Time Enough For Love

Chapters

2. The Peak
3. The Talk
4. The Trip
5. The Gift
6. The Return
7. The Amulet
8. The Sacrifice
9. The Letter
10. The Fight
11. The Queen
12. The Future
1. The Challenge

2. The Peak

Smart Cookie and Sergeant Pansy exchanged a wordless look, then both stared at Clover.

"Ya can't honestly be considering this," Cookie said.

"It's complicated," Clover said automatically, then glanced up to notice the worry on their muzzles. He shot back a confused look. "What do you mean, I can't?"

"What do you mean, complicated?! She's insane! She —" Cookie stopped himself with an effort and drew a deep breath. "No. That ain't fair. But she's an alicorn, Clover, and we ain't nothing but toys to her. The last mare to challenge her to hoof-wrestling in the war camps, the Imperatrix broke her leg the instant they shouted 'Go'. Then she kicked a nearby tree in half, an' stomped off shoutin' for us to stop wastin' her time."

"She's not a pony, Clover," Pansy said. "She looks like one. She acts like one, most of the time. And then …" Pansy's voice faltered. "In the Two-Day War, I watched her level an aerie. An entire gryphon aerie. With a single spell."

Clover swallowed through a suddenly dry throat and glanced around Cookie's consul quarters. That certainly put a mere throne-room door in perspective.

"One day she's gonna sneeze and accidentally smear you 'cross the floor," Cookie said. "An' that's if you keep her attention. Harmony help you if she gets bored, like she does every time she goes a week without some monster's face ta pound in."

"Isn't that all the more reason for me to do this, then?" Clover protested. "She quite nearly pulled off a one-pony coup because she woke up drunk and surly. I have a unique opportunity to guarantee my tribe eternal safety from her, and I'm not about to let Queen Platinum down."

"Don't dodge like that," Cookie said, frowning. "The Imperatrix's promise is a done deal — Queen Platinum traded it for her blessing to woo ya — and now what you've gotta think of is you. Trust me, Clover. Tell her honestly up front it ain't gonna work, an' avoid her till she gets distracted by the next border skirmish."

Pansy touched a hoof to Clover's shoulder. "Cookie's right," she said quietly. "The Imperatrix doesn't care about you. She can't. You deserve somepony who —"

Clover swung his head to hers. "That's not true. Look at what she gave up for me."

Pansy's eyes widened, and she jerked her hoof back. "B-but … think about what she said. She just c-cared that you beat her. You're a challenge."

"And what's she gonna do the instant you ain't fun any more?" Cookie added. "The instant she realizes you're as mortal as the rest of us?"

"It's not that simple!"

Pansy swallowed. "But, but, she doesn't —"

"Not simple how?" Cookie cut in harshly. "Pride?"

Clover's cheeks heated as both accusations pressed in. "No!"

"You are our friend," Cookie said, "and I ain't gonna watch ya get snapped in half 'cause ya see an impossible challenge to fling yourself at!"

Pansy tried to interrupt again, her voice growing fainter by the word. "She's n-not in love with you —"

"I know, Pansy," Clover blurted out. "I don't care."

The room went silent. Pansy blinked several times. Then her eyes widened, and she went rigid.

"Clover," Cookie moaned, head drooping. "You son-of-a-plowshare, you are the downright stupidest genius I ever met."

Clover glanced back and forth between his friends, thrown by their reactions. "What? I'd have thought you'd be relieved I'm not going into this with any delusions."

"Except the biggest one of all," Cookie muttered.

"Cookie, what are you talking about?"

Cookie exhaled, then raised his head back up to stare into Clover's eyes. "I get it, Clover. You're in love, and ya think she'll come around."

"What?!" Clover said, more bewildered than anything. "That's not —"

Cookie lunged forward, clamping his hooves on Clover's shoulders. "Stop, Clover, and listen for one fool second. I get it. There's more'n one reason there's statues of the Imperatrix all over the continent — you'd hafta be made of stone not to have her turn your head. But she breaks ponies. She's broken every single pony that's ever looked in her direction. I'm beggin' you, Clover … I don't care what ya feel. Listen to reason, an' gallop the other direction as fast as your hooves will take you."

"Cookie." Clover met his friend's stare with earnest eyes. "You've got this completely wrong."

Cookie didn't move. "If that were true, I wouldn't have to tell ya to flee."

Clover tried to swat Cookie's legs away, but his hoof bounced uselessly off the earth pony's iron grip. He frowned and settled for abruptly pulling back, stomping over to the window and staring out into the Everfree's orderly rows of trees.

Cookie was talking complete nonsense, of course. And yet. And yet.

"I think I can see where you're getting that idea," Clover said slowly. "She is a goddess, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have the same fantasies every colt in the world has. It would be impossible to be in my position and not have some interest. But I'm interested, not suicidal. I've got nothing to prove to her."

"Really," Cookie said flatly.

"Really. The reason hundreds of ponies have broken themselves against her is that they were trying to catch her eye. I've already done that."

Cookie stared at him expectantly.

Clover squirmed. "Admittedly, there's a certain temptation to doing it again just to show the first time wasn't a fluke."

"Mm-hm."

"And if I did manage to become the first pony to make an alicorn fall in love with me, my name would go down in history." He felt his cheeks begin to heat, and tried not to think about that kiss back in the throne room.

Cookie snorted humorlessly. "Tell me more about you havin' nothing to prove."

"I don't," Clover said without conviction. "To Tartarus with history — I'm already a hero. This is about her."

Clover realized how wrong that had come out before Cookie even opened his mouth to reply.

"I mean, the deal she made for me," he hurriedly added. "Don't twist that into something it isn't."

"Okay," Cookie said, clearly humoring him. "So let's say there's somethin' here which don't boil down to you bein' deep in denial. What's so important about that deal?"

Clover swallowed, beginning to wonder if there was anything to Cookie's insistence. Love had been the absolute last thing on his mind when he'd visited them … but if there hadn't been something nagging at the back of his mind that didn't quite add up, he wouldn't have needed their advice.

What was it about the deal? Surely it didn't have to be anything so complicated as love. Clover took a breath, closed his eyes for a moment and tried to set his swirling thoughts in order. And amid the jumble of fragmentary thoughts, one finally worked its way back to the foreground.

"Okay," he finally said. "Look at how I caught her attention, and look at her response."

Cookie raised an eyebrow. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"I tricked the Imperatrix. I made her look like an idiot in front of the entire Royal Court. And instead of threatening me into silence, or challenging me to combat to restore her honor, or marching straight up to me and smashing me into pulp …" Clover paused, shivered, and shook his head to clear it. "You know something? Everypony is convinced she's some bloodthirsty warrior goddess. But that's not how she reacted back in court, and I don't understand."

Cookie facehoofed and moaned. "Of course. The only problem worse than you fallin' in love. Once a puzzle sinks its teeth into you, it don't ever let go."

"That's not it!" Clover quickly said. "I mean, it's a factor, but …"

The talk of Celestia's reaction finally coalesced the small, nagging sense of guilt that had been swirling deep in Clover's gut all morning.

"I just realized the important thing," he added quietly.

"Mmm?"

"What I said about tricking her? 'Cheating' was the exact word she used. Yet, even knowing that, she turned right around and made an absurd, unbelievable deal for me. She's traded so much away for that chance, and if I don't even give her that … what kind of cheater am I?"

Cookie blinked. Opened his mouth, then hesitated.

Clover's ears drooped. "She deserves better than that, don't you think? Anypony deserves better than that. Distracting a drunkard to defend my tribe is one thing, but I can't let myself become the sort of pony who uses the letter of a bargain to be cruel." Clover trotted back over to Cookie. "I'm aware of how crazy it is to step within squishing distance of her. But I have a moral duty to let this play out."

"Huh," Cookie said. "That's … huh."

Clover nodded firmly, finally back on solid ground.

Cookie shook his head, chuckling quietly. "I can't believe this. You're crazy, alright. But somehow, ya always manage to twist it into the sort of crazy I gotta respect."

"All this cleverness ought to be good for something." Clover smiled. "I'll be careful, okay?"

"Ya better believe I'll hold ya to that." Cookie leaned forward, pulling him into a hug.

The room went silent for a moment. Clover glanced up.

"Pansy?" he said.

She started. "Um. Yes?"

"You've been awfully quiet over there. What do you think?"

Pansy chewed her lip, eyes flicking around the room, then gave Clover a hesitant smile. "If you really want to give her a chance … I could never live with myself if I stopped you from following your heart."

"Home, sweet home," Celestia said, making a sweeping gesture around the fortress high on Canter Peak.

"Fortress" was, perhaps, a kind assessment: it was a single large room with bare stone walls and an empty hearth-pit in the center, dimly lit by several slit-windows open to the raging snowstorm outside. One wall had stacks of supply crates and a pile of dusty firewood, and along the opposite wall lay a quilt-covered slab of straw that was the room's sole piece of furniture.

"So," she added.

"S-s-so," Clover chattered, huddling inside the thin burlap of his robe.

Celestia frowned. "C'mon, Frumpy, don't be a wimp. The cold's good for you. Keeps you on edge."

Clover swallowed and tried to still his jaw. "I-I d-don't h-have y-your st-strength, a-and c-cold c-can't b-be o-outclevered."

"Wasn't that exactly what you did a few years ago?"

Clover glared.

Celestia sighed theatrically, then lit her horn. With a golden flash, a massive pile of logs vanished from the woodpile and appeared in the central hearth. Her horn flashed again, just for a moment, and the hearth burst into a raging bonfire.

Sweat beaded on Clover's brow, and steam immediately started curling off his robe. He backed away from the combustion zone to where it was merely hot.

"Better?"

"Y-yes, thank you," Clover said, his shivers subsiding, and scrabbled to chisel some casual conversation from the glacier of his brain. "So."

Celestia's eyes darted around the room, and she opened and closed her mouth, her muzzle shifting through several expressions before settling into a frown. "Look," she finally said, "you've gotta have figured out by now I'm all about the direct approach. So just tell me the rules to this 'win your heart' thing."

Clover blinked. "Ah," he stammered, "there are no rules to love, exactly —"

Celestia rolled her eyes. "I know, Frumpy, I'm not a newborn foal. But everypony who gets me alone wants something out of me. What's your price? Power? Bragging rights? Murdering the starbeast who killed your dam?"

"What? My dam's not …" Clover said, feeling the conversation slip away from him. He took a breath and started over. "Imperatrix, you're thinking in terms of base motivations. I'm not like that — I'm a scholar."

Celestia's lips finally curled into a smile — a feral, confident grin. "Ah! Books! You want me to go pillage some for you? The Dragon Palace has this huge library —"

"No!" Clover blurted out. "I … ah … that is … I'm not after things. Or favors."

Because I'm an idiot, a voice in the back of his head helpfully supplied. She's desperate to impress me. Say the word and I could have the world on a string.

And how cruel would that be? another voice countered. All I'd have to do is use her interest as leverage. Use her. The way everypony does.

Clover swallowed and put on a shaky smile. "Maybe start by telling me about yourself?"

Celestia hesitated, but her grin quickly broadened again. "Sure! I've got the best stories. Oh, you wanna hear the one about how I leveled a whole gryphon aerie with a single spell? It was a few years back, when they attacked …" Clover held up a hoof, and Celestia stopped mid-sentence. "What."

"Imperatrix," Clover said carefully, "I don't want to know what you've accomplished. I want to know who you are."

She stared at him with an odd expression for a moment before throwing her head back and barking out a laugh. "I knew I liked you, Frumpy! You're one of those romance ponies. You're not going to let me win without a challenge."

"Romance! Yes," Clover said, seizing on the lifeline and desperately ignoring the sentence afterward. "Find out more about each other while we do enjoyable things together." He returned her smile guardedly. "I freely admit I have no references on alicorn romantic protocol, but I imagine that, for starters, it would be hard to go wrong with sharing some dinner while the room's warming up?"

Celestia shrugged. "No food."

"… Wait, what?"

"I don't need to eat or drink to survive, and it's a pain in the ass to haul it up here." Her eyes darted around the room and locked in on a single small barrel amid the crates. "But we can get drunk if you want."

It was entirely unclear to Clover whether or not that had been meant as a joke, so he settled on chuckling uneasily. "Given the quantity of your alcohol reserves, I somehow suspect that 'we' is overstating things."

Celestia smirked. "Shows what you know. That's a three-day supply of dragonfire ale."

"Dragonfire —" Clover sputtered, his smile vanishing and his face going white. Reflexively, he tried to calculate how far away he'd have to teleport to be clear of the blast if she opened it while the hearth was lit. There was an alarming number of digits in the answer.

"… What?" Celestia said, smile fading.

Clover swallowed. "I'm afraid that I must decline your kind offer at this time, Imperatrix," he ventured. "And request that you store the ale outside. I am a mere mortal, and I would rather not have to phrase that sentiment in the past tense."

"Eh," Celestia said, looking away with a flat, inscrutable expression. But at least her horn flashed, and the barrel vanished.

Clover's adrenaline receded. An uncomfortable silence descended.

Change the subject change the subject! Clover's brain screamed, and he cleared his throat. "So … ah … not to be rude, but I never would have pictured you as the solitary sort. How come you don't live down in the war-camps —"

"— carousing and rutting each night?" Celestia snorted. "I do, when I can stand it. But it gets so tedious. Everypony there only cares about competing over catching my eye, or bragging about how long they can stand up to me … and the harder I smack 'em down, the harder the rest fall over themselves to be the next victim. Only Luna's good enough to be on my level, and she stopped playing my games long ago." Her wings twitched in a shrug. "But here? No demands, no bravado. Just me and the sky."

… That certainly explains a few things. Clover sidled a little closer to the fire as a gust of storm-laced air puffed snow through the slit-windows. "Still, if you'll pardon my forwardness, this place seems pretty miserable. Why here?"

"Because when I'm not spending four days sleeping off my worst hangover ever, and I can keep the clouds properly bucked, my mountain has the world's most amazing view," Celestia said, and an unfamiliar sort of smile shaded onto her muzzle. It took Clover several seconds to parse it: none of her usual predation, just a simple, pure joy. "I can see from ocean to ocean, like I'm queen of the world."

The smile suddenly wavered.

"You know. Actual queen. The pony they love, instead of the one who's the best at everything."

An unexpected sort of flutter squeezed at Clover's heart. It took him several seconds to parse it: sympathy.

"I think," he said slowly, "I'd like to see that view."

It was half an hour before she shouldered the door back open, sweating and breathing heavily. By then, the room's chill had retreated from Windigo-spawning to merely nippy, and Clover had hung his robe up on an iron hook on the wall near the bed. Celestia lit her horn. Clover's world shaded gold, and the room rapidly receded as he flew backward toward the cliffside.

She whirled him around and dropped her field. His breath caught.

With the sky clear for leagues in every direction, it was amazing. The mountain dropped away underhoof — a nearly vertical cliff — and beyond that was a landscape worthy of the greatest masters of the brush. The verdant carpet of the Everfree sprawled out to the Great Southern Forests; the gentle hills and gridded orchards of the Earth Kingdoms rolled east to the sea-glimmer on the distant horizon; the cloud cities and towers of the Pegasus Protectorates blanketed the west. The air was clear and crisp, the most brilliant blue he'd ever seen. A single bird wheeled in lazy circles in the far distance, its bright red wings standing out against the sky like a second sun.

"It's beautiful," he whispered.

In between her short pants of breath, Celestia sharply exhaled a sound not unlike a laugh. "I know, right?"

Clover glanced sideways at the war goddess staring breathlessly out into the far distance — at the bizarrely serene smile on her muzzle, at the rise and fall of the sleek curve of her barrel, at the sheen of sweat on her impossibly white pelt that gave her the appearance of living alabaster. An odd lightness settled into his chest.

She was beautiful.

It was a thoroughly unsettling realization, the more so for how obvious it was. Of course she was beautiful — any pony with eyes could tell you that. The Imperatrix's beauty was a simple background fact of her alicornhood. She was the sort of being you compared lesser ponies to. A living ideal.

But there was the Imperatrix's beauty, and then there was … this. Something else beneath that layer of impossible perfection. Something hidden and fragile and tantalizing, only visible in brief flashes when she lowered her guard. Something far more gorgeous than mere transcendence.

Celestia turned her head while he was staring. Clover whipped his muzzle back toward the sky, feeling his cheeks burn. He lifted a leg to cough into his hoof, hoping that would let him cover his face long enough for the blush to fade.

"What?" she said. And though her tone was free of challenge, the shields were back up.

Clover mentally flailed for a moment, then realized she had probably interpreted his cough as a conversational cue. He risked a second glance at her. A slight frown and furrowed brow were tugging at her face as their eyes met, and Clover's heart almost stopped — but there was no disapproval in her look, only uncertainty.

A ridiculously bad idea stirred in the back of his brain. And the instant it occurred to him, he knew he had no other choice.

"It's, um, rather cold out here on the cliffside." Clover chewed his lip for a moment, telling himself he'd come too far for second thoughts. "May I?"

Celestia looked as lost as he felt. "May you what?"

Rather than answering, he stood and walked to where she was sitting on the cliffside, angelic wings half-spread. Ignoring the adrenaline exploding through his veins, he nosed at one foreleg and squirmed stiffly underneath it, nestling himself underneath her barrel, back to chest.

She drew in, and held, a sudden intake of breath — chest pressing uncomfortably on his spine. The clammy dampness of her sweat quickly soaked his pelt. But after the brief shock of unpleasant sensation receded, the warmth of her body began to set in, and Clover's terror receded into mere fear.

Celestia's breathing resumed — making Clover realize he should do the same — then gradually evened. They sat together in an ambiguously awkward silence, muzzles leveled at the horizon. After some time, she lifted a hoof, curling a leg over Clover's chest and making his terror flare anew. But then her leg settled lightly around him, barely touching.

Clover looked down, staring at it uncomprehendingly. As far as he could tell, that was the first time — short of handicapping herself to even out contests — that she'd ever done anything at less than full strength.

Celestia cleared her throat. "Hey? Frumpy? I guess this is pretty romantic, huh." She gave him a brief squeeze, and he felt his ribs flex and protest.

Clover tensed — desperately struggling to keep the reflex from turning into a full-blown wince. "I'm enjoying it more than I expected, Imperatrix," he said tightly.

"Heh," she said with forced cheer. "I should probably start calling you Clover."

"Pet names are not without precedent. I've been called worse."

The silence of the mountain descended. A frigid breeze stirred up. Clover took a breath of searingly cold air, his instincts screaming at him anew to wriggle out of Celestia's grip and bolt away. What was he doing!? He clenched his jaw, ignoring the question, and forced himself to press further into her warmth.

Abruptly, she lowered her leg, hoof coming back to rest on the ground with a soft tick.

"You're scared of me," Celestia said quietly. "Aren't you."

He decided to risk the truth after a moment's deliberation. "Less so than I was this morning. But, yes."

"Why?"

Clover frantically sifted through half-lies to find one that wouldn't get him pitched over the side of the mountain. But before he could settle on one, she sighed.

"I'm too intense, aren't I," she said. "Damn it — I have never understood that about ponies. How can you settle for a life of half-measures, rather than living every moment with every ounce of passion you possess? How can you settle for half-measures knowing you'll die someday? It's bad enough being immortal and bored!"

Clover lifted a foreleg and tentatively patted a hoof against the alabaster pillar alongside his shoulder. "It's less that than the fact that you could snap me in half without meaning to."

He could feel her frown through the tightening of her neck muscles. "I'm being careful. I like you, alright?"

"And I do appreciate that," Clover said. "But as to your question: think of it as if you were one of us. We're fragile little beasts, but greedy ones, trying to wring all out of life that we can. So you've got the right principle, but its actual application is a matter of mathematics. A long life of half-measures offers more overall measures than a single blazing moment."

"Mmm," she grunted. He waited, but she said nothing more.

"I'm sorry," Clover finally said, not quite certain what he was apologizing for.

"Eh, never mind," Celestia said. "Wanna rut?"

Clover tensed again, fresh alarm bells ringing in his head. He hurriedly tried to cover for it with a laugh and a pat on her leg. "Would it involve the aforementioned snapping me in half?" he parried.

Celestia barked out a laugh, and he felt her body finally relax. She lifted her leg back up to encircle his chest again — and despite the circumstances, it wasn't nearly as scary the second time. "Only if you want me to."

"Let's just assume from now on that the answer to that is no."

"Pfah. Never say never, right?" Her weight shifted against his, and he suddenly found himself hoisted off the ground as she rocked back onto hind hooves and stood on two legs.

This time, there was no stopping the adrenaline exploding into his veins. Had she taken his first response as a yes!?

"Wait!" he squeaked, and Celestia froze, and Clover's inner alarm bells redoubled their pealing. "I mean," he added hurriedly, "there may be a minor misunderstanding here, you see, this gets back to what I said about half-measures, we, ah, there's normally more courtship involved —" oh haybales this isn't helping I'm rejecting the alicorn who leveled a gryphon aerie with a single spell — "which is to say that I merely wasn't expecting such an offer, Imperatrix … ah, not that it is without precedent, that is, I experimented with my share of fillies when I was a growing colt, and I am a virile young stallion and you're a breathtaking vision of beauty —" ABORT ABORT ABORT — "but I, I just —" he desperately lunged for the truth — "I don't understand. I'm a sharp-tongued hack of a mage and you're a goddess given flesh. How is this even happening?"

A scowl flitted briefly across Celestia's muzzle, and she dropped back to her haunches. His hindquarters hit the cliffside with a jarring thump. "Because you beat me in a contest," Celestia said, as if explaining to a foal.

"No, I didn't," he said before the smart part of his brain could strangle the clever part. "Like I told you before we started, I keep myself away from alcohol because of my studies. If you had been lucid enough to tell me to grab a tankard after finishing your handicap, you would have crushed me 73 to … maybe 10."

"Doesn't matter," Celestia said, annoyance shading into her tone. "Look. I know nopony's on my level. So every time somepony catches my eye, I challenge 'em on their own terms — and they still fold like paper. You're the only one who hasn't failed. And if I'm ever gonna figure out this 'love' thing that everypony insists is so great, it's not gonna be with failures." She glanced away, and her body tensed back up. "Never mind that. Do you wanna rut or not?"

Clover closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the encircling warmth of Celestia's body — her hinds pressing in around his, the leg across his chest, the rise and fall of her breathing. Then he gave in, twisted his head to look up at her, and said the stupidest, cleverest thing he'd ever said in his stupid and clever life: "You know what? Yes."

She looked down — and he saw fear dissolving from her eyes, and he couldn't be sure if it had been hers or a reflection of his own — and then her familiar predatory smile began to spread across her muzzle. "Excellent."

He tried to smile back, feeling every bit the prey.

"Ever done it in midair, Frumpy?"

He blinked. "Have I ever —"

Then her leg clamped in around his chest, and the rest was lost in an incoherent wheeze. Her wings snapped out straight as she shot to her hooves and bounded forward. He flailed his hooves for purchase on the smooth stone of the clifftop as she tensed and sprang. The earth dropped away.

She tucked her wings in and dove.

The echo of a shriek and the echo of a laugh intertwined on the empty cliffside.

"That," Clover said, between gasps of breath, "was something."

Celestia sprawled out underneath him with a satisfied smirk, both wings at full extension. She wriggled to scratch her back against the fortress' straw mattress, sending a fresh tingle of pleasure through Clover's hindquarters. "Which part?"

"All — nnnnh — of it." Clover couldn't keep a dopey grin from spreading across his face. "Even, if I must be honest, the part where we almost fell to our doom."

It felt strange to say. But it was true. In the blissful haze of afterglow, somehow little things like fear fell away.

Celestia took a deep, languid breath, his body shifting as her chest rose and fell, and her muzzle curled into a relaxed smile. "I thought you'd like it." The smile receded as quickly as it had arrived, and she stared into his eyes with an expression he couldn't quite decipher. "See what I mean about living life with passion? Why settle for anything less than —" and her muzzle twisted through a short word she didn't speak — "than full intensity at every moment?"

Hunh, Clover thought, and felt the heartbeat in her chest quicken to match the pounding in his.

He wanted nothing more than to reach forward and press his muzzle to hers — but he couldn't reach her mouth without pulling away, so he settled for leaving a tender kiss on her chest. "I think," he said, letting an impish smile creep onto his muzzle, "you're underestimating the benefits of taking things slowly."

Her expression softened to match his. "Oh yeah?" she growled in mock-challenge.

"I dare you," he said, "not to move a muscle for thirty minutes." He quickly pressed his hoof to the tip of her muzzle as she opened her mouth to speak. "Not. One. Or is the mighty Imperatrix going to back down from a challenge?"

"Oh, you fragile, greedy little beast," Celestia said with a laugh as he withdrew his hoof. "Challenge accepted."

Clover reluctantly lifted himself from her body, then leaned back in, muzzle almost touching her, the warm exhalations from his nose leaving shallow divots in the short hair of her chest.

"Excellent," he whispered, and then traced his muzzle down the concave curve of her belly.

Her body tensed. A thin whimper left her lips.

He lit his horn as he worked, plucking a feather from one of her wings.

It only took him thirteen minutes to break her.

3. The Talk

Hours before dawn, Clover was staring at the darkened wall of the fortress — trying to pick out the texture of the stones by starlight, in an effort to give his racing mind something concrete to do — when Celestia cleared her throat.

"What's on your mind, Frumpy?" she stage-whispered.

'Everything', Clover thought, would not be an inappropriate answer. Every time he thought he was coming to grips with the reality of the situation, she would shift underneath him — and the leg across his back would squeeze a small whuff of air from his lungs before her pressure retracted to merely firm, and his mind would echo Cookie's warning again. Another part of his brain was replaying their first meeting — and the throne-room kiss; and the look in her eyes as she returned from clearing the sky; and her musical laugh; and her intake of breath as her wings snapped open during their free-fall, gravity pressing him into her embrace —

And part of his brain was chasing its tail in a tight circle. The earlier fear of self-preservation had been replaced by a far subtler and deeper and more troubling one — Luna's words, echoing over and over.

Alone and broken-hearted.

How unutterably cruel would it be to do that to her after what she traded for me? one voice argued. Ignore it, prophecy is garbage, another protested feebly. A sharper voice piped up: Idiot. If anypony could see the future, it would have been Star Swirl. Why deny the warning you've been given? Defensively: It's not even clear Star Swirl was talking about me to begin with.

Look, the calm, clever voice broke in. It's quite simple. The prophecy is about a mare who loves you. As much as you hate to admit it, Cookie was right about her. Let this play out and fade back away as her interest wanes. Don't make this into something it isn't, and you'll have nothing to worry about —

Pain flared in his ribs, and he jolted back to the fortress.

"Equestria to Frumpy," Celestia said, a trace of annoyance in her voice, retracting her hooftip from his side. "Don't pretend like you're sleeping. You've been squirming all night."

"Sorry, Imperatrix," Clover mumbled, and nestled closer into her chest, trying to ignore all of the inner voices' screaming. He decided to deflect. "I could ask you the same question."

"No you couldn't," she said. "I don't sleep unless I want to."

"… and you don't want to?"

Celestia snorted. "I figured it would be rude to accidentally crush you in my sleep. But I suppose if you want —"

"No, no," he said hurriedly. "That's okay."

"Mmh," she grunted, and adjusted her grip, horn briefly lighting to square the blanket off over him.

The room lapsed into the resounding hush of the high mountains.

Only to be broken several minutes later by another throat-clear. "I did ask a question," Celestia said, a bit more hesitantly. "If it's something I'm doing to keep you up, I'm gonna be pissed if you're not telling me."

Clover started, his mind kicking into a full gallop again.

"It, ah, well," he fumbled, then went for reassurance. "Not you. I — well, it's just something Luna said —"

Celestia shifted underneath him, sitting up slightly, as all of his inner voices stopped their arguing and facehoofed simultaneously.

Yes, brilliant, Clover thought. Let's just share sweet romantic prophecies of disaster.

"Hunh," she said. "You talked to Luna?"

"She, ah." Clover stalled as he thought wildly. "When she came to Everfree after our contest."

"Oh," Celestia said. "Yeah. That sounds like her. Always trying to stay in my shadow so I can be a distraction while she works."

"Yes, Luna said something … vaguely similar."

At least, Clover thought, the Imperatrix doesn't seem to know where the conversation's heading. This would already be significantly more awkward if she did.

"What did she say?" Celestia prompted. "I mean, to get your brain going this late."

Clover swallowed through a dry throat. Well, there's no lie like an incomplete truth. "To be honest, Star Swirl the Bearded," he said. "It turns out both you and I were students of his."

Celestia fell silent for a moment. "Huh," she finally said. "Now that's a story I should probably hear."

"Well, he appeared a couple of times during my studies." Again, Clover lunged for the deflection. "But before I bore you with the details — what's bugging me is, Luna never did explain what happened after he disappeared a century ago. Did you ever find him?"

Celestia lapsed into awkward silence again — and Clover belatedly began to wonder whether the prophecy was the only topic they needed to dodge around.

He was fumbling for yet another topic change when Celestia chuckled wryly and said, "Can't say this is what I expected out of pillow talk."

"What can I say? Nothing keeps me awake like trying to think through a mystery."

"Not sure I'm gonna help you get to sleep, then. He's still alive. That's about all I've got."

Clover considered for a moment, inner voices warring. Curiosity won out. "I'd still love to hear the story."

"Eh, I guess." Celestia shrugged, the motion shifting both their bodies. "I should probably start way back when we got our marks. When that happened, he was supposed to take us to the queen to get drafted, but since he vanished —"

"Drafted?" Clover asked.

"Yeah, into the army."

"But you said queen. Didn't you live in unicorn lands? Drafting at the age of majority is a pegasus thing."

"Oh, no. Everypony did, back then. There was a tribal skirmish, like, every other week." She chuckled. "I'd always looked forward to joining the Bloodhorns, actually, and going out raiding. But when we galloped home to tell Star Swirl about our Marks, and he was gone, Luna started looking at the notes that had been left out on his desk. She said she thought she knew why he might have vanished, and we didn't have much time if we wanted to get him back. So instead of heading to the queen, we packed some saddlebags and took off, and that started some crazy adventures." Celestia smirked. "You know how it goes. Free some ponies from Abyssinian slavers, discover he's not among them but a second group just got shipped overseas, take over a pirate ship so you can follow them, end up leading the slave revolt that overthrows the Purrsian Empire."

Clover's eyes widened. "That was you?"

