The solarium door creaked lightly behind Celestia, and Raven's voice entered, an odd waver to it. "Your Highness?"
With an effort, Celestia didn't sigh. "Really, Raven," she said instead, not looking up from the thank-you-for-the-lovely-retirement-gift note she was writing: she figured if she kept at them steadily, she should be finished by midsummer next year. "Am I going to have to set up a jar for you to drop a bit into every time you call me—?"
"Forgive her, Your Highness," another voice said, a voice she hadn't heard in a dozen centuries, a voice Luna had once called 'silken sandpaper,' a voice that brought Celestia to her hooves, spun her around, and set her staring at the tall, broad-shouldered figure in the doorway behind an even-paler-than-usual Raven.
Raven moved to the side, and the figure stepped past her into the solarium: brown mane full and flowing all around that gray, hairless face; claws both thick and sharp touching his chest when he bowed; dark bat-like wings folding around him like a cloak; a smile curling his snout. "I assume your secretary is keeping things formal on my account."
"Lord Scorpan," she managed to get out before her throat went too dry for any other words to survive the arid trek from her brain.
Immediately, though, the air popped beside her to reveal Luna, her big floppy hat and sunglasses showing that she'd been availing herself of the beach below her chateau next door. "The stink of that magic! Surely my senses deceive me, for it cannot truly be the Grinning Gargoyle returned to plague us!"
Scorpan's smile broadened. "Dost forgottenst me so precipitously, Captain Moonbutt?"
Luna winced and laughed simultaneously. "Diction that foul could only issue from one throat!" Bending her knees, she looked ready to leap toward him. But before Celestia could teleport her to the middle of the nearest swamp or wrap her in a bubble of liquid nitrogen, Luna's eyes went wide, her ears folding and her voice dropping. "Ah. But I imagine you're here about..." Her gaze darted over to Celestia, and she took a step back.
"'Twas ever thus." Scorpan shrugged, his long arms spreading.
Every fantasy Celestia had entertained during her long-ago youth about those arms and those claws crashed over her all at once, his musky scent tickling her nose in ways it hadn't been tickled since—
"This charm," he was saying, reaching for a pouch hanging from the belt almost lost in the fur of his waist, "I fashioned more than a millennium ago with the following functionality: a green flicker meant my brother lived and a red flicker meant he'd died. Recently, however..." His nimble fingers plucked a glass-and-metal sphere from the pouch, and yellow light danced about within it. "Nothing in my design should even allow this color to occur." He raised his head. "So you can see perhaps why I became concerned."
For a moment, Celestia could see nothing but his deep, dark eyes. She was looking directly across into them, too, without having to tip her head back the way she'd had to before. And even though a helpful little voice inside her began a simple litany of facts—that she had reigned as both diarch and monarch for more than a thousand years, had seen her enemies become her subjects, had established a peace unprecedented in the history of civilization in this or any other plane of existence—it still took every ounce of her strength and experience not to start stammering.
Not that she lacked for strength and experience, of course. So with a slight bow and her voice gently smooth, she said, "I'll take you to him."
Beside her, Luna drew Celestia's attention with a step forward and a look as somber as a pony could manage while wearing brightly colored beach togs. "When you've seen him, I pray you'll consider remaining for a visit. I know not what reports you've had of events in our existential plane since last you set foot here, but—" Her slow smile appeared. "My sister is not the only denizen of Equestria who would enjoy the opportunity to speak with you at length."
If Celestia hadn't grown accustomed over the years to the burning touch of the sun, the blush she felt now, she was certain, would have melted her through the very bedrock upon which her chateau rested.
Not a quiver of red showed, however—having Luna for a sister, she'd mastered the art of blush concealment before she'd ever heard the word 'alicorn'—and the look she turned in Luna's direction, she made sure, was as placid as a bowl of freshly poured cream. "You're welcome to accompany us, Sister," she said, trusting that the inflections she gave to the words would signify just how unbearable she would make Luna's life if she actually did accompany them.
Fortunately, life-long learning reached both ways. "I shall beg both your pardons," Luna said with a bow of her own. "I am currently engaged in the preliminary steps of learning to snorkel and am therefore neither properly disposed nor attired for any sort of state occasion. Say, however, Scorpan, that you will spend the afternoon with us, and I shall supervise the construction of the finest angel food cake the bakers of Equestria can muster." She straightened, the shadowiest wisp of a smile on her lips. "I seem to recall that your preference ran toward the light and sweet..."
