it helpful to anyone to show his fear. He was still afraid, but not of the sickness. He was afraid of what it did to her, because it went against everything that a unicorn should be.

He trotted up the stairs in the foyer, leaving the laughter and talking behind. Even with so many guests, the mansion was so big it was easy to miss them. His hoofsteps echoed noisily off the marble finish on the stairs, and soon that was the only noise he heard. The second floor was entirely carpeted, so even the sound of his hooves vanished, and he was just a body moving silently through space, towards Mother’s bedchamber. Her ears had always been quite sensitive, even moreso after the sickness, so the Duke had ordered as many soft things lining the halls and walls as possible, but the silence only made him feel floaty, like it was all a dream every time he visited Mother and she was already gone.

He gently pushed the door open, hearing soft, murmured voices. A servant mare sat at Mother’s bedside, reading quietly from a book, while another replaced the damp cloth on Mother’s forehead. It helped with the ache of her horn, which was ragged and chipped.

Orion recalled the name of the sickness as Crackroot Syndrome, which was a terrible sickness in which a pony’s own magic turned on them after something strange happened to their horn. Orion knew and cared little for it apart from the fact that it was terrible and it was taking his mother away, piece by piece, in cracks and slivers. It had first appeared seven months ago when his mother had a splitting headache. The doctors had used the word hereditary, which Orion only understood because his father used it every other sentence in reference to the name of Blueblood. It left him with the terrible thought that one day his horn would just decide to not work anymore, and tear him apart from the inside out.

“Mother,” he said quietly, hopping up on the bedside.

“Oh, little Orion,” she whispered, because it had come to where her own voice irritated her. “Are you well?”

“Yes, Mother.” He bit back a reproach that he was not well, since he was sitting in a room with his dying mother.

“Getting along with the other foals?”

“Yes, Mother.” He neglected to mention he hardly saw other foals anymore save for when they had the same tutor.

“And…” She smiled, and tried to sit up in bed. The serving mares made a great fuss and set about tutting and walking back and forth in the way panicked ponies do, but she ignored them, managing to settle herself against the headboard.

“And, have you journeyed far and wide, and scoured the ends of the earth, and delved deep into the darkest dungeons?”

“...” Orion cleared his throat, suddenly remembering that this was his favorite part, and he had come unprepared due to the utter mind-numbing boredom of breakfast. He glanced pleadingly at the serving mares, who bustled back and forth and bumped into each other before one finally found the old chest in the corner. It was weathered and beaten, with little handles on the sides for pony teeth to grab it by. Nopony knew where it came from, but Orion liked to think that it had once been the possession of a daring explorer who kept all his swords and treasures inside, and it had passed through the hooves of pirates and marauders before ending up in the mansion’s attic when it fell from a griffon warship.

These days, it was just full of the made-up worlds beyond Equestria’s maps Orion had created.

“Well,” he said, pulling out the latest chart of fictional latitudes and exotic monsters and laying it over Mother’s lap, “I mapped out the whole Tropic of Hippo, and I found a great big island with a Great Green Dragon on it. I called it the Island of Glimmerstone,” he said, pointing out the appropriate scribbles on the map. Many of the lines were still very wobbly, but he explained it away as having not gotten a very good look when he was running from the cannibals of Rotskull Island. The Great Green Dragon was an unhealthily bulbous creature whose eyes were far too big for his head, but Blueblood had done his best to draw him from memory.

“What did the Dragon say, sweetheart?” Mother asked in the sweet, velvety tones of all mothers who indulged their children a little too much.

“He said…” Orion tapped his hooves together fretfully. He hated coming back from his journeys with bad news. “He said that he didn’t know anything but the direction I should go. if I went further east, across the sea…” He drew his hoof over the parchment with a satisfying scrape, to the blank spaces. “He said I might find something better there. It gets more magical the closer you get to the edge of the world. He said those are the rules.”

“Of course,” Mother said, smiling benevolently. “One should always be agreeable to the counsel of dragons, my sweet Orion. They have been around much longer than any of us.”

Orion worried his lower lip. “Another clue might be there,” he said, absently drawing a new line across the vast chalk waves of the endless ocean. “The Dread Pirate Halfhorn sailed over the very very tip of the earth, and they say he buried his treasure in a place where nobody had drawn a map of, that way nobody can find it. So I think if I just go far enough and draw enough maps the treasure will have nowhere to hide! And if I can find that, I can definitely find the next step. Fill in more blank spaces. Something’s gotta be there. And maybe then…” He took a deep, shuddery breath clogged with phlegm and a too-tight chest. “Maybe then…”

Mother reached out and touched his hoof with her own. “You’ll find the cure,” she said with a smile that Orion knew couldn’t be wrong. “And we’ll live forever in a house ten times as big as this one.”

“And Father can fly a ship in the foyer.”

“And every room painted gold with Halfhorn’s treasure.”

“And the Princess will visit!” Blueblood cheered, throwing up his hooves. “And she’ll talk about how even her house isn’t even this big, and we could fit the Sun inside!”

“And you’ll be the most famous and beloved pony who ever lived, just like you deserve. The little pony who sailed beyond the edge of every map because he loved us all too much to turn back.” Mother’s hoof tap-tapped on his. “And don’t forget to name every island you come across after us, hmm?”

“I didn’t forget!” Orion said anxiously, pointing at the maps. “See? Blueblood Island, Blueblood Bay, Blueblood Tower, and Goldspinner Reef, after you Mother!”

“All right, all right,” Mother said in a quiet whisper. “I believe you. I do so like hearing about reefs. A shame I will never get to see one.”

“But you will!” Orion insisted, leaning forward. “I’ll take you to one, after I’ve cured you. And every spot on the map will know your name. Okay?”

Goldspinner took far too long to smile again than Orion liked. But eventually she did, slowly, like the corners of her mouth were dragging her lips upward against their will, and she stroked his mane. “Okay,” she said, and then she asked that she be left alone for a little while for her servants to tend to her, as she was feeling another headache coming on. One of the mares hastily applied a cool cloth to the base of her horn.

“Orion,” she said before he left the room. “How is your father?”

Orion chewed his lip carefully. “He is… well. He hopes that I will find the cure soon too.”

“Would you ask him…” Goldspinner gulped in air, as every word seemed to steal her breath away. “Would you ask him to please come see me, before the day is over? If that old colt won’t listen to the servants then…” She trailed off as she looked at Orion, his eyes so big and hopeful. They shivered in their sockets. There was fear in them.

Goldspinner relented. “Well. I just think he would like if you asked him.”

“Yes, Mother.” Orion left the room and closed the door as quietly as he could, but the tiniest click of the door latch still made him wince in sympathy. It was a long walk back to the dining hall. The hallways never felt so quiet and empty as they did after Orion’s visits, and though there was still an army of servants rushing to serve dessert when he got back downstairs, he saw them only as ill-defined shapes in the corners of his vision, hazy and statuesque.

———

After Sunday came Monday, the first day of the week. Sunday was written first on the calendar, but it was still reserved for Celestia, so the regular week was stuck with Mondays as its beginning, which Orion believed was why Mondays were always so dreary. After the gleaming, dreamy power of yesterday the Sun now hid furtively behind a blanket of cloud that stretched over the whole sky, yet sunlight peeked out now and again, like a sleeper fitfully trying to stay under the covers and peeking out to tell bothersome ponies to let it rest. There was nothing to do and nopony to see, and Orion had to get up early yet again for his tutoring, which he very much despised.

First came math. Orion had specifically asked for math in the mornings not because he liked it, but because he hated math more than anything else and wanted it over and done with. He found it terribly easy and boring, made worse for the fact that Duke Blueblood demanded it take place in a horrid grey room free of distraction or whimsy. The grey room was a simple windowless square space to one side of the living room, lit by fairy lights with desks and chairs and wooden floor. Blank grey walls were lined with dusty bookshelves filled with dull books on subjects nopony cared about like the history of the quadratic equation. The math tutor was always there before Orion no matter how early the colt arrived, giving the horrible impression that he just stood there in the off hours, unmoving, until the Duke told him to begin teaching. There was nothing much to say about math, because Orion did his best to forget the nothing that ever happened in there.

After mathematics came history, which was under the direction of an old grey-maned mare who had a name like Dusty Shelves or something that rhymed with it, and it was one of Orion’s favorite lessons. He enjoyed hearing of the real history of great ponies he hitherto only dreamed of, and especially of the long and distinguished history of the Bluebloods. Dusty Shelves had a voice that crackled like the turning of old pages, and had a particular fondness for sunlight, so it only made sense she taught in the mansion’s solar, where it was sunny all day long. The solar was found on the third floor of the mansion in the northwest corner, and was part of a pavilion that extended out from the house into a tall tower, the very top floor of which was where lessons took place. Though it was exposed to the sun all day long, a few magical spells encouraged the wind to seek the cracks between the stone and keep it comfortably cool. On Orion’s off days it was where he performed most of his magical adventures, where nopony could see him gallivanting as a prince should not.

“Dusty,” Orion said one day, interrupting her lesson about the Battle of Coltatrava, “why is there an edge of the map?”

“Excuse me?” Dusty said, blinking owlishly. “Why, because nopony has been there, young master Blueblood.”

“But we are magical,” said Orion, “and the Princess has been around for thousands of years. Hasn’t she seen what’s past the edges?”

“I’m sure that if the Princess,” Dusty said in a sharp voice to corral any budding heresy, “saw fit to share with us all that she has seen in her long and illustrious life, then she will tell us. But we should be thankful she is not traipsing off every century to go and have an adventure. Otherwise, who would protect Equestria? Who would raise the sun and the moon?”

“I guess,” Orion said, carving a divot into his desk with his hoof. “But I think she should know a lot of things if she’s been around that long.”

“And so she does, young master.”

“Does she know how to cure Mother?”

Dusty fell silent at that. She was a kindly sort, matronly without malice, and she became a teacher because she could not have children yet loved them dearly. She scurried to Orion’s side and scooped him up against her chest, where he lay like a limp rag.

“Now, my little nip,” she said, “I know what’s become of your family is an awful thing, but you must not blame the Princess if things go awry. Your father has sent entreaties to the Princess many times, and her best physicians have come around, you know this. The Crackroot is no malady mere medicine can fix. It is an affliction of the magic, and thus the soul. Even a Princess cannot touch a pony’s soul.”

“But why?” asked Orion. “If somepony went out beyond the edge of the map, they might have found out how to stop it, or other bad things. What’s the point of being a Princess if you can’t help ponies?”

“Perhaps that somepony will be you, young master,” Dusty simpered. “As to the point of being a Princess, I am afraid you must ask her. She is the only one who would know after all this time. Celestia has helped a great many ponies, but she is not a goddess, bless her. She is a pony like the rest of us, and some problems are beyond even her.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Orion grumbled. “If you are a Princess, you should be able to do anything. If she can tell the Sun and Moon to go up and down, she should be able to fix Mother’s magic. If I ever became a Prince, I would go beyond everything everypony’s ever seen, and I’ll find a cure, and I’ll make a castle ten times as big as Canterlot.”

“Well, when you become a Prince, let nopony say you cannot do a thing,” Dusty told him. “A pony like you deserves great things, young master.”

Orion thought about how sad he was that Mother was going away. He thought long and hard about how he felt so powerless and how everypony at the dinner table ignored him, and how he was always feeling left out whenever the other little ponies did something because his father was telling him to study or keep quiet because of decorum.

Orion believed that Dusty Shelves was very much on point.

He deserved better than this.

He deserved to be a Prince.

Step Lightly

The next day was Tuesday. It was known as an “off day” in that Orion had no official lessons. The rules were the same as Sunday: get up, get brushed, get dressed. Yet afterwards, Orion thought he should have some measure of freedom—that only made sense. But the wisdom of the time held that a young colt’s brain was more like a sponge than an organ, and if it was not constantly inundated with things to learn, it would eventually lose what it should retain. So the Blueblood household ruled that a young colt’s education should be ongoing in whatever he did, even if it was not during school hours. Thus, Tuesdays were disdained very much by Orion, because he was never sure what he was going to “learn” that day.

“Today,” said the Duke as he led Orion away from breakfast, “you will learn more about my business.” That was how Orion knew it was not going to be an altogether horrible day after all. He already knew very well that his father’s business was airships and the flying, construction, and maintenance of airships, but this was one of the few things the Duke and Orion shared an interest in, and he was always excited to know more.

So he said, “Yes, Father,” like a dutiful son, and followed the Duke through the foyer and out the front door.

The outside of the mansion was nearly as important as the inside. It stood on the inner slope of a large, crescent-shaped hill. Nearly every tree excepting a small grove providing shade for the gardens out back had been removed long ago, providing a commanding view of the landscape. Dusty Shelves told Orion the hill was known as Gendarme’s Crest, after a very famous knight from Prance who hoof-wrestled a minotaur at its peak almost three hundred years ago for the honor of the Bluebloods. He owed the win to his plume of feathers in his helmet which tickled the minotaur’s nose, causing him to sneeze and lose his grip. The mansion was built that same year, since the Bluebloods who attended the match liked the view of Canterlot the hill gave them.

The mansion stood taller on the east side than the west because it had been added to in later years by successively richer and more pompous Bluebloods. It created a fascinating left-to-right timeline of Equestrian architecture. The east roof was covered in busts, fancy pillars, and modern tile at the very end. The older western half was capped by looming battlements and gargoyles, on over to the tower holding the solar and its promenade, which once served as a place for the guard watch. A pony could even see the centuries-old stone, greyed and cracking. The mismatched construction was something of a cultural curiosity and lent the place prestige, or so Orion’s parents said, and the local peasantry gave it the nickname Half House.

Goldspinner refused to have even a bit of the older facade removed anyway, so there it stayed.

