Before Dark

Chapters

3:37 PM - Reunion
5:14 PM - Truth
5:29 PM - Stupidity
5:41 PM - Food
6:21 PM - Rural
6:48 PM - Beauty
7:11 PM - Water
7:43 PM - Dinner
8:07 PM - Interim
8:39 PM - Summit

3:37 PM - Reunion

I don’t know what I felt when I saw Aegis in the farmer’s market that afternoon. Joy. Anger. Sadness. Hatred. Elated. Flat-out peeved. All those. None of those. It’d been a while, and I’d half-forgotten him, but… well, half-forgotten is still half-remembered. And I remembered waiting for hours on that empty train station platform all those years ago, hoping he would show up. But he never did.

And here he was now.

He looked much the same. More fit than he had a right to, considering he was supposed to be an artist now. He didn’t look royal guard fit, but still better than most. I guess old habits die hard. But his mane was hanging looser and longer than it had before, and he had a bluish tinge of stubble around his mouth and on his chin. If he was trying to grow a beard and/or mustache, it wasn’t working. Of course, he’d said he had trouble growing his facial hair out, right?

Sweet Celestia. How could I remember something that inane? That was almost five years ago.

Aegis pushed his way out of the crowd and kind of flopped up next to my produce stand. He attempted to grin, but it looked more like he was paralyzed. Somehow, the thing on his face that remotely resembled a grin looked sad. I wasn’t sure whether I was sympathetic or not.

“Hey,” he said quietly. And that was it.

Really? Really? That was really all he could say after… after everything? That was what one side of me screamed, anyway. The other side screamed that I should be thankful he was here to say that much. And what else was there to say right now? Apologies could wait until we’d gotten more settled in or whatever.

“Hey,” I said flatly. I kept my face as expressionless as possible. “You looking for something in particular?” I swept a foreleg across my wares.

Aegis blinked. “Don’t you… don’t you recognize me?” he asked quietly. “It’s me, it’s-”

“Welded Aegis. Took me, Bluebell, on a quiet whirlwind night through a carnival and Luna Pier almost five years ago. Agreed to meet me at the train station the next year.” I paused, even though he knew what was coming next. Let him squirm. “That was four years ago. You’re late.” I managed to keep my voice emotionless throughout that, until that last sentence. I couldn’t keep a little bit of accusation from creeping into my words. “So are you looking for something to eat?”

“I’m looking for you, Bluebell, I-” Aegis twitched and jumped an inch into the air, then buried his face in his hooves. “Oh, Luna, not to eat. Nothing like that.” His voice turned into a mutter as he kept talking. “Oh, Cadance, why did I say that?”

I couldn’t help but grin slightly. That was Aegis, alright.

But then, that was the same Aegis who had stood me up after I’d waited a year. My grin dropped. “Seriously. What do you want?”

“I…” said Aegis. “I want…” He took a deep breath through his nose and said, “I want to try again. I, I know I should’ve showed up all those years ago, but it’s, I-”

“But you didn’t.” I didn’t want to hear his excuses. He hadn’t shown up. That was that.

“Well, I-”

“You didn’t.”

Aegis flattened his ears and stared at the ground. “No.”

“So why now?”

“It’s…” Aegis raised his head back up. “That night was one of the most memorable nights of my life. One of the magic moment, once-in-a-lifetime things. I know we said we didn’t believe in soul mates, but… There’s just something about you, Bluebell. Something that makes me want to know you more. I, I haven’t met anypony like you since then, and I’m not sure I ever will. I just want to get to know you, like I should’ve done four years ago.” He tried to grin hopefully, but it came out closer to a grimace.

It seemed genuine, but it was hard for me to tell. It had that little… spark that was hard to fake, but at the same time, why hadn’t he shown up four years ago? “Not a bad speech,” I said flatly. “You write that up beforehoof or something?”

“No!” yelled Aegis. He snorted and flicked his tail. “I didn’t-” He stiffened and took a few deep breaths. “Bluebell,” he said in a slightly calmer voice, “I just-”

“Can you get a move on? You’re holding up the line.” I pointed behind him, at the slowly growing line of customers. Everypony looked incredibly self-conscious about being near the arguing couple and doing everything they could to make it look like they definitely weren’t listening in.

Aegis looked behind him and twitched. “Sorry, sorry,” he said quickly to them. “Just, one more second, okay?” He turned back to me and spoke quickly. “Fine. Bluebell, do you want to try to pick up where we left off? Yes or no?”

I tried to think fast, but it was quickly derailed by business anxiety and holding up my regulars. I groaned and slapped my hooves on the counter of my cart. “Look, Aegis. I’m working right now, okay? I barely have any time. I’ll be done in like half an hour, so… so just…” I ran my hoof through my mane. Accept him back or not? I’d kind of moved on, but… that wasn’t really working out. “If you really want to talk, just, just go find a bench or something on the edge of the courtyard and wait there, okay? I’m busy.” I glared at him.

He recoiled slightly and opened his mouth, but after a second’s pause, all he said was, “See you then, then.” He half-grinned, then quickly turned and vanished into the crowd.

I sighed and ruffled my mane as the next customer walked up, looking everywhere but me. Was this really the best idea? I still kind of wanted him, but I was half-taken, but, but, but… Well, if he was serious, I’d see if he’d wait.

Especially since I was going to be done in an hour and a half.

5:14 PM - Truth

Aegis was still there when I closed my stand down. Sitting on an out-of-the-way bench, staring at his hooves, waiting patiently. Good or bad? I didn’t know where to begin.

He didn’t look up as I approached. He probably didn’t hear me in the rest of the crowd. I waited a minute for it to clear out a little more, then cleared my throat. “Hey.”

Aegis’s ears promptly shot up and he raised his head. He smiled for a moment, and… Well, it was one of those earnest, genuine smiles it’s impossible to fake. Pure joy. Part of me poked me in the brain, reminding me that there was a possibility he had a good reason for not showing up. It was annoying.

“Hey,” Aegis said as he climbed off of the bench. “I… I guess I kinda deserved that.” He said it sheepishly, but also with acceptance. I didn’t know whether that made me feel better or worse.

“That’s one way to put it,” I said flatly. “Coming back out of the blue after five years.”

“I-it’s not like that!” he protested. “Bluebell, I-”

“Look, Aegis, I waited a year to see you again. Then, when the day finally came, I waited for hours on that platform, hoping to Canterlot you’d be there on the next train. But whenever the next train arrived, it didn’t have you. I- It-” The words caught in my throat. “So all I gotta say is you better have a really good reason for not showing up.”

“I was attending my grandfather’s funeral.”

…

I blinked. My cheeks started glowing. “…Oh.” That was a really good reason, to say the least. “Pardon me while I extricate my hoof from my mouth.” Head, meet wall.

How could I have been so stupid? So selfish? Of course it’d be something like that. And all this time, I’d just been thinking of myself. I’d never thought to imagine that life could get in the way of us. And since we’d never exchanged addresses, he couldn’t tell me about it, either. Here I was, thinking only of my feelings, when Aegis was mourning the loss of one of his family. He’d probably forgotten me completely, and, to be honest, I’d never blame him in the slightest. Losing a family member was something I’d gone through, too, and… yeah. It’s hard.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. Already, I could feel my anger draining away and being replaced with shame. I hadn’t given him a chance to explain himself when that would’ve solved everything. I was being so self-centered it wasn’t even funny.

“It’s okay,” Aegis said. “It, it was his time anyway.”

Which wasn’t at all what I’d meant. I’d meant- And there I went again, trying to swing the conversation to be about me. Yeesh. Did I have a problem?

“He’d lived a long life,” Aegis continued, “and, and he went peacefully in his sleep, so no suffering there.” He shrugged. “That didn’t make it not hard, but it made the whole thing less hard.” He sighed and ran a hoof through his mane. “I didn’t remember our meetup until a week later, and…” He waved a hoof around. “Things happened, but… I, I just couldn’t forget you, even years down the line. Then I remembered you said lived out near Halterdale, and I came here to look for you on the off chance I’d find you, and…” He shrugged again and spread his forelegs wide. “Here I am.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. It was the only thing I could think to say. I’d spent so much time thinking about me, me, me that I had to completely reorganize my thoughts to accommodate it. And now I was going in circles about “thinking about me” trying to process it all. Wow. Did that night really affect me that much? It was only a few hours.

Aegis’s voice derailed my thoughts. “Did you, um, show up the next year?”

“What?”

“The… the next year. Did you also show up the year after I sto-”

“After your father’s funeral. You would’ve only stood me up if you’d had a choice.”

Aegis grinned. It wasn’t much, but it was far more genuine than most anything else I’d seen so far today. “Right. Yeah. Did you show up the year after that? And, um, grandfather’s funeral.”

“No.” I looked away and my cheeks started burning. “It’s, after you weren’t there the first time, I didn’t think I’d want to see you a year later.”

“Well, um, I guess…” Aegis coughed. “I guess it’s good that I didn’t show up, then, either.”

“So what’s your excuse?”

