Ardent Roan lifted the next page of her manuscript and adjusted her reading glasses.
The menacing stallion cast his mask aside, revealing himself as Dashing Scoundrel! “Sorry I took so long, my sweet. The palace guards were more alert than usual,” he said with a roguish grin.
“I was afraid I’d lost you!” wailed Hidden Steel, throwing herself into the forelegs of her beloved.
“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, now, my sweet.” And he leaned down to kiss, her, pressing his hot tongue in between her half-open lips and running it across hers, making Steel gasp with…
No, that was going on too long. Ardent Roan tapped her chin with a hoof and carefully lifted some of the words off the page with her magic, tossed some into the trash can next to her, and set the rest to one side, leaving them to hover in the air while she removed a second phrase. She set all of them back down in a new order, adding or removing a few words here and there.
She read the passage again.
The menacing stallion cast his mask aside, revealing himself as Dashing Scoundrel, Hidden Steel gasped and threw herself into the forelegs of her beloved, holding back tears as his mouth closed over hers.
“Sorry I took so long,” he said, breaking the kiss. “The palace guards were more alert than usual.”
“I was afraid I’d lost you!” wailed Steel.
“No, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, now, my sweet,” he replied with a roguish grin.
That was better. It was a shame to lose the blow-by-blow description of the kiss, but there were plenty of those in the novel already, and this scene really wasn’t the time for it. Her editor Cerulean would no doubt be into her about comma splices again, but that was his job, not hers. She yawned, and stretched, and glanced at her office wall clock.
“Oh, come on,” she hissed, hopping out of her chair and scooping up her scarf, her saddlebags, and her suitcase with her magic. She was going to miss her train! Time to get out of the head of Ardent Roan and back into the head of Twilight Velvet.
Velvet hurried down towards the front door, struggling to wrap her scarf around her neck, her suitcase clattering on the stairs behind her. She’d had an hour to kill, and with Night Light out of the house she’d thought she could at least get some self-editing in, but as usual when she was writing she’d lost track of time and now she was going to be late. She paused at the door, considering going back for her manuscript, but decided against it. She’d feel antsy being in the Crystal Empire for a week without being able to work on it, but the thought of her children or her daughter-in-law stumbling upon it filled her with dread. She knew Twilight was an Ardent Roan fan but hadn’t made the connection to her mother yet. She’d recognize the writing style immediately. As far as she knew Shiny didn’t read romance novels and Cadence didn’t read anything, but it still wasn’t worth the risk.
She kicked this morning’s newspaper out of the way and swung the door open with her magic to find a tall pink alicorn standing on her porch, hoof half-raised as if about to knock on the door.
Velvet and Cadence both yelped in surprise and hopped half a step back.
“Oh! Um, Hello! Hi! Your Highness!”
Cadence lowered her hoof. “Cadence, please, Mrs. Sparkle. You’re family. You can call me that.” She grinned awkwardly.
“So, um, to what do I owe the pleasure? I didn’t even know you were in Canterlot,” said Velvet. A chilling breeze flitted in through the door. She’d need her coat.
“I flew in for an emergency meeting.” Cadence glanced down at the newspaper and levitated it up to Velvet’s eye level. Tesseract Storm Continues to Wrack Hyperspace. Principality Transit Authority Restricts Teleportation Until Further Notice.
“Oh,” said Velvet. “Is Twilight here?”
Cadence shook her head. “Cutie Map mission.”
“Ah. Okay,” said Velvet, feeling a little disappointed. She hoped her daughter could make it up to the Empire for Hearth’s Warming. “So… is there something… I can help you with?”
“Actually, since I can’t teleport back home, and there’s a snowstorm scheduled that’s going to make flying rough, I was wondering if I could get a train with you?”
Twilight Velvet hesitated. “I’m about to miss mine, actually. I don’t know if there’s time to get you a ticket.”
Cadence smiled. “So you’re on the 11:45 to Vanhoover and the Crystal City? Hold on, let me call ahead. They’ll hold it for me.”
Twilight Velvet gulped. “Oh, no, please don’t go to the trouble, if I miss it I can just…”
Cadence closed her eyes, and her horn glowed. She was silent and still for about a minute and a half, leaving Velvet standing awkwardly in her door, thinking about what standing around with it open so long was going to add to her heating bill. At last Cadence’s eyes snapped open and her bright smile returned. “There. They’re holding it fifteen minutes. That gives up plenty of time to get down to the station. I’ll hail us a cab.”
