More Guidelines Than Actual Rules

by I-A-M

Chapters

When You Knelt By My Mattress
Grey Light, New Day
And Away They Did Run
I'd Marry You In An Instant
An Old Soul Song
The Heart In My Chest
Just To Have You Around

When You Knelt By My Mattress

Author's Note

Set after the events of the Rules series but before the epilogues.

When You Knelt By My Mattress

Shimmer & Blaze

Something was wrong with Aria.

Okay, so, that might be an understatement, or at least a misleading one. There are a variety of things wrong with Aria but when it comes down to it I’m pretty much okay with all of them since they’re either entirely manageable…

...or kind of sexy.

But no, this has been a far more recent development.

Like, a ‘today’ kind of development.

“You… you what?” I felt a small, unsettling ice-cube of disbelief slip into my stomach as I stared at Aria who was shifting a little sheepishly under my gaze.

Sheepish wasn’t a look that suited Aria in any kind of natural manner. She did bellicose pretty well, choleric came naturally, and she was the bar by which any reasonable person could measure ‘fighty’. Right now, though, the best way to say it was that she looked ‘uncomfortable’, and after a full year and loose change of being together I feel like I’ve gotten a pretty accurate feeling for her moods.

“What? I just can’t go, I’m busy, okay?” Aria said with a dismissive shrug, tugging on her badged-up jacket nervously. “Look, it’s no big deal, Red, I’ve just got something to do today.”

Call me the needy girlfriend all you want but I wasn’t used to Aria turning me down when I asked her to come do something with me. Especially in this case since I was actively offering to go and see the newest installment of one of her favorite slasher movies with her despite not really being a huge fan of horror myself.

“Is everything alright?” I asked quietly, feeling wrong footed as I reached out for her.

It was a small relief when she almost lunged out to grab my hand and pull me closer.

“Everything’s fine, Red, I swear,” Aria assured me with a smirk. “‘Big Sister’ just asked me to do something. Any other day and I’d be down.”

“O-Okay,” I nodded, then smiled and leaned down.

As our lips pressed together with that easy, lovely familiarity of time, I reflected on how there would probably never come a day when I didn’t love kissing Aria Blaze. That perfect cupid’s bow is my favorite flavor even if I can’t put a finger on what that flavor is other than ‘Aria’. She leaned into me, pressing against me as she looped her arms around my neck and draped herself against me as I put my arms around her slender waist.

“I love you,” I said with a small smile as I nuzzled my nose to hers, and Aria wrinkled her nose adorable in response.

“Love you too, nerd,” Aria quipped back, kissing the tip of my nose once before stepping back.

“So what’s ‘Dagi having you do?” I asked as I pulled back, and Aria’s face fell.

My chest grew a little tight as she turned her eyes away and gave me another vague shrug. “It’s… just something she wanted me to do, that’s all.”

“Okay,” I said in a smaller voice. “I-It’s no big, we can go see the movie another time.”

I could feel the tension boiling off of Aria. “Yeah, for sure.”

Shoving her hands into her pockets, she leaned in for another kiss, and then scooted out of the room we were sharing. I watched her go with a slightly fragile smile, waving awkwardly until she left before collapsing back onto the bed and staring off into the distance for several minutes.

“It’s… it’s fine,” I said quietly to myself. “Aria loves you, and everything is fine.”

Yeah, my anxiety wasn’t buying it. It felt like my spine was fucking vibrating and my stomach was starting the first few warmups for a real showstopper of a triple-backflip routine. In the year-plus that we’d been together Aria and I had rarely spent more than a couple of days out of each other’s company, even if it was just waking up next to each other and going to sleep beside each other.

We both had our lives, we both got busy sometimes, but… if either of us had a choice in the matter between being side-by-side and doing anything else, you can bet we’d choose each other.

Aria wasn’t just my girlfriend anymore, she was literally my best friend.

We had a ton in common, shared all kinds of interests, played most of the same games and liked a lot of the same movies. Even after a year we could still sit and talk for hours about whatever we wanted.

Except for today.

I rocked back and forth on the bed for a few minutes as I tried to get the jitters out of my system but it wasn’t doing any good. Blowing out a breath, I stood up and started pacing for another couple of minutes before pulling out my phone and stared down at my contacts list until my thumb was hovering over Adagio’s name.

She was in Tokyo with Octavia this week for some meeting with a big Neighpon tech company who was buying into the bulk contract for the Lounge. Plenty of their business partners passed through the city of Canterlot and word of the Lounge’s popularity had reached even to the far east.

“Don’t do it,” I muttered angrily. “Aria is just busy, that’s all… you trust Aria, you love Aria… and everything is going to be fine.”

I stuck my phone back in the pocket of my jeans before pressing both hands to my face and letting out of an angry groan.

“Do not do this again, Shimmer,” I hissed as I pulled my hands back and forced myself to breathe normally.

Turning on my heel I grabbed my jacket off the coat rack and slung it over my shoulders before storming out the door, slamming it behind me a little too hard as I did. I winced as the noise echoed down the empty halls, and felt a touch thankful that it was relatively early by the Lounge’s standards, so it was unlikely that anyone heard that.

I moved silently, instinctively trying to keep the noise of my footsteps to a minimum as I passed numerous doors. I didn’t want to wake anyone up and while a year ago that would have pretty much included just me, Aria, her sisters, Octavia, and Twilight, after the renovations that was no longer the case.

The expansions to the Lounge had included a few dozen two-bed, studio apartments not unlike college dorms that Adagio provided to some of her staff as part of their benefits. Pay-rate at the Lounge was surprisingly modest, at least it looked that way from a certain standpoint. None of that factored in tips or the fact that the majority of the dancers lived on-site rent-free.

Mostly it was thanks to some antiquated city ordinance that Adagio had taken advantage of regarding employee housing that made it almost criminally cheap to house in the confines of the Lounge as long as they were full-time employees of the business. So long as the Lounge adhered to safety rules and regs, with semi-regular inspections, she got away with skipping past a lot of residential fees.

Thanks to that, there were almost fifty staff members permanently residing on-site, not counting the Sirens and their significant others.

It left the place feeling a little crowded, if I’m being honest, and Aria and I had talked more than once about getting our own place sometime soon.

My stomach did another uncomfortable backflip as my mind strayed back onto Aria, and I grimaced as I pushed the door to the back halls open and slipped into the VIP room.

It was the tail end of January, so the air was still chilly upstairs, and I shivered as I pulled my jacket a little tighter around my shoulders and made my way into the kitchens. Another benefit to the expansions is that Adagio had a full gourmet kitchen installed, and while there were plenty of healthy options for cooking myself a decent breakfast I opted instead to exercise my privilege as a grown-ass woman and eat a bowl of cereal with little marshmallow bits instead.

As I moved each spoonful mechanically from the bowl to my mouth, I couldn’t help but glance up at the empty seat across from me. Usually Aria and I would eat breakfast together if we could manage it.

“Don’t think about it,” I mumbled as I swallowed another mouthful of milk and carbs. “Just… just don’t think about.”

I finished off the bowl and took it over to the sink to wash it out before setting it on the drying rack.

My whole body felt like a livewire. I was just a conduit of nervous, restless energy, and if I didn’t do something with it I was going to go out of my fucking mind.

Blowing out a breath, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit the speed-dial.

//What up, Shimmer?// Rainbow friendly rasp came across the line.

“Hey, Dash, not… not much,” I tried to force some cheer into my voice. “Wanna hang out? I’m kinda free all day.”

//Guess Aria must be busy then, huh?// Rainbow said with a laugh, and I felt my stomach clench, but I pushed past it.

“Y-Yeah, she is,” I replied quickly. “So… whadya say?”

The other line was silent for a moment before Rainbow’s voice came across with a touch of suspicion and concern.

//Hey, Sunset… you okay?//

Damn it, for being our group’s resident dense jock Rainbow could be annoyingly perceptive about her friends.

“I’m fine, why?” I lied and almost winced at how badly it came out.

There was no way Rainbow was buying that.

//Bullshit.// Fuck, I knew it. //Spill, Shimmer, what’s up?//

“I just need a distraction, okay?” I said a little more quietly. “Can… can we just hang out? Please?”

Rainbow sighed over the phone, but I could hear her giving in. With the best will in the world, Rainbow always was pretty bad at saying no to me. It was, unfortunately, one of the things that tore us apart back when we were dating. Neither of us were very good for each other romantically, and it showed pretty clearly now that I look back on it with the benefit of hindsight.

C’est l’amour, as Rarity would say.

//Yeah alright, I’ll be there in fifteen,// Rainbow replied after a moment. //But we’re talking about whatever this is, okay?//

“Dash, it’s nothing, seriously,” I pushed as I stood up and starting walking back into the main Lounge. “I promise, it’s just my head doing that thing where it fills up with tar and starts… ugh, it’s just my anxiety, okay?”

//Still talking about it,// Rainbow replied, and I could hear her getting ready in the background. //No gettin’ out of it, Shimmer.//

“Damn it, Dash, I’m fine,” I repeated, but she’d already hung up.

Stupid Rainbow Dash and her stupid ‘worrying about me’ thing. I loved her to death, but ever since our relationship melted down Rainbow has been way more intent on trying to look after me. Admittedly, she’s better than half the reason I met Aria so I probably owed it to her to open up a little, but still…

I hated talking about this stuff. It’s pointless, it’s literally just my stupid brain telling me things that I know are lies. They’re just products of me being a neurotic, obsessive mess with a bakers dozen of abandonment issues and an inferiority complex that makes the Canterhorn look like an anthill.

Ugh, maybe Rarity was right, maybe I do need therapy.

‘Couples therapy,’ my traitorous brain whispered, and I stamped down on that thought hard enough I felt the phantom echo of the pressure in my bootsole.

Aria and I were fine. We were doing just fine and there was nothing wrong. I just had to keep repeating that and eventually it might drown out the nasty little voice telling me that I wasn’t enough.

“So?” Rainbow said nonchalantly as I settled into the passenger seat and she took off from the Lounge parking lot.

“So what?” I said evenly, pointedly not looking at her.

Rainbow blew out a small breath and shot a sideways glare at me that I didn’t acknowledge. She kept it up, rotating between keeping her eyes on the road and side-eyeing me, until Rainbow finally sighed and shook her head.

“C’mon, Shimmer, I know you better than most,” Rainbow said evenly. “We dated long enough that I got the business end of that silent treatment of yours more than once, I know when you’re pissed off.”

“I’m not pissed off,” I said a little peevishly. “I’m… I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Rainbow snapped, turning to glare at me as we stopped at a red light. “Seriously, Sunset, look at yourself! You look like someone shot your dog!”

“I do not!” I snarled. “I’m just… I’m having a shitty day, okay? I don’t need you making it worse!”

“I’m not trying to make it worse!” Rainbow bit the words out, but I could hear her trying to pull her temper back.

That was something a little new, she never did that back when we were dating and I think our brutal breakup was probably the catalyst for her trying to get a handle on both her temper and her drinking.

“You always do this,” Rainbow said angrily. “You bottle everything up, pretend like it’s all okay, and then have a freaking meltdown the moment it hits a boil!”

“I-!” I was about to deny it but, frankly, Rainbow would know better than anyone how true her statement was.

Between Rainbow constantly going out to bars, flirting with other girls and guys, and just generally being Rainbow Dash, and my insecurities and anxieties driving me to push back at her by basically doing the same thing only out of petty spite and jealousy we’d ended up in a screaming match that devolved into a knock-down, drag out fight with a lot of nasty accusations shouted in both directions.

“It’s not that bad,” I amended a little lamely. “I’m just having a freakout, okay?”

“What’s going on?” Rainbow asked in a gentler voice.

I sighed.

“I wanted to take Aria out to see the new Halloween movie that came out a while back, it’s playing at that cushy second-run theater with all the couches and easy chairs,” I explained, and Rainbow grinned and nodded along. “Except… she turned me down.”

Rainbow blinked in surprise.

“What? Seriously?” Rainbow asked, looking skeptical. “That’s like, Aria’s favorite slasher flick, and you freakin’ hate those movies.”

“I do not!” I said defensively. “You just think I do because you scared the piss out of me that one time with the mask.”

Rainbow Dash rubbed at her face instinctively at the memory of that.

“Right, yeah, I didn’t really think that one through,” Rainbow admitted.

“Do you ever?” I asked with a small laugh, and Dash chuckled alongside me. The humor lasted for a few moments before I settled down and continued. “A-anyway, she acted all cagey when I asked her what her plans for the day were, just something about Adagio asking her to do something.”

“Siren business?” Rainbow asked suspiciously, and I shrugged. “Look, Shimmer, normally I’d be all, ‘don’t even worry about it’, but those three’ve been around since rocks were soft… I have no clue what kinda wild crap they’ve gotten up to over the centuries.”

“You think that’s all it is?” I asked quietly, I genuinely hadn’t considered that, but I supposed it was true enough. “You think she’s just wrapping up some of ‘Dagi’s loose ends?”

“I mean, that sounds like Adagio asked’er to whack somebody,” Rainbow said with a grimace. “You don’t… you don’t think that’s what it was, do you? Was that why you were so worried?”

“N-No…” I shifted uncomfortably in the seat as she parked at one of the coffee shops in the Commons, a little place called Cuppa’s.

Rainbow Dash gave me an odd look as she got out of the car and stared at me searchingly over the top of her Mustang for several seconds before her eyebrows shot up into her hairline.

“No shit, you… you think Aria’s messing around on you, don’t you?” Rainbow asked in shock, and I flinched.

“No!” I replied hurriedly, “I promise I… I don’t… it’s just my stupid brain, okay? I know Aria would never do that to me.”

“Damn right,” Rainbow said, shaking her head and laughing in disbelief. “Seriously, Aria is freaking nuts for you, Shimmer, and I mean that literally.”

“I know,” I said, hanging my head a little. “It’s completely unfair to Aria, and I feel like such a bitch for even having the thought.”

“Hey, in your defense…” Rainbow looked apologetic as she came around the car and slung an arm over my shoulders, “that reflex is probably like, half my fault.”

“You never actually cheated on me, Dash,” I said with a shrug.

“I didn’t exactly make it easy to believe that, though,” Rainbow said quietly. “Like, I know how I acted, okay? I know how I can get, and I get why you got all jealous… I shoulda been a better girlfriend.”

“C’mon, Dashie, we’ve been over this,” I said with a wan smile. “We both could’ve been a lot better about a lot of things, okay? It’s behind us now.”

“I still feel like a heel,” she said with a grimace as we walked into the shop and took a seat.

Rainbow ordered us a couple of hot coffees, mine was black per usual while hers was some kind of enormous cross between a caffeinated war crime and a smoothie. We sat at the table for a meandering hour, sipping our drinks and watching the world pass by outside the windows.

“Have you tried calling her?” Rainbow asked after a little while, nodding down to my phone. “Adagio, I mean, just to see what’s goin’ on?”

“No,” I admitted with a frown. “I trust Aria, okay? I don’t want to go snooping around for no reason.”

“It’s not snooping, Shimmer,” Rainbow said firmly. “Look, Aria may not realise it, but she’s causing you some serious issues being all evasive like this, okay? It’s not like she’s doin’ it on purpose but you’ve gotta look out for yourself too… just call Adagio and put this crap to rest.”

“You don’t think I’ll be being too… I dunno, weird?” I said uneasily as I stared down at my phone. Ignoring my own thoughts was one thing, but having them reinforced by Rainbow was an entirely different matter. “I don’t want to be the psycho girlfriend again.”

Rainbow sighed and reached out to put both her hands on either of my shoulders and looked me square in the eyes.

“Sunset, I want you to know before I say this that I love you like a sister, okay?” she said heavily, and I nodded carefully. “Cool, so… Sunny? You are the psycho girlfriend, okay? Like, you go balls to the wall when it comes to being in love.” I grimaced at that and pulled back, but Rainbow held me fast. “BUT! I’m pretty sure Aria is, like, just as fucking nuts as you are, and I’m also pretty sure that’s why this weirdo thing you two have works out.”

“So, what?” I said uncertainly. “Just… lean into it?”

“I mean, e~h…” Rainbow gave a nervous laugh and shrugged. “Maybe don’t lean too hard, y’know? Use your good judgment and all that.”

“That assumes I have good judgment,” I deadpanned, and Rainbow just took in a slow breath through her teeth as she shrugged again.

“Point is…” Rainbow continued, patting me not-so-reassuringly on the shoulder, “I think in this case it’s totally reasonable to give Adagio a call and just, y’know, put all this stuff out there, okay? I’m pretty sure it’s nothing.”

Sighing, I nodded and dialed Adagio’s cell before holding it up to my ear. It rang several times, and I was halfway certain it was going to go to voicemail when the line connected and a grumpy, sleepy voice replied.

“Mmht…”

“Uh… Oh shit, the time difference,” I grimaced, and Rainbow flinched.

Tokyo was something like fourteen hours ahead of Canterlot, so it was likely around three in the morning over there. I’d probably woken Adagio out of a dead sleep.

//Sunset?// Adagio’s tired voice came through. //What’s going on? Is everything okay?//

“Y-yeah, Written’s Quill, ‘Dagi, I’m sorry, I forgot about the time zone thing,” I said with a groan. “Aria’s just been acting cagey about whatever it is you asked her to do today, and I was wondering if you could-”

//What are you talking about?// Adagio grumbled, and I felt my stomach do an uncomfortable flip before clenching hard. //I never asked Aria to do anything today.//

“Y-you didn’t?” I said quietly, and I saw Rainbow’s eyes widen. “But… but she said-”

//Sunset, I’m sorry but I’m exhausted, call me in four or five hours,// Adagio grunted and I heard Octavia let out a quiet murr of annoyance right before the line cut off.

I swallowed thickly as I lowered the phone from my ear and I could feel my vision fuzzing out as I stared straight ahead. My heart was thundering in my chest, and I swear I could tell that Rainbow Dash was saying something but for the life of me I couldn’t make it out. It was like the voices of the parents from that old cartoon where anytime they talked it was the sound of: womp womp womp womp, instead of audible words.

Rainbow raised a hand to me in a sort of calming motion, scooting her chair to my side as she did, and she wrapped her arms around me as she picked up her phone and dialed a number. I was resting against her shoulder as I her voice started to come back into focus.

“Pinks, no time for happy crap, okay?” Rainbow said tersely, “Sunset’s losing her shit, and I need you to find Aria for me.”

I faintly heard Pinkie’s voice through Rainbow’s phone mic, but it wasn’t loud enough for me to tell what it was she said.

“No I don’t- I don’t care how busy it is, find her!” Rainbow hissed. “I know you can do it so… so please, just tell me and I’ll go get her.”

The line was silent for several seconds before the voice replied, but Pinkie was so quiet I barely noticed.

“Yeah… yeah she’s here,” Rainbow said quietly. “Pinkie just… ugh, fine!”

I felt the phone pressed to my ear and I glanced over to find Rainbow holding her phone up and grimacing off into the distance.

//Hey Shimmy, you okay?// Pinkie’s voice was a little tinny and I could hear the worry in her tone. //Shimmy?//

I opened and closed my mouth several times trying to get some kind of response out. Nothing emerged, though… whatever part of my brain was responsible for forming words was being overwhelmed by a single monolithic thought that was hammering away at what fragile sense of security I still had.

Aria had lied to me.

Aria had never lied to me, not like that… she had never looked me straight in the eyes and misled me. It was something that she took pride in, she was who she was and she never apologised for it.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that I was having a full blown panic attack. I felt like was drowning and dying at the same time, my heart was so loud it was deafening, and my fingers were getting pins and needles as I vaguely realised I was hyperventilating.

“N-n-no,” I gasped the word out, and I came through like a sob.

//It’s okay, Shimmy, Auntie Pinkie’ll take care of it,// Pinkie said in that same sad, gentle tone.

Rainbow pulled the phone back and angrily asked: “Well?!”

I heard a string of words from Pinkie and Rainbow nodded several times throughout, never interrupting, until finally she sighed and gave one more nod.

“Cool, thanks Pinks, I owe ya one,” Rainbow said with a weary smile. “I’ll get’er home.”

Rainbow thumbed the end-call button and tucked her phone away before getting her arm under mine and helping me out the door. Cuppa, a tall, dark-skinned young woman with her hair kept in colorfully beaded plaits, gave us a worried look.

“Don’t sweat it, Cuppa,” Rainbow waved at her as she helped me out, “the coffee was fine!”

“R-Rainbow?” I asked in a brittle voice as I stared straight ahead. “Is… is Aria cheating on me?”

“I dunno, Shimmer,” Rainbow said quietly. “Pretty sure it’s somethin’ else, okay? But if she is… fuck, if she’s messin’ around on you, Sunset, then I don’t care how long she’s spent getting badass, she won’t be getting a day older than this.”

I let out a quiet sob.

“I c-can’t lose her like this, Dashie,” I cried. “Aria’s my whole world.”

“I know,” Rainbow said in a quiet, furious tone as we trudged out into the parking lot. “And she better have one helluva good explanation for all this.”

Rather than going to Rainbow’s car, though, she led us to an empty part of the lot and fished out her keyring, holding it up to glare at the little geode that hung from it.

“Phew… been a minute since I’ve done this,” Rainbow muttered.

She swung the keychain a little and caught the whole thing in her hand before sweeping down and scooping me up in a bridal carry.

“Hang on tight, Shimmer,” Rainbow said as she braced herself, lowered her center of gravity, and then-

The air detonated around us as Rainbow tapped into the power of her geode, and suddenly we were surrounded by a luminous blue aura as the world passed in a blur of color and muted noise. I clung to Rainbow desperately as the sensation of overwhelming speed assaulted my senses. I couldn’t even register everything that was happening around us, so I just clenched my eyes shut and held on.

Then we stopped.

The sorcerous power of Rainbow’s geode absorbed the punishing impact of the g-forces we should have been experiencing as we came to a sudden halt at the front door of the Last Note Lounge.

I got set down on shaky legs, and I had to hold onto Rainbow for a few minutes as my stomach managed to work its way back down from where it had entrenched itself somewhere near my uvula.

“Let’s go inside, Sunny,” Rainbow said quietly, getting an arm over my shoulder and guiding me into the Lounge

We passed by several employees who looked to be just getting to the start of their day. Sonata was just slipping behind her beloved bar to start prepping it and Twilight, hair still messy from sleep, was eating a bowl of cereal at the bar next to her girlfriend.

Both of them caught sight of us at the same time, but before they could say anything I saw Rainbow just give them a shake of the head and before guiding us both past the small crowd of employees and into the VIP room, then back to the back halls.

A part of me couldn’t stand to go back to Aria’s room, to our room, if my panic-stricken fears were correct. Another part of me desperately needed to get back there to be surrounded by Aria’s scent so I could try to convince myself that none of it was true and that Aria loved me and would never, ever hurt me like that.

At some point Rainbow had gotten a hold of my keys and was opening the door, I shuffled in and tossed my coat onto the coat rack, missed, and watched as it fell gracelessly to the floor.

I stared down at the crumpled leather article for several seconds before I started shaking, feeling a weird sense of weight settle onto me as I did.

“I… I’m not going to lose it over a fucking jacket,” I muttered, clenching my eyes shut as I stomped over to it, swept it up, and threw it onto the coat rack properly this time.

“You alright, Sunny?” Rainbow asked as I kicked my shoes off and dropped my ass onto the bed.

“Considering I would rather Aria be out murdering someone on Adagio’s say-so, than think that she might be…” I couldn’t make myself say it, instead I just blew out a breath and shook my head. “No, Rainbow, I’m not alright… my brain is trying to claw its way out of my skull right now, and I’m so wound up I don’t know if I want to scream or just set this entire room on fire.”

“A~lright, well just, uh, hang tight on that,” Rainbow said with a nervous laugh. She should be nervous, I wasn’t joking. “Pinkie’s gonna track down Aria and we’re gonna figure this out, okay?”

I nodded silently.

We waited for what felt like an interminable amount of time, but might have only been half an hour before I finally couldn’t stand the silence anymore. It was oppressive and I was already feeling like I was about to sink into the earth. Instead, I looked up at Rainbow who was sitting on a chair dinking around on her phone.

“H-Hey, Dash?” I asked in a choked voice, and my tone got her to look up immediately in concern. “What am I gonna do if… if she really…?”

Rainbow grimaced and shook her head. “I dunno, Sunset, but I know I’m gonna be there for you, okay? No matter what.”

“I can’t lose her, Dash,” I said as I started to shake and I wrapped my arms around my own chest in a futile attempt to reassure myself. “I just… I just can’t… I really don’t think I’ll get over it if it’s true, Dashie…”

“C’mon, Shimmer,” Rainbow said encouragingly, “it’s not, like, the end of the world… I mean, heh, we’d know right?”

“It might be the end of mine,” I whispered softly, and I saw Rainbow’s brow furrow worriedly. “I… she’s the one, Dash, I know it… s-so, I can’t lose her like this.”

Rainbow Dash’s eyebrows shot up for the second time that day.

“Woah, Sunny, you… you mean that?” Rainbow asked in a tone of awe. “Like… ‘the one’ the one?”

I nodded. “Yeah, Dashie… I… I want to be with her forever, or for the rest of my life, I really do.”

“Damn,” Rainbow swore softly as her arms hung by her sides. “Shit… Sunset, I… I guess I didn’t realise.”

I just shook my head. I didn’t know what else to say… I didn’t know if there was anything else to say. I loved Aria like I had never loved anyone in my life, and probably like I would never love anyone ever again if I ever lost her. She was my perfect match: my crazy, disastrous, dumpster-fire Siren girlfriend, and… I’ll be honest, as dramatic as it sounds I’m not entirely sure I’d really survive losing Aria.

Not in any way that really mattered.

I was saved from the silence by Rainbow Dash’s phone going off, and she answered it immediately. She gave a couple of short, clipped replies, a nod, and then hung up her phone.

“Found her,” Rainbow said quickly. “I’ll be right back.”

I watched her sprint out of the room, heard her speed down the hallway, and just as the door started to close I heard the tell-tale crack-boom of Rainbow dipping into her power for the second time that day split the air.