“Same as yours, kinda. Opposite reasons, but same result. I…” He swallowed. “I felt ashamed, more than anything. We’d both said we’d be there, and then I couldn’t be, b-”

“Whoa, hey.” I scooted up next to him and threw a foreleg over his shoulders. “Listen, buddy. You had a really good reason for not being there. Family comes first. I get that. You’ve got no reason to be ashamed. I don’t know wh-”

“The, the way you-”

“You know what, Aegis? Just shut up and let me talk for a moment.”

Aegis opened his mouth, paused, nodded, and mimed zipping his mouth shut.

“Okay. Aegis, I was a selfish bitch an hour and a half ago. I didn’t let you talk when that would’ve cleared everything up like right away. I was only thinking about me, and, well, you’re the one who came here, not the other way around. Don’t think it has anything to do with you, okay? It was all my fault, and I apologize.”

In the half-second between when I stopped talking and he started talking, I bit my lip in anxiety. I already knew he’d forgive me, but part of me kept saying he wouldn’t. I’d been too abrasive and brushed him off. He was only here chasing a dream and hadn’t really thought he’d find me. He was stringing me along just to drop me and mock me for thinking that he would come back. And any one of a dozen other stupid things. Of course, if all that was true, why had he waited? I thought it anyway.

Irrationality, I guess. The same irrationality that made me think he wouldn’t have a good reason for not coming.

But Aegis didn’t respond immediately. He looked at me thoughtfully for a while and licked his lips. Then he said, quietly, “I forgive you, but… did something happen in those five years? I never really saw you as the kind to be so… I dunno, bitter. I thought you’d just shrug it off or something. I mean, it almost felt like you were taking it personally.”

The funny thing was, in spite of that being a very personal question about a very specific part of my life, I had the answer all lined up. “It’s complicated,” I said, removing my leg from around his neck. “Short version, it, that night brought up a romantic side in me-” I rubbed one leg against the other and turned away. “-and then you didn’t show up next year, and that pretty much crushed the romanticism I had. And I was like, well, if that romance was a lie, even though it felt so real, then all romance is the same, and…” I turned back to him and clicked my tongue. “Yeah.”

“Ah,” Aegis said, nodding. “Sour grapes.”

“Pretty much, yeah. Let ferment for four years.”

We stood there in silence for another few moments, letting other ponies pass us by. It was still a lot to take in, especially since we’d — I’d — made amends. It’d gone smoothly, and now we were both thinking, Now what?

Aegis coughed. “So…” He managed to grin. “You said I had to have a good reason for not showing up. I had a good reason. So, you wanna, you know, go and try it again? I’ve only got a few hours before I need to leave again, but the last few hours we spent together were great.”

I turned the thought over. Somehow, it was both appealing and appalling. I’d enjoyed my time with him. I’d enjoyed it a lot. But it was five years ago. Would it actually work, or would we just be spinning our wheels, trying to recapture a lost night we got lucky on? Pretty much impossible to say. I considered this. I considered that. I hemmed. I hawed.

Aegis noticed. He looked at the ground and shuffled his hooves. “Y-you know, if, if you don’t, I mean really don’t want try, it’s, that’s fine, just, tell me.”

I decided. “Aegis, I don’t know if it’ll work. It was one night five years ago.”

“Oh,” he said quietly. “I se-”

“But we won’t know unless we try, right? So let’s try.”

His ears went up and he broke out in a grin. “Great! That’s, yeah, wow. Cool. So… what do you want to do?”

“I dunno. What do you want to do?”

“I dunno.”

Well, at least that much hadn’t changed.

5:29 PM - Stupidity

Halterdale wasn’t much of a town, but it was nice enough. More than big enough to wander through (because what else would we do?). I know pretty much every inch of it, so as we started wandering, I was kind of made the leader between the two of us. Not that it mattered much; we had nowhere to go and all night to get there. We were mostly content to just walk and talk. It was what we’d done last time, after all, and that had worked out well enough. Ish.

And then, about thirty seconds after we’d started meandering, realization struck. It struck hard enough to hurt.

“Hey, Aegis?”

“Yeah?”

“Why the…” I kicked at a rock on the side of the road. “For the love of Celestia, why didn’t we exchange addresses?” I wanted to hit myself. And then him. And then myself again, twice as hard. So much could’ve happened to make this not work, we were lucky this was it. But all that would’ve been avoided if we’d just given each other our addresses. It was so, so stupid of us.

“W-well…” Aegis rubbed the back of his neck. “We, we, uh, kinda agreed that-”

“That was the excuse,” I said. “Not the reason.” I thumped my head. “What were we thinking when we decided not to learn where we were living? Seriously, why?”

Aegis frowned and flicked an ear. After a long, long, long moment, he tentatively said, “Love?”

I frowned. “Love? Really?” I snorted.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “We could’ve agreed to not write unless something came up, but just meeting back later without addresses was…” He gazed out into nothing with a spacey look and a clueless smile on his face. “…oh! so romantic.” He turned back to me. “We were totally in love right then. And love makes ponies do stupid things like that.”

“Actually, no,” I said. “We weren’t in love.”

“But… but we-”

“We were-” I wrapped my forelegs around Aegis’s neck, yanked him close, and mushed his cheeks into mine. “-in lurrrrrrrrve!” I let him go as he massaged his face. “You know, that stupid mushy kind of love teenagers always have.”

Aegis laughed. “Okay, yeah, that’s right. You’d think we’d’ve outgrown that, right?”

“Yeah, but we said we were fifteen-year-olds in twenty-three-year-old bodies, remember?” I kicked at another rock. “And my brother, he put this real well, he said adults are just kids having kids.”

“Ooo. I like that line.”

“That’s how you can tell it’s not mine.”

“Aw, come on.” Aegis lightly nudged me in the shoulder. “You got good lines.”

“Not the, you know, concise, philosophical kind,” I said, waving a hoof. “Mine’re the kind that are memorable but don’t actually say much.”

“It’s more than I got.”

“Doesn’t make them good. Just less bad.”

“Eh, true.”

We kept walking. I couldn’t help but notice that I almost had a spring in my step. It was nothing huge, but I felt… light. Not butterflies-in-my-stomach light, just kind of calmly contented. The same kind of feeling you get from hot chocolate. It might’ve just been Aegis’s presence, but I think it was years of borderline hatred I’d never even noticed just draining away. He hadn’t shown up, but he had a good reason for that, and I couldn’t hold it against him, and my grudge just sort of melted away. I still had a few nagging feelings, but I knew they were irrational, and I tried to ignore them as best I could.

Aegis spoke up. “Do you think we should keep it up if tonight works?”

“Hmm?”

Aegis waved a hoof. “You know. Swap addresses and write letters and stay in touch and stuff, but not actually visit each other for another year,” he said. “We’d jump over all that stupid lovey-dovey stuff where we’re doing nothing but staring into each other’s eyes and using saccharine pet names like ‘schmoopy-doopy sweetie-weetie pootie-pie’.”

“Oh, sweet Celestia,” I muttered, “I know you’re joking, and I still feel ready to puke.”

“Exactly! We skip that bit completely. Ponies in that stage spend all their spare time together, but we can’t actually spend all our spare time together if simply getting together takes up more spare time than we have.”

“You know, I think I’d like that,” I said. “Kinda force us to realize the universe doesn’t revolve around us two. Be more forgiving when circumstances intervene.”

“And if we ever do consider actually moving together, it’d be more tolerable for the ponies around us.”

“You ever know any ponies like that? There was this couple like that in high school that…” I cringed. “I still feel like my teeth are rotting from their sweetness.”

“Nah, never that bad, thank Celestia,” said Aegis. “Some excessive public displays of affection, yeah, but nothing that bad.”

Already, it felt like that night. We were rambling, talking about random junk to fill the time. Any other pony, and I’d probably be annoyed at how boring this was. But with Aegis, I don’t know why, it felt almost fun to talk about annoyingly lovey-dovey couples. Maybe it was his company again, maybe it was the way he talked, maybe it was just putting down something I hated, but it was going a lot better than I thought it would.

“But getting back on track,” said Aegis. “What do you want to do until I have to leave? And, no, you are not allowed to say, ‘I dunno, what do you want to do?’ You know this place better than I do.”

“Well, what kinds of things do you like to do? I’m open to anything.”

“Yeah. Same here.” After a pause, Aegis smirked. “Y’know, if nothing else, this is already like that night.”

“The worst part of that night.” But he had a point. This was how that night had started. It was a shame it’d started so slowly.

“But it doesn’t really matter to me what we do,” said Aegis. “Just as long as we spend some time together.”

Wait. We hadn’t actually done much that night, had we? We’d just sort of walked and talked. So what we needed was something that would allow us to walk and talk again, and… Idea. “Aegis, what time’s the last train out?”

“Uh…” He pawed at the ground. “9:27, I think. Something like that. Why?”

9:27. I ran a few numbers in my head. Yeah, that, that could work. He’d have the time. “I got an idea,” I said. “You see that mountain over there?” I pointed. It wasn’t big, as far as mountains went, but it still sat conspicuously on the outside of town.

