Follows A Little Sparkby EnganonChapters1 Three Princesses2 The Machine3 No Path Home4 Give And Take5 Night Moves6 Blinded With Science7 Alone Time8 Plans10 History11 The Empath12 Consequences13 Aftermath14 Marely Matters15 The HerdEpilogue9 Opening Move1 Three Princesses”That’s quite the collection you have there, Anon.” You look up to see Twilight Sparkle enter, eyeing the massive spread on the huge square table that served as a workbench before you. “Don’t call it that, you sound like Celestia.” The purple alicorn looks up at you. “What is it, then?” “Components!” You spread your arms to encompass the entirety of your chaotic work surface. “Today we begin our great work.” Twilight gives you a look somewhere between ‘oh really’ and ‘that’s cute’. You give her your best hurt expression back. “No, I’m serious. I’m tired of being a ‘royal adviser’ in title only. And I’ve had it with magic. Uh, no offense.” She just rolls her eyes. “Alright, Anon, then why did you want me here?” You look back down at the collection of knickknacks across your desk. Celestia was generous, and acquired just about any part you could ask for. She thought your requests were cute. “Well, I haven’t seen anything more complicated here than a steam engine. I feel like I need to start from scratch. I need to know what magic can and can’t do before I go about breaking it.” “Break it?” “Yeah, you know. Cheat.” ”You can’t cheat magic, Anon.” You wave Twilight’s objection off. “Where I come from, magic is cheating.” ”But there are rules! Like-” “Alright fine, whatever. Rules are made to be broken. Physics has rules too and magic gets around them. Lets use physics to get around magic’s rules.” This gets her full attention. “And you’re going to do that with all this?” “Well, we’re going to start. And we start with a lot of questions.” You hold up what had to be the biggest flawless quartz crystal you’d ever seen, about as long as your forearm. You had fastened a couple electrodes to its surface the night before. “You have a ton of this stuff, apparently.” ”It’s just a crystal, Anon. I could grow something like that one easily.” “That’s ridiculous, but alright. Hold this for me.” Her horn starts glowing. You let go of the crystal when it too begins to glow. You pick up a fairly thick wire attached to it, along with another wire attached to a post on your workstation, and hold their exposed ends near each other. “Now squeeze it as hard as you can without breaking it.” Twilight looks at you like you asked her to open a jar. You’d like her a lot more if it wasn’t for all the condescension she’d been showing you lately. At least she was actually interested in your ideas, unlike the other two alicorns you interacted with regularly. Twilight looked to be straining with the effort, now is the time. You slowly bring the two wires closer together. Far sooner than anticipated, a bright flash arcs between then, accompanied by a loud snap. “Holy shit.” You look to Twilight with a manic grin on your face. She looks astonished. “Power!” ”Did I do that?” “Kinda. It’s complicated.” She looks over the crystal again, then back to you. “Can we do it again?” You tap the now-dead ends of the wires together a few times. “No, you’d need to let it go and start squeezing again. But it’s a fun trick, and when I saw how big this thing was, I had to try it.” Twilight considers this, then shakes her head. “Wait, you were the one with questions. You weren’t supposed to make me have my own.” “Oh, yeah. Well, here we go. If you squeeze something with magic, does it stay squeezed?” ”No.” You thought about this some, looking over the bits and pieces on your desk. “If you shrink something, does it stay shrunk?” ”Yes it does, but that’s much more complicated than squeezing something.” “How so?” ”Well,” Twilight started, fidgeting. By the look of her eyes, she was about ten seconds away from starting a rant. “It requires a lot more preparation and effort. It’s also a lot more specialized, so most unicorns wouldn’t be able to manage it unless they’ve studied it, or their specialtalenthassomethingtodowithmagicorsizeand-” “Alright, alright, I get it. Well I can already think of one way to break this; mechanically, you can make some sort of harness, then shrink the harness around the object in question. It’s now squeezed for long periods of time.” At first she looked miffed you interrupted her lecture-to-be, then rolled her eyes again. “Yeah, Anon, everypony knows that. Well, everypony who cares, which isn’t many. It’s not a very useful trick.” “But that’s the kind of stuff I mean. Getting around the rules of magic. Squeezed things stay… squeezed. There’s all sorts of things we can do, like turn this crystal into a capacitor.” ”I could always charge the crystal directly, with magic. We do that all the time.” You make a show of thinking on this. Could magic be measured piezo- or pyroelectrically? “Maybe I can do something with that later. For now, I was thinking more… mundane. Twilight puts the giant crystal back on your workbench, then looks over some other pieces. “And you want to know how magic can break the rules of the mundane?” “Exactly.” You pick up a rod with several magnets glued to one end, then roll it between your hands back and forth. “Can you make things spin magically?” Twilight looked at your idle activity. “Temporarily, that’s trivial. Over long periods of time without a pony doing it themselves, that’d require something like a come-to-life spell-” “A whatnow?” A look of frustration flit across her features at another interruption. She looks kind of cute when she’s irritated; you’ll have to do it more. “It’s an animation spell, of a sort. It makes things move on their own.” “Can it actually bring things to life? Walking, talking-” ”No, Anon,” she said. You had to expect she’d get you back. “Just simple movement, they’re not aware or anything. You probably could do something like that with magic, but it’d take me a lot of research to figure out how. And, ah, probably not recommended.” “I’m not here to figure out if we should do something, only if we could. And if we can, I will.” Twilight does not look convinced, but she’s having trouble hiding proof that your enthusiasm is contagious. ”So why were you interested in making a machine that could think?” You reach down and whip out a huge sheet of paper from underneath your workbench, startling Twilight. She jumps far enough back for you to snatch a couple more pages from near where she stood. You look around your desk for a pen, then scowl when you see the stick of pencil you’ve been using. Could pony manufacturing advance far enough to make a ballpoint before you die? Taking it up, you vigorously circle an entry on the page, then start making a couple notes next to it. Twilight recovers her wits and walks over, craning her neck around your body to see what you’re doing. Her chin barely clears the benchtop. ”Horse Hands?” she reads off the main entry “Yeah, I figure if I can find a way to make some servomotors and a means of controlling them, I can make you some hands.” You wiggle your fingers in an exaggerated wave. Twilight looked unimpressed. ”Telekinesis is far better than anything you can do with those crude appendages.” “Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. It’s a long way off anyhow.” You roll up your sheets and place them back under your bench with the rest of your many pages. “Doesn’t really matter until I can get some reliable power working. Free spinning is great, that’s a perpetual motion generator already.” ”Not perpetual, after constant use it’ll wear down in about a year. I’d have to come back and cast it again.” “Hell, that’s still better than I was expecting going into this. We’re practically already there.” You pick your magnet-stick up again and spin it a few more times, then put it out at the edge of your collection of parts. What else could you do? “Do ponies know about radioactivity?” ”Radio-what?” “I don’t know how to make a radioisotope generator anyway. Is your metallurgy even good enough to make thermocouples? Wait, are there no handheld firearms because you can’t heat-treat metal?” ”Handheld? We don’t have hands, Anon,” Twilight says flatly. “Right, that makes more sense. Guns are one of those things we shouldn’t do, anyway. Well, we can keep this simple. One of my mentors always said almost every way of generating power consistently used water to make something spin, and you already have coal-fired steam engines. Oil or gas might require too much infrastructure. Reflector arrays can make solar power without messing around with photovoltaics. Aside from boilers… Stirlings should be easy. If you use magic to make something hot, does it stay hot?” ”Of course not.” “I wonder if we can make some sort of Maxwell’s Demon” ”I’m not summoning a demon for you!” You look over to Twilight, who is now visibly angry. “Perhaps a lesson on means and ends is proper, before we go any further!” “No, not an actual- wait are there actual Maxwell’s Demons here? That’s wild.” Her anger slowly fades to confusion. “I’ve never read of anything by that name, demonic or otherwise.” “Not a demon. It’s- nevermind. Can magic do something when it sees something?” ”I don’t know, Anon,” she says, sarcasm practically dripping from her mouth. “Can you be any more vague?” “Perform an action when it notices a specific thing. Like tap a crystal, maybe.” ”Oh, yes. That’s trivial.” “I don’t know any ways of turning information into energy that’d be practical anyway.” Twilight cocks her head. “It sounds like there is a lot you don’t know, Anon.” “Well, that’s how it goes, back home. Everyone specializes. You know a lot about a couple things.” ”Well,” she says, smug, “never send a stallion to do a mare’s job. I’ll have you know I study everything.” “Good for you. You still don’t know how crushing quartz makes a spark.” There’s that cute irritated expression again. “Doesn’t matter. We can make something spin. Is there a limit to how hard it is? How heavy?” ”Well, the harder the motion, the more effort required to cast the spell.” “So the only limit is your prodigious magical talent.” She looks cute when she was proud of herself too. You could get used to working with her. “I’ll take that as a yes. We’ll have to do some experiments sometime on how heavy a load you can turn, and how fast.” “I’d be happy to. It would be a fun challenge.” You lean back and look over your collection of parts again, thinking of your list of ideas. The amount of components you need to make by hand is exhausting just to think about. “Can you duplicate items?” ”Yes. Some ponies can even duplicate themselves, or others.” “How has your economy not collapsed?” ”It’s an exceedingly rare skill. Those who can do it know the trouble that sort of thing brings.” “You’re telling me you’ve never, uh, made change?” She looks away from you and shifts on her hooves. “Thought so. Your restraint is noted. At any rate, I’d like to have you duplicate a bunch of parts for me, once I’ve figured out what I need.” ”As long as they’re small and simple, that wont be a problem.” She looked out across the vast assortment of miscellaneous doodads Celestia had brought you by request. “As long as you clean all this up.” “Oh, uh. Yeah. Now that I know what I have to do next, I can do that.” The two of you continued staring at the mess until it became awkward. You thought about pulling your planning sheets out again, but Twilight stood in the way, shuffling nervously. ”Anon, you know...” “Yes?” ”Well, it’s weird being able to talk to a… a male, about stuff like this. So few are interested in magic, or science.” “I tried talking to some guards about it when I needed help. They wondered why I was getting my hands dirty. I’ve never met such a combination of catty, prissy, and meathead before.” ”They’re there mostly to look pretty.” “Where I come from, they’d be there mostly to kill things.” Twilight blanched. “The princesses are more than capable of taking care of themselves. They wouldn’t put their guards in needless danger. Celestia cares for them.” “So I’d guessed.” You still didn’t like the implications. Twilight swept out one wing to indicate the table and its numerous occupants. “Celestia seems to be taking care of you as well.” “She humors me. Really, she dotes on me. It’s embarrassing, frankly. Part of the reason I’m doing this is just to show I’m able to put deed to word, when she asks my opinion. Not that she’s actually asking my opinion, but she makes a show of it during petitions. I don’t know why; as far as I can tell, my title is meaningless. I don’t even think she knows what I’m doing here. She might not even know you’re here at all.” This stopped the purple pony cold. “She- she doesn’t know I’m here? With you?” “No, why?” Twilight’s wings flit out in alarm, then she started to back out of the room. “Because, she’s, uh. She- it’s hard to explain. I’ll uh, I’ll talk to you later, Anon. Let me know when you’ve got the experiment ready. And, uh, let Celestia know too. I’ll- I’ll see you then.” She turned then, and darted out of the room, leaving you staring baffled at your door. Looking at alien stars is a surreal experience. You weren’t an astronomer, as much as the stars interested you, but you’d learned to navigate by the night sky in Scouts, half a lifetime ago. Celestial navigation was just a bunch of memorization and math to reverse-engineer your position from known constants. ”Anon?” There was nothing to recognize in this collection of tiny sparks. Your mind kept trying to draw lines, build familiar constellations, but all attempts failed. Formations were indistinct, and connections fleeting. ”Anon, please...” Have ponies named all their stars and constellations? Could you take up astronomy as a hobby here, and do it yourself? Maybe name them all after mythologies from your home, as yours were, that’d be an interesting- ”Anon, must thou?!” Your eyes snapped from Princess Luna’s mane to her face, where you found ample consternation. “Sorry. I got lost.” ”Lost? We know human dreams hath strange tides and currents that no pony’s laboreth under, but surely thou meanst not lost. Thou hast not left.” You lean back in the tall chair you’re sitting in, looking back to your drawing board. The open twilit space around you is surrounded by a dense featureless fog; leaving surely would lead to getting lost. Imaginary, all of it, but with Luna around, sleep time can also be work time. You consider for a moment that you’re now not only spending every waking moment but every dozing moment working too. This may not be conducive to continued good health. Fuck it, you have science to do. Beside you, the royal pain in your ass stamps a hoof and clears her throat. “Anon, we will not be ignored.” “Oh. No, thou… beest…? Uh-” Luna rears back, astonishment plastered across her face as if you’d just slapped her with it. Fury quickly chased it away. “Thou shalt say ‘you’ when speaking to us, as befitting our station!” She stomps again. “Before our banishment, stallions were bolder, but even they knew proper respect for royal persons. Thou shalt know we are more amenable than most to thy atrocious breaches of etiquette, but thou canst push even us to ire. We have elected to grant thee this extraordinary time for thee to pursuest thy plans; gratitude, not impertinence, is the appropriate response.” She talks like Henry VIII would have mounted her, then her head on his wall. Your mind reels. Carnal knowledge and regicide is not the best line of thinking right now; for all you know she could read your mind in here. “Sorry, Your- uh- Majesty.” Thankfully, her ire passes quickly. Her temper is quick to flare and quick to fade. You fear her sister may, instead, be slow to anger but result in devastating eruptions. So far you remain blessedly ignorant. ”We accept thy apology, Anon.” She turns to your drawing table and squints. “But what, pray tell, art thou drawing?” You look back to the drawing board, turning your tall swivel chair side to side minute amounts. The drawing was a bit hazy – Luna said this seemed normal for humans as far as she could tell, but not ponies – and half of it was erased. “It’s a transmission. Well, part of one. Or it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t work.” ”We expect not; it is merely paper.” “Even if I had it in my hand, it wouldn’t. I know theoretically one could design a magnetic variable transmission, but I can’t figure it out. You know what? This is going to be a test article anyway. Once I figure out the proper gear ratios, I could make a fixed one.” You wipe a hand across the drawing. Only blank canvas is left behind. “I can’t deny using dreams for this is convenient. Thanks, Princess.” Luna smiles, but is still squinting. The sun’s definitely brighter, now that all the fog’s burned away. Wait, when did the sun appear? “Think you can turn the sun down?” ”Thou art ruler of this space, Anon. Thyself best answerest thy request.” “You’re very hard to understand.” “And thou speakest as a simpleton, like so many others we have had the misfortune to converse with since our return.” “Then why not speak like they do?” She blinked a couple times as she tried to formulate an answer. “Because… we wish to… maintain our regal air. Others seeth it as dignified and attractive.” Attractive? Was that admission intentional? You let it hang in the air, where it’s sweetened by the scent of all the flowers blooming on the hill your drawing table is set atop. You move your work lamp aside, and note that it no longer casts a shadow. The sun has disappeared, but ambient light remains, and the sky is still a clear blue. Clouds smudge the horizon, until they don’t. In some places, the horizon is smudged without their help. “So what are you, chivalrous?” Luna brightens at the prospect. “Thy world hath similar doctrines?” “Had. Usually the word ‘chivalry’ is followed by two more; ‘is dead.’” Her expression falls. “We understand.” Seeing that hurt you more than you’d care to admit. “I’m sure it’s more appreciated around here, even if few show it.” You pick up you pen/cil/marker/stick and perform an arcane yet intuitive motion to ready it that even you cannot describe. You try to swivel your chair again, but it was never able to swivel at all. Instead, it rolls across the hard, flat surface of the tall grass, which tickles your knees as you glide over/through it. You end up rolling away from your table, so you grab it and drag yourself back. Your next drawing is already partially completed on the canvas. It makes more sense than you’d expect. “Oh yeah, that’d work, wouldn’t it?” You draw the other half of the simple design. You redraw the first half, upon finding it had vanished. It was probably never there in the first place. Luna is still squinting at the drawing, even though the fog’s return means it’s not so bright out. Why does the fog smell like flowers? ”Forgive us, for we know little of the technological developments that preceded our return. What doeth this contraption?” “It turns force into different force.” This bland statement somehow conveys far more meaning than the sum of its parts. Luna nods enthusiastically. You point at a part of it and start explaining further anyway. “The shaft connected to this concave cone is already spinning. These rounded wheels between it and a similar cone on the other side transfer force across the gap. If the wheels are angled, one cone will spin faster and the other slower. Usually you’d use a belt, I think, or some sort of planetary gearing, but this would be easier to make.” You look over some notes that appeared on the page. They’re completely illegible. “I’ll use it to figure out an ideal balance of speed and torque Twilight’s spells can produce, then make a fixed transmission with magnets off the required ratios, for reduced maintenance. For the test we can just use flywheels as loads. Oh, I’ll need to design a way to control this.” Luna watches you start working on a manual control extension. “Thou workest with our sister’s student?” “Yeah, we’re trying to combine magic and mechanics. I think she’s into it, and she might be nice to work with. Most ponies scoff at this stuff. Or at me. One or the other, depends on who.” ”She maketh a good compatriot in such endeavors,” Luna squints at the sheet again, and cocks her head, “for she understandeth such matters better than most.” Hearing something in her tone, you stop drawing and look over at her. After at moment, she looks back, with something approximating a sheepish expression. Her wings are slightly lifted off her back and angled downward, giving you an impression of slumped shoulders. “We all have our talents.” You give her your warmest smile. She smiles as well and chuckles, her wings returning to her back. “Indeed. Thou speakest true.” As you return to your work, she clears her throat. “We would warn thou against spending too much time with her on this, however. Thou couldst stir our sister’s displeasure.” “Twilight did kinda freak out last night about that. Why should she worry? Celestia doesn’t stop me from doing this nonsense, and she doesn’t stop me from talking to whoever I want around the palace.” Luna hesitates, then starts pacing around your drawing table, the sound of her hooffalls against what sounded like stone resonating strangely against the fog. “These follies thou pursuest… she believes humoring them is her prerogative alone. She seeth it as a way to ingratiate thyself to her, to- well. She wisheth thou associate her grace with such activities of thine.” “So why are you here?” ”We disagree with her desires to this point,” she says, passing behind you. “We wished to share thy company for a time, and these means are unique to us alone.” You suddenly feel a bit like prey. “I see. What do you think of me so far, then?” She stops her pacing, back at your side near where she’d began. “Thou hast a single-minded focus on thy goals,” she says, tone flat. ”We have seen thy dreams before. Wondrous places. Interesting… activities. We had hoped thou would showest us the ways of thy kind, if we made an appearance. Instead thou engagest in activities thou could performest awake.” “Well I guess I’ve been a little preoccupied,” you mumble. Luna smiles at this, and suddenly her tone is much warmer. “Of course. We have learned thy thoughts runneth over with unique creativity. Though not the pleasure we had hoped, thy company hath nevertheless been a pleasure.” You thought on this for a time. The drawing suddenly feels less important. You’ve got it figured out in your head by now anyway, disregarding the fact this environment itself was in your head. “You’re saying you could put me back home, in here?” Her smile falters, but quickly finds its place again, calm and gentle. “Only thou art ruler here, as we have said. Human dreams are less stable than ponies, we have found, and our control over them is not as firm. But we may be able to nudge thy sleeping mind in certain directions, and then appear to thee once underway.” You sat in silence, slouching. You could actually see home again, however briefly, and you’d never known until now. Is this something you wanted to indulge in? You’ve been treated well here, and a taste of home would tempt further homesickness, not that you had much to be homesick for. Well, the food. You definitely missed the food. And you could, at least, show Luna around. For her benefit if not yours. “You know what? That might not be a bad idea.” Luna stepped back, looking proud. “We are very pleased. Tonight will not work; we have already asserted ourselves within this space to stabilize this working area of thine. In the future we will endeavor to try.” You sighed. “That’ll be a breath of fresh air.” Your sigh was also a breath of fresh air; the flower smell was back. ”Thou art fortunate, for thy world thou hadst left behind was pleasant. Even past, thou at least hast sweet memories of it.” Her tone was a lot sadder. You look over at her. All her pride had fled. “You, uh, you wanna talk about something?” ”Yes, but no. Perhaps another night. Thou hast spent much time here, for we needed to alter the rate of time; thy dreams flow quick, but at that speed are uncontrollable. Thou hast work to complete, so we shall allow thou it, and interrupt no further.” You looked back at your canvas. Even as Luna resumed her place at your side to watch, dozens of little notes resolved across it. They were still illegible, but somehow you knew what they said. You sigh and start writing them out properly, so you’d have them committed to memory come morning. ”Ah, there’s my little adviser.” Startled awake, you jolt upright in your seat. Celestia stands on the other side of your large workbench. A large rubber flap suspended in the air in front of her drops to the table. “Oh, hey Princess. I, uh, did I miss something?” ”Nothing you were needed for. Your requests are becoming rather specific. I thought I’d stop by and see what you were working on.” Behind her entered the palace quartermare, or whatever they called the pony in charge of the royal supply closet. Dragging behind her, one end held in a telekinetic grip, were two large toothed bars. The poor unicorn tried to lift the racks to the workbench, but couldn’t make the high surface. She ended up dropping them beside it instead, then left the room panting. Perhaps it’d be worthwhile to see the limitations of unicorns who weren’t magical prodigies. You stroke your chin in thought at the display you’d just witnessed. The action reveals you haven’t shaved in three days. “Are the rest of the parts coming? If you could put me through to the smith directly...” ”Palace resources are precious, Anon. I will find time in their busy schedule to have your request fulfilled.” Celestia cocks and lowers her head, craning her neck across the table. “You look terrible, and this is the first time I’ve seen you sleeping in here. Are you getting enough rest? Taking care of yourself?” You wave her concern off. “You sound like my mother.” ”I bet she was a wise mare, and you’d have done well to listen to her.” “It sounds weird when you refer to stuff from my world with Equestrian terms.” She smiles. “Ah, but how else would you adapt to your new home?” Despite the rhetorical question, her tone sounds apologetic. She walks around the table to where you sit, her flowing shimmering mane shifting to the other side of her body, to not blanket you. Is that something she can control consciously? Luna wasn’t able to, or at least never thought to do so, leading to a bit of embarrassment last night when she came close enough to be distracting. Apparently staring is as impolite here as back home. “What were you doing so boring to fall asleep?” A big spool of copper wire sits next to you and a collection of thick rods is scattered around this side. Several of them have plates on either end with the wire wound around the shafts. One in front of you has the same plates, but the wire’s only partially wound. “You have no idea how boring making coils by hand is.” “Surely it cannot be that bad.” Celestia laughs, crystal clear. Just hearing it wakes you up a little more, brings you a new alertness and serenity. “How do you do that?” ”Simple; I forego fingers.” Your desk suddenly blazes with pale golden light; a length of wire is extracted from its spool of its own accord, is bent and snapped, and drifts over to a now-floating empty rod. It twists itself into a coil, the rod floats through this coil’s center, and the wire contracts all at once around it, slithering out so its ends align perfectly with the rod’s faces. “That’s not what I meant, but holy hell.” You pick up the now-wound coil and inspect it. Its spacing is impeccable, the wind flawless. “You know, I could really use an assistant.” Celestia laughs again. You’re now even more awake. ”A playmate, Anon?” “The guards aren’t interested, the noble stallions have their own interests, and you manage to keep the mares busy enough they never have the time. Well, the mares who don’t simply gawk, or shrug me off.” ”Your hobby is… unorthodox.” “It’s my job, and I’m a workaholic.” ”Your position is our adviser, Anon, and you’re quite adept.” “At bullshitting answers? I guess. I never find out if they work or not.” ”My sister usually handles concerns of administration like that. If she’s not informing you of your results after our meetings, perhaps she is avoiding you for some reason.” You look at Celestia sidelong. Her face is a perfect image of innocence. “I guess. At any rate, it’d be nice to have someone who I could interest in this work. Isn’t Twilight Sparkle supposed to be a bookworm? You have no idea the number of equations I can drop on her head.” ”My foremost student studies magic. This is perhaps the furthest thing from that. I’m not sure I’d be able to convince her to help you.” The tilt of her head, her relaxed stance, the way her wings are barely folded against her back, her whole body looks the exact opposite of guarded; open and sincere. You realize this is a game, perhaps the only game that matters. Celestia has had a millennium to perfect her play at the highest levels. You barely broke even in the company cafeteria. How do you call a sovereign a liar to her face without getting executed? You’re not going to take your chances that you’ll find a third world after your second death. You still don’t know if you got here by dying at all. Score: fifteen-love. You sigh and look back to your work, picking up the half-completed coil and starting to unkink the wire. “Some smart guys at NASA – remind me to explain that group to you sometime, you might get a kick out of it – said there are three categories of knowledge. You have your known knowns, your known unknowns, and your unknown unknowns. I’ve found this very useful advice for engineering.” You finish your work straightening the wire, and resume winding it by hand. “Obviously, you have your pool of knowledge. Then there’s everything you’re aware you lack, the gaps in your knowledge, all the things you might need help to understand. Know what I’m saying? But after that there’s everything else. All the knowledge that you have no frame of reference for, that you can’t even know you don’t know.” You’ve found a rhythm with the coiling now. It’s a lot easier to slip into now that you’re not exhausted. “In the end, it’s the unknown unknowns that get you. I need to watch out for them. Even you need to watch out for them.” Celestia is silent for a moment. You don’t dare meet her gaze, and simply continue winding your coil. Eventually she responds, “Who taught you that wisdom?” “Ah, who knows. Just call it a friend’s lesson.” You sneak a glance, finally. She still looks sincere, but a light has gone from her eyes, replaced by a strange flatness. At least her eyes are honest. Score: fifteen-all. “It’d be a lot easier if I had someone who knew the ins and outs of magic. That would, I think, cover quite a lot of unknown, and that’s just ones I can think of. I have no idea what could possibly be lurking out there beyond the bits of it I can even contemplate, but I’m sure there are those who do.” ”I’ll see if I can win her over to your cause.” “Thanks. I’ll need someone to spin that obnoxious thing.” You jerk a thumb to the featureless wall opposite the room’s lone window, currently occupied by your half-constructed variable transmission, then resume your winding. ”Just be careful, Anon. Many of our social customs would also be unknown unknowns to you.” You fail to hide a wince, but continue your work. Score: thirty-fifteen. ”You’re important to me. A fresh perspective is often useful, especially when I’ve ruled for a long time. It would sadden me if you lost status due to mere ignorance.” Score: forty-fifteen. You put the coil down and think a bit. “I may have said it before, but where I come from, it’s not unusual for guys to keep their social competitions, uh, constrained. Or, no, that’s not it. We don’t really play for stakes except in certain situations; while I can’t deny it happens, it’s not like our every conversation is moving pegs. I’m not an exception to that.” You look back to Celestia. Her jaw is working as if shes physically chewing on this. Score: forty-thirty. “I never asked for the position you gave me. I don’t even know if my advice is any good or not. Your other advisers and functionaries totally ignore me. If some slip-up means this workshop has to be relocated from this lofty floor to the dungeons, so be it. At least I’d still be working in peace.” Her demeanor had shifted from thoughtful to apologetic understanding. Score: Deuce ”Anon, I know I thrust you into a difficult position, but it was the fastest way for you to demonstrate your talents. As long as I keep you at my side, I keep you protected. Those guards you talk to, well, they talk to each other. They’re quite the rumormongers. And while it may be different in your world, here stallions will gossip about anything, all the time. This is useful, and the true reason I keep them around; my guards know far more about what goes on in this palace than I ever could because of it, and will volunteer any information I ask them for. Lately, though, a lot of that gossip has been about you, and your obsessive pursuits.” Ah, hell. Unknown unknowns. Score: Advantage in Celestia leans in close, then, studying your expression intimately. If you had the misfortune to sneeze now, you’d scalp yourself with her horn. ”If anyone starts coming after you, whether rhetorically or by more serious… social maneuvering, please tell me immediately. I’m worried about you.” Her honest eyes show the truth of her words. Game You sigh and slump in defeat. “Yeah, alright. I just… I want to get this done. If I can pull this off, that gossip will turn to awe. But I need resources, and I need time.” ”I’ll give you everything I can, Anon. You may not believe me, but I really do value your input. Besides,” she chuckles, pulling her head away from you to a more normal posture, “nobody else has the nerve to talk to me like you do. Especially not that other subordinate who I so value. Twilight is familiar, but at the same time skittish.” “Yeah, I, uh, heard that.” Celestia gave you a knowing smile. “I’ll bet you have. Is there anything else you need? Before you ask, the rest of the parts you wanted are still on order.” You wave a hand over your collection of coils. “I need a lot of these. Tons.” ”I think I have a stretch of free time.” The sovereign ruler of this kingdom sat on her haunches beside you like a giant puppy, and once again your workbench was awash in golden fire. 2 The MachineYou’re fortunate the weather is good, because everypony involved insisted on conducting your experiment outdoors. Twilight had teleported it out of your workshop in pieces, but reconnecting everything wasn’t too difficult. A private garden for the princesses now hosts four individuals and one jury-rigged machine. Twilight stands at one end of the device, a metal shaft sticking out of it towards her. Celestia sits on a balcony on the other side of the machine from you, to intervene in case something goes catastrophically wrong. You stand near a hand-wheel that controls the transmission, in front of a big sliding bar that indicates the transmission’s current setting. A paddle with one red and one green side rests on top of a notepad on the control box. Behind you sits a guest you requested Twilight bring; a musician with absolute pitch. The gray earth pony holds ready a cello, and a violin sits on a table beside her. “Alright, first run is a dry run. We’re going to see how fast we can crank this thing, and establish some base values. We’ll put some weights on after to simulate loads.” You crank the hand-wheel until the sliding indicator is at one end of the bar, then give Twilight a thumbs up. The shaft near her lights up with a magenta glow, and the machine starts turning. A lone rubber flap at the far end of the machine starts slapping against a bar, once for every rotation. It picks up speed quickly as Twilight turns it faster, becoming a loud droning tone. You turn to look at the pony behind you. “What are we hearing, Octavia?” She thinks for barely a moment. “E2.” Now you just had to remember what frequency E2 was. “Uh, can you, uh… give me a G2 or something.” Octavia dutifully complies, bowing the cello’s second string with long, even strokes. You hold up your painted paddle with its green side facing Twilight. She nods, then focuses on the shaft again. The drone starts slowly increasing in pitch. As the pitch gets closer to the note Octavia’s playing behind you, you turn the paddle to be more edge-on to Twilight. The drone’s increase in pitch slows down, and you can hear the moment they match. You turn the paddle edge-on. The drone’s increase slows to a crawl. You can hear a very slowly cycling pulse between the two, and start counting seconds in your head. When you count two pulses a second, you drop the paddle. Then you listen for a bit longer; this would be way easier if you could isolate yourself and listen to the two sounds alone, instead of dealing with echoes off the palace walls and the rattling of your thrown-together bearings. Satisfied, you draw your hand across your throat. Twilight stops the machine, and Octavia follows suit. “Alright,” you say, “that should have been about a hundred cycles a second. You were turning that bar far faster than that. Was the effort posing you any problems?” Twilight tilts her head in thought. “Not much, as long as I didn’t have to do it for a long time.” You make a few notes on your pad, then look back at her. “Your speed control is remarkable. I didn’t think it’d work that well.” Twilight draws her head up and beams. Even Celestia’s smiling from her balcony perch. “Alright, this time, just roll it as fast as possible. Go when you’re ready.” Twilight resumes right away, the drone quickly picking up speed. When it sounds like the pitch leveled out, you look back at Octavia. ”D…” The earth pony thinks a moment longer. “Somewhere around D♯3” You do some quick math in your head. Then you flip few pages back in your pad and look at some of your earlier calculations. “Holy shit.” Twilight stands in a wide stance, staring at the spinning shaft like she wants to set fire to it with her mind, but she doesn’t look like she was about to fall over. There’s room to kick this up some more. You make another note on your pad, then grab the hand-wheel controlling your transmission. Slowly, you start cranking it. The drone starts increasing again, slowly at first, and then faster as you continue to crank. When you look up at Twilight, she’s staring back at you in alarm, chest heaving. You stop cranking the wheel and give her the stop signal. No use wearing her out so soon. “How high’d we get, Octavia?” ”Around D4, Anon.” She shifts her cello in her grip, then looks to her violin. “Will you want me to play over it?” “Uh, yeah, why don’t you get ready for that.” While Octavia switches instruments, you make a quick note on your pad, then jog over to where Twilight’s catching her breath. Squatting down next to her, you look her over real quick. What are you even looking for? Damnit, you’re an engineer, not a veterinarian. “Hey, sorry about that. Still don’t really know how the whole magic thing works.” ”I’m… I’m fine. Did I ruin… your data?” She already looks a lot better, but is still panting. “Only if you slowed down before I told you to stop.” She shakes her head no. “Then we’re all good.” You look up to Celestia’s balcony. She’s standing at its edge now, eyeing the two of you with an unreadable expression. “Is she going to kill me if you collapse down here? Because we only found one end of your upper bound, we still have a whole curve to define.” ”She’s just concerned, Anon. But next time… Warn me before you push me that hard.” “Yeah, sure. Well I mean, this is your warning then. I want to see if magic is biased how it can be used to deliver power most efficiently. I had you spinning this thing as fast as possible, then started changing our gear ratio. Next step is working at the opposite extreme. Don’t worry, I wont be able to make it more difficult this time.” ”You know, Anon,” Twilight gives you a weary smile. “Usually I’m the one taking notes.” “I promise I’ll share.” You reach out and tousle her mane just behind her horn as you stand and turn back to your post. You don’t even realize it until you stop; these pint-sized ponies are too precious for you sometimes. They’re like giant puppies, who’d be able to resist? Octavia’s giving you a weird look. She apparently doesn’t feel it important enough to actually tell you why, when you’re back at the control wheel. You look to your purple assistant again as you start cranking the wheel as far as you can. Twilight and Celestia are sharing some wordless communique by eye contact. You guess the Princess was just concerned for her after all. Now the sliding indicator bar is pegged on the opposite side it started at. “Whenever you’re ready, Twilight. As fast as you can.” After taking about a minute to compose herself, Twilight faces the shaft again. Her eyes bulge in shock when she first tries to move it, but she leans into it, and gets it spinning again in short order. The droning sound of the smacking rubber flap very quickly escalates. Once it evens out, you back at Octavia. “What are we at now?” You wonder if she can hear the pitch over the awful rattling of your crappy bearings. You’ll have to think of another solution. ”Almost A4.” After making a few more notes, you grab your colored paddle, and show Twilight the green side. Then you start cranking back on the hand-wheel. The drone drops in pitch, at first, but quickly recovers. You stop your turning every once in awhile to pencil a line on the sliding bar and take notes, asking Octavia for the different pitches she hears. Eventually you’re back near the range you snuck up on Twilight the first time. You give her the stop signal. “Alright, that was good. Lots of good data. Now lets put some weight on this and see what changes. If you could-” Disk-shaped weights – pilfered from a gym somewhere in the guards’ barracks – on the opposite end of the machine from Twilight start levitating, but are illuminated by a golden rather than magenta glow. They deftly slot themselves onto the shaft at that end. You look up at the balcony and give Celestia a thumbs up. “Thanks. Uh, keep an eye on them, please, Princess. We don’t exactly have them secured in-place. If they start coming off, just sorta nudge them back again.” Celestia dips her head, in a gesture you’re not sure is a deep nod or a shallow bow. “Alright Twilight, I’ll be going back up again. Try to keep it spinning as fast as you can; when it gets too heavy, just back off until it’s manageable.” Twilight nods and resumes her work immediately. You work your way back across the range again, taking more notes as you continue changing the ratios. Every so often you have Octavia play a note, and try to get Twilight to match it. Near the top of the range, you notice a larger dropoff than you’d expect. Twilight’s squeezing her eyes shut, standing in the same splayed stance from earlier. Her horn’s almost touching the rapidly-spinning shaft. Celestia’s looking back and forth between her and the weights, but you doubt Celestia’s seen what happens when bodies touch hardware spinning at those speeds. You have. Safety videos aren’t supposed to give you nightmares, but someone, somewhere, didn’t get that memo. This damn thing doesn’t have an emergency stop. You drop your notepad and hit a dead sprint in three strides. The palace tailor’s going to have to make something more mobile for you than this damn suit they insisted on copying from what you wore when you arrived. When you reach her side, you brace one hand against the machine’s frame, and place your other hand square on her chest, shoving her away as hard as you could. She stumbles and falls, and the shaft stops glowing. Celestia’s already over the balcony railing, gliding down to where you kneel, a look of great concern on her face. “Before you ask, yes, I had to.” You tap the end of the now almost stopped shaft. “She got too close. You don’t want to touch these things when they’re spinning that fast. This is just a pretty smooth bar, there’s not a lot to get snagged on, but I’m not going to trust that. If that weird magic aura’s able to interact with objects, I didn’t want to take the chance her horn would latch on and snap her neck before you even had the time to realize what was happening, let alone do something about it.” Celestia looms over your still-kneeling form. “It sounds like your technology carries some great risks.” Despite her intimidating presence, she speaks in a worried tone. “There’s a reason I wanted to keep everything in the workshop. Once I have constant power, I don’t want some pony frying themselves or something. When the final generator’s built we can include all the safety features. I just… wasn’t thinking about that for this one-off design, especially when the final product will be much smaller.” Twilight finally gets to her feet next to you. “You could have just said stop, Anon.” “I didn’t know if you’d hear me; you were flagging. I think we’ve done enough experimentation for one day.” The two – three; Octavia’s put her instruments down and stands near your controls and dropped notepad – ponies watch you as you stand and inspect the machine. You check the rubber flap near the weights. The thing’s absolutely shot. How it lasted this long you don’t quite understand. “I don’t think we could have gotten much more out of it anyway.” You return to Twilight and Celestia. They didn’t appreciate that close call, you felt. Maybe you really were jumping at shadows. But if you overstated the risk, Celestia may demand you stop your work. “I’m sorry, Princess, for dragging you out here. I’m sure you have better things to do with your time. Twilight, thank you for your help. You were great. I’ll send you everything I have once I’ve made a copy.” The two look at each other, and then back to you. Twilight cracks a smile. “Despite the abrupt end, if you got good information, the effort was worth it. I’d be happy to work with you again.” She looks back at Celestia, with the last few words. Celestia looks between you and Twilight several times, worry still plain on her face. “She would make a great assistant.” Your mumble barely reaches her ears. After a few more moments, she flashes a resigned smile. “I was wrong, Anon. It seems Twilight would be a good fit after all. But if you’re going to work with her, I insist on being more mindful of safety. If something were to happen to her – or to you – I would be quite cross.” Now it’s your turn to smile. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks.” ”And,” Celestia says quickly, “I insist on being present, if you ever have to take work out of your shop again. If there are risks, I wish to know about them. It’s my job to know any threats to my ponies.” “Yeah, of course.” ”Now,” she says, looking over you two and Octavia. You stumble when the machine beside you suddenly blinks out of existence with a golden flash. “If we’re done here, how about some refreshments?” After recovering her strength, Twilight insisted on returning to the workshop with you. Said recovery involved eating enough food to last you a whole day, mostly sugary. Some ‘snacktime’. Is magic bound to some sort of metabolic exertion? Might be worth investigating, but that’s one kind of mechanics you don’t really have the tools to measure. Either way, she is now fully reinvigorated. You suspect some sort of sugar-high; while you could normally outpace most ponies’ polite speeds with a power walk, Twilight was staying alongside you engaged in the bounciest trot you’d seen to date. ”So it’s not a novel device, for us, though I’ve never seen one before that can assume any ratio at will. Ours have to be built with gears or cogs, this cone and wheel setup is fascinating, and so simple! Honestly I’m ashamed we hadn’t come up with something like it sooner.” “Belts would probably be better, but I was being lazy.” You can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. She’d grasped the concept as soon as you explained it, no schematics or math required. You liked working with these types, who could just think their way through a design. ”How would belts work?” “Wide and thick, triangular cross-section. Belt shouldn’t stretch when under load. Load side has two cones – straight this time – held together by a spring. Drive side has two cones with controlled spacing.” You hold up your hands, index fingers extended and pointing towards each other. “Changing the spacing on one side will force the other to change inversely, since the belt has to keep the same length. Since the pulleys are cones, this means the belt rides on a narrower or wider cross-section. The difference in diameter of these cross-sections determines your ratio.” You bring your index fingers closer together and further apart. It looks kind of stupid, and you aren’t sure what it’s supposed to demonstrate. At least it keeps your hands busy; Sugarhighlight was looking at them funny when they were just hanging at your side, close as they were to her body when she was trotting beside you. You can’t be too surprised that foreign anatomy might freak ponies out. “We use them a lot at home, but I wouldn’t build one here for a final product, not when we’re concerned about reliability. I was thinking of a magnetic one, but I couldn’t think of how to design one quickly. I’ll just crunch some math, get a fixed ratio, and make magnetic gears for that.” ”What’s so special about magnets?” “Even just the bearings I used there weren’t great. I’ll have to get some better ones, see who makes your trains around here. But I want this to be as reliable and low-maintenance as possible, and noise is also something of a concern. The more magnetic components we have, the less physical wear, and the less noise. Plus, they can slip freely and catch each other again, so we don’t have to worry about catastrophic failures from that angle. I want to see if they’ll work, first.” You rub your chin in thought. “Come to think of it, magnetic bearings exist too. But there’s Earnshaw’s thorny problem, or I’d need a control system for electromagnets. Honestly, I keep running into problems I’d need control systems for, and that makes things more complicated.” Twilight tilts her wings in a remarkable approximation of a shrug. Has she been watching your body language? ”Just use your mind.” You stop and stare at her. She trots around in a half-circle to face you. “What?” “Did you just tell me to control an electrical balancing act with my brain?” She nods vigorously. “I don’t have telekinesis like you do.” ”I let a tortoise fly before, Anon. Using a bit more complicated version of the spell we’ve been talking about this whole time.” “Did you give it wings or something?” You resume walking, and she kicks back into her bouncy trot, this time on your other side. ”No, a rotor.” You look at her again, one brow quirked. “Just one?” ”Yep.” “Nothing else?” ”Nope.” “How’d you provide antitorque?” ”Compensated for it within the mast.” You don’t even know how that’d work. “So you’re telling me your magic can provide control over at least two degrees of movement, alongside a speed control, while automatically balancing a resultant force?” ”Well, Tank still needs to handle the torque. Just has the tools to do so.” Who names a tortoise Tank? “Well, that opens up a whole bunch of options. But I’m not going to sit next to this generator and mind-control it into balance. If you have a spell that can just keep something centered or whatever, that’d be easier. Short of that, we’ll deal with the stuff you use for trains and shrink it down or something. I mean if we really have to I could just just reverse-engineer a locomotive’s drive components and have you spin a wheel instead of a shaft, but that’d be something far larger and more complex than I need. I would like my generator to fit under my work desk. I’m just one man, not a power station.” ”Doesn’t that mean the thing you built is a bit large?” “Was easier to work with larger parts. We have enough data I should be able to extrapolate in either direction. Besides, if you said you made a magical helicopter fit for a turtle, I don’t think down-scaling will be an issue.” ”Tortoise, Anon.” “Yeah, that.” You two reach your workshop. Your test rig is all there – Celestia teleported it in one piece this time, but still fit it with room to spare – and so is your notepad. But something nags at you. Something about what the two Princesses were saying, a couple days (nights?) ago. You’ve done enough math for today. “You know what? Let’s walk and talk.” Twilight hesitates, but ultimately turns and follows you. “Weren’t we just doing that?” “Yeah, well, Princess Celestia thinks I’m working too hard.” ”But… science!” Despite the plaintive tone in her voice, Twilight still hasn’t lost the bounce in her gait. “There’s as much we can talk about! So much I can show you!” “Calm down there Miss Sakamoto, I’ll go blind.” ”So much about magical theory that could be helpful to your projects-” “Yeah I’m sure it’s poetry in motion.” ”That’s a beautiful way of looking at it.” “Can’t take the credit. Look, all I’m trying to say is the Princess doesn’t really let me out of the castle, but she thinks I’m working myself to death. I’ve been here for months and my only respite from being a court showpiece is to do work for free that I used to be paid for. You’re here now. If we’re going to be working together, lets get to know each other a bit, huh? You can show me the town.” It’s her turn to stop in her tracks, forcing you to hold up for her. ”Really?” You shrug. “Is there a problem with that?” ”But Princess Celestia-” “Wants me to get out more.” Twilight shakes her head and resumes her trot. You can her muttering to herself as she passes you. “...sheltered colt putting me on the spot after...” She’s still bouncing. “So uh, so what do you normally do, anyway? Are you like head of the Royal Society here or something?” ”Well, I do a lot!” Her cheerful tone’s returned. “Solving problems, helping friends, studying all SORTS of things.” You fall in behind her. “None of that sounds like Princess stuff. Celestia and Luna are running the kingdom. Are you not heiress apparent?” ”Don’t be silly. Celestia and Luna are immortal. I’m not related to them, if that’s what you mean. Just close.” “Ah, sorry Princess, but that makes no sense to me.” ”I found it a bit much to get used to myself. Please don’t feel a need to call me ‘Princess’.” The two of you make your way through the palace and out into a courtyard. Guards stare at you and Twilight as you head for the main gate, then into the city beyond. With Twilight here, at least they don’t try to stop you. It’s not like you’re trying to sneak out anyway. Canterlot’s riotous architecture is even more vivid from the ground in the middle of it. The sheer amount of gold everywhere boggles your mind. If you can duplicate materials at-will, why not go for the top, you figure. Away from all the nobility, you feel distinctly overdressed. Not just because you’re wearing a suit, even one that’s worse for earlier wear, but because you’re wearing clothing at all. Most ponies in the palace are adorned in some way or another, but Twilight’s birthday suit fashion has a lot of admirers, beyond the castle walls. You’ve seen it before, during petitions, but being surrounded by it is another story. The ponies you’re eyeing rarely return your gaze, but a couple stare at your feet. ”Are you hungry?, I could take you somewhere nice.” “Eh. From what I saw back there, I’m surprised you can even think of food.” Twilight sighs. “We can make it light and fast.” “Celestia never gave me access to some royal bank account. I’m broke.” Twilight gives you a confused look. “I’m paying, silly.” She looks back ahead, then angles off towards a nearby cafe. “Your world must have been a strange place, Anon.” “I can’t believe, with the reputation you have, you didn’t read my file.” ”Oh, I did. Nine times, in fact. It just raised more questions than it answered.” “Nine times?” ”I had to be sure I got everything right, because so much of it made little sense. No magic whatsoever, but you somehow managed to go to the moon. Two hundred nations for one species. And don’t even get me started on the accounts of the device in your pocket.” She turns to you as she reaches the cafe’s door. “Think we can make one?” “Twilight, the original doesn’t even work, I need to find a way to charge it. Uh, thanks.” You enter first, Twilight having opened the door before you could even reach for it. Twilight heads for a table for two – far from a window, you note – and telekinetically pulls out the chairs. She doesn’t sit down when you do, with your back to the shop’s front. ”I’ll grab something I think you’ll like. Be right back.” You take some time to look around. The cafe is almost empty for this time of day, but its few occupants have definitely noticed you. Going incognito your first day out of the palace was never an option, but that doesn’t make their staring any more comfortable. When Twilight returns, she hovers to you a plate with a curious pastry on it. She has a different one for herself, and finally takes her seat. You take a bite. It tastes like a cross between a cinnamon bun and an apple cider doughnut. You need to find out if the palace kitchen makes anything like these. ”Your file,” Twilight said, “included very few social or cultural details. I understand it wasn’t exactly an interrogation, but I thought you’d have volunteered more.” You shrug. “I’m an engineer. My everyday interactions with the world were through the lens of science and technology. Go to work to help make it. Come home and entertain myself with it.” ”You know a lot of what you told us was unbelievable, right?” “One of the reasons I decided to try to show you instead. Most of it I won’t be able to, but I’ll be happy with a little slice. Your magic can make up some of the lost potential.” You take another bite of the pastry. Holy shit this tastes good. ”I’m looking forward to it,” Twilight says, after swallowing her own bite. “I’m just curious, were men like you common? There’s few stallions interested in studying magic, and even fewer science, here.” “Magic aside, most people like me were men.” Twilight’s eyes boggle. “Really?” “Yeah, something like eighty to eighty-five percent. So when you say there’s few stallions you know into this stuff, trust me, the feeling’s mutual. I never knew a lot of, uh, mares.” Twilight stares down at her half-eaten pastry. “Look, I get it’s rare. I’ve seen the traits Celestia selects for in her guards. I’m not going to pretend to understand. I’m not a pony. I’ll just go on working in my shop and feeling overdressed.” ”Well, you could stand to lose the, ah, footwear.” You take another bite while you think on this. Definitely not in the shop, but outside? If fingers were weird enough, heaven forbid ponies get a gander at toes. “Nah, the shoes stay on.” Twilight’s eyes dart to the entrance of the building briefly, before she speaks again. “You are a bit overdressed, besides that.” “I have yet to convince the palace tailor to make me much else besides this crap. They insist on using the same pattern, no matter what I request. At least they fit better; I’d go insane if I had to wear a real suit for as long as I’ve been here.” ”You could just go without.” “Twilight, back home that’d get me arrested. And wouldn’t get me any closer to being warm.” ”Arrested?” She sounded incredulous. “Yeah. Indecent exposure or whatever.” ”Indecent?!” Now she looks as incredulous as she sounds. “Yep. No nudity in public. So forgive me if I want to keep some clothes on.” Twilight shakes her head while chewing another bite. When she’s finished, “Humans are so backwards.” “Hell, in the winter, clearing snow, I’d wear three layers on top, and two pairs of pants. Tuck one pair’s legs into my boots. Thick socks, all the way up to my knees.” You have to suppress a laugh when she nearly chokes. She glances at the door again, then back to you. “Just let me hold on to some habits from home. I already feel awkward enough.” She nods. “S-sorry.” “Meh, I figured I’d need a big cultural exchange talk eventually.” ”It would probably do you good to get out more.” “As long as you’re around, sure. Trust me, I’d have this city memorized if Celestia would let me out on my own. I’m too weird for most of the court; nobody wants to be my chaperone, but Celestia insists I have one if I were to ever leave. Can’t have the great ape banging his head on a low door frame. Just means I’ve been stuck. Now that you can do that job, I have a chance. And seriously, I appreciate it. Thanks.” ”Don’t mention it, Anon. I’m happy to.” She takes a third glance at the door. This time, you turn in your seat and follow her gaze. Despite your location in a rear corner of the establishment, the cafe is small, and you’re not quite isolated from all the windows. Pedestrian rubbernecking is causing minor traffic issues on the sidewalk outside. “Like I’m some goddamned celebrity.” ”You are. You being shut up in the palace hasn’t actually kept you a secret, not with Celestia showing you off inside it. It just fuels more speculation.” “Maybe we should scram, before someone gets hurt. Twists an ankle, goes lame. Uh, there’s some things I’m never going to disclose about the long and storied relationship between humans and equines, by the way. Sorry to disappoint.” Is she blushing? ”I know of a garden that might be a little more secluded. We could have a bit more privacy there.” “Lead the way.” 3 No Path HomeAll around you is nothing. It’s pitch black. The silence is almost painful. You can feel nothing, though you are pretty sure you are curled up into a ball. Hours pass in seconds, or maybe the other way around. You don’t have a reference for time. Maybe you’re going insane. ”Anon.” The voice is really far away, far enough to be right next to your ear. ”Be not afraid, Anon.” Ah, you’re pretty sure you know who that is. Which means you know what this is. “Princess Luna, is this your idea of a prank?” Or, you’re pretty sure that’s what you said. You can’t hear your own voice. ”We have brought thy mind to alertness before any dreams arose.” “This isn’t very fun.” ”Dost thou wish to see home?” Ah, right. It wouldn’t be your first time you’ve dreamed of home, but it’d be the first you could interact with it while aware. You were never a lucid dreamer. “Is it going to be as weird as last time?” ”Thy dreams formeth their own structure. We need not force them as before.” Whatever that means. “Fine, let’s see it. Just, uh, just don’t get your hopes up.” ”Whatever dost thou mean?” “You’ll understand.” The darkness turns itself inside out, now blinding white. A loud ringing sounds in your ears. For the briefest moment, you feel like you’ve been kicked in the head. Turns out you weren’t curled into a ball, you were standing. You twitch violently as your brain does a proprioceptive double-take. You are standing in front of your apartment’s door, to be precise. Your keychain is in your hand. The right key is already in the lock. You turn the key and open the door, then step inside. When you turn to close the door, you hear a voice behind you. “Ah. We understand.” Turning back again, you see Luna in the middle of what passes for a living room. She’s looking towards the kitchen area at the back of the long room. “Thou art lowborn.” “Uh, I guess you could say that. I wasn’t exactly rolling in it.” You open a second door, one leading to your bedroom. The walls are covered with posters of nerdy shit, from video games to reference charts. Luna cranes her neck to look over your shoulder. “This space is too small for thy family.” “I lived here alone.” You hear a slight gasp from her. “Alone? Art thou honest?” “No lie.” You walk into your bedroom. It’s spotless, but everything you remember is here. In their proper places, too, which is somewhat of a rarity for you. You spread your hands to indicate the whole room. “All this, just for me.” You expect to see some expression of indignation, that she’d be mad you were without a minder, despite the fact this was your world and not hers, with no Celestia to demand a guardian. Instead, she looks down at your carpet, and then to one of your bedroom windows. She makes her way over – cautiously, for your room was too cramped for her long body to maneuver well in – and looks outside. You join her at the window. Outside, the street is strangely empty. No pedestrians, no cars. No activity in nearby buildings. “It’s usually more busy than this.” ”Was that better or worse?” “Uh, sorry?” She tries backing up the way she approached the window. Your dresser jabs her in the flank. Her wings extend outward slightly at the shock, which knocks a paperweight off your desk. She sighs and stops moving. “Better or worse than silence, Anon. Didst thou prefer bustle or quiet?” “Quiet, I think. I usually just lost myself in...” You wave a hand in the air vaguely. “Other stuff.” You point to your computer, then. “This could talk to people all over the world, access all sorts of knowledge, play different kinds of games. Most of my time was spent using it.” Luna cocked her head and peered at it. “Fascinating.” “Here.” You wave a hand at your bed. “Feel free to take a seat. Furniture’s not arranged for someone who’s several feet long to walk around.” ”We shall presume not to lay ourselves upon thy bed, even invited. We have tact.” “Suit yourself.” You sit on its end, facing her. She looks around at your walls. “Thy appetite for art seems as voracious as it is peculiar.” “Well, it’s not all art. Some of it is reference material. Others are… Well, here.” You gesture towards a sky blue poster with images of many rockets. “This one depicts a bunch of vehicles we used to get to space. Uh, outside the atmosphere. Er, beyond the sky.” More light jostling of furniture as Luna makes her way over. She looks at the many designs. “How doth they function?” “Explosions.” She looks at you like you just yanked on a couple of her feathers. “We desire serious answers.” “I’m giving them to you. They work by exploding. Controlled rapid combustion. Think like giant fireworks, but many times more violent. Rockets are thousands of tons of canned explosion, with a couple people sitting on top crazy enough to light the fuse and try to steer.” You point to the image of a Saturn V. “This one sent people to the moon, with enough hardware to get them back home. We did that half a dozen times.” Once again, Luna defies your expectations by remaining silent. She slowly sits down on her haunches, staring at the poster. Her silence extends for an uncomfortable period of time. You decide to get something else to show her. Your neglected electric guitar sits in a corner. You never did bother to learn how to play to any degree of proficiency. As you’re reaching for it, Luna finally speaks. ”Why?” You look back at her as you pull the guitar free. “What was that?” ”Why send thy kind to the moon?” “We wanted to go, just to say we did.” ”Foolish. Naught but rocks.” “Rocks we were quite happy to take home. It was a race; who could get there first. Uh, we have a lot of countries here. Some of them compete. Some of them… do worse than compete.” She hasn’t looked back at you since she asked the question. She lapsed into silence again. You turn on the tiny amp near your guitar stand, and pluck a few strings. At least the thing was in-tune. This finally gets Luna to face you. “A musician?” “Hell no, I can’t play for shit.” You noodle through some of the Forbidden Riffs. Even in a dream, you manage to fuck up quite a few of them. Luna looks less than impressed. “I got this cheap piece of crap for a project I was doing in college. I was meaning to learn it properly some day, but obviously that’s not going to happen.” You stop yourself cold, and slowly put the guitar down. “I’m not coming back here, am I?” Luna’s expression immediately softens. “Our sister and her student have found not a way to send thee home. We have discovered not how thou came to us in the first place.” “I didn’t exactly lead a spectacular life here, but the little things bother me.” You gesture at your computer again. “Not gonna lie, I miss that thing a lot, and that’s not something I can rebuild in your world. I didn’t have many friends, but those I did have were good ones, and I miss them too. Every once in a while I’ll be working on a project and have a question I’d want to ask, and I can’t do that. I miss sending dumb edited pictures to friends I’ve never met over the internet.” You sigh as Luna delicately makes her way over to your side. “There are a lot of things about my new life that are better, I’ll admit. I was surprised by that, which is weird, considering my mode of humor when I was still here. This world sucks. But despite that – maybe because of it – we made a lot of ways to enjoy it. Human technology can be summed up as one long arc of making our shitty world nicer for ourselves. And for the most part, we did a damn good job. There’s so much I lost that I loved.” ”May we touch thee?” “What? I guess, whatever.” Luna stretches a wing out, hesitates a moment, then wraps it around your shoulders. You realize just how little physical contact you’ve received these past few months. ”We know, better than thou mayest imagine, the difficulties of an exile. We thought not that our world could be considered such a curse as that. We see now that thou hast lost that which is most important. Thou hast lost friendship, and our world hath not given much of it to fill such a void.” “Well, Twilight’s nice enough. Celestia relented on that one.” You look at Luna. She’s looking over the details of your face, but her neck is held at an odd angle. You guess it’s to put an arbitrary polite distance between your face and hers. “You know, your sister said you might be avoiding me. Said you were in charge of planning stuff, so I’d have to come to you if I wanted to know how my suggestions, and your silence meant you might not want to be around me. We don’t see face-to-face, in the real world, outside those evening meetings.” Luna frowned. “Anon, we have received no such suggestions of thine.” You rub your face with a hand. “She treats me like a child.” ”Our sister is very protective. We think thy position exists not to advise. Thy position exists to shield thyself.” “I got that impression.” You don’t even try to keep the sarcastic tone in check. ”If thou wishest, we could make time for thee. Late evening, or early night, we could discuss matters of state.” You shrug. “At least I’ll be able to fulfill my job description.” ”And Anon...” You look over to Luna when she trails off. She looks almost bashful. ”We are princess of dreams. We are not princess of friendship, as Twilight is. But we understand thy suffering, even if not its particulars. We shall endeavor to be a friend to thee as best we can.” You’ve never in your life heard something so formally declared. Considering the subject, it should have been preposterous. Luna, somehow, sold the idea as if it was perfectly ordinary. “I… thanks. I appreciate it.” Luna smiles, but it’s a sad one. “When we say we wish it was not needed, we hope thou understandest we mean not that we wish to be rid of thee.” “I, uh, I think I follow. Maybe.” Luna laughs. Compared to her stilted form of speech, it’s the most natural sounding thing to come out of her mouth. “Perhaps, with time spent in our company, thou mayest understand proper speech.” She pulls her wing from your shoulders, folding it against her back once more. “Come show us more of thy world. We are sure there are more wonders to this place than large exploding cans and distance friendship boxes.” “For as long as this dream lets me, sure. But first, lemme do something.” You grab the heavy paperweight that had earlier fallen off your desk and move over to your nightstand. After lifting the polished stone comically high over your head, you bring it down as hard as possible on your alarm clock. The thing caves in as if it were hollow. “Always wanted to do that. Princess, as a formal declaration of our friendship, I destroy my killer of dreams.” She smiles at you, warm and gentle. “We accept thy gesture with gratitude, Anon.” As palace guards close the great hall’s main doors behind the last batch of petitioners, you turn to Celestia’s throne. She wears the same serene smile you always see when she interacts with her subjects You, however, have been learning to read her eyes rather than her face. Her eyes tell a much more complicated story. “Your Highness.” She slowly turns her head to meet your gaze. “Your feelings for your subjects, even when hearing trivial matters, is touching.” She sighs and stands from her throne, turning and heading for a side door. “Anon, I’ve been doing this for a thousand years. I’ve spoken with hundreds of thousand of ponies about problems they’re desperate enough about to come to me with. Each one breaks my heart, even if I’ve heard their same problem a hundred times. Every day without a single petitioner showing up is a day I know I’ve played my part well. Those are the days I still live for.” You walk fast to catch up. Celestia’s the only pony you’ve met of comparable height and stride to yourself. “The last one is pretty simple, it’s just a matter of balancing logistics.” ”I already know how we can reallocate things. I’ll give my sister the instructions at this evening’s meeting.” You walk alongside her in silence for a time, looking at her eyes. She stares ahead unfocused, navigating her palace through instinct and muscle memory alone. You have a feeling she’s performed this daily ritual long before you’d arrived. You also have a feeling you’re the only person who’s ever accompanied her for it. In a long time, at least. “I have a question that may seem a bit, uh, weird.” ”Hmm?” “Has my counsel ever been useful? As you said, you’ve been doing this for a thousand years. Why keep me where I am?” She finally looks to you, eyes shifting minutely as she looks your face over. “I value your input.” “Even when it contributes nothing.” ”Then it’s affirmation, which is its own help.” She looks back ahead when the two of you reach a door at one side of the hallway’s end. She opens the door telekinetically and extends a wing to indicate the narrow stairwell inside. Once you start the ascent around the spiral, she follows you, closing the door again behind her. “I spoke to your sister last night. She thinks you put me here to protect me, rather than listen to me.” You can’t see her reaction, with her behind and below you, but she takes some time to respond. ”I think my sister’s view may be colored by her… archaic perspective.” You’ve been working on getting better at The Game. “That doesn’t say anything about the truth of her belief.” In the next several seconds of silence, you reach the top of the spiral staircase. A golden glow opens the door before you. On the other side is a tiny library, round like the tower it sat atop. At the far end is a balcony overlooking Canterlot. You step inside and aside to let Celestia in. She heads immediately for the open balcony, and you turn for the shelf that contains the work of history you’d been reading the past few days while Celestia took the time to organize her thoughts. ”Please let me show you something,” she says. You stop halfway to the shelf in question, then move to join her on the tiny balcony. There’s barely enough room for both of you to stand on it. She nods her head towards one side of the city. “Down there. Grey stallion, on the otherwise empty street.” It takes you some time to find the individual in question, but when you do, you nod. ”He is a good husband, wise father, and is clothed with strength and dignity. His herd’s business has fallen on hard times, so he takes to the streets in search of odd jobs, and utters no complaint. He wants nothing more than to look after his foals, but here he is.” “You know a lot about this random stallion.” She nods solemnly. “Once a week, he finds a tip pointing him somewhere that could use his talents.” You look back at Celestia. “Your doing?” She nods. “I don’t have the time to attend to our subjects’ every problem, but I do what little I can for those on my doorstep. Helping in those small ways makes me feel just as good as helping in big ways in my formal capacity.” “Huh. Noblesse oblige, I guess.” She looks at you and tilts her head. “Luna has been talking to you about the nobility?” You shake your head. “Just something we had too, back when we had monarchs and stuff. Kings leading their men in battle. Dukes and counts overseeing infrastructure projects. We have two units of measurement – the Rayl and the Rayleigh – named after a baron and his son, who devoted themselves to science. Kelvin was made a baron for his scientific and engineering contributions, got a unit of his own. It’s a long list.” ”It’s a philosophy I try to uphold. Princesses are made in this world. Magically elevated to the position for achievement, but that doesn’t mean you can turn away from how you got there. Twilight Sparkle spends her time being a force of friendship and harmony. Cadance, our adopted niece ruling another land, bolsters the emotions of her people. Luna soothes the troubled dreams of our subjects. I try my best to use my power to help ease their lives as I move the heavens that guide them.” “Sometimes going so far as to leave personal notes in mailboxes.” She chuckles. “My reputation as a prankster comes with a certain set of skills I occasionally put to more productive purposes.” You furrow your brows. “You’re known for pranks?” Celestia, for the first time that you’ve seen, visibly flinches. “You don’t know?” “I’ve never even heard of it. I’ve never seen you prank anyone. I haven’t had any jokes played on me that wasn’t a rude comment from a guard since I’ve arrived.” She stares at you, slack-jawed for a minute, then throws her head back and laughs. “What am I doing with you?!” “Well, that’s sorta what I was asking. You put me in a position I’m not qualified for, and when we interact outside of it, you’re doting on me more than anything.” Celestia recovers her composure and looks back to the city. “Luna probably meant I was protecting you physically. Her heart’s of a time where stallions were either far in front or far behind, absolute protectors or in need of absolute protection. That’s not true; I know you’re probably stronger than most of the ponies you’d run into. I meant to protect you mentally. I put you under my wing and at my side in court to give you time to adjust, and to show you this world was worth living in.” You stare at her as that sinks in. “You mean you knew I’d never be going home again?” ”I don’t know for sure, but I wanted to prepare you, just in case.” She shakes her head sadly. “Instead, you’re trying to bring your world here with you, through your little science projects.” “Would you rather I not?” She was quiet for a moment, then said softly, “I don’t know.” She shook herself then in some sort of full-body flinch. “I want to do everything in my power to make sure you have a place in our world. But on the other hand, you’re precious, Anon, and truly unique. You come from a land far beyond anything we know, with different ideas and customs and practices. You have so much you can share with us.” “Is… does that mean you want me to continue?” She looks at you and smiles. “It means I should be asking you, and should have from the start. What would make you happy?” You look back out across the city. “You help your people, in little ways they can’t imagine. I hope someday my creations may help you, in ways you can’t imagine.” Her smile broadens. “I’d like that very much.” The two of you watch the city for a time in silence, until the sun begins to set. Celestia turns away then, back into the library. “It seems even after a thousand years of life, I still have things to learn, even about myself. I’ve been treating you poorly. I hope to put an end that starting tonight.” She walks to the door and opens it for you. “What does that mean?” You move to her side. “Just letting you know, I’m not a fan of pranks.” She smiles again, but says nothing, extending her wing to point you down the stairs. You start your descent, but call out behind you when you hear the door close above, with Celestia’s hooves against the stone stairs following you. “And I told you how dangerous my projects can be if you don’t respect them!” ”I promise I wont mess with them, Anon.” Once the two of you arrived back at the side corridor running down this wing of the palace, Celestia leads you towards the chamber that served what you called ‘The Royal Shift Change.’ She opens the large doors to the conference room for you. Luna is already sitting at the far end of the table. Prince Blueblood sits in the chair to the right of Celestia’s end of the table, as the current master of the royal household. For all the stallion disparagement you hear, you’ve noticed they’re trusted implicitly with any and all domestic operations. As Celestia sits at her end of the table, you sit in the chair to her left. Other seats are occupied by unicorn representatives of the various dukes that managed Equestria’s regions. Celestia clears her throat. “First order of business; Prince Blueblood, Anon is to have direct and unfettered access to the royal stores and palace facilities, without escort, from now on. Please familiarize all staff with appropriate etiquette.” Across the table, Luna gives you a sly smile. You give her the slightest nod you think would still be noticed. ”We request also a chamber like this suitable for discussing certain plans with Anon,” Luna then says. “It shall be cleared for the first hour after every moonrise. Canst thou arrange this, dear Prince?” Blueblood nods while taking notes on a pad, but he doesn’t look happy about the commands. Celestia looks between you and Luna, then smiles and shakes her head. “It seems, sister, that you realized more about my… mistake than I suspected.” Luna’s only acknowledgment was a dip of her head. ”Now, for Appleloosa,” Celestia continues. “Please inform Duke Silversaddle that we received a delegation from one of his outlying towns. In accordance with their wishes, we are sending relief. Please allow us three days to organize a course of action.” The emissary bows her head. Celestia looks to you, next. “Anon.” You’re shocked; she never addressed you in these meetings before. “Yes, Your Highness?” ”If Prince Bluebood finds his space for you and Luna tonight, I’d like you two to discuss the logistics of that request.” You blink in astonishment, and glance over to Luna before looking back to Celestia. “Ah, with respect, why me?” ”I’ve said I was interested in your outside perspectives. I want to compare your plan with mine. Perhaps by looking over both, we can find one better than either.” “I’m, uh, I’ll be honored to.” Is this her idea of a prank? No, her eyes never lie, and they say this is genuine. Celestia looks to the Appleloosan emissary, then. “Please have the Duke send us a short summary of available resources for my adviser here to look over. I want to make sure we have the most up-to-date information.” You’re starting to wonder if you should have ever opened your mouth. Be careful what you wish for, indeed. 4 Give And Take“What do you mean, ‘no’?” The palace smithy mare looks up at you with a flat expression. ”I mean no, brother. You got brain problems too?” “Why the fuck not?” ”Unstallionlike language ain’t doing you any favors in my book.” “I don’t give a damn!” ”Now you’re just being hysterical.” “Didn’t you fuckwits get the memo?” ”Yep, and I don’t care. I got limited time and resources here. ‘S far as I’m concerned, I ain’t got enough’a either to indulge your little pet fantasies. ‘Zecutive decision.” Even with her forelegs propping herself up on the edge of her desk, she still doesn’t come to your eye level. Despite this, she wears the most contemptuous yet complacent expression you’ve seen on a pony. Never have you met someone so short yet so smug. “It’s not even a big order.” ”It will be, after all the times you gotta come back because you screwed it up.” “I’m working with Princess Twilight, you really think the measurements are wrong?” ”This is in your writing, not hers, so absolutely. Stallions ain’t good with numbers.” “I’m the one who came up with them!” The earth pony puts on an exaggerated show of thinking, dropping one of her forelegs to the floor while caressing her chin with the other hoof. “Well, just maybe they could be right. There’s always a chance you screwed up writing down your screwed up measurements. A few of them might have ended up being what you actually want.” She resumes her propped-up position. “Too bad what you want ain’t what you need.” “If you really want, I’ll have you look over the math yourself.” ”What you need ain’t in the math, brother. What you need’s in a mare’s house, and my forge ain’t that.” “Jesus christ.” ”Poor thing’s deluded enough to make up words. Now quit bothering me, I’ve got a heavy workload.” “I’ll give you a heavy workload...” ”Innuendo ain’t doing you any favors either, brother.” “What?” ”Typical stallion, trying to sleep their way out of what’s good for them.” She leans forward on her forelegs and glares at you. “No pony would bed a damn dirty ape like you anyway, not even in the dead of heat. Scram.” If she were a pegasus, you wager you could break her neck right there, but even then it would just make your problems worse. You spin on a heel and storm out of the smithy. This ordeal was, at least, a step in the right direction. She actually spoke to you. The carpenter had just brushed you off, telling you to talk to the quartermare. The quartermare is the one who’d sent you to all the shop bosses in the first place. The tailor had been the only one to listen. You finally have a set of clothes that isn’t patterned after a suit. You find your way back to the stairs that climb to the area of the palace containing your workshop. A nearby guard stares at you; it was your third time through here in half an hour. Fuck them, too. A rumor had started spreading that you’d have killed Twilight if not for Celestia’s timely intervention, and you’re pretty sure of its vector. Odd timing, considering Twilight has been spending more and more time with you, working or otherwise. Maybe that’s the reason, what do you know? Catty stallions and dismissive mares, what did you do to deserve this? Ah, right. For once in your life, you made the mistake of asking for responsibility. With all this runaround, you can’t even dodge it. You finally reach your workshop. Twilight’s there, her hindquarters turned to you as she looks over something on the big square workbench in the room’s center. You change your stride to make as little noise as possible with each footfall. She’s so engrossed in whatever she’s looking at that she doesn’t notice you come up alongside her and flick some of the primaries of a wing. “Hey.” She jumps a good two feet away from you, looking at you wild-eyed. You did have a bit more edge on your greeting than you wanted. Twilight tilts her head as she looks you over, once she’s recovered her wits. “Is something wrong?” “I’m a big disciple of the ancient tradition of ‘fake it ‘til you make it’. I’m trying to fake being calm.” She looks at your balled-up fists. “You’re doing a bad job of it.” “You’re not supposed to be able to read my body language yet.” ”I’m a quick study.” You screw up you face in a confused grimace. “Is that a-” Twilight’s wearing a slight smile. “Heh, a’ight. You got me with that one.” ”Seriously, what’s wrong?” You relax your fists, stretching and working your fingers. “In the past couple days I’ve gone from benign curiosity to object of scorn in this palace. Turns out asking to be taken seriously has its drawbacks.” ”Are they refusing to help you?” You nod glumly. ”I could talk to them, they wouldn’t-” “No. Stop. I didn’t get out from under Celestia’s wing just to huddle under yours.” Twilight extends a wing, looks at it quizzically, then back at you. Her face suddenly lights up. “Oh, right. Sheltering. Common saying.” “Uh, yeah.” ”Sorry, I’m just thinking about, well, this.” She starts circling around the table to you, staring at the large sheet of paper that had occupied her attention when you entered. “You literally have wings, don’t tell me that’s not a natural turn of phrase.” ”I wasn’t born with them, Anon.” “Huh. Wild.” She reaches your side. ”Anyway, I was thinking about this… thing. You describe it as a device like the generator we’ve been working on, basically. I get that it works backwards – power in to turn instead of turning to power out – but that’s just it. Isn’t that all? What’s giving you trouble?” Ah, the servomotors whose parts you’re denied. “It needs a feedback sensor. Tells it where it is. I can’t make Hall sensors or photodetectors so I need to make these dumb inter-meshing electrical contacts, embedded in two glass plates that rub against each other. The miniaturization spell we’ve been testing will work well for that, but they wear down in time, and making them smaller makes them thinner, so they’ll wear out faster.” ”And you want to avoid wear.” “Just like in everything we’re doing. Precision’s the whole point. It’s like when you move a leg, your body knows where the leg is still. That’s what it is. Kinesthesia. Motor needs to know where it is for appropriate precision. If it wears down, it loses precision. Besides, I don’t have the means to make a controller for it.” Twilight stares at the page for a few more moments. “The come-to-life spell can account for the controller.” “We need twelve for a single hand. That’s with only three fingers and a thumb.” She looks down at your hand. “No, we’ll do it like some birds. Two fixed and two digits that could be opposed or not.” “Alright. Add a thirteenth for the wrist. That’s a lot of information channels for the spell to track just for activation. Another thirteen for position sensing. You said the more the spell needs to manage, the harder it is to cast.” ”Anon, if there’s no other way, then we’ll make do. It’ll be difficult to animate, but not impossible. It’ll still be a lot easier than if I tried to cast the spell responsible for the motion itself as well.” There was still another problem here she’d told you. You can’t remember; your mind felt overfull. Too many other things you’re ignoring. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. We’re not even here yet, we...” You wipe your face, then reach out to roll the paper up. “Getting ahead of ourselves.” You put it on a shelf underneath the desk, with all the other large sheets containing your designs and calculations. “We can’t make any because we’re not going to get the mounting hardware or shells.” ”I’ll go talk to them-” “And what would that solve? If anything they’d respect me even less. At least leave me my pride, damnit.” ”If there’s no other way...” “Do you think this was set up?” She looks at you, confused. “Sorry?” “Like, is this a test or something? Is Celestia getting back at me for challenging my isolation?” ”A test maybe, but revenge definitely not. That’s not her way. And I don’t know what she’d be testing you on.” “Yeah, that doesn’t make sense. She wanted to shelter me, so I don’t think she’d suddenly drop it all in my lap. But the timing’s suspicious, Twilight. All this shit started happening just two days ago, and it all happened at once. Maybe it’s just one pony behind it.” She shook her head. “I guess it’s possible...” Then she looks back up at you. “But don’t you have other things you need to be doing than inventing conspiracies?” “Don’t remind me. I’m still working on the Appleloosa thing. I can make and remake systems, but there being living, breathing peo- er, ponies involved, that’s, uh, it’s throwing me. It’s a totally different kind of pressure. Even with Luna’s help something’s just not clicking. It should be as easy as just moving things around, but these reserves are in-place for reasons. Should I just be taking them? Will the ponies I’m inconveniencing dislike Celestia for it? I can’t have my first job in her service bring her disdain.” You sit heavily in your chair and slump over the desk, head in your hands. “I’m not cut out for this. I was never management material. Celestia made a mistake.” Twilight looks at you sidelong. “Don’t say that.” “Well then I made a mistake in making her think she made a mistake.” Twilight looks you up and down, then sighs. “Anon, I’ll tell you something it took me a long time to understand, so accept the hard-earned lesson without argument. Celestia is generous with, ah, mistakes. I don’t think she’s going to punish you for not getting it right on the first try.” “Mmph.” You look over and meet her eyes. ”I’m worried about you.” You manage a thin smile. “Join the club. There’s two other members already, and if there hadn’t been, there’d be no reason to worry in the first place.” She snorts. “Not three? You have ponies looking out for you, but that doesn’t matter if you don’t look out for yourself.” To this you don’t reply. Twilight looks at you for a few more moments, before shaking her head and walking back around the table, this time to where the half-assembled generator sat. Her hooves against the floor echo around the room. You’d never really appreciated how far away you could hear a pony coming or going in this palace. Your bolt upright in your seat, drawing a strange look from Twilight. How did you never think of that? Celestia’s ‘prankster skills’… Ponies can’t really be stealthy, not inside a mostly stone palace like this. Any stealth is good stealth; she must have found a way to get around unnoticed. You don’t have hard hooves, you have fleshy feet. And socks, to boot. You just needed to know your likely targets and their nighttime schedules, and a capable light source for navigation. Fortunately, one of the few ponies who liked you would know all the goings-on of the palace at night; that could cover the former. The latter was sitting in a drawer in your room, as it had been since a week after your arrival. Just needed power. “One thing at a time, Twilight. Lets finish that generator.” “Alright, now duplicate this part here; commutators tend to wear out so we’ll need to pull this side out and put a new one in once in awhile, if we can’t fix it. Other side shouldn’t need it.” Twilight looks it over. The requested part represented about a third of the whole structure. ”It’d be easier if we just had the parts in question. Duplication is more difficult the more complex the object is.” “Uh, alright. Yeah we can get this apart again easily enough.” You dismantle that third of the machine quickly; you’d designed it for rapid breakdown, but mostly it was thanks to the experience of having to rebuild it several times before already, when Twilight asked about little details or wanted to record something. By now, she has more notes on this thing than you do. Once the central assembly is removed, she puts her horn near it, and squeezes her eyes shut. While the object and her horn both glow, nothing happens immediately. You look over to her and notice her straining. You reach out to stop her when suddenly. POP. BANG. A rapid displacement of air is followed by the sound of parts hitting the workbench. You look back and see a perfect duplicate of the entire center assembly, sitting on its side next to the original. “Well, that’s the biggest thing I’ve seen you clone so far.” ”Don’t ask me to do much more than that.” Twilight wobbles on her feet slightly. “Can’t think of anything I’d need to. Well, as long as you have a spell that can repair things.” ”Of course I do.” “That’s just what I like to hear.” The two of you rebuild the section, and place it back in its proper position. “Remember the power levels we agreed on.” ”I have to do this by intuition, Anon. I can’t give an exact output any more than you can push on something with an exact force.” You smile at her. “I have faith.” After a moment of staring at you, she smiles back. ”I’ll get it done.” She looks at the generator, and closes her eyes once more. The small shaft starts spinning, very slowly at first, then increasing. You can hear the other parts spin as well, just as they should. Even if it was way noisier than you’d like. Eventually, Twilight’s horn stops glowing. The magenta glow on the shaft is replaced with a softer, golden one. ”And done,” she says, then looks at you and beams. “Should last for quite awhile!” “Well, it ain’t over ‘til… I’m not sure if you have a version of that saying.” You get up from your chair and head over to the door connecting your workshop to your bedroom. Twilight follows you, but stops at the door. “Ah, Anon, are we done here?” “Nah, sec, lemme get something.” She remains outside your door as you move to our nightstand and pull out a drawer. You grab your dead smartphone and show it to Twilight as you walk back out of the room. Her eyes light up. “Anon, is that-” “Yeah, and this is how we’re going to see if everything we did meant anything.” You walk back to the workbench, and pick up a loose, hastily-arranged cable made from a duplicated end of your USB headphones, attached to posts on a boxy extension off one side of the generator. You plug it into your phone, and put the phone on the table. Twilight’s face is close enough to the dead screen that her breath is fogging it up. You’re just trying to look as relaxed as possible as you sit back on your chair. After a couple seconds that feel like hours, the screen brightens slightly. An empty battery sign appears, flashing yellow. ”Yes!” Twilight jumps back, then starts trotting in place. ”Yesyesyesyesyes-” You lean back and release a breath you didn’t know you were holding, then look over to Twilight’s infectious reveling. Then you jump over and sweep her up in a big hug. “Holy fuck, I can’t believe we actually did it!” When you release her again, she’s frozen in mid-stride, two hooves planted and two raised. “Oh, ah, sorry.” She puts all four on the floor and looks at you. She’s still grinning like a madmare. ”I’m happy I could help.” “I couldn’t have done it without you.” She walks back to the table, staring at the phone’s screen while the battery charging animation loops. “Ah, this generator is a little more noise than I’d like. And we still need to get it under the desk.” As soon as you finish speaking, the whole contraption – including your phone – starts floating, surrounded by a magenta glow. Twilight places them all under your desk, on one side of the big shelf, after you scramble to move your planning paper and notes. When you stand again, a small pink dome forms over the whole thing, significantly reducing what noise isn’t transferred through the desk’s frame. You poke the barrier. It feels like glass. “I’m, uh, I gotta get in there to actually use the power.” ”Don’t worry, I can take it down as easily as I put it up.” “I’ll have to get you for that.” ”Yeah.” She suddenly looks at the ground, realizing what that meant. “Ah. Sorry.” “Nah, don’t worry about it. I don’t think I was going to do anything with it for a bit anyway. Like we were saying, I have other things to worry about right now.” You tap the charging phone. “But having this back is going to be a big help. Calculator, camera, voice recorder, notepad, it’s got all sorts of useful stuff.” ”I can’t wait to see it work.” “I’ll show you everything, when it’s ready. ‘Til then, I don’t know, let's do something. Kinda hungry, honestly.” Twilight smiles, then heads for the exit. “I’ll treat.” You can’t stop grinning as you follow her out. You’ll show those fuckwits in the shops, soon enough. First, it’s time to blow off steam with your friend. 5 Night Moves”Anon?” You and Celestia are once more on the balcony of her private library, as the sun begins to set. You’re sitting on the balcony, leaning against the arch connecting it to the tiny private library, almost finished with an accounting of the lives of the ‘Six Pillars.’ Celestia’s also sitting on the balcony, but she’s looking out across the city. “What’s up?” “I haven’t been seeing you at breakfast, the last couple days.” She finally looks to you, smiling. ”You used to eat on such a regular schedule even I thought it was strange, and I’m the one telling the sun when to rise.” “Well, school and work will do that. Just sorta got into the habit of waking up at a certain time. With Princess Luna helping me, figured I’d try to stay up a little later. Her duties make scheduling hard outside our normal meetings.” She paws at the floor with a hoof, then looks back out across the city. “I never thought I’d miss how grumpy you are just after waking up.” After gauging the amount of daylight left, you close the book and stand up. “Never heard that one before.” “It added an unpredictable element to a routine the palace staff has down to an artform. With you around, I don’t have to try to trip them up myself.” With the book in its place on a shelf, you look at her back. Her strange misty mane’s greens and blues clash with the sunset’s oranges and yellows. “You do that to your staff?” She looks back at you over her side, her long neck craning around, and grins. “I have to keep my little ponies alert and prepared for the unexpected.” “Not a bad policy.” She stands and walks over to you. “You never told me why you join me up here.” You have to stop and think back on the first time you did. “You never dismissed me, that first day. You just got up and walked away. Figured I’d follow.” ”Surely that’s not all.” “Well, you come up here just to watch the city. You’re not the kind of per-, uh, pony to just do nothing. I’m guessing you come up here for some time to think. After being alone surrounded by a hundred ponies talking at you, thought maybe you might like some company with no ponies at all in silence.” Celestia smiles, then turns for the stairs down. “You’re a thoughtful one.” You wave the compliment off. “Eh, it gives me time to catch up on some reading.” Both of you make your way through the palace to the meeting room, for the daily royal shift change. On top of the usual ponies from the last several days, Celestia’s assistant Raven Inkwell shows her face again. She’s been gone the past week to some far-flung locale for her duties as archivist, retrieving some document you couldn’t even pretend to care about. Now that she’s back, the seating arrangement’s changed again, putting you a little further from Celestia’s side. Raven smiles at you and telekinetically pulls your chair out. Considering you’ve spent the last few days just shy of persona non grata, this comes as a bit of a shock. You note Prince Blueblood’s pointed look at her. ”Let us get right down to business,” Celestia says. “What will we do for Appleloosa?” “That could have gone better.” Celestia comes around your side. “Your aggressive timetable was inspired.” “Too bad that’s the only thing that worked. All my quantities were off.” ”It was a useful starting point for a new plan.” You shrug, still looking at the ground as you stand outside the hall. Celestia smiles, almost apologetically. “I didn’t think you’d have everything on your first try. Your input was still very useful.” “If I’m going to do this job, I need to do better.” Celestia tilts her head slightly. “Perhaps your standards are a little high.” You finally meet her gaze, fighting down a brief surge of irritation.“All due respect, Princess, but that’s only a more polite phrasing of what I’ve been hearing for three days now.” She pulls her head back into that straight-necked posture you’ve come to associate with catching her off guard. “Is it, now?” “Don’t you mind that, I have a plan.” She leans in again, a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. “Do you, now?” “Yeah, so don’t you worry your regal little head over it.” ”I’ll take your word for it, Anon.” She grins, then turns to leave. “I’ll let you get to it, then.” As she walks away, Luna walks up on your other side. “What doth our sister speak to thee about?” “Just a bit of mischief.” Luna frowns. “Our sister is quite adept at mischief.” “Wish I had a bit of time to study under her, then.” “As thou speakest of time, Anon...” You turn to face her. She looks chagrined. ”We are afraid we will not be able able to make our usual meeting. We are hosting guests, this night.” “Ah, that’s fine. I got something to take care of anyway.” Luna shuffles in place. “Anon, dost thou know the great problem of thy schedule?” “My, uh, what?” ”As thou stayest awake to makest time to see us, thou losest time for us to visit thee in thy dreams.” “I’m like two hallways down and a flight of stairs away. Come see me when I’m awake.” She shakes her head. “Affairs of state keepeth us busy.” You sigh and run a hand through your hair. “You know what? That makes sense. Do you want me to go back?” “Not at all. We appreciate our discussions.” Her expression brightens “We both learn so much!” You chuckle at her enthusiasm. “That’s true, yeah. I know I didn’t get to contribute much back there, but even that was thanks to your help.” ”We enjoy our time with thee, Anon. We wish for more of it.” “Maybe when this all settles down a bit. I did get tossed to the sharks, after all.” Luna frowns. “We are not sure what thou meanest by this.” “Really? Of all the sayings we have in common, that’s one you don’t have?” ”Perhaps it is just our circumstances.” “You going to tell me about those sometime?” Luna takes a step back, a distant look in her eyes. “Sometime.” Then she snaps back to the here and now. “We must prepare for our guests. We wish you luck on that which thou needest attend to.” You give her a wave as she turns to depart, then make way for the wing of the palace containing the working spaces and supply areas. A guard is standing in the middle of that wing’s central hallway. He eyes you as you approach, but only speaks when you stop in front of him. “This wing is closed, Anon. Everypony’s gone home.” You look past him, down the hall. Sure enough, there is no activity. “Can’t let me by anyway, just for a couple minutes?” ”No.” You stare at him, expecting some snide remark. He holds your gaze, saying nothing further “A’ight, good to know.” You shrug and turn to walk away, towards the stairs leading to your workshop. When you reach your personal retreat, Twilight’s looking over more plans on your desk. Her expression brightens when she notices you enter. ”Oh, Anon! I think I figured out some ideal segment ratios here, after looking over some books on avian anatomy and gauging different likely object sizes. I was going to start running some numbers based on the equations you sent me, but...” She looks down at your phone, sitting on the corner of the table. ”I wanted to test this thing’s calculator, but can’t seem to use it.” You walk by her and pick it up thumbing the power button and unlocking the screen. “The touchscreen will only work with my fingers, most likely. At least with any level of precision. I could probably eventually get the hands we’re making to work with it too, but for now just my fingers.” Her bright expression falters. “No ponies can use it?” “Probably not. There’s a grid inside the screen forming an electrostatic field, and my finger interferes with that field in certain ways. That’s how the phone knows I’m touching it. I doubt your hooves have the right electrical properties for it, and your magic probably wont either, unless you learn how to manipulate electromagnetism directly.” You pause for a moment. “Honestly that’s a bad idea, at least regarding the phone. It’s an extremely complex device, you might damage it. I might be able to set up a test rig for you to play with, if you ever suspect or discover magic can do that. A Van de Graaff generator should be enough.” ”A whatnow?” “Collects charge through a spinning belt. Real simple to make, big arcing sparks are very visually impressive. Useful if you need a ton of voltage, and quite safe to play with.” Twilight chews on this while you put your phone in your pocket, then head towards the far door that leads to your bedroom. “I want to get a nap in, if you don’t mind. I just about pulled an all-nighter and I need to get up real late for something tonight.” ”Hey, wait! What about m-” She screws her face up a moment- “What about our work?” “I really do need to take care of something.” You stop at your door, then turn back to her. “Tomorrow. I promise.” She looks down and paws at the floor. “I’ve been monopolizing your time lately, haven’t I?” You walk back over to her, and crouch in front of her. She’s too tall to be at eye-level here, but you didn’t want to look down at her like you normally do standing. “Look, you’re the only one I can talk to about this stuff, and you’ve been a wonderful guide to society at a ground level, around here. My only complaint is that I don’t have more time to spare.” You reach out and ruffle Twilight’s mane. She leans into it a little, but you catch yourself and pull your hand away again. Why do you keep treating her like that? She’s royalty, and putting aside educational differences, probably smarter than you. It might have something to do with the fact she’s as cute as a four foot tall cat, while the other two alicorns you interact with regularly fall within normal human height ranges. You sigh and stand up again. “I have three princesses and two jobs demanding my attention. I don’t need you to leave me alone, I need more time in a day.” ”Sooo… do princesses demanding your attention have anything to do with what you’re doing later tonight?” You can’t help but bark out a laugh, loud enough to startle her. Turning back for your room, you wave a hand dismissively. “As if any pony would be interested in me like that. The smith was probably right about that at least; I’m a freak to you.” ”Don’t say tha-” “Nah, it’s fine. I don’t hold any illusions otherwise. I’m resigned to my fate.” You reach the door, open it, and turn back to her again. She’s staring at you with a look of… incredulity? “Seriously, thanks for looking past my weird appearance and habits, to work with me on all this. It’s been a nice taste of home, working on this stuff, and I’m glad I can do it with you. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She gives you that baffled stare for a few more seconds, then flashes a warm smile. “Yeah. I’ll see you then.” She turns to leave with that curious bouncing trot you’ve come to associate with her happiness. You make your way to your bed, strip down quickly, then collapse onto it. After fishing your phone out of your discarded pants, you set an alarm for midnight. You’ve got some snooping around to do. It’s pitch black in the palace, late at night. You’re dressed down in the softest clothes you had on you. No shoes, just socks. You’ve never felt more comfortable since you’d arrived. You listen to the sound of a guard retreating down the hallway that your workshop’s situated off of. Luna’s guards, you were pretty sure, could see in the dark. More likely to be mares too, you’ve noticed. In fact, you’ve never seen that particular variety – one with no analogue in your home’s mythology, for once – anywhere but the castle. A recessive phenotype, or some endangered race? They were no quieter than the ordinary ponies, at least, and you could use that to your advantage. Once you couldn’t hear the guard anymore, you slipped out of your workshop, closing the door behind you as quietly as possible. You marvel at how well-maintained the doors in the palace are; you never had any reason to notice before now. You’re down the hall in a flash, half power walking and half skating on the smooth floor. Once you reach the stairs to the lower floor, you pause and listen for a moment. No guards to be heard. After retrieving your phone from your pocket, you flip on its flashlight. The bright white illuminates the stairway, allowing you down safely. At the bottom, you stop to listen again, but still hear no hoof-beats. On the solid stone floor of this level, you could run flat-out and still make less noise than a pony’s leisurely stroll. Bit cold through the socks, though. You sprint half the length of the side corridor, but slow near the large full-height windows that replace the solid wall for its remaining length. The view from them quite literally stops you in your tracks. With only your smaller bedroom windows, you never really took the time to appreciate the night. Fuck it, you had time. You sit in a corner of the window’s frame on the floor, looking up and out. Canterlot, at night, is astonishingly beautiful. The prodigal volume of gold used in the city’s architecture, cheerful yet garish by day, glimmers with moonlight and starlight to throw thousands more subtle points of light by night, provoking a sense of childlike wonder at constellations of land-bound stars mirroring those above. With no light pollution, the sky is as clear as pristine wilderness back home, its background color the deepest blue, with even the dimmest stars visible. You’ve never seen so many of them in your life. Bright moonlight provided the only illumination, bathing everything in a pale glow that lends an ethereal air to the cityscape. Its whites look blue. Its purples appear as darker shades that no longer seem to clash against the green forest and grasslands of lower altitudes beyond the city’s mountaintop siting, barely visible above the palace walls as a thin band below the horizon. Star motifs seem very common in pony decoration, naming, and even in the identity-affirming markings that they receive as some sort of magical rite of passage. You wonder if, culturally, they have some affinity for the night. Perhaps this is the way Canterlot’s architecture was always intended to be viewed. You’ll have to see if you can get a pony to escort you around the city proper one night. You only shake yourself free of your awe when you hear hooves from around a corner back where you first entered, near the stairway. Beautiful as the moonlight is, it is your enemy as long as guards are around. After darting across the hall away from the windows, you sidle along the solid wall opposite them until you turn a corner yourself, once more taking advantage of your nigh-silent movement. Continuing onward by the light of your phone, you encounter no further obstacles before reaching the palace’s work wing. A guard patrols the main hallway, from what you can hear. You stop just before the intersection with that hall, until you hear them walk the other way. Poking your head out, you confirm the guard’s back is to you, then tiptoe your way over to the palace smithy with your phone off. If they were going to think you petty and catty like the rest of the colts, you may as well commit the crime. You manage to slip inside without notice. Once in, you turn your light back on. Darkness aside, it doesn’t look much different from when you were here a couple days ago. Sweeps of your phone’s flashlight over the walls and shelves show much the same clutter as then. You stick your head into what you assume is an office, off to one side. Boxes of various sizes occupy more shelves, each with a slip of paper in front. On a hunch, you start looking for a box of a similar size needed to contain the parts you ordered. Three likely candidates stand out. The first paper indicates it’s an order for the guard’s training grounds, for a number of arrowheads. The ergonomics of a pony – even a pegasus – holding a bow confounds you. Unicorns only? The second appears to be for utensils or some sort of cookware. The third box, however, has a paper labeled MISC ITEMS – ANONYMOUS Ah-ha! At the bottom of the note is more scrawled writing: ORDER HELD PER HH PB. You lift the lid on the box just enough to shine your phone’s light inside. Sure enough, the parts are all there. That bitch already had them, and just wouldn’t give them to you! Briefly considering – and then discarding – several ideas on how to leave your mark here, you stalk out of the office, turning your light off and listening for the guard outside. After confirming they’re once more facing away, you step back out and hurry down the hall back to where you came from. You have to find out what HH PB means. It should be easy enough during the day, but you’re on a roll, so why stop now? Scooting down hallways, dodging guards, it’s almost too easy when you’re the quietest thing in the building. Up a floor, across the majority of the central structure. This palace is way bigger than you thought, or at least it seems at night. You have to make conscious effort not to stop in a long gallery to admire the night’s view again. You arrive at what you’re pretty sure is the administrative wing, another wall of windows forming one side of the three-way intersection. The only room you’ve been to in this area is the library, and that’s at the hall’s other end. You’re going to have to figure out what each room here actually does. You turn the hall to get started. With the moonlight at your back, you come face-to-face with a guard. To her credit, the mare doesn’t even flinch. You, however, jump a full two feet back, then rub your face with a hand once you’ve recovered your wits. “Well, shit. I can’t hear you if you don’t move.” ”Noted. Just what are you doing out here?” “Oh, y’know. Checking the place out.” You gesture to the windows behind you. “It’s drop-dead gorgeous outside and I can’t help myself.” She tilts her head, looking you over. “I believe the gallery would be suited to your tastes. You can find it back-” Her eyes reach your feet, and you can see her slit pupils go wide. “Uh, back, ah, sirmustyoureallybesoindecent-” Muffled laughter draws both of your attention to a pillar at one corner of the intersection. ”Who goes there?!” From behind the pillar walks Princess Celestia. Her horn is glowing, and her hooves are wreathed in its golden glow. They don’t make contact with the floor; she’s ‘walking’ six inches above it. The guard goes ramrod straight. “Apologizes, your Majesty.” ”Oh, come now. You’re just doing your job.” You find you’ve unconsciously straightened, yourself. “Ah, hey Princess. Wasn’t expecting to see you around this late at night.” She eyes you and grins. “I could say the same. When I realized what you were doing, I couldn’t help but observe. I thought you were all business, but now I see you have your own flights of whimsy, with choice hours to pursue them.” “I did say I had a plan.” ”One that involves taunting my sister’s guards with certain footwear for the sake of silent passage, it seems.” The guard, with some effort, manages to stand even straighter. Celestia leans in close to the guard, “Do you have something to say?” You swear you can see the poor mare sweat. ”It seems, ah, like, er, you have everything underrr… control. I’ll, uh, be going now.” The mare crosses her legs then executes what you’re pretty sure is an exact one-eighty, marching back down the hall double-time, turning the corner at its end and going out of sight. Celestia looks at you. “No guards around now, are there? You’re free to carry on.” She winks at you. Your mouth opens and closes a couple times as you try to find words to articulate the dozen questions vying to be first out of your mouth, before you give up and simply nod. By the time you reach the first door, Celestia’s nowhere in sight. You’re not going to be able to shake the feeling of being watched for the rest of the night. The first door is locked. After making sure the guardmare is still out of sight, you walk down to the next door. This one is unlocked. When you open the door, you find the room inside lit. And occupied. You’re on your fourth cup of coffee in as many hours, pulling an all-nighter to catch up on work that piled up while you were gone. Archivist and secretary to royalty, weary but loving your job all the same, wanting to be nothing else despite the mountain of paperwork confronting you on your return. Life never gets easier for Raven Inkwell, but you’re used to it. Now you’re confronted with Anonymous, estranged ambassador of a fabled kind, a strange stallion of stranger ideas, standing in your office’s doorway in the middle of the night with socks on. Oh my. “Hello, Anon. Please, have a seat. I do not have enough coffee in me to deal with you right now, but I will amend that posthaste.” He babbles a bit, not stepping in or out. “I, uh, didn’t mean to-” “I insist. Maybe I can help you find… whatever you look for, at this time of night.” You’re already turning away to pour another cup of coffee, and top off your own. You concentrate on the cups and focus your magic, quickly heating them to an exacting temperature. Anon, meanwhile, finally decides to enter your office, closing the door behind him, and being careful to make sure it latches quietly. You float his cup and a saucer to match over to a side table near the chair he selected to settle into. “Help yourself, I have more where it came from. What brings you around at this absurd hour?” He purses his lips as he collects his thoughts, then looks at his cup. You both take a sip. ”This is some good stuff,” Anon says. You gesture to the massive tankard you’d been pouring from. “I keep my own supply.” ”Remind me to stop by more often, then.” “As long as you tell me why you stopped by in the first place.” ”You know, maybe you can help me. Saw a note, had some sort of code on it. ‘HH PB’. Any ideas what it means?” “Ah. Did you see it as a signature or something similar? That would mean Prince Blueblood.” Anon sat back in the chair and was silent a moment. Then, quietly, “Now that’s interesting.” You read another page and sign off on its contents during the time he thinks over this factoid, levitating the paper into your ‘done’ pile and floating over another one. ”Has he said anything about me to you, since you came back?” “Nothing I felt inclined to acknowledge.” ”What’s that supposed to mean?” “His Highness may oversee the palace’s household staff, but I work for the Princesses on the bureaucratic side, and I occupy a very favorable position, at that. Simply put, I do not have to listen to a word he says.” Anon snorts in amusement at that last part. Normally stallions would get peevish you dismissed one who had found his way into a position of authority. You’re glad Anon has as little time for that nonsense as you do. That he cut straight to the point was nice, as well. You’re starting to see what Celestia sees in him. ”I take it he didn’t have anything nice to say.” “He rarely does.” ”Worse than usual, then.” “He did seem rather peeved at your sudden increase in status. Did something happen while I was away?” ”Your boss tossed my ass into the fire. Gave me run of the place and set me to work on some relief project, three day deadline. You came back on the third day, that’s what we went over in today’s meeting.” You take a long look at him as you chew on that. It had to be more; Blueblood would be familiar with advisors coming and going. Celestia changes them out faster than she runs through students. If Anon knew that, though, he seemed oblivious. ”’Nother thing. Why is your boss still awake, and stalking me through the halls?” You sigh. “Curiosity, I imagine.” ”Sneaking around her own castle?” “When you live as long as she has, you can afford yourself some whimsical excursions.” ”Think she’s still out there?” “After you discovered she had followed you in the first place? No, she would not find any fun in that.” He furrows his brows. “I see.” “At least, you saw.” You both take another sip of your coffee, and you fill out a few more forms. ”I wonder what it’s like to live that long.” “Lonely.” He starts at this, then gives you a searching look. “It would be, wouldn’t it?” “I will not breach confidence with details, but as a good friend to Her Majesty, Anon, I can tell you she is lonely. She has her few close confidantes, and I feel honored as one among them, but we live mortal lives. She has lived for over fifty generations.” ”No helping that along with magic, huh? Those confidantes living mortal lives, I mean.” “If that possibility existed, do you not think she would have accomplished it already?” ”Yeah, probably. Fair point.” For a moment, Anon almost looks hurt. Then contemplative, as he turns his attention to the floor. Almost as if that loneliness was a problem to solve. You’d only ever known him to throw himself into his various projects. You thought that was proper, noble even; a kindred spirit of sorts, even if his line of work was foreign to you. You hadn’t expected such a side to him as this. If he wanted to solve this loneliness, you’d help him in any way you could. What kind of friend to Celestia would you be if you didn’t? After you make your way through a few more articles of paperwork, he finally speaks again. ”Do you have some paper, and something to write with?” “An archivist’s office, Anon, has plenty such things.” ”Cool, toss some over here for me.” After you comply, he immediately starts writing down notes and drawing rough images full of labels. His whole demeanor changes; you’re not even sure he’s aware of you anymore, or of where he is. You both work in near-silence for an hour, only punctuated by infrequent questions of Anon’s. You don’t even feel miffed that the strange stallion then falls asleep in your office wearing socks. You’re going to need to fetch more coffee, though. As you stand to make your way for the kitchens, you glance at his work. Is that supposed to be a pony? 6 Blinded With ScienceYou’re indulging in what passed for stargazing, in a city. The sounds of the city drift up to where you and Luna sit, on top of your old apartment building, despite the fact the place is deserted. More stars are visible than there should be, but Luna chalked this up to your memory filling in the gaps, when you mentioned the effects of light pollution to her. “And you’ll see a cluster of seven stars over there, almost over our heads. Three like a tail and four in a box. That’s called the Big Dipper, it’s the hindquarters of Ursa Major.” ”In our world, that is an animal’s name.” Luna’s barely mumbling; she’s been totally lost in your astronomy lesson. When she brought up the fact the stars were different between your world and hers, you couldn’t help yourself. “Is it like a bear?” ”Yes.” It’s weird how clear her speech is, even this quiet. “That’s kind of strange, considering it means bear but in a dead language, where I’m from.” ”Very curious.” It’s also pretty cute how laconic she gets when she’s not paying attention, compared to her normal archaic speech pattern. “Anyway, look at the box section, specifically the two stars opposite the tail. If you draw a line through them, you can follow that line to another star here, at the end of the tail of a similar pattern of seven stars.” You point where you’re looking, then move your arm as indicated. “That’s Polaris, which is close to true north. If you can find that star, you’ll always know which way you’re heading.” ”We see!” “You can also tell the time. You can imagine Polaris as the center of a clock, and the line you drew is the clock’s hand. Top of the clock is midnight, bottom of the clock is noon, but the numbers go backwards. Normally you wouldn’t be able to see the bottom of the clock, but you have to rotate the face depending on when in the year it is. Considering it’s winter, the current orientation doesn’t need to be changed much. According to the stars, it’s sometime around midnight.” Luna frowns, then looks around the dreamscape. “It is rather warm to be winter.” “Well, I don’t know how dreams work. That’s a late winter sky at least.” ”How canst thou tell?” You shift how you’re laying on your back, adjusting your shoulders. Beside you, Luna rolls half onto her side, to grant her a better field of view. “Alright, go back to the Big Dipper.” ”The bear rear.” “Yeah. Remember we used the far side of the box? Look at the other side now. Draw a line between those other two stars and follow it in the opposite direction.” Once more you trace the path with an outstretched arm. You can see Luna’s head tracking it at the same time. “Follow it to this bright star here. That’s Regulus. Remember where it is, we’ll get back to it. Go back to the Big Dipper, and this time follow the curve of the tail. We’re looking at two brighter stars. First, here, is Arcturus.” You pause moving your arm until you see Luna’s acquired it, then continue its curving path. “Continue through the curve until you get to this second bright star, here. That’s Spica. These two with Regulus form the spring triangle. So named because it’s visible for most of spring.” ”But thou sayest it is winter.” “Yeah, I’m getting to that. Back to the Big Dipper. This time we’re going to draw a diagonal line across the box, in line with the first couple stars in the tail. Continue that line down and you’ll see two bright stars close together, that’s Castor and Pollux. Continue the line and you’ll see a reddish star, named Betelgeuse, marking the corner of a new box, this one with a line of three stars in the middle. That’s Orion, and it’s just as important as the Big Dipper to navigate the night sky.” ”This is all so fascinating. How dost thou remember all this?” “Eh, outdoors program when I was younger. It’s just drawing a bunch of lines between shapes.” She snorts at this. “From Orion we could reverse the line to find the Big Dipper, if we couldn’t find it initially, by cutting diagonally from that star closest to the horizon, Rigel, through Betelgeuse, back to Castor, and onward. Those three smaller stars – Orion’s Belt – can draw a line above the horizon through Aldebaran to that dense formation there, the Pleiades. But we’re more interested in following it the other way. That brings us to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Now if we drew a line through the top two stars of Orion’s boxy body in the same direction, we’d get to Procyon. Those two with Betelgeuse make the winter triangle, which is like the spring triangle, but for, well, winter. The fact we can see both means it’s late winter or early spring. In this dream, at least. As long as the stars stay the way they are. We were looking at a summer sky when we first started talking, at the beginning of the dream.” ”We had noticed they changed. Human dreams appeareth less fixed than those of ponies. It is, at times, irksome. Sufferest thou often under their caprices?” “Not often, after I’d grown. When I was younger, I had frequent nightmares. I was never one of those people who could control their dreams. All I could do was certain actions to try to kick me out of them. Couple of them usually worked. Besides that, I was usually at my dreams’ mercy, with whatever they felt like throwing at me.” ”Escape, at least, seems a useful skill.” You lay back down on your back, and Luna arranges her legs beneath herself again. The two of you take in the stars in silence for some time. It was nice to be able to just relax. Luna had that effect on you, at times, an aura of quiet calm. After some time, she speaks again. ”Thy people claimest the moon.” “If you want to look at it that way.” She’s looking at the moon, now, her expression sad. ”Is there anything beyond? The stars are so far…” “Well, we sent probes and stuff to planets. Some beyond the solar system. No people, though.” You think back on the first time you’d told her about Apollo missions. “Hey, uh, if ponies haven’t been there, how did you know it’s just rocks?” ”One pony has.” You sit upright and look over at her. “Wait, what? How?” She looks at you briefly, then to the roof you two sit on. “Thou art the only one in the palace who knows not the story. Most, though, know not the whole of it. We were that pony. We were there for a long, long time.” You can only stare at her. She continues looking down, avoiding eye contact. ”We were… unruly. We became a hazard, threatened our sister and our country’s order. We were banished, for a millennium.” Your jaw drops. “Isn’t that a good chunk of your life? Maybe most of it?” She nods slowly. “Your sister’s insane.” She shakes her head negative, this time. “No, she was right to do so. Her less reasonable course was not sending us back, when we returned. She took a gamble on Twilight Sparkle and her friends having the power to stop us. That gamble paid off, and here we are, restored.” “Holy fuck.” ”Anon, believest thou in redemption?” “Well, I’m no theologist, but from what I do know, a lot of faiths from my world dealt with it. That one lives – in their one life or across many – to tip the balance towards the positive, spent bettering yourself. Prove you’re righteous or pure of spirit or something, and go somewhere nicer. Overcoming past faults was part of that. Everyone’s flawed. I wasn’t a religious type myself, but it’s a comforting thought.” Luna thought on this, still not meeting your eyes. “That is… a noble perspective. Thou didst say thy world was harsher than ours.” “I don’t know what you did, but you’re immortal, aren’t you? You have until the end of time to make up for it, and I haven’t seen any hint you’re evil.” Luna smiles, but it’s a sad one, and she stands. “We appreciate thy words, but thou knowest not what we’d done, truly. We were a monster.” “I don’t see-” But Luna’s getting worked up, speaking harsher over you. ”Thou doest now. We caused great suffering. Even in exile, we tormented ponies in dreams, to the point of insomnia. Our restoration was only a couple years ago. Our labor at night to run this nation well has only just begun. Our soothing of dreams is penance. It will be another thousand years before we could possibly repay any debt.” “It doesn’t make a diff-” ”And we cannot expect thee to treatest us so friendly, with this knowledge, but thou hast all right to know after the time we have spent together.” She needs to stop interrupting you. You try to reach a hand out, but she backs away, too lost in herself to let you get close. You see hints of tears streaking down her cheeks. How did it work when you were little? Something to do with your neck. Twist it fast enough, at a certain angle. Like you were trying to pop your own head off. “If I can’t get a word in edgewise, here…” After an experimental tweak, you whip your head up and to the side. And bolt upright in your bed. It takes you a moment in your groggy sleep inertia, but you remember where Luna worked from, in the middle of the night. Clothes, socks, phone. Check, check, check. You grab your shoes in your hand before you depart. Out the door, wait for the guard to go, through the hall, down the stairs. Down another hall, across the way. Dodge guards patrolling the hallways looping around the throne room, then across the mirrored core floorplan. Admin wing, up two flights. Make sure no guard’s standing in place this time. She’s turned the other way, good. Dart across. Turn left, around the library’s upper floors. Three doors down. Conference room where you spoke with Luna just hours ago in-person. Across room, through doors on other side. Luna is alone in the room beyond; the skeleton crew of night shift bureaucrats and functionaries always leave her alone during her time allotted to patrolling dreams. Good, they wouldn’t like your tone. She picks her head up from where she’d been slumped across the table. She seems like she’s put herself back together in the time it took you to traverse the palace, but she still looks thoroughly miserable. You start walking towards her. ”Anon, we mean-” She breaks off and stands up when she realizes you’re not stopping. As she rears back, when you reach her, you get your shoulders under her forelegs and wrap her body in a hug. Her front hooves flail behind your head as she squawks in alarm, but she doesn’t try to protest in any more substantial way, and you know she’s plenty capable. “Don’t you dare assume what I think of anything. I’m not one of your precious little subjects, too scared of whatever you were to sleep. I’ve dealt with my nightmares already. And don’t fucking interrupt me when I’m trying to make you feel better. You can’t escape it when we’re not dream-bound.” Eventually she stops her useless flailing and relaxes in your grip. In fact, she goes limp. She’s heavy; figures ponies would weigh more than humans of similar heights, what with the longer bodies. If her rear legs weren’t still supporting most of her weight, she might push you over. “Feeling better?” She speaks quietly, since her head’s close to your ear, just over one shoulder. “Anon, thou art most improper-” ”You can pull away any time.” Half a minute passes before she finally does so. When she’s back on all fours, you jab a finger into her chest. The action’s made a bit awkward by the fact her chest is only a bit higher than your waist. “Now calm down. I’ve already seen enough of you to form an opinion, and none of it leads me to believe you’re a monster. Twilight’s fucking friendship magic or whatever the hell it was must have worked, because you’re plenty friendly. That’s good enough for me.” She looks up at you for a long time. You channel your inner predator to make a staring contest out of it. Prey blinks first. Luna turns away. “We apologize. We are so used to ponies being fearful of us, so we simply assumed.” “Yeah, well fuck ‘em. I’m not a pony.” ”Thou cursest often when agitated.” “Damn right I do.” You drop your shoes to the floor beside you and step into them. This draws Luna’s eyes down. You see her react to your feet, but she doesn’t comment. You’re going to have to figure out why ponies get so hung up when you’re not wearing any shoes. “Now I got a better idea than you being all mopey about literally a thousand years ago. How about we go back to talking stars. Your city is mindbogglingly gorgeous at night. Enough to bring me to tears. Why don’t you take me out there and show me all of your stars, now that you’ve seen some of mine?” After one more searching look, Luna finally nods and smiles. “That is a splendid idea.” You have been an exceptionally efficient pony, today. It had only taken you a few nights to work through your post-return backlog. The palace’s administrative wing buzzes with fully optimized productivity. You’re all caught up on paperwork that actually needed your attention. Better than caught up, even; you have some free time. The palace’s main areas are always quiet around noon. For a couple hours, most activity ceases, in the span between Celestia’s private court hours and hearing public petitions. This makes it the perfect time for a stroll. Your hoof-beats echo through the stone halls of the palace’s main floor, a solitary sound with no others to join you in your chorus of movement. The place is deserted. That’s fine, it meant nopony would bother you with other minor problems only you could address. Sometimes you regretted making yourself so valuable to the state machinery. Then you realize how much smoother everything runs with you here. Nothing wrong with a little pride in one’s work. As you round a corner, you see a purple bundle of anxiety dancing in place at an intersection. So much for nopony needing your help. “Your Serene Highness, may I do anything to help you?” Twilight stops her shuffling and turns to look at you in surprise, as if she wasn’t expecting anyone to show. “Oh, Raven! Have you seen Anonymous around? We were supposed to meet this morning, but he never showed.” You note the small but stuffed saddlebags she wears. “Your Highness now makes deliveries to the ambassador in exile?” She shuffles in place and takes a step back, looking at her own bags. “Oh, this is for a project we’re working on. We’ve been working together a lot lately.” You chuckle at her obvious agitation. “I know, Your Highness. Apologies. I have not seen Anon all day; he may be sleeping in. He spent a significant portion of last night with Her Majesty, Princess Luna.” Twilight recoils at this, wings half-unfurling. Poor mare needs to stop wearing her heart on her wings, no matter how new they are to her. “Not like that, I assure you. They walked the city.” She looks ashamed at her own reaction, then looks around. “I’m sure the guards are having a field day with that.” “The Night Watch rarely speaks to the regulars about anything, and their loyalty to Her Highness would prevent them from gossiping.” Twilight recovers herself then walks towards you. “That’s good. He has enough problems already.” “Do you wish me to escort you?” ”I know the way.” You give her a very carefully calibrated look, and adopt your most helpful tone. “I live to serve the princesses, of which you now count among, Your Highness.” Come on, Twilight. She knows you’re not that dense, and you know she’s not that dense. Then she flashes an apologetic smile. “I’d appreciate the company.” “Allow me, then.” You take the lead, but Twilight soon falls in alongside rather than behind you. ”Now that he’s not as shut in,” she says, “have you noticed Anon’s behaviors can be… peculiar?” “His people have all sorts of strange mannerisms.” ”He does so many things that are unexpected. And unexpectedly forward, if you know what I mean. I don’t even know if he intends it. I was thinking I might have to educate him, but I’ve never talked to colts about, ah, that stuff before.” “I cannot think of any more qualified. Your Highness’s professional yet friendly demeanor precisely suits such a task.” ”It’s just a little embarrassing to talk to him about things like eye contact, certain elements of personal space, and uh…” “Socks.” ”Socks.” You two look at each other after saying that same word at that same moment, and can’t suppress laughs. “Do his inappropriate behaviors bother Your Highness?” She seems shocked at the question, and readjusts her wings on her back. Seriously, mare, get those wings under control. ”N-no, not at all.” “Then surely explaining such matters to him poses little problem.” You two continue in silence for a time. Twilight’s wings still settle awkwardly over her saddlebags. ”Am I wrong to be receptive?” “Pardon, Your Highness?” ”I want to be offended, Raven, despite knowing it’s likely a misunderstanding. Call me old fashioned, but stallions don’t behave in certain ways. Coming from someone so obviously foreign, though, it’s more endearing than off-putting. And he’s so eager to share what he knows! I never thought I’d meet a stallion who could teach me something. Is it wrong to be receptive, even if he probably doesn’t mean it?” “If Your Highness would allow me some boldness, if things play out that way, your heart will not allow anyone to speak against it. Any further advice would fall under Her Imperial Highness, Princess Cadance’s purview. I can write a letter to her on this, if Your Highness wishes.” ”Ah, no, I’ll be fine. Who knows how she’ll tease me about this. I’m just confused. I don’t know how I should feel or react. I don’t know how I do feel.” She sighs. “I guess I could at least be open to the possibility.” “We all can only ever remain open, Your Highness.” Twilight looks you over, then away again. The two of you file into the stairway that leads to the floor Anon’s workshop is on, and ascend in silence. She rolls one wing at its shoulder when the two of you reach the top. “Ah, if I can have a turn being bold, why don’t you have anypony? You’re the most dependable mare I’ve ever known, and I guess with all this, you’re more sensitive than I’d imagined.” You start down the hall again. “Equestria and Equestria alone has my love, Your Highness. I make myself his most loyal, dutiful, and devoted mare. I desire only that, and it suffices.” ”More devoted than Princess Celestia?” “I did not claim leadership of the metaphorical herd.” The two of you arrive at Anon’s workshop’s door. Twilight opens it, and you peer inside. Anon is at his desk, slumped over it. His upper body is sprawled across the table, with his head resting on his arms, snoozing. You look at Twilight’s expression. Then her wings, which are slowly sliding down the sides of her body into a loose, relaxed position. “Perhaps we should return another time?” ”No, it’s fine. I can work around him. I don’t want him to think I brushed him off. He needs these pieces I have.” “As Your Highness wishes.” Twilight walks into the workshop, but stops and turns back to you. “Thank you, Raven. Seriously.” “As I said, I live to serve. Your Serene Highness may seek me out at any time.” Twilight lowers her head and forebody in a short bow, totally unnecessary from a superior. If any guards saw this flagrant reversal of courtesy, you’d lose your careful composure. You bow your head back to her and hastily close the door, turning back for the ground floor. Raven Inkwell; Chief Archivist, High Secretary, Princesses’ Right Wing, and foremost servant of Equestria. And now it seems, between encouraging Anon’s helping Celestia and this, Royal Matchmaker. Something tickles the back of your neck, stirring you awake, but not enough to open your eyes or elicit any movement from you. You’d fallen asleep at your desk. Again. The thing tickles your neck once more. There’s also a very light pressure across your shoulders. Your upper back is warm, like you’ve been covered with a blanket, but that weight isn’t distributed right, and you hadn’t intended to fall asleep out here in the first place, so your bedding should still be on your bed. It doesn’t cover nearly enough of you to be a blanket anyway. You finally open your eyes. Twilight’s head is only a foot and a half away from yours, dozing just as peacefully as you so recently were. One of her wings is draped over your shoulder, the other fallen to the floor beside the chair she’d moved over to you to rest on. On the table on front of you two is a smallish bag and several sheets of paper you don’t remember being there last night. On those pages are many diagrams with labels and calculations in Twilight’s writing. She did all this while you were asleep? Twilight’s wing is slowly sliding down your back, on its way to join its sibling hanging to the floor. You reach a hand out underneath it, but twisting your body to do so finishes the job. You’ve never held a live bird before, so having all these feathers in your hand is a new experience. The biggest feathers, at the end of her wing, are larger than you’d imagined, and larger than any feathers you’ve ever gotten your hands on.The way they fit together is some natural marvel of engineering. Despite its light weight, the entire structure is sturdier than you’d imagined. Nature is fascinating, and a better designer than you’ll ever be. As gentle as you’re trying to be, your manhandling of her wing wakes Twilight up. She nickers softly and half-turns, half-rolls her head towards you. “Mmph. What are you-” She opens her eyes. ”AH!” “AH!” She yanks her wing back, then pinwheels the other to stay seated on her chair. “Sorry, you, uh, y’just...” You point a finger over your shoulder. “I didn’t mean to wake you up, honest. Since you apparently were careful enough not to wake me.” She looks away from you and sits up on the chair. “You looked cold.” You pick up the small bag on the desk and open it. It’s filled with a tiny, translucent rings of various colors and sizes. ”When you said you wanted me to grow some crystals for you, I didn’t expect you to ask for donut-shaped ones, and I didn’t expect you to need them so small.” “Y’know, how do gemstones not fall under the whole money duplication thing?” ”Our jewelers know enough to look for impurities we can’t reproduce.” “Oh, that makes sense.” ”So what are these for?” “Working with tiny motors and tiny gearboxes, we can use a different sort of bearing. That’s what these are for; they’re jewel bearings. Very small, low-friction, low-wear bearings . Perfect for the high reliability I want. And you just proved you can replace them. I hope it wasn’t too much effort.” “It was more difficult than usual, only because of the abnormal shape. When we grow crystals magically, we just let it grow according to natural inclination.” You look over her sheets. They’re filled with different designs for a claw-like hand, using ballpark estimates of electrical properties, run through formulas you’ve taught her. The mechanics are drawn up according to anatomical principles Twilight said she derived from many works on zoology. She’s quickly outgrowing the basic stuff you’ve already taught her. No wonder she was Celestia’s personal student. “You really go hard in the paint on this, huh?” ”Hard in what? I’ve spent my whole life studying, Anon. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.” You pat her on her back. “I like that.” She sits ramrod straight. ”Ah, Anon, maybe we need to have a little, uh, talk about, er, cultural exchange.” “You know, where I’m from, that could be innuendo.” How does a purple horse blush? ”I mean talk about certain, er, social norms and practices!” “Hey you wanted to know about my smartphone, right?” You take it out of your pocket, thumb through the screen lock, and bring up your music library. ”Well, yes, but...” You can almost see her curiosity override whatever she was trying to say. “Well I got a bunch of music on here, if you want some cultural exchange. Listen to this, it should be very different than any music you have here. It’ll keep you occupied while I look over your work.” You pull out your earbuds, remove the rubber tips, and plug the end into your phone. “Here, lemme see your ears.” Twilight hesitates, but ultimately complies, turning her head towards you and down. She only looks up at you for brief moments as you gently place the earbuds into her ears, nestled so the speaker portion is properly oriented but not fully inserted. ”So what are these fo-” She immediately clamps her mouth closed when you start the music. Her eyes go wide, her face gets all screwed up, and she looks like she wants to toss her head to chuck the earbuds out of her ears, but she settles down when she gets used to music being piped directly into her skull. ”Oh, this is what you meant when you said you couldn’t take credit for that ‘poetry in motion’ comment.” You look over the first of Twilight’s sheets. This one is mostly her crunching the numbers you’d provided, running calculations for different circumstances. She’s currently using your calculator to beam synthpop to her brain, so you can’t check them, but they looked accurate enough to you. She really is a quick study. The next of the sheets goes a lot further into mechanical design, showing several different configurations for hands, with notes and ideal measurements for each. They all look distinctly like bird talons to you, but you suppose that makes sense. From what you could tell, the closest analogue to your hands were minotaurs, which were somewhat rare. Some form of avian species was the next best candidate, and besides them, griffons were more readily available and used their talons to manipulate objects. The designs allowed for excellent flexibility, but you were worried about how many motors would be necessary. ”You w-write songs about this?” You glance at Twilight, who looks mortified. “What, about making love?” ”Yeah, I me- wait, the elements of harmony?!” “Elements IN harmony.” ”Oh.” You return your attention to her work and flip to her third sheet. This one, it seems, is mostly written for your benefit. It details some quirks about the spell Twilight needs to make this whole contraption work. The calculations in the first sheet, it turns out, were Twilight playing with different values to take burdens off the spell itself. The more power provided by mundane means, the less work the spell needs to do, so the longer it would last and the easier it would be to cast. The same is true with mechanical linkages; the spell could apparently make a leg without a knee just by positioning two sticks, but giving one a groove for the other to rest in made it easier, and a fully-formed hinge easier still. Flipping back to the second sheet, you notice the various designs are built around certain joint configurations. Twilight must have been working out which would be easiest for the spell to manipulate. At the bottom is a section separated from the rest, circled in red. Apparently the spell could handle position reporting itself, but also integrate whichever system you intended to use for that purpose. But it goes on to say there’s utility in making the spell work harder if it meant minimizing the number of independent channels for control and feedback the spell needed to track. Complex magical systems on Equestria, the notes explain, when used in or around animate objects, tend to spontaneously demonstrate emergent sapience. Many animals in more magic-rich environments like the Everfree Forest – apparently a location near where she lived – display intelligence above and beyond expected of them by large margins. The spell should be crafted in such a way to minimize this possibility, lest the hands literally develop a mind of their own. It goes on to recommend each hand be animated separately, even though this will increase the amount of time needed to acquaint a user with their function. Efforts taken to lessen the load per-channel on the spell are unambiguous improvements away from this possibility, but more important is cutting back on the number of channels where possible, even if this requires the spell to do more work overall. Omitting every other feedback sensor is an option, letting the spell figure the gaps between the ones that remain on its own. This presents a new and very interesting wrinkle in all your plans. Twilight finally shakes the buds out of her ears, and levitates them to the benchtop. “I think you’re the one blinding me with science, Anon.” “It was a big song from over three decades before I came here.” ”The fact this device can reproduce the performance so well is incredible.” “It’s better with the rubber tips on the earbuds, but I haven’t exactly cleaned them, nor have we duplicated any for you. We can do that another time.” ”How much music do you have on here?” “Oh, I don’t know. Hours. Far longer than that thing has battery life.” She looks down at the device, then back to you, eyes sparkling. “Is there any way we can fix that? I want to listen to everything!” “Well, we can make a new power pack. We’re going to have to eventually duplicate that phone and rip it apart to get the battery out anyway. Then we can keep duplicating the battery, and make banks of them. Putting a bunch in parallel would be equivalent to making one that lasts longer, but we’ll also need sets in series for higher output levels for some of the things I want to make. Combine series and parallel to make power packs for higher voltages that still last longer. Those are going to be our primary sources of power, though we’ll need to make charge limiters for each one, so we can recharge them safely off our little bench generator. Lithium-ion batteries like those tend to set themselves on fire if you’re not careful.” ”I’m not sure I can duplicate something this complex.” “We’ll try it when you feel ready, and when we have stuff set up so you don’t hurt yourself. Not today, that can wait. First, I want to go over some of these details regarding this spell of yours...” 7 Alone Time”Anon, you once observed that even with a hundred ponies, I was alone.” You look up from your current history book to Celestia, sitting right beside you. You can’t see what she’s looking at, with your back against the balcony balustrade, but you have a feeling it’s nothing in particular. She’s got one ear on you nevertheless, and you don’t bother responding beyond your shift in attention. Sometimes Celestia liked to warm up to a point, and she didn’t need anything from you until she got there. ”It’s an interesting juxtaposition, isn’t it? I could be surrounded by my precious subjects, and feel no companionship. How many other strange paradoxes do you think there can be? Have you ever felt like you made a wrong turn somewhere, that that put your life on the wrong track?” “You mean besides me coming here?” She turns an eye on you, at that. “I thought you’ve been acclimating quite nicely.” “I’m conversing with a talking horse, no offense. That’s never going to go away.” Celestia smiled and chuckled, then looked back out to the city. “No offense taken.” “But yes, I know the feeling. Sometimes I wish I took a different path. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t taken a different path. Mostly I just reconcile myself to where I am, and make the best of where I’m going. I don’t give it a lot of thought, being honest.” ”If you knew I felt alone in a crowded room, would you believe that I feel powerless, as the highest power in the land?” “I still haven’t seen any proof counter to your – and everyone else’s – claims that you really do move the sun around, Princess. I stopped believing that magic here isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when I read that you have an actual weather factory in Cloudsdale.” She looks like she’s going to say something, then stops. “Yes, I believe it, because at this point I’d believe anything. But I’d still like to hear you explain what you mean.” “I’ve told you before how I sometimes go out of my way to help ponies in more personal ways. Ways I can’t when acting as princess regnant. That’s something like what I mean. Do you know what I’d like to do more than anything, right now?” “Uh, help some pony?” ”What I really want to do, Anon, is lie down.” You look around the balcony, and into the tiny tower library it connects to. It’s cozy, especially with your legs sprawled out across the balcony’s center third, but there’s certainly enough room. “So why don’t you?” ”As I watch ponies down there, I know ponies are watching me up here. Even in this place of private contemplation, I have appearances to maintain. An image to keep. This is what it means to rule. Everything one says and does exists within a confined box of expectations. I have the power to do anything, but my choices are often already made. Decisions I make are defined by how they benefit my ponies. How I comport myself is dictated by the solemnity of my position. I cannot lay down, Anon, because that cuts against the idea of regal presence. I would be resting on a job I must be seen working at all times.” “Last week you chased me around the palace in the middle of the night.” ”If I didn’t have some fun, I surely would have gone mad long before now. Luna’s guards don’t speak to anyone about what happens on their watch. It’s a welcome relief; during the day I have to be more subtle about things, make my own private jokes. It’s always nicer when the humor can be shared, when I can make ponies laugh, even in hindsight. I’d love to spend my day just messing with other ponies in benign ways, helping them by means they don’t and may never quite understand, all while spreading smiles. At night, at least, I can let loose a little.” “It was pretty funny.” She beams down at you. “Wasn’t it?” “If that’s why you feel powerless, what did you mean about your life being on the wrong track?” She’s silent for a bit, and doesn’t move. She is, in fact, unnaturally still. ”Anon, what I’m about to say is not to be repeated to others.” “Wouldn’t dream of it.” ”Funny, because my sister’s the only other who knows.” You shrug. ”You know, by now, what cutie marks are. How important they are, and what they mean. So tell me, what’s mine?” A yellow sun is about four feet from your face, just below eye level where you sit on the stone. “Big ball of fire.” ”It’s not a crown.” “Well, metaphorically, you could think of it like the crown jewel of the sky.” ”This has occurred to me.” “What’s wrong with a sun?” ”A thousand years ago, the task of arranging the heavens was carried out by six unicorns. They were some of the wisest and most powerful. It took the strength of all six of them to do this work. Then my sister and I – we used to be unicorns ourselves, like Twilight – came along. My special talent was that I could do it all myself.” “And your sister?” ”Would you believe she wasn’t that good at magic, when we were young? Her talent has little to do with the moon. The dark splotch around her mark, that’s just as much part of it as the crescent itself. Her talent is her dream-walking. After we had gained our wings and the Elements and started down the path to becoming rulers, we studied under great unicorn mages, and her magical talents only bloomed then, no doubt thanks in part to our becoming alicorns. I granted her the night when we assumed power, as a sign of us being equals. When she was banished, I resumed doing it all myself.” “Well, with great power, right? It makes sense that someone with such a responsibility of changing the sky would end up on top.” ”Truth be told, it wasn’t our goal. We got swept up in everything, and ended up riding a wave of others’ acclaim. She and I – and several other notables – had defeated so many threats, our rise to power was inevitable. Even back then, Anon, I had no choice. I still don’t. I only remain because no pony I trust enough has stepped forward.” “You’d rather not rule?” “I’d rather wander the nation my sister and I built, helping ponies on a personal level. I envy my sister’s nightly work; she gets to do what I always wanted, through others’ dreams. And I know she envies me too, because I so often get to see the results of her work, while she’s stuck in the shadows. Is that not the most terrible curse for sisters to have? But we are where we need to be to help our people most. Her levelheadedness and force of will by night, my charisma and leadership by day.” ”Force of will? What does that matter, when she never leaves the palace?” ”Oh Anon, if only you’d known how much trouble obstinate nobles caused me, before her return. Nowadays, there are few obstinate nobles. They met someone with no patience for their idiocy, and learned quickly. I hardly got any sleep those first two weeks, with how loud the screams were as they woke from nightmare after nightmare, but my sister is very direct when her temper reaches its limits.” “That sounds, uh, pretty terrible, honestly.” ”Perhaps, but she and Raven put together the current system in no time, once their pointless obstacles were no longer an issue. This country has never run better.” “Speaking of Raven, why not talk to her about this? Aren’t you two close?” ”Raven is the last person I want to hear! I confide in her about a great many things, but I fear if her faith in me is ever shaken, she’ll never recover.” Celestia drops her head to the balustrade. “My duties even keep me from my friends, at times, that way.” “Okay, so maybe not Raven, but why talk to me?” She picks her head back up and looks at you. “Anon, you’re most certainly my friend, and the only person to whom I can talk about this.” “Bullsh- ah, nonsense.” ”If I speak to anyone in the court, it wont be as psyche-shattering as if Raven heard, but ponies expect me to have all this down after doing it for a thousand years. I can’t speak to my colleagues of other races, because we are peers in diplomacy first and foremost, and it would be a sign of weakness. You, though; your people aren’t exactly able to interact, and you’ve said half of them don’t even listen to nobility anymore. Even without all that, you’ve done such a wonderful job at my side.” “Not to look a gi- aright I won’t use that phrase. I’m still not sure I’m the only one.” ”There are a few, shall we say, free agents, but I don’t quite trust Discord as much as my student, and who knows what he’ll do with that knowledge. Nothing good, I can assure you. There are a few others from our time who are around, but they visit infrequently. They better relate to my sister, anyway.” She looks back out to the city suddenly. “I just realized that I’m the only one of our kind who came through all this the long way.” “What?” ”Time, Anon. Most were in stasis of some form or another. My sister was in a millennium-long fever-dream. I’m the only pony who lived through it; a couple other sovereigns eternal of different races are all who can boast the same.” You slowly, haltingly, reach out to Celestia’s side, placing your hand on her flank. She’s so tense it’s like touching a sun-baked rock. “So, uh, this up here. Our little routine. Is this part of your… regal presence?” Celestia looks taken aback first by your touch, then by the sudden shift of topic. “It is our personal time, but as long as we’re visible to others…” You withdraw your hand and toss your head to the side, towards the city. “Well, they know you have a routine, right? That includes watching the city at this time?” ”Well, yes…” “A’ight, cool.” You stand up and walk into the tower, toss your book on one of the two chairs inside, and make for the doorway to the stairs. You don’t even hesitate in yanking it open and stepping inside, closing it behind you. Once closed, you wait just inside, listening. Counting. ”Anon? Anonymous!” Six, seven, eight. You hear the metallic stamping of Celestia’s strange hoof-covering armored ‘boots’ stamping around on the balcony. She’s turned her whole body for the door, you guess, but had only done so haltingly. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. She takes her first hesitant steps inside. Twenty-five, twenty-six. The steps gain purpose, and she’s shortly at the door. The handle glows with golden light, even inside, as she pulls it open. “Thirty-one, thirty-two… Hey.” She stares at you in disbelief. “What was that for?” You shrug. “You just made a choice, didn’t you?” ”It certainly doesn’t feel it!” “Oh, maybe not, it was between being forced one way or the other, right? But you still chose which you’d follow. And, uh, being honest, didn’t think you’d choose me. So much for your only one clear path.” She shuffles in place a bit, tail swishing. ”Now what?” “What do you mean, now what?” ”Is this some sort of plan of yours?” “Look, the only things I plan are things I can build or fix. I’m just fucking winging it.” ”You’re ridiculous.” “How about this; now that you’ve already broken your semi-public schedule, there’s no ponies looking at you anymore. Why don’t we go somewhere private you can actually relax while we talk? If you still think I’m worth talking to.” She narrows her eyes at you, but then tosses her head to indicate further down the stairs. “Fine, go.” “That’s the spirit.” Once you’ve descended, she takes the lead. She’s dead silent the whole time. You can’t help but feel you’ve pissed her off. She takes you not to where her room is, but to the library. You’ve been here often, but never to the section she’s leading you. Once you’re inside, she takes you to a side-door leading to a reading area, and beckons you inside. You take a seat, feeling pricks of sweat. After she’s entered herself she practically slams the door behind her. Then she lowers her head and lightly butts the door, her head down enough and slightly tipped to the side so her horn doesn’t jam itself into the wood. She lets out a long breath. “I suppose I needed this.” “Well, hey, now you can lay down.” She turns to look at you, and you wave towards a couch-like chair. “That’s, uh, an order, I guess.” She smiles as she walks over. “It’s a good thing there’s no guards around to hear that. They’ll get the wrong idea.” “Yeah, me giving orders to a princess probably wouldn’t go over to well.” Her smile turns to a wicked grin as she slows her approach, and you can’t help but feel a bit like a deer in headlights. “Not what I meant. You’ve been picking up a peculiar reputation as both a janefilly and a casual flirt, Anon.” She stops right in front of you, neck craned down, her nose only six inches from yours. ”You invite me to a place like this, and I might just dish some of that back.” Suddenly her demeanor becomes cheerful and upbeat, and she pulls her head back and smiles. “Just to see your face.” Once again Celestia has totally derailed an idea of yours to change your friendship dynamic. When are you ever going to learn? “I, uh, well, I was gonna offer a massage, with how tense you were, but after that...” ”I’ll be fine, Anon. But thanks.” She flops down onto the couch in a single motion utterly devoid of grace. “You’re, uh, definitely more animated.” ”Do you know how long it’s been since anypony touched me like you did, just back there?” “Well, humans can get touchy-feely when we’re trying to console someone, or cheer up someone who’s bummed out. Arms around shoulders, big hugs, that stuff. I didn’t mean to, uh...” ”No, Anon, that’s exactly what I mean.” “Sorry?” ”I have few true friends, and fewer who’d think little of touching me. However tense I must have felt to you, I can promise you I was less so moments before.” “So definitely no massage.” She laughed, the draped her head across a side table next to her seat. “Knowing how mareish you are, you might just make things worse. Even a pony as big as I would appreciate a gentler touch.” “You know, you are the only one as tall as I am. I can see why other ponies would be intimidated.” ”As I said before, it’s not my stature. It’s my position.” “Isolates. Yeah. Sorry, Princess.” “And that title is the heart of the matter. You can stop calling me that when we’re alone, Anon. Your casual attitude towards me in private is refreshing, and I’d like to see more of it, even if your language is at times ghastly.” ”That’s a weird way of putting that, all things considered. You still sound kinda formal.” She sighs. “I like it when you’re laid back with me.” “There we go. Relaxing after all?” All at once, one of her wings slumps to the floor. “Trying.” “Well, there’s plenty of books here, being a library and all, so I wouldn’t be against retiring here after petitions, rather than the tower.” ”I do like collecting my thoughts up there.” “And you have to maintain your image longer than necessary, too. ‘Sides, if you have other time to relax, you’ll probably trip up the house staff less.” ”Well that is something I enjoy regardless.” “I’m going to have to start cleaning up after you.” ”That’ll only encourage me, Anon.” “Can’t hold yourself back?” ”I wouldn’t want to if I could.” “Heh. How un-princesslike.” She turns to eye you then grins. “Isn’t that what you’re trying to accomplish with this?” “Uh, fair point.” She adjusts herself on the chair; now her rear legs are hanging off too. She can sprawl out pretty good for a pony with such impeccable posture, normally. Her sheer size helps with that. The chair’s probably designed for regular ponies to recline. ”I will say a lot of the books in here are off-limits. This is a private section of the library for royal use only. You can’t use magic, so that solves most of the danger, but I’d still like you to clear whatever book you pick up with me.” “Now that’s just tempting.” Another grin. “I know.” You stand and turn towards one wall of shelves. Celestia looks like she’s about to move, but relaxes again as you turn away from her. “Well, at least here you can both chill out and have someone to talk to. If I knew you were still on duty while we were up in the tower, I’d have suggested something like this a long time ago.” ”You haven’t been much of a conversation partner, up there.” “You did say you like collecting your thoughts.” She tips her head towards you at this. You pick up a book that looks suitably magical, then show her the cover. She manages a really good approximation of a shrug, for a pony with six limbs pointing in four directions. When you open it up, the entire thing is just weird poetry. “The hell is this?” ”If you mean the format, most complex spells are recorded as poems. Giving them a regular structure and rhyme scheme helps train the mental rhythm necessary to cast them. Sometimes spells are recorded in abnormal forms if the scholar is unsure on a specific element of it, to signify it’s provisional. It’s an ancient technique; diagrams and notes are more common now.” “Huh, Twilight never told me any of this.” ”She’s the prime offender when it comes to the diagrams-and-notes school of study; she’s invented new glyphs and patterns just to convert some of these older, more complex works. She knows all the rhyming forms and meanings, she just doesn’t normally use them. If you talk to my sister about it, she’d use poems exclusively.” “I guess there’s a lot less reading here for me than I thought.” ”Little point in reading tomes on magic when you can neither use nor understand them.” “Got any more history?” She extends a wing towards the opposite wall. “Anything on the second and third shelves should be fine.” Some of the books there were reproductions of the really old ones in the tower, but others were on more recent history. You pick one out at random and return to your seat. Celestia’s even more sprawled out than before; only her body, one foreleg, and one wing remain within the couch’s footprint. “Feeling better?” ”I think I’ll take a nap. Compared to your earlier touch, it’s been even longer since I’ve gotten some quality shut-eye with someone close on watch.” So much for conversation. “That’s a thing?” ”For ponies? Of course. Part of the reason we herd up or band together in the first place.” “Wild.” ”Fittingly enough considering her job, Luna’s one of the soundest sleepers in the palace, when she’s not dealing with dreams of her own.” “Can’t have many more ponies on watch than the entirety of the court and regular guard force, I guess.” She turns to look at you again. “Wake me when we need to head to the meeting?” “Sure thing.” You take out your phone and thumb through to the alarms. At least you’ll still have quality time for some reading. You open your eyes, but it does not get any brighter. You’re lying in bed, perfectly still. Too still. You try to move a hand to your face, but neither one responds. You cannot, you discover, even feel your limbs, let alone move them. Your head keeps moving very slightly, and it takes you some time to realize it’s due to your breathing. Yet you cannot feel the rise and fall of your own chest. It takes you considerable effort to just turn your head to your left side. There should be a window there, where you’re looking. Only darkness greets you. You can’t see. You can’t move. You can’t feel anything. You can, however, start to panic. Can’t see, can’t move, can’t feel, can’t THINK. CAN PANIC. CANTSEEMOVEFEELTHINK. In a tiny corner of your mind not subsumed with primal fear, you realize you CAN think, and you’re thinking right now, only in this little part, only from what feels like a great distance. Your breathing is loud enough you can hear it now. It sounds as distant as your thoughts are from your chaotic mind. It sounds labored. Are you dying? Is this what death is like? A new series of minute movements arises in your neck, rhythmic, rapid, like a muscle spasm. It’s your pulse, you realize. It’s preposterously fast. Heart attack? Or is it connected to the breathing? Does your heart rate go up or down when you can’t breathe? What is the mechanism behind a heart attack, anyway? It’s hard to tell when you can’t feel your chest. You try to scream for help. All that interrupts your hyperventilating is a moan, distant and indistinct. The area outside your fragmented awareness grows slightly brighter. You can see? The nearly-imperceptible outline of your window resolves as the light increases ever so slightly. You can see! You try to get a grip on your breathing. It’s tough work. The light outside the window coalesces to a point, a small and dim one, so far away. It’s the moon, you realize. The moon is rising outside your window, but even on the horizon, it’s as small as if it were at the top of the sky. As the light grows further, it eventually forms a dim but visible shaft from the window, falling across your bed. The moon continues to rise, changing the shaft’s angle downward. Now to the floor, now sweeping across it. It sweeps a dark shape five or so feet away from your bed. When the light passes over it, however, the shape is not illuminated. The moonlight just disappears into it, as if it were a massive void. You lose control of your breathing again, and it once more speeds up dangerously. Death? Is this the shape of death? No hooded or cloaked figure, no scythe, just this looming shape of nothingness. The light slips away from it, then disappears entirely. Once more there’s total darkness. Until two impossibly bright lights appear. Not lights. Eyes. The dark form is looking at you. Now you wish you could go back to not being able to see. The eyes shift as the figure looks around. Then they move towards you. You try to scream again, but it only adds wordless sound to your terribly fast breathing, making a hitching, stuttering sob. The few parts of your body you can feel start tingling. Your vision starts swimming – no, buzzing – and it’s hard to focus. The eyes of light dip down towards you. They’re very close now. You could touch them, shove them away, defend yourself, if only you could move your left arm. “Anonymous, steel thyself! ‘Tis only a dream!” A dream. A dream? Yes, yes it is. It’s a dream. You know this dream. A holdover from your nightmare-plagued youth. The most recent addition to a terrible variety that had survived the others’ extinction. The worst of them all, the one you couldn’t escape. Your punishment for figuring out how to avoid the rest. The only dream it was worse to be aware of than to suffer in thoughtlessness. The dream that gave you all the time in the world to think about what you distracted yourself with work or friends or the internet to avoid. “L-Luna...” You manage to stutter it out through your rapid breaths. They’ve locked themselves into a pattern now, like your whole body is shivering, not that you could feel it. The two eyes of light are a mess across your vision as they lift away from you. “Help!” You can just barely rasp the word out. “Thy dreams are strange, Anon, we cannot simply banish them! Control thyself, and we can resolve it together!” “C-cuh-count.” ”What?” “Count!” Luna’s glowing eyes blink a couple times, but she starts counting up slowly. You focus on the numbers and try to still your breathing. It’s difficult when you can’t feel your chest, when you lack that feedback, but you try to wrap your whole mind around those numbers. Luna, still only visible by her eyeshine, looks over you and moves side to side in a motion you can’t resolve. The motion – both visually and with shifts in sound direction – seem to help a little more. Eventually you get your breathing under control, though your jaw still tingles. At least your eyesight is normal again. ”Art thou recovered?” “I, uh, well, kinda.” ”What meanest thou?” “Well, it’s pitch black, and I can’t move.” Luna’s horn starts glowing and her eyes stop, finally casting enough light around the room to see by. ”Sorry, we forget that thou hast not our night vision.” When her horn dips low enough to be roughly in front of her eyes, you notice they exhibit a strong cyan-colored reflection, even without the supernatural bright white light she demonstrated just before. “So are you here to save me or something?” She looks away from you. “We wish we could.” “I’ll tell you now, this paralysis isn’t pleasant.” She starts looking about the room, apparently agitated. “We can’t help, Anon. What does this mean? For thee, for us?” “Hey, stop that. If you start freaking out, I’m going to start freaking out again, and we’ll be even worse than where we started.” Talking around your semi-numb jaw is difficult, but you’re managing. The tingling’s mostly gone now. She settles, but only a little. “Fine, the long way it shall be. Is this a common nightmare?” “Used to be. Less frequent the past several years.” ”And thou sayest thou cannot move?” “Yeah.” She returns to your bedside and looks your inert body over. “It… pains us, to see thee like this.” “I’d say it pains me too, but if it did, I wouldn’t be able to feel it.” ”This must be a fear of thine.” “There’s a lot to be afraid of.” She cocks her head. “We know why ponies would fear it, but not thee. Tell us?” “I don’t know, Luna. You’re the expert. All I know is it gives me time to think in a state I want to think the least. I knew a few people with traumatic injuries causing impairment. It’s inevitable, when you work with heavy machinery and enough people, even if I spent most of my time at a desk.” She’s silent while she takes this in, still looking at your striken form rather than meeting your eyes. “Thou workest with thy hands.” “More through them than with them, back home. Lots of thinking, lots of computer work. Uh, computers, er, the thing you saw in my room I spent a lot of time with. I did most of my design work with it. It did calculations and visualization and stuff for me. Kinda hard to explain what I did to you, honestly.” ”Some sort of sophisticated drafting table?” “That’s not too far off. We’d call stuff like that CAD – computer-aided drafting, or computer assisted design, or whatever you feel like saying it means. It wasn’t everything, but it was part of it.” ”But thou still doest it with thy hands.” “Yeah. And, well, I can’t even get out of bed like this. How would I support myself? I’d have no independence, and all the time in the world to think on my helplessness and uselessness.” ”Surely thou hast family thou canst rely on to care for thee.” “No.” You’re much quieter. “I was pretty much on my own.” ”Thou art a stallion, Anon. Even between herds thou canst find shelter from any storm. Was there truly no going back?” “Where I’m from, Luna, males were expected to fend for themselves. Going back home, to my parents or whatever, that’d be admitting defeat. Shameful. I was expected to care for myself.” ”But thou art in Equestria now. Thou art cared for. Free.” “No, it’s followed me. I threw away my cushy responsibility-free life in a fit of pride, when I asked Celestia to take me seriously. But that’s part of it, isn’t it? If I couldn’t make myself useful even here, I felt I’d still get kicked out.” ”Plenty of useless stallions leadeth comfortable lives.” “Yeah, well, not me. Besides, throwing myself into my work stopped me from thinking about anything more unpleasant. Back home I’d come home from work and get to work distracting myself. Exhaust myself to sleep, go to work, buckle down, come home, and repeat it. Couldn’t give myself time to think. Here, I don’t have that. So it’s just from one kind of work to another. Keep me busy, keep me sane.” Luna puts her head down on your bed at your side, looking ‘up’ at yours. “Thou remindest us of stallions from our time. Back when life was more dangerous. When stallions walked the perimeter of the herd as the mares recovered, when their power bolstered their mares’ tenacity, some becoming heroes in their own right. When they were still protected, but not as defenseless, nay, but as the last line of defense for the young and invalid. But the plans of ours and our sister’s worked. Life became peaceful. And when life was peaceful, stallions became… domesticated.” “I’m not really domesticated. It’s something of a sticking point, if you hadn’t noticed.” She smiles at you. “We have most assuredly noticed.” You sigh and – with some effort- look back up at the ceiling. “Being stuck like this, for me, is probably the only thing I fear more than death. My work is all I have, especially now.” “Skies above, no. Thou hast more to live for than that.” “Like what?” ”We – and our sister, and her student – have pulled thee away from thy work often, Anon. Thou hast us, and hast left thy work to spend time with us. We are sure – or at least most fervently hope – we are more than a mere distraction for thee.” “I… yeah. Yeah, you’re right on that.” You let your head flop back to the left, to look at her again. She’s still smiling that sweet smile at you. “And is it not better?” “Well, besides feeling stressed about falling behind, yeah. I enjoy our time together, and with Twilight. And even Celestia, though she’s only really opened up to me recently. I enjoy my work, but I’m not complaining about companionship, to what degree it’s available to me here.” ”And is this dream not more bearable for our presence?” Your turn to smile. “Yeah. Much better than being left to it alone, though I still wouldn’t call it great.” ”Perhaps, Anon, thy helplessness and uselessness is only part of this dream. Thou hast, after all, hardly been either of late. Perhaps this dream riseth from another fear.” “What’s that?” Her smile falters. “Isolation. Solitude.” Ah, one of the many thoughts you hated to be left to, in this nightmare’s typical vast time for thinking. You do your best to nod in agreement. ”We know much about solitude, Anon. Absent our magic to dispel this dream, we shall at least alleviate thine. It seems, as this dream embodies, thou knowest some of what we’ve been through. More than we’d thought.” You tilt your head a little further as she looks away from you. ”To be all alone, in the night.” “Not nearly as long as you, Luna, but yeah. I know it.” She meets your eyes again, and her smile returns. “Then let us speak of all manner of things, until thou wakest to our sister’s morning.” You open your eyes once more, despite them having been already open. This time, you’re greeted with bright daylight. Experimentally, you wiggle a foot. This time, it responds. You close your eyes again and heave a huge sigh, relishing the sensation of air entering and leaving your lungs, feeling your chest’s rise and fall. You’re free. Luna kept her word, and you’d talked for what felt like hours, but now you’re free. You reach a hand over to blindly grope at your nightstand for your phone. Your hand actually obliges, which brings another strange pleasure. Your body merely working as intended shouldn’t bring such joy. When you turn the screen on, though, what you see brings none. How the fuck is it so late? When you put the phone back, something catches your eye. You lift your arm and the overly plush blankets to find Princess Luna’s sleeping head, laying just where it had been while you spoke in your dream. She’s lying on the floor about where you’d normally swing your legs over the side to get up. Good thing you hadn’t done so automatically, or you’d have kicked her in the noggin, and maybe impaled a calf on her horn. That would have been a rude wake-up call for both of you. Even as you gather yourself up to get out of bed the other way, though, your movement causes her to stir. “Ah, hell. Didn’t mean to wake you.” She opens her eyes halfway and looks around blearily. “Forgive our intrusion.” “Only if you tell me why.” She drops her head back to the bed. “Dreams normally end, Anon. Thine did not. It just… dissolved, and thou sunk beyond our reach. We came to be sure thou was not lost in a deeper nightmare than we could intervene in.” “And you stayed?” ”Ah, an old tradition,” She’s slurring some of her words, which is strange, considering she’s always been clear of speech even when mumbling or otherwise not making an effort of it. Is it weird for the a princess of the night to be so bad at waking up? Heh, not a morning pony. ”Some ponies in bands sleepeth while others watcheth,” she continued. “Usually the watchers looketh out, beyond, for threats. When one of the herd is ill, one watcher instead looketh to them, foregoing their own protection to be more aware of threats to the stricken, and to monitor their condition. Before, this vigil was not risky, for a couple ponies would be alert to other danger besides. In modern times, it seems this vigil hath become symbolic.” You can’t help but smile, even as you rebuke her. “I appreciate the thought, Luna, but I wasn’t sick.” She slides her head off the bed and drops it to the floor, out of your line of sight. “It was uncalled for. We apologize for our invasion of thy privacy,” she mumbles. “Well, the biggest problem is the fact I’m wearing nothing but my boxers.” That and attendant post-waking quirks of anatomy in that area of your body. Not that she needed to know, and didn’t, thanks to how thick and fluffy the top layer of your bedding was. ”Besides these poor excuses for useless armor,” she lifts a foreleg into your view, displaying one of her darkened metallic hoof-guards, “we wear nothing at all, Anon.” That does not help aforementioned quirks of anatomy. “Ah, all the same, Princess, I’d just like a few minutes of privacy to get ready for the day.” She sits up again, looking back at you. “Please do not hold our too-great concern against us, Anon. Thou art right; we should not have remained. It was presumptuous of us, to an outrageous degree.” “Look, it’s fine. Honest. I understand your concern. Just… not something I expected, nor something that’s normal for humans who aren’t, well… Bit of a culture clash there. We’re cool.” She looked content, until the last bit. “C-cool? Oh, as we feared, a chilling between friends-” “Chrissakes, no. We’re, uh, warm, I guess. Everything’s fine. Seriously. It’s alright. I’ll see you this evening, okay? Get some rest in a bed, instead of beside one; you look like hell warmed over. I don’t want you wearing yourself out on my account, I’d feel guilty as hell after all you’ve done for me.” She took a couple steps back before dipping her head to the floor again, this time far enough away you could still see her. Her eyes met yours briefly. “Thank thee, Anon.” “No, thank you. You made last night nice enough to forget it was a nightmare.” She smiles at you, then in what you could only describe as a loud inverse pop, she vanished. Teleportation is a good way to not get the guards talking about what could be construed as a walk of shame, you suppose. Today was going to be a weird day. ”Now if we arranged it this way we could cut down on the gearbox size, but now it can’t mount to the frame.” You look over the edit Twilight made to the design you two were hammering out. “No. No, this is good. Rotate the motor side of the bracket ninety degrees, cut this frame support here, then extend the frame from here to here.” You make two marks on the rough drawing of the talon-like claw, then scribble a line between them. “That’ll make up for the lost structural support while giving the bracket something to mount to in its new orientation. It’ll fit. Just barely, and it wont be pretty, but we’re more concerned with functionality on this prototype.” Twilight looked at the edits, nodded, then peered over your multimeter at you. A third of your workspace has been filled with bulky lab and testing equipment, several large boxy items that could be combined in the palm of your hand back home, but you had to make do here. Frankly, you were happy enough they worked. “So what’s that put our control channel count at?” Twilight looks back down at the large paper, tilting her head. “We’re at, uh, thirty-two.” “Does that put us under the complexity limit?” She thought for a moment. “Theoretically, three dozen is the breaking point, for a design like this. To be safe, though, I’d like to be under thirty.” You rub your face with the hand you’re not leaning on. “I never thought I’d have a design constraint to prevent a project from getting up and walking away on me.” ”Powering everything preserves spell lifespan, which is definitely desirable, but if we rely on your systems for every single facet of functionality, we might just be making more work for it in the end. Cutting motors for these linkages might be mimicking limitations of the subject we’re emulating, but maybe we’re looking at the wrong side.” “What do you mean?” Twilight levitates the pencil to her side of the table, then starts making a diagram in the corner. “We might be able to remove all the position sensors if we just have the spell report back the distance between two points. If we set those as the base of each finger and the tip, the distance is related primarily by the angle of the big knuckle for the majority of the range, and the second knuckle for the final third, with how you expect it to normally be used. That might be enough, and we could combine a couple sensors.” “What’ll that give us?” “Twenty-six to twenty-eight, depending on how we set the wrist and intermediate connections.” “Well hell, that’s only barely under, but it’s under. It’ll let us get rid of a big set of failure points too, since we won’t have to worry about the sensors wearing out. What’ll that do to the lifespan?” Twilight grimaces. “Cut it in half.” “So, what, around six months?” ”A little more.” “Damn.” ”Hey, it’s better than nothing! Once we have it working, maybe we can find other ways to streamline it.” “I guess. Is there any way to extend it?” ”Not really, but if you focus the spell on some sort of crystal, it can function as a reservoir that you can just add more magic to. There’s a reason so many magical artifacts have gemstones and such. For most artifacts, since they’re used as focii or catalysts, they recharge during normal use. For something like this it might be fairly large, though, and recasting the spell isn’t a big deal. I’m more concerned about your end.” “There’s no way we’re making a battery pack to last six months of regular use. This thing will have to be recharged regularly, maybe even daily. Difference is, if the battery runs dry, we don’t lose the whole thing; it’ll work again just fine once we plug it in. That’s pretty important, since lithium-ion batteries lose their effectiveness over time. Lifespan shortens due to internal degradation. We’ll eventually have to replace packs, but those will be pretty easy.” ”So they can catch on fire if improperly charged, and improperly charge when they get old? They sound pretty dangerous.” “Hard to get a good amount of power storage in such a small form factor, though. A proper charging station mitigates the risk anyway. Besides, it’s all we have for now. Speaking of.” You walk around the table to Twilight’s side, taking your phone out of your pocket and placing it on the table. “Are we going to do this? With this plan in place, we’ve done everything we can on the design. Time to get to work.” She looks down to the phone and sighs. “Do we have everything?” “Water, sweets, and a spotter. You should be fine.” ”I’ve never tried duplicating something as complex as this.” “Twilight. You’ll be fine. You’re an alicorn and your talent is literally magic. If anything does happen, I’ll be right here.” ”Just stay close, alright?” You crouch down next to her as she focuses on your phone. Her horn and your phone glow the same shade of now-familiar magenta. She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut as the brightness grows. After several seconds, she widens her stance, and her wings flare out for balance, giving you a face-full of purple feathers. By the time her whole body is trembling, you’re thinking maybe you should call it off after all. Before you can, there’s a pop and a clatter drawing your attention to the table. A perfect twin of your phone is lying there, face-down. “Hey! You did-” Twilight falls onto you, knocking you off the balls of your feet. Only a timely reach prevents her head and neck from hitting the now-cluttered shelf under the desk as the bulk of her body lands on your legs. She’s unresponsive. Oh fuck oh shit did you just kill a princess god damn it all to hell. You gather her up in your arms – you’ve never realized how much harder it is to manipulate dead weight than an aware and somewhat able person – and manage to stand. You fumble with the door to your bedroom, but manage to get it open without dropping her, though you need to adjust your hold when she starts sliding through. You’re trying really hard not to step on her dragging wings. After finally making it to your bed, you drop her onto it. Her physiology isn’t helping this, and you have to deal with her limb’s awkward ranges of motion while you try to get at her chest. At least they’re more flexible than you imagine your world’s horses to be. You finally get her far enough on her back and remember the truth of what Luna told you shortly after you woke up this morning. Ponies are habitually naked. You didn’t have to deal with the moral questions of modesty and voyeurism when trying to save a nudist’s life. Didn’t paramedics have to take women’s tops off to do CPR and stuff, or was that just a fictional embellishment? How would you do CPR on a pony? Do you have to do CPR right now? No, she looks like she’s breathing, but you have no idea where you’d go for a pulse. You should take a first aid course or something when all this is done. You pull your covers over the lower part of her body just to eliminate the distraction. You put your ear near her snout just to confirm she is, in fact, breathing fine. As you stand and wonder if Equestria has capital punishment for endangerment of nobility, you just barely hear a soft murmur from her. You grab her head in both her hands and bring your face close to hers, and speak about as softly as the sound you’d just heard. “Come on wake up please wake up I can’t lose you not now if you’re in a coma or something I’m so fucked why didn’t we go over this more…” After a stretch of silence, you notice her breathing pattern’s changed. This doesn’t help your mental state any, until you figure out what’s changed about it. She’s now breathing in sync with you. No, opposite; she’s inhaling when you’re exhaling, and vice versa. Is this some sort of automatic response in ponies, if someone else is close enough? Or is it a sign she’s conscious? She murmurs again, or maybe it’s a quiet nicker. You have no idea how pony vocalizations work, either. “Hey. Hey, are you okay? Can you hear me?” Her eyes flutter halfway open, taking some time to focus on you. Her breathing held during your speech, and falls back into its prior pattern when you’d finished. Then, suddenly, one of her wings flaps out. The other flinches but it’s pinned under her body. She starts weakly shoving herself up towards the headboard. “Mphhnno Luna’s gonna kill me.” “What? No, hold on now. Are you alright?” She blinks a couple times, then with what looks to be great effort, opens her eyes all the way. “Tired. Sugar. Sugar?” “Uh, yeah, shit, hold on. Don’t go- well, don’t try to go anywhere.” ”Dun wanna.” “Alright, cool. Be right back.” Your relief, you realize, is very different than simply avoiding punishment. You take a few deep breaths as you turn away from her, towards the door. Back out in the workshop, you snatch a small stash of snacks from a side shelf, then scurry back to the bedside. “Here, eat up. We got plenty.” You can only hope she doesn’t choke on any, as you pop the first piece in her mouth for her. Instead of sucking on a piece of hard candy, she just – with some effort – bites down and shatters it, crunching it up and swallowing. You offer another, and she disposes of it almost as fast. “Holy shit, how much are you going to put away?” ”Ever wonder why Celestia’s got such a sweet tooth?” At least she’s speaking clearer now. “Magic does that to you, huh?” ”Mhmm.” After the sixth piece, she shakes her head when you start to unwrap a seventh. “Feeling better?” ”I’m laying in your bed, as you tend to me like Equestria’s strangest nurse, after you’d put me face to face with you.” “Is that a yes or a no?” She adjusts her position, freeing her other wing. It too extends about halfway, but is otherwise limp like the first. ”We gotta talk about some differences in culture.” You shrug and sit on the side of the bed. “If you’re up to it.” She closes her eyes to collect her thoughts, then pokes you in your side, near where you held her candy. You unwrap another, but before you can get your hand near her mouth, she has her hooves around your hands. You let it go so she can finish the job herself. You’d never seen her try to manipulate anything without magic before. ”Remember when we first walked around the city, and you observed you were overdressed?” “Yup.” ”Dressing up is a stallion thing, but you’re a bit overdone even then. I know it’s probably because you’ve got a very thin coat, but it can be distracting.” “If I walked around naked everywhere, I’d be fucking freezing. And there’s modesty issues. I, uh, my bits ain’t as neatly tucked away as yours.” Twilight’s expression goes… silly. “Really?” “Yeah, it sorta just all hangs out. Seriously, the clothes aren’t going. “ ”Okay, fair. But cool it with the socks talk, those are bedroom clothes." You manage to choke back a laugh. ”I’m serious!” Her gravitas is not helped by her pausing to inhale more candy. “Okay, fine. Sorry. I’ll uh, I wont mention them.” ”And some bits of personal space are off-limits. Like the back just before the tail, and the wing-shoulders. And the nose.” “The nose?” ”DEFINITELY off-limits. Along with everything about it.” “So what we were just doing...” Ah shit, she’s blushing. “Hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” ”Because, well…” “Damn, I guess ponies think I’m some sorta fucking creep. I can’t even pass it off as trying to be charming, considering how monstrous I must be. As if there was any chance of reciprocal interest.” ”Don’t say that!” Her vehemence startles you. It looks like it startles her, too. “Isn’t it self-evident?” ”No! When you say that you… you… insult ponies who might feel otherwise.” Several different snippets of memory vie for your attention at once. “Would, ah, sorry for being so upfront, would you be one of those?” She looks away from you and mumbles, “I think so.” Now you’re the one with warm cheeks. “Is that why you never stopped me, before?” ”Not at first. No stallion’s ever done any of that with me, to me, let alone one I got along with so well. I guess I was taking advantage of your ignorance. I’m sure none of it was intentional on your part.” “Er, is that what you meant by Luna would kill you? Does she have something against ponies trying to get with me? Some old perspective on interspecies relations-” ”No, you dense… argh. She’s never as close to other ponies as she is to you! Raven told me some of what you two get up to. Anon, I’m happy someone’s dragging her out of her shell, but does it have to be someone so oblivious?” You realize that only several hours ago, you were where Twilight’s reclined, and Luna’s head rested where you sat. “I… I can’t know that. If that’s true, she can tell me herself.” ”I might be wrong, Anon, but if I’m right, you’ll know soon enough. The old ways could be quite direct, even if her awareness of her position will blunt most of the… aggression.” “So, if you feel the same way-” ”Well-” “-then, what, would you just let her claim me anyway?” Twilight is silent for a second, before, “I wouldn’t have to give way to her, but I can’t put myself before one of the rulers of Equestria. She just has to get you first.” She picks up on your slack-jawed stare and continues. “It’s called a herd, Anon. Well, Luna might call it a band. Terms change over time. Anyway, several mares can be involved with a single stallion.” “A harem?” She frowns. “That’s such a barbaric term. Besides, it gets the core relationship backwards. A mare’s in charge of a herd. The first mare. And the stallion runs the household while the mares take care of everything else, instead of the stallion being on top and a mare running the household like a harem would imply.” “I, uh, sorry. That’s a bit much to take in. Where I lived, monogamy was the norm.” ”Does that mean exclusivity? That happens here, but not often. It’s seen as a status symbol, sometimes, and other times as a mark of great devotion. That varies place to place. In Canterlot, and the Crystal Empire, or other places governed by formal or high society, the former is default, and it’d be frowned upon unless that status is at play. Elsewhere, in places that may be governed by folk tradition, the latter may be more common.” You don’t respond as you try to assimilate all this, staring at a particularly blank section of wall. Is Luna really after you? You can’t deny you two get along really well, and you definitely appreciate the time you spend with her. But if Twilight’s also interested, and she feels trapped like this, doesn’t that add a sense of urgency? You can’t get over how wrong it feels, despite the fact Twilight says it’s normal to have multiple interested partners. But is it a problem, on a fundamental level? You realize how much you’ve restructured your daily schedule just to spend more time with these two. How much you enjoyed those moments they pulled you away from work. How you came to feel comfortable walking the city with them, despite all the strangers gawking. You fell ass-backwards into new bonds, and you didn’t even realize it, because you’ve been lost in your work. And yet… You can’t believe you actually feel pressured over this, but a lot of it still makes no sense to you. Maybe there’s a good reason you were single, back home. ”Sorry,” Twilight eventually mumbles. “Hm?” ”For dumping all this on you. It can’t work out. I shouldn’t have said anything.” “No, it’s fine. Thanks for bringing it up, I needed to hear all this stuff. I’m still very much lost in Equestria. It’s all so confusing.” ”Yeah, it is confusing.” You look up at her, but her head’s leaning back against the headboard, and her eyes are closed. “I’m, uh, gonna go for a walk. Clear my head. Can you stay here? Until I’m back? I don’t think you’re in any shape to get up.” She nods her head, mute. “A’ight. I’ll, uh, be back. In a short while. Promise.” As you leave, you think you hear angry muttering. She can have it. She gave you a lot to think about. She’s got a lot to think about, too. You were right, this morning; today is definitely a weird day. 8 PlansYou glare at the mare on the other side of your desk. She squirms in her chair. “So, Ms. Craft. I understand that some orders have sat tied up in the smithy, lately.” ”Uh, yes ma’am, Ms. Inkwell.” “It took me some time to track down, since the only lead I had contained nothing but an indication that His Highness was involved. However, no written record can escape my attention for long. I congratulate you, on that note, for having quite comprehensive records. Your doing, or your boss’s?” ”The head smith doesn’t keep the records, ma’am. Thank you for the compliment.” You brighten considerably. “My pleasure. Back to business. Has your boss told you why he wants Anonymous’ orders held?” The mare squirms some more. “No, ma’am. Nor has the Prince. I just know the order stands in perpetuity.” “You speak quite frankly, for a mare who could land her boss in hot water.” She blanched, but continued. “Wasn’t right, how she treated Anonymous, ma’am. Even if she was right about stallions in general. You don’t speak to stallions that way, and his orders have never given us problems before, besides the tight tolerances he demands. If she’s going to get in trouble for that, then let her.” “You and me, Ms. Craft, will do something about that.” The mare stares at you wide-eyed for several seconds, before giving a shallow and rapid nod. “From this point on, I want all orders of Anonymous’s to be provided as soon as completed. If you stand the desk when he comes around, provide them immediately. If your boss does, and rebukes him, make the delivery yourself when you close up for the day.” ”All respect, ma’am, but why?” “Anonymous has shown me plans for a special project for Her Majesty, Princess Celestia herself. As Her Majesties’ chief aide, I will not tolerate any delays to it.” Well, you sneaked a peak at a sketch he made. Close enough. The mare gives you another shallow, rapid nod. “Excellent. Do you have any questions?” ”Yes’m. Why aren’t you talking to my boss about this?” “Several reasons. First, because your boss works diligently and dutifully, for all her attitude. Among His Highness’s many flaws, fulfilling his obligations running the royal household does not number, and that includes staff selection and promotion. This means, however, we cannot question your boss’s loyalty, and as such, we must expect she will report any obstruction of the His Highness’s commands. I wish to avoid that. Should he make such a discovery, things will prove… troublesome.” ”I can’t do this in secret forever, ma’am. He will find out, through her or not. As you say, he runs the household. You’ll have to answer to him for interfering.” “Oh, my new friend, you misunderstand. If His Highness has any objections, and brings them to my attention, he must answer to me, not the other way around. That will inconvenience me little, end quite poorly for him, and I will have my way in the end anyhow.” The smithy mare is ghostly pale beneath her sandy-colored coat. “I desire to avoid that. Unnecessary strife between the two halves of the palace, and their respective leaders. I suspect whatever problem His Highness has with Anonymous comes down to a matter of business between stallions, and we should handle it as such. To state it explicitly; work around it and give it as wide a berth as possible.” The mare sighs in relief and nods. “Yeah, I know how colts can be. Understood, ma’am.” “I only concern myself with seeing Anonymous’ work for Her Majesty completed in an expedited manner. I greatly appreciate your support in this endeavor.” ”Yes’m.” “Very good. I shall let you return to your duties. If any problems arise, please let me know immediately.” The mare stands from her chair and bows her head to you. “Thank you. Ms. Inkwell.” You return the gesture as best you can from behind your desk, and watch her as she leaves. What’s with everypony bowing to you, lately? Interruptions have a habit of multiplying. At least this time when Anon bursts into your office, he’s wearing proper footwear. “Hello, Anonymous. What can I do for you?” He waves a small, shiny tablet around as he storms up to your desk. ”Can I plug this into someone’s brain?” You blink several times in confusion. “Elaborate?” ”It’s got a camera, a microphone, a speaker. It can see, hear, and talk. Can I get it to do that for a pony?” “I cannot think of a reason why you would want to.” ”Come on, I’ve seen ponies with prosthetics before. So what if one goes blind, or deaf? Is there some way I can use this to let them see or hear?” You’re a glorified librarian and secretary. This is definitely not your forte. “From my limited knowledge of magical theory, I do not see a reason why not.” He doesn’t seem satisfied with this answer. “Her Serene Highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle could better answer your question. I have done little studying on magecraft. Do you not normally work with her, at this hour?” ”Do you belt out that whole title every time you talk about her?” “I usually shorten it to ‘Her Highness’ after the first time, unless required by protocol. You have not answered my question.” He sighs and runs a hand through his mane. “Well, normally, yeah. But I can’t now. Something, uh, something has, er, come up.” You frown, then gesture to the seat in front of your desk. “Please. I have some time.” He looks like he’s about to refuse, then sighs again and collapses into it. “Yeah, I was, until a few minutes ago. I kinda pushed her magical ability. She’s resting in my room, and I can’t do any work until she recovers.” Anon’s a poor liar. Not that calling him out on it will get you what you want to know. No use making the obviously troubled stallion defensive. “You seem in a hurry. Can it not wait until she recovers?” ”It’s, uh, well I want it to be a secret. I was going to, until...” He trails off, waving a hand in the air vaguely. “Anon, before I can help you, I need you to speak with precision.” ”I don’t know if she wants me to tell anyone.” You allow yourself the slightest of smiles. It seems Twilight can be decisive, when she wishes. “I assure you, I take Her Highness’s confidence very seriously. If you decide it is not for me to hear, I will not complain. However, I promise nothing will leave this room without your or Her Highness’s consent.” ”She, uh, she admitted to me. Uh. Sorry. She, I guess, confessed?” “Confessed what?” ”That she was into me. I think.” He puts his head in his hands. “The fuck is even happening today. First Luna, and now this.” He looks up at you suddenly. “Shit, I didn’t say that. You didn’t hear that.” “I will endeavor to un-hear that Her Majesty, Princess Luna also adds to your concerns.” “Yeah there you go with the titles again. Fucking royalty. Shit, I shouldn’t think about that right now.” “Amusing. Anon, while very interesting, I do not see how this development is problematic. Might you not return her affections?” ”I don’t even know. About either of them. You gotta understand, I wasn’t the most experienced in these matters, back home. I had a couple flings and that’s that. Hardly qualifies. Then Twilight’s bitching about goddamned timing and Luna’s going to kill me and eat my heart or something ‘aggressive’ and holy hell I’m just a lost human, how do I even respond to this?” “Generally the mare initiates. If you speak truth, let them initiate.” ”See, that’s backwards, back home. Which is part of my confusion here. Besides, Twilight’s bummed because she can’t, for some weird social reason to do with Luna.” Oh, the mare’s a sweetheart, tragically so. Can’t even upset the social hierarchy for love. “Then I think, you should let your heart guide you. Whatever happens, at least you can be content you never lied to yourself.” ”That’s the best piece of useless advice I’ve ever heard.” “I try to give advice excelling in all respects. Uselessness represents another category in which it can be superlative.” ”You’d have me laughing if I wasn’t so fucking confused.” “Yes, it is confusing.” He gives you a very strange look, before shaking his head. “I guess it can’t hurt to see what happens. I do really enjoy her company. She sounded pretty adamant that it wouldn’t work, probably because this weird waiting thing. Well, fuck that. I’ll do what I want, and if I find what I want is, I don’t know, her? Then I’ll do- wow this sounded a lot better in my head.” “Your creative talent lies in artisanship, not poetry.” ”Tell me something I don’t know.” “If you insist. Her Highness convinces herself of silly notions time to time, about what she can and cannot do. I would trust how she says she feels over what she says is possible. Her Highness too often shackles herself to rationality, even if it seems rational only to Her Highness and none other.” He points a finger at you. “That… actually makes perfect sense. And you’re right, I didn’t know it. You’re good.” “I try.” He stands up and turns to your door. “I know she’s going on a long trip in a couple days, maybe she can work things out for herself while she’s gone. We’ll see what happens after then. I think I just needed someone to talk to. Thanks.” “Any time, Anon. My door remains open.” You’ve finished the day’s work, but remain seated at your desk. Anon’s timing was too poor, considering the predicament he found himself in. That means he likely slipped in his schedule, which meant- Your door opens slowly. Princess Celestia stands there, looking chagrined. You stand and bow your head. “Your Majesty.” ”Raven, I haven’t seen Anon all day. Do you know where he might be?” “Yes, Your Majesty. Anon had a critical issue he needed to attend to. I do not know how long it would take him to resolve it – this admittedly complicated issue seems to confuse him more than most – but I suspect that he may even now still work at it. It depends on what course of action he decided on.” She walked into your office and closed the door behind her. “You know how to say so little with so much. Where is he?” You walked over to the door yourself, and put a sound dampening barrier across that whole wall, as usual for your Princess’s private audiences with you. “His workshop, Your Majesty.” She sits in one of your chairs. You place yourself in one opposite her, and get comfortable. ”Is something wrong up there?” “If something has gone wrong, I expect Her Serene Highness is there to help him.” Celestia narrows her eyes. “And if she isn’t?” “Then I fear his problem may become ours as well, soon enough.” ”Ah, one of those. And if the Princess of Harmony cannot handle it herself...” “One can assume the problem involves Her Highness in a disharmonious way, yes.” Celestia smiles. “My once-student has a habit of finding trouble for herself, doesn’t she?” “Your Majesty, you had sent her away specifically to find trouble. We both know eagerly she seeks to satisfy your expectations.” ”Too true. It figures our eccentric emissary is making the trouble for her.” “More than just Her Highness.” She tilts her head. “Oh?” “Your Majesty wouldn’t be here if Your Majesty was not troubled.” She looks mildly offended, but she has a gleam in her eyes. “What if I wanted to relax?” “Your trouble involves relaxation?” She laughs at this. “Yes, my dear friend. The past few days we’ve been retiring to our wing in the main library, instead of our private tower. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had someone to just relax with?” “Yes, Your Majesty, considering you do so only with me, as now, or with your sister and her six occasional guests. I have the records for the latter’s every visit, and the former I know personally, obviously.” ”Well, he’s got me thinking back to when I was younger. You know, if I was now the pony I was then, I don’t think we’d have ever gotten along. I was a bit of a rebel, and wanted little to do with the trappings of power. And you’re so formal and regimented.” She laughs again. “Can you imagine what we’d be like?” You bow your head to her. “I consider fate most kind for ensuring our lives crossed only when we would be amenable.” ”And if anypony heard you talk to me like that in private, instead of in court, they’d think us cold.” “Force of habit.” ”I know.” You two smile at each other, and just sit. This, you know, is the kind of friendship Celestia values. She has enough ponies she could talk to if she wants conversation. A true friend knows that sometimes words aren’t necessary. Sometimes simply being is enough. From what she’s said about Anon, you suspect this is how he found his way close to her, as well. You and he are as superficially opposed as you are secretly alike. You’re glad Celestia has more than just you, now. “Your Majesty, Anon’s life may become quite convoluted, soon. In no small part due to fellow royals. You may want to take stock of what he means to you.” Her smile is more reserved, and a touch sad, this time. “I am content to wait and see, Raven. Patience is something I have in abundance.” “Then, for my own curiosity, I shall rephrase it as a question. What does Anon mean to you?” She chews on this question a bit. “He doesn’t know what he wants, Raven. He’s still trying to figure everything out. Twilight’s swept up in his craft and nominally innocent mannerisms. My sister has found someone who knows even a sliver of what she’s gone through – and trust me, realizing that hurt me, a bit. These, I think, were inevitable. He’s a perfect storm of circumstances, aimed right at this very palace.” “Your Majesty, only one pony has given me straightforward answers today, and she left my office many hours ago. What about you?” “I’m less interested in what he is, and more in what he can be, Raven. But, if you insist on a straightforward answer, I am interested.” You draw yourself up, at this. “Interested beyond merely academic?” ”He doesn’t treat me like a princess. Where he came from, princesses were irrelevant. Isn’t that fascinating? I’ve finally met someone who can see through that. The only other stallions who interact casually are my old friends, and none of that latter group is very compelling. Something about ancient familiarity makes for good friends and bad lovers. And I mean no offense to you of course, you’re overly respectful at all times. But you’re the only one that never bothers me from, because that’s who you genuinely are.” “Then I am glad he came into Your Majesty’s life. Now two can treat you genuinely. But have you spoken to him about this?” ”Oh absolutely. Do you know what he did?” You shake your head. ”He’s the one who dragged me down to the library. Can you believe that? He told me what to do! Then when we get down there, he just goes back to books. He doesn’t even like reading, not like Twilight, he just does it because it’s something to do. I took a nap, right there in the private reading room. When his phone woke me up to attend our meeting, he’d hardly moved.” “Fascinating.” ”More than you could know. Don’t you see? He reads because he’s bored, Raven. But the books are enough. No, the books are just to fill the time. I am enough. Even if I were to disregard his presence completely – which I have done, many times, in that span during which he alone accompanies me – he remains by my side. Not out of respect, for he has little of that, but something deeper. He genuinely cares, Raven, and if I didn’t know where he came from better, I’d call it devotion.” “If not that, then what?” She looks away from you, out the large window behind your desk. “I don’t know. But I intend to find out.” When she looks back, she has another of her gleams in her eyes. “And I intend to enjoy it.” “Someone’s fucking with me.” Twilight looks at you as you drop the box of talon parts on the table. ”Why do you say that?” “Those motors we assembled earlier?” You gesture to the neat row of them along one side of the desk. “I found their parts sitting outside my door yesterday evening. No explanation, after all this time with it tied up. Now when I go down there, the mare at the desk was more than happy to hand this over right away. Totally different mare than usual, but I don’t think the smithy staff has changed at all. So, I say again, someone’s fucking with me.” ”But who would do that?” “Blueblood, I think. From my preliminary investigation I mean. I need to confront him sometime, before something weirder happens. I’m pretty sure he’s telling ponies to stop working with me. Well, except today, I guess. I don’t even know.” ”I could-” “No. Don’t. I want to handle it myself. I just haven’t had the time lately.” She stares at you, her head just barely visible over the edge of the box from where you stand. “If you insist.” “I do. But with these pieces, we should have everything. You ready?” ”Lay it all out.” You start unpacking the box. One ring, about the size of your own palm, with teeth on the outside. Pieces to make an assembly for the back of the hand, including a smaller, thicker ring with many holes around its edge for wires. Finally, a series of smaller pieces, combining to form a single talon of the claw. This last set glowed magenta, and soon three duplicate pieces sat beside it. “Here, lets make this fun.” You take out your phone and put it on the benchtop, flipping to its stopwatch. “How fast can you assemble one?” Twilight grins at you as you remove the now-empty box from the table, then her magic’s glow extends to all the frame pieces and half the motors on the table. When they lift off its surface, you hit the stopwatch. In that magenta field, all the parts align in a configuration similar to the final assembly. Then the entire formation contracts. Every single motor slots into place at once, followed by every frame piece locking into place with each other in one fluid movement. The few fasteners required outside the tabs and slots slip into place from every direction at the same time. The now fully-assembled talons float back down to the tabletop. It takes you a moment to react. “Heh.” ”What?” “Poetry in motion.” Twilight smiles, then looks to the tabletop beside you. “So how long did it take?” You slap the phone’s screen, but it’s far too late. “Shit, I didn’t stop it. Too lost in what you were doing.” She laughs, then shakes her head. “Seriously, Anon.” “Your work’s just that beautiful. Now I gotta complete all the connections. That’ll take a lot longer than your magnificent display.” As you flip your new soldering iron on, she comes around the table to your side. ”That’s fine. Human magic is interesting.” “It’s not magic, it’s electricity to make heat, melting metal.” She nudges your thigh with the side of her head, prompting you to tousle her mane. ”It’s your hands, Anon, how sure you are when you use your tools. It’s magic when you do it.” The two of you had designed this test article with accessibility in mind, and doing all the electrical work while it was fully assembled had been the plan from the beginning. It had been years since you needed to solder anything, so you had to reacquaint yourself with best practices, on top of getting the hang of a handmade iron. You only burnt yourself twice! Twilight continued to prove useful, able to hold wires to parts, either at any angle needed, while you worked with your iron and solder. After around an hour, the completed piece sat on the table, connected to a power pack you made the night before. An open socket on the back of the hand is exposed, surrounded by a ring of wire ends. “Alright, ready when you are.” Twilight telekinetically inserted a small crystal into the center of the ring, to be the focus of the spell. You kick your stool out of the way to crouch beside her, so you’re looking at the claw from the same angle she is. “Alright, just to be safe, lets go over what happens if we messed up.” ”If your connections are bad, some motors won’t work, that’s simple enough. The portion of the spell controlling the motors extends only to the surrounding ring; it’ll just be magically connecting the motors with the power source, and determining how much power is transferred, based on what I tell it mentally. If my magic’s bad, some position feedback won’t work, and we won’t recognize that until I try to use it.” “There’s no risk of messing up the thing letting you control it mentally?” She gives you a flat look. “I’ve cast spells that use that connection many times, Anon. It’s one of the most fundamental spells in advanced magic. Flying tortoise, remember?” “Yeah, yeah, just making sure. What if our design was wrong? What happens if it, uh, gets a mind of its own?” ”If we overestimated our connection limits? The core of its identity will be formed by the caster’s ideas of what it is. So if we leave it, it’ll try to do… hand things? Grabbing objects, moving them, stuff like that. Something this complex would need to learn how to work itself, so we’ll have plenty of time to stop it.” “No danger to you, through the link you make with it?” ”If it gets a life of its own, that link will fail to form in the first place. Scholars still debate on why that happens; this isn’t a very popular field, due to how complex the spell is, and many mages are reluctant to study failure modes. The current leading theory is the mental bridge is tangled and ineffective due to the sheer number of control channels needed; this process may be how it gets its own mind in the first place. What this has to do with the intelligence-boosting effects on magically saturated animals is still in question, it’s just known they’re related.” “As long as you’ll be fine, I’m happy. I got my scare out of your magic yesterday.” You wrap an arm around her midsection, pulling her close to you to steady her. If the spell took too much out of her again, you’d be ready. She turns her head away from you, though. “Anon, I told you it’s too soon for… this degree of familiarity. I should wait.” “Does it make you happy when I do?” ”Well, yes, but-” “That’s enough for me.” She snorts at this, then returns her attention to the claw. Her horn starts glowing, as does the crystal inside the claw’s central socket. She closes her eyes, and you can hear her breathing faster. Then, suddenly, she stops. You look away from her to the claw. The crystal in the center now emits a very faint golden glow. As you’re watching it, the tip of one talon twitches. “Oh shit, you did it! We did it!” You squeeze her tighter to you with the arm around her, while grabbing the claw with your other hand. She turns in your grip to hug you back, drawing your attention down. Her eyes are shining, matching her huge smile. “I told you it’d work.” “Yeah, yeah you did. I should know by now not to doubt you.” She laughs. “I’d appreciate that.” “You said this crystal was too small to hold any magic reservoir, right?” ”Yes, so we will have to recast the spell when it runs down. It wasn’t that difficult though. Shouldn’t be a problem.” “Alright, here, let me put it on.” You gently grab her closer wing, which she helpfully extends. Threading the claw’s thin straps between her feathers carefully, you eventually cinch its base against the end of the limb. “Try it?” ”I’m still trying to get the hang of it, give me a minute.” She’s only moving one of the talons, testing different angles and orientations. You watch it track around the claw’s main ring, rotating into an opposed position then to the other side of the row of digits, and back to its starting position again. As she’s working on learning how it works you study her wing. “Hey Twilight, can you teach me about how this thing works? I’ve been thinking of artificial body parts lately as a natural next step from these hands, but I don’t know how these wings work. Back home, the wings humans made for vehicles were fixed in place, and just dealt with lift passively.” She furrows her brows while focusing on the claw, but her voice doesn’t sound strained when she answers you. “They generate lift in what I imagine is a similar manner, for one. The secret is in the feathers, obviously. Remiges – these wing feathers – have a couple special properties. The last segment of the wing’s core limb, the bit you strapped this claw to, the biggest feathers coming off that are the primaries. Each one can be individually positioned. Pegasi have incredible ranges of motion with them, so you’ll see them use them for non-flight purposes occasionally, like gestures, or attempting to grasp very light objects. Their motion is important with flight, and lets us do things like change the wing’s shape, increase or decrease drag at certain angles, and so on. The ones closer to my body in that same plane are secondaries, they form a lot of the wing’s lift-generating shape. Unlike the primaries, I can’t move them individually. These feathers are covered by the smaller tectrices on top that help fill out the shape and smooth airflow, which would be involved in the lift generation you mentioned.” She’s able to move all four talons at once now, and is running through different grip configurations, though every once and awhile your prodding elicits a flinch that interrupts her practice. “How did humans make flight work with fixed wings? How did you take off?” “You could think of it like getting a running start. Get moving fast enough for the lift to carry you off the ground; we had engines that generated the thrust for that on their own, things that worked a bit like giant fans. Well, for propellers, at least. Jets were more complicated. It’d be wrong to say the wings were entirely fixed; wings had flaps that could change their shape, but they never actually flapped like yours, at least.” You think on the problem more as you watch her work the claw. “Honestly, I think rotors might be better for artificial wings, but they’d only work in a matching set. I’m going to need some notes on anatomy, things like body width, neck length, and head range of motion. Can’t have tiltrotor ponies decapitating themselves. I’m sure you got some information on that in your library.” ”They’d lose some body language pegasi look to, without primary feathers. And it’d be hard to fold the wings with the big rotor blades.” “Nah, we can kill two- okay, that’s not a great turn of phrase. We can solve both those problems with a single solution; back home we had helicopters that could fold their rotor blades. If the user can control blade positions individually through their whole range, that should solve both problems. Think three blades would be enough?” “For the basics, yeah. Foldable rotors. Human technology is incredible.” She squirms out of your arm and turns her side to the table, extending her wing out over it. It takes her some time to get her extended wing in a good position, but she eventually gets the claws near some of the motors slated for the other of the claw’s pair. Slowly, and delicately, she closes the talons around one motor. When she tries to lift it, the motor slips out of her grasp. She grits her teeth and tries again. She doesn’t get the motor off the table until her fourth attempt. You’re hiding a grin behind one hand. “There you go! You weren’t kidding when you said it’d take practice. ”Shut up.” “Hey, I’m not making fun of you. I suppose it would take some time to learn how to use an unfamiliar appendage. You got the hang of that way faster than I’d thought.” “It’s easier with the kinesthetic feedback, you were smart to design for that. All feedback’s working, by the way. It’s a little strange trying to grab something with no tactile feedback, though.” “That would require a significantly more complex design, one I’m not sure how we’d implement. Even if we could provide the technological basis, that’d still put us way over the control limit. Practice and a little knowledge of what you’re grabbing should suffice. Just don’t crush anything.” ”Easier said than done, I think. I’ll learn.” You look at her fiddling with small parts on your desk, tongue-tip sticking out slightly with her concentration. She is, you realize, just as adorable as when you first saw her, even after you’d stopped thinking of her as similar to cute animals from back home. Something about how she approached things, her earnest enthusiasm, her dedication to learning, and her interest in just about every skill you valued in yourself. She better give it all a good think, once she leaves for the Crystal Empire tomorrow. Damn her dumb timetables. Maybe this could work out after all. 10 HistoryYou really enjoy watching Twilight work. She’s humming some song that you can’t quite identify – but you know it’s one off your phone – as she assembles one of the two rotors for your crippled pegasi flight aid. After design revisions, it’s more a tiltwing-tiltrotor hybrid, taking advantage of how it’d need to be able to articulate to fold away anyhow. Complicated, but you figure the capability is worth it. You’re working on the circuit of relays and stops that lock the wings in a fully extended configuration to enable flight. You think you’ve got it just about figured out, now that the two of you have a properly designed rotor hub to include all the functionality you needed to allow its blades to work like the last section of a pegasi’s wing, if the hub was the end of its limb. But you keep getting distracted by the purple cutie building