Unsure of how long it would take, I pulled my clothes off and put on some more comfortable wear, sweatpants and a loose tee shirt, and crawled up onto the bed.

Then I sat down, hugged my knees to my chest, and waited.

I didn’t need a phone call to tell me that Rainbow had returned with Aria in tow, mostly because I heard the boom echo down through the halls, followed by the sound of skidding on concrete, then the door to the room burst open to the tune of some of the most virulent Sirenic cussing and swearing I’d ever heard, even from Aria.

And that was saying something.

“Get in there!” Rainbow shouted, and Aria’s lithe form tumbled into our room.

“What in the FUCK,” Aria scrambled to her feet and glared at Rainbow who was matching her furious look with a glower that could’ve melted carbon.

“That’s what I should be asking,” Rainbow hissed as she stomped up to Aria and grabbed her by the collar of her denim jacket and jerked her up. “Now explain!”

“Explain what?!” Aria snarled. “You grabbed me off the friggin’ street you maniac! I don’t have to explain a damn thing to you!”

“Not to me!” Rainbow snapped. “To her!”

Rainbow jerked her arm out and pointed at me and I almost jumped in surprise. Aria blinked in confusion, then turned her head to look at me.

“Explain to…” Aria began, and all I can think is that she saw something on my face because she blanched. “R-Red?”

Aria started to kick and jerk until she had shimmied her way out of her own jacket and, by the same token, Rainbow’s grip, and dropped to the floor in a tangle of limbs before half-running-half-crawling to the bed. She was still wearing what she’d gone out in, a thin but warm sweater that hugged her curves nicely, and a pair of thermal jeans that made her butt look really good.

Her hair was falling chaotically over her face as she got up to me and reached out.

“Red? What happened?!” Aria was starting to panic. “W-what’s wrong?!”

I flinched away as she reached out, and I saw a look flash across her face like I’d just cut her. I glanced over at Rainbow who narrowed her eyes, then sighed, shrugged, nodded, and left the room.

She slammed the door on the way out, though.

“R… Red?” Aria’s voice came out brittle and terrified.

“Where did you go?” I asked quietly as I turned back to start at her.

“I… n-nowhere,” Aria said stammered. “A-Adagio-!”

“STOP LYING!” I screamed, and Aria jerked backwards.

I was breathing hard, and my fingers and toes were practically buzzing. I wasn’t quite hyperventilating, I’d pretty much gotten the panic attack out of my system back at Cuppas but I could feel another one really knuckling down and getting ready to fuck some heads if I didn’t get a straight answer.

“Sunset I…” Aria looked terrified again, then swallowed hard. “You uh… you called her, huh?”

“Yeah,” I hissed angrily. “I fucking called her.”

“Shit,” Aria was trembling as she sat back and pressed her hands to her face. “Shit, shit, shit! This isn’t how this was supposed to go!”

“How what was supposed to go?!” I snapped. “Why couldn’t you just tell me the truth? Why did you lie to me?! You… you know how I get about this shit, Ari’! You know!”

“I KNOW!” Aria cried before looking up at me and I saw tears in her eyes. “I… I’m sorry! Okay!? I didn’t think it would take that long! They said it was ready and… it woulda been fine except then you wanted to see that movie and I had to pull something out of my ass to… DAMN IT!”

Now Aria was the one full-on crying, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.

“Just tell me okay?” I said quietly. “Was it… was it someone else?”

Aria’s mouth dropped open with an audible click and she stared blankly at me for several seconds. Her jaw moved weakly a few times, then she let out a ragged sob.

“Never,” Aria whispered as she started to shake violently. “Fuck… fuck… you really thought…” then she swallowed hard and shook her head. “No, s-shit, I really made you think I’d-”

“What was I supposed to think?” I asked bitterly. “You left out of nowhere, acted all cagey, wouldn’t tell me anything, and… and you lied to me, Aria.”

“I’m sorry,” Aria cried the words out softly as she curled up a few feet from me. “I… I panicked, Red… I was trying to do something and… and I really, really fucked it up.”

“What were you trying to do?” I asked in a low, raw voice. I was trying really hard not to cry right along with her, but it was an ordeal. “Just… can you just tell me?”

She nodded silently, got up, and trudged miserably over to her jacket and picked it up. She turned it over this way and that as she tried to figure out which was was right-side up and ended up turning it upside down. As she did, something small, circular, and black tumbled out and struck the carpet, only to bounce and roll along the floor towards the bed.

Aria cursed viciously as she noticed it only after it had made it halfway across the room, and threw her jacket at the coat rack, which it landed on perfectly somehow, and took off after it.

She wasn’t quite fast enough. I leaned down and scooped it up from the carpet as it rolled past the bed, and held it up to examine it.

“H-hey, Red, I…” Aria started, but her words trailed off as I turned it over in my hands.

It was a case that was made from smooth, polished black wood, and it had a seam that divided it in half. It was so small that it fit in the palm of my hand, and as I lifted it up I had the oddest, most awful premonition.

“Aria… is this…?” I glanced back up at her and she looked terrified.

Truly, honestly terrified.

Swallowing hard again, she slipped up onto the bed and sat down, fidgeting idly with the hem of her shirt as she shrugged and looked anywhere but at me.

“It… it wasn’t supposed to be like this, Red,” Aria said tearfully as she wiped at her face. “I was going to… to take you out to dinner, and it was going to… to be just right, y’know?”

I stared down at the case with the oddest feeling in my chest. It was a little like the kind of zero-gravity weightlessness that comes from being lifted in a telekinetic sheathe, a feeling of floating and almost-nausea.

Slowly, I held out the little case to Aria without saying a word, and I watched her stare at it for several moments before nodding, plucking it out of my hand, then got up and turned to face me.

She looked more nervous than I think I’ve ever seen her. I could see the sheen of sweat on her brow as she shook out her hands and took a few slow, shuddering breaths. Aria turned the black case over in her hands a few times, running her slender fingers over the smooth wood like a worry-stone, then looked up at me.

“So uh, I… I didn’t really think this out very well,” Aria started, and I let out a nervous little laugh as I shrugged. “B-but, here goes nothing.”

She blew out a breath and nodded.

“Okay, uhm, I guess I’ll start with the obvious,” Aria began, shifting from foot-to-foot as she rubbed the back of her head anxiously, then forced herself to look me in the eye. “Sunset, I love you like I’ve… like I’ve never loved anyone, alright? You drive me completely insane in the best possible way.”

I nodded along with her, feeling my heart clenching as tears started to roll down my face.

“I’ve lived for thousands of years, Red,” Aria said in a raw voice, “and I’ve done some really awful shit. I’ve watched castles rise and fall, and knocked a few over myself, I’ve watched civilizations burn including my own.” She shook her head slowly as she gripped the little case hard enough to make it creak. “Thousands of years, Red… and I’m gonna be honest, most of them sucked! Better than a thousand years on this miserable planet, thousands on thousands of nights where we went hungry, so hungry we thought we’d die of it,” she was really crying now, and so was I. “I hated this world, and this whole damn dimension, so much, and I hated Equestria just as much for banishing us here, but y’know what?”

Aria’s eyes were red and puffy as she stared at me, and I sniffled as I wiped at my eyes.

“W-What?” I croaked the word out, and Aria scooted a few inches closer and got down on a knee.

“Every one of those miserable fucking years is gonna be worth it,” Aria sobbed as she worked her fingers into the seam of the case, cracked it open, and held it up. “Every single one of them… if it means I get to be with you til the day I die.”

Inside the case was a simple band of polished gold. There was no gem, but the outside of the ring was engraved with flowing script that belonged to no tongue of this world, I was certain. The calligraphy was beautiful, and I’m sure it cost an arm and a leg to have something like this custom made, but… somehow I wasn’t surprised.

“So, uh, I know I really fucked this up today, Red,” Aria choked the words out and I could tell she was barely holding it together, “but uhm, this is all I got, okay? I never, ever want to be with anyone but you, so… whadya say? Marry me?”

I slid forward on the bed, wiped at my eyes, and reached out to put my hands on Aria’s as I nodded.

“Y-Yeah,” I said with a cracked laugh before my face split into an ear-to-ear grin. “I… I mean, yes! YES!”

Aria let out a sob of relief before awkwardly prying the ring out of the little case as I held out my hand, and slowly she worked the small band of precious metal onto my finger. It fit perfectly, and I held it up where the light would catch off of it, and I couldn’t stop smiling.

Then I turned and pulled Aria into my arms, and we collapsed back against the bed as she let out a vulnerable little cry and buried her face against my chest, muttering apology after apology for what had happened today. I just shook my head as I curled up around her, and Aria just clung to me and kissed me softly.

“I’ll never leave you, Red,” Aria swore in a quiet voice. “Never, not in a million years.”

“I know, I know!” I sobbed, holding onto her tightly. “I was so scared, though, I really don’t think I can do this without you anymore… I don’t think I can-”

“Me neither!” Aria hugged me even tighter and we stayed there for several minutes, silent and shaking.

It reminded me of that day a year ago when Aria came back early from the Lounge convention, desperate and tired and shaking, and how she had tackled me to the floor and held on like I was the only thing keeping her alive.

We really were no good without each other anymore.

“S-So… is this like the one ring or something?” I said, and laughed softly as I stroked Aria’s long, soft hair with one hand, and held the other up above us to stare at the ring that now glittered on my finger. “What’s it say?”

“My heart shall beat as the tide with yours

and follow you,

as the sea treads towards the brightest moon,

til that moon is dark beneath the waves,

And the tides shall beat no more.”

I stared for several moments, and Aria flushed.

“It… it sounds better in Sirenic,” she said quietly.

I turned back to her, tangling my fingers into her hair, and pulled her closer to press my lips to hers. I felt that soft, perfect Cupid’s bow mold against my mouth, and she trailed her hands down my sides and up my back. I shivered as I leaned into her touch where I could, and I was so desperate for it, so desperate to feel her that it was drowning out everything else.

When we finally parted, mostly to catch our breath, I started to giggle, then I began laughing as I pressed my forehead to hers and all of a sudden she was laughing right along with me.

“I’m getting married!” I cried through my fit of mirth. “We’re getting married! You’re-! Written’s Quill, you’re gonna be my wife!”

“Never getting rid of me now, Red,” Aria said with a small chuckle.

“I’m buying you a gingham dress,” I remarked in all seriousness, and Aria scowled.

“Not a fucking chance,” she deadpanned.

“Even if I wear it first?” I said with a raised eyebrow, and before Aria could reply I added, “...to bed?”

To my surprise, Aria’s face suddenly flushed scarlet and her eyes went wide, and I could see her imagination suddenly taking a hard left into the gutter. So I pressed my advantage and leaned in close until my lips were by her ear and whispered softly.

“And I won’t be wearing anything else.”

Aria swallowed thickly, then said. “C-can we do that before we’re married?”

“Mm… nah,” I smirked as Aria narrowed her eyes. “But maybe on the honeymoon.”

“Then we’re getting married soon,” she replied heatedly. “No waiting.”

“We’ve gotta give it a little time,” I said with a playful chuckle as I nipped at her ear. “There are rules to this kind of thing.”

“Fuck the rules,” Aria hissed as she got a grip on my shoulders and flipped me over, then clambered up til she was straddling me. “I’m not waiting any longer than I have to to bend you over in a gingham dress, grab you by the hair, and fuck you unconscious.”

"Too bad, “I said with a smirk, “gotta punish you for today somehow.”

“Ugh, I feel like a moron,” Aria hung her head and slumped over on top of me before curling around me and pressing her lips to my neck as she nuzzled against me. “Red… I swear it, okay? On Nodens Oath, I’ll never, ever lie to you again, okay?”

“Nodens Oath?” I asked with a small smile as I hugged her and held up my hand again to stare at the ring.

“It’s a Siren thing,” Aria said with a shrug. “I’m no priestess, but… it’s a big deal for us… so yeah.”

“Okay,” I said with a smile. “I trust you.”

“I love you, Red,” Aria put a hand to my cheek and turned my head so I was facing her, and she had the most deliriously happy smile on her face as she leaned in to kiss me.

“Always,” I said softly. “Always.”

Grey Light, New Day

Author's Note

Set after the events of Etiquette but before the Epilogue.

Grey Light, New Day

Melody & Dazzle

It’s rare for me to wake up alone these days.

I think it’s a bit funny how jarring it is, considering I did it for so very long, but the fact of the matter is that when I turned over in bed to find Adagio missing from her usual spot beside me so early in the morning I felt… disturbed.

I wiped my eyes as I rose from the bed and pulled the sheets off, and they came away slightly damp with sweat. I grimaced at them and grumbled as I stretched and smacked my lips, trying to ignore the stifling heat. It was the longest day of summer and we were in the heart of Manehattan which seemed to adopt the extremes of either end of the temperature spectrum depending on where on the calendar you landed.

Winters weren’t cold, they were freezing. Summer wasn’t warm, it was intolerably hot. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would willingly choose to live in the Manehattan considering the plethora of other options. The city was the very definition of crude and disgusting, with Manehattanites proudly declaring they were ‘Manehattan Tough’ and saying things like ‘Only in Manehattan’.

Yes, obviously… only in Manehattan could you encounter a naked, gyrating transient drunkenly slurring through showtunes in front of an open guitar case on the subway.

Only in Manehattan could you have someone verbally savage you for having the audacity to almost be run over by their car as they flew past a red light.

And you would certainly need to be ‘Manehattan Tough’, whatever that means, in order to endure the fact that the wretched city turns your brain into a caged vermin that it administers semi-random electrical shocks to until it loses its mind in a frenzy of rage.

I’m not a fan of the city, is my point.

Still, it was tolerable enough with Adagio by my side, which she wasn’t at the moment, which leads me to my current distress.

“Darling?” I called as I stood from the bed and looked around our hotel room. It was a voluminous one, as per usual. “Adagio? Love, are you here?”

There was no forthcoming answer and since the shower wasn’t running I was certain she wasn’t just bathing and out of earshot that way. No, it seemed she truly wasn’t in the room, and for some reason that sent an unfeasible stab of panic through me.

“Damn you, woman,” I nearly bit my lip as I stalked into the bathroom to rinse myself off for the morning. “When I find you I’ll-!”

A note was tacked to the mirror of the bathroom.

My love,

Just in case you missed the note I left by the bedside, I’ve left this one here.

I’ve gone out for the morning, it’s nothing to be concerned about, I just had something to attend to in private. If that troubles you, I’ll be at the boardwalk overlooking the bay. You may join me if you wish.

With all my love,

A.D.

I stared for a moment as I scanned the note, then turned and swept back across the room to the end table by my side of the bed and found, certain enough, a copy of the note in the bathroom that I had overlooked in my panic.

“Bloody Sirens,” I sighed as I picked up the note and scanned it as well, but it said more or less the same thing.

She had something to do. She was inviting me to join her if I wanted to, but I got the distinct feeling that it was something she wasn’t certain about. Maybe it was something Adagio was used to doing alone? I suppose that was possible, but she’d never mentioned something like that to me before.

I picked up my phone and tapped Adagio’s contact icon, then held the mobile to my ear and waited til the line connected.

//Good morning, my Melody,// Adagio’s voice was soft and almost sad. //I trust you got my note?//

“I did,” I replied evenly, “you could have woken me up, you know.”

//Perhaps,// Adagio allowed with a small chuckle, //But I know how you love your beauty sleep, and I was up quite early.//

“It’s still early, darling,” I replied grumpily. “It’s not even six in the morning.”

//That was rather my point,// Adagio laughed, then sighed and I could hear the call of ocean birds through the line. //I’ll text you my location if you wish to join me, otherwise-//

“Send it to me,” I tried to bite back the annoyance in my voice, but I’m certain I failed. Lord knows my temper is always getting the better of me. “Sorry, I’m just… I mislike waking up alone, darling… just… I’ll be there soon, alright?”

//Of course,// Adagio replied quietly. //I love you, Octavia.//

“I… I love you too,” I replied softly. “Now and always.”

I showered and dressed as quickly as I could, favoring a light, pale blouse secured with my bowtie, as ever, and a flowing skirt that trailed down to my ankles. I settled a wide-brimmed sunhat over my head in anticipation of the day, then made my way outside to the chauffeur that had been put at our service and gave him the directions Adagio had sent me.

As the vehicle moved at a fair clip, the traffic was not quite into its full and terrible swing for the day, I combed my hair straight and watched the city pass by. Even at the heart of Summer, it was still not quite fully light out. I couldn’t fathom what would have had my darling Adagio up so early as to make it all the way out to the bay before I’d even stirred.

Damnably, the heat was still present. The city soaked up heat like a sponge and even the chill of the morning and the east ocean wasn’t enough to sap it away, so the city was as horribly hot as usual, and it would only get worse as the day progressed and the sun rose higher in the sky. Adagio knew I hated Manehattan… I was a winter child, a daughter of the frigid city of Canterlot, with its forested hills and still, lakeside waters.

But then again, Adagio was a creature of the ocean. The city of Manehattan was as tumultuous as a storm-tossed sea and perhaps that was what Adagio found so comforting about it. As chaotic as the city was, it still reminded her of home and the familiarity therein was at least comforting, if not comfortable.

The car stopped at the curbside to the boardwalk and I got out, tipping the driver and sending him on his way. We had an app on our phones that would let us call him when we needed a ride back.

At least the car was air-conditioned.

I made my way down the street and onto the boardwalk itself, and my nose filled with the scent of sea salt and fish, and I blessed the cool kiss of the ocean breeze on my too-hot skin.

If there was one thing I loved about the ocean over the lakes that bordered Canterlot, it was the smell of it. That clean, salty scent that seemed to sweep straight through you and leave you feeling more awake and refreshed than anything else in the world could have at that moment.

Adagio wasn’t hard to spot, standing at the far end of one of the emptier docks. Her bombastic poof of orange curls was unmistakable even at a distance.

The sun fully crested the horizon in the east as I opened my mouth to call out to her, and my voice died in my throat as she was framed by the dawn. The light seemed to spill out around her, and my heart skipped a beat as I felt something ephemeral wash over me.

Then… Adagio began to sing.

It was a high, mournful sound, and the language was one I could never reproduce even if I trained for decades. I couldn’t tell where the vocalising ended and the lyrics began, or vice versa. Adagio’s song spun through ranges and registers that I couldn’t even fathom, and if I’d heard it as a recording I’d have sworn up and down that it was a modified somehow, or doctored.

There was simply no way that such a beautiful sound could be made by a human voice.

But then, I suppose it wasn’t being made by a human voice, was it?

Adagio’s song lasted the better part of ten minutes until the sun had risen entirely, and as the last of the sun passed the lip of the ocean Adagio’s voice came to a low, sorrowful close.

It was like waking up from a dream as the final notes tapered off, and I snapped back to reality before striding across the dock towards Adagio. She never moved from where she stood at the edge, she just stared out across the sea in silence as I moved up next to her, slipping my hand into hers and twining our fingers together.

“Good morning, my love,” Adagio said softly, and her voice was a touch raw when she spoke. “Apologies for this morning… I wasn’t sure I wanted company for this, but… I knew you wouldn’t have any peace about it til you saw me.”

“It’s alright,” I leaned against her slightly, and let out a small sigh of relief at her proximity. “May I ask what… what was that?”

Adagio was silent for several minutes, but I could see her ruminating. Her eyes, soft gleaming raspberry orbs that were normally lit with ambition and delight, were unfocused as she gazed at the ocean. She wasn’t ignoring me, though, and I felt her hand tighten its grip on mine as she tilted her head just slightly so it was resting atop mine.

“Do you believe in God, Octavia?” Adagio asked quietly.

I lifted my head from her shoulder and stared at her for a moment. She so rarely used my name like that, but today she’d done it twice in as many hours. There was something different about her this morning, something far more serious than I was accustomed to.

“I’ve never been a person of great faith, if that’s what you’re asking,” I replied after a moment. “My parents weren’t churchgoers, nor was I… and I’ve never felt any great need for religion either.”

“But do you believe in God?” Adagio pressed, glancing over at me as she finally broke her staring contest with the horizon.

“I… suppose I don’t,” I said finally. “This world never struck me particularly godly, if I’m being honest,” I grimaced bitterly as I thought back to Stalling Reins. “It’s an ugly thing, most of the time… brutish and unfair, and it seems designed to prey upon the most vulnerable of people.”

I sighed and pulled my hand back from Adagio’s to wrap my arms around myself.

“If I had to put it into words,” I continued, “I would say that, if God were real, then people wouldn’t have to work so hard just to enable basic humanity… so either God isn’t real… or he truly doesn’t care.”

“I see,” Adagio’s tone was quiet and thoughtful as she nodded. She didn’t seem put out by my answer, for which I was thankful. “Did you know I was a priestess?”

I stared at her in shock.

I had not known that.

“A… a priestess?” I repeated dumbly. “A-as in you were-?”

“Like your Priests, Fathers, and Pastors, yes,” Adagio nodded as she turned to face me fully. “Although the Deep Faith was quite different from these modern faiths… more like the ancient Roaman religions, I suppose.” Then she chuckled wryly and shrugged. “Actually, I was more than just a Priestess… I was the Priestess. The High Priestess, the chief ritualist of the Deep Faith and keeper of the most sacred sites and temples.”

“I… I see,” my voice came out toneless and unsteady.

Adagio hadn’t been just a Priestess of her faith, if she was telling the truth which I had no reason to believe that she wasn’t, she had been the Siren equivalent of the bloody Pope.

Holy hell.

“Before the death of my people,” Adagio turned to look back at the ocean as she spoke, “before I came here in this… this human body, I was the highest authority in the matters of faith for the Siren Empire.” Her thoughtful expression turned to a grimace a moment later. “At least, I was until I confronted our Empress about her mad plan to weaponise our song… to take the holiest of gifts from our progenitor and defile it for the sake of mass conquest.”

“What happened?” I asked softly.

“We engaged in a debate,” Adagio replied with a faint shrug. “Although for the Siren race that means far more than simply making our arguments as it does here.” She chuckled as she turned back to me with a wan smile. “The Siren word for ‘Debate’ more accurately translates into something like ‘War of Voices’, and the ensuing property damage was… significant.”

“I assume you didn’t, ah… make your point?” I ventured carefully, and Adagio let out a harsh laugh.

“As it happens, I did not,” she replied with a shake of her head. “Empress Concerta stood victorious after an hours-long debate and then, rather than kill me as she normally would have, she stripped me of my title and cast me out of the city to the hermitage of my temple.”

“I’m sorry,” I wasn’t really sure what else to say. “At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I feel that’s not terribly dissimilar, except for perhaps in relative scale, to what had happened to myself.” Adagio raised an eyebrow thoughtfully, so I continued. “You had her life’s endeavor torn from her by a cruel overseer… you lost everything trying to do what you felt was right, and protect the sanctity of something you loved.”

“I rather suppose I did,” Adagio allowed with a nod. “And the debasement of Noden’s Gift reaped precisely the reward I warned Concerta about.”

“Your people died,” I said softly, and she nodded. “Who… who is Nodens? A Siren?”

“Who is God?” Adagio countered with an even look. “Our scripture says that Nodens was the ocean made manifest, the living song of the tides and the trenches,” her voice took on a sermonistic tone, “Nodens was the first living Will of the world, and its Will crafted the Oceans and Lands… its Oath birthed the Siren race… and its Gift to us was our holy voices that carried a splinter of its own will, the voice that commands life to exist as it sees fit.” She trailed off, then sighed despondently. “Or so sayeth the Deep Faith, I suppose.”

“You believe in Nodens as a creator, then?” I asked cautiously, and Adagio just shrugged again.

“I… I did…” she said weakly, and I felt my heart clench at the lost tone of her voice. “Maybe I still do in Equestria but… in this place? This literally godless planet? I’m not sure.”

And there it was. Adagio wasn’t just upset, she was having a crisis of faith, and likely had been for some time but had been burying it under work and goals.

“I’m not really what anyone would call an expert in the matter,” I began as I moved in front of her and settled my hands on her hips. “But I’m given to understand that’s rather the purpose of faith, isn’t it?”

Adagio pulled me close, and hugged me tightly, her arms folding around me and I could feel the fragility in her as a small shudder ran through Adagio’s powerful frame. It was a rare thing for Adagio to seem helpless or weak, she was the iron pillar that held everything up most of the time, but I’d learned quickly that even the strongest load-bearing column can only take so much.

I wasn’t as strong as her, and admitting that to myself wasn’t nearly as galling as I thought it would be, but I was strong enough. Strong enough to take a bit of the weight from Atlas’s shoulders for a moment.

Strong enough to lighten her load now and again.

“Faith is a tricky thing,” Adagio broke the silence finally and let out a slow breath. “It’s as ephemeral as the moon’s grip on the tides… and yet no less strong for it.”

“I’m not in much of a position to speak on the matter, I suppose,” I admitted as I rested against her chest comfortably. “I’m not really a creature of faith.”

“I beg to differ,” Adagio replied, pulling back slightly to look down at me, and I met her eyes from under my sun-hat with a raised eyebrow of my own, and she laughed. “Do you love me, my Melody?”

I let out an offended huff. “Do you really have to ask that?”

“You know I’ll never leave you?” She asked, and I nodded judiciously. “And you know that I will never cease to love you?” I nodded, again, as this wasn’t exactly news. “That I will love with you all of my heart til time’s end and beyond?”

“Forever and always,” I said with a smile.

“How do you know?” Adagio asked in a somber voice.

“I…” I began but trailed off, finally catching her meaning. “Well… I suppose I just have faith, then, don’t I?”

“Love is the greatest leap of faith in all the cosmos, I think,” Adagio reached out with one hand to pluck the hat from my head, seized me around the waist with the other, and pulled me into a deep kiss.

I hummed in approval as I snaked my arms around her sides and up her back and hold onto her shoulders as Adagio leaned in. As always, when Adagio kissed me the world melted away and all there was around me was her. If I’m being honest though, out here that feeling was doubled upon itself. It was more than just a sensation, it was an overriding and almost overwhelming truth.