"Pfft, that was the start. We heard of a band of pony escapees heading east on the Silk Road, so we ended up in Qilin for a while. Had to take a break from the search to keep the Great Jade Dragon from escaping his bindings in the Forbidden Temple and eating the world. Beat back the Oni Kings' invasion, too." Her voice went uncharacteristically quiet for a moment. "Yeah, those were bad times. Glad they're gone. Anyway. Finally tracked down the pony refugees. Didn't find him, but some of them said Star Swirl had been with them up until the Llamalayas, so we backtracked. The rumors we followed started getting weirder and weirder. Like he was looking for something big. And every time we got a solid lead, we'd hit some ancient temple or fight some ancient monster or something, and find nothing but another breadcrumb to someplace else he might have gone."

"Huh. And how long did this go on?"

"Eh. Couple more decades."

"Decades—!?"

"Till we stopped finding clues, I mean." Celestia didn't even seem to notice Clover's outburst. "Then another … seventy years? Where we just wandered the Far Continent and chased every crazy rumor of weird ancient mysteries that we overheard."

"That's … wow." Clover shook his head. "I can't fathom why you didn't give up."

"Oh, we were tempted, all the time," Celestia said. "But … you know? He was basically our father. And nopony was gonna search for him if we didn't. By ten years in, it was pretty likely he was dead, but we weren't gonna give up till we knew." Clover wasn't quite sure what to make of her detached tone. "At some point, though — after we'd wrecked the face of yet another ancient sealed horror — Luna did the math. We'd been chasing Star Swirl so long that, even if we did somehow find him, he would have been the oldest unicorn alive. And every place we chased him into had crazier traps and fangier monsters than the last."

"So you did give up?"

"We tried! We trotted out to the Sword Coast to head home. Except we ran into a ship captain who swore up and down that a pony looking just like Star Swirl had bought passage on his ship for the trip into town, and then wandered off toward the way we'd come from."

"Which should have been impossible," Clover said drily. "In a manner I find all too familiar."

Celestia chuckled humorlessly. "Yeah. But it was enough to get us back out there, and we always kept hearing just enough to keep us looking. Like chasing a damn ghost. Right up until … almost two years ago, now."

"The Tribal Accords."

"A few days before. We were six hours' flight from a remote Llamalayan village. And the old geezer walks up to our campfire out of nowhere."

Clover laughed in sympathy. "I see we've got that in common, too."

Celestia propped herself up on a foreknee, not returning his laughter. "Yeah. And get this. The first thing he says is: 'Your search is no longer necessary.' Can you believe that?"

Clover's smile turned into a wince. "Unfortunately, yes."

"I'm standing there sputtering, and Luna's bursting into tears and stammering out 'where've you been', and all he says is he's proud of our diligence, and we've each earned one future boon in recompense, do we understand, and he has to leave again but he assures us he'll be there the next time his presence is truly needed." Celestia's tone had turned decidedly bitter, and even in the dark, Clover could see her face curled into a scowl.

"And then what?" he asked, with a sinking feeling that he knew the answer.

"And then his horn glows and he vanishes in front of our eyes."

Clover gave Celestia a tentative squeeze. Her body remained rigid.

"Ungrateful son-of-a-timberwolf," she muttered. "So what else could we do but head home?"

"Only to find out that while you were gone, ponykind changed quite nearly beyond recognition," Clover murmured, trying to change the subject. "I can only imagine how strange it must have been to see us celebrating the first anniversary of unification, and signing a treaty between the tribes not forged in spilt blood. Though I doubt it was as great a shock for you as it was for us to learn that some remnant of the Great Herd still existed."

Celestia grunted, not taking the bait.

Clover sighed. "Look. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault." But she sighed and reclined back down to the bed. "It's just … it bugs me so much. Like, he was our father, he should have loved us, but he sent us on a wild-goose chase for two lifetimes."

Clover thought for several seconds — not about Star Swirl's logic, which seemed obvious, but about how to explain it.

"Imperatrix," he said, "correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like your plan after finding Star Swirl was always to head home and volunteer for the Unicornian draft, yes?"

"Yeah," Celestia said. "Just like I did at the Accords for the unified army. Why?"

"You're an alicorn," Clover said. "You're strong beyond comparison. You're unstoppable on the battlefield. Now imagine that immense strength deployed not against monsters, nor foreign invaders, but against your fellow ponies."

"Not much to imagine," Celestia said smugly. "We would've conquered the other tribes within days."

"Conquered, yes. And then there would have been no reason to work out our differences when the Windigos arrived — not when the Queen could have thrown you at the problem. So we'd still be living today with earthers and pegasi subjugated, and we'd be conquering the rest of the world as another one of the evil empires we're fighting left and right." Clover's voice softened. "So, yes, I think Star Swirl did send you on a wild-goose chase … because we weren't good enough to deserve you until two years ago."

"Hnh," Celestia grunted, and nothing more.

However, some tension eased out of her body, and she started gently stroking Clover's back with her hoof. And when he felt himself start finally drifting off to sleep, her breathing had become slow and regular.

The next morning, despite Clover's protests, Celestia dragged him outside right before dawn. He buried himself in her wing, teeth chattering, breath freezing into icicles on his lips. Then the horizon started glowing, and his jaw dropped, and his chattering died away.

He'd never watched sunrise from so close to the sky.

"Leavin' with her?" Cookie asked. "Or runnin' from her?"

Clover glanced up from where he was trying to wedge sheets of hardtack between the layers of clothing crammed into his saddlebags. Cookie, muzzle set in a poker face, was leaning against the doorway of Clover's modest room in Everfree Palace. Pansy stood in the hallway, watching over Cookie's shoulder, not meeting Clover's eyes.

Clover stood, turning away from his desk. "Neither. It simply turns out that her home is short on amenities that ordinary ponies take for granted."

"And things went well enough you're headin' back?"

Clover sighed. He'd been hoping to sneak in and out of the castle quickly enough to avoid this conversation. "As I already said, I have a moral duty to let this play out."

Cookie shifted — and his face, oddly, fell. "Oh."

Clover braced for several seconds before realizing that was all that was forthcoming.

"… 'Oh'?" he said. "What do you mean, 'oh'?"

"I think —" Cookie started as Pansy finally worked herself up to a "You should —"

They both stopped. Cookie glanced over his shoulder. Pansy shrank back, and nodded at him to continue with a mumbled "Sorry."

"I think," Cookie repeated, "we've all had some time to think about whatcha said yesterday. I'd gotten to hopin' you'd stop pretending this is nothin' more than principle, but —"

Clover winced. "Cookie," he interrupted, keeping his voice as level as he could, "you're not the only one who's had time to think. And it is exactly a matter of principle. Nothing more. There are some problems which even I am smart enough to run away from."

Cookie's brow furrowed. "You went to a lot of effort convincin' us of the opposite, yesterday."

"That's not …" Clover stopped himself; explaining the prophecy would unnecessarily complicate things. He turned back to his packing to conceal his reddening face. "… Not important, because you were right. I'm just a toy. So I'll let the Imperatrix play for a while. She has some fun, then loses interest, and I come home with an as-yet-undetermined level of injury. End of story."

"For somepony makin' such a big deal of principle, that don't sound like giving her a square chance."

"I'm going back, aren't I?" Clover snapped.

Cookie sighed loudly. "Damn it, Clover. You are really not makin' it easy to apologize."

It took Clover a moment to confirm he'd heard that right.

He slowly turned back around, one eyebrow raising. "If that's your intention, you're taking rather a strange approach."

"Sure. Because last night, the one being selfish was us."

Pansy — who had opened her mouth several times as she worked herself up to joining the conversation — snapped her jaw closed with a toothy click.

Cookie drew in a deep breath. "Listen. We were tryin' to think of you. We didn't want to see ya hurt. But keepin' ya safe ain't always a friend's job. You're puttin' yourself out there for something you believe in — and a real friend helps ya leap for your dreams, even when it means bein' there to catch you when you fall. Right, Pansy?"

She froze up, and her eyes flicked around the room even faster. "Um," she said. "Yes."

Clover nodded uncertainly. "What's this about being selfish, then?"

"Because this ain't a drinking contest you're refereein'," Cookie said, and his voice softened. "You're right about the principle of the thing. But you're makin' the mistake I made last night — focusin' on how you might get hurt if your 'interest' brings ya too close." He lifted his forelegs for the hoof-quotes. "If you want to be fair about her wooin' ya, though, you can't close your heart up front. You've gotta be ready to fall in love back."

Clover felt his muzzle flush again. "It's not that simple."

"No," Cookie said pointedly, "love ain't."

"I mean it." Clover squirmed. "Trust me, it's a bad idea."

"That kicks it right in yer wheelhouse, then." Cookie gave Clover a grin — which quickly fell away at his friend's expression.

Cookie let out a breath, stepped forward, and set a hoof down on Clover's withers.

"Alright," the earth pony said, gentle but unyielding. "If you can look me straight in the eyes an' tell me there ain't nothing but pain that can come from this … then you throw those saddlebags away, an' the three of us will march out there together to tell her no. But if you're just scared …" Cookie looked at Clover sympathetically. "I get why. But it ain't no excuse not to do this right."

Clover winced inwardly. That was an overreaction … wasn't it? This wasn't really a matter of being scared of what Celestia might do to him — and even if it was, the argument of principle still applied. But the prophecy did change things.

If it was relevant.

If. If! What an unfunny joke. Here he was obsessing over a bunch of weird, squirrelly words that sounded just plausible enough to obscure their withering improbability. Yes, Clover was perfectly capable of falling in love — perhaps even madly, impossibly, dangerously in love. But the danger here — even if Star Swirl had been talking about Clover; even if the necklace somehow ended up in his hooves — required that Celestia be capable of falling in love back.

Clover let out a long breath, feeling some tension drain from his shoulders. That, at least, was impossible. And that meant there was no call to spook and cause hurt feelings. He could let Celestia be the one to walk away, and let this play out safely.

For some value of 'safe', he thought with a tinge of irony, which a week ago I wouldn't have touched with a ten-hoof pole.

Clover refocused and fixed Cookie with a calm, steady stare, pausing only to give a miserable-looking Pansy a comforting smile.

"You're absolutely correct," he told Cookie. "This is worth doing right."

Celestia's wings flared out as she advanced with a mad grin. "Because we're gonna do this right."

Clover took an involuntary step back over the fort's threshold, feeling the mountain wind he'd just escaped start to whip around his hinds again. "Wait! Now?"

"No time like the present. You've already got bags packed."

"Not for a trip!" he protested, realizing as he said it how ridiculous that sounded. "Not to mention how many arrangements I'd have to … wait. What was the first thing you said, again?"

" 'Next stop, Abyssinia'?"

"Abyssinia." Clover opened and closed his mouth. "Imperatrix. No sane captain sails the Griffon Ocean during the dragon migrations."

She threw her head back and laughed. "Who said anything about a ship? Let's go."

Celestia reached for his shoulder. Clover flinched.

She stopped, her smile falling away. "Okay, seriously, what."

"I am not opposed to a trip, in principle," Clover said. "But we really need to talk about this first."

Annoyance flitted across her muzzle, then settled in for a longer stay as she refolded her wings. "What's there to talk about? Yesterday went well. And our talk last night gave me an idea — we'll go hit all the most awesome spots Luna and I found as we explored. You want romance? We'll go take a romantic trip no other pony could ever give you."

"Do you also remember our discussion about the benefits of taking it slow?"

Celestia gave him a flat stare. "That's why we haven't taken off yet — which I'm already starting to regret. Do you remember the part yesterday where I grabbed you and we did something intense and you finally had fun?"

Clover winced but held firm. "Yes, but there's the fun that I can enjoy, and the fun that kills me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you were planning on getting there by grabbing me and flying?"

"Yeah." She raised an eyebrow. "Are you going somewhere with this?"

"Over an ocean that takes two weeks to sail."

"Pfah. Day and a half at top speed."

"Just … what, holding me the whole time?"

She raised an eyebrow. "How else?"

"During the dragon migration."

"If they go for a snack, I'll take one down as a warning and outfly the others." Celestia waved a dismissive hoof.

Clover held himself back from contesting that. It was probably the least insane part of her plan.

Finding further objections was an oddly difficult task given how transparently ridiculous the idea was. But he managed a weak one. "Are you bringing any water? We'll be flying over ocean, and I didn't pack anything to drink."

Celestia opened her mouth to shoot something back at Clover, then paused, eyes flicking side to side. Abruptly, she sat, crossing her forehooves.

"Okay," she muttered. "I could have solved that along the way, but if grabbing a water-gourd gets us moving, it's not like that slows us down any more than this does."

Solved along the way?! Clover thought. What was she going to do, boil the ocean until clouds formed …

… Oh. Right. She probably can.

Clover looked down at his hooves, guilt beginning to gnaw at his belly. The Imperatrix hadn't been thinking about his problems — her response had confirmed that. Perhaps she wasn't even capable of thinking about some of his problems. But every problem that had leapt to mind had been in her blind spot only because it was something she could solve as easily as breathing.

It was a thoroughly bizarre feeling. She was impossible. This entire thing was impossible. But every minute he spent with Celestia was warping his definition of impossible even further.

"Well?" she prompted. "What else is gonna go wrong?"

Clover glanced back up. While he'd looked away, Celestia's muzzle had settled into a defensive frown — and, seeing it, his heart twisted up. He was an idiot. Here she was, literally offering him the world, and he was ruining the moment with fear, exactly like Cookie had told him not to.

Clover let out a long breath, ears drooping. "Imperatrix," he said, "I'm sorry. This sort of intensity is still scary sometimes — but you deserve better than my fear. The trip sounds amazing, and you're absolutely right, we should go."

Celestia studied him for several seconds, her face unreadable.

"Why?" she finally said.

"Well," Clover said, lost. "As you said, we can share the highlights of your journey —"

A flicker of irritation crossed her muzzle again, but receded back into guarded neutrality. "No. Why is it still scary, after everything we said last night."

"Um," Clover said, lost for entirely different reasons.

"Don't you trust me?"

He swallowed, throat going dry. Well, he'd galloped into that at full tilt.

Clover paused for a moment to line up his thoughts. "Last night is proof enough that you respect my mortality," he said. "I trust you on that — or, at least I know I should, even if my instincts still fail me. But I don't trust myself to live up to your assumptions. I am acutely aware of my own limitations in a way that you aren't. I don't want you to make a choice that you end up regretting because I pushed myself too hard to keep up, and broke myself the way that other ponies trying to impress you have done."

Celestia stared at him, then snorted, shaking her head.

"Wow," she said, sounding disappointed for the first time. "I can't believe you of all ponies don't get it."

"Get what?"

"Why do you think you're even here? You're the first pony who hasn't broken themselves trying to impress me. I assumed you wouldn't be stupid enough to start."

Clover felt his muzzle heat. There was an uncomfortable amount of truth behind the jab. Doing anything more than looking out for himself was stupid here — both stupid and unnecessary. He merely needed to stay in this until she lost interest.

And yet.

He lifted a hoof up to her shoulder, resting it there as he spoke. "I beg to differ, Imperatrix," Clover said softly. "I think we're here because you wanted our contest to be fair. My best isn't even a fraction as magnificent as your best — but you still wanted to test yourself against it on equal terms. So how is it fair to you if you're bringing your best to winning my heart, and I'm not trying to be the best pony I can in return?"

Celestia didn't immediately say anything. But her expression softened as she stared, and the corner of her mouth twitched.

"Heh," she said, and Clover's gut unclenched as her muzzle curled into a genuine smile.

"I don't want to break," he quickly added. "Let's please not do that. But that's a mortal's hardest fear to shake, and the last day has been quite a crash course in how often that fear lies to me. So if you're willing to be patient with me as I learn how to ignore it, I promise I'll make that patience worthwhile."

Celestia pressed a hoof to Clover's leg. "You're some kind of poet, Frumpy," she said, her usual energy returning to her voice. "Apology accepted."

"I'm glad. You're worth the effort." Clover smiled back at her.

"So," Celestia said, her horn beginning to glow as she stood back up. "Enough of that. Where's the nearest water-gourd?"

Clover advanced, leaning tentatively in against her. "About that," he said. "I seem to recall you saying that was something you could solve along the way. So do you remember the part yesterday where you grabbed me, and we did something intense, and we had fun?"

She grinned. "I like what I'm hearing. Are you going somewhere with that?"

"No," he said. "We are."

Celestia's laughter was musical as her wings flexed and spread. And quite before he knew it, they were airborne.

Author's Note

And with our heroes heading overseas, the first of the story's four acts draws to a close.

PLEASE NOTE: As soon as I post this, I'm headed out to the mountains to spend my birthday leading a Search & Rescue team on an overnight Type 1 training. I'm not getting back into cellular range until late Sunday. There will be no chapter posted on Sunday, July 21.

TEFL will return Monday morning the 22nd with "The Trip". The adventure part of the adventure romance kicks into high gear as Celestia and Clover fly east!

4. The Trip

The thunder of the fresh-boiled clouds was sharp and deafening when Celestia adjusted her grip on Clover to buck them. The water that poured from their roiling grey underside was hot, clean, and tasted almost sweet.

When Celestia shifted him to her back and then started flying tight circles underneath the storm, Clover closed his eyes and faced the onrushing water, letting the charred hair from their second dragon encounter wash away.

It was unlike anything he'd ever felt. The weightlessness of flight, the bursts of heat as the rain hit his face, the sense of lingering electric power causing his pelt-hair to stand on end. The salt-tang on the sea-breeze. The warm embrace of the rivulets of water running down his body. The rhythmic swaying as Celestia's wings beat underneath him, surging them through the evening air.

He realized he'd gotten lost in his own little world when Celestia's voice cut in to ask if he was okay. Clover laughed and nuzzled the back of her neck.

Enjoy this while you can, a voice of damnable, irrefutable logic whispered as she laughed back. And a quiet, floaty sort of ache twinged in his chest.

After the third run-in with the migrating dragons, Clover was starting to get a little concerned. But he allowed himself to relax when they finally spotted land.

Celestia flew over the coast of the Eastern Continent for half an hour to get her bearings. Then, on the horizon, they spotted a massive, ancient stone tomb on a cliff over the ocean. Celestia's face immediately brightened, and she beelined toward it, dragging Clover inside. The burial chamber deep underground was worth the side trip, she promised him.

Four levels down, he was beginning to doubt that. Maybe it was the spear traps she kept prematurely triggering, or the pit traps she stomped open and flew him over, or the giant rolling rocks she blasted into powder with Mister Smashy. But she guided him past what was absolutely, definitely the final deathtrap, and strode confidently down the hall toward an enormous golden door.

Clover heard a soft, hollow click. Celestia's left hindleg dropped a fraction of an inch. And, with a deafening roar, the walls of the corridor slammed together, inches in front of his muzzle.

Before he could even flinch, it was over. All he could do was cough and stagger backward through the blinding, billowing dust cloud kicked up by the sudden motion. Then panic set in. Celestia! What happened to her, how do I get home, how do I even get out of here — and the panic flared into full-blown terror as Clover bumped into something soft and fuzzy.

Iron limbs snared him. He wheezed and flailed. Then, with a flash of light, warm air blasted past his skin, and the dust vanished in an instant, leaving him gasping for breath in Celestia's grip.

"Oops," she said — and though her tone was light, the cheer felt forced. "Forgot about that one."

The walls slowly retracted, shuddering and grinding. A few flattened white feathers floated out from between them. The tingling ozone scent of massive thaumic expenditure wafted past Clover's nose.

He didn't appreciate how massive until he did some idle calculations later that night. Clover hadn't seen Celestia's horn light for the teleport; there hadn't been time to focus. And spellcasting without the focus of a horn required utterly ridiculous energy costs. It took a highly competent mage to be capable of the high demands of teleportation — and that same mage, deprived of their horn, would push themselves to their limit with the basic task of telekinetically flipping a page in a book.

With costs scaling with the cube of the spell complexity … Clover mentally rearranged some numbers, and his jaw dropped. Celestia had spent something like five orders of magnitude beyond mortal capability, and shrugged it off like it was nothing.

That gryphon aerie had gotten off lucky.

The next two weeks were a whirlwind tour of impossible secrets on four different continents — two of which he'd never even heard of.

A temple filled with frescos depicting creatures which even the Old Races had no names for. An underground lake whose acrid purple water was breathable. A mountaintop surrounded by flat, endless cloud-plains filled with lumbering cloud-beasts. A land so far south that the sun no longer rose nor set — instead, simply circling the line of the horizon in a bleak eternal twilight. A cave so deep into the Undershadow that Clover's hornlight couldn't reach his outstretched hoof, and there were no sounds to mask the river-rush of his own heartbeat. A ley-junction so overcharged with magic that he could think phantoms into existence without the structure of a spell. A mountain that made Canter Peak look like a foothill — its top so high that the sky darkened as they climbed, and no amount of wing-flapping could keep Celestia from descending to the ground. Each site was more breathtaking than its predecessor. In that last case, literally so.

Along the way, they rutted in nineteen different places — several of which would have instantly killed Clover if Celestia had lost her concentration on the spells protecting him. The volcanic lava, he was surprised to discover, was his favorite. It had a quite indescribable (and unexpectedly pleasant) texture, even if afterward he had to pull rocks out of places where rocks had no business being.

In between stops, he'd try to fall asleep in Celestia's iron grip as she flew tirelessly for a day and night; or to keep from emptying his stomach after rapid strings of long-distance teleportations; or to learn the trade pidgin of exotic nations like Brayzil or Moleysia — at least enough to communicate to some middle-of-nowhere village's chieftain that it would be lovely if the humble visiting unicorn could get some supplies before the crazy white goddess behind him got bored and challenged the local warlord to a hoofwrestling match.

Two weeks in, Clover was starting to get confident there was nothing left in the world which could surprise him. Then they reached the barren, cloudless steppes of the northern continent.

Halfway through a monotonous 16-hour flight, Celestia swooped down to the ground at the edge of a small pool of brackish meltwater. While she sprawled out in the thin sunlight, eyes closed and wings akimbo, Clover ate some hardtack and refilled the waterskin he'd bartered for in Sibearia.

With that done, Clover quietly excused himself to go to the bathroom. Celestia didn't respond. Clover watched her barrel rise and fall for a few moments, smiling, then stepped softly away toward a meandering, table-like plateau. At the base of its rugged vertical cliffs were scattered piles of massive grey boulders, angular and uneven. He walked around one that seemed more jagged than the others, maybe fifty spans tall, and once he was discreetly out of sight, he turned around and lifted a hindleg.

He was halfway through relieving himself when the rock shifted. A thick neck lifted from the far end, and yellow eyes the size of serving platters cracked open from the stone.

Clover froze, bladder muscles immediately clenching.

Wings untucked as the enormous rock-dragon uncoiled to loom over him. Clover glanced wildly around, seeing eyes crack open on the other, smaller boulders. He took a rigid step backward, and was whirling to flee when a huge claw shot forward with unexpected speed, points stabbing the ground in a tight circle around his body.

«Finish,» the jagged form rumbled in heavily accented Draconic, and one clawtip crooked under his hindleg to force it up again. «That leg is already fouled, and I would loathe to splash your void-water anywhere else as I rip you apart.»

Rumbling hisses echoed around the other boulders, sounding suspiciously like laughter.

"Sorry!" Clover blurted out, ineffectually squirming against the claw as he fumbled for long-unused vocabulary. «Ah, sorry! Much sorry! What is word, insult, no insult, ah, I not did intend —»

The dragon's face contorted into a snarl. «Pathetic bug!» it growled. «Dare you to defy a dragon's order? Finish now, or your death will be slow and painf—»

A metallic blur shot through Clover's vision. WHAM! The claw holding him jerked away, and the dragon took a step back in surprise as Mister Smashy spun through the air by Clover's head and bounced to a halt on the ground.

The hissing laughter stopped dead. A dozen stony heads swiveled as one. Celestia — pelt still dusty and mane mussed from her interrupted nap — took a step forward from the watering hole and squared off with the rock-dragon, narrowing her eyes.

«Shove your order up your tailhole,» she growled, lighting her horn to bring Mister Smashy floating back by her side, «and leave the pony alone.»

The rock-dragon jerked fully upright, baring glistening gemstone fangs. «Insolent fleshbag!» it roared. «I will feed you your weapon, and then retrieve it from your entrails to pick my teeth!»

Celestia lowered her head, horn flaring. The dragon reared up, wings spreading, blotting out the sun in a wide zone around her. Clover bolted toward open ground, aware he was well out of his league.

The rock-dragon whipped a jagged foreleg three times Celestia's size down at her. With lightning speed, she threw herself forward toward the dragon's chest as its limb came down, and the leg smashed heavily into empty ground. The impact echoed around the plains, almost jarring Clover off his hooves. Celestia spun around, squaring herself off with the dragon's chest, and bucked upward.

Even knowing Celestia's power, Clover didn't expect the kick to do anything. She was striking at a building-sized mass of solid stone. But the dragon jolted slightly upward, one foreleg windmilling off the ground while spiky points of the other caught on the edge of the crater its strike had made. It was only a momentary opening. But it was enough.

Celestia sprang up onto the dragon's stuck foreleg, horn flaring into painful light, and screamed a wordless battle cry. The aura around Mister Smashy turned an ugly red as she reared up on two legs, grabbing the weapon out of midair and bracing it between her fores. She swung.

The rock-dragon exploded.

Clover would later replay the encounter in his head, and that was the only word that did her strike justice. One moment, the hammer was arcing toward the rock-dragon's chest. The next, there was a mighty flash of light and heat, and the world went weightless, and then he was spitting out a fresh mouthful of meltwater and staggering out of the pool while hoof-sized chunks of stone fell like hail around him. One glanced off his side, making him yelp in pain, before he recovered enough sense to fling a shield overhead. The falling rocks slowed, then shrank, and Clover reassessed the scene as the stonefall dwindled away to the patter of occasional pebbles.

Celestia staggered to her hooves to one side of him, breathing heavily, lips curled back in a wild snarl. The pack of rock-dragons stared at her with wide eyes, then at where their leader had just stood — now a wide field of rubble and a few collapsed pillars of detached limbs.

Celestia panted a few times, straightening up. Then she picked Mister Smashy back up, hornglow taking a second or two to flare back to full brightness. «Who's next?» she bellowed.

The plateau itself began to shift. In the middle of the nearby cliff, one enormous, yellow eye cracked open.

Celestia froze.

"Okay," she said to Clover, the shock on her face matching his own, "we're running now."

Technically, they flew. But Clover wasn't about to sweat the details.

For the most part, Celestia avoided larger centers of civilization. But while flying over Qilin a few days later, she suddenly banked and dove toward a bustling city in the shadow of the Dragon Palace, making a beeline toward a modest roadhouse near the outer edge.

As Clover got his land legs back, Celestia slammed the door open and bellowed a greeting to the dog-faced serpent-dragon behind the counter. "Taiyang-ma!" the dragon shouted back, face lighting up behind a broad grin.

There was some rapid-fire conversation in a language Clover didn't know, and a cask slammed onto the counter whose contents curled his nose-hairs from five yards away. A whispering crowd of motley beasts closed in, then burst into wild cheers as Celestia grabbed a mug of the oily liquid and threw it back without hesitation.

Six hours later — after quietly watching a sequence of drinking feats as improbable as the rest of their trip put together, amid an increasingly enormous and raucous audience — Clover helped the proprietor drag Celestia upstairs to a tiny room with a huge, lumpy bed.

He hauled her onto it, then flopped down against her side, and was asleep himself by the time his head hit the padding.

The next morning, Clover was the first to awake. He cracked his eyes open, still slumped across Celestia's chest, and watched the sun slowly drift above the horizon.

(That was a sight he still hadn't gotten used to in their weeks overseas. They were so far from home that when unicorns grabbed the sun to pull it decisively above the Equestrian horizon, it was already long past dark. When they worked to set it, it was early mid-day, and there were a few moments when the sun would lurch across the apex of the Qilinese sky.)

He got up to relieve himself, then stood in the doorway for a long time on his return — staring at the rise and fall of Celestia's barrel while the shadows slowly shifted.

This is it, a cruel voice whispered. That was the distraction. She's gotten bored and moved on.

A different voice argued that that was ridiculous — just because she was taking him on a trip didn't stop her from indulging her usual interests. A smaller voice wondered how he was going to get back to Equestria on his own. And a silent part of him ached to pretend nothing had happened, crawl back into bed, and nuzzle up next to her until she finally awoke.

Clover sighed, rubbing his forehead with a hoof. The voices chased each other in circles. Standing there was accomplishing nothing, he finally decided. So he forced himself to walk forward to the bed, gently prodding Celestia in the shoulder.

She didn't stir.

Nothing he did changed that. Not shaking, nor an upended mug of water. Not even the proprietor — Dianzhu, the dragon said after Clover introduced himself, and Clover wasn't sure if it was a name or not — could rouse her limp, snoring form.

Half an hour later, shortly after Dianzhu shrugged and headed back downstairs, Clover also gave up. He wrote her a note, put on his saddlebags, and wandered out into the city of Lambyang.

No book Clover had ever read prepared him for the experience.

Sure, a few pony explorers had ventured as far east as Qilin, but their reports had said little about such comparatively mundane things as the cities. Mostly they'd been filled with breathless talk of exotic, hidden wonders, which — despite the universal tendency of authors to exaggerate — still paled next to the ones he'd seen firsthoof. And what little the books did say about everyday Qilinese life seemed hopelessly inadequate to the sight when he rounded the corner behind the roadhouse to discover a bustling, sprawling market square.

It wasn't the massive stone temple overshadowing the entire city which threw him most, nor the graceful, arching architecture of the modest wooden buildings lining the square. It wasn't the mingling scents of fried vegetables and roasting meat, nor even the shoulder-to-shoulder crowdedness — unthinkably packed by pony standards. No, it was the sheer variety of beings which jostled and shoved past each other.

Clover had been led to believe that Qilin was filled with, well, qilins. But the only dragon-horses in sight were a pack of heavily armed guards arguing with a merchant on the far side of the square, and everycreature else seemed to be giving them a wide berth.

Instead, the street market was filled with an impossible panoply of beings. Deer, llamas, okapi. Minotaurs, Diamond Dogs, hippogryphs, sphinxes, snakelike dragons like Dianzhu, and even a few "normal" dragons like the ones common back home. Odd quadrupeds: winged panthers, many-tailed foxes, richly dressed alligators. Odd bipeds: diminutive goblinoids; shuffling froglike things with cuplike heads; large red-skinned one-eyed ogres. And some that defied classification: what looked like an eagle with a deer's head; a vaguely equinoid insect with dark chitin and gossamer wings; a horse with everything above the shoulders ripped off and the top half of a pink goblin-thing in its place.

Clover noticed as he wandered that he seemed to be getting at least as many curious looks as the bizarre beings in that last category. He could hear whispers in several different languages start up behind him as he passed. A disproportionate number of them seemed to be from the small goblinoid creatures.

Eventually, one of them — larger and older, with wrinkled skin and shrewd eyes — met his stare and approached him. "You pony, yes?" he said in rough, halting Equestrian. "Very rare. I trade of rare things. Neck-cloth, can touch?"