“Great,” said Velvet, trying to force a smile. “That’s just great.”
✭☆✭☆✭☆✭
Silence reigned as their carriage rattled down the cobblestone streets of the capital towards the train. When traffic was moving at all. Mountain fortresses didn’t make for straight roads or smooth traffic flow, and Twilight Velvet really didn’t think fifteen extra minutes were going to be enough. It would have been faster to walk — the stairs between Buckington and Caltrop Streets and in Boltaway Plaza made almost a straight line from her house to the station. But she supposed princesses weren’t expected to walk. Fight monsters and save the world, sure. Walk? No.
Another advantage of walking would have been that they’d have been too out of breath to have to worry about small talk. That would have at least waited until the eight-hour train ride to the Crystal City.
“So,” said Velvet, turning to the one thing they had in common. “How’s Shiny doing?”
“Oh, you know. He’s keeping busy. Fixed Fortifications and Dress Parade have started letting him come to staff meetings, so that’s good. Oh, and he’s started writing a military history of the Crystal Empire. Doing a lot of interviews, reading a lot of old books, things like that.”
Velvet tried not to grind her teeth. Her son had been a soldier once. Captain of the guard. He’d had a bright future ahead of him. Now… well, she was proud that he’d married well. Certainly, he wasn’t ever going to want for anything. But what was he but a glorified concubine? Maybe he was happy that way. It sounded like the leaders of the Crystal Legions were starting to accept him more, and if he’d really taken a literary turn, then that was quite exciting. Though exactly how she’d broach the topic with him without revealing her own background was a conundrum.
“Have you, um, seem much of Twilight?” said Cadence. “You’d think we’d see more of each other, but our paths don’t cross that much.”
Velvet shook her head sadly. “No, she’s very busy these days. I mean, we all are, really.”
Cadence nodded. “So true.”
And another thing: if Shiny did have to marry a princess — which again, she was very proud that he’d been able to pull that off — couldn’t he have picked a more interesting one? Admittedly Celestia and Luna were a bit old for him. But still. Cadence was nice. The people loved her. She was very brave and very kind. She was just… shallow. Shallow was the word she was looking for. What you saw was what you got, with this one. It was a terrible thing to say about anypony, but it was true — Cadence was shallow. Velvet made a careful note not to use that word out loud, in any context, around her daughter-in-law.
The carriage jerked up and down suddenly as it hit a small pothole.
“Darn these Canterlot roads,” said Cadence, smoothing her ruffled feathers.
“There are a lot of them, aren’t there? At least that one was fairly shallow.” Harmony darn it, Velvet.
✭☆✭☆✭☆✭
Crowds parted around them as they entered the station. Canterlot Station was magnificent — a fairly new building that nonetheless perfectly captured the spirit of classical unicorn architecture. Elegant columns and spiral staircases in white marble and gold leaf surrounded the central plaza where hundreds of ponies stood in line to buy tickets or waited for their trains. She glanced up at the big board over the far side of the atrium, which showed arrivals and departures on automagical tiles, and found “delayed” next to the 11:45 train to Crystal City. An aching lump of guilt formed in Velvet’s throat — a soreness near the top of her chest, between mouth and heart. She did not deserve this sort of special treatment! Nopony did! She watched the way ponies parted for Cadence as she walked in front of her towards Platform N. Cadence didn’t even thank them — she was accustomed to it. Was that how Twilight acted these days? That’s certainly not how Velvet raised her to be.
A conductor and the station manager met them at the platform, both trembling visibly as they bowed. “Your Highness, I’m afraid we don’t have a private car available for you on this train,” said the station manager, still kneeling. “We can attach one, but it will take at least an hour to…”
“Oh gosh, it’s fine! Get up, get up! I can sit in a regular seat like everypony else!”
“Are you sure, Your Highness?”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all! Do you mind, Mrs. Sparkle?”
Everyone was looking at Velvet. She gulped. “Oh, no, that was what I was expecting, actually.”
A ‘regular seat’ turned out to be first-class. A padded bench all to herself, with a table in between her and Cadence. Velvet could have gotten quite a bit of writing done on the trip if she’d brought her manuscript. Three train attendants brought them coffee and madeleines and blankets, and the engineer came by to make sure that everything was okay. Once the attention had cleared, Velvet took a bite of a madeleine. It tasted like pure butter and sugar and melted like ice cream the second it hit her tongue. Maybe traveling with a princess wasn’t so bad.