“Yeah,” he said as he squinted at it. “Why?”

“Let’s climb it. Watch the sunset. Maybe pick up some food before we leave and have dinner there. If we book it on the way back, you can make your train.”

Aegis looked at the mountain for another moment, then turned to me. “You sure we have enough time?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, nodding. “It’s pretty short for a mountain and closer than it looks. We can take it nice and slow on the way up and have time to spare.”

“Alright, then,” Aegis said, returning his gaze to the mountain. “Mountain it is. Wanna get some food first?”

“Sure. What do you like?”

5:41 PM - Food

We’d stopped by a grocery store to pick up some food for our picnic. Yeah, we could’ve gotten food from my stand for free, but I’d closed it down for the night and didn’t want to put more work into balancing my checkbook than I had to. I could afford to lose a few foodstuffs for one night; I was just lazy. Besides, the grocery store had a lot more variety — grains, sweet stuff, drinks, condiments, all that jazz — and we like variety. Mare cannot survive on greens alone, after all. In particular, there was one very important type of food that my stand was sorely lacking.

“Come on, chocolate chip is way better,” I said.

“But they’re frosted sugar cookies!” protested Aegis.

“Sugar cookies are boring. Chocol-”

“Frosted!”

“There’s barely any taste besides sug-”

“Frosted!”

“And besides, they’re expen-”

“Frooosteeed!”

I moaned and rubbed my head. “If you care so much about the frosting, why don’t you get some frosting so you can spread it on whatever cookies we get yourself?”

Aegis opened his mouth slightly, tilted his head and paused, then said, “There is so much sugar involved in that I think I’m already going into a diabetic coma. Let’s do it!” He was off like a shot to whatever aisle the frosting was in.

I huffed. Sheesh. They were just cookies. It wasn’t like this was the end of the world.

As I slipped a small box of chocolate chip cookies into the basket around my neck, I thought: did coltfriends and marefriends go grocery shopping together? Grocery shopping was so… dispassionate, I guess. I couldn’t think of a better word. Banal. Trite. Whatever. Coltfriends and marefriends were romantic. Grocery shopping wasn’t. It was domestic.

And yet, Aegis and I were doing it like it was nothing. We weren’t doing it because we had to, picking the bare minimum and leaving. We were actually debating over brands, foods, flavors, that sort of thing. Almost like we’d skipped over the romantic part of the relationship and gone straight to the daily grind.

But the really weird thing was that I didn’t mind. Grocery shopping is normally one of those things that’s drudgery, but now it was just sort of a thing that happened and I had no opinion on. It might’ve just been the company, but while I was hardly enjoying the shopping, it didn’t pull me down like it usually did.

A clip-clopping of hooves made me turn to look. Aegis was slowly walking around the corner, levitating a can of vanilla frosting in front of him and giving it a very strange, very involved look.

“What do you think, Aegis?” I asked. “Hayseed chips?” I pointed at the bag.

“Uh… nah,” Aegis said distantly. “We don’t want too much stuff.”

Fair enough. We already had quite a bit of food for one two-pony picnic. “What’s up with you?” I asked. “It’s frosting, not antimatter or sunstuff or solidified orgone.”

Aegis looked up at me and lowered an ear. “Solidified what?”

“Orgone. It’s an obsolete scientific theory of… universal life force or something.”

“Where did you get that from?”

Scowling, I flicked my tail. “From the look you were giving that can. What’s up with that?”

“Well, it’s…I just realized,” said Aegis, his gaze drifting back to the container. “You can just… go out and… buy frosting. Like, on its own. In an easy-open can.” He looked up at me like he’d discovered some deep mystery of life. “And there’s even, like, different flavors and stuff. It’s like they want you to eat it straight.”

“Oh, Celestia, no,” I said, grimacing. “That’s too much sugar, even for me.” Funny; growing up on a farm, you’d think I’d have really good eating habits. Nope. I’m a bit of a slob and not particularly health-conscious when it comes to food. But I do a lot of manual labor, so I’m not fat.

No, really. I’m not.

“Too much is not enough,” Aegis said. He dropped the can into the basket. “I can stomach one or two of those.” He paused. “Orrrrr… one chocolate-chip-cookie-and-frosting sandwich.”

“Sweet Luna, Aegis,” I said, swatting at him. “Shut up. At this rate, I won’t be able to eat anything come dinner.”

“Fine. Shutting up.” Aegis made a zipping motion across his mouth.

“Where did this come from?” I asked as we walked down the aisle. “The sweet tooth, I mean. Didn’t you order a plain salad at dinner last time?” Okay, wow. How could I remember that?

“I blame college,” Aegis said quickly. “I had easy access to sweet foods, so I got used to them, and when I was done, I just kept it up even though I had to go out of my way for it.” He smiled sheepishly and shrugged.

Ah. That explained a lot. I could relate to that. “Weren’t you taught discipline to avoid this sort of thing in the Royal Guard?”

“I was taught discipline in following orders,” said Aegis, “not eating healthy. I didn’t avoid cookies and cakes because I was told to, I avoided them because they just weren’t available. Then suddenly they were available, and I just… yeah.”

“Oh.” I glanced at his trunk. It wasn’t fat. Maybe a bit plumper than it had been last time, but still pretty lean. “No freshman fifteen, though. I’m impressed.”

“You just missed it. Gained five pounds, started going for runs in the morning, lost them, kept going for runs.” Aegis rubbed his stomach self-consciously, even though there wasn’t really anything to be self-conscious about. “I eat bad, but I exercise well.”

“Right. That’d keep you slim.”

We turned a corner (wow we were going slow), and Aegis looked into the basket. “You know, we’ve got quite a variety of stuff in there.” Indeed, the contents of our basket more resembled something you’d snack on during a lazy afternoon than an actual dinner, even if that dinner was a picnic. We didn’t have a lot of any one thing, but we had lots of one things. “And most of it was picked out by you.”

I shrugged. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, nothing, it’s… you’re a greengrocer, I thought you’d go for greens.”

“Why? I always have greens. They’re ordinary to me. Not like, say…” I fished a random box out of my basket. “…fruit snacks, which I don’t have often a-” I did a double-take at the box I was holding up, then shot a Look at Aegis. “Fruit snacks? Really?”

“Fruit snacks are good,” Aegis said defensively. “They’re tasty and something vaguely resembling almost healthy.”

“They’re fruit snacks. They’re for foals.” At least he had the decency to get the ones shaped like the fruits they were supposed to taste like, and not the ones shaped like cartoon characters or anything.

“I like them,” said Aegis. He looked about ready to pout. “And I’m secure enough in my maturity to admit I like them. Stallion walks down the street with that snack, ponies know he’s not afraid of anything.”

That made sense. But they were still fruit snacks. “Fine,” I said, dropping the box back into the basket. “The point is, this is all stuff that I normally don’t have. I’ll get it for special occasions, but not much else.”

Aegis’s face remained steady, but his ears went straight up. “Special occasions… Like-”

“Yeah, this is special. You and me-” I pointed between the two of us. “-together again. It’s special. Maybe not marriage special, but it’s special. Special enough to let you get fruit snacks, at least.”

“O-okay.” Aegis paused, nodded, then paused again. “S-so, um, I think we’ve got enough food. Maybe we should buy it and leave now.”

I looked down at the basket one last time. Yeah, we probably had enough. “Yeah, let’s get going before we spend all our time in here. You wanna pay, or should I?”

“I’ve got some bits. Split the bill?”

“Split the bill.”

6:21 PM - Rural

Outside the town limits, Halterdale cut out pretty quickly. Barely fifteen minutes of walking, and Aegis and I were already on the lower slopes of the mountain, surrounded by trees, with nothing more than a beaten-down dirt path to follow. Lots of ponies went to the summit, and the path was pretty much a part of the land now.

There wasn’t much to look at as we walked. Mostly trees and a few hills. No dramatic vistas just yet; we were too low. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at Aegis; his head was turning like a record as he looked this way, jaw slightly agape in mild awe. It was an expression I recognized well from certain types of tourists.“You are such a city colt,” I said with a laugh as I hiked up my saddlebags.

“Not my fault!” said Aegis as he watched a bird flit from one tree to another. “I was born in San Franpinto and grew up in Neigh Orleans. When I was a royal guard, I was never deployed in the wilderness or anything. And, I can’t really believe it, but I’ve never even gone camping. I’ve never actually been out in the country.”

“Come on. Seriously? Never went hiking or anything?”

“Nope. My family was never really an outdoorsy outdoorsy one.”

I could understand that, but something about it didn’t sit right with me. He’d been a royal guard, he shouldn’t be this impressed by the countryside, one way or another. And also- “Didn’t you say your father was a guard, too?”

Aegis was still watching the bird. I think it was some kind of woodpecker. “Yeah. Why?”

“He wasn’t the stereotypically stallionly kind? Being a royal guard is kind of the stallionliest thing you can be, so I was thinking he’d be into other stallionly stuff. You know, lumberjacking, grilling, flannel, outdoorsing.”