Clover touched a hoof to the crumpled scarf which had survived the dragon migration mostly unsinged, keeping one wary eye on the crowd. "This? I suppose."

The goblin approached, running its stubby hand over the fabric. "What from is make?"

"Wool," Clover said cautiously. "Wool from yaks." That was one race, he realized, he hadn't seen since flying over the ocean.

The goblin folded and stretched a tiny corner of the scarf, then backed off, nodding. "Yaks," he repeated gravely. "Never seen its like. You trade, I give three hundreds of yi." The crowd began to murmur, wide-eyed.

Clover considered — then said, mostly to see what would happen, "Four hundred."

"Four hundreds, yes." The goblin nodded his head eagerly. "You wait. Wait, yes? I go, I get."

Clover began pacing as the goblin scurried off down the street. He frowned, looking around at the surrounding stalls and buildings, then glanced over as another of the goblins approached. He was much younger than the first one, taller, and more sharply dressed.

"This one hears pony made deal with trader Yang," he said — smoothly, if with a thick accent that blurred most vowels and even a few consonants together.

"Yes," Clover said. "What of it?"

"Pony must be new to Lambyang if pony trades for yi," the goblin said. "Yi are qilin coin. Over three hundred yi, must bring qilin, what is word, notary. Sign paper, pay tax, thirty percent." He glanced surreptitiously around, then slipped a hand inside his cloak to draw out an enormous, flawless diamond, mounted in a small gold setting with an unobtrusive clasp on one side. "Gem worth three and a half hundred. But maybe we forget to tell notary." He winked. "You trade scarf for gem, much more profit."

"That sounds like quite a deal," Clover said — then, on a whim, "Alright."

Clover unwound the scarf from his neck, hoofed it over, then put the gem in his saddlebag — checking carefully to make certain nothing was missing, and that he re-latched it securely. "Thank you," he told the goblin, who gave him a bow with an odd little flourish at the end. Then he stood there, watching the goblin stroll away around a corner.

He counted to five. Then he lit his horn and teleported into the nearby alleyway.

Clover appeared nearly on top of the well-dressed goblin, who yelped and sprang backward. An enormous gemstone in a familiar-looking gold setting was in one of his hands — with a golden cord attached to the clasp, the end of which was looped between two of his thin fingers.

"I must admit, I have no idea how you managed to get that back," Clover said. "I wasn't even certain what the scam was until now. But I can recognize a scam when I see one."

The goblin took a step back, then drew up to his full height, looming slightly over Clover. He spread his limbs in an aggressive posture. "Walk away, pony," he hissed.

Clover smirked and held his ground. "Prey on the victim's greed — make him think he's getting a good deal. Get him to break the law — then he can't run to the guards to report you. Nice touch with the crowd, by the way, except it was a little too obviously choreographed. It was clear your friends had no idea what we were saying, but they reacted to the scarf's price anyway."

Shuffling and murmuring behind Clover caught his ear. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Over a dozen of the other goblins were advancing from the mouth of the alley, reaching into their cloaks or behind their backs for various small blades and clubs.

A menacing smile curled onto the well-dressed goblin's face. He chuckled, low and quiet, and casually flicked his wrist — catching a small, jeweled dagger that shot out from his sleeve.

"Pony is clever," the goblin said. "Maybe he is clever enough to give us his bags and walk away with his life. Or maybe he will be so clever that qilin never find his body."

Clover stared at the goblin speechlessly for a moment. Then he burst into incredulous laughter.

"Are you serious right now?" he said as the goblins circled him. "Do you think that scares me? Do you think anything you do is capable of scaring me?"

"If pony is not scared," the well-dressed goblin growled as he made a hand motion to his gang, "he will learn his mistake."

"You pitiable, deluded fool," Clover said, lighting his horn. "This is nothing. I've survived the affection of an alicorn."

On his way back to the roadhouse, Clover walked into a shop resembling a pawnbroker's and traded his new jeweled dagger for an empty book and a pot of sticky black ink. The book's pages were thick, rough and waxy to the touch, and made of a material the ogre called "yangpi zhi". Clover tried not to think about the faint scent of goat as he tucked it into his saddlebags.

Then Clover got into a lengthy conversation with an okapi who was selling jewelry on a tattered blanket at the side of the road. Her name was Fimi, and she had drawn his attention by hailing him in crisp, unaccented Pegasus. As a native of the western coast of the Eastern Continent, she was nearly as far away from home as he was. Clover caught her up on what little news he'd overheard from the area as he and Celestia had flown through — then, when her eyes widened at the mention of the Imperatrix, told her the story of how they had come to be traveling together.

After half an hour of mutual questions — her about their trip, him about Lambyang — he pulled out the giant diamond on a whim and asked her what it was worth. She immediately took the small golden clasp off the setting and hoofed it back to Clover with a bemused expression, then held the gem to the light, squinting and rotating it. "At a glance, let's say 250 yi," she said. "The quality and size are indeed exceptional, but look at how discolored the edges are. It would have to be cut far down for use in a quality piece."

"What about my scarf?" Clover asked.

Fimi's eyebrows shot up as she examined it more closely. "Yak, yes?" she said. "This close to the Llamalayas, it's worth more than everything I have on display put together."

Clover took a closer look at that display — holding up an intricately filigreed horn-sized ring and nodding appreciatively at its construction. "I don't see how. Your craftsmareship is exquisite." He did a double take. "Wait, is this enchanted?"

"Yes, I draw the iron so thin that I always start a piece by weaving a strengthening spell into the material to protect it. You could jump off a roof onto one without ruining the pattern." Fimi made a face. "But except for the occasional visitor, nocreature in Qilin seems to care. Status is everything, which means wearing only the most precious metals you can afford. I can't afford the licenses to buy any raw materials worth crafting from, and I can't even afford to leave."

He slowly rotated the hornring one more time, then floated her the diamond. "I'll take it."

Fimi went quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry, friend Clover. It would be a great honor to make this sale, but you overpay by far, and no moneylender in this neighborhood carries two hundred forty yi for change."

"I didn't ask for any." Clover reached out a hoof to her shoulder. "Sell that and head back west. You should put your talent to use someplace where it will be properly appreciated."

"I," Fimi stammered, and her eyes began to fill with tears. Her hoof flew to her muzzle, and she nodded in mute thanks.

Clover deliberated for a moment, also floated his scarf around her shoulders, and walked away.

His sense of satisfaction vanished as he walked upstairs in the roadhouse.

Celestia was still snoring right where he'd left her — and along with her, all the questions Clover had left to avoid. His inner voices picked up their circular argument right where they'd left off. What did her stop mean? Was it blowing off steam, or checking in on an old friend, or a sign of some shift between them?

Clover sighed, and considered turning around and heading back out into the city. He quickly realized the idea didn't sit well with him. Earlier, he had needed some time alone to clear his head — now, it was different. Entirely aside from the risk of Celestia waking up to find him gone, he simply didn't want to leave her behind. He'd been growing too used to her larger-than-life presence, and her laugh, and the disturbing way her presence put him at ease with the most insane risks. And while Clover was certain he could go outside, pick a direction to walk, and stumble into the adventure of a lifetime, there was no adventure he could have which would measure up to the ones they could share.

So he fished his new journal out of his bag, lay down on the floor by the bed, and started writing up his memories of their trip.

Hours flew by to the rhythm of his quill-scratches and her snoring. Half the journal was full by the time Celestia stirred.

"Mmh," she said, eyes cracking open underneath limp pink hair as she rolled onto her side. Clover glanced up. Their eyes met. And the competing voices inside Clover exploded into an incoherent, muddled mess.

"Good evening, Imperatrix," he said.

"Frumpy?" she mumbled. She rubbed one eye with the back of a pastern, leg swaying unsteadily.

"I'm here," he murmured back, not knowing what else to say.

Celestia said something unintelligible. Her horn sparked, then came to life. A shimmering gold field surrounded Clover, and the air jetted from his lungs as she slammed him into the side of the bed.

As the black spots of impact faded from his vision, the room lurched and flipped — finally settling in sideways with the bed pressed against his cheek and a warm, fuzzy form against his back. Legs clamped in around his chest, driving his breath out a second time. Clover struggled in vain to inhale, then to shout — letting loose a sad little wheeze with the last of his air — and finally settled for pounding with his full strength on the iron band against his ribs.

Celestia murmured something incoherent into his ear, and she loosened her foreleg. Clover gasped, loud and sharp, then lay trembling in Celestia's embrace as his adrenaline subsided.

Finally, he closed his eyes, letting out a little laugh-sob of relief.

It wasn't over yet.

Author's Note

Clover and Celestia return tomorrow morning in "The Gift"!

5. The Gift

Dianzhu brought them an enormous pile of hot steamed buns shortly before sunrise the next morning, quietly pushing open the door and leaving a wooden tray just inside. The noise woke Clover. The scent woke Celestia.

For once, she ate with him — shoving entire buns into her mouth at once, chewing noisily as she rubbed at sunken, reddened eyes. Clover managed to grab two buns out of the two dozen. The millet flour was sweet and soft, and as he bit down, rich custard-like filling spurted out.

There was a loud series of thumps from outside as Dianzhu hauled an enormous barrel up the stairs, grunting and puffing. It didn't even make it into the room before Celestia snatched it from him, upended it over her muzzle, and began virtually inhaling the water inside.

As it ran dry, she lowered it with a long sigh — then locked eyes with Clover, guilt flitting across her muzzle. She exchanged some rapid-fire conversation with Dianzhu, who laughed, nodded, and returned a few moments later with a mug of water. Clover drank it as the dragon and the alicorn chatted a bit more — with Dianzhu saying something with a grin and a head-shake, Celestia making a noise of disgust and muttering something back, and Dianzhu laughing and shooting back a short line that got Celestia chuckling too.

"What was that about?" Clover asked as Dianzhu excused himself and headed back downstairs with a cheery wave.

Celestia shook her head vigorously, combing through sleep-matted clumps of pink mane with her magic and making a face. "All that effort, and I didn't even beat the record I set when he was a whelp." She smiled wryly; it fell quickly away. "He joked that we must both be going soft in our old age."

Clover poked the sleek line of Celestia's flank, smiling. "If this is soft, I can't imagine what you looked like last time you came through."

"That was the joke, yeah." She stretched out her wings to full extension, wincing. "Mmmmh. This is the one part I hate about drinking."

"Most ponies feel that way, Imperatrix," Clover said. "And they only have to deal with normal hangovers."

"Yeah." Celestia glanced back and forth, frowning, as if something was missing — then her eyes drifted back to Clover, and she scraped a hoof in a little circle on the floor.

Clover tilted his head inquisitively.

"So, um," she said quietly, "thanks for staying with me yesterday."

"Of course," he said, raising an eyebrow. "This is our trip, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I didn't bring you to foalsit me as I sleep the liquor off." Celestia gestured at a corner of the room. "That was always Luna's job. I'd wake up and she'd be sitting there, staring at me. Then she'd go get me water, and tell me everything she did while I was asleep, and where we were heading next. Heck, she planned the entire campaign against the Oni Kings right here in this room."

"You two sound pretty inseparable," Clover said, curious enough to humor the subject change.

"Are you kidding? It was us against the world for a century! It always feels weird to be back here without her, actually." Celestia glanced around the room again. "But it's not the first time. She knows I'll be back. We're too perfect a pair."

Clover wasn't certain what to say to that. After a moment, Celestia started shifting in a way that suggested she didn't, either.

"A lot of memories with this room," she finally said. "You know, the last time we were here together wasn't the planning session. It was when …"

Clover waited for her to finish the sentence. Celestia bit her lip, then turned her head to the tiny window looking out over the street.

"When?" he prompted.

She turned back to stare at him for a moment, then let out a quiet sigh, and her gaze fell to the floor. "When we were healing," she said quietly. "After it was all over."

Clover winced in sympathy. Tentatively, he walked up to Celestia and rested his head against her shoulder. She turned to look when he did, but made no move.

"Eight whole months," she said distantly.

Clover gave her a little nuzzle. "Was this before or after your drinking record?" he said, trying to lighten the mood.

"After." Celestia stirred, and the corners of her mouth crooked into a short-lived smile. "I think that was when Dianzhu decided he wanted to become a soldier. He was seven years old at the time. While we were healing, he'd bring us steamed buns in the morning, and stick around while we ate, begging us for war stories till his dad chased him off." She let out a brief chuckle. "I told him all the good ones. Then, one day, Luna made him sit down for four hours and went into great detail about the battle against the Oni Kings. He followed his dad into the family business after that."

Clover chuckled and patted Celestia's leg. After a moment, she unfolded a wing, draping it over his back.

"Thank you for sharing, Imperatrix," Clover said gently.

Celestia gave a little start, glancing down at him and seeming to refocus. For a moment, she blinked uncertainly, looking straight into his eyes.

Then the moment passed, and she forced out a hearty laugh. "It's our trip, right? You and me against the world." Without giving him a chance to respond, Celestia lunged in for a vigorous kiss — then lit her horn to slam the door shut and haul him to the bed.

Her motions were clumsy and her reactions slow, but it was still more than enough to preoccupy Clover for a while. As they cuddled together in the aftermath, though, he began to realize from Celestia's distant stare that he wasn't the only one for whom the distraction was temporary.

Clover lit his horn and stroked her withers. "Imperatrix," he gently said, "what's on your mind?"

She didn't answer right away. Clover was wondering whether to say anything else when she stirred, gave him a squeeze, and murmured, "I'm glad you're here."

Clover smiled and kissed her chin.

The laugh Celestia responded with was a little shaky. "That was pretty romantic, huh? See, I can do romance."

It was, Clover thought. But he deliberated for a moment, then — curious about her reaction — declined to rise to the bait of the subject change, instead simply giving her a little nuzzle.

Celestia was still for a moment, then she sighed and looked away. "It's just …" she started. "I almost didn't come here."

There we go, Clover thought. "Why?" he murmured.

"Dianzhu was a good whelp," she said — halting at first, then the words starting to spill out. "And he's a good drake. I try to check in on him once in a while. Plus it gives me another chance to beat the old record." A smile flitted briefly across her muzzle. "But Luna absolutely refuses to come back to Lambyang, and she argues with me every time I ask her to come. I guess I was just sc—" Celestia cut herself off sharply, then corrected herself before Clover could speak. "I wasn't sure whether you'd feel the same way."

"Of course not, Imperatrix," Clover said, giving her a gentle squeeze. "I'm grateful to get to see what's important to you." He gently rotated her muzzle with a hoof so he could look in her eyes, and smiled. "And you're right. That is romantic."

He felt her body relax underneath him. "Yeah," Celestia said, then gripped him and rolled over to put them side by side. "And she's kinda right, you know? But also wrong."

"How do you mean?"

Celestia shrugged a shoulder. "She says it's pointless to get attached to him — he's only gonna die on me in the end. And sure, he'll probably be gone the next time I come back. Doesn't mean I shouldn't have fun for a little while."

Clover tried to ignore the sudden stabbing pain in his heart, and buried his face in Celestia's chest so she wouldn't see his expression.

"Yeah," he said faintly.

"So, yeah," Celestia said after a while. "Thanks for sticking around here with me."

"Of course," he murmured.

She's right, he tried to tell himself. Live in the moment. Enjoy this while it lasts. He was distracted by a low chuckle, and glanced up into her eyes.

Celestia was grinning. "You saved me from a sad, lonely hangover. I guess that makes us even for saving you from the rock dragon, huh."

Clover managed a faint laugh. "I guess it does," he said.

Given everything she'd shown him, the score was the farthest thing from even that he could imagine, but it felt good to pretend.

Once they got up, Celestia excused herself for a little while — she needed to check in at the Dragon Palace, she said, and it was probably best not to bring any ponies they wouldn't recognize. Sit tight, she told Clover, and she'd be back for lunchtime.

Clover hugged her goodbye, smiled as she trotted out, and then took a long, deep breath. I should trust her, he thought. This is our trip. She's glad I'm here. She wouldn't simply vanish on me. And he was a bit surprised to discover that — except for an all-too-familiar voice of fear at the back of his head — he did trust her. As impulsive and temperamental as she was, she was at heart a good pony. A pony who restrained her strength for her mortal lover. Who spent two lifetimes trying to find her father. Who still visited dragons that had idolized her as a whelp.

So he picked his book back up and returned to his notes. And Celestia did, in fact, return promptly at mid-day — before he had even had a chance to second-guess himself.

She was carrying a wooden pot filled with warm broth, noodles, herbs, and chunks of carp. "Brought some leftovers from the banquet," she said, and Clover dug in without hesitation; compared to some of the dishes he'd been exposed to over the course of the trip, meat which was immediately recognizable as fish was practically Equestrian cuisine.

Celestia watched him eat in comfortable silence. Clover took a brief break to nuzzle her shoulder. She smiled and gave him a brief hug with the iron grip of an outstretched wing.

"We should probably get going soon," Celestia said when the bowl was nearing empty. "Still got places to show you."

Clover set the dregs of his meal down and began rummaging through his saddlebags. "Before we do, Imperatrix," he said, "I've got something for you."

"Oh?" Celestia said, sitting a little straighter.

Clover withdrew the finely filigreed hornring from his bag, floating it over to her with a smile. "What do you think? Isn't the work on this exquisite?"

He was completely unprepared for her raised eyebrow and the disappointment that shaded onto her muzzle. "Really?" Celestia said.

Clover blinked, feeling heat creep into his cheeks. "Ah," he said defensively, "I do realize that the locals seem to have an inordinate prejudice against the materials in use, but I think we as ponies can look past that to the beauty and effort in its construction —"

Celestia snorted and detached the tiny golden clasp from one edge of the ring, lobbing it in an arc toward his face. Clover reflexively caught it, and his embarrassment redoubled. He had forgotten that, after it kept falling off of its companion cord, he had attached the clasp to the ring to keep the tiny bit of gold from falling out of his increasingly worn saddlebags.

"C'mon, Frumpy," Celestia said, rolling her eyes. "You know what I mean. Were you trying to pull one over on me, or did I really just save you from getting scammed?"

"It's not what you think." He held up both forehooves. "I mean … yes, I forgot that I put the clasp on there after I liberated it from a con artist, and if for some reason it bothers you I'm really sorry, but it's broken, and I'm not sure what you think was going to happen."

Both of her eyebrows shot up this time. "Are you trying to tell me you don't know what a Returning Clasp is?"

"No? I've never seen anything like it."

"Seriously? It's the most basic scam —" Celestia paused for a moment. "Oh. Yeah, I guess we only ever saw them this far east." She huffed. "Still, please tell me that you weren't stupid enough to leave the cord behind."

"No, I figured from context that it was important too." Clover fished the golden cord from his bag. "Not that it matters — like I said, it broke in our fight. I keep trying to reattach the cord to the clasp, and I can feel the enchantment of the clasp flare up when I do, but no matter what I do, the cord keeps falling back off and the enchantment dies away again."

"Frumpy." Celestia facehoofed with an incredulous laugh, then pushed the ring back into his chest. "Just … reattach everything together. Then watch."

Clover tilted his head inquisitively, but Celestia merely sat there with a grin. So he hooked the clasp onto one of the filigreed loops, threaded the golden cord through the ring on the clasp, and tied a knot in the cord. The instant he tugged it tight, the knotted end of the cord suddenly swung free from the clasp as if it wasn't there, and dangled loose in his grip.

"See?" he said — but Celestia had already grabbed the cord from his horngrip and looped it around her hoof. She gave a sudden, sharp tug — and the ring vanished from Clover's grip, appearing at the end of the cord and swinging wildly around with the momentum of her pull.

"Oh," Clover said. "That is pretty clever."

"Psssh. If you've never seen it before, maybe." Celestia threw the cord, clasp and ring back toward Clover. "And I'm glad you're trying with the whole gift thing, but I've got no need for one of those. Keep it yourself. Somepony like you might get some use out of it someday."

Clover felt his cheeks begin to flush again. "That's not," he began to protest, and fumbled to detach the clasp from the ring. He thrust the hornring back to Celestia. "This. This is what I bought for you."

She took it, rotating it in her grip, eyes flicking back and forth between it and him.

"Oh," Celestia said.

Clover's heart sunk. "Imperatrix," he said desperately. "If you don't like it —"

"No! No," she quickly interrupted. "It's … nice." She swallowed. "No, it's beautiful. It really is. I haven't seen a hornring this lovely in … maybe ever." She looked away. "Thanks."

"What's wrong with it? I'll get you a better one." Clover braced himself, and then a small ember of hope stirred. "Does it look too fragile? It really isn't — there's a strengthening spell built into it. You won't find jewelry more durable —"

Celestia wordlessly flared her horn. The ring ripped apart into a puff of red-hot wire, its enchantment bursting apart with a shower of golden sparks.

Clover stared, taken aback.

Celestia let out a breath, then glanced up at him. And froze.

"It —" she blurted out as Clover finally began to speak, and they both hesitated, and she pressed on as Clover swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. "It was nice! It was just —" She danced sideways a step, wings twitching, desperation growing in her eyes. "It's a hornring, it doesn't matter how strong it is, it would melt the first time I cast —"

Celestia broke off again, trotting in place, and Clover tried to get a word in edgewise. "Imperatrix —"

"You —"

They both halted again — Clover with lowered ears, Celestia with wide eyes, in the closest he'd ever seen her to actual panic.

"Really, it's —" Clover ventured.

"The thought —"

Clover winced, and tried to seize the conversational momentum, ears going fully flat. "It's alright," he said with a conviction he didn't feel. "You were right, you'd have had no use —"

"I'm sorry!" she blurted out.

Clover blinked, uncertain if he had heard that right.

"I'm sorry," Celestia repeated faintly, her own ears drooping. "I — you — so many ponies give me gifts I can't use, but yours was so nice …"

She had apologized. She hadn't even apologized for trying to take the sun. And yet here she was, apologizing for destroying his gift.

"It's okay," Clover said haltingly, and realized to his shock that it really was. "It's okay," he repeated softly, stepping forward, smiling gamely and resting a hoof on her shoulder.

She had apologized. To him.

"I'll get you a hornring," Celestia said. "They'll have jewelers in the Dragon Palace —"

"It's okay," Clover said softly, and nuzzled her throat.

She let out a shuddering breath, and threw her forelegs around Clover — the air bursting from his lungs with a sudden wheeze. He flailed a bit. The pressure eased off. Her body gradually relaxed.

At some length — still clinging to him — Celestia let out a weak chuckle. "I was getting so proud of myself for being the clever one today," she said. "I guess that makes us even again."

They weren't, of course. That was the one tiny, fragile corner of their relationship where Clover had the indisputable edge.

But, he reflected as he held her, the idea that she wanted to treat him as an equal felt far better than the idea of winning ever had.

Author's Note

Huh. "The Gift" didn't refer to Star Swirl's necklace after all. I guess that prophecy must have been about somepony else after all, and the relationship here has no problems left to overcome.

Tune in tomorrow for "The Return" and find out how wrong I am!

6. The Return

On their way west from Lambyang, they stopped on a small ledge high in the Llamalayas, where stark, snowy slopes overlooked an impossibly lush and verdant jungle valley. Birdsong carried through the frigid mountain air, and flocks of large red birds wheeled and dove through the trees. A few peeled off toward them, the air shimmering with heat around their wings; Celestia inclined her head and made a show of tucking her wings and sitting down, and the birds let out piercing aquiline cries and wheeled back away.

"This is as close as we get, Frumpy," she said. "I know you'd rather be down there where they keep it warm, but they get cranky about their territory." Celestia shrugged. "Still, it's on the way, and it's worth seeing."

"It is," Clover said. "It's indeed gorgeous." He smiled and rested his head to her shoulder. "Although I find it hard to believe you fight off packs of marauding dragons, yet keep your distance from a mere flock of birds."

She barked out a laugh. "Trust me, I'm not making that mistake again. Phoenixes hold grudges forever, and one even managed to track me from here to Canter Peak. I lost three whole casks of dragonfire ale to him before we finally called a truce."

Clover smirked. "I'll keep that in mind should I ever require a method of vengeance which even the mighty Imperatrix fears."

Celestia grabbed him in her hornglow, scooting him underneath her and wrapping a leg over his chest in a way that was becoming increasingly endearing. "And if you could learn how to burst into flames and then survive the explosion, I might even get worried."

"Touché." Clover lit his horn, stroking his field to her shoulder. "So how'd you find this place?"

"About the way you'd expect." Celestia snorted. "All the local villagers had a legend about the gardens of Shangri-Llama. Someone's grandmother needed to save a sick father or kill a marauding beast or something, so she climbed up here, picked a sun-flower, and brought it back down the mountain."

Clover nodded. "Naturally it would catch your attention. Sun-flowers wither at the first hint of cool temperatures, let alone frost. Nobody in the mountains should have even heard of them."

"Yeah, that was Luna's logic. And it sounded like the sort of place Star Swirl would go. So we flew around for a few months till we found it."

Clover inwardly winced at the mention of Star Swirl. He already had enough uncomfortable thoughts lurking in the back of his brain without the big one forcing its way back in.

"Mmh," he grunted, trying to distract himself by rubbing his cheek to Celestia's pelt.

"… What?"

"Nothing," he said — then added, "Nothing important."

Celestia was silent for a moment. "You know, you had a point," she said. "Maybe him leading us around here wasn't all bad. I mean, without that, I wouldn't have all these pretty places to show you."

Clover put his leg atop Celestia's and squeezed. "Frankly, Imperatrix, they're not half as beautiful as the company I'm sharing it with."

It came out before Clover could think it through. And it was followed by a profound silence, as if neither he nor she nor Clover's inner voices could believe what he'd said. Even the distant bird-sounds paused for a moment before resuming high and trilly. Heat prickled at the surface of Clover's cheeks, then spread throughout his muzzle.

Celestia's body against his was a bit too still. Then she squeezed him, and although her tone was light, the laugh she let loose wasn't even on the same continent as genuine. "Hah! I see we're finally starting in on the flattery."

It's not, he wanted to shout. There are no words superlative enough to describe your beauty, which is as impossible and indescribable as everything else about you. If I could wander this entire world, and discover a million sights like this, I would trade them all away for you.

Clover's heart sank. It was true — but what did it matter? She'd heard it from a thousand infatuated ponies before. Even if that weren't the case, he knew where this was ultimately heading, and Clover's feelings had no chance of changing the outcome.

"Well, we both know how tedious you find it," Clover said instead. "What better hint that we need to find my tongue a more suitable distraction?"

Her laugh this time was genuine. "What, right here in front of the phoenixes?"

"Scandalous," Clover deadpanned. "A flock of birds might start thinking you live life at full intensity."

"… Oh, you did not."

He twisted his neck to look up into her eyes with a smirk. "Weren't you the one looking forward to me not letting you win without a challenge?"

Celestia gave him an old, familiar, predatory grin as her horn lit. Clover's body spun around. Then she clamped her mouth around his, and lowered her hooves to his barrel, and the rest was quite distracting indeed.

Afterward, Clover turned to his saddlebags for lunch, only to find a number of colorful fruits stacked atop them.

Clover blinked and glanced around. He hadn't seen any motion nearby since they'd arrived, and the nearest phoenix was back down at the edge of the trees, fifty yards away. It lifted its wing, dug its beak into its chest feathers, and let out a satisfied chirrup.

"What are you — oh." Celestia stared at the fruits. "Those cheeky featherheads."

"On the bright side," Clover said — cheeks flushing as he belatedly reassessed the right-here-in-front-of-the-phoenixes thing — "apparently their grudge against you was somewhat overstated."

"Are you kidding? They're never going to let me live this one down." She blew some stray strands of mane out of her face. "At least they like you."

Clover picked up one of the fruits in his hornfield. It was round and hoof-sized, with a hard, waxy, purple skin. "I hope so," he muttered, "after the show we provided."

Celestia grabbed a fruit with her magic, tapped it against a rock with a light crack, then twisted it in half and held it out to Clover. Inside the rind, deep red flesh surrounded a puffy white center that smelled vaguely of caramel and looked vaguely like a bulb of garlic. "Well, eat up. You don't turn down a phoenix meal."

"In a moment." Clover opened his saddlebags, and — after glancing through to check that everything inside seemed untouched — extracted his notebook. "I've never seen anything like this before. I'd like to at least sketch it before we taste our only samples."

Celestia raised one eyebrow, saying nothing. However, by the time Clover had gotten a quick line drawing down, she had already finished a fruit of her own in just a few bites and was pacing in circles around him. He savored a fruit slowly — its taste was surprisingly mild — and as he began jotting down notes on the experience, the book shimmered and snapped closed on his quill, leaving a black splatter on the page.

Clover flinched back in surprise, then glanced up at Celestia, frowning. "What was that for?"

She was rocking back and forth on her hooves, wingtips twitching as her eyes flicked back and forth between him and the distant birds. "C'mon, Frumpy. If you're done eating, we're burning daylight."

Clover glanced over at the phoenixes himself. A growing crowd was accumulating at the edge of the trees. "Are … are you embarrassed?"

"No! We've just …" She made a vague gesture with her hoof. "Got places to go."

From the high, trilling sounds of the phoenix flock, they didn't believe her either.

But Clover relented, stuffing his journal back in his saddlebags and letting Celestia whisk him back into the frigid mountain air. The last he saw of the valley of phoenixes was the flock's largest bird — its plumage a vibrant red like a second sun — waving one wing in a cheerful farewell salute.

Little by little, the sights were getting less breathtaking, and the flights in between them longer. Celestia, too, seemed to be slowing down — what in any other pony Clover would have dared call fatigue. When he woke up, or finished eating a meal, or stretched his legs after a bathroom break, she would sprawl out for a while, staring into space — then, a few minutes later, would push herself to her hooves and grab him abruptly, leaping into the air as if they hadn't ever paused.

He started using those in-between minutes to write. A few times, Celestia eyed him but stayed silent, standing over him once ready to leave and waiting just long enough for him to stow the book again. After a languid lunch outside a Sibearean village, that changed.

He was writing up some of their northern encounters when he heard her approaching hoofsteps, and hurriedly finished the sentence in preparation for her to grab him. Instead, she said from over his shoulder: "What are you doing?"

"Just getting down some memories while they're still fresh," Clover murmured, screwing the top back on the container of ink as he wrote the last word.

A hoof flashed through his vision, jostling his diary out of his horngrip. Celestia's own field caught it before Clover could compensate, and floated it up to her muzzle, her eyes flicking curiously around the page. He started, then lunged for his journal into the iron barricade of her outstretched leg.

Celestia's eyes suddenly widened, and her muzzle creased into a sharp frown.

"Memories?" she said. "Really, Frumpy?"

It's all I'm going to have, soon, he didn't say.

"I want to remember this," Clover protested.