A broad street for carriages followed the curve of the hill on its south side in a wide arc, the top of which was the front door of the mansion. Inside the arc of the street were wide pathways going down the slope of the Crest, allowing visitors to enjoy fountains, artificial streams, and professional topiary. Orion especially liked the hedge dominating the center of the boulevard: a gigantic clipping of Princess Celestia. He had never met the Princess face-to-face, but he liked to imagine she was about as big and impressive as the artist suggested.

Today, though, even she was dwarfed by the airship moored at the base of the hill, on the elliptical dirt field normally used as a parking space for carriages.

Orion took one look at it and fell in love.

“She’s beautiful. Are we going to board her, Father?”

The corners of the Duke’s lips twitched upwards. Perhaps he was proud Orion remembered to call the ship a ‘she,’ because that was only proper for a lovely craft like her. “Yes, my son. She is what we’ll be unveiling at the Big To-Do next week, and as airships have become an unending passion of yours, I think it best if you are introduced to a more in-depth study of them. This one is based on the design of a simple sketch, made for going hither and thither in comfort. You can see the two sails coming off the side?”

“They’re like fins of a fish,” Orion said.

“Exactly. A sea vessel would need many more such sails simply to move. But our engines provide a little more push. We need it due to the extra weight of the balloon.”

Propellers on the rear of the ship came dangerously close to striking the ground, but the sleek vessel was held aloft by the giant gas sac tethered to it. Even the balloon was shapely, not bulbous like a hot air balloon, but egg-like and sturdy. She looked like a racehorse at the starting gate.

The Duke gave Orion a nudge. “Let us board her. She’s named the Ambient, and with a little luck, her duty will be to ferry the Princess herself when she requires both speed and luxury.”

Orion scampered after his father, unable to contain his excitement. He had been aboard airships once or twice, but those were vague memories of being dragged around showroom floors on big tubby things that floated a story at most above the ground. Nothing so lean and mean as the Ambient, which seemed to strain at the ropes that moored her. She was a creature of the air and knew she belonged in the sky, and Orion wanted dearly to see her in action.

“Will we fly her, Father?”

“Not today, my son,” said the Duke, quite happy about his child’s enthusiasm, “but soon, I promise you. Today you will take part in a very important ritual.”

“Ooh!” Orion’s eyes widened as he stopped in front of the gangplank. “Is it magic?”

“A little,” said the Duke. “You see, every ship that has passed through our shipyards has been touched by me at least once, and given my blessing. You can only really know something if you hold it yourself, my son, and feel its pulse beneath your bare hoof. I have been involved in every step of Ambient’s construction, but she has not yet known the touch of her maker.”

He glanced down at Orion through his monocle. “That honor goes to you, my son.”

“Wow,” said Orion, staring at the gangplank. It was not officially part of the ship, so he tottered up it until he got to the deck, spread out before him like a new horizon. It was sanded and polished and clean, shining in the sun. The balloon loomed over him, a deep royal purple unblemished by work or travel. The clean sails billowed gently with a noise like flapping wings. Everything was quiet and expectant. This ship had been worked on by a hundred hooves, but it hadn’t been given the final test: the touch of a Blueblood.

“Go on,” said the Duke. “Let her get the measure of you.”

Orion gently stretched out his hoof and daintily pressed down on the deck. It did not sag under his touch, but he felt the ship sway just so, like a nervous dog that hadn’t been pet before. But then the whole ship seemed to spring back up, bobbing happily, and Orion’s face glowed with his smile.

“She’s wonderful,” he said. “Pliant, and, and… bouncy!”

“Then she is fit for service,” said the Duke, coming up behind. “Head up to the navigation deck, and I will show you how to make her move.”

Orion sprinted up the stairs to the stern of the ship, giddy with glee. His father had never done something like this before, not even on his happiest days. Perhaps his talk with Mother had gone better than Blueblood hoped.

“Take hold of the wheel with your hooves.”

“But why not with magic, Father?”

The Duke gave him a flick on the horn. “What have I said, my son?”

Orion ducked his head and muttered as he placed his hooves on the wheel spokes. “Magic is for holding, hooves are for feeling.”

“Yes. Magic is the impression of our will upon the world. It changes what is there and turns it into something else. But our hooves tell us the truth of the world around us, and let us guide our environment rather than step on it. Magic therefore is mundane when you are running a ship, for a ship doesn’t really care what you want. She is what she is, and so she must be dealt with by our hooves.”

Orion began to roll the wheel back and forth, listening to the rudder creak as it turned. “Look, Father! I’m a commander!”

“You have been paying attention at your lessons, I hope?” the Duke said, suddenly stern. “Those were meant to prepare you for a moment like this.”

“Of course!” Orion squeaked. “I know that first of all we must check her buoyancy to ensure she will stay level in the air, and then ensure the hull is in working order. There are lift tests, engine diagnostics, checks of the balloon and ballast…”

“Very good,” said the Duke. “Remember my son: all things must happen in their time and in the right place. If we do anything out of order, if anypony forgets their place, then all could be lost. That is the key to keeping a ship afloat.”

“Yes Father,” Orion said, already imagining he was a great explorer as he turned the wheel left and right. There was fair weather on the horizon and a fast-rising sun to the east, and he was commander of everything that lay before him.

“Do you feel the slight resistance of the rudder as it turns?”

“Yes.”

“That is what you must look out for. If it becomes too easy and you feel nothing, it means the rudder has broke and you have lost all control. So it is in life. Always be sure you are levering some of your own effort into a task, my son. Letting others perform for you is like a rudderless ship. She is adrift on somepony else’s currents.”

Orion let the words of his father sink in and wash over him. This was the most they had spoken in weeks. The Duke’s low voice rumbled just above a whisper like a storm ever on the horizon, only caught if you paid attention to the signs of its coming. A pony was forced to pay attention to the Duke if he wanted to hear anything, and Orion often lost count of how many hangers-on leaned in close to glean the wisdom of his words. In this way everypony was dependent on him. He ran a tight ship, the Duke did.

Then a new voice, mirthful and quite higher in pitch than the Duke’s, breezed over the railing.

“Hello, the captain!”

The Duke went to the side and let a small smile grace his lips. “Hello, the shore,” he replied in a more measured tone.

An earth pony stallion with the most ridiculous wig Orion had ever seen strolled up the gangplank. The wig, which was the pony’s most prominent feature and the one Orion noticed first, towered like a ship’s main sail and bobbed about as though it sailed choppy waters. It was chalky white and done up in curls and rolls near the bottom, which Orion supposed were like sea waves if one had never seen the sea before and just flung their comb at the wig a few times. The pony was about as chalky as his wig, with a scraggly grey beard and dull yellow eyes and knees that looked far too wobbly and arthritic to have ever stood firm on the deck of a ship.

“Celestia’s mercy, is that Royal Inspector T’gallant I see there?”

The old stallion creaked and clattered over the deck, seeming about to topple over with every step. “’Tis. I have not been buried at sea yet, wot wot. Is that your young son I see there, Duke Blueblood, or are my eyes finally failing?”

Orion bowed low. “I am honored, good sir,” he said without prompting, for the Duke insisted his son speak for himself when in noble company.

“I am here to honor the Ambient,” replied T’gallant. “The Duke may declare every ship that passes through his shipyards fit to sail, but I am the one who decides if they are fit for the Princess to sail upon. Though she may only use this craft to enjoy the view of Canterlot without the aid of her beatific wings, it still falls upon me to ensure she experiences superior commutation to all other modes of transportation, wot!”

“The Royal Inspector will be at the Big To-Do next week,” said the Duke. “He will give our ship the seal of approval, and then the Princess will bless her, and take her into the Royal Fleet.”

“You sound very certain, my good stallion,” T’gallant said, squinting. His voice was suddenly clear of cobwebs and stutters.

“The ships Blueblood yards have developed have never failed to pass muster,” the Duke said with an imperious upward tilt of his snout. “And every one considered for induction into the Royal Fleet has gone on to serve admirably. You have seen the new yacht, tested it, felt it. If you are refusing to remark on any deficiencies until the day before the Big To-Do, then rest assured it will not be a stain on the house of Blueblood, but the Royal Inspector’s office.”

“Ha ha ha!” T’gallant barked. “All these years and you still think I am the majority shareholder in Her Majesty’s good graces? I have recommended numerous vessels for royal service, yet she has turned down more than one. Or is the fate of the Oriole still so fresh in your mind?”

A harsh silence rose like a wall. The Duke and T’gallant stared each other down, but Orion’s mind was working fast. Any feud between Blueblood and the Inspector would have to wait.

“Are you close to the Princess?” Orion dared to ask, a vague and amorphous feeling rising in his gut.

T’gallant blinked owlishly. “Close to the Princess? I am in her counsel, dear boy, but I am not what anypony would call close to her. In fact, I daresay it is improper to assume such no matter your station. The Princess is a cut above mortal ponies and should be treated as such.”

“She has no friends?” wondered Orion. “Does she play with nopony?”

“Hush, my son,” said the Duke. “The Princess is our protector, the mover and shaker of all that is. She does not engage in frivolity.”

T’gallant’s moustache seemed to bristle. “Quite! There is nothing that Princess Celestia does that is without purpose. She is the ruler of the sun, and ‘play’ is something I have not seen her engage in in all my years of service.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” said Orion, fidgeting with his hooves. “Everything I’ve seen of her makes her seem so wonderful.”

“She is the most astounding pony you shall ever hope to meet,” said T’gallant, “but a frolicking filly she is most certainly not.”

“Um,” said Orion. “I should like to see for myself.”

“To meet the Princess?” T’gallant sputtered, his beard shaking like a loose branch. “The Bluebloods are not short of prestige, but one does not simply ‘see’ the Princess, or ‘meet’ the Princess, or do anything at all in her vicinity without express permission from Her Majesty’s Royal Court.”

“But,” the Duke interjected, “she will be present at the Big To-Do next week, yes? To bless the Ambient.”

“I should say she will be present to do whatever she pleases, being the Princess,” said T’gallant, with a very conspicuous sigh. “My Lord Blueblood, you know I respect you, and for all the friction that comes of my duties brushing against your ambition, I know your ships are always exceptional. But let’s not start putting the cart before the pony, hmm?”

“The Ambient is the product of typical Blueblood Yards efficiency and artisanship,” the Duke replied tartly. “Whatever comes, I am sure the Princess will find her more than acceptable.”

“How long will the Princess be at the inspection?” Orion pressed on, feeling like he was being squeezed out from between two large rocks. The subtleties of old feuds did not interest him; only the tantalizing glimpse of a rising sun on the horizon.

T’gallant barely glanced at him. “As long as she is required. It will not be an open day for petitions, and I doubt she will have much time or inclination to speak to anypony unless it is important.”

“It is important,” Orion said stubbornly, stamping his hoof on the deck. He immediately checked to make sure he had not scuffed it. “I want to request an audience with the Princess!”

“Do not speak out of turn, Orion!” the Duke snapped. Orion flinched bodily and turned his ears down. “Next week is for the honor of the Blueblood family, and is not to be spent bothering Her Highness with questions. If you must see her, I promise you will be introduced formally to her at the event, but the last thing she will appreciate is a disrespectful colt who will waste her time. We are nobility, but we are not royal. To presume any familiarity with the Princess could disgrace our family, you know this. And it is all you need to know.”

“It will not be a waste of time, Father!” Orion said, a sudden fire leaping up inside him. He reared up just slightly on his back hooves, a severe breach of composure for nobles of any age or stature. Rearing was heavily frowned upon as a barbarous act that only primitive ancestors took part in, and it made T’gallant’s whiskers shiver with scandal. “And I wasn’t going to pretend I’m familiar with her! I was going to ask her about Mother, and if she found any magic that could help with—”

“No, child!” the Duke barked, putting his hoof down firmly. “That is the absolute last thing you will ask Celestia, familiar or not. That day will be a day of celebration and triumph, and we do not need more reminders of our calamity shrouding it.”

“Mother is not a calamity!” Orion said, and sudden tears pricked the corners of his eyes. “I just want to help her and all you can think about are these stupid boats!”

T’gallant cleared his throat and walked away. “I should perhaps take a look at the poop deck.”

The Duke loomed over Orion, nostrils flaring. He glared down at his son in a way no father should, and said, “You are a young and ill-tempered colt, so I am going to pretend that I didn’t hear that. Go to the forward cabin and sit there, Orion, until you think about what a foal you are being and what horrid things you have just said. Do not move, do not touch anything until I come to fetch you again when my business with T’gallant is finished.”

Orion sniffled, rubbing his nose with the back of his hoof. Shame at his outburst and guilt for ruining the first nice day he’d had with his father in weeks suddenly washed over him. He wanted his father to understand, but he couldn’t. His own tongue felt useless and flabby in his mouth, all the great and wonderful places he’d seen on his maps couldn’t come out, and magic was useless and his own hooves were useless and this ship was useless.

“Father, I only just—”

“Go!” the Duke roared, loud enough that the sails quivered.

Orion ran for his life, shutting the door to the forward cabin tight behind him. He turned and collapsed on it, beat the immaculate floor and thumped the doorframe, because curse this pretty ship for looking so lean and beautiful when his mother was ailing. He didn’t deserve to fly it.

Then he cried, and berated himself for being a stupid foal, because real stallions like Father didn’t cry, and then he cried more anyway. He reasoned a future Prince could cry if he wanted to. There wasn’t much to say about the crying, thought it felt like hours before it ended. It was the type of crying all little colts did, snotty and full of hiccups and dragging on longer than it needed to, just to spite himself and the world that made him do it.

After a long time he sat up and looked around the cabin, wondering if T’gallant and his father heard his wretched moaning. It would serve them right if they did.