The whistle blew. The train began to move. Velvet looked out the window until the train left the city and headed out over the cliffside towards the valley. Not that the entire Canter River Valley being laid out like before her like a lovingly constructed model wasn’t breathtaking, but the thought of the two-thousand-foot drop down the mountainside made her just a teensy bit queasy. She looked across the table at Cadence and found her smiling benignly at her.
“Um, hi,” said Velvet awkwardly.
“I’m sorry. I was just watching you,” said Cadence. “I like watching ponies. I’m sorry if it’s creepy, I just…” She shrugged. “I like watching them.”
Velvet could actually understand that. Some novelists, like Straight Whiskey, A.K. Yearling, or Four Legs Good went out and had amazing adventures to write about. Others, like Ardent Roan, preferred research and eavesdropping. Speaking of books…
“So,” she said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s going to be a long ride. Do you mind if I read for a while?”
“Oh, not at all!” said Cadence. “I brought a book, too.”
Velvet’s relief was palpable. Eight hours of awkward conversation with an in-law would have been more than she could bear. They could talk later. She fished The Ponyponesian War and her reading glasses out of her saddlebags. She found her place, then glanced up over the top of the book, curious to see what the least intellectual of princesses read. Her heart stopped. The princess was holding a hoof-thick mass market paperback with the name “Ardent Roan” emblazoned across the top of the cover in silver block capitals. Her hoof was over the cover art, but she could see that it was the red one.
Oh mother of whores, why did it have to be the red one? That one had all of Ardent Roan’s hallmarks — the bisexual heroine, the incest (flagrant and deliberate in this case, not accidental as it usually was), the hundreds of pages of over-written sex scenes — plus the scene with the diamond dogs. Oh, that scene with the diamond dogs! Why had she pushed to keep it? Why had her editor agreed?
“I love these books,” said Cadence, noticing Velvet’s stare. “I know they’re trashy, but I just can’t help myself!”
Trashy. That was putting it mildly. “I don’t really read that sort of book,” said Velvet. It was a preposterous lie; there were three romance novels in the bottom of her saddlebags. Cadence nodded and began to read. Velvet found her place again.
“Do you like the classics?” said Cadence.
Velvet felt the first pulse of a headache deep in her skull. Why could some ponies not go five minutes without talking? She took a deep breath, determined to maintain a calm exterior. “I’ve read shallowly on the topic. I’ve always been interested in history. The early Principality is my favorite period, though.” All of which was true. What she didn’t mention was that she’d heard of the Thoroughbred Band, and an army of pegasus stallions who fought as pairs of lovers, and decided that this subject needed further fictional exploration.
Cadence nodded. “Luna and Celestia did a great deal to make Equestria the peaceful and prosperous nation it is today.”
Something about Cadence’s emphasis interested Velvet. “I’m impressed that they chose to keep the title of princess, rather than become queens,” she said.
“It led to the liberties the citizens of Equestria still enjoy today.”
Twilight Velvet’s heart began to feel light. Was the Princess of Love, the Satrap of the Crystal Empire, a secret democrat?
“Some might say too many liberties,” said Cadence.
Velvet sighed internally. No. No, she was not.
“You don’t think ponies are fit to govern themselves?” asked Velvet, nervously testing the waters.
“Oh. My. Gosh. Do not get me started.” Cadence glanced around the car. The fellow passengers were being very careful not to look at them. Cadence got up and sat next to Velvet. “Do you mind if I bitch about work for a minute?”
Velvet closed her book reluctantly. “Please. Do,” she said with a total lack of sincerity.
“Okay, you know how many things have been going wrong lately? Celestia barely being ready for Nightmare Moon’s return. Discord. Tirek. Chrysalis nearly conquering Canterlot. Tempest actually conquering Canterlot?”
Velvet froze. Was this some sort of bizarre test of loyalty? What was she supposed to say?
“The problem is that Celestia is totally checked out. And who wouldn’t be, after running a world power for over a thousand years? She doesn’t show it, but she’s tired.”
“You… you don’t say?” said Velvet.
“That’s why she raised Twilight and me.” Cadence shrugged. “I do my best, but I’m in charge of the Crystal Empire now. And Twilight is just… she’s so smart, but being smart isn’t the only thing a leader needs, and… Oh. Wait. I’m sorry.”