Once again, Celestia's fireproof nature served her well; she turned to Scorpan and said as if she were addressing any other transdimensional potentate, "We would be honored by your presence."
Scorpan's face had always been completely unreadable as far as Celestia was concerned. The expression of calm bemusement he now wore had been a constant feature during their earlier acquaintance, and, she had to admit, had driven her even crazier than the imagined sensation of those claws scritch-scritch-scritching along various parts of her...
Another effort of will pushed away the memory of the visions with which she had delighted and tormented herself during many a sleepless night in the world's distant past, and she was able to successfully give him nothing more than a slightly more sorrowful version of his own smile.
That smile of his twitched the tiniest bit wider. "I shall be equally honored to accept Equestria's hospitality, of course." When he bowed this time, his gaze didn't stray from hers, Celestia's heart wanting to hammer at the sight.
Everything Luna wasn't saying made the air nearly too thick to breathe, but her horn flashed, taking her and her silent innuendo off somewhere: Celestia found she didn't much care what Luna's destination might be as long as it was away from here.
Drawing in a breath, sweet and spicy with his aroma, Celestia called to mind the never-before-used and recently updated protocols she'd designed for this sort of event. "We'll travel to Canterlot where I'll present you to Equestria's current monarch, then—"
"Current?" One of Scorpan's eyebrows arched slightly. "The two of you no longer reign?"
"It was time for a change." She had so many questions of her own, but just blurting them out seemed a less than ideal strategy. Best to keep the conversation on its current topic. "Are your parents still well and ruling?"
"Very much so on both counts." His shoulders seemed to relax though Celestia didn't recall seeing them tense at any previous point in the conversation. "I find my place as Heir Eternal suits me. I'm available when events call for a largely disposable royal presence, and in the meantime, I'm able to pursue my own interests."
Uncertain if she was filling his words with some non-existent double meaning, she still raised the question she was even more uncertain she wanted him to answer. "And have you had many...interests...since last we spoke?"
"Alas." The sigh Scorpan heaved seemed to come all the way up from his toes, but again, his gaze didn't stray from hers. "I've not found much to truly interest me in quite a long time."
Her heart wanted to flutter, but instead, she gave her most correct smile and powered up her horn. "Well, we'll have to see if Equestria can once again provide for the needs of her honored guests." Conjuring her third-flashiest teleportation spell—she refused to give the impression that she was showing off—she nodded. "A bit of warning, however. Twilight Sparkle, our aforementioned current monarch, was my final and greatest student. I would be entirely unsurprised to learn that she already has an interview waiting in her files on the off chance that she ever got the chance to meet you."
He brushed at his chest fur. "It won't be the first time I've been intensely scrutinized by an Equestrian princess."
Celestia took an extra breath to steady her concentration, reminded herself that she wasn't a filly anymore to be flustered by a flirty bit of banter, extended her hornglow to encompass him, and cast the spell.
His magic brushed against hers like she'd always dreamed it would, silky and soft but strong and solid, though again, she wasn't about to let her thoughts run along that path. As carefully as she'd ever moved in her life, she set the two of them down in the private garden behind Canterlot Tower and reattached them to the time-space continuum without allowing herself to savor the luscious feel of him for an instant longer than was entirely necessary. She even slid half a step away when she felt solid earth beneath her hooves once more just to further discourage certain unruly thoughts.
Nothing could keep her from being aware of him, though, flexing his wings and giving a gentle sigh. "I'd almost forgotten," he murmured, "what beauty this realm of yours holds, Celestia."
Darting a half-hopeful, half-fearful glance toward him, she felt a similar mixture of relief and annoyance when he gestured toward the carefully tended grounds rolling away from the palace. None of that stopped her from responding, though. "I seem to recall you saying that your homeland, and I believe this is a direct quote, 'brims over with lava and lava by-products.'" She let her gaze touch his for a fraction of an instant longer than etiquette would have allowed. "Beauty can certainly be found in that sort of environment, I've always thought."
"Have you?" One of his eyebrows arched delightfully. "You must come visit, then, now that you're retired. Mother and Father would love to meet you under circumstances that aren't fraught with diplomatic bristling, and—"
"Emerita?" a stallion's voice asked, and Celestia looked over to see Captain Greaves, his ears back and his horn nearly pulsing with the effort of containing the unpleasant spells brewing there.