The cabin was pretty, though. It was a large square room with a table secured firmly to the deck, and large portholes let in a lot of sunlight. Cushioned benches jutted from the walls, and he went to sit on one. Father had told him not to touch anything, but he didn’t say Orion couldn’t sit on things.

He sank into the velvety pillow and sighed, then buried his face into it. The warm softness felt good on his aching snout. When he lifted his head he looked out the porthole and saw his family’s grounds, the hill leading up to the mansion, the afternoon sunlight playing off its face. Orion saw the window of his mother’s room, and wondered if she was looking out as he looked in. He saw the Duke escorting T’gallant off the ship. The two of them seemed to exchange pleasantries and T’gallant left, and his father came back up the gangplank.

The door opened without a sound, and the Duke stepped inside with the lightness of a bird on a branch.

“My son,” he said calmly. “We need to complete your lessons. I know you are looking forward to seeing the Princess, but we are a minor house. We cannot simply do whatever we please, especially when it comes to royalty. Do you think the Princess would appreciate it if we nagged her with all our problems when she has thousands of other ponies to help?”

Orion shook his head slowly.

“Would it help if I promised that I will do what I can to get you close enough to speak to her?”

Orion nodded.

“And you understand that means very little, and it will probably not have the outcome you wish? That simply because she is a Princess, she will not be able to give you everything you wanted?”

Orion rested his chin on crossed hooves.

The Duke sighed, as if that closed the entire affair.

“Good. Then you must learn a little more than commanding a ship. You must learn to command yourself in the presence of an alicorn.”

You Will Know

“And then he said he’d get the Princess to speak with me!” Orion cheered prancing back and forth across the soft carpet. Even with his light steps, his mother had to hide her wince at every step, ears folded back with a pained smile.

“That’s lovely, my child,” she whispered, needing to take a breath between words. “The Princess will... surely look on you and see what the rest of us see.”

“Yeah!” Orion said, letting his enthusiasm get the better of him. He had not felt very happy about anything at all in the last few months. True joy had become an alien feeling in the Blueblood household, peering in through foggy windows and waiting by the door only to be brushed aside when the occupants left. Today Orion wanted to revel in it. “I’m going to do it, Mother! I’ll speak to the Princess, and then she’ll give me a place in the Royal Navy, and I’ll learn to fly airships and explore and--”

“Yes, child,” Goldspinner murmured, putting a hoof on the bridge of her nose. The servants glanced at each other nervously. “She will—”

“I’m finally going to do everything I said I would! Our dreams are going to come true and this will be the first step!” Orion said, running back and forth on the carpet. He picked up one of his maps and flapped it around excitedly, giggling aloud and exclaiming how he would be the master of the known world and he would find the treasure and fill in every blank spot and--

“Orion!” Goldspinner snapped, her voice breaking like a fallen vase.

Orion stopped on a dime, ears going flat against his head. In all his years he had never heard his mother raise her voice to him. Not once, even before she was sick, and he had thrown tantrums like no other.

“Orion,” she said, her voice softer now, cracked and weak. “Come here.”

Orion didn’t want to turn around. His blood ran cold and he shivered.

“Orion, come here,” said Goldspinner.

Orion turned around. His mother’s face wrenched in different directions and her brow and lips quivered at the edges as if unsure where to go. It stopped somewhere between pity and pride. He decided he didn’t like it at all.

“Yes Mother?” he asked, trembling as he approached her bed. “I’m sorry for being so loud. I was just so excited about everything and I realized I could finally help out in the house and…”

Goldspinner took several deep breaths, patting the space next to her where he hopped up. “It’s fine, my darling. Now listen. The Princess will be there, and you must be on your best behavior.”

Orion hopped up next to her, curling his hooves underneath him. “Yes, Mother.”

“You must not speak too plainly to her, or act as though you went to her just to get something you wanted.”

“Of course.”

Goldspinner reached out and stroked some of his flaxen mane. “And promise you will remember to bow, but not to simper. We Bluebloods do not grovel. It would be disrespectful not only to us, but to the Princess. Keep your back straight and your chin up, so she can see your handsome face.”

Orion managed to smile a bit. He didn’t know why his mother was telling him things he already knew, but she said it so tenderly he went along with it. “I will, Mother.”

“That’s my boy,” said Goldspinner. “You will never be a disappointment to me, all right? You must remember that, Orion.”

His smile faltered. “I will, Mother.”

Goldspinner winced, curling her hoof tight into the mattress. Orion watched, uncertain if he should try to comfort her. She tried to speak, but she gritted her teeth instead and closed her eyes.

A niggling feeling pricked the back of Orion’s skull. It felt like a claw scraping down his mane, cold and dreadful, a terrible reminder of something that lurked just out of sight. Orion shook his head to rid himself of that feeling though it clung to him tenaciously, like a parasite. He took his mother’s hoof.

“Orion,” she murmured in a voice so quiet he had to turn his ears forward and lean in close to hear her. Her voice strained like she was being pressed beneath a great weight. “Promise me. “Promise me that whatever she says, you will be a good boy. That she will see you the way I see you. Promise me that she will think you are just as special and wonderful as you deserve, because your heart is just that good.”

“I will, Mother,” he said, since it was the only thing he could think to say. “You know I will.”

Goldspinner managed to smile again, which was the only thing that kept Orion from breaking into tears. Instead he leaned forward and buried his face into her fur, as she gently caressed his mane. He tried not to think about how she could only twist her hoof at the wrist, stroking back and forth with the tiniest of movements. Yet even after that, he felt the pricking sensation down his neck again as he listened to her heartbeat, gently tap-tapping against her ribcage like a ticking clock.

The day of the Big To-Do was a Wednesday. Normally, Wednesdays were a day reserved for a larger meal than usual to help noble families make it through to the weekend. Orion’s lessons consisted then of table manners, etiquette, and the ins and outs of high society fashion. It wasn’t entirely horrible, because Orion liked dressing up and looking nice. It just seemed like a thing a colt should do. What he couldn’t stand was the standing. So much standing to be done here and there and on the balconies and on parapets and in front of big doors so you could only listen to what a grand old time everypony else was having inside while you shook hooves.

Unfortunately since last week his lessons went into overdrive, and he was rushed through a quick succession of fashion designers, posture police, and silverware aficionados until he was pretty sure he had transmogrified into a brittle statue, ready to fall over at the slightest brush of wind to relieve his aching knees because he had to stand through every single lesson.

Yet on this Wednesday, this glorious summer Wednesday, he could take standing because he stood over everypony else.

Beneath him swayed the deck of the Ambient, and above the sun shone with a perky, gentle light that wasn’t painful to look at. Folklore said the sun was a reflection of Celetsia’s mood, so today she must be mild and composed, a good omen for the party. In front of Orion stretched a menagerie of rainbow colors and wigs of all shapes and sizes that loomed overhead, threatening to drop as they swayed with their owners’ forced laughter and polite head dips. In fact, Orion very much wanted to push one over and send every wig in the crowd falling like a row of dominos.

The sea of wigs tossed and turned on a canopy-laden field in front of Canterlot Mountain. It was traditionally a place for nobles of Equestria to congregate for parties, given it was big and open and regularly tended to by earth ponies so the grass was always lush and green no matter how many hooves trampled it. In between the wig waves wandered lonely butlers and servants passing out appetizers and wine imported at great cost to the Blueblood household. Orion didn’t know the specifics, but it seemed to put everypony in a good mood.

Dusty Shelves told him that long ago the field was a place where nobles met to discuss important matters of state when Canterlot was still being built, but Orion had seen enough of the nobility to know that matters of state were often far from their mind, which was how he liked it too. He wasn’t here to talk about economics or fashion. He had eyes for only one pony who had yet to show up. For now he just had to wait.

Wait and talk.

“Oh, what a simply marvelous get-together, Duke Blueblood!” squealed the Duchess of Marehampton, a lanky and cheerful unicorn with cheeks absolutely crimson with blush. Her whole body quivered with a sort of shimmy as she hopped up the gangplank. “I do so adore airships!”

“It is well that so many could attend, not least of all yourself, my lady,” Orion’s father said, with a tight smile. Orion knew his father was also on the lookout for Celestia, and would not calm down until she had blessed the Ambient. “I don’t know what we would have done without your particular brand of enthusiasm.”

The Duchess giggled and said something or other. Orion was already looking away from the small talk, up into the sky, to Canterlot, the City Above All Cities. He had only ever seen it from afar, and wondered what Celestia’s descent would be like. The Princess would be waiting in her throne room of alabaster pearl and marble pillars, wreathed in the glory of the sun, calmly waiting for her army of advisors to say it was time to go. She would descend from her throne carved of Tartarian rock said to be impervious to any harm, and don her regalia crafted by the master artisans of ancient Unicornia. She would ride on a chariot made of gold scraped from the mountains of Camelu, and then she would come to a stop, the crowd would go silent, and she would be so very, very beautiful —

“Orion,” the Duke said with a nudge. “Welcome our guests.”

There were six more ponies now alongside the Duchess of Marehampton, all with patient, cloying smiles as they waited for the official Blueblood greeting which would give them official permission to speak.

Orion’s face lit up with a bright, ear-to-ear smile as he reached out for every hoof in turn, shaking them or clutching them like the hooves of an old friend, of which he had none.

“Orion, son of Blueblood welcomes you all!” he simpered. “My Duchess, you are radiant. Good Sir Regal Rein, I remember you from the tennis party last month! Is your hip well? Oh, what a relief! And Lady Verity, I am so sorry your daughter could not attend.”

“Such a shame!” Lady Verity agreed. “She speaks of you so often since you bumped into each other at the soirée some six Sundays ago.”

“Oh, how lovely,” said Orion who remembered nothing of the daughter save that he was supposed to mention her, and quickly moved on through the others, dispensing hoofshakes and smiles like they were on sale at the local market.

His father gave him a proud, rueful smile when he was done. “Your lessons have paid off, my son.”

Orion smiled again, a little more genuine this time because it was his father giving out the praise, but he had only done this as part of their agreement. His purpose was to meet the Princess.

“Can we stop standing on the deck soon?” he wondered.

“Only after the blessing has been given,” said the Duke. “We cannot be seen to be ignoring our own ship while she is still under judgment.”

“I think she is utterly fine and the Princess will only need to look at her before blessing her.”

“Utterly fine is a standard to which only commoners aspire, my son. Remember that a Blueblood must be exceptional.”

Orion wrinkled his nose. “Father, what did T’gallant mean by the fate of the Oriole?”

The Duke abruptly looked away, up into the sky. “Not. Now. My son.” He raised a hoof. “Behold. She has come.”

Orion’s gaze lifted with the noise of trumpets and drums. As one, the crowd followed suit. From the sky came a bright streak of gold, descending in twists and turns like a lost snowflake. As it grew larger, Orion saw pegasus stallions in gleaming armor galloping on the air, their wings carrying them with austere confidence. He felt an intense pang of envy, and his shoulders itched as if there were wings of his own, ready to fly.

Behind the stallions was a white-gold chariot that could fit ten ponies end to end, shining so bright it hurt Orion’s eyes to look at it. But he did, because the Princess sat upon it, and he could not take his eyes off her if he tried.

As the stallions and chariot set down across the field, the Princess stood tall, and taller still when everypony bowed down. Her ethereal rainbow mane shimmered as she raised her head, and her pristine white coat glistened like sunlight through dew-dropped glass.

Then she moved, and oh, how she moved. An aisle of ponies graciously parted for her, and she seemed to sail over the ground as though the windy waves of grass reverently bore her weight. There was no wasted movement, no frivolous bobbing of her head or swaying of her hips, only smooth, gentle forward motion. A thousand years of lonely rule had trimmed away all excess, leaving only this slim creature of poise and venerable grace.

For a moment, Orion thought he was in love. Then his father grabbed him by the mane and pushed him down until his face touched the deck, and he heard only the creaking of wood, the groaning of wind, and a rustle of soft feathers.

“Is that her?” he asked the Duke. “Is that really her?”

The Duke said nothing. Orion’s ears strained, but they heard nothing except for a gentle breeze on the grass and the quiet breathing of his father next to him. Soon his heart joined in, pounding blood as loud as hammers, and his head felt like it was about to float off his shoulders.

“Rise, my little ponies,” said the Princess, sounding much nearer than she should be. Her voice was musical and resonant, making Orion’s ears tingle. He looked up and saw her right in front of him, taller than anypony he had seen before. She seemed to stretch up to the clouds that swirled overhead, a warm smile on her face as she looked straight down at him from on high. The shadows on her face highlighted her luminous magenta eyes, eyes that seemed to look back at him across a great distance, from a place and time ten centuries removed.

“And one very little pony,” she said, with a laugh in her voice that could make a statue blush. “Duke Blueblood, this is your son?”

“He is, your highness,” said the Duke, making sure to rise only after everypony else. “Nearing the age that all colts do when they get their mark. Speak, my son.”

“I, I um,” Orion mumbled, his lips quivering. His whole body felt weighed down but his head was out of control, craning back, back, until he was forced to stumble over his hooves and fall flat on his bottom.

“Um,” he said, cursing his clumsiness. The eyes of every single pony in attendance stared up at him. His lessons were forgotten, his mind gone blank, everything seized up or ran out of control. In moments the Princess had made a wreck of him in spite of all the drills and books and rehearsals.

“Orion,” the Duke grumbled between clenched teeth. Celestia waited with a polite smile on her face.

“M-My name is Orion and it’s good to meet you, madam, my lady, high princess!” Orion blurted out, finally managing to untangle his legs and stand up straight, a few paces back so he didn’t feel like he stood under a mountain. “Orion of House Blueblood, t-tall and mighty—the House is, I mean.”

“Of course, young one,” said Celestia. “It is good to see the future of your House is secure. So tall for somepony your age! I am sure you will show the same aptitude for magic your father did.”