Velvet giggled, suddenly feeling just a tiny bit more at ease. “I’ll have you know that my daughter is a perfect little angel with no flaws whatsoever, thank you very much.”
Cadence laughed and relaxed visibly. “It’s just that if she’s read a few books on a topic, she thinks she knows everything about it. But there’s so much to governing that you have to learn by doing! And Celestia, bless her heart, she just lets Twilight do her research and have adventures all the time. If she ever has to run Equestria alone? Running a country is amazingly hard! I’m lucky to get six hours’ sleep most nights.”
“I worry about that, too,” said Velvet. “What about Luna?”
Cadence scowled. “Luna came back from the moon with some very odd ideas. She wants the government to become smaller. Weaker. That’s why you can do drugs in public in Canterlot at night.” Cadence’s voice was taut with disapproval.
Velvet didn’t know what to think about that.
“Anyway,” said Cadence, risking a touch on Velvet’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to get the idea I don’t love them because I do. They’re… well, they’re literally my family. But nopony’s perfect, you know?”
Velvet took a deep breath. “Maybe if you had some help.”
“Well what do you mean?” said Cadence.
Velvet took a deep breath and tapped her hoof on her book. She could couch this in terms of history. “The ancient Pegasopolans governed by the will of the ponies. Well, the will of the wealthiest mares, but still, some of the ponies.”
Cadence gave Velvet a considering look. “Well, I don’t know. You shouldn’t talk politics with family, right? It’s all pretty complicated. I think I’ll just let you read.”
Finally. And yet. Velvet watched over the top of her book as Cadence sprawled out on her bench under her blanket, and levitated up her book and a madeleine. That was more insight than she’d thought Cadence capable of. Was her flightiness an act? Or was the puddle just a little bit deeper than she’d thought? She wouldn’t have expected Shiny to marry an airhead, that’s for sure. And yet, stallions were stallions. They valued beauty over depth. And Cadence was very beautiful. Velvet ought to know — she didn’t write bisexual heroines just to shoehorn in diversity, no sir.
Wait, what had she been thinking about? Velvet sighed. Who was an airhead? Maybe if she could keep her mind off of pretty mares, she’d write something besides trashy, porny romance, and she wouldn’t have to hide her writing from her family. Well. Whatever. Back to The Ponyponesian War.
Twilight Velvet fell asleep somewhere in the afternoon, lulled by the rocking motion and the dryness of her reading material. She dreamed of tesseract storms, which her sleeping mind envisioned as a pelting rain of sharp little hypercubes. She woke up only as they were pulling out of Vanhoover. It was dark outside, the lights of the city illuminating fresh snow on the platform as the train began to move; slowly at first, but picking up speed. A full moon floated in place, distant and serene, as the rooftops of the suburbs whipped past them.
Soon they were out of the city and into the Unicorn Mountains. The train would be passing through them all the way to the Crystal Empire. The mountaintops sparkled above them, pristine white, marbled with ridges of black rock. The peaks fascinated her. What mysteries could they be hiding? She opened her book to the back and jotted down some ideas. Yetis. Ancient temples. Predictable, but it was a start.
Maybe tesseracts, like in the papers.
She looked across the table. Cadence wasn’t sleeping. Velvet had assumed she was because she was so still, but she was just sitting, all four legs under her, head on the bench, staring across the cabin at a sleeping family of fellow travelers.
“What’s a tesseract storm?”
Cadence looked over at her without moving her head. “Do you know what a tesseract is?”
“A four-dimensional hypercube. What you’d get if you folded a cube in on itself eight times. It's just a math thing, isn’t it?”
“You can do it to actual space. That’s what teleporting is. We fold the universe together at one point, then step over to the new location and push the old one away.”
Velvet blinked. She’d always been perplexed when Twilight tried to explain it to her. It wasn’t the kind of thing they taught you in magic high school; it was considered too advanced for most unicorns. “It seems so simple when you put it that way.”
“The problem is, when you fold space like that, it doesn’t always snap right back. It leaves little wrinkles in space. Not harmful on their own, not something a normal pony could even feel. And it's never caused a problem before, but they get tangled together over time and form natural tesseracts. So.”
“So?”
Cadence closed her eyes. “So no more teleporting for a while.”
“I wasn’t gonna try, honey.”
A smile flickered at the corner of Cadence’s mouth and then vanished.