“Dad was weird like that,” said Aegis. “He was a guard, but aside from that, not very stallionly.” He finally tore his gaze from the woodpecker to look at me. “He was… not really wimpy, but definitely not the tough guy you’d expect to go into the Guard. He was quiet, withdrawn, kinda introverted, that sort of guy, you know?”

“Huh.” I looked at the path ahead and tilted my head this way and that, trying to figure out what would make a pony like that join the Guard. The only reason I could come up with was “to serve Equestria”, but there were plenty of other places a pony like that would probably be more useful. Even within the Guard; he didn’t have to be a soldier. Eventually, I asked Aegis, “You ever ask why he joined?”

“Nope. Didn’t think it was important. He had his own reasons for it, I never thought I needed to know.”

Bummer. Well, ponies are ponies. Maybe Aegis’s dad was a little more wild inside than he let on. “Hmm.”

After a few seconds of silence, Aegis went back to gazing at the forest. I was used to seeing a lot of trees, and by now, they were boring to me. I rarely saw anything interesting in them. But Aegis was looking at them like he’d never seen anything like them before. But then, if he was a true-blue city boy, he hadn’t. I lightly poked him in the ribs. “So what do you think of the country, city slicker?” I asked.

“It’s… it’s hard to say,” replied Aegis. “It’s just so different from what I’m used to. Like…” He raised his nose into the air and inhaled deeply. “I never noticed how much everything smells.”

“…You mean th-”

“W-well, no, I, I don’t mean it’s stinky,” Aegis said quickly. “I, I don’t usually think about smells, and there’s all sorts of them out here.” He sniffed a few more times and frowned. “Why do we barely have any words for smell?”

“Dunno,” I said, shrugging. “We don’t use it all that much.”

“Yeah, but there’s pretty much no words for smell. It’s all kinda…” Aegis waved a hoof around. “Vague.”

“Smell overall is vague to us. Maybe if we used it more, we’d have more words for it.”

“Maybe.”

Neither of us continued that line of conversation. A few moments later, I asked, “Alright, so you overall like it out here, right?”

“Sure.”

“Anything you don’t like?”

Aegis chewed his lip for a moment. “Not sure. Probably, but let me think it over.”

“Alright.”

As we kept walking, I looked sideways at Aegis. He was staring at the path a few feet in front of him. He always seemed to get really focused when thinking. It made me wonder: what did I look like when I thought? Did I zone out? Did I look into the distance? Did my look change at all? I’d never really thought about it before, if at all. It was a weird thing to think about.

Just as I realized what I was doing, I tried think about what I looked like at the moment. But I immediately grew self-conscious and the feeling was gone. Curses.

Eventually, Aegis said, “I think it’s the lack of street lamps that gets me. We took a few steps outside town, and there was nothing between there and here. How do you see at night?”

I shrugged. “Directed light gems and firefly lanterns. The usual, you know? Everypony has them out here. Barely anypony’s traveling between towns at night, so who’d want to waste time every evening and morning lighting and extinguishing lamps almost nopony would need?”

“Well, it’s… it’s way too dark for me. I like light.”

I snorted. Aegis was definitely a city colt, through and through. Darkness was perfectly normal out here. “It’s not that bad. There’s streetlights in the actual towns. The moon and stars provide a decent amount of light. And if the moon is full, or even close to full, you don’t need any other lights at all.”

“Really?”

“Not even close. The full moon is bright. It might not be as clear as day, but you can see stuff just fine.”

Aegis looked skeptical. “It’s… There’s no way it can be…”

“Oh, come on, Aegis! Think about it! The moon might not be as bright as the sun, but it’s about the same size. That means a lot of light.”

“Well…” said Aegis, “well, yeah, but, but the, the moon being full doesn’t make any difference in the city.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You’re in the city, where every square inch is illuminated with at least three different lightbulbs. You’re not going to see any difference there. Out here…” I waved a hoof around. “You only have the moon, stars, and your own eyes adjusting to darkness to see by.”

“It… I…” Aegis looked over his shoulder at the eastern horizon, where the moon would come up eventually. “Okay, fine. You can see by the light of the moon.”

It was obvious from his tone that he was only saying that to shut me up. Yeesh. Really a city colt. I was used to the moon being bright, but was it really that hard to believe? It wasn’t like I was telling him it was bright as day. “Look, when the moon rises, you can see it then. It’s supposed to be full tonight.”

“I, um, don’t think I’ll be able to.” Aegis rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “I’ll, I’ll probably need to leave before then.”

I blinked. “Oh. Train. Right.” Stupid time limit. I’d forgotten all about it. We’d have time to be done before then, but still. Bleh.

Ahead of us, the path divided into two. One side went more-or-less straight to the mountain’s summit, the other off to the side. I knew from experience that the other one went to the summit, too; it just took a bit longer. “So,” I said, “which way do you want to go? Straight to the top-” I pointed to the shorter path. “-or the scenic route?” I pointed to the longer one.

Aegs looked back and forth between the two. I noticed he tended to look at the longer path a bit more. After a moment, he said, “We’ll be able to be back in time either way, right?”

“Sure. Take the scenic route, we get to the summit just in time for sunset, take the shorter path down, get to the train station just in time.”

“Then I say we go for the longer path,” Aegis said, setting off down it. “We’re here to talk, and this way’ll keep us moving and talking at the same time.”

“About what I was thinking,” I said as I followed him. “More or less.”

Aegis looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “We’re really on the same wavelength, aren’t we?”

“Duh. We both agreed to come here for the same reasons.”

“Come on, quit taking the fun out of this.”

6:48 PM - Beauty

The path was slowly getting steeper as we curled around the mountain, the sun getting lower in the sky. To both sides, the ground was getting more and more tilted. Maybe a little riskier, but the path was plenty wide for three or four ponies to comfortably walk side-by-side. Aegis was still looking around like he was in some kind of wonderland. Really, really, really a city slicker. I decided to pull him out of his reverie. “Aegis?” I asked.

“Yeah?” he said, not pulling his gaze from the trees overhead.

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

I couldn’t help it. He’s cute when he’s flustered.

He tripped on nothing and started blinking a lot. He flicked his ears over and over. He looked away, babbling nothings, his voice getting softer and softer. “Well, uh, it’s, I, you, uh…” His tail kept swishing back and forth and his steps started getting smaller. He looked a few notches away from hyperventilation.

I smiled faux-innocently. “Well…?”

“Well, um…” Aegis gulped. “Did, did you really have to, to drop that bombshell on me? It’s, uh, kinda-”

“Oh, c’mon,” I said. I nudged him him the belly. “You know me, I really don’t care. I just wanna know.”

Aegis blinked again and regarded me suspiciously. “You really don’t care?” Kind of hard to blame him, to be honest. Some mares always talk like, “I don’t care if you don’t think I’m pretty and I really don’t care and did you know that I don’t care because it’s really important that you know that I don’t care you should know that! WHY? DO YOU CARE? ‘CAUSE I DON’T (as long as you think I’m pretty, of course).”

“Aegis, you arrived four years late for this date and in completely the wrong place, and I still went out with you.” I bumped my muzzle against his and scowled exaggeratedly. “I think I can handle it if you don’t think I’m pretty.”

Pushing me away, Aegis looked up. His panic tremors died down a little. He clicked his teeth a few times, then looked me in the eye. “Total honesty?”

I nodded. “Total honesty.”

“Alright. W-well, um…” He took a deep breath and said, “Kinda, not really.”

“Alright, but nothing special?”

“Y-yeah,” he said. He flicked his ears, rubbed the back of his neck, and looked away. “It’s, you, you’re not ugly, but, but you don’t really have anything special going for you, either, and you’re just kinda… there, if, if you get what I’m saying. Looks-wise, I mean. You know? Not that bad, not that great.” He looked at me, grinned for half a second, and looked away again.

I shrugged. “Fair enough.” I kept walking.

It took Aegis a second to process it. “Wait, that- that’s it?” he called out, trotting to catch up to me.

“What’s it?” I asked innocently.

“I tell you you’re not pretty, you’re just ‘meh, whatevs’? Come on. I mean, it’s great you’re not exploding, but- but-”

“But what?” Still innocent.

“Well, I don’t know!” Aegis said, throwing his front legs wide. “It’s just- I expected something more than just ‘fair enough’!”

“How about this?” I said. I clambered over a fallen log in the path. “Your perception of me matches my perception of me.” As he climbed over it, I turned around and started walking backwards. “I don’t think I’m pretty, either. Just kinda alright. I’ve never really cared about it. Sure, I’d like to be pretty, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make it so.”

Aegis huffed. “You could’ve said that rather than just ‘fair enough’.”

“I know,” I said with a smirk. I turned around and started walking forwards again.

“So what about me?”

I looked over my shoulder as I pushed aside some branches from a bush growing over the path. “What about you?”