Orion gaped at his father. He had never once been told that the Princess knew anything of his father’s magic.

“Don’t look so surprised, my son,” said the Duke with a rueful smile. “I was a student at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, far back in the day. Celestia herself watched my development.”

“And a very good student you were,” Celestia said with a beatific smile and a raise of her wings. “But such things can be dwelt upon later. I believe that you have a young lady to introduce me to as well?” She shared a little wink with the Duke.

“Of course,” said the Duke. “Your Highness, welcome aboard the Ambient!”

He waved her aboard and began the tour. Orion walked alongside them, keeping his head up and his back straight like he had been taught, determined not to shame himself again. Celestia nodded and cooed her appreciation at the fine craftsmanship on the wall carvings and the excellent quality of the timber and sail cloth. Excessive lacquer and numerous enchantments had been laid into the woodwork to ensure not a single scuff touched the deck, and the hull was exquisitely gilded in gold and silver.

“And how,” Celestia asked as they strolled below decks and entered the engine room, “does such a nimble ship expect to carry the weight of a royal retinue?” She ducked her head to avoid the low ceiling, and her ethereal mane seemed to waft through the floorboards of the above deck like smoke.

“Oh, I know that one!” Orion chirped before he actually checked that he knew. The Duke seemed to flinch that his son spoke out of turn, but he did not upbraid him, instead watching with a clenched jaw.

“Do tell, little Orion,” said Celestia with a calm smile as she looked through a porthole, surprising the nobles outside.

“The, uh, the magic!” Orion said to buy time, poking at the engine. It took up over half the room, a gigantic compressor and turbine housed in a metal frame with exhaust pipes and shafts leading out to the fins on the sides of the ship. “The engine room is actually built to geometric specifications that allow a maximum space-to-energy ratio of magical output. A spell extends out in a web to hold all the enchantments that surround the ship. The heavier a load sensed by the spell web, the more it works to hold everything up! It’s proportional. Here, look!” He scampered over to the engine and pried back a square hatch, revealing a complex, gossamer-thin network of crystal around an arcane capacitor mounted on a metal plate. “This is the main energy relay station, which will dole out energy based on the need of the ship. The capacitor is a brand new design, able to hold ten percent more thaumic charge than predecessors at a much smaller size, allowing for more varied applications. Easy access means it can be immediately replaced or recharged in the event of an emergency. I was involved in its construction.”

He puffed his chest out, proud he had remembered such big words in front of the Princess. In truth he had just read many books and taken notes until he got to personally mount the capacitor under careful supervision by unicorn engineers a few days ago, but that seemed immaterial.

“How interesting,” said Celestia, turning to peer directly at him. Orion’s ears burned under her timeless gaze. “You have a keen interest in the subject of airships, then?”

“He has grown up fascinated by travel and exploration, your highness,” the Duke answered with a pleased smile. “He has drawn maps and plans to visit every place with an airship of his very own.”

“Father,” Orion chided him, but in reality he hoped very much to tell Celestia all about those maps.

“Really!” Celestia gushed, one hoof lifting up in surprise. “An adventurer in the making. You will need more than a ship, little Orion, but a crew of close friends as well.”

“Oh, I’ll get around to that,” Orion said with a shrug. “I just… I really like ships, your highness. And traveling. Or, the idea of it. I have…” His voice faltered and he bit back the explanation that almost spilled out. “I have plans.”

If Celestia noticed his hesitation, she did not remark on it. Her porcelain smile did not even flinch as she turned back to the Duke and gave a gentle nod. “I believe I am ready to pass judgment, your lordship.”

The Duke nodded and led them back outside. The deck was now choked with ponies who had been allowed on now that the Princess had taken her first steps, all from the upper echelons of nobility--dukes, grand princes, and marquises. Celestia made her way to the forecastle and stretched out a hoof for silence. The murmur died down so her voice rang clear and loud over the assembly.

“Gentle ponies,” she said. “Today is a day of celebration and appreciation. We are gathered to enjoy the fruits of labor of a very good friend of the crown, Duke Blueblood the Tenth, Earl of Marehampton, and the excellent and well-pleasing presentation of his ship, the lovely Ambient.”

There was a round of dutiful stomping from the crowd.

“He has shown us the inner workings of this fine vessel, in the hope that we would look upon her with favor and admiration, and take her into our service. In honor of the Duke's dedication to the craft and the crown, and because of how clearly his design excels above his peers, we are pleased to announce that this ship shall have the Blessing of the Solar Throne, and henceforth a date shall be set, upon which she will be inducted into our Royal Fleet, and will serve honorably as a new chariot for your Princess!”

The crowd erupted into cheers, though many of them had very little stake in this whatsoever. As the Duke said, many were here just to witness the event, and to be witnessed witnessing it. Orion’s heart swelled as he looked up at the Duke.

His father had tears in his eyes.

The Duke paused to shade his brow with a hoof, and when he looked down at Orion, Orion saw that he had not been crying at all; it was merely a trick of the sunlight glinting in his father’s eyes. The Duke never cried. It was simply not possible for him, and it was unseemly for one of his rank. Orion had come to understand this long ago.

The party was in full swing, but Orion had lost all track of it. The rest of the nobility had been welcomed aboard soon after the Princess gave her blessing, and then every one of them wanted to be seen near the ship, or on it, or in it. Everypony knew that proximity to great things meant you were also great by association. As a consequence, Orion had been forced to stand even more than his lessons ever made him and congratulate everypony who set hoof on the Ambient, with barely a glance Celestia’s way since the blessing. He didn’t know how his father managed it, speaking without end to the same ponies who asked the same questions and laughed at the same jokes over and over again.

But he had a plan.

When he looked over at the Princess in between hoofshakes that were getting more sweaty, he saw her put a hoof to her head and breathe heavily as she tucked some of her unruly mane behind her ear. It seemed to him that she felt hot or thirsty, if that was possible for a Princess who commanded the Sun.

So when his father seemed sufficiently distracted with rubbing his newfound esteem in the faces of his peers, Orion snuck away through the crowd and wound his way through a forest of legs to the snack table atop the bow deck. His magic reached out and grabbed a pitcher of iced punch, drenched in condensation by the late morning sun. He pulled it from the table without disturbing a single drop and worked his way through the crowd once more, maintaining good posture as he’d been taught. The nobility barely paid him a second glance—the event was far more important than the ponies hosting it, though his father seemed certain this would raise the estimation of the Blueblood family by several notches.

He searched for Celestia’s tall form through the sea of hats and manes soaked in hair gel, and spotted the very tip of her rainbow mane across the deck. He hurried towards her, though the pitcher didn’t even wobble a bit. If he remembered anything of his lessons, it was the switch he got whenever he let his poise waver. He took pride in it now, and thought it would be a very good thing to march right up to the Princess the picture of a gentlepony.

There she was, walking with the same calm grace. But as he watched her long legs sliding through the crowd, he realized nopony stood aside for her. None of them moved. Perhaps it was just a trick of perspective, or they had cleared a channel when he wasn't looking.

He followed her to the edge of the deck and saw her suddenly turn and walk down the gangplank, her ethereal mane disappearing below the edge.

He hurried his pace and pushed on through to see nothing but a crowd of ponies below the ship, milling, talking, without a care for the goddess who had just walked among them. But where was she?

A flash of rainbow light disappeared around the stern of the ship, and he followed it in silence. It did not occur to Orion that this behavior was at all strange. She was Princess Celestia; she did whatever pleased her and Equestria bent to her will. Instead he dutifully hopped down the gangplank and hurried after the faint shimmer, weaving through the crowd with the punch still firmly in his grip.

When he came around the front of the ship he saw her far off, much further than she should have gotten at the meandering pace she went. She sat under a stand of trees, looking south, her legs curled up beneath her and her mane swirling more quickly than before.

Orion stopped short several feet away, wondering at her slight frown and melancholy curve of her brow. Her wings were tucked tight against herself. It seemed to Orion that she was hiding, after a fashion, though he could still see ponies on the deck of the Ambient from here. But he knew all about wanting to be away from the claustrophobic presence of other ponies sometimes. It made him stop short in perplexed silence, wondering if it would be rude to try and speak to her, but knowing this might be his only chance to do so for many weeks hence.

“Your field control is impeccable,” she said, which made him jump and almost drop the pitcher. "Some of the best I've ever seen."

“Ah!” he gasped, struggling to straighten the drink out again. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to interrupt, Your Highness. I’ll leave, I was just curious when you left and nopony else saw you go—”

“Be at peace, my little pony,” she said, turning and fixing him with that stare, the stare that saw so many things he never would. It riveted him to the ground, trapping him mid-step between leaving and going forward, to those eyes. To fall into them.

“You need not leave, and I am not bothered if you stay or go.” Something about her voice echoed, reverberated in his bones. It made him plant his hooves to the ground, and that seemed to be answer enough for the Princess. She smiled gently. “I meant it, by the way. Your control over your magic.”

Orion glanced at the pitcher floating next to him in a field of shimmering gold. “Thank you. How do you know it is better than others?”

“I have seen more magic than most ponies will ever learn exists,” said Celestia, without pride or vanity. She stated a fact. “I know what it looks like when a pony exhibits greater control over themselves than others.”

Orion cleared his throat. “My father has taught me well.”

“He has.” Celestia gestured to the ground next to her with her wing. “He was a gifted student, once. But that is a tale you should ask him about yourself.”

Orion hesitated. “Your Highness, I am sure the party misses your company.” Secretly he hoped she would say nothing about it and he could stay here indefinitely; only decorum made him bring it up.

“They will not. I did not exactly leave.” Her angelic wing extended to its full span, stretching over Orion’s head like a sail. His gaze followed the pointing feathers, and there stood Celestia on the stern deck of the Ambient, waving and smiling and even conversing with ponies. Not a one batted an eyelid or seemed to remember Celestia had left the ship a few minutes before.

This time, Orion dropped the pitcher. It was caught by Celestia, who set it down gently. “Am I dreaming?” asked Orion.

“No,” said Celestia. “Though sometimes I feel like I am when I do this. You could say I am… splitting my attention. I know exactly what to say for this kind of thing, and the ponies will be satisfied with it. We may speak without being disturbed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to, not right now,” Celestia said with a smile. “Suffice to say I am truly here and there, and we are truly speaking, and I will treat what you say with the utmost respect wherever we are.”

Orion gulped, feeling very small. Celestia was much more than he thought she would be, and he didn’t know what to make of it. She was big and powerful, like a tidal wave eternally poised to crash down, but gentle and calm as his blanket. He opted for the choice that he always took when he was uncomfortable: go for the blanket.

Celestia’s wing settled over him, limp yet comforting all the same.

“I’m glad you like my magic,” Orion whispered, staring at the horizon.

“It is something I have learned to keep an eye out for. Ponies so rarely see the full extent of their talents. I want to help them all reach it. I want to help you, Orion.”

Orion’s breath hitched in his throat. “I don’t need help,” he whispered.

“But you do,” Celestia answered. “I can feel the tension inside you, Orion. There is such turmoil in you. I know why.”

Orion’s heart leapt. He felt queasy all of a sudden, and his body went cold in spite of the warmth of the Sun Princess. A brick seemed to be trying to force its way up his throat. The words were knotted and wouldn’t come undone. He had so much to ask, but the question—the most important question—was so simple, yet so hard to say.

Words felt like razors in his throat. “Can you cure my mother?”

Celestia’s hesitation was all the answer he needed, but the tightening of her wing around his small body kept him from falling entirely into the darkness at the edge of his vision.

“What ails her,” she said, “is not a matter of curing, my little pony. Magic is not just a tool. It is an extension of what we are. An expression of who you are inside. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” Orion muttered, feeling his spirit sink further than ever.

“You will,” said the Princess. “My little pony, your mother’s magic is destroying her because… because sometimes, ponies are hurt in ways that medicine cannot fix.”

“Why not magic?”

“Because magic is part of us, Orion. When we hurt, our magic hurts. You can no more ask a pony to stop hurting than you can a cloud to stop flying.”

Orion felt something other than inevitability. It was dread. A horrible knowledge that there remained something he hadn’t seen yet in the bottom of that deep, dark pit where his greatest fears waited.

“What hurt my mother?”

Celestia did not answer. Instead she lifted her gaze and stared into the horizon with him as the sun crawled over the sky. About five minutes must have passed before she spoke again.

“You will know,” she said, in a voice that reminded him of her eyes. Deep and resonant and frightfully knowledgeable. The voice of utter certainty, spoken with the gravitas of prophecy, or just ten thousand years of cultivated foresight. “I am certain of it, Orion. In a certain place at a certain time, you will know. But that time and place has not yet come. Though I am a Princess, there are certain words it will never be my place to say. But some day soon, perhaps sooner than it should, it will come to you. And the choices you make before that day, and especially the day after, will determine who you are forever.”

Tears pricked at the corners of Orion’s eyes, and he huddled tightly against her side. He felt like he stood at the edge of a precipice, and clung to her as the last bit of foundation he had. “I’m scared,” he said, his voice trembling. “I’m so scared. And I’m angry and I hate things and I don’t even know why. And everything’s worse because it doesn’t fix anything.”

“It is all right to be all of those things,” Celestia murmured, raising her hoof to brush away a tear that leaked out down his cheek. “Trust me, Orion. I know grief. I have been just as scared and angry as you are now. I have watched loved ones slip away from me more times than I can count. I understand what you feel. Do you believe me?”

Orion nodded. It was easy to believe someone as nice as Celestia, but it didn’t untie the knot in his chest.

“Do not be scared of your fear. It is part of what helps us care so deeply. I know it hurts. But there is nothing that cannot be overcome. I promise you, Orion. I promise you. None of this is your fault. And you will never be alone.”