Adagio had that most curious scent about her; the gentle bouquet of sunshine and salt, and out here by the ocean under the light of the morning sun it was like the world was composed entirely of Adagio.

“Faith,” I began softly as we parted, then chuckled. “Well, I suppose having faith in a supernatural being makes more sense if I can regularly wake up next to her.”

“My point stands,” Adagio smirked, leaned in, and kissed me on the nose. “You have faith in me, and I in you.”

She raised her head to stare out over the ocean, and I turned to follow her gaze, leaning against her and molding my body to hers as I did.

“Love and Faith,” Adagio murmured, “what is eternity compared to putting your whole heart in the hands of another?”

“You’re the only one who will ever hold mine, darling,” I said softly, and Adagio leaned her head down to rest on mine in reply. “May… may I ask what it was you were doing when I got here?”

“An old rite,” Adagio replied easily. “The Solar Song was sung at the dawn of the longest day to give hope and thanks for a good harvest… the rich, warm sunlight fostered the algae farms on the surface of the ocean,” she gestured over the water, “and in turn made food plentiful for all the smaller creatures of the sea which we then hunted.”

“I see,” I stared out at the ocean, remembering as I did that no matter how silent it looked on the surface, beneath that surface it was teeming with life.

“I still hold to the old rites and rituals,” Adagio continued, “more fool me, perhaps… but on the minuscule chance that Nodens can still hear my song then…” she paused for a moment, looking sorrowful as she did before continuing. “I… I want our maker to know that at least one of the Firstborn yet lives and that she still remembers the old ways.”

“I think that’s lovely,” I looked up at her and smiled, and her lips curved up delightfully. “Will you tell me more?”

“It’s a bit dull and preachy,” Adagio warned, but I could hear her voice lighten.

“Tell me anyway?”

Adagio chuckled that rich, throaty laugh of hers, but nodded.

“Very well… ah, but where to start?”

I slipped my arm around her waist and hugged myself tight against her again.

“How about the beginning?” I ventured, and Adagio nodded.

“The beginning,” she repeated softly. “In the beginning… there was no dawn, and the depths were lightless and lifeless… and from that total emptiness came the first true feeling, and that feeling was Desire,” Adagio voice rose to a sonorous pitch, gaining strength as it did. “And with that desire came the Will to fulfill it, and the Ocean took its first breath, then exhaled the first note of song and that note was the first of the Siren daughters…”

And Away They Did Run

Author's Note

Set two weeks after the last chapter of Hospitality.

And Away They Did Run

Sparkle & Dusk

I stared down at my phone.

Seven missed calls, twenty-two unread messages, four voicemails… all from either my mother or Cadence.

A month had passed since the family dinner that had imploded and ended up sending Sonata to the hospital after she made a good-intentioned but perhaps ill-advised effort to make us understand one another. Linking our emotional states through an empathic gateway vis a vis her Siren magic had emptied her of all of her stored emotional reserves, and although she’d recovered… it had nearly killed her.

Sighing, I tucked my phone away and resolved to do the adult thing and ignore it for another day.

I just didn’t really know how to broach the subject of what had happened back there. I didn’t know how to explain magic to my mom and dad, although Cadence had a rudimentary grasp after witnessing the events the Friendship Games seven years ago.

Still, that was better than half a decade ago, and memories fade. I’m living proof that a human being can choose to turn a blind eye to a substantial body of evidence suggesting something is true in favor of comfortable ignorance.

I’d done it with my feelings for Sunset for pretty much that same amount of time, after all.

Closing my eyes, I concentrated on relaxing my body. My legs were crossed one over the other, and my hands were held out with palms open. I let my eyes fall into soft focus and my breathing became a low, steady hum as I slowly raised both hands to clasp the geode that hung from the necklace I was wearing.

The world bloomed around me.

It’s hard to describe telekinesis to someone who has never experienced the method and mechanics of it before. Imagine your proprioception, your sense of awareness of yourself, spread out to a wide radius around you centered on your body. Imagine having a vague sensation of touching the whole world around you, like the lightest brushing of fingers across the air, the floor, and the furniture.

Even with my eyes closed I could count all the tools scattered around the VIP room. I could sense the entirety of the dismantled stage; every bolt, every screw, and every wire.

I let out a breath, and lifted.

The grind of metal filled my ears as I slowly began dismantling the stage. The screws came undone, swiveling in place at the slight urging of my will. The bolts were unfastened and placed in neat orderly lines to the side, organised by location and size.

Furrowing my brow, I put out my true surge of effort and raised the whole platform up.

“Alright, get in there,” Tempest’s smooth, accented voice gave the command and several workers dove under the floating mass of steel to fully remove the main wiring manifold that powered everything in the room. “Careful!”

The new manifold they were installing would not only last longer and be less expensive to maintain in the long run, it would also be able to run the system and power the newly expanding room once the additions were made.

Most of the work had already been done prior to this, but my help meant that they could install the whole thing in a matter of minutes rather than have to manually dismantle the whole stage, move it away, install the manifold, then reverse the process.

That would’ve been the work of an entire day, but thanks to my geode it was the work of a little under an hour.

“Alright, l’oscura, it’s all you,” Tempest shot me a grin as she stepped back, with the rest of the workers following suit.

I could feel all of the components in their places, everything was laid out and positioned where it needed to be, waiting for me to begin.

Taking a deep breath, I spread my influence across all of the knuts, bolts, screws, wires, and delicate machinery. A dozen pieces at a time began to float gently into the air before affixing to their correct points. Every part in its place, every wire in its socket, each bolt and screw fastening every plate and support.

It was a symphony of order, the gentle clinks and soft scrapes of metal as the entire stage began to settle itself into a single cohesive whole, and I couldn’t help but smile. The perfect geometry of it, the assemblage of the machine that took place both in my mind and in reality in perfect synchronicity, was almost euphoric.

Sweat beaded at my forehead as the last bolts were fitted, and I opened my eyes only to wince at the sharp stab of pain from the lights around me.

“Done,” I let out a soft breath, and a moment later a roar of applause rattled around the room.

I flushed as the praise washed over me. I wasn’t used to attention like this, but I had to admit it was kind of nice to be recognised. For a long time my life was defined more by what I wasn’t that what I was. It helped that everyone in the room was privately contracted by Adagio and her sisters, and that they all knew the score when it came to magic.

Apparently, Adagio had used a number of them in the past for construction purposes, in some cases even their parents. It was a strange relationship that the elder Siren hadn’t seemed terribly keen on elaborating on.

“That was awesome!” Sonata wrapped me up in a tight hug, pulling me close and brushing her lips across my cheek. I blushed as I returned the affection before laying my head on her shoulder and sighing.

“That was a lot of weight… I haven’t done something like that in a while,” I admitted with a small laugh. “It’s easier than I remember it being, actually.”

“Probably because your head’s on straighter now!” Sonata said cheerfully, giving me a good-natured nudge.

I stepped back and gave her a questioning look.

“Magic is like energy, remember?” Sonata gave a small shrug before giving my nose a small boop. “It loses efficacy if it encounters resistance, if your mind is full of stress and anxiety and other gunk it takes more power to do whatever it is you’re trying to do.”

“So my chronic anxiety is crippling my magic?” I asked blithely, sagging a little at the thought.

Realistically, though, it made sense. Every time she and the girls had pulled through a hairy situation back in the day it had been when everyone synced up, for lack of a better term. There hadn’t been time to be anxious or jittery, there had been too much at stake, and too much happening.

“I dunno if I’d say ‘crippling’,” Sonata replied with a small laugh. “But it definitely makes stuff harder, y’know?”

Sonata brought her hand gently up to my chin, tipping my face up so she could lean down and press her lips to mine. I enjoyed the way she’d gently take control, not forcing the issue, but more politely asking with her hands. I smiled around the curves of her lips as I press a little deeper, letting my hand stray across her waist and come to rest on her hip.

“Tell me you love me,” I said as I pulled away, kissing her bottom lip gently as I did. “Please?”

“I love you, Twi’,” Sonata smiled as she obeyed, and I felt my heart swell a little. “You know you don’t have to ask me to say it, right?”

“It just… feels nice,” I shrugged, then turned and pressed and back to her and leaned against her as she wrapped her arms around me.

I loved it most of all when she held me. There were still days when it felt like I was so anxious or so rattled, that I was afraid I’d just fly apart at any moment. There wasn’t really any rhyme or reason to it either, and the worst part was that it wasn’t even all that uncommon.

Some days I just wouldn’t be able to crack out of my own head.

Sonata was always there for me, though. Anytime there were too many thoughts vibrating in my mind I could always curl up next to Sonata in bed, or hold her hand at the bar, or in the worst case just call her up.

She always answered, no matter how tired she was.

It was one of the reasons I knew I was one of the most important pieces of her world.

I twitched in surprise as my phone buzzed and rattled in my pocket, then sighed in annoyance as I pulled it out and glared at the caller ID.

“What’s wrong?” Sonata leaned around my head to look at the screen, then let out her own sigh. “Twi’... you should-”

“Don’t, ‘Nata,” I cut her off, then sent the call to voicemail.

“You can’t just ignore them forever,” Sonata chided gently, and I scoffed quietly before pulling away and stalking out of the VIP room.

Sonata followed me as I stormed up to the bar and settled onto one of the stools, dropping my phone onto the bar with a clatter as I glared at it like it had betrayed me.

“I don’t blame them,” Sonata spoke softly as she slipped behind the bar. “The way they reacted? The things they said? It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”

“Okay, but what if I blame them?” I asked acidly, still glaring at my phone and all the missed calls and message notifications.

I glanced up at Sonata was who leaning on the bar and staring sadly over at me, and I let out a grumbling sigh as I reached out across the wooden slab to rest one of my hands on hers. It was really unfair how cute Sonata was when she wanted to be. Her eyes did this thing where I swear they actually got bigger, and her lower lip trembled just a little as she stared at me.

It was awful.

I loved it.

“You know you’re doing the same thing you did with Sunset, right?” Sonata said as she gave my hand a squeeze, and I stiffened a little.

“I fail to see the comparison,” I replied testily, flicking my gaze up to stare at her.

Sonata didn’t flinch away, meeting my hard look with unflinching endurance. Her bright, berry-colored eyes had colours to them I couldn’t really place, something in the spectrum of red I’d never known before, but they left me feeling a little unnerved anytime I looked at them too long.

I never looked away though. I couldn’t help it, I wanted to keep looking. There was something about those depths and the strangeness of her eyes that made them even more endearing to me.

“You didn’t want to face Sunset because you were afraid it would mean goodbye,” Sonata’s words caught me in the throat like a blade.

There was something to be said about being straightforward, but Sonata took it to another level. Even Aria had a certain amount of good grace when it came to the things she said or how she approached hard topics.

Sonata didn’t really have that inclination.

Where Adagio might dance around an issue or come at it sideways, and Aria would flounder the moment she was forced to reconcile her emotions with whatever was going on, Sonata would just… say it.

For better or worse.

“You know they love you,” Sonata pressed, “you know they won’t reject you.”

“But what if I reject them?” I asked quietly, and Sonata froze. I waited for a moment to see if she had a response, but she looked genuinely wrong-footed, so I continued. “What if I’m the one who says goodbye? What if I see them, and then…”

“It… it wasn’t that bad,” Sonata said nervously. “They didn’t mean anything by-!”

“You know that’s not true,” I shot back, and Sonata backed up a step. “I… I know my parents and my brother and Cadence are nice people but that doesn’t mean they weren’t looking down on you.”

“Exactly!” Sonata argued, slapping an open palm on the bar. “Me! I was the one! Not you! You don’t have to lose your family because-!”

“It’s not about you!” I shouted back furiously, standing up as I clenched my fists hard enough to turn my knuckles white as Sonata jerked back in surprise. “It’s not always about you, ‘Nata! This has nothing to do with you!”

I was panting, my breath coming in short gasps as I stared at the hurt look on Sonata’s face, and felt my heart clench as I realised I’d been yelling at her.

“I… S-Sonata I’m sorry…” I choked the words out, but I could feel my heart breaking at the tiny sob she let out.

She wiped at her eyes quickly, rubbing at them with sharp, uneasy motions.

When Sonata had been trying to get me to hold her hand she’d given me the impression she was about to cry, but I think somewhere deep down I knew it wasn’t real. I knew she was just playing with me, and it was all good-natured specifically because it wasn’t real.

This was real.

Her tears were real this time, and they’d been my fault.

Slowly, I took a step back, then another, and as I saw Sonata’s eyes widen I turned on my heel and scampered out of the Last Note. My sneakers smacked dully against the tile as I barreled out the door and into the parking lot as Sonata called out for me.

I didn’t turn though, I couldn’t. I’d just made Sonata cry!

I just… I couldn’t.

Gripping my geode hard, I poured my will into it. I needed to be somewhere else… anywhere else! I needed to be-

The world spasmed violently around, and for a moment I was consumed by the strangest sensation. It was as if I was feeling the whole of the world at once, every tree and blade of grass, every wave of the ocean and every mountain summit. It was like going blind, deaf, and mute, and obtaining omniscience simultaneously, and that was my last thought before blacking out.

I’m not sure how long I spent unconscious, but it couldn’t have been long. I woke up in darkness, but I still had the scent of the city in my nostrils meaning I was probably only out for a moment or two, but I fear struck me as I glanced around, uncertain of where I was.

“Hello?” I squeaked gingerly as I tried to get to my feet.

My head was throbbing. I felt like someone had tried to squeeze my skull through a pinhole and succeeded only by the barest margin. Every inch of my body was sore, almost like I’d gotten a very minor body-wide bruise.

“A-Anyone?” I tired again, my voice a little stronger. “Is anyone there?”

My took a few deep breaths before holding up my geode and focusing. My head pounded worse, but I managed a little spark of illumination from the stone, held it up, and scanned my surroundings.

I was in a cave, there was crude, unworked stone all around me, and I had the oddest premonition of familiarity as I made a slow circuit of the cavern.

“I know this place,” I muttered softly, narrowing my eyes as I swung my geode around, back and forth, while I fished for the memory I was searching for. “This… the Everfree!”

I remembered.

The cave in the Everfree Forest that lay not far from Camp Everfree where we had all originally found our geodes. It was where we had found the truth about our powers, and the truth about Gaia Everfree along with it.

“I wanted to be somewhere else, so the geode took me home,” I glanced down at the shimmering stone and smiled a little wanly.

Its home. The place where the geode had been forged by an onslaught of Equestrian magic mixing with the natural energy of the Everfree Forest, only to be found by a desperate human searching for an answer to her prayers.

I held up the geode higher and walked forward, my memory guiding me until I found my way to the crude stone pedestal where my friends and I had discovered the artifacts we still held.

Even though there hadn’t been an outbreak of Equestrian magic in better than half a decade, the geodes never lost their power. I knew for a fact that Sunset had tucked her stone away a long time ago because, even though it had great power, she’d confided in me that she thought the potential for abuse with something like the ability to see memories and read minds was too dangerous, and that it frightened her.

That was true back then the same as it was now, I think. Sunset had used the power because she knew it was necessary, and because without her geode the Terran Elements, as we had started to call them, were incomplete.

With that being said, she’d never felt fully comfortable with it.

I wasn’t sure about the other geodes aside from AJ and Fluttershy’s.

Applejack still used her near constantly. As it turns out, super-strength was pretty useful on a farm, and it made her life significantly easier, and the same was true of Rarity who put her ability to create planes of kinetic force to good use on the Apple Family Farm. It was a secret that the family kept quiet, and Applejack liked it that way, she had no desire for a bunch of reporters to come crawling over her family home.

I also happened to know that Apple Bloom was capable of using the geode too.

I’m not sure how many of our friends know, but Applejack had once asked me about the mechanics of it. I hadn’t been certain but I theorised that a combination of Apple Bloom’s relation to Applejack as a sister, combined with her being around so much magic, might mean the geode recognised her a valid wielder.

Either way, I’d promised not to mention it.

Like Applejack, Fluttershy used hers near constantly, although it helped that it was almost impossible to tell. Despite technically being veterinary tech, everyone in town knew that the little vet’s clinic she worked at was the best one in Canterlot. Somehow, they always knew exactly what was wrong with your pet.

And me?

Like Sunset, I’d put my geode away years ago, never unearthing it unless I wanted to test some hypothesis on the nature of magic as it related to the world. I’d always planned on doing more with it, of course, but I knew I didn’t have the facilities yet. I wanted to know the truth one day, though, about how magic functioned in our world and why it did it was did. There wasn’t really any such thing as magic in the mystical sense, just energy, like Sonata said.

I only took it out recently because Aria had mentioned how being able to lift hundreds of pounds of metal and wood would be handy for the construction and I’d really wanted to help.

“And now I’m in a cave,” I grimaced as I looked around.

It was odd to see it as just a cave. For some reason I’d always thought of it almost like a holy site, or a shrine. A place where magic flowed into our world should have more gravitas to it than just ‘a cave’.

Right?

I sat down on one of the stone steps leading up to the pedestal and curled up, resting my head on my knees as I sighed.

“How did I even get here?” I looked around, holding up the geode again to get a better look. “One minute I was in Canterlot at the Note, the next it’s like I tele… ported.”

I teleported.

I’d only done it a few times seven years ago when I was Midnight Sparkle, but I supposed, theoretically speaking, telekinesis and teleportation weren’t strictly alien to one another on a mathematical level.

The translation of energy over distance.

“I bent the laws of space and time,” I mumbled in disbelief. “I executed the first instance of human-directed FTL travel…” nervous laughter bubbled out of me as I slapped my palm to my face, “...and I used it to run away!”

Because of course I did.

Of course I did.

Running away was pretty much the only thing I was good at. I was the worst sort of coward, the one whom you couldn’t tell was a coward until they abandoned you at the eleventh hour.

The kind who could never face the things that truly frightened them.

Dark magic? Fine.

Monsters from another dimension? Also fine.

Potentially coming to grip with the fact that I might hate my mother?

…

Not fine.

“I wonder how much of it they really felt?” I stared up at the pedestal above me, leaning back as I did and sighing.

Another reason I was terrified of facing them… even though I felt what they felt for me that day… I wasn’t sure how much of what I felt for them translated over. If it was as much as I got then they would have to know.

They would have to know how angry I really was.

They would have to know how furious I was with them, and not just for how they treated the woman I loved, although that was bad enough, but how much I resented them for how I’d grown up. How pressured I had felt, how miserable I had been, how lonely I had been for so long.

All because they wanted me to live up the Crystal Prep ideal.

To them it had been a point of pride, something to strive for and something that would be a memory worth cherishing, but for me it had just been a lonely, frozen hellscape of test after test after test as I ended up more and more isolated.

All because I had wanted to live up to that ideal and finally just make them proud. To finally just… be enough for them.

How was I supposed to look my mother in the eyes knowing how much she loves me and see the pain on her face because she knows that I hate her, even if just a little bit, for what she and my father put me through growing up?

How could I look at Cadence, knowing how much she adores me, and live with the fact that deep in my heart I blame her for feeding me to Principal Cinch? That I blame her for not protecting me from that awful woman who only wanted to abuse and take advantage of my intellect?

I couldn’t help it though.

I was just so angry.

Sighing, I stood up and held out the geode. Even after seven years I remembered which way to go; perks of having a near-eidetic memory. Plus, this place was etched into my mind for more than one reason.

Being careful with my footing on the rough stone, I walked slowly towards the exit, and squinted as the darkness began to lighten gently until I stepped fully out of the cave mouth and into the canopied verdance of the Everfree Forest.

The sky was overcast and gray, and the tall, thick trees blocked most of the light that was coming through the clouds. That left the forest not terribly brighter than the fields, but-

Moments after stepping out of the cave, my phone began buzzing wildly, and I snatched it out of my pocket.

One hundred and three missed calls from Sonata.

I felt a stony pit open up in my stomach. I had done it again… I’d run out on Sonta after shouting her down in the middle of the note.

After making her cry.

My phone began to ring again, and I very nearly hit the power button to send it to voicemail on pure instinct. The image of Sonata’s smiling face came up on my screen, and the green ‘Accept Call’ button blinked at me accusingly.

I froze for a moment, stuck between two impulses. On the one hand I wanted to run away so badly. I was terrified of what I had done, and of what it might mean, and what Sonata would say but…

But I loved Sonata.

I loved her so much.

Even if I yelled at her, even if I made her cry, she still deserved to hear from me, right? I owed it to her to talk to her because I loved her and I knew she loved me. I’d felt it, back then, on the heels of all of my mother’s and Cadence’s feelings I still remember that sweet, chaste, fledgling love Sonata felt when she looked at me.

How could I possibly betray something that pure?

“I’m here,” I said quickly, the moment I hit the green button.

//TWILIGHT?!// I jerked the phone away from my ear at the volume, before putting it back. //Are you okay?! What HAPPEN?!//

“I… I guess I teleported,” I said sheepishly as I took a seat in the grass. “Sorry, I ended up somewhere with no cell reception, I just got out into the open again.”

//It’s… it’s alright I just…// I flinched as I heard the waterworks start as whatever Sonata had been trying to say dissolved into a wash of relieved sobs.

“I’m so sorry, ‘Nata,” I cried, feeling my own eyes tear up, “I’m so sorry I yelled, and I’m sorry I made you cry, and I-”

//It’s okay!// Sonata’s voice came through a little raw. //I… I know you get scared, and I know you get angry, b-but I also know that you l-love me, right?//

“Always!” I cradled the phone in my hand. All I wanted was to be next to her again, I ran because I was scared, but this wasn’t about me it was ab-

The world spasmed again and suddenly I was falling.

“AH!”

I blinked in confusion as the warm air and familiar smells of the Lounge filled my nose. I was staring up at the ceiling of the Last Note, flat on my back, and my head was pounding again.

“You’re BACK!”

“Sonata?!”

I turned my head and found Sonata beneath me, having apparently broken my fall when I’d teleported back to the lounge, grinning up at me before wincing a little.

“Ow… my back…” Sonata grunted.

Working my limbs free of the tangle I’d ended up in, I flipped over and wrapped Sonata in a tight hug, one that she returned before twining her legs around mine and pulling me into a deep, gentle kiss.

I could still taste the salt from her tears mixed with the sweetness of her lips as I let my fingers play through the arctic strands of her hair. Sonata giggled lightly as we kissed, again and again, laying in a sprawled-out pile on the floor of the Lounge, and I cradled her face in my hands as I smiled tearfully at her.

“I’m so sorry…” I sobbed the words out as I ran my thumb over her cheek, savoring how soft she was. “I really… I didn’t…”

“I know,” Sonata said quietly. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not, though,” I sat up and pulled her up with me. “It’s seriously not!”

“But-!”

“No, ‘Nata!” I cut her off, but took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’m seriously, I’m not just kicking myself here, okay? What I did? It wasn’t any kind of ‘okay’!”

“But I forgave you,” Sonata said softly, looking a little hurt, and I grimaced.

“It’s not about that,” I softened my tone a little and tugged at her hand, drawing her closer until I had my arms around her. “I shouldn’t let myself get so mad that I’m shouting at the girl I’m in love with… that’s really messed up.”

Sonata fidgeted uncomfortably for a few moments before shrugging.

“I guess I’m just used to it,” she said after a moment, and I felt my heart sink. “My… my sisters love me, I know, but for thousands of years the Heartstones were poisoning them, making them mean, and…”

“...and they took it out on you,” I finished.

“Or on each other,” Sonata admitted. “Siren’s butt heads to stay in power, it’s just how we are, so Adagio would always bully Aria and I into line,” she looked up towards the VIP room where their shared rooms lay beyond the back door. “Adagio would bully Aria and I, and Aria would bully me because I was under her,” Sonata’s eyes took on a distant quality for a moment before sharpening as she looked back up at me and smiled. “But it’s better now! Ever since the stones were broken it’s better!”

“I… I get that,” I said quietly, taking both of her hands in mine, “but it was still wrong, you know that right?”

Sonata fidgeted silently for several moments before leaning forward and resting her head against my shoulder and nodding.

Slowly, I brought my arms up and around her, patting her back as she cried quietly against me. For so many years she’d be forced to just endure whatever was thrown at her… I didn’t need to be a part of that.

We stayed that way for a while. Once, Aria stepped out into the Lounge, but the moment she saw us she just stopped and slowly backed up back into the VIP room. I assume she probably told people to stay out and give us some space, which I appreciated.

“They did apologise,” Sonata said quietly as the tears finally came to an end and she rested comfortably in my arms, her head still on my shoulder. “Adagio and Aria… they feel awful for how they treated me, it’s why they’re so…”

“Protective?” I offered, and Sonata nodded. “Adagio threatened me pretty thoroughly about treating you well… y’know, the night I asked you out?”

“Heh, I’m not surprised,” Sonata chuckled, then leaned forward and nuzzled against my neck. “Adagio loves me, I know… and she feels terrible about how she used to hurt me, and Aria is always trying to make it up to me even if she’s not very good at it.”

“Aria’s kind of a disaster,” I admitted with a laugh.

“Yeah, but she’s my disaster,” Sonata replied with a grin. “Or, well, I guess she’s Sunset’s disaster now.”

“Sunset is an even bigger disaster,” I pointed out, which Sonata just nodded in agreement to. “That seems like a bad match.”

“You’d think so,” Sonata shot a glance towards the VIP room, “but honestly, I think they’re like two shelves full of crap that managed to tip over in just the right way and now they’re like, holding each other up.”

“That seems kind of precarious,” although I didn’t necessarily disagree with Sonata’s assessment.

Aria and Sunset were one of those couples that I tried really hard not to think too hard about otherwise it would give me serious anxiety.

“Nobody is perfect,” Sonata said quietly. “I’ve lived a long time, Twi’... I’ve seen a lot of people fall in love, then out of love, then back into love again sometimes, if they’re lucky,” she sighed and turned until she was sitting in my lap and resting against me. “I’ve seen awful people find love, and good people die alone… I’ve seen some really weird, terrible relationships just… work somehow, and other ones that looked perfect fall apart in a year.”

“What’s that mean for us?” I asked pensively.