your tech! She’s got your soldering iron in one of her claws, a spool of solder in the other, while she holds the parts she’s working on in place with her magic. She’s getting good at using them; it gives you hope that your combination of magic and technology could do the world good after all. Those concerns, however, feel distant, when you’re watching her. It’s something you’d never thought you’d see, here, in the first few months after you’d arrived. But Twilight has picked up on everything you’ve taught her, and then some. Her ability to master any skill related to your work astounds you, and her eagerness to employ those skills thrills you. How did you get so lucky as to have someone like this interested in you for more than your work? Just thinking about it set your heart aflutter. You look back to your circuit diagrams, ready to tackle the last section. No, wait, hold on. The core section didn’t look like this before. You erase and redraw it to be correct. By the time you’re done, the rest of the diagram has disappeared. While you’re trying to process this, you feel an incessant tugging at your attention. No, it’s not wanting to watch Twilight more. The tugging turns into a suction. Suddenly it’s a physical struggle to keep your focus on the page before you. One you lose. Violently. A cacophonous shriek builds as you feel your mind being ripped out of your body. You look back at Twilight one last time as the world dissolves into static. An eternity is compressed into a handful of seconds as the scene distorts itself into hazy nothingness. Then a thunderclap booms, but it’s strangely muted. The mostly-assembled rotor, no longer held up by a work stand, falls to gray, dusty ground in slow motion. Twilight’s nowhere to be found, nor is the workbench she was standing near. The bench you were drawing on is still present, when you turn back to it, but your plans aren’t. The walls and ceiling have been replaced by a pitch black starfield. Though it’s not from any angle or image you recognize – and you’ve known a fuckload about the Apollo program since your boyhood aspirations – you realize you’re on the moon. In the distance, you can see Luna galloping towards you, though it’s more a bounding prance, considering the environment. You let out a breath you’ve been holding, but even as you do, you’re still holding your breath. Somehow you’re breathing and not breathing at the same time. Better than asphyxiating in the moon’s nigh-nonexistent atmosphere, you suppose Luna’s not slowing down. You brace for impact just before she hits you, but she still knocks you off your feet, sending both of you drifting towards the ground. She lands on top of you with all her weight, which isn’t nearly enough to hurt you here, while you end up on your back. Her head’s out of sight; her neck’s extended along the side of your face, but from her hitching breath you can tell she’s crying, as she scrabbles at the dusty ground around you. You push her up off you as you sit up. “Hey now, stop that. Please stop that? I don’t know what’s going on.” She looks at you with tear-filled eyes. “We are sorry, we-” she takes a deep breath, which doesn’t help much- “we planned not to bother thee, but…” Luna sits back as you stand up and dust yourself off. “It’s fine. No, really. I’m just surprised. I’m guessing this is a nightmare of yours?” ”Yes. Being back here.” She shakes her head. “And we are back here often, Anon, in our own dreams.” “You can’t just end it?” ”We are asleep ourselves, right now, so without our full talent. We have some control, but cannot stop it, or change the fundament.” She rears back and throws her forelegs over your shoulders, and wraps her wings around you.”And we are tired of facing it alone.” You return her hug, and start rocking her side to side slowly when her sobbing resumes. Up on her hind legs like this, she’s a bit taller than you, despite being only about five feet on all fours. She’s actually the perfect height to be hugging a pony like this, you realize. Twilight can’t hug you around your neck unless you’re crouching or kneeling – though she has plenty of room when you’re that low – and Celestia’s weight with height-enabled leverage would knock you over; even the palace’s smaller rooms are so much taller than normal because her horn would lodge in the ceiling of a usual eight or nine foot clearance of a typical domestic floorplan if she reared back. Thinking on Celestia, “Why don’t you bring your sister?” Luna pulls her head up and back, and looks down at you with wide eyes. “Never! Thou canst never tell her. She knoweth our time was spent in suffering, and knoweth we still have nightmares of it, but if she learneth what it was truly like, her guilt would be unimaginable.” You reach up to pull her neck back over your shoulder, and stroke a hand through her mane. Unlike Celestia’s warm mist, Luna’s feels like a slightly chilly void or lower-pressure area, with a faintly blowing wind. You can even feel the stars; they nip at your skin like pellets of sleet as you pass your hand through them. She must be reading your thoughts, because halfway through your fourth stroke, her mane flashes to her normal blue hair. “I know you told me you were here, but I never really comprehended it until now, looking on it myself.” ”A thousand years, Anon, even if my perception was… distorted.” She drops out of your arms back onto all fours. “Awhile ago, we sat with thee through one of thy nightmares, and made it pleasant.” Her wide eyes are pleading you, frantically looking across your features. “Please, canst thou do the same for us? You stroke some errant part of her mane away from her damp cheek and shining eyes. “If you’re already sleeping, it’s morning, so I doubt I have much time. But I’ll do what I can.” Pulling back, the two of you look around the area. Luna spots the rotor that was dragged through from your dream, in your transfer’s wake. ”What is that?” You walk over to it, and Luna follows you. “This is part of the system Twilight and I are building to give pegasi the ability to fly again, if something happens to their wings.” You reach it and crouch beside it, propping it up so it’s oriented vertically. It suffered no damage from its gentle fall. “These three blades here spin, like three thin wings. The whole thing works a little like a big fan, you could say. We’re going to have one on each side of what you could consider prosthetic wings. They’ll generate enough thrust to get the pegasus off the ground and, once they’re tilted in the right direction, on their way.” Luna tilts her head as she examines it. She seems a lot more composed now; either her anxiety has run its course, or she’s managed to tuck it away for now. “It looketh most peculiar. We cannot pretend to understand how it worketh, but we trust thy talent.” You manipulate the blades where they attach to the hub, manually pulling the locking pins on two of them and folding them back along either side of the third. “And this is the system we devised so the pegasus can still gesture and communicate normally. These two folded blades can be positioned at any point along this range of travel, and the entire assembly can still rotate at the hub. Along with each blade’s ability to tilt, this means these three blades can replicate the behavior of a pegasi’s first three primaries on each wing, which Twilight told me is the core of their wing body language.” Luna extends her own wings, and executes a series of involved patterns by arranging and angling her own primary feathers. “Pegasi in this age knoweth not many of the old signs. This displeases us, though we admit to amusement that we now know more than they about their own secret language of yore, we who had so much trouble learning it in our youth when we received wings of our own.” “They used to talk through sign language?” ”Not exclusively, but they possessed many different gestures to relate meanings or attitudes more subtle than speech alloweth. They were very extroverted and socially colorful. While those traits remaineth today, they lost much of their old nuance. Pegasi nowadays are so forward and bold.” Luna shakes her head. “We miss it, to be truthful. It earned them a stubborn place among unicorn-dominated Canterlot society. One pegasus alone couldn’t do much in the face of a unicorn, but two or more together would make a terrifying rhetorical challenge for even the hardiest nobles, as they could communicate privately with each other even while speaking to you.” “For our deaf, back home, we had entire languages that could be spoken with hand gestures alone. I don’t know any of the signs, but I always respected those who learned it.” ”Thou speaketh of many accommodations for your crippled.” “Well, we preferred to call them disabled, or similar terms. But yeah, we tried to take care of those who couldn’t take care of themselves. We’d train dogs specifically for certain tasks. Ramps and specially modified vehicles for the wheelchair-bound. Different interface schemes for the colorblind. Special social programs for the disabled. Stuff like that.” ”It is admirable.” “Now you see why I’d like to bring a piece of it here. My work can do that. It’s how I can repay the kindness all of you have shown me.” Luna extends her head up – she can just barely make it – to brush your cheek with her snout, reversing your earlier gesture. “Thou art noble of soul, Anon.” You reach up to hold her head against yours. “That means a lot, coming from someone with so firm a belief in nobility as you.” You look around at the vast blankness. “Hey, since this is your dream – a pony’s dream – and you said you can read thoughts, can you pull stuff from my mind? Make it part of the space?” ”We can try.” “Alright. I’m about to remember something I’ve seen. I’d like you to try to stick it over there. I want to show it to you.” Closing your eyes, you recall your many memories of moon landing exhibits from different museums you’ve visited. You fix many angles and perspectives of the Apollo lunar module in your mind. ”We have it.” When you open your eyes again, there’s a perfect copy of a lunar module, life-sized, sitting about a hundred yards away. ”Now canst thou tell us what it is?” “Yeah, sure. Follow me.” The two of you make your way over to its golden base. You have some fun mimicking the leaps of the Apollo astronauts, but realize you can go much faster and further with each bound, not weighed down with gear and suits as they were. The fact you can feel accurate lunar gravity, thanks to Luna’s experience with it, blows your mind. This is literally a childhood dream come true. When you arrive, you take position in front of it, one hand grabbing the ladder. “This, my moon-bound mare, is what we came here in.” From her widening eyes and angling of her ears, you can tell her interest has gone from negligible to maximum in a fraction of a second. “Not just this, strictly speaking, but this is what we rode down to the surface. There was another part that would circle it high above, that carried all this here, and would carry this top half-” You jump up – the low gravity helping your altitude – to slap the side of the ascent module “-back home to Earth. The base would stay behind.” She sits down in the dust, staring up at it. You walk over and crouch next to her, wrapping an arm around her neck, then turn your gaze towards it as well. She absentmindedly extends her wing to wrap around you. ”Is this… Is this what human technology meaneth? Doth this represent the pinnacle of thy craft?” “Luna, these things hadn’t been used in almost half a century, when I left. This is old tech, from my perspective. Not ancient, but before my time. If I can get ponies making vacuum tubes, we could start building some of the systems that my people used when the Apollo program started. After you guys study and develop your own technology enough, at least. The computer that’s actually in there was the first computer to use silicon-based integrated circuits, which is something you guys might take awhile to get ahold of.” You pat your pockets. Looks like your phone didn’t make it into this dream. “The little device I carry around in my pocket most of the time is so many orders of magnitude more powerful than the computer in there it blows my mind. We’ve come a long way.” You shake your head. “But not a long enough way to come back.” She walks over to the lander, then rears back to put her forehooves on the first rung of the ladder, and cranes her neck around to look back at you. “Anon, we cannot say we have cared much for thy science, beyond the fact thou doest it, and what thou canst achieve with it. But this…” She looks back up the ladder, towards the entrance hatch. “This hath meaning for us. We still understand not why thy kind wanted to come to this dreadful place, but to see the proof of it warms our heart.” You walk over to her and pat her on the lower back, earning you a swish of her tail. “Here, let me show you inside.” You jump onto the ladder and climb, getting to the module’s entrance hatch. When you grasp the handle, you find it works and feels exactly like a doorknob. That’s not right, but you’ve never actually opened a hatch like this one before, so Luna wouldn’t have any reference to replicate it. Dreams can’t be entirely accurate, after all. When you swing the hatch open, you find inside is just an empty shell. You frown and close the hatch. “Uh, interior. Hey, I’m gonna recall a bunch of stuff again, what the inside of this thing looks like. Can you stuff it all in?” ”We will do our best.” You close your eyes again and remember back to all the exhibits, schematics, diagrams, models, and even a virtual reality environment you’ve messed with before. You try to make a mental map of everything together. “We think we have done it?” You smile at the question in her voice as you open your eyes and open the hatch again. The interior is indeed present, though mostly just in basic shapes. Still, those shapes are all the right sizes and in the right places, so it’s good enough. You wave Luna up the ladder behind you and duck inside the small hatch. It’s very cramped inside, and you have to stand and contour your back to one side of the interior for Luna to crawl inside herself. She closes the hatch behind her with magic. It sounds like a regular door too, and you have to stifle a chuckle at the absurdity. ”How many humans traveled in this vehicle? There is little space.” “Just two. A third would be in the other part in orbit.” She looks out one of the triangular main windows, conveniently enough at just the right height for her, then tilts her head upward to look through the small docking window in the ceiling over the commander’s station. Something’s bothering you about the lighting; it’s far too bright in here. Ah, that’d be the exhibit lighting, coming from sources that you don’t think would exist in the real article. “Hey, uh, can you turn off the ambient light in here? It’s not, er, accurate.” Luna blinks at you, but then nods. The interior is plunged into darkness, illumination now only provided by the controls, which unlike most of the interior, are rendered in loving detail. ”Skies above.” “Yeah this is more like it. At least, I think.” Luna stares at the many controls. “What is all this for?” “That’s how we piloted this thing. I can’t really explain it all to you, as much as I studied it.” You sit down with your back to the step up to the rear half of the compartment, your feet against the hatch. “C’mon, sit for a bit. Relax, as best you can in here.” She looks to the floor, then at your legs. “There is little room.” You shrug, then pat your thighs. She hesitates before settling herself over your legs, then sprawls out across the lower floor section of the control stations. “Not so bad, was it?” You reach out and scratch around one of her ears. She leans into it even as she laughs and smiles in embarrassment. “Only for thy invitation.” “Hey, last time we shared a dream, you climbed into bed with me.” She snorts and ducks away from your hand. “Anon, thou art rude, with such insinuation.” You reach out with both hands this time, getting both her ears and scratching around them more aggressively. She ducks her head down, but not far enough to escape, and fails to suppress a soft nickering. “Just speaking the truth. And don’t try to say you didn’t like it.” When she tosses her head again, you decide to give her ears a break, and go back to stroking the mane she never reverted to its starry form. You two spend a good deal of time in silence, with one of your hands idly playing with her head and neck as she leans into its ministrations, and the other on her side, feeling her chest move with her breathing. You study the controls and try to remember what they all do, while she looks this way and that, studying the interior. Suddenly, she stops leaning into your hand. ”Anon?” Is that a note of panic? ”Anon, what’s-” You feel her breathing pick up its pace, then she gathers her legs under her and stands. “Anon, what’s wrong?” You look at her, but your head movement feels like it overshoots its mark. Everything suddenly feels so sluggish. Indistinct. Very, very far away. You can’t really focus on her face, despite it being only about a foot and a half away from you, but you think you see tears in her eyes. ”Anon please leavest not us now!” But everything’s going white. Then you open your open eyes. The white is daylight. You’re in your room again, staring at white ceiling. Fuck. You dress as quickly as you can. It’s not night, unlike the last time you needed to make this quick cross-palace excursion to Luna’s side, and you have appearances to maintain during the day. You do have to cross the outdoors, since you’ve moved out to the new place. Squinting against daylight, you nod and greet ponies you pass as politely as you can. Your fast jog raises some eyebrows. You stop yourself when you reach the hallway that wraps around the throne room. No, you’re not going to the bureaucratic wing this time. Royal quarters are towards the back of the palace, up several floors, then down a short hall to the front. You almost pass out by the time you’ve sprinted up enough flights of stairs to get to the right floor, and have to stop to catch your breath. Just a little further. Two of Luna’s guards stand outside her door, the only ones you know to stand watch in daylight besides the one that Luna’s attached to your workshop. You reach them, but are too out of breath to articulate your need. You end up pointing to your temple and closing your eyes instead. “She, uh, she wants me-” Breathe, damnit. “Was in a dream, but woke up. I think she needs my help.” Her two guards look at each other, but one shrugs her wings and steps aside. The other opens the door for you. “Only doing this because it’s you, Anon,” he says. Luna’s suite is fairly spartan, for royalty, so you have no trouble navigating it for her bed, and sit down on its side. Even asleep, she doesn’t look happy. Every once in awhile you can hear a quiet whinny or whimper from her. She’d waited until you woke up, when she visited you during your nightmare. But she also said you dropped out of it, so you assume you were just sleeping normally. She’s obviously still stuck in hers. Maybe she’s still looking for you. Hesitantly, you reach a hand out, and rest it on one of her shoulders. Her whole body jerks around it, and she snaps out at our arm, which you pull away just in time. “Hey, hey calm down, it’s me!” She freezes, then slumps back onto the bed. “Oh. Sorry,” she croaks out. “Nah, it’s fine. You looked miserable.” She groans, then curls up towards where you sit. “Hell, you still look miserable.” ”Hate waking up.” “Fitting, for a princess of dreams. Still, I think you hated being where you were, too.” She nods, which is pretty awkward when the side of her face is still pressed into the bedding. You notice that her mane’s normal hair even in the real world. Did changing it in the dream change it here, too? “Sorry, I kinda woke up.” ”We knew.” “You sounded like you still might have been looking for me.” ”We were alone again.” “Well, now I’m here.” She’s quiet for a long time before finally responding, “Thou hast much to do.” “I can stick around until you’re asleep again.” This earns you the slightest of smiles, and that’s enough to make it worth it. After Celestia closes the door to the private reading room, she turns to you instead of her usual seat. ”You know, Anon, the first time we came here together, you offered me a massage.” She grins at you. “I’ve decided I could use your touch after all, even if not the most stallionine.” That grin always means trouble for you of some sort, even if just a bit of teasing. You don’t really mind. Truth be told, you’ve come to anticipate it, and enjoy that anticipation. Hardly a dull day around Celestia. You wait for the joshing follow-up, but she simply walks to the middle room, turns her rear to you, and lowers herself to the floor, legs neatly tucked beneath her. When you don’t move, she looks back at you expectantly. “Well shit, I didn’t think you were serious.” She flashes a more genuine smile, then once again lays her head on the floor away from you. “It’s been a long day.” There was something of an incident in the great hall earlier, a big fracas between two groups who had evidently arrived to ask for Celestia’s help on opposing sides of some policy dispute out in stars-know-where. Celestia not only managed to stop the fighting, but imply the perfect solution in her rebuke to them. You have no idea how she thinks these solutions up. Over a thousand years of fighting social battles will make a top tier rhetorical soldier of anyone, you assumed. But now this warrior of words wanted you to work over her body. “All due respect, but why me? I’m sure there’s some masseuse in Canterlot somewhere you could ask.” ”I want to see if what my student says about your hands and fingers is true. She claims you can work wonders with them.” She turns back to you again, this time wearing that feral grin. “I don’t know what you did to her to convince her of that, but I’ll settle for a massage.” You’re rolling that slanderous innuendo around in your head as you kneel by her side. It doesn’t help that Celestia’s universally attractive, despite being one of this world’s cruel pranks upon your psyche of small sapient horses. She’s one of the few beings you’ve seen here who exists on your scale, for one, so your options have already been extremely narrow. Her body is of a nearly unique slender build, one shared by her sister and only a few other ponies you’ve seen, all unicorns. Some older unicorn phenotype, washed out with genetic stock from the other tribes? Or was it the other way around, with the extant unicorn families demonstrating it having alicorn ancestry? All you know is that her shape touched some deep language of beauty, with her perfect curves between contrasting fullness and apparent fragility. This, coupled with her reserved composure that obliterated some of the unfeminine mannerisms of most mares, inviting you to dream of how she might otherwise carry herself, well, it prompted thoughts you were too embarrassed to admit to anypony. But, in Equestria, who would disagree? You’re pretty sure those mares who displayed her body type are the peak of sex appeal, at least in Canterlot. Eternal youth, wisdom, AND beauty. Alicorns had it made. But as you lay a hand on her back – something you’ve done so rarely, despite how physically familiar you’ve become with her sister and student – you’re reminded that afore-thought fullness owes itself to muscle, and that apparent fragility is only skin-deep. Celestia’s a powerful mare in more than just charisma and magical ability. With your hands grabbing her lower back, it really doesn’t help your state of mind any. What would the other two think? You’ve already all but committed to Twilight, and Luna’s finding her way into your heart even through your mental objections from your prior culture’s monogamous leanings. ‘Sorry gals, I really want to fuck your sister/teacher. No hard feelings! Jus primae noctis? Oh it’s an ancient Earth custom, the ruler gets to bang your new spouse. Stallions are the fairer sex here, right? Just the way it is on this bitch of a world.’ Celestia might have it all, but you’re too terrified of breaking their hearts to let yourself even think of doing anything about it. So here she is asking you to. As you get started, you find yourself having some difficulty getting through how taut her muscles are. Her whole back is hard as a rock. What kind of tension is this poor mare under? Besides running a nation, at least. Honestly, that’s probably enough. Celestia has a way of moving her body in minute ways to guide your hands exactly where they need to be, as you work your way up her spine. It’s not just your hands doing work; her whole body is relaxing as you make your way forward. Was your touch part of the tension, and she’s acclimating? Or was she just that bad off, and her body’s relaxation is some sort of feedback or cascading effect from your work? Whatever it is, she’s practically putty in your hands now. She never once vocalizes any pleasure, not even that nickering you’ve deciphered means satisfaction, but from her big sighs to her increasingly-frequent stretching, you can tell you’re having an effect. Damn, maybe you should have been a masseuse this whole time. Something about mighty mares melting to manual ministrations makes your mind meander merrily. But your current line of work is the only reason you’re doing any good. A body is a finely engineered system. Your actions build off an ingrained understanding of mechanical stress, loading, tension, and likely arrangements of connections between two points on a frame. Besides, your work has been honing your manual dexterity lately, so that’s a big part of it. You run into a problem, however, when you reach her wings. From her side, you can’t reach the same angles on both simultaneously, and more involved work would require you to awkwardly reach around the closer one. When you stand to move behind her, she doesn’t twitch a muscle. You crouch at her rear, the warm mists of her flowing tail provoking an illusion of dampness about your ankles. You reach out and place your hands around her waist again, about where you started, and look up the length of her body in line with her spine, taking in how it’s changed with your work and her relaxation, how her long and slender neck extends forward like that, how her prodigious wingspan is fully spread across the floor… Skies above. You’re even thinking pony oaths, now. You carefully step to either side of her waist, then drop onto your knees, your butt over the small of her back. The mood takes a welcome hit when, in some part of the back of your mind, you’re losing your shit at the fact this looks like a ridiculous caricature of riding a horse. Smiling and shaking your head, you reach out and grab the base of her wings, and start kneading them. This earns you a shudder from her, and she pulls her legs out from underneath her, extending them forward and back in a cat-like full-body stretch beneath you. “You, uh, you okay, down there?” ”It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve been touched by a stallion like this.” So you aren’t the only victim to these thoughts. She picks up on your hesitation to resume, lifting her head off the floor to look at you. “Don’t worry, you’re not arousing me.” “Ah, right, suppressed sex drive and other alicorn nonsense.” She drops her head back to the floor once you reluctantly resume. “Besides, this feels almost as good.” She laughs when you freeze again. “I didn’t say stop.” You shake your head and get back to work on her wings. “Why has it been so long? I imagine you can get any stallion that you wanted.” ”’That I wanted’ being the key part of that. I didn’t want any.” “Er, are you a, uh, confirmed… bachelorette?” ”Please, I appreciate the finer things in life.” This must be some sort of joke that doesn’t translate well, because she’s wearing that goofy smile again. When it falls flat, she sighs and shakes her head. “No, I just felt it wouldn’t be right to take any when my sister was… away. As long as she was lonely, I should be too. Besides, there are very few stallions who I ever thought I could love as an equal.” “You said it’s been a long time, not never. Tell me about a stallion who you thought you could?” She’s silent for a time, not even giggling when you flinch back from a face-full of her feathers you give yourself while manipulating her right wing to feel down its length. ”He was often quiet, when around me,” she begins with a soft voice. “Always lost in himself and whatever held his attention at that moment, never paying much attention to the outside world. Introspective I guess, though he rarely thought highly of what he found in there. He was humble, and deeply thoughtful of others in a uniquely thoughtless way.” “He sounds like he was a scatterbrain.” She chuckles. “You could say that. I think he’d argue that he was intensely focused, instead, just focused on many different things. He’d take too much on and not know what to do with it, then feel overwhelmed.” “I think I know the type.” She turns her head to give you a curious sidelong glance, before dropping back down and resuming. “But he knew the meaning – if not the value – of his companionship to me, and was always by my side when I expected it. When I needed it, not that I think he ever knew I did. He had a way of underestimating his value, so he’d never see what others saw in him. It was honestly infuriating. As all ponies have our special talents, he thought he was his special talent, and no more.” “Did you ever tell him your feelings?” She shakes her head, dragging it across the carpet without lifting it. “Why not?” ”He was a little strange. Not conventionally attractive, nowhere near an ideal stallion in comportment. He had little patience for palace life and would rather be left to his own devices than participate in courtly affairs. Even if that was everything I wanted for myself, in my heart longing to be free of the throne, what would my ponies say? The image of my office bound me, even when he tempted me with freedom from it, and even if I indulged his whimsy to those ends once in awhile." “I guess that makes sense, yeah.” She grimaces at this, then continues. “Besides, he was destined for others, more suited to what he did, his interests, his feelings and his way of living. I thought I’d be content just watching from afar, making sure he was happy. But, looking back, I’m not sure why I thought that.” One of her ears angles for the door, then she picks her head up and looks at it. “Oh, this should be interesting.” “What?” As soon as the question’s out of your mouth, the door opens. You freeze. Luna’s standing there, eyes half closed, wearing a good pony approximation of Resting Bitch Face. ”G’affurnoon” She walks – it’s more a finely controlled stumbling, if anything – across the room in front of you two, then comes to a halt in no place in particular. ”I see you’re up early, sister. You have good timing; Anon and I were just discussing matters of love.” Luna slowly turns to face you two. You’re still frozen, straddling Celestia’s back, hands buried in the larger feathers around her shoulders. ”Twilight’s right, his hands are divine. You should let them crawl all over you too sometime.” This more explicit than usual innuendo finally stirs Luna out of her sleep inertia. She takes a step back, eyes opening fully. “I swear I didn’t do anything like that.” You finally take your hands off Celestia’s back, to hold them up in a placating gesture. ”Anon, we… er…” “I’m dead serious. She’s fucking with you. I promise.” Luna’s apparently still trying to process what she’s looking at, judging by how she’s blinking. You stand up and step to the left away from Celestia, who rolls onto her right side after. She’s looking between you and Luna with that damnable grin again. ”Anon, if thou desirest her…” ”Oh I’m sure he does, but he’s far too pure of heart to act on it. Despite my not so subtle test, his innocence remains intact. Sister, you have yourself a keeper. And I mean it about those hands; why don’t you feel for yourself?” ”I need to get a reference for the meeting this evening, for-” ”Nonsense. Let the stallion pamper you.” You shrug, then gesture to the open floor to your left. After some hemming and hawing, Luna drops her head and slowly walks over, turning in place and dropping to the floor in the same manner her sister initially did. You crouch next to her, wrapping your arm around her neck to hold the opposite side of her head and pull it against yours. Your fingers play with the base of her ear on that side. “Evening, sleepyhead.” ”Mrmph.” Her ear next to your face flicks at your temple. You laugh as you get yourself in the same position you’d just left over Celestia. Luna’s smaller size means you have access to everything, from your position over her waist. You get to work, applying what you learned from your work across Celestia’s body. It doesn’t take long for Luna to be almost totally limp, only upright thanks to your thighs on either side of her body. She sways a little every time you need to use a more vigorous motion. Unlike Celestia’s silence, she’s a bit more vocal. Her nickering, you realize, has what you guess is a more intentionally voiced component; it has a unique timbre that Twilight’s doesn’t, something that you could mistake for some different kind of sound. You’ve never heard another pony mask it that way, and Celestia doesn’t do it at all. Was it considered uncouth for royalty to admit to pleasure in such a base way? Or some old taboo from their original time? When did you pick up so much about pony reactions? Probably since you’ve been surrounding yourself with three of their finest specimens to study. Jeeze, now you’re thinking like Twilight. ”Cadance is coming in a few days,” Celestia says, watching you work over her sister. “I know you two haven’t spoken in some time. I think you have a lot to catch up on.” Luna doesn’t respond. She’s stopped reacting to your motions, too. Celestia eyes you, then slightly tosses her head towards her sister’s. You lean over her back to listen to her breathing. It’s the deep, even breathing of sleep. “Well shit. I knocked her out again.” Celestia gets to her hooves, then makes her way to the two of you and kneels again. “She always took too long to get up.” She looks up at you then, with a twinkle in her eyes. “She looks so comfortable. Why don’t we join her?” You stand as Celestia snuggles up to her sister’s side. It wakes Luna up, but she just mumbles something unintelligible, then lays her head over Celestia’s back. There’s just enough room in the tangle of legs and wings for you to get comfy yourself, if you sit and sort of recline back onto them. It takes some shifting on your and Celestia’s part – Luna doesn’t move a single muscle – but you find a way to arrange yourself comfortably. Once you do, you’re covered by a pair of wings, one dark blue and one white. Who knew living blankets are the best blankets? You fish your phone out of your pocket – careful not to jab Luna with your elbow – and set an alarm for the evening’s meeting. Maybe there’s something to be said for naps after all. 11 The EmpathChildren have always fascinated you, in some sort of distant, academic way. Babies, however, have all the downsides of children and then some, with hardly any positives to their accursed names. A vestigal religious part of you is convinced all babies are born inhabited by demons, which can only be fully exorcised by good parenting over two decades. You were extremely glad, then, when Princess Cadance and Shining Armor left Flurry Heart with Twilight, outside the room you’ve re-purposed into a sort of living room and office. Shining had whispered something to her, while handing over the foal, something that had her shoot you a glance. Between that and the royal guard outside whispering something to Shining, there was a lot of secrets in your embassy that you weren’t in the loop on. Well, you had a big one of your own, stored in boxes in a forgotten side room, but who’s counting, really? Besides you. You’re counting. Cadance, you notice, does that same bouncy trot that Twilight does when she’s happy. Must be where Twilight got it from, if Cadance had been responsible for some of her upbringing. Cadance is apparently happy all the time. Even when calm and relatively stationary, she’s always gently swaying in some sort of subtle bliss, with a warm smile on her face. Frankly, you feel happy just being near her. To the point that you’re able to quantify it; unable to resist an easy and informal experiment, on your way over you moderated your distance from her, noting how your mood changed as you did. You can only conclude she’s some sort of empath, as capable of broadcasting love and positivity as you’ve heard she is at detecting it. Shining Armor is much more stoic and reserved, but basks in his wife’s aura of joy like an cold man before a raging fire. It’s very strange seeing a couple that approaches gender dispositions you’re familiar with, but at the same time it’s comforting. Comforting is what they’ve pulled you aside to do, and with Cadance here, they’re exceedingly efficient at it. Cadance is looking you up and down like a delicious cut of meat, not that ponies here eat any. Shining Armor is looking between you two with a strained smile. ”Ah, sorry Anon, my wife can be-” ”So you’re Twilight’s lover!” The pink alicorn is sitting at the edge of her seat, and leaning forward to boot, her wings extended out behind her for balance. “Well, that’s a little much.” ”You can’t lie to me about affairs of the heart.” “No, I mean ‘lover’. We haven’t, ah-” You eye Shining sidelong, “-haven’t made love yet. So maybe not the most accurate term.” ”Oh! I’m sorry. I thought- no, that might be a couple weeks out still?” She ends the question with a look to her husband. Who rolls his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re asking me. I’m surprised you even remember.” ”It pays to know these details about those you care about, love.” “What details?” ”You’ll see!” Cadance leans forward again. “So, I imagine you have a lot of questions about your new life, being from another world and all.” “You’re getting ahead of the situation again. I’m still getting used to the idea of living here as my new life; living with Twilight is a life yet to come, if it happens.” ”It will.” Cadance beams at you. “But if we’re getting ahead of ourselves, start us at the beginning. How did you two meet?” “Work, I suppose. I managed to rope her into some of the side projects I’d been doing to fill time. She got interested enough to start helping me understand magic, and we worked on combining them. Honestly, I never intended any of this. I was just happy to have a friend.” ”That,” Cadance said, her smile gentler – no, her entire demeanor overhauled in a moment, less bubbly and more sensitive, “is how it often begins. A lot of ponies are caught up in gestures, or courtship, or wooing, but love grows separate from any of that. All those do is create an opening. Friendship – and doesn’t she know about that – is the spark from which the flame of love can grow. And a great fire follows a little spark! Oh, I love it when it develops so naturally.” “Yeah, and I wouldn’t have a problem with it, if I hadn’t gotten tangled up with another mare.” ”Oooh.” Cadance shoots a grin at her husband. “Scandalous.” She’s flipping her attitude like a switch, from motherly wisdom to teenage excitement. It would throw you off if you haven’t been swept up in its soothing wake, an effect you’re fairly sure she’s actively dictating with whatever her unique variety of magic is. She can keep doing it, as far as you care. You’ve always felt so uptight when talking about this; it highlighted just how out of place you are in this world. This externally imposed relaxation is a welcome relief. “I’ve been led to believe that’s pretty common around here.” ”Oh, absolutely. But a stallion thawing the time-lost Luna’s heart, it’s both thrilling and enigmatic.” “Well, she and I understand each other on things no other ponies can.” ”Entirely reasonable, and a good connection to have. Such burdens are always more easily carried with one you love.” “So, uh, how did you know it was Luna?” Her eyes sparkle. “You can’t lie to me about affairs of the heart.” “Not even by omission, I guess. Thing I’m caught up on is that herding didn’t exist back home. I have no idea how to do it.” ”Do it?” “Yeah, like how it all comes together. How the participants, uh, fit into place, I guess.” Cadance looks you over. “Twilight wasn’t wrong about you being very unstallionine. You’re thinking about it like it’s a machine, not ponies’ emotions.” “Yeah. Not a lot of experience to work off.” Cadance tilts her head in a pitying expression. “That’s a shame. From what Twilight tells me, you’re very sweet.” “I’d trust her assessment over mine. But, ah, you two are exclusive. Isn’t that rare?” ”Love, Anon, works in mysterious ways. We’re privileged by our position to be able to do this; normally unicorn-influenced societies like Canterlot or the Crystal Empire’s upper crust wouldn’t abide it, but we have the clout to have our way. I’m grateful, because truth be told-” The look she gives Shining then screams absolute devotion, like her entire world is compressed into the space he occupies. You’re hit with a tinge of something you’d almost call worship when he looks back at her with his own smile, and you’re positive that emotional effect wasn’t intentional; it’s too out of place with the effect she’d been creating so far. Her feelings slipped into her broadcast despite herself. “-I don’t think we could include another without hurting them.” “Hurting them?” She looks back at you, and the unintentional effects fade. “Love cannot be diminished by spreading it, Anon. If you love more than one pony – true, selfless, devoted love – they will know, and it will work out fine. But love can be diminished other ways. If it isn’t cared for, if it’s spread unequally, or if it’s compartmentalized. If the one loving does not love themselves. Some – like Shining and I – are too caught up in each other, too busy giving each other all we have, that another would be left out. And in a herd, one has to love love itself. Not receiving it, but giving it.” “I… I don’t know if I can do all that. I’ve never had to think of all that before.” “Your love for Twilight is different than your love for Luna. You might not be able to understand that, I think you’re just confused, but I can see it. They come from different places, and express themselves through different means. This is good; you’ll never need to worry about dividing it.” “But what about the two of them?” Another gentle smile. “Surely you have family, in your old home. Family that you loved?” You nod. ”There are many kinds of love, Anon. They don’t have to be attracted to each other. Though some mares may love other mares of the herd as they love the stallion, there is also the love of a deep friendship, or the love of family ties. There is a form of love in fundamental, unconditional respect. There’s the love of altruistic bonding, and the love of working in harmony for common aims. Any will do between the mares of your herd.” You are, on some level, aware of what she’s getting at. You loved your parents, after all, and you loved your work, which definitely wasn’t romantic. You know terms like brotherly love and platonic love. You’re just not used to hearing it all spelled out like this. It makes a lot of sense. “So do I just trust them to work it out?” ”I don’t see a reason why it shouldn’t. Just remember the stallion’s partially responsible for keeping everything together. If a dispute arises, don’t be afraid to step in.” “I think I can do that.” Cadance rocks back, wearing a manic grin again. “Then when’s the wedding?” “Holy hell, give me some time to get used to everything, will you? Not enough for Celestia to be breathing down my back, huh?” Confusion flits across Cadance’s features. “Is she giving you a hard time?” “Kinda. Mostly teasing me, and being really flirty.” Cadance frowns. “Strange.” “You’re telling me.” Shining looks over to his wife. “You could talk to her about it. It’d give Anon and I some time to talk about stallion stuff.” ”That’s a good idea, love.” She stands and turns to Shining, then the two of them do that thing where they press their snouts together. You’ve been wondering if that’s a pony’s version of a kiss ever since Twilight did it to you. One of Cadance’s ears perk towards you the moment your recollection of that moment settles into your mind, and when she disengages from Shining, she winks at you before turning to leave. Once she’s out – her emotional influence fading away, restoring somewhat disheartening normalcy – Shining sighs and shakes his head. “Sorry, my wife can get over-eager about these affairs.” “Well that’s sorta her thing, isn’t it? Princess of love and all that. Does it, uh, ever bother you? That she could just be planting the love in your head?” ”What? No, she can’t do that.” “Why not?” ”Because it’s my love in the first place. The positive emotions she uses to lift everyone’s spirits, those are mine, how I feel for her, how I feel about being around her. She just selects the one she wants from them, amplifies it, and sends it on its way. Back home, love keeps eternal winter at bay, so we’re used to using fire metaphors. By those terms, I’m the fuel for her inferno. When I first learned of her ability, I was worried it was the opposite. That she loved me only because of what I felt for her. She told me later it started when she saw how I felt for my sister; she fell for me because how devoted I was to family, and how eager I was to protect them.” He chuckles. “So, while we’re on that topic… About Twily.” Shit, this is going to be some sort of life-or-death interview, isn’t it? Your mind quickly races through what a powerful unicorn could do to someone who’s displeased them, with their magic. You don’t like what you’re thinking up. ”You haven’t told her you love her yet, have you?” That detracks all those thoughts. “I, uh, well, I guess it’s sorta implied… how could you tell?” ”There was a big difference in how Cadance was acting based off of what she felt coming from you and how you responded. You’re in love - probably already committed to her, from Cadance's comments - but you haven’t done much about it.” “I, er, I guess you can say that, yeah.” ”Besides,” he smiles, “I’m a stallion, we have a feel for these things.” “No offense, but you two are the closest I’ve ever seen ponies to what the dynamic would look like back home. Stoic stallion, sensitive mare. I thought the opposite was the norm here.” ”There’s no reason it can’t be both. I was a captain of the guard, here, and I lead them in the Crystal Empire. But my leadership is founded on my appreciation and respect for those under me. I pride myself on making a personal connection with every one I can, and being able to predict their wants and needs. That’s stallion sensitivity. Cadance isn’t above using her abilities for utilitarian ends; you’ve never seen her use her powers to influence a crowd like a conductor leading an orchestra, deft gestures and subtle tweaking bringing everyone into harmony. When she needs to be, she’s all business, and when it’s called for, she’ll be your stoic mare.” “So, uh, maybe you can help me after all. Twilight says there was something I could talk to you about. Just you.” He leans forward, in a nearly comical imitation of his wife earlier, though less barely restrained energy. “What’s that?” You glance to the door Cadance exited. “They’re going to outlive us.” ”Ah.” “How do you handle that?” He sighs. “My wife’s work isn’t all smiles and romance. A sad truth; every marriage ends with one member watching the others die, and continuing on alone.” You slump in your chair. “Fuck, that’s depressing.” ”Cadance may specialize in the positive emotions – love, happiness, satisfaction, and so on – but she can feel anything. Jealousy, depression, arrogance. Grief. Her self-control, her sheer willpower, keeps her together in the face of it all. That ultimate implacability is the most maresculine thing I’ve ever known, no matter how whimsical she behaves. We’ve had a lot of time to think about those things, Anon, and a lot of nights we weren’t given a choice, if we were alone and something caught her off guard.” He shakes his head. “In the end, we’re no different than every other couple or herd. It’ll come down to one outliving the other. We’re just cursed with the knowledge of who it will be.” “I can’t leave them to that. I can’t just fucking disappear on them, leaving nothing but memories.” ”You’re not talking about death, then. You’re talking about a legacy, some way you can continue making a difference in their life after you’re gone.” “Yeah. You two have a kid. Er, a foal. I can’t do that for your sister, or any pony. And that hurts, man. That hurts a lot more than I thought it would. I can’t fulfill the most basic desire of a family. Your sister just sorta brushed it off-” ”Heh, she would.” “-but I just cant do that to them.” ”She tells me you’re quite the inventor, Anon. You’ll have plenty of creations that live on.” “Yeah, and I have something special planned for her, but I don’t know how she’d take it.” ”Like what?” You straighten your back and eye him more critically. “I can’t tell you that, sorry.” ”Ah, it’s fine. I doubt I’d understand it anyway. I still have no idea how you two made those claws of hers.” “Trust me, it was a lot of work. But in a way, those were sort of the start of all this. No, it was as your wife said. A spark started it. A literal one, awhile ago, when I stuck two wires to a chunk of quartz and asked her to squeeze.” You can’t help but laugh at yourself. “It was such a stupid little thing. We had no idea what we were getting into, in more ways than one. I can only hope that whatever I leave behind for her is as magnificent as that first moment was silly and trivial.” ”With an attitude like that, I’m sure you’ll leave her something worthy of your love.” You look up at him. “That simple?” “That simple.” You fall to the backrest and sigh. “I guess it’s all I can try for, then. Thanks.” ”We’re going to be family, Anon. I’ll do anything for family.” “Now you’re the one getting ahead of things.” He just laughs at that. “Well, hey, Twilight tells me you’re something of a thrill-seeker like your mom, and your talent’s in protection magic. I can show you one of the things she and I are working on, and you can help us test it, since you can protect yourself from any harm that’d happen. That’s doing something for me, and in return I’ll be doing something for you.” He adopts an eager grin. “What’cha got for me, then?” “How would you like to get a pair of wings of your own, and fly with your sister and wife?” ”So Anon’s working her over, and she sounds like she’s having the time of her life, but then it sorta trails off. I say something about Cadance just to see if she’s still with us, but wouldn’t you know, Raven, the poor mare just fell asleep again. With Anon sitting on top of her and everything.” You can’t help but smile at that, as bad as you feel. Luna missed out on so much excitement, due to her sleep cycle. Figures she’d miss out even when she was right in the middle of it. “What happened then?” ”Well he’d got me all heavy-lidded by then too, so I thought I’d do the same. And he must have gotten over himself a little, because he joined in.” “Ah! An interesting change of pace.” ”He’s so sweet, just too easy to play with. It’s been wonderful, though. I’m going to miss it when those two start monopolizing his time.” “So Your Majesty remains resolute about staying distant?” Celestia looks away from you, then shakes her head. “I’m not so sure anymore. I should. Luna deserves some happiness without me screwing it up for her. But I surprised myself with how much his obliviousness hurt.” “Your Majesty may have raised the issue too subtly.” ”I meant to, and the way I approached it was part of that. I could bring it up without making it a challenge, and gauge his response. Even still, part of me hoped he’d catch on. I never know what he’ll pick up on; sometimes he’s dense as stone, other times he seems to intuitively grasp things.” “Quirks from his home, surely.” ”Perhaps. Unfortunately, that only makes him more interesting.” You suddenly feel a deep contentment, as if what Celestia just said was a transcendent realization about the nature of the world. ”That would be Cadance,” Celestia says, looking to the door. “Her Highness usually tries harder than washing us away. She likes to crush us.” ”Her husband might not be with her.” “I suppose I can let her in, then.” You open the door telekinetically without getting up from behind your desk. Cadance is indeed standing outside. She takes two steps in, looks at Celestia, and then takes a half step back. “Oh gosh.” Celestia smiles at her, but it’s a weak smile. “As you may have surmised, we discuss matters of your domain, Your Imperial Highness.” Cadance wrinkles her nose “Stop making me feel old.” “Never.” This gets some humor back into Celestia’s expression. “Hello, my dear niece. As Raven says, we were speaking on your area of expertise, so forgive my emotional turmoil.” Cadance walks in far enough for you to close the door and raise your soundproof barrier again, then perches on a chair opposite her adoptive aunt. “Well, I was going to talk to you about it, but you’ve already answered my first question.” Celestia glances at you, then back to Cadance. “Humor me, and ask it anyway.” ”What do you feel for Anon?” Celestia dips her head a fraction. “I may be better served hearing your answer than you hearing mine.” ”Ignoring the obvious? Fear. What are you afraid of missing out on?” After a slight flick of her tail across her seat, Celestia replies, “You well know what a sense of awe and novelty can turn into. I fear losing what I’ve spent all this time looking for, now that it’s finally arrived. Now let me ask you; what did you want to talk to us about?” Cadance glances at you, prompting a flat look from Celestia. ”You know how much I trust Raven. You were as much under her guidance as mine.” “I still have not recovered from the ordeal.” But you’re smiling at her, and you feel a ping of bright warmth wash over you in return. ”Fine. Anon thinks you’re teasing him.” ”I am.” Cadance gives Celestia a dirty look. “You’re just adding to his confusion.” ”He seemed to be taking it quite well.” ”He’s putting on a show of being laid back. I don’t know why, but he feels a need to downplay all his emotions.” ”That’s what stallions are like, where he’s from, he’s told me.” ”In the end he’s just a lost colt, Aunt!” Cadance leans forward as she says this, and a faint sizzle of irritation lashes out from her towards you. “And you know your aloof act never worked on me. I knew how you felt about him the moment I walked into the room. So lets talk about this like mares.” Celestia’s pulled her posture back and up in her seat, stunned by the rebuke. Or stunned due to a more focused assault on Cadance’s part, but that’d achieve the same end anyway. Maybe just stunned because she dropped the whimsy for once. You would be stunned too, if you hadn’t half a mind to chew out Celestia yourself – more politely phrased, of course – if she’d gone on long enough before Cadance arrived. Since that’s not on you, now, you can play the diplomat. “Perhaps we should reflect on this matter a moment, then begin anew when cooler heads prevail.” You feel numbed, and Celestia stiffens, as Cadance sucks the emotion out of the room. “Cool, Your Highness, not cold.” She returns feeling to the room, but slowly. “Now, Her Majesty told me of her conflict on this subject just before you arrived. We can begin there.” You look at Celestia expectantly. She shakes her head and sighs. “I shouldn’t take this from my sister, niece. I’ve put her through enough already, without ruining her love life now that she’s back.” Cadance glances at you – no, out the window behind you – then returns her attention to Celestia. ”If you love her, trust her to work things out on her own.” ”I should put her first.” ”Not like this. Your feelings matter too. If you deny yourself this on her account, you’re going to grow to resent her for it. Are you willing to sacrifice your relationship with your sister for her relationship with this stallion? When he’ll eventually be gone, and you two are stuck with each other forever?” Celestia winced at that, but you didn’t feel any emotional outburst from Cadance. ”I don’t even know if he reciprocates.” Cadance’s expression softens. You get a distinct feeling of being enveloped in a warm blanket, soothing away worries and concerns in favor of a quiet peace. “He respects you, and is concerned about your well-being and how you feel. He cares a great deal about you. Is that romantic love? Not quite. But right now he’s too confused about what you’re doing, and too worried about what that’ll do to Twilight and your sister. We didn’t talk about you at great length, but when you came up, those are the impressions I got.” She glances out your office’s window again. Celestia dips her head, wearing a sad smile. ”I’ve already lost my chance, haven’t I?” The blanket’s peace turns into the comfort of a mother’s caressing touch as Cadance stands, walks over to her aunt, then sits on the floor in front of her, looking up at her. She stays like this for almost a minute, examining Celestia’s features. The princess regnant remains composed during this, but adjusts her wings a couple times. ”For someone with such power,” Cadance mumbles, “and prone to such mischief...” ”Have you reached a verdict?” ”If you’re worried about missing out, Auntie, then why not take a page from your own book? Once the other two figure everything out, just… jump in. Maybe he’ll recognize the potential and let you closer. Maybe that’ll turn into what you’re looking for. ”That’s a lot of ‘maybes’ for a consolation prize.” “Your Majesty, please, do not think of it like that.” The two of them look at you, and when you meet Cadance’s eyes for a brief moment, you’re buoyed by a burst of conviction. “He still must learn what it means to be a stallion, here. He misses some pieces of that puzzle, cannot see the full picture. He will not learn if not taught, and Her Majesty’s exile has rendered her out of practice, on a subject where Her Highness may fare even worse. Your Majesty must act soon, before he believes his learning concluded. Become a teacher once again.” You glace at Cadance again, this time tilting your head towards her a sliver. You try to put all the awe and respect you feel for your sovereign after years of serving her, and years of happiness she’d given you as you shared your closest thoughts and leaned on each other, to the front of your mind. ”Please act for your own benefit on a matter of import, Your Majesty, just this once. If not for yourself, then for me, as your dear friend and faithful servant. Your happiness means more to me than my own, and I cannot bear to see you suffer as you surely will if you let this pass you by. If he rejects you, then you sit no worse than the present. If he accepts you, you may realize all you desire. Your choice seems clear to me.” Celestia’s eyes flick to Cadance, but she stands from her chair and walks over to your desk. “You know, he lectured me before about believing my path was fixed. Raven, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve somepony like you at my side, but I must be doing something right.” She leans down to brush your cheek with hers. With that contact, you feel an intense contentment bloom in your mind. It’s similar to how Cadance announced her presence, but where that was raw, this feeling is richly textured, containing layers of trust and appreciation and compassion, all part of a supreme and sublime peace with life itself. Cadance is reversing what you asked her, directing towards you how Celestia feels about you. “I live to serve Your Majesty. In my eyes, you do more right than words can describe.” Cadance walks past your desk, to stand by the window. This time, Celestia follows her attention. “Is something bothering you, my niece?” She flicks her tail ”My husband distracts me.” ”You can feel him from all the way over there?” ”I could feel him across all of Canterlot, if I had to. It’s like how a familiar voice carries over a crowd.” The two of you join her by the window. ”It turns out,” Cadance continues, “it’s just stallions being stallions.” Down near the parade grounds, a ways off but not too distant the three of you couldn’t see clearly, Anon and Shining Armor stand side-by-side. The latter is wearing a ridiculous contraption that’s about the same size, shape, and arrangement to be pegasus wings, but a bit too bulky, and joined by a strange elongated hump running down his spine. Twilight’s a ways off, watching with Flurry Heart. Shining’s wings are limp at his sides. You can see occasional movement from them, sometimes considerable distances, but he can’t seem to hold them in place. Anon’s picking one of the wings up from time to time and inspecting it, flexing it in his hands. From the way he’s handling it and gesturing every time Shining moves the unsupported one, he’s explaining something. Eventually, the human darts back inside his embassy-workshop, leaving Shining to his efforts with the wings. Flurry tries to scamper towards her father, but Twilight picks her up magically and pulls her back. That’s odd. “How does Shining feel, to distract Your Highness so?” ”He’s confused, but excited for something. Are those supposed to be wings?” ”That must be Anon’s current project. He wants to help injured pegasi fly again.” ”It doesn’t look like it’s working.” Anon returns, then, carrying some sort of brace that he places on Shining’s back. After some fiddling, Shining’s ersatz wings are fully spread. Its wingspan is a little larger than that of a pegasi’s, though the three feathers on each wing stick straight out to the sides, rather than in a rearward arc. The two stallions talk for a bit more, Anon gesturing while Shining nods along. Suddenly, what you thought were supposed to be feathers spread far wider than reasonable. The feathers alter themselves to look more like a fan. Anon’s gesturing is much more exited. Shining’s looking back over his shoulder, tilting his body slightly in different directions. Then the fans start slowly spinning. Anon jogs clear, while Twilight drags Flurry a bit further back as well. Soon the twin fans are spinning too fast to see. And then Shining, ever so slightly, begins to rise. He looks around, astonished. The action tilts his body, and he drifts sideways, catching himself on two hooves and doing a few awkward side-steps before he’s stable again. Beside you, Cadance snorts, and down on the grounds, Shining suddenly straightens. When you look to the pink alicorn, she’s wearing a big grin. “What did Your Highness do?” ”Oh, just gave him a bit of encouragement.” Anon’s standing back, waving his arms. You’re not sure what the patterns mean. You don’t think Shining knows either, because he isn’t paying a lot of attention to the man. He rises more steadily this time. Not straight up; he wobbles minute amounts in different directions, which sends him gently drifting to and fro, but he’s definitely ascending more than moving in any given direction. Eventually he gets the wobbling under control, compensating for it by drifting in roughly the other direction, trying to rise straight up. It’s not long, in fact, until he’s on your level. Cadance takes a step forward, to put her head almost against the window. Her horn flashes with a bright cyan burst, causing you and Celestia to flinch away. ”Please warn us next time, niece.” She looks to Celestia, then you, with an apologetic glance, before returning her attention to her husband. The unicorn hasn’t moved, but has his head turned towards you. The next wobble causes a bright pink spark to arc off from near his head, and he recoils from it. ”Oh!” Cadance exclaims. “Shock, then relief. He’s got himself and the wings shielded.” His flinch tilts his whole body considerably, causing him to dart off away from the palace, but he gets it under control easily enough. Anon’s sprinting to try to stay under him. You’re not sure what he hopes to achieve with this; Shining’s easily three times as heavy as his sister, lightened as she is by pegasi magic as part of her transformation. You really hope Anon doesn’t think he could catch her brother. Eventually, Shining figures out how to turn around, not without a few further minor mishaps. Slowly, he starts drifting towards the palace, and the window you three stand at. The sound his artificial wings make is very strange; it’s not a constant drone like you’d expect from a fan, but instead a very rapid and soft snapping or thumping sound. Cadance is grinning like an idiot, and you feel a small smile creep to your own lips as her pride and enthusiasm is quite literally infectious. Shining tilts backwards, like rearing in mid-air, when he finally arrives at the window. This is apparently enough to arrest his forward motion. Cadance takes a step back from the window and half-spreads her wings. Then she tilts them down, followed by kneeling with the front half of her body, in a very regal bow to her husband. He tries to return the gesture, but when he tilts his wings downward, it angles the big propellers on the end of them as well. This kicks him down and forward at considerable speed. Celestia gasps, but Cadance just smiles as she watches a pink bubble appear around him, bouncing him off the wall below the window with a soft thump you can hear from inside. Beside you, his wife giggles. ”You think you can send him back down?” ”Come on, Auntie, I know you’re old, but can’t you appreciate a glimpse of the future?” Celestia laughs. “It’s not my husband looking to rival Discord as the avatar of whimsy.” Cadance looks at her aunt as her husband drifts away from the window, descending in fits and starts back down to the field. “Not unless you get what you want, out of this.” The three of you look down to where Shining’s heading, at the silly human doing his best to sprint towards the flying unicorn with his arms waving wildly. Celestia’s smile rivals Cadance’s own. Long after the two princesses left to get a debriefing on today’s miraculous flight test, you’re still coasting off the happiness Cadance had left you on. A knock at your door is followed by an earth pony with a sandy coat. She looks nervous. Several rolled up pages line her saddlebags. “Ah, welcome, Ms. Craft. Thank you again for your cooperation to date.” ”Uh, yeah, hi. You told me to come to you if any problems come up?” You put down your quill and the page you were inspecting. “Yes. Come in.” The mare closes the door behind her and walks to your desk. “I’m not sure if it really is a problem, but I thought you might want to see it. I’ve made copies of the last several orders Anon placed, and, well...” You levitate the pages out of her saddlebags yourself, looking each over in turn. “Ms. Craft, I work as a secretary, not a draftsmare. I admire the work you have put into these reproductions, but they tell me little.” ”Well, uh, here, then. I drew up what they’d look like all put together. Anon tried to hide it by spacing the orders out over a couple weeks, but I finally have the whole picture.” She fishes a neatly folded up paper out of the bottom of her bag, then tosses it on your desk. You unfold it carefully, but your eyes go wide when you see what it depicts. It’s just a framework, a multilayered lattice of thin, delicate curving metal struts. Some expected features are missing, and others either exaggerated or minimized. There’s no mistaking, however, that this structure is in the shape of a mare’s head. ”It’s all to the proper scale, too, Ms. Inkwell. Anon really did his homework on this one. I thought it might be some sort of helmet, before we got the following orders for internal pieces. But even then, the dimensions are too accurate. It’s not fitted to go over a mare’s head. It’s fitted to be one.” This confirms your suspicions. The crazedcolt is actually going to do it. You don’t know how, but he’s going to build Celestia a companion. You fold the paper just as gently as you unfolded it, but you don’t return it. “Ms. Craft, may I keep this excellent work of yours?” The mare nods quickly. “Thank you. And please, tell nopony about this. I believe this depicts a most special gift for Her Majesty. Make sure nopony can spoil the surprise, or get the wrong ideas.” ”Yes’m. That’s all I had to say. Sorry to bother you.” “You came after closing, correct? You may go home, Ms. Craft. Thank you again, and have a wonderful evening.” The earth pony smiles, then backs out of your office. You place the paper in one of your desk’s drawers that lock, alongside several other personal documents relating to Celestia. Even if Celestia can’t get her way with Anon, it looks like she’ll still have something to hold on to. That makes all this effort and heartache worth it. Once again, you stalk the palace at night in your socks. Not the whole palace, really, just the hallway and last few rooms to where Luna usually does her work. You still have some work to do; the test with Shining could have gone better, despite being nominally successful. He did fly, after all. But Twilight’s already asleep – she’s staying in Canterlot as long as her brother and sister-in-law are here – so you can’t get much work done, and you were feeling restless. You could do with some company. You figure Luna could too. So here you are, shoes in hand, sneaking as silently into the room she usually works from as possible. As usual, she’s alone, sitting in the middle of the room at a table. Her eyes are glowing white; she must be dreamwalking. She’s almost perfectly motionless as you creep up on her, breathing slow and steady as her shining eyes are fixed on nothing in particular. After taking a seat next to her at the table, you place your shoes on the tabletop and lean on one elbow, watching her. One of her ears is tracking you, but she otherwise doesn’t respond. For several minutes you watch her, a perfect image of serenity. Just taking in every detail of her body calms you as well, somehow. Twilight and Celestia each have certain tells; the former’s wings and the latter’s eyes, in particular. Luna can be stoic when she wants; in fact, she’s always a perfect image of uptight composure whenever it’s a matter of formal business, but she was quick to drop pretenses in dreams, once she’d shared enough with you. Something about her body language is truthful to the point of innocence, when her guard is down. As she comes out of her dreamwalk she shows you a moment of that perfect honesty. She turns to look at you, and a smile graces her face, her now-normal eyes glimmering with happiness and comfort when they find you. You’re pretty sure you know what love looks like. “Hey, you.” ”Anon, thy presence surpriseth us.” You reach out to scritch at one of her ears. Something about how often you’ve comforted each other, how physical she is with you already, and the honesty of her body’s answers to you, makes it hard to resist touching her. It’s not something you even think about much, certainly not when the two of you are apart, but when she’s right in front of you like this, you just want to see her happy, and see her react. “Had to get out, thought you might be lonely while you work.” She presses her cheek against your arm, eyes closed and smile wider, as you abuse her ear. “So I thought I’d stop by.” “We appreciate thy concern.” Recently, the mismatch between what you still interpret as formal speech clashes with how familiar and genuine she sounds, talking to you. Especially when you can make her body move more or less on command. “Why do you always work from this room?” ”Anypony may findeth us easily, if we are needed.” “How often is that?” Her face freezes, then she looks away when you remove your hand. “Not often.” “Then why stay? One of these days I’m going to convince all you royals that being comfortable is important. How about we go somewhere you can relax?” ”There are not many places we can.” “Shit, there’s your room.” Luna finally looks back to you, but it’s a guarded look. “Bold of thee to invitest thyself to our quarters.” “I’ve already seen ‘em, remember? Besides, we’ve already been in my bed together, why not yours?” Her expression flattens further. “I’ll give you another massage.” Oh, there goes the guardedness; it’s a real struggle for her now. You tousle her mane and stand. This brings her attention down to your feet. “Fine, we shall go, but only if thou wearest proper footwear.” “I was wondering how long it’d take you to notice.” You can’t help but laugh at her shocked reaction. One pair of shoes later and the two of you are walking the halls together, back to her quarters. “How long are you at this?” ”The rest of the night. Our talents are not often needed, but we wish to be ready whenever they are.” “And spend time with your sister and I.” She smiles up at you. “We do hope thou mindest not our frequent intrusions.” “I look forward to them. I’ve come around to thinking myself pretty lucky I can spend time with those I’m close to at all hours, day or night.” ”We’re glad! The time we spend with thee and our sister maketh the brightest moments of our nights.” “Gotta say, seeing you and your sister as close as you are is-” Luna’s no longer by your side. When you turn to where she’d stopped dead, she’s staring straight ahead, eyes glowing white. “Shit, seriously? Right in the middle of walking?” She slowly, haltingly, lifts and resettles her wings. Just how much can she respond to the outside world, anyway? Standing in the middle of a hallway isn’t what you had in mind when you thought of relaxation. Sighing, you walk over to Luna’s side, and crouch down. She’s got an ear tracking you again, but like before, doesn’t otherwise respond. After some maneuvering, you get under her body and lift her up in something approximating a fireman’s carry. Her wings flail out as you stand again, but doesn’t impact your balance too badly. Still she doesn’t snap out of her trance, merely grunting at your exertion. You’re lucky alicorns are light; she hardly weighs any more than a smallish human. You can manage her the rest of the way. Fortunately, her quarters weren’t far. When you get there, the two of her guards at her door look at each other, then back to you, confusion plain. “Just open the damn door already.” ”Is something wrong?” “Yeah, I’m carrying her on my back, that’s what. Trust me, I wish I didn’t have to.” While one guard gets the door, the other squints at you. “I remember the last time you came around. You stop in with the strangest circumstances.” “If she and I walked in normally, I know what the scuttlebutt would be, and I’d be sorely disappointed if y’all, uh, impugned my honor or whatever.” Neither guard responds to this as you shoulder your way inside, making sure Luna’s clear of the doorframe. It’s dark, here, but the moonlight tonight is bright enough through the windows that you’re not blind. You know she’ll have even less trouble seeing than you when she’s back to the real world. You get Luna to her bed, and rather unceremoniously lower yourself backwards, thanking the stars her bed is ludicrously soft and plushy as you disentangle her from your back and shoulders. The alicorn slowly starts to right herself, but her body moves in a strangely halting manner, like she’s controlled by an overly conservative puppeteer. She looks so pathetic you decide to help her, getting on the bed yourself. First you put her head on some pillows, then help her arrange her limbs, putting her in as close to a conventional sitting position you can without touching anything intimate. Fortunately, all those bits are clustered together, for ponies. You prop up a few pillows against the headboard and recline on them, waiting for her to come out of her dream. She definitely doesn’t look as composed as she was when you first came to her tonight. She’s close enough to your left side that you can feel her breathing, and it’s as slow and steady as before. She does still look serene, in a way A somewhat comical way, but still. When her eyes finally fade back to normal, she adjusts her position on her own, looks around her bed, then at you with some confusion. ”Our, er, thanks, Anon.” “I wasn’t going to let you just stand there.” She buries her face under the pillow you’d provided for her. “Thou wast serious about our bed.” You get a hand under her chin and gently lift her head out, leaning down close to her to be on eye-level. “Honestly, I just wanted to have you to myself. But what’s so different about when you crawled into bed with me stargazing?” “Those were dreams!” “That’s all? What’s the difference, to us?” You let go of her chin, just in case she’s uncomfortable being this close to you, but she doesn’t move her head. She’s still looking into your eyes as if she can find an answer to your own question in them. Breath matched? No, she’s holding hers. You’re not sure if that’s out of some sort of chastity, or if she’s expecting something else. You lean in, avoiding her horn, and give her a peck on the top of her snout. “You’re a goof. Those dreams felt plenty real to me, and I never valued them any less than if we were together physically.” She blinks, then shakes her head as if to clear it. “We just expected not thee to doest it. We appreciate thy touch, but thou hast given us the chance to only recently.” “Yeah, I could tell you enjoyed it.” You grin at her quizzical look. “I’m just saying when you like something, you show it.” She smiles and drops her head back to the pillow. “Thou hast many likable traits. We are glad thou decidest to share them with us, now. Last we knew, thou still… testest matters.” “Cadance had a good talk with me about how I can manage all this.” This gets Luna’s rapt attention. “Helped me see I may not have been entirely honest with myself, and let some things hold me back. She told me to trust that things will work out. So you know what? I can tell you like my attention. You always make my dreams feel peaceful, and I’d like to be able to repay that.” As she’s looking you over, after that, you snake your left arm under her neck, across the front of her body, and pull her close. “So sure, nothing wrong with it, if you like it.” You reach your rind hand over and place it on the back of her neck, then start searching out for any tight muscles. “Besides, I said I’d give you a massage.” Under this hand, she drops her head to her pillow again, smiling. “We hope we can still work, under thy attentions.” “You seem like you go pretty out of it, when you do.” ”We know what goeth on around us, but we find responding difficult.” “Shouldn’t be a problem just letting me work, then.” She nods into the pillow, but then you can feel her stiffen. “Ah, our sister could use our presence.” “Better not keep her waiting.” Her eyes adopted that white shine again, and once more she went very still. You keep working up and down her neck, watching the little twitches you cause even when she’s unable to pay attention to you. ”Anon...” You lean down close to her, to better hear her mutters. ”Shame thou art… awake.” “Why’s that?” After a pause, “She wisheth… to speak… with thee.” You close your eyes and lean your head back. Not like you’re going to fall asleep in any reasonable time, let alone start dreaming for Luna to pull you in. You feel her tail sweep over your calf. Once, twice. Thrice. Then she extends her closer wing over you, then, in that same jerky manner as before. What are those two talking about? Her eyes still glow, seemingly senseless. Her breathing is still calm and regular. But that body language means something, doesn’t it? You think that she’d be even more at peace, with both you here in the real and her sister there in the dream. If she liked the both of you so much on your own, then both together would be better, right? Why does she seem so agitated? You take your hand off her mane and start gently stroking her extended wing, instead. You spend maybe ten minutes like this with your eyes closed, petting her wing, feeling her tail wash over your leg occasionally. Just trying to tune in to her body. Eventually you can feel her head stir. You open your eyes and look at her just as she’s bringing her own up to meet your gaze. “Anon, let us talk about our sister.” “She wanted to speak to me that bad, huh?” ”When art thou next able?” “Shit, I don’t know. Twilight and I need to go over the flight test results tomorrow, the wings aren’t working like they should. That could take all day. She can stop by if she wants, but I bet she’s going to be swamped with dignitaries, what with Cadance in town.” ”Indeed.” After a moment of silence, “She wisheth to apologize.” “For what?” “Thou feelest she teaseth thee?” “Well, she does.” ”She apologizeth.” “Huh.” Luna furrows her brows, and drops her head back onto her pillow. “What’s wrong now? You seemed a little miffed, in there.” ”Our sister can be frustratingly vague.” “Yeah, that sounds about her.” ”We discussed the circumstances of our… prior separation. How she feeleth she must approach certain subjects, after our return.” “Now you’re being vague.” Luna closes her eyes. “We cannot be sure how much of what she spoke was real, and how much was hypothetical. It is the first time we find ourselves in… this situation, after all.” “That’s unhelpful enough I could believe it, considering how agitated it looked like it made you.” ”Anon, hast thou any problem giving her affection, should thou feelest it?” You frown. “Would you?” ”She is our sister.” “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Why would I alienate you-” ”Thou art a fool. It meaneth we care for her more than anything.” “I figured, but what’s that have to do with anything? If I had to make a choice-” “It meaneth thou needst not choose.” You stare at her. She stares back, then shakes her head. ”That day we found thee with thy hands on her, what did thou thinkest we felt?” “I was worried you’d get upset.” ”Were we upset?” “You didn’t look happy.” ”We had just woken up. We are never happy in those circumstances.” “Heh, alright.” ”We were shocked, yes, but only for lack of understanding. We thought thou hast not any design on her.” “I still don’t. Well, I can’t say that. I can’t say why I can’t say that. She’s really good at fucking with my head, I don’t even know anymore.” Luna gets a glint in her eyes, at that. “Our sister has her ways, we are well aware.” “I was trying not to think about them.” “All we wish to say is that thou deniest not thyself her on our account. If thou desireth her, and she feeleth similarly, we raise no objection.” “Really?” ”We would like nothing more than to share our happiness with our dearest sister.” Despite sounding like Shakespeare writing a bad porno, it gets you thinking. Specifically: What the fuck have you gotten yourself into? You just wanted to cuddle this pony. 12 ConsequencesYou lift the wing again, flexing and rotating it at the shoulder around where the test article sits on its makeshift stand. Twilight stands on top of the work table, her nose practically inside the shoulder joint, watching the open gearboxes as it articulates. You’re looking up at her, at this angle, giving you a rare view of her belly while she’s standing. Also some other anatomy, underneath her. Not that you’re going to tell her. You’re just trying to focus on her work. You mean, your work. “They’re all moving fine, Anon.” This isn’t even the first time she’s got you like this, if you’re being honest with yourself. Ever since she left for the Crystal Empire, you’d realized how big a void her absence made in your life. Since she’d come back, your work had been suffering for her constant innocent distractions, just by being in the same room. Even in your dreams you found yourself unable to work around her, like the one Luna pulled you out of awhile back. ”Anon?” Your time with her was, as the song went, as sweet as any harmony. Of course she knew all about harmony. For the past couple days, she’d been doing most of the gruntwork, while you took every opportunity to distract her just as bad as she distracted you, with anything from idle chitchat to physical contact. She’d never once objected. ”Anon, I’m glad you think I’m so engrossing, but you’re embarrassing me.” You shake your head a bit to return to the present. You’ve been staring into her eyes for you don’t know how long now; even your random motions with the wing you held had stopped. “Sorry, I just… Well, you…” She smiles at you, and in your eyes you get a glimpse of a reflection of everything you feel. “I know. You’ve been going out of your way to remind me of, uh, me, every chance you can.” She giggles, then. “I never thought that you being reduced to another useless stallion could make me like you more. I still hope this condition of yours is temporary.” “Yes ma’am it is. I can work as soon as you leave the room.” She laughs again, then looks to the shoulder joint. “Like I said, it’s working as it should.” “Shining said the wings felt like they took a lot of effort to move, and he couldn’t hold them in place without the brace.” ”We might need more powerful motors. It’s not a problem with the gearing or the joints.” “We’d have to stagger the mounting, making it bulkier and heavier.” She shakes her head, then lays down on the table, body upright and legs beneath her, to be at eye level with you. “Magically decreasing its weight might be our only option.” “That’s another spell that needs to be recast during periodic maintenance.” ”It’s a much easier spell than the come-to-life spell we’re using to control it and run the powerplant. I doubt any unicorn capable of the latter wouldn’t know the former.” “Yeah it’s just… another thing that needs to be taken care of. Careless casting could lead to two different maintenance schedules. That could lead to things giving out while still in-flight, and that can’t happen.” Twilight tilts her head down, and speaks with a gentler tone. “Anon, that might happen anyway. You can’t make something foolproof.” You rub the bridge of your nose and sigh. “It has to be as good as we can make it. Yeah, I guess that’s how we’ll have to do. We’ll add the mechanical lock as well; that way if it gets heavier unexpectedly it can at least stay in flight configuration.” ”What if they disengage the lock mid-flight?” “It can be managed by a sort of weighted relay. Contacts are closed when the lightening spell is active, held there by a spring. If the spell wears off, the weight on the contact is too heavy for the spring, and they open. Cuts the signal to unlock. If they roll upside-down or some other maneuvers it may close again, but that’s a much slimmer chance of an already slim chance, or a conscious action on their part.” Twilight looks over to the elongated hump that makes up the unit’s back. A smaller, more streamlined version of the workshop’s power generator hums away inside, though presently disconnected from everything. “Well, you certainly have enough power for it. Why did you design it with so much excess capacity? Not only is it enough for this bigger design – the ones we’ll make for pegasi won’t be this heavy, spell or no spell – but it’s larger than necessary even for this.” “Better safe than sorry?” ”Anon, if my math is right, this has over five times the output we’d need for the final product. If you’re worried about weight, you can start there.” “I wasn’t intending it for use on the final product.” ”Why did you make the test rig this way? Surely you weren’t thinking of using my brother as the test pilot way back then.” You shrug. ”I swear, you’re going to have a whole box full of parts you’ve over-” She stops , an ear swiveling towards the door. “What’s wrong?” She grins. “The guards are talking about you.” You stand and move closer to the door, to listen in. ”I helped him move everything here! Besides, he can spin a yarn as well as I; you should have heard the stuff he threw back at us when I told him some of those rumors I started. We’re practically best friends already. If either of us are going to stay here alone, it should be me.” Tall Tail is the royal guard unicorn assigned to the embassy during the day shift. The stallion normally stands outside the front door, the one leading directly to the workshop. ”Well I’ve seen him in his s-socks!” Catnip, on the other hand, isn’t a royal guard at all. The mare is one of Luna’s. Luna insisted on having the embassy under twenty-four hour watch by her own, and this poor bat drew the short straw for the day shift. You haven’t seen her without her sun-goggles once. ”He’s always wearing socks.” ”No shoes, just his socks! In the middle of the night. He walked right up to me in them. You can’t get more intimate than that! I stay.” Alright, maybe you’ve seen her once without her sun-goggles. Twilight cocks her head. “What are they talking about?” You look back and respond in barely a loud whisper. “I think they’re arguing who should leave first for the evening shift change. Or which I like more. I don’t know. They don’t usually argue like this.” ”Wow, you night watch get all the fun, huh?” the guard outside says. ”W-w-what’s that supposed to mean?” ”Oh, y’know, seeing strange creatures in sleepwear. Maybe with some of the other usual nightly activities.” “Shut up!” ”I’m sure you get to hear which ponies are enjoying the late hours.” ”SHUT UP!” ”You lot can hang upside-down, can’t you? Maybe you get a peak in a-” ”AAAAAAA!” ”Wait,” Tall Tail says, “are you… is it that time?” Catnip doesn’t respond. ”You know, the few mares in the Guard get time off for that.” ”Our lives for her. Always on watch. A-always.” ”Hold on, lemme go find a griffin for you.” ”SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!” You and Twilight exchange glances. She hides a grin and quiet laughter behind a wing. You hear a thump from the roof from where Catnip usually stands watch. ”Just because I like cats doesn’t mean- what was that?” That one thump becomes many as Catnip gallops across the embassy roof. Twilight’s grin vanishes a moment before she herself does, in a pop of magic. Then you hear a mare scream. You’re already halfway down the hall before you realize that wasn’t Twilight. That doesn’t really help your nerves, but it is some comfort. When you get to the long room you’ve re-purposed to a testing area and common room, you notice the door at the far end is wide open. Beyond is a unicorn trapped in a magenta dome, thrashing against its walls. As you’re walking over, Catnip drops from the roof between the dome and the door, rearing back with wings spread. When you get to the door, you see its knob neatly disassembled nearby. So that’s what this was about. Magic would be pretty useful for breaking and entering, wouldn’t it? Twilight stands off to the side, looking serious. Catnip’s wings are still spread, her nose almost against the dome, fangs bared. You walk to her side and jab a thumb into the paw-print on her flank, causing her to jump a full six feet to the side. Guess she really is hot and bothered, today. You crouch in front of the dome and the scrabbling unicorn inside, then look at Twilight. “Can I talk to her, in there?” She nods, and you look back to the wannabe intruder. She looks really young, probably hasn’t had that cutie mark for long. Maybe some teen thinking she was hot shit because she could take apart locks with her mind. Stupid fillies doing stupid things. “You’re one dumb motherfucker, ain’t’cha? She stops her frantic flailing and looks up in confusion. “What?” That insult probably doesn’t translate well. “Both guards still here, Ms. Superweapon over there inside, and you’re itching to break in just after sundown? Not a professional, huh? How’d you even get onto the palace grounds?” “I w-was let in!” ”By who?” Twilight asks. ”The prince!” You share a look with Twilight, before returning your attention to the filly. “Tell us something we don’t know.” She just looks at you in confusion again. “What did he want you to do?” ”J-Just take papers, burn them. Take some stuff apart or smash it, I don’t know.” “Really scraping the bottom of the barrel with you, huh?” She nods rapidly. “At least you’re honest.” You stand, hands on your hips, setting off another whinny and more panicked flailing back against the dome. “Pathetic.” You point to Tall Tail, then, who’s at Catnip’s side. “Take her in and do… whatever you do. I don’t know. Just remember she didn’t actually do anything but take apart a doorknob. Catnip, uh, take the night to relax, I guess. That’s an order. Not that I can order you around.” As soon as the bubble drops, the filly tries to take off, but Tall Tail wraps a loop of magic around her legs before she can get too far. He then simply starts dragging her through the dirt. Guess you’re not the only stallion here who can do some work. Catnip just looks a cross between chagrined and relieved. She bows to you and flies off. Twilight walks to your side once they’re gone. “I could have handled that, you know.” “Yeah, well, my embassy. How’d I do?” She looks at you, brows furrowed. “What do you mean?” “If I was back home, and she got inside? I would have had grounds to kill her, and the weapon to do it too, magic or no magic.” “What?!” She looks shocked at this. “Yeah. It’s a rougher world. But here’s not there. Trying to do things your way. You ponies seem big on compassion and forgiveness.” She looks back to the two retreating forms of the guard and his new prisoner. “You did fine.” “On that note, I gotta go forgive the shit out of a certain noble.” You start to walk back inside, but Twilight runs around you, blocking your way. “No, wait! I can handle him, Anon.” “I told you in the beginning I wasn’t going to do that. I’ve let this go on long enough.” You walk back inside. Twilight follows you, magically replacing and reassembling the doorknob as she passes it almost as an afterthought. “Let me, Anon. Please, he’s a unicorn, and you have no way of dealing with magic.” “I just grab the horn, right?” “If he lets you get close enough!” She was right, though. You did need something to defend yourself with, if it came down to it. As you pass your workbench, you pick up the closest screwdriver in reach and drop it in a pocket. It’s not even a big one, but it’s something. “Besides, I have this.” ”And just what are you going to do with it?” “I don’t know. I’ll think of something. Maybe he’s just got a few screws loose.” You exit the embassy, Twilight hot on your heels. “Anon, it’ll be fine, just let me-” You wheel on her then, stopping her cold. “If you go charging up there, chewing out the highest noble in the palace who doesn’t move the fucking sky, that’s gonna be hell for your reputation around here. That’s something you gotta be aware of, since you run your own little slice of this queendom or whatever the fuck it is, and you’re doing it enough harm shacking yourself up with me. I’m gonna go up there so you can stay out of it.” ”I care about you more!” On the surface, that declaration makes you feel pretty good. But you knew she felt that way about you already. You weren’t expecting it, further down, to make you feel bad. Can’t she see how much you care about her, in turn? You wanted to avoid forcing her into some magical honor duel with the Prince in the middle of Canterlot, especially considering how wrong it is for a mare to beat up a stallion around these parts. If she was right that it wouldn’t be too terrible a hit to her standing, you wanted to save her even that. No, maybe she doesn’t see that. Like her brother says, you never told her, no matter how she’d been making you feel lately. You kneel down in front of her, and bring a hand around the back of her head, fingers through her mane, holding her close to you. “I’m really happy you want to protect me, Twilight, but let me do this. Our work needs someone to look after it, before Catnip’s replacement comes back. Who knows how many gremlins he has crawling around the place. Please? For me?” You hold her gaze until she dips her head slightly in acknowledgment. ”Fine. But if you take too long, I’m going after you.” “I wouldn’t expect any less.” You press your nose to hers, then kiss where they’d touched, drawing a faint nicker from her. Wrapping your other arm around her neck, you pull her head in beside yours. She presses the side of her head into you, and wraps her wings around you. You feel her tongue on your neck, just above your collar. Maybe this time it’s you who needs to tell her about cultural differences in lewd gestures. “Now don’t worry about me. You ponies rarely have a violent bone in your body. Everything’s going to turn out fine.” ”I’m only letting you do this because you wont be happy otherwise.” “I know.” You hold her there a moment longer, running your hands through her mane. You hope she doesn’t feel your heart about to burst out of your chest. Love, sure, but at this point mostly nerves. But why be nervous? She’d made her own stance known plenty of times already. “Twilight?” ”Yes?” “Love ya.” You say it playfully, putting a cheerful spin on the words like it was the most casual thing in the world, an umpteenth restatement of something already made clear. She’d already made it clear to you, after all, even if she hadn’t said it precisely that way. Can’t let her feel left out. It’s enough to shock her motionless. You stand wearing a shit-eating grin. She looks up at you with wide eyes and no words. Then you spin on a heel and walk off towards the palace. “Wait… You can’t just leave, after that!” You don’t even turn your head to call back. “Watch me!” ”Anon!” You flash a thumbs-up over a shoulder as you walk away, her whinny at your back. The sun had already set by the time your little intruder had shown her head, and by now it’s dark. Tall Tail would be too busy handling the prisoner. The Royal Guard may send someone off double-time to tell Celestia once she is processed, but you probably still have a little while before then, if ‘then’ is even while Celestia was still awake. It’s sunbutt bedtime soon. You hope Catnip is too heat-addled to do anything other than what you commanded. Luna is definitely up by now, and likely in one of her several meetings with the bureaucrats before her dreamwalking. If Catnip had put the word out, a nightwatchmare could be barging intoone any moment, but in her current state that’s a big if. Either one would get a princess much more powerful than Twilight into your business, one you’re a lot less likely to be able to stop. If you want to get out of this with your pride intact, you need to hurry. You know where his office is; top floor of the household wing. Your embassy guard’s argument over the evening shift change means that it’s likely already carried out elsewhere in the palace. Luna’s guards are more likely to do you favors and help than Celestia’s, so this is to your advantage. You’re not stopped once before arriving at his office. Your nerves haven’t let up since leaving Twilight. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. This confrontation has been a long time coming. As you suspected, it’s Night Watch posted at the door. You jerk a thumb to the door. “He inside?” The bat-stallion nods back. “A’ight, cool.” You open the door hard enough for it to slam into the wall beside it. Prince Blueblood, at his desk, looks up in alarm. “Hey buddy, lets have a little chat, stallion to stallion.” He narrows his eyes, as you hear the guard outside close the door behind you. “You’re no stallion, human.” “Twilight would disagree.” His expression doesn’t change, but you can tell by the way his ears move you struck a nerve there. You pick up the chair in front of his desk and spin it around, so when you sit in it, you’re leaning forward on its backrest. A lot of magic works on line of sight, Twilight had told you. Gotta protect the vitals. “Wanna guess why I’m here?” ”I have no idea, and I’d rather you weren’t.” “Tough shit, mate. A friend of mine met up with a friend of yours, today. What street did you pick her up off of? I know I’m just a sheltered colt here in the palace, but I didn’t think Canterlot had the kinds of slums to produce those types.” ”I will not tolerate your insults to our city!” “Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about them? More passive-aggressive bullshit? Don’t think I didn’t know it was you fucking up my shit all along. I just didn’t give enough of a fuck about you to do anything about it.” He rears back and plants his forehooves on the desk, using the extra height to loom over you. ”You think you’re the greatest thing to enter this palace since Luna’s return, yet all you do is make a mockery of Celestia by standing at her side, and taking resources that would be better put towards productive ends. You almost killed Shining Armor yesterday, and that’s merely the most recent of your offenses! Your contraptions are dangerous, and I will not condone their development!” “Dangerous? You oversee the kitchens, you know all those griffin imports I eat. I’m a fucking predator. I’m surprised your concern is about my contraptions, instead of me. Back home I’d see a cow and start thinking about lunch. Some humans ate horses, on my world. He doesn’t flinch. “Is that a threat?” “I’m not dumb enough to threaten you; I know stallions on this world are the last line of defense of the family, and you’ve got magic to boot. I’m pretty sure you could kill me before that guard outside could intervene. But I’m making a point. What other sapient carnivores do you have here, griffins and some sorta cat? One’s a pursuit predator, the other an ambush predator. You outpace them and win, or you give ‘em a swift kick and they scamper back to the shadows.Your stalling at the smithy, that was slowing me down. That didn’t work. Your shitty little saboteur, that was supposed to be your kick, wasn’t it? Humans don’t work like that. We’re endurance predators, in for the long haul, so know I’m not going anywhere.” “But I’ll tell you something else about us. Back home, me? Men? We’re the mares, except we’re really, really bad at sharing. Since I’m maresculine enough to not be stupidly impulsive, and you ponies are peaceful enough to not kill anything that pisses you off, we’re going to discuss this reasonably.” ”And if I don’t wish to be reasonable? If I’m… stupidly impulsive, by your words?” “Then I do my level best to use this screwdriver in my pocket to geld you, and that’s not a threat either. What the fuck is your problem with me? I made a unicorn fucking fly, and he survived the trip. I know you’ve heard the rumors of me almost killing princesses, and you probably saw that goofball bounce off the palace wall yesterday, but damnit, I haven’t hurt anypony. Save your fucking sanctimony.” He sits down in his chair again. Message fucking received; now the real progress begins. ”Why do you think anything you make is worthwhile? Your grandiose speech when you pitched them to us was the height of puffery, and I deal with the royal court all day. Your arrogance is astounding.” “Not even the first time I’ve heard that, buddy, though I thought you’d be more amenable to my plight. The idea I’m a stallion so I can’t do anything worthy is getting pretty old, but hearing it from another stallion who rates higher than a no-name guard in the hallway hurts. No camaraderie among colts, here?” ”Do what you like, but stallions have one responsibility above all others. One you are not capable of, making you less than nobody. So yes, you are more dangerous than your inventions, because as a predator, you prey. Not on any pony, but on ponykind, and its future.” “If not with my creations, then how?” ”In this very palace – east wing, fourth floor, south hall, room three – is the first natural born alicorn this world has ever seen. And she’s not ours. She belongs to a country that didn’t exist until a couple years ago!By pursuing a princess, you deny all of Equestria that opportunity.” He leans over his desk. “You deny us our proper rulers. And from what I’ve heard of your world, I suspect that’s your aim!” You lean back and bark out a laugh. “So you’ve read my file! Trust me, buddy, I’ve been thinking on that one myself. Thing is, they’re fucking immortal. I’m only tying them down for a few decades, at best. You’ve got Cadance beat three to one, and while I’m sure a princess of love can make a really good head start on an alicorn arms race with that time, we’re talking about timescales you and I can’t even comprehend. Celestia and Luna are good for any ten, or even any hundred, little fucks she can pop out in that time. Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance, as some saying went back home.” ”You think that’s your decision to make?” “Fuck no, and I didn’t make it. Twilight made that call.” His white fur grows tinged with the red of anger, underneath. That’s the same nerve you hit earlier, too. ”If you think I’m going to die before I see this palace welcome a rightful heir, you’re very sorely mistaken.” Go for that nerve a third time. Go for the throat, like the predator you say you are. ”It’s not the palace, though, is it? You want it to be you. Or, should I say, you want it to be yours.” The red under his fur vanishes, and his narrowed eyes widen with shock. ”Sure this palace has three princesses, but one’s been celibate for a thousand years. Between Luna coming back, and Cadance and Twilight’s ascensions, there’s been a bit of an explosion in the eligible princesses scene, hasn’t there? But Cadance got hitched and Luna’s got, ah, social and scheduling issues. Twilight was your only shot, wasn’t she? Is that all this was? Petty fucking jealousy, since that moment you realized I had this apparently dangerous combination of access to Twilight and some measure of responsibility?” ”She must see reason!” “Was that your fallback? If you were ever found out, she’d come up here to defend my honor, but she’s an understanding pony who cares about harmony, so she’d sit down and listen to you, right? You’d convince her the folly of my existence? Then you could get that royal heir, yours or not. That’s why you targeted my work, instead of my food or something. My work is the thing I shared with her, it’d get her to come to you.” You laugh again. “But you didn’t expect me instead. You didn’t know men were the mares of my world, that I’d want to handle this personally. You lost to the unknown unknowns!” ”I have not yet ‘lost’. All I need to do is speak with her, and I can do that at any time.” “Then why haven’t you yet? It’s accessibility, isn’t it? Or it’s the fact stallions here are treated like jokes. Did you need to force a confrontation just to be taken seriously?” You stand, shaking your head. “It doesn’t matter. This gives me the first crack at this conversation with them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to do a little rhetorical battlespace shaping. Or, if I can indulge in stallion stereotypes, I have some gossip to spread.” You turn and move to the door, but the glow of magic appears around its knob. ”You’re not going anywhere until we come to an agreement. As you said, discuss it reasonably. And there’s only one reasonable outcome.” You look down at the doorknob. It’s a pretty crappy one. Government contractors being cheap bastards must be a universal constant. You pull out your screwdriver. It’s not the right size, a little on the small side, but at least it matches the screw type. You jam it in a screw between the knob and the plate where it meets the door. The too-small screwdriver makes it more difficult than it needs to be, but you manage to work the screw out in just a couple seconds. ”What are you doing?” “Returning a favor.” As the door opens inward from this side, you weren’t expecting him to be holding the knob in place by pulling on it. The doorknob flies off the door, slamming into your hip on its way to the middle of the room, the impact turning you halfway around. Blueblood stops pulling on it before it hits him too, and it skitters to the floor somewhere under his desk. ”Cease this foolishness!” You smash the handle of the screwdriver against the end of the square-shaped shaft running through the door. The shaft, and the knob on its other end, pops out of the door and into the hallway beyond before Blueblood can get his magic on it. Then you stick your screwdriver’s blade against a small tab on top of the mechanism connected to the latch and pull it open. You look back at Blueblood as you swing the door open, rubbing your hip. “I bet you don’t know how to put this back together as well as Twilight.” You leave his sputtering behind as you walk away, nodding to the guard collecting the errant knob assembly as you pass him. “Sorry for the mess.” Still rubbing your hip, you pocket your screwdriver and set out for the embassy. It’s starting to hurt, and the pain only increases as you make your way down to the main floor again. When you get down to the door leading to the area behind the palace, you’re stopped short by the door opening on its own. Twilight stands there, breathing quickly. She leaps up at you, knocking you off-balance. ”AnonIwasgettingsoworriedyouweren-” You hit the ground, jarring your hip and forcing the screwdriver’s tip against your thigh, forcing a curse from you. Twilight looks down at you in alarm, and quickly backs away from standing over you. “Nah, don’t worry, I’m fine. Honest.” You sit up, then get to your feet, wincing. “I may not have gotten him to stop, but I know why now, and I think that’ll be enough to keep him down. If this doesn’t do it, you can talk to him. But for this one, he wanted you. Talking to you was his backup plan.” The two of you stride out into the night, towards your embassy. ”That doesn’t make any sense. What did he want from me?” You laugh, short and humorless. “From you? He wanted a foal.” ”You can’t be serious. That’s ridiculous.” “I am one hundred percent serious. If not by him, then by another stallion.” ”You and I talked about this.” “Yeah, and we’ve talked about the mortality stuff, and I laid that on him too. I don’t think he cared.” At the embassy, you see the two Night Watch guards in place. Why do they insist on standing on the roof? “Everything looking alright, up there?” ”No problems, Your Excellency.” “Great, keep it up.” They didn’t sound like Catnip had filled them in. You’ve got the night without any further explaining to do, then, as long as the guard at Blueblood’s door took exploding doorknobs as a simple consequence of a heated argument. You hesitate at the door. “Hey, Twilight? Can we take dinner in the city? You lived here when you were younger, you could find some out-of-the-way place, somewhere you wouldn’t normally take me. You know, a comfy place that’s not in the nicer part of town, where natives would eat.” She looks up at you, then nods. “Sure, Anon. Anything.” “You’re staying?” Twilight stands in the door to your bedroom, even after you’ve made it clear you’re looking to sleep. “Anon, you got hurt today. Because I wasn’t there. And I don’t care if that was your choice.” “Seriously, it’s just a bad bruise. I’ll recover.” She walks back into your room. “That’s not it. It’s… the meaning of it, I guess. I’m staying, so you don’t get hurt again.” ”I have two wonderful protectors making a racket on the roof.” “All the more reason I should be here!” “You think they’ll turn on me?” ”No, it’s because… mares protect their stallions!” You grin. “So I am your stallion after all.” She looks away, but nods. “No more waiting for Luna to make a move?” “Buck her, she’s had long enough. I’m tired of waiting!” You can’t help but laugh at how forceful Twilight says it. “Alright, on one condition.” ”Anon-” “That you’re not sitting on the fucking roof with the other two loons. You’re in here, with me.” ”How am I supposed to watch over you?” “By literally watching over me, Twilight. How better could you protect me than right at my side? Besides, it’ll be comfier.” You pat your bed. “Also, I don’t have anywhere else set up for sleeping, and I refuse to put you on the couch in the lounge.” She walks towards you, head lowered. “Alright. Only because you asked.” “Don’t act like you don’t want it, yourself.” You swing your legs back onto the bed and scoot over, giving her enough room to get in with you. She looks down at the bed, and back to you. “Are you sure?” “Holy fuck Twilight, just get in the goddamned bed.” She steps into it almost like she’d shatter it, if she moved too fast. You prop yourself up on an elbow as she gingerly maneuvers around the more than ample space you’ve provided. Eventually she lowers herself to the bed, in that kneeling-laying pose ponies do, with their legs all under them like they’re pretending to be a cat. When she turns to look at you, she slowly, very slowly, pitches her body away from you to end up partially on her side. ”What?” she demands, as you laugh. “I can’t believe this . It’s like you’re trying to stay as far away from me as possible. What happened to all that goofing off in the workshop, the past few days? What happened to me being your stallion now?” You reach out and hook a hand over her spine, then yank her towards you, pitching her body up and over the opposite direction, so her back’s to you. Then you get your other arm under her midsection and pull her in close. “If you’re going to be in here with me, I mean you’re going to be with me. This is how we did it back home. Do ponies not? No proximity in bed? ”No, it’s just…” “I bet if it weren’t for me, you’d be hopeless.” ”Sometimes it’s the other way around…” “I’m way too big for that, Twilight.” She frees the wing not underneath her body from your arm, and you pull the arm under her body into a more comfortable position for the both of you, near her neck. You reach up and play with her ear, earning a contented sigh. She doesn’t respond as freely as Luna, but it’s still pretty nice to hear. Her wing extends back over you for a moment, before settling over her and your hips. She snuffs the nearby candle with her magic, plunging the room into darkness. You spend a couple moments just listening to her breathing, and feeling it under your arm, itself under her wing. She’s got an ear towards your face, presumably listening to yours as well. You snake the arm around her body between her forelegs, burying your hand in the thicker fur on the front of her chest, and pull her closer to you. The size difference puts her head cleanly below your head, even hiking her up towards your chest the way you are. Her mane’s tickling under your chin, and the tip of her horn is about at the same ‘height’ as your eyes, framed by her ears like some purple sight post for this world’s most powerful friendship gun. As your eyes adjust to the dark, you start to think you can make out the faintest stars in the darker purple hair of her mane. Nah, can’t be. She’s not in control of her powers enough for that yet. Still, you don’t mind losing yourself in it trying to see them. You can’t remember the last time you’d fallen asleep with another warm body in your bed. No, Luna’s head that one time didn’t count. You find yourself trapped between knowing it’ll be a wonderful night’s sleep, and not wanting to sleep at all. You can’t sleep when your heart feels like this anyway. This is finally happening. You finally got a girl who loves you, your work, and wants to take care of you. One who’s sharp as a tack, has ridiculous status, and is enthusiastic as fuck for just about everything you are. So she’s not your species. You’ve come around to that. Your parents might be disappointed, but you don’t have a lot of options, where you are. It means you haven’t stuck your dick in her, but that’s the one bridge you haven’t really looked across yet besides occasional glances. Still time to get yourself on the right page with that. Honestly, all things considered, Twilight’s way out of your league. Yet, here you are. “Hey, Twi?” ”Yes?” “Thanks for looking out for me.” She wiggles her back against your body, trying to close the last of the little distance between you. “Thanks for, er, letting me.” “You’re not used to this, are you?” ”It’s my first time…” “Say it like that and you’d think we were doing something besides sleeping, in here.” She mumbles a reply you don’t quite catch. “And that’s no way for you to worry about my hip.” She stiffens ever so slightly, and her free wing starts wandering around your lower body. “No, no, stop, it was a joke, I’m kidding. No, seriously, please, I’m a little ticklish.” The wing settles back into its prior position, and you take another swipe at her ear with the arm not wrapped around her, the ear not focused on you. ”Hey Anon?” “Yeah?” She pulls her head around all the way, twisting her upper body for the rest of the range she needs. Her nose finds yours with perfect accuracy at the end of her arc, and she’s sharing your breath again. “I love you too.” You stumble into the doorframe, turning to take it on your shoulder. Twilight still doesn’t stir, limp in your arms. Coughing doesn’t do much to clear the smoke from your lungs when every breath just sucks more in. Dropping to one knee gets you low enough the air is somewhat clean, but you can’t escape the inferno like this. You look down the hall, towards the embassy’s front door. The main workshop room at the end is blazing. Can’t leave that way. You’ll need to go deeper, try to get out the back door near the test area. You take a deep breath and hold it. Then you surge to your feet and take off down the hall away from the workshop as fast as you can manage. As you enter the testing room and lounge, you trip over your own feet, pitching forward to the concrete floor. You twist in mid-air to land on your back instead of on Twilight. The impact knocks the wind out of you, stunning you. Unsupported by your now-limp arms, Twilight rolls off your chest, ending on her side on the floor to your right. When you manage to turn your head to look at her, your eyes widen in shock. The entire far side of the long room is engulfed. That was the only other way out. When you recover your breath – what of it you can, with the still-building smoke accumulating above you – you sit up and pull Twilight into your lap, then scoot back on your rear to the wall opposite the flames, to get as far from them as possible. The entire structure is stone, and you thought that’d be enough to prevent something like this. Everything you’d since put inside to make it comfortable, however, is wood. As are the doors, window frames, and wall cladding that had been left over from its prior life as a barracks. You’re going to die for creature comforts. She’s going to die for your creature comforts. You bring your knees up and hug the unconscious Twilight to your chest, her head beside yours, and bury your face in her shoulder and wing. You shouldn’t have tried to handle this yourself. You should have let the mares take care of it for you. This isn’t your world. Their justice isn’t yours to emulate. You never should have forgiven the filly. Never should have told the guards to go lightly. You should have been the predator you bragged about being and killed Blueblood, or at least fucked him up, made him understand that you weren’t to be messed with. If that put you in prison or worse, well… At least Twilight would have been okay. She’d have been heartbroken. Probably would have hated you. But she’d have lived, and that would have been worth it. Now she won’t even have that. In the end, this is all your fault. You sit with her in your lap, your entire body wrapped around hers in a futile gesture, as if you could somehow protect her from the encroaching flames. You clutch her to you with all the life you have left, squeezing her in your arms, running your hands over her mane and feathers and coat. Try to get all that closeness, that contact, that you would never have again, and you cry. Your life together ends as soon as it had begun. Out cold, you can’t even tell her you love her. Seriously this time, with feeling. At the far side of the room, the fire shifts. It must be getting closer. Claimed another piece of furniture, or something. No. No, that’s not it. A dark figure stands inside it, and it’s coming closer. After a few moments, Luna walks out of the fire, totally unscathed. When she sees you, she hurries her approach. How did she do that? How did she walk through and not burn? As soon as that thought completes, she bursts into flames, and disappears with a yelp, only to reappear a few heartbeats later, once more in perfect health. ”We wish to save thee! Makest not our effort difficult!” “I can’t… she’s passed out, Luna. You can’t drag both of us. Leave me… take her.” It’s hard to speak. Maybe death is closer than you’d thought. When she reaches you, she shoves you aside, spinning you in place. Then she grabs the back of your shirt in her teeth and starts pulling you backwards. When did she get this strong? When you realize she’s pulling you towards the fire, you curl tighter around Twilight. ”Preparest thyself; even in a dream, thy mind believeth thee burns.” Before you can process what she’s said, you’re enveloped in mindblowing pain. You clench your jaw, screaming through your teeth. But your flesh doesn’t blister or char. Then you’re clear. Luna keeps dragging you backwards, first across the packed dirt surrounding the embassy, then across the grass beyond. You stare in disbelief at the burning building, Canterlot Palace rising behind it, and the sunny sky behind that. It’s daytime? Luna stops dragging you through the grass, and your body rocks to a halt. You look down at your precious burden. She looks and feels like she’s breathing, but only barely. “Twilight, we made it. Luna came, she saved us. We’re okay now. You can wake up now.” You give her a little shake as Luna walks in front of you. “Please wake up?” ”She wont, Anon.” Your blood runs cold as you look up at Luna. “What- what are you saying?” She gives you a weak smile. “She is not here. Thou dreamest.” A dream. This is a dream. A nightmare. A new one, to go with your new life. Luna studies your features, as that sinks in. “Ah, thy head cleareth, now. We are surprised. Thou knowest normally straight away.” Even knowing she’s not Twilight, not really, you still cradle her a few moments longer in your arms, then gingerly lay her down in the grass beside you. Then you draw your knees up to your chest, wrap your arms around them, and take a deep, shuddering breath. Luna comes around to your other side, opposite Twilight. She extends her neck towards you, but seems to think better of it, pulling her head back again and sitting down. It takes you some time to collect yourself. Luna stays distant, watching you. Only when you’re steady does she speak. “Dost thou wish… us to merge her into that body?” You look over at her when you hear her hesitation, but she looks away from you. “Is she having a nightmare too?” Luna shakes her head. “She dreameth pleasantly.” “Then leave her. She doesn’t need to see this.” Luna is silent for several more seconds, before, “She dreameth of thee. As she so often doeth.” That would make you happy, but for Luna’s tone saying it. ”As thou often doest of her.” Only then does she look back at you. “Anon, answerest truthfully. Where is she now?” You look down at the mostly-inert body beside you. If you were sitting up in bed right now, the two of you would probably be arranged a lot like this. “She’s sleeping beside me. In my bed, in there.” You point a finger at the burning building. Luna nods, but each descent of her head brings it lower to the grass. “We see. We had thought, with what dreams we’d seen, but…” You reach out a hand to her face, but she pulls away from you, getting to her hooves quickly and backing up. Her eyes look hard. ”How long?” “How long what?” ”How long hath she slept with thee?” “Tonight’s the first night. Honest, Luna. It’s not like I was keeping anything from you.” Her gaze softens a bit, and she looks down at the grass. “We thought as much, but...” She shakes her head. “We are isolated from the world, awake at night and sleeping during day. For all we gleaned from dreams, we knew she was dear to thee, and thou her, but not how much.” She looks to the burning embassy, then. “Is that this dream’s root? Dost thou fear losing her?” “That’s definitely a fear, after this. But I don’t think it’s the cause. Not from what I was thinking, in there. Before you saved me.” She looks back to you. “What thoughts were those?” “Well, there’s still some stuff about this world I haven’t gotten used to. I’m trying. I really am. But back home, justice is more retributive, than rehabilitative here.” You wave a hand at the building. “I guess this is my lack of faith in that approach, or maybe just a lack of faith in my capacity to execute it.” Luna looks between the building and you a couple times. “But what hath that to do with thy home and Twilight?” Should you tell her? You already had your talk with Blueblood. Your current plan was to spread the word as much as possible, to prejudice ponies against whatever plans he might next undertake by making his actions and motivations known. If you couldn’t start here, then where? You take a deep breath before you begin. “Blueblood sent someone to vandalize the place, today. We caught it before anything bad happened, and I confronted him about it. But the vandal was just a filly, and Blueblood’s a coward. I took pity. The guards have the former, and the latter I was gonna let stew in it.” After a long moment of silence, you look back at Luna. She’s staring at the building in shock. Something was off about her. It wasn’t her stance – stunned as it was – or anything so visible, but- Her eyes. Her pupils are narrowed into slits, like her guards. “We… We had heard of an altercation, today. From the guard at his door. We thought it… trivial. We thought…” She fixes those slit pupils on you. “He would have killed thee. Destroyed thy life’s work. Burned thee to ash. Nothing to mourn.” ”Luna-” ”We would have known not. Been unable to save thee.” “Twilight was there, I was-” ”His peace is forfeit. His life must be made a waking nightmare. No respite from terror.” Maybe rehabilitative justice is a recent development, in pony culture. You stand to face her, but she only draws herself up further. “And his suffering shall serveth as a warning to all that thou shelterest under our own wing, that our grace blesseth all thou doest, that no harm shall come to thee while we still draw breath.” “Luna stop!” Your shout jolts her, and she takes a step back from you. “You told me about some big dumb fucking gesture. Is that what this is supposed to be? Your gesture to me? You want to prove yourself by causing suffering? I’m trying to do things your world’s way, I don’t want to see you do them mine. If that’s your fucking idea of a grand fucking gesture, forget it!” She recoils as if you’d just slapped her. Her pupils revert to their usual round shape. ”That… That is…” She starts moving side to side, slowly but accelerating, in a strange weaving action you haven’t seen before. She looks like she wants to run but can’t decide in which direction, and is stuck facing you. ”That is understandable! Oh yes. Hah. Of course. Thou saidst thou hadst never seen us unkind, so we had nothing to fear of thy disapproval. But now thou seest! So thou rejectest us. Naturally.” “No, wait, hold on now-” She’s breathing extremely fast, now, between words. ”Isolated, we find it difficult to connect. This keeps us further isolated. Only our sister keepeth us. Yes. Loneliness begetteth loneliness! Not a pain others would beareth on our behalf. This is proper. We remain alone.” She lowers her head and slows the strange motion, but not in a very coordinated manner. She looks drunk. “Alone. Though I love you, alone.” She pitches over and collapses to the ground. You play that back in your head as you rush to her side. She dropped her antiquated pronoun bullshit on that last one, didn’t she? Not that you can ask; she’s passed out. “Wake up! Why do you spiral like this?” You put both hands on the side of her body and shake her. “Come on you dumb mare wake the fuck up come on come on!” There are now two unconscious mares on your lawn, and you’re really not feeling silent company. You wrap an arm around her upper body, lift her slightly, and start shaking again. “Wake up wake up wake up!” Suddenly she’s flailing in your grip, forcing you to let go and drop her back on the now-matted grass. She stills a couple seconds after she lands. Fortunately, you’ve managed to avoid getting kicked by her scything hooves. After a couple seconds laying on her side in the grass panting she looks up at where you kneel. “Under… understandable.” “Hey, you cool? You calm?” She looks away from you, curling her head down to her chest silently. She’s not freaking out again, however, so that’s a yes. “You said ‘I love you’.” Her eye snaps back to you. “Truly?” “You said that. Not ‘We love thee.’ Those three exact words.” She looks away again. “We… I have made a habit of rudeness. You are beneath me not, Anon. Anything but.” You switch from a kneeling to a sitting position, and pull her head into your lap, stroking the side of her neck. “And, uh, yeah. Truly.” She turns her head upward at you, then struggles to right herself where she lays in the grass, but you push her back down. “Nah, rest. Don’t go passing out on me again.” ”But… you saw my-” “Everyone’s got their inner demons. Yours just might, uh, be an actual demon. I said I’d cut Blueblood’s balls off, when I was talking to him.” You laugh. “I understand the sentiment behind wanting him to suffer, I really do.” ”And what about Twilight?” “What about her?” ”She must accepteth me.” “She was waiting for you, you know. Got fed up with it.” Luna’s silent for a time, before, “I did take long enough to say it, did I not?” “Yeah, well something about gestures or whatever. When I said forget it, Luna, that’s all I meant. I don’t care about some big deed to prove yourself to me.” You laugh to yourself again, shaking your head. “We’ve spent enough time together to prove yourself to me the real way. And you gave me enough time to realize it. I was psyching myself up for it, when Twilight first said something, but it sorta just fell into place. Now, lately, I can’t keep my hands off you.” You pat her side with your hand not busy with her neck, just to prove your point. “And now, hey, you revealed the deepest, darkest part of you. And you’re the only one who’s seen my old home. We know more about each other than anyone else in Equestria. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already in.” ”In?” “Yeah. The herd or whatever.” ”The band.” “Twilight told me you’d call it that.” Luna smiles up at you. “I suppose I should get with the times, if I am to be a satisfactory mate.” ”Mate, huh? I’m already a big fan of how your body reacts to mine.” Luna puts a forehoof on your shoulder, then rolls herself upright, pushing your back down to the grass in the process. She looms over you, grinning. “Anon, you will find I am just as fond of innuendo as my sister, merely restrained by tact. You have now given me all the permission I need to do whatever I want with you.” She stops herself, then, blinking and pulling her head up slightly, before looking at something behind you. The smell of smoke still drifts over you, and you can see the reflections of flames dancing in her eyes. ”We must tell my sister.” You roll out from underneath her onto your stomach, and look at the building as well. “Do we? I, uh, I’m not particularly proud of this crisis of faith in your culture. In fact, she’s the last person I want to know; she’s pretty invested in me acclimating well.” ”I insist. She must knoweth the threat you have faced.” “No, really, can we just-” You hear a popping sound, like a unicorn teleporting. ”Oh!” That was Celestia’s voice. You quickly stand and locate her. No strange objects surround her, and the environment looks exactly as it had before. Strange how easy Luna can shuttle ponies around, when she has such difficulty with you. Celestia gently nudges Twilight’s body with her nose before looking at you and Luna. ”Is she alright?” ”That is merely a dream construct, sister.” Celestia looks down at Twilight and takes two steps back, looking like her student had just transformed into a particularly grotesque bug. “You know those always creeped me out, when I’m made aware in dreams. Especially someone so dear to me.” “Anon’s, not mine. But look yonder.” Celestia turns to your still-burning embassy then, and takes a step back. Then another. She backs up to you even as you walk to her side. When you reach her, your heart falls when you see her face. She’s wearing no mask, no facade of propriety. Just a look of pure horror. It takes several seconds before she turns to look at you. Luna comes up on your other side, dipping her head low and nudging your hand out with her snout, then bringing her head up underneath your hand so it’s resting between her ears. When Luna stops beside you, she draws Celestia’s attention. “Why do you show us this nightmare, sister?” You can hear her voice quaver. When have you ever known Celestia to be this raw? ”Not just a nightmare. A prophecy of a future averted. At least, so I hope.” She looks to Celestia, then. “Averting it is why I bring you.” ”Explain. Now.” Luna nudges your side. “Well, uh, Blueblood hired some kid off the street to break in, today. We turned her away – your guards have her – but, uh.” You shake your head and sigh. “I’m scared it’s not enough, is all. I talked to him, and figure I can try to beat him at his game, but that’s not the same sense of security I’d get back home. So I got a new nightmare, for the first time in a long time.” You gesture to the not-actually-Twilight nearby. “She and I would have died in there, if Luna hadn’t stepped in.” ”Is Twilight with you now? In the real?” “Yeah.” ”Comforting.” “Well, she’s asleep too. With me. In bed.” Celestia gives you something approximating a sly look, but it’s twisted with worry from the scene before her. On your other side, you feel Luna flick her tail. ”Anon, I-” Celestia’s voice breaks, and she looks away from you. ”This has been going on for quite some time, hasn’t it?” “From the moment I stepped out from under your wing, yeah.” ”I told you to tell me if you were ever harassed.” “I had to try to make my own way, Celestia. I couldn’t be glued to your side forever.” She wheels on you then, her expression a mix of sorrow and… rage. ”When it got this bad? What if I lost you? What do you think that’d do to me, for your stubborn pride? What would that do to my sister, to Twilight? You’re not so different from a stallion after all; you don’t think!” “I got what I wanted to get done. I don’t care anymore, you can take it from here.” ”Oh, I can, now? And if your little plan didn’t work? If you died here-” She punctuates it with a stamp of a hoof- ”where would that leave the three of us, who’d spent so much caring for you? You’ve seen my own nightmare, Anon. I thought you’d be more sensitive than encouraging it to become a reality!” She has to put more force into the words to make them sound angry. Her wrath had burned out halfway through the diatribe. It’s just sorrow left now; you can hear as much, and see it in her ever-honest eyes as they tear up. “Yeah. It’s my fault. I understand that. That-” You gesture at the building. “-showed me that. I thought I had it under control, but really I’m still scared shitless, if I’m getting dreams like this.” Celestia’s speechless, and you can see her tears starting to fall. Luna leaves your side for her sister’s, pushing her head into Celestia’s shoulder. “He is fine, sister. No use crying. Let us plan.” Celestia looks like she’s about to object, but then shakes her head. You can see her usual posture start to return, all those interlocking armor plates of apparent calm, aloofness, and composure sliding into place and layering over each other, assembling her normal facade. ”Yes. Lets. You said you talked to him. What was his rationale?” “He’s upset I got Twilight’s interest. He saw her as the first eligible princess for Equestria for, uh, for breeding. He thinks there needs to be more alicorns, to build some sort of ruling caste I guess.” She nudges Luna’s neck with her snout. “Sister, can stallions think of anything besides foals?” ”Mine can.” Celestia blinks a few times, then looks over Luna’s shoulders at you. “I see. You are most fortunate, then.” Then, for the first time in this dream, she smiles. ”Very good. I, however, must deal with the wayward nobility running our household.” ”We must remove him.” So much for your plans of subtlety, your battle of wits. ”And? He’s still royalty, sister, no matter how distant.” ”The scion of an ancient cadet branch. He can be cast aside, until an heir to his lineage comes forth. One you could make a student, and show the true responsibility of their status.” ”And until then?” You clear your throat. “You could, uh, put Raven in charge I guess?” Celestia gives you a look like she’s holding back laughter. “Anon, Raven can pluck the strings of state like the finest musician, but I wouldn’t trust her to run a hovel, let alone the palace. She only returns home to sleep, you know, and comes back as soon as her morning preparations are complete. If it weren’t for the palace kitchens, I’m sure she would have starved long ago; the only thing she knows how to make is coffee. Perhaps we could simply keep Blueblood on a short leash, until we have a suitable replacement.” Luna looks back at you. “Why does my stallion not do it?” “Look, if you put me with Raven, together we can make maybe two thirds of that hovel work.” The blue alicorn frowns. “You will have to work on that.” “Sure, but you don’t have the time for that now. Look, I’m not going to be much of a help, so I think I’ll step out and let you two get to it.” You do that thing where you try to pop your own head off to exit the dream. Nothing happens. Celestia eyes you inquisitively. “What are you doing to yourself?” ”He can escapeth dreams sometimes. However, at present, you anchor him.” ”Ah. I’m sure you can call up a more pleasant one in my head to continue this discussion.” ”I need your mind in my grasp already for best effect, sister.” Luna eyes you critically. “It is a simulated head injury, correct?” “Uh, yeah. At least I think so. I think it started with trying to break my neck or something.” ”Interesting. I told you I cannot abort your dreams for you, as human dreams work in strange ways. I can, however, facilitate your own means.” “Er, what’s that supposed to-” She pivots on her front hooves so her rear is to you, and kicks off the ground with her hind legs, drawing them inward as she’s tilting forward. You have just enough time to figure out what’s about to happen before her two rear hooves smash into the side of your skull. You bolt upright in your bed. Damn, the mare could kick. That’s a distant thought, though, like the dream you just woke from had concluded long ago. ”Mrhuh?” Twilight’s head pokes out from under the covers she’d apparently drawn over both of you, sometime in the night. Seeing her face and hearing her voice, no matter how sleep-addled, brings back all the memories from inside the burning building. Your arms are around her then, squeezing her tight, your hands petting whatever portions of her coat are within reach as you fight back tears. ”Anon, hey, you’re- you’re crushing me.” You relax a bit, just enough she can move. “Sorry, just… need this. Just for a bit.” She brings her head as close to yours as she can, with how you’re limiting her range of motion. “Is something wrong?” “Just a bad dream.” ”Want to talk about it?” “No. It’s, uh, it’s being handled.” ”Luna?” “Yeah, she helped. But I just-” You settle back to your sleeping position, Twilight still in your arms. “I need to hold you for a bit, that’s all.” ”As long as you’d like.” 13 Aftermath”Your Excellency!” The use of your rarely heard official style stops you, and Celestia a few paces after. Her stop isn’t even as graceful as yours, let alone as her usual self. Both of you turn to the guard stallion you just passed. ”We’re keeping an eye on him, sir. Looking out for you.” You toss a casual salute at him and resume walking. “Your guards are gossipy, as usual.” Celestia continues walking herself, once you’re back to her side, and the two of you enter the library. ”This is the most excitement they’ve seen in awhile.” “Over a doorknob.” ”Over you. And Twilight, too; my sister’s guards don’t tell, but when mine saw the two of you leave your building together, this morning, there’s only a few conclusions they’d draw.” “Yeah, I’ve been congratulated a couple times too. It’s a little weird, being honest.” Celestia closes the door to your private reading room behind her, then sighs and leans against the wall there. Once you’ve taken a seat, you lean forward, elbows on your knees, and study her. “You’ve been off all day. You almost stuttered, earlier, and I’ve never heard you stutter in front of anypony. Your gait’s all screwy and you’re distracted as hell. I‘m pretty sure most haven’t noticed, but I have. What’s wrong?” “Between Blueblood and you being with my sister now, I’ve got a lot on my mind. This whole thing with the Prince will become a big issue with the way this palace is run, if we let it drag. He knows something is up, even if we haven’t confronted him yet; the Guard is all over him, to the limits of propriety. Trust me, this is restrained, for the Commander. He’d be at Blueblood’s throat if I allowed it; after what you’ve told us, it’s the perfect storm to set his hopelessly romantic heart ablaze. As it is Raven is going to have to manage everything around here more or less alone, with those two angry enough at each other to become useless.” She thumps her head lightly against the wall. “Luna and I just haven’t settled on a punishment, yet. I’ve been corresponding with… colleagues.” “That’s not like you, either. Usually you can think of these things on the spot. And why would me being with Luna bother you? I thought it’s what you wanted.” She looks over to you and smiles, standing upright again. “I’m happy for you two. I just thought I should keep a respectful distance.” “That’s the last thing I want. I’ve been with you every step of your routine for months now trying to help you relax, and you said you liked my lack of respect. C’mere, sit down.” You gesture to her usual spot. Instead, she comes up to you, then lies down on the floor next to you. “Well, sure, no distance is what I asked for I guess.” Her mane flows over and phases through your clothes and body, as Luna’s does like this. It feels like a warm mist, immersing your legs in a sensation of a very fine spray, though you know it doesn’t wet your clothes. You reach down through it – though not very far; her greater than normal height is just as apparent when she’s sitting on the floor – and pat the side of her neck. Honestly, this all seems so pathetic. The mighty and sure sovereign of Equestria is lying on the floor at your feet. It’s been awhile now since she started letting her guard down around you, in here. You were glad for it; she really needed some time in the day she could relax. You were honored she could around you, honored in a way you’ve never really felt before in your life. It was a strange thing to realize, that you feel an entirely new feeling to you from these moments. You’ve never seen her so put to pieces as this. No, there was your dream last night. But besides that. In both cases, you were the key. How she felt about you last night, that was obvious enough. Between her reaction to the dream, and her own nightmare you’d seen before, she was terrified of losing you. Maybe all the teasing was masking something more earnest. You’ve never been good at this stuff. “Hey. Move over to the middle, a bit. Lemme get my hands all over you.” She jerks as if about to stand, but stops and remains motionless. She doesn’t even take that low-hanging fruit for some crude comment. “Seriously. I mean it.” She sighs and does as you ask, settling on the floor in the middle of the room atop her legs, wings spread wide and loose. “Can’t believe I have to cajole you into this.” You get behind her again, starting your massage at her hindquarters and planning to move up, as you did last time. ”Would it sound strange if I said I hesitated because I wanted it?” “Yeah, that is pretty strange.” ”I used to indulge in a self-satisfying selflessness. If I wasn’t sure on a course of action, where both choices were exactly equal, I’d often pick the option I didn’t want. To prove to myself I had that will, that I could make decisions with no regard to my own interests. But lately, a couple friends told me I should pursue my own wants more.” “No wonder you’re always so uptight.” She laughs, the reverberations running through her body to your hands on her sides. “Yes, that’s probably part of it. But I used to be quite the opposite.” “Self-interested?” ”Partially. Haughty, stuck-up, thoughtless and careless. I’d mock my sister, when we were both young. Very young; still unicorns, and our first couple years after earning our wings. Not that I didn’t love her, but I used my wit and quick tongue for immediate satisfaction more often than thoughtful care.” “That doesn’t sound like you.” “I learned, thanks to our shared mentor, and what we went through together. By the time we were set to take the throne of our then-recently founded country, I had acquired some of the wisdom that intellect should be paired with. But sometimes I still feel like that foolish filly, sometimes I feel like I still have so far to go.” She shakes her head. “Back then, she and I used to always be at each others’ sides. The Elements of Harmony we used – just two back then, not the six Twilight’s at the center of now – were just one of many things we did together.” After a chuckle, “A list which includes, to be crude, a few stallions. But we’d stopped that once we took our thrones. So now, faced with my sister finally finding love again, I’m reminded of our earlier misadventures, but also of how poorly I at times treated her then. I wasn’t sure if I should just leave her to it, and I was tempted to apply that old test; what don’t I want? Yet my dear friends counsel me otherwise. I’ve spent too long thinking about how I have all the time in the world; for once I should take advantage of it.” Your hands are massaging the shoulders of her wings, now, as you chew on this. You can see where this is going. “So what about that stallion you told me about? Did you stay away from him because he was hers?” You can feel Celestia tense under you, briefly, before relaxing again and laughing. “He… oh, come now. I was talking about you then, Anon.” You start laughing, yourself. And don’t stop, folding forward over where you straddled her hips to lay on top of her upper back. She’s laughing with you, quieter. “Honestly, for someone who’s so capable of leaps of intuition, you are too often distracted beyond reason. Considering what I know you’re capable of, you miss some of the most blatant things.” “Yeah, I, uh, that’s me for sure. The only errors I make are the obvious ones.” ”Lets not get too full of ourselves, now.” “So if I asked you want you want-” She does a little shimmy, tossing you onto her left wing, then she swings that wing up while rolling beneath you. Once you pass through her right wing, extended up over your head, she brings it down around you and pushes you to the floor. You land between her forelegs, which wrap around your arms and upper body, pulling you close to her, followed by her hind legs around your thighs and knees. Her neck curls down, her chin against the top of your head. The two of you are on your sides now, facing each other, and it’s a little hard to breathe with your face mashed into her chest as it is, considering her coat’s thicker there than most of the rest of her body. ”I want this.” Celestia is the only pony who can cuddle you, instead of the other way around. Her being as tall as you standing means she’s got a lot more volume on you, with her four-legged body configuration. She’s currently making very effective use of it. She must be thinking the same thing you are. “It’s nice to hug a stallion my size, for once. We’re… compatible.” “In more ways than one, I’d guess.” Your response is muffled by her coat. ”Is this too far?” Well, Luna said she didn’t care. Twilight… Since when did Twilight object to anything Celestia did? “I don’t know, are you just teasing me again?” She loosens her weird hoof-hug, giving you a bit of room to breathe. “I’m sorry for all that, before.” “Yeah, your sister told me.” ”I meant what I said in your dream, last night. I was upset because I cared for you. I don’t want to lose you, Anon, but that means I need to have you, first.” You wiggle a bit in her hoofy grasp. She’s pleasantly warm, and surrounding you with that warmth. “Yeah, that checks out.” She laughs. “Knowing you, I should have stated it so simply earlier.” “Might have helped.” After a moment of silence, “And you?” “I’m feeling less in control of my own love life by the hour, with everything that’s been going on in the past couple days.” ”Yes, I suppose it’s a bit much to take in.” She adjusts her legs around you. ”I’ve waited many, many years. I can wait a little bit longer.” You’re trying to figure out how she manages to smell like flowers. As far as you know that’s her natural scent. Probably the same way her laugh energizes you, and how her mane works, and what Luna said about bodily control. You’re fortunate you enjoyed her affections. If you didn’t, you’re afraid she might have a way to make you enjoy it. ”You should take a shower when we’re done here.” “Woah, hey now, physical affection like this is one thing, but Luna got a little peeved when she learned Twilight and I were sleeping in the same bed, and that wasn’t even, ah, some other activities one does in bed. And that’s what it sounds like you’re proposing.” ”No, silly. It’s the scent.” She pulls you in tighter, mashing your face into her chest again. Your office is very close to the library. Close enough that your pink alicorn friend can sense every feeling coming from it with clarity, the emotional voyeur. She’s looking in that direction now, but her eyes are closed. She’s wearing a faint smile, and she refuses to give you as much feedback as you’d like about what she’s picking up. You’re about to ask her for the ninth time for more commentary when she opens her eyes and looks at you. ”It is done, Raven.” “Stop these cryptic replies, Your Highness.” ”Aw, let me have a little fun with it.” “So he loves Her Majesty?” ”No.” The one word hits you like this whole wing of the palace just collapsed. The weight drops on your shoulders, threatening to drive you down to the desk you’d propped yourself up on, while watching Cadance. She momentarily looks shocked and physically recoils, when that sensation reaches her. Then her expression shifts to apologetic. ”Not in the way you’re thinking, my inexperienced mentor. She doesn’t love him like that, either.” “Her Majesty told me quite clearly-” ”She didn’t lie to you. But their connection isn’t like that between Anon and Twilight or Luna. Those are deep loves rooted in shared experiences and aspects of being, intellectual or emotional. That’s not what Celestia shares with Anon. And that’s okay! Not all relationships start with the pair head over heels for each other. What’s important is the feelings are mutual.” “What do they feel, then?” Cadance makes a show of pondering the question. “They care how the other feels. They interest each other, respect each other, and arouse each other. She’s invested enough in him that she’s off-balanced by recent events surrounding him, and if he slips her grasp she’ll be devastated. He’s realized his private moments by her side is as important to him as her, he’s proud and humbled she’s chosen him for that, and wants to see her get what he feels she deserves. The only difference between them is that she recognizes all this in herself, and knows what it means. That’s what she meant when she told you, and when she talked to us.” “And Anon?” ”He’s… still working through it. He believed her earlier behavior to be shallower than it was. I believe – this was hard to pick up, since he tries muting his emotional expression reflexively, poor soul – he understands otherwise, now. I did get a sense of understanding, but couldn’t catch on what. There’s only so much I can do when I can’t see a pony I’m unfamiliar with.” You nod, more to yourself than anything. This all sounded good. Not great, but good. Cadance, of course, can pick up on your feelings on the matter. She sends a wave of reassurance your way, in return, allowing you to relax a tensionin your posture. You release a breath you didn’t know you were holding, nor for how long. ”Have faith. As I said, not all relationships begin with love. Sometimes love grows into the space a relationship provides, instead, molding itself to all its nooks and crannies. Those two already have everything else needed, a lot of things some ponies don’t even understand in each other until after marriage. These things need more than just love to make them work, you know.” No, you didn’t, not really. This was one field you had no understanding of. Your object of affection never loved back, not as you loved it. You’re fine with that. It’s part of the job. Equestria loves all ponies equally, in a distantly paternal fashion. ”Besides, her bonds with Twilight and Luna make a unique niche for her in their nascent herd. All that is enough, and she knows it’s enough, she’s been around long enough to see. The only question is whether or not he’s receptive.” You prop yourself up again, at this, and look at her. “Will he accept her, then?” The pink princess just grins at you, a gleam in her eye. You stamp a forehoof on your desk. “Your Highness, I said-” ”It’s funny, Raven. You taught me a lot of what I needed to know, before I left for the Crystal Empire. I was the learner, but now I’m the master. Let me teach you what you’ll need to know.” By the time Celestia had reluctantly let you go – as reluctantly as you were to be let go – you smelled a bit like her own body’s strangely floral scent. Considering a human’s sense of smell isn’t great, relatively speaking, you have no clue how other ponies took it. Your face had been ground zero, so maybe you’ve got a much better awareness than usual, but that doesn’t help matters any. She wasn’t kidding about the scent-marking. Luna was absent from the evening’s council meeting. Strange, since these meetings were mostly for her benefit, when the two sovereigns needn’t meet with the ducal representatives from across Equestria. Turns out that, according to Raven, she took some time off, now that she was with you. Not that she told you that. Not that she’d have even had the chance; this was usually your first opportunity to see each other in your daily schedule. Quiet though she normally is, she always bore a certain presence, and her absence was noticeable. It brought the table down to five; Celestia, you, Raven, Blueblood, and the Royal Guard’s commander. It seemed what Celestia had done to you was quite apparent to all present. Raven kept shooting the two of you knowing looks. The Commander’s normally severe visage was cracked by a faint smile the whole meeting. And Blueblood… Blueblood looked terrified. He was never as composed as Celestia, but even he had a mask he could don. That masked was shattered, this evening, from the moment you had walked in the room at Celestia’s side. Celestia herself wore the smuggest expression you’d ever seen. The meeting was mercifully brief. You couldn’t handle being the subject of so many different attentions. You have no idea what Celestia’s guards think, and you didn’t really want to think about it yourself. The sun was still below the horizon, by the time you and Celestia made your way to your workshop together. She usually retires to her chambers or her library, but today she insisted on joining you. As soon as you open the door, you’re thankful for it; you can hear an altercation inside. The two of you hustle through the main hallway to the lounging room’s door. ”And beyond age, we are clearly the more powerful.” ”I seem to remember taking your butt down, a few years ago.” ”This is no herd with thy five friends!” ”This isn’t even your herd!” Luna and Twilight are all up in each other’s faces. Entirely too close, considering the volume they’re speaking to each other at. Not speaking, shouting. They don’t even notice the two of you enter. At least you don’t have to explain why you smell like Celestia. ”We have shared secret and private moments with him inside his own mind.” ”I’m the only one who had faith in his life’s work, helped him achieve his goals.” Celestia, wearing an expression of mock shock, leans towards you and whispers, “You just told Luna she was included, didn’t you?” “Yeah, what about it?” You can already tell those two have been arguing in circles, retreading the same points repeatedly. You have no idea how long this has been going on. ”There’s a procedure to be followed, Anon. You didn’t even have a herd for a single day before you screwed it up.” “How was I supposed to know, I’m just a human.” Luna stamps a hoof, her head held imperiously high. ”We touched the deepest parts of each other’s souls.” Twilight’s wings are flared out to make herself look larger. ”And you took too long to do it!” Celestia pulls on the back of your shirt with her magic, beckoning you out of the room. “Anon, the lead mare calls the shots. You just have veto power.” “So what was I supposed to do? Your sister passed out when she thought I rejected her. In my dream! How does a princess of dreams pass out in a dream and not fuck something up? How do you even pass out in a dream anyway?” ”Because it was in your head, not hers or anyone else’s. Beside the point. You should have given her the go ahead to talk to Twilight, or talked to Twilight about her in the morning. Then they’d meet and discuss it and if Twilight’s satisfied, you have the final say.” “That’s ridiculous. I’m the stallion, isn’t it my herd?” ”You’re just the centerpiece, the nexus. It’s Twilight’s herd. Well, it was, but you’ve now called that into question; your unilateral decision made both of them leaders because you undercut Twilight’s authority. Now go out there and fix your mess.” She nudges you in the back and pushes you on with one wing. They’re apparently in a lull in the argument, because they’re angrily discussing things with their eyes instead of their voices. “Hey. Uh. You two. Shut up for a sec. Er, continue being shut up. Get over here.” Twilight complies immediately. Luna follows only after a moment of watching Twilight go, as if being the last to leave her spot was some minor victory. Both of them shoot a glance at Celestia after they stop in front of you, but neither says anything. Oh, right. Her scent. Keep this focused. “What’s your problem?” The two of them shift uneasily. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. The hell are you two fighting over? Me? Did this start the moment Luna came around and said something about it?” They both nod. ”Heaven and earth, how are you two supposed to live together?” Twilight adjusts her wings in a gesture you’ve recognized as discomfort. Luna shoots her a glance, then says, “With a hierarchy. A proper one.” ”I never said I was going to overrule your position! You’re a princess of Equestria, but-” “We’re not starting round two! You two are acting like children.” You run a hand through your hair and close your eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh. “Alright. I know I’m not the one in command, with how you ponies do it, but Celestia told me I have to fix my fuckup here. One of you’s gotta be in charge over the other, for some dumb reason. That sounds an awful lot to me like I have to play favorites, and I really don’t want to do that, but it’s not like I have any idea what’s going on here in the first place. Okay, whatever, when in Rome and all that. Here’s what we’re gonna do.” The two look up at you, expectantly. You stare back, putting your hands on your hips, alternating your gaze between them. “Twilight.” Her ears perk up, and her wings fidget again. “You were first. You’re in charge.” Their expressions start changing immediately, but you hold up a hand. “Slow your fucking rolls, I’m not done yet. Twilight, you’re in charge because you don’t have a country to run. Just a little slice of it or whatever. Also, Luna, you know I love you but your sleep schedule’s kinda garbage when it comes to managing this crap. We’re not gonna fuck up Twilight’s just to take her into a dream every night, and that’s where you and I do a lot of our shit. It doesn’t mean I love her more or something. It’s because she doesn’t have as much on her plate, and I don’t want you to suffer with this division of responsibilities. And I mean responsibilities, Twilight. If I hear you lording this status over her, I might rethink my decision, especially if you neglect her or whatever other duties this lead mare thing entails. And Luna, speak to her like she deserves. None of those pronouns of disrespect.” The two of them look away from both you and each other. ”I was planning to anyway,” Luna mutters. ”She is right about the royalty thing,” Twilight mumbles. “Cool. Kiss and make up, or however you add ponies to a herd.” Celestia walks up to your side as the two face each other. At first they don’t look like they’ll move; both wear the remnants of earlier glowers, holding themselves in stiff stances. Then Luna glances at you, smiles, and exhales in a cross between a huff and a sigh. She holds that smile when she looks back to Twilight, and the smaller alicorn relaxes. Twilight fully spreads her wings and draws herself up as best she can to the larger Luna while staying on all four hooves. Luna spreads her wings only halfway, and tilts them so their leading edges are angled downward. She dips her head to the floor in a bow, then tilts her head up while keeping it low, to look up at Twilight. The two bring their noses close, eyes closed. You half-turn to Celestia and whisper. “I thought the breath thing was supposed to be romantic.” ”It’s shared between parents and foals too, but here you could consider it a sort of bonding ritual.” “Wild.” Once they finish the gesture, they look at you. “Oh come on, we’re a family now, aren’t we? All that unpleasantness is behind us. Fresh start. Luna, welcome. Happy to have you here.” Before you even finish, Celestia’s walking around you, towards Twilight. ”Twilight.” Twilight looks up at her towering mentor. “Yes?” Celestia smiles. “I too would like to join you.” Twilight’s demeanor goes to pieces on the spot. Awkward shuffling, fidgeting wings, the works. “Wh-what? I- I can’t do that! Both of you in my herd? Celestia, I was your student for half my life! How can you ask to be my charge now? Celestia bows to her once-student, then, a deep formal affair, exceptional wingspan swept out across the floor. Luna walks up beside her sister, beaming. Twilight looks to you, with an expression crying out for help. You just shrug. Shaking her head and sighing, Twilight dips her head down to Celestia’s. “Of course you can. You know I can’t say no. Go ask Anon.” Celestia lifts her head and folds her wings again, still smiling, and walks up to you. “Anon, Cadance told me you still might be confused about me, and about how you feel towards me. I hope you will give me the chance to show how serious I am about this. About us.” You shift your weight on your feet, and shake your head. “Princess, I’m pretty sure I smell more like you than whatever I normally smell like right now, and I didn’t exactly object to that process. No, I’m not as confused as I was, about you. I’m honored you would choose me.” Celestia gives you a deep nod and reaches her head out to touch her nose to yours for the briefest moment, before returning to Twilight. She copies her sister’s earlier gestures, but her movements are more graceful and refined, with a bit of a theatrical flourish. Twilight repeats her half of the ritual, though conversely, she does so more haltingly than before. Turning to her sister, then, Celestia repeats the process. Instead of assuming Twilight’s pattern, Luna mirrors that of her sister at precisely the same time and down to every exact detail, including all the grace and flourishes she hadn’t displayed before. Instead of Luna rising again and Celestia tilting her head up, the two of them touch noses while their heads are still low to the ground. You’re not sure if this is how the ritual is supposed to go or if Luna’s modifying it out of deference for her sister, but their perfect synchronicity just reminds you that no matter what you mean to them, it’s not a candle to what they mean to each other, in a different respect. You’re pretty okay with that. It’s not like it hurts your position in the relationship, after all. Equestria’s a pretty wonderful place. When they straighten again, you join the three, wrapping one arm around Twilight and the other around the sisters, which was a bit of a stretch, but you made it work thanks to some helpful repositioning on Luna’s part. “Now we’re all settled. All together. Honestly, I have no idea how this herding thing works, but I’m sure you all can teach me right.” Celestia seems to just be basking in the moment. Luna’s keeping reserved, but arching her neck back against your hand. Twilight still looks dazed and confused. You give her a pat on her side. “You especially. I’m sure these two have enough experience behind them to know how to get the better of me.” ”I’ll d-do my best.” “Atta’girl.” ”But could you give us a bit? To work stuff out. Mare stuff.” You look at the other two. Celestia’s wearing an expression of exaggerated mock innocence, probably in response to your earlier comment. Luna just gives you a nod. “Yeah, yeah I can do that.” You disengage from the group, but turn back to them once you’ve walked to the door. “But if I hear any of you treating others poorly, there’ll be hell to pay.” Twilight and Luna nod, but Celestia just shoos you off with a wing. Once you’re outside, you start walking towards the palace. Before you enter, you see a pink spot standing out against the palace’s white and purple. Cadance stands on the balcony of her suite, looking down at you. When you look back up at her, she tosses her head towards the embassy in an unspoken question. Wearing a smile you’re sure she can’t see, you give her a salute, and continue inside. Unsure of how much time they need, you start wandering the halls by instinct. You don’t live in the palace anymore – though you suppose that will shortly change again, soon – but your body still falls into certain patterns, while moving within it. It’s not long before you find yourself at Raven’s office. Smiling to yourself, you step inside. ”Ah, Your Excellency! Your arrival heartens me.” “You’re giving me the style too?” ”I hear you have become part of the royal family, now. You deserve more respect than I had been displaying.” You take the seat in front of her desk. She’s already floating over a cup of that wonderfully strong coffee she keeps for herself. Was she expecting you? “Alright, how’d you know? It just happened.” ”I know a great many things that go on around here, Anon, from a great many sources.” “Yeah, that’s you alright. Wait. Don’t tell me you didn’t plan this.” She laughs. “Anon, I do not take credit for the accomplishments of others. You made this happen. I simply helped in whatever ways I could, so you could succeed in the tasks you set out on.” She gives you a more serious look, then. “Including ones that have not yet completed.” You lean back in the chair. “So you know about my little project.” ”Oh yes. And I must say, your ambitions have met my expectations. It’s about time Her Majesty had a friend who she would not outlive.” Friend. “Yeah, uh, well, plans have changed since then. But yeah, I hope it works. You know, if Blueblood doesn’t kill her.” Raven tilts her head. “Kill who?” “The, er, friend. Kill, destroy, whatever. So, uh, what’s going to happen to him, you think?” ”If Celestia has not acted yet, she may be agonizing over her decision. That means she contemplates a severe punishment. But, if you want my opinion on the entire range of possibilities, I can provide.” “Sure, shoot.” ”The slightest involves removing him from his position and little more. Fines, mandatory service, or other more mundane penalties might be considered. Increasing in severity, his family’s status stems from links to her family, long ago. As the head of the senior branch, she could alter that status in various ways. Seizing holdings is a possibility, as well as altering his position in the noble hierarchy. Higher still, she could consider relegation, or deportation. At this point we speak of the most severe punishments. She could order the erasure of all records of his existence – that task would fall to me – or even simply turn him to stone.” You choke on your drink at that last one. “Excuse me, what?” ”Justice fell harsher, in the time of her and her sister, long ago. Heroes dealt with threats in a manner that, if not permanent, at least lasted a long time. Those normally involved much more chronic and severe wrongdoing, however.” “All these sound more like stuff I’d expect from my world, not yours.” ”Ah, you mean her clever contrivances of rehabilitation. You asked of punishment, so I answered with such. What you speak of now is healing, of individuals or of a community. These means she seeks to implement out of an understanding of those who wronged and who suffered for it. Do not mistake this for an overabundance of mercy. With sufficient wisdom, one can display both compassion and justice at once, and deliver verdicts that satisfy the injured while helping the wrongdoer walk a new path. This way she may heal two, instead of one.” You contemplate this, while sipping your coffee. You’re dating or married or whatever to this manipulative mare, now. Life might become a little more difficult than you’d thought. “So, uh, what happens to his job, if he’s removed?” ”I imagine, Your Excellency, the task will fall to you.” “I don’t know the first fucking- I don’t even eat half your food, let alone how to cook it.” ”I can help you.” “Celestia tells me this coffee is the only consumable thing you can make.” If she’s offended by that comment, she doesn’t show it. “Anon, the keeper of the royal household represents a much more administrative position than a domestic one. You must think like an administrator, a leader.” “I haven’t led much, in my life, Raven.” ”A leader knows how to do things by knowing who can do them. Fortunately for you – and for Her Majesties – I know a great many talented ponies.” You smile. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” ”Neither do I.” 14 Marely Matters”I’m so excited you were able to get everything worked out before we left!” Cadance is beaming at you and Celestia, on the boarding platform. Shining Armor, carrying Flurry in a floating magical bubble, looks like he’s in a good mood too. But his wife is absolutely radiant. You can’t tell if the emotions you’re feeling are your own mirrored back at you, or Cadance’s joy that you and her aunt and her sister-in-law all came together in a single happy herd. ”Thank you for your help, your visits are always wonderful,” Celestia says, with a little bow of her head. “Maybe someday you’ll tell us how much you helped, exactly.” Cadance laughs. “I didn’t contribute anything that wasn’t already there, Anon. Only cleared the air. This was all the four of you, promise. My aunt taught me the wisdom in a light touch.” It’s Celestia’s turn to beam at her. “And you’ve learned well.” “Twilight sends her apologies, especially to you, Shining. She wanted to see you all off, but something came up.” Shining’s expression becomes utterly unreadable, but like flipping a switch, Cadance’s smile becomes a terrifyingly feral grin. Just for the briefest of moments, then it’s gone. “That’s fine, Anon. I hope it works out for her. Good luck!” “Good luck?” The family turns to board. “Oh yes,” Cadance says, over her shoulder. “You’ll be needing it.” The two of you stay on the platform to watch the train depart, but not a moment longer. “You know, there’s still some weird cultural elements we gotta work through, with displays of affection.” Celestia turns with you, and you two start heading back through the city to the palace. It’s a short walk, but it’s enough that you two wanted to see your guests off at the station instead of the palace gates. “Oh?” “Yeah. I’ve gotten used to the touching noses thing, that’s like kissing back home. Some Earth cultures had similar practices. But I’m still gonna probably end up actually kissing you mares at some point and that might get awkward. I’ve been keeping it to the coat because I don’t know how you’d react. Also, Twilight keeps licking me. Especially this morning. Fucking tons. Like I woke up to it.” ”What’s wrong with that?” “Back home, at least where I was from, licking people was rare. And, uh, bedroom behavior, I guess.” Celestia adopts that wide-eyed puckered look like she’s holding back laughter at a joke only she understands. “I see.” “And there’s a couple other things. I’m not used to, uh, carrying a sign of affection around. The scent thing will take some getting used to. Though I gotta say, whatever you and Luna do to your body chemistry to make yourselves smell as pleasant as you do, I can’t wait until Twilight figures out how. You smell like a meadow in full bloom, and your sister smells like a spice-laden campfire, what the actual fuck. I thought your manes were the only outlandishly impressive things you two did with your bodies.” She chuckles. “Anon, that’s only to impress you, but I’m glad you enjoy it.” “What?” ”Effort may not be the right word, but it takes more effort to do that than to just not have any scent at all, as we had before the herd. But, as you have learned, a side effect of affectionate behavior is marking each other with our scents. We decided to make it something pleasant.” “Well shit, I appreciate it. I was wondering why Twilight’s was so much more muted. Or why I could never smell other ponies, but honestly, a human’s sense of smell is kinda garbage. You three are the only ones I’ve gotten close enough to.” You make your way back to the palace, trading differences in physiology and culture. Instead of going around for the back, as you would have, the two of you enter instead. The four of you made a snap decision last night to relocate to the royal suites. A door joined Celestia and Luna’s quarters, allowing you a sense of continuity, but it was still a bit strange. Eventually you’ll all get relocated to the workshop for some renovations of that area of the palace to a proper arrangement, but until then, you’re making do. As you enter the suites, you’re confronted with Luna, a look of mock panic barely hiding a smile on her face. “Celestia, it is terrible! Our companion mare is delirious! Without her noble guidance, our herd is stricken! Oh, however shall we carry on?” From the far end of the string of rooms comes Twilight’s voice. ”By the grace of your sister will you shut up already?!” The alicorn sisters snicker at each other as you slip inside. ”It’s appropriate she gets him first, no?” Celestia cranes her neck to look through the doorway into the adjacent rooms. ”I am content to wait my turn, sister.” ”Then we can show him some proper, thoughtful love, together.” ”Are you suggesting we approach the situation like old times?” ”I don’t see why not.” “What the fuck are you saying?” Twilight appears in the doorway, then. “Don’t think I don’t hear you two… scheming!” She looks downright disheveled. Her mane’s a mess, her eyes are wild, and her stance is a bit wider, like she’s drunk and needs the extra stability. Then her eyes find you, and ‘wild’ is no longer a sufficiently intense descriptor. ”Anonthanktheskiesyouareback canyoucomehereforamoment Ineedyouforsomething.” “Uh, yeah.” You look back at the sisters. They’re still trying to keep a lid on their snickering. As you turn to follow Twilight, you hear Celestia do an imitation of Cadance from earlier. ”Good luck!” Twilight practically slams the door behind you, once you’re in the same room as her. She’s looking over you with eyes that can’t seem to stay still. Her tail’s flicking erratically. She’s breathing really heavy. ”A-anon… is there something wrong with me?” “If I had to guess? You look like you’re in the middle of the worst hangover you’ve ever had.” ”No! I mean physically. Is- is there a reason… I’m a different species. Do you find me attractive?” “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” ”Sexually!” Ah. You’ve talked to Luna about this, before. Should have figured it was going to come up. You’d been steering clear of the subject usually, because ponies seemed to not really consider the idea as much as humans, but Luna told you when a mare’s ready, she’s ready. That explains the panting, at least. And this morning’s licking. “Twilight, if you need something, I’m more than happy to provide. Like, whenever. That’s sorta how humans work.” You don’t have time to elaborate; she’s already stalking towards you, as you sit down on the bed. You’re pretty sure that’s aggression posture, for ponies. You cant tell if those are bedroom eyes or hungry eyes. ”What I need. Is. You.” “Shit, mare, you got me.” ”I don’t know what it’ll be like. If we’re compatible or not. Just… do whatever you can. Please.” She props herself up with her forehooves on your knees. She can’t stop herself from glancing at your lap. ”I’m begging you.” “Twilight, seriously, just-” She’s already undoing your pants telekinetically. Why does she bother begging when she can simply take? Even as she’s sliding them off you, she’s climbing up onto the bed, forcing you onto your back, her hooves to either side of your body. She looks down at your face. Her expression is a lot more complex than you were expecting. Lust, for sure, but also the love you’re able to find in her eyes every time. Frustration. Some concern, and a bit of apology. She’s taking your shirt off telekinetically, and you move to let her. Then she collapses on top of you. There’s the licking again, all over your face and neck and upper body. Her hooves are wrapped around you in a tight hug. How she expects to get anything done when she’s way up here, and your business end is way down there, you have no idea. You’ll have to do some of this yourself. A little difficult, when her half-spread, arched wings are blocking your view of what her own body isn’t obstructing itself. She recalls herself when you’re bringing your arms around for some crucial repositioning, and stands up again, looking down at your now naked body between her legs. ”I… I don’t know what I was expecting. But without your clothes… You look good, Anon.” “I’d say the same to you, but I’ve only ever looked at you without clothes, Twi.” “Mmm. Enough looking. Time to feel.” She sits back hard on your hips. You’re pretty sure six rounds in one sitting is a new record, for you. You’d lost track of how many it was for her. Ponies have garbage stamina. At least you’ll never have to worry about satisfying your herd. You’d fucked her unconscious. Celestia and Luna looked in on you, and had to give you some brief advice about that. They’d looked impressed. And a little dejected, when you told them you couldn’t possibly do more at that time, so soon after exhausting yourself on – in – the purple alicorn, but you’d promised to make it up to them. They’d brightened up at that, and left you alone. Hopefully they wont be as crazed, when it’s their turn. On that note, when Twilight woke up again, you discovered you had literally fucked some sanity into her. She could think and speak coherently now. She’d felt guilty she’d been useless all day, so the two of you were trying to get some work done in the shop. The two of you got the generator out of the wings. You need that for something else. Twlight was so proud of herself that she managed to accomplish it that she never even asked why you wanted her to. Poor thing. Now you’re carrying it to the one storage room with a different lock from the rest, the one whose key isn’t on your usual chain. Key in lock, open lock. You step inside as quickly as possible and close the door behind you, using your phone for light. There is a good number of parts in here now. Besides the half-assembled head and its attendant box of waiting pieces, you have four legs, minus hooves, and the basic shell of a body, though the smithy hasn’t completed your pieces for the inner framework yet. You’re almost at your limit for how far you can get without Twilight’s help, but you’ve yet to figure out a way to get what you need from her without revealing the surprise. It got close, when she asked why you’d designed the generator for the test article wings so powerful. It wasn’t a generator for wings at all. It was a new pony’s heart. Though the wings were coming here too, eventually. You place the still-spinning generator next to the body shell, then pick up the master design sheet, illuminating it with your phone’s flashlight. The mounting brackets for the generator should be ready in four days, according to how you’ve been spacing orders out to avoid suspicion. That should give you enough time to finish the head’s internals, minus the brain. All three pieces of which you needed Twilight for. This is getting difficult. You hear a pop, experience a moment of disorientation, and realize everything is a lot brighter now. ”You’re taking too long, Anon.” Twilight, perched on top of one of the workbenches, looks over to where she teleported you. “Oh, what’s that?” Your design sheet starts glowing magenta, and is gently yet firmly removed from your grasp. As Twilight looks over it, her eyes widen. First in confusion. Then in anger. ”What is this supposed to be?” You sigh, face in palm, trying to figure out how you’re going to get through this. “It’s a pony, Twilight.” ”What, is three of us not enough? You need to build something to screw?” “No, Twilight. You’re literally looking at the design, you can see there’s no, uh, hardware for that.” This just sends her from angry to worried. “Are… are we failing you in some other way? Some-” “Twilight, stop. Your heat’s getting to you again.” ”Buck the heat! Is this why you’ve been so curious about the failure state of the come-to-life spell, recently? If you seriously think I’m going to-” “Let me explain!” You only realize you shouted it in the ensuing silence. “Just… let me explain. Look past the body for a sec, because that’s not a mare.” ”I don’t see how you expect me to believe that.” “Okay, uh, from the top. You told me when the come-to-life spell gets screwed up, it creates an awareness based on what the caster intended the object to be. If the object is complicated enough, that new awareness needs to learn the body it now animates. This thing is preposterously complex. Hell I have two copies of my cellphone’s motherboard in there, to handle sensory processing, and they’re probably the most complex physical objects on this world. I have no idea if it’ll even work the way I intend it to. But it’s going to take a long time for her to learn how she’s supposed to be, especially with what you’re going to be keying her identity to. And she’s going to need guidance. Like… like a child, Twilight. The body’s just full-sized because it can’t grow. Not a mare. A filly.” Her expression has been shifting to awe slowly through your whole explanation, eyes wide and jaw loose. Maybe the heat’s good for something; it could be making her receptive to arguments of motherhood, no matter how strange the subject in question. “Don’t you see? That sex we just had to clear your head, that sure is satisfying, but it’s not- it’s not productive. With this we can make a product of our minds where our bodies can’t cooperate. A foal. We could have a foal after all. See, something this complicated, we’re going to fail the casting intentionally. And when you’re casting the spell, Twilight, think about a daughter.” Twilight looks back and forth between you and the plans, and the latter slowly floats to the tabletop beside her. “Anon, how… how long have you been planning this?” ”I started these plans on Raven’s indirect suggestion awhile ago, to give you immortals a companion. But then we got all tangled up in each other, and as I learned more about the spell, I learned about its obstacles. So this became something more.” You laugh and shake your head. “I wanted to make it a surprise; I was going to tell the three of you after I worked out all the kinks in the design. But I’ve been running into more and more snags, more things that… that I needed you for. So it’s been dragged out.” You look back up at her. Her eyes are starting to well up. Ah hell don’t do that, it’ll set you off too. “I know you said you never really thought of foals, and I’m sorry for keeping this a secret from you, but… can we try? You said the failure modes of this spell are unexplored territory. So at the very least, it’s worth it just for that experience. But it has the chance to be so much more, Twilight. A family we didn’t think possible. A lasting labor of love I can leave to you all.” Does the heat make her more emotional? Because she’s crying now, but she’s smiling. ”Typical stallions… always thinking of foals.” The two of you share a chuckle. ”Yeah, Anon. I think it’s worth a shot. And I’d love nothing more than for it to work, even if it’s your most whimsical idea yet.” You quickly walk to where she sits on the workbench and wrap her in a big hug. ”If you insist on being so physical, we’re going to have to take another break to get me straightened out again.” “Ah, shit. Sorry.” ”It’s fine. Get whatever you have so far, and we can look at these snags you’ve hit, redesign for them. Quickly, while I’m still capable of thought.” You feel bad for Luna, still awake as she was. She hadn’t gone to bed at her usual time, and now it’s early afternoon. She needed to make sure everything that was about to happen was properly prepared. To her credit, she’s still walking at your side just fine. In fact, she’s the epitome of solemn severity, but you know that humorlessness goes deeper than just appearances. She doesn’t take missing out on sleep well. Celestia’s on the other side of you, and similarly looks cheerless, though in her case she’s as calm and collected as ever. It was her plan that Luna’s preparations supported. It had taken a little over a week to figure it out and set it up, but that time had flown by, with how much the four of you had been enjoying each other’s company. But after her… issue… had cleared, Twilight had to go to Ponyville. None of you let it bother you during what you guessed amounted to an at-home honeymoon, but with her gone, now was the time to eliminate the last threat to your herd. The three of you enter the council room. Unlike the usual seating arrangements, Blueblood sits at the far end, where Luna normally would. Raven and the Royal Guard commander stand on either side of him. Celestia and Luna both take seats at Celestia’s end of the table. You move to stand between and behind them, arms behind your back. Blueblood looks miserable. Specifically, like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week. At least since Celestia’s little scent stunt. You know he’d been progressively isolated from even his own subordinates, as the week went on. Celestia cut them loose to work independently of him, or had put them under Raven temporarily. Raven looked no worse for the wear, though you hadn’t gotten a chance to meet her since the herd was formed. That mare must be a machine. Almost as much as the actual machine body you were in the process of building for a mare-to-be. The commander looked smug as fuck. He’d turned out to be a real master of intrigue, himself, and you were starting to see how Celestia used the guard’s rumor mill as a source of information. He’d kept Celestia apprised of Blueblood’s every movement, and every pony he had talked to, this week or regularly before. Frankly, it terrified you, knowing this stallion had likely been watching you in that much detail through his guards’ eyes since you’d arrived. Between the two of them, Blueblood had been shut out of his network of contacts, as well as his professional connections. You’re really glad you didn’t let yourself get sucked into courtly intrigues. As soon as the princesses are settled, Blueblood speaks, panic evident in his voice. “Please, I can explain-” ”We have already heard your explanations.” Celestia intones, voice low and harsh with gravitas. “From you, through my sister’s guard, and from the pony you roped into this scheme of yours, through my own guards.” He falls back against the chair, as if slapped. The commander manages to look even more smug. ”Further, we had quite generously granted you a week to come to us with your concerns, after the incident. You failed to take advantage of this opportunity.” Blueblood slumps. Lack of sleep may have sapped his will to fight before he’d even begun. ”We assumed you left the matter to our wisdom to resolve.” ”Wise of thee, thyself,” Luna said, gravelly yet clear. ”And so we come to our… resolution.” Several documents appear in front of Celestia in a flash colored the same as Raven’s magic. Celestia picks the first one up and looks it over. ”Prince Blueblood, the nature of your crime is truly a confluence of unique circumstances. The conspiracy you ran from your position in this very palace was alarming. Malign from the outset, though not so far removed from decency as to warrant intervention, and within the realm of your responsibility.” Judging by his expression, this admission does little to hearten him. Celestia continues, “Its recent and blessedly final escalation, however, wasn’t just an attack against Anonymous, whose current status I need not remind you.” Behind Celestia as you are, you couldn’t see her expression, but whatever Blueblood saw at that moment, he didn’t like. ”Through his position, and by his nature, your incident created a diplomatic crisis for all Equestria. An attack on a foreign nation, should it have gone off, would have been disastrous. ”But we have no contact with-” ”Do you know how Anonymous got here?” Blueblood fell silent. ”Neither do we, and therein lies the problem. I have seen a glimpse of what they’re capable of. We all have, thanks to Anonymous. If more humans appear here, what would they think if they discovered we had torched the space we set aside for them, and murdered their emissary?” ”Murdered? I didn’t-” ”You don’t know what can harm him, and with this attempt foiled, where would you have gone? There’s a reason we removed the kitchen staff from your authority. Furthermore, the attempted attack’s timing compounds matters. Princess Twilight Sparkle mediates Ponyville; she’s one of the few ponies with a higher station than you, and she also was threatened by your actions. We downplay the nobility, nowadays, but laws related to its hierarchy are still on the books, should we choose to use them.” He shakes his head side to side slightly, rapidly. You’re not sure what he’s objecting to. ”However...” Celestia shuffles to another document before continuing, “Your loyalty to Equestria cannot be questioned. Indeed, in a twisted way, it is one of the motivations for your crime. You have been a truly faithful servant of ours from the beginning, as your family has been for generations.” She looks up from the paper to him, then. ”Thus the nature of your punishment shall havegreater meaning.” She magically rolls up the third of the three documents, and floats it over to him. “Blueblood, you are hereby exiled from Equestria to the Crystal Empire. A nation you considered an other. Our niece Princess Cadance will teach you the meaning of family, one who you thought our competition despite being as close to us as the heirs you wished to see from Twilight. Shining Armor will teach you the meaning of nobility, one who was common-born and rose to his position by merit alone. You are placed into their care, for them to use you as they wish. Your inherited title and possessions are stripped from you, and will be transferred to your next of kin entitled to them.” Blueblood is silent for a long time, his gaze flicking from the tabletop in front of him to the two princesses and back again. When he finally speaks, it’s barely a hoarse whisper. “When do I leave?” ”Immediately,” Luna grinds out. Then the two sisters’ horns glow, and Blueblood vanishes from his seat, along with Celestia’s scroll near him. You can hear, from both sisters, a forced exhalation of exertion. Raven and the Commander nod to each other, then the Princesses, and file out. As soon as the doors close behind them, Luna’s head unceremoniously thumps to the table, startling you from the stance you’d held through the whole sentencing. “Oh shit, is she okay?” Celestia laughs, but it’s weak. “And so the decorum is shattered. She’s fine, Anon. Teleporting a pony to another country entirely is quite a feat, even for two old alicorns. Twilight’s twice-daily teleporting to Ponyville and back for you, when she still did, was a labor I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to fully appreciate.” You look to Celestia, then. Her expression is visible now, as she’s looking back at you, and at her sister, with a troubled expression. “What’s wrong?” ”Exile is a very serious punishment, more serious than his crime deserved. We were harsh. However…” Her expression regains a bit of her usual calm. “…I believe firmly that ponies can be redeemed, and I modify my punishments accordingly. Sometimes this makes them less severe. Other times, like this one, it makes them moreso, but only conditionally. Should he learn the two lessons I set for him, and should he serve Cadance and Shining as well as he served us, his life in the Crystal Empire will be comfortable. Should he refuse those lessons, and refuse to serve, he will feel the full weight of his sentence, and it will crush him. Those two are aware of the circumstances of his crime; we discussed all this beforehand. They’ll ensure he’s handled properly. However, the core of his sentence remains the fact he is never welcome back into the country he loves, forever distant from the sovereigns he served his whole life.” Luna finally stirs. ”Don’t sleep yet, sister, we still must make it back. We were going to watch Anon work today, remember?” Ah, yes. Today’s the day you must tell them what you and Twilight have planned. “Damn if this camera isn’t shit.” You reach up and flip a switch on your blindfold. The world goes dark. You shove the blindfold – festooned with jury-rigged wiring – up to sit on your forehead and open your natural eyes. Sometimes you have to admit biology’s got you beat, or has whatever Asian country your phone came from beat. You’re amazed the thing works as well as it does, but you still notice all those fun ways eyes beat cameras. You swear you can still see the faint color-static noise you’d occasionally noticed, if you squeeze your eyes closed hard enough. Having to turn your head for every little thing instead of just moving your eyes was a lot more irritating than you’d expected. You needed to test this vision and hearing replacement system at length, but earmuffs didn’t block out all the sound you were trying to listen through the microphones, and you kept having to switch back to Eyeball Mk.1 to continue your work assembling these legs. At least they work. “I feel bad for the ponies we’re going to stick with this garbage.” ”It’ll be better than what they have now, Anon.” Celestia’s laying on a big pile of bedding she’d teleported into one corner of your workshop, to stay out of your way while she watched you work. Luna lays beside her, head and neck draped across her sister’s back, sleeping. “Well, I can see and hear. I’m not going to give it any credit beyond the fact that yes, it achieves basic functionality.” ”Is that a problem with the spell?” “Hell no, the spell’s incredible. It’s like I’m actually looking at its screen in camera mode, but it’s piped directly to my mind. All the phone’s automatic adjustments and everything work as they should. Those functions are actually more responsive than I expected. It’s just a cellphone is a multipurpose device. It can do a lot, but it doesn’t do any of it particularly well. A proper camera even with half this one’s resolution is going to take images far better, just because it has better quality components; its chief concern is taking a good picture. The phone’s camera’s chief concern is being flat. I’ve worn headsets with better microphones than these, and unlike the camera, the microphone has a lot less ability to adjust to different noise levels. I expect the speakers to be strictly okay, and the spell for them is ready, but we haven’t tried testing it to replace voice yet.” As if explaining it resigns you to its use, you pull the blindfold back down and flip the camera on, feeling your closed eyes wince to no effect as the camera adjusts its sensitivity downward to the current light level, then adjusts its focus. Celestia cocks her head. “Who did all this spellcrafting, anyway? I don’t doubt the capabilities of my former student, but she only has so many hours in the day, and tends to obsess over details.” ”Nah, not just her. She worked with some unicorn named Starswirl on them, over the past several weeks.” “Ah! I was wondering when those two would get a chance to collaborate.” You turn your head towards Celestia. Differences in how the camera handles motion threatens a brief bout of mild dizziness. “You’re familiar?” Celestia laughs. “Oh yes. Starswirl was our mentor, Anon. And, I might add, a childhood idol of Twilight’s.” “Holy shit, is he immortal too?” ”No, he was just trapped for a long time. He’s freed now, obviously.” “You know, if I knew he was your mentor, I would have been more concerned about him jacking up my brain with magic. Y’know, in case he’s the protective type or something.” ”Twilight wouldn’t let him harm you.” “Is she stronger than him?” ”Of course.” “Good.” ”Only by a little bit.” “Okay you didn’t have to tell me that, I was enjoying my too-brief moment of relief.” You shake your head, then freeze when you risk disorienting yourself again. “Just wish I had the means to make something better than this crap. Ponies are going to expect to be able to see and hear, when we tell them what we’ve done. This is a poor excuse for it.” Luna stirs in her sleep, but settles down against her sister once more. Celestia eyes the legs you’re working on. ”I hope you’re not planning to test those on yourself, either.” “Ah, no. This is for something else.” ”Oh? This secret project you and Twilight have been working on?” “What?” Celestia’s eyes gleam. “I’m quite observant, and both you and Twilight are bad at hiding things from me.” You sigh, then grab the rolled up plans next to you. “Alright, fine. Can you wake your sister up? This is for both of you to hear.” She cranes her neck around to nuzzle her sister’s cheek. Luna starts awake and looks around blearily, before returning the nuzzle. “Hey there, sleepyhead.” ”Mrph.” “Yeah, you too. Here, I got something to show you.” You turn the camera off again, then remove the blindfold, placing it on the workbench. Luna perks up when you hop off your chair, and you point the rolled paper at her as you approach. “Yes, you. And I don’t want to have to repeat myself.” You pull a couple pillows off the pile, sitting on them and crossing your legs. “Okay, so, about a week ago, Twilight and I reworked a project I had been sitting on for awhile. We didn’t tell you right away, because we weren’t sure what the end result would be like, and then she left for Ponyville, partially to get some parts for this. But she told me I could fill you in, and I’m not going to keep it from you.” You unroll the updated plans, then turn it for them to see. Celestia’s eyes widen. Luna still looks half-dead, but by her ears you can tell you have her attention. “She and I want to, uh… We want… We’re gonna give you – us – a kid. Er, a foal. A filly. Even if nature won’t let us.” Luna’s finally awakening to the idea, as Celestia looks back and forth between the plans and the legs you’d been assembling. “But she’s so big,” Celestia breathes. “Yeah, well, metal can’t grow, and we’ve got some size constraints as it is. A weight-reduction spell means she’s not going to crush us, at least. No magic, either, so we’ve designed her as a pegasus rather than an alicorn. Uh, sorry.” Celestia smiles, but she’s craning her neck to the page, presumably to examine it in detail. “A shame, I like the little ones.” “You seem to be taking this pretty calmly. Twilight started crying.” Celestia looks up at you, then, giving her sister’s nose a chance to smell the ink instead. “I’ve been helping raise fillies for a long time, Anon. My students always started young. I very much enjoyed it, and I’ll happily do so again, even if I won’t get to see her grow.” She looks back at the page. “It’ll be nice to call one my own, no matter how unusual. My… little princess.” Ah, there’s her eyes swimming. “Not ready to be a mother.” You and Celestia look at a slurring Luna. Then you look back to Celestia and tap the top of the page. It starts glowing with her magic, allowing you to let go and sit by Luna’s side. Luna’s nearer wing almost instinctively wraps around your back, as you hug her neck where it meets her body. Celestia looks over. ”You were the one more eager for the prospect, when we were younger, sister.” Luna buries her face in a nearby blanket. “And then we know what happened,” she mumbles into it. You stroke her ethereal mane with your free hand. “Come on, you’ve got the rest of us helping you. I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a father, sure as hell not an Equestrian one, but I want to give you three this. Something to re-” Celestia gives you a flat look. Yeah, you don’t need to finish that sentence. “We’ll do the best we can. And if, by the end, we think we could have done better, well, we can give her a sibling.” ”Things are very different than they were, back then. You have more than just me to care for you, and I’ve learned my lesson from then too.” Luna just snorts into the blanket. “Besides, Twilight and I designed her so she doesn’t need to sleep. She can stay up all night with you.” Luna pulls her head out from the blankets lightning quick, looking first to you, then to the page in Celestia’s telekinetic grip. “Truly?” “Why would I lie to you? Twilight said we could stick a big enough gem in her head that it could act as a magic reservoir as well as the spell focus, that it’d be necessary so the spell doesn’t run down quickly and she, er, ceases to be. She thinks we can get a month of life in there, though we’d be topping it off regularly anyway. Big enough reserves she can be awake twenty four hours every day without us worrying. No organic body to maintain, after all.” Luna looks back to you, searching your expression for even the tiniest hint of dishonesty. You give her your warmest smile, and reach up to play with her ears. “Your filly as much as ours.” ”She… she won’t be able to dream.” “We don’t know that. For all we know sleep is something she’ll still be capable of, even if unnecessary. We’re in uncharted waters, here. But that’s not going to keep her from you; she could always be at your side.” Luna stares at you for a little longer, and you catch a brief glimpse of a trembling smile beforeshe shoves her face into your side, head twisted so she doesn’t gore you with her horn. You can feel her sobbing under your arm around her, and look at Celestia. She’s studying her sister with that warm smile you’ve come to associate with their love for each other. Not distant, but preoccupied, full of memories. “Hey.” She switches her gaze to you, and her expression changes, though it’s no less caring. “What do you think?” ”I think you just made my sister the happiest mare in the world, Anon.” You pat Luna’s side, but remain looking at her sister. “And you?” ”How could I say no to that? And it’d be nice being… on the other side of the relationship, for a change. The one whose filly is being taught.” She chuckles. “But with a herd like ours, who needs mentors?” “I think we’ll do just fine.” ”Awhile back, Anon, I helped you with one of your projects. A simple task. You and Twilight have come a long way, since then. I don’t know how I’ll be able to, but I want to help again.” “The wings and that sensory system over there, those were the most complicated bits. We’ve got everything figured out, it’s just getting it all together. For that, we’d love your help. Luna’s too, if she’s willing.” You can feel the blue alicorn nod into your side, breathing calmer now. “Then she’ll have all four of us involved in her conception. What other herd can claim that?” 15 The Herd“Anon!” Twilight canters onto the boarding platform, straight into your open arms. You close them around her as she closes her wings around you, and she nuzzles the side of your head as you stroke her mane. “Welcome home.” The two of you pull back and touch noses, and you kiss the top of her head behind her horn as you stand. ”Oh! I got you something!” She levitates a bundle out of her saddlebags, and drops it into your hands once you hold them out. It’s very hard, heavy, and bigger than one of your closed fists. ”You said that human couples give each other rings with jewels, and, well…” You unwrap the paper surrounding it to behold the biggest faceted gemstone you’ve ever seen, colorless and clear. “Holy hell, Twilight. What is this, diamond? How much did this cost?” ”Nothing. A friend and I grew it, though it took all day, then she faceted it the next. Pure sapphire – corundum, not diamond – has no color. Not as hard as diamond but more durable. It’ll be perfect for a spell focus.” The two of you turn to head towards the palace, after you place it back in her bags. “Which friend is this?” ”She’s the one I got the shroud for the claws from, to protect the internals. She made shrouds for the whole body while I was there, as we needed. If you ever wondered if cutie marks were always accurate, she’s a tailor with a cutie mark for gemstones.” “Seems odd.” ”She’s in fashion, so I guess it works. I told her our plans and she said she’d never worked in metal before, and then went to do just that. So now I have some orders for the smithy.” “Heh, we’re dressing her up already and she isn’t even born yet.” ”And another one of my friends already wants to race her.” “She’s going to have to wait a few years.” ”And another wants to throw us a celebration.” “I’m not big on formal occasions.” ”Don’t tell her that.” You smile as the two of you walk out of the station into Canterlot’s streets, lit by a setting sun. “Sounds like your friends all took it well.” ”Of course they did, they’re happy for me. They’re going to miss me when I start spending more time here, but I’ll make enough time for everyone.” She chuckles. “Besides, how else would they react, knowing I’m in a royal herd?” “No idea. This is entirely outside the realm of my experience, Twilight. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all.” She nuzzles your side as you approach the palace gate. “You’ll be fine.” After making a quick detour to the smithy to drop the new orders off with a note they’re to be prepared as soon as possible, the two of you make your way to the workshop. The sisters are inside, eyeing the mare’s body, without legs or a head, currently hanging from the ceiling, wings spread. They both turn and smile as you and Twilight enters. Celestia meets Twilight halfway. ”There’s our wayward leader. Was your trip productive?” ”Yes! I got everything I needed, and then some. Everypony sends their regards and well-wishes, Princess.” Celestia shakes her head. “You don’t need to be so formal, Twilight.” ”I… sorry. Habit.” You walk around them as they nuzzle each other’s necks, over to Luna’s side, wrapping an arm around her neck to scratch her cheek and play with an ear, while you look over the body suspended in the middle of the room. “Looks like you two have been doing good work.” She resettles her wings in a shrug-like gesture. ”We merely put pieces together.” “You’d be surprised how bad some people I knew are at that, even with clear directions.” ”My sister has been doing more work than me, for sure…” You laugh and pull her head into your side. “Any contribution helps.” The other two alicorns join you, on the body’s other side. Twilight’s horn glows, and then pieces of the body match its light, flashing across many for the briefest of moments before moving on. ”I don’t feel anything out of place,” Twilight says. “This is a huge help.” Luna beams, while Celestia simply nods. “Anon has been helping us understand all you two have accomplished. I knew your achievements weren’t just limited to magic and friendship, Twilight.” Twilight’s turn to smile, as she climbs up on a nearby workbench to inspect the body from another angle. “It looks like most of the inner body shell is done.” “The legs are ready for assembly, they’re just waiting on your shrouding.” She lifts the relevant pieces of fabric from her saddlebags, then floats them around the benches. “Then lets not waste any more time!” “You should sleep.” Luna looks at you with concern, standing next to the stool you’d just sat heavily on. The light from her horn fades. Without it, the workshop descends into gloom again. Good lighting was one of the things you still missed from back home. You’ll have to see about rigging something up, sometime soon. “I’ll be fine. I just need a moment.” ”You look exhausted.” “I can’t say I’m not. But if I go to sleep now, you’ll be here all alone. I’ll stay up as long as I can, that way we can still get work done, and you’ll still have company. Then when the other two wake up, they can take over, and Twilight can guide Celestia.” You look over to the pile of bedding Celestia had moved into your workshop several days prior. She and Twilight are sleeping soundly. Twilight’s curled up into a little ball. Celestia’s stretched around her back, hugging the purple pony to her belly and chest, with one wing draped over her. Their peaceful repose and quiet breathing bring you a weary smile, before you look back to your work. “Alright, gimme some light again, please?” Luna’s horn resumes its glow, illuminating the body casing. Little motes of light drift off her horn, floating into and around your work, hanging in place once they reach suitable locations like a swarm of obedient and very bright fireflies. You look back inside to the freshly-mounted and already-spinning generator, glancing over all the fasteners one more time. You’d already secured the larger cables in place, providing main power for the wings. They’d be disconnected from the rotors for years, until your filly-to-be can learn how her body works, and not hurt anything or herself. It’s still easier to get them in-place now, rather than when that time comes. You don’t know how she’ll take to being partially dismantled after all. What an unusual thought. Satisfied, you pick up your soldering iron once more, and reposition your stool to give you easy access to the row of contacts coming off one side. “Alright, now hold this wire for me right here.” You tap one of the contacts with the tip of the iron. Luna grabs one with magic, placing its stripped end against the contact. You solder the thick stranded wire to the contact, and Luna retrieves another wire. Once this process is completed for all the contacts, you sit back, place the iron in its stand, then rest your head against a hand. “Alright, you should be able to put that frame piece on the front now. I’ll start running these to where they need to go, down the side.” ”Remember the ones for the neck!” “Ah, yeah. Right. What would I do if you weren’t here.” She eyes you with concern. “Sleep, as you should.” You wave her off, then move to the body’s side, sitting on a new chair. “I’ll be fine.” ”I shall tell Twilight to check your work, come the morrow.” “Yeah, please do. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked this late.” You reach over and grab Luna’s chin, pulling her head over and up to look into her eyes. “Too busy spending time with you.” She smiles, but eventually shakes her head out of your grasp. “If you insist on working, then let us work.” “Yeah. A’ight. Four wires, the ones off contacts three through six; those go up to the neck through the frame gap on the right side.” After watching Luna to be sure she knew where you were talking about, you turned to the flank before you, and start threading the wires here to the proper places. ”Anon?” You look over to her, but you can tell she’s already done what you asked correctly. She’s looking over the body in general. “Yeah?” ”She may standeth at my side. The three of us together, since you have been staying up for me. I never had anyone for company, before you started doing that, and you need sleep too. But if she can stayeth all night, as you say…” She looks at you then, with a trembling smile. “Just thinking about it…” You hop off your stool and move to her side, hugging her. She hugs you back with her wings. “You won’t be left out. Not anymore. She’s for all of us.” Luna nods, over your shoulder. “Thank you. For everything.” “No, thank you. You were a big help in showing me this world. This is the least I could do to repay that, to help you realize what you deserve.” ”You are starting to convince me of that.” “Of what?” ”That I deserve this.” You tweak her cheek when she pulls back from you. “Hey, look, progress all around, right?” She nods, smiling. “And eventually, I shall make a proper stallion of you.” “Is that a threat?” ”A promise. Now let us get back to our collective whimsy.” There’s something off about this hip joint. Or maybe how the leg’s attached to it. You figured you should have left the leg connecting to the morning crew. You’ve only got one attached, and it hangs a bit awkwardly. Maybe you misread the plans. You know the plans aren’t wrong, you and Twilight had gone over every little detail when you reworked them, but for some reason this connection just doesn’t look right, not to your tired mind, your heavy eyes. Luna, beside you, looks to something at your back, but that detail seems really far away. Everything does. ”Good morning.” Celestia’s voice right next to your ear makes you jump. You’d have fallen out of your chair if a big white wing didn’t catch you. “Is… is it already?” ”Yes, silly.” You look out the window. The sky beyond is starting to light with the colors of dawn. When you look back, Luna is giving you a flat glare “And now you may sleep.” “Something’s off about this-” ”Now!” Anger flashes across her features. You hang your head, nodding against your chest. “Yeah. Sorry.” She comes to your side as you slide off your chair, her wing replacing her sister’s as she half-guides, half-pushes you towards the big plush pile Twilight’s still resting in. You drop to your knees then crawl around it on all fours, ending up roughly where Celestia had been, as Luna returns to her sister’s side. ”Lets do our dance,” Celestia says to her. “Together.” You nudge Twilight. “Hey.” ”Hmph?” You kiss the sleepy pony on her cheek, then collapse back on the bedding behind her. “Shift change.” ”Hmph.” Twilight gets to her feet, shakes her head, and drags herself out of the cushions. “Can you check my work, when you’re fully awake? I’m pretty sure I screwed something up with that hip.” ”Stallions...” The two of you look out the now-open door, then, where Celestia and Luna sit on the grass just beyond the packed earth path. They sit side-by-side, leaning on each other. A wing of each is wrapped around the other. Their horns glow as they look up to the sky, with small traces of glowing color drifting upward from both now and then. The sky fills with tiny sparks corresponding to their magic hues, as they do their work. Not for long, maybe just to put a little more spin on things already in motion, but for as long as the effect lasts, it’s beautiful. You only led your eyelids’ weight take over when it’s complete, and Luna’s walking back to you, while Celestia and Twilight head towards the palace. Your fatigue-scrambled mind takes an abominably long time to realize why. Yeah, breakfast is probably important. You and Luna haven’t eaten since a midnight snack, but you’re too tired to care. You’d already fallen halfway asleep by the time Luna reaches you, and she drops down on the pile, snapping you awake again. As you open your eyes again, she puts her nose to yours, looking into your eyes. ”Now you can rest.” Your turn to give an indistinct mumble of a response, like Twilight’s before. Luna laughs, then rolls over to shimmy her back towards you. You reach out and pull her against you, burying your face in that cool, nippy mane. The little pricks of sleet-like stars keep you at a modicum of alertness. After a moment, she half-turns her head to you. “Do you enjoy that sensation?” “I’ve been coming around to it. It’s… unique. It’s you. You can do this thing no other pony can, and I’m going to experience it as much as I can.” ”Doth it bother you, then?” “Nothing about you bothers me. Only things I need to get used to.” She squrims against you a little more and drops her head back to the bedding. “You are too sweet.” “Just sweet enough. Love you.” She nickers quietly, not loud enough for you to hear with one ear buried in a pillow and her facing away from you, but you can feel it where your hand rests on her chest. “I love you too, Anon.” That she said it feels so far away, as you’re already falling asleep. You gently, so very gently, slide the brain’s frame into the back of the head. Two phone motherboards are angled to fit against the inner walls of the head, against rubber plates for impact protection. Between them is a large ring with innumerable contacts, wires extending off them from both the top and bottom of the ring. Some travel to other parts of the head. Most of them run into a hard, segmented conduit that will plug into where the neck meets the body, once you get the neck assembled. For now, however, the head rests disembodied on a workbench. Once it’s inserted, you start securing the fasteners on either side of the exterior, then work the final attachment points for the fabric shroud between the inner and outer frames. Twilight floats her massive sapphire to the back of the head, and slowly places it at the center of the ring. Then you hear the click of its retaining bracket snapping into place. “Snug?” ”It’s secure.” Twilight’s horn continues to glow as she closes the head’s access hatch, and then you see a magenta flash as she magically seals it. Wouldn’t do to have just anyone able to poke around her head. You and Twilight join Celestia and Luna , where they were watching you from the other side of the bench. “Looks better than I expected, being honest.” Celestia looks to you. “What do you mean by that?” “Well, back home we had this principle called ‘uncanny valley.’ If you make something perfectly lifelike, it looks okay. If you make it look not lifelike at all, it looks okay. But if you make it look somewhat but not quite lifelike, it’d look repulsive. Twilight and I designed around that; it’s one reason why we have framework over the protective shroud, why there’s no mane but there will be a tail, and so on. Needs to be obviously artificial in some respects.” You look to the three, then. “But I’m not a pony, so I can’t really say. What do you think?” ”I will admit,” Celestia begins hesitantly, “that it will be difficult to ignore her nature no matter how she looks. Perhaps it was best to emphasize it, then.” “Yeah. No pretenses. Will it, uh, get in the way of any motherly instinct?” ”She’ll have a strange scent,” Twilight says, returning to the suspended body and circling it, “and she’s already the size of an adult. But that’s only part of it. There’s still our awareness of what she is, and the bonds we’ll be nurturing. And the care for a creation exists beyond just that of a parent and child, I imagine doubly so when the creation can care for you back.” She shakes her head, then. “But who am I to say? I never really thought about motherhood before. I’ve just read some books.” You look to the sisters. ”I love all my little ponies,” Celestia says, “and this one will be mine moreso than the rest.” She leaves it at that, as if it was self-evident. Luna’s looking intently at the face of the head in front of you. “If she will looketh upon me as her mother, I shall see her as my filly.” Then the three look at you. You look at the head yourself, and sigh. “I’m going to be a terrible father, an Equestrian one especially. But that’s not going to stop me from trying my best. Back home we humans would get attached to all sorts of things, even robots, which is similar to what she will be like. They didn’t have to look human, or even like an animal. Soldiers would get attached to bomb disposal robots. Millions of people followed the misadventures of robots in development, would get upset when the engineers and techs had to abuse them for tests. I think Twilight’s right; it’s about how you view it and what you go through, more than anything.” ”So this is not the first time your people have built things like this?” Celestia asks. “No, but it’s the first time it’s going to be, well, alive. Thinking, presumably feeling. Just plowing ahead as we are would get me skewered back home; half the world thinks making thinking robots would bring about the end of everything.” ”Then we’ll just have to raise her right.” You chuckle and shake your head. “Yeah. It still feels so surreal. I’m glad you’re so sure of this, Celestia. I’d be halfway insane by now if I was doing this alone.” She smiles a warm, gentle smile at you. “I have faith in my herd.” The four of you continue looking at the head, once Twilight stops her circling. The black fabric sandwiched between the two frame layers contrasts with the steel of the outer frame atop it. You’ll have to keep her clean. Maybe not polished, but you’ll have to stay on top of any potential corrosion. Regular maintenance is essential, and you’re not sure how much she’ll be able to do herself. Not that you’d do any less than everything, to keep her in top shape. Even if not in a tub full of water, that’s like bathing your filly while she’s still unable, isn’t it? Maybe you could do this fatherhood thing after all. You shake your head and stand. “Alright, onto the neck.” Her completed body lay on the pile of bedding. The pile had been moved to the middle of the room, rearranged so all the pillows were at the bottom with all the blankets spread on the top in successive layers. Hopefully this would minimize any confusion on the part of its occupant. She looks, frankly, beautiful. The contrast of black fabric under bright steel framing had only been heightened by the workshop’s delivery of Twilight’s rush orders, from her friend. Brass and bronze filigree patterns lay over the steel frame, its curves and arcs thick enough to resist everyday damage but still looking delicate as it winds in its own intricate, looping designs. Wings excluded, of course, which are still unadorned aluminum. Sometimes functionality cannot be compromised in the slightest. Moving her into place hadn’t been difficult. With the weight-decreasing spell, she was heavier than the similarly-sized Twilight, but not by much, somewhere just over Luna’s weight. Her head rests on the blankets, neck outstretched forward of her body. Her legs are folded beneath her. This had been Twilight’s idea; she said the awareness the spell creates would likely try inputs at random at first, gauging responses. Restricting certain ranges of motion may prompt it to explore other avenues first. This would lead, hopefully, to her eyes opening and head moving as one of her first actions. Beneath her as they were, you can’t see her quartz hooves. It was such a simple thing, but you are inordinately proud of them; they sounded more natural than steel would have, their mounting provides a bit of shock resistance for the leg, they enable walking to trickle-charge a small backup battery in case the main generator fails, and they look good to boot. Her talons are tipped with quartz as well, one claw on each rotor hub on her wings. They aren’t the best pressure sensors designed, but thanks to magic, you could do more with the piezoelectric effect than back home. You haven’t yet figured out how to electrically monitor magic in a crystal, but Twilight had figured out how to magically monitor electrical charge in one. She said the talon-tips were necessary because she was tired of having to guess how much force she applied with her own claws. Those wings are held to her sides by way of a small hook protruding from the body between it and each wing. A temporary measure for the filly to rest her wings until she figures out how to hold them in place on her own. Then she could make a decision whether or not she wanted to keep them. You still need to get used to the idea of your creation making design decisions for herself. Her inert form looks very dignified in its repose. But the time has come to give her the spark of life. Celesta and Luna stand to either side of her, heads low and horns pointed towards the open access hatch at the back of her head. Twilight sits on the ground in front of her, her own horn up under the head’s upper jaw. Besides the back hatch, this was the only way to access the core crystal. You’re crouched at Twilight’s side, steadying her with an arm around her midsection, as she starts to speak. ”Okay. Casting the spell is going to take a bit of time. Celestia, Luna, I need you to fill the crystal with as much raw power as you can. Once the animation spell takes hold, the amount of power you’ve managed to put into it will set its reservoir capacity. Don’t worry about breaking it; I’ll be draining it as I cast the spell, so I don’t have to rely on my own power exclusively. I’ll need to cast three more spells; two for the sense-sharing spells for each other part of the brain, and then closing up the head, and I can’t be exhausted for that. I’ll know if the first spell worked – or, I should say, if it didn’t work in the manner we intend it to not work – if I can target it with the spells to come after.” You hug your arm around Twilight’s midsection a little tighter, to comfort yourself more than her. Her wing around your shoulders hugs you back as she closes her eyes. It’s all out of your hands now. Everything leading up to this moment you’d been an integral part of, alongside Twilight. Your initial designs, your tech, the progress of which had been under your direction, using your knowledge. The very idea was a slice of home, that you could make a construct of copper and steel instead of crystal and magic. Two of the three major parts of the brain were duplicated from the one significant piece of your world you had left to yourself, but you’d done all you could. It’s up to your three mares now. No, not yours. You were theirs, truly, something you’d been realizing as this project had unfolded. You gave direction, and you still did a good amount of work, but Twilight did just as much as you on both counts. The three of them, though, they’d tackled this project you’d given them with an intensity beyond mere work, or even enthusiasm. They had taken it from you exclusively, and made it their own. As they’d worked, as you spent the time between tasks together, ate together, and slept in pairs on the same makeshift bed, even while building this echo of your world, they’d taken you from that world, and made you their own too. So much for your antiquated notions. Twilight’s horn starts glowing magenta, followed shortly by Celestia’s glowing yellow and Luna’s blue. After hearing the quiet thunk of the generator’s contacts engaging, you can feel Twilight’s breathing quicken, and become more labored, under your arm. Her wing feels like it spasms around your shoulders, and you bring up your other hand to close around the end of the limb, to steady it, but she makes not a sound. The sisters to either side look less troubled, but their eyes are closed in concentration. You’re crouched here with no way of knowing what’s going on. The wait is torture. What if it fails here, at this final step? What if something goes wrong, and they have undo everything, killing her as soon as she’s born? Your mind is flying through the plans, thinking of every place something could have been screwed up. It could all end before it even begins. Twilight’s eyes snap open, and as she pulls her head back out of the filly’s mouth and upward, the light of the three horns fades. ”I’ve got it!” Twilight’s horn lights up again, three flashes in rapid succession, the last eliciting an echoing burst from the back of the filly’s head. As it fades the body’s already moving. The sisters come around to either side of you and Twilight as you watch the haphazard twitching. True to Twilight’s prediction, the little nudges and rocks of flexing leg joints, beneath the body, don’t turn into larger movements. A minute motion here and there from the neck, or the back where the body’s front half and back half meet, disturbs the blankets she lays on. Then her left eye opens. She goes still, and stays still for almost a minute. The four of you, in unison, dip your heads to look into that one eye. It flicks to the left, then back ahead. Down, then back. Then in two small motions, one horizontal and the other vertical, it looks at you. One of you, at least; it’s difficult to tell with the light reflecting off the glass eye’s surface, but definitely in your direction. One ear swivels and flexes in seemingly-random directions, before turning to face you. The other shortly follows suit. Then the other eye opens. You suppress a snort of amusement when you see the two eyes aren’t looking in the same direction. This quickly corrects itself; the second eye apparently not needing the experimental motions first, just like the second ear. As soon as you’re looking into both those eyes, staring back at you, you get the feeling everything is going to work out just fine. Luna, on the other side of you from Twilight, sits heavily on the floor, then lowers the front part of her body as well, laying down. You put your other arm around her and scritch at her cheek. From the tension there, it feels like she’s holding back tears. Twilight’s panting turns into a quiet laugh of relief. It’s Celestia who takes the first meaningful action, though. She walks up to the filly’s side. Those glass eyes snap to her, tracking her in halting jumps as she moves until she’s out of their range of motion. The neck twitches one way, then cracks all the way in the other direction, eyes now closed. Celestia kneels down beside the filly and murmurs something in her ear. The head jerks back towards her again, but in slower, more measured increments, as Celestia lays down beside the filly. You lean in to whisper to Twilight, who’s breathing is only now coming under control. “There’s no way she knows words yet.” ”I don’t know, Anon. We don’t really know much about how this works. Nobody’s ever wanted to fail casting a spell before, let alone one this complex. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t” Celestia’s face is alongside the filly’s now, and Celestia nuzzles the side of her head. The filly’s head twists the other direction, overcompensates, then slowly tilts back to level. Upon discovering this new function, the filly starts tilting her head by small amounts in every direction, returning to level after every adjustment, and opens her eyes again once she’s finished, finding Celestia’s own close eyes easily. The white alicorn then nudges the filly’s front half to the side, pushing the closest leg out with her snout and dragging it out in front of the two of them. The filly looks down at it and slowly, experimentally, flexes the leg. Twilight tenses up in your grip “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” “Think of what?” She shakes her head and laughs quietly again. “She always finds a way to remind me that I was the student. I explained to her how, with theoretically unlimited channel space, we decided to just give every actuator a magical position sensor, instead of having to compromise as we did with the claws. That’s one to one with every way the body can move. From how quickly her opposite eye and ear were able to train, it seems like she understands that, in a way. Celestia caught on, and decided to show her those movements.” “Why is she using her nose, instead of her magic?” Twilight shrugs her wings under your arm. “I don’t know. Maybe wanting to bond as physically as possible, even if the filly can’t feel it like natural ones can. She wont know what all that means, but when she watches us give each other affection like that, she’ll understand eventually, and want it for herself, even without all the physical and chemical reinforcement behind it.” “So what you’re saying is-” This sounds ridiculous, especially with how much it fills you with hope. “-we can teach a robot to love?” ”I think she already knows that, in the sense of family bonds. That’s what I focused on when casting, as you said when you first showed me. Love, that she’s a pony, and that she’s our daughter.” Luna stands again and leaves your side, at that. She settles herself down on the filly’s other side from Celestia, but doesn’t mirror Celestia’s actions, instead just watching the two of them. The filly’s actively turning her head and eyes back to Celestia after each action, now, to see Celestia smile, for the princess to touch their noses together. By the third time this action’s repeated, the filly’s stretching her own head out for the contact. When you and Twilight edge closer, head-on, however, the filly’s attention snaps to you, and she brings her head up and back. You stop and look to Luna, who’s watching the filly intently. Then, thinking on what Twilight said about learning affection by example, you reach out and caress the side of Luna’s head. She automatically leans into it. You keep your hand there, playing with Luna’s ear, as the filly’s gaze travels down your arm to where you touch the blue alicorn, then slowly back up its length to meet your eyes again. Then you let go of Twilight and slowly reach your other hand out to the filly’s own head, hooking your thumb around her ear just as you had Luna’s. She doesn’t react, but neither does she move any further as you and Twilight come up to the filly’s front, with her settling down on front of Celestia and you in front of Luna. The sisters have their wings over the filly, by then, so she’s completely surrounded by her family but for her head sticking up and out of the feathery mess. When you pull your hand away from her head, she chases after it a short distance, drawing a laugh from more than one of you, and you realize that feeling that drove Luna to the ground, when the filly had first looked at you all. An eerie, almost crippling feeling of love. Like you just want to exist in this moment for all eternity.Surrounded by the mares of the herd in one big pile of love, at your collective creation’s – your child’s – moment of birth, with so many possible futures stretched out before you and the past that led to this moment feeling inconsequential. Luna drops her head across your thighs, and tilts her head to look up at you with one eye. It’s a silent question. ’You feel it too?’ You nod and rub the side of her neck, then look to Twilight and Celestia, leaning into each other as Twilight’s started trying to get the filly to mirror her head and ear motions, her forehooves resting on your shins near her chest. One moment of perfect bliss. But, ah, you’re ever preoccupied with work, aren’t you? There is still a task left unfinished. You sigh and clear your throat. This gets all the ponies’ attentions, including the filly. With a soft smile, you look over them all, your new Equestrian family. “So… what do we name her?” END EpilogueFifty-one years later... The thumping of your twin rotors drowns out all other sound, though there isn't much competition atop the table mountain, an hour's flight from Canterlot. An hour's flight for Flurry Heart anyway, who touches down beside you. When your rotors spin down, you unlock your wings and fold the blades away, then use the claws near each rotor hub to take your saddlebag off. Flurry does the same with her magic, though she's only carrying a heavy metal slab. You may be much faster, but she has a much more generous payload capacity. Synthetic muscles ripple the array of small segmented plates that form your new body's shell as you look around the area. This body’s only a little over a year old, a fiftieth birthday present of a proper mature alicorn form, horn and all, like your mothers; your father made it because he said he couldn't bear the thought of anything being considered his magnum opus but you. Once it was finished, he never entered your shared workshop again, and you took on full-time the job of helping ponies you’d been aiding him with for decades. His life's work was complete, he said. He was finally happy with everything he had built, and felt he needed to make nothing more. It was the last big gift he ever gave you. As of a week ago, he can never give another gift again. You complete your survey of the immediate area. "I think this will work." "We're far enough away it shouldn't be disturbed, either. Nopony comes out here." "Not unless they know what they're looking for." Only Raven knew you two were out here, what you were doing. Her faculties had only grown sharper with age, her function helped in no small part with how many of your father’s works she’d voluntarily taken on. She wasn't going to tell a soul. You'll tell your mothers and the rest of your family, eventually. They'll want to know what you've done, but they're dealing with the loss in their own way right now. You wanted something you could have to yourself, for a time. You paw at the loose earth with a crystalline hoof. Then, nodding, kneel and start scrabbling away with the claws on your wings. Flurry Heart walks in front of you, then starts digging a furrow with her own hooves. You didn't need to dig too deep. Father had been cremated, according to his wishes. Those ashes had been scattered days ago, far from here, in a ceremony attended by thousands of ponies whose lives his creations had bettered. The exoskeleton he used to carry out his later work was slated to be enshrined in the palace. He’d even be memorialized in the stars themselves; Luna selected a human-shaped constellation from his home to add to the night sky. You still feel the need to make a grave, of sorts. One that represents the connection between you and him specifically. With a delicacy only your new body can afford you, you remove an old, battered smartphone from your saddlebag. The only thing your father had with him besides the clothes on his back, when he came to Equestria. The original, from which parts of your brain, your eyes, your ears, your voice were cloned. It had stopped working long ago, changed out for a backup, which itself had been replaced, and so on. Its memory card was gone, shuttled on to newer copies through the years. But the rest of it is just as it was when he arrived. You turn it over in your claws. Every tactile detail is apparent as you gently dragged a quartz-tipped talon across its edges, handling it one last time. With a reverence reserved for newborn foals, you place it into the pit you'd dug. Flurry finishes her own work, and shoves the metal plate into the dirt on the other side of the pit from you. "Get behind me, please. I don't want to risk hurting you.” Your cousin and best friend complies, coming around to stand behind you, turned the other way. You bring your horn close to the plate, and ready one of this new body's greatest gifts, the pinnacle of Twilight and your father's cooperation. Your own 'magic', unique to you. After disengaging the frequency doubler, adjusting the focus, and increasing the power, you start firing the laser in your horn in pulses. Though these bursts are invisible, unlike the usual green beam, the effects it has on the metal plate are unmistakable; ablated spots discolor the surface. Moving your head precise distances allows you, very slowly, to write on the plate, punctuated by the rapid snaps of laser discharges. H.E. ANONYMOUS FIRST HUMAN OF EQUESTRIA HIS CREATIONS LIVE ON It’s straightforward and simple. Just the way he'd want it. You shove dirt back into the shallow pit with a hoof, then after a couple steps back, sit to look over your work. You have to lock your joints in place to prevent yourself from collapsing, right then and there. He wouldn’t want you to lose it, not with how you were your family’s rock right now. Your composure is helped by the fact there were some things even this new body isn’t capable of. "Flurry." "Yeah, cuz?" "I can't cry." "It's okay," the empath replies. "You don't have to." You let yourself down to the ground slowly, wanting nothing more to bury yourself beside the artifact. To be left here until your magic reserves ran out, until you died. Maybe then you could see him again. You still had so much you wanted to build for him, to show him what you could do. So many plans, so many things from his old home you wanted to try to realize. An entire world died with your father, one you and your family will never again be able to experience. Earth, that wonderful and terrible world of humanity, is forever lost to you. "Besides," Flurry finally says, her breath hitching, "I'm crying for you." When you turn back to look at her, she's smiling at you, but that smile doesn't reach her eyes. Her tears flow freely. Seeing it is like a knife in your quartz heart. Flurry recoils away from you, shaking her head, when this new feeling of yours hits her. "What would your dad say, if he knew you let your emotional defenses down?" "I have to feel what you're going through. Maybe it'll help you, in some little way." She shakes her head again, slower this time. "I need to get used to it. He's getting old too, cuz. I don't think it'll be long until our places are reversed." "Why would you want to feel this twice?" "I don't have a choice. I miss him too. So does mom and dad. I'm just choosing to feel it more." She lays down beside you, covering your back with one of her wings. You adjust the rotor-blades of your own wings so she doesn't have to worry about any of her feathers getting caught. You can feel her touch, no matter how light, now. Even the warmth of her body is evident to you. Yet more gifts of this marvelous new body. For a time, the two of you are silent, listening to the wind, Flurry’s breathing, and the quiet whir of the generator in your chest. If you listened hard enough, you swear you could hear the beating of her heart, alongside the soft pinging of your own, a totally superfluous conceit your father had insisted on for your new body. If you could have stopped yours to restart his, when he’d passed, you would have. In a, well, in a heartbeat. "It's not fair." "What isn't?" "That the stallions in our families are the only ones cursed like this. It should be a mare's thing, something for us to face for them. Why do they have to be the ones who... end?" "Don't think like that." Flurry's wet eyes meet your glass ones, before she leans into you and nuzzles your neck. "It's not an end. Not really. It's more like... the end of the beginning. That's you, cuz. Everything he’s built, all the ponies he’s helped, and you. That’s his legacy. And you can choose how his legacy plays out." She's right. You still know everything he's taught you, and then some. You knew all the mechanisms and devices he and your mom – and later, you as well – had developed to help ponies in need. You could continue to make them, ensure his work still had meaning. Maybe someday you could find a stallion who could love you. A unicorn, or with a herdmate who was one. You could build a child of your own, using his work on you as a foundation. You could improve on his work yourself. You feel Flurry puff up beside you, heartened by your hope. Yes! There's always something new to be made, boundaries to be pushed, frontiers to explore. It didn't have to end here. You'd do it all, even without true magic of your own. Because that's what he did. You are Nova Spark, and you are your father's daughter. 9 Opening Move”Do Their Graces need to bring anything else to this council’s attention?” Raven asks the ducal representatives around the table. They shake their heads. ”Excellent,” Celestia says. “This council is adjourned.” The representatives always left first, as was custom. As they’re filing out, you see Raven and Prince Blueblood arranging their various papers to leave. You’re nervous, but this is a familiar nervousness. What’s coming, at least, is something your past life prepared you for. Past life… are you really over it now? Something to think on later. What matters is the challenge before you is a familiar one. All you’re doing is selling a project to management. Simple. Though you’ve never tried to be this flashy or grandiose about it before. Just as the last of the representatives leaves, Raven looks at the other five individuals remaining. You, her, Blueblood, the two princesses, and the commander of the guard. ”Now for matters at home,” Raven says. “What must we address?” “Yeah, if I may.” You stand from your chair and pull a small circuit board from your pocket, a bit smaller than the palm of one hand. You flip it to the table casually, aiming for its center. Twilight had duplicated it already, this piece is expendable for showmanship. At least she could clone the board itself without passing out. “Stallions and gentlemares, this is the single most sophisticated piece of hardware in the world, right now.” You point at the chip where it landed. “That is a copy of the heart of this.” You pull out your smartphone, unlock it, then slide it across the table to rest near the motherboard. “This is human magic.” Thanks for the line, Twilight. You have everyone at the table’s focused attention. You realize Twilight’s the only one who has seen your phone work, besides Celestia knowing about the flashlight, and you having waved it in Raven’s face a week ago. None of the royalty participated in your arrival interview. You suppose Luna may have seen it working in your dreams, but she seems just as fascinated with the real deal as the others. “Basically, we could make sand think. Unfortunately, we can’t make new ones with the technology you have, and I don’t know enough about the theory to train up a suitable scientific base and skilled labor force to open a factory for it on my own, and I wont bore you with the details about that. That’s a project that will take at least two generations, and I don’t have that kind of time.” Celestia flinches at that, subtle enough you almost missed it. Raven gives you an unamused sidelong look. You didn’t intend that line to be about mortality. Time to pull out the positivity. “We can, however, make copies of it with duplication magic. This isn’t as useful as it may sound, because there’s a lot locked in; these things aren’t just blank slates. But what it can do is interpret other devices that my phone has built in. I’ve been learning a lot about your magic from Twilight. I’m astounded you can replace limbs with simple materials and a single spell; back home prosthetics were still an evolving field, and we couldn’t yet perfectly duplicate natural movements. But she gave me a lot of ideas, and during this week she’s been away, I’ve been making plans.” You retrieve the phone from the table, open and start the voice recorder app, then aim the camera at Celestia and snap a shot. Turning the flash off was a good idea; the table hardly reacts to the whole process. “Twilight tells me that limbs are about your limit. You can’t help lame pegasi fly again without more involved magic, which can be very awkward for them to adapt to. She also tells me you can’t replace lost senses.” You slide the phone back into the center of the table, this time displaying the picture you just took. “That’s where this comes in. Look at that; it can interpret the image and knows how to present it in a form you can comprehend. The screen provides a working model your scholars can study to create a spell that will allow you to imitate it. The chip at this thing’s heart can interpret and output the camera’s signal with that.” Once they’ve had a look, you reach over, flip the photo app away, and hit playback on the voice recorder. ‘Twilight tells me that-’ “It can also hear sound and process that as well. A spell to interpret its sound output would be, I expect, trivial, if doing things with magic is as simple as the technological foundation used. Speakers are easy, and I know some unicorn musicians already make use of them with their own magic. In short, if my projects work out, I can let your blind see, and your deaf hear.” You’d normally pause for some sort of reaction here; you intended that to be a punchy line. Instead, you have three ponies staring at you with rapt attention, a big ol’ princess and her secretary looking thoughtful and a touch proud, and a prince wearing a scowl. Ah, hostile management at the table. “I’m also designing a system that can serve pegasi who cannot fly. That one will need considerably more work on my end than the other systems, which would lean on your mages, but that just means it’s working off proven principles, just in a novel way. It still won’t be as natural as a working wing, but it’ll give them a lot more freedom than the awkward levitation spells you currently employ.” You put both your hands on the table’s surface and lean on them, bringing you down to their eye level. “To do all this, I’m going to need a proper workshop, a space I can test everything in safety and store all the equipment I’ll need. Building the initial demonstration model will take a lot of time and resources. I’ll also need another talented unicorn earmarked to study whatever Twilight passes them about potential magical theory; Her Serene Highness-” Thanks, Raven. Lets end on a respectful and humble note. “-already has enough on her plate, and I’ve been taking too much of her time with this stuff already. I haven’t been much use in matters of statecraft, but this is something I can do to help the country.” ”Absolutely not!” You – and five ponies – turn to Prince Blueblood. ”We simply do not have the resources to dedicate to your absurd projects, let alone the space to provide. I will not enable the use of this strange technology we have no knowledge of! We don’t know what could go wrong, not without years of study by all the scholars of the land, which will be disruptive enough-” ”Your Excellency,” the commander of the guard begins. The stallion looks up at you with an expression more guarded than during your presentation. “Give me an excuse to put your work under my supervision, and you’ll have everything you need.” You look back and forth between him and Blueblood. Is this going to devolve into Equestria’s version of a catfight? “Well, I, uh, I could probably design weapons and armor, but I don’t think-” ”The last thing we need are weapons!” Yeah, Blueblood was right, there. ”If you’re going to let this chance to better our people slip through our-” ”Please, stallions,” Raven butts in. “We can go over this later, just the three of us supervisors.” She turns to you, then. “Thank you for bringing this opportunity to our attention, Anonymous.” You know a dismissal when you hear it. You retrieve your phone and the spare motherboard, then sit back down. Raven looks to the two stallions at the table. ”I ask you two to assess what spare material and manpower you have, and report back to me. Then we can discuss what we shall do about Anonymous’ request. This task should take you the rest of the evening; for this reason I suggest we table the rest of our business for now.” She looks to Luna. The princess nods, then everypony stands to leave. Neither the commander nor the prince look very happy. Stallions really were moody, huh? You’re still getting the hang of the different gendered behaviors. As you’re leaving, after most others have already gone, you feel a tug on the back of your shirt. Raven stands behind you, wearing a conspiratorial expression. ”You use the prosthetics as a pretense for something else,” she says, barely loud enough to hear “What makes you say that?” ”You told me a week ago that you cannot make this project, with your phone and senses, known to Twilight. Now you tell this whole room, and say you have worked with Twilight this whole time. Something else lurks beneath all this.” “Uh, yeah, but I wasn’t lying when I said all that. They’re just pieces of a bigger puzzle. But don’t tell any of the princesses your suspicions. Don’t tell anyone. I could probably get in a lot of trouble, and it’s going to be hard enough keeping this from Twilight, who’s going to be helping me. The stuff I intend to work with was a big point of contention back home, involving several scientific fields that were just coming into their own. But while we were having trouble with it back home, I might be able to pull it off here. I just need time to get everything together.” ”If your activities jeopardize our work or the palace, you will make me very cross.” “Look, the stuff I’m going to be doing might get me called a mad scientist back home, but I’m starting to get the hang of what’s possible here, with a fusion of magic and technology. I’m not going to let these possibilities pass me by. It’s curiosity, not ambition or malice. I promise.” ”Should my assumptions prove accurate, some might call you mad here too.” “We’ll just have to see, huh?” She gives you a long, hard look. “But should those assumptions prove accurate, you might do what no pony ever could before. And – to the extent I can ascertain what you do will benefit the lives of Their Majesties – I will back you. Your presentation here represented your opening move on Blueblood, no?” “Can’t get it by you, huh?” ”You pushed him on the issue where the few who had power over him observed, a smart tactic. Now all present know his angle, but you have not gotten any closer to understanding his motivation or resolving the issue. But I must warn you; he will not stop even if denied here, when he argues the point with the commander and I. You made an escalation play, and that can prove dangerous with the power those at that table wield.” “I’ll be careful.” ”I wanted to stay out of this conflict of yours, Anon. The proper functioning of this palace hinges on Blueblood, the Commander, and I all getting along. You drove a wedge between those two, on an issue of great interest to me.” “Oh. Sorry.” ”I can deliver you this victory, but I ask you resolve his problem with you sooner rather than later. And do not expect my direct help in the future; I can do much for you behind the scenes, but a great deal of my effectiveness in the palace relies on my abstention from petty intrigues like what animates Blueblood to stand against you. Power thought a threat proves more effective than used as fact, often, for every use diminishes it in more ways than one. I have pulled influence for you before, but I cannot play champion for you in courtly disputes. I have acted only to allow your project a place to succeed; my interest lies there.” “Were you the one to finally get me my parts?” She dips her head in acknowledgment. “Ah, thanks.” “I simply wish to keep your conflict with the Prince contained, rather than eventually involve Their Majesties. The core battle remains yours to fight alone. Do so.” She walks around you and out the door, then. Figures that keeping your secrets will get you in over your head, with this crowd. You stalk off towards the room where you and Luna discuss administrative matters in the evenings. Maybe things really were easier when you were concerned with matters of state. Once more you find yourself stargazing, back home. For some reason, your bed is on top of your apartment building, now. Further, the building is no longer in the city. You’re surrounded by some sort of wilderness. The setting reminds you of younger days, when you’d go out on camping trips and hikes, or riding your bike through trails. There’s no light pollution, and the sounds of the city in which you used to live are absent. You can see every star in a nearly pitch black sky, now. A shimmering sheet of aurora borealis covers the sky’s northern quadrant. You’ve never seen an aurora before in your life, so you have no idea how it’s in this dream. Dreams are pretty fucking weird, but you’re not complaining. You’re just relaxing in your strangely-sited bed, looking up at a stunningly beautiful night sky. Now would be an excellent time to test some hypotheses. “Hey Luna, wanna stop by? Hang out for a bit?” You’re about to laugh your silly idea off when you notice something about the moon. Its features changed; there’s a dark crescent covering the right arc, with some sections that extend leftward. As you’re observing it, the disk of light flashes. Then a pony climbs out. Luna practically falls out of the moon as if it were a giant hole in the sky, then catches herself with spread wings, and glides down to you. “Thou callest us, Anon?” “You know, I didn’t expect you to actually be listening in, but I thought it was worth a shot.” You look back up at the moon. It’s returned to normal. ”We have kept an eye on thee since thy nightmare’s return.” Time for hypothesis number two. You scoot over in your bed and pat a hand on the vacated spot. Luna hesitates for only a moment before clambering on. She eventually settles down next to you, her spine against your side, her rear near your knees, and the wing of the side she’s laying on sprawled across your lap. “You must have seen some, uh, interesting things.” She cranes her neck around to look at you with one eye. “What dost thou mean?” “Well, I, uh, sometimes have dreams of, er, indecent nature.” She grins. “Anon, seeing such is part of our talent. Thou art not the first, nor the last. We have learned to glance before diving in, and look away when prudent.” “Well hell, I’ve had to explain why we wear clothes for modesty to Twilight, and here you are knowing me at my most immodest.” You pause for a moment, letting that sink in with its own sinking feeling. “You never, uh, watched anyone, have you?” She looks offended. “Why should we?” “Well, everyone has needs.” ”Dost thou see our mane?” “Yeah, but I don’t see how that’s relevant.” ”When alicorns mature, we gain a great deal of control over our bodies. That is how we achieve immortality. We can choose for ourselves how our manes appear.” Her star-flecked void of a mane flashes. Left behind is normal blue hair, spilling across your chest. ”This is a sign of our mastery over ourselves. Our sister also has this ability. Twilight and Cadance have not yet grown enough.” Another flash, and once more a starfield cascades from her neck and tail. ”We chose these stars ourselves. Our sister chose a rainbow through morning mists. This is just a trapping, of course, but we use it as an example. Another thing we can control is our… needs, as thou callest them. We keep them suppressed. We are sure thou art aware how inconvenient they can be.” “Er, that’s something guys have to deal with, back home. I mean, moreso than usual. It’s considered a guy thing at least.” She looks surprised. “Thou hast thy own cycles?” “Hell no, it’s always on. I’m not sure what you mean by cycles, being honest.” ”Thou dost not mate at certain intervals?” “Oh, no, we just do it whenever we want. I guess women do have a sort of monthly cycle but it’s not like we only have sex at certain times of it. Actually it’s more we don’t have sex at certain times. That can get, er, messy, and not in a good way.” Luna’s confusion is writ plain across her features. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t really feel like explaining.” ”Anon, that thy drive is ever-present beggars belief. Thou art always so reserved.” She thinks for a moment. “Well, it explaineth thy socks.” “No, the socks are just insulation and such, I swear. I had your tailors make me steel-toed boots for my lab. They’re pretty uncomfortable barefoot, and then my shoes would always be sweaty. Why is it hard to understand? We manage.” Luna turns away from you “Anon, for ponies, it doeth… it leaveth us stricken.” “Oh. Huh. Well then, I see why you’d want to avoid dealing with it.” She looks up at the sky you were admiring, before you summoned her. “Thy stars are beautiful.” “Yeah, this is what I wished you could see, when I was explaining them all to you.” You turn to her then. “This was a test, you know.” She looks back at you, surprised. “Did we pass?” “Not that kind of test. When you first saw this bed, I said you could sit on it.” You chuckle. “You said no, because you had too much tact to enter a stallion’s bed. Guess that’s changed.” Luna looks shocked, then chagrined, and starts moving to get up. You wrap an arm around her neck and pull her back down. “I think I know why.” She doesn’t struggle, instead relaxing more than when she first laid down. “How didst thou know?” “Eh, a little birdie told me.” ”If thou meanst our guards, Anon, they are not pegasi, they-” “No no no. Forget it. Look, I don’t really know how pony courtship works. Twilight told me monogamy wasn’t really a big thing here, so it’s not like it’s costing me anything. I’m not really comfortable enough to do anything serious. I’m still getting used to all this. But if you’re feeling lonely… I tested it.” This still doesn’t feel right in a way. You were already doing something with Twilight, and no matter how much she says it’s okay – how much she was expecting it, and conditioning your relationship on it, even – you can’t help but feel this is off, no matter what you feel for Luna. This is as much a test for you as it is for her. ”We didn’t want to say anything. A grand gesture is required, per the old ways. We have not done such for thee. It is not yet time.” “Old ways. Yeah.” You drop your head back to the pillows and look up at the stars. “I was thinking, in the meeting this evening, about how I’ve started to see all this-” You sweep a hand across the sky “-as my past life, like I’m living a new one. I thought it meant I was getting over everything. Then something comes back to remind me. I’m still tied up in it, in some ways.” You pat her side with the arm you still have around her neck. “I feel stuck, when it comes to stuff like this. Your customs fight my customs, and they both fight my feelings. The time we’ve spent together means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me. But I’m lost, and I don’t know how to express it, or whether or not I should.” Luna remains silent, but you can see she’s watching you, from the corner of your eye. “You know, when I was a kid, I was fascinated by the night sky. I wanted to go there, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. What little boy didn’t? As I got older I figured that wasn’t my path, but it’s why I went into engineering. I wanted to be part of something sent up there. Something that went beyond the world I lived on. To play a tiny part in something that we threw out into space, or sent to the moon, or another planet. Those things will be there forever, immune to all the chaos of my home. There’s a permanence in that, in being part of that accomplishment. In making something that outlasts you. A creation that outlives you. That’s an ironclad legacy.” You shake your head and close your eyes. “I don’t know what I’ll have, here. I’m flying blind. I can only hope that, in the end, everything works out. I’m still tied to that dream that’s now out of reach.” ”Anon, thou-” Luna tenses up, then quickly moves to get off the bed. You prop yourself up and look over to her as she quickly preens the wing that was across your body. “Is something wrong?” ”Our duties call.” She looks at you, her eyes now glowing bright white. “Thou art needed.” “What’s that supposed to-” A terrible shriek rings out like the world is ending. You get a sensation that feels like hours compressed into a fraction of a second. The environment jumps and scrambles itself like static, and you feel a terrible sense of dissociation, like you’ve been violently torn from your own mind. The shriek ends with a thunderclap ringing out, as if its bolt hit the ground right next to you. The violent thump almost throws you off your bed. A bed which no longer sits on your apartment building’s roof. Your night sky is still there, but everything else has changed. You’re outside a small cemetery of some sort now, surrounded by trees in autumn colors. Luna is already striding through its gates. A voice from within calls out. “Must your entrance be so dramatic?” ”The dream merge was rougher than expected. My apologies.” Luna only dropped her thees and thous for one pony. “Merge? Sister, why-” You slide out of bed and look to where Luna was heading, just in time to see a white face over a slender neck turning to look back at you. Luna looks back at you as well, and waves you over with a wing. You scramble to their side as fast as your legs can take you. As you reach them, you notice Celestia had been laying down in front of a specific headstone. She’s standing by the time you stop, and maneuvers to put herself between it and you. She’s wearing one of those smiles her eyes betray as false. “Anon, you have no idea how proud you made me, this evening. You pledged to find some way to use your technology to help Equestria. I’m happy you’re making progress to keeping that promise. Already you exceed my expectations.” You look around. Her speech is entirely at odds with the setting. “All respect, Celestia? I know what your sister’s job is. This is a nightmare. One of yours, I’m assuming.” The false smile falls away, and she looks around herself. “Ah. Yes. It’s… I’ve lived a long time, Anon. Many ponies have left me behind.” Her shifting stance lets you catch a glimpse of the headstone she’s hiding from you. It has your name on it. Your blood runs cold as you take a step back, closer to Luna. “So, uh, what’s, what’s all this? Is this-” Luna interrupts. ”Sometimes it’s a dream, and she remebereth those who hath gone before. Sometimes it’s a nightmare, and she mourneth those who hath not yet passed.” ”She brought you,” Celestia says, sitting down, “to snap me out of it.” She looks at you with a weak smile. “Hard to argue the matter when you’re right in front of me. You said something, during the meeting, about not having time. This is what somepony not having time looks like, to me.” Luna walks past you to sit down at her sister’s side, leaning into her and hugging her with a wing. The size difference – Celestia has easily a third again her wingspan, and a foot over her when standing – makes the gesture somewhat awkward, but only more touching for that. You crouch on the ground in front of them. “Yeah, I guess that’d be… if you live forever, you’re going to see a lot of ponies go, and you care about your-” ”Anon, thou art a dolt. Look around thee. There are few here, not the multitudes of a ruler mourning her people.” ”That’s a different nightmare,” Celestia mutters. ”These are those she careth for.” ”Before my sister’s return,” Celestia says, slowly, “I never had relief from this, when it occured. I would wake up and think a friend really was dead, until I ran into them in the palace halls, or the gardens outside. That crippling depression, that sudden shock,” She shakes her head, though she’s smiling. “I’ve made a fool of myself in front of dear friends many times.” Luna hangs her head. “I must do everything I can to help you.” ”Only so far as it’s your job, sister. I’ve told you I forgive you.” Celestia looks up to the sky, then. “These aren’t your stars.” ”They are Anon’s.” ”They’re beautiful.” ”Yes, they are. He was explaining their patterns to me. I am thinking of using some.” You’ve never seen them like this before, side by side, physically close. During official functions they were never far apart, but it always felt like they insisted on a certain polite distance. You’ve never seen them in casual sorts around the palace in the flesh, either. You know Celestia met with Luna’s occasional gaggle of guests, and you’re sure she’s as good friends with them as Luna, but you were never invited, so you couldn’t say what went on there. Here, now, they really feel like sisters. Do they spend all their time in the palace apart, just to spend time together while Celestia sleeps? Not that it was much different between you and Luna, either, though you knew based on your clearer recollection on waking that Luna generally walked your dreams after sunrise, ever since you shifted your schedule. It hits you, then, just how much that meant. Those times she spent in your dreams before you started waking later, that was time she couldn’t be with her sister. Even back then, she considered you Celestia’s equal. Like family. ”Anon, here we are not in thy dream. We are in hers. We can hear thy thoughts, and control this space.” Luna’s head is cocked to the side, smiling. ”Thou assumest much, but not entirely wrongly. Our uniquely shared circumstances warranted curiosity.” ’So I can just…’ You think the words, as if reading them off a page and sounding them out in your head. ”Clever colt, but that would maketh thee rude to our host.” Luna inclines her head to Celestia, who looks between you two in confusion. “Ah, yeah. Sorry. I can’t help but experiment, Celestia. No offense intended.” ”None taken.” She blinks. “I think.” Luna laughs. “I assure you, sister, tonight I have learned he is unreasonably innocent, despite his carefree attitude to our positions.” ”You know how much I respect that.” ”Indeed.” “I’m not sure if I should take that as an insult or not,” you grumble. ”Innocence,” Celestia begins, extending her neck toward where you crouch to meet your eyes at your level, “Is a prized virtue in a stallion.” “It’s the ‘unreasonable’ part that gets me.” At this, they both laugh. “I was just thinking that I never get to see you two acting so sisterly. Was it in here, in your head, all along?” ”When we first took up ruling Equestria, we found we never saw each other. This was Luna’s solution. It’s kept us sane, when our shared work separated us. I stopped her once, for a time, and...” Luna leans her head into the side of Celestia’s neck. ”So we do it as much as we can. A private retreat, just for us, inside my dreams.” She looks around again. “No matter how grim. She brightens them all.” “You two are lucky to have each other.” “We learned it the hard way, but we learned it,” Celestia replies. “You have no idea how lucky we are.” Your workshop is almost entirely empty. Everything was moved out earlier in the day, with the help of a few guards. Their attitude towards you has turned around massively; the jeering ones are reserved, and the skeptical ones more willing to voice positive comments. In the end, their commander didn’t do much for you but find you an unused building. His attitude must have trickled down, though. It was nice to get some respect around here, for once. The guards helping you even told you some of the choicest gossip, as you moved everything out to the new workshop. The list included gems like… Not only had you almost killed Twilight, but Celestia too, with some sort of magic-stealing weapon the princesses defused at the last second, or that you saved them from with a change of heart just in time. You aren’t allowed outside the palace grounds without escort because you’re under house arrest for a terrible crime, but maybe one you didn’t commit. You were sent to gather information for your home, as some sort of advanced contact. As hideous as your body was, it was merely a projection for ponykind’s convenience to comprehend, masking a terrible true form. Your upright stature was a handicap, to put ponies at ease, or perhaps to disguise your incredible abilities when on all fours. Humans were a mythical race from before magic, and you were a harbinger of their glorious return, but only if you judged the world worthy. You might have come here from a parallel reality, to prepare ponykind for magic disappearing. You secretly had wings, but they were ephemeral and no good for flight. Any pony who managed to touch them would die, or maybe live forever. You were a… well the explanation was a little long, but some rough equivalent to a succubus. The princesses may or may not be under your sway, or trying to contain or control you. Eating meat gave you power, and once you’d eaten the meat of every sentient race of the world, you’d become an anti-deity like Discord. Who the fuck was Discord? Many variations on similar themes. It doesn’t help that Twilight is your primary contact, in their eyes, and she’s is a living superweapon who exists more or less to deal with dangerous unknown entities like yourself by way of reforming them. One of the guards helping you admitted he invented a couple himself, just to see how far they’d go. He was proud to report the Commander himself believes one of his fables, but wouldn’t tell you what it is. You’re starting to understand the meaning of ‘whimsy’, and how the Royal Guard was the greatest concentration of it in Equestria, when they were off duty. Once you’d warmed up to the idea, you got them back with some carefully-curated facts and myths from Earth. Humans and ponies had lived side by side for most of history, but ponies became obsolete. You refused to elaborate on what obsolete ment. You got some good reactions when you showed them the height of an average horse, and talk about how humans would ride on their backs all the time without phasing them. You never did, of course, because they were all obsolete, remember? You even spiced it up with what little art you had on your phone of knights and such; a couple of them want full body armor now. You told them about the Four Horsemen, though you may have tweaked the colors a bit to something they could relate to better, like certain royal coats, just to get them back for the one saying how you were going to end their world. You told them about centaurs, which apparently spooked one of them, who told you about some ancient enemy. The others treated him like a fucking nerd, so you’re not sure if this is historical or fiction. You’ll have to look through Celestia’s private collection for it, later. For now, though, the fun’s over. You sit against one wall, watching the only thing that hadn’t been moved. Your original workbench is still in the center of the room. The generator you and Twilight built still sits on the shelf underneath it, humming away under its sound-dampening dome. Frequently, a snapping sound can be heard despite the dome, as a bright spark flashes inside one end. After so much constant use, the commutator is showing some wear. You’ll have to replace it with a spare Twilight duplicated, when you move it. The sparking spooked the guards, who refused to touch it, though one pointed out it’d be difficult to dispel the soundproofing dome if Twilight was the one who’d cast it. Watching it was relaxing, in a way, even though the sparks did not fall into a regular pattern. It was nice to focus on something external, even though it let your thoughts drift to some less than pleasant subjects. You were looking forward to Twilight’s return today, but knowing she was some sort of weapon of last resort bothered you in more ways than one. Is that why Celestia first introduced you two? You know it’s not the only reason she sticks around – you know her well enough to appreciate her genuine interest in what you do – but it could still be one reason among several. Besides that, what if she gets hurt doing whatever it is she does? What would you do if she dies out there? On that note, death was another thing occupying your mind. You’ve caught some sort of thinking-about-mortality bug from the dream you’d spent with Celestia and Luna, a couple nights back. Seeing your name on a headstone was disconcerting and sobering, and it hurt knowing that the limitations of your body would let those who care about you down. Thinking about your place with them was uncomfortable in its own way. It probably wouldn’t look good for royalty to be romantically involved with another species. Immortality and the redundancy of three in one place meant heirs wasn’t a problem, but that was just one of the concerns. You’re still trying to wrap your head around the idea of it being okay to split your attention between both the mares who’ve expressed interest, let alone how to manage a relationship like that, and they both were still holding back on you besides. You’d been throwing yourself back into your work again to deal with it – or to avoid dealing with it, as usual for you – as unhealthy as you now realize it to be. This forced stop to open the new workshop today is probably for the best. You just know you have to leave something meaningful behind, before you die here. Your old dreams can have a new form. Maybe not one object you’ve touched, but many; you’ve done more design work on the articulated tiltrotor ‘wings’ for pegasi, but you’re waiting on anatomical measurements from Twilight. You weren’t putting all your eggs in that basket, though. You had something special in the works. From down the hall, you hear a pony approach. Not the measured strides of guards, but a trot. A quite lively one, too. All those terrible thoughts fade away, driven from your mind by those hoofbeats, for you know whose they are. By the time you’re off your butt and turned towards the door, Twilight appears. You spread your arms and kneel at the same moment she half-extends her wings, looking like they were just opening for a downstroke. She gallops all three strides to reach you, rearing back as you wrap her in a hug. She wraps her forelegs around your neck, and her wings around your body, nuzzling the side of your head and nickering. You can feel the metal talons on each of her wings on your shoulderblades. “Welcome back!” ”I missed you!” She pulls away from you and composes herself to what you’ve come to know as Proper Princess Poise. Not as calmly dominating in presence as Celestia, but prim in its own way. “I did not, however, miss teleporting between Ponyville and Canterlot twice a day.” “Yeah, well, long distance relationships suck.” She cocks her head at this, and you belatedly realize what you said. Getting ahead of yourself again. It feels more natural than it did before, though; progress. She didn’t even object. You reach out to tousle her mane around her horn, then stand up as she looks around the empty room. ”Where’d everything go?” “Oh, do I have a surprise for you. C’mon, follow me.” She follows you out of the room, adopting that bouncy trot you find so cute. “I’m surprised you’re still wearing those. Showing off the claws to your brother and his wife?” ”They were fascinated, though they questioned why I’d need them. Obviously, with magic and all. They understood I was just testing them, but honestly I haven’t taken them off the whole time.” “You even slept with them?” ”It took some getting used to, but yeah. I’d take them off every morning to preen my wings and readjust the straps, but I tried to wear them as much as possible, even though the power was disconnected a lot to save battery life. We need to know what heavy wear would do.” “I’m worried about your wings a lot more than the talons.” ”I’m fine. If you want to be sure, you can look when we get to wherever we’re going.” You two make your way through the palace, then out to a flattish area behind it. Turns out the guard had been much larger before Luna’s return. Made sense, when you thought about this reclusive tribe she’d brought back into the ponykind fold with her return, all of whom seemed to be devoted to her. The royal guard had shrunk by a third. Luna’s devotees, however, had claimed a cave system inside the mountain the palace is built near. These had apparently been their domain before her banishment, and they were more than happy to take the place up again. This had left several of the guard’s buildings dormant, and while many were torn down for materials to use for later maintenance on the rest, a couple had remained, now overgrown and forgotten. You walk towards a somewhat isolated barracks building with Twilight. Over the door, a stenciled sign reads WELCOME TO EARTH. When Twilight reads it, she starts bounding ahead of you towards the door. “Skies above, I didn’t know you were getting an upgrade!” “We just moved everything out this morning.” She stops inside the entryway, marveling at the room. The place is all now-pristine stonework, this first room being easily three times the size of your old shop. Shelving lines one wall, stacked with test equipment and various parts. Two massive stone tables sit in the middle of the room, with just enough space between them for you and Twilight to stand back to back. Or, back to rear. “I decided to make this common room the main lab. There’s a room that I suppose was a workout or dining area that we’ve cleared out to be a testing area. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the various individual rooms down the hall there, but I suppose they could be parts and material storage, as well as places for finished projects. I’ve taken over what I think was an office as my own bedroom. This little embassy also has the small adjacent grassy area, in case we want to test something outside. It’s not a lot, but it’s way better than what I had.” She turned all the way around in the room, before trotting off to inspect the rest of the small barracks building. “This is incredible! How did you convince them to let you have all this?” “Easy. I told them what we were planning.” She pokes her head back into view from down the hall. “They agreed?” “Well, agreed to let me prove it’s worth something. If I can get them proof of concepts, they’ll take things as they come. Now get over here and let me look at your wings.” She returns to the main room, and climbs up on a chair near where you’re sitting. She puts her back to you and extends both her wings out. You pull your chair up right behind hers, so your legs are on either side of her chair. Then you gently pull one of her wings back towards you to examine. She’s managed to find a way to arrange the straps better between her primary feathers so there’s minimal interference, with the upshot that the straps are almost entirely hidden from view. It takes you some effort to undo them all without causing undue discomfort, but eventually you have it off her and placed on the table beside you, followed by the other. “What’s with this fabric wrapped around them?” ”Oh, a friend of mine works with textiles and tailoring. I had her make that as a protective covering. It’s water-resistant, too.” “When were you going to tell me?” ”Whenever you asked.” “Hah. Got me there.” You look over a wing in detail, now, picking through the feathers she’d strapped the claw near, making sure everything looked proper, compared against other feathers that wouldn’t have been impacted by the straps. Twilight’s fidgeting a bit with your ministrations, but isn’t saying anything about them. “So was this some official business, or just visiting family?” ”Just a visit. I’ve always been close to my brother, and Cadance and I go way back. And I like to keep up with Flurry, she’s growing so fast. She’s important, you know, besides just being a princess herself. The first natural-born alicorn we’ve known, she’s amazing.” “Wait, alicorns can be born? Celestia told me you all become that way. That you three were unicorns, and Cadance a pegasus.” ”Yeah, and that’s all we knew, until she and my brother had their foal.” Shit. Maybe the heirs thing was a problem after all. “Hey, uh, can we talk about something?” ”Aren’t we already?” “No, uh, I mean, specifically. There’s been a lot on my mind.” Twilight turns herself in her chair, looking at you with concern. “What’s wrong?” “This is my first time learning about Flurry being, well one of you. I, uh, you know if we ever decide to, er, go through with this… We’re probably not that compatible, being two different species from two different worlds.” ”I’d figured, Anon.” “And that doesn’t bother you? If Flurry’s an alicorn, that’s an incredible opportunity. I’d think you’d want to, y’know, try for some of your own. Perpetuate the tribe, or something. I wouldn’t be able to do that for you, if you decide to end up with me.” She looks at you and smiles. “It’s fine. It’s not like the ones already around are going anywhere.” “Yeah, uh. Immortal. Right. About that-” ”Anon-” “You already know humans don’t last forever; our life cycle and such was one of the things in my arrival interview you said you’d read, and-” ”Anon, don’t-” “It doesn’t feel right expecting you to-” ”ANON!” Twilight’s wings are still folded, but lifted off her back, angled forward. Her head’s dropped a bit, quite close to you. Her eyes flick between the two of yours. “Anon, just… calm down. You act like I haven’t been thinking about this myself. It’s okay. Once everything’s settled out, we’ll take it as it comes. I haven’t thought a lot about foals. Maybe I’d want one someday, but if you’re my stallion, that decision’s already made.” “Just doesn’t feel right. I’d be tying you down, in every sense of the word. Until I’m not anymore.” You chuckle weakly and lower your gaze to the floor. “I guess my mortality’s a blessing, looking at it that way.” She scoots forward on her seat and drops her head so she’s looking up at you, blocking your floor-bound gaze. “Don’t say that. It’s our choice, and we’ll make of it what we can.” Her breathing’s matched yours, in those pauses between speech. It’s a strange sensation, but you think you know what it means, now. It’s comforting. ”So please, don’t worry about yourself on my account. I had a lot of the same thoughts you did. When I was away, I talked to Cadance about them. I’m a scholar, Anon; if I have questions, I ask an expert and study.” “Heh. I can’t imagine what she must have thought of that.” ”She wants to meet you.” You pull your head back in surprise. Twilight scoots forward a little more and raises her head again, smiling as she follows you back. ”Really! What did you think she’d say?” “I don’t think you’d appreciate hearing it.” She laughs gently. “No, probably not. Your strange alien nature aside, Anon, her and Shining weren’t that different. She’d already become an alicorn by the time they were dating; she’d gotten her horn even younger than I’d gotten my wings. My brother and I had some status due to our positions, which elevated our family a bit, but we weren’t nobility, let alone the royalty she was entitled to by her achievement.” Her expression falters. “She’s going to outlive my brother, too. As am I.” That sadness lasts only a moment. “But they worked out. They’re exclusive, that’s Cadance’s right as a princess, and I don’t think either of them would want it any other way. I’ve never met another pair more in love with each other than they.” She recovers her smile. “You should sit down with my brother, when they arrive. You two could have a lot to talk about.” You crack a thin smile, yourself. “Meeting your family, huh? It sounds like you’ve already decided what you want. How long until I have to face your parents?” ”I still intend to wait a bit on everything. The social obstacles aside – knowing who else wants to claim you – we’re still feeling things out, so taking things slow is just smart, but...” Her face is still close to yours. Very close. Not that she can see, with her eyes closed now. Wait, hold on, you’re experienced enough to recognize this. How the fuck do you even kiss a pony? Instead of the usual head maneuvering, though, Twilight just slowly, very gently, pushes her nose into yours. She holds it there, for several moments, your breathing again synced with each other. You’re not sure if it’s just carbon dioxide rebreathing or something more, but your chest feels awfully light. When she pulls her head back, she’s smiling, but her head’s tilted down, and her cheeks have that strange undercoat coloration you’ve been assuming is blushing. Her demeanor looks somewhere between demure and embarrassed. ”Your standard, before I left, was ‘does it make you happy when I do?’ So I ask you, does it?” You smile back at her. “Well, I sure felt something that I wouldn’t mind feeling again.” ”As you said then, that’s enough for me.” You hold each other’s gaze with your soft smiles for some time. Then some more time. It’s getting awkward. Come on, you’re smoother than this. How did you even score back home if you were this much an artless mess? You two break eye contact and look away at the same time. “Well, uh, now that you’ve seen the place, lets break it in, huh?” Her eyes, now wide as dinnerplates, snap back to you, along with her ears. Her wings flinch outward at strange angles. “I got some plans I want to go over with you, I need your help refining them. I’ve drawn up initial designs for the replacement wings, and other limbs to boot. And I’ve made some revisions to what we were thinking for sensory apparatuses. And we gotta move the generator out of the old room, sometime today.” She relaxes again, adjusting her wings then refolding them. You wink at her. “Taking things slow is just smart, Twilight.” She shakes her head. “Colts.”
1 Three Princesses”That’s quite the collection you have there, Anon.” You look up to see Twilight Sparkle enter, eyeing the massive spread on the huge square table that served as a workbench before you. “Don’t call it that, you sound like Celestia.” The purple alicorn looks up at you. “What is it, then?” “Components!” You spread your arms to encompass the entirety of your chaotic work surface. “Today we begin our great work.” Twilight gives you a look somewhere between ‘oh really’ and ‘that’s cute’. You give her your best hurt expression back. “No, I’m serious. I’m tired of being a ‘royal adviser’ in title only. And I’ve had it with magic. Uh, no offense.” She just rolls her eyes. “Alright, Anon, then why did you want me here?” You look back down at the collection of knickknacks across your desk. Celestia was generous, and acquired just about any part you could ask for. She thought your requests were cute. “Well, I haven’t seen anything more complicated here than a steam engine. I feel like I need to start from scratch. I need to know what magic can and can’t do before I go about breaking it.” “Break it?” “Yeah, you know. Cheat.” ”You can’t cheat magic, Anon.” You wave Twilight’s objection off. “Where I come from, magic is cheating.” ”But there are rules! Like-” “Alright fine, whatever. Rules are made to be broken. Physics has rules too and magic gets around them. Lets use physics to get around magic’s rules.” This gets her full attention. “And you’re going to do that with all this?” “Well, we’re going to start. And we start with a lot of questions.” You hold up what had to be the biggest flawless quartz crystal you’d ever seen, about as long as your forearm. You had fastened a couple electrodes to its surface the night before. “You have a ton of this stuff, apparently.” ”It’s just a crystal, Anon. I could grow something like that one easily.” “That’s ridiculous, but alright. Hold this for me.” Her horn starts glowing. You let go of the crystal when it too begins to glow. You pick up a fairly thick wire attached to it, along with another wire attached to a post on your workstation, and hold their exposed ends near each other. “Now squeeze it as hard as you can without breaking it.” Twilight looks at you like you asked her to open a jar. You’d like her a lot more if it wasn’t for all the condescension she’d been showing you lately. At least she was actually interested in your ideas, unlike the other two alicorns you interacted with regularly. Twilight looked to be straining with the effort, now is the time. You slowly bring the two wires closer together. Far sooner than anticipated, a bright flash arcs between then, accompanied by a loud snap. “Holy shit.” You look to Twilight with a manic grin on your face. She looks astonished. “Power!” ”Did I do that?” “Kinda. It’s complicated.” She looks over the crystal again, then back to you. “Can we do it again?” You tap the now-dead ends of the wires together a few times. “No, you’d need to let it go and start squeezing again. But it’s a fun trick, and when I saw how big this thing was, I had to try it.” Twilight considers this, then shakes her head. “Wait, you were the one with questions. You weren’t supposed to make me have my own.” “Oh, yeah. Well, here we go. If you squeeze something with magic, does it stay squeezed?” ”No.” You thought about this some, looking over the bits and pieces on your desk. “If you shrink something, does it stay shrunk?” ”Yes it does, but that’s much more complicated than squeezing something.” “How so?” ”Well,” Twilight started, fidgeting. By the look of her eyes, she was about ten seconds away from starting a rant. “It requires a lot more preparation and effort. It’s also a lot more specialized, so most unicorns wouldn’t be able to manage it unless they’ve studied it, or their specialtalenthassomethingtodowithmagicorsizeand-” “Alright, alright, I get it. Well I can already think of one way to break this; mechanically, you can make some sort of harness, then shrink the harness around the object in question. It’s now squeezed for long periods of time.” At first she looked miffed you interrupted her lecture-to-be, then rolled her eyes again. “Yeah, Anon, everypony knows that. Well, everypony who cares, which isn’t many. It’s not a very useful trick.” “But that’s the kind of stuff I mean. Getting around the rules of magic. Squeezed things stay… squeezed. There’s all sorts of things we can do, like turn this crystal into a capacitor.” ”I could always charge the crystal directly, with magic. We do that all the time.” You make a show of thinking on this. Could magic be measured piezo- or pyroelectrically? “Maybe I can do something with that later. For now, I was thinking more… mundane. Twilight puts the giant crystal back on your workbench, then looks over some other pieces. “And you want to know how magic can break the rules of the mundane?” “Exactly.” You pick up a rod with several magnets glued to one end, then roll it between your hands back and forth. “Can you make things spin magically?” Twilight looked at your idle activity. “Temporarily, that’s trivial. Over long periods of time without a pony doing it themselves, that’d require something like a come-to-life spell-” “A whatnow?” A look of frustration flit across her features at another interruption. She looks kind of cute when she’s irritated; you’ll have to do it more. “It’s an animation spell, of a sort. It makes things move on their own.” “Can it actually bring things to life? Walking, talking-” ”No, Anon,” she said. You had to expect she’d get you back. “Just simple movement, they’re not aware or anything. You probably could do something like that with magic, but it’d take me a lot of research to figure out how. And, ah, probably not recommended.” “I’m not here to figure out if we should do something, only if we could. And if we can, I will.” Twilight does not look convinced, but she’s having trouble hiding proof that your enthusiasm is contagious. ”So why were you interested in making a machine that could think?” You reach down and whip out a huge sheet of paper from underneath your workbench, startling Twilight. She jumps far enough back for you to snatch a couple more pages from near where she stood. You look around your desk for a pen, then scowl when you see the stick of pencil you’ve been using. Could pony manufacturing advance far enough to make a ballpoint before you die? Taking it up, you vigorously circle an entry on the page, then start making a couple notes next to it. Twilight recovers her wits and walks over, craning her neck around your body to see what you’re doing. Her chin barely clears the benchtop. ”Horse Hands?” she reads off the main entry “Yeah, I figure if I can find a way to make some servomotors and a means of controlling them, I can make you some hands.” You wiggle your fingers in an exaggerated wave. Twilight looked unimpressed. ”Telekinesis is far better than anything you can do with those crude appendages.” “Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. It’s a long way off anyhow.” You roll up your sheets and place them back under your bench with the rest of your many pages. “Doesn’t really matter until I can get some reliable power working. Free spinning is great, that’s a perpetual motion generator already.” ”Not perpetual, after constant use it’ll wear down in about a year. I’d have to come back and cast it again.” “Hell, that’s still better than I was expecting going into this. We’re practically already there.” You pick your magnet-stick up again and spin it a few more times, then put it out at the edge of your collection of parts. What else could you do? “Do ponies know about radioactivity?” ”Radio-what?” “I don’t know how to make a radioisotope generator anyway. Is your metallurgy even good enough to make thermocouples? Wait, are there no handheld firearms because you can’t heat-treat metal?” ”Handheld? We don’t have hands, Anon,” Twilight says flatly. “Right, that makes more sense. Guns are one of those things we shouldn’t do, anyway. Well, we can keep this simple. One of my mentors always said almost every way of generating power consistently used water to make something spin, and you already have coal-fired steam engines. Oil or gas might require too much infrastructure. Reflector arrays can make solar power without messing around with photovoltaics. Aside from boilers… Stirlings should be easy. If you use magic to make something hot, does it stay hot?” ”Of course not.” “I wonder if we can make some sort of Maxwell’s Demon” ”I’m not summoning a demon for you!” You look over to Twilight, who is now visibly angry. “Perhaps a lesson on means and ends is proper, before we go any further!” “No, not an actual- wait are there actual Maxwell’s Demons here? That’s wild.” Her anger slowly fades to confusion. “I’ve never read of anything by that name, demonic or otherwise.” “Not a demon. It’s- nevermind. Can magic do something when it sees something?” ”I don’t know, Anon,” she says, sarcasm practically dripping from her mouth. “Can you be any more vague?” “Perform an action when it notices a specific thing. Like tap a crystal, maybe.” ”Oh, yes. That’s trivial.” “I don’t know any ways of turning information into energy that’d be practical anyway.” Twilight cocks her head. “It sounds like there is a lot you don’t know, Anon.” “Well, that’s how it goes, back home. Everyone specializes. You know a lot about a couple things.” ”Well,” she says, smug, “never send a stallion to do a mare’s job. I’ll have you know I study everything.” “Good for you. You still don’t know how crushing quartz makes a spark.” There’s that cute irritated expression again. “Doesn’t matter. We can make something spin. Is there a limit to how hard it is? How heavy?” ”Well, the harder the motion, the more effort required to cast the spell.” “So the only limit is your prodigious magical talent.” She looks cute when she was proud of herself too. You could get used to working with her. “I’ll take that as a yes. We’ll have to do some experiments sometime on how heavy a load you can turn, and how fast.” “I’d be happy to. It would be a fun challenge.” You lean back and look over your collection of parts again, thinking of your list of ideas. The amount of components you need to make by hand is exhausting just to think about. “Can you duplicate items?” ”Yes. Some ponies can even duplicate themselves, or others.” “How has your economy not collapsed?” ”It’s an exceedingly rare skill. Those who can do it know the trouble that sort of thing brings.” “You’re telling me you’ve never, uh, made change?” She looks away from you and shifts on her hooves. “Thought so. Your restraint is noted. At any rate, I’d like to have you duplicate a bunch of parts for me, once I’ve figured out what I need.” ”As long as they’re small and simple, that wont be a problem.” She looked out across the vast assortment of miscellaneous doodads Celestia had brought you by request. “As long as you clean all this up.” “Oh, uh. Yeah. Now that I know what I have to do next, I can do that.” The two of you continued staring at the mess until it became awkward. You thought about pulling your planning sheets out again, but Twilight stood in the way, shuffling nervously. ”Anon, you know...” “Yes?” ”Well, it’s weird being able to talk to a… a male, about stuff like this. So few are interested in magic, or science.” “I tried talking to some guards about it when I needed help. They wondered why I was getting my hands dirty. I’ve never met such a combination of catty, prissy, and meathead before.” ”They’re there mostly to look pretty.” “Where I come from, they’d be there mostly to kill things.” Twilight blanched. “The princesses are more than capable of taking care of themselves. They wouldn’t put their guards in needless danger. Celestia cares for them.” “So I’d guessed.” You still didn’t like the implications. Twilight swept out one wing to indicate the table and its numerous occupants. “Celestia seems to be taking care of you as well.” “She humors me. Really, she dotes on me. It’s embarrassing, frankly. Part of the reason I’m doing this is just to show I’m able to put deed to word, when she asks my opinion. Not that she’s actually asking my opinion, but she makes a show of it during petitions. I don’t know why; as far as I can tell, my title is meaningless. I don’t even think she knows what I’m doing here. She might not even know you’re here at all.” This stopped the purple pony cold. “She- she doesn’t know I’m here? With you?” “No, why?” Twilight’s wings flit out in alarm, then she started to back out of the room. “Because, she’s, uh. She- it’s hard to explain. I’ll uh, I’ll talk to you later, Anon. Let me know when you’ve got the experiment ready. And, uh, let Celestia know too. I’ll- I’ll see you then.” She turned then, and darted out of the room, leaving you staring baffled at your door. Looking at alien stars is a surreal experience. You weren’t an astronomer, as much as the stars interested you, but you’d learned to navigate by the night sky in Scouts, half a lifetime ago. Celestial navigation was just a bunch of memorization and math to reverse-engineer your position from known constants. ”Anon?” There was nothing to recognize in this collection of tiny sparks. Your mind kept trying to draw lines, build familiar constellations, but all attempts failed. Formations were indistinct, and connections fleeting. ”Anon, please...” Have ponies named all their stars and constellations? Could you take up astronomy as a hobby here, and do it yourself? Maybe name them all after mythologies from your home, as yours were, that’d be an interesting- ”Anon, must thou?!” Your eyes snapped from Princess Luna’s mane to her face, where you found ample consternation. “Sorry. I got lost.” ”Lost? We know human dreams hath strange tides and currents that no pony’s laboreth under, but surely thou meanst not lost. Thou hast not left.” You lean back in the tall chair you’re sitting in, looking back to your drawing board. The open twilit space around you is surrounded by a dense featureless fog; leaving surely would lead to getting lost. Imaginary, all of it, but with Luna around, sleep time can also be work time. You consider for a moment that you’re now not only spending every waking moment but every dozing moment working too. This may not be conducive to continued good health. Fuck it, you have science to do. Beside you, the royal pain in your ass stamps a hoof and clears her throat. “Anon, we will not be ignored.” “Oh. No, thou… beest…? Uh-” Luna rears back, astonishment plastered across her face as if you’d just slapped her with it. Fury quickly chased it away. “Thou shalt say ‘you’ when speaking to us, as befitting our station!” She stomps again. “Before our banishment, stallions were bolder, but even they knew proper respect for royal persons. Thou shalt know we are more amenable than most to thy atrocious breaches of etiquette, but thou canst push even us to ire. We have elected to grant thee this extraordinary time for thee to pursuest thy plans; gratitude, not impertinence, is the appropriate response.” She talks like Henry VIII would have mounted her, then her head on his wall. Your mind reels. Carnal knowledge and regicide is not the best line of thinking right now; for all you know she could read your mind in here. “Sorry, Your- uh- Majesty.” Thankfully, her ire passes quickly. Her temper is quick to flare and quick to fade. You fear her sister may, instead, be slow to anger but result in devastating eruptions. So far you remain blessedly ignorant. ”We accept thy apology, Anon.” She turns to your drawing table and squints. “But what, pray tell, art thou drawing?” You look back to the drawing board, turning your tall swivel chair side to side minute amounts. The drawing was a bit hazy – Luna said this seemed normal for humans as far as she could tell, but not ponies – and half of it was erased. “It’s a transmission. Well, part of one. Or it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t work.” ”We expect not; it is merely paper.” “Even if I had it in my hand, it wouldn’t. I know theoretically one could design a magnetic variable transmission, but I can’t figure it out. You know what? This is going to be a test article anyway. Once I figure out the proper gear ratios, I could make a fixed one.” You wipe a hand across the drawing. Only blank canvas is left behind. “I can’t deny using dreams for this is convenient. Thanks, Princess.” Luna smiles, but is still squinting. The sun’s definitely brighter, now that all the fog’s burned away. Wait, when did the sun appear? “Think you can turn the sun down?” ”Thou art ruler of this space, Anon. Thyself best answerest thy request.” “You’re very hard to understand.” “And thou speakest as a simpleton, like so many others we have had the misfortune to converse with since our return.” “Then why not speak like they do?” She blinked a couple times as she tried to formulate an answer. “Because… we wish to… maintain our regal air. Others seeth it as dignified and attractive.” Attractive? Was that admission intentional? You let it hang in the air, where it’s sweetened by the scent of all the flowers blooming on the hill your drawing table is set atop. You move your work lamp aside, and note that it no longer casts a shadow. The sun has disappeared, but ambient light remains, and the sky is still a clear blue. Clouds smudge the horizon, until they don’t. In some places, the horizon is smudged without their help. “So what are you, chivalrous?” Luna brightens at the prospect. “Thy world hath similar doctrines?” “Had. Usually the word ‘chivalry’ is followed by two more; ‘is dead.’” Her expression falls. “We understand.” Seeing that hurt you more than you’d care to admit. “I’m sure it’s more appreciated around here, even if few show it.” You pick up you pen/cil/marker/stick and perform an arcane yet intuitive motion to ready it that even you cannot describe. You try to swivel your chair again, but it was never able to swivel at all. Instead, it rolls across the hard, flat surface of the tall grass, which tickles your knees as you glide over/through it. You end up rolling away from your table, so you grab it and drag yourself back. Your next drawing is already partially completed on the canvas. It makes more sense than you’d expect. “Oh yeah, that’d work, wouldn’t it?” You draw the other half of the simple design. You redraw the first half, upon finding it had vanished. It was probably never there in the first place. Luna is still squinting at the drawing, even though the fog’s return means it’s not so bright out. Why does the fog smell like flowers? ”Forgive us, for we know little of the technological developments that preceded our return. What doeth this contraption?” “It turns force into different force.” This bland statement somehow conveys far more meaning than the sum of its parts. Luna nods enthusiastically. You point at a part of it and start explaining further anyway. “The shaft connected to this concave cone is already spinning. These rounded wheels between it and a similar cone on the other side transfer force across the gap. If the wheels are angled, one cone will spin faster and the other slower. Usually you’d use a belt, I think, or some sort of planetary gearing, but this would be easier to make.” You look over some notes that appeared on the page. They’re completely illegible. “I’ll use it to figure out an ideal balance of speed and torque Twilight’s spells can produce, then make a fixed transmission with magnets off the required ratios, for reduced maintenance. For the test we can just use flywheels as loads. Oh, I’ll need to design a way to control this.” Luna watches you start working on a manual control extension. “Thou workest with our sister’s student?” “Yeah, we’re trying to combine magic and mechanics. I think she’s into it, and she might be nice to work with. Most ponies scoff at this stuff. Or at me. One or the other, depends on who.” ”She maketh a good compatriot in such endeavors,” Luna squints at the sheet again, and cocks her head, “for she understandeth such matters better than most.” Hearing something in her tone, you stop drawing and look over at her. After at moment, she looks back, with something approximating a sheepish expression. Her wings are slightly lifted off her back and angled downward, giving you an impression of slumped shoulders. “We all have our talents.” You give her your warmest smile. She smiles as well and chuckles, her wings returning to her back. “Indeed. Thou speakest true.” As you return to your work, she clears her throat. “We would warn thou against spending too much time with her on this, however. Thou couldst stir our sister’s displeasure.” “Twilight did kinda freak out last night about that. Why should she worry? Celestia doesn’t stop me from doing this nonsense, and she doesn’t stop me from talking to whoever I want around the palace.” Luna hesitates, then starts pacing around your drawing table, the sound of her hooffalls against what sounded like stone resonating strangely against the fog. “These follies thou pursuest… she believes humoring them is her prerogative alone. She seeth it as a way to ingratiate thyself to her, to- well. She wisheth thou associate her grace with such activities of thine.” “So why are you here?” ”We disagree with her desires to this point,” she says, passing behind you. “We wished to share thy company for a time, and these means are unique to us alone.” You suddenly feel a bit like prey. “I see. What do you think of me so far, then?” She stops her pacing, back at your side near where she’d began. “Thou hast a single-minded focus on thy goals,” she says, tone flat. ”We have seen thy dreams before. Wondrous places. Interesting… activities. We had hoped thou would showest us the ways of thy kind, if we made an appearance. Instead thou engagest in activities thou could performest awake.” “Well I guess I’ve been a little preoccupied,” you mumble. Luna smiles at this, and suddenly her tone is much warmer. “Of course. We have learned thy thoughts runneth over with unique creativity. Though not the pleasure we had hoped, thy company hath nevertheless been a pleasure.” You thought on this for a time. The drawing suddenly feels less important. You’ve got it figured out in your head by now anyway, disregarding the fact this environment itself was in your head. “You’re saying you could put me back home, in here?” Her smile falters, but quickly finds its place again, calm and gentle. “Only thou art ruler here, as we have said. Human dreams are less stable than ponies, we have found, and our control over them is not as firm. But we may be able to nudge thy sleeping mind in certain directions, and then appear to thee once underway.” You sat in silence, slouching. You could actually see home again, however briefly, and you’d never known until now. Is this something you wanted to indulge in? You’ve been treated well here, and a taste of home would tempt further homesickness, not that you had much to be homesick for. Well, the food. You definitely missed the food. And you could, at least, show Luna around. For her benefit if not yours. “You know what? That might not be a bad idea.” Luna stepped back, looking proud. “We are very pleased. Tonight will not work; we have already asserted ourselves within this space to stabilize this working area of thine. In the future we will endeavor to try.” You sighed. “That’ll be a breath of fresh air.” Your sigh was also a breath of fresh air; the flower smell was back. ”Thou art fortunate, for thy world thou hadst left behind was pleasant. Even past, thou at least hast sweet memories of it.” Her tone was a lot sadder. You look over at her. All her pride had fled. “You, uh, you wanna talk about something?” ”Yes, but no. Perhaps another night. Thou hast spent much time here, for we needed to alter the rate of time; thy dreams flow quick, but at that speed are uncontrollable. Thou hast work to complete, so we shall allow thou it, and interrupt no further.” You looked back at your canvas. Even as Luna resumed her place at your side to watch, dozens of little notes resolved across it. They were still illegible, but somehow you knew what they said. You sigh and start writing them out properly, so you’d have them committed to memory come morning. ”Ah, there’s my little adviser.” Startled awake, you jolt upright in your seat. Celestia stands on the other side of your large workbench. A large rubber flap suspended in the air in front of her drops to the table. “Oh, hey Princess. I, uh, did I miss something?” ”Nothing you were needed for. Your requests are becoming rather specific. I thought I’d stop by and see what you were working on.” Behind her entered the palace quartermare, or whatever they called the pony in charge of the royal supply closet. Dragging behind her, one end held in a telekinetic grip, were two large toothed bars. The poor unicorn tried to lift the racks to the workbench, but couldn’t make the high surface. She ended up dropping them beside it instead, then left the room panting. Perhaps it’d be worthwhile to see the limitations of unicorns who weren’t magical prodigies. You stroke your chin in thought at the display you’d just witnessed. The action reveals you haven’t shaved in three days. “Are the rest of the parts coming? If you could put me through to the smith directly...” ”Palace resources are precious, Anon. I will find time in their busy schedule to have your request fulfilled.” Celestia cocks and lowers her head, craning her neck across the table. “You look terrible, and this is the first time I’ve seen you sleeping in here. Are you getting enough rest? Taking care of yourself?” You wave her concern off. “You sound like my mother.” ”I bet she was a wise mare, and you’d have done well to listen to her.” “It sounds weird when you refer to stuff from my world with Equestrian terms.” She smiles. “Ah, but how else would you adapt to your new home?” Despite the rhetorical question, her tone sounds apologetic. She walks around the table to where you sit, her flowing shimmering mane shifting to the other side of her body, to not blanket you. Is that something she can control consciously? Luna wasn’t able to, or at least never thought to do so, leading to a bit of embarrassment last night when she came close enough to be distracting. Apparently staring is as impolite here as back home. “What were you doing so boring to fall asleep?” A big spool of copper wire sits next to you and a collection of thick rods is scattered around this side. Several of them have plates on either end with the wire wound around the shafts. One in front of you has the same plates, but the wire’s only partially wound. “You have no idea how boring making coils by hand is.” “Surely it cannot be that bad.” Celestia laughs, crystal clear. Just hearing it wakes you up a little more, brings you a new alertness and serenity. “How do you do that?” ”Simple; I forego fingers.” Your desk suddenly blazes with pale golden light; a length of wire is extracted from its spool of its own accord, is bent and snapped, and drifts over to a now-floating empty rod. It twists itself into a coil, the rod floats through this coil’s center, and the wire contracts all at once around it, slithering out so its ends align perfectly with the rod’s faces. “That’s not what I meant, but holy hell.” You pick up the now-wound coil and inspect it. Its spacing is impeccable, the wind flawless. “You know, I could really use an assistant.” Celestia laughs again. You’re now even more awake. ”A playmate, Anon?” “The guards aren’t interested, the noble stallions have their own interests, and you manage to keep the mares busy enough they never have the time. Well, the mares who don’t simply gawk, or shrug me off.” ”Your hobby is… unorthodox.” “It’s my job, and I’m a workaholic.” ”Your position is our adviser, Anon, and you’re quite adept.” “At bullshitting answers? I guess. I never find out if they work or not.” ”My sister usually handles concerns of administration like that. If she’s not informing you of your results after our meetings, perhaps she is avoiding you for some reason.” You look at Celestia sidelong. Her face is a perfect image of innocence. “I guess. At any rate, it’d be nice to have someone who I could interest in this work. Isn’t Twilight Sparkle supposed to be a bookworm? You have no idea the number of equations I can drop on her head.” ”My foremost student studies magic. This is perhaps the furthest thing from that. I’m not sure I’d be able to convince her to help you.” The tilt of her head, her relaxed stance, the way her wings are barely folded against her back, her whole body looks the exact opposite of guarded; open and sincere. You realize this is a game, perhaps the only game that matters. Celestia has had a millennium to perfect her play at the highest levels. You barely broke even in the company cafeteria. How do you call a sovereign a liar to her face without getting executed? You’re not going to take your chances that you’ll find a third world after your second death. You still don’t know if you got here by dying at all. Score: fifteen-love. You sigh and look back to your work, picking up the half-completed coil and starting to unkink the wire. “Some smart guys at NASA – remind me to explain that group to you sometime, you might get a kick out of it – said there are three categories of knowledge. You have your known knowns, your known unknowns, and your unknown unknowns. I’ve found this very useful advice for engineering.” You finish your work straightening the wire, and resume winding it by hand. “Obviously, you have your pool of knowledge. Then there’s everything you’re aware you lack, the gaps in your knowledge, all the things you might need help to understand. Know what I’m saying? But after that there’s everything else. All the knowledge that you have no frame of reference for, that you can’t even know you don’t know.” You’ve found a rhythm with the coiling now. It’s a lot easier to slip into now that you’re not exhausted. “In the end, it’s the unknown unknowns that get you. I need to watch out for them. Even you need to watch out for them.” Celestia is silent for a moment. You don’t dare meet her gaze, and simply continue winding your coil. Eventually she responds, “Who taught you that wisdom?” “Ah, who knows. Just call it a friend’s lesson.” You sneak a glance, finally. She still looks sincere, but a light has gone from her eyes, replaced by a strange flatness. At least her eyes are honest. Score: fifteen-all. “It’d be a lot easier if I had someone who knew the ins and outs of magic. That would, I think, cover quite a lot of unknown, and that’s just ones I can think of. I have no idea what could possibly be lurking out there beyond the bits of it I can even contemplate, but I’m sure there are those who do.” ”I’ll see if I can win her over to your cause.” “Thanks. I’ll need someone to spin that obnoxious thing.” You jerk a thumb to the featureless wall opposite the room’s lone window, currently occupied by your half-constructed variable transmission, then resume your winding. ”Just be careful, Anon. Many of our social customs would also be unknown unknowns to you.” You fail to hide a wince, but continue your work. Score: thirty-fifteen. ”You’re important to me. A fresh perspective is often useful, especially when I’ve ruled for a long time. It would sadden me if you lost status due to mere ignorance.” Score: forty-fifteen. You put the coil down and think a bit. “I may have said it before, but where I come from, it’s not unusual for guys to keep their social competitions, uh, constrained. Or, no, that’s not it. We don’t really play for stakes except in certain situations; while I can’t deny it happens, it’s not like our every conversation is moving pegs. I’m not an exception to that.” You look back to Celestia. Her jaw is working as if shes physically chewing on this. Score: forty-thirty. “I never asked for the position you gave me. I don’t even know if my advice is any good or not. Your other advisers and functionaries totally ignore me. If some slip-up means this workshop has to be relocated from this lofty floor to the dungeons, so be it. At least I’d still be working in peace.” Her demeanor had shifted from thoughtful to apologetic understanding. Score: Deuce ”Anon, I know I thrust you into a difficult position, but it was the fastest way for you to demonstrate your talents. As long as I keep you at my side, I keep you protected. Those guards you talk to, well, they talk to each other. They’re quite the rumormongers. And while it may be different in your world, here stallions will gossip about anything, all the time. This is useful, and the true reason I keep them around; my guards know far more about what goes on in this palace than I ever could because of it, and will volunteer any information I ask them for. Lately, though, a lot of that gossip has been about you, and your obsessive pursuits.” Ah, hell. Unknown unknowns. Score: Advantage in Celestia leans in close, then, studying your expression intimately. If you had the misfortune to sneeze now, you’d scalp yourself with her horn. ”If anyone starts coming after you, whether rhetorically or by more serious… social maneuvering, please tell me immediately. I’m worried about you.” Her honest eyes show the truth of her words. Game You sigh and slump in defeat. “Yeah, alright. I just… I want to get this done. If I can pull this off, that gossip will turn to awe. But I need resources, and I need time.” ”I’ll give you everything I can, Anon. You may not believe me, but I really do value your input. Besides,” she chuckles, pulling her head away from you to a more normal posture, “nobody else has the nerve to talk to me like you do. Especially not that other subordinate who I so value. Twilight is familiar, but at the same time skittish.” “Yeah, I, uh, heard that.” Celestia gave you a knowing smile. “I’ll bet you have. Is there anything else you need? Before you ask, the rest of the parts you wanted are still on order.” You wave a hand over your collection of coils. “I need a lot of these. Tons.” ”I think I have a stretch of free time.” The sovereign ruler of this kingdom sat on her haunches beside you like a giant puppy, and once again your workbench was awash in golden fire.
2 The MachineYou’re fortunate the weather is good, because everypony involved insisted on conducting your experiment outdoors. Twilight had teleported it out of your workshop in pieces, but reconnecting everything wasn’t too difficult. A private garden for the princesses now hosts four individuals and one jury-rigged machine. Twilight stands at one end of the device, a metal shaft sticking out of it towards her. Celestia sits on a balcony on the other side of the machine from you, to intervene in case something goes catastrophically wrong. You stand near a hand-wheel that controls the transmission, in front of a big sliding bar that indicates the transmission’s current setting. A paddle with one red and one green side rests on top of a notepad on the control box. Behind you sits a guest you requested Twilight bring; a musician with absolute pitch. The gray earth pony holds ready a cello, and a violin sits on a table beside her. “Alright, first run is a dry run. We’re going to see how fast we can crank this thing, and establish some base values. We’ll put some weights on after to simulate loads.” You crank the hand-wheel until the sliding indicator is at one end of the bar, then give Twilight a thumbs up. The shaft near her lights up with a magenta glow, and the machine starts turning. A lone rubber flap at the far end of the machine starts slapping against a bar, once for every rotation. It picks up speed quickly as Twilight turns it faster, becoming a loud droning tone. You turn to look at the pony behind you. “What are we hearing, Octavia?” She thinks for barely a moment. “E2.” Now you just had to remember what frequency E2 was. “Uh, can you, uh… give me a G2 or something.” Octavia dutifully complies, bowing the cello’s second string with long, even strokes. You hold up your painted paddle with its green side facing Twilight. She nods, then focuses on the shaft again. The drone starts slowly increasing in pitch. As the pitch gets closer to the note Octavia’s playing behind you, you turn the paddle to be more edge-on to Twilight. The drone’s increase in pitch slows down, and you can hear the moment they match. You turn the paddle edge-on. The drone’s increase slows to a crawl. You can hear a very slowly cycling pulse between the two, and start counting seconds in your head. When you count two pulses a second, you drop the paddle. Then you listen for a bit longer; this would be way easier if you could isolate yourself and listen to the two sounds alone, instead of dealing with echoes off the palace walls and the rattling of your thrown-together bearings. Satisfied, you draw your hand across your throat. Twilight stops the machine, and Octavia follows suit. “Alright,” you say, “that should have been about a hundred cycles a second. You were turning that bar far faster than that. Was the effort posing you any problems?” Twilight tilts her head in thought. “Not much, as long as I didn’t have to do it for a long time.” You make a few notes on your pad, then look back at her. “Your speed control is remarkable. I didn’t think it’d work that well.” Twilight draws her head up and beams. Even Celestia’s smiling from her balcony perch. “Alright, this time, just roll it as fast as possible. Go when you’re ready.” Twilight resumes right away, the drone quickly picking up speed. When it sounds like the pitch leveled out, you look back at Octavia. ”D…” The earth pony thinks a moment longer. “Somewhere around D♯3” You do some quick math in your head. Then you flip few pages back in your pad and look at some of your earlier calculations. “Holy shit.” Twilight stands in a wide stance, staring at the spinning shaft like she wants to set fire to it with her mind, but she doesn’t look like she was about to fall over. There’s room to kick this up some more. You make another note on your pad, then grab the hand-wheel controlling your transmission. Slowly, you start cranking it. The drone starts increasing again, slowly at first, and then faster as you continue to crank. When you look up at Twilight, she’s staring back at you in alarm, chest heaving. You stop cranking the wheel and give her the stop signal. No use wearing her out so soon. “How high’d we get, Octavia?” ”Around D4, Anon.” She shifts her cello in her grip, then looks to her violin. “Will you want me to play over it?” “Uh, yeah, why don’t you get ready for that.” While Octavia switches instruments, you make a quick note on your pad, then jog over to where Twilight’s catching her breath. Squatting down next to her, you look her over real quick. What are you even looking for? Damnit, you’re an engineer, not a veterinarian. “Hey, sorry about that. Still don’t really know how the whole magic thing works.” ”I’m… I’m fine. Did I ruin… your data?” She already looks a lot better, but is still panting. “Only if you slowed down before I told you to stop.” She shakes her head no. “Then we’re all good.” You look up to Celestia’s balcony. She’s standing at its edge now, eyeing the two of you with an unreadable expression. “Is she going to kill me if you collapse down here? Because we only found one end of your upper bound, we still have a whole curve to define.” ”She’s just concerned, Anon. But next time… Warn me before you push me that hard.” “Yeah, sure. Well I mean, this is your warning then. I want to see if magic is biased how it can be used to deliver power most efficiently. I had you spinning this thing as fast as possible, then started changing our gear ratio. Next step is working at the opposite extreme. Don’t worry, I wont be able to make it more difficult this time.” ”You know, Anon,” Twilight gives you a weary smile. “Usually I’m the one taking notes.” “I promise I’ll share.” You reach out and tousle her mane just behind her horn as you stand and turn back to your post. You don’t even realize it until you stop; these pint-sized ponies are too precious for you sometimes. They’re like giant puppies, who’d be able to resist? Octavia’s giving you a weird look. She apparently doesn’t feel it important enough to actually tell you why, when you’re back at the control wheel. You look to your purple assistant again as you start cranking the wheel as far as you can. Twilight and Celestia are sharing some wordless communique by eye contact. You guess the Princess was just concerned for her after all. Now the sliding indicator bar is pegged on the opposite side it started at. “Whenever you’re ready, Twilight. As fast as you can.” After taking about a minute to compose herself, Twilight faces the shaft again. Her eyes bulge in shock when she first tries to move it, but she leans into it, and gets it spinning again in short order. The droning sound of the smacking rubber flap very quickly escalates. Once it evens out, you back at Octavia. “What are we at now?” You wonder if she can hear the pitch over the awful rattling of your crappy bearings. You’ll have to think of another solution. ”Almost A4.” After making a few more notes, you grab your colored paddle, and show Twilight the green side. Then you start cranking back on the hand-wheel. The drone drops in pitch, at first, but quickly recovers. You stop your turning every once in awhile to pencil a line on the sliding bar and take notes, asking Octavia for the different pitches she hears. Eventually you’re back near the range you snuck up on Twilight the first time. You give her the stop signal. “Alright, that was good. Lots of good data. Now lets put some weight on this and see what changes. If you could-” Disk-shaped weights – pilfered from a gym somewhere in the guards’ barracks – on the opposite end of the machine from Twilight start levitating, but are illuminated by a golden rather than magenta glow. They deftly slot themselves onto the shaft at that end. You look up at the balcony and give Celestia a thumbs up. “Thanks. Uh, keep an eye on them, please, Princess. We don’t exactly have them secured in-place. If they start coming off, just sorta nudge them back again.” Celestia dips her head, in a gesture you’re not sure is a deep nod or a shallow bow. “Alright Twilight, I’ll be going back up again. Try to keep it spinning as fast as you can; when it gets too heavy, just back off until it’s manageable.” Twilight nods and resumes her work immediately. You work your way back across the range again, taking more notes as you continue changing the ratios. Every so often you have Octavia play a note, and try to get Twilight to match it. Near the top of the range, you notice a larger dropoff than you’d expect. Twilight’s squeezing her eyes shut, standing in the same splayed stance from earlier. Her horn’s almost touching the rapidly-spinning shaft. Celestia’s looking back and forth between her and the weights, but you doubt Celestia’s seen what happens when bodies touch hardware spinning at those speeds. You have. Safety videos aren’t supposed to give you nightmares, but someone, somewhere, didn’t get that memo. This damn thing doesn’t have an emergency stop. You drop your notepad and hit a dead sprint in three strides. The palace tailor’s going to have to make something more mobile for you than this damn suit they insisted on copying from what you wore when you arrived. When you reach her side, you brace one hand against the machine’s frame, and place your other hand square on her chest, shoving her away as hard as you could. She stumbles and falls, and the shaft stops glowing. Celestia’s already over the balcony railing, gliding down to where you kneel, a look of great concern on her face. “Before you ask, yes, I had to.” You tap the end of the now almost stopped shaft. “She got too close. You don’t want to touch these things when they’re spinning that fast. This is just a pretty smooth bar, there’s not a lot to get snagged on, but I’m not going to trust that. If that weird magic aura’s able to interact with objects, I didn’t want to take the chance her horn would latch on and snap her neck before you even had the time to realize what was happening, let alone do something about it.” Celestia looms over your still-kneeling form. “It sounds like your technology carries some great risks.” Despite her intimidating presence, she speaks in a worried tone. “There’s a reason I wanted to keep everything in the workshop. Once I have constant power, I don’t want some pony frying themselves or something. When the final generator’s built we can include all the safety features. I just… wasn’t thinking about that for this one-off design, especially when the final product will be much smaller.” Twilight finally gets to her feet next to you. “You could have just said stop, Anon.” “I didn’t know if you’d hear me; you were flagging. I think we’ve done enough experimentation for one day.” The two – three; Octavia’s put her instruments down and stands near your controls and dropped notepad – ponies watch you as you stand and inspect the machine. You check the rubber flap near the weights. The thing’s absolutely shot. How it lasted this long you don’t quite understand. “I don’t think we could have gotten much more out of it anyway.” You return to Twilight and Celestia. They didn’t appreciate that close call, you felt. Maybe you really were jumping at shadows. But if you overstated the risk, Celestia may demand you stop your work. “I’m sorry, Princess, for dragging you out here. I’m sure you have better things to do with your time. Twilight, thank you for your help. You were great. I’ll send you everything I have once I’ve made a copy.” The two look at each other, and then back to you. Twilight cracks a smile. “Despite the abrupt end, if you got good information, the effort was worth it. I’d be happy to work with you again.” She looks back at Celestia, with the last few words. Celestia looks between you and Twilight several times, worry still plain on her face. “She would make a great assistant.” Your mumble barely reaches her ears. After a few more moments, she flashes a resigned smile. “I was wrong, Anon. It seems Twilight would be a good fit after all. But if you’re going to work with her, I insist on being more mindful of safety. If something were to happen to her – or to you – I would be quite cross.” Now it’s your turn to smile. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks.” ”And,” Celestia says quickly, “I insist on being present, if you ever have to take work out of your shop again. If there are risks, I wish to know about them. It’s my job to know any threats to my ponies.” “Yeah, of course.” ”Now,” she says, looking over you two and Octavia. You stumble when the machine beside you suddenly blinks out of existence with a golden flash. “If we’re done here, how about some refreshments?” After recovering her strength, Twilight insisted on returning to the workshop with you. Said recovery involved eating enough food to last you a whole day, mostly sugary. Some ‘snacktime’. Is magic bound to some sort of metabolic exertion? Might be worth investigating, but that’s one kind of mechanics you don’t really have the tools to measure. Either way, she is now fully reinvigorated. You suspect some sort of sugar-high; while you could normally outpace most ponies’ polite speeds with a power walk, Twilight was staying alongside you engaged in the bounciest trot you’d seen to date. ”So it’s not a novel device, for us, though I’ve never seen one before that can assume any ratio at will. Ours have to be built with gears or cogs, this cone and wheel setup is fascinating, and so simple! Honestly I’m ashamed we hadn’t come up with something like it sooner.” “Belts would probably be better, but I was being lazy.” You can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. She’d grasped the concept as soon as you explained it, no schematics or math required. You liked working with these types, who could just think their way through a design. ”How would belts work?” “Wide and thick, triangular cross-section. Belt shouldn’t stretch when under load. Load side has two cones – straight this time – held together by a spring. Drive side has two cones with controlled spacing.” You hold up your hands, index fingers extended and pointing towards each other. “Changing the spacing on one side will force the other to change inversely, since the belt has to keep the same length. Since the pulleys are cones, this means the belt rides on a narrower or wider cross-section. The difference in diameter of these cross-sections determines your ratio.” You bring your index fingers closer together and further apart. It looks kind of stupid, and you aren’t sure what it’s supposed to demonstrate. At least it keeps your hands busy; Sugarhighlight was looking at them funny when they were just hanging at your side, close as they were to her body when she was trotting beside you. You can’t be too surprised that foreign anatomy might freak ponies out. “We use them a lot at home, but I wouldn’t build one here for a final product, not when we’re concerned about reliability. I was thinking of a magnetic one, but I couldn’t think of how to design one quickly. I’ll just crunch some math, get a fixed ratio, and make magnetic gears for that.” ”What’s so special about magnets?” “Even just the bearings I used there weren’t great. I’ll have to get some better ones, see who makes your trains around here. But I want this to be as reliable and low-maintenance as possible, and noise is also something of a concern. The more magnetic components we have, the less physical wear, and the less noise. Plus, they can slip freely and catch each other again, so we don’t have to worry about catastrophic failures from that angle. I want to see if they’ll work, first.” You rub your chin in thought. “Come to think of it, magnetic bearings exist too. But there’s Earnshaw’s thorny problem, or I’d need a control system for electromagnets. Honestly, I keep running into problems I’d need control systems for, and that makes things more complicated.” Twilight tilts her wings in a remarkable approximation of a shrug. Has she been watching your body language? ”Just use your mind.” You stop and stare at her. She trots around in a half-circle to face you. “What?” “Did you just tell me to control an electrical balancing act with my brain?” She nods vigorously. “I don’t have telekinesis like you do.” ”I let a tortoise fly before, Anon. Using a bit more complicated version of the spell we’ve been talking about this whole time.” “Did you give it wings or something?” You resume walking, and she kicks back into her bouncy trot, this time on your other side. ”No, a rotor.” You look at her again, one brow quirked. “Just one?” ”Yep.” “Nothing else?” ”Nope.” “How’d you provide antitorque?” ”Compensated for it within the mast.” You don’t even know how that’d work. “So you’re telling me your magic can provide control over at least two degrees of movement, alongside a speed control, while automatically balancing a resultant force?” ”Well, Tank still needs to handle the torque. Just has the tools to do so.” Who names a tortoise Tank? “Well, that opens up a whole bunch of options. But I’m not going to sit next to this generator and mind-control it into balance. If you have a spell that can just keep something centered or whatever, that’d be easier. Short of that, we’ll deal with the stuff you use for trains and shrink it down or something. I mean if we really have to I could just just reverse-engineer a locomotive’s drive components and have you spin a wheel instead of a shaft, but that’d be something far larger and more complex than I need. I would like my generator to fit under my work desk. I’m just one man, not a power station.” ”Doesn’t that mean the thing you built is a bit large?” “Was easier to work with larger parts. We have enough data I should be able to extrapolate in either direction. Besides, if you said you made a magical helicopter fit for a turtle, I don’t think down-scaling will be an issue.” ”Tortoise, Anon.” “Yeah, that.” You two reach your workshop. Your test rig is all there – Celestia teleported it in one piece this time, but still fit it with room to spare – and so is your notepad. But something nags at you. Something about what the two Princesses were saying, a couple days (nights?) ago. You’ve done enough math for today. “You know what? Let’s walk and talk.” Twilight hesitates, but ultimately turns and follows you. “Weren’t we just doing that?” “Yeah, well, Princess Celestia thinks I’m working too hard.” ”But… science!” Despite the plaintive tone in her voice, Twilight still hasn’t lost the bounce in her gait. “There’s as much we can talk about! So much I can show you!” “Calm down there Miss Sakamoto, I’ll go blind.” ”So much about magical theory that could be helpful to your projects-” “Yeah I’m sure it’s poetry in motion.” ”That’s a beautiful way of looking at it.” “Can’t take the credit. Look, all I’m trying to say is the Princess doesn’t really let me out of the castle, but she thinks I’m working myself to death. I’ve been here for months and my only respite from being a court showpiece is to do work for free that I used to be paid for. You’re here now. If we’re going to be working together, lets get to know each other a bit, huh? You can show me the town.” It’s her turn to stop in her tracks, forcing you to hold up for her. ”Really?” You shrug. “Is there a problem with that?” ”But Princess Celestia-” “Wants me to get out more.” Twilight shakes her head and resumes her trot. You can her muttering to herself as she passes you. “...sheltered colt putting me on the spot after...” She’s still bouncing. “So uh, so what do you normally do, anyway? Are you like head of the Royal Society here or something?” ”Well, I do a lot!” Her cheerful tone’s returned. “Solving problems, helping friends, studying all SORTS of things.” You fall in behind her. “None of that sounds like Princess stuff. Celestia and Luna are running the kingdom. Are you not heiress apparent?” ”Don’t be silly. Celestia and Luna are immortal. I’m not related to them, if that’s what you mean. Just close.” “Ah, sorry Princess, but that makes no sense to me.” ”I found it a bit much to get used to myself. Please don’t feel a need to call me ‘Princess’.” The two of you make your way through the palace and out into a courtyard. Guards stare at you and Twilight as you head for the main gate, then into the city beyond. With Twilight here, at least they don’t try to stop you. It’s not like you’re trying to sneak out anyway. Canterlot’s riotous architecture is even more vivid from the ground in the middle of it. The sheer amount of gold everywhere boggles your mind. If you can duplicate materials at-will, why not go for the top, you figure. Away from all the nobility, you feel distinctly overdressed. Not just because you’re wearing a suit, even one that’s worse for earlier wear, but because you’re wearing clothing at all. Most ponies in the palace are adorned in some way or another, but Twilight’s birthday suit fashion has a lot of admirers, beyond the castle walls. You’ve seen it before, during petitions, but being surrounded by it is another story. The ponies you’re eyeing rarely return your gaze, but a couple stare at your feet. ”Are you hungry?, I could take you somewhere nice.” “Eh. From what I saw back there, I’m surprised you can even think of food.” Twilight sighs. “We can make it light and fast.” “Celestia never gave me access to some royal bank account. I’m broke.” Twilight gives you a confused look. “I’m paying, silly.” She looks back ahead, then angles off towards a nearby cafe. “Your world must have been a strange place, Anon.” “I can’t believe, with the reputation you have, you didn’t read my file.” ”Oh, I did. Nine times, in fact. It just raised more questions than it answered.” “Nine times?” ”I had to be sure I got everything right, because so much of it made little sense. No magic whatsoever, but you somehow managed to go to the moon. Two hundred nations for one species. And don’t even get me started on the accounts of the device in your pocket.” She turns to you as she reaches the cafe’s door. “Think we can make one?” “Twilight, the original doesn’t even work, I need to find a way to charge it. Uh, thanks.” You enter first, Twilight having opened the door before you could even reach for it. Twilight heads for a table for two – far from a window, you note – and telekinetically pulls out the chairs. She doesn’t sit down when you do, with your back to the shop’s front. ”I’ll grab something I think you’ll like. Be right back.” You take some time to look around. The cafe is almost empty for this time of day, but its few occupants have definitely noticed you. Going incognito your first day out of the palace was never an option, but that doesn’t make their staring any more comfortable. When Twilight returns, she hovers to you a plate with a curious pastry on it. She has a different one for herself, and finally takes her seat. You take a bite. It tastes like a cross between a cinnamon bun and an apple cider doughnut. You need to find out if the palace kitchen makes anything like these. ”Your file,” Twilight said, “included very few social or cultural details. I understand it wasn’t exactly an interrogation, but I thought you’d have volunteered more.” You shrug. “I’m an engineer. My everyday interactions with the world were through the lens of science and technology. Go to work to help make it. Come home and entertain myself with it.” ”You know a lot of what you told us was unbelievable, right?” “One of the reasons I decided to try to show you instead. Most of it I won’t be able to, but I’ll be happy with a little slice. Your magic can make up some of the lost potential.” You take another bite of the pastry. Holy shit this tastes good. ”I’m looking forward to it,” Twilight says, after swallowing her own bite. “I’m just curious, were men like you common? There’s few stallions interested in studying magic, and even fewer science, here.” “Magic aside, most people like me were men.” Twilight’s eyes boggle. “Really?” “Yeah, something like eighty to eighty-five percent. So when you say there’s few stallions you know into this stuff, trust me, the feeling’s mutual. I never knew a lot of, uh, mares.” Twilight stares down at her half-eaten pastry. “Look, I get it’s rare. I’ve seen the traits Celestia selects for in her guards. I’m not going to pretend to understand. I’m not a pony. I’ll just go on working in my shop and feeling overdressed.” ”Well, you could stand to lose the, ah, footwear.” You take another bite while you think on this. Definitely not in the shop, but outside? If fingers were weird enough, heaven forbid ponies get a gander at toes. “Nah, the shoes stay on.” Twilight’s eyes dart to the entrance of the building briefly, before she speaks again. “You are a bit overdressed, besides that.” “I have yet to convince the palace tailor to make me much else besides this crap. They insist on using the same pattern, no matter what I request. At least they fit better; I’d go insane if I had to wear a real suit for as long as I’ve been here.” ”You could just go without.” “Twilight, back home that’d get me arrested. And wouldn’t get me any closer to being warm.” ”Arrested?” She sounded incredulous. “Yeah. Indecent exposure or whatever.” ”Indecent?!” Now she looks as incredulous as she sounds. “Yep. No nudity in public. So forgive me if I want to keep some clothes on.” Twilight shakes her head while chewing another bite. When she’s finished, “Humans are so backwards.” “Hell, in the winter, clearing snow, I’d wear three layers on top, and two pairs of pants. Tuck one pair’s legs into my boots. Thick socks, all the way up to my knees.” You have to suppress a laugh when she nearly chokes. She glances at the door again, then back to you. “Just let me hold on to some habits from home. I already feel awkward enough.” She nods. “S-sorry.” “Meh, I figured I’d need a big cultural exchange talk eventually.” ”It would probably do you good to get out more.” “As long as you’re around, sure. Trust me, I’d have this city memorized if Celestia would let me out on my own. I’m too weird for most of the court; nobody wants to be my chaperone, but Celestia insists I have one if I were to ever leave. Can’t have the great ape banging his head on a low door frame. Just means I’ve been stuck. Now that you can do that job, I have a chance. And seriously, I appreciate it. Thanks.” ”Don’t mention it, Anon. I’m happy to.” She takes a third glance at the door. This time, you turn in your seat and follow her gaze. Despite your location in a rear corner of the establishment, the cafe is small, and you’re not quite isolated from all the windows. Pedestrian rubbernecking is causing minor traffic issues on the sidewalk outside. “Like I’m some goddamned celebrity.” ”You are. You being shut up in the palace hasn’t actually kept you a secret, not with Celestia showing you off inside it. It just fuels more speculation.” “Maybe we should scram, before someone gets hurt. Twists an ankle, goes lame. Uh, there’s some things I’m never going to disclose about the long and storied relationship between humans and equines, by the way. Sorry to disappoint.” Is she blushing? ”I know of a garden that might be a little more secluded. We could have a bit more privacy there.” “Lead the way.”