"What, seriously?" Celestia scowled. "Listen to this. 'The circumpolar region is an achingly desolate, wind-blasted wasteland, and not even when surrounded by windigos have I felt such cold'? Why would you want to remember that?"

Clover's muzzle flushed. "It's important context —"

"Pfah! Context?" Celestia ripped the page out of his journal — causing Clover's eye to twitch — and shoved the book back into his chest. "You could have just told me you weren't enjoying this!"

"What?" Clover sputtered. "That's not true!"

"Then why are you writing crap like that?"

"Because it's valuable!" Clover stood a little straighter, trying to put enough conviction in his posture that he could soften his voice. "Because everything we do together is valuable."

Celestia snorted. "C'mon, Frumpy. Bad memories are failures. You don't go out on a battlefield and try to lose. You don't fling yourself off a cliff and try to keep your wings closed. You think writing a book is different? You're an idiot if you're trying to make your memories more bad."

Clover frowned. "You're wrong, Imperatrix. Of course I don't want to experience bad things, but having had those experiences, I don't want to forget them. The way we learn is from our failures."

"Am I failing, then?" Celestia snapped, tensing up. "Is this trip a failure? Is that what you're saying?"

A voice in the back of Clover's head began screaming in warning. "No! That's not —" he blurted out before a competing voice of principle began shouting to drown it out. He was a scholar — and goddess or not, lover or not, she was spitting in his face if she was calling his writing a waste. He took a breath and stared her straight in the eyes.

"Imperatrix," he said, a hard edge in his tone, "this has been a good trip. But I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me there's absolutely nothing you would have done differently if you could do it over."

For a fraction of a second — before her wings snapped wide open — Celestia's eyes widened. By the time Clover parsed the fear in her expression, it was already gone.

She squared off with him, dropping into a dangerous crouch. "No!" she shouted. "Of course not!"

"In that case," Clover said coolly, "why are you upset that I'm writing it down?"

Celestia's muzzle contorted through disbelief into a snarl. Her wings quivered. Her horn lit. Clover's life flashed before his eyes as the voice of fear finally overwhelmed the voice of argument.

Then, without a word, Celestia bolted straight upward with a mighty flap of her wings. Her horn flared. And with a brilliant flash, she was gone.

It only took a moment for the regrets to sink in.

What was I thinking?! Clover facehoofed and let out a hissing breath between his teeth. Stupid. Stupid! She was right. This trip has been magical. I could have left the bad parts out entirely and still had enough material for a hundred books.

A quiet voice muttered that maybe it was for the best. He'd been waiting for the horseshoe to drop ever since the start of the trip; now at least he could get on with his life. What life? the voice of regret immediately snapped. What could I ever do that would be a fraction as amazing as what she's shown me in less than three weeks? He didn't even need to listen to that voice; the way that his heart seemed to burst in his chest and pool in his stomach was answer enough.

Clover glanced around wildly, hoping to spot where Celestia had teleported in case she was still close enough to apologize to. It was no use. The only white in the skies was a tiny dot on the distant horizon — and it vanished while he was watching and never reappeared.

Instead, Clover trudged the league to the nearby village and begged a farmer for some blankets and some sleeping space in a dilapidated shed.

In the morning, he walked to the edge of the village and tried to orient himself enough to follow the vague directions he'd been given to the next town westward. Then he caught sight of a flash of white in the sky. He looked up, and his heart stopped. Celestia locked eyes with him, vanished, and appeared a pace away, her posture tall and her expression intent.

"I'm sorry," he immediately blurted out.

Celestia's hoof shot to his muzzle. "Let me talk, Frumpy!" she snapped — and squeezed her eyes and mouth shut, struggling to compose herself with a breath through the nose.

When she opened her eyes again, there was a fire in them, but no heat. She took another breath, wingtips quivering. "So," she said, voice tight. "We came out here so I could win your heart. And we both knew you weren't going to let me win without a challenge."

"Okay?" Clover said, suddenly lost. Voices of hope and fear and need were blurring together into a muddy, incoherent mess in his head.

Celestia breathed in and out again, looking a little more composed with each one. "Well, you certainly decided to be a challenge yesterday. I guess you had to be sure I could put up with a little trash talk." Her lips curled back in a brief, defiant smile. "It's been a while since anypony was able to get under my skin. Took me a little while to realize that was all it was."

Clover's heart leapt back to life. He remembered to breathe. It's not over! he thought madly. Somehow, it's not over. And next to that, the idea that he was still just a challenge to her was only a tiny sting.

"So," she said, fixing him with a level stare. "Even though this is our trip, I left you here overnight by yourself. And even though you were a jerk, I should probably apologize for that, huh."

Clover allowed himself a hopeful smile. "If I accept," he said gently, "will you let me apologize too for being wrong yesterday?"

Celestia hesitated for a moment. Then a slightly too eager grin began to spread across her muzzle.

"Deal," she said quickly. "So what were you wrong about?"

"Imperatrix," he said — stepping forward and offering her a hoof as his heart began to thud in his chest — "this is the most incredible experience I've ever had. Context is valuable, but I can't let it obscure that. And I don't ever want you to think that this — or you — have been any less than amazing."

"This has been pretty amazing," she said, visibly relaxing. "I haven't had this much fun in decades, myself."

"Thank you for sharing it with me," Clover said softly, feeling his cheeks heat up.

Celestia laughed, and he watched the rest of the tension drain from her. "Well, of course," she said, eyes going half-lidded. "I mean, we're both supposed to be bringing our best to this, right?"

Clover stepped forward, his own tension dissolving, and nuzzled her chest. She lifted a leg and gently draped it over his back.

"Most incredible experience ever, huh," she said.

Clover grinned. "Absolutely."

"Even the bad memories?"

"Even the bad memories."

Clover could feel Celestia grin through her neck muscles. "Then they're not actually bad memories, are they?"

Clover laughed. "Very clever, Imperatrix," he parried. "It's such a clever point, in fact, that I myself made it yesterday."

Celestia gave him a light-for-her, chest-compressing squeeze. "No you didn't," she said. "Yesterday you got me by pointing out I didn't think anything in the trip was bad. Now I'm pointing out that you don't, either."

"I…" Clover paused, then lifted his head and stared into her eyes. "Huh. I think you got me."

The amount of smugness in Celestia's expression could have powered a water-wheel.

"Look me in the eyes," she said, holding his gaze, "and tell me that there's another pony in the world capable of giving you a perfect trip with not a single bad part."

Clover didn't even try to keep the stupid grin off his muzzle.

"I can't, Imperatrix," he said softly. "And I wouldn't want it any other way."

For a moment, Celestia's smug grin dissolved into a smile, pure and bright. Then she blinked a few times and swallowed, and a flicker of uncertainty appeared in her eyes. Her mouth started to form words, then froze again.

Clover swallowed, too, his eyes locked with hers, feeling the flush on his cheeks spread throughout his face. Then he leaned in and brushed his lips to hers.

And, for once, she merely leaned into the kiss, savoring the press of their muzzles as they both closed their eyes.

On the nineteenth day of their trip, he was sprawled atop Celestia in a long-abandoned cathedral made of pure gemstone — basking in the scintillating glow of reflected light, and drifting to sleep amid the slow rise and fall of her chest — when she stirred underneath him.

"Frumpy?"

"Yes, Imperatrix?"

"Where do you want to go next?" she said, and fear congealed in Clover's veins.

It would have been a harmless question from any other pony. Even from her, in any other circumstance it might have felt touching. But there was a certain momentum behind it — the slowing pace of their trip, the fading shine of their destinations, her growing restlessness — that took the question right off a cliff without wings.

She'd shown him wonder after wonder, most quite beyond his capability to imagine. A question like that, Clover knew with a dread certainty, meant she was out of marvels to woo him with. That meant letting the blazing wonder of their mad vacation fade into the mundane. And that meant there was nothing left to keep Celestia from getting bored with him and moving on.

He had known all along there was no other way that this could possibly end. Considering the potential catastrophes looming around every turn, he should have even been relieved at the prospect. But actually thinking about the idea of losing her twisted Clover's insides around so violently that he could scarcely breathe.

"I," he said, faltering. "Ah."

Celestia stared up at the ceiling for a moment. "I mean," she added, "we could go out exploring, I guess. But trust me, it's not the good time everypony thinks it is. Exploring is the years of tedium you put in so you can get to where the days of adventures are."

He could suggest more adventures. Couldn't he? No. There was nothing worth suggesting.

"We could go pick fights with dragons again." She made a vague hoof gesture in the air past his shoulder. "But the migration's over by now, and they get pretty ornery once they lair up."

… Nothing sane worth suggesting.

"Or, I don't know. Go hang out in strange cities for a while. Set some drinking records. Overthrow an empire."

"Lambyang was … somewhat nice," Clover said.

She laughed humorlessly. "No it wasn't. It was an oppressive dungheap that hadn't quite driven the last of the good creatures out yet."

Clover chuckled back and gave the most casual shrug he could muster. "That makes it more interesting, right?"

"Depends on why you want to go back." Celestia went silent for a few moments, then said quietly: "You know, Luna's probably starting to wonder where I am."

Clover's heart squeezed anew. The same had to be true of Pansy and Cookie. The smart move was heading home — he wasn't even sure what else to suggest. But every voice in his head screamed in unison at the thought of giving in and letting her slip away.

He sat up, catching Celestia's gaze with the motion.

"Honestly," Clover said with an intensity he didn't know he possessed, "it doesn't matter where we go, as long as it's with you."

Celestia stared back, blinking — and an unsteady smile spread across her muzzle. And for a moment, before she glanced away … perhaps it was a trick of the cathedral's light, or a reflection off her mane, or perhaps there was a slight trace of pink under the gleaming white fuzz of her cheeks.

She drew his body back down to hers with a hug. "I guess that means I win, then," she murmured, though her tone was strangely subdued. A forced joke, bizarrely devoid of triumph. A deflection.

Perhaps, Clover thought, like she didn't want this to end either — but didn't have any more idea how to escape that fate than he did.

It was that thought which spurred the stupid, clever voice in the back of Clover's brain to full volume — and jolted him into motion. He wriggled out from under her foreleg, sitting up next to her and clasping one of her hooves.

"Imperatrix," he said, pouring every ounce of his love and fear and hope into the conviction in his voice, "part of me — no, most of me — wants nothing more than to agree. You are like no other mare I've ever met, and now that I've gotten to know you, there's no way I could ever settle for anything less. By any standard you care to name, any creature on the planet would agree my heart is yours." He felt his throat getting dry as the weight of the moment settled in. "But we agreed I wasn't going to let you win without a challenge … and I think, finally, I've found a challenge worthy of you."

Celestia sat upright, eyes lighting up, and a little twinge passed through Clover's gut. It was crude manipulation — and that was the least of the reasons it was a horrible idea. Never mind the near certainty that she would break him by accident. Never mind the prophecy. Definitely never mind the prophecy.

He didn't care. He just couldn't let it end so soon.

"Do you know why they call it falling in love?" he asked.

"I don't know. It sounds more poetic or something?"

"No." He patted her hoof. "It's actually fairly straightforward, Imperatrix. Love is a state — it's something you can be in, or fall through. And like falling, getting started is the easy part."

Celestia studied him, standing and turning to face him. "What are you saying?"

"You can't fall forever, or you crash. But the act of falling isn't impressive — it's seeing how long you can go before you pull away from the ground. How close to the edge you can get." He grinned at her. "So my challenge to you is … set aside the handicap of a trip that would win any heart on the planet. And show me how long you can make this work."

She considered the idea for long enough that Clover's heart began to pound in his chest. Then a smile slowly started to spread across her muzzle.

"So even though we go home," she said, "you stay with me. For as long as I can keep you."

Clover smiled back shakily. "For as long as you dare to keep trying," he said. It wasn't forever, but it was still rewinding the clock ticking down toward their ending, and that was more than enough to flood his chest with relief.

She gave his ear a surprisingly tender nuzzle, then pulled back to stare into his eyes with an irrepressible grin. "I love the idea, Frumpy."

Clover let out a gentle laugh, losing himself in that violet gaze. "I love you, Celestia."

As he said it, he wondered if he was overstepping. And it seemed to take her a moment to parse it, herself. But then her smile widened. "Not Imperatrix any more, huh?"

"No," Clover said. "She's not the one who beat me."

"Huh," Celestia said. Then: "Huh."

And she leaned down to kiss him, and their bodies moved together, and they held each other in the shimmering rainbow light of the gemstone cathedral.

Author's Note

We've reached the halfway point, and the end of the travel arc!

…Huh. Tomorrow's chapter is called "The Amulet". Buckle your seat beats, and let's find out what Star Swirl's gift actually does!

(If you're new to the story, speculate in comments! If you read the original short story, don't spoil it — it's more fun to read all the guesses.)

7. The Amulet

Their first big argument came when Clover tried to set up an alchemical workbench in the keep. Celestia asked what in blazes he was doing to her home. Clover said he thought she would have appreciated his effort to help him spend more time there. She said he was making his work more important than her. He said that surely the Imperatrix was too powerful to act so needy. She shoved him into a wall.

Wasn't it just like a mortal to overreact, she yelled when he limped outside and began staggering down the mountain. If she'd been trying to hurt him, he'd have gone through it.

When Clover trudged into his room in Everfree Palace the next morning — still silently fuming — there was a jewelry box on his desk. He squinted against the reflected light of a sunbeam off the lid, walked up to it, and cautiously hoofed it open.

There were two things inside. One was a square scrap of parchment, with two words penned in a spidery, classical script: "Turn once." The other made his blood freeze in his veins.

It was a circular golden necklace with an inset triangle.

Clover closed his eyes. The parchment in the violet glow of his field began to shiver, then spasmed and crumpled in on itself into a tight little ball.

"Star Swirl," he whispered. "You son of a timberwolf."

This was all wrong, he wanted to scream into the aether. Clover was madly, impossibly, dangerously something — but he had known all along how dangerous a game he was playing. No matter how much this felt like love, he knew, deeply and fundamentally, that he was fighting a ticking clock — he'd merely been allowing himself to get swept up in the illusion of permanence. As much as he yearned for Celestia's attention, as much as he burned for her touch, he would never be stupid enough to let this get to the point where he was capable of unleashing a prophecy on her …

Clover sighed, a sense of inevitability seeping in. Who was he kidding? He was entirely capable of that. They didn't call him Clover the Clever because he was smart.

But sorting out his emotions could wait — he had to test the amulet. The only thing more unthinkable than getting swept up in a doomed, deadly romance was doing it without even investigating the gift that history's greatest mage thought he would need.

Clover lifted the necklace in his field, peering more closely at the central design. It wasn't a single piece — the triangle appeared to be a separate element from the outer solid gold ring. The triangle's top was flush with the inside of the circle, and halfway across its base was a skinny bar which jutted down to the bottom of the circle. It looked, in other words, like it was mounted on a vertical axis, capable of rotation.

Clover prodded at the inset triangle with the edge of a hoof. It didn't move when he pressed in on the left side, but the triangle pivoted as he pushed on the right. It receded back to flat as he eased up his hoof-pressure, as if some invisible force was pushing back against him.

He gave it a firmer poke, and the triangle spun out perpendicular to the circle, crossing the halfway point of its rotation and surging forward to snap back flat —

— and Clover immediately sneezed, sending a cloud of dust billowing through the sunbeam.

He blinked watering eyes several times, dust tickling his throat. The desk was empty. The jewelry box and the crumpled note had vanished. He turned around as his lungs started to burn with inhaled dust, and he realized with a start that his bed had been made.

Clover staggered over to the door — rattling the handle, fumbling with the lock he hadn't locked, then finally pushing it open — and caught his breath in the corridor. Curious, he headed toward the throne room, only to nearly collide with Celestia as he rounded a corner.

Her eyes widened. Her mouth fell open.

Before he could say anything, she lunged at him, yanking him into a deep kiss. Then a sob wracked her throat. She took a step back, tears streaming down her face, and headbutted his muzzle. He heard a crack and felt liquid spurt into his nostrils, and a sharp sting lanced his ear where her horn had passed.

"Aah!" he shouted, staggering back and sitting down hard. "Wha tha faah?"

"You royal asshole," she shouted, the windows trembling, "you goat-spawn, you stone-eating addlepated … clever, stupid … frump, where have you been?!" She choked back another sob. "Nobody knew! I even called in my boon to summon Star Swirl, and all he'd tell me was that you'd be back, and to make sure Queen Platinum kept your room untouched!"

Clover blinked tears out of his eyes, then fumbled for his robe and blew a giant bloody mass clear of his nose. "That son of a timberwolf. I think ah'm begidding to udderstahd." He blew his nose again, ignoring the shooting pain. "This isn't September, is it."

"Uh," Celestia said, confusion overtaking her expression. She wiped her own nose with a leg, the fire draining from her wet eyes. "What do you mean? Of course it is."

Clover winced. "Better question, then. How many years forward did his little gift send me?"

Celestia stared for a moment, then bared clenched teeth. "That son of a timberwolf."

Their make-up sex was extremely dusty, slightly bloody, and broke his bed.

Lieutenant Pansy and Ambassador Cookie were quiet for a long time when he told them the whole story.

"I'm going to destroy the amulet," Clover said. "No good can come of it."

Cookie coughed. "Are you sure? The way that prophecy sounds, destroyin' it don't solve your problems."

"Neither will keeping it. And I haven't seen either of you for a year."

"I've missed — we've missed you, Clover." Pansy's ears flattened. "But, um. To be honest, we're not the ones that need you."

Cookie fidgeted and looked down. "Yeah, the Imperatrix has been … uh … more'n a little terrifying this last year, tryin' to track you down. I guess you haven't heard about the Great Southern Wastes?"

Clover's eye twitched.

"… Well, they're a thing now. Point is, she's been a wreck without you, and as bad as she's been … she's gonna live for stars know how long, an' if Star Swirl thought she needed you now he wouldn't have given that to you in the first place."

"And I'm going to ruin things if I use it. I told you what he told Luna."

"An' you'll ruin things if you stay. So it don't make sense for that to be the thing that stops you trying."

Clover exhaled through gritted teeth and flung his forehooves wide. "I can't believe this. What happened to 'gallop the other direction as fast as your hooves will take you'?"

Cookie's ears lowered. "What happened is that you were right, okay? I thought she was gonna break you and move on. An' I don't know how you did it, but you've been gone for a year and she ain't moved."

"Okay. Fine. But what about me?"

"What about you?" Cookie said. "You got a goddess in love with you."

"Yes, yes, she's perfection embodied, I'm the luckiest colt in the world, et cetera. Does that mean it's my responsibility to give up my entire life for her sake?"

Pansy quietly cleared her throat.

"Do you love her?" she asked.

Clover moaned and cradled his head in his hooves.

"I'm beginning to question whether that even matters," he finally said. "I think I've lost count of my brushes with death. And the longer we stay together, the more she expects me to keep up with her impossible pace. I feel like I'm slowly driving her to some sort of snapping point I'm not going to survive."

"Okay, but that ain't what she asked," Cookie said.

"I know." Clover stared at the floor, chewing his lip for a bit. "Cookie, what you just said, about her being in love with me? … I think it's true. She tries, stars damn it, she tries for me like I don't think she's ever tried for anypony in her life."

"She does," Cookie said quietly. "That still ain't an answer."

Clover let out a long sigh. "I know. I know! But those are the circles my brain keeps chasing itself around in. Of course I'm in love with her! That makes nothing about this any clearer."

The room was briefly silent. Clover risked a glance up. Cookie was looking over at Pansy. Pansy was looking intently at the floor.

"If it's love," she said softly, "then it should be clear. When you're in love, that's bigger than any sacrifice."

"Should it be, though?" Clover protested. "What if what I'm chasing is impossible? What if I'm only going to drive myself crazy or break myself?"

Pansy glanced up, blinking, then seemed to shrink back into herself even further. "I don't know," she mumbled. "I just think that, for somepony who's really in love, that doesn't matter."

Cookie nodded. "I think I see what she's sayin'. This choice you're making, Clover, you gotta give something up either way. We're tryin' to help you find the way out of this with the least regrets."

Clover let out a long breath, nodded back, then walked over to the window and stared out for quite some time.

"I would regret dying," he finally said. "That's the first thing that came to mind. And I want to say, well, there's your answer, the answer that any sane pony would give.

"But then I had to go and ask myself why I would regret dying." Clover sighed. "And all I can think about is her. Like … when we returned to Equestria, I took her to my secret thinking-place at the waterfall near the palace, and we just sat and watched the water run over the rocks, and she was crying. I'm not kidding, she cried and told me it was the most beautiful place anypony but Luna had ever taken her." His muzzle crept upward into a wry smile. "And then we get back to Canter Peak, and … well. She asked me to take a turn keeping the clouds by the fort bucked, and I told her I wasn't a pegasus, and she said I'd think of something, and I did. Then on a whim she started teaching me to juggle knives — by flinging them over my head and seeing how long I could keep up with them. Two days ago, I finally drank a full sip of dragonfire ale without vomiting, and when I tried to stumble to the privy, I ran headlong into the door frame and she laughed until she fell down.

"And I already miss it. If I left, I'd regret that more than I've ever regretted anything before, for the entire length of my long and boring life.

"So yes, Pansy, the old bastard was right — I am madly, impossibly, dangerously in love, and it's going to kill me. I have to leave. But there's no way I could look at her and say no. If I don't destroy this amulet now, I'm never going to work up the nerve."

Pansy and Cookie exchanged a look.

Clover's head drooped. "I … should at least try, shouldn't I? For her. You were right, I've got a problem either way, and if she still wants me this much after a whole year has passed …"

Cookie stepped in, curling his neck to Clover's, and after a moment, Pansy joined the hug. "Sounds like 'now' is passin' you by," Cookie said.

"I suppose you're right," Clover said, staring dully down at the circle of gold.

"I'm happy for you," Pansy whispered, not meeting his eyes. "Follow your heart."

Cookie chuckled. "Exactly. Ain't that what being clever is all about?"

In their second big argument, Celestia threw him through the bookshelves he'd lugged up the mountainside to sit alongside the workbench.

Clover stood up on three legs, teeth gritted in pain, tears streaming down his cheeks. Celestia snarled ferally, dropping to a half-crouch and facing him head-on. He had to light his horn twice to unlace the strap on his saddlebags, and as she stared at him in silent challenge, he floated the golden necklace out and fastened it around his neck.

"If you ever lay a hoof on me again," he hissed, "I am gone for good, Imperatrix. And I strongly suggest that you spend the next year thinking of an appropriate apology."

As Clover grasped the triangle in his magic, recognition dawned in her eyes — to be immediately replaced with fear. Celestia shot back upright. "Wait!" she cried as he twisted the triangle around its axis, and as she lunged —

— the fort on Canter Peak wavered and came back into focus, with six unicorns in physicians' robes standing off to one side, a white alicorn slumped forlornly on her bed, and a midnight-blue alicorn impassively sitting alongside it.

Celestia's head shot upright, followed by the rest of her. Clover flinched and took a step back. Predictably, his broken leg exploded in pain, and he crumpled to the floor with a whimper.

The next few minutes were a blur of medical attention. Along with the broken leg, the physicians quickly diagnosed and set four cracked ribs, and cast several layers of spells to dull the pain and reduce the swelling of the bruise developing along his entire left side. The entire time, Celestia paced along the far wall. Luna sat in stony silence.

Finally, the head physician stepped back and nodded to Celestia. She lunged forward like a pouncing cat, flattening herself at Clover's hooves. "Luna! Witness me," she said, and bowed her head. "I swear by the strength of my hoof, I swear by the speed of my wing, I swear by the magic of my horn, thrice I swear, thrice and done." Her head drooped and her voice briefly hitched. "Clover the Clever, never will I raise hoof nor horn to harm thee. By the power of my tribe, bound I am by word and spell and law, until the end of days. So mote it be."

"So mote it be," Luna echoed, eyes burning into Clover's, face an unreadable mask. And at the words, Clover felt the whole room stir with old, deep magic.

He felt his eyes begin to tear up. This time, it had nothing to do with pain.

Clover leaned down to delicately kiss the tip of Celestia's horn. "Apology accepted," he whispered, and smiled when Celestia let out a shuddering breath of relief.

Then a throat cleared from one side.

Clover glanced up. Luna had stepped forward herself, looming over him with wings flared out. She lifted one hoof slightly from the floor, crooking her pastern outward, and added in a voice of quiet iron: "I took no oath, mortal, so instead I offer a promise: Break her heart and I will end you."

Celestia immediately shot to her hooves, eyes widening. "Luna!"

Luna turned coolly to her sister. "You are welcome. I will never let any pony take advantage of you."

Celestia's horn flared to bright life. "You will not speak that way to my lover!" she thundered.

Clover scrambled backward. The physicians did, too — their expressions suggesting that they wished they could be someplace safer, like a hungry dragon's cave.

Luna stared at Celestia, not moving a muscle. Celestia's snarl contorted into a grimace. Finally, her horn sputtered out, and the sudden heat in the room began to recede.

Clover remembered to breathe.

Celestia stepped between them. "Don't you ever talk to Clover again," she growled.

Luna gave Clover an emotionless glance over Celestia's shoulder. "I assure you, sister," she said, "I shall have neither need nor desire to do so, save for matters of life or death."

"Good."

Luna nodded curtly. "Then I trust the matter is settled."

"No." Celestia's horn flared anew, but this time, it was merely to rip the fort's heavy stone door off its hinges, sending a gust of mountain air into the room. "Because how dare you. Get out."

For the first time, Luna's face registered emotion — eyes widening in shock, muzzle twitching.

"How dare —" she repeated, sputtering, then leaned forward as her expression curled into indignation. "How dare I protect you, sister? Do you even know what this colt will —"

"No," Celestia interrupted. "Don't care. Out."

"But you —" Luna's face contorted, then her eyes snapped closed and she took a long breath through her nose. Pain twisted her features for a moment, and she took another breath to even it out.

"Celestia," Clover murmured through a dry throat. He had absolutely no idea what to say, but saying nothing felt wrong. It was strangely relieving when Celestia sharply held up a hoof to silence him, and he backed away without protest.

When Luna opened her eyes again, she nearly seemed to be winning her struggle with composure. "Sister?" she asked. "Do you truly think I do this out of anything other than love for you?"

Celestia said nothing, pointing toward the door.

Luna let out a breath, and her posture deflated along with it. "Then out of love for you I will depart. And I will not regret leaving —" she looked directly back into Clover's eyes — "because sometimes love requires the greatest sacrifice."

Clover's stomach twisted. What did she think he was doing? Did she think that it wouldn't be easier for him to run screaming from the whole mess?

Celestia, for her part, barked a sharp laugh of disbelief. "Really, sis? You think after what I just did, I don't understand sacrifice?"

"No," Luna said. "But you will." Her jaw trembled, and she added softly: "And when you do, dearest sister, I promise I'll be there for you."

Then she turned and plodded heavily away — shooting Clover a brief, dark glare.

As she left, the door glowed gold, then slammed back into place with a roar that sent mortar-dust showering down from the ceiling and made every pony but Celestia flinch.

"Sorry about that, Frumpy," Celestia said lightly, then lunged in to hug him with such desperate need that it nearly unwove the healing spells.

He clung back, mind spinning furiously.

And when her lips clamped to his, losing himself in that and letting those thoughts spin away was far easier than conversation.

Author's Note

The true test of a relationship isn't how amazing the honeymoon is. It's how that passion survives its first real challenges, and how it gets reshaped by them into a love that lasts a lifetime.

Clover and Celestia have some talking to do. Tune in tomorrow for "The Sacrifice."

8. The Sacrifice

The make-up sex after the physicians left was slow, and cautious, and under a hanging blanket of suffocating tension.

They sprawled on opposite sides of the straw mattress afterward, Clover staring at the fire, Celestia staring at Clover.

She was the first to break the silence. "I've been thinking," she said, "about that amulet of yours."

Clover closed his eyes, drew in a slow breath, and let it out. "I'm sorry I did it," he said. "If you hadn't hurt me … but you won't, not any more. I'm destroying it in the morning."

Celestia was silent for some time.

"Actually," she said, "I've had a lot of time to think, and you know, it might be the best thing that could happen to us."

Clover lifted his head and looked back at Celestia. Her expression was unusually somber. "I'm serious," she continued. "Remember what I said about living at full intensity? We live life at different speeds, Frumpy. I love …" her voice faltered. "I love the idea of you, and I love our time together, but your half-measures and your weaknesses start to drive me crazy and after a week or two I just want to strangle you. But this way, every time I start to resent you —" she made a little gesture with her hoof — "flip! And look at me! A year later, I'm desperate for you again."

"But you wanted to strangle me the first time I came back."

"Because I didn't know what had happened! I spent a whole year thinking I'd lost you, just like that! But this way I'll expect it, and I don't have to resent you for making me tone myself down for you." Celestia reached forward and tentatively touched a hoof to his shoulder, giving him a hopeful smile. "What do you think?"

Clover chewed his lip for a few moments, then rolled over to face her, wincing as his weight shifted onto his tender side. "Celestia," he said, looking into her eyes. "Listen to me. I do love you — and I don't really have a life beyond my job and my studies and my two best friends. But I would have to give up that life for you. Watch years vanish in between moments. Do you understand what you're asking?"

Her smile wavered, and she forced it back to her muzzle. "I know. But I can promise you me, and I can promise you only the best of me, for every moment we're together, for every moment of the decades you have." She patted a hoof to her flank. "I can be your sun, bringing eternal brilliance to your life, and you can be my planet, grounding me and giving me something to shine for."

Clover couldn't help but laugh. "That's poetic. Have you been studying the classics?"

She laughed back. "Nobody's been stupid enough to go to war with us since I scorched the Wastes. I spent a lot of time last year with literally nothing better to do than page through your stupid books."

"Hey!" He swatted her playfully on the shoulder. "They're not stupid."

"Psssh," Celestia said, rolling her eyes. "Me neither. 'Cause there's at least two of them I made it through without falling asleep four pages in."

They shared another laugh, and then Clover leaned forward and gave Celestia's chest a long, slow nuzzle, closing his eyes to feel the rise and fall of her breathing.

Her voice pierced through the gentle haze of his exhaustion. "Clover?"

"Yes?"

"I …" She faltered for a moment. "I was serious."

He looked into her eyes and brushed a hoof to her chin. "I know. And I'll seriously consider it." He sighed. "It's just … it's a lot."

"I know." Celestia swallowed, then opened and closed her mouth several times, at first staring into Clover's eyes, then tearing her gaze away.

"… Please," she finally said, then snapped her mouth shut with the clack of teeth, and her lower jaw trembled.

Clover's heart twisted inside his chest.

He closed his eyes and swallowed, knowing that there would be no going back from the choice he was about to make. An odd vertigo settled in. He took a deep breath.