“Dunno,” Sonata shrugged and turned her head to kiss my cheek. “But I want it to last… I wanna make it work.”

Tears trickled from my eyes as I wiped at them, and I hugged Sonata tight, burying my face in her long, soft hair.

“Me too,” I replied wetly.

“So… so now what?” Sonata brought a hand up to run her fingers gently over my cheek.

“Now?” I laughed a little bitterly. “Now I should probably find a decent therapist because I apparently have a trainwreck’s worth of issues to work out.”

“What about… y’know?” Sonata ventured uneasily, and I grimaced.

“Mom and Cadence?” I guess, and Sonata nodded. “I dunno… I want to talk to them, I think… but I don’t know how to say what I want to say, or even what I want to say at all, really.” I hugged Sonata tight, and she let out a dramatic squeak that prompted a laugh from me. “Do I say sorry? Do I ask for them to say sorry?”

“It’s kind of a mess, huh?” Sonata kissed me just under the chin, and I smiled as I angled my head down to kiss her back.

“Do they know?” I asked softly as I pulled away, meeting Sonata’s eyes evenly for a moment. “Do they know how I… how I felt?”

Sonata looked troubled for several moments before finally nodding sullenly.

“I… I didn’t know you felt that way about them when I did it,” Sonata said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” I hugged her tightly again. “I forgive you.”

“What do we do now?” Sonata leaned in to kiss me on the cheek before standing up and holding out a hand.

Gripping her wrist, I levered myself up onto my feet and pulled out my phone again, staring at it with a feeling of sick apprehension in my stomach.

“I guess we start with this,” I opened my contacts, selected my mom and Cadence, then opened my messenger app.

//Hey mom, Cady, I know we haven’t talked in a while, and I guess you probably already know why… things are complicated right now, but I-//

I paused, staring down at the message screen and sighed. What was I supposed to say here? That I forgive them? I wasn’t sure I was there yet, and I’m pretty sure it would come out sounding disingenuous if I tried.

A pair of warm lips pressed to my cheeks as Sonata looped her arms around my waist and held me close, keeping me from flying apart the way she always did.

“I’m here for you,” Sonata said gently as she laid her head on my shoulder.

“I know,” I leaned my head to rest on hers and inhaled her calming scent.

//-want to talk to you again… I just don’t know what I want to say yet. I’m going to find someone to talk to, and I’ll let you know how it goes, but until then… I need some space. I’m sorry.//

SEND.

I'd Marry You In An Instant

Shimmer & Blaze

“Hey, uh, ‘Dagi?” I looked up from the balcony I was standing at with wide eyes. “I think I’m gonna throw up,”

“Don’t you dare,” Adagio looked me up and down, then chuckled. “Or if you do, at least aim over the side, and for Nodens sake don’t get it on the suit.”

I chuckled, then paled and clapped a hand over my mouth.

“Do not,” Adagio repeated sternly.

“Trying,” I gasped between my fingers, then swallowed hard. “Written’s Quill… I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous in my entire life!”

“I’ll take that as a compliment considering it’s my sister,” Adagio put an arm over my shoulders as I took slow, shallow breaths and tried to fight down my nausea. “But you’ll do fine… it’s her I’m more worried about, actually.”

“Why?” I looked up and Adagio just shrugged.

“Aria, Nodens bless her, is a bit of a mess,” Adagio replied blithely. “Trust me when I say that when she gets nervous she makes the worst possible decisions.”

“That sounds ominous,” I grumbled.

“Don’t worry, I set a guard on her,” Adagio patted my back reassuringly, “Tempest will keep her from doing anything too severe.”

That was more reassuring than Adagio probably knew. Tempest wasn’t the type of person to let things go lightly, especially when she was given a task. In the year and change we’d known each other she’d proved to be one of the most consummately professional women I’d ever met.

With that said, the task of wrangling Aria Blaze wasn’t something I would wish on anyone unless I had no other choice.

“So what is this place exactly?” I turned and leaned back against the balcony, trying to get my mind off of my nerves. “When you said you’d handle the venue, I was kind of picturing a church or something, not a cliffside lighthouse.” I looked around then shrugged. “Not that it’s not beautiful, I’ve always loved the coast, and it’s kind of appropriate all things considered.”

“I beg your pardon, but it is a church,” Adagio replied stiffly, then grimaced. “Well, it’s technically a church, or… well, I suppose it’s more a temple.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“Adagio Dazzle, am I getting married in a pagan Sirenic temple?” I met Adagio’s gleaming eyes and she let out a weak laugh. “Wait… seriously?”

“You should be honored!” Adagio shot back. “There’s only three properly anointed temples to Nodens on this whole planet!”

I met her eyes evenly for several moments, then sighed and shook my head. “So let me guess… the person officiating the ceremony will be…?”

“There’s only one remaining Priestess of the Deep Faith, my dear soon-to-be-sister,” Adagio’s grin was shark-like, and I couldn’t help but laugh quietly.

“You’re really looking forward to this, aren’t you?” I stood up and tugged at my outfit to straighten it. “And do I really have to wear this? It’s kind of ostentatious.”

And it was, kind of. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to wear to my wedding, although Aria and I had been of two minds when it came to who would wear what, and had bickered about it for weeks. I’d always been a fan of tuxedo’s and nice suits, while Aria thought of them as ‘monkey suits’ and refused to wear one, which of course meant that she’d be wearing a dress instead.

I was really looking forward to that, actually because despite the passage of a year-plus in our relationship, I’d never once seen Aria in a proper dress.

My outfit wasn’t what you’d call typical, of course. It was a Carousel Boutique original, after all. It was ‘Chic, unique, and magnifique’, as its creator would say and, I had to admit, it was definitely all of those things, and then some.

The whole of the outfit was a deep, rich shade of scarlet trimmed with black and gold, and accented with teardrops of amber. Rather than a suit jacket, I was wearing a long jacket almost reminiscent of a mantled duster, shot through with black embossments, and it made me look a bit like the villain of a western.

My hair was pulled back in a ponytail and bound by a small clasp made from white gold with an amber adornment.

The single color that stood out which didn’t match the ensemble was a small amethyst on a choker that rested comfortably at my throat.

“It’s lovely, sister dear,” Adagio smiled and looked me up and down again, this time with an admiring eye. “Remind me to give my compliments to your friend… I’ll have to have her do mine when Octavia and I are wed.”

“A few months, right?”

“Mhm,” Adagio nodded, and for a moment I saw a touch of nervousness break through her facade of calm. “I’ll admit, I’m a touch nervous myself, but-!” She held a hand at the smile on my face, “It’s only because I want to be certain the ceremony will be worthy of my wife-to-be.”

“Octavia would marry you in sackcloth under a bridge, ‘Dagi,” I laughed, putting a hand on her shoulder, and Adagio wilted a little.

“I… I know,” Adagio looked away from me and up at the sky, taking a deep breath of the clear ocean air. “She deserves all the beauty in the world, though…”

“She would say she’s already getting it,” I replied with a chuckle, and Adagio did laugh at that. “Anyway, I’m going to go down to the bar since I’ve got another two hours til the ceremony.”

Adagio eyed me critically. “Tell me you’re not tying one off before your wedding?”

“Hell no,” I shook my head with a frown. “I’m not a hundred percent I can do this sober, I’m definitely not going to risk trying to manage it buzzed.”

I got the evil eye from big sister Adagio for a solid few seconds before she seemed satisfied, patted me on the shoulder, then turned to lean against the balcony alone and stare out over the ocean.

As I was walking away I shot a glance over my shoulder at her, and paused. There was such an indescribable kind of melancholy around Adagio in that moment, and it struck me with the force of a hammer. Maybe it was just because of how old I knew she was, and how many things she’s seen, but the depth and weight of it was almost suffocating in that brief moment.

“Do you miss it?” I asked quietly.

Adagio didn’t reply for a long time, she just continued to stare at the lapping waves, listening to the cries of the gulls the crash of the surf, but finally…

“Every day,” Adagio spoke the words so softly that I barely heard it above the wind.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said nothing. I just nodded and turned away, leaving Adagio to her musings and ocean-watching. I gave up my home of my own accord, but they were banished. I chose to remain in the human world even given the option of returning to Equestria, but the sorcery that banished them here would never release them, no matter how much they wished to leave.

And I knew they didn’t really want to leave. Equestria held less than nothing for them, and the human world was where their lovers were, but… I knew a little bit of how they felt.

As I descended the stairs into the large house that was attached to the lighthouse, I found myself missing the great marble towers of Canterlot, and the view of the open prairies that sprawled out from the Canterhorn the city hung from.

I wouldn’t trade Aria for all of Equestria, but I still missed my home.

Pushing the door to the living room open, I was greeted by the sight of Sonata humming happily from behind the long bar that was built into the room. It was small compared to the bar of the Last Note, but the youngest sister of the Siren trio was never happier than when she was behind a bar with the tools of her trade at hand.

The bar itself was attached to the kitchen which lay past a door behind it, and it was where most of the alcohol and any nonperishable foodstuffs were stored. There was no refrigerator though. This place predated the civil war, so it wasn’t exactly up to code, but it had most of the right amenities.

“Seltzer water, please,” I said with a smile that was half of a grimace as I sat at the bar, and Sonata chuckled.

“Cold feet?” She plopped a glass in front of me fill three quarters full of fizzing liquid.

“No, not… not exactly,” I shifted uncomfortably as I picked up the glass and sipped at it. “I’m just… can I really do this?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Sonata raised an eyebrow, and I laughed bitterly.

“Because,” I gestured around us with the glass, “the last time I had the opportunity to commit to something huge, I ended up fleeing to another dimension.”

“It wasn’t exactly like that,” Sonata replied dryly. “I seem to recall dark magic was involved.”

“Just the theoretical stuff,” I grumbled as I took another small drink, then leaned on the bar and sighed. “Can I do this, ‘Nata? Really do it?” I shivered and looked out the window. “This is the real deal… I’m… Written’s Quill, I’m really getting married!”

“Yup,” Sonata put a hand over my arm and smiled. “You’re going to be fine, Sunset, I promise, you’re not just getting my crazy sister in this deal, remember?” I laughed at that and nodded. “You’ll have all of us, me and ‘Dagi, and eventually Octavia too, and…”

I looked up, and Sonata flushed prettily.

“Woah, wait…” I smiled as I tried to meet Sonata’s eyes which she studiously managed to avoid me doing. “Hold up, ‘Nata… are you going to ask-?”

“M-Maybe,” Sonata giggled quietly. “Twilight isn’t big on marriage, but I’m like, a couple thousand years old, so I think I’m allowed to be old-fashioned, y’know?”

“I mean, fair,” I allowed with a laugh. “You think she’ll go for it?”

“Probably,” Sonata poured herself a seltzer water and raised it. “Guess we’re all getting married now, huh?”

“Not today,” I clinked my glass to hers. “Today is mine.”

“Also fair,” Sonata took a sip of her drink and then froze as something in the attached kitchen fell over with a loud crash. “Oh, dammit.”

“What?” I stood up with a frown. “What’s going on?”

Sonata looked over her shoulder with a scowl.

“The shelves are kind of ancient,” she explained as she set her drink down, “so stuff in there falls over a lot, sorry… can you give me a hand?”

I chuckled and set my drink beside hers. “Sure thing, it’ll keep me busy.”

I shrugged the long coat off of my shoulders and hung it from the old fashioned carved coat stand nearby, made sure my hair was pulled back and secure, and made ready to wade into the dusty back room.

“Alright, just mind the…” Sonata trailed off as she opened the door, “...the fuck?!”

We both stared through the door to see my gremlin of a fiancee gripping two bottles of strong red wine by their necks, half-dressed, with a look of wide-eyed panic on her face.

“SHIT!” Aria shrieked, then turned tail and leapt out the window she had apparently come in through.

There was a dull thump as she dropped a half-story, along with the sound of a bottle shattering, followed by muffled cursing. I ran over to half hang out of the window and watch as she stumbled out of the bush that had broken her fall clutching one whole bottle and the broken remnants of a second, then sprinted clockwise as Tempest rounded the opposite corner in a furious temper and immediately dropped to a knee, hands gripping a gun in a perfect marksman’s pose, and pulled the trigger just before Aria could clear her line of fire.

My eyes went wide as Aria spasmed and dropped the alcohol, jerking in place for a moment before keeling over backward.

Tempest stood and shook her head, sighing, before tromping over and picking Aria up, slinging her over her shoulder, and making her way back towards the far end of the house where Aria was supposed to be getting ready.

“What… the fuck?” I said as I pulled my head back into the house and turned to look at Sonata who was just shaking her head in weary resignation.

“Sorry you had to see that,” Sonata put a hand on my shoulder and steered me back to the bar. “She’s fine, the voltage is low… Aria’s just small.”

“That was a surprisingly well-executed takedown,” I admitted in a daze as Sonata led me to my seat and sat me down. “What… what did I just see, exactly?”

“Heh, we~ll,” Sonata smiled sheepishly as she leaned against the bar beside me. “If you thought you were having nerves over this, Aria has been this way for the past two days.” She jerked a thumb towards the kitchen where Aria had made her great escape. “That’s like, the fourth attempt…”

“At what?” I stared Sonata in dismay. “Escape?!”

“No!” Sonata laughed. “She’s just trying to get drunk.”

“Uh… why?”

“It’s how she deals with panic,” Sonata explained as she took a sip of seltzer water. “We’ve all got our vices,” Sonata swirled her drink and watched the bubbles rise. “I mean, she’s not as bad as ‘Dagi at least… big sis is a messy drunk.”

“Oh, I remember,” I grumbled into my glass. “So what… Aria’s drinking because she’s scared?”

“She’s scared of letting you down,” Sonata filled in, turning to meet my gaze, her eyes were so much like her older sisters, and yet not. They were more… alien, than Adagio’s. “Aria loves you like crazy, emphasis on crazy, and she’s terrified that she won’t be enough for you in the end.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the crazy part,” I snorted quietly as I finished my seltzer. “Aria is the perfect amount for me.”

“I know,” Sonata said with a smile. “And she knows it too, she’ll be there when it counts.”

“And be sober, hopefully,” I added, and Sonata nodded judiciously.

“That’s Tempest’s job, and Temp doesn’t fail,” Sonata pointed out, to which I had to nod in agreement. The Head of Security of the Last Note had an impeccable record.

Aria having an issue with her nerves wasn’t entirely news to me, I’ll admit. She’s always been more brittle than Adagio, and less flexible than Sonata, which meant if enough pressure was applied in a single place she had a tendency to snap rather easily.

My Aria…

She was as strong as she was weak, if that made any sense at all.

“Sonata?” I stared down at my empty cup, turning it this way and that and watching the remaining droplets of water swing around inside it. “Are you sure we can do this?”

“You and Aria?” Sonata looked thoughtful for a moment, then shrugged. “Like I said before, it’s not like you’re doing it alone and, besides, you love her don’t you?”

“Like I’ll never love anyone else,” I swore softly.

“Then you’ll figure it out,” Sonata clapped me gently on the shoulder. “Because you’re the only one in Aria’s heart now, and I’m pretty sure that’s a ‘forever’ thing.”

I smiled up at Sonata who grinned back at me. Sonata was right, it was time to stop second-guessing and just do it. There was no looking back anymore, Aria and I had come way too far for that and neither of us would be satisfied going any less than all the way.

All the way.

I felt a blush creep along my cheeks.

“Hey, ‘Nata…” I stood up and pulled my coat from the stand before sliding it on smoothly as Sonata looked up at me. “Do you think Aria will want… y’know… kids?”

Sonata chuckled. “A year ago I’d have said definitely not, but with you?”

She shrugged thoughtfully, still smiling that odd, enigmatic smile of hers. I always had the mental impression of the Cheshire Cat from her in those moments, that wide, toothy smile floating in midair with feline, inhuman eyes above them, and grinning like it knew something you didn’t and found that fact to be terribly funny.

“We’re all mad here, huh?” I muttered quietly as I tugged the long scarlet coat straight. “Maybe we are.”

“All ready?” Sonata came up behind me and straightened out my collar for me.

“Not even a little bit,” I replied with a weary smile.

“Sounds about right!” I felt her clap both hands on my shoulders from behind. “Now get out there and marry my sister!”

“Yes, ma’am,” I sketched a mock salute as I shot her a wry look over my shoulder, then straightened my ponytail and started towards the door.

“And good luck with Twi’,” I waved a hand without looking back.

Twilight deserved something good coming her way. Whatever she’d told Sonata, I was pretty sure it wasn’t that she disapproved of, or disliked marriage, precisely.

I think she was just afraid of it, and the kind of commitment it entailed. Even if it was all just overly poetic words spoken in front of an altar along with a piece a paper written down and filed away somewhere, it was something embedded in our minds, in our cultural zeitgeist, that weighed on us.

It had meaning because, whether or not we meant to, we gave it that meaning.

For me, at least, I wanted that meaning.

“Look’it me, ma, I’m a real girl now,” I spoke the words softly, and no one heard them but me.

And maybe Nodens.

“Definitely gonna throw up,” I muttered as I stood at the altar.

Adagio raised an eyebrow disapprovingly, and I gave her a weak grin to tell her I was joking.

Well, mostly joking.

The sun was just starting to dip to the horizon. It was four’o’clock, and the ceremony was just about to begin. We stood in front of the door to the main house with a long carpet laid out from the threshold leading up to the altar itself, which was a large wooden table of magnificently ornate make. It bore accoutrements that I assumed was important to Adagio’s faith and to the rite, although given what Aria had told me about Siren ‘weddings’ I could only assume that Adagio had adapted her religion’s rituals to a more human definition, or at least I hoped so.

I didn’t particularly want to engage in a ceremonial battle for domination prior to the vows, especially since I’m pretty sure Aria would win.

“You sure she’s coming?” I gave Adagio a worried glance, and she just chuckled.

“Yes, Shimmer, I’m sure,” Adagio ran her hands through her luxurious mane of orange curls, fluffing it out so it fell gracefully over her back. “My sister is many things, but when it comes down to it, she’s not a coward.”

“I know,” I glanced across the open yard of the lighthouse, taking some comfort in the presence of my friends.

The ceremony itself was small, it was always planned to be that way. Applejack and Rarity sat together, fingers linked, near the front, alongside Twilight and Octavia. Behind them were Princess Twilight, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie, the last of whom gave me an encouraging thumbs up as my gaze crossed her, and I smiled back, while Rainbow Dash was to the far left of the altar with her guitar, ready to play Aria down the aisle.

Tempest was in the far back looking stern and unyielding, per usual, and her small retinue of bouncers, that looked more like secret service agents than anything, were arrayed around to make sure nothing happened.

Octavia’s former butler, Good Form was in attendance too, keeping everything tidy. Between him and Pinkie I trusted the reception would be one to remember.

A few of the dancers and staff from the Note were in attendance too; Mixer and Highball were in the crowd, being good friends with Sonata, along with Kickstep, Foxtrot, and Sweets, who had all been dancing at the Note for some time now. They were the closest things to bridesmaids that Aria had, being some of her longest running coworkers, and I considered them to be friends.

“It’s time,” Adagio said softly, drawing my mind back to where I was standing.

“Okay, here we go,” I licked my lips and nodded to both her and Rainbow Dash, who flashed me a smile before beginning to play.

As the first chords began, the door to the house opened, and my heart stopped.

Aria stood on the other side of the threshold, the veil not quite covering the brilliant blush on her face as she took her first steps forward. The dress was a shade of soft lavender, and it was long, silk, and strapless, and hung perfectly over her slight form allowing it to billow in the gentle ocean breeze that carried her long, purple locks with it. There were accented traces of aquamarines the color of the clearest ocean water sketching designs like crashing waves and rolling tides across the dress’s surface, and as it rippled it caught the light just like the sea.

She clutched a bouquet of rare Wisteria blossoms to her chest as she strode forward. I could hardly breathe, and it was taking all of my willpower not to start crying and to keep my knees from knocking together.

Through it all, the whole two functioning brain cells left to me after finally seeing her in her wedding dress were only managing to give me a single coherent thought.

“Oh no, she’s hot,” the words tumbled out, and anything left behind them died forgotten as I lost my ability to speak, but I could see Adagio grinning proudly.

I took a deep breath, and put on my most winning smile for her, and as I faced her I knew for certain that I hadn’t managed to keep the tears off of my face all the way. I could feel the faint trickles of heat tracing lines down my cheeks.

She was so beautiful.

Aria’s chin was held high and proud, and her gorgeous, amethyst eyes flashed with that same dangerous confidence I’d fallen in love with when I watched her dance for the very first time. Her stride was measured and even, and the gown was made of alternating folds of silk and some strategically arranged semi-sheer fabric that gave glimpses of her long, lovely legs.

Before I could get a hold of myself, she was there. Aria stood in front of me, Wisteria blossoms held between us, and those sharp, gleaming gems staring up at me.

And she was afraid.

Well, in fairness, so was I.

With shaking hands, I raised her veil and revealed her face fully, and I realised she was crying too, and only the fabric of the veil had hid the tears.

Adagio cleared her throat softly from between us, and we both turned to face her as Rainbow Dash stopped playing. Adagio raised both hands with her palms up as if in prayer, closed her eyes, and began to intone something in Sirenic.

It took me a few seconds to realise it was a prayer. A prayer to Nodens, the First Will, and the Progenitor of the Siren race if their mythology was to be believed. I supposed it wasn’t all that different from the Equestrian belief in Written Word, the first Alicorn, who wove the world into existence with her quill.

Maybe Nodens was a contemporary.

The prayer finished after a moment, and Adagio lowered her hands.

“By the Deep do I invoke the cold grace of Nodens,” Adagio began in a solemn voice, “by Will, Oath, and Gift, I bind those who stand before me, for it is Will that has brought them together, seen them through trench and trial, and strengthened them as the ocean depth strengthens the scale.” I felt something unnameable pass over me, and I had the most absurd sensation that there was something unimaginably ancient regarding us. “Now as Will has bound them to the world, by Oath do they bind themselves… speak, now, your Oaths.”

I turned from Adagio to meet Aria’s eyes, and she smiled weakly up at me.

“A-Aria,” I started, reaching out to put my hands over hers. “I love you so much… I c-can’t even keep my voice steady, and it feels like my heart is going to pound right out of my chest,” Aria bit her lip, trying to keep her tears in check as she nodded silently as I tried to remember the words Adagio had taught me. “But I give you, now, my Oath, by Sea and Sky, by Moon and Lightless Depth, that I shall stand beside you from now til the end of all things,” I gripped her hands hard as my voice cracked and tears started falling in earnest. “Til the final tide washes all the earth away, and, as the moon moves the tide, I swear this Oath that only you shall move me.”

Aria took a slow, shuddering breath, freed one hand to wipe at her cheeks, then nodded shakily.

“B-By my Oath,” Aria took a small step forward, joining our hands so we were both clutching the blossoms of Wisteria, “I swear that I shall be your Moon, that I shall hold you in my grasp eternal, and that my light shall never fade from your face,” her voice was gentle and I’d never speak with such love and fragility in the presence of others, and I could see what it was costing her to let herself be seen like this. “I swear now this Oath, that my life is yours, as yours is mine, and no one else shall take them, and that I shall guard your heart by voice and song, that never the twain shall fall.”

We gripped each others hands tightly for a moment before nodding and finishing the rite.

“By Oath we stand,” we spoke in unison.

“Nodens has heard thy Oaths,” Adagio intoned, and though her voice was steady, I could see the tears of joy in her eyes. “By Will you have come to this place, by Oath do you stand, and by Gift you are bound.”

I reached into the pocket of my jacket at her words and drew out a slim band of pure white.

“This is made from a metal called Solerrum,” I said softly, “and legends say it was once part of the armor of Queen Adamance Unyielding, the first Monarch of the Unicornian Kingdoms,” Aria raised her hand, look of surprise on her face as I fitted the ring onto her finger. “Only ten of these rings exist, and they’re for when royalty get married which, since I’m technically Princess Celestia’s daughter by adoption, it means this counts… uh, surprise?”

I smiled nervously, and even Adagio looked shocked, although she recovered significantly faster than Aria who was still staring gape-mouthed at me. I probably could have picked a better time to tell Aria that Princess Celestia was going to be her mother-in-law than at the altar, but then again I’ve never been particularly famous for my timing.

Infamous, maybe.

“Uh…” Aria worked her jaw a few times before remembering to breathe, then she swallowed thickly, and nodded. “R-right, uh… the immortal Pony Sisters are now my direct family… c-cool…”

“Aria… the ring,” Adagio hissed under her breath, and Aria nearly leapt in place.

“Right!” Aria fumbled through the folds of her dress before pulling out a ring of deep, seastorm green metal. “So uh, jeez, how am I supposed to follow that?” she grumbled as she held up the ring a little sullenly, and I smiled as I raised my hand to hers. “T-this is made from Deepsteel, s-specifically from a few fragments of my old armor from when we were banished.”

As Aria turned the ring over I realised there were tiny red gems studded along the outside of it, catching the light with blood-red luminance that seemed to emit from within.

“Aria are those…?” I breathed, barely willing to believe it.

“The very last pieces of my Heartstone, yeah,” Aria took my hand and slipped the ring on my finger. “Because your hands are the only ones that will ever hold my heart.”

Her voice broke at the end, and tears started falling down her cheeks. That broke me too, and I started to cry along with her as we held onto each other. I could hear the sounds of tears from the audience, and I glanced to the side to see even Adagio was openly weeping.

“T-Then by Will, by Oath, and by Gift,” Adagio said through her tears, “I pronounce you both forever bound.” She sniffled and wiped at her eyes, “and as the humans say: you may kiss the bride!”

I pulled Aria into my arms, and our lips met with passion and fury. I melted against her as she threw the bouquet into the crowd, then looped her arms around my neck and shoulders to pull herself harder against me. My hands came to rest on her slender waist as we drank each other in, and for a moment there was nothing else in the world but the pair of us.

Our friends cheered, and Adagio was clapping gently beside us, and I could hear woops of happiness sounding off all around us.

But none of that mattered.

All that mattered was the woman in my arms.

My Moon and Song, my beloved Aria.