3 No Path HomeAll around you is nothing. It’s pitch black. The silence is almost painful. You can feel nothing, though you are pretty sure you are curled up into a ball. Hours pass in seconds, or maybe the other way around. You don’t have a reference for time. Maybe you’re going insane. ”Anon.” The voice is really far away, far enough to be right next to your ear. ”Be not afraid, Anon.” Ah, you’re pretty sure you know who that is. Which means you know what this is. “Princess Luna, is this your idea of a prank?” Or, you’re pretty sure that’s what you said. You can’t hear your own voice. ”We have brought thy mind to alertness before any dreams arose.” “This isn’t very fun.” ”Dost thou wish to see home?” Ah, right. It wouldn’t be your first time you’ve dreamed of home, but it’d be the first you could interact with it while aware. You were never a lucid dreamer. “Is it going to be as weird as last time?” ”Thy dreams formeth their own structure. We need not force them as before.” Whatever that means. “Fine, let’s see it. Just, uh, just don’t get your hopes up.” ”Whatever dost thou mean?” “You’ll understand.” The darkness turns itself inside out, now blinding white. A loud ringing sounds in your ears. For the briefest moment, you feel like you’ve been kicked in the head. Turns out you weren’t curled into a ball, you were standing. You twitch violently as your brain does a proprioceptive double-take. You are standing in front of your apartment’s door, to be precise. Your keychain is in your hand. The right key is already in the lock. You turn the key and open the door, then step inside. When you turn to close the door, you hear a voice behind you. “Ah. We understand.” Turning back again, you see Luna in the middle of what passes for a living room. She’s looking towards the kitchen area at the back of the long room. “Thou art lowborn.” “Uh, I guess you could say that. I wasn’t exactly rolling in it.” You open a second door, one leading to your bedroom. The walls are covered with posters of nerdy shit, from video games to reference charts. Luna cranes her neck to look over your shoulder. “This space is too small for thy family.” “I lived here alone.” You hear a slight gasp from her. “Alone? Art thou honest?” “No lie.” You walk into your bedroom. It’s spotless, but everything you remember is here. In their proper places, too, which is somewhat of a rarity for you. You spread your hands to indicate the whole room. “All this, just for me.” You expect to see some expression of indignation, that she’d be mad you were without a minder, despite the fact this was your world and not hers, with no Celestia to demand a guardian. Instead, she looks down at your carpet, and then to one of your bedroom windows. She makes her way over – cautiously, for your room was too cramped for her long body to maneuver well in – and looks outside. You join her at the window. Outside, the street is strangely empty. No pedestrians, no cars. No activity in nearby buildings. “It’s usually more busy than this.” ”Was that better or worse?” “Uh, sorry?” She tries backing up the way she approached the window. Your dresser jabs her in the flank. Her wings extend outward slightly at the shock, which knocks a paperweight off your desk. She sighs and stops moving. “Better or worse than silence, Anon. Didst thou prefer bustle or quiet?” “Quiet, I think. I usually just lost myself in...” You wave a hand in the air vaguely. “Other stuff.” You point to your computer, then. “This could talk to people all over the world, access all sorts of knowledge, play different kinds of games. Most of my time was spent using it.” Luna cocked her head and peered at it. “Fascinating.” “Here.” You wave a hand at your bed. “Feel free to take a seat. Furniture’s not arranged for someone who’s several feet long to walk around.” ”We shall presume not to lay ourselves upon thy bed, even invited. We have tact.” “Suit yourself.” You sit on its end, facing her. She looks around at your walls. “Thy appetite for art seems as voracious as it is peculiar.” “Well, it’s not all art. Some of it is reference material. Others are… Well, here.” You gesture towards a sky blue poster with images of many rockets. “This one depicts a bunch of vehicles we used to get to space. Uh, outside the atmosphere. Er, beyond the sky.” More light jostling of furniture as Luna makes her way over. She looks at the many designs. “How doth they function?” “Explosions.” She looks at you like you just yanked on a couple of her feathers. “We desire serious answers.” “I’m giving them to you. They work by exploding. Controlled rapid combustion. Think like giant fireworks, but many times more violent. Rockets are thousands of tons of canned explosion, with a couple people sitting on top crazy enough to light the fuse and try to steer.” You point to the image of a Saturn V. “This one sent people to the moon, with enough hardware to get them back home. We did that half a dozen times.” Once again, Luna defies your expectations by remaining silent. She slowly sits down on her haunches, staring at the poster. Her silence extends for an uncomfortable period of time. You decide to get something else to show her. Your neglected electric guitar sits in a corner. You never did bother to learn how to play to any degree of proficiency. As you’re reaching for it, Luna finally speaks. ”Why?” You look back at her as you pull the guitar free. “What was that?” ”Why send thy kind to the moon?” “We wanted to go, just to say we did.” ”Foolish. Naught but rocks.” “Rocks we were quite happy to take home. It was a race; who could get there first. Uh, we have a lot of countries here. Some of them compete. Some of them… do worse than compete.” She hasn’t looked back at you since she asked the question. She lapsed into silence again. You turn on the tiny amp near your guitar stand, and pluck a few strings. At least the thing was in-tune. This finally gets Luna to face you. “A musician?” “Hell no, I can’t play for shit.” You noodle through some of the Forbidden Riffs. Even in a dream, you manage to fuck up quite a few of them. Luna looks less than impressed. “I got this cheap piece of crap for a project I was doing in college. I was meaning to learn it properly some day, but obviously that’s not going to happen.” You stop yourself cold, and slowly put the guitar down. “I’m not coming back here, am I?” Luna’s expression immediately softens. “Our sister and her student have found not a way to send thee home. We have discovered not how thou came to us in the first place.” “I didn’t exactly lead a spectacular life here, but the little things bother me.” You gesture at your computer again. “Not gonna lie, I miss that thing a lot, and that’s not something I can rebuild in your world. I didn’t have many friends, but those I did have were good ones, and I miss them too. Every once in a while I’ll be working on a project and have a question I’d want to ask, and I can’t do that. I miss sending dumb edited pictures to friends I’ve never met over the internet.” You sigh as Luna delicately makes her way over to your side. “There are a lot of things about my new life that are better, I’ll admit. I was surprised by that, which is weird, considering my mode of humor when I was still here. This world sucks. But despite that – maybe because of it – we made a lot of ways to enjoy it. Human technology can be summed up as one long arc of making our shitty world nicer for ourselves. And for the most part, we did a damn good job. There’s so much I lost that I loved.” ”May we touch thee?” “What? I guess, whatever.” Luna stretches a wing out, hesitates a moment, then wraps it around your shoulders. You realize just how little physical contact you’ve received these past few months. ”We know, better than thou mayest imagine, the difficulties of an exile. We thought not that our world could be considered such a curse as that. We see now that thou hast lost that which is most important. Thou hast lost friendship, and our world hath not given much of it to fill such a void.” “Well, Twilight’s nice enough. Celestia relented on that one.” You look at Luna. She’s looking over the details of your face, but her neck is held at an odd angle. You guess it’s to put an arbitrary polite distance between your face and hers. “You know, your sister said you might be avoiding me. Said you were in charge of planning stuff, so I’d have to come to you if I wanted to know how my suggestions, and your silence meant you might not want to be around me. We don’t see face-to-face, in the real world, outside those evening meetings.” Luna frowned. “Anon, we have received no such suggestions of thine.” You rub your face with a hand. “She treats me like a child.” ”Our sister is very protective. We think thy position exists not to advise. Thy position exists to shield thyself.” “I got that impression.” You don’t even try to keep the sarcastic tone in check. ”If thou wishest, we could make time for thee. Late evening, or early night, we could discuss matters of state.” You shrug. “At least I’ll be able to fulfill my job description.” ”And Anon...” You look over to Luna when she trails off. She looks almost bashful. ”We are princess of dreams. We are not princess of friendship, as Twilight is. But we understand thy suffering, even if not its particulars. We shall endeavor to be a friend to thee as best we can.” You’ve never in your life heard something so formally declared. Considering the subject, it should have been preposterous. Luna, somehow, sold the idea as if it was perfectly ordinary. “I… thanks. I appreciate it.” Luna smiles, but it’s a sad one. “When we say we wish it was not needed, we hope thou understandest we mean not that we wish to be rid of thee.” “I, uh, I think I follow. Maybe.” Luna laughs. Compared to her stilted form of speech, it’s the most natural sounding thing to come out of her mouth. “Perhaps, with time spent in our company, thou mayest understand proper speech.” She pulls her wing from your shoulders, folding it against her back once more. “Come show us more of thy world. We are sure there are more wonders to this place than large exploding cans and distance friendship boxes.” “For as long as this dream lets me, sure. But first, lemme do something.” You grab the heavy paperweight that had earlier fallen off your desk and move over to your nightstand. After lifting the polished stone comically high over your head, you bring it down as hard as possible on your alarm clock. The thing caves in as if it were hollow. “Always wanted to do that. Princess, as a formal declaration of our friendship, I destroy my killer of dreams.” She smiles at you, warm and gentle. “We accept thy gesture with gratitude, Anon.” As palace guards close the great hall’s main doors behind the last batch of petitioners, you turn to Celestia’s throne. She wears the same serene smile you always see when she interacts with her subjects You, however, have been learning to read her eyes rather than her face. Her eyes tell a much more complicated story. “Your Highness.” She slowly turns her head to meet your gaze. “Your feelings for your subjects, even when hearing trivial matters, is touching.” She sighs and stands from her throne, turning and heading for a side door. “Anon, I’ve been doing this for a thousand years. I’ve spoken with hundreds of thousand of ponies about problems they’re desperate enough about to come to me with. Each one breaks my heart, even if I’ve heard their same problem a hundred times. Every day without a single petitioner showing up is a day I know I’ve played my part well. Those are the days I still live for.” You walk fast to catch up. Celestia’s the only pony you’ve met of comparable height and stride to yourself. “The last one is pretty simple, it’s just a matter of balancing logistics.” ”I already know how we can reallocate things. I’ll give my sister the instructions at this evening’s meeting.” You walk alongside her in silence for a time, looking at her eyes. She stares ahead unfocused, navigating her palace through instinct and muscle memory alone. You have a feeling she’s performed this daily ritual long before you’d arrived. You also have a feeling you’re the only person who’s ever accompanied her for it. In a long time, at least. “I have a question that may seem a bit, uh, weird.” ”Hmm?” “Has my counsel ever been useful? As you said, you’ve been doing this for a thousand years. Why keep me where I am?” She finally looks to you, eyes shifting minutely as she looks your face over. “I value your input.” “Even when it contributes nothing.” ”Then it’s affirmation, which is its own help.” She looks back ahead when the two of you reach a door at one side of the hallway’s end. She opens the door telekinetically and extends a wing to indicate the narrow stairwell inside. Once you start the ascent around the spiral, she follows you, closing the door again behind her. “I spoke to your sister last night. She thinks you put me here to protect me, rather than listen to me.” You can’t see her reaction, with her behind and below you, but she takes some time to respond. ”I think my sister’s view may be colored by her… archaic perspective.” You’ve been working on getting better at The Game. “That doesn’t say anything about the truth of her belief.” In the next several seconds of silence, you reach the top of the spiral staircase. A golden glow opens the door before you. On the other side is a tiny library, round like the tower it sat atop. At the far end is a balcony overlooking Canterlot. You step inside and aside to let Celestia in. She heads immediately for the open balcony, and you turn for the shelf that contains the work of history you’d been reading the past few days while Celestia took the time to organize her thoughts. ”Please let me show you something,” she says. You stop halfway to the shelf in question, then move to join her on the tiny balcony. There’s barely enough room for both of you to stand on it. She nods her head towards one side of the city. “Down there. Grey stallion, on the otherwise empty street.” It takes you some time to find the individual in question, but when you do, you nod. ”He is a good husband, wise father, and is clothed with strength and dignity. His herd’s business has fallen on hard times, so he takes to the streets in search of odd jobs, and utters no complaint. He wants nothing more than to look after his foals, but here he is.” “You know a lot about this random stallion.” She nods solemnly. “Once a week, he finds a tip pointing him somewhere that could use his talents.” You look back at Celestia. “Your doing?” She nods. “I don’t have the time to attend to our subjects’ every problem, but I do what little I can for those on my doorstep. Helping in those small ways makes me feel just as good as helping in big ways in my formal capacity.” “Huh. Noblesse oblige, I guess.” She looks at you and tilts her head. “Luna has been talking to you about the nobility?” You shake your head. “Just something we had too, back when we had monarchs and stuff. Kings leading their men in battle. Dukes and counts overseeing infrastructure projects. We have two units of measurement – the Rayl and the Rayleigh – named after a baron and his son, who devoted themselves to science. Kelvin was made a baron for his scientific and engineering contributions, got a unit of his own. It’s a long list.” ”It’s a philosophy I try to uphold. Princesses are made in this world. Magically elevated to the position for achievement, but that doesn’t mean you can turn away from how you got there. Twilight Sparkle spends her time being a force of friendship and harmony. Cadance, our adopted niece ruling another land, bolsters the emotions of her people. Luna soothes the troubled dreams of our subjects. I try my best to use my power to help ease their lives as I move the heavens that guide them.” “Sometimes going so far as to leave personal notes in mailboxes.” She chuckles. “My reputation as a prankster comes with a certain set of skills I occasionally put to more productive purposes.” You furrow your brows. “You’re known for pranks?” Celestia, for the first time that you’ve seen, visibly flinches. “You don’t know?” “I’ve never even heard of it. I’ve never seen you prank anyone. I haven’t had any jokes played on me that wasn’t a rude comment from a guard since I’ve arrived.” She stares at you, slack-jawed for a minute, then throws her head back and laughs. “What am I doing with you?!” “Well, that’s sorta what I was asking. You put me in a position I’m not qualified for, and when we interact outside of it, you’re doting on me more than anything.” Celestia recovers her composure and looks back to the city. “Luna probably meant I was protecting you physically. Her heart’s of a time where stallions were either far in front or far behind, absolute protectors or in need of absolute protection. That’s not true; I know you’re probably stronger than most of the ponies you’d run into. I meant to protect you mentally. I put you under my wing and at my side in court to give you time to adjust, and to show you this world was worth living in.” You stare at her as that sinks in. “You mean you knew I’d never be going home again?” ”I don’t know for sure, but I wanted to prepare you, just in case.” She shakes her head sadly. “Instead, you’re trying to bring your world here with you, through your little science projects.” “Would you rather I not?” She was quiet for a moment, then said softly, “I don’t know.” She shook herself then in some sort of full-body flinch. “I want to do everything in my power to make sure you have a place in our world. But on the other hand, you’re precious, Anon, and truly unique. You come from a land far beyond anything we know, with different ideas and customs and practices. You have so much you can share with us.” “Is… does that mean you want me to continue?” She looks at you and smiles. “It means I should be asking you, and should have from the start. What would make you happy?” You look back out across the city. “You help your people, in little ways they can’t imagine. I hope someday my creations may help you, in ways you can’t imagine.” Her smile broadens. “I’d like that very much.” The two of you watch the city for a time in silence, until the sun begins to set. Celestia turns away then, back into the library. “It seems even after a thousand years of life, I still have things to learn, even about myself. I’ve been treating you poorly. I hope to put an end that starting tonight.” She walks to the door and opens it for you. “What does that mean?” You move to her side. “Just letting you know, I’m not a fan of pranks.” She smiles again, but says nothing, extending her wing to point you down the stairs. You start your descent, but call out behind you when you hear the door close above, with Celestia’s hooves against the stone stairs following you. “And I told you how dangerous my projects can be if you don’t respect them!” ”I promise I wont mess with them, Anon.” Once the two of you arrived back at the side corridor running down this wing of the palace, Celestia leads you towards the chamber that served what you called ‘The Royal Shift Change.’ She opens the large doors to the conference room for you. Luna is already sitting at the far end of the table. Prince Blueblood sits in the chair to the right of Celestia’s end of the table, as the current master of the royal household. For all the stallion disparagement you hear, you’ve noticed they’re trusted implicitly with any and all domestic operations. As Celestia sits at her end of the table, you sit in the chair to her left. Other seats are occupied by unicorn representatives of the various dukes that managed Equestria’s regions. Celestia clears her throat. “First order of business; Prince Blueblood, Anon is to have direct and unfettered access to the royal stores and palace facilities, without escort, from now on. Please familiarize all staff with appropriate etiquette.” Across the table, Luna gives you a sly smile. You give her the slightest nod you think would still be noticed. ”We request also a chamber like this suitable for discussing certain plans with Anon,” Luna then says. “It shall be cleared for the first hour after every moonrise. Canst thou arrange this, dear Prince?” Blueblood nods while taking notes on a pad, but he doesn’t look happy about the commands. Celestia looks between you and Luna, then smiles and shakes her head. “It seems, sister, that you realized more about my… mistake than I suspected.” Luna’s only acknowledgment was a dip of her head. ”Now, for Appleloosa,” Celestia continues. “Please inform Duke Silversaddle that we received a delegation from one of his outlying towns. In accordance with their wishes, we are sending relief. Please allow us three days to organize a course of action.” The emissary bows her head. Celestia looks to you, next. “Anon.” You’re shocked; she never addressed you in these meetings before. “Yes, Your Highness?” ”If Prince Bluebood finds his space for you and Luna tonight, I’d like you two to discuss the logistics of that request.” You blink in astonishment, and glance over to Luna before looking back to Celestia. “Ah, with respect, why me?” ”I’ve said I was interested in your outside perspectives. I want to compare your plan with mine. Perhaps by looking over both, we can find one better than either.” “I’m, uh, I’ll be honored to.” Is this her idea of a prank? No, her eyes never lie, and they say this is genuine. Celestia looks to the Appleloosan emissary, then. “Please have the Duke send us a short summary of available resources for my adviser here to look over. I want to make sure we have the most up-to-date information.” You’re starting to wonder if you should have ever opened your mouth. Be careful what you wish for, indeed.
4 Give And Take“What do you mean, ‘no’?” The palace smithy mare looks up at you with a flat expression. ”I mean no, brother. You got brain problems too?” “Why the fuck not?” ”Unstallionlike language ain’t doing you any favors in my book.” “I don’t give a damn!” ”Now you’re just being hysterical.” “Didn’t you fuckwits get the memo?” ”Yep, and I don’t care. I got limited time and resources here. ‘S far as I’m concerned, I ain’t got enough’a either to indulge your little pet fantasies. ‘Zecutive decision.” Even with her forelegs propping herself up on the edge of her desk, she still doesn’t come to your eye level. Despite this, she wears the most contemptuous yet complacent expression you’ve seen on a pony. Never have you met someone so short yet so smug. “It’s not even a big order.” ”It will be, after all the times you gotta come back because you screwed it up.” “I’m working with Princess Twilight, you really think the measurements are wrong?” ”This is in your writing, not hers, so absolutely. Stallions ain’t good with numbers.” “I’m the one who came up with them!” The earth pony puts on an exaggerated show of thinking, dropping one of her forelegs to the floor while caressing her chin with the other hoof. “Well, just maybe they could be right. There’s always a chance you screwed up writing down your screwed up measurements. A few of them might have ended up being what you actually want.” She resumes her propped-up position. “Too bad what you want ain’t what you need.” “If you really want, I’ll have you look over the math yourself.” ”What you need ain’t in the math, brother. What you need’s in a mare’s house, and my forge ain’t that.” “Jesus christ.” ”Poor thing’s deluded enough to make up words. Now quit bothering me, I’ve got a heavy workload.” “I’ll give you a heavy workload...” ”Innuendo ain’t doing you any favors either, brother.” “What?” ”Typical stallion, trying to sleep their way out of what’s good for them.” She leans forward on her forelegs and glares at you. “No pony would bed a damn dirty ape like you anyway, not even in the dead of heat. Scram.” If she were a pegasus, you wager you could break her neck right there, but even then it would just make your problems worse. You spin on a heel and storm out of the smithy. This ordeal was, at least, a step in the right direction. She actually spoke to you. The carpenter had just brushed you off, telling you to talk to the quartermare. The quartermare is the one who’d sent you to all the shop bosses in the first place. The tailor had been the only one to listen. You finally have a set of clothes that isn’t patterned after a suit. You find your way back to the stairs that climb to the area of the palace containing your workshop. A nearby guard stares at you; it was your third time through here in half an hour. Fuck them, too. A rumor had started spreading that you’d have killed Twilight if not for Celestia’s timely intervention, and you’re pretty sure of its vector. Odd timing, considering Twilight has been spending more and more time with you, working or otherwise. Maybe that’s the reason, what do you know? Catty stallions and dismissive mares, what did you do to deserve this? Ah, right. For once in your life, you made the mistake of asking for responsibility. With all this runaround, you can’t even dodge it. You finally reach your workshop. Twilight’s there, her hindquarters turned to you as she looks over something on the big square workbench in the room’s center. You change your stride to make as little noise as possible with each footfall. She’s so engrossed in whatever she’s looking at that she doesn’t notice you come up alongside her and flick some of the primaries of a wing. “Hey.” She jumps a good two feet away from you, looking at you wild-eyed. You did have a bit more edge on your greeting than you wanted. Twilight tilts her head as she looks you over, once she’s recovered her wits. “Is something wrong?” “I’m a big disciple of the ancient tradition of ‘fake it ‘til you make it’. I’m trying to fake being calm.” She looks at your balled-up fists. “You’re doing a bad job of it.” “You’re not supposed to be able to read my body language yet.” ”I’m a quick study.” You screw up you face in a confused grimace. “Is that a-” Twilight’s wearing a slight smile. “Heh, a’ight. You got me with that one.” ”Seriously, what’s wrong?” You relax your fists, stretching and working your fingers. “In the past couple days I’ve gone from benign curiosity to object of scorn in this palace. Turns out asking to be taken seriously has its drawbacks.” ”Are they refusing to help you?” You nod glumly. ”I could talk to them, they wouldn’t-” “No. Stop. I didn’t get out from under Celestia’s wing just to huddle under yours.” Twilight extends a wing, looks at it quizzically, then back at you. Her face suddenly lights up. “Oh, right. Sheltering. Common saying.” “Uh, yeah.” ”Sorry, I’m just thinking about, well, this.” She starts circling around the table to you, staring at the large sheet of paper that had occupied her attention when you entered. “You literally have wings, don’t tell me that’s not a natural turn of phrase.” ”I wasn’t born with them, Anon.” “Huh. Wild.” She reaches your side. ”Anyway, I was thinking about this… thing. You describe it as a device like the generator we’ve been working on, basically. I get that it works backwards – power in to turn instead of turning to power out – but that’s just it. Isn’t that all? What’s giving you trouble?” Ah, the servomotors whose parts you’re denied. “It needs a feedback sensor. Tells it where it is. I can’t make Hall sensors or photodetectors so I need to make these dumb inter-meshing electrical contacts, embedded in two glass plates that rub against each other. The miniaturization spell we’ve been testing will work well for that, but they wear down in time, and making them smaller makes them thinner, so they’ll wear out faster.” ”And you want to avoid wear.” “Just like in everything we’re doing. Precision’s the whole point. It’s like when you move a leg, your body knows where the leg is still. That’s what it is. Kinesthesia. Motor needs to know where it is for appropriate precision. If it wears down, it loses precision. Besides, I don’t have the means to make a controller for it.” Twilight stares at the page for a few more moments. “The come-to-life spell can account for the controller.” “We need twelve for a single hand. That’s with only three fingers and a thumb.” She looks down at your hand. “No, we’ll do it like some birds. Two fixed and two digits that could be opposed or not.” “Alright. Add a thirteenth for the wrist. That’s a lot of information channels for the spell to track just for activation. Another thirteen for position sensing. You said the more the spell needs to manage, the harder it is to cast.” ”Anon, if there’s no other way, then we’ll make do. It’ll be difficult to animate, but not impossible. It’ll still be a lot easier than if I tried to cast the spell responsible for the motion itself as well.” There was still another problem here she’d told you. You can’t remember; your mind felt overfull. Too many other things you’re ignoring. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. We’re not even here yet, we...” You wipe your face, then reach out to roll the paper up. “Getting ahead of ourselves.” You put it on a shelf underneath the desk, with all the other large sheets containing your designs and calculations. “We can’t make any because we’re not going to get the mounting hardware or shells.” ”I’ll go talk to them-” “And what would that solve? If anything they’d respect me even less. At least leave me my pride, damnit.” ”If there’s no other way...” “Do you think this was set up?” She looks at you, confused. “Sorry?” “Like, is this a test or something? Is Celestia getting back at me for challenging my isolation?” ”A test maybe, but revenge definitely not. That’s not her way. And I don’t know what she’d be testing you on.” “Yeah, that doesn’t make sense. She wanted to shelter me, so I don’t think she’d suddenly drop it all in my lap. But the timing’s suspicious, Twilight. All this shit started happening just two days ago, and it all happened at once. Maybe it’s just one pony behind it.” She shook her head. “I guess it’s possible...” Then she looks back up at you. “But don’t you have other things you need to be doing than inventing conspiracies?” “Don’t remind me. I’m still working on the Appleloosa thing. I can make and remake systems, but there being living, breathing peo- er, ponies involved, that’s, uh, it’s throwing me. It’s a totally different kind of pressure. Even with Luna’s help something’s just not clicking. It should be as easy as just moving things around, but these reserves are in-place for reasons. Should I just be taking them? Will the ponies I’m inconveniencing dislike Celestia for it? I can’t have my first job in her service bring her disdain.” You sit heavily in your chair and slump over the desk, head in your hands. “I’m not cut out for this. I was never management material. Celestia made a mistake.” Twilight looks at you sidelong. “Don’t say that.” “Well then I made a mistake in making her think she made a mistake.” Twilight looks you up and down, then sighs. “Anon, I’ll tell you something it took me a long time to understand, so accept the hard-earned lesson without argument. Celestia is generous with, ah, mistakes. I don’t think she’s going to punish you for not getting it right on the first try.” “Mmph.” You look over and meet her eyes. ”I’m worried about you.” You manage a thin smile. “Join the club. There’s two other members already, and if there hadn’t been, there’d be no reason to worry in the first place.” She snorts. “Not three? You have ponies looking out for you, but that doesn’t matter if you don’t look out for yourself.” To this you don’t reply. Twilight looks at you for a few more moments, before shaking her head and walking back around the table, this time to where the half-assembled generator sat. Her hooves against the floor echo around the room. You’d never really appreciated how far away you could hear a pony coming or going in this palace. Your bolt upright in your seat, drawing a strange look from Twilight. How did you never think of that? Celestia’s ‘prankster skills’… Ponies can’t really be stealthy, not inside a mostly stone palace like this. Any stealth is good stealth; she must have found a way to get around unnoticed. You don’t have hard hooves, you have fleshy feet. And socks, to boot. You just needed to know your likely targets and their nighttime schedules, and a capable light source for navigation. Fortunately, one of the few ponies who liked you would know all the goings-on of the palace at night; that could cover the former. The latter was sitting in a drawer in your room, as it had been since a week after your arrival. Just needed power. “One thing at a time, Twilight. Lets finish that generator.” “Alright, now duplicate this part here; commutators tend to wear out so we’ll need to pull this side out and put a new one in once in awhile, if we can’t fix it. Other side shouldn’t need it.” Twilight looks it over. The requested part represented about a third of the whole structure. ”It’d be easier if we just had the parts in question. Duplication is more difficult the more complex the object is.” “Uh, alright. Yeah we can get this apart again easily enough.” You dismantle that third of the machine quickly; you’d designed it for rapid breakdown, but mostly it was thanks to the experience of having to rebuild it several times before already, when Twilight asked about little details or wanted to record something. By now, she has more notes on this thing than you do. Once the central assembly is removed, she puts her horn near it, and squeezes her eyes shut. While the object and her horn both glow, nothing happens immediately. You look over to her and notice her straining. You reach out to stop her when suddenly. POP. BANG. A rapid displacement of air is followed by the sound of parts hitting the workbench. You look back and see a perfect duplicate of the entire center assembly, sitting on its side next to the original. “Well, that’s the biggest thing I’ve seen you clone so far.” ”Don’t ask me to do much more than that.” Twilight wobbles on her feet slightly. “Can’t think of anything I’d need to. Well, as long as you have a spell that can repair things.” ”Of course I do.” “That’s just what I like to hear.” The two of you rebuild the section, and place it back in its proper position. “Remember the power levels we agreed on.” ”I have to do this by intuition, Anon. I can’t give an exact output any more than you can push on something with an exact force.” You smile at her. “I have faith.” After a moment of staring at you, she smiles back. ”I’ll get it done.” She looks at the generator, and closes her eyes once more. The small shaft starts spinning, very slowly at first, then increasing. You can hear the other parts spin as well, just as they should. Even if it was way noisier than you’d like. Eventually, Twilight’s horn stops glowing. The magenta glow on the shaft is replaced with a softer, golden one. ”And done,” she says, then looks at you and beams. “Should last for quite awhile!” “Well, it ain’t over ‘til… I’m not sure if you have a version of that saying.” You get up from your chair and head over to the door connecting your workshop to your bedroom. Twilight follows you, but stops at the door. “Ah, Anon, are we done here?” “Nah, sec, lemme get something.” She remains outside your door as you move to our nightstand and pull out a drawer. You grab your dead smartphone and show it to Twilight as you walk back out of the room. Her eyes light up. “Anon, is that-” “Yeah, and this is how we’re going to see if everything we did meant anything.” You walk back to the workbench, and pick up a loose, hastily-arranged cable made from a duplicated end of your USB headphones, attached to posts on a boxy extension off one side of the generator. You plug it into your phone, and put the phone on the table. Twilight’s face is close enough to the dead screen that her breath is fogging it up. You’re just trying to look as relaxed as possible as you sit back on your chair. After a couple seconds that feel like hours, the screen brightens slightly. An empty battery sign appears, flashing yellow. ”Yes!” Twilight jumps back, then starts trotting in place. ”Yesyesyesyesyes-” You lean back and release a breath you didn’t know you were holding, then look over to Twilight’s infectious reveling. Then you jump over and sweep her up in a big hug. “Holy fuck, I can’t believe we actually did it!” When you release her again, she’s frozen in mid-stride, two hooves planted and two raised. “Oh, ah, sorry.” She puts all four on the floor and looks at you. She’s still grinning like a madmare. ”I’m happy I could help.” “I couldn’t have done it without you.” She walks back to the table, staring at the phone’s screen while the battery charging animation loops. “Ah, this generator is a little more noise than I’d like. And we still need to get it under the desk.” As soon as you finish speaking, the whole contraption – including your phone – starts floating, surrounded by a magenta glow. Twilight places them all under your desk, on one side of the big shelf, after you scramble to move your planning paper and notes. When you stand again, a small pink dome forms over the whole thing, significantly reducing what noise isn’t transferred through the desk’s frame. You poke the barrier. It feels like glass. “I’m, uh, I gotta get in there to actually use the power.” ”Don’t worry, I can take it down as easily as I put it up.” “I’ll have to get you for that.” ”Yeah.” She suddenly looks at the ground, realizing what that meant. “Ah. Sorry.” “Nah, don’t worry about it. I don’t think I was going to do anything with it for a bit anyway. Like we were saying, I have other things to worry about right now.” You tap the charging phone. “But having this back is going to be a big help. Calculator, camera, voice recorder, notepad, it’s got all sorts of useful stuff.” ”I can’t wait to see it work.” “I’ll show you everything, when it’s ready. ‘Til then, I don’t know, let's do something. Kinda hungry, honestly.” Twilight smiles, then heads for the exit. “I’ll treat.” You can’t stop grinning as you follow her out. You’ll show those fuckwits in the shops, soon enough. First, it’s time to blow off steam with your friend.
5 Night Moves”Anon?” You and Celestia are once more on the balcony of her private library, as the sun begins to set. You’re sitting on the balcony, leaning against the arch connecting it to the tiny private library, almost finished with an accounting of the lives of the ‘Six Pillars.’ Celestia’s also sitting on the balcony, but she’s looking out across the city. “What’s up?” “I haven’t been seeing you at breakfast, the last couple days.” She finally looks to you, smiling. ”You used to eat on such a regular schedule even I thought it was strange, and I’m the one telling the sun when to rise.” “Well, school and work will do that. Just sorta got into the habit of waking up at a certain time. With Princess Luna helping me, figured I’d try to stay up a little later. Her duties make scheduling hard outside our normal meetings.” She paws at the floor with a hoof, then looks back out across the city. “I never thought I’d miss how grumpy you are just after waking up.” After gauging the amount of daylight left, you close the book and stand up. “Never heard that one before.” “It added an unpredictable element to a routine the palace staff has down to an artform. With you around, I don’t have to try to trip them up myself.” With the book in its place on a shelf, you look at her back. Her strange misty mane’s greens and blues clash with the sunset’s oranges and yellows. “You do that to your staff?” She looks back at you over her side, her long neck craning around, and grins. “I have to keep my little ponies alert and prepared for the unexpected.” “Not a bad policy.” She stands and walks over to you. “You never told me why you join me up here.” You have to stop and think back on the first time you did. “You never dismissed me, that first day. You just got up and walked away. Figured I’d follow.” ”Surely that’s not all.” “Well, you come up here just to watch the city. You’re not the kind of per-, uh, pony to just do nothing. I’m guessing you come up here for some time to think. After being alone surrounded by a hundred ponies talking at you, thought maybe you might like some company with no ponies at all in silence.” Celestia smiles, then turns for the stairs down. “You’re a thoughtful one.” You wave the compliment off. “Eh, it gives me time to catch up on some reading.” Both of you make your way through the palace to the meeting room, for the daily royal shift change. On top of the usual ponies from the last several days, Celestia’s assistant Raven Inkwell shows her face again. She’s been gone the past week to some far-flung locale for her duties as archivist, retrieving some document you couldn’t even pretend to care about. Now that she’s back, the seating arrangement’s changed again, putting you a little further from Celestia’s side. Raven smiles at you and telekinetically pulls your chair out. Considering you’ve spent the last few days just shy of persona non grata, this comes as a bit of a shock. You note Prince Blueblood’s pointed look at her. ”Let us get right down to business,” Celestia says. “What will we do for Appleloosa?” “That could have gone better.” Celestia comes around your side. “Your aggressive timetable was inspired.” “Too bad that’s the only thing that worked. All my quantities were off.” ”It was a useful starting point for a new plan.” You shrug, still looking at the ground as you stand outside the hall. Celestia smiles, almost apologetically. “I didn’t think you’d have everything on your first try. Your input was still very useful.” “If I’m going to do this job, I need to do better.” Celestia tilts her head slightly. “Perhaps your standards are a little high.” You finally meet her gaze, fighting down a brief surge of irritation.“All due respect, Princess, but that’s only a more polite phrasing of what I’ve been hearing for three days now.” She pulls her head back into that straight-necked posture you’ve come to associate with catching her off guard. “Is it, now?” “Don’t you mind that, I have a plan.” She leans in again, a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. “Do you, now?” “Yeah, so don’t you worry your regal little head over it.” ”I’ll take your word for it, Anon.” She grins, then turns to leave. “I’ll let you get to it, then.” As she walks away, Luna walks up on your other side. “What doth our sister speak to thee about?” “Just a bit of mischief.” Luna frowns. “Our sister is quite adept at mischief.” “Wish I had a bit of time to study under her, then.” “As thou speakest of time, Anon...” You turn to face her. She looks chagrined. ”We are afraid we will not be able able to make our usual meeting. We are hosting guests, this night.” “Ah, that’s fine. I got something to take care of anyway.” Luna shuffles in place. “Anon, dost thou know the great problem of thy schedule?” “My, uh, what?” ”As thou stayest awake to makest time to see us, thou losest time for us to visit thee in thy dreams.” “I’m like two hallways down and a flight of stairs away. Come see me when I’m awake.” She shakes her head. “Affairs of state keepeth us busy.” You sigh and run a hand through your hair. “You know what? That makes sense. Do you want me to go back?” “Not at all. We appreciate our discussions.” Her expression brightens “We both learn so much!” You chuckle at her enthusiasm. “That’s true, yeah. I know I didn’t get to contribute much back there, but even that was thanks to your help.” ”We enjoy our time with thee, Anon. We wish for more of it.” “Maybe when this all settles down a bit. I did get tossed to the sharks, after all.” Luna frowns. “We are not sure what thou meanest by this.” “Really? Of all the sayings we have in common, that’s one you don’t have?” ”Perhaps it is just our circumstances.” “You going to tell me about those sometime?” Luna takes a step back, a distant look in her eyes. “Sometime.” Then she snaps back to the here and now. “We must prepare for our guests. We wish you luck on that which thou needest attend to.” You give her a wave as she turns to depart, then make way for the wing of the palace containing the working spaces and supply areas. A guard is standing in the middle of that wing’s central hallway. He eyes you as you approach, but only speaks when you stop in front of him. “This wing is closed, Anon. Everypony’s gone home.” You look past him, down the hall. Sure enough, there is no activity. “Can’t let me by anyway, just for a couple minutes?” ”No.” You stare at him, expecting some snide remark. He holds your gaze, saying nothing further “A’ight, good to know.” You shrug and turn to walk away, towards the stairs leading to your workshop. When you reach your personal retreat, Twilight’s looking over more plans on your desk. Her expression brightens when she notices you enter. ”Oh, Anon! I think I figured out some ideal segment ratios here, after looking over some books on avian anatomy and gauging different likely object sizes. I was going to start running some numbers based on the equations you sent me, but...” She looks down at your phone, sitting on the corner of the table. ”I wanted to test this thing’s calculator, but can’t seem to use it.” You walk by her and pick it up thumbing the power button and unlocking the screen. “The touchscreen will only work with my fingers, most likely. At least with any level of precision. I could probably eventually get the hands we’re making to work with it too, but for now just my fingers.” Her bright expression falters. “No ponies can use it?” “Probably not. There’s a grid inside the screen forming an electrostatic field, and my finger interferes with that field in certain ways. That’s how the phone knows I’m touching it. I doubt your hooves have the right electrical properties for it, and your magic probably wont either, unless you learn how to manipulate electromagnetism directly.” You pause for a moment. “Honestly that’s a bad idea, at least regarding the phone. It’s an extremely complex device, you might damage it. I might be able to set up a test rig for you to play with, if you ever suspect or discover magic can do that. A Van de Graaff generator should be enough.” ”A whatnow?” “Collects charge through a spinning belt. Real simple to make, big arcing sparks are very visually impressive. Useful if you need a ton of voltage, and quite safe to play with.” Twilight chews on this while you put your phone in your pocket, then head towards the far door that leads to your bedroom. “I want to get a nap in, if you don’t mind. I just about pulled an all-nighter and I need to get up real late for something tonight.” ”Hey, wait! What about m-” She screws her face up a moment- “What about our work?” “I really do need to take care of something.” You stop at your door, then turn back to her. “Tomorrow. I promise.” She looks down and paws at the floor. “I’ve been monopolizing your time lately, haven’t I?” You walk back over to her, and crouch in front of her. She’s too tall to be at eye-level here, but you didn’t want to look down at her like you normally do standing. “Look, you’re the only one I can talk to about this stuff, and you’ve been a wonderful guide to society at a ground level, around here. My only complaint is that I don’t have more time to spare.” You reach out and ruffle Twilight’s mane. She leans into it a little, but you catch yourself and pull your hand away again. Why do you keep treating her like that? She’s royalty, and putting aside educational differences, probably smarter than you. It might have something to do with the fact she’s as cute as a four foot tall cat, while the other two alicorns you interact with regularly fall within normal human height ranges. You sigh and stand up again. “I have three princesses and two jobs demanding my attention. I don’t need you to leave me alone, I need more time in a day.” ”Sooo… do princesses demanding your attention have anything to do with what you’re doing later tonight?” You can’t help but bark out a laugh, loud enough to startle her. Turning back for your room, you wave a hand dismissively. “As if any pony would be interested in me like that. The smith was probably right about that at least; I’m a freak to you.” ”Don’t say tha-” “Nah, it’s fine. I don’t hold any illusions otherwise. I’m resigned to my fate.” You reach the door, open it, and turn back to her again. She’s staring at you with a look of… incredulity? “Seriously, thanks for looking past my weird appearance and habits, to work with me on all this. It’s been a nice taste of home, working on this stuff, and I’m glad I can do it with you. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She gives you that baffled stare for a few more seconds, then flashes a warm smile. “Yeah. I’ll see you then.” She turns to leave with that curious bouncing trot you’ve come to associate with her happiness. You make your way to your bed, strip down quickly, then collapse onto it. After fishing your phone out of your discarded pants, you set an alarm for midnight. You’ve got some snooping around to do. It’s pitch black in the palace, late at night. You’re dressed down in the softest clothes you had on you. No shoes, just socks. You’ve never felt more comfortable since you’d arrived. You listen to the sound of a guard retreating down the hallway that your workshop’s situated off of. Luna’s guards, you were pretty sure, could see in the dark. More likely to be mares too, you’ve noticed. In fact, you’ve never seen that particular variety – one with no analogue in your home’s mythology, for once – anywhere but the castle. A recessive phenotype, or some endangered race? They were no quieter than the ordinary ponies, at least, and you could use that to your advantage. Once you couldn’t hear the guard anymore, you slipped out of your workshop, closing the door behind you as quietly as possible. You marvel at how well-maintained the doors in the palace are; you never had any reason to notice before now. You’re down the hall in a flash, half power walking and half skating on the smooth floor. Once you reach the stairs to the lower floor, you pause and listen for a moment. No guards to be heard. After retrieving your phone from your pocket, you flip on its flashlight. The bright white illuminates the stairway, allowing you down safely. At the bottom, you stop to listen again, but still hear no hoof-beats. On the solid stone floor of this level, you could run flat-out and still make less noise than a pony’s leisurely stroll. Bit cold through the socks, though. You sprint half the length of the side corridor, but slow near the large full-height windows that replace the solid wall for its remaining length. The view from them quite literally stops you in your tracks. With only your smaller bedroom windows, you never really took the time to appreciate the night. Fuck it, you had time. You sit in a corner of the window’s frame on the floor, looking up and out. Canterlot, at night, is astonishingly beautiful. The prodigal volume of gold used in the city’s architecture, cheerful yet garish by day, glimmers with moonlight and starlight to throw thousands more subtle points of light by night, provoking a sense of childlike wonder at constellations of land-bound stars mirroring those above. With no light pollution, the sky is as clear as pristine wilderness back home, its background color the deepest blue, with even the dimmest stars visible. You’ve never seen so many of them in your life. Bright moonlight provided the only illumination, bathing everything in a pale glow that lends an ethereal air to the cityscape. Its whites look blue. Its purples appear as darker shades that no longer seem to clash against the green forest and grasslands of lower altitudes beyond the city’s mountaintop siting, barely visible above the palace walls as a thin band below the horizon. Star motifs seem very common in pony decoration, naming, and even in the identity-affirming markings that they receive as some sort of magical rite of passage. You wonder if, culturally, they have some affinity for the night. Perhaps this is the way Canterlot’s architecture was always intended to be viewed. You’ll have to see if you can get a pony to escort you around the city proper one night. You only shake yourself free of your awe when you hear hooves from around a corner back where you first entered, near the stairway. Beautiful as the moonlight is, it is your enemy as long as guards are around. After darting across the hall away from the windows, you sidle along the solid wall opposite them until you turn a corner yourself, once more taking advantage of your nigh-silent movement. Continuing onward by the light of your phone, you encounter no further obstacles before reaching the palace’s work wing. A guard patrols the main hallway, from what you can hear. You stop just before the intersection with that hall, until you hear them walk the other way. Poking your head out, you confirm the guard’s back is to you, then tiptoe your way over to the palace smithy with your phone off. If they were going to think you petty and catty like the rest of the colts, you may as well commit the crime. You manage to slip inside without notice. Once in, you turn your light back on. Darkness aside, it doesn’t look much different from when you were here a couple days ago. Sweeps of your phone’s flashlight over the walls and shelves show much the same clutter as then. You stick your head into what you assume is an office, off to one side. Boxes of various sizes occupy more shelves, each with a slip of paper in front. On a hunch, you start looking for a box of a similar size needed to contain the parts you ordered. Three likely candidates stand out. The first paper indicates it’s an order for the guard’s training grounds, for a number of arrowheads. The ergonomics of a pony – even a pegasus – holding a bow confounds you. Unicorns only? The second appears to be for utensils or some sort of cookware. The third box, however, has a paper labeled MISC ITEMS – ANONYMOUS Ah-ha! At the bottom of the note is more scrawled writing: ORDER HELD PER HH PB. You lift the lid on the box just enough to shine your phone’s light inside. Sure enough, the parts are all there. That bitch already had them, and just wouldn’t give them to you! Briefly considering – and then discarding – several ideas on how to leave your mark here, you stalk out of the office, turning your light off and listening for the guard outside. After confirming they’re once more facing away, you step back out and hurry down the hall back to where you came from. You have to find out what HH PB means. It should be easy enough during the day, but you’re on a roll, so why stop now? Scooting down hallways, dodging guards, it’s almost too easy when you’re the quietest thing in the building. Up a floor, across the majority of the central structure. This palace is way bigger than you thought, or at least it seems at night. You have to make conscious effort not to stop in a long gallery to admire the night’s view again. You arrive at what you’re pretty sure is the administrative wing, another wall of windows forming one side of the three-way intersection. The only room you’ve been to in this area is the library, and that’s at the hall’s other end. You’re going to have to figure out what each room here actually does. You turn the hall to get started. With the moonlight at your back, you come face-to-face with a guard. To her credit, the mare doesn’t even flinch. You, however, jump a full two feet back, then rub your face with a hand once you’ve recovered your wits. “Well, shit. I can’t hear you if you don’t move.” ”Noted. Just what are you doing out here?” “Oh, y’know. Checking the place out.” You gesture to the windows behind you. “It’s drop-dead gorgeous outside and I can’t help myself.” She tilts her head, looking you over. “I believe the gallery would be suited to your tastes. You can find it back-” Her eyes reach your feet, and you can see her slit pupils go wide. “Uh, back, ah, sirmustyoureallybesoindecent-” Muffled laughter draws both of your attention to a pillar at one corner of the intersection. ”Who goes there?!” From behind the pillar walks Princess Celestia. Her horn is glowing, and her hooves are wreathed in its golden glow. They don’t make contact with the floor; she’s ‘walking’ six inches above it. The guard goes ramrod straight. “Apologizes, your Majesty.” ”Oh, come now. You’re just doing your job.” You find you’ve unconsciously straightened, yourself. “Ah, hey Princess. Wasn’t expecting to see you around this late at night.” She eyes you and grins. “I could say the same. When I realized what you were doing, I couldn’t help but observe. I thought you were all business, but now I see you have your own flights of whimsy, with choice hours to pursue them.” “I did say I had a plan.” ”One that involves taunting my sister’s guards with certain footwear for the sake of silent passage, it seems.” The guard, with some effort, manages to stand even straighter. Celestia leans in close to the guard, “Do you have something to say?” You swear you can see the poor mare sweat. ”It seems, ah, like, er, you have everything underrr… control. I’ll, uh, be going now.” The mare crosses her legs then executes what you’re pretty sure is an exact one-eighty, marching back down the hall double-time, turning the corner at its end and going out of sight. Celestia looks at you. “No guards around now, are there? You’re free to carry on.” She winks at you. Your mouth opens and closes a couple times as you try to find words to articulate the dozen questions vying to be first out of your mouth, before you give up and simply nod. By the time you reach the first door, Celestia’s nowhere in sight. You’re not going to be able to shake the feeling of being watched for the rest of the night. The first door is locked. After making sure the guardmare is still out of sight, you walk down to the next door. This one is unlocked. When you open the door, you find the room inside lit. And occupied. You’re on your fourth cup of coffee in as many hours, pulling an all-nighter to catch up on work that piled up while you were gone. Archivist and secretary to royalty, weary but loving your job all the same, wanting to be nothing else despite the mountain of paperwork confronting you on your return. Life never gets easier for Raven Inkwell, but you’re used to it. Now you’re confronted with Anonymous, estranged ambassador of a fabled kind, a strange stallion of stranger ideas, standing in your office’s doorway in the middle of the night with socks on. Oh my. “Hello, Anon. Please, have a seat. I do not have enough coffee in me to deal with you right now, but I will amend that posthaste.” He babbles a bit, not stepping in or out. “I, uh, didn’t mean to-” “I insist. Maybe I can help you find… whatever you look for, at this time of night.” You’re already turning away to pour another cup of coffee, and top off your own. You concentrate on the cups and focus your magic, quickly heating them to an exacting temperature. Anon, meanwhile, finally decides to enter your office, closing the door behind him, and being careful to make sure it latches quietly. You float his cup and a saucer to match over to a side table near the chair he selected to settle into. “Help yourself, I have more where it came from. What brings you around at this absurd hour?” He purses his lips as he collects his thoughts, then looks at his cup. You both take a sip. ”This is some good stuff,” Anon says. You gesture to the massive tankard you’d been pouring from. “I keep my own supply.” ”Remind me to stop by more often, then.” “As long as you tell me why you stopped by in the first place.” ”You know, maybe you can help me. Saw a note, had some sort of code on it. ‘HH PB’. Any ideas what it means?” “Ah. Did you see it as a signature or something similar? That would mean Prince Blueblood.” Anon sat back in the chair and was silent a moment. Then, quietly, “Now that’s interesting.” You read another page and sign off on its contents during the time he thinks over this factoid, levitating the paper into your ‘done’ pile and floating over another one. ”Has he said anything about me to you, since you came back?” “Nothing I felt inclined to acknowledge.” ”What’s that supposed to mean?” “His Highness may oversee the palace’s household staff, but I work for the Princesses on the bureaucratic side, and I occupy a very favorable position, at that. Simply put, I do not have to listen to a word he says.” Anon snorts in amusement at that last part. Normally stallions would get peevish you dismissed one who had found his way into a position of authority. You’re glad Anon has as little time for that nonsense as you do. That he cut straight to the point was nice, as well. You’re starting to see what Celestia sees in him. ”I take it he didn’t have anything nice to say.” “He rarely does.” ”Worse than usual, then.” “He did seem rather peeved at your sudden increase in status. Did something happen while I was away?” ”Your boss tossed my ass into the fire. Gave me run of the place and set me to work on some relief project, three day deadline. You came back on the third day, that’s what we went over in today’s meeting.” You take a long look at him as you chew on that. It had to be more; Blueblood would be familiar with advisors coming and going. Celestia changes them out faster than she runs through students. If Anon knew that, though, he seemed oblivious. ”’Nother thing. Why is your boss still awake, and stalking me through the halls?” You sigh. “Curiosity, I imagine.” ”Sneaking around her own castle?” “When you live as long as she has, you can afford yourself some whimsical excursions.” ”Think she’s still out there?” “After you discovered she had followed you in the first place? No, she would not find any fun in that.” He furrows his brows. “I see.” “At least, you saw.” You both take another sip of your coffee, and you fill out a few more forms. ”I wonder what it’s like to live that long.” “Lonely.” He starts at this, then gives you a searching look. “It would be, wouldn’t it?” “I will not breach confidence with details, but as a good friend to Her Majesty, Anon, I can tell you she is lonely. She has her few close confidantes, and I feel honored as one among them, but we live mortal lives. She has lived for over fifty generations.” ”No helping that along with magic, huh? Those confidantes living mortal lives, I mean.” “If that possibility existed, do you not think she would have accomplished it already?” ”Yeah, probably. Fair point.” For a moment, Anon almost looks hurt. Then contemplative, as he turns his attention to the floor. Almost as if that loneliness was a problem to solve. You’d only ever known him to throw himself into his various projects. You thought that was proper, noble even; a kindred spirit of sorts, even if his line of work was foreign to you. You hadn’t expected such a side to him as this. If he wanted to solve this loneliness, you’d help him in any way you could. What kind of friend to Celestia would you be if you didn’t? After you make your way through a few more articles of paperwork, he finally speaks again. ”Do you have some paper, and something to write with?” “An archivist’s office, Anon, has plenty such things.” ”Cool, toss some over here for me.” After you comply, he immediately starts writing down notes and drawing rough images full of labels. His whole demeanor changes; you’re not even sure he’s aware of you anymore, or of where he is. You both work in near-silence for an hour, only punctuated by infrequent questions of Anon’s. You don’t even feel miffed that the strange stallion then falls asleep in your office wearing socks. You’re going to need to fetch more coffee, though. As you stand to make your way for the kitchens, you glance at his work. Is that supposed to be a pony?
6 Blinded With ScienceYou’re indulging in what passed for stargazing, in a city. The sounds of the city drift up to where you and Luna sit, on top of your old apartment building, despite the fact the place is deserted. More stars are visible than there should be, but Luna chalked this up to your memory filling in the gaps, when you mentioned the effects of light pollution to her. “And you’ll see a cluster of seven stars over there, almost over our heads. Three like a tail and four in a box. That’s called the Big Dipper, it’s the hindquarters of Ursa Major.” ”In our world, that is an animal’s name.” Luna’s barely mumbling; she’s been totally lost in your astronomy lesson. When she brought up the fact the stars were different between your world and hers, you couldn’t help yourself. “Is it like a bear?” ”Yes.” It’s weird how clear her speech is, even this quiet. “That’s kind of strange, considering it means bear but in a dead language, where I’m from.” ”Very curious.” It’s also pretty cute how laconic she gets when she’s not paying attention, compared to her normal archaic speech pattern. “Anyway, look at the box section, specifically the two stars opposite the tail. If you draw a line through them, you can follow that line to another star here, at the end of the tail of a similar pattern of seven stars.” You point where you’re looking, then move your arm as indicated. “That’s Polaris, which is close to true north. If you can find that star, you’ll always know which way you’re heading.” ”We see!” “You can also tell the time. You can imagine Polaris as the center of a clock, and the line you drew is the clock’s hand. Top of the clock is midnight, bottom of the clock is noon, but the numbers go backwards. Normally you wouldn’t be able to see the bottom of the clock, but you have to rotate the face depending on when in the year it is. Considering it’s winter, the current orientation doesn’t need to be changed much. According to the stars, it’s sometime around midnight.” Luna frowns, then looks around the dreamscape. “It is rather warm to be winter.” “Well, I don’t know how dreams work. That’s a late winter sky at least.” ”How canst thou tell?” You shift how you’re laying on your back, adjusting your shoulders. Beside you, Luna rolls half onto her side, to grant her a better field of view. “Alright, go back to the Big Dipper.” ”The bear rear.” “Yeah. Remember we used the far side of the box? Look at the other side now. Draw a line between those other two stars and follow it in the opposite direction.” Once more you trace the path with an outstretched arm. You can see Luna’s head tracking it at the same time. “Follow it to this bright star here. That’s Regulus. Remember where it is, we’ll get back to it. Go back to the Big Dipper, and this time follow the curve of the tail. We’re looking at two brighter stars. First, here, is Arcturus.” You pause moving your arm until you see Luna’s acquired it, then continue its curving path. “Continue through the curve until you get to this second bright star, here. That’s Spica. These two with Regulus form the spring triangle. So named because it’s visible for most of spring.” ”But thou sayest it is winter.” “Yeah, I’m getting to that. Back to the Big Dipper. This time we’re going to draw a diagonal line across the box, in line with the first couple stars in the tail. Continue that line down and you’ll see two bright stars close together, that’s Castor and Pollux. Continue the line and you’ll see a reddish star, named Betelgeuse, marking the corner of a new box, this one with a line of three stars in the middle. That’s Orion, and it’s just as important as the Big Dipper to navigate the night sky.” ”This is all so fascinating. How dost thou remember all this?” “Eh, outdoors program when I was younger. It’s just drawing a bunch of lines between shapes.” She snorts at this. “From Orion we could reverse the line to find the Big Dipper, if we couldn’t find it initially, by cutting diagonally from that star closest to the horizon, Rigel, through Betelgeuse, back to Castor, and onward. Those three smaller stars – Orion’s Belt – can draw a line above the horizon through Aldebaran to that dense formation there, the Pleiades. But we’re more interested in following it the other way. That brings us to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Now if we drew a line through the top two stars of Orion’s boxy body in the same direction, we’d get to Procyon. Those two with Betelgeuse make the winter triangle, which is like the spring triangle, but for, well, winter. The fact we can see both means it’s late winter or early spring. In this dream, at least. As long as the stars stay the way they are. We were looking at a summer sky when we first started talking, at the beginning of the dream.” ”We had noticed they changed. Human dreams appeareth less fixed than those of ponies. It is, at times, irksome. Sufferest thou often under their caprices?” “Not often, after I’d grown. When I was younger, I had frequent nightmares. I was never one of those people who could control their dreams. All I could do was certain actions to try to kick me out of them. Couple of them usually worked. Besides that, I was usually at my dreams’ mercy, with whatever they felt like throwing at me.” ”Escape, at least, seems a useful skill.” You lay back down on your back, and Luna arranges her legs beneath herself again. The two of you take in the stars in silence for some time. It was nice to be able to just relax. Luna had that effect on you, at times, an aura of quiet calm. After some time, she speaks again. ”Thy people claimest the moon.” “If you want to look at it that way.” She’s looking at the moon, now, her expression sad. ”Is there anything beyond? The stars are so far…” “Well, we sent probes and stuff to planets. Some beyond the solar system. No people, though.” You think back on the first time you’d told her about Apollo missions. “Hey, uh, if ponies haven’t been there, how did you know it’s just rocks?” ”One pony has.” You sit upright and look over at her. “Wait, what? How?” She looks at you briefly, then to the roof you two sit on. “Thou art the only one in the palace who knows not the story. Most, though, know not the whole of it. We were that pony. We were there for a long, long time.” You can only stare at her. She continues looking down, avoiding eye contact. ”We were… unruly. We became a hazard, threatened our sister and our country’s order. We were banished, for a millennium.” Your jaw drops. “Isn’t that a good chunk of your life? Maybe most of it?” She nods slowly. “Your sister’s insane.” She shakes her head negative, this time. “No, she was right to do so. Her less reasonable course was not sending us back, when we returned. She took a gamble on Twilight Sparkle and her friends having the power to stop us. That gamble paid off, and here we are, restored.” “Holy fuck.” ”Anon, believest thou in redemption?” “Well, I’m no theologist, but from what I do know, a lot of faiths from my world dealt with it. That one lives – in their one life or across many – to tip the balance towards the positive, spent bettering yourself. Prove you’re righteous or pure of spirit or something, and go somewhere nicer. Overcoming past faults was part of that. Everyone’s flawed. I wasn’t a religious type myself, but it’s a comforting thought.” Luna thought on this, still not meeting your eyes. “That is… a noble perspective. Thou didst say thy world was harsher than ours.” “I don’t know what you did, but you’re immortal, aren’t you? You have until the end of time to make up for it, and I haven’t seen any hint you’re evil.” Luna smiles, but it’s a sad one, and she stands. “We appreciate thy words, but thou knowest not what we’d done, truly. We were a monster.” “I don’t see-” But Luna’s getting worked up, speaking harsher over you. ”Thou doest now. We caused great suffering. Even in exile, we tormented ponies in dreams, to the point of insomnia. Our restoration was only a couple years ago. Our labor at night to run this nation well has only just begun. Our soothing of dreams is penance. It will be another thousand years before we could possibly repay any debt.” “It doesn’t make a diff-” ”And we cannot expect thee to treatest us so friendly, with this knowledge, but thou hast all right to know after the time we have spent together.” She needs to stop interrupting you. You try to reach a hand out, but she backs away, too lost in herself to let you get close. You see hints of tears streaking down her cheeks. How did it work when you were little? Something to do with your neck. Twist it fast enough, at a certain angle. Like you were trying to pop your own head off. “If I can’t get a word in edgewise, here…” After an experimental tweak, you whip your head up and to the side. And bolt upright in your bed. It takes you a moment in your groggy sleep inertia, but you remember where Luna worked from, in the middle of the night. Clothes, socks, phone. Check, check, check. You grab your shoes in your hand before you depart. Out the door, wait for the guard to go, through the hall, down the stairs. Down another hall, across the way. Dodge guards patrolling the hallways looping around the throne room, then across the mirrored core floorplan. Admin wing, up two flights. Make sure no guard’s standing in place this time. She’s turned the other way, good. Dart across. Turn left, around the library’s upper floors. Three doors down. Conference room where you spoke with Luna just hours ago in-person. Across room, through doors on other side. Luna is alone in the room beyond; the skeleton crew of night shift bureaucrats and functionaries always leave her alone during her time allotted to patrolling dreams. Good, they wouldn’t like your tone. She picks her head up from where she’d been slumped across the table. She seems like she’s put herself back together in the time it took you to traverse the palace, but she still looks thoroughly miserable. You start walking towards her. ”Anon, we mean-” She breaks off and stands up when she realizes you’re not stopping. As she rears back, when you reach her, you get your shoulders under her forelegs and wrap her body in a hug. Her front hooves flail behind your head as she squawks in alarm, but she doesn’t try to protest in any more substantial way, and you know she’s plenty capable. “Don’t you dare assume what I think of anything. I’m not one of your precious little subjects, too scared of whatever you were to sleep. I’ve dealt with my nightmares already. And don’t fucking interrupt me when I’m trying to make you feel better. You can’t escape it when we’re not dream-bound.” Eventually she stops her useless flailing and relaxes in your grip. In fact, she goes limp. She’s heavy; figures ponies would weigh more than humans of similar heights, what with the longer bodies. If her rear legs weren’t still supporting most of her weight, she might push you over. “Feeling better?” She speaks quietly, since her head’s close to your ear, just over one shoulder. “Anon, thou art most improper-” ”You can pull away any time.” Half a minute passes before she finally does so. When she’s back on all fours, you jab a finger into her chest. The action’s made a bit awkward by the fact her chest is only a bit higher than your waist. “Now calm down. I’ve already seen enough of you to form an opinion, and none of it leads me to believe you’re a monster. Twilight’s fucking friendship magic or whatever the hell it was must have worked, because you’re plenty friendly. That’s good enough for me.” She looks up at you for a long time. You channel your inner predator to make a staring contest out of it. Prey blinks first. Luna turns away. “We apologize. We are so used to ponies being fearful of us, so we simply assumed.” “Yeah, well fuck ‘em. I’m not a pony.” ”Thou cursest often when agitated.” “Damn right I do.” You drop your shoes to the floor beside you and step into them. This draws Luna’s eyes down. You see her react to your feet, but she doesn’t comment. You’re going to have to figure out why ponies get so hung up when you’re not wearing any shoes. “Now I got a better idea than you being all mopey about literally a thousand years ago. How about we go back to talking stars. Your city is mindbogglingly gorgeous at night. Enough to bring me to tears. Why don’t you take me out there and show me all of your stars, now that you’ve seen some of mine?” After one more searching look, Luna finally nods and smiles. “That is a splendid idea.” You have been an exceptionally efficient pony, today. It had only taken you a few nights to work through your post-return backlog. The palace’s administrative wing buzzes with fully optimized productivity. You’re all caught up on paperwork that actually needed your attention. Better than caught up, even; you have some free time. The palace’s main areas are always quiet around noon. For a couple hours, most activity ceases, in the span between Celestia’s private court hours and hearing public petitions. This makes it the perfect time for a stroll. Your hoof-beats echo through the stone halls of the palace’s main floor, a solitary sound with no others to join you in your chorus of movement. The place is deserted. That’s fine, it meant nopony would bother you with other minor problems only you could address. Sometimes you regretted making yourself so valuable to the state machinery. Then you realize how much smoother everything runs with you here. Nothing wrong with a little pride in one’s work. As you round a corner, you see a purple bundle of anxiety dancing in place at an intersection. So much for nopony needing your help. “Your Serene Highness, may I do anything to help you?” Twilight stops her shuffling and turns to look at you in surprise, as if she wasn’t expecting anyone to show. “Oh, Raven! Have you seen Anonymous around? We were supposed to meet this morning, but he never showed.” You note the small but stuffed saddlebags she wears. “Your Highness now makes deliveries to the ambassador in exile?” She shuffles in place and takes a step back, looking at her own bags. “Oh, this is for a project we’re working on. We’ve been working together a lot lately.” You chuckle at her obvious agitation. “I know, Your Highness. Apologies. I have not seen Anon all day; he may be sleeping in. He spent a significant portion of last night with Her Majesty, Princess Luna.” Twilight recoils at this, wings half-unfurling. Poor mare needs to stop wearing her heart on her wings, no matter how new they are to her. “Not like that, I assure you. They walked the city.” She looks ashamed at her own reaction, then looks around. “I’m sure the guards are having a field day with that.” “The Night Watch rarely speaks to the regulars about anything, and their loyalty to Her Highness would prevent them from gossiping.” Twilight recovers herself then walks towards you. “That’s good. He has enough problems already.” “Do you wish me to escort you?” ”I know the way.” You give her a very carefully calibrated look, and adopt your most helpful tone. “I live to serve the princesses, of which you now count among, Your Highness.” Come on, Twilight. She knows you’re not that dense, and you know she’s not that dense. Then she flashes an apologetic smile. “I’d appreciate the company.” “Allow me, then.” You take the lead, but Twilight soon falls in alongside rather than behind you. ”Now that he’s not as shut in,” she says, “have you noticed Anon’s behaviors can be… peculiar?” “His people have all sorts of strange mannerisms.” ”He does so many things that are unexpected. And unexpectedly forward, if you know what I mean. I don’t even know if he intends it. I was thinking I might have to educate him, but I’ve never talked to colts about, ah, that stuff before.” “I cannot think of any more qualified. Your Highness’s professional yet friendly demeanor precisely suits such a task.” ”It’s just a little embarrassing to talk to him about things like eye contact, certain elements of personal space, and uh…” “Socks.” ”Socks.” You two look at each other after saying that same word at that same moment, and can’t suppress laughs. “Do his inappropriate behaviors bother Your Highness?” She seems shocked at the question, and readjusts her wings on her back. Seriously, mare, get those wings under control. ”N-no, not at all.” “Then surely explaining such matters to him poses little problem.” You two continue in silence for a time. Twilight’s wings still settle awkwardly over her saddlebags. ”Am I wrong to be receptive?” “Pardon, Your Highness?” ”I want to be offended, Raven, despite knowing it’s likely a misunderstanding. Call me old fashioned, but stallions don’t behave in certain ways. Coming from someone so obviously foreign, though, it’s more endearing than off-putting. And he’s so eager to share what he knows! I never thought I’d meet a stallion who could teach me something. Is it wrong to be receptive, even if he probably doesn’t mean it?” “If Your Highness would allow me some boldness, if things play out that way, your heart will not allow anyone to speak against it. Any further advice would fall under Her Imperial Highness, Princess Cadance’s purview. I can write a letter to her on this, if Your Highness wishes.” ”Ah, no, I’ll be fine. Who knows how she’ll tease me about this. I’m just confused. I don’t know how I should feel or react. I don’t know how I do feel.” She sighs. “I guess I could at least be open to the possibility.” “We all can only ever remain open, Your Highness.” Twilight looks you over, then away again. The two of you file into the stairway that leads to the floor Anon’s workshop is on, and ascend in silence. She rolls one wing at its shoulder when the two of you reach the top. “Ah, if I can have a turn being bold, why don’t you have anypony? You’re the most dependable mare I’ve ever known, and I guess with all this, you’re more sensitive than I’d imagined.” You start down the hall again. “Equestria and Equestria alone has my love, Your Highness. I make myself his most loyal, dutiful, and devoted mare. I desire only that, and it suffices.” ”More devoted than Princess Celestia?” “I did not claim leadership of the metaphorical herd.” The two of you arrive at Anon’s workshop’s door. Twilight opens it, and you peer inside. Anon is at his desk, slumped over it. His upper body is sprawled across the table, with his head resting on his arms, snoozing. You look at Twilight’s expression. Then her wings, which are slowly sliding down the sides of her body into a loose, relaxed position. “Perhaps we should return another time?” ”No, it’s fine. I can work around him. I don’t want him to think I brushed him off. He needs these pieces I have.” “As Your Highness wishes.” Twilight walks into the workshop, but stops and turns back to you. “Thank you, Raven. Seriously.” “As I said, I live to serve. Your Serene Highness may seek me out at any time.” Twilight lowers her head and forebody in a short bow, totally unnecessary from a superior. If any guards saw this flagrant reversal of courtesy, you’d lose your careful composure. You bow your head back to her and hastily close the door, turning back for the ground floor. Raven Inkwell; Chief Archivist, High Secretary, Princesses’ Right Wing, and foremost servant of Equestria. And now it seems, between encouraging Anon’s helping Celestia and this, Royal Matchmaker. Something tickles the back of your neck, stirring you awake, but not enough to open your eyes or elicit any movement from you. You’d fallen asleep at your desk. Again. The thing tickles your neck once more. There’s also a very light pressure across your shoulders. Your upper back is warm, like you’ve been covered with a blanket, but that weight isn’t distributed right, and you hadn’t intended to fall asleep out here in the first place, so your bedding should still be on your bed. It doesn’t cover nearly enough of you to be a blanket anyway. You finally open your eyes. Twilight’s head is only a foot and a half away from yours, dozing just as peacefully as you so recently were. One of her wings is draped over your shoulder, the other fallen to the floor beside the chair she’d moved over to you to rest on. On the table on front of you two is a smallish bag and several sheets of paper you don’t remember being there last night. On those pages are many diagrams with labels and calculations in Twilight’s writing. She did all this while you were asleep? Twilight’s wing is slowly sliding down your back, on its way to join its sibling hanging to the floor. You reach a hand out underneath it, but twisting your body to do so finishes the job. You’ve never held a live bird before, so having all these feathers in your hand is a new experience. The biggest feathers, at the end of her wing, are larger than you’d imagined, and larger than any feathers you’ve ever gotten your hands on.The way they fit together is some natural marvel of engineering. Despite its light weight, the entire structure is sturdier than you’d imagined. Nature is fascinating, and a better designer than you’ll ever be. As gentle as you’re trying to be, your manhandling of her wing wakes Twilight up. She nickers softly and half-turns, half-rolls her head towards you. “Mmph. What are you-” She opens her eyes. ”AH!” “AH!” She yanks her wing back, then pinwheels the other to stay seated on her chair. “Sorry, you, uh, y’just...” You point a finger over your shoulder. “I didn’t mean to wake you up, honest. Since you apparently were careful enough not to wake me.” She looks away from you and sits up on the chair. “You looked cold.” You pick up the small bag on the desk and open it. It’s filled with a tiny, translucent rings of various colors and sizes. ”When you said you wanted me to grow some crystals for you, I didn’t expect you to ask for donut-shaped ones, and I didn’t expect you to need them so small.” “Y’know, how do gemstones not fall under the whole money duplication thing?” ”Our jewelers know enough to look for impurities we can’t reproduce.” “Oh, that makes sense.” ”So what are these for?” “Working with tiny motors and tiny gearboxes, we can use a different sort of bearing. That’s what these are for; they’re jewel bearings. Very small, low-friction, low-wear bearings . Perfect for the high reliability I want. And you just proved you can replace them. I hope it wasn’t too much effort.” “It was more difficult than usual, only because of the abnormal shape. When we grow crystals magically, we just let it grow according to natural inclination.” You look over her sheets. They’re filled with different designs for a claw-like hand, using ballpark estimates of electrical properties, run through formulas you’ve taught her. The mechanics are drawn up according to anatomical principles Twilight said she derived from many works on zoology. She’s quickly outgrowing the basic stuff you’ve already taught her. No wonder she was Celestia’s personal student. “You really go hard in the paint on this, huh?” ”Hard in what? I’ve spent my whole life studying, Anon. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.” You pat her on her back. “I like that.” She sits ramrod straight. ”Ah, Anon, maybe we need to have a little, uh, talk about, er, cultural exchange.” “You know, where I’m from, that could be innuendo.” How does a purple horse blush? ”I mean talk about certain, er, social norms and practices!” “Hey you wanted to know about my smartphone, right?” You take it out of your pocket, thumb through the screen lock, and bring up your music library. ”Well, yes, but...” You can almost see her curiosity override whatever she was trying to say. “Well I got a bunch of music on here, if you want some cultural exchange. Listen to this, it should be very different than any music you have here. It’ll keep you occupied while I look over your work.” You pull out your earbuds, remove the rubber tips, and plug the end into your phone. “Here, lemme see your ears.” Twilight hesitates, but ultimately complies, turning her head towards you and down. She only looks up at you for brief moments as you gently place the earbuds into her ears, nestled so the speaker portion is properly oriented but not fully inserted. ”So what are these fo-” She immediately clamps her mouth closed when you start the music. Her eyes go wide, her face gets all screwed up, and she looks like she wants to toss her head to chuck the earbuds out of her ears, but she settles down when she gets used to music being piped directly into her skull. ”Oh, this is what you meant when you said you couldn’t take credit for that ‘poetry in motion’ comment.” You look over the first of Twilight’s sheets. This one is mostly her crunching the numbers you’d provided, running calculations for different circumstances. She’s currently using your calculator to beam synthpop to her brain, so you can’t check them, but they looked accurate enough to you. She really is a quick study. The next of the sheets goes a lot further into mechanical design, showing several different configurations for hands, with notes and ideal measurements for each. They all look distinctly like bird talons to you, but you suppose that makes sense. From what you could tell, the closest analogue to your hands were minotaurs, which were somewhat rare. Some form of avian species was the next best candidate, and besides them, griffons were more readily available and used their talons to manipulate objects. The designs allowed for excellent flexibility, but you were worried about how many motors would be necessary. ”You w-write songs about this?” You glance at Twilight, who looks mortified. “What, about making love?” ”Yeah, I me- wait, the elements of harmony?!” “Elements IN harmony.” ”Oh.” You return your attention to her work and flip to her third sheet. This one, it seems, is mostly written for your benefit. It details some quirks about the spell Twilight needs to make this whole contraption work. The calculations in the first sheet, it turns out, were Twilight playing with different values to take burdens off the spell itself. The more power provided by mundane means, the less work the spell needs to do, so the longer it would last and the easier it would be to cast. The same is true with mechanical linkages; the spell could apparently make a leg without a knee just by positioning two sticks, but giving one a groove for the other to rest in made it easier, and a fully-formed hinge easier still. Flipping back to the second sheet, you notice the various designs are built around certain joint configurations. Twilight must have been working out which would be easiest for the spell to manipulate. At the bottom is a section separated from the rest, circled in red. Apparently the spell could handle position reporting itself, but also integrate whichever system you intended to use for that purpose. But it goes on to say there’s utility in making the spell work harder if it meant minimizing the number of independent channels for control and feedback the spell needed to track. Complex magical systems on Equestria, the notes explain, when used in or around animate objects, tend to spontaneously demonstrate emergent sapience. Many animals in more magic-rich environments like the Everfree Forest – apparently a location near where she lived – display intelligence above and beyond expected of them by large margins. The spell should be crafted in such a way to minimize this possibility, lest the hands literally develop a mind of their own. It goes on to recommend each hand be animated separately, even though this will increase the amount of time needed to acquaint a user with their function. Efforts taken to lessen the load per-channel on the spell are unambiguous improvements away from this possibility, but more important is cutting back on the number of channels where possible, even if this requires the spell to do more work overall. Omitting every other feedback sensor is an option, letting the spell figure the gaps between the ones that remain on its own. This presents a new and very interesting wrinkle in all your plans. Twilight finally shakes the buds out of her ears, and levitates them to the benchtop. “I think you’re the one blinding me with science, Anon.” “It was a big song from over three decades before I came here.” ”The fact this device can reproduce the performance so well is incredible.” “It’s better with the rubber tips on the earbuds, but I haven’t exactly cleaned them, nor have we duplicated any for you. We can do that another time.” ”How much music do you have on here?” “Oh, I don’t know. Hours. Far longer than that thing has battery life.” She looks down at the device, then back to you, eyes sparkling. “Is there any way we can fix that? I want to listen to everything!” “Well, we can make a new power pack. We’re going to have to eventually duplicate that phone and rip it apart to get the battery out anyway. Then we can keep duplicating the battery, and make banks of them. Putting a bunch in parallel would be equivalent to making one that lasts longer, but we’ll also need sets in series for higher output levels for some of the things I want to make. Combine series and parallel to make power packs for higher voltages that still last longer. Those are going to be our primary sources of power, though we’ll need to make charge limiters for each one, so we can recharge them safely off our little bench generator. Lithium-ion batteries like those tend to set themselves on fire if you’re not careful.” ”I’m not sure I can duplicate something this complex.” “We’ll try it when you feel ready, and when we have stuff set up so you don’t hurt yourself. Not today, that can wait. First, I want to go over some of these details regarding this spell of yours...”
7 Alone Time”Anon, you once observed that even with a hundred ponies, I was alone.” You look up from your current history book to Celestia, sitting right beside you. You can’t see what she’s looking at, with your back against the balcony balustrade, but you have a feeling it’s nothing in particular. She’s got one ear on you nevertheless, and you don’t bother responding beyond your shift in attention. Sometimes Celestia liked to warm up to a point, and she didn’t need anything from you until she got there. ”It’s an interesting juxtaposition, isn’t it? I could be surrounded by my precious subjects, and feel no companionship. How many other strange paradoxes do you think there can be? Have you ever felt like you made a wrong turn somewhere, that that put your life on the wrong track?” “You mean besides me coming here?” She turns an eye on you, at that. “I thought you’ve been acclimating quite nicely.” “I’m conversing with a talking horse, no offense. That’s never going to go away.” Celestia smiled and chuckled, then looked back out to the city. “No offense taken.” “But yes, I know the feeling. Sometimes I wish I took a different path. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t taken a different path. Mostly I just reconcile myself to where I am, and make the best of where I’m going. I don’t give it a lot of thought, being honest.” ”If you knew I felt alone in a crowded room, would you believe that I feel powerless, as the highest power in the land?” “I still haven’t seen any proof counter to your – and everyone else’s – claims that you really do move the sun around, Princess. I stopped believing that magic here isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when I read that you have an actual weather factory in Cloudsdale.” She looks like she’s going to say something, then stops. “Yes, I believe it, because at this point I’d believe anything. But I’d still like to hear you explain what you mean.” “I’ve told you before how I sometimes go out of my way to help ponies in more personal ways. Ways I can’t when acting as princess regnant. That’s something like what I mean. Do you know what I’d like to do more than anything, right now?” “Uh, help some pony?” ”What I really want to do, Anon, is lie down.” You look around the balcony, and into the tiny tower library it connects to. It’s cozy, especially with your legs sprawled out across the balcony’s center third, but there’s certainly enough room. “So why don’t you?” ”As I watch ponies down there, I know ponies are watching me up here. Even in this place of private contemplation, I have appearances to maintain. An image to keep. This is what it means to rule. Everything one says and does exists within a confined box of expectations. I have the power to do anything, but my choices are often already made. Decisions I make are defined by how they benefit my ponies. How I comport myself is dictated by the solemnity of my position. I cannot lay down, Anon, because that cuts against the idea of regal presence. I would be resting on a job I must be seen working at all times.” “Last week you chased me around the palace in the middle of the night.” ”If I didn’t have some fun, I surely would have gone mad long before now. Luna’s guards don’t speak to anyone about what happens on their watch. It’s a welcome relief; during the day I have to be more subtle about things, make my own private jokes. It’s always nicer when the humor can be shared, when I can make ponies laugh, even in hindsight. I’d love to spend my day just messing with other ponies in benign ways, helping them by means they don’t and may never quite understand, all while spreading smiles. At night, at least, I can let loose a little.” “It was pretty funny.” She beams down at you. “Wasn’t it?” “If that’s why you feel powerless, what did you mean about your life being on the wrong track?” She’s silent for a bit, and doesn’t move. She is, in fact, unnaturally still. ”Anon, what I’m about to say is not to be repeated to others.” “Wouldn’t dream of it.” ”Funny, because my sister’s the only other who knows.” You shrug. ”You know, by now, what cutie marks are. How important they are, and what they mean. So tell me, what’s mine?” A yellow sun is about four feet from your face, just below eye level where you sit on the stone. “Big ball of fire.” ”It’s not a crown.” “Well, metaphorically, you could think of it like the crown jewel of the sky.” ”This has occurred to me.” “What’s wrong with a sun?” ”A thousand years ago, the task of arranging the heavens was carried out by six unicorns. They were some of the wisest and most powerful. It took the strength of all six of them to do this work. Then my sister and I – we used to be unicorns ourselves, like Twilight – came along. My special talent was that I could do it all myself.” “And your sister?” ”Would you believe she wasn’t that good at magic, when we were young? Her talent has little to do with the moon. The dark splotch around her mark, that’s just as much part of it as the crescent itself. Her talent is her dream-walking. After we had gained our wings and the Elements and started down the path to becoming rulers, we studied under great unicorn mages, and her magical talents only bloomed then, no doubt thanks in part to our becoming alicorns. I granted her the night when we assumed power, as a sign of us being equals. When she was banished, I resumed doing it all myself.” “Well, with great power, right? It makes sense that someone with such a responsibility of changing the sky would end up on top.” ”Truth be told, it wasn’t our goal. We got swept up in everything, and ended up riding a wave of others’ acclaim. She and I – and several other notables – had defeated so many threats, our rise to power was inevitable. Even back then, Anon, I had no choice. I still don’t. I only remain because no pony I trust enough has stepped forward.” “You’d rather not rule?” “I’d rather wander the nation my sister and I built, helping ponies on a personal level. I envy my sister’s nightly work; she gets to do what I always wanted, through others’ dreams. And I know she envies me too, because I so often get to see the results of her work, while she’s stuck in the shadows. Is that not the most terrible curse for sisters to have? But we are where we need to be to help our people most. Her levelheadedness and force of will by night, my charisma and leadership by day.” ”Force of will? What does that matter, when she never leaves the palace?” ”Oh Anon, if only you’d known how much trouble obstinate nobles caused me, before her return. Nowadays, there are few obstinate nobles. They met someone with no patience for their idiocy, and learned quickly. I hardly got any sleep those first two weeks, with how loud the screams were as they woke from nightmare after nightmare, but my sister is very direct when her temper reaches its limits.” “That sounds, uh, pretty terrible, honestly.” ”Perhaps, but she and Raven put together the current system in no time, once their pointless obstacles were no longer an issue. This country has never run better.” “Speaking of Raven, why not talk to her about this? Aren’t you two close?” ”Raven is the last person I want to hear! I confide in her about a great many things, but I fear if her faith in me is ever shaken, she’ll never recover.” Celestia drops her head to the balustrade. “My duties even keep me from my friends, at times, that way.” “Okay, so maybe not Raven, but why talk to me?” She picks her head back up and looks at you. “Anon, you’re most certainly my friend, and the only person to whom I can talk about this.” “Bullsh- ah, nonsense.” ”If I speak to anyone in the court, it wont be as psyche-shattering as if Raven heard, but ponies expect me to have all this down after doing it for a thousand years. I can’t speak to my colleagues of other races, because we are peers in diplomacy first and foremost, and it would be a sign of weakness. You, though; your people aren’t exactly able to interact, and you’ve said half of them don’t even listen to nobility anymore. Even without all that, you’ve done such a wonderful job at my side.” “Not to look a gi- aright I won’t use that phrase. I’m still not sure I’m the only one.” ”There are a few, shall we say, free agents, but I don’t quite trust Discord as much as my student, and who knows what he’ll do with that knowledge. Nothing good, I can assure you. There are a few others from our time who are around, but they visit infrequently. They better relate to my sister, anyway.” She looks back out to the city suddenly. “I just realized that I’m the only one of our kind who came through all this the long way.” “What?” ”Time, Anon. Most were in stasis of some form or another. My sister was in a millennium-long fever-dream. I’m the only pony who lived through it; a couple other sovereigns eternal of different races are all who can boast the same.” You slowly, haltingly, reach out to Celestia’s side, placing your hand on her flank. She’s so tense it’s like touching a sun-baked rock. “So, uh, this up here. Our little routine. Is this part of your… regal presence?” Celestia looks taken aback first by your touch, then by the sudden shift of topic. “It is our personal time, but as long as we’re visible to others…” You withdraw your hand and toss your head to the side, towards the city. “Well, they know you have a routine, right? That includes watching the city at this time?” ”Well, yes…” “A’ight, cool.” You stand up and walk into the tower, toss your book on one of the two chairs inside, and make for the doorway to the stairs. You don’t even hesitate in yanking it open and stepping inside, closing it behind you. Once closed, you wait just inside, listening. Counting. ”Anon? Anonymous!” Six, seven, eight. You hear the metallic stamping of Celestia’s strange hoof-covering armored ‘boots’ stamping around on the balcony. She’s turned her whole body for the door, you guess, but had only done so haltingly. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. She takes her first hesitant steps inside. Twenty-five, twenty-six. The steps gain purpose, and she’s shortly at the door. The handle glows with golden light, even inside, as she pulls it open. “Thirty-one, thirty-two… Hey.” She stares at you in disbelief. “What was that for?” You shrug. “You just made a choice, didn’t you?” ”It certainly doesn’t feel it!” “Oh, maybe not, it was between being forced one way or the other, right? But you still chose which you’d follow. And, uh, being honest, didn’t think you’d choose me. So much for your only one clear path.” She shuffles in place a bit, tail swishing. ”Now what?” “What do you mean, now what?” ”Is this some sort of plan of yours?” “Look, the only things I plan are things I can build or fix. I’m just fucking winging it.” ”You’re ridiculous.” “How about this; now that you’ve already broken your semi-public schedule, there’s no ponies looking at you anymore. Why don’t we go somewhere private you can actually relax while we talk? If you still think I’m worth talking to.” She narrows her eyes at you, but then tosses her head to indicate further down the stairs. “Fine, go.” “That’s the spirit.” Once you’ve descended, she takes the lead. She’s dead silent the whole time. You can’t help but feel you’ve pissed her off. She takes you not to where her room is, but to the library. You’ve been here often, but never to the section she’s leading you. Once you’re inside, she takes you to a side-door leading to a reading area, and beckons you inside. You take a seat, feeling pricks of sweat. After she’s entered herself she practically slams the door behind her. Then she lowers her head and lightly butts the door, her head down enough and slightly tipped to the side so her horn doesn’t jam itself into the wood. She lets out a long breath. “I suppose I needed this.” “Well, hey, now you can lay down.” She turns to look at you, and you wave towards a couch-like chair. “That’s, uh, an order, I guess.” She smiles as she walks over. “It’s a good thing there’s no guards around to hear that. They’ll get the wrong idea.” “Yeah, me giving orders to a princess probably wouldn’t go over to well.” Her smile turns to a wicked grin as she slows her approach, and you can’t help but feel a bit like a deer in headlights. “Not what I meant. You’ve been picking up a peculiar reputation as both a janefilly and a casual flirt, Anon.” She stops right in front of you, neck craned down, her nose only six inches from yours. ”You invite me to a place like this, and I might just dish some of that back.” Suddenly her demeanor becomes cheerful and upbeat, and she pulls her head back and smiles. “Just to see your face.” Once again Celestia has totally derailed an idea of yours to change your friendship dynamic. When are you ever going to learn? “I, uh, well, I was gonna offer a massage, with how tense you were, but after that...” ”I’ll be fine, Anon. But thanks.” She flops down onto the couch in a single motion utterly devoid of grace. “You’re, uh, definitely more animated.” ”Do you know how long it’s been since anypony touched me like you did, just back there?” “Well, humans can get touchy-feely when we’re trying to console someone, or cheer up someone who’s bummed out. Arms around shoulders, big hugs, that stuff. I didn’t mean to, uh...” ”No, Anon, that’s exactly what I mean.” “Sorry?” ”I have few true friends, and fewer who’d think little of touching me. However tense I must have felt to you, I can promise you I was less so moments before.” “So definitely no massage.” She laughed, the draped her head across a side table next to her seat. “Knowing how mareish you are, you might just make things worse. Even a pony as big as I would appreciate a gentler touch.” “You know, you are the only one as tall as I am. I can see why other ponies would be intimidated.” ”As I said before, it’s not my stature. It’s my position.” “Isolates. Yeah. Sorry, Princess.” “And that title is the heart of the matter. You can stop calling me that when we’re alone, Anon. Your casual attitude towards me in private is refreshing, and I’d like to see more of it, even if your language is at times ghastly.” ”That’s a weird way of putting that, all things considered. You still sound kinda formal.” She sighs. “I like it when you’re laid back with me.” “There we go. Relaxing after all?” All at once, one of her wings slumps to the floor. “Trying.” “Well, there’s plenty of books here, being a library and all, so I wouldn’t be against retiring here after petitions, rather than the tower.” ”I do like collecting my thoughts up there.” “And you have to maintain your image longer than necessary, too. ‘Sides, if you have other time to relax, you’ll probably trip up the house staff less.” ”Well that is something I enjoy regardless.” “I’m going to have to start cleaning up after you.” ”That’ll only encourage me, Anon.” “Can’t hold yourself back?” ”I wouldn’t want to if I could.” “Heh. How un-princesslike.” She turns to eye you then grins. “Isn’t that what you’re trying to accomplish with this?” “Uh, fair point.” She adjusts herself on the chair; now her rear legs are hanging off too. She can sprawl out pretty good for a pony with such impeccable posture, normally. Her sheer size helps with that. The chair’s probably designed for regular ponies to recline. ”I will say a lot of the books in here are off-limits. This is a private section of the library for royal use only. You can’t use magic, so that solves most of the danger, but I’d still like you to clear whatever book you pick up with me.” “Now that’s just tempting.” Another grin. “I know.” You stand and turn towards one wall of shelves. Celestia looks like she’s about to move, but relaxes again as you turn away from her. “Well, at least here you can both chill out and have someone to talk to. If I knew you were still on duty while we were up in the tower, I’d have suggested something like this a long time ago.” ”You haven’t been much of a conversation partner, up there.” “You did say you like collecting your thoughts.” She tips her head towards you at this. You pick up a book that looks suitably magical, then show her the cover. She manages a really good approximation of a shrug, for a pony with six limbs pointing in four directions. When you open it up, the entire thing is just weird poetry. “The hell is this?” ”If you mean the format, most complex spells are recorded as poems. Giving them a regular structure and rhyme scheme helps train the mental rhythm necessary to cast them. Sometimes spells are recorded in abnormal forms if the scholar is unsure on a specific element of it, to signify it’s provisional. It’s an ancient technique; diagrams and notes are more common now.” “Huh, Twilight never told me any of this.” ”She’s the prime offender when it comes to the diagrams-and-notes school of study; she’s invented new glyphs and patterns just to convert some of these older, more complex works. She knows all the rhyming forms and meanings, she just doesn’t normally use them. If you talk to my sister about it, she’d use poems exclusively.” “I guess there’s a lot less reading here for me than I thought.” ”Little point in reading tomes on magic when you can neither use nor understand them.” “Got any more history?” She extends a wing towards the opposite wall. “Anything on the second and third shelves should be fine.” Some of the books there were reproductions of the really old ones in the tower, but others were on more recent history. You pick one out at random and return to your seat. Celestia’s even more sprawled out than before; only her body, one foreleg, and one wing remain within the couch’s footprint. “Feeling better?” ”I think I’ll take a nap. Compared to your earlier touch, it’s been even longer since I’ve gotten some quality shut-eye with someone close on watch.” So much for conversation. “That’s a thing?” ”For ponies? Of course. Part of the reason we herd up or band together in the first place.” “Wild.” ”Fittingly enough considering her job, Luna’s one of the soundest sleepers in the palace, when she’s not dealing with dreams of her own.” “Can’t have many more ponies on watch than the entirety of the court and regular guard force, I guess.” She turns to look at you again. “Wake me when we need to head to the meeting?” “Sure thing.” You take out your phone and thumb through to the alarms. At least you’ll still have quality time for some reading. You open your eyes, but it does not get any brighter. You’re lying in bed, perfectly still. Too still. You try to move a hand to your face, but neither one responds. You cannot, you discover, even feel your limbs, let alone move them. Your head keeps moving very slightly, and it takes you some time to realize it’s due to your breathing. Yet you cannot feel the rise and fall of your own chest. It takes you considerable effort to just turn your head to your left side. There should be a window there, where you’re looking. Only darkness greets you. You can’t see. You can’t move. You can’t feel anything. You can, however, start to panic. Can’t see, can’t move, can’t feel, can’t THINK. CAN PANIC. CANTSEEMOVEFEELTHINK. In a tiny corner of your mind not subsumed with primal fear, you realize you CAN think, and you’re thinking right now, only in this little part, only from what feels like a great distance. Your breathing is loud enough you can hear it now. It sounds as distant as your thoughts are from your chaotic mind. It sounds labored. Are you dying? Is this what death is like? A new series of minute movements arises in your neck, rhythmic, rapid, like a muscle spasm. It’s your pulse, you realize. It’s preposterously fast. Heart attack? Or is it connected to the breathing? Does your heart rate go up or down when you can’t breathe? What is the mechanism behind a heart attack, anyway? It’s hard to tell when you can’t feel your chest. You try to scream for help. All that interrupts your hyperventilating is a moan, distant and indistinct. The area outside your fragmented awareness grows slightly brighter. You can see? The nearly-imperceptible outline of your window resolves as the light increases ever so slightly. You can see! You try to get a grip on your breathing. It’s tough work. The light outside the window coalesces to a point, a small and dim one, so far away. It’s the moon, you realize. The moon is rising outside your window, but even on the horizon, it’s as small as if it were at the top of the sky. As the light grows further, it eventually forms a dim but visible shaft from the window, falling across your bed. The moon continues to rise, changing the shaft’s angle downward. Now to the floor, now sweeping across it. It sweeps a dark shape five or so feet away from your bed. When the light passes over it, however, the shape is not illuminated. The moonlight just disappears into it, as if it were a massive void. You lose control of your breathing again, and it once more speeds up dangerously. Death? Is this the shape of death? No hooded or cloaked figure, no scythe, just this looming shape of nothingness. The light slips away from it, then disappears entirely. Once more there’s total darkness. Until two impossibly bright lights appear. Not lights. Eyes. The dark form is looking at you. Now you wish you could go back to not being able to see. The eyes shift as the figure looks around. Then they move towards you. You try to scream again, but it only adds wordless sound to your terribly fast breathing, making a hitching, stuttering sob. The few parts of your body you can feel start tingling. Your vision starts swimming – no, buzzing – and it’s hard to focus. The eyes of light dip down towards you. They’re very close now. You could touch them, shove them away, defend yourself, if only you could move your left arm. “Anonymous, steel thyself! ‘Tis only a dream!” A dream. A dream? Yes, yes it is. It’s a dream. You know this dream. A holdover from your nightmare-plagued youth. The most recent addition to a terrible variety that had survived the others’ extinction. The worst of them all, the one you couldn’t escape. Your punishment for figuring out how to avoid the rest. The only dream it was worse to be aware of than to suffer in thoughtlessness. The dream that gave you all the time in the world to think about what you distracted yourself with work or friends or the internet to avoid. “L-Luna...” You manage to stutter it out through your rapid breaths. They’ve locked themselves into a pattern now, like your whole body is shivering, not that you could feel it. The two eyes of light are a mess across your vision as they lift away from you. “Help!” You can just barely rasp the word out. “Thy dreams are strange, Anon, we cannot simply banish them! Control thyself, and we can resolve it together!” “C-cuh-count.” ”What?” “Count!” Luna’s glowing eyes blink a couple times, but she starts counting up slowly. You focus on the numbers and try to still your breathing. It’s difficult when you can’t feel your chest, when you lack that feedback, but you try to wrap your whole mind around those numbers. Luna, still only visible by her eyeshine, looks over you and moves side to side in a motion you can’t resolve. The motion – both visually and with shifts in sound direction – seem to help a little more. Eventually you get your breathing under control, though your jaw still tingles. At least your eyesight is normal again. ”Art thou recovered?” “I, uh, well, kinda.” ”What meanest thou?” “Well, it’s pitch black, and I can’t move.” Luna’s horn starts glowing and her eyes stop, finally casting enough light around the room to see by. ”Sorry, we forget that thou hast not our night vision.” When her horn dips low enough to be roughly in front of her eyes, you notice they exhibit a strong cyan-colored reflection, even without the supernatural bright white light she demonstrated just before. “So are you here to save me or something?” She looks away from you. “We wish we could.” “I’ll tell you now, this paralysis isn’t pleasant.” She starts looking about the room, apparently agitated. “We can’t help, Anon. What does this mean? For thee, for us?” “Hey, stop that. If you start freaking out, I’m going to start freaking out again, and we’ll be even worse than where we started.” Talking around your semi-numb jaw is difficult, but you’re managing. The tingling’s mostly gone now. She settles, but only a little. “Fine, the long way it shall be. Is this a common nightmare?” “Used to be. Less frequent the past several years.” ”And thou sayest thou cannot move?” “Yeah.” She returns to your bedside and looks your inert body over. “It… pains us, to see thee like this.” “I’d say it pains me too, but if it did, I wouldn’t be able to feel it.” ”This must be a fear of thine.” “There’s a lot to be afraid of.” She cocks her head. “We know why ponies would fear it, but not thee. Tell us?” “I don’t know, Luna. You’re the expert. All I know is it gives me time to think in a state I want to think the least. I knew a few people with traumatic injuries causing impairment. It’s inevitable, when you work with heavy machinery and enough people, even if I spent most of my time at a desk.” She’s silent while she takes this in, still looking at your striken form rather than meeting your eyes. “Thou workest with thy hands.” “More through them than with them, back home. Lots of thinking, lots of computer work. Uh, computers, er, the thing you saw in my room I spent a lot of time with. I did most of my design work with it. It did calculations and visualization and stuff for me. Kinda hard to explain what I did to you, honestly.” ”Some sort of sophisticated drafting table?” “That’s not too far off. We’d call stuff like that CAD – computer-aided drafting, or computer assisted design, or whatever you feel like saying it means. It wasn’t everything, but it was part of it.” ”But thou still doest it with thy hands.” “Yeah. And, well, I can’t even get out of bed like this. How would I support myself? I’d have no independence, and all the time in the world to think on my helplessness and uselessness.” ”Surely thou hast family thou canst rely on to care for thee.” “No.” You’re much quieter. “I was pretty much on my own.” ”Thou art a stallion, Anon. Even between herds thou canst find shelter from any storm. Was there truly no going back?” “Where I’m from, Luna, males were expected to fend for themselves. Going back home, to my parents or whatever, that’d be admitting defeat. Shameful. I was expected to care for myself.” ”But thou art in Equestria now. Thou art cared for. Free.” “No, it’s followed me. I threw away my cushy responsibility-free life in a fit of pride, when I asked Celestia to take me seriously. But that’s part of it, isn’t it? If I couldn’t make myself useful even here, I felt I’d still get kicked out.” ”Plenty of useless stallions leadeth comfortable lives.” “Yeah, well, not me. Besides, throwing myself into my work stopped me from thinking about anything more unpleasant. Back home I’d come home from work and get to work distracting myself. Exhaust myself to sleep, go to work, buckle down, come home, and repeat it. Couldn’t give myself time to think. Here, I don’t have that. So it’s just from one kind of work to another. Keep me busy, keep me sane.” Luna puts her head down on your bed at your side, looking ‘up’ at yours. “Thou remindest us of stallions from our time. Back when life was more dangerous. When stallions walked the perimeter of the herd as the mares recovered, when their power bolstered their mares’ tenacity, some becoming heroes in their own right. When they were still protected, but not as defenseless, nay, but as the last line of defense for the young and invalid. But the plans of ours and our sister’s worked. Life became peaceful. And when life was peaceful, stallions became… domesticated.” “I’m not really domesticated. It’s something of a sticking point, if you hadn’t noticed.” She smiles at you. “We have most assuredly noticed.” You sigh and – with some effort- look back up at the ceiling. “Being stuck like this, for me, is probably the only thing I fear more than death. My work is all I have, especially now.” “Skies above, no. Thou hast more to live for than that.” “Like what?” ”We – and our sister, and her student – have pulled thee away from thy work often, Anon. Thou hast us, and hast left thy work to spend time with us. We are sure – or at least most fervently hope – we are more than a mere distraction for thee.” “I… yeah. Yeah, you’re right on that.” You let your head flop back to the left, to look at her again. She’s still smiling that sweet smile at you. “And is it not better?” “Well, besides feeling stressed about falling behind, yeah. I enjoy our time together, and with Twilight. And even Celestia, though she’s only really opened up to me recently. I enjoy my work, but I’m not complaining about companionship, to what degree it’s available to me here.” ”And is this dream not more bearable for our presence?” Your turn to smile. “Yeah. Much better than being left to it alone, though I still wouldn’t call it great.” ”Perhaps, Anon, thy helplessness and uselessness is only part of this dream. Thou hast, after all, hardly been either of late. Perhaps this dream riseth from another fear.” “What’s that?” Her smile falters. “Isolation. Solitude.” Ah, one of the many thoughts you hated to be left to, in this nightmare’s typical vast time for thinking. You do your best to nod in agreement. ”We know much about solitude, Anon. Absent our magic to dispel this dream, we shall at least alleviate thine. It seems, as this dream embodies, thou knowest some of what we’ve been through. More than we’d thought.” You tilt your head a little further as she looks away from you. ”To be all alone, in the night.” “Not nearly as long as you, Luna, but yeah. I know it.” She meets your eyes again, and her smile returns. “Then let us speak of all manner of things, until thou wakest to our sister’s morning.” You open your eyes once more, despite them having been already open. This time, you’re greeted with bright daylight. Experimentally, you wiggle a foot. This time, it responds. You close your eyes again and heave a huge sigh, relishing the sensation of air entering and leaving your lungs, feeling your chest’s rise and fall. You’re free. Luna kept her word, and you’d talked for what felt like hours, but now you’re free. You reach a hand over to blindly grope at your nightstand for your phone. Your hand actually obliges, which brings another strange pleasure. Your body merely working as intended shouldn’t bring such joy. When you turn the screen on, though, what you see brings none. How the fuck is it so late? When you put the phone back, something catches your eye. You lift your arm and the overly plush blankets to find Princess Luna’s sleeping head, laying just where it had been while you spoke in your dream. She’s lying on the floor about where you’d normally swing your legs over the side to get up. Good thing you hadn’t done so automatically, or you’d have kicked her in the noggin, and maybe impaled a calf on her horn. That would have been a rude wake-up call for both of you. Even as you gather yourself up to get out of bed the other way, though, your movement causes her to stir. “Ah, hell. Didn’t mean to wake you.” She opens her eyes halfway and looks around blearily. “Forgive our intrusion.” “Only if you tell me why.” She drops her head back to the bed. “Dreams normally end, Anon. Thine did not. It just… dissolved, and thou sunk beyond our reach. We came to be sure thou was not lost in a deeper nightmare than we could intervene in.” “And you stayed?” ”Ah, an old tradition,” She’s slurring some of her words, which is strange, considering she’s always been clear of speech even when mumbling or otherwise not making an effort of it. Is it weird for the a princess of the night to be so bad at waking up? Heh, not a morning pony. ”Some ponies in bands sleepeth while others watcheth,” she continued. “Usually the watchers looketh out, beyond, for threats. When one of the herd is ill, one watcher instead looketh to them, foregoing their own protection to be more aware of threats to the stricken, and to monitor their condition. Before, this vigil was not risky, for a couple ponies would be alert to other danger besides. In modern times, it seems this vigil hath become symbolic.” You can’t help but smile, even as you rebuke her. “I appreciate the thought, Luna, but I wasn’t sick.” She slides her head off the bed and drops it to the floor, out of your line of sight. “It was uncalled for. We apologize for our invasion of thy privacy,” she mumbles. “Well, the biggest problem is the fact I’m wearing nothing but my boxers.” That and attendant post-waking quirks of anatomy in that area of your body. Not that she needed to know, and didn’t, thanks to how thick and fluffy the top layer of your bedding was. ”Besides these poor excuses for useless armor,” she lifts a foreleg into your view, displaying one of her darkened metallic hoof-guards, “we wear nothing at all, Anon.” That does not help aforementioned quirks of anatomy. “Ah, all the same, Princess, I’d just like a few minutes of privacy to get ready for the day.” She sits up again, looking back at you. “Please do not hold our too-great concern against us, Anon. Thou art right; we should not have remained. It was presumptuous of us, to an outrageous degree.” “Look, it’s fine. Honest. I understand your concern. Just… not something I expected, nor something that’s normal for humans who aren’t, well… Bit of a culture clash there. We’re cool.” She looked content, until the last bit. “C-cool? Oh, as we feared, a chilling between friends-” “Chrissakes, no. We’re, uh, warm, I guess. Everything’s fine. Seriously. It’s alright. I’ll see you this evening, okay? Get some rest in a bed, instead of beside one; you look like hell warmed over. I don’t want you wearing yourself out on my account, I’d feel guilty as hell after all you’ve done for me.” She took a couple steps back before dipping her head to the floor again, this time far enough away you could still see her. Her eyes met yours briefly. “Thank thee, Anon.” “No, thank you. You made last night nice enough to forget it was a nightmare.” She smiles at you, then in what you could only describe as a loud inverse pop, she vanished. Teleportation is a good way to not get the guards talking about what could be construed as a walk of shame, you suppose. Today was going to be a weird day. ”Now if we arranged it this way we could cut down on the gearbox size, but now it can’t mount to the frame.” You look over the edit Twilight made to the design you two were hammering out. “No. No, this is good. Rotate the motor side of the bracket ninety degrees, cut this frame support here, then extend the frame from here to here.” You make two marks on the rough drawing of the talon-like claw, then scribble a line between them. “That’ll make up for the lost structural support while giving the bracket something to mount to in its new orientation. It’ll fit. Just barely, and it wont be pretty, but we’re more concerned with functionality on this prototype.” Twilight looked at the edits, nodded, then peered over your multimeter at you. A third of your workspace has been filled with bulky lab and testing equipment, several large boxy items that could be combined in the palm of your hand back home, but you had to make do here. Frankly, you were happy enough they worked. “So what’s that put our control channel count at?” Twilight looks back down at the large paper, tilting her head. “We’re at, uh, thirty-two.” “Does that put us under the complexity limit?” She thought for a moment. “Theoretically, three dozen is the breaking point, for a design like this. To be safe, though, I’d like to be under thirty.” You rub your face with the hand you’re not leaning on. “I never thought I’d have a design constraint to prevent a project from getting up and walking away on me.” ”Powering everything preserves spell lifespan, which is definitely desirable, but if we rely on your systems for every single facet of functionality, we might just be making more work for it in the end. Cutting motors for these linkages might be mimicking limitations of the subject we’re emulating, but maybe we’re looking at the wrong side.” “What do you mean?” Twilight levitates the pencil to her side of the table, then starts making a diagram in the corner. “We might be able to remove all the position sensors if we just have the spell report back the distance between two points. If we set those as the base of each finger and the tip, the distance is related primarily by the angle of the big knuckle for the majority of the range, and the second knuckle for the final third, with how you expect it to normally be used. That might be enough, and we could combine a couple sensors.” “What’ll that give us?” “Twenty-six to twenty-eight, depending on how we set the wrist and intermediate connections.” “Well hell, that’s only barely under, but it’s under. It’ll let us get rid of a big set of failure points too, since we won’t have to worry about the sensors wearing out. What’ll that do to the lifespan?” Twilight grimaces. “Cut it in half.” “So, what, around six months?” ”A little more.” “Damn.” ”Hey, it’s better than nothing! Once we have it working, maybe we can find other ways to streamline it.” “I guess. Is there any way to extend it?” ”Not really, but if you focus the spell on some sort of crystal, it can function as a reservoir that you can just add more magic to. There’s a reason so many magical artifacts have gemstones and such. For most artifacts, since they’re used as focii or catalysts, they recharge during normal use. For something like this it might be fairly large, though, and recasting the spell isn’t a big deal. I’m more concerned about your end.” “There’s no way we’re making a battery pack to last six months of regular use. This thing will have to be recharged regularly, maybe even daily. Difference is, if the battery runs dry, we don’t lose the whole thing; it’ll work again just fine once we plug it in. That’s pretty important, since lithium-ion batteries lose their effectiveness over time. Lifespan shortens due to internal degradation. We’ll eventually have to replace packs, but those will be pretty easy.” ”So they can catch on fire if improperly charged, and improperly charge when they get old? They sound pretty dangerous.” “Hard to get a good amount of power storage in such a small form factor, though. A proper charging station mitigates the risk anyway. Besides, it’s all we have for now. Speaking of.” You walk around the table to Twilight’s side, taking your phone out of your pocket and placing it on the table. “Are we going to do this? With this plan in place, we’ve done everything we can on the design. Time to get to work.” She looks down to the phone and sighs. “Do we have everything?” “Water, sweets, and a spotter. You should be fine.” ”I’ve never tried duplicating something as complex as this.” “Twilight. You’ll be fine. You’re an alicorn and your talent is literally magic. If anything does happen, I’ll be right here.” ”Just stay close, alright?” You crouch down next to her as she focuses on your phone. Her horn and your phone glow the same shade of now-familiar magenta. She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut as the brightness grows. After several seconds, she widens her stance, and her wings flare out for balance, giving you a face-full of purple feathers. By the time her whole body is trembling, you’re thinking maybe you should call it off after all. Before you can, there’s a pop and a clatter drawing your attention to the table. A perfect twin of your phone is lying there, face-down. “Hey! You did-” Twilight falls onto you, knocking you off the balls of your feet. Only a timely reach prevents her head and neck from hitting the now-cluttered shelf under the desk as the bulk of her body lands on your legs. She’s unresponsive. Oh fuck oh shit did you just kill a princess god damn it all to hell. You gather her up in your arms – you’ve never realized how much harder it is to manipulate dead weight than an aware and somewhat able person – and manage to stand. You fumble with the door to your bedroom, but manage to get it open without dropping her, though you need to adjust your hold when she starts sliding through. You’re trying really hard not to step on her dragging wings. After finally making it to your bed, you drop her onto it. Her physiology isn’t helping this, and you have to deal with her limb’s awkward ranges of motion while you try to get at her chest. At least they’re more flexible than you imagine your world’s horses to be. You finally get her far enough on her back and remember the truth of what Luna told you shortly after you woke up this morning. Ponies are habitually naked. You didn’t have to deal with the moral questions of modesty and voyeurism when trying to save a nudist’s life. Didn’t paramedics have to take women’s tops off to do CPR and stuff, or was that just a fictional embellishment? How would you do CPR on a pony? Do you have to do CPR right now? No, she looks like she’s breathing, but you have no idea where you’d go for a pulse. You should take a first aid course or something when all this is done. You pull your covers over the lower part of her body just to eliminate the distraction. You put your ear near her snout just to confirm she is, in fact, breathing fine. As you stand and wonder if Equestria has capital punishment for endangerment of nobility, you just barely hear a soft murmur from her. You grab her head in both her hands and bring your face close to hers, and speak about as softly as the sound you’d just heard. “Come on wake up please wake up I can’t lose you not now if you’re in a coma or something I’m so fucked why didn’t we go over this more…” After a stretch of silence, you notice her breathing pattern’s changed. This doesn’t help your mental state any, until you figure out what’s changed about it. She’s now breathing in sync with you. No, opposite; she’s inhaling when you’re exhaling, and vice versa. Is this some sort of automatic response in ponies, if someone else is close enough? Or is it a sign she’s conscious? She murmurs again, or maybe it’s a quiet nicker. You have no idea how pony vocalizations work, either. “Hey. Hey, are you okay? Can you hear me?” Her eyes flutter halfway open, taking some time to focus on you. Her breathing held during your speech, and falls back into its prior pattern when you’d finished. Then, suddenly, one of her wings flaps out. The other flinches but it’s pinned under her body. She starts weakly shoving herself up towards the headboard. “Mphhnno Luna’s gonna kill me.” “What? No, hold on now. Are you alright?” She blinks a couple times, then with what looks to be great effort, opens her eyes all the way. “Tired. Sugar. Sugar?” “Uh, yeah, shit, hold on. Don’t go- well, don’t try to go anywhere.” ”Dun wanna.” “Alright, cool. Be right back.” Your relief, you realize, is very different than simply avoiding punishment. You take a few deep breaths as you turn away from her, towards the door. Back out in the workshop, you snatch a small stash of snacks from a side shelf, then scurry back to the bedside. “Here, eat up. We got plenty.” You can only hope she doesn’t choke on any, as you pop the first piece in her mouth for her. Instead of sucking on a piece of hard candy, she just – with some effort – bites down and shatters it, crunching it up and swallowing. You offer another, and she disposes of it almost as fast. “Holy shit, how much are you going to put away?” ”Ever wonder why Celestia’s got such a sweet tooth?” At least she’s speaking clearer now. “Magic does that to you, huh?” ”Mhmm.” After the sixth piece, she shakes her head when you start to unwrap a seventh. “Feeling better?” ”I’m laying in your bed, as you tend to me like Equestria’s strangest nurse, after you’d put me face to face with you.” “Is that a yes or a no?” She adjusts her position, freeing her other wing. It too extends about halfway, but is otherwise limp like the first. ”We gotta talk about some differences in culture.” You shrug and sit on the side of the bed. “If you’re up to it.” She closes her eyes to collect her thoughts, then pokes you in your side, near where you held her candy. You unwrap another, but before you can get your hand near her mouth, she has her hooves around your hands. You let it go so she can finish the job herself. You’d never seen her try to manipulate anything without magic before. ”Remember when we first walked around the city, and you observed you were overdressed?” “Yup.” ”Dressing up is a stallion thing, but you’re a bit overdone even then. I know it’s probably because you’ve got a very thin coat, but it can be distracting.” “If I walked around naked everywhere, I’d be fucking freezing. And there’s modesty issues. I, uh, my bits ain’t as neatly tucked away as yours.” Twilight’s expression goes… silly. “Really?” “Yeah, it sorta just all hangs out. Seriously, the clothes aren’t going. “ ”Okay, fair. But cool it with the socks talk, those are bedroom clothes." You manage to choke back a laugh. ”I’m serious!” Her gravitas is not helped by her pausing to inhale more candy. “Okay, fine. Sorry. I’ll uh, I wont mention them.” ”And some bits of personal space are off-limits. Like the back just before the tail, and the wing-shoulders. And the nose.” “The nose?” ”DEFINITELY off-limits. Along with everything about it.” “So what we were just doing...” Ah shit, she’s blushing. “Hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” ”Because, well…” “Damn, I guess ponies think I’m some sorta fucking creep. I can’t even pass it off as trying to be charming, considering how monstrous I must be. As if there was any chance of reciprocal interest.” ”Don’t say that!” Her vehemence startles you. It looks like it startles her, too. “Isn’t it self-evident?” ”No! When you say that you… you… insult ponies who might feel otherwise.” Several different snippets of memory vie for your attention at once. “Would, ah, sorry for being so upfront, would you be one of those?” She looks away from you and mumbles, “I think so.” Now you’re the one with warm cheeks. “Is that why you never stopped me, before?” ”Not at first. No stallion’s ever done any of that with me, to me, let alone one I got along with so well. I guess I was taking advantage of your ignorance. I’m sure none of it was intentional on your part.” “Er, is that what you meant by Luna would kill you? Does she have something against ponies trying to get with me? Some old perspective on interspecies relations-” ”No, you dense… argh. She’s never as close to other ponies as she is to you! Raven told me some of what you two get up to. Anon, I’m happy someone’s dragging her out of her shell, but does it have to be someone so oblivious?” You realize that only several hours ago, you were where Twilight’s reclined, and Luna’s head rested where you sat. “I… I can’t know that. If that’s true, she can tell me herself.” ”I might be wrong, Anon, but if I’m right, you’ll know soon enough. The old ways could be quite direct, even if her awareness of her position will blunt most of the… aggression.” “So, if you feel the same way-” ”Well-” “-then, what, would you just let her claim me anyway?” Twilight is silent for a second, before, “I wouldn’t have to give way to her, but I can’t put myself before one of the rulers of Equestria. She just has to get you first.” She picks up on your slack-jawed stare and continues. “It’s called a herd, Anon. Well, Luna might call it a band. Terms change over time. Anyway, several mares can be involved with a single stallion.” “A harem?” She frowns. “That’s such a barbaric term. Besides, it gets the core relationship backwards. A mare’s in charge of a herd. The first mare. And the stallion runs the household while the mares take care of everything else, instead of the stallion being on top and a mare running the household like a harem would imply.” “I, uh, sorry. That’s a bit much to take in. Where I lived, monogamy was the norm.” ”Does that mean exclusivity? That happens here, but not often. It’s seen as a status symbol, sometimes, and other times as a mark of great devotion. That varies place to place. In Canterlot, and the Crystal Empire, or other places governed by formal or high society, the former is default, and it’d be frowned upon unless that status is at play. Elsewhere, in places that may be governed by folk tradition, the latter may be more common.” You don’t respond as you try to assimilate all this, staring at a particularly blank section of wall. Is Luna really after you? You can’t deny you two get along really well, and you definitely appreciate the time you spend with her. But if Twilight’s also interested, and she feels trapped like this, doesn’t that add a sense of urgency? You can’t get over how wrong it feels, despite the fact Twilight says it’s normal to have multiple interested partners. But is it a problem, on a fundamental level? You realize how much you’ve restructured your daily schedule just to spend more time with these two. How much you enjoyed those moments they pulled you away from work. How you came to feel comfortable walking the city with them, despite all the strangers gawking. You fell ass-backwards into new bonds, and you didn’t even realize it, because you’ve been lost in your work. And yet… You can’t believe you actually feel pressured over this, but a lot of it still makes no sense to you. Maybe there’s a good reason you were single, back home. ”Sorry,” Twilight eventually mumbles. “Hm?” ”For dumping all this on you. It can’t work out. I shouldn’t have said anything.” “No, it’s fine. Thanks for bringing it up, I needed to hear all this stuff. I’m still very much lost in Equestria. It’s all so confusing.” ”Yeah, it is confusing.” You look up at her, but her head’s leaning back against the headboard, and her eyes are closed. “I’m, uh, gonna go for a walk. Clear my head. Can you stay here? Until I’m back? I don’t think you’re in any shape to get up.” She nods her head, mute. “A’ight. I’ll, uh, be back. In a short while. Promise.” As you leave, you think you hear angry muttering. She can have it. She gave you a lot to think about. She’s got a lot to think about, too. You were right, this morning; today is definitely a weird day.