Orion rubbed his tears away against her pristine white fur. She did not even flinch as he let out a hoarse sob, struggling to keep his noble composure. The party still had to be attended to. He could not be seen crying in front of his father, or anypony else for that matter. But Celestia made it better. It was still painful and disgusting and salty and wretched. But he did not feel ashamed for it here.

When he finally got himself back together with a sip of punch, he managed to speak. “W-will you visit me?”

Celestia nodded once. “I think it would do both of us good to stay in touch, my little pony. Do not be afraid to write, or ask for my company.” She lifted his chin, and this time he was unable to look away from what he saw in her eyes. There was something behind them, something vast and bright and ancient. A presence that looked down at him as much as it welcomed him.

“I know you will do great things,” she whispered. “You will take a ship. You will push the edge of the map further than it has ever gone before. You will find your islands and dragons. You will be a spark that ignites the greatest fire since the Flame of Friendship first bloomed. But none of these things can you do alone. Do not let yourself be alone, Orion.”

Orion, uncomprehending, could only nod.

Then she shooed him back to the party, and when he looked over his shoulder, she had vanished. Her other self still stood on the deck of the Ambient, conversing politely with the nobility. When he spoke to her next to thank her for coming as she departed for Canterlot, she replied with some rote words of welcome. It was as if they had never spoken at all.

But her gaze lingered on him for half a second longer than it needed before she turned away, and Orion saw himself in her eyes.

The trip back home hummed with a quiet excitement, filling the carriage and making Orion unable to sit still.

“That was wonderful, father!” he chirped. “The Princess blessed the ship and everypony was so happy!”

“It was a much more fortuitous day than I believed it would be,” the Duke replied, stoic as ever. But a smile cracked his facade. “I believe Her Highness took a shine to you as well, my son. You did well.”

Orion chuckled and buffed his chest with his hoof, remembering how many ponies fawned over his good manners and his impeccable hygiene. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think I did. I liked making all those ponies smile, father. It felt good being friendly.”

“That is well, my son. I am sure your mother will be glad to hear it.”

Orion hadn’t told his father of his secret meeting with Celestia, but he knew deep down that today had been a turning point. It was not a conscious realization, not something he would remember until much later as the point where his entire life swung on this fulcrum, but he felt it deep down in his gut. Something important happened today.

When they reached the doors, the servants were there to greet them, head butler and house guards included. Orion saw Dusty Shelves in the crowd, which he found odd, as usually on her off days she was squirreled away in some corner of the mansion reading or taking trips to visit relatives. But today was a day to congratulate and uplift, so she must have come out to do that. She had a black scarf wound around her neck, to ward off the cold, certainly.

They stepped down and the head butler approached the Duke. His normally pale face and tight skin looked paler and tighter than normal, and a black cloak rested over his shoulders. That was not normal dress at all.

“Father—” Orion said, but when he looked up at the Duke, he froze.

His father cried.

A stream of tears ran in furrows through his fur, constant, unending, though he didn’t seem to notice them. His strong, solid body shivered with a wintry chill.

“My lord—” said the butler.

“When?”

“An hour ago, my lord. She was sleeping, and the maids turned away but a moment. When they checked again…”

“Father,” Orion said, his voice tumbling out in a wheezy half-shout. “Father, what’s he saying?”

The Duke cried. He did not cry. He had never cried before, not once. Why was he crying? The Duke did not cry. If he stopped crying, things would make more sense.

The butler sputtered. “We were about to send a messenger.”

“No,” the Duke snapped. “Better not to dread it all the way home.”

“Father?”

“I want to see her. She is still in bed?”

“Father, stop crying, please!”

“As always, my lord. She was—she is peaceful.”

One of the maids burst into tears, and Orion almost yelled at her to shut up, but his father was still crying. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. His father did not cry.

“Where’s my mother?!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Orion, come with me,” the Duke barked, marching into the house and leaving a wet trail behind him and all over the front of his coat. Orion shoved anyone who got in his way, shoved away Dusty’s hoof when she reached out to comfort him.

It didn’t make sense. It was insane. Fathers didn’t cry, and mothers…

His mother couldn’t...

He heard himself crying for his father to explain, to tell him what was happening. It’s all a joke, they’re just saying mother’s happy for us but can’t take the commotion, right?

His ears shrank back when his father shouted at him to keep quiet. His entire body quivered and he collapsed on the stairs, everything swirling and going dark and cold. The precipice he stood on next to Celestia was there. Gaping. Waiting.

Stop crying, father.

Get up, Orion.

He couldn’t see, he couldn’t walk. Dark spots swam in front of his eyes and the Duke had to drag him the last few steps. When he hit the top of the stairs a jolt of animal fear hit him, and his throat felt raw until his father cuffed him hard and held him by the shoulders so he stopped shouting nonsense.

Look at me, son.

He couldn’t look at his father. Not when he was crying.

I want you to stay here.

All the iron had fled from his voice. He sounded afraid. Hoarse and weak and far away. It made less sense than his tears. Fathers feared nothing and mothers did not and he wanted to see her.

I wanna see my mom.

Stay here, his father pleaded more than shouted, and stalked down the corridor, to the open door to Mother’s room. Orion fell forward by chance and staggered a few more steps, but Dusty was on him and he fought her like a wildcat with strength he didn’t know he had but he didn’t even know where he wanted to go. He pressed forward a few more inches, past maids and butlers and Dusty, craning his neck to see Mother and show her the maps and the ships.

He saw his father’s back. A physician standing like a statue. The four poster bed and the soft covers he nestled in so many times, the whole picture frozen in warm candlelight.

There was someone on Mother’s bed, someone thin and unfamiliar and horribly, awfully still. A white shroud covered her face and he did not know why.

He didn’t know that pony. He didn’t know why his father cried. He didn’t know why his face was soaking wet and the floor was slick and his throat felt like knives or who kept shouting gibberish. No, screaming. They screamed so loud it hurt his ears and his ears also burned but his hooves were ice cold and his chest collapsed in on itself as everything inside fell over the precipice, tumbling down and down and down.

His father's magic enveloped the door and slammed it shut like a slab of stone, and the noise seemed to crack the whole world in two.

What Is Best

The alarm clock went off at 7 o’clock in the morning as always, and Orion got up to brush his teeth and wash his mane. For some reason the toothpaste tasted especially bitter, and he washed his mane slower than usual. No servants came to help him brush when he finished; he had to go get his own towel and work out the kinks by himself. No butlers swooped in to give him his predetermined dress for the day. Nopony came in with a list to run down his schedule. It didn’t even look like a normal morning. The Sun was shrouded by frumpy, angry looking clouds, making the whole world outside muted and oppressed.

But he did not mind. For some reason today having no servants around felt like a good thing. He peered at the calendar as he slipped on his favorite necktie. A Monday, and it was nearly eight thirty. Wasn’t he supposed to have started lessons by now?

He expected Father to come bursting in to see why he was late, but he did not. Nopony did.

He opened the door and found a maidservant bustling by, dusting down random things.

“Excuse me,” he said, almost making her drop her duster. “Where is everypony?”

“Young master Blueblood,” said the maid, blinking owlishly, “half the staff is absent today.”

“And the teachers?” asked Orion. “The tutors and the house guests? Why is everything so quiet? I must start my lessons.”

The maid blinked again, irritating Orion greatly. Was she new? It was so hard to tell when they all wore the same clothes and had the same simpering faces. “My young master Blueblood,” she stammered, “do you not remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Your poor mother, dear,” she sighed with a look of alarming pity. “We held the funeral for her just yesterday. Your father ordered a day of rest and sent most of us home.”

Now Orion blinked, and swayed on his hooves. The maid didn’t speak above a whisper, but it felt like a stormy breeze buffeted his face. Everything felt heavy. The walls closed in around him.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. I… Oh.”

“I’m sorry, young master,” the maid said. “Your father is still in his room and won’t let anypony see him. Might I get you anything?”

“Thank you,” said Orion, and shut the door in her face.

———

He remembered getting up at some time or other and managing to wrestle his mane into a serviceable side part. He remembered dull rumbling that might have been thunder, or instructions from his father on how the funeral was to play out.

He felt nothing about what was going on. No keen pain in his chest. No burning in his eyes as he cried. Nothing but the actions. The pictures. The moments. Playing out like a silent film with mannequin actors going through the motions with eerie nonchalance.

Mother is dead, a voice nagged at him. Mother is dead.

Yes, he replied. A thoughtless response, mechanical and automatic. She is dead and I am still here. This is how it is. In the end, wanting her to be alive did not matter a fig.

A slate grey sky smothered all good cheer when he looked outside. The clouds made a flat ceiling stretched across the entire horizon. Only pale and sickly sunlight bled through, leaving everything dull and gelid. The Duke had paid a battalion of pegasi to blot out the sun from here to Ponyville, as it was only proper that the sky itself mourned for a pony like Goldspinner. There was nothing to do but mourn. Even happy memories were choked by the knowledge that no more would be made with her.

Orion stood dull and dreary-eyed at the door to the mansion. A carriage waited at the bottom of the front steps, its rear doors yawning wide open to receive Mother’s casket. He was one of many ponies who stood in a somber line down the steps like an honor guard. Nobles from every house major and minor, as far away as the Hayseed Marches, but Orion did not notice any of them. He did not even remember seeing them later. His eyes stared forward at nothing, unblinking.

A casket passed in front of him, levitated by solemn-faced unicorns. He did not see what was inside.

They placed it in the back of the carriage. A gust of cold wind chilled the tears on Orion’s cheeks, but he did not wipe them or blink them away. He did not care who saw him or what he looked like. He didn’t care about anything anymore.

The ride to the burial place took them through a green wood behind the manor, to a tiny plot of land nestled in the hills far away from buildings or ponies the Duke had purchased in perpetuity from the crown. Orion might have found it pretty if it was not the place his mother would rest forevermore. It was a sacred clearing beneath a young maple tree perched in a rocky nest which would serve as the headstone. Ancient unicorns believed young trees were as magical as their horns, and Goldspinner had always enjoyed learning of those old legends.

The procession entered the clearing like holy pilgrims over soft leaves that smothered the noise of their hooves. A hole had already been dug. It gaped at Orion like a mouth, ready to swallow. It disgusted him. He wanted to fill it back up with earth and let the trees have it.

Dirt was just such a common way to end for an exceptional pony like his mother. She had deserved so much more. She deserved to live long enough to see Orion become a Prince, and all the treasures he would have brought her from the ends of the earth.

It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair. But that was the world’s way.

He sat down on a chair and listened to the extensive eulogies, saw the tears he believed were all fake, didn’t even recognize most of the ponies who came and talked about a mare they had never met or visited when she was sick. His mother got very few visitors just for her, even before she was sick. Her title had been rendered meaningless decades ago and she had no living family save some old doddering cousin far away in Trottingham. After her illness, guests all just ignored her while she was cloistered up in her room like an animal. Every Sunday dinner, every party, every visit from abroad. Not a one had ever gone up to Goldspinner’s room like he did, never showed her things from the world she missed.

And now the only thing she’d ever see was dirt.

At least the casket had cushions inside, and enchantments to keep it from being eaten by local animals and worms. The undertaker who prepared it explained years from now when everypony had forgotten a pony was even buried here it would simply disintegrate on its own.

Forgotten, Orion decided, was the most awful thing his mother could ever be.

His father stepped up, standing in front of the awful hole that was to receive his wife. His was the only speech Orion actually listened to. His father’s eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. Like Orion, he seemed only to see what was directly ahead of him.

“There are no words for this,” he said, his voice rote and flat. “There are no words for the loss of somepony like Goldspinner. She held the world in her hooves and cradled it with a smile. She bore her illness with the grace of an angel, and she never brought anyone anything but joy.”

That was a bald-faced lie, thought Orion. Her sickness brought everyone misery and uncertainty and they tried to hide it away. Goldspinner hid her pain from him, and he realized asking Celestia what exactly caused her illness was the first time he’d ever really thought about it. Mother had hid the cause of her pain. Everypony here was hiding something. His father hid tears and the guests hid boredom and Orion hid nothing at all and that was what really bothered him.

Somepony coughed and Orion felt some distant part of him wish to rise up to smack them in the face. But he didn’t do anything, and the fire snuffed itself out in due time.

“She…” The Duke faltered. “She wanted to stay with us. She wanted to be with us so badly, and I—I didn’t—”

Orion’s ears perked and he felt a rising tension in the air, like everypony was joined by a cord suddenly snapped taut. His father always said the best way to do something was to be seen doing it. If he was seen crying in front of everypony there would be scandal unending.

But the Duke clamped his jaw so tight it shook his whole head, and he blinked rapidly to clear the mist.

“My wife was a mare who had a better influence on House Blueblood than any of its occupants present or former. I noticed her across a room years ago because she was beautiful. I married her because she made everything around her beautiful. We did not give her the dues owed her in life, for such cannot be given to a pony who is beyond giving. To bequeath something upon her implies that we were in a position to decide what she deserved.”

His impassive eyes swept over the crowd. Orion was not sure, but he swore his father’s gaze lingered on him for just a second longer than anypony else.

Then the Duke stared straight ahead once more and spoke in a soft, quiet voice.

“She deserved more than any of us could ever give her.”

Orion tilted his head, felt a chill go down his spine. Some of the mares present sniffled and put their hooves over their hearts, but Orion noted how some in the crowd murmured to each other and shook their heads. The naked sincerity in his father’s voice outstripped everything he had ever heard the Duke say. Such sentiment was touching, but also a touch improper.

It pulled at something in his heart, cracking the ice, and he cleared his throat to choke down the knot in his throat. Then the Duke went to him and put a hoof on his shoulder. The sincerity, the vulnerability was all gone. It was time for Orion to do his duty and speak.

He walked up to the hideous hole in the ground with his mother’s casket resting beside it and he caught a peek in. Just an ugly dirt hole to be filled with disgusting dirt. It terrified him.