Aegis rolled his eyes and gave me a light telekinetic smack on the back of the head. Worth it. “You know. Do you think I’m pretty? Or handsome or hot or whatever?”

“Weeeeeell…” I slowed my pace a little to let him catch up. “Kinda, yeah. And, no, not ‘kinda, not really’. Actually kinda.”

“Really.” His tone of voice was leaning towards the interested side of “whatever”. Guess he didn’t care, either.

“Sure,” I said with a nod. “I’ve always been kind of attracted to royal guards. They’re so… studly. As long as they keep their bodies.” I lightly poked him in the stomach. “You’re pushing, juuuust a little.”

“Yeah,” Aegis said sheepishly, “like I said, I like sweet stuff when I can afford it. Still manage to exercise, but I need to cut down a little.”

“And you need to shave. Why’re you trying to grow a beard? Didn’t you say you couldn’t?”

“Yeah,” Aegis said, cringing slightly. “It’s, I, uh, I forgot to shave before I left, and… yyyyyeah.”

“Ah. So if you let it grow, would it just stick like that and not actually grow?”

“Uh-huh. More or less.”

“Hmm.” I took a moment to squint at his face. “Too scraggly for my tastes.”

“Too scraggly for mine, too,” said Aegis.

We walked in silence for a few more moments before Aegis asked, “So why do ponies place so much emphasis on beauty? It doesn’t really do anything. But, I mean, we’re attracted to it. So why?”

I shrugged. “My guess? Biology. It’s all bunch of leftover signals for evolutionary fitness or something that we’re still attracted to.”

“Weak,” Aegis snorted.

“Well, I don’t know! Beauty’s just kind of a… thing that holds way too much sway for how irrational it is! It’s gotta be hardwired in somehow, and that points me to biological stuff.”

“Still weak.”

I batted him in the face with my tail. “Well, let’s think about it. What do you find beautiful in a mare?”

“Seriously?”

“Sure.”

“Well, um…” Aegis flicked his tail and an ear. “For body shape, tall and lean, so, um… lithe. Yeah, lithe. Not skinny, though. More like sleek.” (I unconsciously rubbed my not-small belly.) “I don’t really care about coat color. Or mane color, for that matter, as long as they match. Kinda longish mane and tail, don’t care about style. Face, um…” He tapped his forehead underneath his horn. “Face, face, face,” he muttered.

“Nah,” I said, “if we’re guessing beauty comes from biology, then the face doesn’t matter as much. Now, I li-”

“But, wait, hang on,” Aegis interrupted. “When ponies talk about beauty, we usually talk about the face. Like, yeah, the rest of the body matters, but the face is like ninety percent of it.”

I frowned and thought about it. “Right,” I muttered. “Dang. I was feeling so good about that.”

“There’s still probably some truth to it,” said Aegis. “My idea of a beautiful mare is kind of skewed toward a fast one, and we did evolve from prey animals, so they’d need to get away from predators quickly. Maybe that has something to do with it?”

“Maybe,” I said with a nod. “Or maybe, now that evolutionary fitness isn’t as important, wires are getting crossed for what’s ‘desirable’ and natural selection isn’t uncrossing them.”

“Or both.” Then Aegis grinned.“You know, since we don’t think the other’s all that beautiful, you know what this means?”

“That we like each other solely for our minds and personalities? I’m pretty sure we said that five years ago.”

“Oh.” Aegis looked mildly downcast in the way that said he had a good idea, only to find it’d been done. I knew the feeling. “Kinda wonder what it’d be like to be the sexiest guy in the room, though.”

“I don’t,” I said. “You’d have to deal with all sorts of crap. Ponies trying to butter you up because they think you’re purty, not taking you seriously, ponies obsessing over you… Not my cup of tea.”

He tilted his head back and forth and flicked his tail. “But would all that be worth it? Maybe, if-”

I shook my head. “Definitely not. You know who first came up with the theory that would form the basis of dragonfire transport?”

“No.”

“Hedy Lamare.”

Aegis blinked and stared at me. “Hedy Lamare? As in, that Hedy Lamare? Bombshell black-maned Hedy Lamare?”

“Bombshell black-maned Hedy Lamare,” I said, nodding. “She was really, really smart, especially when it came to magic. One of the smartest ponies out there in that field, or so I heard.”

“But there’s no way she could be that smart!” protested Aegis. “She’s too- She’s… too…” His voice trailed off.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, wow,” Aegis mumbled. He slapped himself in the face. “I knew what was coming, and I still did it.”

“So imagine what it was like when other ponies didn’t know it was coming,” I said. “She had trouble getting ponies to take her seriously because she was so pretty. She once said something like, ‘My face has been my misfortune.’ Oh, and, ‘Any filly can be glamorous; all you have to do is stand still and look stupid.’”

Aegis snickered. “Dang. Smart, pretty, and witty, too? Talk about a dream mare.” Then he frowned and added, “Which was part of the problem, I guess.”

“‘It has attracted six unsuccessful marriage partners,’” I recited. “‘It has attracted all the wrong ponies into my boudoir and brought me tragedy and heartache for five decades. My face is a mask I cannot remove. I must always live with it. I curse it.’”

“Nice,” said Aegis. “Very nice.” He nodded in approval. “You never really think about that sort of thing, do you? Well, you might. How do you know so much about her?”

“Got her autobiography as an I-don’t-know-what-to-get-you Hearth’s Warming gift a few years back,” I said. “Short list that year, told friends and family to get me whatever, wound up with Ecstasy and Me in my bookshelf when it was done.”

“Cool. You like biographies?”

“A bit, yeah. Not a collector or anything, but I think I read more than the usual.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“So we’re, what, about halfway to the summit?” he asked.

“About, yeah.”

Aegis bit his lip and looked at the sun. “You’re sure I’ll have enough time to get back to the train? We’ve been going up this for over an hour, and with sunset at the time it is…”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, brushing it aside. “We’re moving slow down the scenic route, and when we’re done, we’ll rush and get you down on time.”

“If you say so.”

7:11 PM - Water

We heard it before we saw it. A low, rumbling whooshing, coming from the other side of the ridge we were walking next to. It was constant, never wavering significantly or changing much. I knew what was coming and tensed in excitement. This was one of the things that broke up the monotony of trees, trees, trees, and it was beautiful. As we rounded a corner, the rock wall to our side fell away to reveal-

“A waterfall?!” Aegis looked like a foal in a candy shop and ready to start bouncing on his hooves. He promptly dashed off the path and towards the falls, leaving me spitting out dust.

The Sapphire Falls stretched about two dozen feet above us, a narrow but fast-moving stream of water tumbling down the cliff face to a pool more than large enough to swim in. Spray flew from the falls, getting everything around it a little bit damp. A river ran off from one side, heading under a bridge and rushing down the slopes. All the while, the sound from the falls drowned out most ordinary noise in a never-ending rumble. It wasn’t the greatest waterfall in the world, but it was very pretty, and it was nearby. I liked coming here from time to time.

“Wow!” said Aegis, staring up at the falls as he trotted around the pool. “That is so cool! Wow!”

I hacked up the last of the dust, found a dry-ish place to shrug my saddlebags off, and walked up behind Aegis. “Yeah,” I yelled over the rumble. “Nice, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure whether or not Aegis noticed me. He kept walking and didn’t look in my direction. “They never talk about what it sounds like,” he said. I’m pretty sure he was just thinking out loud. Either that, or he was telling me things I already knew. “It just never stops!” He reached the outlet from the pool and stopped walking. He swiveled his ears towards the waterfall and just listened for several moments. “Wow!” he said again.

For once, I knew where he was coming from. Trees were trees. Out here, you saw them every day. Waterfalls, though… They were something else. The Sapphire Falls were the only big, or even noteworthy, waterfalls I knew of anywhere near my house. And even if you’ve seen them, there’s just something serene about watching them. I could sit and watch the water flow for hours and hours and hours and not get bored. In motion, they’ve got something a picture just can’t capture.

“I know,” I said to him. “It’s calming. I like to come up here sometimes after a rough day. And also…”

I shoved him into the pool.

He yelped, flailed, and fell into the shallows with a splash. He promptly shot out of the water, screaming, “Cold! Cold! Cold!” When he was about a dozen feet away, he slid to a stop and eyed me warily, ears folded back.

“Oh, come on,” I said with a laugh. “It’s not that bad.” I waded into the pond. It was cold, but not frigid. I thought it was nice, the brisk kind of cold. Soon, I was in water up to my chest.

“Not if you’re expecting it, it’s not,” Aegis mumbled. He returned to the shore and, with some hesitation, prodded the water like it was acidic.

“Come on in, you big wuss!” I hollered. “It’s nice!” I jumped into deeper water, submerging myself before he could respond. The pool wasn’t all that deep; even in the lowest spots, I could get my head above the water if I stood on my back hooves. In spite of the river emptying it out, there wasn’t much of a current; I didn’t have to worry about getting pulled down the mountain.

I surfaced in the middle of the pool. Aegis had taken a few more steps in and was in up to his fetlocks, flicking his tail and still looking at the water like it was going to bite him. “Come on!” I yelled. “What’s the deal?”