She smiled, mostly to set the captain at ease but also in pleasure at hearing him use the title she and Luna had agreed to take after their retirement: she'd wanted no title at all; Twilight had insisted they had to have something; and Luna, a glint in her eye, had begun with 'Dowager Highness' and gotten more ludicrous from there. After a robust four- or five-hour discussion, they'd all come together around 'Emerita' for direct address and 'Princess Emerita' in those cases where announcements were being made or invitations being filled out.
"Good afternoon, Captain," she said in the soothing voice she'd deployed countless times to countless creatures. "A somewhat urgent interdimensional matter has arisen, or I would've sent word of our coming." With as smooth a wave of her hoof as she could manage, she gestured toward Scorpan, standing beside her with that sweetly infuriating grin barely curling his lips. "This is Lord Scorpan of—"
The entire aethersphere shivered, Celestia forcing her ears not to twitch at the sensation. A purple bubble appeared behind Captain Greaves and popped to reveal Twilight, her wide eyes and mouth making her look like an eager student rather than a reigning monarch. "Oh, my gosh!" she nearly crowed. "I felt your magic, Celestia, when it manifested, but the other power was— I mean, is— I mean— This is so amazing!"
A flare of her wings carried her past the frowning Greaves, and she dropped into a perfect courtly bow. "For a second time, Lord Scorpan," Twilight said, her expression the very picture of earnestness when she straightened and looked up at him, "all Equestria owes its freedom to you."
Celestia almost cheered to see Scorpan's little smile falter. "Me? I...I can't begin to imagine how, Your Highness."
"Oh, call me Twilight, please." Her horn wavered, and an image of a medallion on a chain appeared in the air between them. "You gave this medallion to your brother. He gave it to Discord, Discord gave it to me, and it proved to be the final key we needed to stop Tirek's second rampage here."
More than just Scorpan's smile was faltering now, his gaze locked on the projected medallion, his ears collapsing back into his mane, a twitch pulling at the left side of his face. "He...he kept that? Why would—? He called me...said I betrayed him when I...I—" His knees buckled, and he began to fall like a stately oak struck by a sudden axe.
Not even thinking, Celestia sprang to his side, stretched a wing, wrapped it around him. "It's all right," she murmured. "Tirek's a monster, Scorpan. You know that. The things he said, the things he did, there was nothing proper, valid, or correct in any of it, not in your part of the cosmos, not in our part of the cosmos, not in any part of the cosmos."
He was leaning against her side, his eyes closed, his mouth a jagged line, his arms drawn up to his chest with the little flickering yellow glass sphere suddenly clutched in his hands. "Yes," he whispered. "I know, I know, I know. But...he's still my brother..."
The words stabbed straight through her and into the little shattered section of her heart that even Luna's joyous presence these last several years hadn't quite been able to repair, the section that still recalled every crunching and horrible second of the battle, the exile, the loneliness, the guilt, the constant second-guessing.
She realized that she had drawn him into an even closer embrace, both her wings cocooning him, her head tucked over his shoulder. For the briefest of instants, she worried about the propriety of her position, but then she discovered that she didn't care. "It's not hopeless," she said, her lips near enough to his ear that she could feel the fine hairs along its tip. "Please never think that it's hopeless."
The warmth of his sigh shivered along her neck. "I shan't." His tired little chuckle provoked a different sort of shiver. "I shall, however, continue to think it extremely unlikely that his story and mine will end anywhere near as happily as your story and Luna's."
With all her senses concentrated on the soft and long-desired touch of his neck ruff along her throat, she wasn't quite sure she heard him correctly. "You...you know about our...situation?"
"I do." The slow expansion and contraction of his upper body as he breathed made her pinfeathers tingle. "When news of the happenings here came filtering down to our little corner of the cosmos, in fact, one of Father's less-scrupulous advisors even recommended we take some advantage of it. I'm afraid I rather had to put my foot down on the matter even though Father spoke to me quite sternly and deducted the cost of his advisor's hospital bills from my allowance." His chuckle then had no trace of humor in it. "Mother and Father closed off all access to Equestria after that. I think they feared someone would follow in Brother's hoofprints..."
A clearing of throat—not hers, Celestia knew, and not deep enough to be his—opened her eyes and settled her gaze upon Twilight, a blush darkening her purple cheeks. "I...I'm sorry, Lord Scorpan," Twilight said, her voice cracking. "I didn't mean to upset you."