"Well," he said, wriggling forward into her embrace and laying his head on her leg, "you know I can't resist a well-read mare."

Years spun into decades, and the world aged in the split seconds in between.

Before each flip, Clover would retreat to Everfree Palace to take a day or two for himself — checking in with Pansy and Cookie when they were there, and writing them lengthy letters when they weren't. Sometimes he caught up on news, and sometimes he deliberately avoided it. Sometimes — after Celestia had misjudged his limits and enjoyed his company a little too enthusiastically — he just slept for a day or two to let his body heal.

Captain Pansy changed his bandages, and listened to his tales with an unshakable smile.

Clover tried to tell himself that Platinum was doing alright without his counsel. Many would have argued she was, with the Tribes at peace and the world being inexorably tamed. But every time he allowed himself a few hours to get swept up in work — or scheduled an audience or a meal with her — she was a little more distant. A little more tired. A little more surrounded by the petty sort of pony that grew like barnacles on the hull of court.

Then, one year, Platinum refused to see him at all. He was bluntly informed by a minor official that a small trust fund had been set up for him, and he would be allowed to rent his old room for three nights per year at nigh-extortionary rates. Despite his best efforts at getting within eyesight of Platinum again, that was that.

By the next time he flipped, Major Pansy had bought a house in the forest near Everfree, with a spare bedroom that never failed to smell of fresh linens. And despite her pegasus heritage, she had cultivated an enormous flower garden worthy of a family of earth ponies, which always seemed to be in bloom no matter the time of year he arrived.

On one of their visits, Smart Cookie introduced him to a taciturn pegasus mare with penetrating eyes — a young sergeant on leave from her military garrison on the Crimson Coast. The next visit, she was wearing Cookie's marriage-band over a permanently scarred leg and split hoof, and their two foals were already learning to walk.

Colonel Pansy's house was never empty — Clover could scarcely stay an hour there without one of her fellow officers, or a neighborhood colt or filly, wandering by for tea or cookies. But she never introduced Clover to anypony, other than the casual introduction of one friend to another.

Clover watched Snickerdoodle turn from a round foalish blob to a stout, shaggy colt to an awkward, stammery teenager to a quiet, grounded young stallion to a sous-chef in Queen Platinum's kitchens. He watched Sugar Cookie turn from a frail, bony infant to a bedridden, sickly filly to a shy perpetually-coughing youngling to a brilliant young mare of letters. Then he didn't get to watch her at all, as she followed her father into diplomacy and took a permanent post overseas.

General Pansy — whose garden was still unfailingly, perpetually in bloom, although it seemed to be more a community garden than a pony's, judging by the constant stream of soldiers in with fertilizer and out with flowers — said Sugar had grown into a very sweet mare, and her legs shook only a little as she showed off her chests full of Sugar's letters.

Three visits later — when he hugged a graying, wrinkled Pansy goodbye and stepped outside her front door and flipped his necklace and turned around to knock — it swung open on silent hinges to reveal the looming presence of Luna.

Clover froze.

Then his brain parsed the cold fury in her expression, and he bolted.

Or tried to, anyhow. The air took on a midnight glow, and Clover glanced down to realize his hooves weren't quite touching the ground as he galloped. Luna — her horn lit — strode forward next to him and sat down. Her muzzle was set in its usual mask, but her eyes were as frigid as a windigo's.

"You missed her funeral," she said.

Clover stilled his flailing legs. "What?"

"She had one request on her deathbed," Luna said as emotion twitched at the edges of her mouth. "Only one. She wanted you to be there. To tell you how she felt. And when I explained to her that you were not to return to us for six months yet, she said, 'Well, it would be lovely if he was there for the funeral.' Those were the last words she ever spoke."

Clover's heart unclenched, only to plummet into his ribs. "I …"

Luna whirled on him. "Alone!" she shouted, lunging in — then restraining herself with an effort. "Alone and broken-hearted at the time she needed you most." Her muzzle curled back to reveal clenched teeth. "Which might well have fulfilled the prophecy," she hissed, "if I believed there was any possibility whatsoever that Star Swirl was speaking of her."

Clover couldn't muster any more than a deflated whimper.

Abruptly, Luna's hornglow vanished, and Clover landed with a bone-jarring impact. He staggered for balance, scrambling a few steps backward, then risked a glance at the alicorn. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing through her nose.

He glanced around the side of the house at the garden. It was overgrown and deserted, many of the bushes a drab out-of-season green. And the enormity of it finally hit him. In the span of an eye-blink, one of his dearest friends was six months gone.

A friend who had loved him.

"Luna," he ventured — and when there was no response, swallowed and pressed on. "I'm so, so sorry."

"I am certain you are," she said, eyes still closed. "It is insufficient."

"I, I don't," Clover said softly, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. "I don't know how I never saw it. I was a fool."

Luna was silent for several seconds.

"I am not certain whether it reflects more poorly on you," she finally said, "that you spent Pansy's entire life blind to her feelings for you, or that you think I am here because of her."

Clover froze, mentally reorienting himself.

"Well, that isn't going to happen with Celestia," he said, putting as much conviction into his voice as he could. "This was the life I gave up for her. This was the sacrifice I made."

"More fool you." Luna's eyes finally opened again, and the calm in her voice somehow felt even more ominous than her barely controlled rage. "My own foolishness has been every bit as great. I assumed at first that Celestia would break you, and you would retreat to the comforts of a mortal mare and inflict your curse upon some pony of no consequence. Then, when my sister made her oath, I assumed that my warning would suffice to prevent you from acting rashly for the few years or decades before she lost interest. But now that the mare has passed on who you might have otherwise reciprocated the love of, and Celestia's irrational fixation on you has not waned in the slightest, I can no longer take refuge in denial."

"What denial?" Clover protested. "Didn't you just say Pansy died alone and broken-hearted? The prophecy doesn't say how I felt about her, only that I —" his voice hitched for a moment — "I failed her."

Luna snorted. "No, Clover. I shall not allow you to repeat my own error with so much at stake. The prophecy would not have referred to the trifles of mortals, or Star Swirl would not have wasted my time with it."

Clover swallowed, knowing how much danger he might be in if he couldn't hold his emotions at bay long enough to talk Luna down. "But the only way this isn't about Celestia is if it's about the trifles of mortals," he said. "Isn't that what we're trying to make it about? Shouldn't we accept it for what it was?"

Luna's eyes narrowed. "Do not try my patience by ignoring context. You were perfectly capable of breaking that mare's heart without the gift of a priceless artifact." She stepped forward. "And you continue irresponsibly, callously encouraging the infatuation of the sister I love beyond mortal capacity."

The alarm bells that had been quietly ringing in the back of Clover's head cranked up to a deafening peal. He glanced around, beginning to wonder what he could do if the situation turned ugly. If Luna had been willing to wait in Pansy's house for him to reappear, he had a sinking feeling that a flip of the amulet wouldn't do much to save him.

"Nay," Luna continued, "his words were a warning for exactly this moment, to ward off disaster before it was too late." Her horn glowed for a moment, and she stepped forward — her form shimmering oddly before snapping back into focus. "Clover the Clever, when I shared his prophecy with you, I believed you would have the wit to handle it with greater care. Had I suspected then that you would aim the blade of my warning at Celestia's heart, I would have ended you on the spot."

She locked eyes with Clover, her own devoid of emotion. A chill ran down his spine.

Clover tried not to squirm under her unflinching gaze. "What do you want me to do, then?"

"You will walk away. Give me the amulet and leave my dearest sister. Find another mare to fall deeply, irresponsibly in love with, and spend the rest of your days with. And, when that ends in sorrow, the prophecy of your failure will speak of the power you gave up for her."

Clover's throat tightened. He couldn't do that to Celestia … could he? No. She loved him, and it would break her — most likely in a way that made the prophecy horribly self-fulfilling, and leave him fleeing Luna for the rest of his extremely short life. On the other hoof, he wasn't certain that he would be walking away from the conversation if he pointed that out.

"Luna, it doesn't have to be like this," he murmured instead. "Help me find a way."

Her eyes narrowed. "That is what I just offered."

"But we could —"

"No, Clover," she interrupted. "I am not fool enough to beat my head against walls in search of a false door — not when the exit lies within sight."

Clover swallowed and tried again. "You've toppled empires with your wit. I've saved ponykind with mine. Imagine what we could do if we worked together."

"Indeed. If you simply saw reason we could save my sister from an unimaginable tragedy." Luna's horn lit. "This is not a request, mortal, and I will not repeat it. Your selfishness places Celestia in the greatest peril. Relinquish the amulet, or face my judgment."

Clover, mind racing, took a step back from Luna — only to bump into something. He glanced over his shoulder to see his hinds against her chest and her glaring face inches from his muzzle. Clover yelped in shock, flinging himself forward. A midnight glow again surrounded his body, and before he could react, he felt himself being lifted and slammed spread-eagled into the wall of Pansy's house.

"Don't!" Clover squeaked. And then, in a burst of desperate inspiration: "Don't do this to yourself!"

Luna — the one he'd backed into; whatever illusion she'd cast had vanished from her original spot when he'd looked away — strode up to him in stony silence. Her face remained unreadable. But, Clover noticed, her ears had angled back slightly at his plea.

He swallowed and tried to dig at that tiny crack in her armor. "How will Celestia react? What happens when she finds out you were responsible for this?"

"She will thank me," Luna said. "Someday."

"I … don't think you believe that."

"What you think is immaterial, so long as you remain a danger to her."

Luna glared up at him, the shimmer of her horn intensifying. The air by her shoulder deformed and rippled, and a gleaming spear twice the length of her body — its shaft an eerie pale metal, its blade limned in blue-white light — emerged into her horngrip.

Clover squirmed uselessly against the iron grip on his limbs. "Luna. Celestia has never once in her life backed down from a challenge. You do anything to me, and she's always — always — going to look back on this, and see you ripping her heart in half because you were too scared to let her try to fight."

The spear angled toward Clover's throat, its tip quivering. Luna's face twitched for a moment. She squeezed her eyes closed, nostrils flaring in inhalation, before refocusing her glare at him.

Clover swallowed through a suddenly dry throat. "Please, Luna! I'm not worth losing your sister's love —"

Luna's horn flared. The spear shot forward — and buried itself halfway into the wall by his neck, vibrating from the impact.

Clover opened and closed his mouth wordlessly.

He … wasn't dead.

Luna snapped her eyes shut and screamed.

For a fraction of a second — as a thin film of midnight blue distorted his vision — Clover felt a rush of air blast back his fur, whip his mane, and fill his lungs. There was a cascade of sharp cracks from behind him, followed by a prolonged rumbling roar nearly matching the shriek in intensity. Clover froze, uncertain what might happen if he so much as twitched.

It was long seconds before Luna's scream trailed off into a gasping sob, tears spilling down her cheeks. Her horn stuttered out, and the blue field around Clover instantly dissipated. The world began angling away as he — and the spear, and the pony-shaped fragment of wall behind him — tipped backward.

Clover had just enough time to yelp before he crashed down amid the scoured rock and snapped foundations which had once been Pansy's home.

"You impossible idiot!" Luna thundered. There was a deafening crack as her hoof came down, and the ground lurched, nearby trees swaying. "Are you even capable of understanding what you sacrifice upon the altar of your love?"

Clover sat up, staring wordlessly as a curious mix of emotions coursed through his blood. The adrenaline of his life flashing before his eyes, of course. And the terror of facing a rampaging goddess face-to-face. But also a hysterical and indescribable relief: Luna had conceded to his logic.

… Or had already known it was a bad idea to hurt him. And he'd been foolhardy just long enough to call her bluff.

The alicorn abruptly whirled away, wings quivering. He could see her barrel rise and fall in short, sharp spasms as she struggled to control her breathing. Little dark dots blossomed on the ground beneath her muzzle.

Clover drew in a shuddering breath of cool, dusty air. "The future's not set in stone," he said. "We can't change prophecy — but we can control how we fulfill it."

Luna's body convulsed. It took Clover a moment to realize that she was shaking in silent laughter.

"Thus speaketh the cleverest, cruelest doom ever to walk on four legs," Luna said bitterly — and her shift back to the deference of the Earth dialect stabbed at Clover's heart with surprising ferocity.

"We'll change that," Clover said with quiet conviction. "I promise you. We'll change that."

Luna flexed and refolded her wings, then slowly turned back around. Her cheek-pelts were wet and matted. Her sky-blue mane was in disarray. And her expression was a dull and distant resignation.

"Perhaps, impossible as thou art, thou might," she said. "And perhaps, as thou dost, thou wilt comprehend at last the nature of the love which thou pretendest at. True love — which would pay any cost for Celestia, no matter how dear."

A sickly glow — as much the black of shadow as the blue of a starless night — encircled the spear by Clover's side. It sailed back to Luna, and with a twisting flourish, vanished into empty air.

"Alone and broken-hearted," Luna said, turning to leave and fixing him with a dull stare over her shoulder. "If thou'rt at her side — then why does the Imperatrix grieve? And where is the sister who would give her life to keep the smile 'pon Celestia's lips?"

A dull nausea spread through Clover's gut.

Oh, he thought.

Luna stepped forward into a shimmering blue mist and vanished. And Clover was left alone amid a shattered forest, silent as the grave, at the scar in the earth which once had been Pansy's home.

Celestia took one look at his face, and her delighted smile fell away.

She blinked rapidly. Tried several times to speak. Then finally settled on "What's wrong?"

Clover knew they needed to talk. But the idea was unthinkable. What was there to say? Our relationship is going to kill your sister?

"I need a year," he finally managed. "A real year."

Confusion and concern warred on her muzzle. "Okay," she said slowly. Then recognition sparked. "Oh! General what's-her-name?"

Clover's ears flattened. Somehow, being reminded of the death of one of his dearest friends didn't make him feel worse — but the knowledge that it didn't, did.

"I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I — she —" and he wondered if even mentioning Pansy's destroyed house would crack the seal of the topic which couldn't be breached; and a small voice noted that at least he could be fairly certain Luna wasn't going to break the silence for him, because I'm going to die for your relationship was an equally unthinkable conversation that would provoke a meltdown just as big — "it's, it works both ways, right? I want to be good for you, I, I'm not sure I can —" tears were blurring his vision — "I'll come back, just pretend I flipped again —"

"Shh," Celestia said. One hoof came to rest on his shoulder. The other brushed his cheek. "I get it."

You don't, he wanted to shout. You really don't.

But what was there to say?

Clover knew he had to talk to Smart Cookie, too. There weren't any awkward prophecies in the way of that, but he still couldn't work up the nerve. Every time he thought of Cookie, he thought of Pansy — and the home that an alicorn had blasted into dust, and the love that he had blasted into dust just as mercilessly.

Clover had failed one of his dearest friends. She'd sacrificed everything for him, and he'd never even seen it. Cookie knew — he had to have known. And he had every right to be furious, even without knowing how much more damage Clover was poised to cause.

Clover couldn't bear the thought of Cookie's judgment. Naturally, the idea refused to leave his brain.

He visited Everfree only long enough to cash out his trust fund. He put all the bits into a large bag, galloped for the coast, and boarded the first clipper ship he found. Only when they were four days into the journey did he realize it was headed to the okapi port town where Sugar Cookie was posted.

It was too late to change his destination, but it worked out anyway. The bad side of the city was easy enough to vanish into. It had cheap rooms, and cheap taverns, and an extremely cheap liquor that alternated between making his head too dull to care and making it hurt too much to think.

Nine months later — after the money ran out, and the headaches cleared, and he worked up the nerve to visit Sugar long enough to beg for some bits for a boat ride back home — Clover found himself back at Canter Peak, sobbing uncontrollably into Celestia's chest.

They didn't talk about Luna then, either.

Clover was broken. Celestia was the only one who could pick up his pieces. And the possibility that she might learn enough to hate him terrified Clover beyond rational thought.

Author's Note

Oh.

Oh dear.

Chapter 9 tomorrow. "The Letter."

9. The Letter

Clover finally faced his fears long enough to ask "What's wrong?" a few weeks later.

They were lying in bed together, his back to her chest — which was basically all they'd done together since his return. Celestia had spent their first few days back together just holding him, and stroking his mane, and flying down the mountain to bring him food. But her trips had become longer, and her stays shorter, and she'd begun saying less and less when the two of them snuggled together, passively letting Clover drift in and out of restless sleep.

Celestia didn't answer him for a while.

"You know that thing where we share the good parts together?" she finally said. Then one of her forelegs shifted, and she made a little circular motion with her hoof that resembled the flipping of Clover's necklace, and she said nothing more.

Clover's heart squeezed. His eyes blurred. And he tried not to make any sound as tears worked loose and dripped down his cheeks onto the mattress.

The next morning, after Celestia had wordlessly strode out the door and leapt off the cliff in some direction she didn't share, Clover rummaged through the fort for what supplies he could find and packed some saddlebags. Then he walked down the mountain.

The flip she'd asked for wouldn't help — what she needed was a Clover who wasn't a wreck, and no amount of fiddling with jewelry would change that. He had no hope that the normal passage of time would, either. But she'd endured so many years without him in order to give him a better Celestia … what right did he have to be selfish, now that the shoe was on the other hoof?

Queen Sterling, unlike her late mother, at least gave him an audience. That wasn't the only thing that had changed. The palace had been thoroughly remodeled since the last time he'd visited. The wing where his room had once stood had been converted into bureaucratic offices. And the only things that Clover recognized in her throne room were Platinum's old throne and the slight bulge in the back wall where, a generation ago, one alicorn had repaired another's hole.

Sterling herself seemed to live up to her name. The queen was darker in pelt than Platinum, and her mane glimmered with metallic sparkles of several different hues. Her surrounding coterie of nobles also followed the same fashion — although they weren't really "surrounding". Where Platinum had allowed them to swarm the steps beneath the throne, Sterling corralled them into a gallery along the outer edges of the room, and gave them sharp glances every time their chatter rose above a whisper.

"Clover the Clever," she said without waiting for her guards to announce her guest. "Has his lover a request for Us?"

He couldn't quite keep his ears from flattening. "Nay, Highness," Clover said in the Earth dialect, trying to ignore the sudden whispers from the gallery. "My purposes today are mine own."

Sterling frowned, then shifted forward in her throne, propping chin to forehoof. "Clearly so," she said neutrally. "Or he would know that for the past two decades, to speak another tribe's dialect in royal address has been recognized as a rude presumption against his equals."

The murmurs from the gallery increased further in intensity, and for once, Sterling made no move to stop them. Clover felt his cheeks start to burn.

"My deepest apologies, Your Highness, to the Throne and the Court," he said, shifting back to Unicorn and crouching to one knee. "I have not set hoof in here for those decades, and longer besides."

Sterling waved a hoof. "His situation is … unique. He may be excused his ignorance this once. What does he desire of Equestria?"

Clover remained kneeling, inwardly wincing. "He offers his humble services to the Throne," he said, falling back on mimicking her speech to hedge against further insult, "as Magister emeritus and magical researcher."

He didn't dare to hope — even when Sterling shifted on the throne again, an intrigued spark in her eyes. Regardless of the Court's changes, there was no way that begging for a job would go over well after walking in and insulting the room.

Judging by the renewed whispers from the gallery, the nobles didn't seem to think so, either. But the queen flicked a hoof toward the gallery, which immediately brought them to dead silence. Sterling considered for quite some time.

"He has the discourteous habit of addressing the Throne in third person," she finally said, and Clover winced again as his faint stirrings of hope were immediately quashed. "He also seems unaware of the magnitude of the advancements in magical theory since his previous tenure, and of modern Equestria's lack of hostile foreign powers, which render useless his storied expertise in combat thaumaturgy. Regardless, We recognize the deeds which earned him his epithet; his record of service to Our mother; and his favor with one of Equestria's most honored heroines. It is an offer not without merit. So We wish him great success in his ventures, and We vow to call upon him in the event of a windigo invasion."

That last bit was a barb so pointed that not even Clover's cluelessness with current court protocol was a barrier to comprehension. But when the gallery began snickering, Sterling flicked a hoof at them again, bringing the room back to an uneasily respectful silence.

"He may depart," she said, and looked away.

Clover bowed stiffly — far more lost than when he'd arrived — and began respectfully backing away. One of the guards lunged in to grab him, roughly rotating him to face the door and giving him a pointed eye-roll.

When he finished the all-too-long walk out of the throne room, the iron door slammed behind him with an almost-familiar boom.

Clover used the few coins in the bottom of his bags to buy a meal and a place to sleep for the night. The next morning, he began wandering the streets of the capital, not sure what else to do.

Around the time his stomach began rumbling, he passed by a scribe-house with a job posting in the window — and paused for a moment, considering. Strictly speaking, he didn't need a job to survive — even if he was reduced to the edge of starvation, he could always head out into the forest and graze. But he was acutely feeling the lack of a place to call his own — and both that and food would be far simpler to secure with a source of income.

The scribe-house, unfortunately, only wanted a papermaker, which didn't match his skills. Nor, from the look the chancellor gave him, did Everfree Academy have any positions he could fill. The bureaucratic offices, even if they hadn't operated by royal charter, had a two-month hiring process. Even the couriers — one of the few remaining professions where his level of literacy was a bonus — had no openings.

As the day drifted on, Clover — his hunger growing and his pride stinging — began simply walking into buildings with hiring notices posted outside. He was preparing himself for his tenth rejection of the day when he shouldered his way into what looked like some sort of jewelry shop. "Hello, you're looking for a salespony?" he called out, and a black-muzzled, large-eared face popped up from behind the counter.

Clover blinked. A young okapi doe — with something oddly familiar about her face.

Her eyes narrowed for a moment at the obvious shock on his muzzle, then her expression receded into a masked neutrality. "Thank you for your interest," she said calmly, "but you might not be the best fit."

"No!" Clover protested, feeling his cheeks burn. "That's not …" He trailed off as the ridiculousness of it hit him; Fimi would be long dead even if she hadn't lived half a world away. He swallowed. "I'm sorry. I just thought for a moment … you look like an okapi I once met."

"Mm-hmm," she said, clearly humoring him.

"In Lambyang," he muttered, increasingly embarrassed. "A lifetime ago."

The doe froze, one ear twitching.

Clover froze too, suddenly uncertain, then looked down at the display cases. Really looked. They held finely filigreed pieces, delicate gold and silver wires that seemed almost organic in the way they arced and swirled around tiny, gleaming gemstones. When he glanced back up, the doe was scrutinizing him with the same intensity, eyes wide.

"Fimi?" he said.

"You're — you're Clover," she stammered. "Grandmother's stories were true." She abruptly stood up, backing toward the workroom. "Don't go anywhere. I have something of yours."

The strip of frayed, clumped yak wool was barely recognizable as a scarf any more. It was essentially disintegrated around the spots that dragonfire had once burned away, and barely clung together in the middle where it had been folded throughout a lifetime of use.

"You wouldn't believe the number of times we heard her talk about it," Golden Hope said after closing the shop and inviting him into the back for a meal of hastily assembled greens. "The Imperatrix and her lover visited Lambyang, and the great Clover —" she hastily corrected herself — "you paid a small fortune for one of Grandmother's rings. Then, as you left, you gave her a gift of unimaginable value. A gift so great it would have been an insult to refuse, and also an insult to sell it. So she made a vow to repay your generosity by bringing her skills to pony lands, and to hold on to your scarf for you until she could meet you in person again and show you how you'd changed her life. She tried, a few times. Never quite got the chance."

Clover's ears drooped. Yet another being he'd failed by vanishing through the years. "I'm sorry," he murmured, setting down his fork.

"What?" Hope's face contorted in confusion. "Why?"

"I —" images of Pansy crowded Clover's mind — "I should have been there."

"Again, why? You met her for … what, five minutes? And in those five minutes you saved her from a life of misery, and then you saved her life. What have you got to feel guilty about?"

"I don't know. I …" Clover trailed off, then let out a heavy breath.

Hope considered for a few moments. "Well, if you want to talk, Mother says I'm a pretty good listener."

"Thank you for the offer." Clover picked his fork back up and tried to change the subject. "What do you mean, saved her life?"

Hope giggled. "Oh, that's the other story we heard a million times. She got caught in a sudden storm in the Llamalayas, and she would have frozen to death if she hadn't had the scarf. That's why we kept it after her death, honestly." She gestured at the sorry pile of near-fabric. "She could have walked to the market and bought a new one from a Crystal Empire importer for, what, twenty bits? But Grandmother refused to ever consider the idea. She'd wear this scarf every day we weren't melting from the heat. This was … is … her."

Clover nodded, at a loss for words.

Hope crunched a quick mouthful of salad, thinking, then swallowed. "So what do you know about jewelry?"

"Hmm?" Clover blinked a few times, then sighed again. "Nothing, to be honest."

"Okay," she said. "Do you want the job?"

The pay was thin — as gorgeous as the jewelry was, it was too expensive for many ponies and had fallen out of fashion for many others — but the work kept Clover occupied. During the down times, he would talk to Hope and her parents Aketi and Kungu, hearing stories of Fimi's life and theirs. Slowly, he started giving in to their questions and sharing stories of his own wilder adventures.

The inevitable topic came up. He was taking a little break from Celestia, he delicately explained. That was a thing they sometimes did, with the difference in their lifespans. It kept things fresh between them.

When Hope heard that, she offered him a room in the back of the shop. Clover refused. The okapi were doing enough for him; he needed to feel like he was in charge of something in his own life, even if the only lodging he could afford was a ramshackle, rat-infested boarding-house on the bad side of the city.

That seemed like a more fitting place to sleep, anyhow. It matched how he felt when he turned out the lights — when there was nothing to hold back the thoughts of Pansy and Luna, and the guilt flooded in like the moonlit tide.

Three weeks in — when he finally had a little bit to spare after paying for the week's rent and meals — Clover walked down the street from the boarding-house to a tavern. He sat down at the bar and ordered a drink.

When it arrived, he looked at the glass. He thought of Hope and Aketi and Kungu, and how disappointed in him they would be if he got drunk and missed work.

He clung to that thought. He stared at the glass for a long time. The foam evaporated off the beer.

I don't want to be the sort of the pony who lets everyone down, he finally decided.

Clover stood up, leaving the glass untouched, and went back to his room to resume wrestling with his demons.

The next morning started out hard, and then got worse when one of the customers looked a bit like Pansy. She wasn't even the same tribe, or coat color, or mark. But it was enough of a resemblance that he abruptly excused himself, went into the back of the store, and balled up in a closet.

Hope found him a minute or two after he broke down sobbing. She crouched next to him and held him until his breathing evened out — cautious and hesitant, as if he were made of the hairlike filaments of unenchanted jewelry wire.

The story of Pansy's unrequited love started coming out — first in a trickle, then a flood. Aketi closed the store, and soon the earthy scent of frying beans wafted in from the workroom. Clover found himself repeating it all over madesu, and somehow, it wasn't so bad the second time around, even when the room lapsed into uncomfortable silence at the end of his tale.

Kungu was the first to break it, clearing his throat as he crooked a hoof around Clover's withers.

"We all make mistakes, Clover," he said. "I myself was … not a good calf, in my youth. There were some bad colts who terrorized our neighborhood, and I fell in with some gryphons who kept them away. Mother's store was robbed one day while I was with the flock, and I thought I knew who was responsible. By the time the Guard stopped the fight and arrested us all, one of my wingmates was dead, and I had beaten two of the colts to within an inch of their lives.

"Mother took out a large loan to pay the maregild the court fined me, and a second when the Guard discovered I had taken to thievery to survive. She would have lost everything had I not agreed to an arranged marriage with Aketi; it was her father's purchase of the store, and her hard work improving upon Mother's patterns, which brought us through the hard times." Kungu squeezed his wife's leg.

"We had our share of fights," Aketi said, squeezing back. "But those taught us to appreciate the good times."

"I was not blameless in those," Kungu said. "Frankly, I still do not think that the fool who I was deserved such a blessing as her. But I slowly began to understand what being a good buck required, and she came to love me, and I her, and now we have Hope, and I would not trade this family for a thousand lifetimes as a rich prince." He smiled wistfully, then locked eyes intently with Clover. "Listen, Clover. There is no number of years of being the good father which could have ever made up for me being the bad son. But despite all the pain I caused Mother, before she passed, she said she was proud of me.

"That is love. Even though no amount of good can erase the pain of your failures, love forgives."

Clover wrote a long-overdue letter to Cookie that night.

The next morning, he sent it out via courier before work. He was quiet all morning at the jewelry store, lost in thought, and finally approached Aketi at her workbench as she was taking a break for lunch.

"Could you make me a custom piece?" he asked. "I can pay for it out of my wages."

"Of course," the old doe immediately said. "And do not dare think of paying. But for an accessory worthy of an alicorn, it will take quite some time to gather materials and perfect a design which complements her beauty."

Clover's face flushed. "No, that's … I mean, this might sound silly, but I have a much simpler design in mind. And it's not for her."

Aketi turned around, silently raising her eyebrows.

"What I was thinking," Clover explained to Hope while they were sweeping up that evening, "is that it's too late to apologize to Pansy now. But I can honor the sacrifice she made, and make her a promise that I'll learn from it."

"I don't see how jewelry for a dead mare does that," Hope mumbled around her broom.

"Not just any jewelry." Clover lifted his necklace from his chest. "We might have had a life together if it hadn't been for this. If I leave a copy at her grave, it'll remind me to think of her every time I skip a year."

Hope worked in silence for some time. "I hope the idea brings you peace," she finally said.

"You say that like you think it's silly," Clover said, a bit defensive.

She spit out the broom. "It is."

"Your mother didn't seem to think so. She thought it was sweet."

"Father and Mother got stuck in an arranged marriage when they were my age. That gave them both heads full of impossible romantic fantasies they enjoy playing out vicariously." Hope rolled her eyes and began cleaning the jewelry cases. "You must understand, Clover. Father and Mother never had a single spark of romance. They simply learned to live with each other in a way that turned into love. And yet they care more for each other and for myself than any couple I've ever met."

"Okay. What has that got to do with Pansy?"

"Love is work." Hope turned to squarely face Clover. "Love is not the foolish grand gestures, it's what you do every day you're together."

That set off a twinge in Clover's heart having nothing to do with Pansy — a little ache of longing that stuck with him the rest of the night.

And while spending his night missing Celestia wasn't pleasant, it was a welcome change of pace from the other thoughts chasing themselves in circles inside his head.

A few days later, Clover was awoken by a knock on his door. It was a courier — an old grey pegasus with one eye that didn't move with the other, staring forward with an unsettling consistency.

"You Clover?" the courier said, his voice gravelly.

Clover rubbed sleepy eyes with a hoof. "That's me."

The courier leaned to one side, his good eye shifting to stare at Clover's Mark. He glanced around the old, ratty boarding-house. He half-looked back to Clover's face and raised the brow over the still eye. "That Clover?"