Velvet looked down at her book. She levitated over a pencil and started to jot down an outline about a lost mountain climber. A bisexual mare, of course. Maybe she met somepony in the mountains. A sexy hermitess? A sexy yeti? A sexy tesseract?
Velvet wrote LOVE TESSERACT in large letters next to the outline. She was running out of room. She should have known she couldn’t go six hours without writing. Maybe the porter would bring her some paper.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when she heard a soft rumbling. At first, she thought it was Cadence snoring. And she was snoring. But there was another rumble, too. Distant, and yet louder than the sound of the train’s wheels. Velvet looked out the window. A wave of pure and sparkling snow was rolling down the mountainside towards the train.
“Cadence! Cadence! Wake up!”
“Leame ’lone,” Cadence mumbled.
Twilight Velvet growled, and leaped over the table between them, directly onto the larger pony’s back. She was not going to die today. “Cadence! Emergency!” she said, thumping her on the withers.
“What? What!” cried Cadence, snapping her head up.
Velvet tried to explain, but panic had reduced her to a babbling moron. She couldn’t remember what the thing that was happening was called. “Snow! Snow! Bad!” She shouted, pointing out the window at the onrushing white wall, now barely a hoofball field away from the train.
There was a flash of blue light and the unwelcome sensation of being tossed through space. At first, she thought the avalanche (that was the word; how stupid was she?) had hit them, and that Cadence was shielding her. But no. They were standing on top of the train, the wind of its passage blowing their manes and tails sideways. Cadence was in full alicorn rage mode, wings out, eyes glowing like little suns. All along the train’s length, the avalanche was vanishing into a cyan vortex. Its rumbling sound continued behind them. She turned to see it flowing, unimpeded, down into the uninhabited valley below. Cadence had teleported the avalanche around the train.
Seconds later, the train was running over a bridge, and they were safe.
Cadence slumped to all four knees, shaking, teeth chattering. “Should have just… just moved the train.”
“No. No. You might’ve missed the tracks. That was good. That was a good idea.” The wind up here tore straight through her, bones and all. Shock had numbed her to the cold at first, but now she realized hypothermia couldn’t be far off. “We need to get inside, right now!”
They climbed in through the skylight. A cluster of porters and passengers appeared to help them down.
✭☆✭☆✭☆✭
The train slowed to a stop, rapidly enough that Cadence and Twilight Velvet were pressed into the bench they sat huddled together on, covered in multiple scratchy railway blankets. The hot chocolate sloshed in their cups.
“This is one of the worst train rides I’ve ever been on,” hissed Velvet, wiping chocolate off of her snout.
“Do you think?” mumbled Cadence.
Long minutes passed. The engineer appeared, snowflakes dusting his flat hat and the back of his great coat, flanked by porters. They fumbled around, trying to kneel in the tight aisle.
“Rise,” mumbled Cadence.
“Your Highness? Ma’am? There’s a… an object on the tracks.”
“An object?”
“Really more of a lack of an object. I’ve never seen anything like it. We know you’re tired. And cold. But do you think you could…”
Cadence set down her mug with what could only be described as exquisite royal grace. “We’ll have a look,” she said.
They allowed themselves to be bundled up like foals with overprotective mothers going into their first snow and were helped down beside the rails. The railroad ponies seemed reluctant to go any further. Velvet looked down the tracks. Something loomed against the night sky. Something excessively cube-shaped. Three stories high and darker than the night sky, it looked like a cube that had somehow become infested with other cubes.
Cadence dismissed the railroad ponies, and the two mares walked towards the hypercube, legs sinking knee-deep in snow.
“So this is part of that tesseract storm you were talking about?” said Velvet.
“It’s a tear. A tear in space,” said Cadence. “This is what we were worried about. This is the worst thing that could happen.”
They stood beneath it, looking up into it. Velvet felt sure there were things moving in the darkness inside. Huge. Immense. Cyclopean. Mountainous. Whopping. Velvet’s inner thesaurus was humbled trying to describe the scope of the things she could almost see living in there. “Why? Is this because...?”
“Because I teleported the avalanche around the train? Yes, probably,” said Cadence, regarding the abyss with a dispassionate calm Velvet found rather disconcerting.
“Well, why did you do that?” said Velvet, with the exact same tone she remembered using when teenage Shining Armor had left a major school project until the Sunday before it was due.
Cadence’s eyes narrowed dangerously, without turning to look at her. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Sparkle?”