Then he turned to face the crowd and found himself utterly petrified. He didn’t remember his lines. He didn’t remember how to stand or how to look or how to do anything. He didn’t know what to say about a mare who had birthed him, raised him, been the focus of his dreams and now was gone, how could he put that into words, so many ponies staring and waiting and expecting, expecting what, how dare they expect anything of him now—

“Uh, my mother—” He felt her presence in the casket behind him. Was it cold in there? Was she sleeping well? Was she still in pain?

“My mother was…”

Golden hair. A perfect smile. Patience when he broke her precious Trottingham teaset. Millions of thoughts and ideas and memories all gone, all gone.

“She...” Orion licked his lips and found them chapped. Curses, the lip balm, he knew he’d forgotten something, you’re such an idiot you stupid stupid pony this is all your fault—

“I-I was… I was going to go places and… it just happened…”

“Orion,” he heard his father growl somewhere in the audience.

Orion froze. Ponies would remember today for years to come and he’d be remembered as the stupid little colt who shamed his mother’s funeral. He wanted to scream at them for even caring what he had to say about his dead mother. He wanted to scream at his father for letting Mother die, at himself for not exploring the world fast enough, at everything and nothing in general. He wanted to run away and hide forever. Was that right? Was it okay? What was the proper thing to do?

The proper thing, his father’s glare said to him, was to do his duty and get it over with. Make your speech and let them see you do it. So Orion returned to that place of tranquil nothingness. He didn’t think about Mother. He didn’t think about father or speeches or ponies or anything. Only the words rolling out of his mouth one after the other like parts on a conveyer belt.

He cleared his throat and clamped his mouth like Father and made his eyes look at nothing, and staggered his way through the rest of his speech. He didn’t remember what he said afterwards but nopony wagged their hooves at him, so it must have been all right.

He almost went back to his seat when the Duke rose to stand beside him. Abruptly everypony else followed suit, and the casket bearers stepped forward. It was time to put Goldspinner in the ground.

Orion heard the tinkle of unicorn magic and refused to look up. He kept his head down and his gaze focused on the floor as the musical chime swept overhead along with the shadow of the casket, and closed his eyes when it began to lower. Somepony sang something beautiful and sad.

When he opened his eyes again the coffin rested snugly in its hole. It looked cramped and uncomfortable and hideously unadorned. Would his mother be happy with it? Was she ashamed wherever she was now, embarrassed her family skimped on a proper unicorn tomb? His father stared at him expectantly. Everypony did. There was yet one more duty to perform, stomach-turning though it may be. But they had to see him do it. They had to take home stories of his piety and solemn observance of the proper rituals.

Orion reached down and scooped up a hoofful of earth. It was wet and unpleasantly cool and clung to him, refusing to let go as he rotated his wrist and shook.

The clod finally released its grip and fell with a sorry thump on the coffin’s lid. It did not give him closure or satisfaction. It was just dirt on a lid.

As far as he’d been told, that was the last of his obligations. Orion turned away from the grave, climbed into his carriage, and hid his face from the world.

———

It was evening of the next day when Orion opened his door again. Breakfast and lunch sat cold and untouched at his bedside, and he felt more disgusted than hungry. The curtains were drawn over his windows. Thin lines of light peeking into the cracks teased at a world outside the manor, but he wanted no part of it. There was nothing out there, just a vast empty space that lacked everything that was his mother.

Everything felt grey and flat, like dusty sheets draped lazily over old furniture. His skin sagged over his bones and every muscle felt sluggish and heavy. He slumped into the hall and considered calling for a servant, but why bother? There was nothing to help with. He still wore his funeral clothes and dumped them in the hall as he trudged along, not knowing where to go.

He only heard his soft hoofsteps on the thick carpet—muted, scratchy little noises like rats in the walls. It irritated him. No wonder Mother liked it quiet. He wandered all through the second story of the manor, encountering nopony and shying away from sunlight that seeped in, cold and pale and ugly.

The manor felt big and empty even on party days. Whole crowds, if sectioned off into particular corners of the house, could go unnoticed by somepony on the other side. Orion used this to his advantage and skulked here and there, keeping to dusty old rooms nopony had visited in ages. He saw only three servants who studiously avoided his gaze, which was easy as he mostly kept it on the floor.

He did not know how long he wandered, but when he looked up again he was face to face with the head butler, his skin drawn tight over his face, dreadfully pale and forcefully polite.

“Young master,” he said, managing not to sound impressed upon. “Is there something you required from your father?”

“Huh?”

Orion looked around and saw he was in the hall that led to the Duke’s study. The door was shut but a sliver of candlelight shone from inside. A tense, heavy feeling settled around his shoulders like an ill-fitting cloak.

“Yes,” he said after a while. “Yes, I think there is.”

“Ah,” said the butler, fiddling with his cummerbund. “Then I shall relay what you desire to him in the morning. He has given strict orders not to be disturbed by anypony—”

“I’m his son, aren’t I?” asked Orion.

The butler hemmed and hawed and refused to look him in the eyes. “Well, yes, of course, but—”

“Then I will speak with my father.” Orion tried to make his voice like the Duke’s, quiet and harmfully intense and subtly inflicting shame. He seemed to do it well as the butler blushed and cleared his throat.

“Young master, your father was very specific that nopony should disturb him.”

“I am not disturbing him if I am his son wishing only to speak with him, correct?”

“That is technically true, however—”

“And you are here to ensure that the needs of the Blueblood family are met, is that so?”

“For the last eleven years, young master, but—”

“I have a need to speak with my father, and I order you as my servant to open that door.”

Eerie calm suddenly settled over the butler’s bony features. His jaw unclenched and his eyelids sagged with resignation. Orion stared at him for a while, wondering if he was being condescending or actually helpful. There was no guile in his eyes, no sneer of self-importance or false gravitas. Orion had always known him to be a truthful type. There was no reason not to believe that going to see his father really was a bad idea.

“Young master,” he said with a kindly patience Orion had never heard him use before, “today more than any other day I am intent upon the wellbeing of all Bluebloods. And today I must tell you that speaking to your father is not in your best interest. At least not right now.”

From within the room came a howl like a creature possessed. Something crashed onto the floor with the sound of cracking wood. The butler did not flinch. Orion did.

“… Very well,” he said. He continued his lonely circuit around the house, around and around again to no discernible end. He went to bed without supper and woke up feeling exactly the same as he did yesterday, which would have frightened him if he could bring himself to care.

———

Three weeks passed without incident, each day in them about as bland and grey as the next. Orion woke up, dressed, cleaned himself, and sat through his lessons, because the Duke ordered that structure and routine be maintained at all costs. Without them, without the rules, they would all go mad. Orion already felt mad, because he barely remembered going to any lessons whatsoever, and found himself forgetting where he was because everywhere felt the same. The end of one lesson merely bled into the beginning of another. Dusty Pages often tried to rouse him with stories of old explorers and heroes, but Orion just sighed until she stopped.

Duke Blueblood left his room late in the mornings and went to bed even later, milling around the house like a dog without a master. Orion passed him by every so often and they shared a glance, frightful and timid. Orion did not know what to make of his father’s change in behavior, but they had never been particularly close. It was not the distance that worried him, but that it seemed to be increasing.

Without Goldspinner the house had no direction. No purpose. Everything revolved around her room, her sickness, her future. The Duke had held parties to maintain the veneer that all was well. Now there were no parties. No visitors. No friends. Just long empty hallways and vast empty dining rooms, and servants flitting around like shadows. Far from being free of Goldspinner’s illness, her death had settled an even more terrible shroud over the house than before.

When he was not sitting in lessons or staring out windows with a blank look on his face, Orion continued to wander the house. He found nooks and crannies from when it was a younger place, frightened the servants by peeking into their quarters, and always turned away from the solar when he went near it. Dusty Pages insisted they have their lessons there, but Orion no longer saw the point. It only reminded him of how he’d failed to save his mother before he even got started. How his father had all but ignored her illness until it destroyed her.

“Dusty,” he said during one of his lessons.

The old mare looked up from the chalkboard. “Yes, little nip?”

“Why won’t Father talk about Mother?”

Dusty sighed and put her chalk down. “He has not spoken to you at all since the funeral? About the letter?”

Orion shook his head.

“That horrid old stallion,” Dusty whispered, but Orion heard it. He did not feel up to rebuking her, because he felt pretty horrible himself. Dusty turned to him with infinite pity in her eyes. “Your father is not well, Orion. I should not have to be the one explaining this to you; it’s his duty as a stallion to help you, for Celestia’s sake! But that poor colt and his sweet wife kept things from each other as much as he’s keeping himself from you now.”

Orion felt perturbed. “How do you know more than I do about what my parents did?”

Dusty sighed and went to sit next to him, dropping heavily into a chair. It groaned in protest. “Little nip,” she said, her voice cracking as she regarded him with pity and fear. Her old eyes shimmered. “I have tutored many children, and in those houses I am often as invisible as the child to the parents. They loosen their lips because they think hired help isn’t important enough to pay attention to. Sometimes parents do things for their children that they themselves do not understand. And they tell themselves it will be for the best. But in trying to do the best for their child, they forget that their child is their greatest good. I don’t know what exactly happened between your parents, but I do know that your father cares more than he lets on, and that’s what’s killing him. He is doing something he believes will protect you from himself. He is consumed by his own grief. But Orion…” She reached out and pulled him into a hug, which he did not resist. “I am afraid the only way to get an answer is to ask a question.”

“Then what letter did you mean?” Orion asked.

Dusty gulped. “Young master, your father has already scheduled for your continued education in Canterlot. The Princess herself endorsed the idea.” Her gaze fell to the ground. “I received notification my services would no longer be required three days ago.”

———

That night, Orion followed his father with the intent of asking many questions. The Duke staggered through the halls to his study, where the head butler met him. The two stallions shared some quiet words, and then sharp ones, and then the Duke poked the head butler with his hoof and that settled that. The butler allowed the Duke to pass, and he went inside and slammed the door shut. The butler took up his post next to the study door, and Orion approached him. He tried not to shake too much.

“Young master—” the butler began, but Orion held up his hoof for silence.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said. “But I don’t care. Please open the door.”

The butler looked at him in a way that said he believed Orion was still a child and should be treated as such. That things should be kept from him like Dusty kept the letter secret and his father apparently kept things from Mother. “You will not like what you see, young master.”

“I haven’t liked a lot of things I’ve seen recently,” said Orion, brusquely. “Please open the door now.”

The butler sighed and gave the door a knock.

“Lord Blueblood,” he said, “your son is here.”

A muffled, angry snort.

The butler cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Pardon, your Lordship?”

“I said…”

There was a lengthy pause.

“I said let him in.”

Orion found the study in a sorry state when he entered. It used to be a venerable place that looked out into the gardens behind the house, where guests would coo over the two-story book collection and the globe in the corner enchanted to make locations glow when you said their names. Now books and notes and bottles were scattered everywhere, torn from the shelves and tossed aside, as were several plates of half-eaten, spoiling food. The furniture was all haphazardly rearranged, like the Duke had tried to find several ways to get comfortable and hated all of them. The large desk in the center of the room was covered in papers with scribblings all over them.

At its head sat the Duke, lazily chewing on a biscuit. His hair was unkempt and his eyes had the same vacant quality as the day of the funeral. A half-full glass of whiskey swirled in his magical grip. His entire body was slouched over his chair like forgotten clothes, and if not for the gentle rise and fall of his chest one might assume he was halfway dead. Orion felt a lurch of worry upset his stomach, but he ignored it even as the door clicked shut with a note of dreadful finality.

“My son,” the Duke drawled, watching his drink swish around and around. “My son.”

“Father,” Orion said, gulping. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“What about?”

Orion’s composure crumbled. He’d never seen his father like this, and it frightened him horribly. The fright stole away his grand plan of storming in here blustering with righteous indignation. “I just…” He scuffed the carpet with his hoof. “I’m sad, Father.”

“You’re sad.” The Duke gulped down the rest of his drink and set it on the table. “That’s understandable. I am very sad as well.”

“You’ve been drinking a lot lately.”

“OF COURSE I’M DRINKING!” the Duke’s voice cracked like the table as he smacked it with his hoof.

Orion flinched, curling into a ball as he stared down at the floor. “I’m sorry, Father,” he whispered, his voice a dry husk. His heart crunched in on itself, holding tight to the tears threatening to spill out. No wonder Father wanted to send him away, if the mere sight of him incited this reaction. No wonder he felt everything falling apart at the seams.

The Duke stared forward, chest heaving, eyes wild and bloodshot. He blinked several times and rubbed his eyes, then looked around as if confused.

“No,” he slurred. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Orion. I’m sorry, Goldspinner, my love. I’m so sorry.” As Orion watched, his father covered his face with his hooves and slumped in his chair, slowly sliding down like spilled syrup until he hung halfway to the floor. “I’m sorry,” he kept saying. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

An awful empty silence surrounded them both. Orion felt naked and alone and wondered if he was the reason his father was angry. The silence stretched on and his father still didn’t move, nor did he speak. Orion sat for a while and listened to him breathing. He had never really heard his father breathe before, though he heard his mother do it many times. Sometimes her breathing was slow and steady and calming, others it frightened him as she wheezed and coughed.

Father’s breathing was almost too quiet to hear. Like everything else he kept it to himself. But with Mother gone, Orion felt compelled to at least try to reach out to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I wish I could have done something sooner.”

“My son,” said the Duke, “that is a sentiment that our family is all too familiar with. But I have done something.”

Orion’s gaze fell to the floor. “Canterlot,” he said.

“Yes,” the Duke said. His eyes widened, and he seemed to look at something he had not seen in ages, something that very slightly roused him from his stupor, making him sit up straight. “Canterlot. The First City of Equestria. Seat of the Princess. There is much good waiting for us there, perhaps we should move.”