"Long story," Clover said. "What's this about?"

"Huh, guess it's no surprise you're on this side of town after that stunt with the Queen. You sent a letter out to a Mister Smart Cookie?"

Clover's heartbeat quickened. "Yes. Did he respond?"

"Long story." The courier fished a letter from his bags, speaking around it in a somewhat muffled tone. "Yes, four months ago."

"… What?"

"Yeah, he paid for delivery on this right before he died."

Clover made a strangled little noise in the back of his throat.

"Funny thing, though," the courier said, dropping the letter into Clover's trembling horngrip. "He was awful insistent we not even try to find you till next month. Paid a ton extra for it. Said this was too important to risk coming back undeliverable." He shrugged. "Sorry I didn't track you down after hearing about your stunt in Court. Delivery instructions are delivery instructions, right? But when you sent him a letter of your own, I figured, there's no way he'd want us to keep waiting."

The courier glanced over at Clover — then paused at his expression, and cleared his throat.

"I, ah, won't keep you from your reading," he said. "Sorry about your friend. You have a good day."

Old friend, the letter began, and Clover closed his eyes for a moment as guilt stabbed him through the heart.

I write this knowing I won't ever see you again. We only get so much time till the stars call us Ever Upward, and mine won't last till your return —

Clover had to set the letter down as tears blurred his vision. Cookie was talking about him as if he'd flipped his amulet. But he had been sailing back across the ocean on the date the letter was written.

He should have visited Cookie right away on his return, Clover thought. No — he should have stayed in Equestria and gotten over himself. He had failed all his closest friends, one after the other. Cursed. Useless.

It took Clover several minutes to return to the paper. He wasn't quite sure why he did. Probably because he deserved whatever came next.

— your return. Part of me wants to hate that your necklace robbed us of one last meeting. But I can't. I know what a blessing it is to me and mine.

Clover blinked. He reread the line twice more. It refused to change.

The world's changed, Clover. Changed in ways I could never have hoped for. My son runs banquets for the queen of the unicorns. My daughter writes trade deals with races that used to enslave us. This is the world we built with friendship. And I couldn't be prouder for what the three of us did to make that happen. We were a living lesson that our tribes were stronger together. Because of that lesson, my foals grew up in a better world.

Thing is, I've studied enough history to know how fragile that is. Ponies now take friendship for granted — and that's how lessons get forgotten.

The world isn't going to stop being dangerous just because we did a good thing once. The ponies I love will need to remember what made them great to begin with. They'll need heroes. And I can rest my eyes easier since I know for sure there's one hero who'll still be there for them.

Clover looked up from the letter for a moment and shook his head numbly. "Oh, Cookie," he whispered. "You optimistic old foal."

I wish I could leave it at that, the letter continued. But you're not gonna believe me. You're too shook up right now.

Clover couldn't hold back a pained laugh. Smart Cookie had always lived up to his name — in his own humble, guileless way, he had more than matched wits with Clover. It was one of the things that had made Clover befriend an earth pony, way back at the beginning when that was unthinkable.

I don't know what happened at Pansy's home, the letter continued. I just know you took it hard, or you'd have come talked to me. And I think I know why.

So there's something I gotta say. It's breaking a promise, and you know how serious I take those. But I don't care. I'll only get this one last chance, and sometimes your principles stand in the way of doing what's right.

Clover sat up, his full attention on the shaky mouthwriting.

Back at the beginning I suspected you meant more to Pansy than just a friend. But even if I'd been sure, it wasn't my place to say. Then it took me another two years to realize just how deep that went. When I finally figured it out I told her she had to be honest with you. She said that would do nothing but hurt everypony. You and the Imperatrix were already deep in love. She said she was willing to wait till the Imperatrix broke you, cause you'd need somepony to help pick up the pieces. That never happened. But she never gave up.

About twenty years back, I begged her to move on. Said she'd already lost her childbearing years, she shouldn't waste the whole rest of her life too. That's when she made me swear never to tell you. Said that she'd come to accept you would spend the rest of her life loving the Imperatrix. And she'd made a decision. She wanted to die alone and broken-hearted to fulfill your prophecy, so nobody else who loved you ever had to.

The tears that had been lingering on the edge of Clover's vision finally worked loose from his eyes and fell to the page. "Oh, Pansy," he murmured, throat closing up.

I don't even know if that's how it works, the letter said. But nothing I did could talk her out of it. She was so determined to make that sacrifice that she didn't even tell any of us she was sick until she couldn't get out of bed. A lot of us didn't get to say goodbye either.

She was the best of us, Clover. She was the kindest pony that ever will live. She was a second mother to my family, and half of Everfree besides. But none of that meant more to her than you.

A sob escaped Clover's throat. He reached out to the paper in his horngrip, brushed it with a hooftip, and nodded wordlessly.

So whenever you doubt you can beat that prophecy, the letter finished, don't look at what you've lost. Look at the mare who believed in you so much she sacrificed everything for it. Look at the amazing mare you're doing this for. Look at the world that needs you both.

I wish I could've made it to the end of this adventure with you. But I know you and the Imperatrix are going to make the world even better than we all did together.

Your friend forever,

Cookie.

It was a clear, cool autumn day when Clover walked into the graveyard outside Everfree. Birds twittered in the red-and-gold canopies of the surrounding trees, and rabbits and squirrels scurried away at his approach. It was immediately obvious which grave was his friend's. Even more than a year past her death, it was cluttered with dozens of fresh bouquets, chrysanthemums and crocuses and her namesake pansies.

"Hey there," Clover said to the gravestone — and somehow, the silence he got in return felt comfortable and intimate, the same way it always had with her. And as much as it ached to finally see her resting place, he couldn't hold back a bittersweet smile.

"I wish you'd told me," he said. "I would have done things quite differently if I'd known." Clover stepped forward. "But I suppose that was the point of staying silent. You had to, to make the sacrifice you wanted to make."

Clover lit his horn, undoing the strap of one saddlebag. "When I first planned to come here, I thought I was going to make a foolish, grand gesture to remind me every day of my failures." He laughed, a painful noise at the edge of a sob. "But I know now that it would break your heart for that to be the lesson I walked away from this with. And I think I've got a gesture more fitting."

He gently extracted Fimi's disintegrating scarf from his saddlebag, laying the folded fabric onto the grave with infinite care.

"I won't waste my second chance," he whispered.

Then he turned and walked out of the graveyard, not looking back.

Author's Note

And that concludes the third, penultimate arc of the story. We're down to the final chapters, and drawing in toward the biggest moments!

That journey begins tomorrow. For now, let's celebrate Clover's moment of peace.

10. The Fight

Clover was no stranger to stupid ideas, but even he had to hesitate when the pair of guards escorted him to the top of Everfree Palace's basement stairs. He mentally ran through his logic again. He was probably safe. Probably.

He was gambling a lot on her self-control. Still, he had to make the effort.

When the three of them entered the candlelit basement, Luna was sitting at a table surrounded by open books, cross-referencing information onto a chart she was assembling on an oversized piece of papyrus.

A guard cleared his throat. Luna scratched out another row of figures. "Ah, the guards return," she said without looking up. "Are you so determined to interrupt my work that now you drag down somepony with a crown from their throne, to be affronted to my face about my absence at the banquet?"

Clover braced himself and went for broke. "Well," he said lightly, "if the Queen is upset at us both, then that's another thing we've got in common."

Luna's quill froze. Then began trembling in her horngrip.

Clover considered bolting. He figured standing very, very still was slightly safer.

"Have you come to your senses," Luna finally said — her back still to him, her voice carefully controlled — "and accepted my terms?"

"With respect, Luna," Clover said, "no."

The quill shifted to one side, flicked its tip down into an inkwell, and then began writing again. "Then we've nothing to talk about."

Clover took a breath to steady himself. "I disagree. It's an unacceptable solution, but so is your death."

Abruptly, Luna wheeled on her stool, wings spreading wide as she stood. "Unacceptable?!" she said icily. The tightly controlled frown on her muzzle curled upward into a bland and insincere smile. "Oh, well then! When whatever fell beast that is to be my doom puts its claws to my neck, I shall inform it that the idiot mortal wooing my sister finds the situation unacceptable, and all manner of things shall be well."

Clover took an involuntary step back — which suddenly made him realize that the guards alongside him had vanished.

He swallowed and held his ground as Luna strolled up to loom over him. He had to put his faith in the same logic that had saved him back at Pansy's house — that they both knew Celestia wouldn't forgive Luna if anything happened to him at her hooves.

"You don't have to accept that fate either," he said quietly. "You're more clever than that."

Her muzzle twitched in annoyance. "Do not insult me via comparison. You are clever. I solve problems." Abruptly, Luna whirled back to the desk. "Equestria has more than enough of those to resolve without adding your occasional annoyance to the mixture. For example, I am close to calculating the source of the incubus incursions into ponies' dreams, which have grown vastly more common in the past six months. And if I am not allowed to finish that work within the fortnight, the consequence is another half-dozen ponies vanished, three score laid low by magical illness, and weakness and headaches for half a city." She glanced back over her shoulder. "What have you accomplished for Equestria lately, little hero, other than distracting my sister from its defense?"

Clover's ears lowered. Whether she had expected it to or not, Luna's jab had struck home.

"That's another thing I'm trying to do better at," he said. "Would you like my help?"

"Ha!" Luna said sharply, turning back around. "No."

Clover, finally, began to feel his fear yield to frustration. "Why not, if it's that important? You're pressed for time, and surely I could take some of the drudgework of research off your hooves."

"Because the last time I offered you a problem to solve, you used it to doom both myself and my sister." Luna began writing again. "No, mortal. I shall learn my lesson from this, which is that those of you who manage to pierce our realm can but blunder destructively about. And I shall endure, and solve Equestria's problems until my own fate is no longer escapable, and ignore your existence — rather than cling to foalish hope that your death predates mine, and my sister returns permanently to my side."

Her horn flared an ugly black-blue. With a quiet pop and a blur of shadow, the two guards reappeared by Clover's side, blinking and stumbling for balance.

"Guards," Luna said, "this malingering rampallion displeases me. Remove him from my presence."

And for the second time that year, Clover found himself thrown out of Everfree Palace.

It had been a beautiful plan. Make peace with his old friends' deaths; make peace with Luna; return to Celestia with her and tell her everything; divert the prophecy and enjoy a life of perfect moments. The failure of step two was a problem. But not, Clover decided, an insurmountable one.

Clover told the okapi he was going back to Celestia again. He helped Hope find a replacement salespony, and promised them he'd make time to visit them once in a while. Then, after the goodbyes, he stewed in his cheap, rat-infested room for one last night, planning his next step.

He and Celestia still needed to talk, didn't they? Sooner or later wouldn't he have to rip the metaphorical bandage off? Maybe, even without Luna's help, Celestia would be able to help him find some clever way around the problem. Or she'd be able to talk some sense into her sister. Or … or maybe he was overthinking this. If Luna was doing things like sequestering herself off in a basement to research some crazy monster infecting ponies' dreams, maybe they were spending enough time apart that she wasn't necessarily going to die to fulfill the prophecy?

That still left Celestia alone and broken-hearted, of course. Not a solution.

The next morning, Clover took the now-familiar trip up Canter Peak, and let his churning stomach settle at the doorway, and took a deep breath before knocking. He still hadn't settled out the details — but he was better. He'd fixed himself. Now it was time to fix them.

Celestia — only slightly hung over, judging by the scattered clouds and the slight swelling of her eyelids — yanked the door open, eyes taking a moment to focus in on him.

Clover smiled — with genuine happiness, but far more enthusiasm than he was really feeling. "Hello, Celestia."

Celestia's face lit up. "Frumpy!" she said, and lit her horn to drag his body in to hers, and threw her forelegs around him, muzzle clamping passionately to his.

For a moment, it was as if the years had melted away. As if they could be there for each other forever, and nothing bad could touch them.

It was wonderful — but thoroughly disorienting. The last two times he'd seen her, he'd been an absolute mess. Wouldn't that have been her expectation? Shouldn't she have been more hesitant with him, more worried about his recovery? Shouldn't she have asked him what had happened over the last two years?

Then it hit him. For Celestia, there hadn't been two years of soul-searching. For what most ponies would have called an entire lifetime, she'd occasionally had a lover suddenly appear and lavish her with attention, and then vanish again once the shine started wearing off. And she didn't believe in bad memories. Time filed the rough edges off of their previous encounters, and all she knew of him was the good parts. Anything less than that was an aberration to be reset away — which, from her perspective, was exactly what he'd done.

And which, for her, was exactly how it worked. If she wasn't at her best, she'd shrug and live a year without him and enjoy him all the more when he returned. What did a year mean to an immortal? Maybe it hadn't even occurred to her that his own ability to similarly expend his grief elsewhere wasn't infinite.

But … the setup worked. In its own strange way, it worked. If he expected flipping to always mean she'd be eager for his company, and if she expected flipping to always mean he'd be eager for her company, then there was no reason for either of them to approach a reunion with anything less than anticipation and joy. And that joy would keep things perfect — until it didn't, and they shrugged and moved on to their next perfect moment. What good would it do to spoil that with fear or hesitation?

So Clover smiled, and did his best to empty his mind and sink into her kiss, and let himself lose himself in her touch. They shared a few perfect days, with nothing more important on their minds than each other. And when Clover's intrusive thoughts finally broke through and the guilt started seeping in, he kissed her and excused himself for a 'mini-flip' and spent a month walking around Equestria.

He re-read Cookie's letter, and thought about Luna, and the prophecy, and all the friends who believed in him. Then he thought back through all the wonderful times he and Celestia had had. And finally, as the weeks passed, the bad things just … started to seem a little less important.

Was a stupid prophecy really worth ruining everything over?

No, he decided. And a fresh little yearning for Celestia slowly blossomed in his chest.

"Hey, Frumpy," she said when he returned, her face lighting up anew. And this time, he didn't have to fake his enthusiasm.

Celestia, for her part, was as constant as she was ageless — eagerly and passionately greeting him on each of his returns. At least at first. But then there was the year she was a bundle of rage at a silly dispute with Queen Orichalcum over a change in her title … and what was that, but a momentary inconvenience and another flip of the amulet? The next year, her kiss was as passionate as ever, and the moment melted away.

But then there was the year Clover flipped when they were both down in Everfree Palace, and on his return, Celestia wasn't there to greet him. He walked up the mountain, knocked on the door of the fort, and a pegasus stallion answered.

Clover staggered back, shocked. Then, past the doorway, he watched the rumpled covers on Celestia's bed — their bed — shift, and a disheveled white head poked out.

"Burry?" Celestia mumbled, bleary eyes focusing toward the pegasus. "Who's there?"

Something squeezed in Clover's chest, hot and hard and hollow. It took him two tries to light his horn, fumbling for the necklace against his chest, feeling metal tickle fur as the triangle flipped. The world hiccuped, and he was again facing a closed door.

Clover fell to his knees, eyes blurring with tears. He let out a choked sob.

A moment later, he heard muffled voices inside the fort. Two voices.

Clover yanked the triangle around its axis a second time. Then again, without waiting for the world to stabilize. He poured his grief and rage and fear and disbelief into his horn, as if he could rip it apart and this cruel lie with it. Grab, flip, and the world shifted and glitched. Grab, flip, glitch.

Then, with an incoherent scream, he grabbed and wrenched — not pushing against the pressure of inertia, but unleashing an explosive torrent of magic into the metal. It jerked, spasming off his chest. Then whatever tension was coiled up inside of it seemed to break loose with a wail of sour color, and the triangle whirled crazily around its axis as the years scintillated by.

The year that the necklace slowed to a stop was the year of their third big argument.

"You should have told me!" he shouted.

"You didn't let me!" she yelled back, a fire smoldering in her eyes that he hadn't seen for hundreds of visits.

"What was there going to be to say? 'Oh, sorry, Clover, but even though you unmoored yourself from time for me I found some other stud to rut'?"

"I promised you," she growled, leaning in so that her bared teeth were inches from his eyes, "the best of me. But I don't live life at your speed, and we never agreed you'd be the only one to get the best of me."

"Great comeback, Imperatrix," he snarled. "How long did it take you to come up with it?"

"Eighty-three years, Frumpy, which I had because you weren't here!" she shouted, and the mountain trembled.

Clover squeezed his eyes shut, feeling tears spill down his cheeks.

"You know what hurts the most," he said quietly, "is that you can't stand me for more than a few weeks at a time, but that pegasus? Oh, no, he gets a normal lifetime."

"That pegasus' name was Thunderburst," Celestia said coldly, "and for your information, he drove me crazy too, and he left for good fourteen months later. But I learned so much patience from you — waiting for your return every year — that I thought I could make some on-again, off-again thing work with him. And he was one of those once-in-a-generation ponies that had a chance of keeping up with me … what was I supposed to do? Turn him away for a lover who doesn't exist 50 weeks of the year?"

"Considering what I've given up for you, maybe!"

Celestia whirled and stalked away. "Do you even know how much effort I went to in order to make things work out? I told him about you, Clover! He flipped out too — and then I begged and pleaded and reasoned and finally told him it was a dealbreaker if he wasn't okay with me spending time with you once in a while." Clover opened his eyes again, and Celestia was staring at him with wet eyes from across the room. "Thank the stars, he gave in. But I was willing to ruin my own happiness for the short time we get — throw away the entire rest of my year — and then the instant you see him, you throw a snit and vanish for good before I even lay eyes on you."

Clover stared at Celestia. She glared back, standing tall and proud. He laughed bitterly.

"Unbelievable," he said. "I'm getting nostalgic for the good old days when you threw me through a bookcase over something a hundred times as trivial."

"For the first time in four hundred and twenty-two years," she muttered, "I wish I could break my oath and do it again."

"I guess four hundred years and twenty-two years really does change a mare," he snapped back. "I never thought you'd back down from a challenge."

Celestia's muzzle twisted into a snarl whose rage could have petrified a cockatrice, and she tensed for a spring before Clover could even think to react. Then her body lurched forward and swayed drunkenly back, looking for all the world like some living rocking-horse, wings flailing out awkwardly for balance. Her legs began to tremble — hooves perfectly still — and despite her obvious fury, she made no further move toward him.

Clover froze, confused but suddenly very aware of the line he'd crossed. They stared at each other for a moment before it clicked. Her oath.

Celestia finally managed to regain her balance, breathing in sharp snorts through her nose. With obvious effort, she squeezed her eyes closed. The tremble in her legs spread to her wingtips as she deliberately stretched and retucked them. She took a long breath and held it, and her fury slowly receded.

"You're right, you know," she finally said, her eyes still closed. Her tone was uneven, but there was more control than rage in it. "I can change. For example, I just figured out that you're baiting me — without needing a day of beating up dragons to calm myself down. And I can be a better pony than that." She deliberately lifted one hoof — and, as Clover's heart stopped and his vision zeroed in on the motion, she picked her hooves up one by one, slowly rotating in place to turn her back on him.

"I wish you'd figured that part out earlier," Clover said — and bit back any further reply, not feeling quite brave enough to press his luck with the oath again.

Silence again descended — feeling colder this time. Or maybe that was just the mountain air? Clover huffed, trying to focus, and his breath came out in a glistening cloud.

That set an inner alarm to screaming.

Clover knew exactly where that sudden icing over came from. But — part of him was shocked to realize — he didn't particularly feel like doing anything about it. After all, it wasn't like the mighty Imperatrix would be in any danger from a pack of windigos, and the realization that she was responsible for the disharmony which drew them in would teach her an invaluable friendship lesson about taking friends for granted.

The voice of reason protested that logic, too. Windigos, it reminded him, latched onto sources of discord and magnified them until they overwhelmed rational thought. By definition, both of them were now overreacting — and was he, of all ponies, really about to stand back and let windigos do their thing? But then Clover thought of that pegasus again, and the voice got easier and easier to ignore.

"You know the worst part?" Celestia said, breaking him out of his thoughts. "Part of me says that you're not good enough for me. That you never were, and you never will be. And it's right, with the way you're acting." Her voice grew faint. "But despite how colossal of an idiot you're being, I can't convince myself to walk away from you."

Clover felt his jaw tremble and his heart squeeze. As impossible as Celestia was being, she was right — that was the worst part. It would have been so much easier if he could have listened to the silky voice telling him it was over, and made the decision to walk away. But he loved her, stars, he loved her. No matter what she did to rip his beating heart from his chest.

Clover gritted his teeth — feeling some frost shake loose from his lips at the motion — and nearly gave in and apologized. He needed her, after all. Maybe even as much as she needed him.

Really? the cruel, cold voice whispered — and he hesitated for a moment. He wasn't the only one who had done something wrong. And Clover had given up everything for her. If she loved him too, wasn't it time for her to make a sacrifice?

Celestia sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, and hope flared in Clover's chest for a moment —

"I think it's time for you to flip your necklace," she said evenly.

— snuffing out just as quickly. Fine. Let her deal with her windigos — or whatever super-windigos that the disharmony of an alicorn summoned from the storms. He'd be back in a year when she saw reason.

So he lit his horn, rotating the triangle —

— and landed in blackness.

A migraine danced on his skull, sending melodious fuzzy spots dancing through his vision. Everything was wrong. Nothing seemed wrong — at least, none of his senses were giving him anything concrete to work with — but every instinct he had was screaming out different warnings, at top volume, all at once.

Clover lit his horn. Or tried to.

Absolutely nothing happened.

Panic set in as he realized he couldn't even feel magic around him any more.

Realizing he was getting light-headed, Clover forced himself to control his breathing. Focus. Focus! There's got to be something you can do. He took a step, stumbled, and caught himself against something soft at his shoulder.

A broad circle of that wall lit up at his touch, as if illuminated by a spotlight. He blinked and looked closer at the plush blue fabric, his eyes readjusting to the idea of sight. He was leaning against a throw rug.

The moment Clover realized that, there was the ding of a distant bell. Gravity instantly rotated underneath the rug, sending him unceremoniously faceplanting to the floor.

The darkness above him opened up one yellow, red-pupiled eye, and grew a mismatched collection of fangs. Something that looked like a lion paw faded into view at the edge of the spotlight, flexing claws out of its fingers and pointing one right at him.

"Theeeeeeeeere's my little meddler," a high, masculine voice sang as a grotesque brown face advanced into the light.

Clover screamed and bolted.

He tried, at any rate. The floor dropped out from underneath him, sending him spinning back into the disorienting blackness. The spotlight swept through a broad arc before stopping directly in front of him, and Clover slammed with tremendous force into the newly illuminated circle of blue plaid rock. It was rubbery and yielding — at least enough that he didn't feel anything break — but it was more than enough to drive all the wind out of him.

As Clover gasped for breath, struggling to his hooves, the spotlight rapidly expanded, the circle of rock resolving into a discolored mountainside. The surrounding lands resembled nothing so much as a foal's parody of Equestria, a coloring-book filled in with all the wrong colors, with parts ripped out of place and pasted in where they didn't belong. Everfree Palace was floating in midair high above them, with the sun chasing the moon in bounding circles around the building, causing shadows to continuously lurch and veer.

With the sound of off-key trumpets, a gaudy silver throne on a tall green dais floated down to earth from the now orange-colored sky. The throne rotated toward Clover to reveal some sort of chimerical monstrosity sitting on it. The beast was clapping one leonine paw and one aquiline claw, chortling to itself.

Clover bolted again.

The thing snapped a claw. Clover felt the world lurch and rotate around him, and yet again, he slammed headfirst into the ground.

"A spirited escape attempt, Beardy," the monster said, leaning forward and steepling its fingers. "But I must admit I'm disappointed. After all the effort you've expended flinging yourself back and forth through time, now that we're finally face to face you're not even going to play a game with the magnificent Discord for the fate of your world?"

"What," Clover said feebly.

Discord uncoiled himself from the throne, stepping forward on tiny mismatched legs. Clover tried scrambling backward, only to feel a sharp pain in his hinds. He glanced backward to see rabbits with pitchforks prodding just above his hooves.

Discord's muzzle began to fall into a dangerous frown. "You're really performing below expectations, you know," it said. "Is the great Star Swirl the —" he squinted — "Presently Unbearded so helpless with his innate unicorn magic removed? Or did you not expect me to track you by the distinct feeling of your time spells?" His smile returned, gleeful and predatory. "Regardless, we're going to have fun, you and I."

A creeping feeling of horror enveloped Clover. "No! No. You've got it all wrong."

Discord giggled. "Well, let's hope you don't, or this will be a short game."

"I'm not —" Clover stopped. For all he knew, the belief that he was Star Swirl was the only thing keeping this deranged god from slaughtering him outright.

Fortunately, Discord seemed to ignore his outburst. "I'm feeling generous, so I'll let you choose how to entertain me. Dodge the Deathtrap? Gladiator combat? The Harmless Maze of Completely Innocent Fun?"

Clover thought faster than he'd ever thought in his life. Then he smoothed down his cloak and straightened up, projecting as much confidence as he could.

"Heads or tails," he said. "A simple flip with a simple wager. If you win, you choose. But if I win, I choose a game for us both to play."

A wild glint appeared in Discord's yellow eyes, and his smile spread wide. Clover knew that look. It was the grin of a con-man confident he could out-cheat his opponent.

Clover grinned back, trying not to let his nervousness show. "I assume a gentlebeing as powerful and generous as yourself won't mind if I select the coin?"

Discord snapped a claw, and his throne skittered toward him, catching him as he languidly fell backward and reclined. "I assure you, it makes no difference to me," he said, not even trying to hide his smugness.

"A moment, then. Let me find it." Clover turned to rummage in his saddlebags, fumbling with clumsy hooftips for the returning clasp. He leaned toward the bag it was in, his necklace swinging over it and coming to rest just inside its top edge. He held his breath as he pressed the clasp's catch against the side of the bag and angled the inner part of the necklace into it. The instant it caught, he dug further into the bag, angled his hooftip inside a loop he'd tied in the golden cord, and then jerked upright and yanked his leg back with all his might.

The magic of the clasp flared. Suddenly, the triangle tried to be somewhere else than the circle it was mounted in — making the necklace bounce crazily from his chest. The chain jerked taut then snapped back, spinning the triangle wildly.

Pain exploded in Clover's head as the years slammed into him, and consciousness faded.

Author's Note

The next-to-last chapter, "The Queen", posts tomorrow!

11. The Queen

Awareness slowly returned amid the soft caress of fabric and the scent of jasmine tea. Clover was sprawled on his back, and there was a heavy weight on his hind legs. His horn hurt like it had been dragged down a few centuries of bad road — but at least it hurt, which meant his magic was back.

He groaned and sat up, only to stare into the eyes of a smiling white alicorn.

"Hey, Frumpy," Celestia said, and there was a hint of that old predatory confidence in her grin.

"Buh," he said, eyes fixed above her face. The old blue war-paint stripe had been joined by a green one — but neither stripe was paint. Paint didn't float in some intangible thaumic breeze, nor did paint colors stay completely still as her mane wafted to and fro, like some cosmic optical illusion.

He wasn't sure whether that or the tiara disturbed him more.

"Been quite a while," Celestia said, studying a gold-shod hoof. "It caused one heck of a commotion when you showed up at Canter Fort. I have to order them to keep it staffed, you know. The ministers whine at me about the budget every year."

"What," Clover croaked.

Celestia's smile didn't waver, but it grew a lot tenser. "Oh, you know how it is. Some big villain of primal chaos takes over the world and wipes out Queen Platinum's entire lineage with a wave of his claw. Jerk dad shows up just long enough to point Luna and I toward some Super Gemstones of Ultimate Harmony or something. We fight off Discord, Equestria crowns us because we're the only ones left with the power to raise the sun and moon, and after long enough you almost start to tolerate the taste of tea."

"What. What. What."

"So. Yeah. Busy three hundred years. How about you?"

Clover curled up into a little ball, whimpering.

Celestia kicked her chausses over the side of the bed and lifted the tiara from her brow, setting it down on the side table next to Clover's golden necklace. She crawled up fully next to him, curling around him and gently stroking his chest with a hoof. "Hey. It's alright. Everything's alright. I did it, Clover, I'm the Queen like I always dreamed. And now I get to share it with you, too."

Clover's head swam. This was all wrong — in its own way, as wrenching as Equestria turning into Discord's plaything. After everything they'd said, she was just casually greeting him as if nothing had happened?

But that was how they worked, wasn't it? How they had to work, with as different as Clover and Celestia were. Only the good times, and if they weren't perfect, grab the necklace and start over again. They didn't have to be a couple who fought … ever. All he had to do was forgive her for that pegasus, the same way she had apparently already forgiven him for unleashing a horde of windigos and some sort of world-eating super-windigo at her.

… When he put it that way, Clover wasn't so certain he could forgive himself.

He wriggled around in Celestia's grasp, turning himself to look directly at her, and pushed himself to the outer limits of her hug. "Listen," he said. "I'm sorry. When we talked about, what was his name, Thunder—"

Celestia's horn shimmered, and Clover's mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth. Her smile grew strained for a moment, then she closed her eyes and let out a breath before gently meeting his stare.

"It's okay," she said. "Really. I honestly mean that, Clover. It's been a few centuries, you know? I've had a lot of time to think. And, sure, you said some awful things, and you got me so pissed I was ready to flatten our mountain, but … in hindsight, you had a point too." She propped herself up on one elbow. "And our fight — that worked out, didn't it? If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't be Queen. So I've got you to thank."

Clover rubbed his jaw as Celestia released it. Let it go, a tiny part of him screamed. We're past that now. Things are back to normal. We can just enjoy each other again.

The rest of him sighed, head drooping.

"Celestia," he said. "For you it's been a few centuries. For me everything's still raw. I just had a screaming match with the mare I love. And I'm not sure I recognize the one I'm talking to."

Her smile tightened. "Then take a year," she said. "Come back fresh. That's what we do. What we've always done. And the best of everything will be waiting for you when you get back." She nuzzled stiffly at his cheek. "You can be my senior Prince Consort. I promised you the best, didn't I?"

Clover fought off vertigo, his chest tightening, and forced himself to nod. "I … wait. 'Senior'?"

Celestia's smile finally fell. "I'm Queen now, Clover," she murmured. "If I don't have a harem everypony starts to wonder."

Clover reached for his necklace.

Celestia's leg shot out to stop him. "Clover," she murmured, voice as gentle as her hoof was iron. "I'm sorry. I am. Really and truly sorry, and if I'd known three hundred years ago you weren't dead I would have done things very differently."

"Well, now you do know," he said, sounding far more resigned than he'd expected. "How long should I fast-forward?"

"Why would you?" she asked, voice getting more and more strained. "Everything's perfect, except you weren't here. Now you are. It doesn't get better than this."

"It's hardly perfect if there's no place for me," he murmured. It felt like the sort of thing he should shout, but so soon after his brush with windigos, he simply didn't have the energy for anger.