“If you know this could happen, Your Highness, why did you teleport the snow?” said Velvet. She found she was trembling. The void frightened her. There was no up or down in that dark place. She felt as if it was watching her.
Cadence rounded on her. “You didn’t think it was a bad idea at the time. In fact, you said so.”
“Well I didn’t know this could happen!” said Velvet, waving her hooves at the void. “Couldn’t you have… I don’t know? Melted it? Made the train go faster?”
Cadence snarled. “Melting the snow fast enough to make a difference would have created a large amount of high-pressure, superheated steam. Accelerating the train fast enough to get it out of the way would have created gravitational forces not survivable by a non-alicorn. Or by the tracks. Or the train. Do you have any other bright ideas?”
Velvet backed up as Cadence scolded her, swishing through the snow until her hind hoof hit the track. “No. No, but…”
“Do you know whose fault this is?” snarled Cadence. “Do you want to know? I don’t care if you want to know, I’m going to tell you. This is Twilight’s fault!”
“T-Twilight’s?” said Velvet. Her heart roared with rage and fear. She wanted to bop the Princess a good one on the nose for saying such a thing. Twilight could never be responsible for something like this!
“Ten years ago, nopony teleported. Nopony but Celestia and one or two of her most gifted students. But then Twilight comes along. She knows the risks, but she doesn’t care. She’s popping over here, and popping over there. And It’s fine. Celestia lets her. Because she’s careful. Responsible. She learns how to smooth space over when she’s done. If she notices a bad topology while she’s passing, she neatens it out, like she’s straightening a tablecloth. Fine, fine. Everything’s okay. Except for the foals. The Harmony-damned Magic School foals. They all want to be like Twilight. So what, their parents can’t teleport? So what if the school won’t teach them? They work it out on their own. They cut corners to bring it down to energy levels a normal unicorn might be able to use. And they leave space looking like their own unmade beds!”
“That is completely uncalled for!" Velvet stomped, though the effect was lost when the sound was muffled by the soft white powder. "Even if that’s true, you can’t blame my Twilight for that!”
“And yet you blame me for saving your life.”
Velvet remained silent. That had been unfair, but after what Cadence had said about Twilight she wasn’t ready to concede the point.
“But I know why,” continued Cadence. “It’s because I’m not good enough for your son, isn’t it? I’ve never been good enough! If he’d married the incarnation of Harmony herself, it wouldn’t be good enough for your perfect little boy!”
“Well, how could you be?" snapped back Velvet. "Who are you? You’re the Princess of Love. What does that even mean? Who are you? And what’s going to happen when he gets old? You’re going to live so much longer than him! It's not fair to either of you!”
Cadence bit her lower lip. In seconds, she’d gone from fury to looking like she was going to cry. “I know.”
Velvet turned her head to one side. “You… know?”
“I know he’s going to die while I’m still young. And I don’t know what to do about that. Celestia says you never forget them. But what was I supposed to do? Shining Armor is the strongest, bravest, gentlest pony I’ve ever met. I couldn’t live without him. I’m sorry. I should have chosen another immortal. I was selfish.” She hung her head. “But I will never forget him.”
“She remembers her husbands?” said Velvet.
Cadence gave a half-hearted little giggle. "Celestia isn't the marrying kind. But yes. Phalanx. Clean Sweep. Peaceful Pumpkin. To name just a few. You can find them in the history books if you dig enough. She remembers the colors of their eyes.”
Velvet put a hoof to her mouth. “Cadence, I’m so sorry. I judged you really quickly. I thought you were… you know… a little…”
“Shallow,” said Cadence with a wry half-smile.
Velvet gulped. “No! No! Not at all.”
“I’m really good at reading people, Mrs. Sparkle.”
It was Velvet’s turn to hang her head. “I’m so sorry.”
Cadence rested her hoof on Velvet’s shoulder. “It’s all right.”
“No. It’s not. You’ve been really forthright with me, and I’ve been living a lie.”
Cadence gave Velvet a sidelong look. “I’m sorry?”
Velvet looked up at her. “I have a deep, dark secret I’ve been keeping from everypony except my husband. And it’s time you knew.”
Cadence looked panicked. “Velvet, it’s okay. Not everypony has to know everything about you.”
She grabbed Cadence by the front of her parka. “I’m Ardent Roan.”
Cadence stared at her, gears turning visibly behind her eyes. “You’re what? Who? Hold on… Do you mean?”