Moments after I said that, I regretted it. For all I knew, he could have had some bad experience as a foal or something. Maybe he almost drowned and was afraid of water. I knew a pony like that. She wasn’t nearly this bad, but everypony was different. I could’ve just set Aegis’s fear off, and h-

“It’s…” Aegis slowly took another step in. “It’s cold!”

Well, shoot. “That’s it?”

“It’s really cold!”

Well, double shoot. So much for learning something new. I began paddling towards the shore. “This is not really cold,” I said. “It’s not icy. Your teeth won’t chatter.”

“W-well…” Aegis plodded forward another inch. “It’s still cold!”

I waded out of the water and up next to him. “Just go in,” I said. “It’s easier once you get used to it. I think submerging your head works best.”

“No thank you,” whispered Aegis. Another inch.

“Really, it is. If you’re gonna go in, go in.”

“I’ll go in at my own pace, thanks.” Another inch.

Another inch.

I sighed. “Look, you’re taking forever. Want some help?”

Aegis looked up for a moment to shoot me a glare. “No.”

“Know what? Too bad.” I dive-tackled him and we rolled into the water. Droplets flew everywhere as the cold hit me like a pillow-covered anvil. I came up on top and stood up in chest-deep water.

When Aegis came back up, thrashing, he squealed — squealed — “Oh Celestia and Luna and Celestia and Luna and Celestia and Luna and cold cold cold cold cold!” Water wasn’t coming out of his mouth, so that was a good sign. He bolted for shore.

But not before I grabbed his tail between my teeth and dug in. He didn’t make it two yards, no matter how hard he tried. “Cuhv ah, Aevis!” I said. “Teh moah seguhds!”

“Too cold!” Aegis pulled as hard as he could, but I was an earth pony. He had no chance.

I pulled backwards. He started coming with me. “Fieh seguhds! Ih’s no’ vad vunce yuh’h yussed tuh ih!”

“Fine!” he snapped. He stopped struggling and I released. As he started taking slow steps towards deeper water, he glared at me through the water dripping out of his mane and hissed, “Five. Seconds.”

He was still in the water fifteen seconds later, all the way up to his chest. He was tense and moving slowly, but he was still moving deeper. “Huh,” he said. “It isn’t as bad once you’re used to it.”

“Of course it’s not,” I said as I drifted around on my back. “Haven’t you ever gone swimming in anything other than a pool before?”

“…W-well, uh…”

“You poor, poor stallion.”

“I know I’m a city colt! Stop ragging on me about it!” By now, Aegis was in up to his neck.

“Seriously, you’ve never gone swimming outside of pools?”

“I’ve barely gone swimming in pools. I can do it, it just never really appealed to me.” Aegis tentatively kicked off into the water and started dog paddling. He stayed afloat, at least.

I curled up into a ball and backwards-somersaulted through the water, coming out with my head up. “Any reason why? Or just because?”

“Just because, I guess,” he said. “It’s, I mean, it’s alright, it’s just… nothing great. And cold.” He looked around, then said, “And you know what? It’s been way more than five seconds. I’m done.” He turned around and pulled himself to shore.

“Wuss,” I said, and flicked some droplets at him.

Aegis snorted and flicked his tail at me before shaking himself off. “Just because I-”

“You’re a former royal guard who doesn’t want to go swimming because the water is too cold!”

“Oh, shut up. You’ve told me to shut enough times.”

“Shutting up,” I said. I went onto my back again and lightly kicked my way away from shore, towards the waterfall. I liked the pressure from the falling water; I needed to hold my breath a lot, but it felt like a massage. A very, very cold massage. What the hay, I could live with it.

“Hey, uh, I’m glad you’re having fun,” Aegis called out, “but don’t stay in there too long, alright? We’ll need to get moving again eventually if I’m going to get back in time.”

“Five minutes, max,” I said, and plunged beneath the water before Aegis could respond.

7:43 PM - Dinner

We were taking a break in a small clearing off the side of the path. Between the swimming and the walkin in general, we’d worked up an appetite, and Aegis had suggested we stop for a bit and have something resembling a dinner. It wasn’t much, mostly a hodgepodge of healthy-ish foods that didn’t need silverware, but after all that exercise, it was definitely filling. Unfortunately, Aegis’s last-minute decision with the cookies and frosting almost reversed that.

“What do you think?” Aegis asked, holding up the frosting-and-chocolate-chip-cookie sandwich. “That look good?”

I gagged. “No, Aegis. It’s one of the most frigging disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.” I punched some of the trash deeper into the bag I was collecting it in. “I can feel my heart seizing up already.”

Aegis raised an eyebrow. “I don’t like cold water, and you call me a wuss. You don’t like my sandwich, so does this mean I get to call you a wuss?”

“If it makes you feel better,” I said. I almost looked away at that point. “Just go ahead and eat it so I don’t have to look at it anymore, okay?”

“Fine.” Aegis popped the monstrosity into his mouth and began chewing. “Wuff,” he said around the cookie.

“Diabetic.”

“No’ ye’!” Aegis swallowed. “You know, if just this hurts you this much, it might not hurt you to get a thicker skin.” He pulled some more frosting from the can with his magic and spread it on another cookie. “You’re good about handling stuff you don’t like, but if you react like that, you’ll need to learn to tolerate a bit better.”

Ooh, boy. I could see where this was going. I agreed with it, but decided to lead Aegis on a bit, just to see how react. “Oh, come on,” I snorted as I dropped onto a fallen log. “I’m supposed to tolerate that?”

“Of course!” Aegis stuck another cookie on top of the frosting. “A little tolerance never hurt anypony.”

“So tolerance is always good?”

Aegis stuffed the sandwich in his mouth (ugh), started chewing, and rolled his eyes. “Yeff. Dah’s wha’ I’fe be’ sayih.”

“Then you’ll have to tolerate my intolerance.”

Aegis froze and looked at me like I’d said something weird. “Wha’?” he asked.

“My intolerance. You’ll have to tolerate it.”

He swallowed and frowned up at the sky. He pointed limply at some point on the ground, like he was trying to spatially organize his thoughts. “Tolerate…” he mumbled. He looked in another direction and pointed in yet another.

I grinned a little. “My intolerance, yes.”

“Your… intolerance…” he mumbled. He switched looking and pointing directions again. “But… that… uh… huh?” He blinked and banged himself on the forehead. “Sweet Sisters, was that a brain fart,” he said. “Tolerating intolerance.”

“But that’s the thing,” I said. “You have to, if you’re tolerating everything, because otherwise, you’re intolerant.”

“I know,” said Aegis. He rubbed his forehead. “I mean, just, wow. That’s oxymoronic if anything was.”

“Of course, there’s an easy way out,” I said. I smirked a little and slurped up some water. “But I’m not telling you. Guess.”

Aegis hmmed and hahed for a moment as thought. Eventually, he said, “Well, you shouldn’t tolerate everything, right? If Tirek goes and tries to destroy Equestria, it won’t do much good to tsk at him and say, ‘Now, I don’t like your tantrum, but I’ll tolerate it because it makes you happy.’ Tolerance doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff that’s wrong.”

“Ding ding ding,” I said. I flicked the tip of my hoof back and forth, like I was ringing a bell. “There’s just some things where you can’t, in all honesty, tolerate them and say you’re doing something good.”

“Like setting fire to the puppy orphanage while the widows with cancer are visiting?”

“Well, yeah. Sure, that’s an extreme case, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, right?”

“Huh. I guess.” Aegis sounded more thoughtful than skeptical. He flicked his ears back and forth as thought. “So what’re the extreme kinds of things we should and shouldn’t tolerate?”

“Yeah… that’s the hard part. You’ve got all these…” I waved a hoof around. “Schools of philosophy and stuff trying to answer that questions for centuries and no one seems to agree that.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Aegis. “And schools within those schools, and blah de blah de blah. My philosophy classes were terrible.”

“It’s weird,” I said. “You’d think they’d have some common ground. But even when they say murder is wrong, they can’t agree on why it’s wrong!”

“Hmm.” Aegis looked at the half-empty cookie box for a moment. “…Which section do you think frosting cookie sandwiches would go in?”

I almost gagged at the thought, but said, “Tolerate. I think they’re disgusting, but you’re not really hurting anyone but yourself, and you’re even exercising to stay fit, so no matter how terrible I find them, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to eat them.”

“The same way you tolerate me not being able to stand cold water?”

“Close enough.” I looked up at the sky. It was slowly beginning to orange, but sunset was still a ways off. “So that would kind of imply something that doesn’t hurt others isn’t wrong… Which, in turn, would imply helping others isn’t wrong-”

“Eh, I, I don’t know,” said Aegis quietly. “In the right circumstances, altruism can be… it can get pretty bad.”

“Really,” I said flatly, looking back at Aegis. “Helping others is bad.”

Aegis rubbed the back of his neck. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “I mean, yeah, overall, I like altruism, but if you take it far enough, you get the claim that, if you’re doing something for somepony else, it’s good.”