Celestia drew back a bit. She rubbed her temple with a hoof.

"Not this again," she said, and her own voice sounded nearly as exhausted as his.

"It's not again for me! We were just talking about this ten minutes ago."

"And it was no less stupid then!" She let out a long breath. "There is a place for you — a place nopony else gets. Do you think I put my whole life on hold for anypony else? Do you think I make stallions Senior Prince Consort on a whim?"

"I don't know!" Clover said. "I really don't. This is the first time I've seen you in three hundred years, and Thunderburst was almost another century before that."

"So Burry's the problem?" Celestia's tone grew a hint of an edge. "Is that what you want? To argue about a pony so long dead I no longer even know if he has descendants?"

Clover forced himself to take a long breath and put his thoughts in order.

"What I want is to feel like I matter," he said. "I did this — did everything, the necklace, the trip, taking you up on Platinum's deal — because you matter. Celestia, not the Imperatrix. And I had a chance to be somepony who knew that pony, who could be something for her that nobody else could. In return, you pushed me to be the pony you saw in me. A pony I didn't know I could be."

She frowned. "That can't be true, because Burry had exactly nothing to do with that."

"He's got everything to do with it!"

"Are you jealous I'm rutting other ponies? Is that what this is?"

"No!" Clover's ears flattened, but he looked into her eyes, forcing an earnest tone. "It never was. It's not like I didn't know what you were doing when you went to the war-camps for a week to blow off steam. But with Thunderburst, for the first time, it mattered."

Celestia shifted, sitting back, resettling her wings. Then asked, simply: "Why?"

"I sacrificed my life for you," Clover snapped back, feeling his heart squeeze in his chest. "Once, I thought I traded that for something unique. Thunderburst's the proof I was wrong. I just get what everypony else gets."

Celestia's eyes widened in shock. "That's not true! You're — he —" She broke off, steadying herself and continuing in a calmer tone. "Clover. It was Burry who just got what everypony else who loves me gets. The annoyances, the arguments, the failures. You, though? You're irreplaceable."

"I don't feel like it! Because the instant anything goes the slightest bit wrong, you kick me out for a year!"

"And give us a fresh start!" Celestia made an exasperated hiss. "Why do you do this to yourself? You never actually answered that, back on our trip. Why would you want anything other than the best possible times?"

"Because the bad times," Clover said, "are when love counts."

Celestia didn't answer right away.

She set her jaw, and her eyes flicked away in thought. "No," she finally said. "You're wrong. I've had enough arguments over my lifetime to know that, when I care for somepony, it's not because of the arguments and the tears."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said. It's …" Clover made a vague hoof gesture, then trailed off into a sigh, closing his eyes. "I don't know. Everything's so muddy. My nerves are on edge. I … no. Maybe you're right. I should take some time away." His voice grew faint. "All I know is that I love you. And we've had so many good times together. Wonderful times. Impossible, irreplaceable times. But the good times are breaking my heart."

Celestia said nothing. But her ears drooped.

"I'm sorry," Clover said. "I'll go. I'll come back in a year. I'll try to figure out by then whether I can keep doing this."

"Wait," Celestia said faintly, and tears began gathering in the corners of her eyes. "Will you stay one day before you flip? Just one day. I'll show you around the castle. Tomorrow's the first-ever Summer Sun celebration. They made me a holiday, Clover. They love me. Everypony loves me. I raise the sun for the longest day of the year, and you can hear the cheers from here to Canter Peak." Her voice hitched, and her muzzle contorted with a fear he hadn't seen since before the first time-skip. "Can't — can't you be happy for me, at least?" Her voice dropped to a choked whisper. "Do you love me enough for that?"

Clover looked away, so she wouldn't see the tears which spilled down his own cheeks.

"One day," he mumbled. "I can do that."

Their make-up sex was hesitant and perfunctory. She clung to him, afterward, while he stared at the far wall and tried not to think about the mare in his embrace.

Somehow — without quite understanding how the transition had occurred — Clover found himself aimlessly following Celestia around Everfree Palace. Clover let his blank gaze wander the castle he'd once known, taking in the bizarre extravagance and the strange clothing and the portraits of a thousand unfamiliar faces. She talked about history — so much history. Her tales of her triumphs washed over him like a tide, but it was her expression that kept looking more and more like a drowning pony's.

Celestia occasionally tried to ask him questions. He gave her what were probably good answers or something.

Then something she said drew him back to the present: "— balcony where we switch day and night."

"We?" Clover asked. "Didn't you say you were 'the' Queen?"

"Oh! Yeah. Luna's …" Celestia made a vague hoof gesture. "Backup Queen, kind of. And Imperatrix."

Clover refocused, glancing around. They were in some sort of ballroom, or feast hall, or something. Its floor had recently been refinished with some kind of exotic wood, and a number of sturdy marble tables were scattered around the room, being moved into place for the upcoming holiday. Nothing in it was recognizable, but it still felt familiar in a way Clover couldn't quite place — at least, until he saw a discolored, bulging section on the back wall.

Then he did a double-take at Celestia's words. "Imperatrix?!"

Celestia laughed uneasily. "Funny that she's the war leader now, isn't it? But she said she should have the title now since nobody in the waking world is crazy enough to attack us any more. So she's usually up at weird hours fighting off armies of nightmares or something, and it was easier to split things in half so she rules during the — Oh! Luna! Look, Frumpy's back!"

Clover froze, tracking Celestia's eyes to a point over his shoulders. He slowly turned his head, not daring to breathe.

The sight that met his eyes was a large figure in intimidating black-and-silver battle armor, her mane a living swirl of stars and galaxies to match Celestia's aurora. Luna, too, was stiff and unmoving, her eyes as comically wide as Clover's own, her stare locked with his.

The room went dead silent.

"Luna?" Celestia said.

Luna blinked rapidly, her muzzle dropping open in shock. The corner of her mouth began to twitch.

Then her eyes snapped shut, and she let out an incoherent scream.

It wasn't as loud as the one that had leveled Pansy's house. And it wasn't aimed at him. Nevertheless, Clover was blasted off his hooves, bouncing onto one of the tables and then behind it into cover. Around him, chairs tumbled outward. Even Celestia had to spread her wings for balance, sliding backward several body-lengths.

There was an ugly burst of darkness while Clover was still flailing his way back upright. By the time his ears stopped ringing, Luna was gone, and ominous silence again descended on the room.

Celestia shuffled over to him and cleared her throat uncertainly. "Um."

"I —" Clover started fumbling in his saddlebags for his necklace. "Okay, I really should go."

"No!" Celestia's hoof shot to his chest. "I — she —" She let out a breath through clenched teeth, then gave Clover a rigid smile. "I'll talk to her later, okay? I don't know what salted her drink, but I don't want you worrying about that. Tomorrow's for us."

The sun didn't rise the next morning. Instead, screams and distant rumbles heralded what should have been the dawn.

Clover bolted upright in Celestia's empty bed, and instinct instantly spurred him toward the noise. He paused at the entrance to her room just long enough to grab his saddlebags off her nightstand — then hesitated for a moment longer, remembering his fight with the chaos monster. He had a sinking feeling that this time he wouldn't have the luxury of his opponent waiting for him to improvise.

His mind racing, he fumbled with the Returning Clasp for a bit, then grabbed some pins off the nightstand and pinned the golden cord to the inside of the cloak lining. That accomplished, he threw the cloak on, tightly clasping it all the way shut to wear it like a robe with his bags over the top.

It wasn't much. It would have to do.

Explosions rocked the castle as Clover galloped through the unfamiliar halls. "Celestia!" he screamed in the face of a stampeding noble, and managed to collar the stallion long enough to get pointed toward the new throne room.

But when he reached it, the hall was empty, and it looked like there had already been a fight there. A gaping hole yawned in the back wall — directly behind the shattered remnants of one of the two thrones. Clover realized with a sudden shock that it was Platinum's old throne which lay in pieces; the other one was of a much simpler, newer design, with a small silver moon mounted atop its utilitarian iron back. Whatever blast had shattered the old throne had passed neatly between two circular wall-mounts, each containing three large brightly-colored gemstones, and for a moment he couldn't help but think that if young Celestia had bucked in this room's door she would have destroyed some lovely display pieces.

He was standing there, wondering what to do next, when the ceiling caved in with a terrific roar. Debris exploded past him, one stone winging him on the side of the head, and when his vision cleared he saw a white winged form struggling upright from a new crater in the center of the room.

Celestia! But no sooner had Clover shook off his haze and started galloping forward than she glanced up and flung herself toward the shattered throne. In less than an eye-blink, a dark meteor hurtled through the hole in the roof, and another boom shook him off his hooves. As his body tumbled to a stop near the central crater, a jet-black alicorn-shaped demon rose from it, a sharp and sickly night flowing from its body to pool menacingly into the shadows.

"No more boasts, sister?" it purred, its back to him as it crouched to face Celestia. "Is this pleading all that the Unconquerable Sun is reduced to? Will you at least cease fleeing and face your doom?"

"Luna," Celestia said brokenly. "Stop! I love you. I've always loved you."

"Pathetic," the dark thing sneered. "Keep begging like a dog and I will end you like one."

Clover struggled to stand in silence, heart hammering. Celestia, bleeding in several places, lurched to her hooves as well before falling over again.

Then their eyes met.

Celestia's eyes widened.

In an instant, the demon had spun to face him, hissing. Instinctively, his horn flared to life to blast it with a thaumic bolt, hoping to stagger it long enough to scramble into cover, but a dark limb lashed forward faster than magic could gather. The tip of it barely brushed his neck — and even that was enough to crumple his throat and snap his head back.

Clover tried to wheeze in pain, feeling his lungs silently tighten and stars burst at the corners of his vision. A wave of searing air backwashed from his disrupted spell, and he staggered back. He gasped heavily as that jarring motion reopened his airway, and scrambled backward on leaden legs as the thing-that-was-once-Luna flowed forward on tendrils of night.

"No!" Celestia screamed, launching herself toward the pair, summoning Mister Smashy from the aether and drawing it back for a blow. Without looking, the demon swatted Celestia away with a wave of darkness, sending her rocketing into a corner of the far wall with an impact that shook the building. The already-weakened wall collapsed in on her with a roar, and streaks of shadow shot across the room, splattering against the rubble and causing it to shimmer with a sickly dark sheen.

Clover, too, began spellcasting as Celestia charged — but there was an impossibly fast blur as a shadowy tendril lashed toward his forehead and coiled around his horn. He jerked his head back and the tendril dissipated into smoke, but something still clung to his horn, numbing it and greedily suckling at whatever energy he tried to focus through it.

"And thus ends the battle." Cruel laughter rolled like thunder from a distant storm. "Clover, Clover, party's over. Skipping so far down the river of time only to feed the shadows with your blood."

Clover scrambled backward from its implacable advance. "Luna!" he shouted desperately. "If you're in there — if any part of you still cares for Celestia — then fight this. Please."

The demon snorted. "As hopelessly foolish as ever. A trait I see you infected my sister with. Did you not think I embraced vengeance against a callous sister and an uncaring world?"

Clover, realizing he was backing toward a wall, started angling his retreat. The demon — no, Luna — smoothly glided sideways, boxing him in.

"I'm ever so glad you stayed for this," she said as she closed in. "For the first time in my life I was worried that you might do the sensible thing."

Clover's hoof slipped on a loose stone. He crumpled to the floor, Luna looming over him.

The rubble at the back of the room, which had been erratically shifting, gave a mighty heave, sending a few rocks rattling down from the pile which its dark infection immediately drew back in. "Luna!" Celestia shouted, muffled, from underneath. "Leave him alone! He's no threat. I'll —" her voice broke. "I'll do anything you want."

Luna's face contorted as she looked over her shoulder. "You will suffer!" she shouted. "And that is reason enough to break him!" Clover felt a tendril of darkness caressing his muzzle, and flinched back as the sudden rage drained back away from her voice. "But even if it wasn't," she purred, "I'm afraid my hooves are tied, sister. For in this instance I am but a humble servant of prophecy."

Oh no. Clover's protest died on his lips, and his stomach clenched and twisted. No, no.

"Luna!" Celestia shouted, and the rubble shook and resettled again. "What are you talking about?"

Luna threw back her head and laughed, loud and long. "Oh, me! He never even told you what Star Swirl said." Her laughter subsided into a purring, mocking tone. "'Without the amulet,'" she quoted, "'the mare who loves him will be alone and broken-hearted at the time she needs him most. And with it, the mare who loves him will be alone and broken-hearted at the time she needs him most.'" Her lips split into a sharp, jagged smile. "Because I finally found the correct solution. I ended him as you watched."

"That's not what it meant!" Clover blurted out. "Pansy loved me, once upon a time! And she died without —"

The air suddenly darkened, and something slapped Clover hard across the face. The room spun. When the motion stopped, he was lying cheek to floor, feeling something wet and metallic in his teeth.

"You're a horrible liar," Luna stage-whispered, right in his ear.

Clover yelped and scrambled away. He'd barely moved before a dark fog coalesced around him, and his limbs slowed as if he was wading through molasses.

Luna glided back alongside him. "Do you know how long I agonized over those words?" she purred. "How much I sacrificed to ward off the moment of their arrival, and how many threats to Equestria I removed once I determined I would make my death mean something?" She sneered. "And then I survived Discord, and you perished. I could not believe it! I had cheated fate. So I comforted Celestia, and I made her life perfect in a way nopony else ever could." Something in the darkness seized Clover, and the demon's face appeared in front of his own, its muzzle contorting: "A perfection she threw back in my face the moment you returned!"

There was the sudden sensation of motion as the face vanished back into the fog. Then the stone castle wall appeared inches from his face, and Clover barely had time to flinch before he slammed into it full-on.

"Luna!" Celestia let out a muffled shout from across the room, and the rock burying her shifted as she fought for leverage.

Shadows roughly grabbed Clover before he hit the floor. "After everything I did, she chose a mortal over me!" Luna screamed. The room spun around him for a moment, and the next thing he knew, another wall slammed him to a painful halt. He bounced away and rolled to a dazed stop on the stone floor, trailing tendrils of smoke as the fog pulled back to re-coalesce into an equine form.

For a moment, Clover was shocked that he hadn't been pulverized. She was holding back, he realized. Making sure he suffered.

He barely had time to breathe before Luna was looming over him again. "Did you truly think you could swindle your way out of prophecy? Doomed to fail Celestia in her time of need?" A dozen dark auras shimmered in midair, resolving into spearlike slivers of moonlight, and the spears' wicked points gleamed as they swiveled to face his body. The darkness around him grew teeth and swirled aggressively inward, nipping at his legs and back, numbing his skin. "But now it is all so clear. My own vow once upon a time — 'break her heart, and I will end you' — was itself prophecy. Two separate prophecies in one, and I will fulfill both at a single stroke."

Out of the corner of his eye, Clover saw Celestia finally thrash her head free of the rubble, eyes wide and manic, teeth gritted. She glanced around wildly — then snapped her head toward the gems which had fallen from the wall displays at her impact. Her horn stuttered to uncertain life.

One by one, the rainbow gems began to hover and glow. Whatever it was, it was charging far too slowly.

"Wait!" Clover shouted, looking into Luna's dark, demonic face as the numbness seeped up his legs to his shoulders. Stall. Stall! "You've won, Luna. There's no way I can stand up to an alicorn, let alone whatever you've become. But wouldn't you rather have a satisfying victory?"

Luna sneered, and the spears of light lifted and drew back. "Fool. You would play at bargaining? There is nothing you could offer me that would be sweeter than your long-overdue death."

Clover groped madly in his saddlebag, feeling for the thin golden chain and working his hooftip into its neck-loop to yank it out. Its triangle-in-circle amulet dangled from his hoof in front of her muzzle.

"Admitting how wrong I was," Clover said. Three glowing gems. "Throwing myself at your hooves and begging for the deal you once offered."

Luna hesitated for a long moment. Her eyes strayed to the necklace.

Four gems. They were starting to circle each other, leaving little colored trails that merged into a partial midair rainbow.

Suddenly, Luna's muzzle curled into a toothy scowl. Her horn surged with power. The necklace jerked out of Clover's grasp, and the amulet ripped apart in such an intense shower of golden sparks that he couldn't help but wince.

"A Returning Clasp?" she shouted, flinging the small golden clasp over her shoulder with such force that there was a crack as it left her hornglow, and a pok and puff of dust as it embedded itself into the wall. "Really? Are you truly such a lackwit that your best plan is to insult my intelligence?"

Clover forced himself not to look at the useless shards of gold on the ground — right now, he couldn't let anything but the distraction matter. Five gems!

"I'm afraid so," he said with false calm, shifting his shoulder in a small, apologetic shrug. "But isn't it satisfying to know how pathetic my best is?"

Luna's eye narrowed. "Hardly. Even for you, this is —"

Then she paused, black eyes boring into Clover's. Six!

"A distraction?" Clover said, allowing himself a smile.

The gems' whirling became a six-colored blur, and they descended upon Celestia's buried body. The air in the throne room began to shimmer with harmonic energy. The rubble trembled and discolored into rainbow hues, and a glowing Celestia burst out of the rocks as if they weighed no more than pillows.

And in a single, fluid motion, shadowy tentacles lashed out to grab Clover, yanking him roughly into the demon's embrace. Luna whirled around, thrusting him forward like a shield.

"Hold!" she shouted, a note of desperation at the edge of her voice. "Or you shall regret it!"

Celestia gasped, blank white eyes flying wide. Her shimmering body froze mid-ascent, hovering perfectly still.

The alicorn and the demon stared at each other for a long, silent moment — broken only by Clover's urgent gasp for breath as he managed to wriggle around enough to shift the dark tentacles' iron hold.

Then Luna threw back her head, loosing a hearty cackle. "Wait. Was this your plan?" she crowed, shaking Clover for punctuation. "Break the Elements of Harmony by turning them upon one of their wielders, and in the process, banish your sister and your lover? Oh, this is marvelous! I should beg you to fire! You will suffer more thoroughly than any punishment I could inflict!"

Celestia blinked. "Clover?" she said, voice cracking, and the whirling trails of rainbow circling her form began to wobble. "Luna? I …"

Clover thrashed wildly against his shadow bindings. "Do it!" he screamed, feeling their one chance start to slip away. "Or we're both dead, and Equestria with us!"

"Do it!" Luna hissed with equal intensity, lowering her head next to Clover's and drawing back her lips for a fanged smile. "Send me to the shadows with a plaything to devour piece by piece!"

Celestia flinched and moaned. Her body began to drift toward the floor, and the colors of the rainbow started to separate back into their individual components. Clover's blood froze in his veins.

"Celestia," he croaked, pleading her with his eyes. And then an odd lightness settled in, and every stupid, clever voice in his stupid, clever head sang one thought in unison. He fixed his lover with an intent gaze, and gave her a wry little grin.

"I dare you to do the right thing," Clover said. "Or is the mighty Imperatrix going to back down from a challenge?"

Celestia's descent halted. Her pupilless eyes widened. The shadow gripping Clover went very still.

Then Celestia's lower jaw began to tremble. She slammed her eyes shut, and her horn flared back to life, and she screamed. The Elements of Harmony flared as every last scrap of power she could summon poured into their Harmonic engine, and a brilliant beam of rainbow light burst forth.

"No!" Luna screeched — once, and then again more shrilly — and then any thought of sensation was washed away in the overwhelming power of the Elements.

And when that power slowly faded some time later, and Celestia cracked her eyes open again, the room was empty — save for the shattered pieces of a golden necklace on the ruined floor.

Author's Note

…It is probably worth reminding longtime fans that way back in my very first comment, I noted: "If you've read the original Writeoff version and you think you know exactly how this goes … maybe a few things have changed." We'll see how the ending plays out from here.

One more chapter left! I am *SO* tempted to delay it a day and make everyone scramble to download it at the airport while they're waiting for their flight to Bronycon. But nah — "The Future" will post in the morning, because I am a kind and considerate pony.

Who likes his kneecaps.

12. The Future

There was a faint scrambling noise from outside the throne room, then a grunt, and a quiet rattling as pebbles showered down from a not-quite-solid hoofhold.

Celestia waited.

In the circle of starlight shimmering through the hole in one pitch-black wall, a dark equine silhouette clambered up to all four legs, pausing for a moment to take a breath. It took a step forward and dropped again, letting out a feminine yelp as it faceplanted. A cacophonous skitter suggested a collection of objects spilling to the floor.

The visitor bit back the first syllable of an Earth-dialect curse word, and her silhouette shifted around the lower edge of the starlight, accompanied by the scrape of hooves on floor and the occasional clatter of finding something by touch.

Celestia waited.

There was a loud clack, and a momentary flash as flint sparked on steel. A moment later, light flared up as flame enveloped the rag-wrapped end of a short stick. The other end was clenched in the teeth of a dirt-smeared, white-coated earth pony, whose flattened muzzle and faintly striped legs suggested okapi crossbreeding somewhere in the family tree.

The pony glanced backward at what had tripped her, and her eyes widened. A small section of the broken shaft of a warhammer was embedded deeply in the wall at the edge of the hole, looking like it had been flung with impossible force.

She turned slowly back around, throat muscles tightening as she swallowed, then spit the torch out into the crook of one pastern. "Y-your Highness?" she said, fear thick in her voice as she peered into the darkness.

Celestia waited.

The mare's legs were openly trembling, and she made no move forward. "M-my name is Silver," she said, eyes sweeping through the darkened room. "S-silver Polish. I used to work in Everfree as a maid, but we never really met. I —" Her voice faltered for a moment. "I know you don't like being bothered any more." She forced a smile. "I didn't want to bother you, either, but I drew today's lot, so, um, if you'll just raise the sun, please, I can leave and let you be…?"

Celestia said nothing.

Fear and desperation warred on Silver's muzzle, and she let out a whicker from deep in her throat, hooves rocking in a suppressed little dance. She stilled herself with obvious effort, then forced a smile.

"Please, Your Highness?" she said. "It's a special day today. The first Summer Sun since you saved the world from the Imperatrix. So we'd like to celebrate your —"

A golden glow flared in the center of the darkened throne room, followed by a lightning blur of golden light. Before Silver could even blink, there was a hollow whunk, and a new section of warhammer-shaft was embedded in the wall just past her ear, vibrating fiercely.

"— vic … tory …" she trailed off. A lock of pale blue hair, neatly shorn, drifted down from her mane to the floor.

Silver screamed. She bolted out the hole, dropping the torch as she scrambled and leapt. Celestia said nothing. The torch slowly guttered out.

A few minutes later, there was the sound of cautious motion out in the starlight. "Y-your Highness?" a thoroughly miserable voice said, muffled, from around a corner. "I'm so sorry. But if nopony raises the sun, our crops will fail and we'll start freezing …"

Celestia said nothing.

There was silence from outside, then a choked-back sob. "P-please," Silver whimpered. "I-I can't leave until you do. A-and, um, if I don't come back, t-they'll just send somepony else."

There was a shuddering sob from inside.

Then the throne room was bathed in golden hornglow. Outside, a shadow-darkened moon trembled and slipped below the horizon. The sky lightened, and reddened, and suddenly burst into daylight.

Silver let out a sob of relief. "Thank you, Your Highness!" she shouted, followed by the sound of galloping hooves receding at top speed.

Celestia waited. And, when the noises from outside had faded into the distance, her eyes gradually settled closed, and she returned to the uneasy half-sleep that had tormented her for a year.

Clover emerged with a body-jolting thump into a blinding halo of light.

He went limp until gravity finished having its way with him, settling painfully against something cool and hard. The light lurched around in his vision as he jolted to a stop, but refused to go away. He squinted — wondering for a moment if he was still in the middle of the Harmonic blast, but the glare was too white. Then it occurred to him to consider whether he had died and was orienting to the Ever Upward. But it didn't seem right that the afterlife would welcome him with both throbbing agony in every corner of his body, and the distant, muted sounds of birdcall.

Whatever the situation, there weren't any homicidal shadow demons. That was a plus. So he closed his eyes for a while, and listened to that birdcall while his pain subsided and the light baked off the last lingering tendrils of darkness from his form.

After some time, Clover rolled his head against the hard surface, then finally managed to block the glare by clumsily lifting a hoof to shade his face. As he cracked his eyes open and blinked the spots out of them, straight lines began to resolve in the surrounding dimness: the walls and corners of what had once been Everfree Palace's new throne room.

Slowly, the halo resolved into a shaft of sunlight peeking at a low angle through the giant hole in the ceiling. Clover was centered in that spotlight; a second sunbeam shone through a hole in the back wall with two thin, broken spears embedded in the edge, and that spotlight illuminated the crater in the center of the room where both alicorns had landed during their fight. The rest of the room was lit only indirectly from those sources. No mage-lights shone on the walls. Heaps of rubble had been stacked in front of the doors, blocking every entrance except for the holes. The background sensations of dark magic and Harmonic surge — and the tangy ozone of overwhelming magical discharge — still suffused the room and clung to the back of Clover's throat. That seemed impossible if a full year had passed since the fight, but then, everything about the Everfree had seemed subtly off since his encounter with Discord.

At first Clover thought the room was empty. But then he saw her: A pale form slumped in the center of the crater. What at first had looked like a mound of pebbles was a sprawled wing, white turned grey beneath a layer of dust. Her once-sleek barrel was emaciated and patchily discolored, rising and falling in barely perceptible waves.

Clover's jaw dropped.

He staggered to his hooves, wincing as fresh pain blossomed, and croaked, "Celestia?"

Celestia's head turned toward the voice, eyelids cracking open. Her face was gaunt, eyes red and raw, pupils dead.

She blinked slowly, and her eyes drifted into focus. Then they widened, and she lifted her head, sending dust eddying from the floor.

"Clover?" she whispered through a scratchy throat.

He staggered forward. "I'm here," he said, the moment too big for clever words.

Celestia lunged at him with startling speed, given her appearance. He let out a weak little rattle as she squeezed fractured ribs, and tried not to twitch in pain as she bawled into his shoulder, and waited until the oxygen-deprivation spots began to appear around the edge of his vision before he started smacking her side in their age-old "please ease off the hug" signal.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed the whole while, and Clover finally managed to gently shush her.

Their clinging forms soon sunk to the ground in the crater. It was intensely, supremely uncomfortable — lumpy where it wasn't jagged, and curving at an angle that pressed on all the wrong parts of his spine. Celestia's body was gaunt, hard-edged in all the wrong places, and smelled like a year of bad dirt.

None of that mattered.

Celestia sobbed until her tears were spent, and Clover simply held her — which felt more important than any words they could possibly have exchanged. Gradually, her sobs faded, and her breathing slowed. Silent minutes later, Clover glanced up to see her eyes closed and her mouth half-open. Her chest still occasionally hitched as it slowly rose and fell, but the anguish suffusing her features had receded.

Finally, he let exhaustion take him, too, drifting to sleep as the sun shifted in the sky and left their crater in shadow.

Sunlight from the hole directly overhead stirred them both back awake hours later. Clover nuzzled into Celestia's chest. She clung to him fiercely, hooves wandering in repeated loops over his barrel. He held her, and waited for her to speak.

"I didn't ruin everything," she finally whispered. "You're really here."

Clover gave her a reassuring squeeze. "You did the right thing," he murmured back. "I'm sorry I had no time to explain."

"You're really here," Celestia repeated. "How?"

The corners of Clover's mouth twitched upward. "A time skip, of course. When Luna was finally distracted for a moment, trying to shield against your rainbow blast."

"But …" Celestia said, opening and closing her mouth. She finally managed: "That's impossible."

"No, just very difficult." Clover chuckled, then winced as the chest motion twitched against something cracked. "Ow. … The leech spell she stuck on me is a standard anti-magic technique. It cripples unicorns by removing their ability to focus through their horn. But a trained caster can still throw ridiculous amounts of energy into a raw magic surge, and direct some tiny fraction of it with pure willpower and colossal inefficiency. I watched you teleport that way once."

"You cast a time skip with a raw magic surge? I couldn't do that!"

Clover's eyebrows shot up. "What? Are you kidding? I was lucky I could muster up enough energy for the briefest burst of telekinesis."

"Telekinesis?" Celestia stared at him uncomprehendingly, then blinked. "What good would — wait, your necklace?" Celestia lifted a hoof in the direction of the shattered bits of gold scattered across the floor. "But I watched Luna destroy it."

Clover fumbled with his cloak, undoing the catches and revealing a circular golden necklace with an inset triangle. The real one — not the duplicate Aketi had once made.

"It turns out," he said with a grin, "I used to know a jeweler."

Celestia stared down at the necklace in disbelief.

Then a smile began to spread across her muzzle, and she wheezed out a laugh — which quickly shifted into a hacking cough, doubling her over and causing Clover to wriggle madly to avoid being bent the wrong way.

"You are a miracle," Celestia whispered once she caught her breath.

Clover beamed and kissed her nose. "Only because I've got the example of a goddess to live up to," he whispered back, and snuggled back into her embrace.

He wasn't expecting Celestia's body to go rigid.

Clover pulled his head back, startled. "Celestia?" he said, his heart squeezing at the sudden terror in her eyes. "What's wrong?"

"I —" she said, faltering, and abruptly drew back, sitting up. "I'm sorry. You should go."

"What?" Clover exploded. "For all stars' love, Celestia. Why?"

It would have been hard to argue that the anguish on her muzzle looked worse than when Clover had arrived, but it was certainly a strong contender. "I promised you only the best of me," she whispered, eyes barely holding back tears. "This isn't … I'm not …" Her horn sputtered to life as she trailed off, and the necklace rose from Clover's chest in a shaky golden glow.

Clover yelped and shot a hoof through the amulet's chain, yanking outward as hard as he could. With a brief flash of pain at the back of his neck, the clasp snapped. There was a brilliant shower of golden sparks from the ends of the chain, and the necklace shot away and skittered across the floor.

Both of them turned their heads to stare at the amulet. Then back at each other.

Celestia slowly blinked. Then her eyes widened and her cheeks went pale.

"Oh, no, no, no," she said. "I broke it, I broke it, I —"

Realization hit. Clover's eyes widened.

He lunged in, pressing both forehooves to her muzzle. "Celestia."

She whimpered, ears lowering. Clover stared deeply into her eyes, feeling her lower jaw tremble under his hooves. Then he lowered his legs and gave her a gentle smile.

"You silly, silly mare," he said. "Do you think you just did something wrong?"

"What do you mean? I just ruined everything again!" Celestia said, voice rising as panic set back in. "Now you're going to grow old and die! I'll get upset! We'll have bad times and fights! The necklace is what made us work!"

"No, it isn't," Clover said firmly. "We had those anyway. And the amulet isn't our relationship — merely what brought us to this moment." His voice softened. "When the mare who loves me is alone and broken-hearted. Without it, I have the chance to be here when she needs me the most."