As we parted, I stared down in her eyes, and she smiled tearily up at me. Those enticing, cupids bow lips curved up into the happiest, most genuine smile I’d ever seen on her face. There wasn’t even a trace of her usual sarcasm and vitriol, just pure and unadulterated happiness.

“I love you, Red,” Aria sobbed.

“I love you, Ari’,” I cried back. “We made it!”

“Yeah, we did,” she laughed, then buried her face against my chest. “Honeymoon next, right?”

“Right,” I agreed as I hugged her tight.

“Good,” Aria snuggled against me in a surprising show of affection given we were still surrounded by people. “Because I already bought the gingham dress.”

It took a moment for me to remember what she was talking about, and when I did, I just started laughing.

“God damn it, Aria.”

An Old Soul Song

Author's Note

Set after Grey Light, New Day, but before the epilogue. This story refers back to events in Adagio's Lament, although reading it isn't required reading for understanding this chapter.

An Old Soul Song

Melody & Dazzle

“You what?”

Adagio stared at me from across the table, her fork dangling from her fingers as she lowered the bit of salmon she’d speared on the end of it back to her plate. I just shrugged and smiled as I took another bite of my shrimp alfredo, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then swallowed and repeated myself.

“I want you to meet my parents,” I said again, and Adagio’s expression turned a touch brittle. “Properly, I mean.”

“It’s… not that I’m opposed in theory, my Melody,” Adagio said slowly as she toyed with the bit of fish on her plate. “But your parents are quite mortal, human, I mean, sorry… force of habit.”

“It’s alright,” I chuckled slightly and took another bite, giving my lover time to gather her thoughts and continue.

“Your father knows me, and he remembers me I’m sure since I never sang anything out of him,” Adagio said with a touch of concern, then frowned. “Well, at least he knows ‘Serenata’ and both of your parents would recognise me on sight, I assure you.”

“I’m fully aware,” I said with a nod. “We’ll have to tell them the truth… the entirety of it, I mean regarding who you are.”

“I doubt exposing that many sins all at once would go over well,” Adagio replied dryly, gesturing with her fork as she did. “Not unless… Oh, what is it they say nowadays? ‘Not unless everyone gets real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly.’?”

I snorted with laughter.

“Besides, we’re less than half-way through all of the meetings we have to attend and have very little free time unless you’ve forgotten,” Adagio added as she took another bite. “We can’t exactly pop back to Canterlot for a quick dinner.”

“Eat, then speak, darling, please,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes, and Adagio smirked at me. She’d done it on purpose. “And that’s not an issue… my parents don’t live in Canterlot anymore, although they kept the house.”

“Oh?” Adagio raised an eyebrow, then grimaced, “ah… let me guess…”

“They moved to Prance about a half-year after I moved out,” I said cheerfully. “And the only opportunity that, oh… that fashion mogul-”

“-Hoity Toity-”

“-yes, him, the only time he can meet us is two days from now in Prance,” I smiled, took a bite, and swallowed. “So, I told my parents we’d be in town, and they’re thrilled to be meeting you!”

“I’m sure they are,” Adagio responded in a terse voice before taking another bite of her salmon.

I stalled out for a moment as Adagio’s arid tone washed over me, and I felt my good humor fading as she tensely finished the rest of her entree in silence before spearing a piece of broccoli hard enough to elicit a sharp clink of metal from the porcelain plate.

“My love… I…” I began, trying to break through the wall of silence she had erected. “Have… have I done it wrong? I didn’t mean to make you-”

“I’m not angry,” Adagio said stiffly

“Darling, please,” I set my fork down and reached across the table to her, stopping a bare few inches away. “Won’t you talk to me?”

I wasn’t going to close the distance myself. I needed her to reach back, I needed to know she would reach back. As childish as it seemed considering I knew full well how deeply she cared for me, and I for her, I felt the need to know she would still reach out to me even after I’d seemingly stepped in it quite badly.

Adagio sighed and inched her hand over to lay it on mine, and I let out a small sigh of relief.

“I’m frightened, my Melody,” Adagio admitted quietly, and I cocked my head slightly in question. “I’m frightened that they won’t approve, and yes, I’m aware of how silly that sounds given how old I am.”

“I don’t think it’s silly at all,” I assured her as I turned her hand over to twine my fingers with hers. “I would feel the same way, I think.”

“You aren’t a monster in human skin, my dear,” Adagio replied sullenly

“Neither are you,” I replied quietly. “If anything I wonder if you weren’t a human in a monster’s skin all along.”

Adagio blinked at that, then chuckled in that pleasant, sultry manner of hers. Her laughter always gave me a bit of a thrill, with how throaty and husky it always was. Perhaps it’s pointless to say this of a Siren, but Adagio’s voice was truly sublime.

“My point still stands, though, my Melody,” Adagio said in a calmer voice. “I was eighteen, or so I said, when I first met your parents, and wearing a different name, and now?” She gestured down to herself and shook her head resignedly. “Better than fifteen years later I’m only a bit past twenty-four by mortal reckoning, and you expect them to simply accept my inhuman nature as par for the course.”

“Well, obviously not,” I replied, shaking my head and chuckling. “I can’t very well expect them to swallow all of that with no more than a spoonful of sugar, now can I?”

“Then what, pray tell, do you intend?” Adagio pressed the question, leaning on her arm over the table and fixing me with a stern look.

“My parents deserve to know you, my love,” I said quietly. The look on Adagio’s face softened a bit at that. “I love you more than life, but they’re my parents… if I have mistakenly made light of this, let me correct that now.”

I dabbed at my mouth with my napkin, set it down, pushed my plate away, and fixed Adagio with a look that bent all my intentions toward her that I was able.

“I do not give one bloody toss whether they accept you or not,” I said gravely, and Adagio’s eyes widened. “My parents love me and I believe they will understand in time, but even if they do not I still believe this is something worth doing… is that acceptable?”

Adagio relaxed back in her chair and sighed.

“I suppose it is, my dear,” she allowed with a small, tired laugh.

“I never intended to make it seem as though I wasn’t taking this matter seriously, my love,” I said softly, wringing my hands as I considered my words carefully. “But my father is the reason we met at all, and my mother has adored your work for many years, even if she’s only ever heard the one composition I happen to know she holds it in exceedingly high esteem.”

“Does she now?” Adagio gave me a small, self-assured smile. “I wasn’t joking when I called that work ‘good enough for a journeyman’, you know… it was hardly my best.”

“Then bring some of your best,” I met her eyes firmly, and leaned in. “Let me play some of those compositions for them!”

“I… I suppose I could send for a few of them,” Adagio looked reticent for a moment. “I hardly think a recital will sway their opinions if they judge me poorly, though, my Melody.”

“You would be surprised,” I replied with a laugh. “Trust me, won’t you?”

Adagio sighed and nodded, reaching out to slip a hand through mine and run her thumb over my fingers gently. I’ve heard some people say that endlessly repeating the words ‘I love you’ robs them of their meaning, and I find myself in dire disagreement with those people.

That being said, I can only imagine the reason they might have come to that conclusion is that the words came out as hollow. Love is so much more than words, after all… saying those three words repeatedly does not make it so, but when the words are paired with those small persistent affections, they become so much more.

When I say ‘I love you’ to Adagio, it’s more than words, it’s the way her hand so easily finds mine when we’re near one another. It’s the way my head rests pleasantly in the crook of her shoulder when she holds me, and the way her gaze lingers on me for just long enough that it’s clear how hard it is for her to look away.

It’s all of those things and more.

“To Prance, then!” I raised my glass, still half-full with a fine chardonnay, to meet Adagio’s glass.

“Come what may,” Adagio agreed.

My parents’ Prench Chateau was, much like our home in Canterlot, more understated than some of the other homes in the area. With that being said, the standard for being called ‘ostentatious’ in this country is a significantly higher one than it is in ours.

It must be said that my father has done quite well for himself. His business in terms of the music industry is booming, due in no small part to his partnership with Record Scratch Studios. My father has never been what you’d call hidebound, but he is a product of his age and time, and having someone like Vinyl Scratch consistently present and able to advise him on the minute changes to the musical landscape has served him quite well.

Well enough to keep his company well abreast of the others in the industry, anyway.

“I must say, I’ve not been in a place like this for a good while,” Adagio remarked as we walked down the long, smooth stone path through the gardens that made up the front of the Chateau. “Reminds me a bit of Byzantium, actually.”

Didn’t you spend some time in Prance?” I gave her a curious look, and she shrugged.

“Not really,” she admitted, “Prior to going to Neighpon we were in Brayton for a good while, then that whole Tudor and Lancaster mess happened.”

“Was that your fault as well?” I raised an accusatory eyebrow, and Adagio chuckled.

“No, it wasn’t,” Adagio shook her gloriously maned head. “Those two houses had every reason to be at one another’s throats, Sonata and I avoided that mess as much as we could.”

“Sonata and you…” I trailed off, and Adagio let out a small, weak laugh. “What about Aria?”

“Well… my dearest, most belligerent younger sister was feeling nostalgic for the conquests of the Sirenic empire at the time, as I recall,” Adagio replied, looking a little uneasy. “I believe she raised a blade for Lancaster and went on to fight through several of the battles disguised as a man… not hard given her less than impressive, ah, assets.”

“Did you just call your sister flat?” I laughed, and Adagio shrugged.

“At any rate, she got it out of her system around the fourteen-seventies, and by then things had tied up nicely anyway,” We strolled past a long plot of flowers, roses ironically, though unsurprisingly since they were my mother's favorite, and Adagio knelt to admire them. “I don’t think she affected the outcome much, but she certainly had fun.”

“You are aware you’re talking about a war in which tens of thousands died, yes?” I said dryly, and Adagio sighed as she stood and met my gaze.

“Remember who you’re speaking to, and about, my Melody,” Adagio said quietly. “Whether you agree with me or not, we were proper monsters in those days… my sister cut a crimson path through your kind with a smile on her face for better than a decade before she got bored and we hopped a boat to Neighpon.”

I wilted back, wrapping my arms around myself for a moment as I struggled for words. She wasn’t wrong of course, but I had put a bit of effort into trying not to think too hard about certain aspects of their pasts, specifically the bloodier aspects, but at times it was hard to ignore.

Adagio sighed quietly and pulled me close. “I’m sorry, darling, I am… but this is who we were, for better or worse.”

“I’m fully aware,” I replied as I rested against her, slipping my arms around her as I did to pull myself closer into her embrace. “And you know I don’t judge you for those days… right?”

“It does not change what we did, though,” Adagio pressed. “We may have been influenced by our Heartstones, but that cruelty was still in us.”

I sighed and shook my head, pulled away a little, and brought my hands up to cradle Adagio’s face and draw her down into a kiss.

There was nothing I could say to change what had happened or what they had done, but I could tell her without words that at the end of the day it truly didn’t matter. I knew my history, and I knew that my own people were hardly blameless when it came to record-setting levels of death and devastation.

“Miss Dazzle, you know that no matter what, I will always be yours, right?” I said softly, and Adagio blushed but nodded silently. “Good, because you’re becoming maudlin and that’s hardly any kind of mood to be in when you meet my parents.”

Adagio chuckled and pulled me for another, more playful kiss, and I squeaked in delight as she spun me about in the garden a few times before setting me, flustered and red-faced, back onto my feet. I glared up at her for a moment, although the expression was spoiled somewhat by my smile, as I silently gestured to my now wind-tossed hair.

“Please, you look better like that, anyway,” Adagio waved her hand dismissively before pulling a small comb out of her clutch and passing it to me.

“Thank you, darling, you do so know how to charm a girl,” I laughed as I ran the comb through the long black strands, pulling them back to a semblance of order.

“Well it’s how you go to sleep every night when we share a bed,” Adagio remarked playfully.

“You’re a louse, Adagio Dazzle,” I passed her the comb back with a neutral glare.

“And how,” Adagio stuck out her tongue briefly before tucking the comb back from whence it came.

It’s times like this I wonder what it is I’ve really gotten myself into, being with someone like Adagio. Not that I’m unhappy, quite the opposite, I’m practically blissful, but there’s so very much about her that I don’t know, and our time in Manehattan only highlighted that. Of course, I do mean what I said when I told her I truly didn’t care about her past, and perhaps that makes me callous, but I don’t feel that it’s inaccurate to state that the Adagio Dazzle who committed those actions and the Adagio Dazzle that I want to fall asleep next to every night for the rest of my life are two very different people.

Or perhaps I’m just making excuses.

C’est l’amour.

“Come on then you brute,” I took her hand and tugged her along towards the Chateau. “My parents await with bated breath.”

“Is that a fish joke?” Adagio jibed, nudging me in the ribs, and I groaned.

“You’re intolerable sometimes, you know that?” I replied dryly, and received a hum of agreement in response, and I scowled. “Really, darling, can you at least try to be serious?”

Adagio slowed her gait, glancing at me with a worried look before sighing and giving me a small nod.

“I’m sorry, my love,” Adagio said softly. “I’m nervous… I’m worried… and I’m afraid I’m acting out a bit because of it.”

“I know,” I pulled myself a little closer to her, drawing her arm around my waist so she cradled me as we walked. “But I told you, regardless of the outcome of this meeting… you will never be without me.”

“You would choose me over your parents?” Adagio asked weakly.

I sighed, resting my head against her chest as I considered my next words carefully. The answer to that question was, technically, a resounding yes, but at the same time I loved my parents dearly.

“If my parents would choose to neglect my happiness, then yes,” I finally said as we reached the doors to the large manse. “Because you are my happiness, Miss Dazzle.”

“As you are mine, my Melody,” Adagio turned to face me, and I shivered as she brushed her fingers over my cheek.

I don’t need any other proof than this to know my feelings for Adagio as true. I can’t look into her raspberry-colored eyes without my heart stirring like a caged tempest. I can’t feel her touch without leaning into the press of her fingers.

I cannot kiss her without feeling as though I never want to stop.

“Alright, enough of that,” I pushed back from Adagio with a smile. “Keep it up and we’ll never get through the door.”

“Drat, thou hast sussed out my dastardly plan,” Adagio chuckled before leaning down to brush her lips over mine. “Fine, let’s get this over with.”

“You talk like we’re attending an execution,” I knocked on the door a few times, then stepped back.

A moment later the door opened with a creak. Behind it was a tall, statuesque woman roughly on the scale of Adagio, though her silver hair was tied back in a long, and painfully straight braid.

I’d always thought that Pleasant Purpose had a strange name because, all things considered, while she certainly had purpose, she was hardly what you’d call pleasant about it even at the best of times. She wore a perpetual frown of disapproval on her face, as if she’d just discovered a poorly made souffle left to moulder on the kitchen counter, and there was an air about her that suggested you had just failed some secret test in her mind.

That being said, her capability as head of the house’s servants was unquestionable.

“Welcome home, Young Miss,” Pleasant said stiffly, and I gave her a thin smile.

Young Miss…

Pleasant Purpose has been in my family’s service since I was a little girl, even longer than Good Form, and she has only ever called me ‘Young Miss’. I suspect that she will continue to do so until I’m old and gray because, despite knowing factually that the woman is better than twice my age I can’t actually identify any signs that she has changed in the more than two decades I’ve known her.

She ages much like a mountain, I suppose. Just getting colder and more stern as the eons pass.

“Miss Purpose,” I gave her a small nod, “how are you keeping?”

“I am well,” Pleasant responded curtly before turning to Adagio with a critical expression.

Adagio returned the cold look expertly, with those raspberry eyes of hers, normally so warm, now looking like sharp shards of cold, frozen blood as she and Pleasant sized one another up.

“And you are…?” Pleasant asked the question in a manner that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise in anger.

She wasn’t precisely rude, but Pleasant Purpose had a very certain tone to her voice that she took whenever she felt someone was unwelcome.

“Adagio Scyllia Dazzle,” Adagio drew herself up to her full, regal bearing, and for the first time in my life I saw Pleasant Purpose retreat slightly.

It was a momentary thing, just a slight drawing back, not even a full step backwards, but I felt a small surge of triumph that manifested on my face as what I suspect was a catlike smile.

“My girlfriend,” I clarified, “we’ve been seeing each other for some time now and I felt it was past due for her to meet my parents.”

“Very good,” Pleasant replied politely, but I could see the tension in the set of her jaw as she stepped aside. “Welcome home, Young Miss.”

“Thank you, but I’ll be home when I return to Canterlot, I’m afraid,” I replied evenly.

“Of course,” Pleasant turned rigidly, gesturing for us to follow her.

“That was catty, my love,” Adagio whispered to me as we fell in behind Pleasant Purpose, and I sighed quietly.

“I’m not sorry,” I said cooly, “she could’ve been more welcoming to you.”

Adagio chuckled, a warm, lovely sound that kindled a small flame in my heart. Normally it was Adagio who was possessive and protective of me, but this was, as they say, my turf, and she was the one who felt out of place. It was on my shoulders to ensure she was treated as she deserved.

“I don’t want you alienating people for my sake, though,” Adagio muttered back, softening the gentle admonishment with a nuzzle against the top of my head. “Be nice, alright?”

“If you insist,” I grumbled playfully.

Pleasant led us into a large parlour whose bay windows looked out over the vast gardens stretching out from the east wing of the Chateau. This, I knew, was my mother’s handiwork, because regardless of my father’s aesthetic appreciation for flora, he wasn’t much of a botanist. My mother, on the other hand, could probably grow a rosebush in the Mojave.

By contrast, I once failed to keep a cactus alive in my teens, and have since decided I’m far more my father’s daughter, no matter who I look like.

“How lovely,” Adagio breathed as she stepped past Pleasant to stop at the windows, her eyes sparkling in delight as she admired the view.

“I wasn’t aware you liked gardens, my dear,” I said quietly as I joined her at the window, waving a dismissal to Pleasant who nodded and vanished down the hall.

Presumably to fetch my mother and father.

“Once upon a time, I had my own garden,” Adagio’s voice was distant and filled with grief. “It was nothing so grand as this, of course… a simple garden in the depths of a forest where I lived with my-”

I looked up at her as she paused, and felt a deep, stabbing pain of heartache at the look in her eyes.

“My love?”

“It’s nothing,” Adagio replied gently. “I have lived a long life, my Melody, and it is full of sorrows… some more vast than others.”

“I… I see,” I turned away from her, feeling as if she’d pulled away from me in that moment, and I found that I liked the sensation of that not at all. “Are you alright?”

Silence met my question for several moments before she sighed and turned to me with a melancholy smile.

“I am so long as I am with you, my dearest,” Adagio said with certainty.

“Well, that is a most hopeful impression,” a proud and familiar male voice said from the far end of the room, and I turned in Adagio’s grasp to smile broadly at my father.

Legato Melody is a tall, robust man with a thick head of neatly kept hair that was once as dark as mine, but is now shot through with early veins of bright silver. His outfit was one that matched him well, a plain, dark polo and gray slacks. He opened his arms to me and I raced towards him to practically leap into his arms, and he wrapped me in a warm embrace as soon as I was near enough.

It had been better than a year and a half since I’d last seen either of my parents. Living a continent apart from one another will do that, of course, especially as all of our schedules were rather busy.

That and I am, in my heart of hearts, something of a daddy’s girl, and I very likely always will be.

“Oh my darling daughter!” My father crowed as he set me down, giving me another strong hug. “You don’t know how thrilled I was to hear you were coming to visit, it has been far too long!”

“I agree,” a strong, feminine voice that was at least as musical as Adagio’s said from deeper in the hall.

My mother, Soprana Melody, is the first and last word in stately elegance. Those are not my words, but the words of an influential columnist who saw her in a live performance of Der Freischutz six years ago. She stands a little more than two inches over my father, and is in every possible way the definition of a ‘Lady’, with stately, patrician features, warm, dark eyes, and a regal bearing to shame a Queen.

It was my mother, more than anything, that I felt awful about not visiting.

“Mother,” I greeted her warmly as I stepped close and hugged her, sharing a kiss on each cheek with her as I did. “How have you been?”

“Better these past couple of years,” She replied softly, kissing the top of my head as she did. “I’m still in remission, fortunately.”

“Almost two full years now,” my father said boisterously.

“Remission?” Adagio’s voice was brittle. “You mean you-?”

“Did my daughter not tell you?” Mother said sternly, before fixing me a sharp look. I wilted back as she did, I’ll be the first to admit that while my glare has quite the oomph behind it, I never quite mastered the phosphorescent blaze that my mother had attained. “Octavia, for shame!”

“Mother! It’s not as though it’s something that comes up in average conversation, now is it?” I retorted, trying to regain some ground, but my mother had my number and snapped a hand out grip me by the ear.

“Ow, ow, ow!” I chirped as she gave my ear a good tug.

“Octavia Melody, you know better than that,” my mother chided me, before letting go and turning to Adagio. “I’m so sorry about that Miss… oh, my stars…”

Adagio winced but hid it well as she offered my mother a small smile. At my mother’s words, however, my father turned and examined Adagio more closely and I watched his expression turn to shock.

“I… I know your face,” my father approached her as though she were a specter, his eyes wide and stunned. “You’re… no, that’s not possible… Serenata, wasn’t it?”

“It was, once upon a time,” Adagio’s reply was uneasy, but she didn’t shy away.

“You look as though you’ve barely aged,” my mother breathed as she stepped closer, her eyes narrowed and exact she looked Adagio up and down. “As my husband so rightly put it… that’s not possible.”

“Not possible for a human,” I said quietly from behind., drawing a look from all three.

I took several strides forward, putting myself between Adagio and my parents, crossing my arms firmly over my chest as I stared them both down. Admittedly, I wasn’t much of a bulwark, given my relatively slight frame, so me positioning myself in front of Adagio probably looked a little silly.

With her greater height, broad shoulders, and defined body, me protecting Adagio was not dissimilar to a tabby cat trying to defend a lynx.

“Not… human?” my mother said in confusion, glancing between the two of us before shooting my father a look of concern.

“It’s alright, my love,” Adagio said gently, putting a hand on my shoulder as she did.

She didn’t push me aside, but the faint pressure was there and it took an act of will not to simply stubbornly plant my feet and refuse to move. I knew, intellectually, that this would not endear her to my parents but…

But she was mine. My girlfriend, my lover, and one day… so much more.

She hadn’t asked me yet, but at this point I suspected our ultimate union was a foregone conclusion.

“As I told your butler, my name,” Adagio put her hand to her chest and drew herself up in a regal posture to rival my mother’s, “is Adagio Scyllia Dazzle, and yes, I once wore the name of Serenata Dazzle,” she deflated a little as she met my parents’ looks of concern. “Something that, I freely admit, I did for the express purpose of ingratiating myself to your family for less than… reputable reasons.”

My mother and father shared a look in that silent manner of married couples, where I could see a full conversation passing between them despite the total lack of words.

Finally, my mother turned back to Adagio and crossed her arms in a manner I realised was almost identical to mine. Or I suppose mine would be identical to hers.

Well, at least our tempers are quite similar.

“Explain,” my mother said curtly.

“Very well, shall we take a seat?” Adagio gestured to the various couches, chaise lounges, and cushioned chairs. “I would advise one, at the very least, along with a stiff drink.”

“I’ll hear this sober, if it’s all the same to you,” my father replied sternly. “I don’t take kindly to getting swindled, Miss Dazzle.”

“You’ll find she did nothing of the sort!” I spat, and my father took a step back in surprise.

In truth, my vitriol surprised even me.

“Enough, my Melody,” Adagio said quietly, “I’ll handle this.”

She slipped her arm around my waist and I hummed my approval as her hand settled lightly on my hip while we walked to a loveseat and she sat down, patting the spot next to her.

Rather than obey her silent request, I very pointedly looked at parents as I sat down in Adagio’s lap, draping an arm over her shoulder and nestling myself protectively over her.

Adagio flushed and I found myself smiling as she struggled not to blush herself crimson in front of my parents.

“D-Darling,” Adagio hissed, “what in Nodens oceans are you doing?”

“Being obvious and clear,” I replied sternly, “now I believe you were going to explain something to my parents?”

I watched as my parents shared another one of those infuriatingly silent conversations with a glance before turning back to us, and Adagio cleared her throat delicately.

“You’ll have to suspend disbelief for some of this, I’m afraid, but I’ll tell you as much as you wish if it means you’ll approve of my relationship with your daughter,” Adagio began, and I felt her arm settle over me as if she were afraid I’d vanish. “As I said, my name is Adagio Dazzle, that is my true name, and as your daughter said… I am not, and never have been, human in the strictest sense of the word.”

Neither of my parents looked particularly convinced, but Adagio continued.

“I have lived for, by human reckoning, some span just over two thousand years,” Adagio’s voice took on a stronger quality as my parents stared, wide-eyed at that statement. “Although I’ll admit to not being wholly certain that the translation of my first millennia of life is exactly equal in span on this world.”

“Ahem, ‘this world’?” my mother said in a tone of disbelief.

“Believe it or not, she isn’t making it up,” I cut in, “I never told you, but during my years and Canterlot High there were a series of… incidents, do you recall?”

“I do,” my father replied gruffly. “The matter with some bully or other ruining a dance, and some odd light shows?”

“One of those ‘light shows’ were my sisters and I,” Adagio clarified.

Over the next hour and a half, Adagio recounted the events that occurred during the ‘Battle of the Bands’, which I seem to recall, hazy though the memory was, to have become significantly more literal than one might expect. She even described things I hadn’t known about the matter, like her sisters and their constant bickering, their short tempers stemming from their desperation to finally return home, and their final humiliation when their Heartstones were shattered, leaving them incapable of using their Gift.

Before my parents could rediscover their voices, I spoke up as well.

“I can attest to this, as one of my very good friends is from the same world as Adagio,” I pulled out my phone and sent her a picture of Aria and Sunset in the VIP room of the Lounge that the latter had sent me, showing their progress. “Sunset Shimmer, I’m sure you remember her?”

“I certainly do,” my mother said quietly. “She was quite a terror until she turned over a new leaf, isn’t that right?”