“The novel. In your bag. I wrote that. Every word, except for the introduction by Jade Singer. The book I’m reading? I’m doing research so I can write a novel about gay warrior pegasi from classical times.”
Cadence gasped. She began to cry in earnest. Oh no. Was it really that much of a shock? Velvet knew she should have cut the part about the diamond dogs. She knew she shouldn't have confessed to Cadence!
Then Cadence was hugging her. So tight she couldn’t breathe.
“Air! Air!” gasped Velvet.
“This is amazing. Are you for real? I love those books!” said Cadence.
“They’re trash,” said Velvet.
“They’re wonderful trash,” said Cadence.
“Even the part with the diamond dogs?”
“Especially the part with the diamond dogs. That was hot.”
An echoing, metallic groan rent the night’s icy silence. Both mares looked up at the tesseract. Deep inside of it, a vast, baleful, square-pupiled eye regarded them with idle malice.
“So it’s been great connecting with you,” said Cadence, “but we really need to do something about this.”
“What can we do?” said Velvet.
“I don’t know! As far as I know, nothing like this had ever happened before! And I’m still worn out from my snow removal trick a little while ago. If Twilight were here, she’d know a spell, or she’d make a new one on the spot. But I can’t do that!” Cadence shifted from hoof to hoof anxiously.
“You’re an alicorn. If a bunch of CSGU undergrads can write their own teleport spells, you can close a cosmic rift,” said Velvet. “Come on! You’re all we’ve got!”
In the darkness, the eye was moving. There was a sense of some vast, unseen thing uncoiling. A realization that though the eye seemed huge, it was still very far away. But it was closing fast.
“I’m not all we've got,” said Cadence. “You're a writer. Do you happen to know any editing spells? And do you have any paper?”
Velvet had brought her saddlebags, and her pencil. The endpapers of her history book were full, but the blank page opposite the copyright information would do. Cadence began to scribble.
“Do you remember the principle of grammatical equivalence?” said Cadence.
Velvet nodded. “Magic is enforcing change in conformity to the will. Language is the most common and most powerful form of magic. Any spell can be expressed in linguistic form.”
Cadence had filled the whole page with what looked like a nonsense poem. “This is Starswirl’s original teleportation spell. We need to reverse the whole thing. Can you do that?”
Velvet glanced at the tesseract. It was impossible to tell how far away that thing was. It would seem to be moving away, then suddenly would jump forward all at once. “Yes. Just give me a second.” Her horn glowed. She pulled the words from the page. With the deftness of a mare who’d met countless impossible deadlines, she shuffled them into reverse order and set them back on the page. Cadence’s eyes flickered over them, one word at a time glowing as she read through the spell.
“A good start, but it's not enough. Quick. Cut these words, and this stanza and…”
Velvet obeyed as quickly as she could. Cadence erased a word or two herself and scribbled in several new lines. She ran through the spell a second time, then shut the book. “That’s going to have to do. I need one more thing. Open your mind to me. I’m tired. I need your power.”
“Me, but I’m just…”
“The mother of two of the most powerful living mages in the world. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Or it better not have, or we’re in deep trouble.”
Velvet laid her head against her daughter-in-law’s shoulder. She felt Cadence’s magic enter her mind. She saw things like tendrils made of millions of black flies begin to coil out of the tesseract. Then Cadence’s magic blazed, and Velvet’s perceptions were pulled along with it. She’d co-cast before, but nothing like this. Cadence’s power was like a torrent of blazing light, sweeping her along. She fed what power she had into the stream and was pulled along with it. Like a needle darning torn cloth, she darted back and forth, tearing through resistance, dodging tendrils of darkness, and coming back for another pass.
There was that metallic call, a scream this time, not a moan. The sound of a door slamming. Velvet was in her body again, shaking and faint. She opened her eyes. The sky was just the sky. The aurora flickered near the horizon, green and blue. Cadence made glowing lines of force where the tesseract had cut the rails. She was smiling, humming as she worked.
“We did it, Your Highness,” said Velvet, her voice trembling.
“We did. And ‘Cadence’. Please, Mrs. Sparkle.”
Velvet levitated her book out of the snow and brushed the cover clear. “You can me Velvet, Cadence.”
“How about ‘Mom’?”
“Mom works, too.”
They turned and walked back towards the train, side by side. Cadence spread her wing over Velvet’s back, sheltering her from the cold.