One more gentle sigh puffed goose pimples over Celestia's hide, then Scorpan was turning, Celestia dropping her wings so he could touch his chest and bow. "It's not you, Twilight, who's upset me, nor can I in fact imagine a situation where a pony would ever upset me." He glanced back at Celestia, his smile regaining about half its former wryness. "True perturbation, I've always found, can only come from family. And please." He turned to Twilight again and seemed to blossom, the more-usual lightness coming into his voice and manner again. "If I'm not allowed to call you 'Princess,' you certainly shan't be allowed to call me by any sort of a title."
In other circumstances, Celestia could imagine Twilight hopping in place and squealing at this, but for all the charming naïveté her former student continued to radiate, Celestia's heart warmed with pride to see Twilight merely nod. "Thank you, Scorpan. And I hope you'll be able to extend your stay beyond the unfortunate task that's brought you to Equestria today."
Scorpan took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and rustled his wings back into the cape-like position he'd had them in earlier. "I've had so many genteel invitations in just the few moments since I arrived that I can't see how I'll be able in good conscience to return home much sooner than the middle of next week."
"Excellent!" Twilight did actually give a little hop at this, but just a little one. "Then I'll leave you in our Princess Emerita's capable hooves and look forward to our future conversations." Nodding, she powered up her horn and surrounded herself with another bubble; when it popped, she was gone.
More throat clearing brought Celestia's attention to Captain Greaves, still standing where he'd first appeared. He'd powered down his horn, however, something that Celestia took as a good sign. "Will you be wanting any sort of an escort, Emerita?" he asked, and the actual solicitousness in his voice again touched Celestia with pride.
Still, she shook her head. "Thank you, Captain, but we'll just be going through the garden to the maze."
"As you wish, ma'am." The captain bowed, turned, and trotted off toward the castle.
"First," Scorpan said, and when Celestia turned to look, his maddeningly elegant little smile had returned, "let me state that Equestria appears to be in very good hooves with your student at the helm. But second..." He gave an equally elegant little sigh. "Were we ever that young?"
Celestia snorted as inelegantly as she could. "I was. But you?" She tossed her head and began a slow trot across the grass. "All I know is that by the time you showed up here as the reluctant half of the force bent on conquering us, certain parties looked upon you as quite dashingly mature."
"Did they?" A rustle of featherless wings gusted her with a slight breeze, and Scorpan settled into a walk alongside her, the stretching of his two long legs threatening to draw Celestia's gaze away from the path ahead. "And what parties would those have been?"
"Luna, mostly." She shot him a sidelong glance. "She was terribly besotted with you, you know."
"Ah." A cloudiness shaded his expression. "I can't tell you how devastated I was when I heard about her...breakdown, if that's the right word. I couldn't help but wonder if our little incursion here had somehow been a factor, and with Their Majesties, my parents, closing off all entry into Equestria, I could do no more than send my sympathies into the aether in the hope that they might somehow reach you." He shook his head. "Still, Luna seemed every bit as high-spirited back at your chateau as I recall from my previous visit."
"Yes." And for all that Celestia didn't want to spend her time with Scorpan discussing her sister, considering the sibling-related errand that had brought him across multiple levels of existence... "The experience changed us both a great deal, but I truly think those changes have been for the better."
"I can only agree." The warmth came into his voice again—or to be more honest, the quiet sincerity in his voice made Celestia start warming again. "You were immensely impressive the last time I was here, Celestia, but now, you're even more so." She could hear his grin return when he added, "If I might be so bold."
"You might," she replied, putting a bit of a strut into her step. "You may in fact continue in that vein for as long as you wish."
He made a slight humming sound. "Perhaps. Or perhaps I'll ask about Discord."
Panic squeezed her midsection—if he was here, she would turn him into a rug! But no trace of his usual sour-mustard stink drifted on the breeze, so she breathed her tightness away and asked, "Whatever would cause him to spring to mind?"
"I don't see his statuary prison." Scorpan gestured forward. They'd advanced around the first group of hedges by this time, several of the pony statues coming into view. "I mentioned the impression you made when we first arrived here? Seeing the Lord of Chaos frozen in the garden of your palace caused even Brother to hesitate, and he's never been one to doubt his own prowess." His ears dipped. "I also recall Princess Twilight saying that Tirek gave my necklace to Discord and that he then gave it to her. This sounds as if he's not only free once again but that he's being at least partially cooperative."