“She was,” I agreed, remembering Sunset’s early years at CHS, “she and her friends possess artifacts from that world that allow them to do marvelous things…”

“Rather than trouble them, though,” Adagio added, pulling me a little more snugly against her. “I would happily answer any of your questions.”

“I am beginning to regret turning down that drink,” my father said wearily, “in fact… Pleasant!”

My father had barely raised his hand before Pleasant Purpose was at his side, although I couldn’t quite account for where she had come from. That odd sort of stealth was something she shared with Good Form.

“Glenlivet, neat,” my father said with a sigh, “actually make it a double.”

“And a glass of old vine syrah for me,” my mother added, before glancing at the pair us, and I could see her nature as hostess take over. “Anything for you two?”

“I’ll have what he’s having actually,” Adagio gestured at my father.

“Water for me, and do keep your intake to a minimum tonight, my love,” I sighed with a laugh. “You down that stuff like it’s spring water.”

“I’ve been drinking for more than a millennium, my Melody,” Adagio gave me a withering look, I smiled back at her teasingly. “I can hold my liquor thank you very much.”

“Probably better than my father,” I joked, which earned an annoyed huff from near my mother.

Pleasant arrived with our drinks moments later, and as my mother and father were sipping at their drinks, my father leaned in a little, cradling his glass as he did.

“Miss Dazzle,” he began, drawing my love’s attention, “what exactly was your intention when you came into my home.”

“To fleece you of your wealth,” Adagio replied boldly, and I winced. I knew it was true, but hearing it was rather a different thing. “Of course, that all fell by the wayside when I started teaching your daughter… I’ve told her what I’ll tell you, I’ve never had such an apt pupil, and it broke my heart to leave her.”

“You never took more than your wage you asked for, though,” my mother put in, “and in fact, you even gave back your final paycheck when you could have kept it and left.”

“It didn’t feel right,” Adagio’s voice was soft as she hugged me tightly. “My heartstone hardened me to much of this world’s kindness, but not even an artifact of that grade could blunt me to the sheer, unbridled adoration of a child…” Shifting in her seat, Adagio buried her face against my back for a moment and sighed. “This may sound silly, but trust me, magic exists in this world in the little miracles, and there is more magic in a child’s pure heart than almost anything in the world.”

“I suppose given that you’re speaking about my daughter I can’t rightly disagree,” my father said with a certain smug satisfaction to his tone that only a proud papa can truly bear. “What about you personally… you’ve told us what you did at the school seven years ago, but I know nothing about you.”

“Indeed,” my mother swirled her glass before taking a sip. “For instance, if you’ve lived as long as you claim you must have had other relationships.”

“Mother!” I snapped, but my mother waved away my objection.

“It’s a valid question, darling, and you know it,” she said, before turning back to Adagio, “past performance is the best indicator of future actions, in my opinion, so?”

Adagio looked terribly grim for a moment, but then she nodded.

“I did say you could ask me whatever you wished, and that I would tell you if it meant you would give me a chance,” Adagio’s tone had taken on a wintery quality, and I instinctively curled against her to try and ward against it. “You ask if I’ve had other relations, the answer is yes… although the difference between my psyche and a human one was vast enough that it was almost never truly a partnership of equals.”

“I see,” my mother’s voice had matched Adagio’s in temperature, and I shivered.

My father was, wisely, staying well out of this conversation.

“Except for one,” Adagio amended, and I looked up sharply. She’d never told me about this. “There was one that would count, I think, by your reckoning.”

“A true relationship?” My mother queried, and Adagio nodded.

“Yes… it was nigh on three hundred years ago that I was married,” my eyes widened.

Married?

Adagio had been married? I mean, given her age and that her partner was surely human, that would mean she was a widower, but…

“His name was Timber Heart,” Adagio’s voice was electric with pain, and I could see even my mother draw back at her tone. “And we were wed in a small town whose name I never learned in the northern tsardoms… I was happy then, we were happy then… Timber, myself, and…”

Adagio choked.

I have seen my love in various states of distress and disarray, and nearly all of them have been in the throes of liquor, or at the very least in exceedingly heightened states of stress. Never once have I seen Adagio lose her composure so cleanly and so totally while sober.

“Miss Dazzle?” my father stood, a look of worry on his face, but Adagio just held up a hand to forestall him.

“...T-Timber, myself, and our d-daughter,” she finished.

My jaw clicked open in shock, an expression neatly mirrored by my father and mother who were staring at her.

Tears were openly streaming down her cheeks, and Adagio lifted her drink to finish it in a single pull.

“You… had a daughter?” my mother breathed, “does that mean there’s a bloodline out there that-?”

“No,” Adagio bit the words out so harshly that I almost jumped out of her arms. “No, my daughter never wed, in fact she didn’t even live to see her second decade,” there was a sharp intake of breath at that. “She and my husband were murdered, and I buried them in a small plot outside of our shared home that we’d lived happily inside of for years before their killers burned it to the ground.”

“Oh.”

It was not even a word, really, just a sound of abject misery made by my mother as Adagio shook in my grasp, her composure totally destroyed as she tried and failed to keep from crying. Carefully, I stood up and knelt in front of Adagio, taking both her hands as I watched streams of hot tears pour down her face.

Before I could say a word, my mother was kneeling beside me and took Adagio’s hands from me. I wasn’t sure what to do so I let my mother slowly and gently pull Adagio into her arms, and belatedly I realised she was crying too.

“Oh my dear,” my mother sobbed, “I’m so sorry… I am so sorry.”

Adagio didn’t speak, she just let out a small, broken sound of grief as she buried her face against my mother’s shoulder and simply wept.

I felt a strong hand settle onto my shoulder, and I looked over to see my father standing behind me with a solemn look on his face. He nodded silently for me to follow him, and I did. I wasn’t sure what else to do, so I entrusted the love of my life to my mother’s arms and followed by father out into the hall, and then the veranda where the sun was slowly setting.

“I… I never knew,” I said quietly as the glass doors clicked closed behind us. “She never told me.”

“I’m not surprised, I would think that talking about something like that would be impossible,” my father replied in a voice that was thick and raw with emotion. “I cannot fathom the kind of unyielding strength of character and will that it would take to just get up in the morning with the knowledge that your only child is dead, and that you are not.”

He turned to face me with tears glistening in his eyes.

“I can say, without reserve, that if I were to lose you and your mother in such a nightmarish manner-!” his voice cracked, and he covered his face with his hand for a moment, shivering as he regained his composure before looking back up at me. “If I were to suffer such a loss… it would kill me.”

“Papa!” I sobbed, before walking forward and embracing him, and he pulled me close, almost desperately. He cradled me as he did when I was barely up to his knee.

“I wasn’t certain I believed your Adagio’s wild tale, but…” he shook his head. “Now, I can’t find myself able to doubt, nor do I think I will ever be able to unhear how she sounded when she spoke of her daughter.”

“She shouldn’t have had to!” I cried as I slapped my hands against his chest, suddenly furious, and I could feel him give a little as I stepped back with my tears of pain and anger held just barely in check as I stared up at my father. “You had no right! You and mother and no right to make her relive that!”

My father didn’t defend himself, he just nodded with a look of grievous pain.

“I could say we didn’t know,” he began weakly, “I could say this was never our intent, and that we only wanted to get to know her, but… the damage is done.”

“I know her story was hard to believe,” I stepped back, wrapping my arms around myself to keep myself from lashing out, “but what else could her answer have possibly have been? If she was telling the truth then that would mean whoever she was with was-!”

“I know,” my father sagged and nodded. “I realise now, and I realise what we did, unintentional though it was.”

I held up a finger under his nose, my whole body trembling with unmasked fury as I fought to find some kind of phrase or a word or something to say to him.

“This… this was my idea,” I spat, “my plan, and now… now you’ve made it my fault, father.” I spat the last word, normally said with such warmth, into his face and he flinched. “I… how am I supposed to look my love in the eye after this?”

“I can offer nothing but my most heartfelt apologies, Octavia,” my father said wearily. “Were it possible to take it back then I would, in an instant.”

“You… well, you can’t!” my hand shook in his face as tried to reign in my temper and found myself failing spectacularly. “I… I may never forgive you… either of you!”

“Peace, my Melody,” the gentle, familiar voice of my darling Adagio said as I felt her hand settle onto the small of my back, and I turned to see her and my mother standing behind me.

My mother still had her arms around Adagio, and their eyes were both puffy and red from crying. Adagio’s voice was still terribly raw, and the sound of it hurt my heart.

My father and I had been so wrapped up that neither of us had heard the veranda door open, or our respective loves approach, but I could see the pain on my mother’s face having heard my words to my father.

“Peace?” I choked the word out furiously, “what peace?! No, how dare they… how dare they!”

“They have inflicted significantly less pain than I have in my very long life,” Adagio said pointedly.

“Well excuse me if I don’t particularly give a damn!” I snarled, gesticulating wildly at my parents. “I don’t care who you’ve hurt, I care who hurts you!”

My breath came in short, angry gulps as I stood apart from my parents and Adagio, the former of which were looking at me with surprise, while the latter just looked sad. Pulling away from my mother, Adagio approached and held out her hands to me, opening her arm and waiting.

Damn her.

She knows me far too well.

Sighing, I stepped into her embrace and leaned against her, and as she held me tight I could feel the rage that had built up inside me like a poison slowly sluicing out.

“I mean it,” I cried softly as I pressed against her. “The world can burn itself out for all I care… all I want is you.”

“I know,” Adagio’s voice was tender as she stroked my back in calming motions. “But you can’t let your rage better you like this… you know that.”

I did know, and I hated it every time I let it happen. My temper has long been the worst part of me, and it’s something I know I share with my mother. It happened on numerous occasions when I was younger, as I grew up I became angry and withdrawn, and there were plenty of times I got into shouting matches with my mother. I came by my temper honestly, at least, and it was only after meeting Vinyl Scratch that I began to mellow out.

At my core, though, I’m just… angry.

Passionate, is what my father would call it, but anger is what people often see.

My mother and I are passionate people, but that means that when we get angry we tend to say things we don’t mean out of fury and spite. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve told my mother that I hated her, only to come crying back to her and apologising mere hours later.

“I can’t stand it,” I gripped Adagio’s dress hard, trying to keep my voice steady. “Seeing you hurting like that, seeing you in so much pain… it ruins me!”

“Miss Dazzle, once again I can’t apologise enough for my behaviour,” my mother said quietly from beside us. “As a mother myself, I can hardly even imagine the depth of your pain.”

“Three hundred years,” Adagio said hollowly, “and I can still see her face like it was yesterday.”

“How do you do it?” my mother asked, her voice pained and brittle. “How do you go on?”

Adagio held me tighter, and sighed.

“Is it awful of me to say that there are days that I wouldn’t be able to answer that question?” Adagio replied, and I shivered in her arms. “Although… those days are fewer of late, since your daughter found me again.”

I stepped back, looking up at Adagio’s lovely face as I tried to smile for her.

“I love you, darling,” I said through raw tears. “Never forget that, please?”

“Never,” Adagio swore, before looking up at my parents with more strength in her posture. “And to you two… I forgive you for your thoughtless questions,” my mother and father practically sagged in relief, “I knew that today would be a difficult day, I knew it perhaps better than my darling Melody, so now I ask you to understand that the reason I bared my deepest pain to you is so you would understand that your daughter means that much to me.”

Mother and father shared another conversational look, then nodded.

“We understand entirely,” my father said with a stiff nod.

“Secondly, I have another request,” Adagio stepped boldly forward, but now she seemed almost uncertain, like she was nervous. “I… I would ask for your blessing.”

My mother raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been dating our daughter for some time now, isn’t our blessing a bit peripheral at this point?”

“That’s not… I don’t want your blessing to date your daughter,” Adagio amended, shaking her head and sending her glorious curls bobbing about. “I want your blessing to marry her.”

You could have cut the air with a knife as Adagio turned to face me with flushed cheeks.

“I know that, perhaps, I do not look my best at the moment…” Adagio began, wiping at her eyes before opening her purse and drawing out a box made of warm, brown wood that looked hand-carved. “But I knew I would be doing it this way the moment you told me I’d be meeting your mother and father, my dear.”

I stared, wide-eyed at the box in her hand.

“When… when did you get that?” I asked quietly. “We’ve rarely spent more than a few moments apart in almost the last six months, when did you-?”

“I’ve always had it,” Adagio replied somberly before looking over at my parents who were slowly overcoming their shock.

“Well, all things considered I can’t find it in my heart to reject your request,” my father said a bit gruffly, but I could see how happy he was in the lilt of his lips and the lines around his eyes. “My love?”

My mother just nodded silently, her mouth covered as she tried to keep from crying.

“Well then, let’s do this properly, shall we?” Adagio said, before adjusting her skirts, kneeling in front of me, and holding up the box. “Octavia Melody, I never told you why I call you ‘My Melody’, but I’ll tell you now that it’s more than just because it’s your surname.”

I chuckled a bit weakly as I tried to fight back the wave of emotion that was welling up in my chest.

If I started crying now I’d probably never stop.

“It’s because I am a Siren,” Adagio continued, “and our voices are our Gift, and for so very long I felt as though I had lost that Gift forever…” she cracked the box open, and held it up, “until I met you, my Melody.”

The ring wasn’t impressive, but it was certainly old. It was a simple band of purest silver, crafted in a manner I couldn’t quite identify, and there was a small, clear diamond set carefully into it that looked a bit more recent than the rest of the piece.

“Once I wore this ring as a sign of my love,” Adagio said carefully, “and I would be honored if you would wear it now and be my wife.”

I had thought I was prepared for this. Adagio had never made any secret of her intentions towards me, and I knew it was quite literally just a matter of time before she proposed, so I had imagined that when it happened I would be braced and ready.

As it turns out, I was not.

I sobbed, nodding as my voice completely failed to come through, and held out my hand for her to slip the ring onto. It was light and unobtrusive, which I honestly preferred, and I’d been a little worried that Adagio would go over the top and get some enormous, extravagant piece of jewelry.

“I’m sorry if it’s too small,” Adagio said uncertainly. “I’m not sure if you prefer gold but-?”

“I love it!” I gasped the words out, falling to my knees as I wrapped my arms around Adagio. “Truly, I love it! It’s perfect.”

Adagio let out a quiet sigh of relief and embraced me back.

“Truthfully, I hate those large, chunky pieces of stone most socialites seem to prefer,” I laughed as I pulled back and admired the ring. “They always seemed so gauche, like they’re compensating for something.”

“Let us be the first to congratulate the both of you,” my mother said brightly as she stepped out from my father’s arms and held her hands out to both of us. “I, for one, would gladly welcome a new addition to our family.”

Together, Adagio and I stood, albeit a bit shakily, and moved into my mother’s embrace. My father joined us a moment later for a time we stood there as a family, united in warmth.

“I’m sorry,” my voice was muffled as I leaned my head against my father’s broad chest, “I didn’t mean those awful things I said.”

“I know, darling,” my father patted my back gently. “But I earned them nonetheless, I think.”

“We both did, I’m afraid,” my mother said as she took Adagio’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Your forgiveness means more than I can say.”

“Holding a grudge would hardly be the way to start this kind of thing, I think,” Adagio replied with a dry laugh.

Clearing her throat, my mother stepped away and tugged my father along with her. “Come now, darling, let’s leave these two alone for a moment.”

“I… yes, of course, dear,” my father capitulated, bowing to my mother’s grace and following her back into the house.

“Well…” I began weakly, leaning against Adagio as we turned to face the last vestiges of the sunset. “This was certainly far more of a disaster than I envisioned.”

“I suppose it was something like that, yes,” Adagio replied, chuckling as she looped her arm around my waist comfortably, and growing quiet as she did before speaking up again. “I’m… I’m sorry that I never told you about that part of my past.”

“Don’t be, my father did have a good point,” I admitted sullenly. “I’m not sure how anyone is supposed to talk about something so…”

“Still, I could have prepared you better,” Adagio pressed, “although you didn’t tell me about your mother’s condition.”

“Cancer, yes, for which I’m sorry,” I sighed and leaned my head against her chest. “I hate that it’s part of the reason I avoid coming back here… I’m always a little afraid, I suppose… does that make me awful?”

“No, it makes you human,” Adagio’s reply was gentle as she turned to kiss the crown of my head. “We try not to think about that which troubles us most terribly, and I’m no different.”

“I should spend more time with my mother,” I resolved quietly. “I really should.”

“I agree,” Adagio nodded gravely. “One never knows when a loved one will be gone forever.”

I suppose she would know that better than anyone else, and I mused on that for several moments as we watched the sun vanish over the horizon. A chilly wind blew over the Prench hills, and I shivered only for Adagio to wrap her arms more fully around me, and I basked in her warmth for a few moments.

“If I may,” I ventured carefully, “what… what was she like?”

Adagio was silent for a long time before sighing quietly, and I watched as a few more tears fell.

“Her name was Jackrabbit and, although they never met, she was very much like Aria, actually.”

The Heart In My Chest

Sparkle & Dusk

Canterlot has a lot of nicknames; the Alley Capital, Second City, and Manehattan Done Right, but if I’m being honest, my favorite one is: ‘City by the Lake’.

The City of Canterlot borders the enormous Lake Canter, whose bitterly cold waters drink in the icy air and freeze every winter. That also means that it’s surprisingly temperate during the hot summers, which makes it a popular place to go camping for the populace who can take the time to do so.

“It’s chilly,” Sonata shivered as she stepped next to me, her hand slipping through mine to grasp it lightly. I returned the affectionate squeeze as I set my glasses back into place on my nose, they got fogged up easily out here.

I nodded my agreement.

We’d both dressed for the weather, but the cold of Lake Canter was a singular, elemental thing. I was wearing an ankle-length lavender winter coat that Sonata had bought me as a gift last month for starting therapy, and it was a twin to her own gray coat. I took a moment to admire how beautiful she was again; she had her hair down today, the long, two-tone locks covering her ears and giving her some relief from the cold. I had my hair tied back, I never liked letting it flow freely since it had this annoying habit of getting in my eyes.

“It’s better in the summer, honestly,” I smiled a little as I remembered those days, the few good times of my childhood that I could clearly recall. “My family used to camp along the banks every August before school got back in but I think once I got into college we all got too busy for it, and we haven’t done it in a long time.”

“Pretty sure ‘Dagi and Aria have had their fill of camping,” Sonata chuckled sheepishly. “We’ve spent a lot of nights under the stars, and not all of them were comfortable, y’know?”

“Makes sense,” I agreed with a laugh as Sonata sidled a little closer and leaned against me.

She was warm, and her presence relaxed me in a way I couldn’t really describe. I wasn’t the type of person who unwound easily, but ever since I found Sonata I found myself relaxing more often. The trouble with that, of course, is that all the tension and coiled up feelings I’ve kept restrained for the past decade-and-change with some real world-class repression all started boiling the surface the moment I began to get comfortable.

“No appointment today?” Sonata asked quietly, and I shook my head. “When’s your next one?”

“Tomorrow afternoon at one,” I replied, sighing as I turned to press a kiss to the top of her head. “Doctor Bright Eyes thinks I might be moving too fast with this thing I’m doing today…”

Sonata just hummed thoughtfully as she slid her arm around my waist and turned to brush her lips over my cheek before turning to rest her head in the hollow of my neck. It had ultimately been Sonata’s idea for me to start going to therapy for my anger issues and done a lot of the legwork finding me a good one.

During the short span of our relationship, I’d come to the disturbing conclusion that I was an extremely angry person. A large part of that stemmed from my childhood and the strain of expectation that was put on me, combined with the social isolation, and the emotional and mental abuse I suffered at Crystal Prep Academy.

None of that excuses me, though. One thing Doctor Bright Eyes drilled into my head during our sessions was that past trauma may be a reason for a behaviour, but it was most certainly not an excuse. We are each of us responsible for our actions and the harm it brings on others, and frankly, I was getting sick and tired of my snap temper coming out around Sonata.

The gentle Siren was so close to my heart that I couldn’t keep my guard up around her anymore. I couldn’t wall off my emotions like I used to, which meant when I got agitated it would come out as yelling or snappy, waspish behaviour that left my… my girlfriend hurting.

God, I could be such a bitch sometimes.

“Am I doing the right thing, ‘Nata?” I turned to look down over at her and she smiled encouragingly.

“I have no idea!” Sonata chirped, and I couldn’t help but chuckle weakly at her reply. “I don’t even know if there is a ‘right’ thing now… I made a real mess of this, huh?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I hugged her tight and nuzzled against her long, soft hair. “It would have come out eventually, and probably been a lot worse.”

“Screaming yourself hoarse over Thanksgiving dinner?” Sonata suggested playfully, and I winced.

“Holidays have always been a little… tense,” I admitted, “I never really gave it much thought, but now it seems pretty obvious why I always hated our big holiday get-togethers.”

“Twi’, you know you don’t have to do this, right?” Sonata looked up at me with worry writ over her face. Another thing that endlessly charmed me about Sonata was how open she was. I never had to wonder with her. “I know I said you shouldn’t give up on your family, but I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I do have to do this, though,” I replied quietly. “Even if I don’t really know what ‘this’ is.”

Sonata pulled back, then stepped in to press her lips softly against mine. I let out a quiet hum of satisfaction as she molded against me, and I found my hands tracing daringly over her hips and waist, enjoying the comfortable softness of her gentle curves.

She was the most charming of the Siren sisters, certainly, although I might be a little biased in that regard. I’m sure Octavia would disagree with me in Adagio’s favor, although Sunset might not for her lover. God love her girlfriend, but Aria really isn’t the most approachable creature. I think she’s appealing in the same way that an angry, fluffy cat is: it’s so obnoxiously fighty that you want to pet it all the more.

In the months since we’d found ourselves together, I’d become more comfortable with physical contact. It was one thing to have the kind of platonic contact that my friends were constantly doling out, but entirely different when it was in a romantic context. Nevertheless, Sonata always felt comfortable to me. For all of my hangups and trust issues, Sonata Dusk would always be my ‘safe place’.

I never felt afraid when I was with her.

“I love you,” I whispered against her kiss, and she giggled lightly.

“I love you too, Twi’,” Sonata nestled against me again, our shared warmth a firm ward against the chill of the late winter months on the shores of Lake Canter.

For someone who has spent the majority of their life consumed by the pursuit of scientific knowledge, something about Sonata never failed to make me wax romantic.

A slight cough from some dozen feet away interrupted our moment, and a chill settled into my stomach that had nothing to do with the temperature.

I looked up from Sonata to spy a familiar face standing where the little footpath that led from the beach to the parking lot of the campsite terminated. She was beautiful as ever, with her perfectly coiffed head of pink hair, angelic smile, and sharp, intelligent eyes. She wore a fashionably short winter jacket, thermal leggings, which probably had more layers, and fluffy gloves, all of which were done up in complementary shades of pink.

Cadence, my sister-in-law, and one of the people against whom I’d nursed a silent grudge for a long time.

“Cadence,” I began cooly, stepping away from Sonata. “You’re early.”

“Less traffic than I expected,” she looked awkward and almost scared, which was alien to the Cadence I knew. “How, uhm… how’ve you been?”

“Good…” I swallowed hard as I took Sonata’s hand and squeezed it. “Better than I’ve ever been, actually.”

“O-Oh, that’s… good,” Cadence was maintaining a solid ten feet of distance, and somehow I still felt the distance manage to grow between us. “I’m really happy for you.”

I barely kept in my mounting sigh.

Cadence was many things, but anxious wasn’t usually among them. All my life she had been the confident, certain one. Especially where my brother and her were concerned; she was always the one who took the first step forward. I always admired her ability to move past obstacles like they weren’t there and just act.

I couldn’t see even a hint of that person right now. She was just so… scared.

“So uhm… it’s been a minute since we’ve come out here, huh?” Cadence tried to resuscitate the faltering conversation, and I tried not to grimace and instead meet her halfway.

“Almost six years,” I said quietly, turning away from her to look over the beach and the lake. “I wanted to talk here because I have a lot of good memories on this shore.”

“Me too,” Cadence’s reply was quiet, almost mournful, as she finally stepped forward and closed the distance between us, coming to stand beside Sonata and I to look out over the frigid water. “I suppose it’s only just now unfrozen, hm?”

“A few weeks ago, maybe,” I nodded as I turned to match her gaze over the lake. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s so… still.”

“It’s quiet,” Cadence turned her head to regard me, “you always liked the quiet, didn’t you?”

“Would it be strange to say that I don’t know?” The question certainly sounded strange to me, and Cadence cocked her head a little at it.

“I can’t really remember what I liked and disliked as a kid,” I continued, my voice turning a little bitter. I thought about trying to hide it but I stopped myself before I could give in to the inclination. “Doctor Bright Eyes says it's probably because I spent so long trying to live up to something, or to fulfill a role,and that who I was as a kid got swallowed up in it. Now I can’t really say one way or the other who I even was growing up, or even as a teen, but… I do remember that I liked coming here.”

I turned to Cadence, and was surprised to see tears falling down her cheeks. She was biting her lip, keeping the sobs penned up inside her, but couldn’t stop the tears as she stared at me in grief-stricken pain.

“I’m sorry,” Cadence sobbed quietly, “I can’t… I didn’t know.”

I knew she wasn’t talking about my feelings as a kid. In her defense, Cadence wasn’t responsible for me like that, my mother and father were. Cadence was my babysitter, and she was a good one to my memory… even now I still cherish the memories of Cadence helped me make as a child, some of my few other bright spots in a childhood that became increasingly dour as the years passed.

So no, Cadence wasn’t talking about my childhood, she was talking about her more direct sins against me.

She was talking about Abacus Cinch.

“Didn’t you?” Sonata finally broke her silence, and Cadence let out a hiccuping noise that sounded like distilled panic to my ears. “You had CInch as a Principal for like, four years, right? And then you worked for her… so you had to know what she was like, right?”

I pulled Sonata a little closer, and despite the softness of her I could feel the hard tension in her body. She wasn’t letting it show, but she was angry. Sonata didn’t show her anger the way everyone else did, she just got really, really intense when she was mad about something which, in her defense, wasn’t very often. I’m not sure there’s a word for how Sonata emotes her anger, though, beyond ‘really intense’, but I do know that when Sonata is angry, she’s dangerous.