“Move?” Orion wondered, though the Duke didn’t seem to be speaking to him.

“Th-there will be so many opportunities for us,” his father murmured. “So many things for the little one to do. W-we could… uh, we could…” The moment of reverie faded. His eyes dimmed and he slouched once more beneath the weight of the world. “Canterlot, yes,” he said, nodding firmly. “It’s a good idea I think. Arrangements have been made.”

“Arrangements?”

The Duke waved vaguely at the table.

Orion looked around the room and decided to pull up a chair next to his father. The Duke did not stop him, merely sat and stared at the wall. On the table next to the Duke, among all the papers and dusty books, lay an unfurled scroll. It taunted him with its flowing script and total accessibility. Orion snatched it up in his magic to read before he lost his nerve.

My dear Blueblood,

It has been exactly twelve years, four months, and nineteen days since we last saw each other on good terms. Forgive me. I have been remiss in our correspondence, though I must admit that one finds it hard to remain motivated when one’s letters are never answered. I am glad I was able to see you smile at the Ambient’s presentation before the recent tragedy, at least. If nothing else, you make such wonderful ships.

I do not want to be short with you, yet you have ever been a short-tempered pony, so I will not mince words. I will not pretend that either of us have a hope of reconciliation. But I do want you to know, Polaris, that I have always cared for you, even when you shunned what I wanted to give you. I have always held out hope that one day you would see the wisdom in what I had to offer.

That same offer is one I wish to extend to your son.

I have heard much about Orion through the grapevine, his maturity and curiosity and continued endurance in the face of your family’s immeasurable tragedy. My meeting with him was illuminating. He has potential I have not seen in a century, potential that I wish to cultivate, and rather than leave him to the sharks of noble politics now that he is the sole chance the Blueblood line has of survival, I am formally requesting to be his custodian, and to shift the focus of his training to my School for Gifted Unicorns. This is no barter, no noble trade of blood and hostages. Nor is it a punishment for how cruelly you cast off my guidance long ago. It is an option for you to take, and to decide with your child. I am keenly aware of the turmoil that has enveloped your house in recent years, Polaris, and I also know that you do love your son, and want him to grow apart from what you did. This is his best chance of doing that.

I do not want you to live alone in that great big house either, or think I am taking your son away from you. A place remains for you in Canterlot as well, and you need only ask. I want your family to flourish, Polaris, and I want to give you hope in this dark time. You and your child. Goldspinner’s loss does not have to define the Blueblood name.

Orion.

Orion’s eyes widened. Had those words been there before? They seemed to spring out of the page the moment he got to them. He thought he had reached the end, and yet…

Please do not lose faith, Orion.

Sincerely,
Princess Celestia

Orion put the letter back in a daze, confused and amazed and hurt all at the same time. To live in Canterlot? With the Princess herself? Would that make up for the trainwreck of his life? Could be do what his mother believed he could? Would that make him a Prince? Would it even matter if he was? Who could tell?

He curled up on the chair with his hooves between his legs, hunched and miserable. Time passed them by like a rich man passed the poor.

“I’m not sure I want to go, Father,” said Orion, after the sun had set.

“Go where?” the Duke asked.

“To Canterlot.”

“You’d rather stay here in this dreadful house? Canterlot is a wonderful place, my son. You will be with ponies your own age at last. You will be staying with the Princess.” He took a drink from a wine bottle without pouring a glass. “I have made my decision. You are going. It will be better for you.”

Orion’s breath hitched in his throat. “I want to be near Mother. I want to be near the places she was because somehow I know leaving them won’t make me feel better. I feel like if I go I’ll have given up on her.” He sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hoof. It was undignified but he didn’t care. Nobody was watching. Not even Father, who stared blankly at the far wall.

“I feel like if I go I’ll be admitting I failed. And then… then what would the point be? Of anything at all? What would be the point of saying I loved her so much if she didn’t care and she left us anyway and…” He coughed and hiccuped as tears started to flow freely.

“And,” he said, “what’s the point of loving somepony if they just die like that?”

His father snored in response.

The ineffable Duke, the rock of Orion’s life, had passed out from too much drink.

“Oh,” said Orion, lapsing back into silence. He found it more comfortable than having to talk about his feelings, which had a bite like snakes and felt just as poisonous. The silence comforted him. And so Orion learned that it was not just rules, but silence that ruled the house.

He thought for a while.

Then he thought some more.

Then he sighed and went back to bed after a tepid, lonely supper, and dreamed of houses made of gold, and homecomings after long journeys. He spent the next few days dreading and fretting and hiding from the inevitable. He avoided the solar, his drawings, and all thoughts of adventure, because he hated the thought of going outside at all.

Then, one grey and dreary morning, the Sun rose over his house, knocked on his door, and asked to come inside.

The Colt In the High Castle

Orion never felt smaller than when he stood next to Celestia, especially outside in the Manor’s gardens. She deliberately slowed her gait to a near-crawl so he could keep up, and even then he struggled. Then again, he struggled to do anything besides eat and sleep these days.

“You do not need to do anything, Orion,” Celestia told him, her voice quiet and dulcet.

“I know,” he said, head hung low and ears folded back.

“It is an invitation, not an order. But you would be as well cared for as you are here.”

“Yeah.”

“You may begin your education in earnest. Perhaps you will even find your cutie mark with a fresh start.”

“I don’t want a fresh start.”

Celestia’s hoofsteps ceased. He looked up and saw her staring across the manor’s grounds, over the manicured bushes and clean swept pathways.

All around the Princess life was more lively. Birds chirped and swooped, happy just to be near her. The plants appeared more green and the sky more blue, and the distant splashing of a fountain had a happy tinkle to it. The whole world danced in her presence.

She closed her eyes and spread out one great wing, lowering its tip to the ground.

The birds retreated. Colors grew paler. The leaves ceased their rustling and the fountain gurgled instead of sang. The whole world cleared its throat and looked away.

“Come,” she said. “Let us sit in the shade.”

She sat with the grace of angels beneath the canopy of a large oak tree, every movement precise and gentle, every curve and contour smooth and immaculate. Orion felt awkward just being near her. Every muscle in his body lost its strength at once and he flopped, chin to the earth, close enough to see the little bugs that crawled on it. Everything crawling along next to him, around him, past him.

“What is it that you fear, Orion?”

“I dunno,” said Orion, shrugging.

Celestia stared straight ahead at a stand of rose bushes not far away. “Do you think that leaving this place would leave you all alone?”

“Maybe,” said Orion.

“Do you fear that ponies would be disappointed in you if you gave up on your old home?”

Orion scuffed the grass with his hoof. It felt stiff and uncomfortable.

“That you would be disappointed in yourself?”

Orion choked back a sob.

“Ah,” Celestia said, like her voice held a delicate vase she was afraid of dropping. “That is it.”

Orion sniffled as the Princess’ wing descended on him like a blanket made of feathers and well wishes.

“Dear child,” Celestia said, “There is nothing to be ashamed of here. You have failed nopony.”

Orion’s lip trembled. An awful clawing feeling reached up from a deep pit in his stomach. It felt like a gash opening inside him, and something worse than blood leaked from it.

“But she’s dead,” he squeaked, curling up as tight as he could. He tried to stop the words from coming, but of course that was impossible. Words find a way to be said even when you don’t want them to. “She’s dead and I didn’t… I didn’t even get the chance to save her, and I wanted to, I wanted to so much, but… but I didn’t even get the chance!”

He slapped the ground with both hooves, letting out a short, shrill sound. “I hate it!” he said. “I hate everything! I wish none of it had happened! I don’t deserve this! Mama didn’t deserve it! And Father just sits there and talks and drinks and eats and nothing ever happens in this stupid, stupid house!”

He beat the earth again and bawled into the grass. His body felt like it was too small, his skin too tight and his muscles too slack. He wanted to get up and run, to flail and move so he could remember where his legs were, but he knew there was nowhere to go but to clean, holy Canterlot, where ponies lived in great ivory towers and all the things he wanted would suddenly be in reach a lifetime too late.

Celestia’s wing tightened, drawing him to her chest. He resisted at first, but then fell into her embrace, into the fur coat so soft that even his red, snotty nose and itchy, salty eyes felt comfortable. She smelled of peonies and roses, of dew brushed away by sunlight, leaving the air clean and fresh. Orion curled up in the blanket of her hooves and wings and her wide, warm neck, muffling and choking his sadness with the cushion of the Princess.

In fits and starts, he felt the writhing snake inside him go still, and his bawling became whimpers, and then those fell to silence as he considered how much of a mess he just made.

“I’m sorry,” he hiccuped. “I should’ve got my kerchief.”

“It is nothing, Orion,” Celestia said, her voice magnanimous and resonant. “You have been waiting to do that for a long time.”

Orion nodded, taking a deep breath full of phlegm and misery. “I cried at the funeral, but this was different,” he said. “It hurt a lot more.”

“It may happen again,” Celestia said, “and it will hurt just as much. But gradually, day by day, it will hurt a little less. This kind of sadness steals upon you like a thief in the night. But do not be afraid of it. It is a reminder of how much we have loved, and can love again.”

Her wing curled around him, and a long, narrow feather pushed his chin upward. He looked up into eyes that saw beyond a world made of the fleeting flicker-lives of small ponies. The gaze that filled him with awe and fear stretched ten thousand thousand years into the past, down a long thin line of ponies just like Mother paving the road from now to the vanishing point of eternity.

“I know this pain called loss,” she murmured quietly. “I have encountered it time and time again, until I became more acquainted with it than anypony should be. I have learned only this: it is not an enemy to be beaten. It is part of you now, and denying it will only make it worse. This is a wound that must be embraced if it is to heal.”

“Embraced?” Orion asked, sniffling. “How?”

“Come with me, and I will teach you. There is so much I believe you can accomplish, Orion. In Canterlot, I think you will find the path to your destiny, and do many wonders. As many as your dear mother knew you could, and more.”

Orion’s ears perked. “More?”

Celestia placed the tip of her wing over his lips. It felt like the brush of a cloud. “We will not know until we get there, will we?” she said quietly. “For now you must make a decision, little one. You must decide if you will come to Canterlot. I know what your father said. I know that he has… encouraged your departure in his own way. But the decision is yours. It must only ever be yours.”

Orion hid his face against her chest again, but he did not feel hidden. The mansion stretched over them even this far into the gardens, and its windows were like eyes. If he looked very, very closely, Orion saw Father standing at the window to his study, white fur standing out amidst the gloom, his body drawn in stiff, unmoving lines, his magical grip on his wine slipping now and then in the throes of intemperance. What must it be like, all alone up there in his musty tower, hoping to shoo away bad memories like a kitchenmaid shooed rats with a broom? He would have seen them walk all the way from the doors to the lines of lilacs and orchids in the back. What did he hope Orion would do? Did he hope for anything for his son anymore? Orion only knew he did not have the courage to ask. There were so many questions Orion was too terrified to know the answer to, and almost all of them concerning his father.

His father who set this whole thing up. His father who kept a chair open for Mother at the table, like she would just hop out of bed one day fit as a fiddle. His father who walked like a ghost in the only house Orion had ever known. His father who hid himself away.

The house seemed to wait with bated breath. The odd angles and mismatched nature of it gave it a slouch. It seemed dark and dreary from out here, in the sunlight. He felt no kinship with it anymore. Did the Blueblood estate always look so cold, so dry and miserable?

He did not know if Canterlot would make him happy. But he knew he wanted to be away from this place. He knew Mother was not here anymore. He knew his father wanted him gone.

“... I’ll go,” Orion said, his voice flat and clear and simple. “I want to go with you.”

“Are you sure—”

“I am.”

Celestia considered him for a very long moment. The only thing on earth that moved was her head, as she relented with a single, slow nod.

“Very well.”

Leaving was much the same as staying. Orion collected bags, watched rooms empty out, watched ponies file in and out of his living space bearing a train of his effects. Father directed most of it, and Orion noticed that quite a lot was going to Canterlot. Most of his clothes, his chests of toys he never played with anymore, and many of his books. Nothing else was truly his, all of it bought and paid for by previous generations of his family. The house would be scrubbed clean of the House of Blueblood’s youngest son.

But before that, he had to be clean of all he once knew. He had goodbyes to give. He wandered the halls of the house and said farewell to all the serving staff, whether he knew them or not. They were never very close, but they were the only ponies he had for company when Father wasn’t having a big together.

He found Dusty Pages in the solar where they once studied together. She sat hunched over some old papers, handling them with meticulous care. He gently knocked on the door and she gasped, quickly shuffling the papers away from his gaze.

“Dusty?” he asked. “I have to go.”

“I know,” she said, her voice as fragile as her books. “You will be well cared for. The Princess can give you everything. But you must remember to be worthy of it. All the heroes we read about didn’t get everything on a silver platter, did they?”

Orion nodded sadly. “I think I’m worthy of it,” he said. “I’m tired of waiting to be happy. I think going to Canterlot will finally make that happen. The Princess seems willing to help me. Maybe I’ll get to be a Prince.”

Dusty walked over to him, stroked his ear. “Well. You just remember to always be in accordance with what Her Majesty desires, little nip.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You must do as she tells you and never go anywhere you aren’t allowed.”

“Of course I won’t.”

“And you must…”

Dusty Pages wiped her hoof over her eyes, attempting to hide it by fussing with her mane, but Orion caught it easily.

“You must make sure that even though you’re going a very long way away, you don’t forget where you came from. You don’t forget this house, or the ponies who gave birth to you. I’ve done a lot to try and teach you history, little nip, and that it’s very important not to forget it. All right?”