Several possible replies flashed through her head, each of them snider than the last. But she knew none of them were fair. "Luna and I aren't the only beings who've changed for the better over the last millennium." A thought flickered against her. "It also occurs to me that Discord might have something to do with the behavior of your tracking charm." She couldn't help but swallow. "Since he suggested your brother's current whereabouts and all..."
Scorpan drew a sharp breath. "Do you mean to say—?" At which point they rounded the second group of hedges, more statues visible...including the assemblage that had taken Discord's place off to the right of the maze's entrance.
All sound seemed to cease, the breeze no longer rustling the leaves, the birds no longer chirping among the branches. Scorpan's face had gone completely blank, his eyes as expressionless as wet stones under his brow. Celestia stopped herself from breathing but had more difficulty stopping herself from following when Scorpan began taking shaky steps toward the statue: Chrysalis charging, Cozy Glow above her gasping, Tirek behind them wincing.
The moment of silence stretched, Scorpan moving to within what was certainly arm's length for him. He didn't reach out, though, but stopped at that distance and asked without turning around, "May I please know the circumstances that led to this situation?"
His question reached her with even less expression than she'd seen on his face. But she didn't let the sudden tightness in her throat affect her own words. As quickly and quietly as she could, Celestia summarized the events surrounding Discord's impersonation of the Father of Monsters and all that had then followed.
"In the end," she finished, shaking the smell of burning frosting from her memory, "the three of them refused to renounce their violent and destructive ways. My first thought would have seen us consign them once more to the depths of Tartarus, but Discord whispered that he would be able to remove them from there should he ever formulate another of his hair-brained schemes. So he suggested the only form of imprisonment against which he has proven himself helpless." She gestured to the statue even though Scorpan still wasn't looking at her.
"Discord..." The cold hiss he made of the word convinced Celestia that Discord wouldn't be foolish enough to manifest anywhere within a parsec of this time and place. "He was there, you know, at the beginning." Scorpan took another half step toward the statue. "The day after Tirek first attempted to drain an Equestrian, Father had the two of us brought to the throne room, and Discord was standing there off to the side. I had no idea who he was at that point and never knew his interest in the matter, but now...now I wonder if he might not have first conceived his notion to conquer Equestria after seeing the power Tirek unleashed that night."
Celestia made a mental note to ask Discord about that, but Scorpan was going on: "I also wonder if he might not have somehow begun lending his unseen support to my brother in the years after that in order to set Tirek against you and yours, softening Equestria up, as they say, for his own invasion."
Opening her mouth, Celestia wanted to point out that the chronology didn't fit, that she and Luna had defeated Discord some time before the brothers' arrival, but again—
"No," Scorpan was saying, his head drooping. "I can't blame Discord for my mistakes. It was my support that emboldened Tirek. If I'd just...just spoken up that morning in the throne room, spoken the truth when Father asked me if I knew anything of Tirek's activities or whereabouts the night before, maybe things would've..."
Scorpan straightened, reached out, and touched Tirek's stone face, clenched in the act of shrinking from the spell that had been rushing upon him. "So many 'if's, Brother. If our positions were reversed, for instance, I can only imagine the sneering, gloating tone of voice you would be employing to once again enumerate the ways in which centaurs are superior to gargoyles." He pulled his hand away as if stung, rubbed it against the fur of his other arm, and asked, "Do you know our history, Celestia? The tangles of magic and brutality that forever bind centaurs and gargoyles?"
She did know, of course. Once Tirek had been imprisoned that first time and Scorpan had returned home, she'd researched the tall, dark, mysterious stranger from another dimension in a slightly feverish manner, delving into Starswirl's secret archives without his knowledge or permission. And the story she'd found there had changed her every core belief as to the fundamental workings of Harmony in the cosmos.
But still, she didn't nod, didn't breathe, didn't want to interrupt the quiet fragility of Scorpan's voice. "We fought, our two peoples," he said, still not looking away from his brother. "For century upon century, we slaughtered one another and shattered our world, but neither group ever gained any appreciable ascendancy. On and on it went until my mother's father's mother, the most powerful gargoyle war-mage of her generation, in her madness developed a spell to sterilize every centaur everywhere. Their females would become instantly barren, their males instantly impotent, and our world would never see another generation of the brutes."