Physically and emotionally dangerous.

“You’re guilty,” Sonata muttered, and her voice had a hard edge to it. “You taste guilty, anyway…”

“That’s enough, ‘Nata,” I admonished her gently, and Sonata’s lips took on a hard line before she looked away from Cadence.

I couldn’t blame her, it was her nature. Sonata was a Siren and they were violently protective of their mates. To Sonata’s eyes, Cadence had hurt me badly, and right now I knew Sonata was fighting the ingrained instinct inside her to just beat Cadence senseless over it.

“No, she’s right,” Cadence said miserably. “I… I did know what Cinch was like, or maybe I was just being willfully ignorant of it.”

“Why?” I asked, and my voice felt tight in my throat. “If you knew what she was like then why?”

“Because I thought I was doing the right thing!” Cadence cried, her arms going around herself like she was trying to keep herself from flying apart. “I thought that Abacus could help you get what you wanted out of life! And… and I thought that it was just one day… just one day! You just had to deal with her for that day and then your whole future would be open to you!”

“All it meant was letting her use me for one day,” I repeated quietly, and Cadence flinched as if I’d struck her.

The worst day of my life.

The first day of my life.

The day Midnight Sparkle was born and died, and the day Twilight Sparkle came back to life. The day I made my first set of friends, the day Sunset Shimmer reached out for me, through the darkness, and made me feel like who I was in that moment was worthy of being helped and being befriended.

The day that Twilight Sparkle was ‘enough’.

“You threw me under the bus,” I said tersely, and Cadence curled inward like she’d had a knife planted in her ribs. “You knew she was a bad person, and you still let her get her hands on me because you thought she could help me be successful.”

“It was… no, you’re right,” Cadence hissed, and I could hear the fury behind her words. “You’re right, there’s no excuse for it… I didn’t give any thought to how abusive she was towards her students, I just thought, y’know, that it was just one day, right? Just the one day and then it would be over and you could go on to your dream role.”

“I would go on to being the lonely, angry, conceited shut-in I’d grown up to be,” the anger in my chest was familiar now, and it had taken me a month of therapy to even identify its source, even if I hadn’t come to terms with it yet.

Cadence sagged, and her whole body was shaking as she tried to look me in the eyes and failed, settling instead for turning to stare down at the rocky beach.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Cadence whispered tearfully. “I really did… I know that’s not an excuse, but I really, really thought I was doing the right thing.”

“So did pretty much everyone who ever ruined anyone else’s life,” Sonata replied tersely. “People don’t make decisions knowing they’re the wrong one, they make decisions because they think they’re right.”

“Cadence, I know I don’t have to tell you this, because you felt it when Sonata linked you, me, and mom, but…” I grimaced, the words sticking on the edge of my tongue. I needed to say them, I needed to be able to admit what I was feeling like Doctor Bright Eyes was always telling me to. “...I am so angry, all the time,” it felt as though I were biting the words out one by one, “I am just so angry and I don’t even know what I’m angry at or why, but I know that it’s… it’s your’s and mom’s fault.”

I turned to face her, pulling out of Sonata’s arms to square up in front of Cadence, planting my feet hard on the ground as the emotions swept through me, threatening to pull the ground out from under me.

“You should have protected me!” I snapped, “or at least you shouldn’t have just… just fed me to that witch!”

Cadence withstood every one of my accusatory blows in a miserable fashion, crying, red-eyed, and flinching at every other word. She did endure them, though, probably because she knew she deserved them.

“You pushed me right into her arms and let her turn me into a monster!” I sobbed, and my hand went to the geode around my neck instinctively. It was the symbol of my salvation, of the bond, however battered, that I shared with my friends. “I was just a kid! I didn’t know any better! But you did! You stood aside while she blackmailed me! And you stood aside while she used me! I trusted you! HOW DARE YOU!”

I was crying now too, hot tears of pent up rage and grief spilling out across my cheeks as I laid into my former babysitter. All this time I’d had these feelings walled up inside my heart, scraping at the bricks like Fortunato as I sealed them up over and over and over again.

Every time some of those toxic feelings would leak out I would lay another brick. Every time I snapped, every time I lashed out, and every time I lost control, I would lay another brick, and in doing so I sealed the poison up inside my chest.

For the love of God.

Yes, for the love of God.

I couldn’t keep it going, though. Unlike that story, I couldn’t just seal up my trauma and anger and sorrow behind masonry and let it rot. Unlike Montresor I still had to deal with the people who had hurt me because they were people that I loved and who loved me. They had no idea what they’d done although Cadence, I’m sure, had an inkling even before we were linked and she got the full monty of my resentment.

The stillness of the lake echoed with my fury until it was spent, and I was left gasping for breath and shaking in the cold air, my tears turning frigid on my face as Cadence sobbed on her knees where she’d sunk halfway through my tirade.

For a time, there was nothing but the small, empty sounds of sorrow filling the air around us until-

“Why did you never apologise?”

Cadence and I both looked up at Sonata who had advanced to stand at my side, with her hands shoved into the pockets of her gray winter coat, and her berry-colored eyes hard and glinting like bloody shards of glass.

“All this time,” she continued quietly, “all these years, and you never apologised, right? Why?”

Cadence was silent for several long moments before saying, “because I was ashamed.”

She hung her head, apparently unwilling to look either of us in the eyes.

“I knew that what I’d done had hurt Twilight, but I had hoped…” Cadence grimaced and sighed, “I had hoped that she would be happy with her friends and that, in the end, meant that it had all turned out for the best.” She made a small scoffing sound and shook her head. “But really it was just me being a coward… I was so, so ashamed of what I’d done that I didn’t want to think about it, and I think I just convinced myself that it had all blown over, a notion that had been sturdy until last Christmas.”

“I guess neither of us wanted to think about it,” my voice was raw as I reached out to link my arm with Sonata’s and pull myself close to her. I needed the comfort of her presence more than anything right then.

“I know I don’t deserve to say it now, after it’s been so long,” Cadence began quietly, “but… I’m sorry, for everything, Ladybug, I am so sorry. I only ever wanted… eugh, it doesn’t matter what I wanted, I hurt you, Twily, and I am so goddamn sorry.”

“Y’know what the worst part is?” I said after a moment of silence, and Cadence looked up at me with a wretched expression. “The worst part is that if you’d succeeded, if the competition had been normal and magic free like everyone expected, then I’d have ended up more miserable than I can even fathom right now.” I turned to looked at Sonata, feeling an indescribable ache in my heart as I imagined never having met her. “I would have gotten into that private research study, and probably stayed there, miserable, angry, and alone, and I wouldn’t have made any friends, and I’d never have met the… the best part of my life.”

Sonata’s smile was as sorrowful as it was radiant, and she leaned in to kiss me briefly, a gentle meeting of lips brushing against one another.

“I know you didn’t mean it, but…” I sighed and held out a hand for Cadence to take, and she stared at it like it was a venomous serpent for a second before accepting it and letting me pull her to her feet. “But who I am today is happy despite you, not because of you, and I really wish it were the other way around.”

“Me too,” Cadence replied weakly, “and honestly you deserved that apology long before now, seven years ago, in fact.”

She quietly brushed the pebbles and grit from her legs and sighed despondently before shaking her head and giving me a sad smile.

“But you are happy, right?” Cadence asked.

“More than I can ever remember being,” I laid my head against Sonata’s, and she turned to press a kiss to my cheek, and I could feel the small smile of her lips. “Sonata keeps me together right now, she’s patient with me, and she calls me out when I… when I go back to bad habits, and she’s the reason I’m in therapy now, too.”

Cadence was smiling more widely now and she turned to Sonata, regarding her silently for a moment taking a deep breath, pinning her arms to her sides, and bowing deeply to the young, former-immortal.

“Thank you,” Cadence sobbed, her long hair obscuring her face as she held the bow for several long moments. “Thank you for being there for her when I wasn’t, and thank you for making her happy. I love Twilight like a sister, or a daughter, and… just, thank you.”

Then she straightened, wiped at her eyes with her gloved hands, and took a deep, calming breath, putting a hand to her chest, and then extending it outward. I chuckled a little, remembering how she’d taught me to do that every time I got stressed out to the point that my anxiety and panic attacks kicked it. That little trick of centering myself had kept my sane and stable through more than a few panic attacks.

“I’m sorry it ended up like this, Ladybug,” Cadence said in a raw voice. “I wish I’d done a better job, but at the very least I’m happy that you’re happy… it’s all I ever wanted.”

Cadence gave the pair of us another look, smiled, then turned to walk away.

“Twi’, are you okay?” Sonata asked gently, keeping her voice low as Cadence made it to the footpath.

Was I okay? Was that what I’d wanted? To vent and shout and finally tell Cadence all of the things that I’d been keeping walled up inside my heart for better than half a decade?

Yes, was the short answer, but the long answer was no, although I couldn’t properly account for why that was. I felt empty, still, like I’d pulled something out and hadn’t yet put it back in. My chest felt hollow and-

“Wait!”

I pulled away from Sonata and ran after Cadence, reaching her just as she got to the edge of the small copse of trees separating the parking lot from the beach.

Cadence looked up at me as I reached her, surprise clear on her face as I stopped, panting, in front of her.

“What is it?” Cadence looked at me almost fearfully, and maybe a little hopefully.

“I know don’t have to forgive you,” I panted, cursing myself for my lack of fitness and resolving to accept Sunset’s offer to join her and Aria in the Lounge’s new gym facilities at some point soon, “and I know you don’t really deserve it after ghosting me on that apology for seven years,” Cadence winced, but nodded, “but… but I…”

I stood up straight and looked her in the eye, wiping at my cheeks and nose which were turning red and raw from the dry cold.

Then I reached out, took both of Cadence’s wrists, and pulled her hands from her pockets until her arms were extended all the way. I took a small step back, not letting go of her until the last moment when I released my grasp, then pressed my hands to hers, palm-to-palm.

“Sunshine… sunshine…” I started tentatively, tapping my hands to hers in rhythm, and I saw tears start to fall anew down her cheeks as Cadence sobbed out the next line.

“...Ladybugs awake.”

“Clap your hands and do a little shake!” We finished the rhyme in unison, just like we always used to, and that broke the wall.

Cadence let out a shattered cry as she lunged forward and pulled me into her arms, and suddenly I was crying harder than I could remember in a long time. I hugged her tight, burying my face against her chest as she rested her cheek on my head, and I could feel the wet droplets of her tears falling freely.

For several moments, I think that we were the only things holding each other up.

I didn’t have to forgive her, and lord knows she didn’t deserve it, but I hadn’t deserved it either and I knew the moment I saw her walking away from me that I still wanted her in my life. Cadence was such an important part of who I was, even if she wasn’t the best person in the world, even if she’d made mistakes and hurt me, she had also been one of the few people who had treated me like a real person growing up. She had played silly games with me, and helped me with my panic attacks when even my mom and dad were stumped. She had read me stories in bed when I was a little girl, and played dress-up with me, and done all the things no one else would do with the ‘uncommonly serious’ Twilight Sparkle.

All my life, Cadence had tried her hardest to treat me right, and maybe she didn’t succeed all the time, but… but she tried.

“So uhm, d-does this mean-?” Cadence began hopefully, and I nodded.

“Yeah, I forgive you,” I hugged her tight again and Cadence let out another happy sob as she hugged me back.

“Thank you,” Cadence cried quietly into my hair, “thank you, thank you, thank you…”

“I love you, Cady,” I said the words quietly as I relaxed in her embrace, feeling like a child again, briefly, as she rocked me back and forth.

“I love you too, Ladybug,” she replied fondly.

We rested that way for a good several minutes before I finally sighed and pulled away, turning to look back at Sonata who was smiling happily at me. Her grin was practically ear-to-ear as she moved up the path to stop by my side, and held out a hand to Cadence.

“Friends?” Sonata chirped quizzically, and Cadence chuckled, nodded, and took the proffered hand.

“That sounds nice, actually,” Cadence replied, “and since I’m trying to build the habit of apologising at the right times, I am so sorry for how I acted at Christmas, that was incredibly rude of me.”

“It was,” Sonata agreed with a simple nod, and I snorted out a laugh at her blunt admission, “but that’s okay, so long as you apologise and know it’s wrong… there’s a lot of really good people where I work, and they don’t deserve to be looked down on.”

“I know, I know,” Cadence massaged her temples and sighed. “It’s just the whole ‘strip club’ thing, and I know that’s really shallow and bitchy of me, and I promise I’ll get better about it, alright?”

“Mm… okay!” Sonata smiled again, that odd, not-quite-human smile that I’d come to associate with her more unearthly thought processes. “You should come have a drink at the bar sometime, the first one’s on me!”

“You should,” I added, smiling as I remembered her little trick with her drinks, “her drinks are kind of magical.”

“L-Literally, or…” Cadence looked a little uncertain, but I didn’t reply, I just shared a smile with Sonata, then turned back to Cadence and shrugged.

“Okay… fine, I deserved that,” Cadence laughed quietly, then her face turned stern. “But I’m not bringing your brother to a str-... a Lounge, alright? This isn’t a knock against anyone who works there, but you know your brother, Twily.”

“His eyes would be rolling out of his skull as he tried not to look at any of the dancers,” I chuckled and nodded. “And he’d be beating himself up for days if he saw so much as a stray nipple.”

“Exactly, and I do not want to deal with all the apologies,” Cadence shook her head and sighed. “Seriously, every time Shiny thinks he’s done something wrong he goes full-blown madcap trying to make it up to me.”

“Well to be fair you’re well out of his strike zone, Cady, and he knows it,” I pointed out, then added, “I should know, we Sparkles have a habit of that.”

I nodded at Sonata who gave me a wry look.

“So uh, not to put too fine a point on it, but…” Cadence shuffled awkwardly, then took another breath. Hand in, then out. “What about your uh…”

“Ugh, I don’t have the spell slots for that today,” I grumbled, “working this out with you was hard enough, alright? And that was just from one extremely bad day. I’m gonna need a lot more therapy before I try to unpack the years of inferiority and inadequacy issues my mom gave me.”

“She does…” Cadence paused, then shook her head. “Oh, what am I saying, you know how she feels.”

“I know,” I stepped in next to Sonata and hugged her close, taking a deep breath of her sunny scent and smiling. “And she knows how I feel, and that’s… that’s not something that will go away anytime soon.”

“I hope it works out, okay?” Cadence put a hand on my shoulder, and I nodded. “You and Sonata should come have dinner at mine and Shiny’s place.”

We parted ways far more amicably than I had expected when I came out to the shores of the lake. I hadn’t really been sure what to expect when I came out here, actually. I had thought there would be some yelling and crying, which there was, but beyond that, I’d just hoped to find whatever I’d been missing.

And I had.

“It’s starting to warm up a little,” Sonata said, taking a breath as she looked up at the sky. Sure enough, the hour was getting later and the sun was starting to break through the clouds. I wagered it must have been close to noon. “How do you feel?”

“Better, and lighter,” I admitted, then sighed, “and tired.”

“No kidding,” Sonata turned to me, pulled off her gloves, and pressed her warm hands to my cheeks, “but I’m proud of you, Twi’.”

I sniffled and nodded again. “I’m proud of me, too.”

“What do you want to do when we get home? Movie night?”

I thought about it for a moment before shaking my head and smiling. “Actually, I think I could use a drink.”

Sonata matched my smile with one of hers, kissed softly on the cheek, and hugged me tight.

“I have the perfect one in mind.”

Just To Have You Around

Author's Note

Lots of AriaSet sexytimes while they honeymoon, and if that surprises you then I'm not sure what to say.

Also Happy Holidays.

Just To Have You Around

Shimmer & Blaze

The scent of warm, tropical water filled my senses as I leaned over the porch railing of the small home we’d rented for the next two weeks. The wind was a soft, aromatic caress that wove through my hair and sent it gently tumbling around my face in a wash of red and gold.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed quietly, letting my gaze roam over the white sands and whispering beach tides.

I pair of slender arms moved around my waist, and I brought my hand down to meet hers. The rings our fingers clicked together lightly, her band of rarest Solerrum, and my ring forged from an armored heart.

“Not as beautiful as you,” Aria said quietly, and I laughed.

“That’s such an awful cliche,” I leaned my head down to rest against hers, relished the scent of lilacs and cherries that drifted around her. “Besides, we’re already married, you don’t have to keep flirting.”

Aria’s hands lifted to my collar and she exerted the smallest bit of pressure to turn me around til I was facing her. She was as breathtaking as always, with her long, flowing waterfall of purple and aquamarine hair, her glittering amethyst eyes, and that lovely cupid’s bow that was never far from a smirk.

“Say it again,” Aria asked as she pulled herself closer to me.

“What?” I nuzzled her nose with mine and she laughed. “That we’re married?”

“Mm, yeah,” Aria pressed her lips to mine, and I hummed in delight.

I will never grow tired of kissing Aria Blaze. I knew that from the very first time we kissed beneath her blankets while we curled around each other. The night she’d taken me to her bed thinking to make a meal of me in more ways than one, and ended up with a brand new addiction of her own. The night she’d shared her air with a human being for the first time, and I hadn’t even realised what a momentous thing had occurred.

It had taken Aria a week after that night to admit to herself that she’d gotten addicted to me, at least enough to seek me out at the Canterlot University campus. She fed on me again after that, only lightly, but I’d been putting off eating all that day while I worked and ended up collapsing. Aria had carried me home, fed me, clothed me, cared for me, and then slept beside me all night. It was the first time she had demonstrated that there was something more between us than casual sex and a feeding addiction, and that was when we’d become truly inseparable.

A year and a half later of ups and downs, long nights and early mornings, shouting matches and sobbed apologies, we had finally made it.

We were together forever.

“Ten years ago,” Aria began as she pulled back from me with a smirk, “if someone had told me that I’d end up mortal, married, and happy about it, I’d’ve punched them in the mouth.”

“You wouldn’t punch them in the mouth now?” I asked wryly.

“I mean, I would,” Aria shrugged and chuckled, “but like, mostly on principle, not because they were wrong.”

I hugged her close, nuzzling against her neck and getting a happy murr from her in the process. “Mm, I guess that’s fair, principles are important, after all.”

Aria sighed happily, and I felt her relax into me in a way that even I rarely experienced. Aria wasn’t the type of person who relaxed easily and, if I’m being honest, neither am I, which is one of the reasons we work so well. We only really relax when we’re alone with one another, and even that’s only about halfway. The pair of us are pretty high-strung people by nature, and I think part of it is just that we’re too dynamic, we can’t idle or stay still for very long.

But sometimes, rarely, Aria will do this thing where she just melts against me, and it makes me fall in love with her all over again because, when she does, she is just so fucking soft.

“I love you…” Aria breathed quietly, and I could feel her go almost limp in my arms. I was the only thing holding her up in that moment, and I knew it was for one reason and one reason only.

Because she was letting herself be that vulnerable for me.

Just for me.

Another thing I liked about our honeymoon spot was how isolated it was. There was nothing but beach for miles, and the closest town was a half-hour drive away. We had satellite television and internet, and all the amenities, and we could check in if anything happened, but for our honeymoon Aria had wanted it to be us and only us, and I agreed because it let me do things like this…

I pressed forward, lowering Aria to the warm, wooden planks of the porch as I kissed down her neck and collar to her nearly-bare chest.

She was wearing a bikini that was only that by definition alone. It was a handful of strings and fabric that displayed far more than it covered, and it was still annoyingly in the way. I tugged on the strings, pulling her top away and I ran my tongue delicately along her breasts, and she shivered delightfully beneath me as I shed my own top and threw it to the side.

Maybe I’d find it again, maybe I wouldn’t, I didn’t really care.

“Mine…” I muttered, my lips moving against her skin, and I felt her shudder, “all mine…”

Aria gave a vague moan of affirmation as I moved further down, leaving behind a trail of kisses from her chest to her navel, then lower as I pulled at the strings of her bikini’s lower half with my teeth to get at my prize.

She was hot and wet, and I pressed my tongue to her core with a moan of satisfaction, tasting her as I took hold of her long, lovely legs and draped them over my shoulders. Aria shivered and writhed as I tended to her, licking and suckling gently as she kneaded her hands in my hair.

“More!” Aria cried out, locking her thighs around my head. “Red… please!”

I obliged, sliding one finger, then two inside of her, and never letting up as she jerked and twisted in my grip. Aria mewled and moaned in a haze of lust as she came across my lips, drenching me in her pleasure before pulling me against her again silently demanding more attention.

And I loved giving my Siren attention.

My Aria.

My wife.

After more than a year, I knew exactly how to make Aria squirm, I knew precisely where she liked to be touched and exactly how hard she wanted it, and I gave it to her. Aria rocked her hips against my face instinctively, her body trying to get as close to the source of her pleasure as it could.

I let up with my mouth only to nip and kiss at her inner thighs where I knew she was sensitive as I worked my fingers in and out of her. Aria moaned throatily, not bothering to muffle herself despite us being outside, and the thought of it turned me on even more.

By the time she came again my body was practically burning with need, and I pulled away from Aria for just long enough to jerk the bottom of my own bikini down and kick it to the side before moving up her body and positioning my dripping sex over her mouth. She let out a harsh gasp of anticipation, and I didn’t even have the chance to lower myself before her arms went over my thighs and she pulled me down onto her face.

My voice hit a high-pitched cry of relief as her tongue slid into me, and I rolled my hips slowly over her lips, relishing the insistent pressure and the familiar sensations of Aria’s lips touching me.

There’s such an indescribable comfort in the way Aria pleasures me. Her constant need to be in physical contact, to have as much of her touching as much of me as possible and the way she just drinks me in sends fireworks through my heart every single time.

Even now, a year later, it’s just as good if not better than our first time together.

Another cry escaped my lips as I hit my peak and climaxed, and Aria’s fingers stroked across my bare skin sending pure pleasure trickling over me. I can’t even imagine a more perfect lover than Aria, even my imagination isn’t that good, and I once imagined myself as a Goddess.

I relaxed as the afterglow slithered through me, and I slowly dismounted from Aria’s face to slump to the warm surface of the porch, letting out small whimpering noises of satisfaction at the sunny feelings covering my body, and even more so as Aria slipped up beside me to curl up, naked, in my arms.

Holding Aria after we finished making love was probably my favorite activity in the world.

“Say it again.”

I laughed quietly as I hugged Aria to me, burying my face in her hair as I did.

“We’re married,” I repeated for the third time. I’d say it as many times as she wanted. “I’m your wife.”

I felt a wet warmth touch the bare skin of my shoulder where Aria was resting her head, and I looked over to see her smiling. Eyes closed, and tears trickling down her cheeks.

“Damn right,” Aria sobbed, “you’re my wife.”

The way she said those words sounded like she almost couldn’t believe it. If I’m being honest, it was a little hard to believe, myself.

I had changed so much from the bratty little bitch that had come through the portal seeking power. The girl who spent the following five years making everyone around her miserable until six girls finally put boot to ass hard enough to dislodge my head from said orifice.

Once upon a time, I had desired nothing but power. No friends, no romance, no love, just the power to write my will onto the world and prove… Written’s Quill, I didn’t even know what I was trying to prove. Maybe I was just trying to prove that I could do it when everyone told me I couldn’t. Maybe it was just the petty wounded pride of an orphan filly with a chip on her shoulder spitting in the face of everypony who had ever looked down on her.

Now, all I wanted was to spend the rest of my life holding this beautiful, wonderful woman in my arms. Tears leaked from my eyes as I realised my only desire was to make absolutely sure that, when everything was done, when I finally reached the end of my life, that I had loved my wife as much as I could, and as well as she deserved.

Power be damned.

I took in a deep breath, savoring Aria’s scent again, and a strange, melancholic pain flashed through me as it occurred to me that, no matter how long I lived, and no matter how many hours or days or years we spent in each others company, I would never get enough. Yes, that meant that I would never fall out of love with Aria, and that I would never get tired of her presence, but it also meant that on my deathbed I’d still want more.

Maybe that’s just the nature of being mortal.

The gentle agony of love.

Aria tugged at my arms, and I looked down at her. She was frowning up at me, her cupid’s bow turned to a delicate moue of annoyance.

“You’re getting maudlin again,” Aria grumped, “you’re not allowed to get sad on our honeymoon, save it for the flight home.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Right, why did I marry a Siren, again?” I laughed, and Aria rose quickly to peck a kiss under each eye where tears were drying.

“Because you’re a crazy bitch who fell in love with the craziest, bitchiest Siren left alive?” Aria replied with a wry grin, and I nodded my concession of the point.

Aria stood on shaky legs, pulling me to my feet as she did, and together we walked back into the beachhouse. It was a comfortable, low-sitting bungalow with a generous porch that overlooked the glorious Marexican beach we’d chosen to honeymoon at, and although I’m sure it would’ve cost a small fortune to rent this kind of location for an extended stay, we’d ended up paying almost nothing.

Turns out, the Siren sisters owned a number of nice properties like this one around the globe. If the Lounge ever failed their fallback had been to sell off their property assets, but of course they were loathed to do that. Most of these locations had sentimental value to them if nothing else, and I know they’d hoped to keep a number of the properties as locations for retirement given that they were no longer immortal.

I imagined retiring to this little bungalow with Aria in our autumn years and found I didn’t dislike the idea at all. Except maybe that we would be so far from the rest of our family that it would make visiting kind of difficult. The notion of leaving my friends behind wasn’t a pleasant one but, at the same time, having the last years of Aria and my’s lives free to be spent solely in one another’s company was appealing. But what if we did have kids? Would they come all the way out here to-

A finger flicked across my nose in a sharp but mild pain, and I wrinkled my nose before glaring down at Aria.

“Stop. Thinking.” Aria demanded, “Did you forget that I can taste your emotions? You’re getting all melancholy on me again!”

I sighed.

“I know, I’m sorry!” I laughed weakly as I dropped onto the couch, only belatedly remembering I was pretty much naked and definitely a mess. Oh well, it was just Aria and I. “I keep thinking about the future, y’know?” I gestured vaguely at the horizon out the window. “I’m married now! Honestly, I’m not sure I ever believed I’d get this far, and now I can’t stop thinking about ten, twenty, even fifty years down the line!”