He didn’t continue, but I could tell he wanted to. I guess he was waiting for me to say something else, but I couldn’t think of what. “And the catch is…?” I asked.

Aegis took a deep breath and said, “…Regardless of what that something you’re doing is.”

It took me a few seconds to get it, but when I did, I cringed. “Yeesh. Scary. Ends justifying means through rose-colored glasses.”

“Yep,” said Aegis. “When we were covering this in my philosophy class, my professor kept describing increasingly creepy things, then adding, ‘But I’m doing it for your own good, so that makes it all okay!’ That burned the idea into my mind like nothing else.”

“Yeah. I can see that.” I looked up at the sky again. “So scratch helping others automatically being good.” Philosophy was hard.

“You know, that’s actually the kind of altruism Ayn Reind was arguing against in Objectivism. Where-”

I twitched. “No. Just, please, don’t talk to me about Objectivism. Just, don’t.”

Aegis flicked his tail. “…I, I’m not one, just so you know.”

“That’s suspiciously specific.”

“It’s Objectivism!” Aegis waved his hooves around. “The branch of philosophy pretty much guaranteed to get ponies up in arms, and I was just about to defend a part of it! I just- I didn’t want you to think- Gah!” He folded his ears back and looked away. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

I twitched again. Not the way I wanted that to go. “Well, if you were one,” I said softly, “I’d tolerate it.”

He turned back to me and grinned halfheartedly. It soon grew to three-quarters-heartedly. “But I’m not,” he said, “so you don’t have to.”

“And I’m very happy about that,” I said. I smiled back. “Even if I could tolerate it, I don’t think you’d be you if you were an Objectivist. Or a Different Philosophy Than Whatever You Are Nowist. And we’re here because you’re you and I’m me, so we probably wouldn’t be together at all, anyway.”

“No. Probably not.” Then Aegis frowned. “Well, that got derailed fast,” he said.

I nodded. “Yep.” After a moment, I said, “So… if helping ponies isn’t always good, does that mean hurting ponies isn’t always bad? Like, if they were going to hurt somepony else worse?”

“I guess. I dunno.”

Silence.

“I hate philosophy,” I said.

“Me, too.”

8:07 PM - Interim

We were ten minutes from the summit if you decided to walk really slow. The sunset still wasn’t for a while, so we decided to take a short break and digest our dinner. There was a grassy ledge not too far off the path; I’d gone up there plenty of times during the summer as a foal. Aegis and I lay there on our backs, side by side, staring up at the clouds. There was a tense silence between us, something we had to say but couldn’t. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t comfortable, either.

“You know,” Aegis said at last, “there’s one thing we really haven’t touched on yet.”

“Yeah?”

“How’s life treating you?”

And there it was. I was kind of surprised it hadn’t come up earlier. We’d danced around the whole issue of what had happened in the five years since. I’d been thinking about it, and I was sure he was thinking about it, but we’d never even alluded to it. Probably should’ve. I decided to go first to just get it over with. “Not bad,” I said, somewhat distantly. “Farming’s been going good. Nothing really special. Just keep growing and selling.”

“Doing okay business?”

“Little more than okay, actually. Good crop last year, had a little bit of surplus money. Saved it, just in case.”

“Oh. That’s good.” Aegis’s voice was only there, like he wasn’t really paying attention to me. It was kind of hard to blame him; there wasn’t a lot to pay attention to.

“Yeah.”

Silence. Really, I’d kept beating around the bush for the question he was really asking. I went and said it, to try to keep the awkwardness level as low as possible. “And… and I haven’t really been in a relationship since.”

That got his attention. “Really?”

I scratched my head. “Technically, I have been — several times, actually — but it doesn’t matter what I do once I’m in a relationship, nothing’s working for me.”

“Nothing’s working? Why?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered. I glared at one of the few clouds in the sky. It was hard to say. I’d never really thought about the whole why. I knew things didn’t work, and that was that. “It’s, I don’t know. I really can’t say.”

“Try something,” said Aegis. “Even if it doesn’t make sense. The hardest part of getting an idea is starting it.”

“What if I can’t think of something?”

“You’re good with words, you’ll figure it out. And if it takes you a while, I’ll wait.”

“Fine. It’s like…” I stopped and thought. What was it like? I went back over my relationships for the past four years. I’d tried to make them work, and there was never really anything wrong with them. But they never worked out and always coasted to a zero-chemistry stop. It always felt like some part of me was missing, no matter what I did.

Well, then, that was it, wasn’t it? “I just put so much of myself into that night. The romantic part. You took that with you when you left, and I was okay, because you’d be back next year, right? Then you weren’t back, and I didn’t get the romantic part back, and I… This probably sounds stupid, but it was like I couldn’t be romantic anymore. It’d just been… sucked out of me. I went through the motions and tried relationship stuff, but just couldn’t get any zing out of it.” I turned my head to face Aegis, my cheek brushing the grass. “That make sense?”

After a moment, Aegis nodded. “Yeah. It’s hard to explain why, but I think I get what you’re saying.”

“Cool.” I looked back up. “Right now, I’m… kind of with somepony, b-”

“Wait, what?” Aegis rolled over and stood up, looking down at me. “You’ve got somepony, but you went back to me at the drop of a hat? That’s-”

“Hey,” I said. I lightly swatted at his face. “The thing is, it’s not really working. I’ve been with him for several moons, but I’ve got less sparks in all that than in the few hours I’ve spent with you today. We’re friends, and we started going out because we thought we had feelings for each other, but it’s not clicking. I think we’re only staying together because we’re already a couple, and ponies are kind of expected to be in a relationship.”

“Oh.” Aegis slowly lay back down, but he still felt a bit tense. Guess he was more worried about my coltfriend than I was. Ponies can be weird like that.

“And if nothing else, we’re avoiding the matchmakers.”

Aegis bit back a snort. “Oh. Those kinds of ponies. Yeah, I’ve run into them.”

“Like I said, we’re still friends,” I said, “just not, you know… those friends. Not really. It’s complicated.” I waved vaguely at the sky.

“Hmm.” Aegis didn’t sound particularly convinced, but he didn’t try to push the matter, either.

“And if my love life stays like this, well, I really don’t know what I’ll do. I want to be romantic, but I don’t know where to go from here. Not if I can’t connect with anypony the way I connect with you.”

“Oh.” I didn’t look at him, but I could imagine Aegis smiling. “Good thing I came back, then, right?”

“Yep.”

When Aegis didn’t add anything, I lay there for a moment, resting my legs and watching the clouds. How had I not thought of that before? It was like I was deliberately ignoring it. In hindsight, yeah, it felt like all my attempts at romance were doomed to failure, but I’d always convinced myself that this was the one that would work. Why hadn’t I seen any of the warning signs?

Probably because they were related to Aegis. I hadn’t wanted to think about him, so I didn’t, and that meant I didn’t think about what was going wrong. Now that I’d finally admitted that to myself, it felt like I’d taken off a gas mask I hadn’t realized I was wearing.

If Aegis left and we didn’t stay in touch, would the gas mask go back on?

Eventually, I decided to keep the conversation going. “So… you?”

“Well…” Aegis chuckled. “The image of the starving artist is based in reality. I haven’t really been able to sell much of my stuff — mostly sculptures, by the by — so money’s kinda tight. I’m doing alright, don’t get me wrong, but dinner often has an awful lot of ramen.”

“Bummer. Got another job?”

“Yeah. Retail.” He didn’t continue.

“…I take it I shouldn’t speak of it?”

“Nope.”

“Alrighty then.”

“Still…” Aegis sighed. “Could be worse. I’ve got some friends and roommates helping me out, and there’s a local show featuring some of my art tomorrow that might get it some more attention, so hooves crossed.”

I rolled onto my side to look at him. “You asked your family for help?”

“Nah, it’s not that bad,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “Nowhere near that bad. Splitting rent with a few roommates already cuts down expenses a ton, and my job pays… well enough. I’m kinda poor, just not, you know, living from paycheck to paycheck poor.”

“Okay, cool.” I rolled back onto my back. “How do you think the show’ll go?”

“Hard to say. First one, so I’m still a little unsure of how it all goes. Might make a lot of money, might not make any.”

That was one of the reasons I’d never really understood being an artist as a job. It was just so finicky, and you couldn’t have a steady paycheck; money came in large bursts if it came at all. Even being a farmer was more dependable than that; you grew food, you sold it, and that was that. Grow the food right, and you don’t have to worry about commissions or anything like that.

“S-so, um,” I said, “what’s, what’s your love life been like?”

Aegis sighed. “Worse than yours, if you can believe that. Completely nonexistent.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t exactly Casaneighva before, but, but now, I… I just can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t really get attracted to mares anymore, and when I think about it, the only reason I can come up with is that they’re not you.”

“Huh. You know why?”