8 PlansYou glare at the mare on the other side of your desk. She squirms in her chair. “So, Ms. Craft. I understand that some orders have sat tied up in the smithy, lately.” ”Uh, yes ma’am, Ms. Inkwell.” “It took me some time to track down, since the only lead I had contained nothing but an indication that His Highness was involved. However, no written record can escape my attention for long. I congratulate you, on that note, for having quite comprehensive records. Your doing, or your boss’s?” ”The head smith doesn’t keep the records, ma’am. Thank you for the compliment.” You brighten considerably. “My pleasure. Back to business. Has your boss told you why he wants Anonymous’ orders held?” The mare squirms some more. “No, ma’am. Nor has the Prince. I just know the order stands in perpetuity.” “You speak quite frankly, for a mare who could land her boss in hot water.” She blanched, but continued. “Wasn’t right, how she treated Anonymous, ma’am. Even if she was right about stallions in general. You don’t speak to stallions that way, and his orders have never given us problems before, besides the tight tolerances he demands. If she’s going to get in trouble for that, then let her.” “You and me, Ms. Craft, will do something about that.” The mare stares at you wide-eyed for several seconds, before giving a shallow and rapid nod. “From this point on, I want all orders of Anonymous’s to be provided as soon as completed. If you stand the desk when he comes around, provide them immediately. If your boss does, and rebukes him, make the delivery yourself when you close up for the day.” ”All respect, ma’am, but why?” “Anonymous has shown me plans for a special project for Her Majesty, Princess Celestia herself. As Her Majesties’ chief aide, I will not tolerate any delays to it.” Well, you sneaked a peak at a sketch he made. Close enough. The mare gives you another shallow, rapid nod. “Excellent. Do you have any questions?” ”Yes’m. Why aren’t you talking to my boss about this?” “Several reasons. First, because your boss works diligently and dutifully, for all her attitude. Among His Highness’s many flaws, fulfilling his obligations running the royal household does not number, and that includes staff selection and promotion. This means, however, we cannot question your boss’s loyalty, and as such, we must expect she will report any obstruction of the His Highness’s commands. I wish to avoid that. Should he make such a discovery, things will prove… troublesome.” ”I can’t do this in secret forever, ma’am. He will find out, through her or not. As you say, he runs the household. You’ll have to answer to him for interfering.” “Oh, my new friend, you misunderstand. If His Highness has any objections, and brings them to my attention, he must answer to me, not the other way around. That will inconvenience me little, end quite poorly for him, and I will have my way in the end anyhow.” The smithy mare is ghostly pale beneath her sandy-colored coat. “I desire to avoid that. Unnecessary strife between the two halves of the palace, and their respective leaders. I suspect whatever problem His Highness has with Anonymous comes down to a matter of business between stallions, and we should handle it as such. To state it explicitly; work around it and give it as wide a berth as possible.” The mare sighs in relief and nods. “Yeah, I know how colts can be. Understood, ma’am.” “I only concern myself with seeing Anonymous’ work for Her Majesty completed in an expedited manner. I greatly appreciate your support in this endeavor.” ”Yes’m.” “Very good. I shall let you return to your duties. If any problems arise, please let me know immediately.” The mare stands from her chair and bows her head to you. “Thank you. Ms. Inkwell.” You return the gesture as best you can from behind your desk, and watch her as she leaves. What’s with everypony bowing to you, lately? Interruptions have a habit of multiplying. At least this time when Anon bursts into your office, he’s wearing proper footwear. “Hello, Anonymous. What can I do for you?” He waves a small, shiny tablet around as he storms up to your desk. ”Can I plug this into someone’s brain?” You blink several times in confusion. “Elaborate?” ”It’s got a camera, a microphone, a speaker. It can see, hear, and talk. Can I get it to do that for a pony?” “I cannot think of a reason why you would want to.” ”Come on, I’ve seen ponies with prosthetics before. So what if one goes blind, or deaf? Is there some way I can use this to let them see or hear?” You’re a glorified librarian and secretary. This is definitely not your forte. “From my limited knowledge of magical theory, I do not see a reason why not.” He doesn’t seem satisfied with this answer. “Her Serene Highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle could better answer your question. I have done little studying on magecraft. Do you not normally work with her, at this hour?” ”Do you belt out that whole title every time you talk about her?” “I usually shorten it to ‘Her Highness’ after the first time, unless required by protocol. You have not answered my question.” He sighs and runs a hand through his mane. “Well, normally, yeah. But I can’t now. Something, uh, something has, er, come up.” You frown, then gesture to the seat in front of your desk. “Please. I have some time.” He looks like he’s about to refuse, then sighs again and collapses into it. “Yeah, I was, until a few minutes ago. I kinda pushed her magical ability. She’s resting in my room, and I can’t do any work until she recovers.” Anon’s a poor liar. Not that calling him out on it will get you what you want to know. No use making the obviously troubled stallion defensive. “You seem in a hurry. Can it not wait until she recovers?” ”It’s, uh, well I want it to be a secret. I was going to, until...” He trails off, waving a hand in the air vaguely. “Anon, before I can help you, I need you to speak with precision.” ”I don’t know if she wants me to tell anyone.” You allow yourself the slightest of smiles. It seems Twilight can be decisive, when she wishes. “I assure you, I take Her Highness’s confidence very seriously. If you decide it is not for me to hear, I will not complain. However, I promise nothing will leave this room without your or Her Highness’s consent.” ”She, uh, she admitted to me. Uh. Sorry. She, I guess, confessed?” “Confessed what?” ”That she was into me. I think.” He puts his head in his hands. “The fuck is even happening today. First Luna, and now this.” He looks up at you suddenly. “Shit, I didn’t say that. You didn’t hear that.” “I will endeavor to un-hear that Her Majesty, Princess Luna also adds to your concerns.” “Yeah there you go with the titles again. Fucking royalty. Shit, I shouldn’t think about that right now.” “Amusing. Anon, while very interesting, I do not see how this development is problematic. Might you not return her affections?” ”I don’t even know. About either of them. You gotta understand, I wasn’t the most experienced in these matters, back home. I had a couple flings and that’s that. Hardly qualifies. Then Twilight’s bitching about goddamned timing and Luna’s going to kill me and eat my heart or something ‘aggressive’ and holy hell I’m just a lost human, how do I even respond to this?” “Generally the mare initiates. If you speak truth, let them initiate.” ”See, that’s backwards, back home. Which is part of my confusion here. Besides, Twilight’s bummed because she can’t, for some weird social reason to do with Luna.” Oh, the mare’s a sweetheart, tragically so. Can’t even upset the social hierarchy for love. “Then I think, you should let your heart guide you. Whatever happens, at least you can be content you never lied to yourself.” ”That’s the best piece of useless advice I’ve ever heard.” “I try to give advice excelling in all respects. Uselessness represents another category in which it can be superlative.” ”You’d have me laughing if I wasn’t so fucking confused.” “Yes, it is confusing.” He gives you a very strange look, before shaking his head. “I guess it can’t hurt to see what happens. I do really enjoy her company. She sounded pretty adamant that it wouldn’t work, probably because this weird waiting thing. Well, fuck that. I’ll do what I want, and if I find what I want is, I don’t know, her? Then I’ll do- wow this sounded a lot better in my head.” “Your creative talent lies in artisanship, not poetry.” ”Tell me something I don’t know.” “If you insist. Her Highness convinces herself of silly notions time to time, about what she can and cannot do. I would trust how she says she feels over what she says is possible. Her Highness too often shackles herself to rationality, even if it seems rational only to Her Highness and none other.” He points a finger at you. “That… actually makes perfect sense. And you’re right, I didn’t know it. You’re good.” “I try.” He stands up and turns to your door. “I know she’s going on a long trip in a couple days, maybe she can work things out for herself while she’s gone. We’ll see what happens after then. I think I just needed someone to talk to. Thanks.” “Any time, Anon. My door remains open.” You’ve finished the day’s work, but remain seated at your desk. Anon’s timing was too poor, considering the predicament he found himself in. That means he likely slipped in his schedule, which meant- Your door opens slowly. Princess Celestia stands there, looking chagrined. You stand and bow your head. “Your Majesty.” ”Raven, I haven’t seen Anon all day. Do you know where he might be?” “Yes, Your Majesty. Anon had a critical issue he needed to attend to. I do not know how long it would take him to resolve it – this admittedly complicated issue seems to confuse him more than most – but I suspect that he may even now still work at it. It depends on what course of action he decided on.” She walked into your office and closed the door behind her. “You know how to say so little with so much. Where is he?” You walked over to the door yourself, and put a sound dampening barrier across that whole wall, as usual for your Princess’s private audiences with you. “His workshop, Your Majesty.” She sits in one of your chairs. You place yourself in one opposite her, and get comfortable. ”Is something wrong up there?” “If something has gone wrong, I expect Her Serene Highness is there to help him.” Celestia narrows her eyes. “And if she isn’t?” “Then I fear his problem may become ours as well, soon enough.” ”Ah, one of those. And if the Princess of Harmony cannot handle it herself...” “One can assume the problem involves Her Highness in a disharmonious way, yes.” Celestia smiles. “My once-student has a habit of finding trouble for herself, doesn’t she?” “Your Majesty, you had sent her away specifically to find trouble. We both know eagerly she seeks to satisfy your expectations.” ”Too true. It figures our eccentric emissary is making the trouble for her.” “More than just Her Highness.” She tilts her head. “Oh?” “Your Majesty wouldn’t be here if Your Majesty was not troubled.” She looks mildly offended, but she has a gleam in her eyes. “What if I wanted to relax?” “Your trouble involves relaxation?” She laughs at this. “Yes, my dear friend. The past few days we’ve been retiring to our wing in the main library, instead of our private tower. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had someone to just relax with?” “Yes, Your Majesty, considering you do so only with me, as now, or with your sister and her six occasional guests. I have the records for the latter’s every visit, and the former I know personally, obviously.” ”Well, he’s got me thinking back to when I was younger. You know, if I was now the pony I was then, I don’t think we’d have ever gotten along. I was a bit of a rebel, and wanted little to do with the trappings of power. And you’re so formal and regimented.” She laughs again. “Can you imagine what we’d be like?” You bow your head to her. “I consider fate most kind for ensuring our lives crossed only when we would be amenable.” ”And if anypony heard you talk to me like that in private, instead of in court, they’d think us cold.” “Force of habit.” ”I know.” You two smile at each other, and just sit. This, you know, is the kind of friendship Celestia values. She has enough ponies she could talk to if she wants conversation. A true friend knows that sometimes words aren’t necessary. Sometimes simply being is enough. From what she’s said about Anon, you suspect this is how he found his way close to her, as well. You and he are as superficially opposed as you are secretly alike. You’re glad Celestia has more than just you, now. “Your Majesty, Anon’s life may become quite convoluted, soon. In no small part due to fellow royals. You may want to take stock of what he means to you.” Her smile is more reserved, and a touch sad, this time. “I am content to wait and see, Raven. Patience is something I have in abundance.” “Then, for my own curiosity, I shall rephrase it as a question. What does Anon mean to you?” She chews on this question a bit. “He doesn’t know what he wants, Raven. He’s still trying to figure everything out. Twilight’s swept up in his craft and nominally innocent mannerisms. My sister has found someone who knows even a sliver of what she’s gone through – and trust me, realizing that hurt me, a bit. These, I think, were inevitable. He’s a perfect storm of circumstances, aimed right at this very palace.” “Your Majesty, only one pony has given me straightforward answers today, and she left my office many hours ago. What about you?” “I’m less interested in what he is, and more in what he can be, Raven. But, if you insist on a straightforward answer, I am interested.” You draw yourself up, at this. “Interested beyond merely academic?” ”He doesn’t treat me like a princess. Where he came from, princesses were irrelevant. Isn’t that fascinating? I’ve finally met someone who can see through that. The only other stallions who interact casually are my old friends, and none of that latter group is very compelling. Something about ancient familiarity makes for good friends and bad lovers. And I mean no offense to you of course, you’re overly respectful at all times. But you’re the only one that never bothers me from, because that’s who you genuinely are.” “Then I am glad he came into Your Majesty’s life. Now two can treat you genuinely. But have you spoken to him about this?” ”Oh absolutely. Do you know what he did?” You shake your head. ”He’s the one who dragged me down to the library. Can you believe that? He told me what to do! Then when we get down there, he just goes back to books. He doesn’t even like reading, not like Twilight, he just does it because it’s something to do. I took a nap, right there in the private reading room. When his phone woke me up to attend our meeting, he’d hardly moved.” “Fascinating.” ”More than you could know. Don’t you see? He reads because he’s bored, Raven. But the books are enough. No, the books are just to fill the time. I am enough. Even if I were to disregard his presence completely – which I have done, many times, in that span during which he alone accompanies me – he remains by my side. Not out of respect, for he has little of that, but something deeper. He genuinely cares, Raven, and if I didn’t know where he came from better, I’d call it devotion.” “If not that, then what?” She looks away from you, out the large window behind your desk. “I don’t know. But I intend to find out.” When she looks back, she has another of her gleams in her eyes. “And I intend to enjoy it.” “Someone’s fucking with me.” Twilight looks at you as you drop the box of talon parts on the table. ”Why do you say that?” “Those motors we assembled earlier?” You gesture to the neat row of them along one side of the desk. “I found their parts sitting outside my door yesterday evening. No explanation, after all this time with it tied up. Now when I go down there, the mare at the desk was more than happy to hand this over right away. Totally different mare than usual, but I don’t think the smithy staff has changed at all. So, I say again, someone’s fucking with me.” ”But who would do that?” “Blueblood, I think. From my preliminary investigation I mean. I need to confront him sometime, before something weirder happens. I’m pretty sure he’s telling ponies to stop working with me. Well, except today, I guess. I don’t even know.” ”I could-” “No. Don’t. I want to handle it myself. I just haven’t had the time lately.” She stares at you, her head just barely visible over the edge of the box from where you stand. “If you insist.” “I do. But with these pieces, we should have everything. You ready?” ”Lay it all out.” You start unpacking the box. One ring, about the size of your own palm, with teeth on the outside. Pieces to make an assembly for the back of the hand, including a smaller, thicker ring with many holes around its edge for wires. Finally, a series of smaller pieces, combining to form a single talon of the claw. This last set glowed magenta, and soon three duplicate pieces sat beside it. “Here, lets make this fun.” You take out your phone and put it on the benchtop, flipping to its stopwatch. “How fast can you assemble one?” Twilight grins at you as you remove the now-empty box from the table, then her magic’s glow extends to all the frame pieces and half the motors on the table. When they lift off its surface, you hit the stopwatch. In that magenta field, all the parts align in a configuration similar to the final assembly. Then the entire formation contracts. Every single motor slots into place at once, followed by every frame piece locking into place with each other in one fluid movement. The few fasteners required outside the tabs and slots slip into place from every direction at the same time. The now fully-assembled talons float back down to the tabletop. It takes you a moment to react. “Heh.” ”What?” “Poetry in motion.” Twilight smiles, then looks to the tabletop beside you. “So how long did it take?” You slap the phone’s screen, but it’s far too late. “Shit, I didn’t stop it. Too lost in what you were doing.” She laughs, then shakes her head. “Seriously, Anon.” “Your work’s just that beautiful. Now I gotta complete all the connections. That’ll take a lot longer than your magnificent display.” As you flip your new soldering iron on, she comes around the table to your side. ”That’s fine. Human magic is interesting.” “It’s not magic, it’s electricity to make heat, melting metal.” She nudges your thigh with the side of her head, prompting you to tousle her mane. ”It’s your hands, Anon, how sure you are when you use your tools. It’s magic when you do it.” The two of you had designed this test article with accessibility in mind, and doing all the electrical work while it was fully assembled had been the plan from the beginning. It had been years since you needed to solder anything, so you had to reacquaint yourself with best practices, on top of getting the hang of a handmade iron. You only burnt yourself twice! Twilight continued to prove useful, able to hold wires to parts, either at any angle needed, while you worked with your iron and solder. After around an hour, the completed piece sat on the table, connected to a power pack you made the night before. An open socket on the back of the hand is exposed, surrounded by a ring of wire ends. “Alright, ready when you are.” Twilight telekinetically inserted a small crystal into the center of the ring, to be the focus of the spell. You kick your stool out of the way to crouch beside her, so you’re looking at the claw from the same angle she is. “Alright, just to be safe, lets go over what happens if we messed up.” ”If your connections are bad, some motors won’t work, that’s simple enough. The portion of the spell controlling the motors extends only to the surrounding ring; it’ll just be magically connecting the motors with the power source, and determining how much power is transferred, based on what I tell it mentally. If my magic’s bad, some position feedback won’t work, and we won’t recognize that until I try to use it.” “There’s no risk of messing up the thing letting you control it mentally?” She gives you a flat look. “I’ve cast spells that use that connection many times, Anon. It’s one of the most fundamental spells in advanced magic. Flying tortoise, remember?” “Yeah, yeah, just making sure. What if our design was wrong? What happens if it, uh, gets a mind of its own?” ”If we overestimated our connection limits? The core of its identity will be formed by the caster’s ideas of what it is. So if we leave it, it’ll try to do… hand things? Grabbing objects, moving them, stuff like that. Something this complex would need to learn how to work itself, so we’ll have plenty of time to stop it.” “No danger to you, through the link you make with it?” ”If it gets a life of its own, that link will fail to form in the first place. Scholars still debate on why that happens; this isn’t a very popular field, due to how complex the spell is, and many mages are reluctant to study failure modes. The current leading theory is the mental bridge is tangled and ineffective due to the sheer number of control channels needed; this process may be how it gets its own mind in the first place. What this has to do with the intelligence-boosting effects on magically saturated animals is still in question, it’s just known they’re related.” “As long as you’ll be fine, I’m happy. I got my scare out of your magic yesterday.” You wrap an arm around her midsection, pulling her close to you to steady her. If the spell took too much out of her again, you’d be ready. She turns her head away from you, though. “Anon, I told you it’s too soon for… this degree of familiarity. I should wait.” “Does it make you happy when I do?” ”Well, yes, but-” “That’s enough for me.” She snorts at this, then returns her attention to the claw. Her horn starts glowing, as does the crystal inside the claw’s central socket. She closes her eyes, and you can hear her breathing faster. Then, suddenly, she stops. You look away from her to the claw. The crystal in the center now emits a very faint golden glow. As you’re watching it, the tip of one talon twitches. “Oh shit, you did it! We did it!” You squeeze her tighter to you with the arm around her, while grabbing the claw with your other hand. She turns in your grip to hug you back, drawing your attention down. Her eyes are shining, matching her huge smile. “I told you it’d work.” “Yeah, yeah you did. I should know by now not to doubt you.” She laughs. “I’d appreciate that.” “You said this crystal was too small to hold any magic reservoir, right?” ”Yes, so we will have to recast the spell when it runs down. It wasn’t that difficult though. Shouldn’t be a problem.” “Alright, here, let me put it on.” You gently grab her closer wing, which she helpfully extends. Threading the claw’s thin straps between her feathers carefully, you eventually cinch its base against the end of the limb. “Try it?” ”I’m still trying to get the hang of it, give me a minute.” She’s only moving one of the talons, testing different angles and orientations. You watch it track around the claw’s main ring, rotating into an opposed position then to the other side of the row of digits, and back to its starting position again. As she’s working on learning how it works you study her wing. “Hey Twilight, can you teach me about how this thing works? I’ve been thinking of artificial body parts lately as a natural next step from these hands, but I don’t know how these wings work. Back home, the wings humans made for vehicles were fixed in place, and just dealt with lift passively.” She furrows her brows while focusing on the claw, but her voice doesn’t sound strained when she answers you. “They generate lift in what I imagine is a similar manner, for one. The secret is in the feathers, obviously. Remiges – these wing feathers – have a couple special properties. The last segment of the wing’s core limb, the bit you strapped this claw to, the biggest feathers coming off that are the primaries. Each one can be individually positioned. Pegasi have incredible ranges of motion with them, so you’ll see them use them for non-flight purposes occasionally, like gestures, or attempting to grasp very light objects. Their motion is important with flight, and lets us do things like change the wing’s shape, increase or decrease drag at certain angles, and so on. The ones closer to my body in that same plane are secondaries, they form a lot of the wing’s lift-generating shape. Unlike the primaries, I can’t move them individually. These feathers are covered by the smaller tectrices on top that help fill out the shape and smooth airflow, which would be involved in the lift generation you mentioned.” She’s able to move all four talons at once now, and is running through different grip configurations, though every once and awhile your prodding elicits a flinch that interrupts her practice. “How did humans make flight work with fixed wings? How did you take off?” “You could think of it like getting a running start. Get moving fast enough for the lift to carry you off the ground; we had engines that generated the thrust for that on their own, things that worked a bit like giant fans. Well, for propellers, at least. Jets were more complicated. It’d be wrong to say the wings were entirely fixed; wings had flaps that could change their shape, but they never actually flapped like yours, at least.” You think on the problem more as you watch her work the claw. “Honestly, I think rotors might be better for artificial wings, but they’d only work in a matching set. I’m going to need some notes on anatomy, things like body width, neck length, and head range of motion. Can’t have tiltrotor ponies decapitating themselves. I’m sure you got some information on that in your library.” ”They’d lose some body language pegasi look to, without primary feathers. And it’d be hard to fold the wings with the big rotor blades.” “Nah, we can kill two- okay, that’s not a great turn of phrase. We can solve both those problems with a single solution; back home we had helicopters that could fold their rotor blades. If the user can control blade positions individually through their whole range, that should solve both problems. Think three blades would be enough?” “For the basics, yeah. Foldable rotors. Human technology is incredible.” She squirms out of your arm and turns her side to the table, extending her wing out over it. It takes her some time to get her extended wing in a good position, but she eventually gets the claws near some of the motors slated for the other of the claw’s pair. Slowly, and delicately, she closes the talons around one motor. When she tries to lift it, the motor slips out of her grasp. She grits her teeth and tries again. She doesn’t get the motor off the table until her fourth attempt. You’re hiding a grin behind one hand. “There you go! You weren’t kidding when you said it’d take practice. ”Shut up.” “Hey, I’m not making fun of you. I suppose it would take some time to learn how to use an unfamiliar appendage. You got the hang of that way faster than I’d thought.” “It’s easier with the kinesthetic feedback, you were smart to design for that. All feedback’s working, by the way. It’s a little strange trying to grab something with no tactile feedback, though.” “That would require a significantly more complex design, one I’m not sure how we’d implement. Even if we could provide the technological basis, that’d still put us way over the control limit. Practice and a little knowledge of what you’re grabbing should suffice. Just don’t crush anything.” ”Easier said than done, I think. I’ll learn.” You look at her fiddling with small parts on your desk, tongue-tip sticking out slightly with her concentration. She is, you realize, just as adorable as when you first saw her, even after you’d stopped thinking of her as similar to cute animals from back home. Something about how she approached things, her earnest enthusiasm, her dedication to learning, and her interest in just about every skill you valued in yourself. She better give it all a good think, once she leaves for the Crystal Empire tomorrow. Damn her dumb timetables. Maybe this could work out after all.
10 HistoryYou really enjoy watching Twilight work. She’s humming some song that you can’t quite identify – but you know it’s one off your phone – as she assembles one of the two rotors for your crippled pegasi flight aid. After design revisions, it’s more a tiltwing-tiltrotor hybrid, taking advantage of how it’d need to be able to articulate to fold away anyhow. Complicated, but you figure the capability is worth it. You’re working on the circuit of relays and stops that lock the wings in a fully extended configuration to enable flight. You think you’ve got it just about figured out, now that the two of you have a properly designed rotor hub to include all the functionality you needed to allow its blades to work like the last section of a pegasi’s wing, if the hub was the end of its limb. But you keep getting distracted by the purple cutie building your tech! She’s got your soldering iron in one of her claws, a spool of solder in the other, while she holds the parts she’s working on in place with her magic. She’s getting good at using them; it gives you hope that your combination of magic and technology could do the world good after all. Those concerns, however, feel distant, when you’re watching her. It’s something you’d never thought you’d see, here, in the first few months after you’d arrived. But Twilight has picked up on everything you’ve taught her, and then some. Her ability to master any skill related to your work astounds you, and her eagerness to employ those skills thrills you. How did you get so lucky as to have someone like this interested in you for more than your work? Just thinking about it set your heart aflutter. You look back to your circuit diagrams, ready to tackle the last section. No, wait, hold on. The core section didn’t look like this before. You erase and redraw it to be correct. By the time you’re done, the rest of the diagram has disappeared. While you’re trying to process this, you feel an incessant tugging at your attention. No, it’s not wanting to watch Twilight more. The tugging turns into a suction. Suddenly it’s a physical struggle to keep your focus on the page before you. One you lose. Violently. A cacophonous shriek builds as you feel your mind being ripped out of your body. You look back at Twilight one last time as the world dissolves into static. An eternity is compressed into a handful of seconds as the scene distorts itself into hazy nothingness. Then a thunderclap booms, but it’s strangely muted. The mostly-assembled rotor, no longer held up by a work stand, falls to gray, dusty ground in slow motion. Twilight’s nowhere to be found, nor is the workbench she was standing near. The bench you were drawing on is still present, when you turn back to it, but your plans aren’t. The walls and ceiling have been replaced by a pitch black starfield. Though it’s not from any angle or image you recognize – and you’ve known a fuckload about the Apollo program since your boyhood aspirations – you realize you’re on the moon. In the distance, you can see Luna galloping towards you, though it’s more a bounding prance, considering the environment. You let out a breath you’ve been holding, but even as you do, you’re still holding your breath. Somehow you’re breathing and not breathing at the same time. Better than asphyxiating in the moon’s nigh-nonexistent atmosphere, you suppose Luna’s not slowing down. You brace for impact just before she hits you, but she still knocks you off your feet, sending both of you drifting towards the ground. She lands on top of you with all her weight, which isn’t nearly enough to hurt you here, while you end up on your back. Her head’s out of sight; her neck’s extended along the side of your face, but from her hitching breath you can tell she’s crying, as she scrabbles at the dusty ground around you. You push her up off you as you sit up. “Hey now, stop that. Please stop that? I don’t know what’s going on.” She looks at you with tear-filled eyes. “We are sorry, we-” she takes a deep breath, which doesn’t help much- “we planned not to bother thee, but…” Luna sits back as you stand up and dust yourself off. “It’s fine. No, really. I’m just surprised. I’m guessing this is a nightmare of yours?” ”Yes. Being back here.” She shakes her head. “And we are back here often, Anon, in our own dreams.” “You can’t just end it?” ”We are asleep ourselves, right now, so without our full talent. We have some control, but cannot stop it, or change the fundament.” She rears back and throws her forelegs over your shoulders, and wraps her wings around you.”And we are tired of facing it alone.” You return her hug, and start rocking her side to side slowly when her sobbing resumes. Up on her hind legs like this, she’s a bit taller than you, despite being only about five feet on all fours. She’s actually the perfect height to be hugging a pony like this, you realize. Twilight can’t hug you around your neck unless you’re crouching or kneeling – though she has plenty of room when you’re that low – and Celestia’s weight with height-enabled leverage would knock you over; even the palace’s smaller rooms are so much taller than normal because her horn would lodge in the ceiling of a usual eight or nine foot clearance of a typical domestic floorplan if she reared back. Thinking on Celestia, “Why don’t you bring your sister?” Luna pulls her head up and back, and looks down at you with wide eyes. “Never! Thou canst never tell her. She knoweth our time was spent in suffering, and knoweth we still have nightmares of it, but if she learneth what it was truly like, her guilt would be unimaginable.” You reach up to pull her neck back over your shoulder, and stroke a hand through her mane. Unlike Celestia’s warm mist, Luna’s feels like a slightly chilly void or lower-pressure area, with a faintly blowing wind. You can even feel the stars; they nip at your skin like pellets of sleet as you pass your hand through them. She must be reading your thoughts, because halfway through your fourth stroke, her mane flashes to her normal blue hair. “I know you told me you were here, but I never really comprehended it until now, looking on it myself.” ”A thousand years, Anon, even if my perception was… distorted.” She drops out of your arms back onto all fours. “Awhile ago, we sat with thee through one of thy nightmares, and made it pleasant.” Her wide eyes are pleading you, frantically looking across your features. “Please, canst thou do the same for us? You stroke some errant part of her mane away from her damp cheek and shining eyes. “If you’re already sleeping, it’s morning, so I doubt I have much time. But I’ll do what I can.” Pulling back, the two of you look around the area. Luna spots the rotor that was dragged through from your dream, in your transfer’s wake. ”What is that?” You walk over to it, and Luna follows you. “This is part of the system Twilight and I are building to give pegasi the ability to fly again, if something happens to their wings.” You reach it and crouch beside it, propping it up so it’s oriented vertically. It suffered no damage from its gentle fall. “These three blades here spin, like three thin wings. The whole thing works a little like a big fan, you could say. We’re going to have one on each side of what you could consider prosthetic wings. They’ll generate enough thrust to get the pegasus off the ground and, once they’re tilted in the right direction, on their way.” Luna tilts her head as she examines it. She seems a lot more composed now; either her anxiety has run its course, or she’s managed to tuck it away for now. “It looketh most peculiar. We cannot pretend to understand how it worketh, but we trust thy talent.” You manipulate the blades where they attach to the hub, manually pulling the locking pins on two of them and folding them back along either side of the third. “And this is the system we devised so the pegasus can still gesture and communicate normally. These two folded blades can be positioned at any point along this range of travel, and the entire assembly can still rotate at the hub. Along with each blade’s ability to tilt, this means these three blades can replicate the behavior of a pegasi’s first three primaries on each wing, which Twilight told me is the core of their wing body language.” Luna extends her own wings, and executes a series of involved patterns by arranging and angling her own primary feathers. “Pegasi in this age knoweth not many of the old signs. This displeases us, though we admit to amusement that we now know more than they about their own secret language of yore, we who had so much trouble learning it in our youth when we received wings of our own.” “They used to talk through sign language?” ”Not exclusively, but they possessed many different gestures to relate meanings or attitudes more subtle than speech alloweth. They were very extroverted and socially colorful. While those traits remaineth today, they lost much of their old nuance. Pegasi nowadays are so forward and bold.” Luna shakes her head. “We miss it, to be truthful. It earned them a stubborn place among unicorn-dominated Canterlot society. One pegasus alone couldn’t do much in the face of a unicorn, but two or more together would make a terrifying rhetorical challenge for even the hardiest nobles, as they could communicate privately with each other even while speaking to you.” “For our deaf, back home, we had entire languages that could be spoken with hand gestures alone. I don’t know any of the signs, but I always respected those who learned it.” ”Thou speaketh of many accommodations for your crippled.” “Well, we preferred to call them disabled, or similar terms. But yeah, we tried to take care of those who couldn’t take care of themselves. We’d train dogs specifically for certain tasks. Ramps and specially modified vehicles for the wheelchair-bound. Different interface schemes for the colorblind. Special social programs for the disabled. Stuff like that.” ”It is admirable.” “Now you see why I’d like to bring a piece of it here. My work can do that. It’s how I can repay the kindness all of you have shown me.” Luna extends her head up – she can just barely make it – to brush your cheek with her snout, reversing your earlier gesture. “Thou art noble of soul, Anon.” You reach up to hold her head against yours. “That means a lot, coming from someone with so firm a belief in nobility as you.” You look around at the vast blankness. “Hey, since this is your dream – a pony’s dream – and you said you can read thoughts, can you pull stuff from my mind? Make it part of the space?” ”We can try.” “Alright. I’m about to remember something I’ve seen. I’d like you to try to stick it over there. I want to show it to you.” Closing your eyes, you recall your many memories of moon landing exhibits from different museums you’ve visited. You fix many angles and perspectives of the Apollo lunar module in your mind. ”We have it.” When you open your eyes again, there’s a perfect copy of a lunar module, life-sized, sitting about a hundred yards away. ”Now canst thou tell us what it is?” “Yeah, sure. Follow me.” The two of you make your way over to its golden base. You have some fun mimicking the leaps of the Apollo astronauts, but realize you can go much faster and further with each bound, not weighed down with gear and suits as they were. The fact you can feel accurate lunar gravity, thanks to Luna’s experience with it, blows your mind. This is literally a childhood dream come true. When you arrive, you take position in front of it, one hand grabbing the ladder. “This, my moon-bound mare, is what we came here in.” From her widening eyes and angling of her ears, you can tell her interest has gone from negligible to maximum in a fraction of a second. “Not just this, strictly speaking, but this is what we rode down to the surface. There was another part that would circle it high above, that carried all this here, and would carry this top half-” You jump up – the low gravity helping your altitude – to slap the side of the ascent module “-back home to Earth. The base would stay behind.” She sits down in the dust, staring up at it. You walk over and crouch next to her, wrapping an arm around her neck, then turn your gaze towards it as well. She absentmindedly extends her wing to wrap around you. ”Is this… Is this what human technology meaneth? Doth this represent the pinnacle of thy craft?” “Luna, these things hadn’t been used in almost half a century, when I left. This is old tech, from my perspective. Not ancient, but before my time. If I can get ponies making vacuum tubes, we could start building some of the systems that my people used when the Apollo program started. After you guys study and develop your own technology enough, at least. The computer that’s actually in there was the first computer to use silicon-based integrated circuits, which is something you guys might take awhile to get ahold of.” You pat your pockets. Looks like your phone didn’t make it into this dream. “The little device I carry around in my pocket most of the time is so many orders of magnitude more powerful than the computer in there it blows my mind. We’ve come a long way.” You shake your head. “But not a long enough way to come back.” She walks over to the lander, then rears back to put her forehooves on the first rung of the ladder, and cranes her neck around to look back at you. “Anon, we cannot say we have cared much for thy science, beyond the fact thou doest it, and what thou canst achieve with it. But this…” She looks back up the ladder, towards the entrance hatch. “This hath meaning for us. We still understand not why thy kind wanted to come to this dreadful place, but to see the proof of it warms our heart.” You walk over to her and pat her on the lower back, earning you a swish of her tail. “Here, let me show you inside.” You jump onto the ladder and climb, getting to the module’s entrance hatch. When you grasp the handle, you find it works and feels exactly like a doorknob. That’s not right, but you’ve never actually opened a hatch like this one before, so Luna wouldn’t have any reference to replicate it. Dreams can’t be entirely accurate, after all. When you swing the hatch open, you find inside is just an empty shell. You frown and close the hatch. “Uh, interior. Hey, I’m gonna recall a bunch of stuff again, what the inside of this thing looks like. Can you stuff it all in?” ”We will do our best.” You close your eyes again and remember back to all the exhibits, schematics, diagrams, models, and even a virtual reality environment you’ve messed with before. You try to make a mental map of everything together. “We think we have done it?” You smile at the question in her voice as you open your eyes and open the hatch again. The interior is indeed present, though mostly just in basic shapes. Still, those shapes are all the right sizes and in the right places, so it’s good enough. You wave Luna up the ladder behind you and duck inside the small hatch. It’s very cramped inside, and you have to stand and contour your back to one side of the interior for Luna to crawl inside herself. She closes the hatch behind her with magic. It sounds like a regular door too, and you have to stifle a chuckle at the absurdity. ”How many humans traveled in this vehicle? There is little space.” “Just two. A third would be in the other part in orbit.” She looks out one of the triangular main windows, conveniently enough at just the right height for her, then tilts her head upward to look through the small docking window in the ceiling over the commander’s station. Something’s bothering you about the lighting; it’s far too bright in here. Ah, that’d be the exhibit lighting, coming from sources that you don’t think would exist in the real article. “Hey, uh, can you turn off the ambient light in here? It’s not, er, accurate.” Luna blinks at you, but then nods. The interior is plunged into darkness, illumination now only provided by the controls, which unlike most of the interior, are rendered in loving detail. ”Skies above.” “Yeah this is more like it. At least, I think.” Luna stares at the many controls. “What is all this for?” “That’s how we piloted this thing. I can’t really explain it all to you, as much as I studied it.” You sit down with your back to the step up to the rear half of the compartment, your feet against the hatch. “C’mon, sit for a bit. Relax, as best you can in here.” She looks to the floor, then at your legs. “There is little room.” You shrug, then pat your thighs. She hesitates before settling herself over your legs, then sprawls out across the lower floor section of the control stations. “Not so bad, was it?” You reach out and scratch around one of her ears. She leans into it even as she laughs and smiles in embarrassment. “Only for thy invitation.” “Hey, last time we shared a dream, you climbed into bed with me.” She snorts and ducks away from your hand. “Anon, thou art rude, with such insinuation.” You reach out with both hands this time, getting both her ears and scratching around them more aggressively. She ducks her head down, but not far enough to escape, and fails to suppress a soft nickering. “Just speaking the truth. And don’t try to say you didn’t like it.” When she tosses her head again, you decide to give her ears a break, and go back to stroking the mane she never reverted to its starry form. You two spend a good deal of time in silence, with one of your hands idly playing with her head and neck as she leans into its ministrations, and the other on her side, feeling her chest move with her breathing. You study the controls and try to remember what they all do, while she looks this way and that, studying the interior. Suddenly, she stops leaning into your hand. ”Anon?” Is that a note of panic? ”Anon, what’s-” You feel her breathing pick up its pace, then she gathers her legs under her and stands. “Anon, what’s wrong?” You look at her, but your head movement feels like it overshoots its mark. Everything suddenly feels so sluggish. Indistinct. Very, very far away. You can’t really focus on her face, despite it being only about a foot and a half away from you, but you think you see tears in her eyes. ”Anon please leavest not us now!” But everything’s going white. Then you open your open eyes. The white is daylight. You’re in your room again, staring at white ceiling. Fuck. You dress as quickly as you can. It’s not night, unlike the last time you needed to make this quick cross-palace excursion to Luna’s side, and you have appearances to maintain during the day. You do have to cross the outdoors, since you’ve moved out to the new place. Squinting against daylight, you nod and greet ponies you pass as politely as you can. Your fast jog raises some eyebrows. You stop yourself when you reach the hallway that wraps around the throne room. No, you’re not going to the bureaucratic wing this time. Royal quarters are towards the back of the palace, up several floors, then down a short hall to the front. You almost pass out by the time you’ve sprinted up enough flights of stairs to get to the right floor, and have to stop to catch your breath. Just a little further. Two of Luna’s guards stand outside her door, the only ones you know to stand watch in daylight besides the one that Luna’s attached to your workshop. You reach them, but are too out of breath to articulate your need. You end up pointing to your temple and closing your eyes instead. “She, uh, she wants me-” Breathe, damnit. “Was in a dream, but woke up. I think she needs my help.” Her two guards look at each other, but one shrugs her wings and steps aside. The other opens the door for you. “Only doing this because it’s you, Anon,” he says. Luna’s suite is fairly spartan, for royalty, so you have no trouble navigating it for her bed, and sit down on its side. Even asleep, she doesn’t look happy. Every once in awhile you can hear a quiet whinny or whimper from her. She’d waited until you woke up, when she visited you during your nightmare. But she also said you dropped out of it, so you assume you were just sleeping normally. She’s obviously still stuck in hers. Maybe she’s still looking for you. Hesitantly, you reach a hand out, and rest it on one of her shoulders. Her whole body jerks around it, and she snaps out at our arm, which you pull away just in time. “Hey, hey calm down, it’s me!” She freezes, then slumps back onto the bed. “Oh. Sorry,” she croaks out. “Nah, it’s fine. You looked miserable.” She groans, then curls up towards where you sit. “Hell, you still look miserable.” ”Hate waking up.” “Fitting, for a princess of dreams. Still, I think you hated being where you were, too.” She nods, which is pretty awkward when the side of her face is still pressed into the bedding. You notice that her mane’s normal hair even in the real world. Did changing it in the dream change it here, too? “Sorry, I kinda woke up.” ”We knew.” “You sounded like you still might have been looking for me.” ”We were alone again.” “Well, now I’m here.” She’s quiet for a long time before finally responding, “Thou hast much to do.” “I can stick around until you’re asleep again.” This earns you the slightest of smiles, and that’s enough to make it worth it. After Celestia closes the door to the private reading room, she turns to you instead of her usual seat. ”You know, Anon, the first time we came here together, you offered me a massage.” She grins at you. “I’ve decided I could use your touch after all, even if not the most stallionine.” That grin always means trouble for you of some sort, even if just a bit of teasing. You don’t really mind. Truth be told, you’ve come to anticipate it, and enjoy that anticipation. Hardly a dull day around Celestia. You wait for the joshing follow-up, but she simply walks to the middle room, turns her rear to you, and lowers herself to the floor, legs neatly tucked beneath her. When you don’t move, she looks back at you expectantly. “Well shit, I didn’t think you were serious.” She flashes a more genuine smile, then once again lays her head on the floor away from you. “It’s been a long day.” There was something of an incident in the great hall earlier, a big fracas between two groups who had evidently arrived to ask for Celestia’s help on opposing sides of some policy dispute out in stars-know-where. Celestia not only managed to stop the fighting, but imply the perfect solution in her rebuke to them. You have no idea how she thinks these solutions up. Over a thousand years of fighting social battles will make a top tier rhetorical soldier of anyone, you assumed. But now this warrior of words wanted you to work over her body. “All due respect, but why me? I’m sure there’s some masseuse in Canterlot somewhere you could ask.” ”I want to see if what my student says about your hands and fingers is true. She claims you can work wonders with them.” She turns back to you again, this time wearing that feral grin. “I don’t know what you did to her to convince her of that, but I’ll settle for a massage.” You’re rolling that slanderous innuendo around in your head as you kneel by her side. It doesn’t help that Celestia’s universally attractive, despite being one of this world’s cruel pranks upon your psyche of small sapient horses. She’s one of the few beings you’ve seen here who exists on your scale, for one, so your options have already been extremely narrow. Her body is of a nearly unique slender build, one shared by her sister and only a few other ponies you’ve seen, all unicorns. Some older unicorn phenotype, washed out with genetic stock from the other tribes? Or was it the other way around, with the extant unicorn families demonstrating it having alicorn ancestry? All you know is that her shape touched some deep language of beauty, with her perfect curves between contrasting fullness and apparent fragility. This, coupled with her reserved composure that obliterated some of the unfeminine mannerisms of most mares, inviting you to dream of how she might otherwise carry herself, well, it prompted thoughts you were too embarrassed to admit to anypony. But, in Equestria, who would disagree? You’re pretty sure those mares who displayed her body type are the peak of sex appeal, at least in Canterlot. Eternal youth, wisdom, AND beauty. Alicorns had it made. But as you lay a hand on her back – something you’ve done so rarely, despite how physically familiar you’ve become with her sister and student – you’re reminded that afore-thought fullness owes itself to muscle, and that apparent fragility is only skin-deep. Celestia’s a powerful mare in more than just charisma and magical ability. With your hands grabbing her lower back, it really doesn’t help your state of mind any. What would the other two think? You’ve already all but committed to Twilight, and Luna’s finding her way into your heart even through your mental objections from your prior culture’s monogamous leanings. ‘Sorry gals, I really want to fuck your sister/teacher. No hard feelings! Jus primae noctis? Oh it’s an ancient Earth custom, the ruler gets to bang your new spouse. Stallions are the fairer sex here, right? Just the way it is on this bitch of a world.’ Celestia might have it all, but you’re too terrified of breaking their hearts to let yourself even think of doing anything about it. So here she is asking you to. As you get started, you find yourself having some difficulty getting through how taut her muscles are. Her whole back is hard as a rock. What kind of tension is this poor mare under? Besides running a nation, at least. Honestly, that’s probably enough. Celestia has a way of moving her body in minute ways to guide your hands exactly where they need to be, as you work your way up her spine. It’s not just your hands doing work; her whole body is relaxing as you make your way forward. Was your touch part of the tension, and she’s acclimating? Or was she just that bad off, and her body’s relaxation is some sort of feedback or cascading effect from your work? Whatever it is, she’s practically putty in your hands now. She never once vocalizes any pleasure, not even that nickering you’ve deciphered means satisfaction, but from her big sighs to her increasingly-frequent stretching, you can tell you’re having an effect. Damn, maybe you should have been a masseuse this whole time. Something about mighty mares melting to manual ministrations makes your mind meander merrily. But your current line of work is the only reason you’re doing any good. A body is a finely engineered system. Your actions build off an ingrained understanding of mechanical stress, loading, tension, and likely arrangements of connections between two points on a frame. Besides, your work has been honing your manual dexterity lately, so that’s a big part of it. You run into a problem, however, when you reach her wings. From her side, you can’t reach the same angles on both simultaneously, and more involved work would require you to awkwardly reach around the closer one. When you stand to move behind her, she doesn’t twitch a muscle. You crouch at her rear, the warm mists of her flowing tail provoking an illusion of dampness about your ankles. You reach out and place your hands around her waist again, about where you started, and look up the length of her body in line with her spine, taking in how it’s changed with your work and her relaxation, how her long and slender neck extends forward like that, how her prodigious wingspan is fully spread across the floor… Skies above. You’re even thinking pony oaths, now. You carefully step to either side of her waist, then drop onto your knees, your butt over the small of her back. The mood takes a welcome hit when, in some part of the back of your mind, you’re losing your shit at the fact this looks like a ridiculous caricature of riding a horse. Smiling and shaking your head, you reach out and grab the base of her wings, and start kneading them. This earns you a shudder from her, and she pulls her legs out from underneath her, extending them forward and back in a cat-like full-body stretch beneath you. “You, uh, you okay, down there?” ”It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve been touched by a stallion like this.” So you aren’t the only victim to these thoughts. She picks up on your hesitation to resume, lifting her head off the floor to look at you. “Don’t worry, you’re not arousing me.” “Ah, right, suppressed sex drive and other alicorn nonsense.” She drops her head back to the floor once you reluctantly resume. “Besides, this feels almost as good.” She laughs when you freeze again. “I didn’t say stop.” You shake your head and get back to work on her wings. “Why has it been so long? I imagine you can get any stallion that you wanted.” ”’That I wanted’ being the key part of that. I didn’t want any.” “Er, are you a, uh, confirmed… bachelorette?” ”Please, I appreciate the finer things in life.” This must be some sort of joke that doesn’t translate well, because she’s wearing that goofy smile again. When it falls flat, she sighs and shakes her head. “No, I just felt it wouldn’t be right to take any when my sister was… away. As long as she was lonely, I should be too. Besides, there are very few stallions who I ever thought I could love as an equal.” “You said it’s been a long time, not never. Tell me about a stallion who you thought you could?” She’s silent for a time, not even giggling when you flinch back from a face-full of her feathers you give yourself while manipulating her right wing to feel down its length. ”He was often quiet, when around me,” she begins with a soft voice. “Always lost in himself and whatever held his attention at that moment, never paying much attention to the outside world. Introspective I guess, though he rarely thought highly of what he found in there. He was humble, and deeply thoughtful of others in a uniquely thoughtless way.” “He sounds like he was a scatterbrain.” She chuckles. “You could say that. I think he’d argue that he was intensely focused, instead, just focused on many different things. He’d take too much on and not know what to do with it, then feel overwhelmed.” “I think I know the type.” She turns her head to give you a curious sidelong glance, before dropping back down and resuming. “But he knew the meaning – if not the value – of his companionship to me, and was always by my side when I expected it. When I needed it, not that I think he ever knew I did. He had a way of underestimating his value, so he’d never see what others saw in him. It was honestly infuriating. As all ponies have our special talents, he thought he was his special talent, and no more.” “Did you ever tell him your feelings?” She shakes her head, dragging it across the carpet without lifting it. “Why not?” ”He was a little strange. Not conventionally attractive, nowhere near an ideal stallion in comportment. He had little patience for palace life and would rather be left to his own devices than participate in courtly affairs. Even if that was everything I wanted for myself, in my heart longing to be free of the throne, what would my ponies say? The image of my office bound me, even when he tempted me with freedom from it, and even if I indulged his whimsy to those ends once in awhile." “I guess that makes sense, yeah.” She grimaces at this, then continues. “Besides, he was destined for others, more suited to what he did, his interests, his feelings and his way of living. I thought I’d be content just watching from afar, making sure he was happy. But, looking back, I’m not sure why I thought that.” One of her ears angles for the door, then she picks her head up and looks at it. “Oh, this should be interesting.” “What?” As soon as the question’s out of your mouth, the door opens. You freeze. Luna’s standing there, eyes half closed, wearing a good pony approximation of Resting Bitch Face. ”G’affurnoon” She walks – it’s more a finely controlled stumbling, if anything – across the room in front of you two, then comes to a halt in no place in particular. ”I see you’re up early, sister. You have good timing; Anon and I were just discussing matters of love.” Luna slowly turns to face you two. You’re still frozen, straddling Celestia’s back, hands buried in the larger feathers around her shoulders. ”Twilight’s right, his hands are divine. You should let them crawl all over you too sometime.” This more explicit than usual innuendo finally stirs Luna out of her sleep inertia. She takes a step back, eyes opening fully. “I swear I didn’t do anything like that.” You finally take your hands off Celestia’s back, to hold them up in a placating gesture. ”Anon, we… er…” “I’m dead serious. She’s fucking with you. I promise.” Luna’s apparently still trying to process what she’s looking at, judging by how she’s blinking. You stand up and step to the left away from Celestia, who rolls onto her right side after. She’s looking between you and Luna with that damnable grin again. ”Anon, if thou desirest her…” ”Oh I’m sure he does, but he’s far too pure of heart to act on it. Despite my not so subtle test, his innocence remains intact. Sister, you have yourself a keeper. And I mean it about those hands; why don’t you feel for yourself?” ”I need to get a reference for the meeting this evening, for-” ”Nonsense. Let the stallion pamper you.” You shrug, then gesture to the open floor to your left. After some hemming and hawing, Luna drops her head and slowly walks over, turning in place and dropping to the floor in the same manner her sister initially did. You crouch next to her, wrapping your arm around her neck to hold the opposite side of her head and pull it against yours. Your fingers play with the base of her ear on that side. “Evening, sleepyhead.” ”Mrmph.” Her ear next to your face flicks at your temple. You laugh as you get yourself in the same position you’d just left over Celestia. Luna’s smaller size means you have access to everything, from your position over her waist. You get to work, applying what you learned from your work across Celestia’s body. It doesn’t take long for Luna to be almost totally limp, only upright thanks to your thighs on either side of her body. She sways a little every time you need to use a more vigorous motion. Unlike Celestia’s silence, she’s a bit more vocal. Her nickering, you realize, has what you guess is a more intentionally voiced component; it has a unique timbre that Twilight’s doesn’t, something that you could mistake for some different kind of sound. You’ve never heard another pony mask it that way, and Celestia doesn’t do it at all. Was it considered uncouth for royalty to admit to pleasure in such a base way? Or some old taboo from their original time? When did you pick up so much about pony reactions? Probably since you’ve been surrounding yourself with three of their finest specimens to study. Jeeze, now you’re thinking like Twilight. ”Cadance is coming in a few days,” Celestia says, watching you work over her sister. “I know you two haven’t spoken in some time. I think you have a lot to catch up on.” Luna doesn’t respond. She’s stopped reacting to your motions, too. Celestia eyes you, then slightly tosses her head towards her sister’s. You lean over her back to listen to her breathing. It’s the deep, even breathing of sleep. “Well shit. I knocked her out again.” Celestia gets to her hooves, then makes her way to the two of you and kneels again. “She always took too long to get up.” She looks up at you then, with a twinkle in her eyes. “She looks so comfortable. Why don’t we join her?” You stand as Celestia snuggles up to her sister’s side. It wakes Luna up, but she just mumbles something unintelligible, then lays her head over Celestia’s back. There’s just enough room in the tangle of legs and wings for you to get comfy yourself, if you sit and sort of recline back onto them. It takes some shifting on your and Celestia’s part – Luna doesn’t move a single muscle – but you find a way to arrange yourself comfortably. Once you do, you’re covered by a pair of wings, one dark blue and one white. Who knew living blankets are the best blankets? You fish your phone out of your pocket – careful not to jab Luna with your elbow – and set an alarm for the evening’s meeting. Maybe there’s something to be said for naps after all.
11 The EmpathChildren have always fascinated you, in some sort of distant, academic way. Babies, however, have all the downsides of children and then some, with hardly any positives to their accursed names. A vestigal religious part of you is convinced all babies are born inhabited by demons, which can only be fully exorcised by good parenting over two decades. You were extremely glad, then, when Princess Cadance and Shining Armor left Flurry Heart with Twilight, outside the room you’ve re-purposed into a sort of living room and office. Shining had whispered something to her, while handing over the foal, something that had her shoot you a glance. Between that and the royal guard outside whispering something to Shining, there was a lot of secrets in your embassy that you weren’t in the loop on. Well, you had a big one of your own, stored in boxes in a forgotten side room, but who’s counting, really? Besides you. You’re counting. Cadance, you notice, does that same bouncy trot that Twilight does when she’s happy. Must be where Twilight got it from, if Cadance had been responsible for some of her upbringing. Cadance is apparently happy all the time. Even when calm and relatively stationary, she’s always gently swaying in some sort of subtle bliss, with a warm smile on her face. Frankly, you feel happy just being near her. To the point that you’re able to quantify it; unable to resist an easy and informal experiment, on your way over you moderated your distance from her, noting how your mood changed as you did. You can only conclude she’s some sort of empath, as capable of broadcasting love and positivity as you’ve heard she is at detecting it. Shining Armor is much more stoic and reserved, but basks in his wife’s aura of joy like an cold man before a raging fire. It’s very strange seeing a couple that approaches gender dispositions you’re familiar with, but at the same time it’s comforting. Comforting is what they’ve pulled you aside to do, and with Cadance here, they’re exceedingly efficient at it. Cadance is looking you up and down like a delicious cut of meat, not that ponies here eat any. Shining Armor is looking between you two with a strained smile. ”Ah, sorry Anon, my wife can be-” ”So you’re Twilight’s lover!” The pink alicorn is sitting at the edge of her seat, and leaning forward to boot, her wings extended out behind her for balance. “Well, that’s a little much.” ”You can’t lie to me about affairs of the heart.” “No, I mean ‘lover’. We haven’t, ah-” You eye Shining sidelong, “-haven’t made love yet. So maybe not the most accurate term.” ”Oh! I’m sorry. I thought- no, that might be a couple weeks out still?” She ends the question with a look to her husband. Who rolls his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re asking me. I’m surprised you even remember.” ”It pays to know these details about those you care about, love.” “What details?” ”You’ll see!” Cadance leans forward again. “So, I imagine you have a lot of questions about your new life, being from another world and all.” “You’re getting ahead of the situation again. I’m still getting used to the idea of living here as my new life; living with Twilight is a life yet to come, if it happens.” ”It will.” Cadance beams at you. “But if we’re getting ahead of ourselves, start us at the beginning. How did you two meet?” “Work, I suppose. I managed to rope her into some of the side projects I’d been doing to fill time. She got interested enough to start helping me understand magic, and we worked on combining them. Honestly, I never intended any of this. I was just happy to have a friend.” ”That,” Cadance said, her smile gentler – no, her entire demeanor overhauled in a moment, less bubbly and more sensitive, “is how it often begins. A lot of ponies are caught up in gestures, or courtship, or wooing, but love grows separate from any of that. All those do is create an opening. Friendship – and doesn’t she know about that – is the spark from which the flame of love can grow. And a great fire follows a little spark! Oh, I love it when it develops so naturally.” “Yeah, and I wouldn’t have a problem with it, if I hadn’t gotten tangled up with another mare.” ”Oooh.” Cadance shoots a grin at her husband. “Scandalous.” She’s flipping her attitude like a switch, from motherly wisdom to teenage excitement. It would throw you off if you haven’t been swept up in its soothing wake, an effect you’re fairly sure she’s actively dictating with whatever her unique variety of magic is. She can keep doing it, as far as you care. You’ve always felt so uptight when talking about this; it highlighted just how out of place you are in this world. This externally imposed relaxation is a welcome relief. “I’ve been led to believe that’s pretty common around here.” ”Oh, absolutely. But a stallion thawing the time-lost Luna’s heart, it’s both thrilling and enigmatic.” “Well, she and I understand each other on things no other ponies can.” ”Entirely reasonable, and a good connection to have. Such burdens are always more easily carried with one you love.” “So, uh, how did you know it was Luna?” Her eyes sparkle. “You can’t lie to me about affairs of the heart.” “Not even by omission, I guess. Thing I’m caught up on is that herding didn’t exist back home. I have no idea how to do it.” ”Do it?” “Yeah, like how it all comes together. How the participants, uh, fit into place, I guess.” Cadance looks you over. “Twilight wasn’t wrong about you being very unstallionine. You’re thinking about it like it’s a machine, not ponies’ emotions.” “Yeah. Not a lot of experience to work off.” Cadance tilts her head in a pitying expression. “That’s a shame. From what Twilight tells me, you’re very sweet.” “I’d trust her assessment over mine. But, ah, you two are exclusive. Isn’t that rare?” ”Love, Anon, works in mysterious ways. We’re privileged by our position to be able to do this; normally unicorn-influenced societies like Canterlot or the Crystal Empire’s upper crust wouldn’t abide it, but we have the clout to have our way. I’m grateful, because truth be told-” The look she gives Shining then screams absolute devotion, like her entire world is compressed into the space he occupies. You’re hit with a tinge of something you’d almost call worship when he looks back at her with his own smile, and you’re positive that emotional effect wasn’t intentional; it’s too out of place with the effect she’d been creating so far. Her feelings slipped into her broadcast despite herself. “-I don’t think we could include another without hurting them.” “Hurting them?” She looks back at you, and the unintentional effects fade. “Love cannot be diminished by spreading it, Anon. If you love more than one pony – true, selfless, devoted love – they will know, and it will work out fine. But love can be diminished other ways. If it isn’t cared for, if it’s spread unequally, or if it’s compartmentalized. If the one loving does not love themselves. Some – like Shining and I – are too caught up in each other, too busy giving each other all we have, that another would be left out. And in a herd, one has to love love itself. Not receiving it, but giving it.” “I… I don’t know if I can do all that. I’ve never had to think of all that before.” “Your love for Twilight is different than your love for Luna. You might not be able to understand that, I think you’re just confused, but I can see it. They come from different places, and express themselves through different means. This is good; you’ll never need to worry about dividing it.” “But what about the two of them?” Another gentle smile. “Surely you have family, in your old home. Family that you loved?” You nod. ”There are many kinds of love, Anon. They don’t have to be attracted to each other. Though some mares may love other mares of the herd as they love the stallion, there is also the love of a deep friendship, or the love of family ties. There is a form of love in fundamental, unconditional respect. There’s the love of altruistic bonding, and the love of working in harmony for common aims. Any will do between the mares of your herd.” You are, on some level, aware of what she’s getting at. You loved your parents, after all, and you loved your work, which definitely wasn’t romantic. You know terms like brotherly love and platonic love. You’re just not used to hearing it all spelled out like this. It makes a lot of sense. “So do I just trust them to work it out?” ”I don’t see a reason why it shouldn’t. Just remember the stallion’s partially responsible for keeping everything together. If a dispute arises, don’t be afraid to step in.” “I think I can do that.” Cadance rocks back, wearing a manic grin again. “Then when’s the wedding?” “Holy hell, give me some time to get used to everything, will you? Not enough for Celestia to be breathing down my back, huh?” Confusion flits across Cadance’s features. “Is she giving you a hard time?” “Kinda. Mostly teasing me, and being really flirty.” Cadance frowns. “Strange.” “You’re telling me.” Shining looks over to his wife. “You could talk to her about it. It’d give Anon and I some time to talk about stallion stuff.” ”That’s a good idea, love.” She stands and turns to Shining, then the two of them do that thing where they press their snouts together. You’ve been wondering if that’s a pony’s version of a kiss ever since Twilight did it to you. One of Cadance’s ears perk towards you the moment your recollection of that moment settles into your mind, and when she disengages from Shining, she winks at you before turning to leave. Once she’s out – her emotional influence fading away, restoring somewhat disheartening normalcy – Shining sighs and shakes his head. “Sorry, my wife can get over-eager about these affairs.” “Well that’s sorta her thing, isn’t it? Princess of love and all that. Does it, uh, ever bother you? That she could just be planting the love in your head?” ”What? No, she can’t do that.” “Why not?” ”Because it’s my love in the first place. The positive emotions she uses to lift everyone’s spirits, those are mine, how I feel for her, how I feel about being around her. She just selects the one she wants from them, amplifies it, and sends it on its way. Back home, love keeps eternal winter at bay, so we’re used to using fire metaphors. By those terms, I’m the fuel for her inferno. When I first learned of her ability, I was worried it was the opposite. That she loved me only because of what I felt for her. She told me later it started when she saw how I felt for my sister; she fell for me because how devoted I was to family, and how eager I was to protect them.” He chuckles. “So, while we’re on that topic… About Twily.” Shit, this is going to be some sort of life-or-death interview, isn’t it? Your mind quickly races through what a powerful unicorn could do to someone who’s displeased them, with their magic. You don’t like what you’re thinking up. ”You haven’t told her you love her yet, have you?” That detracks all those thoughts. “I, uh, well, I guess it’s sorta implied… how could you tell?” ”There was a big difference in how Cadance was acting based off of what she felt coming from you and how you responded. You’re in love - probably already committed to her, from Cadance's comments - but you haven’t done much about it.” “I, er, I guess you can say that, yeah.” ”Besides,” he smiles, “I’m a stallion, we have a feel for these things.” “No offense, but you two are the closest I’ve ever seen ponies to what the dynamic would look like back home. Stoic stallion, sensitive mare. I thought the opposite was the norm here.” ”There’s no reason it can’t be both. I was a captain of the guard, here, and I lead them in the Crystal Empire. But my leadership is founded on my appreciation and respect for those under me. I pride myself on making a personal connection with every one I can, and being able to predict their wants and needs. That’s stallion sensitivity. Cadance isn’t above using her abilities for utilitarian ends; you’ve never seen her use her powers to influence a crowd like a conductor leading an orchestra, deft gestures and subtle tweaking bringing everyone into harmony. When she needs to be, she’s all business, and when it’s called for, she’ll be your stoic mare.” “So, uh, maybe you can help me after all. Twilight says there was something I could talk to you about. Just you.” He leans forward, in a nearly comical imitation of his wife earlier, though less barely restrained energy. “What’s that?” You glance to the door Cadance exited. “They’re going to outlive us.” ”Ah.” “How do you handle that?” He sighs. “My wife’s work isn’t all smiles and romance. A sad truth; every marriage ends with one member watching the others die, and continuing on alone.” You slump in your chair. “Fuck, that’s depressing.” ”Cadance may specialize in the positive emotions – love, happiness, satisfaction, and so on – but she can feel anything. Jealousy, depression, arrogance. Grief. Her self-control, her sheer willpower, keeps her together in the face of it all. That ultimate implacability is the most maresculine thing I’ve ever known, no matter how whimsical she behaves. We’ve had a lot of time to think about those things, Anon, and a lot of nights we weren’t given a choice, if we were alone and something caught her off guard.” He shakes his head. “In the end, we’re no different than every other couple or herd. It’ll come down to one outliving the other. We’re just cursed with the knowledge of who it will be.” “I can’t leave them to that. I can’t just fucking disappear on them, leaving nothing but memories.” ”You’re not talking about death, then. You’re talking about a legacy, some way you can continue making a difference in their life after you’re gone.” “Yeah. You two have a kid. Er, a foal. I can’t do that for your sister, or any pony. And that hurts, man. That hurts a lot more than I thought it would. I can’t fulfill the most basic desire of a family. Your sister just sorta brushed it off-” ”Heh, she would.” “-but I just cant do that to them.” ”She tells me you’re quite the inventor, Anon. You’ll have plenty of creations that live on.” “Yeah, and I have something special planned for her, but I don’t know how she’d take it.” ”Like what?” You straighten your back and eye him more critically. “I can’t tell you that, sorry.” ”Ah, it’s fine. I doubt I’d understand it anyway. I still have no idea how you two made those claws of hers.” “Trust me, it was a lot of work. But in a way, those were sort of the start of all this. No, it was as your wife said. A spark started it. A literal one, awhile ago, when I stuck two wires to a chunk of quartz and asked her to squeeze.” You can’t help but laugh at yourself. “It was such a stupid little thing. We had no idea what we were getting into, in more ways than one. I can only hope that whatever I leave behind for her is as magnificent as that first moment was silly and trivial.” ”With an attitude like that, I’m sure you’ll leave her something worthy of your love.” You look up at him. “That simple?” “That simple.” You fall to the backrest and sigh. “I guess it’s all I can try for, then. Thanks.” ”We’re going to be family, Anon. I’ll do anything for family.” “Now you’re the one getting ahead of things.” He just laughs at that. “Well, hey, Twilight tells me you’re something of a thrill-seeker like your mom, and your talent’s in protection magic. I can show you one of the things she and I are working on, and you can help us test it, since you can protect yourself from any harm that’d happen. That’s doing something for me, and in return I’ll be doing something for you.” He adopts an eager grin. “What’cha got for me, then?” “How would you like to get a pair of wings of your own, and fly with your sister and wife?” ”So Anon’s working her over, and she sounds like she’s having the time of her life, but then it sorta trails off. I say something about Cadance just to see if she’s still with us, but wouldn’t you know, Raven, the poor mare just fell asleep again. With Anon sitting on top of her and everything.” You can’t help but smile at that, as bad as you feel. Luna missed out on so much excitement, due to her sleep cycle. Figures she’d miss out even when she was right in the middle of it. “What happened then?” ”Well he’d got me all heavy-lidded by then too, so I thought I’d do the same. And he must have gotten over himself a little, because he joined in.” “Ah! An interesting change of pace.” ”He’s so sweet, just too easy to play with. It’s been wonderful, though. I’m going to miss it when those two start monopolizing his time.” “So Your Majesty remains resolute about staying distant?” Celestia looks away from you, then shakes her head. “I’m not so sure anymore. I should. Luna deserves some happiness without me screwing it up for her. But I surprised myself with how much his obliviousness hurt.” “Your Majesty may have raised the issue too subtly.” ”I meant to, and the way I approached it was part of that. I could bring it up without making it a challenge, and gauge his response. Even still, part of me hoped he’d catch on. I never know what he’ll pick up on; sometimes he’s dense as stone, other times he seems to intuitively grasp things.” “Quirks from his home, surely.” ”Perhaps. Unfortunately, that only makes him more interesting.” You suddenly feel a deep contentment, as if what Celestia just said was a transcendent realization about the nature of the world. ”That would be Cadance,” Celestia says, looking to the door. “Her Highness usually tries harder than washing us away. She likes to crush us.” ”Her husband might not be with her.” “I suppose I can let her in, then.” You open the door telekinetically without getting up from behind your desk. Cadance is indeed standing outside. She takes two steps in, looks at Celestia, and then takes a half step back. “Oh gosh.” Celestia smiles at her, but it’s a weak smile. “As you may have surmised, we discuss matters of your domain, Your Imperial Highness.” Cadance wrinkles her nose “Stop making me feel old.” “Never.” This gets some humor back into Celestia’s expression. “Hello, my dear niece. As Raven says, we were speaking on your area of expertise, so forgive my emotional turmoil.” Cadance walks in far enough for you to close the door and raise your soundproof barrier again, then perches on a chair opposite her adoptive aunt. “Well, I was going to talk to you about it, but you’ve already answered my first question.” Celestia glances at you, then back to Cadance. “Humor me, and ask it anyway.” ”What do you feel for Anon?” Celestia dips her head a fraction. “I may be better served hearing your answer than you hearing mine.” ”Ignoring the obvious? Fear. What are you afraid of missing out on?” After a slight flick of her tail across her seat, Celestia replies, “You well know what a sense of awe and novelty can turn into. I fear losing what I’ve spent all this time looking for, now that it’s finally arrived. Now let me ask you; what did you want to talk to us about?” Cadance glances at you, prompting a flat look from Celestia. ”You know how much I trust Raven. You were as much under her guidance as mine.” “I still have not recovered from the ordeal.” But you’re smiling at her, and you feel a ping of bright warmth wash over you in return. ”Fine. Anon thinks you’re teasing him.” ”I am.” Cadance gives Celestia a dirty look. “You’re just adding to his confusion.” ”He seemed to be taking it quite well.” ”He’s putting on a show of being laid back. I don’t know why, but he feels a need to downplay all his emotions.” ”That’s what stallions are like, where he’s from, he’s told me.” ”In the end he’s just a lost colt, Aunt!” Cadance leans forward as she says this, and a faint sizzle of irritation lashes out from her towards you. “And you know your aloof act never worked on me. I knew how you felt about him the moment I walked into the room. So lets talk about this like mares.” Celestia’s pulled her posture back and up in her seat, stunned by the rebuke. Or stunned due to a more focused assault on Cadance’s part, but that’d achieve the same end anyway. Maybe just stunned because she dropped the whimsy for once. You would be stunned too, if you hadn’t half a mind to chew out Celestia yourself – more politely phrased, of course – if she’d gone on long enough before Cadance arrived. Since that’s not on you, now, you can play the diplomat. “Perhaps we should reflect on this matter a moment, then begin anew when cooler heads prevail.” You feel numbed, and Celestia stiffens, as Cadance sucks the emotion out of the room. “Cool, Your Highness, not cold.” She returns feeling to the room, but slowly. “Now, Her Majesty told me of her conflict on this subject just before you arrived. We can begin there.” You look at Celestia expectantly. She shakes her head and sighs. “I shouldn’t take this from my sister, niece. I’ve put her through enough already, without ruining her love life now that she’s back.” Cadance glances at you – no, out the window behind you – then returns her attention to Celestia. ”If you love her, trust her to work things out on her own.” ”I should put her first.” ”Not like this. Your feelings matter too. If you deny yourself this on her account, you’re going to grow to resent her for it. Are you willing to sacrifice your relationship with your sister for her relationship with this stallion? When he’ll eventually be gone, and you two are stuck with each other forever?” Celestia winced at that, but you didn’t feel any emotional outburst from Cadance. ”I don’t even know if he reciprocates.” Cadance’s expression softens. You get a distinct feeling of being enveloped in a warm blanket, soothing away worries and concerns in favor of a quiet peace. “He respects you, and is concerned about your well-being and how you feel. He cares a great deal about you. Is that romantic love? Not quite. But right now he’s too confused about what you’re doing, and too worried about what that’ll do to Twilight and your sister. We didn’t talk about you at great length, but when you came up, those are the impressions I got.” She glances out your office’s window again. Celestia dips her head, wearing a sad smile. ”I’ve already lost my chance, haven’t I?” The blanket’s peace turns into the comfort of a mother’s caressing touch as Cadance stands, walks over to her aunt, then sits on the floor in front of her, looking up at her. She stays like this for almost a minute, examining Celestia’s features. The princess regnant remains composed during this, but adjusts her wings a couple times. ”For someone with such power,” Cadance mumbles, “and prone to such mischief...” ”Have you reached a verdict?” ”If you’re worried about missing out, Auntie, then why not take a page from your own book? Once the other two figure everything out, just… jump in. Maybe he’ll recognize the potential and let you closer. Maybe that’ll turn into what you’re looking for. ”That’s a lot of ‘maybes’ for a consolation prize.” “Your Majesty, please, do not think of it like that.” The two of them look at you, and when you meet Cadance’s eyes for a brief moment, you’re buoyed by a burst of conviction. “He still must learn what it means to be a stallion, here. He misses some pieces of that puzzle, cannot see the full picture. He will not learn if not taught, and Her Majesty’s exile has rendered her out of practice, on a subject where Her Highness may fare even worse. Your Majesty must act soon, before he believes his learning concluded. Become a teacher once again.” You glace at Cadance again, this time tilting your head towards her a sliver. You try to put all the awe and respect you feel for your sovereign after years of serving her, and years of happiness she’d given you as you shared your closest thoughts and leaned on each other, to the front of your mind. ”Please act for your own benefit on a matter of import, Your Majesty, just this once. If not for yourself, then for me, as your dear friend and faithful servant. Your happiness means more to me than my own, and I cannot bear to see you suffer as you surely will if you let this pass you by. If he rejects you, then you sit no worse than the present. If he accepts you, you may realize all you desire. Your choice seems clear to me.” Celestia’s eyes flick to Cadance, but she stands from her chair and walks over to your desk. “You know, he lectured me before about believing my path was fixed. Raven, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve somepony like you at my side, but I must be doing something right.” She leans down to brush your cheek with hers. With that contact, you feel an intense contentment bloom in your mind. It’s similar to how Cadance announced her presence, but where that was raw, this feeling is richly textured, containing layers of trust and appreciation and compassion, all part of a supreme and sublime peace with life itself. Cadance is reversing what you asked her, directing towards you how Celestia feels about you. “I live to serve Your Majesty. In my eyes, you do more right than words can describe.” Cadance walks past your desk, to stand by the window. This time, Celestia follows her attention. “Is something bothering you, my niece?” She flicks her tail ”My husband distracts me.” ”You can feel him from all the way over there?” ”I could feel him across all of Canterlot, if I had to. It’s like how a familiar voice carries over a crowd.” The two of you join her by the window. ”It turns out,” Cadance continues, “it’s just stallions being stallions.” Down near the parade grounds, a ways off but not too distant the three of you couldn’t see clearly, Anon and Shining Armor stand side-by-side. The latter is wearing a ridiculous contraption that’s about the same size, shape, and arrangement to be pegasus wings, but a bit too bulky, and joined by a strange elongated hump running down his spine. Twilight’s a ways off, watching with Flurry Heart. Shining’s wings are limp at his sides. You can see occasional movement from them, sometimes considerable distances, but he can’t seem to hold them in place. Anon’s picking one of the wings up from time to time and inspecting it, flexing it in his hands. From the way he’s handling it and gesturing every time Shining moves the unsupported one, he’s explaining something. Eventually, the human darts back inside his embassy-workshop, leaving Shining to his efforts with the wings. Flurry tries to scamper towards her father, but Twilight picks her up magically and pulls her back. That’s odd. “How does Shining feel, to distract Your Highness so?” ”He’s confused, but excited for something. Are those supposed to be wings?” ”That must be Anon’s current project. He wants to help injured pegasi fly again.” ”It doesn’t look like it’s working.” Anon returns, then, carrying some sort of brace that he places on Shining’s back. After some fiddling, Shining’s ersatz wings are fully spread. Its wingspan is a little larger than that of a pegasi’s, though the three feathers on each wing stick straight out to the sides, rather than in a rearward arc. The two stallions talk for a bit more, Anon gesturing while Shining nods along. Suddenly, what you thought were supposed to be feathers spread far wider than reasonable. The feathers alter themselves to look more like a fan. Anon’s gesturing is much more exited. Shining’s looking back over his shoulder, tilting his body slightly in different directions. Then the fans start slowly spinning. Anon jogs clear, while Twilight drags Flurry a bit further back as well. Soon the twin fans are spinning too fast to see. And then Shining, ever so slightly, begins to rise. He looks around, astonished. The action tilts his body, and he drifts sideways, catching himself on two hooves and doing a few awkward side-steps before he’s stable again. Beside you, Cadance snorts, and down on the grounds, Shining suddenly straightens. When you look to the pink alicorn, she’s wearing a big grin. “What did Your Highness do?” ”Oh, just gave him a bit of encouragement.” Anon’s standing back, waving his arms. You’re not sure what the patterns mean. You don’t think Shining knows either, because he isn’t paying a lot of attention to the man. He rises more steadily this time. Not straight up; he wobbles minute amounts in different directions, which sends him gently drifting to and fro, but he’s definitely ascending more than moving in any given direction. Eventually he gets the wobbling under control, compensating for it by drifting in roughly the other direction, trying to rise straight up. It’s not long, in fact, until he’s on your level. Cadance takes a step forward, to put her head almost against the window. Her horn flashes with a bright cyan burst, causing you and Celestia to flinch away. ”Please warn us next time, niece.” She looks to Celestia, then you, with an apologetic glance, before returning her attention to her husband. The unicorn hasn’t moved, but has his head turned towards you. The next wobble causes a bright pink spark to arc off from near his head, and he recoils from it. ”Oh!” Cadance exclaims. “Shock, then relief. He’s got himself and the wings shielded.” His flinch tilts his whole body considerably, causing him to dart off away from the palace, but he gets it under control easily enough. Anon’s sprinting to try to stay under him. You’re not sure what he hopes to achieve with this; Shining’s easily three times as heavy as his sister, lightened as she is by pegasi magic as part of her transformation. You really hope Anon doesn’t think he could catch her brother. Eventually, Shining figures out how to turn around, not without a few further minor mishaps. Slowly, he starts drifting towards the palace, and the window you three stand at. The sound his artificial wings make is very strange; it’s not a constant drone like you’d expect from a fan, but instead a very rapid and soft snapping or thumping sound. Cadance is grinning like an idiot, and you feel a small smile creep to your own lips as her pride and enthusiasm is quite literally infectious. Shining tilts backwards, like rearing in mid-air, when he finally arrives at the window. This is apparently enough to arrest his forward motion. Cadance takes a step back from the window and half-spreads her wings. Then she tilts them down, followed by kneeling with the front half of her body, in a very regal bow to her husband. He tries to return the gesture, but when he tilts his wings downward, it angles the big propellers on the end of them as well. This kicks him down and forward at considerable speed. Celestia gasps, but Cadance just smiles as she watches a pink bubble appear around him, bouncing him off the wall below the window with a soft thump you can hear from inside. Beside you, his wife giggles. ”You think you can send him back down?” ”Come on, Auntie, I know you’re old, but can’t you appreciate a glimpse of the future?” Celestia laughs. “It’s not my husband looking to rival Discord as the avatar of whimsy.” Cadance looks at her aunt as her husband drifts away from the window, descending in fits and starts back down to the field. “Not unless you get what you want, out of this.” The three of you look down to where Shining’s heading, at the silly human doing his best to sprint towards the flying unicorn with his arms waving wildly. Celestia’s smile rivals Cadance’s own. Long after the two princesses left to get a debriefing on today’s miraculous flight test, you’re still coasting off the happiness Cadance had left you on. A knock at your door is followed by an earth pony with a sandy coat. She looks nervous. Several rolled up pages line her saddlebags. “Ah, welcome, Ms. Craft. Thank you again for your cooperation to date.” ”Uh, yeah, hi. You told me to come to you if any problems come up?” You put down your quill and the page you were inspecting. “Yes. Come in.” The mare closes the door behind her and walks to your desk. “I’m not sure if it really is a problem, but I thought you might want to see it. I’ve made copies of the last several orders Anon placed, and, well...” You levitate the pages out of her saddlebags yourself, looking each over in turn. “Ms. Craft, I work as a secretary, not a draftsmare. I admire the work you have put into these reproductions, but they tell me little.” ”Well, uh, here, then. I drew up what they’d look like all put together. Anon tried to hide it by spacing the orders out over a couple weeks, but I finally have the whole picture.” She fishes a neatly folded up paper out of the bottom of her bag, then tosses it on your desk. You unfold it carefully, but your eyes go wide when you see what it depicts. It’s just a framework, a multilayered lattice of thin, delicate curving metal struts. Some expected features are missing, and others either exaggerated or minimized. There’s no mistaking, however, that this structure is in the shape of a mare’s head. ”It’s all to the proper scale, too, Ms. Inkwell. Anon really did his homework on this one. I thought it might be some sort of helmet, before we got the following orders for internal pieces. But even then, the dimensions are too accurate. It’s not fitted to go over a mare’s head. It’s fitted to be one.” This confirms your suspicions. The crazedcolt is actually going to do it. You don’t know how, but he’s going to build Celestia a companion. You fold the paper just as gently as you unfolded it, but you don’t return it. “Ms. Craft, may I keep this excellent work of yours?” The mare nods quickly. “Thank you. And please, tell nopony about this. I believe this depicts a most special gift for Her Majesty. Make sure nopony can spoil the surprise, or get the wrong ideas.” ”Yes’m. That’s all I had to say. Sorry to bother you.” “You came after closing, correct? You may go home, Ms. Craft. Thank you again, and have a wonderful evening.” The earth pony smiles, then backs out of your office. You place the paper in one of your desk’s drawers that lock, alongside several other personal documents relating to Celestia. Even if Celestia can’t get her way with Anon, it looks like she’ll still have something to hold on to. That makes all this effort and heartache worth it. Once again, you stalk the palace at night in your socks. Not the whole palace, really, just the hallway and last few rooms to where Luna usually does her work. You still have some work to do; the test with Shining could have gone better, despite being nominally successful. He did fly, after all. But Twilight’s already asleep – she’s staying in Canterlot as long as her brother and sister-in-law are here – so you can’t get much work done, and you were feeling restless. You could do with some company. You figure Luna could too. So here you are, shoes in hand, sneaking as silently into the room she usually works from as possible. As usual, she’s alone, sitting in the middle of the room at a table. Her eyes are glowing white; she must be dreamwalking. She’s almost perfectly motionless as you creep up on her, breathing slow and steady as her shining eyes are fixed on nothing in particular. After taking a seat next to her at the table, you place your shoes on the tabletop and lean on one elbow, watching her. One of her ears is tracking you, but she otherwise doesn’t respond. For several minutes you watch her, a perfect image of serenity. Just taking in every detail of her body calms you as well, somehow. Twilight and Celestia each have certain tells; the former’s wings and the latter’s eyes, in particular. Luna can be stoic when she wants; in fact, she’s always a perfect image of uptight composure whenever it’s a matter of formal business, but she was quick to drop pretenses in dreams, once she’d shared enough with you. Something about her body language is truthful to the point of innocence, when her guard is down. As she comes out of her dreamwalk she shows you a moment of that perfect honesty. She turns to look at you, and a smile graces her face, her now-normal eyes glimmering with happiness and comfort when they find you. You’re pretty sure you know what love looks like. “Hey, you.” ”Anon, thy presence surpriseth us.” You reach out to scritch at one of her ears. Something about how often you’ve comforted each other, how physical she is with you already, and the honesty of her body’s answers to you, makes it hard to resist touching her. It’s not something you even think about much, certainly not when the two of you are apart, but when she’s right in front of you like this, you just want to see her happy, and see her react. “Had to get out, thought you might be lonely while you work.” She presses her cheek against your arm, eyes closed and smile wider, as you abuse her ear. “So I thought I’d stop by.” “We appreciate thy concern.” Recently, the mismatch between what you still interpret as formal speech clashes with how familiar and genuine she sounds, talking to you. Especially when you can make her body move more or less on command. “Why do you always work from this room?” ”Anypony may findeth us easily, if we are needed.” “How often is that?” Her face freezes, then she looks away when you remove your hand. “Not often.” “Then why stay? One of these days I’m going to convince all you royals that being comfortable is important. How about we go somewhere you can relax?” ”There are not many places we can.” “Shit, there’s your room.” Luna finally looks back to you, but it’s a guarded look. “Bold of thee to invitest thyself to our quarters.” “I’ve already seen ‘em, remember? Besides, we’ve already been in my bed together, why not yours?” Her expression flattens further. “I’ll give you another massage.” Oh, there goes the guardedness; it’s a real struggle for her now. You tousle her mane and stand. This brings her attention down to your feet. “Fine, we shall go, but only if thou wearest proper footwear.” “I was wondering how long it’d take you to notice.” You can’t help but laugh at her shocked reaction. One pair of shoes later and the two of you are walking the halls together, back to her quarters. “How long are you at this?” ”The rest of the night. Our talents are not often needed, but we wish to be ready whenever they are.” “And spend time with your sister and I.” She smiles up at you. “We do hope thou mindest not our frequent intrusions.” “I look forward to them. I’ve come around to thinking myself pretty lucky I can spend time with those I’m close to at all hours, day or night.” ”We’re glad! The time we spend with thee and our sister maketh the brightest moments of our nights.” “Gotta say, seeing you and your sister as close as you are is-” Luna’s no longer by your side. When you turn to where she’d stopped dead, she’s staring straight ahead, eyes glowing white. “Shit, seriously? Right in the middle of walking?” She slowly, haltingly, lifts and resettles her wings. Just how much can she respond to the outside world, anyway? Standing in the middle of a hallway isn’t what you had in mind when you thought of relaxation. Sighing, you walk over to Luna’s side, and crouch down. She’s got an ear tracking you again, but like before, doesn’t otherwise respond. After some maneuvering, you get under her body and lift her up in something approximating a fireman’s carry. Her wings flail out as you stand again, but doesn’t impact your balance too badly. Still she doesn’t snap out of her trance, merely grunting at your exertion. You’re lucky alicorns are light; she hardly weighs any more than a smallish human. You can manage her the rest of the way. Fortunately, her quarters weren’t far. When you get there, the two of her guards at her door look at each other, then back to you, confusion plain. “Just open the damn door already.” ”Is something wrong?” “Yeah, I’m carrying her on my back, that’s what. Trust me, I wish I didn’t have to.” While one guard gets the door, the other squints at you. “I remember the last time you came around. You stop in with the strangest circumstances.” “If she and I walked in normally, I know what the scuttlebutt would be, and I’d be sorely disappointed if y’all, uh, impugned my honor or whatever.” Neither guard responds to this as you shoulder your way inside, making sure Luna’s clear of the doorframe. It’s dark, here, but the moonlight tonight is bright enough through the windows that you’re not blind. You know she’ll have even less trouble seeing than you when she’s back to the real world. You get Luna to her bed, and rather unceremoniously lower yourself backwards, thanking the stars her bed is ludicrously soft and plushy as you disentangle her from your back and shoulders. The alicorn slowly starts to right herself, but her body moves in a strangely halting manner, like she’s controlled by an overly conservative puppeteer. She looks so pathetic you decide to help her, getting on the bed yourself. First you put her head on some pillows, then help her arrange her limbs, putting her in as close to a conventional sitting position you can without touching anything intimate. Fortunately, all those bits are clustered together, for ponies. You prop up a few pillows against the headboard and recline on them, waiting for her to come out of her dream. She definitely doesn’t look as composed as she was when you first came to her tonight. She’s close enough to your left side that you can feel her breathing, and it’s as slow and steady as before. She does still look serene, in a way A somewhat comical way, but still. When her eyes finally fade back to normal, she adjusts her position on her own, looks around her bed, then at you with some confusion. ”Our, er, thanks, Anon.” “I wasn’t going to let you just stand there.” She buries her face under the pillow you’d provided for her. “Thou wast serious about our bed.” You get a hand under her chin and gently lift her head out, leaning down close to her to be on eye-level. “Honestly, I just wanted to have you to myself. But what’s so different about when you crawled into bed with me stargazing?” “Those were dreams!” “That’s all? What’s the difference, to us?” You let go of her chin, just in case she’s uncomfortable being this close to you, but she doesn’t move her head. She’s still looking into your eyes as if she can find an answer to your own question in them. Breath matched? No, she’s holding hers. You’re not sure if that’s out of some sort of chastity, or if she’s expecting something else. You lean in, avoiding her horn, and give her a peck on the top of her snout. “You’re a goof. Those dreams felt plenty real to me, and I never valued them any less than if we were together physically.” She blinks, then shakes her head as if to clear it. “We just expected not thee to doest it. We appreciate thy touch, but thou hast given us the chance to only recently.” “Yeah, I could tell you enjoyed it.” You grin at her quizzical look. “I’m just saying when you like something, you show it.” She smiles and drops her head back to the pillow. “Thou hast many likable traits. We are glad thou decidest to share them with us, now. Last we knew, thou still… testest matters.” “Cadance had a good talk with me about how I can manage all this.” This gets Luna’s rapt attention. “Helped me see I may not have been entirely honest with myself, and let some things hold me back. She told me to trust that things will work out. So you know what? I can tell you like my attention. You always make my dreams feel peaceful, and I’d like to be able to repay that.” As she’s looking you over, after that, you snake your left arm under her neck, across the front of her body, and pull her close. “So sure, nothing wrong with it, if you like it.” You reach your rind hand over and place it on the back of her neck, then start searching out for any tight muscles. “Besides, I said I’d give you a massage.” Under this hand, she drops her head to her pillow again, smiling. “We hope we can still work, under thy attentions.” “You seem like you go pretty out of it, when you do.” ”We know what goeth on around us, but we find responding difficult.” “Shouldn’t be a problem just letting me work, then.” She nods into the pillow, but then you can feel her stiffen. “Ah, our sister could use our presence.” “Better not keep her waiting.” Her eyes adopted that white shine again, and once more she went very still. You keep working up and down her neck, watching the little twitches you cause even when she’s unable to pay attention to you. ”Anon...” You lean down close to her, to better hear her mutters. ”Shame thou art… awake.” “Why’s that?” After a pause, “She wisheth… to speak… with thee.” You close your eyes and lean your head back. Not like you’re going to fall asleep in any reasonable time, let alone start dreaming for Luna to pull you in. You feel her tail sweep over your calf. Once, twice. Thrice. Then she extends her closer wing over you, then, in that same jerky manner as before. What are those two talking about? Her eyes still glow, seemingly senseless. Her breathing is still calm and regular. But that body language means something, doesn’t it? You think that she’d be even more at peace, with both you here in the real and her sister there in the dream. If she liked the both of you so much on your own, then both together would be better, right? Why does she seem so agitated? You take your hand off her mane and start gently stroking her extended wing, instead. You spend maybe ten minutes like this with your eyes closed, petting her wing, feeling her tail wash over your leg occasionally. Just trying to tune in to her body. Eventually you can feel her head stir. You open your eyes and look at her just as she’s bringing her own up to meet your gaze. “Anon, let us talk about our sister.” “She wanted to speak to me that bad, huh?” ”When art thou next able?” “Shit, I don’t know. Twilight and I need to go over the flight test results tomorrow, the wings aren’t working like they should. That could take all day. She can stop by if she wants, but I bet she’s going to be swamped with dignitaries, what with Cadance in town.” ”Indeed.” After a moment of silence, “She wisheth to apologize.” “For what?” “Thou feelest she teaseth thee?” “Well, she does.” ”She apologizeth.” “Huh.” Luna furrows her brows, and drops her head back onto her pillow. “What’s wrong now? You seemed a little miffed, in there.” ”Our sister can be frustratingly vague.” “Yeah, that sounds about her.” ”We discussed the circumstances of our… prior separation. How she feeleth she must approach certain subjects, after our return.” “Now you’re being vague.” Luna closes her eyes. “We cannot be sure how much of what she spoke was real, and how much was hypothetical. It is the first time we find ourselves in… this situation, after all.” “That’s unhelpful enough I could believe it, considering how agitated it looked like it made you.” ”Anon, hast thou any problem giving her affection, should thou feelest it?” You frown. “Would you?” ”She is our sister.” “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Why would I alienate you-” ”Thou art a fool. It meaneth we care for her more than anything.” “I figured, but what’s that have to do with anything? If I had to make a choice-” “It meaneth thou needst not choose.” You stare at her. She stares back, then shakes her head. ”That day we found thee with thy hands on her, what did thou thinkest we felt?” “I was worried you’d get upset.” ”Were we upset?” “You didn’t look happy.” ”We had just woken up. We are never happy in those circumstances.” “Heh, alright.” ”We were shocked, yes, but only for lack of understanding. We thought thou hast not any design on her.” “I still don’t. Well, I can’t say that. I can’t say why I can’t say that. She’s really good at fucking with my head, I don’t even know anymore.” Luna gets a glint in her eyes, at that. “Our sister has her ways, we are well aware.” “I was trying not to think about them.” “All we wish to say is that thou deniest not thyself her on our account. If thou desireth her, and she feeleth similarly, we raise no objection.” “Really?” ”We would like nothing more than to share our happiness with our dearest sister.” Despite sounding like Shakespeare writing a bad porno, it gets you thinking. Specifically: What the fuck have you gotten yourself into? You just wanted to cuddle this pony.