“Tch, c’mon, Red,” Aria settled into my lap and wrapped her arms around me, “I’d kinda prefer you not spend our whole honeymoon getting morose about shit that is, frankly, future us’s problem.”

“Neither do I, but I can’t help it!” I groaned, laying back on the couch and pulling Aria along with me until we were sprawled together. “I’m not trying to be a downer, okay? I’m just… scared, I guess.”

“Can you be scared later?” Aria asked sullenly. “I… I never even imagined I’d be on a honeymoon, on my honeymoon, okay? A thousand years plus as a human and the thought literally never crossed my mind until I realised I was definitely gonna fuckin’ wife you, okay?” She curled around me, laying featherlight kisses along my bare neck. “I think I’m allowed to be selfish and want to spend my honeymoon with a happy wife, okay?”

“Happy wife, happy life?” I quipped, and Aria rolled her eyes.

“Don’t make me get all domestic on you, Red,” Aria prodded me in the stomach, and I laughed.

“Pretty sure I just finished getting ‘domestic’ on you.”

Aria gave me a flat glare. “How did I managed to marry the most sarcastic one of our nemeses?”

“Because you have terrible taste in women,” I darted down to kiss her quickly across the lips. “For which I am incredibly thankful.”

“You’re the one who married a supervillain,” Aria pointed out, slipping a hand affectionately over my cheek before impishly licking my nose prompting a squeal of surprise from me.

“Gross!” I laughed.

I tried to pull away but Aria followed me down, pinning me to the couch and licking my face while I swatted at her playfully. I let out a ‘yeep’ as she fixed her teeth over my neck and went rigid, causing us to tumble to the floor which, thankfully, had a relatively soft rug making up the floor. I managed to land atop Aria, my hands pressing her wrists to the ground as I grinned down at her.

“Oh no, whatever shall I do?” Aria drawled.

“I think you forgot that I was a supervillain too,” I chuckled, raising an eyebrow at her, and she smirked up at me. “Now that I have you, I guess I’ll just have to ravish you.”

“That’s probably for the best, really,” Aria agreed solemnly.

Quill, I love this woman.

I lowered myself to start kissing along her neck, and she hummed in satisfaction as I ran my fingers over her svelte form. There were few things I liked more than touching Aria, she was the most pleasant handful of woman I’d ever been with and now, as the jewelry on our hands attested, the only one I ever wanted to handle again.

Thankfully I was still very naked, and I slid one of my legs under one of Aria’s before pressing my wet cunt against hers, drawing a ragged gasp from both us as I began to rock my hips against her. Muffled curses slipped from Aria’s lips as she rolled her hips against mine, her eyes clouding with lust as she struggled against my grip. The feeling of her moving beneath me was driving me insane, and I rocked against her in a mindless motion that sent fireworks of pleasant sensation up from my core and throughout my body.

“F-Fuck me harder, Red,” Aria moaned, and I was happy to oblige.

I ground myself against her in slick, familiar motions that I knew would push her right up against the edge, then eventually over it, and take me with her. We shivered and shook together, our bodies perfectly matched in tempo as the tropical air cooled us deliciously while we worked up a sweat together.

It only took another moment for Aria to finally peak, and she gave a high, musical cry as she came against me. The feeling of her convulsing in pleasure drove me right along with her and I gasped violently stars flashes across my vision while my body locked up, then went pleasantly wobbly, and a moment later we were on the floor curled up again.

“S-So is this what we’re gonna do for the next two weeks?” I asked breathlessly, and Aria laughed as she kissed the hollow of my neck.

“I mean, I wouldn’t complain,” Aria nuzzled against my cheek for a moment before pulling back, “but I wouldn’t say no to spending some time swimming in the ocean.”

“Mm… that actually sounds nice right about now.”

Aria glanced around silently before looking back at me with a wry grin. “Assuming we can find your bikini… I’m pretty sure it’s outside somewhere.”

I looked down at myself, then back up at Aria and shrugged.

“Who the hell needs a bikini?”

Per usual, Aria was game, and twenty minutes later we were both splashing into the warm ocean waters that stopped barely thirty feet from the bungalow. I spun and twirled around underwater for a few seconds, getting used to the feeling of it again. It had been a long time since I’d really gone swimming since Canterlot’s options are usually restricted to going to a chlorine-filled public pool or freezing your tits off in one of the great lakes, neither of which was appealing to me.

Here, though, oh yes.

This was swimming.

Or at least… I thought so until Aria joined me. I hit the water at a sprint, diving in and rolling around it, but Aria just slowly waded in, letting the ocean waters climb her body it was up to her neck, and as I bobbed up beside her, she gave me this enigmatic smile.

“What?”

“You’ve never seen a Siren in the open water, huh?” Aria asked.

I hadn’t, although I had never really given it any thought, but I got the inkling that I was about to witness something special when Aria shot me a wink then rolled back and dove beneath the surface.

Let me give you an impression of what it is to watch a Siren swim. Have you ever watched an Olympic swimmer, like a technically trained gold medalist, swim?

Okay, it’s not like that.

Have you ever watched an Islander swim? Someone born and raised beside the ocean, who skin is kissed by sunlight caught through reflected water, whose whole body is tool for propelling them through the water, and everything they do, from the slight adjustments to the positions of their hands and feet, to the way they flex their muscles under their skin, and how they turn and weave?

That’s close.

Aria swam like nothing I’d ever seen except maybe a native-born creature of the sea. She cut through the water like it wasn’t even there, swimming circles around me and erupting out of the water periodically to arc beautifully through the air, her hair plastered gracefully to her back and the water clinging to her skin catching the sun as it cascaded over her skin.

Through it all, I just floated there in the water, mouth agog, as I watched this gorgeous creature that had somehow decided I was worth spending her life with performed feats of aquatic acrobatics that would have left even a born islander in awe. The way Aria moved beneath the water would make anyone else swimming near her look like an epileptic stroking out in a puddle, and not even doing a good job at that.

I must have watched her for close to an hour, floating around in the warm water as I tried to keep up with her while she swam up and down the beach. Now I understood why she wanted to come out to the ocean, not just because she wanted to be close to the water, but because she wanted me to be here with her. She wanted to share a part of herself with me that she couldn’t communicate in words, something cultural, or native to her that just didn’t exist in this world.

It was so beautiful.

“Ah!”

I yelped as Aria popped up beside me out of nowhere, grinning from ear to ear before lunging at me, wrapping her arms around me, and diving again. I barely had time to take a deep breath before I was dragged down. Now I’m not a weakling or anything and, pound for pound, I am definitely stronger than Aria. In the water, though, I had no traction and for the life of me I could not figure out where she was getting the leverage to just drag me beneath the ocean. It was like a predator of the deeps had just crashed up from the sea to seize hold of me and drag me to my death which, technically, wasn’t far from the truth.

Aria carried me along for a few meters before breaking the surface again and I staggered to my feet, realising we were much closer to the beach than we’d been a moment ago.

I coughed a spluttered as Aria laughed brightly, and I shot her a long-suffering look as she smirked at me while I wiped the saltwater from my mouth.

“Really?” I gestured to the wake she’d left behind, and Aria shrugged.

“I wanted you to know how it felt to swim as fast as a Siren,” Aria rolled her shoulders, then stretched and yawned. “Damn, that took it out of me… it’s been way too long since I swam like that, I’m really out of shape.”

“That was you ‘out of shape’?” I laughed as I made the beach and collapsed to butt. “That was insane.”

“I was born in the water,” Aria said quietly as she trudged out of the ocean to join me and let the slowly setting sun dry us off. “I was born swimming and feeling the currents against my scales, it’s literally my first nature… this whole walking on dry land thing sucks ass by comparison.”

“Yeah, feet kinda suck,” I agreed, chuckling. “I definitely miss being able to run across the plains, all four hooves hitting the ground in stride, feeling the wind in my mane as the whole world flies past me… it’s just not the same when you’re human.”

“Tell me about,” Aria groaned, slouching back against the sand and sighing.

“Would you ever want to go back?” I asked quietly as I laid down beside her, reaching a hand out to trace my fingers up and down her toned abdomen. “Back to Equestria? Back to the oceans of that world?”

“We were banished, so it’s kind of a pointless question,” Aria gestured dismissively. “It’s not like anyone can undo that old goat’s curse on us, and even if they could…?” Aria trailed off for a moment before turning onto her side and looking over at me, then smiled and shook her head. “There’s nothing for me over there but a bunch of ghosts and a whole lot of bad memories.”

“But your real body-!”

“This is my real body,” Aria said firmly, and I clammed up in surprise. Aria sighed and shuffled closer, wrapping her arms around me. “On that side of the portal? In Equestria? I wouldn’t be able to hold you, or kiss you, or… or make love to you, I wouldn’t be able to be with you, so fuck that place, I’ll take this world over that one any day if it means being with you, Red.”

“Aria…” I felt myself close to tears again, earning a grimace from my wife.

“Get it through your skull, babe,” Aria leaned in a pressed a passionate kiss to my lips and I returned the affection with full force, savoring the salty-sweet taste of her mouth mixed with the ocean water. When she pulled back her eyes were blazing like her namesake. “If there’s anything that would keep me away from you? Even one extra inch? I don’t fuckin’ want it, alright?”

I nodded silently, and we spent the rest of the time it took the sun to fully set curled up on the beach, kissing and murmuring softly to one another. This was what a honeymoon was supposed to be about, I realised, and I savored the satisfaction of this time I had with Aria apart from everything else in the world.

If you had asked me, two years ago, if I thought perfect days existed I’d have probably said no. Not that good, or even great, days don’t exist because thanks to my friends I’ve had lots of those.

But capital-P, ‘Perfect’? I’d likely have shaken my head and said no because something always, always goes at least a little bit wrong.

I’ve just spent the day making love to my new wife in the open, tropical air of Cancun, swimming in the warm waters of the Marexican Gulf, and I’m here to admit I’ll have to eat some crow on that because today was perfect.

“Hey, wake up,” I nudged Aria who was snoozing on my shoulder as the sun finally dipped below the horizon. “Babe, c’mon…”

“Mmph… fuck you,” Aria grumbled and cuddle against me.

“Babe, we haven’t got any food in the house,” I laughed quietly, “so if we want dinner we need to go out before the markets close.”

“Fish.”

“What?”

“We’ve got fish.”

I raised an eyebrow, glanced towards the bungalow, then back at Aria. I didn’t recall stopping to buy any fish. I certainly didn’t remember either of us stashing fish away in the freezer or fridge. I was pretty sure the only thing we had in the house was herbs and spices, flour, sugar, and the like, some nonperishable canned stuff that wouldn’t be particularly satisfying, and a metric fuckton of booze courtesy of Adagio’s drinking habit.

Mostly Scotch, natch.

“Pretty sure we don’t have any fish in the house, hon,” I chuckled, and Aria just sat up sleepily, groaned, and shook her head.

Then Aria stood up, did a few limbering stretches to the tune of a couple of pops and cracks from her limbs, and bolted away from me at full chat towards the darkening ocean. I didn’t even have time to call out to her before she hit the waves and dove beneath them, and only the faint ripples on the surface betrayed her motion under the water.

I stared for several minutes with my jaw hanging open, a little knot of worry growing in my chest as I realised I’d completely lost sight of Aria. Fortunately, she was only gone for a few moments before surfacing.

In either hand she was clutching a large fish, Tuna of some kind I thought, and which dangled and jerked in her grasp. The pair of fish were big enough to hang nearly to the sandy beach as Aria stomped up to me and held them up matter-of-factly.

“Fish.”

I stared for a few seconds before falling into paroxysms of laughter as Aria glowered at me. She very kindly waited an entire three minutes of me laughing before snorting and stomping past me to the house.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up horse-girl, I’m gonna make us dinner,” Aria grumbled as she dragged her still-flopping catch towards the bungalow. I managed to scramble to my feet and follow her a moment later, catch up and kissing her on the cheek as she did, turning her scowl a little bit lighter.

Aria really was awfully pretty when she was frowning, which still made zero sense to me.

“Since when can you cook fish?” I managed, as I followed her.

“Since the eleventh century?” Aria replied with a dry smile. “You remember we lived before microwaves were a thing, right? All of us can cook.”

I paused, stunned and feeling just slightly stupid while Aria sashayed away from me.

“Okay, fair,” I said as I caught up again, as we climbed the stairs up to the porch, shook ourselves reasonably free of sand, and went inside. “Do you, uhm… need any help?”

“I’ve got this, Red, just go take a shower and relax, okay?” Aria leaned in a pecked a kiss on my cheek. “I’ll join you once I’ve cleaned the Tuna.”

“Giggity.”

Aria favored my comment with a withering glare, and I laughed as I retreated to the bathroom.

I ran the water as hot as I liked and stepped beneath the rolling spray, a satisfying groan escaping my lips as the water sluiced away the sandy grit and soothe my sore muscles. Swimming really did work absolutely everything, and since the same could be said about the kind of sex that Aria and I have, that meant my limbs were really starting to feel the burn.

The next few moments were spent luxuriating under the stream, letting the steam fill the bathroom, and I lost track of time enough-so that I was caught off guard when Aria brushed the shower curtain aside to gently hip-check her way into the stall, nudging me to the side so she could take the best spot beneath the showerhead.

Of course, the perks of having a shorter girlfriend is that I could immediately position myself over her, hugging her from behind as I lathered up some body wash and started running my hands over her limbs, clearing away the harsh sand brine, and leaving behind smooth, clean skin.

Being that Aria and I aren’t super religious, I still think everyone needs to believe in something, to have little rituals and the like, and this was one of mine.

“I’ll never get enough of that,” Aria murmured as she leaned back against me while I ran soapy hands down her chest to her legs.

“What? Me washing you?” I laughed quietly as I brushed my lips over her bare shoulder.

“Mm… no, I mean the way you taste when you’re doing it,” Aria let out a murr of satisfaction. “I’ve never tasted anything like it from any other human.”

“What is it?” I was genuinely curious, although I didn’t let it distract from my kneeling at her feet and continuing to wash her legs.

Aria made a thoughtful noise as her hand came to rest in my hair, idly playing with the damp locks of red and gold.

“Devotion, I think…” Aria said quietly, “and love, a mixture maybe… love and devotion, and I don’t know for sure but the way you taste when you’re washing me is like how I imagine priest would taste while praying if they were, y’know… praying to me.” I looked up at her in surprise, and she blushed. “You treat me like I’m, I dunno, sacred…”

“Hm,” I considered my reply as I finished washing her legs and feet, then stood and pulled her into my arms.

“Red?”

“I think maybe you are sacred,” I said softly as I buried my face in her hair, “to me, I mean… I feel like without you, my life just falls apart.”

“Feels like?” Aria gave a weak laugh. “With you, I know my life would fall apart, and not just ‘cause I’d starve to death.” She pulled back and ran her fingers over my cheek before holding up the hand with her wedding ring. “See this? This means that I’d survive losing you about as well as I’d live through losing both my legs.”

I nodded as I kicked the lever nozzle closed and shut off the water. We dried each other off, got dressed in soft, comfy pants and shirts, and made our way back into the kitchen where Aria sidled up to the fish where they had been resting and began to filet and prepare them.

Lime, a few light herbs, and some butter, and they were prepped and into the oven. Aria watched them for a few moments before nodding to herself and standing up.

“That shit’s way easier than cooking it in a stone oven,” she noted as she doffed her oven mitt and tossed it onto the counter. “Those things are not as fun and retro as you’d think.”

“Why?”

“Imagine a stove where the whole fucking thing gets ‘burn your flesh off’ levels of hot whenever you cook anything,” Aria replied with that acidic smirk of hers, and I winced. “Yeah, now imagine having to cook that shit in summer.”

“Point taken,” I laughed as she joined me on the couch and curled up beside me. “So what should we do while we eat?”

“Mm… movie?” Aria leaned up and kissed under my jaw idly before burrowing under my arm and nestling against the crook of my shoulder.

“Slashers again?” I asked, and Aria’s smirk widened.

“You know me, Red,” Aria snatched up the remote and flipped it over to one fo the streaming apps she liked, one that seemed to exclusively carry horror movies both mainstream and so obscure I was pretty sure they were just snuff films that no one had caught onto yet.

When the fish came out, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that it was as good as it ended up being, but it was. I could barely pay attention to the movie as I ate, and finally nudged Aria to get her attention.

“How come you never cook?” I asked through a mouthful of delicious fish, and Aria gave me a raised eyebrow as she took a bite of own meal before replying.

“Because I hate cooking,” Aria gestured at the kitchen. “Look at all the crap it leaves behind, I’ve gotta wash all that, plus its a ton of effort. I have to buy and prep all the ingredients myself… I’d rather just order takeout.”

I grumbled some inchoate noises of irritation as I levered another mouthful of fresh fish into my craw. I am not a graceful woman, not like my wife anyway, and I’m fully aware that I, to quote Rainbow Dash, ‘eat like a gremlin’. That being said, I really, really like good seafood, so I was a little bit miffed that Aria had never revealed this weirdly domestic ability of hers.

“Maybe every once in a while,” Aria finally conceded to my silent pout, and I turned the expression to a smile as I tucked back into my meal.

We finished the movie in comfortable silence, with Aria resting happily in my arms as a psychotic murderer disemboweled his unfortunate victims for her amusement. Horror movies weren’t exactly my favorite, but Aria loved them and I loved Aria.

Seeing her happy made any experience a pretty decent one in my book.

“This was a good first night,” Aria snuggled against me, sighed happily. “I love you like hell, Red.”

“Love you too, babe,” I pressed a kiss to the top of her head before pulling myself free of her, to Aria’s immense dissatisfaction.

“Where are you going?” She asked sullenly as I mantled the couch and made for the hallway behind us.

“Bathroom,” I replied with a smile, and Aria scowled, but shrugged and shifted a little so she was sitting in my warm spot on the couch.

I didn’t lie, I was going to the bathroom, but I was going there to get changed into the surprise I’d brought along with us. I doubted that Aria had forgotten about it because I certainly hadn’t, but even she knew I’d packed it she definitely wasn’t expecting it at this moment. I had a feeling for these sorts of things, it came from long experience in fucking with people.

I ducked into our shared room and swept my target out of the bag, along with a modest hair-tie and the pair of shoes I’d picked up to match, then walked to the bathroom.

My clothes hit the floor a moment later and I took to giving my hair a good, long brushing to get it straight and soft, then pulled on the dress, brushed my hair a few more times, and tied the long, tumbling strands into a high ponytail before slipping into the shoes.

The woman looking back at me from the mirror would’ve gotten my engine revving in an instant, and I was looking forward to the expression on Aria’s face when she saw me.

The heels of my shoes made soft little clicking sounds as I walked out of the hall, and I could see the back of Aria’s head where she was sitting at the couch, idly flipping through channels while she waited for me to get back. I saw the moment she heard my footsteps, and she turned her head with a huff of annoyance.

“About time, what took you so… long…” Aria’s sentence stretched to a crawl before dying unmourned as she stared at me, her jaw slipping open in shock.

I ran my hands down my body, from my breasts to my sides, and down along my hips, showing off how the gingham dress clung to my curves while I gave her my most sultry set of bedroom eyes. I took another few steps forward in the sexy red pumps I’d gotten, they were a comfortable pair that Rarity had designed and I was looking forward to seeing how thoroughly I could break in the padding in the soles.

Strolling past Aria, I gave my ass a shake as I sauntered over to the counter, cocked my hip, and leaned forward at the waist while throwing a glance over my shoulder at her. Aria was still staring in speechless disbelief as her face turned all kinds of adorable shades of red.

“Well?” I gave her a smirk of my own as I wiggled my ass at her again. “Aren’t you going to check if I’m living up to my promise?”

Aria stood up in a daze, her eyes fixed on my hips as she stumbled past the couch, stopped in front of me, swallowed hard, and knelt before pulling my dress up over the curve of my ass.

I promised her I wouldn’t be wearing anything else, and I wasn’t.

“Well? What do you- eep!”

My voice crumpled as Aria was suddenly between my legs, her tongue lashing out and licking as her hands gripped and kneaded at my ass and thighs. My knees knocked together at the sensory overload and I sagged against the countertop, barely holding myself up as Aria took out her lust on my dripping sex.

Now, I find Aria to be mind-blowingly sexy pretty much all the time. All she has to do is look at me the right way and I’m ready to go as in; shoes off, panties on the floor, ready. I also know that she finds me just as attractive, but ‘knowing’ that and having her just jump my bones because I’m that goddamn irresistible is a completely different thing and my ego was loving it.

Pleasure rolled through me as I listened to the soft moans of approval from behind me as Aria drank her fill, and was scratching and scraping at the, thankfully stone, countertops while my wife indulged herself greedily against me.

Then, just as abruptly, the sensation vanished, and I made a quiet noise of annoyance as I glanced over my shoulder to see Aria standing up, wiping at her mouth with one arm before raising her hand bringing across my ass with a ringing slap.

“Mmph!” I practically bit my lip as a shiver of good feelings slithered up my back.

“Don’t move a muscle,” Aria growled, her voice throaty with desire as she gave me another firm squeeze, then turned to stomp off towards our bedroom.

I knew exactly what she was going to grab.

She was back less than a minute later, the mass of buckles making up her favorite strap-on gripped in her right hand while her left worked at her pants.

They hit the floor a moment later, followed by her panties, and she pulled the complex coils of straps of buckles on with the ease of long practice; practice that had entirely been executed on me for the past year and a half.

“Don’t keep your wife waiting, honey,” I cooed playfully, leaning forward a little more and stick my butt out towards her.

“I’m going to destroy that ass,” Aria hissed as she yanked the straps taught, stepped forward, and pressed the long toy against my sopping wet entrance.

I hadn’t even managed to start my response before she took a firm grip on my hips and slid forward, hilting inside of me in a single, smooth motion. A long, low moan was pulled out of me as Aria reached up and grabbed a fistful of hair, right at the back of my head like she knew I liked and started to roll her hips in fast, brutal thrusts.

Every smack of skin on skin was punctuated with a moan from me and deep huff of breath from Aria as she pounded me mercilessly. I laid forward, splayed out on the countertop while she held onto me and gave me the relentless fucking I’d been asking for by coming out here in this dress.

Aria’s tempo only started to flag as she slammed into me and shivered, cumming from a combination of the toy that was inside both of us and the sheer appeal of the tableau I had laid out for her tonight.

As she took a few long, heavy breaths, I looked back at her, my hair still gripped tight in her fist, and smiled.

“Getting… tired of… fucking your wife… already?” I panted, and Aria bristled, her eyes widening.

“Never,” she firmed up her grip on my gingham-clad waist, let go of my hair, and flipped me over until I was laying sprawled on my back on top of the counter with my legs spread.

“Mm… good,” I smirked.

Aria yanked me back towards her and began rolling her hips again, pulling herself closer until she was draped over me, hilting herself in me again and again as she lavished my neck and collar with kisses. I tangled my fingers into her hair while Aria devoted herself fully to satisfying my promise to her, and I was all too happy to give her that satisfaction.

I locked my legs around her waist, pulling her in as her fingers hooked the collar of the dressed and pulled it down, and I hissed delightedly as she fixed her lips over one of my breasts, running her tongue over it and nipping gently.

“F-Fuck, more!” I moaned and could feel Aria tense as she breathed deep, sating her Siren hunger on my lust as she fixed her teeth on my neck and bucked into me, and I jerked and cried out as another orgasm washed across me.

Aria let out a deep sigh of satisfaction, and her eyes were nearly lit from behind by her inhuman nature. “My favorite flavor…” she said huskily as she ran her tongue over my neck, then pressed her lips to mine in a desperate kiss.

I parted my lips for her, and our tongues met as she pressed forward with a passion, and I dug my fingers into her back to pull her closer.

My Siren, my lover, my wife.

I climaxed again and again, my bare legs tightening around Aria’s waist with every shudder as she lavished me with kisses until I finally let out one final, window-rattling moan and went slack, my body finally giving it up as Aria collapsed on top of me, crawling up onto the counter with me for lack of anywhere else to go, kicking the strap-on off and letting it fall to the floor so she could press herself as close to me as possible.

“Did… I keep… my promise… or what?” I panted as Aria curled up in my arms, and she hummed a wordless agreement at me.

I reached down to the hiked-up hem of the gingham dress and tugged at it, finding that it was still surprisingly whole. I had kind of expected it to get torn up but the material was actually kind of sturdy.

“So uh… gingham, am I right?” I said dryly, and Aria laughed quietly as she propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at me lovingly.

“Damn right,” Aria said huskily, her voice raw from her harsh breathing. “We’re keeping this, by the way.” She ran her hands over the dress, and I nodded.

“You’re wearing it next, though,” I gave her a pointed look, and she frowned.

“I already wore a dress at our wedding, alright?” Aria grumbled, and I pulled her to lick her ear playfully, earning a swat.

“You wear it next or I’m never wearing it again,” I said evenly, and Aria met my stare with a glare of her own that lasted about five seconds before she faltered.

“Fine… blackmailer,” Aria groaned and nestled in closer to me.

“Supervillain,” I reminded her, and she chuckled.

“Right… hey, Red?”

“Hm?”

Aria put a hand on my cheek and guided my face down to hers, and she pressed a warm kiss to my lips; soft, featherlight, and sweet as could be.

“I love you so much,” Aria whispered.

“I love you, too,” I laid my hand over hers, feeling the cool metal of the ring on her hand, “now and forever.”

We kissed again and I savored the softness of that perfect cupid’s bow, the only lips I ever wanted to kiss again for the rest of my life, as Aria twined her fingers with mine.

“Know what else?” Aria asked, a smirk growing on her face.

“What?” I raised an eyebrow.

“We should probably wash this counter before making breakfast tomorrow.”

I glanced around us for a moment, then shrugged. “Why? It’s not like there’s anything here we haven’t had in our mouths before.”

Aria gave me a long, flat stare.

“You’re a fucking goblin.”