“That’s the really annoying part. I don’t. You’re forward, but there’re other ponies who’re forward. You’re witty, but there’re other ponies who’re witty. You’re a good conversationalist, but there’re other ponies who’re good conversationalists. It’s not even all those put together, because there’re other… Yeah, you know. It’s, I don’t know. Something about you. That’s the whole reason I came out here. To either have you reject me and just try and put the whole thing to rest or get back together.”

“Oh, wow. I, I’m sorry.” What was I sorry about? It wasn’t my fault.

“Thanks.” Aegis reached out and stroked my mane for a moment. “Now, I still don’t know why, but it’s definitely something about you.”

We were silent again for another few seconds, but now it was a comfortable silence. We weren’t saying anything because we didn’t need to say anything.

“Think this really is love?” I asked. “Actual, bona fide love and not just lust and puppy love?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because, when you get right down to it, we’ve only known each other for, what, ten hours? We had no contact those five years in between, they don’t count. But right now, we’re spilling our hearts out to each other, no problem. I’ve never told anypony about the problems I had after you didn’t show up, but I tell you without a second thought.”

“Well, it… could just be friendship.”

“Yeah, maybe, but it totally wrecked our love lives. Friendship doesn’t work like that. But we’ve never really done any romantic stuff, either. Just, you know, talked.”

“And that one hug, right before I left.”

“Yeah, but that’s not, you know, romantic romantic. It might be love, but it might not be.”

The grass rustled as Aegis shifted his weight a little. “Well, if we’re gonna be serious about this, we should know what we’re talking about. First of all, what is love?”

Too easy. “Baby, don’t hurt me,” I said.

I could almost hear Aegis rolling his eyes. “Ba-dum tish,” he said. “Seriously, wh-”

I scooted over a foot or so and put my hoof on his mouth. “You know what, Aegis? Let’s not analyze this and just accept it for what it is, love or not. Trying to pick apart love is like trying to pick apart a kitten. It doesn’t make it cuter, it just makes a terrible mess, and now you’re without something you liked.”

“…Just where did you get that metaphor from?”

“Dunno. My mind, probably.”

“…I love your mind.”

“Me, too.”

We lay on our backs and watched the few clouds go by.

8:39 PM - Summit

As Aegis pulled me close, I laughed quietly. “This is such a cliché.”

“It’s romantic,” Aegis responded.

“We’re on a mountaintop watching the sunset. It’s cliché.”

“Romantic.”

“Cliiiiiichéééééé.”

“That doesn’t make it not romantic, too.”

“I guess you’re right. You sentimental twig.” I poked him in the stomach.

Aegis blinked and looked at me. “Twig?”

I reddened. “I don’t know where that came from. It just popped into my head.”

“Twig?”

“I was looking for some light, silly insult, and…” I shrugged helplessly.

“…Twig?”

“Shut up, you twig.” I lightly bopped him on the head.

“I am never, ever, ever going to let you live that down,” Aegis said as he rubbed his head and grinned. “EV-ER.”

We’d finally made it. The summit of the mountain was free of any obstructions that would keep us from seeing the sunset. And, Celestia, what a sunset. I’d never seen anything like it. The way the oranges twisted into the purples, the way the clouds caught the light, the shadows cast on the landscape… I’d seen sunsets up here before, but this was a step up. Aegis and I were sitting next to each other, our forelegs on the other’s shoulder. After all the walking we’d done, simply sitting down felt good.

Being this close to Aegis didn’t hurt things.

“But,” Aegis continued, “cliché or not, this was a good idea. I finally got out of the city, and this sunset…” He whistled. “Wow.”

“Something else, isn’t it?”

“Yep. Can’t believe I never just went out and watched the sun set before.”

I’d never been aware of breathing before. I don’t know why. I guess there was never really a need for it. But now, I was deeply aware of both Aegis’s and my breathing. We were in sync, our chests slowly rising and falling. I wasn’t trying to do that, and I don’t think he was, either. It was like we were uni-

“Mind if I sing?”

There went my groove. Tilting an ear back, I frowned at Aegis. “Sing.”

“Well… yeah. Do re mi fa s-”

“You sing? I didn’t think you did that.”

Aegis coughed and looked away. “Not well. I just- I can’t sing that well, but I like doing it.”

“So, what, you’re gonna serenade your lover on a mountaintop?”

“It’s not a love song, just something I think kinda fits.”

There were plenty of worse reasons to sing. What the hay. “Sure. Go ahead.”

Aegis nodded, took a deep breath, and began singing.

Tell me, oh, where are you from?
I want to know from whence you come;
It seems to me you might have some
Stories that you could tell me.

His voice wasn’t half bad. Nothing spectacular, but I could listen to it for hours. And in spite of the song’s quick pace, he never stumbled over any of the words. I’d heard this song a thousand times before, but I could hear it a thousand times again. It was one of my favorites. Not that he knew that.

Tell me, please, where have you been?
I want to know the things you’ve seen.
The oceans blue, the forests green.
That I could never see.

He took a breath, and in that pause, I seized my chance.

I’ve wanted long to travel far
And wide, to sleep beneath the stars.
That type of pony’s who you are,
So tell me, won’t you please?

Aegis twitched, like he wanted to join for a moment, but then he just smiled and let me be.

Tell me of the foreign lands,
The mountain peaks, the desert sands,
The sights from all your travels grand,
And how you crossed the great seas.

I want to hear, I want to know
Of what the world will surely show
Those who have bravery to go
Exploring, always free!

As the last echoes of my voice faded away from the mountaintop, Aegis whispered to me, “You have a really nice voice.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean really nice,” he said. “You could probably get a job singing if you wanted.”

“But I don’t.”

“Hey, I didn’t say you needed to. Just that you could.”

I chuckled. “We’re really hitting all check marks on this one, aren’t we? Sunset, mountaintop, singing, those sorts of compliments…”

“Aw, c’mon.” Aegis bopped me on the shoulder. “It’s romantic.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

To be honest, it really was. I couldn’t help myself. It was cheesy, it was sappy, but it was romantic. It was a feeling I’d been missing for half a decade; a light heart and a general satisfaction with the world.

And then a thing we hadn’t done yet hit me. “You know, there’s only one more thing to make this more cliché,” I said.

Aegis turned to me. “Yeah?”

I leaned in close and kissed him.

It was barely anything. Just a quick, short peck. But it was both electrifying and calming. It felt right. We hadn’t done it before. Why not now?

When I leaned back, Aegis looked slightly dazed, maybe shocked. He blinked. “Was… was that our first kiss?”

“Yep,” I said, smiling.

“Not much,” he said. “But nothing else would fit, don’t you think?”

“Nah,” I said. “Too sappy.”

He chuckled. “Of course not. It took five years for us to kiss in the first place. Anything bigger than that would be silly.”

“Heh. Yeah.”

We sat side by side for a little while longer. Then I turned, twisted him, and wrapped my forelegs around his neck in the tightest hug I could muster. He quickly returned the favor, holding me close. I whispered in his ear, “I love you, Welded Aegis.”

“I love you, Bluebell,” he whispered in mine. We didn’t say anything more. We didn’t need to. Time passed. I don’t know how much. I had Aegis, he had me, and that was all that really mattered at the moment.

By the time we separated, only a little bit of the sun was still above the horizon, and most of the sky was dark. We probably should’ve gotten going; the trip down was faster than the trip up, but it’d still take a while, and at this rate, we’d be going down the mountain with nothing but Aegis’s horn to guide us. But I didn’t want to leave just yet, so I stayed silent. So did Aegis.

After a moment, Aegis rolled his shoulders. “So… now what?”

“We sit,” I said. “We enjoy each other’s company. We watch the sunset a little while longer. You hightail it back to your train.” It was getting a bit late. He should’ve hightailed it already. But I didn’t care, and I don’t think he did, either.

We sat for another moment. Then Aegis said, “You know, that carnival’s coming back up in a month.”

“Yeah?”

“So why don’t we meet there when it comes? We-”

“‘Cause it worked so well last time.”

Aegis chuckled and lightly clouted me on the back of the neck. “Not like that. We exchange addresses and stuff so that we can warn the other of bad things going down that might keep us from getting there. Not just, ‘See you in a month! Romantic swooooon!’” He imitated said swoon and collapsed to the ground. “No letters that aren’t that. We’ll be prepared this time.”

“…You know what, yeah. Let’s try that. We can figure out what to do long-term then.”

“Alright,” Aegis said as he sat back up. “Trade addresses at the train station?”

“Sure. Now, hush.” I wrapped my leg around his neck and pulled him close. “I want to see the last bit of the sunset.”

I watched the sun go down, snuggled up against Aegis. I felt… “happy” was too simplistic. I wasn’t the kind of energized of bouncy that implies. I didn’t feel much like doing anything, but not because I was drained. There just wasn’t anything that needed to be done. I was fine sitting here with Aegis, just him and me, doing nothing as the last bits of the sun slid below the horizon and the final dregs of orange drained from the sky.

I wasn’t just happy. I was content.

There was just one problem. “Hey, Aegis?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s getting late. You stay up here much longer, you’re gonna miss your train.”

He laughed. “I know.”