Celestia choked back a sob, standing still on trembling legs. Then her face softened in something very much like awe.

Clover leaned in and clamped his forelegs around her withers, clinging as tightly as he could until she let out a shuddering breath and lunged back in to return the hug.

"Do you remember what I said about when love counts?" he whispered. "I love you, Celestia, and there's no time or place I would rather be."

Celestia let out a long breath, clinging tightly to him and shivering, the tension slowly draining from her shoulders.

"Thank you," she whispered back.

Clover gave her a silent squeeze, closing his eyes and feeling her body against his.

A few moments later, Celestia shifted against him. "No, that's not enough," she murmured. "Because I think I finally understand. You were right. Love — real love — means wanting each other every possible minute. For the good times, to share them. And for the bad times, because you would make any sacrifice to make your lover's bad times better." She sniffled, and her body shook in silent laughter. "I can't give you my best right now. I'm as far from my best as I can get. But having you here makes me want to try." Celestia lowered her muzzle and kissed his forehead. "I love you, Clover. I do love you. But I wasn't loving you when it counted. I want to change that. And I'm sorry that took me so long to realize."

Clover felt tears burst through the dams of his eyelids, and he laughed, and raised his head to return her kiss.

Noises stirred Clover back to consciousness as the shadows outside were getting long. The muffled sounds of hoof-fall, and the rattle of shifting pebbles. A pale head popped up from the lower edge of the hole in the wall, then immediately ducked back into cover.

"Y-your Highness?" a feminine voice hesitantly called from outside.

Celestia stirred, too — looking past Clover, then refocusing her eyes on him, as if even now she couldn't believe he was really there. She gave him a brief squeeze, which he smiled and returned.

The touch seemed to stir something within her, and Celestia lifted her head and cleared her throat. "Hey," she called out in a gravelly voice. "I'm sorry about this morning."

There was no sound from outside for several seconds. Then a wide-eyed head slowly rose to stare into the room, its surprise matching Clover's own.

Celestia, too, rose up — a cloud of dust puffing up around her as she pushed herself upright from the crater and shook out her wings. "You're here for me to lower the sun and raise the moon, right? Even though you thought I was going to kill you last time." She glanced back at Clover. "There must be a pony you really love to make a sacrifice that big."

Silver scrambled up to the rim of the hole, then dropped into a low, trembling bow. Her mane had been cut short and uneven in a crude attempt to compensate for the chunk of hair shorn off by the warhammer shaft. "I-it's for all of Equestria, Your Highness. I drew the lot, and without day and night, there's far more than my life at stake."

Celestia winced at the honorific — and was silent for a moment in thought — but her muzzle ultimately curled into an unsteady smile. "Uh, good! Don't sell yourself short. Being willing to sacrifice yourself for ponykind is the sort of heroism I hear stories about. Equestria needs more ponies like you."

Silver was briefly silent. Then she risked a glance up. Her eyes met Clover's for a moment, and confusion registered, but she quickly turned her gaze back to Celestia. "… Thank you, my Queen?"

This time, Celestia's ears flattened. "No," she said softly. "Not your Queen. Never again Queen. I got so caught up in being on top of the world that I didn't realize how badly I was rutting everything up. And until a few hours ago I —" her voice hitched — "I … was scared I'd ruin the whole world the same way I ruined everything I ever cared for. I'm sorry."

Silver considered for a moment, opened her mouth to speak, then hesitated. Instead, she bowed her head again.

Celestia's horn blazed at full intensity for a moment. The shadows outside lengthened, then spread as the sun dipped below the horizon, then lightened fractionally as a dull, darkened moon rose. Celestia's horn stayed lit, and soon, the throne room's magelights stuttered to damaged, flickering life.

Then she stepped forward to Silver. "Whoever sent you here," Celestia said, "tell them there's no need to draw lots tomorrow. I'll raise the sun." She fidgeted as Silver gasped, then glanced back at Clover to smile gamely. "I've never done well with the bad times, but it's time I started trying."

"That's," Silver stammered. "I-I can't tell you how much that will mean to us all. Thank you, Your Highness."

"Celestia."

"… Celestia." Silver angled her head even further down, and took a step back toward the hole — but paused, then made no further move to leave.

Celestia stared back uncertainly, then frowned. "Is something wrong?"

"Not … with what you just said, no." Silver swallowed, then shakily stood. "I'm so sorry, Your… Celestia. This is rude beyond belief. But you said I was a hero because I asked you for help when the world was at stake. And … I think that means I need to do it again."

Celestia's eyebrows raised. "What do you mean?"

"You already do more for us than we have any right to ask for. You saved us from the Im— the Nightmare — and you move the sun and moon." Silver's ears swiveled back. "But there are monsters in the forests, and raiders on the borders, and nobles and warlords fighting each other for the scraps in between. To be blunt, Your Highness, Equestria needs more than sunlight. We need you back. Now more than ever."

Celestia looked away for a long while. Then she glanced out at the shadow-darkened moon.

"Not back," she finally murmured, lowering her head. "You deserve better than that." She drew in a deep breath, then let it out again and straightened up. "But … a wise pony just taught me that the most important thing is being there for the bad times. And it looks like I'm not the only one who spent the last year convinced everything was ruined forever." She let out a pained laugh. "After everything I've done, I owe it to you to fix what I can."

Silver's eyes filled with tears. Her jaw started quivering. Then, suddenly, she lunged in for a hug, clinging to Celestia. "Thank you," she sobbed, over and over. "Thank you."

Celestia lifted a hoof to awkwardly pat her withers, giving Clover a wry smile, then said, "Go let the others know. I'll fly out tomorrow morning. We'll talk."

Clover watched Silver gallop away, then walked up to Celestia and leaned his head to her shoulder.

"I'm proud of you," he said. "And you really should think about what she said. If the world's that bad off, Equestria will need a leader."

"No," Celestia said firmly. "All this happened because I was Queen."

"Celestia, I know what I just heard," Clover said gently, "and I promise you, in my professional opinion as a royal advisor, that they're never going to find a better ruler than a pony who wants to listen and fix things."

She stared into his eyes. Clover smiled.

Celestia nuzzled his cheek. "I'll think about it," she said softly.

"Princess," the pegasus said with a crisp salute, "I bring word from General Firefly. The Western Protectorates recognize your rightful rule, unconditionally cease hostilities against the Everfree Fiefdoms, and pledge allegiance to a reunified Equestria." He bowed low. "Welcome back, Your Highness."

Clover smirked. "Told you."

Celestia stuck her tongue out at him, then nodded to the messenger. "Tell him we'll be looking forward to his visit here to Canter Peak. We —" She hesitated for a moment, then clarified. "That's the 'all of us' we, not the royal we. This time, everypony's going to sit down from the start and figure out how to work together again. 'Cause I already lived through one Unification, and this time, we're gonna skip the part where the big problems don't get brought up until a generation later."

Celestia watched the messenger spin and leap off the cliff, tracking his form as he flapped past the teams of mages and weatherponies who were still — four weeks after their arrival — working in round-the-clock shifts to tame Canter Peak's skies. Only after he vanished into the storms did she let out a breath, yanking the tiara from her head and rubbing her eyes with a hoof.

"Gah, telling ponies how to fix things is so tiring," she muttered. "I'm supposed to be out there doing the bucking."

"Save that impatience for King Guto," Clover said. "The way talks are going, you're likely going to have to beat some sense into him. And when you leave to lead the army, we don't want the clouds rolling back in and undoing all our work. The more experience these ponies get by then, the less effort we waste."

"I know," Celestia grumbled. "It's just … nnnngh!" Clover's world suddenly shaded gold, and he hurtled through the air alongside Celestia as she trotted toward the storage building that had once been the only structure on the mountain. "Busy for a bit! Princess time!" she shouted as she yanked Clover inside, slamming the door.

Celestia's form was decidedly less tense as they snuggled together afterward, Clover noted. But she was still staring out into space in a way he wasn't certain any distraction could erase.

"What's on your mind, lover?" he murmured, nuzzling her shoulder.

"Mmm?" she grunted, her eyes refocusing. Then she sighed and laid back, sprawling out on the straw mattress they'd set up for old times' sake.

"Luna," Celestia said. "Fixing things was always her job. I just … you think you get used to seeing shadows on the moon, and you think you get used to a world without her, and then a reminder of her still blindsides you, you know?" She let out a much longer, deeper sigh. "I failed her most of all."

"So did I." Clover sighed too. "I keep thinking, if I had talked to you about the prophecy earlier, or tried harder to make up with her …"

"If I had listened." Celestia's voice was quiet. "If I hadn't taken her for granted. If I'd put more effort into making her equal to me, instead of a substitute me. There are so many signs I should have seen over the past few decades."

Clover gently stroked her side. "I wasn't there for that. What happened?"

"A lot." Celestia looked away. "I'll … tell you later, okay?"

"Alright," Clover said. "And when you do, I'll tell you about the wonderful beings who helped me get less broken after I failed Pansy. And we'll figure out if there's anything we can do to fix this — and if not, how we can learn from our mistakes."

They held each other in silence.

"I'm sorry," Celestia finally said. "I've got the entire rest of my life to have regrets in. I shouldn't be wasting your time with them."

Clover gave Celestia a kiss on the base of her perfect alabaster throat, running a hoof through the otherworldly aurora of her mane.

"We'll always have regrets," Clover murmured. "Regrets are part of life. But we'll still have time enough for love."

A few weeks later, Clover was directing the team of ponies hanging tapestries in the newly finished Canterlot throne room when an ear-shattering boom split the air. Two tons of iron-plated wooden door sailed out from the doorway, bouncing across the marble floor and coming to rest against the steps of the broad throne dais.

Every pony in the Great Hall froze statue-still, then swiveled their heads toward the projectile's source. Clover sighed and turned around, a gentle smile plastered on his muzzle.

"My name," a deep baritone voice thundered, "is Prince Gruntwig of the Great Yak Kingdoms! I have laid low eight gryphons with a single blow, wrestled the Arimaspi until he cried, and evicted the Lord of the Frostdrakes from his cave!" Gruntwig's gaze swiveled around the room, then fixed in on Clover, and a burly hoof shot forward. "You! Stories have reached yak lands of the tiny little pony who won a drinking contest for the sun! Now the mightiest of the yaks challenges you, to see if you can keep it!"

Chaos erupted as Gruntwig stomped the floor for emphasis, tossing back the braids of his shaggy brown mane and swaggering into the room. Earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn alike all screamed and galloped for the nearest exit — except for Clover, and one small white figure with faded stripes.

Silver galloped up to Clover and poked his shoulder. "Get the Princess?" she whispered.

Clover smirked. "Oh, yes, get the Princess," he murmured back as Gruntwig strode up. "She wouldn't miss this for the world."

Then he dipped his head to the yak in a casual bow. "A drinking contest, eh?" he said. "You've certainly caught my interest. But what makes you think you have a chance against me?"

Gruntwig's blunt face contorted with pride. "Look at the frail little pony!" he bellowed. "This yak has endurance to make the stars themselves tremble! He can drink four hundred tankards and still stand up from the table!"

Clover lifted his eyebrows. "Four hundred! That's certainly worth bragging about. For, you know." He waved a dismissive hoof. "Normal beings."

Gruntwig's eyes widened. His nostrils flared. "Bring us tables!" he shouted. "Bring us tankards and your weak thaw-lands drinks! We will see if the little pony can live up to his boasts!"

Clover straightened up. "What kind of weakling do you take me for!" he shot back, putting his hoof to his chest in mock outrage. "I'll drink you and your ancestors under the table! Just as soon as … well, you know." He gave Gruntwig an apologetic shrug. "Surely, you're aware that a competitor at my level can't take challenges from just anyone. First, there's a tiny formality. A simple test to make sure you're worthy."

"Ha!" Gruntwig bellowed. "A yak fears no mere test!"

"Marvelous!" Clover said, gesturing toward the doorway — where Princess Celestia had just galloped in, wings flared, Mister Smashy at the ready. "It's simple. Merely outdrink the mare who lost to me."

Celestia blinked.

Then her eyes lit up, and the peal of her laughter echoed throughout the castle.

Author's Note

THE END

1. The Challenge

Clover was approaching Queen Platinum's throne to deliver his usual Sunday morning report when an ear-shattering boom split the air, and five tons of iron door shot past his shoulder.

The thick stone wall just to the left of the throne exploded as the door hurtled through it. Every pony in the Great Hall froze statue-still, then swiveled their heads toward the projectile's source.

"My name," a voice thundered from the tall white mare in the doorway, "is Celestia Invicta, Slayer of the Dragon Legions, Tamer of Tartarus, Imperatrix of the Tribes. And alla you prancers better clear on out, cause you're raising the sun too rutting early, and 'sabout time I showed you how it's done."

Chaos erupted as Celestia tossed back her disheveled pink mane and swaggered into the room. Nobles and servants alike screamed and galloped for the nearest exit. Platinum remained frozen on her throne, terrified eyes locked with the intruder, her face a blank mask. The royal guards, to their credit, huddled into a semblance of a defensive line, backing slowly toward the throne in time with the war goddess' casual advance.

The smart thing to do would have been to join the stampede, Clover thought as he leapt up the steps toward his queen's side. But they didn't call him Clover The Clever because he was smart.

Platinum's eyes flicked toward him. "What's she doing here?" she hissed through clenched teeth. "I thought the alicorns were with the army reclaiming the Great Southern Forest from the Diamond Kingdoms."

"That is curious," Clover murmured back. He narrowed his eyes, taking in every detail of Celestia's approach. Her steps were coming down wide, and her hinds were swaying hypnotically, accentuating the barrel-sized warhammer strapped to her back. A lopsided smile hung on her muzzle — not one of the predatory ones they saw every time she faced her foes, but a self-satisfied smirk.

Clover frowned. "The more so that she'd launch a coup without her sister," he whispered.

One of the guards stumbled as he retreated, falling to the floor and quickly scrambling back to his hooves within range of Celestia's weapon. She halted — ah, and there was that predatory smile. She slowly raised a forehoof, curling a pastern over the warhammer's handle, her body teetering toward the lifted hoof until she took a little half-step to compensate. "Finally," she said, drawing out the f a touch too long. "Mister Smashy has been looking forward to a workout."

Her slurred speech, her near-stumble, her disheveled appearance, her odd belligerence: Ah, that explains it, Clover thought. An idea began to brew, and before self-preservation could stop him, he lit his horn in an amplification spell and took a step forward. His shoe came down with a crack that would have been impressive in any other circumstance, and he boomed in his deepest voice: "Hold!"

Every head in the room — including Celestia's — swiveled to Clover as he strode down the steps of the dais. The guards scurried past him to huddle around Platinum's throne. "Most honored Imperatrix," he continued, "let us not raise arms against innocent ponies when this dispute can be settled with a contest of champions."

Celestia blinked, tilted her head, scrutinized Clover's simple burlap robes, then looked around the hall. "Okay, I'll bite. Where is she?"

"… that would be me, Imperatrix."

There was silence for a moment as she digested this, then Celestia threw back her head in a room-shaking laugh. "Oh, sweet stars, that's a good one. Who are you? Frumpy-Clothes, the court jester?"

Clover stood a little straighter. "They call me Clover the Clever," he said solemnly. "Melter of Windigos, Co-Discoverer of the Fires of Friendship, Lord High Magister of the Platinum Court, and the sharpest wit of the Three Tribes."

Celestia strode forward, closing the gap between them with two steps, and sized him up. Then she poked him in the chest. Clover staggered back — the air rushing from his lungs — and barely managed to keep his hooves.

Celestia's smile fell away. "Sending a colt to do a mare's job, Platinum? Really?" She exhaled an exaggerated sigh, and a wave of alcohol curled his nose-hairs. "I have no idea how I could possibly make this a fair match. How about I loan you Mister Smashy, blindfold myself, and only hit you with my left back knee?"

Perfect. The last piece of his plan fell into place, and Clover couldn't quite keep a smirk from spreading across his muzzle. "Who said I was here to fight you, Imperatrix? To defend unicorns' right to rule the sun and moon, I challenge you to a drinking contest."

The alicorn's eyes lit up.

In a single fluid motion, she whipped a foreleg down on the handle of the warhammer, catapulting it into midair. A shimmering gold field snatched it from the top of its arc, sending it rocketing downward like a bolt of lightning. With a boom that made Clover flinch, the hammer landed between them, leaving a crater in the hall's marble floor. Celestia lifted both forelegs, crossing them over the handle of the hammer, then set her grinning muzzle atop her legs.

"Challenge accepted, Frumpy," she said.

Queen Platinum shot Clover a glare nearly as lethal as the war-goddess. Clover gave her a single, slow wink in return. "One table, every tankard in the castle, and an ocean of the Three Tribes' strongest cider," he shouted, and Platinum grudgingly raised a hoof, sending servants scurrying throughout the castle.

"Never had a unicorn challenge me to a drinking contest before," Celestia said as the proceedings were being arranged, throwing a hoof around Clover's withers. "Usually it takes an Earther to be dumb enough to think they're in my league."

Clover wheezed, squirming one shoulder out of her vise-grip to open up his windpipe. "If you have never drunk with a unicorn, Imperatrix, then you have never had a real challenge," he said gravely. "In my diligent study of the arcane, I have mastered secrets of the self, shielding my wits from the ravages of alcohol with mental techniques unknown in the toughest earth-pony bars."

Celestia's head swiveled to his. There was a dangerous twinkle of excitement in her eyes. "Really?"

"Indeed," Clover said, "and I aim to prove it. The world's hardiest earth pony could consume, what, a hundred tankards of cider at a sitting? By what margin do you think you could outdrink her? Two hundred tankards? Five hundred?" He leaned in. "Eight hundred?"

"Pfah, do you think your boasts can intimidate me? I outdrank the Lord of the Dragons once! Try a thousand!"

"Well!" Clover examined a hoof. "I'm certain that I'm twice the drinker that an earth pony is. So you'll merely need a nine-hundred-tankard head start for us to be fairly matched."

Celestia's expression tried to contort three different ways at once.

"And never let it be said that the mighty Imperatrix would back down from a fair challenge," Clover said. "Am I right?"

The midnight-blue alicorn kicked several stray tankards out of the way, circled the warhammer-crater, and calmly stepped over Celestia's loudly snoring form. The silence this time was tense rather than terrified. The whispers began when she approached Platinum's throne, head bowed low.

"I beseech thy pardon," Luna said in the Earth dialect used within the court to signal humility and contrition — and out of all the strangeness of the day, to hear such words from the mouth of an immortal was the strangest of all. "My sister hath o'erstepped her bounds. On behalf of the Alicorn Tribe, I would fain reaffirm the Tribal Accords and honor thy place as true custodian of the skies."

Platinum glanced sideways at Clover, then laughed uneasily. "The absolution thou seek'st," she said in the same dialect, "is matched only by Our unending gratitude for the countless blessings thou hast brought the Tribes, o Lighter of Stars. It is not meet for thee to abase thyself to Us or Our ponies."

"Thou art too gracious." Luna left her head down for another long moment, but when she brought it back up, there was the hint of what might have been a smile on her muzzle. "I heard the guards' whispers about the challenge on my way in," she said in Unicorn. "I should like to meet the pony responsible."

"Clover," Platinum said, and gestured him forward.

Luna turned to Clover, and her eyes flicked appraisingly around his form. Despite the lack of malice in her words, Clover suppressed a shiver. When Celestia had looked at him, he had felt like a sparring dummy being analyzed for weak spots — but there was no subtlety to her intentions, and a predictable threat was one you could sidestep and redirect. With Luna, though, the way she stared gave up nothing in return.

Luna finally seemed to satisfy herself, and nodded. "I am curious," she said conversationally. "How many tankards did she drain?"

Clover bowed low. "Well, o Lighter of Stars —"

"I do not think we should waste time on formalities," Luna interrupted. Despite the mildness of her voice, it didn't feel like a suggestion. "If you bested one alicorn, surely you can speak to another as an equal."

Clover blinked and jerked back upright. Not even Platinum got away with discarding alicorn titles.

"M-my apologies," he stammered. "… Luna."

Luna tilted her head in silence at him. Clover tugged at the collar of his robe, wondering if he'd overreached — then remembered her hanging question.

"Ah. Tankards, yes. Nine hundred and seventy-three." He considered, then decided he might as well go for broke with the conversation-as-equals thing. "I must admit, I figured that even reaching her 900-mug head start was impossible."

Luna let out a short, sharp chuckle before her muzzle settled back into flat solemnity, and Clover's adrenaline receded. "Many have underestimated my sister," she said. "Once. I am the one who comes out from her shadow to clean their pieces from the floor."

Clover gave her a disarming smile. "You quite nearly did. A lesser pony would have made the acquaintance of Mister Smashy when he reversed the count at 700."

At that, Luna snorted, a hoof leaping to her muzzle to cage a grin while she struggled to re-leash it.

She coughed, then, and glanced around the room. A blue glow encircled Celestia, the warhammer, the massive door that eight ponies were lugging across the hall, and the pile of wall-rubble that had been assembled near the hole, lifting them all at once. The door sailed smoothly across the room as its damaged frame distorted and straightened, and the scrap-metal of the hinges glowed and reshaped into rods, sliding silently back into position. Simultaneously, the rubble shaped itself into a slab and slid back into the wall, small streams of mortar showering down as its edges wedged in. Amid the midair dance, Celestia and her weapon floated to a point behind Luna's shoulder.

"By your leave, Your Majesty," she said, then turned her head back to Clover. "Clover, was it?"

"Yes, Ligh—" Clover caught himself. "Luna."

"Know that this day you have earned the undying gratitude of …" Luna paused mid-sentence, then studied him anew, an odd expression crossing her muzzle. "Hold. Clover, Melter of Windigos, known by the epithet 'the Clever'?"

Clover blinked, sudden unease gnawing at his gut. Being recognized by an alicorn should have been a mark of incalculable prestige, let alone their completely unprecedented conversation, but there was something odd about the way she said it. "… Yes?"

"Well, well." Luna's expression relaxed back into a blank mask again, but she bowed — bowed! — to him. "Clover, the brilliance of your deceit has saved my dearest sister from walking a foolhardy road cobbled in misery and maregild. I believe I owe a great recompense. And I believe I am in possession of a gift uniquely suited." Her speech shifted back into the Earth dialect. "Wilt thou walk with me, that I may share a story which someday might aid thee in out-clevering a similar misery?"

Clover opened and closed his mouth, finally at a complete loss. He glanced at Platinum, who gave him a pointed look and nodded. Clover swallowed and nodded, too. Luna turned without another word and began strolling out of the hall. Clover blinked, then trotted to catch up.

The two of them moved through the keep in silence, a rag-doll Celestia hovering alongside. Clover ignored the whispers, and focused on hustling to keep up as gracefully as possible with Luna's longer stride. They passed through the gates and some distance down a path into the surrounding woods. Then, without warning, Luna halted, looked around — presumably to make certain they were alone — and fixed him with an intent stare.

"I have good reason to believe," she said quietly, "that you are a student of Star Swirl the Bearded's."

A tiny part of Clover wondered when the day was going to stop getting weirder.

He took a long, shaky breath. "Setting aside how absurd that accusation should be, considering that history's greatest unicorn died a century before my birth," he said, "I'm … not entirely certain that I can deny it."

Luna nodded silently, gestured with a head-tilt toward the path, and began walking again. Clover fell in alongside her, bit his lip, then decided to go for broke.

"I've … hallucinated him, a few times," Clover said. "Or at least that's what I've always assumed. Occasionally — when I was close to a major spellwork epiphany — a figure who was the spitting image of the old coot has suddenly appeared over my shoulder, said something cryptic to riddle me in the right direction, and then vanished again before I could react.

"And then — a few days before Cookie, Pansy and I discovered the Fires of Friendship — I woke up to somepony shuffling around near my desk. Star Swirl's silhouette. I scrambled out of bed, hoping to confront him, but by the time I lit the magelights, he was gone. The only sign of his visit was that three books had been moved from my shelf to the reading-stacks on my table.

"While I was refiling them, I started wondering why he'd do something so bizarre … and then thinking about what the three books had in common … and that's what led to me creating the spell which I used to harness the fires." Clover took a long breath. "But I've never told a soul, because I thought nopony would be crazy enough to believe me. How did you know?"

"It is therein which lies my tale," Luna said.

"… Go on."

Luna walked in silence for a moment — her shining silver peytrals coming down in the Everfree's deadfall with the whisper of dreams. "Before I say anything," she finally said, "you must understand. A century ago — after the Calamity and before the Three Tribes' cessation of open warfare — it was a dark and bloody time full of regrets. I shall not speak freely of it, even for you.

"But lights within the deepest darkness shine all the brighter for their surroundings. One such was Star Swirl. When the Calamity scattered the alicorn herd to the six stellar poles, and two fillies yet to reach apotheosis were abandoned here to die, he saved them and raised them as daughters and as students."

"Yes," Clover said, "that was mentioned in my magical histories — although, at the time, the part about you two was thought to be a legend." His own hooves landed with clumsy crunches of leaves. "If what I've heard is true, it was right when you got your Marks that he vanished without a trace?"

"True," Luna said, "but irrelevant to my tale."

Clover tilted his head inquisitively. "How? I was there when you showed up at the Tribal Accords. I heard some of the rumors of your search for your father." He hesitated for a moment, but pressed on without giving Luna a chance to reply. "Normally I'd feel it wasn't my place to ask, but … isn't this conversation hurtling straight toward the fact that Star Swirl somehow is still alive, a century beyond his normal lifespan?"

Luna walked on for several steps. "That is, I believe, a tale for another time," she finally said. "Because the fact is, my suspicion of your tutelage came not from the modern era, but from something he said in my youth."

Clover's eyebrow shot upward, and the other quickly joined it. "You have my undivided attention."

Luna nodded, apparently satisfied.

"One night," she said, "early in our teenage years — when he was tutoring us in the ways of magic — I found myself struck by insomnia, and took a walk while Celestia was sleeping. There was a light in Star Swirl's workshop, and I entered to investigate. He was at his workbench, casting an enchantment I did not recognize into a small amulet of gold.

"It was simple in design, a circle inset with an inscribed triangle. 'What's that?' I asked him.

" 'A very special present,' he replied. 'Another student of mine, who's too clever for his own good, someday is going to fall madly, impossibly, dangerously in love.'"

Clover smiled unsteadily. "That first bit might sound like me, I'll admit."

Luna turned her head and fixed him with an inscrutable stare for a moment before continuing.

"I asked Star Swirl," she said, " 'What does the amulet do?' And he simply winked at me.

"But I had always been quite the curious filly, and had learned that that manner of non-answer meant I was asking him the wrong question. So I asked, 'Why are you making the amulet?'

"He nodded at that. 'Because cleverness won't be enough,' Star Swirl told me. 'Without the amulet, the mare who loves him will be alone and broken-hearted at the time she needs him most. And with it, the mare who loves him will be alone and broken-hearted at the time she needs him most.'"

Clover slowly blinked. "… Did I hear you right?"

"That was the question I myself asked," Luna said. "By then, I was well used to his riddles, but even so …" She shook her head. "When he repeated the prophecy, I told him, 'That's stupid. What good is it, then?'

"Star Swirl smiled in that knowing way that meant the conversation was over, and said, 'Oh, it's quite stupid. But they don't call him clever because he is smart.'"

Four days later, Clover was discussing merchant tax receipts with Platinum when a boom echoed through the Great Hall. The re-hung iron door bulged inward, tilted, and fell, and by the time it had hit the carpet, the stampede toward the side doors had already begun.

Oh no, not again, Clover thought as Celestia sauntered through the hall. This time, the pink aura of her well-brushed mane had a streak of blue war-paint dyed in, and she was in full battle regalia, her breastplate and chausses gleaming with reflected light. Clover's heart stopped when he saw her stride — this time, the sway of her hips was narrow and precise.

Guards shuffled forward into a reluctant half-circle around her. Celestia gave them a menacing smile, not breaking stride, and the circle widened. Platinum frowned, assessing her advance, then raised one hoof and flicked it sideways. The circle gratefully scrambled to reform into two lines, escorting Celestia toward the throne.

She came to a stop at the head of the stairs, and a hush deeper than the bowels of Tartarus settled over the room.

"So," Celestia said, "my sister ordered me to come and apologize for trying to take the sun off your hooves, or something. But on my way here I realized two things." She shifted her hoof to the handle of her warhammer — as the guards' horns lit and a dozen swords immediately leveled themselves at her — but she merely nudged it with the inside of her leg, causing the weapon to roll off her back and land with a heavy crash on the floor. "One, what you care about ain't actually an apology, it's making sure I don't do it again. And two, Frumpy there did a heck of a job cheating me out of the sun."

Clover briefly wondered whether apologizing would help. Not that it mattered — his throat felt like he'd swallowed a block of ice.

"Now, I've gotta admit he tricked me fair and square, and I ain't ever been beaten in a fair fight before," Celestia continued, stepping forward and towering over the seated Platinum. "So I'm gonna make you a deal. I'll swear three oaths, by hoof and wing and horn, by all the power of my tribe, that I won't ever take the sun from your bloodline. And in exchange —" she pointed at Clover — "I get him."

Platinum wordlessly opened and closed her mouth several times.

Feeling the situation rapidly slipping away, and feeling very un-clever for once, Clover swallowed and managed to squeak words out: "What are you going to do to me?"

Celestia locked eyes with him, her mouth curling into a predatory grin. Her horn lit.

Clover slid across the dais toward her, his body encased in a golden glow, his hooves scrambling for purchase against the marble. Celestia whipped her hooves around to the back of his head, yanking him in, and clamped her muzzle to his.

"Mmmmmf!" Clover said, trying to inhale and finding only tongue. A burning sensation spread through his lungs as he struggled for air. Long seconds later, when Celestia released him, he crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath.

Heat rose to his cheeks as he tried to process the situation, staring in disbelief at the Imperatrix's sculpted form and the smirk on her lips. What had just happened? He had cheated the Tribes' war-goddess out of a coup. And she had kissed him.

Nope, he thought as his heart began to pump a bewildering stew of confusion, terror, and lust through his leaden chest. It made no more sense in hindsight.

"We accept," Platinum said far too eagerly, then glanced at Clover apologetically and added: "On one condition. Clover the Clever is no trophy to barter, but a pony. If you desire his companionship, you must win his heart as any suitor would. The only recompense We may offer for thy oath is Our blessing for that attempt."

A smile slowly inched up Platinum's muzzle, and Clover's heart stopped again.

"But never let it be said that the mighty Imperatrix would back down from a fair challenge," Platinum said. "Are We correct?"

Author's Note

THE RIDE BEGINS! I have done my best to make this worth the three-and-a-half-year wait.

New chapters will be posted daily until Bronycon!