Orion responded by giving her a hug, which she returned. She smelled of old paper, and was almost as warm as the Princess. They stood up together and looked around the solar one last time. It was cleaned out of most everything, as most everything Orion wanted or needed had already been removed to Canterlot.

“Will we ever see each other again?” Orion wondered, because Dusty Pages had been, if not a mother to him, then at least as constant in his life as one.

Dusty smiled and patted him on the head. “If we don’t, little nip… look me up in the history books.”

When he left Dusty, he had a deep knot in the pit of his stomach which only got worse. There was yet one more farewell to say. He trudged down the long hallways, past Mother’s room which stood with its door open and its furniture utterly untouched, all the way to the Duke’s study. The Duke had not left his room at all save to direct Orion’s packing, and Orion expected to find him deep in a bottle of wine.

Instead he found him deep in thought, staring at a fireplace that was only embers. A glass of champagne hovered in his magic, but it was untouched. Orion cleared his throat, and the Duke turned abruptly. They stared at each other in silence. The atmosphere of the room was ice cold, thick and slow.

“I’m going now, Father.”

“Yes. It’s about that time, isn’t it?” His voice was rough as sandpaper.

Orion licked his lips. The Duke swirled his champagne.

“It will be a while before I come back,” Orion said.

The Duke nodded slowly. “Quite some time.”

“All right. We will write each other if we get the time.”

“Indeed.”

They hugged, briefly, and then Orion left. He did not remember what his father’s hold felt like.

The knot in his stomach made it almost impossible to eat or sleep, and he woke up on moving day tired and bleary-eyed. He had one last sparse breakfast at the table, and took it alone. Nopony lined up to see him out the door, but there were chaperones to see him to his carriage. They wore resplendent, bright clothing that seemed audacious on the moody, somber grounds of the Manor. The cutie mark of Celestia blazed bright on the side of the carriage.

Orion ran to them without looking back.

Canterlot towered over everything. For miles in any direction a pony saw it, silhouetted against the horizon. From afar it was a landmark, albeit a beautiful one. As the train grew closer to the base of the mountain Canterlot perched on like a majestic bird, it became less a landmark and more a monolith from a distant age. The lonely mountain holding up the city sprouted like the arm of a Titan thrusting the city toward the sky, where its golden towers caught the light of the Sun. Other towers sprouted from the largest ones like branches of a tree, ivory and resplendent. Waterfalls streamed down from on high, crashing on the rocks as though to remind them of their place. The city was a bold rebuke to the laws of nature and physics—to show mastery of ponykind over all the world. A city on the edge of a mountain, where jealous eyes might wish it would fall. But it never did, and never would, and the world simply had to accept that.

Orion saw the Sun disappear behind the mountain face as they passed into its shadow. Now the city loomed over him like the mansion back home. There was no escape from it, no way not to notice it. A pony either had it in front of them or behind them at all times.

Orion shrank away from the train window and curled up in his seat, staring dimly at the chaperones surrounding him. Through the whole trip they’d barely shared a word between them, and fewer with Orion, and only ever in hushed whispers. As if speaking too loudly might shatter him. Orion thought that wasn’t far from the truth.

That was, in part, why he scooted a little closer to the mare on his left, a beautiful and kindly young unicorn with a light purple coat and rich red mane, dressed in stately robes.

“Um,” he said.

She smiled down at him in a manner reminiscent of Celestia. “Yes, young master?”

“Am I going to have my own room?”

“Yes, young master.”

“Will it be big?”

“Most assuredly. All the rooms in Canterlot are big. You are being taken under the wing of Princess Celestia herself, and she absolutely does not like feeling cramped.”

Orion wrinkled his nose and peered back up at the city.

“I would like to have a room with a window. One that looks west.”

“Certainly, young master. Do you enjoy sunsets?”

“Not especially,” Orion said. “But my mother did.”

The rest of the ride was silent.

They took a carriage up the mountain, and if it weren’t for how wide and well traveled the road was, Orion would feel very frightened by how high they went. Could the city really remain perched like this forever? Was the Princess’ power so great?

Then they reached the gate, and all doubts fled his mind.

The drawbridge yawned open to receive them. Ponies trickled in and out in an endless stream beneath the vast arch of the gatehouse, patrolled by royal guards in shining golden armor. They stood like statues as the carriage bounced past, welcoming Orion, or at least the cutie mark of Celestia, with a loud stomp of their spears on the ground.

Orion heard a rush of noise like the buzzing of bees, which grew to almost a roar, and he realized it was the voice of ponies. Ponies swarming the streets, crowding the walkways, more ponies than he had ever seen in his life, more than he thought possible to exist in a single space.

Then the city swallowed him. It sprawled and crowded all at once. The roads wound like a snake and ran down huge open boulevards. White buildings, white streets, brilliant gold roofs and royal purple stone loomed like giants, peering off to the horizon far above his head. Manes and fur coats of every stripe and color surged around him like a tide. It passed him in a blur too fast to see, too layered with life and meaning. It felt like a neverending explosion after the dreary doldrums his life had been, and it overwhelmed and terrified and amazed him all at once.

He kept his face glued to the window of the carriage, his wide open eyes drinking it in. The chauffeurs seemed amused and endeared, and the mare he spoke to on the train leaned over his head.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

“... I don’t know,” Orion said. “I’ve never seen another city like this one.”

“There are no cities like Canterlot, because there are are no rulers like Celestia.”

Orion gulped. “Am I really going to live with her?”

“As near as one can. She will provide for your tutelage from now on, and take a personal hoof in your development, young master.”

“Whoa.”

“Whoa, indeed.”

“Oh, I forgot to ask.” Orion looked straight up at her chin. “What’s your name?”

“Lily Garland, young master.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“Thank you.”

They approached the Palace District. Here the architecture was more refined, but no less extravagant. Towers and crenellations soared, and every surface was artfully and tastefully decorated, gilded with gold, or covered in expensive and colorful tile. The grass itself shone like emeralds.

“Lily, why did the Princess choose me?”

“Do you think she should not have?”

Orion bit his lip. “I think I should be here. But… I dunno.”

Lily’s head tilted thoughtfully. “Many ponies are confused by the actions of the Princess. But she has been alive longer than most of us can imagine. She has seen things we would not believe. If she came to you, I think it is because she sees something inside you nopony else can.”

Orion put a hoof on his chest. All he felt was the beat of his heart and the rise and fall of his lungs. But if the Princess said that was special… well, who was he to say no?

“We will be arriving at the castle soon,” said Lily. “Feel free to explore while we unpack.”

Orion shook his head. “I have a lot of stuff, but I can carry it. I’m not that amazing. I had a ton of servants back home, but I didn’t know their names or jobs or anything. I’m tired of ponies knowing more about everything than I do. I wanna know more stuff than anypony else. That’s why I wanted to go on airships. I wanna find things.”

“The Princess will be interested to know that.”

Orion asked why, but she only replied with a strange little smile.

If the city was awe-inspiring, the castle made him weak in the knees.

The Throne Quarter, as it was called, was the place Celestia herself resided, and was without a doubt the true center of Equestria. It was not a single building but an enormous complex of many, joined together by arching bridges, soaring minarets, and onion dome towers. Tapestries of every shape and color were draped over pristine white walls. Pillars run through with mauve and lavender minerals held up balconies that had overlooked thousands of ponies across a thousand years of rule.

The carriage came to a stop in front of an aquamarine door standing ajar. It seemed to yawn like a lion, ready to swallow him whole. A tongue of red velvet carpet led up the stairway inside, and a platoon of Royal Guards guarded every angle. True to his word, Orion helped the chauffeurs remove his bags from the carriage, but his eyes never sat still. He drank in everything: the vases, the banners, the flooring. The main hall seemed to be larger than the whole world.

And at the top of another stairway, in the middle of a mezzanine splitting off to yet more stairs to places who-knew-where, was Princess Celestia.

“Young master Blueblood,” she said, smiling. “Welcome to Canterlot.”

Orion’s mouth was dry. His mind was blank. His knees shook as he collapsed to the carpet on the floor. In an instant Celestia was before him, lifting him in her magic to his hooves.

“None of that anymore,” she said kindly. “You are part of the castle now. I never command anypony to kneel to me.”

“I’m nervous,” said Orion.

Celestia’s smile quirked into something teasing. “I find movement often helps with that.”

They walked together, deeper into the castle. Every hallway was immaculately polished. Every surface scrubbed to a shine.

Not a single speck of dirt anywhere.

“What’s going to happen now?” asked Orion.

“Now you will be shown to your room. I find that is a very good place to start. In the morning, your classes can begin, unless you would like a few days to settle.”

“I like settling.”

Celestia giggled. It was not a sound Orion ever expected to hear from the Princess, and it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard. “So do I, my little pony,” she said, her voice lilting like a feather on the wind. “So do I.”

He asked many questions about the castle as they walked, because every hallway brought new sights and sounds and colors. Here was the entrance to the royal archives, guarded at all times by stern-faced soldiers. There was a thirteen hundred year old bust of St. Trotilde, wife of King Cloven who spread friendship and harmony to all the western territories. All around him whispered hints of history and myth come to life, and Orion gradually felt his heart warm to it. Here great ponies had lived and died. Here greatness had been made.

Here he too would become a great pony.

“Ah!” Celestia said all too soon. “Here is your room.”

It was only then that Orion realized how lucky he was.

He had expected a neo-classical bent to the architecture, with dark wood and drab curtains making up most of the furnishing with gilded knick-knacks to provide an air of wealth and culture. It was how Blueblood manor had been furnished, and he had thought that was the height of Equestrian excess.

Instead, well...

“That’s a lot of pink,” he said.

“We can change it if you like,” Celestia said, only now betraying a hint of concern.

“No,” he said, walking into the room and spinning around. There was indeed a lot of pink. The domed ceiling was covered in it, like the top of a cupcake. A chest in one corner was painted pink. Some of the drawers on the vanity and bedside table had pink highlights. The bed had pink pillows, and its seams almost burst with fluffy feather down. None of it had the pompous, overwrought look of his old house. Everything was curved, comfy, soft and billowy like a cloud. It felt like being thrown into the illustration of a foal’s fairy tale book. “It’s fine. It reminds me of cake frosting. And the curtains… are they silk?”

“Somnia spider silk, actually.” Celestia fluffed her wings. “They make no sound when fluttering in the breeze. Very useful when you would like a draft on warm summer nights. But this space is yours now, Orion. Anything you wish to add or take away is yours to do so.”

Orion ran his hoof over the bookshelf, and the small vanity. They were not pink, but a fashionable snow white like his own coat. Plenty of space for his collection of tomes he had taken from home.

“There are of course some restrictions. This space is yours, but the rest of the castle remains the property of Equestria,” Celestia said as Orion traveled to and fro, checking every little nook and cranny, burying his face into the bed’s pillows. “Certain wings of the castle will be off-limits at certain times of the day. The state department only takes visitors through their guided tours, the library—which I assure you you will be seeing more of—has a strict off-limits policy to certain wings. The kitchens prefer to be left to their own devices; the poor dears are often quite busy, especially with foreign visits coming more often than they used to…”

She trailed off when Orion made it to the window, which looked down over the massive palace gardens. She followed him and stood over his shoulder, trying to see what he could see.

“What about down there?” he asked. “It’s practically a forest all its own.”

“Ah, yes. The gardens. It includes much of the surrounding mountain’s terrain. Those are free for all to enjoy, whenever they have need of them. Solace, peace and quiet, privacy… there are enchantments to dull noise from outside in certain areas. I myself take advantage of it from time to time. Gardeners with green hooves, sculptors whose work didn’t fit inside the castle, all have added their genius to its beauty over the centuries. A lot of Equestria’s state budget goes to its upkeep, you know. I think down there, you can spot some of the sculptures showcased by good old Hammer Hoof from his glory days...”

“What’s that one?”

“Which one, dear?”

“That weird looking one.”

“Oh,” Celestia said, shortly. “That’s just a draconequus. It was a gift in poor taste.”

His gaze went to the palace labyrinth, marked by streaming banners and tall sentinel-like hedges. It stretched far beyond the boundaries of the garden, out past the manicured flowers and trees and into the wild countryside. Doubtless on the edges one felt the cold of the mountain.

“And that?”

Celestia chuckled indulgently. “A frivolity that grew into a preposterous monster of its own making. Four hundred years old and it only got bigger. When I had it commissioned, it was part of a ploy by Lord Chalk Tip to woo Lady Umber Mane. They both were lost for three hours before he found her and they proposed. I feared the mood was ruined, but they enjoyed it so much, well… I might have embellished it with a few touches of my own.”

“More than a few,” Orion said, impressed by its vastness. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say it had no right to fit on the castle grounds, or anywhere near Canterlot at all.

“It must be magic,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Ponies would have to work day and night keeping the overgrowth from choking every inch of it.”

“In fact,” Celestia said, her voice strangely resonant and echoing, “there is quite a lot of magic in that labyrinth. Ponies have wandered it for centuries. Some have left their mark in more ways than misplaced cufflinks and forgotten jackets.”

Orion took a deep breath, feeling the old sense of history that rolled off Celestia blanket him again. He pressed his hooves up against the window, and his breath fogged around his nose. It only just now began to hit him that he was here. Really here, in Canterlot.

The heart of Equestria. The seat of power and the fulcrum upon which the world turned. The place where the rule of the Princess began, and perhaps where a Prince might find his own beginning.

A place just loud and big enough to drown out the awful silence of the grey days back home.

“I think I’m going to like it here,” he sighed wistfully.

“Perhaps,” Celestia said, her voice lilting with a sing-song tune, “you might feel differently as I turn our talk to your education.”

Orion blew the tip of his mane out of his eyes. “Of course. Halfway across the country I still run back into the clutches of dreaded school.”

“Oh,” said Celestia, “I think you’ll like mine.”