Finally he glanced over his shoulder, his dark eyes shimmering. "I've seen the spell she fashioned, Celestia, filling a grimoire flecked with the blood of her experiments. It's a masterpiece of horrendous proportions and should've done exactly what she intended. But just as she was speaking the final syllables that would unleash her genocide, something intervened, someone, some force. A massive golden butterfly appeared before Great-grandmother, spread its glowing wings from wall to wall within her chamber, and caught every thaum of the magical energy she'd just unleashed.
"My great-grandmother shrieked and launched her most lethal attack spells. But the butterfly flapped the tip of a wing, dissipated the death magic, and, as Great-grandmother reported it in her memoirs afterwards, puffed away every bit of the madness that had infested her thoughts, scattered it as thoroughly as sand blown away in a gale. 'No,' a firm but gentle voice said in the sudden silence. 'Let's do something else instead.'
"Great-grandmother wrote that, if her clarity of thought had struck her like a blast of wind, the twisting of her innards stabbed her like a dagger. She fell to her knees and pleaded with the entity to punish her, yes, by all means, by giving her the infertility with which she'd meant to destroy the centaurs, but she wailed aloud a fervent prayer that the curse not touch her fellow gargoyles, none of whom carried any blame for Great-grandmother's atrocity.
"'Oh, hush, now, child,' that same immense but quiet voice told her. 'We'll just modify this a bit.' The butterfly closed its wings, then spread them wide, wafting an entirely new sort of magic away from itself. And at that very moment throughout the entire length and breadth of our world, every centaur and every gargoyle froze where they stood to feel a shifting of their bodies' every cell and gene."
Scorpan brushed one set of claws over the other, his attention focused once again on the unmoving stone of his brother. "The fighting continued in some places almost immediately, of course: we've never been the cleverest of beings. But in their separate conclaves, gargoyles and centaurs wondered what had changed, cast diagnostic spells on themselves, and stared in stark terror at the results."
His voice got even quieter. "You see, the entity altered Great-grandmother's spell only slightly. From that moment on, gargoyle females could only conceive children with centaur males, and centaur females only with gargoyle males. And every birth, whether the mother was gargoyle or centaur, would result in two offspring, one of each species."
Celestia shivered to recall Starswirl's dispassionate discussion of the matter in his notes once she'd found them. He'd called it 'an elegantly harmonic solution,' but even all these centuries later with all the experience she'd had being both a tool and an observer of Harmony's workings in the multiverse, Celestia couldn't quite bring herself to think of it that way.
"It bound us together, you see," Scorpan was saying. "Either we learned to live with each other, or neither of our peoples would ever cradle another child. It was touch-and-go there for a while, but under Father and Mother's guidance, we've made great strides toward establishing something that, when squinted at in the proper light, might perhaps take on certain aspects of a civilization..."
Unable to hold back, Celestia stepped forward to brush the feathery tips of her wings against the leathery tips of his where they draped down across his back.
He shivered. "Forgive me. I didn't mean to make this such a maudlin occasion." The glance he gave over his shoulder made Celestia shiver in turn, his eyes partially closed and something close to his usual smile back on his lips. "Especially when, after more than twelve centuries of fantasizing, I'm at last feeling your wings caressing mine..."
Her first impulse—to pull away—she fought down easily enough. Less easy, though, was the struggle between giving him her matronly look and allowing her actual feelings to show for once in her long, long life. And while sweetly generic words of comfort rose to her tongue, ready for her to deploy as she always did, she instead swallowed them down, took a breath, and forced herself to speak the absolute truth. "My own fantasy, oddly enough, has always involved the imagined sensation of your claws gently scritching at the base of my ear."
The silence that engulfed the world then seemed even deeper than the previous bout. But Scorpan's widening eyes didn't show the disgust that Celestia in her darker moments had often convinced herself would be there. She'd spent a good deal of time during Luna's exile immersed in self-pity, after all, and it had seeped even into her most private thoughts, the places in her mind where Scorpan smiled and breathed and touched her oh-so-thrillingly...
"Well, now," he said after what seemed like hours but she knew from the sun's motion had only been seconds, "may I mention that I've also spent the centuries contemplating the question of what your mane might feel like?" He swallowed so loudly, Celestia could hear it. "Contemplations that have only grown more pressing since I arrived to see the beautiful pink of my memories transformed into a glorious pastel rainbow..."
Celestia knew that, with an effort, she could slow the increasing in-and-out of her breath. But she found that she didn't want to. Instead, never breaking eye contact, she inclined her head toward him, her ears spread and perked.
The catch in his own breath and slight shiver to his hand when he raised it made her heart dance, and at his touch, somehow both firm and tentative and exactly as perfect as she'd always dreamed, she completely lost all control. Wrapping him in her magic, she spirited them both away to a meadow she knew of high in the mountains north of Canterlot where the grass was thick, the sun warm, and the breeze playfully cooling.
It wasn't until well after sundown that they rematerialized in her now-shadowy solarium, his magic interlaced with hers in an embrace she never wanted to end. "Starswirl," he was muttering, his fingers still doing wonderful things along the base of her mane. "I should've known that scoundrel would find some way to cheat death." He rubbed his face against the side of her neck. "We'll have to invite him to the wedding."
Laughing, Celestia swung her tail over to thump him in the small of the back. "I thought we said we were taking things slow."
He cleared his throat. "A thousand years of pining isn't enough for you?" His claws danced over her hide in a way that was patently unfair and supremely wonderful. "But perhaps," he whispered, "there's something I could do to change your mind..."
A lovely little whimper started tickling the back of her throat, but another clearing of throat, a clearing of throat she knew almost as well as she knew her own, sent her leaping from Scorpan's side, her eyes flying open and trying to focus.
Luna sat on the chaise lounge by the solarium's outer door, her legs tucked up under her like a cat. A book floated in the glow of her horn, and if her expression had been any blanker, she would've had no features at all upon her face. "I believe I mentioned this earlier," she said, her voice also devoid of expression, and a flare of her horn activated the room's lights to reveal a perfect angel food cake on the coffee table in front of her, strawberries, chocolate chips, and whipped cream in bowls beside the cake's platter.
Celestia's whole midsection rumbled, her ears folding. At the matching rumble from Scorpan, though, she couldn't stop a giggle from bubbling up.
A slow smile grew across Luna's face. "As I thought. You've tasted nothing all day but one another."
The blush that swept over Celestia felt volcanic, and it only increased when Scorpan's low chuckle caressed her ears. "There she is," he said. "Though I quite approve of this new look, Celestia, I did slightly miss the dusty rose mare who's gamboled for so long through my dreams."
That last word made Celestia's hide prickle, and she raised an eyebrow toward Luna.
Slicing the cake with a knife held in her hornglow, Luna shook her head. "Transdimensional dreams are outside my jurisdiction, Sister." She raised a wedge of cake, slathered it with various of the condiments, and gave the resulting mass a dainty nibble. "Any haunting of each other's nightly visions these many centuries is entirely between the two of you."
"And yet?" Scorpan stepped past Celestia, sat cross-legged on the carpet, took a slice of cake, and dipped it in the whipped cream bowl. "Your sister insists upon perpetuating our shared torment. 'Stringing me along' I believe is the current idiom."
"Indeed." Luna sighed. "You'll discover her to be quite the harsh taskmistress once you get to know her." She cocked her head. "Or perhaps you enjoy that sort of thing?"
His mouth full of cake, Scorpan shrugged and swallowed. "A little of it goes a long way, I find. Though, of course, there's nothing little about your sister, is there?"
Luna gave her head another shake. "In terms of sheer acreage alone, the term 'monumental' might be best to describe her."
Scorpan nodded, and Celestia decided that that was just about enough of that.
A leap carried her to Scorpan's side, and she wrapped him in her wings, bent him over backwards, and pressed her lips to his in a kiss so deep and thorough, she wasn't sure, pulling away, which of them had actually taken that bite of cake. "Tomorrow," she said, smiling at his rapidly blinking eyes, "we shall journey between the folds of space to ask your parents' permission and blessing upon our courtship." Reaching out with her magic, she stroked his mane. "If that would be satisfactory?"
Those wonderful, wonderful claws brushed the sides of her face, and he stretched his neck to give her a much gentler sort of kiss. "Extremely," he said.
"And," she heard Luna add, "if they insist upon a chaperone, I shall be more than happy to—"
A quick teleportation spell filled Luna's mouth with cake, and Celestia turned her attention back to the pressing matter of Scorpan's lips.