12 ConsequencesYou lift the wing again, flexing and rotating it at the shoulder around where the test article sits on its makeshift stand. Twilight stands on top of the work table, her nose practically inside the shoulder joint, watching the open gearboxes as it articulates. You’re looking up at her, at this angle, giving you a rare view of her belly while she’s standing. Also some other anatomy, underneath her. Not that you’re going to tell her. You’re just trying to focus on her work. You mean, your work. “They’re all moving fine, Anon.” This isn’t even the first time she’s got you like this, if you’re being honest with yourself. Ever since she left for the Crystal Empire, you’d realized how big a void her absence made in your life. Since she’d come back, your work had been suffering for her constant innocent distractions, just by being in the same room. Even in your dreams you found yourself unable to work around her, like the one Luna pulled you out of awhile back. ”Anon?” Your time with her was, as the song went, as sweet as any harmony. Of course she knew all about harmony. For the past couple days, she’d been doing most of the gruntwork, while you took every opportunity to distract her just as bad as she distracted you, with anything from idle chitchat to physical contact. She’d never once objected. ”Anon, I’m glad you think I’m so engrossing, but you’re embarrassing me.” You shake your head a bit to return to the present. You’ve been staring into her eyes for you don’t know how long now; even your random motions with the wing you held had stopped. “Sorry, I just… Well, you…” She smiles at you, and in your eyes you get a glimpse of a reflection of everything you feel. “I know. You’ve been going out of your way to remind me of, uh, me, every chance you can.” She giggles, then. “I never thought that you being reduced to another useless stallion could make me like you more. I still hope this condition of yours is temporary.” “Yes ma’am it is. I can work as soon as you leave the room.” She laughs again, then looks to the shoulder joint. “Like I said, it’s working as it should.” “Shining said the wings felt like they took a lot of effort to move, and he couldn’t hold them in place without the brace.” ”We might need more powerful motors. It’s not a problem with the gearing or the joints.” “We’d have to stagger the mounting, making it bulkier and heavier.” She shakes her head, then lays down on the table, body upright and legs beneath her, to be at eye level with you. “Magically decreasing its weight might be our only option.” “That’s another spell that needs to be recast during periodic maintenance.” ”It’s a much easier spell than the come-to-life spell we’re using to control it and run the powerplant. I doubt any unicorn capable of the latter wouldn’t know the former.” “Yeah it’s just… another thing that needs to be taken care of. Careless casting could lead to two different maintenance schedules. That could lead to things giving out while still in-flight, and that can’t happen.” Twilight tilts her head down, and speaks with a gentler tone. “Anon, that might happen anyway. You can’t make something foolproof.” You rub the bridge of your nose and sigh. “It has to be as good as we can make it. Yeah, I guess that’s how we’ll have to do. We’ll add the mechanical lock as well; that way if it gets heavier unexpectedly it can at least stay in flight configuration.” ”What if they disengage the lock mid-flight?” “It can be managed by a sort of weighted relay. Contacts are closed when the lightening spell is active, held there by a spring. If the spell wears off, the weight on the contact is too heavy for the spring, and they open. Cuts the signal to unlock. If they roll upside-down or some other maneuvers it may close again, but that’s a much slimmer chance of an already slim chance, or a conscious action on their part.” Twilight looks over to the elongated hump that makes up the unit’s back. A smaller, more streamlined version of the workshop’s power generator hums away inside, though presently disconnected from everything. “Well, you certainly have enough power for it. Why did you design it with so much excess capacity? Not only is it enough for this bigger design – the ones we’ll make for pegasi won’t be this heavy, spell or no spell – but it’s larger than necessary even for this.” “Better safe than sorry?” ”Anon, if my math is right, this has over five times the output we’d need for the final product. If you’re worried about weight, you can start there.” “I wasn’t intending it for use on the final product.” ”Why did you make the test rig this way? Surely you weren’t thinking of using my brother as the test pilot way back then.” You shrug. ”I swear, you’re going to have a whole box full of parts you’ve over-” She stops , an ear swiveling towards the door. “What’s wrong?” She grins. “The guards are talking about you.” You stand and move closer to the door, to listen in. ”I helped him move everything here! Besides, he can spin a yarn as well as I; you should have heard the stuff he threw back at us when I told him some of those rumors I started. We’re practically best friends already. If either of us are going to stay here alone, it should be me.” Tall Tail is the royal guard unicorn assigned to the embassy during the day shift. The stallion normally stands outside the front door, the one leading directly to the workshop. ”Well I’ve seen him in his s-socks!” Catnip, on the other hand, isn’t a royal guard at all. The mare is one of Luna’s. Luna insisted on having the embassy under twenty-four hour watch by her own, and this poor bat drew the short straw for the day shift. You haven’t seen her without her sun-goggles once. ”He’s always wearing socks.” ”No shoes, just his socks! In the middle of the night. He walked right up to me in them. You can’t get more intimate than that! I stay.” Alright, maybe you’ve seen her once without her sun-goggles. Twilight cocks her head. “What are they talking about?” You look back and respond in barely a loud whisper. “I think they’re arguing who should leave first for the evening shift change. Or which I like more. I don’t know. They don’t usually argue like this.” ”Wow, you night watch get all the fun, huh?” the guard outside says. ”W-w-what’s that supposed to mean?” ”Oh, y’know, seeing strange creatures in sleepwear. Maybe with some of the other usual nightly activities.” “Shut up!” ”I’m sure you get to hear which ponies are enjoying the late hours.” ”SHUT UP!” ”You lot can hang upside-down, can’t you? Maybe you get a peak in a-” ”AAAAAAA!” ”Wait,” Tall Tail says, “are you… is it that time?” Catnip doesn’t respond. ”You know, the few mares in the Guard get time off for that.” ”Our lives for her. Always on watch. A-always.” ”Hold on, lemme go find a griffin for you.” ”SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!” You and Twilight exchange glances. She hides a grin and quiet laughter behind a wing. You hear a thump from the roof from where Catnip usually stands watch. ”Just because I like cats doesn’t mean- what was that?” That one thump becomes many as Catnip gallops across the embassy roof. Twilight’s grin vanishes a moment before she herself does, in a pop of magic. Then you hear a mare scream. You’re already halfway down the hall before you realize that wasn’t Twilight. That doesn’t really help your nerves, but it is some comfort. When you get to the long room you’ve re-purposed to a testing area and common room, you notice the door at the far end is wide open. Beyond is a unicorn trapped in a magenta dome, thrashing against its walls. As you’re walking over, Catnip drops from the roof between the dome and the door, rearing back with wings spread. When you get to the door, you see its knob neatly disassembled nearby. So that’s what this was about. Magic would be pretty useful for breaking and entering, wouldn’t it? Twilight stands off to the side, looking serious. Catnip’s wings are still spread, her nose almost against the dome, fangs bared. You walk to her side and jab a thumb into the paw-print on her flank, causing her to jump a full six feet to the side. Guess she really is hot and bothered, today. You crouch in front of the dome and the scrabbling unicorn inside, then look at Twilight. “Can I talk to her, in there?” She nods, and you look back to the wannabe intruder. She looks really young, probably hasn’t had that cutie mark for long. Maybe some teen thinking she was hot shit because she could take apart locks with her mind. Stupid fillies doing stupid things. “You’re one dumb motherfucker, ain’t’cha? She stops her frantic flailing and looks up in confusion. “What?” That insult probably doesn’t translate well. “Both guards still here, Ms. Superweapon over there inside, and you’re itching to break in just after sundown? Not a professional, huh? How’d you even get onto the palace grounds?” “I w-was let in!” ”By who?” Twilight asks. ”The prince!” You share a look with Twilight, before returning your attention to the filly. “Tell us something we don’t know.” She just looks at you in confusion again. “What did he want you to do?” ”J-Just take papers, burn them. Take some stuff apart or smash it, I don’t know.” “Really scraping the bottom of the barrel with you, huh?” She nods rapidly. “At least you’re honest.” You stand, hands on your hips, setting off another whinny and more panicked flailing back against the dome. “Pathetic.” You point to Tall Tail, then, who’s at Catnip’s side. “Take her in and do… whatever you do. I don’t know. Just remember she didn’t actually do anything but take apart a doorknob. Catnip, uh, take the night to relax, I guess. That’s an order. Not that I can order you around.” As soon as the bubble drops, the filly tries to take off, but Tall Tail wraps a loop of magic around her legs before she can get too far. He then simply starts dragging her through the dirt. Guess you’re not the only stallion here who can do some work. Catnip just looks a cross between chagrined and relieved. She bows to you and flies off. Twilight walks to your side once they’re gone. “I could have handled that, you know.” “Yeah, well, my embassy. How’d I do?” She looks at you, brows furrowed. “What do you mean?” “If I was back home, and she got inside? I would have had grounds to kill her, and the weapon to do it too, magic or no magic.” “What?!” She looks shocked at this. “Yeah. It’s a rougher world. But here’s not there. Trying to do things your way. You ponies seem big on compassion and forgiveness.” She looks back to the two retreating forms of the guard and his new prisoner. “You did fine.” “On that note, I gotta go forgive the shit out of a certain noble.” You start to walk back inside, but Twilight runs around you, blocking your way. “No, wait! I can handle him, Anon.” “I told you in the beginning I wasn’t going to do that. I’ve let this go on long enough.” You walk back inside. Twilight follows you, magically replacing and reassembling the doorknob as she passes it almost as an afterthought. “Let me, Anon. Please, he’s a unicorn, and you have no way of dealing with magic.” “I just grab the horn, right?” “If he lets you get close enough!” She was right, though. You did need something to defend yourself with, if it came down to it. As you pass your workbench, you pick up the closest screwdriver in reach and drop it in a pocket. It’s not even a big one, but it’s something. “Besides, I have this.” ”And just what are you going to do with it?” “I don’t know. I’ll think of something. Maybe he’s just got a few screws loose.” You exit the embassy, Twilight hot on your heels. “Anon, it’ll be fine, just let me-” You wheel on her then, stopping her cold. “If you go charging up there, chewing out the highest noble in the palace who doesn’t move the fucking sky, that’s gonna be hell for your reputation around here. That’s something you gotta be aware of, since you run your own little slice of this queendom or whatever the fuck it is, and you’re doing it enough harm shacking yourself up with me. I’m gonna go up there so you can stay out of it.” ”I care about you more!” On the surface, that declaration makes you feel pretty good. But you knew she felt that way about you already. You weren’t expecting it, further down, to make you feel bad. Can’t she see how much you care about her, in turn? You wanted to avoid forcing her into some magical honor duel with the Prince in the middle of Canterlot, especially considering how wrong it is for a mare to beat up a stallion around these parts. If she was right that it wouldn’t be too terrible a hit to her standing, you wanted to save her even that. No, maybe she doesn’t see that. Like her brother says, you never told her, no matter how she’d been making you feel lately. You kneel down in front of her, and bring a hand around the back of her head, fingers through her mane, holding her close to you. “I’m really happy you want to protect me, Twilight, but let me do this. Our work needs someone to look after it, before Catnip’s replacement comes back. Who knows how many gremlins he has crawling around the place. Please? For me?” You hold her gaze until she dips her head slightly in acknowledgment. ”Fine. But if you take too long, I’m going after you.” “I wouldn’t expect any less.” You press your nose to hers, then kiss where they’d touched, drawing a faint nicker from her. Wrapping your other arm around her neck, you pull her head in beside yours. She presses the side of her head into you, and wraps her wings around you. You feel her tongue on your neck, just above your collar. Maybe this time it’s you who needs to tell her about cultural differences in lewd gestures. “Now don’t worry about me. You ponies rarely have a violent bone in your body. Everything’s going to turn out fine.” ”I’m only letting you do this because you wont be happy otherwise.” “I know.” You hold her there a moment longer, running your hands through her mane. You hope she doesn’t feel your heart about to burst out of your chest. Love, sure, but at this point mostly nerves. But why be nervous? She’d made her own stance known plenty of times already. “Twilight?” ”Yes?” “Love ya.” You say it playfully, putting a cheerful spin on the words like it was the most casual thing in the world, an umpteenth restatement of something already made clear. She’d already made it clear to you, after all, even if she hadn’t said it precisely that way. Can’t let her feel left out. It’s enough to shock her motionless. You stand wearing a shit-eating grin. She looks up at you with wide eyes and no words. Then you spin on a heel and walk off towards the palace. “Wait… You can’t just leave, after that!” You don’t even turn your head to call back. “Watch me!” ”Anon!” You flash a thumbs-up over a shoulder as you walk away, her whinny at your back. The sun had already set by the time your little intruder had shown her head, and by now it’s dark. Tall Tail would be too busy handling the prisoner. The Royal Guard may send someone off double-time to tell Celestia once she is processed, but you probably still have a little while before then, if ‘then’ is even while Celestia was still awake. It’s sunbutt bedtime soon. You hope Catnip is too heat-addled to do anything other than what you commanded. Luna is definitely up by now, and likely in one of her several meetings with the bureaucrats before her dreamwalking. If Catnip had put the word out, a nightwatchmare could be barging intoone any moment, but in her current state that’s a big if. Either one would get a princess much more powerful than Twilight into your business, one you’re a lot less likely to be able to stop. If you want to get out of this with your pride intact, you need to hurry. You know where his office is; top floor of the household wing. Your embassy guard’s argument over the evening shift change means that it’s likely already carried out elsewhere in the palace. Luna’s guards are more likely to do you favors and help than Celestia’s, so this is to your advantage. You’re not stopped once before arriving at his office. Your nerves haven’t let up since leaving Twilight. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. This confrontation has been a long time coming. As you suspected, it’s Night Watch posted at the door. You jerk a thumb to the door. “He inside?” The bat-stallion nods back. “A’ight, cool.” You open the door hard enough for it to slam into the wall beside it. Prince Blueblood, at his desk, looks up in alarm. “Hey buddy, lets have a little chat, stallion to stallion.” He narrows his eyes, as you hear the guard outside close the door behind you. “You’re no stallion, human.” “Twilight would disagree.” His expression doesn’t change, but you can tell by the way his ears move you struck a nerve there. You pick up the chair in front of his desk and spin it around, so when you sit in it, you’re leaning forward on its backrest. A lot of magic works on line of sight, Twilight had told you. Gotta protect the vitals. “Wanna guess why I’m here?” ”I have no idea, and I’d rather you weren’t.” “Tough shit, mate. A friend of mine met up with a friend of yours, today. What street did you pick her up off of? I know I’m just a sheltered colt here in the palace, but I didn’t think Canterlot had the kinds of slums to produce those types.” ”I will not tolerate your insults to our city!” “Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about them? More passive-aggressive bullshit? Don’t think I didn’t know it was you fucking up my shit all along. I just didn’t give enough of a fuck about you to do anything about it.” He rears back and plants his forehooves on the desk, using the extra height to loom over you. ”You think you’re the greatest thing to enter this palace since Luna’s return, yet all you do is make a mockery of Celestia by standing at her side, and taking resources that would be better put towards productive ends. You almost killed Shining Armor yesterday, and that’s merely the most recent of your offenses! Your contraptions are dangerous, and I will not condone their development!” “Dangerous? You oversee the kitchens, you know all those griffin imports I eat. I’m a fucking predator. I’m surprised your concern is about my contraptions, instead of me. Back home I’d see a cow and start thinking about lunch. Some humans ate horses, on my world. He doesn’t flinch. “Is that a threat?” “I’m not dumb enough to threaten you; I know stallions on this world are the last line of defense of the family, and you’ve got magic to boot. I’m pretty sure you could kill me before that guard outside could intervene. But I’m making a point. What other sapient carnivores do you have here, griffins and some sorta cat? One’s a pursuit predator, the other an ambush predator. You outpace them and win, or you give ‘em a swift kick and they scamper back to the shadows.Your stalling at the smithy, that was slowing me down. That didn’t work. Your shitty little saboteur, that was supposed to be your kick, wasn’t it? Humans don’t work like that. We’re endurance predators, in for the long haul, so know I’m not going anywhere.” “But I’ll tell you something else about us. Back home, me? Men? We’re the mares, except we’re really, really bad at sharing. Since I’m maresculine enough to not be stupidly impulsive, and you ponies are peaceful enough to not kill anything that pisses you off, we’re going to discuss this reasonably.” ”And if I don’t wish to be reasonable? If I’m… stupidly impulsive, by your words?” “Then I do my level best to use this screwdriver in my pocket to geld you, and that’s not a threat either. What the fuck is your problem with me? I made a unicorn fucking fly, and he survived the trip. I know you’ve heard the rumors of me almost killing princesses, and you probably saw that goofball bounce off the palace wall yesterday, but damnit, I haven’t hurt anypony. Save your fucking sanctimony.” He sits down in his chair again. Message fucking received; now the real progress begins. ”Why do you think anything you make is worthwhile? Your grandiose speech when you pitched them to us was the height of puffery, and I deal with the royal court all day. Your arrogance is astounding.” “Not even the first time I’ve heard that, buddy, though I thought you’d be more amenable to my plight. The idea I’m a stallion so I can’t do anything worthy is getting pretty old, but hearing it from another stallion who rates higher than a no-name guard in the hallway hurts. No camaraderie among colts, here?” ”Do what you like, but stallions have one responsibility above all others. One you are not capable of, making you less than nobody. So yes, you are more dangerous than your inventions, because as a predator, you prey. Not on any pony, but on ponykind, and its future.” “If not with my creations, then how?” ”In this very palace – east wing, fourth floor, south hall, room three – is the first natural born alicorn this world has ever seen. And she’s not ours. She belongs to a country that didn’t exist until a couple years ago!By pursuing a princess, you deny all of Equestria that opportunity.” He leans over his desk. “You deny us our proper rulers. And from what I’ve heard of your world, I suspect that’s your aim!” You lean back and bark out a laugh. “So you’ve read my file! Trust me, buddy, I’ve been thinking on that one myself. Thing is, they’re fucking immortal. I’m only tying them down for a few decades, at best. You’ve got Cadance beat three to one, and while I’m sure a princess of love can make a really good head start on an alicorn arms race with that time, we’re talking about timescales you and I can’t even comprehend. Celestia and Luna are good for any ten, or even any hundred, little fucks she can pop out in that time. Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance, as some saying went back home.” ”You think that’s your decision to make?” “Fuck no, and I didn’t make it. Twilight made that call.” His white fur grows tinged with the red of anger, underneath. That’s the same nerve you hit earlier, too. ”If you think I’m going to die before I see this palace welcome a rightful heir, you’re very sorely mistaken.” Go for that nerve a third time. Go for the throat, like the predator you say you are. ”It’s not the palace, though, is it? You want it to be you. Or, should I say, you want it to be yours.” The red under his fur vanishes, and his narrowed eyes widen with shock. ”Sure this palace has three princesses, but one’s been celibate for a thousand years. Between Luna coming back, and Cadance and Twilight’s ascensions, there’s been a bit of an explosion in the eligible princesses scene, hasn’t there? But Cadance got hitched and Luna’s got, ah, social and scheduling issues. Twilight was your only shot, wasn’t she? Is that all this was? Petty fucking jealousy, since that moment you realized I had this apparently dangerous combination of access to Twilight and some measure of responsibility?” ”She must see reason!” “Was that your fallback? If you were ever found out, she’d come up here to defend my honor, but she’s an understanding pony who cares about harmony, so she’d sit down and listen to you, right? You’d convince her the folly of my existence? Then you could get that royal heir, yours or not. That’s why you targeted my work, instead of my food or something. My work is the thing I shared with her, it’d get her to come to you.” You laugh again. “But you didn’t expect me instead. You didn’t know men were the mares of my world, that I’d want to handle this personally. You lost to the unknown unknowns!” ”I have not yet ‘lost’. All I need to do is speak with her, and I can do that at any time.” “Then why haven’t you yet? It’s accessibility, isn’t it? Or it’s the fact stallions here are treated like jokes. Did you need to force a confrontation just to be taken seriously?” You stand, shaking your head. “It doesn’t matter. This gives me the first crack at this conversation with them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to do a little rhetorical battlespace shaping. Or, if I can indulge in stallion stereotypes, I have some gossip to spread.” You turn and move to the door, but the glow of magic appears around its knob. ”You’re not going anywhere until we come to an agreement. As you said, discuss it reasonably. And there’s only one reasonable outcome.” You look down at the doorknob. It’s a pretty crappy one. Government contractors being cheap bastards must be a universal constant. You pull out your screwdriver. It’s not the right size, a little on the small side, but at least it matches the screw type. You jam it in a screw between the knob and the plate where it meets the door. The too-small screwdriver makes it more difficult than it needs to be, but you manage to work the screw out in just a couple seconds. ”What are you doing?” “Returning a favor.” As the door opens inward from this side, you weren’t expecting him to be holding the knob in place by pulling on it. The doorknob flies off the door, slamming into your hip on its way to the middle of the room, the impact turning you halfway around. Blueblood stops pulling on it before it hits him too, and it skitters to the floor somewhere under his desk. ”Cease this foolishness!” You smash the handle of the screwdriver against the end of the square-shaped shaft running through the door. The shaft, and the knob on its other end, pops out of the door and into the hallway beyond before Blueblood can get his magic on it. Then you stick your screwdriver’s blade against a small tab on top of the mechanism connected to the latch and pull it open. You look back at Blueblood as you swing the door open, rubbing your hip. “I bet you don’t know how to put this back together as well as Twilight.” You leave his sputtering behind as you walk away, nodding to the guard collecting the errant knob assembly as you pass him. “Sorry for the mess.” Still rubbing your hip, you pocket your screwdriver and set out for the embassy. It’s starting to hurt, and the pain only increases as you make your way down to the main floor again. When you get down to the door leading to the area behind the palace, you’re stopped short by the door opening on its own. Twilight stands there, breathing quickly. She leaps up at you, knocking you off-balance. ”AnonIwasgettingsoworriedyouweren-” You hit the ground, jarring your hip and forcing the screwdriver’s tip against your thigh, forcing a curse from you. Twilight looks down at you in alarm, and quickly backs away from standing over you. “Nah, don’t worry, I’m fine. Honest.” You sit up, then get to your feet, wincing. “I may not have gotten him to stop, but I know why now, and I think that’ll be enough to keep him down. If this doesn’t do it, you can talk to him. But for this one, he wanted you. Talking to you was his backup plan.” The two of you stride out into the night, towards your embassy. ”That doesn’t make any sense. What did he want from me?” You laugh, short and humorless. “From you? He wanted a foal.” ”You can’t be serious. That’s ridiculous.” “I am one hundred percent serious. If not by him, then by another stallion.” ”You and I talked about this.” “Yeah, and we’ve talked about the mortality stuff, and I laid that on him too. I don’t think he cared.” At the embassy, you see the two Night Watch guards in place. Why do they insist on standing on the roof? “Everything looking alright, up there?” ”No problems, Your Excellency.” “Great, keep it up.” They didn’t sound like Catnip had filled them in. You’ve got the night without any further explaining to do, then, as long as the guard at Blueblood’s door took exploding doorknobs as a simple consequence of a heated argument. You hesitate at the door. “Hey, Twilight? Can we take dinner in the city? You lived here when you were younger, you could find some out-of-the-way place, somewhere you wouldn’t normally take me. You know, a comfy place that’s not in the nicer part of town, where natives would eat.” She looks up at you, then nods. “Sure, Anon. Anything.” “You’re staying?” Twilight stands in the door to your bedroom, even after you’ve made it clear you’re looking to sleep. “Anon, you got hurt today. Because I wasn’t there. And I don’t care if that was your choice.” “Seriously, it’s just a bad bruise. I’ll recover.” She walks back into your room. “That’s not it. It’s… the meaning of it, I guess. I’m staying, so you don’t get hurt again.” ”I have two wonderful protectors making a racket on the roof.” “All the more reason I should be here!” “You think they’ll turn on me?” ”No, it’s because… mares protect their stallions!” You grin. “So I am your stallion after all.” She looks away, but nods. “No more waiting for Luna to make a move?” “Buck her, she’s had long enough. I’m tired of waiting!” You can’t help but laugh at how forceful Twilight says it. “Alright, on one condition.” ”Anon-” “That you’re not sitting on the fucking roof with the other two loons. You’re in here, with me.” ”How am I supposed to watch over you?” “By literally watching over me, Twilight. How better could you protect me than right at my side? Besides, it’ll be comfier.” You pat your bed. “Also, I don’t have anywhere else set up for sleeping, and I refuse to put you on the couch in the lounge.” She walks towards you, head lowered. “Alright. Only because you asked.” “Don’t act like you don’t want it, yourself.” You swing your legs back onto the bed and scoot over, giving her enough room to get in with you. She looks down at the bed, and back to you. “Are you sure?” “Holy fuck Twilight, just get in the goddamned bed.” She steps into it almost like she’d shatter it, if she moved too fast. You prop yourself up on an elbow as she gingerly maneuvers around the more than ample space you’ve provided. Eventually she lowers herself to the bed, in that kneeling-laying pose ponies do, with their legs all under them like they’re pretending to be a cat. When she turns to look at you, she slowly, very slowly, pitches her body away from you to end up partially on her side. ”What?” she demands, as you laugh. “I can’t believe this . It’s like you’re trying to stay as far away from me as possible. What happened to all that goofing off in the workshop, the past few days? What happened to me being your stallion now?” You reach out and hook a hand over her spine, then yank her towards you, pitching her body up and over the opposite direction, so her back’s to you. Then you get your other arm under her midsection and pull her in close. “If you’re going to be in here with me, I mean you’re going to be with me. This is how we did it back home. Do ponies not? No proximity in bed? ”No, it’s just…” “I bet if it weren’t for me, you’d be hopeless.” ”Sometimes it’s the other way around…” “I’m way too big for that, Twilight.” She frees the wing not underneath her body from your arm, and you pull the arm under her body into a more comfortable position for the both of you, near her neck. You reach up and play with her ear, earning a contented sigh. She doesn’t respond as freely as Luna, but it’s still pretty nice to hear. Her wing extends back over you for a moment, before settling over her and your hips. She snuffs the nearby candle with her magic, plunging the room into darkness. You spend a couple moments just listening to her breathing, and feeling it under your arm, itself under her wing. She’s got an ear towards your face, presumably listening to yours as well. You snake the arm around her body between her forelegs, burying your hand in the thicker fur on the front of her chest, and pull her closer to you. The size difference puts her head cleanly below your head, even hiking her up towards your chest the way you are. Her mane’s tickling under your chin, and the tip of her horn is about at the same ‘height’ as your eyes, framed by her ears like some purple sight post for this world’s most powerful friendship gun. As your eyes adjust to the dark, you start to think you can make out the faintest stars in the darker purple hair of her mane. Nah, can’t be. She’s not in control of her powers enough for that yet. Still, you don’t mind losing yourself in it trying to see them. You can’t remember the last time you’d fallen asleep with another warm body in your bed. No, Luna’s head that one time didn’t count. You find yourself trapped between knowing it’ll be a wonderful night’s sleep, and not wanting to sleep at all. You can’t sleep when your heart feels like this anyway. This is finally happening. You finally got a girl who loves you, your work, and wants to take care of you. One who’s sharp as a tack, has ridiculous status, and is enthusiastic as fuck for just about everything you are. So she’s not your species. You’ve come around to that. Your parents might be disappointed, but you don’t have a lot of options, where you are. It means you haven’t stuck your dick in her, but that’s the one bridge you haven’t really looked across yet besides occasional glances. Still time to get yourself on the right page with that. Honestly, all things considered, Twilight’s way out of your league. Yet, here you are. “Hey, Twi?” ”Yes?” “Thanks for looking out for me.” She wiggles her back against your body, trying to close the last of the little distance between you. “Thanks for, er, letting me.” “You’re not used to this, are you?” ”It’s my first time…” “Say it like that and you’d think we were doing something besides sleeping, in here.” She mumbles a reply you don’t quite catch. “And that’s no way for you to worry about my hip.” She stiffens ever so slightly, and her free wing starts wandering around your lower body. “No, no, stop, it was a joke, I’m kidding. No, seriously, please, I’m a little ticklish.” The wing settles back into its prior position, and you take another swipe at her ear with the arm not wrapped around her, the ear not focused on you. ”Hey Anon?” “Yeah?” She pulls her head around all the way, twisting her upper body for the rest of the range she needs. Her nose finds yours with perfect accuracy at the end of her arc, and she’s sharing your breath again. “I love you too.” You stumble into the doorframe, turning to take it on your shoulder. Twilight still doesn’t stir, limp in your arms. Coughing doesn’t do much to clear the smoke from your lungs when every breath just sucks more in. Dropping to one knee gets you low enough the air is somewhat clean, but you can’t escape the inferno like this. You look down the hall, towards the embassy’s front door. The main workshop room at the end is blazing. Can’t leave that way. You’ll need to go deeper, try to get out the back door near the test area. You take a deep breath and hold it. Then you surge to your feet and take off down the hall away from the workshop as fast as you can manage. As you enter the testing room and lounge, you trip over your own feet, pitching forward to the concrete floor. You twist in mid-air to land on your back instead of on Twilight. The impact knocks the wind out of you, stunning you. Unsupported by your now-limp arms, Twilight rolls off your chest, ending on her side on the floor to your right. When you manage to turn your head to look at her, your eyes widen in shock. The entire far side of the long room is engulfed. That was the only other way out. When you recover your breath – what of it you can, with the still-building smoke accumulating above you – you sit up and pull Twilight into your lap, then scoot back on your rear to the wall opposite the flames, to get as far from them as possible. The entire structure is stone, and you thought that’d be enough to prevent something like this. Everything you’d since put inside to make it comfortable, however, is wood. As are the doors, window frames, and wall cladding that had been left over from its prior life as a barracks. You’re going to die for creature comforts. She’s going to die for your creature comforts. You bring your knees up and hug the unconscious Twilight to your chest, her head beside yours, and bury your face in her shoulder and wing. You shouldn’t have tried to handle this yourself. You should have let the mares take care of it for you. This isn’t your world. Their justice isn’t yours to emulate. You never should have forgiven the filly. Never should have told the guards to go lightly. You should have been the predator you bragged about being and killed Blueblood, or at least fucked him up, made him understand that you weren’t to be messed with. If that put you in prison or worse, well… At least Twilight would have been okay. She’d have been heartbroken. Probably would have hated you. But she’d have lived, and that would have been worth it. Now she won’t even have that. In the end, this is all your fault. You sit with her in your lap, your entire body wrapped around hers in a futile gesture, as if you could somehow protect her from the encroaching flames. You clutch her to you with all the life you have left, squeezing her in your arms, running your hands over her mane and feathers and coat. Try to get all that closeness, that contact, that you would never have again, and you cry. Your life together ends as soon as it had begun. Out cold, you can’t even tell her you love her. Seriously this time, with feeling. At the far side of the room, the fire shifts. It must be getting closer. Claimed another piece of furniture, or something. No. No, that’s not it. A dark figure stands inside it, and it’s coming closer. After a few moments, Luna walks out of the fire, totally unscathed. When she sees you, she hurries her approach. How did she do that? How did she walk through and not burn? As soon as that thought completes, she bursts into flames, and disappears with a yelp, only to reappear a few heartbeats later, once more in perfect health. ”We wish to save thee! Makest not our effort difficult!” “I can’t… she’s passed out, Luna. You can’t drag both of us. Leave me… take her.” It’s hard to speak. Maybe death is closer than you’d thought. When she reaches you, she shoves you aside, spinning you in place. Then she grabs the back of your shirt in her teeth and starts pulling you backwards. When did she get this strong? When you realize she’s pulling you towards the fire, you curl tighter around Twilight. ”Preparest thyself; even in a dream, thy mind believeth thee burns.” Before you can process what she’s said, you’re enveloped in mindblowing pain. You clench your jaw, screaming through your teeth. But your flesh doesn’t blister or char. Then you’re clear. Luna keeps dragging you backwards, first across the packed dirt surrounding the embassy, then across the grass beyond. You stare in disbelief at the burning building, Canterlot Palace rising behind it, and the sunny sky behind that. It’s daytime? Luna stops dragging you through the grass, and your body rocks to a halt. You look down at your precious burden. She looks and feels like she’s breathing, but only barely. “Twilight, we made it. Luna came, she saved us. We’re okay now. You can wake up now.” You give her a little shake as Luna walks in front of you. “Please wake up?” ”She wont, Anon.” Your blood runs cold as you look up at Luna. “What- what are you saying?” She gives you a weak smile. “She is not here. Thou dreamest.” A dream. This is a dream. A nightmare. A new one, to go with your new life. Luna studies your features, as that sinks in. “Ah, thy head cleareth, now. We are surprised. Thou knowest normally straight away.” Even knowing she’s not Twilight, not really, you still cradle her a few moments longer in your arms, then gingerly lay her down in the grass beside you. Then you draw your knees up to your chest, wrap your arms around them, and take a deep, shuddering breath. Luna comes around to your other side, opposite Twilight. She extends her neck towards you, but seems to think better of it, pulling her head back again and sitting down. It takes you some time to collect yourself. Luna stays distant, watching you. Only when you’re steady does she speak. “Dost thou wish… us to merge her into that body?” You look over at her when you hear her hesitation, but she looks away from you. “Is she having a nightmare too?” Luna shakes her head. “She dreameth pleasantly.” “Then leave her. She doesn’t need to see this.” Luna is silent for several more seconds, before, “She dreameth of thee. As she so often doeth.” That would make you happy, but for Luna’s tone saying it. ”As thou often doest of her.” Only then does she look back at you. “Anon, answerest truthfully. Where is she now?” You look down at the mostly-inert body beside you. If you were sitting up in bed right now, the two of you would probably be arranged a lot like this. “She’s sleeping beside me. In my bed, in there.” You point a finger at the burning building. Luna nods, but each descent of her head brings it lower to the grass. “We see. We had thought, with what dreams we’d seen, but…” You reach out a hand to her face, but she pulls away from you, getting to her hooves quickly and backing up. Her eyes look hard. ”How long?” “How long what?” ”How long hath she slept with thee?” “Tonight’s the first night. Honest, Luna. It’s not like I was keeping anything from you.” Her gaze softens a bit, and she looks down at the grass. “We thought as much, but...” She shakes her head. “We are isolated from the world, awake at night and sleeping during day. For all we gleaned from dreams, we knew she was dear to thee, and thou her, but not how much.” She looks to the burning embassy, then. “Is that this dream’s root? Dost thou fear losing her?” “That’s definitely a fear, after this. But I don’t think it’s the cause. Not from what I was thinking, in there. Before you saved me.” She looks back to you. “What thoughts were those?” “Well, there’s still some stuff about this world I haven’t gotten used to. I’m trying. I really am. But back home, justice is more retributive, than rehabilitative here.” You wave a hand at the building. “I guess this is my lack of faith in that approach, or maybe just a lack of faith in my capacity to execute it.” Luna looks between the building and you a couple times. “But what hath that to do with thy home and Twilight?” Should you tell her? You already had your talk with Blueblood. Your current plan was to spread the word as much as possible, to prejudice ponies against whatever plans he might next undertake by making his actions and motivations known. If you couldn’t start here, then where? You take a deep breath before you begin. “Blueblood sent someone to vandalize the place, today. We caught it before anything bad happened, and I confronted him about it. But the vandal was just a filly, and Blueblood’s a coward. I took pity. The guards have the former, and the latter I was gonna let stew in it.” After a long moment of silence, you look back at Luna. She’s staring at the building in shock. Something was off about her. It wasn’t her stance – stunned as it was – or anything so visible, but- Her eyes. Her pupils are narrowed into slits, like her guards. “We… We had heard of an altercation, today. From the guard at his door. We thought it… trivial. We thought…” She fixes those slit pupils on you. “He would have killed thee. Destroyed thy life’s work. Burned thee to ash. Nothing to mourn.” ”Luna-” ”We would have known not. Been unable to save thee.” “Twilight was there, I was-” ”His peace is forfeit. His life must be made a waking nightmare. No respite from terror.” Maybe rehabilitative justice is a recent development, in pony culture. You stand to face her, but she only draws herself up further. “And his suffering shall serveth as a warning to all that thou shelterest under our own wing, that our grace blesseth all thou doest, that no harm shall come to thee while we still draw breath.” “Luna stop!” Your shout jolts her, and she takes a step back from you. “You told me about some big dumb fucking gesture. Is that what this is supposed to be? Your gesture to me? You want to prove yourself by causing suffering? I’m trying to do things your world’s way, I don’t want to see you do them mine. If that’s your fucking idea of a grand fucking gesture, forget it!” She recoils as if you’d just slapped her. Her pupils revert to their usual round shape. ”That… That is…” She starts moving side to side, slowly but accelerating, in a strange weaving action you haven’t seen before. She looks like she wants to run but can’t decide in which direction, and is stuck facing you. ”That is understandable! Oh yes. Hah. Of course. Thou saidst thou hadst never seen us unkind, so we had nothing to fear of thy disapproval. But now thou seest! So thou rejectest us. Naturally.” “No, wait, hold on now-” She’s breathing extremely fast, now, between words. ”Isolated, we find it difficult to connect. This keeps us further isolated. Only our sister keepeth us. Yes. Loneliness begetteth loneliness! Not a pain others would beareth on our behalf. This is proper. We remain alone.” She lowers her head and slows the strange motion, but not in a very coordinated manner. She looks drunk. “Alone. Though I love you, alone.” She pitches over and collapses to the ground. You play that back in your head as you rush to her side. She dropped her antiquated pronoun bullshit on that last one, didn’t she? Not that you can ask; she’s passed out. “Wake up! Why do you spiral like this?” You put both hands on the side of her body and shake her. “Come on you dumb mare wake the fuck up come on come on!” There are now two unconscious mares on your lawn, and you’re really not feeling silent company. You wrap an arm around her upper body, lift her slightly, and start shaking again. “Wake up wake up wake up!” Suddenly she’s flailing in your grip, forcing you to let go and drop her back on the now-matted grass. She stills a couple seconds after she lands. Fortunately, you’ve managed to avoid getting kicked by her scything hooves. After a couple seconds laying on her side in the grass panting she looks up at where you kneel. “Under… understandable.” “Hey, you cool? You calm?” She looks away from you, curling her head down to her chest silently. She’s not freaking out again, however, so that’s a yes. “You said ‘I love you’.” Her eye snaps back to you. “Truly?” “You said that. Not ‘We love thee.’ Those three exact words.” She looks away again. “We… I have made a habit of rudeness. You are beneath me not, Anon. Anything but.” You switch from a kneeling to a sitting position, and pull her head into your lap, stroking the side of her neck. “And, uh, yeah. Truly.” She turns her head upward at you, then struggles to right herself where she lays in the grass, but you push her back down. “Nah, rest. Don’t go passing out on me again.” ”But… you saw my-” “Everyone’s got their inner demons. Yours just might, uh, be an actual demon. I said I’d cut Blueblood’s balls off, when I was talking to him.” You laugh. “I understand the sentiment behind wanting him to suffer, I really do.” ”And what about Twilight?” “What about her?” ”She must accepteth me.” “She was waiting for you, you know. Got fed up with it.” Luna’s silent for a time, before, “I did take long enough to say it, did I not?” “Yeah, well something about gestures or whatever. When I said forget it, Luna, that’s all I meant. I don’t care about some big deed to prove yourself to me.” You laugh to yourself again, shaking your head. “We’ve spent enough time together to prove yourself to me the real way. And you gave me enough time to realize it. I was psyching myself up for it, when Twilight first said something, but it sorta just fell into place. Now, lately, I can’t keep my hands off you.” You pat her side with your hand not busy with her neck, just to prove your point. “And now, hey, you revealed the deepest, darkest part of you. And you’re the only one who’s seen my old home. We know more about each other than anyone else in Equestria. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already in.” ”In?” “Yeah. The herd or whatever.” ”The band.” “Twilight told me you’d call it that.” Luna smiles up at you. “I suppose I should get with the times, if I am to be a satisfactory mate.” ”Mate, huh? I’m already a big fan of how your body reacts to mine.” Luna puts a forehoof on your shoulder, then rolls herself upright, pushing your back down to the grass in the process. She looms over you, grinning. “Anon, you will find I am just as fond of innuendo as my sister, merely restrained by tact. You have now given me all the permission I need to do whatever I want with you.” She stops herself, then, blinking and pulling her head up slightly, before looking at something behind you. The smell of smoke still drifts over you, and you can see the reflections of flames dancing in her eyes. ”We must tell my sister.” You roll out from underneath her onto your stomach, and look at the building as well. “Do we? I, uh, I’m not particularly proud of this crisis of faith in your culture. In fact, she’s the last person I want to know; she’s pretty invested in me acclimating well.” ”I insist. She must knoweth the threat you have faced.” “No, really, can we just-” You hear a popping sound, like a unicorn teleporting. ”Oh!” That was Celestia’s voice. You quickly stand and locate her. No strange objects surround her, and the environment looks exactly as it had before. Strange how easy Luna can shuttle ponies around, when she has such difficulty with you. Celestia gently nudges Twilight’s body with her nose before looking at you and Luna. ”Is she alright?” ”That is merely a dream construct, sister.” Celestia looks down at Twilight and takes two steps back, looking like her student had just transformed into a particularly grotesque bug. “You know those always creeped me out, when I’m made aware in dreams. Especially someone so dear to me.” “Anon’s, not mine. But look yonder.” Celestia turns to your still-burning embassy then, and takes a step back. Then another. She backs up to you even as you walk to her side. When you reach her, your heart falls when you see her face. She’s wearing no mask, no facade of propriety. Just a look of pure horror. It takes several seconds before she turns to look at you. Luna comes up on your other side, dipping her head low and nudging your hand out with her snout, then bringing her head up underneath your hand so it’s resting between her ears. When Luna stops beside you, she draws Celestia’s attention. “Why do you show us this nightmare, sister?” You can hear her voice quaver. When have you ever known Celestia to be this raw? ”Not just a nightmare. A prophecy of a future averted. At least, so I hope.” She looks to Celestia, then. “Averting it is why I bring you.” ”Explain. Now.” Luna nudges your side. “Well, uh, Blueblood hired some kid off the street to break in, today. We turned her away – your guards have her – but, uh.” You shake your head and sigh. “I’m scared it’s not enough, is all. I talked to him, and figure I can try to beat him at his game, but that’s not the same sense of security I’d get back home. So I got a new nightmare, for the first time in a long time.” You gesture to the not-actually-Twilight nearby. “She and I would have died in there, if Luna hadn’t stepped in.” ”Is Twilight with you now? In the real?” “Yeah.” ”Comforting.” “Well, she’s asleep too. With me. In bed.” Celestia gives you something approximating a sly look, but it’s twisted with worry from the scene before her. On your other side, you feel Luna flick her tail. ”Anon, I-” Celestia’s voice breaks, and she looks away from you. ”This has been going on for quite some time, hasn’t it?” “From the moment I stepped out from under your wing, yeah.” ”I told you to tell me if you were ever harassed.” “I had to try to make my own way, Celestia. I couldn’t be glued to your side forever.” She wheels on you then, her expression a mix of sorrow and… rage. ”When it got this bad? What if I lost you? What do you think that’d do to me, for your stubborn pride? What would that do to my sister, to Twilight? You’re not so different from a stallion after all; you don’t think!” “I got what I wanted to get done. I don’t care anymore, you can take it from here.” ”Oh, I can, now? And if your little plan didn’t work? If you died here-” She punctuates it with a stamp of a hoof- ”where would that leave the three of us, who’d spent so much caring for you? You’ve seen my own nightmare, Anon. I thought you’d be more sensitive than encouraging it to become a reality!” She has to put more force into the words to make them sound angry. Her wrath had burned out halfway through the diatribe. It’s just sorrow left now; you can hear as much, and see it in her ever-honest eyes as they tear up. “Yeah. It’s my fault. I understand that. That-” You gesture at the building. “-showed me that. I thought I had it under control, but really I’m still scared shitless, if I’m getting dreams like this.” Celestia’s speechless, and you can see her tears starting to fall. Luna leaves your side for her sister’s, pushing her head into Celestia’s shoulder. “He is fine, sister. No use crying. Let us plan.” Celestia looks like she’s about to object, but then shakes her head. You can see her usual posture start to return, all those interlocking armor plates of apparent calm, aloofness, and composure sliding into place and layering over each other, assembling her normal facade. ”Yes. Lets. You said you talked to him. What was his rationale?” “He’s upset I got Twilight’s interest. He saw her as the first eligible princess for Equestria for, uh, for breeding. He thinks there needs to be more alicorns, to build some sort of ruling caste I guess.” She nudges Luna’s neck with her snout. “Sister, can stallions think of anything besides foals?” ”Mine can.” Celestia blinks a few times, then looks over Luna’s shoulders at you. “I see. You are most fortunate, then.” Then, for the first time in this dream, she smiles. ”Very good. I, however, must deal with the wayward nobility running our household.” ”We must remove him.” So much for your plans of subtlety, your battle of wits. ”And? He’s still royalty, sister, no matter how distant.” ”The scion of an ancient cadet branch. He can be cast aside, until an heir to his lineage comes forth. One you could make a student, and show the true responsibility of their status.” ”And until then?” You clear your throat. “You could, uh, put Raven in charge I guess?” Celestia gives you a look like she’s holding back laughter. “Anon, Raven can pluck the strings of state like the finest musician, but I wouldn’t trust her to run a hovel, let alone the palace. She only returns home to sleep, you know, and comes back as soon as her morning preparations are complete. If it weren’t for the palace kitchens, I’m sure she would have starved long ago; the only thing she knows how to make is coffee. Perhaps we could simply keep Blueblood on a short leash, until we have a suitable replacement.” Luna looks back at you. “Why does my stallion not do it?” “Look, if you put me with Raven, together we can make maybe two thirds of that hovel work.” The blue alicorn frowns. “You will have to work on that.” “Sure, but you don’t have the time for that now. Look, I’m not going to be much of a help, so I think I’ll step out and let you two get to it.” You do that thing where you try to pop your own head off to exit the dream. Nothing happens. Celestia eyes you inquisitively. “What are you doing to yourself?” ”He can escapeth dreams sometimes. However, at present, you anchor him.” ”Ah. I’m sure you can call up a more pleasant one in my head to continue this discussion.” ”I need your mind in my grasp already for best effect, sister.” Luna eyes you critically. “It is a simulated head injury, correct?” “Uh, yeah. At least I think so. I think it started with trying to break my neck or something.” ”Interesting. I told you I cannot abort your dreams for you, as human dreams work in strange ways. I can, however, facilitate your own means.” “Er, what’s that supposed to-” She pivots on her front hooves so her rear is to you, and kicks off the ground with her hind legs, drawing them inward as she’s tilting forward. You have just enough time to figure out what’s about to happen before her two rear hooves smash into the side of your skull. You bolt upright in your bed. Damn, the mare could kick. That’s a distant thought, though, like the dream you just woke from had concluded long ago. ”Mrhuh?” Twilight’s head pokes out from under the covers she’d apparently drawn over both of you, sometime in the night. Seeing her face and hearing her voice, no matter how sleep-addled, brings back all the memories from inside the burning building. Your arms are around her then, squeezing her tight, your hands petting whatever portions of her coat are within reach as you fight back tears. ”Anon, hey, you’re- you’re crushing me.” You relax a bit, just enough she can move. “Sorry, just… need this. Just for a bit.” She brings her head as close to yours as she can, with how you’re limiting her range of motion. “Is something wrong?” “Just a bad dream.” ”Want to talk about it?” “No. It’s, uh, it’s being handled.” ”Luna?” “Yeah, she helped. But I just-” You settle back to your sleeping position, Twilight still in your arms. “I need to hold you for a bit, that’s all.” ”As long as you’d like.”
13 Aftermath”Your Excellency!” The use of your rarely heard official style stops you, and Celestia a few paces after. Her stop isn’t even as graceful as yours, let alone as her usual self. Both of you turn to the guard stallion you just passed. ”We’re keeping an eye on him, sir. Looking out for you.” You toss a casual salute at him and resume walking. “Your guards are gossipy, as usual.” Celestia continues walking herself, once you’re back to her side, and the two of you enter the library. ”This is the most excitement they’ve seen in awhile.” “Over a doorknob.” ”Over you. And Twilight, too; my sister’s guards don’t tell, but when mine saw the two of you leave your building together, this morning, there’s only a few conclusions they’d draw.” “Yeah, I’ve been congratulated a couple times too. It’s a little weird, being honest.” Celestia closes the door to your private reading room behind her, then sighs and leans against the wall there. Once you’ve taken a seat, you lean forward, elbows on your knees, and study her. “You’ve been off all day. You almost stuttered, earlier, and I’ve never heard you stutter in front of anypony. Your gait’s all screwy and you’re distracted as hell. I‘m pretty sure most haven’t noticed, but I have. What’s wrong?” “Between Blueblood and you being with my sister now, I’ve got a lot on my mind. This whole thing with the Prince will become a big issue with the way this palace is run, if we let it drag. He knows something is up, even if we haven’t confronted him yet; the Guard is all over him, to the limits of propriety. Trust me, this is restrained, for the Commander. He’d be at Blueblood’s throat if I allowed it; after what you’ve told us, it’s the perfect storm to set his hopelessly romantic heart ablaze. As it is Raven is going to have to manage everything around here more or less alone, with those two angry enough at each other to become useless.” She thumps her head lightly against the wall. “Luna and I just haven’t settled on a punishment, yet. I’ve been corresponding with… colleagues.” “That’s not like you, either. Usually you can think of these things on the spot. And why would me being with Luna bother you? I thought it’s what you wanted.” She looks over to you and smiles, standing upright again. “I’m happy for you two. I just thought I should keep a respectful distance.” “That’s the last thing I want. I’ve been with you every step of your routine for months now trying to help you relax, and you said you liked my lack of respect. C’mere, sit down.” You gesture to her usual spot. Instead, she comes up to you, then lies down on the floor next to you. “Well, sure, no distance is what I asked for I guess.” Her mane flows over and phases through your clothes and body, as Luna’s does like this. It feels like a warm mist, immersing your legs in a sensation of a very fine spray, though you know it doesn’t wet your clothes. You reach down through it – though not very far; her greater than normal height is just as apparent when she’s sitting on the floor – and pat the side of her neck. Honestly, this all seems so pathetic. The mighty and sure sovereign of Equestria is lying on the floor at your feet. It’s been awhile now since she started letting her guard down around you, in here. You were glad for it; she really needed some time in the day she could relax. You were honored she could around you, honored in a way you’ve never really felt before in your life. It was a strange thing to realize, that you feel an entirely new feeling to you from these moments. You’ve never seen her so put to pieces as this. No, there was your dream last night. But besides that. In both cases, you were the key. How she felt about you last night, that was obvious enough. Between her reaction to the dream, and her own nightmare you’d seen before, she was terrified of losing you. Maybe all the teasing was masking something more earnest. You’ve never been good at this stuff. “Hey. Move over to the middle, a bit. Lemme get my hands all over you.” She jerks as if about to stand, but stops and remains motionless. She doesn’t even take that low-hanging fruit for some crude comment. “Seriously. I mean it.” She sighs and does as you ask, settling on the floor in the middle of the room atop her legs, wings spread wide and loose. “Can’t believe I have to cajole you into this.” You get behind her again, starting your massage at her hindquarters and planning to move up, as you did last time. ”Would it sound strange if I said I hesitated because I wanted it?” “Yeah, that is pretty strange.” ”I used to indulge in a self-satisfying selflessness. If I wasn’t sure on a course of action, where both choices were exactly equal, I’d often pick the option I didn’t want. To prove to myself I had that will, that I could make decisions with no regard to my own interests. But lately, a couple friends told me I should pursue my own wants more.” “No wonder you’re always so uptight.” She laughs, the reverberations running through her body to your hands on her sides. “Yes, that’s probably part of it. But I used to be quite the opposite.” “Self-interested?” ”Partially. Haughty, stuck-up, thoughtless and careless. I’d mock my sister, when we were both young. Very young; still unicorns, and our first couple years after earning our wings. Not that I didn’t love her, but I used my wit and quick tongue for immediate satisfaction more often than thoughtful care.” “That doesn’t sound like you.” “I learned, thanks to our shared mentor, and what we went through together. By the time we were set to take the throne of our then-recently founded country, I had acquired some of the wisdom that intellect should be paired with. But sometimes I still feel like that foolish filly, sometimes I feel like I still have so far to go.” She shakes her head. “Back then, she and I used to always be at each others’ sides. The Elements of Harmony we used – just two back then, not the six Twilight’s at the center of now – were just one of many things we did together.” After a chuckle, “A list which includes, to be crude, a few stallions. But we’d stopped that once we took our thrones. So now, faced with my sister finally finding love again, I’m reminded of our earlier misadventures, but also of how poorly I at times treated her then. I wasn’t sure if I should just leave her to it, and I was tempted to apply that old test; what don’t I want? Yet my dear friends counsel me otherwise. I’ve spent too long thinking about how I have all the time in the world; for once I should take advantage of it.” Your hands are massaging the shoulders of her wings, now, as you chew on this. You can see where this is going. “So what about that stallion you told me about? Did you stay away from him because he was hers?” You can feel Celestia tense under you, briefly, before relaxing again and laughing. “He… oh, come now. I was talking about you then, Anon.” You start laughing, yourself. And don’t stop, folding forward over where you straddled her hips to lay on top of her upper back. She’s laughing with you, quieter. “Honestly, for someone who’s so capable of leaps of intuition, you are too often distracted beyond reason. Considering what I know you’re capable of, you miss some of the most blatant things.” “Yeah, I, uh, that’s me for sure. The only errors I make are the obvious ones.” ”Lets not get too full of ourselves, now.” “So if I asked you want you want-” She does a little shimmy, tossing you onto her left wing, then she swings that wing up while rolling beneath you. Once you pass through her right wing, extended up over your head, she brings it down around you and pushes you to the floor. You land between her forelegs, which wrap around your arms and upper body, pulling you close to her, followed by her hind legs around your thighs and knees. Her neck curls down, her chin against the top of your head. The two of you are on your sides now, facing each other, and it’s a little hard to breathe with your face mashed into her chest as it is, considering her coat’s thicker there than most of the rest of her body. ”I want this.” Celestia is the only pony who can cuddle you, instead of the other way around. Her being as tall as you standing means she’s got a lot more volume on you, with her four-legged body configuration. She’s currently making very effective use of it. She must be thinking the same thing you are. “It’s nice to hug a stallion my size, for once. We’re… compatible.” “In more ways than one, I’d guess.” Your response is muffled by her coat. ”Is this too far?” Well, Luna said she didn’t care. Twilight… Since when did Twilight object to anything Celestia did? “I don’t know, are you just teasing me again?” She loosens her weird hoof-hug, giving you a bit of room to breathe. “I’m sorry for all that, before.” “Yeah, your sister told me.” ”I meant what I said in your dream, last night. I was upset because I cared for you. I don’t want to lose you, Anon, but that means I need to have you, first.” You wiggle a bit in her hoofy grasp. She’s pleasantly warm, and surrounding you with that warmth. “Yeah, that checks out.” She laughs. “Knowing you, I should have stated it so simply earlier.” “Might have helped.” After a moment of silence, “And you?” “I’m feeling less in control of my own love life by the hour, with everything that’s been going on in the past couple days.” ”Yes, I suppose it’s a bit much to take in.” She adjusts her legs around you. ”I’ve waited many, many years. I can wait a little bit longer.” You’re trying to figure out how she manages to smell like flowers. As far as you know that’s her natural scent. Probably the same way her laugh energizes you, and how her mane works, and what Luna said about bodily control. You’re fortunate you enjoyed her affections. If you didn’t, you’re afraid she might have a way to make you enjoy it. ”You should take a shower when we’re done here.” “Woah, hey now, physical affection like this is one thing, but Luna got a little peeved when she learned Twilight and I were sleeping in the same bed, and that wasn’t even, ah, some other activities one does in bed. And that’s what it sounds like you’re proposing.” ”No, silly. It’s the scent.” She pulls you in tighter, mashing your face into her chest again. Your office is very close to the library. Close enough that your pink alicorn friend can sense every feeling coming from it with clarity, the emotional voyeur. She’s looking in that direction now, but her eyes are closed. She’s wearing a faint smile, and she refuses to give you as much feedback as you’d like about what she’s picking up. You’re about to ask her for the ninth time for more commentary when she opens her eyes and looks at you. ”It is done, Raven.” “Stop these cryptic replies, Your Highness.” ”Aw, let me have a little fun with it.” “So he loves Her Majesty?” ”No.” The one word hits you like this whole wing of the palace just collapsed. The weight drops on your shoulders, threatening to drive you down to the desk you’d propped yourself up on, while watching Cadance. She momentarily looks shocked and physically recoils, when that sensation reaches her. Then her expression shifts to apologetic. ”Not in the way you’re thinking, my inexperienced mentor. She doesn’t love him like that, either.” “Her Majesty told me quite clearly-” ”She didn’t lie to you. But their connection isn’t like that between Anon and Twilight or Luna. Those are deep loves rooted in shared experiences and aspects of being, intellectual or emotional. That’s not what Celestia shares with Anon. And that’s okay! Not all relationships start with the pair head over heels for each other. What’s important is the feelings are mutual.” “What do they feel, then?” Cadance makes a show of pondering the question. “They care how the other feels. They interest each other, respect each other, and arouse each other. She’s invested enough in him that she’s off-balanced by recent events surrounding him, and if he slips her grasp she’ll be devastated. He’s realized his private moments by her side is as important to him as her, he’s proud and humbled she’s chosen him for that, and wants to see her get what he feels she deserves. The only difference between them is that she recognizes all this in herself, and knows what it means. That’s what she meant when she told you, and when she talked to us.” “And Anon?” ”He’s… still working through it. He believed her earlier behavior to be shallower than it was. I believe – this was hard to pick up, since he tries muting his emotional expression reflexively, poor soul – he understands otherwise, now. I did get a sense of understanding, but couldn’t catch on what. There’s only so much I can do when I can’t see a pony I’m unfamiliar with.” You nod, more to yourself than anything. This all sounded good. Not great, but good. Cadance, of course, can pick up on your feelings on the matter. She sends a wave of reassurance your way, in return, allowing you to relax a tensionin your posture. You release a breath you didn’t know you were holding, nor for how long. ”Have faith. As I said, not all relationships begin with love. Sometimes love grows into the space a relationship provides, instead, molding itself to all its nooks and crannies. Those two already have everything else needed, a lot of things some ponies don’t even understand in each other until after marriage. These things need more than just love to make them work, you know.” No, you didn’t, not really. This was one field you had no understanding of. Your object of affection never loved back, not as you loved it. You’re fine with that. It’s part of the job. Equestria loves all ponies equally, in a distantly paternal fashion. ”Besides, her bonds with Twilight and Luna make a unique niche for her in their nascent herd. All that is enough, and she knows it’s enough, she’s been around long enough to see. The only question is whether or not he’s receptive.” You prop yourself up again, at this, and look at her. “Will he accept her, then?” The pink princess just grins at you, a gleam in her eye. You stamp a forehoof on your desk. “Your Highness, I said-” ”It’s funny, Raven. You taught me a lot of what I needed to know, before I left for the Crystal Empire. I was the learner, but now I’m the master. Let me teach you what you’ll need to know.” By the time Celestia had reluctantly let you go – as reluctantly as you were to be let go – you smelled a bit like her own body’s strangely floral scent. Considering a human’s sense of smell isn’t great, relatively speaking, you have no clue how other ponies took it. Your face had been ground zero, so maybe you’ve got a much better awareness than usual, but that doesn’t help matters any. She wasn’t kidding about the scent-marking. Luna was absent from the evening’s council meeting. Strange, since these meetings were mostly for her benefit, when the two sovereigns needn’t meet with the ducal representatives from across Equestria. Turns out that, according to Raven, she took some time off, now that she was with you. Not that she told you that. Not that she’d have even had the chance; this was usually your first opportunity to see each other in your daily schedule. Quiet though she normally is, she always bore a certain presence, and her absence was noticeable. It brought the table down to five; Celestia, you, Raven, Blueblood, and the Royal Guard’s commander. It seemed what Celestia had done to you was quite apparent to all present. Raven kept shooting the two of you knowing looks. The Commander’s normally severe visage was cracked by a faint smile the whole meeting. And Blueblood… Blueblood looked terrified. He was never as composed as Celestia, but even he had a mask he could don. That masked was shattered, this evening, from the moment you had walked in the room at Celestia’s side. Celestia herself wore the smuggest expression you’d ever seen. The meeting was mercifully brief. You couldn’t handle being the subject of so many different attentions. You have no idea what Celestia’s guards think, and you didn’t really want to think about it yourself. The sun was still below the horizon, by the time you and Celestia made your way to your workshop together. She usually retires to her chambers or her library, but today she insisted on joining you. As soon as you open the door, you’re thankful for it; you can hear an altercation inside. The two of you hustle through the main hallway to the lounging room’s door. ”And beyond age, we are clearly the more powerful.” ”I seem to remember taking your butt down, a few years ago.” ”This is no herd with thy five friends!” ”This isn’t even your herd!” Luna and Twilight are all up in each other’s faces. Entirely too close, considering the volume they’re speaking to each other at. Not speaking, shouting. They don’t even notice the two of you enter. At least you don’t have to explain why you smell like Celestia. ”We have shared secret and private moments with him inside his own mind.” ”I’m the only one who had faith in his life’s work, helped him achieve his goals.” Celestia, wearing an expression of mock shock, leans towards you and whispers, “You just told Luna she was included, didn’t you?” “Yeah, what about it?” You can already tell those two have been arguing in circles, retreading the same points repeatedly. You have no idea how long this has been going on. ”There’s a procedure to be followed, Anon. You didn’t even have a herd for a single day before you screwed it up.” “How was I supposed to know, I’m just a human.” Luna stamps a hoof, her head held imperiously high. ”We touched the deepest parts of each other’s souls.” Twilight’s wings are flared out to make herself look larger. ”And you took too long to do it!” Celestia pulls on the back of your shirt with her magic, beckoning you out of the room. “Anon, the lead mare calls the shots. You just have veto power.” “So what was I supposed to do? Your sister passed out when she thought I rejected her. In my dream! How does a princess of dreams pass out in a dream and not fuck something up? How do you even pass out in a dream anyway?” ”Because it was in your head, not hers or anyone else’s. Beside the point. You should have given her the go ahead to talk to Twilight, or talked to Twilight about her in the morning. Then they’d meet and discuss it and if Twilight’s satisfied, you have the final say.” “That’s ridiculous. I’m the stallion, isn’t it my herd?” ”You’re just the centerpiece, the nexus. It’s Twilight’s herd. Well, it was, but you’ve now called that into question; your unilateral decision made both of them leaders because you undercut Twilight’s authority. Now go out there and fix your mess.” She nudges you in the back and pushes you on with one wing. They’re apparently in a lull in the argument, because they’re angrily discussing things with their eyes instead of their voices. “Hey. Uh. You two. Shut up for a sec. Er, continue being shut up. Get over here.” Twilight complies immediately. Luna follows only after a moment of watching Twilight go, as if being the last to leave her spot was some minor victory. Both of them shoot a glance at Celestia after they stop in front of you, but neither says anything. Oh, right. Her scent. Keep this focused. “What’s your problem?” The two of them shift uneasily. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. The hell are you two fighting over? Me? Did this start the moment Luna came around and said something about it?” They both nod. ”Heaven and earth, how are you two supposed to live together?” Twilight adjusts her wings in a gesture you’ve recognized as discomfort. Luna shoots her a glance, then says, “With a hierarchy. A proper one.” ”I never said I was going to overrule your position! You’re a princess of Equestria, but-” “We’re not starting round two! You two are acting like children.” You run a hand through your hair and close your eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh. “Alright. I know I’m not the one in command, with how you ponies do it, but Celestia told me I have to fix my fuckup here. One of you’s gotta be in charge over the other, for some dumb reason. That sounds an awful lot to me like I have to play favorites, and I really don’t want to do that, but it’s not like I have any idea what’s going on here in the first place. Okay, whatever, when in Rome and all that. Here’s what we’re gonna do.” The two look up at you, expectantly. You stare back, putting your hands on your hips, alternating your gaze between them. “Twilight.” Her ears perk up, and her wings fidget again. “You were first. You’re in charge.” Their expressions start changing immediately, but you hold up a hand. “Slow your fucking rolls, I’m not done yet. Twilight, you’re in charge because you don’t have a country to run. Just a little slice of it or whatever. Also, Luna, you know I love you but your sleep schedule’s kinda garbage when it comes to managing this crap. We’re not gonna fuck up Twilight’s just to take her into a dream every night, and that’s where you and I do a lot of our shit. It doesn’t mean I love her more or something. It’s because she doesn’t have as much on her plate, and I don’t want you to suffer with this division of responsibilities. And I mean responsibilities, Twilight. If I hear you lording this status over her, I might rethink my decision, especially if you neglect her or whatever other duties this lead mare thing entails. And Luna, speak to her like she deserves. None of those pronouns of disrespect.” The two of them look away from both you and each other. ”I was planning to anyway,” Luna mutters. ”She is right about the royalty thing,” Twilight mumbles. “Cool. Kiss and make up, or however you add ponies to a herd.” Celestia walks up to your side as the two face each other. At first they don’t look like they’ll move; both wear the remnants of earlier glowers, holding themselves in stiff stances. Then Luna glances at you, smiles, and exhales in a cross between a huff and a sigh. She holds that smile when she looks back to Twilight, and the smaller alicorn relaxes. Twilight fully spreads her wings and draws herself up as best she can to the larger Luna while staying on all four hooves. Luna spreads her wings only halfway, and tilts them so their leading edges are angled downward. She dips her head to the floor in a bow, then tilts her head up while keeping it low, to look up at Twilight. The two bring their noses close, eyes closed. You half-turn to Celestia and whisper. “I thought the breath thing was supposed to be romantic.” ”It’s shared between parents and foals too, but here you could consider it a sort of bonding ritual.” “Wild.” Once they finish the gesture, they look at you. “Oh come on, we’re a family now, aren’t we? All that unpleasantness is behind us. Fresh start. Luna, welcome. Happy to have you here.” Before you even finish, Celestia’s walking around you, towards Twilight. ”Twilight.” Twilight looks up at her towering mentor. “Yes?” Celestia smiles. “I too would like to join you.” Twilight’s demeanor goes to pieces on the spot. Awkward shuffling, fidgeting wings, the works. “Wh-what? I- I can’t do that! Both of you in my herd? Celestia, I was your student for half my life! How can you ask to be my charge now? Celestia bows to her once-student, then, a deep formal affair, exceptional wingspan swept out across the floor. Luna walks up beside her sister, beaming. Twilight looks to you, with an expression crying out for help. You just shrug. Shaking her head and sighing, Twilight dips her head down to Celestia’s. “Of course you can. You know I can’t say no. Go ask Anon.” Celestia lifts her head and folds her wings again, still smiling, and walks up to you. “Anon, Cadance told me you still might be confused about me, and about how you feel towards me. I hope you will give me the chance to show how serious I am about this. About us.” You shift your weight on your feet, and shake your head. “Princess, I’m pretty sure I smell more like you than whatever I normally smell like right now, and I didn’t exactly object to that process. No, I’m not as confused as I was, about you. I’m honored you would choose me.” Celestia gives you a deep nod and reaches her head out to touch her nose to yours for the briefest moment, before returning to Twilight. She copies her sister’s earlier gestures, but her movements are more graceful and refined, with a bit of a theatrical flourish. Twilight repeats her half of the ritual, though conversely, she does so more haltingly than before. Turning to her sister, then, Celestia repeats the process. Instead of assuming Twilight’s pattern, Luna mirrors that of her sister at precisely the same time and down to every exact detail, including all the grace and flourishes she hadn’t displayed before. Instead of Luna rising again and Celestia tilting her head up, the two of them touch noses while their heads are still low to the ground. You’re not sure if this is how the ritual is supposed to go or if Luna’s modifying it out of deference for her sister, but their perfect synchronicity just reminds you that no matter what you mean to them, it’s not a candle to what they mean to each other, in a different respect. You’re pretty okay with that. It’s not like it hurts your position in the relationship, after all. Equestria’s a pretty wonderful place. When they straighten again, you join the three, wrapping one arm around Twilight and the other around the sisters, which was a bit of a stretch, but you made it work thanks to some helpful repositioning on Luna’s part. “Now we’re all settled. All together. Honestly, I have no idea how this herding thing works, but I’m sure you all can teach me right.” Celestia seems to just be basking in the moment. Luna’s keeping reserved, but arching her neck back against your hand. Twilight still looks dazed and confused. You give her a pat on her side. “You especially. I’m sure these two have enough experience behind them to know how to get the better of me.” ”I’ll d-do my best.” “Atta’girl.” ”But could you give us a bit? To work stuff out. Mare stuff.” You look at the other two. Celestia’s wearing an expression of exaggerated mock innocence, probably in response to your earlier comment. Luna just gives you a nod. “Yeah, yeah I can do that.” You disengage from the group, but turn back to them once you’ve walked to the door. “But if I hear any of you treating others poorly, there’ll be hell to pay.” Twilight and Luna nod, but Celestia just shoos you off with a wing. Once you’re outside, you start walking towards the palace. Before you enter, you see a pink spot standing out against the palace’s white and purple. Cadance stands on the balcony of her suite, looking down at you. When you look back up at her, she tosses her head towards the embassy in an unspoken question. Wearing a smile you’re sure she can’t see, you give her a salute, and continue inside. Unsure of how much time they need, you start wandering the halls by instinct. You don’t live in the palace anymore – though you suppose that will shortly change again, soon – but your body still falls into certain patterns, while moving within it. It’s not long before you find yourself at Raven’s office. Smiling to yourself, you step inside. ”Ah, Your Excellency! Your arrival heartens me.” “You’re giving me the style too?” ”I hear you have become part of the royal family, now. You deserve more respect than I had been displaying.” You take the seat in front of her desk. She’s already floating over a cup of that wonderfully strong coffee she keeps for herself. Was she expecting you? “Alright, how’d you know? It just happened.” ”I know a great many things that go on around here, Anon, from a great many sources.” “Yeah, that’s you alright. Wait. Don’t tell me you didn’t plan this.” She laughs. “Anon, I do not take credit for the accomplishments of others. You made this happen. I simply helped in whatever ways I could, so you could succeed in the tasks you set out on.” She gives you a more serious look, then. “Including ones that have not yet completed.” You lean back in the chair. “So you know about my little project.” ”Oh yes. And I must say, your ambitions have met my expectations. It’s about time Her Majesty had a friend who she would not outlive.” Friend. “Yeah, uh, well, plans have changed since then. But yeah, I hope it works. You know, if Blueblood doesn’t kill her.” Raven tilts her head. “Kill who?” “The, er, friend. Kill, destroy, whatever. So, uh, what’s going to happen to him, you think?” ”If Celestia has not acted yet, she may be agonizing over her decision. That means she contemplates a severe punishment. But, if you want my opinion on the entire range of possibilities, I can provide.” “Sure, shoot.” ”The slightest involves removing him from his position and little more. Fines, mandatory service, or other more mundane penalties might be considered. Increasing in severity, his family’s status stems from links to her family, long ago. As the head of the senior branch, she could alter that status in various ways. Seizing holdings is a possibility, as well as altering his position in the noble hierarchy. Higher still, she could consider relegation, or deportation. At this point we speak of the most severe punishments. She could order the erasure of all records of his existence – that task would fall to me – or even simply turn him to stone.” You choke on your drink at that last one. “Excuse me, what?” ”Justice fell harsher, in the time of her and her sister, long ago. Heroes dealt with threats in a manner that, if not permanent, at least lasted a long time. Those normally involved much more chronic and severe wrongdoing, however.” “All these sound more like stuff I’d expect from my world, not yours.” ”Ah, you mean her clever contrivances of rehabilitation. You asked of punishment, so I answered with such. What you speak of now is healing, of individuals or of a community. These means she seeks to implement out of an understanding of those who wronged and who suffered for it. Do not mistake this for an overabundance of mercy. With sufficient wisdom, one can display both compassion and justice at once, and deliver verdicts that satisfy the injured while helping the wrongdoer walk a new path. This way she may heal two, instead of one.” You contemplate this, while sipping your coffee. You’re dating or married or whatever to this manipulative mare, now. Life might become a little more difficult than you’d thought. “So, uh, what happens to his job, if he’s removed?” ”I imagine, Your Excellency, the task will fall to you.” “I don’t know the first fucking- I don’t even eat half your food, let alone how to cook it.” ”I can help you.” “Celestia tells me this coffee is the only consumable thing you can make.” If she’s offended by that comment, she doesn’t show it. “Anon, the keeper of the royal household represents a much more administrative position than a domestic one. You must think like an administrator, a leader.” “I haven’t led much, in my life, Raven.” ”A leader knows how to do things by knowing who can do them. Fortunately for you – and for Her Majesties – I know a great many talented ponies.” You smile. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” ”Neither do I.”
14 Marely Matters”I’m so excited you were able to get everything worked out before we left!” Cadance is beaming at you and Celestia, on the boarding platform. Shining Armor, carrying Flurry in a floating magical bubble, looks like he’s in a good mood too. But his wife is absolutely radiant. You can’t tell if the emotions you’re feeling are your own mirrored back at you, or Cadance’s joy that you and her aunt and her sister-in-law all came together in a single happy herd. ”Thank you for your help, your visits are always wonderful,” Celestia says, with a little bow of her head. “Maybe someday you’ll tell us how much you helped, exactly.” Cadance laughs. “I didn’t contribute anything that wasn’t already there, Anon. Only cleared the air. This was all the four of you, promise. My aunt taught me the wisdom in a light touch.” It’s Celestia’s turn to beam at her. “And you’ve learned well.” “Twilight sends her apologies, especially to you, Shining. She wanted to see you all off, but something came up.” Shining’s expression becomes utterly unreadable, but like flipping a switch, Cadance’s smile becomes a terrifyingly feral grin. Just for the briefest of moments, then it’s gone. “That’s fine, Anon. I hope it works out for her. Good luck!” “Good luck?” The family turns to board. “Oh yes,” Cadance says, over her shoulder. “You’ll be needing it.” The two of you stay on the platform to watch the train depart, but not a moment longer. “You know, there’s still some weird cultural elements we gotta work through, with displays of affection.” Celestia turns with you, and you two start heading back through the city to the palace. It’s a short walk, but it’s enough that you two wanted to see your guests off at the station instead of the palace gates. “Oh?” “Yeah. I’ve gotten used to the touching noses thing, that’s like kissing back home. Some Earth cultures had similar practices. But I’m still gonna probably end up actually kissing you mares at some point and that might get awkward. I’ve been keeping it to the coat because I don’t know how you’d react. Also, Twilight keeps licking me. Especially this morning. Fucking tons. Like I woke up to it.” ”What’s wrong with that?” “Back home, at least where I was from, licking people was rare. And, uh, bedroom behavior, I guess.” Celestia adopts that wide-eyed puckered look like she’s holding back laughter at a joke only she understands. “I see.” “And there’s a couple other things. I’m not used to, uh, carrying a sign of affection around. The scent thing will take some getting used to. Though I gotta say, whatever you and Luna do to your body chemistry to make yourselves smell as pleasant as you do, I can’t wait until Twilight figures out how. You smell like a meadow in full bloom, and your sister smells like a spice-laden campfire, what the actual fuck. I thought your manes were the only outlandishly impressive things you two did with your bodies.” She chuckles. “Anon, that’s only to impress you, but I’m glad you enjoy it.” “What?” ”Effort may not be the right word, but it takes more effort to do that than to just not have any scent at all, as we had before the herd. But, as you have learned, a side effect of affectionate behavior is marking each other with our scents. We decided to make it something pleasant.” “Well shit, I appreciate it. I was wondering why Twilight’s was so much more muted. Or why I could never smell other ponies, but honestly, a human’s sense of smell is kinda garbage. You three are the only ones I’ve gotten close enough to.” You make your way back to the palace, trading differences in physiology and culture. Instead of going around for the back, as you would have, the two of you enter instead. The four of you made a snap decision last night to relocate to the royal suites. A door joined Celestia and Luna’s quarters, allowing you a sense of continuity, but it was still a bit strange. Eventually you’ll all get relocated to the workshop for some renovations of that area of the palace to a proper arrangement, but until then, you’re making do. As you enter the suites, you’re confronted with Luna, a look of mock panic barely hiding a smile on her face. “Celestia, it is terrible! Our companion mare is delirious! Without her noble guidance, our herd is stricken! Oh, however shall we carry on?” From the far end of the string of rooms comes Twilight’s voice. ”By the grace of your sister will you shut up already?!” The alicorn sisters snicker at each other as you slip inside. ”It’s appropriate she gets him first, no?” Celestia cranes her neck to look through the doorway into the adjacent rooms. ”I am content to wait my turn, sister.” ”Then we can show him some proper, thoughtful love, together.” ”Are you suggesting we approach the situation like old times?” ”I don’t see why not.” “What the fuck are you saying?” Twilight appears in the doorway, then. “Don’t think I don’t hear you two… scheming!” She looks downright disheveled. Her mane’s a mess, her eyes are wild, and her stance is a bit wider, like she’s drunk and needs the extra stability. Then her eyes find you, and ‘wild’ is no longer a sufficiently intense descriptor. ”Anonthanktheskiesyouareback canyoucomehereforamoment Ineedyouforsomething.” “Uh, yeah.” You look back at the sisters. They’re still trying to keep a lid on their snickering. As you turn to follow Twilight, you hear Celestia do an imitation of Cadance from earlier. ”Good luck!” Twilight practically slams the door behind you, once you’re in the same room as her. She’s looking over you with eyes that can’t seem to stay still. Her tail’s flicking erratically. She’s breathing really heavy. ”A-anon… is there something wrong with me?” “If I had to guess? You look like you’re in the middle of the worst hangover you’ve ever had.” ”No! I mean physically. Is- is there a reason… I’m a different species. Do you find me attractive?” “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” ”Sexually!” Ah. You’ve talked to Luna about this, before. Should have figured it was going to come up. You’d been steering clear of the subject usually, because ponies seemed to not really consider the idea as much as humans, but Luna told you when a mare’s ready, she’s ready. That explains the panting, at least. And this morning’s licking. “Twilight, if you need something, I’m more than happy to provide. Like, whenever. That’s sorta how humans work.” You don’t have time to elaborate; she’s already stalking towards you, as you sit down on the bed. You’re pretty sure that’s aggression posture, for ponies. You cant tell if those are bedroom eyes or hungry eyes. ”What I need. Is. You.” “Shit, mare, you got me.” ”I don’t know what it’ll be like. If we’re compatible or not. Just… do whatever you can. Please.” She props herself up with her forehooves on your knees. She can’t stop herself from glancing at your lap. ”I’m begging you.” “Twilight, seriously, just-” She’s already undoing your pants telekinetically. Why does she bother begging when she can simply take? Even as she’s sliding them off you, she’s climbing up onto the bed, forcing you onto your back, her hooves to either side of your body. She looks down at your face. Her expression is a lot more complex than you were expecting. Lust, for sure, but also the love you’re able to find in her eyes every time. Frustration. Some concern, and a bit of apology. She’s taking your shirt off telekinetically, and you move to let her. Then she collapses on top of you. There’s the licking again, all over your face and neck and upper body. Her hooves are wrapped around you in a tight hug. How she expects to get anything done when she’s way up here, and your business end is way down there, you have no idea. You’ll have to do some of this yourself. A little difficult, when her half-spread, arched wings are blocking your view of what her own body isn’t obstructing itself. She recalls herself when you’re bringing your arms around for some crucial repositioning, and stands up again, looking down at your now naked body between her legs. ”I… I don’t know what I was expecting. But without your clothes… You look good, Anon.” “I’d say the same to you, but I’ve only ever looked at you without clothes, Twi.” “Mmm. Enough looking. Time to feel.” She sits back hard on your hips. You’re pretty sure six rounds in one sitting is a new record, for you. You’d lost track of how many it was for her. Ponies have garbage stamina. At least you’ll never have to worry about satisfying your herd. You’d fucked her unconscious. Celestia and Luna looked in on you, and had to give you some brief advice about that. They’d looked impressed. And a little dejected, when you told them you couldn’t possibly do more at that time, so soon after exhausting yourself on – in – the purple alicorn, but you’d promised to make it up to them. They’d brightened up at that, and left you alone. Hopefully they wont be as crazed, when it’s their turn. On that note, when Twilight woke up again, you discovered you had literally fucked some sanity into her. She could think and speak coherently now. She’d felt guilty she’d been useless all day, so the two of you were trying to get some work done in the shop. The two of you got the generator out of the wings. You need that for something else. Twlight was so proud of herself that she managed to accomplish it that she never even asked why you wanted her to. Poor thing. Now you’re carrying it to the one storage room with a different lock from the rest, the one whose key isn’t on your usual chain. Key in lock, open lock. You step inside as quickly as possible and close the door behind you, using your phone for light. There is a good number of parts in here now. Besides the half-assembled head and its attendant box of waiting pieces, you have four legs, minus hooves, and the basic shell of a body, though the smithy hasn’t completed your pieces for the inner framework yet. You’re almost at your limit for how far you can get without Twilight’s help, but you’ve yet to figure out a way to get what you need from her without revealing the surprise. It got close, when she asked why you’d designed the generator for the test article wings so powerful. It wasn’t a generator for wings at all. It was a new pony’s heart. Though the wings were coming here too, eventually. You place the still-spinning generator next to the body shell, then pick up the master design sheet, illuminating it with your phone’s flashlight. The mounting brackets for the generator should be ready in four days, according to how you’ve been spacing orders out to avoid suspicion. That should give you enough time to finish the head’s internals, minus the brain. All three pieces of which you needed Twilight for. This is getting difficult. You hear a pop, experience a moment of disorientation, and realize everything is a lot brighter now. ”You’re taking too long, Anon.” Twilight, perched on top of one of the workbenches, looks over to where she teleported you. “Oh, what’s that?” Your design sheet starts glowing magenta, and is gently yet firmly removed from your grasp. As Twilight looks over it, her eyes widen. First in confusion. Then in anger. ”What is this supposed to be?” You sigh, face in palm, trying to figure out how you’re going to get through this. “It’s a pony, Twilight.” ”What, is three of us not enough? You need to build something to screw?” “No, Twilight. You’re literally looking at the design, you can see there’s no, uh, hardware for that.” This just sends her from angry to worried. “Are… are we failing you in some other way? Some-” “Twilight, stop. Your heat’s getting to you again.” ”Buck the heat! Is this why you’ve been so curious about the failure state of the come-to-life spell, recently? If you seriously think I’m going to-” “Let me explain!” You only realize you shouted it in the ensuing silence. “Just… let me explain. Look past the body for a sec, because that’s not a mare.” ”I don’t see how you expect me to believe that.” “Okay, uh, from the top. You told me when the come-to-life spell gets screwed up, it creates an awareness based on what the caster intended the object to be. If the object is complicated enough, that new awareness needs to learn the body it now animates. This thing is preposterously complex. Hell I have two copies of my cellphone’s motherboard in there, to handle sensory processing, and they’re probably the most complex physical objects on this world. I have no idea if it’ll even work the way I intend it to. But it’s going to take a long time for her to learn how she’s supposed to be, especially with what you’re going to be keying her identity to. And she’s going to need guidance. Like… like a child, Twilight. The body’s just full-sized because it can’t grow. Not a mare. A filly.” Her expression has been shifting to awe slowly through your whole explanation, eyes wide and jaw loose. Maybe the heat’s good for something; it could be making her receptive to arguments of motherhood, no matter how strange the subject in question. “Don’t you see? That sex we just had to clear your head, that sure is satisfying, but it’s not- it’s not productive. With this we can make a product of our minds where our bodies can’t cooperate. A foal. We could have a foal after all. See, something this complicated, we’re going to fail the casting intentionally. And when you’re casting the spell, Twilight, think about a daughter.” Twilight looks back and forth between you and the plans, and the latter slowly floats to the tabletop beside her. “Anon, how… how long have you been planning this?” ”I started these plans on Raven’s indirect suggestion awhile ago, to give you immortals a companion. But then we got all tangled up in each other, and as I learned more about the spell, I learned about its obstacles. So this became something more.” You laugh and shake your head. “I wanted to make it a surprise; I was going to tell the three of you after I worked out all the kinks in the design. But I’ve been running into more and more snags, more things that… that I needed you for. So it’s been dragged out.” You look back up at her. Her eyes are starting to well up. Ah hell don’t do that, it’ll set you off too. “I know you said you never really thought of foals, and I’m sorry for keeping this a secret from you, but… can we try? You said the failure modes of this spell are unexplored territory. So at the very least, it’s worth it just for that experience. But it has the chance to be so much more, Twilight. A family we didn’t think possible. A lasting labor of love I can leave to you all.” Does the heat make her more emotional? Because she’s crying now, but she’s smiling. ”Typical stallions… always thinking of foals.” The two of you share a chuckle. ”Yeah, Anon. I think it’s worth a shot. And I’d love nothing more than for it to work, even if it’s your most whimsical idea yet.” You quickly walk to where she sits on the workbench and wrap her in a big hug. ”If you insist on being so physical, we’re going to have to take another break to get me straightened out again.” “Ah, shit. Sorry.” ”It’s fine. Get whatever you have so far, and we can look at these snags you’ve hit, redesign for them. Quickly, while I’m still capable of thought.” You feel bad for Luna, still awake as she was. She hadn’t gone to bed at her usual time, and now it’s early afternoon. She needed to make sure everything that was about to happen was properly prepared. To her credit, she’s still walking at your side just fine. In fact, she’s the epitome of solemn severity, but you know that humorlessness goes deeper than just appearances. She doesn’t take missing out on sleep well. Celestia’s on the other side of you, and similarly looks cheerless, though in her case she’s as calm and collected as ever. It was her plan that Luna’s preparations supported. It had taken a little over a week to figure it out and set it up, but that time had flown by, with how much the four of you had been enjoying each other’s company. But after her… issue… had cleared, Twilight had to go to Ponyville. None of you let it bother you during what you guessed amounted to an at-home honeymoon, but with her gone, now was the time to eliminate the last threat to your herd. The three of you enter the council room. Unlike the usual seating arrangements, Blueblood sits at the far end, where Luna normally would. Raven and the Royal Guard commander stand on either side of him. Celestia and Luna both take seats at Celestia’s end of the table. You move to stand between and behind them, arms behind your back. Blueblood looks miserable. Specifically, like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week. At least since Celestia’s little scent stunt. You know he’d been progressively isolated from even his own subordinates, as the week went on. Celestia cut them loose to work independently of him, or had put them under Raven temporarily. Raven looked no worse for the wear, though you hadn’t gotten a chance to meet her since the herd was formed. That mare must be a machine. Almost as much as the actual machine body you were in the process of building for a mare-to-be. The commander looked smug as fuck. He’d turned out to be a real master of intrigue, himself, and you were starting to see how Celestia used the guard’s rumor mill as a source of information. He’d kept Celestia apprised of Blueblood’s every movement, and every pony he had talked to, this week or regularly before. Frankly, it terrified you, knowing this stallion had likely been watching you in that much detail through his guards’ eyes since you’d arrived. Between the two of them, Blueblood had been shut out of his network of contacts, as well as his professional connections. You’re really glad you didn’t let yourself get sucked into courtly intrigues. As soon as the princesses are settled, Blueblood speaks, panic evident in his voice. “Please, I can explain-” ”We have already heard your explanations.” Celestia intones, voice low and harsh with gravitas. “From you, through my sister’s guard, and from the pony you roped into this scheme of yours, through my own guards.” He falls back against the chair, as if slapped. The commander manages to look even more smug. ”Further, we had quite generously granted you a week to come to us with your concerns, after the incident. You failed to take advantage of this opportunity.” Blueblood slumps. Lack of sleep may have sapped his will to fight before he’d even begun. ”We assumed you left the matter to our wisdom to resolve.” ”Wise of thee, thyself,” Luna said, gravelly yet clear. ”And so we come to our… resolution.” Several documents appear in front of Celestia in a flash colored the same as Raven’s magic. Celestia picks the first one up and looks it over. ”Prince Blueblood, the nature of your crime is truly a confluence of unique circumstances. The conspiracy you ran from your position in this very palace was alarming. Malign from the outset, though not so far removed from decency as to warrant intervention, and within the realm of your responsibility.” Judging by his expression, this admission does little to hearten him. Celestia continues, “Its recent and blessedly final escalation, however, wasn’t just an attack against Anonymous, whose current status I need not remind you.” Behind Celestia as you are, you couldn’t see her expression, but whatever Blueblood saw at that moment, he didn’t like. ”Through his position, and by his nature, your incident created a diplomatic crisis for all Equestria. An attack on a foreign nation, should it have gone off, would have been disastrous. ”But we have no contact with-” ”Do you know how Anonymous got here?” Blueblood fell silent. ”Neither do we, and therein lies the problem. I have seen a glimpse of what they’re capable of. We all have, thanks to Anonymous. If more humans appear here, what would they think if they discovered we had torched the space we set aside for them, and murdered their emissary?” ”Murdered? I didn’t-” ”You don’t know what can harm him, and with this attempt foiled, where would you have gone? There’s a reason we removed the kitchen staff from your authority. Furthermore, the attempted attack’s timing compounds matters. Princess Twilight Sparkle mediates Ponyville; she’s one of the few ponies with a higher station than you, and she also was threatened by your actions. We downplay the nobility, nowadays, but laws related to its hierarchy are still on the books, should we choose to use them.” He shakes his head side to side slightly, rapidly. You’re not sure what he’s objecting to. ”However...” Celestia shuffles to another document before continuing, “Your loyalty to Equestria cannot be questioned. Indeed, in a twisted way, it is one of the motivations for your crime. You have been a truly faithful servant of ours from the beginning, as your family has been for generations.” She looks up from the paper to him, then. ”Thus the nature of your punishment shall havegreater meaning.” She magically rolls up the third of the three documents, and floats it over to him. “Blueblood, you are hereby exiled from Equestria to the Crystal Empire. A nation you considered an other. Our niece Princess Cadance will teach you the meaning of family, one who you thought our competition despite being as close to us as the heirs you wished to see from Twilight. Shining Armor will teach you the meaning of nobility, one who was common-born and rose to his position by merit alone. You are placed into their care, for them to use you as they wish. Your inherited title and possessions are stripped from you, and will be transferred to your next of kin entitled to them.” Blueblood is silent for a long time, his gaze flicking from the tabletop in front of him to the two princesses and back again. When he finally speaks, it’s barely a hoarse whisper. “When do I leave?” ”Immediately,” Luna grinds out. Then the two sisters’ horns glow, and Blueblood vanishes from his seat, along with Celestia’s scroll near him. You can hear, from both sisters, a forced exhalation of exertion. Raven and the Commander nod to each other, then the Princesses, and file out. As soon as the doors close behind them, Luna’s head unceremoniously thumps to the table, startling you from the stance you’d held through the whole sentencing. “Oh shit, is she okay?” Celestia laughs, but it’s weak. “And so the decorum is shattered. She’s fine, Anon. Teleporting a pony to another country entirely is quite a feat, even for two old alicorns. Twilight’s twice-daily teleporting to Ponyville and back for you, when she still did, was a labor I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to fully appreciate.” You look to Celestia, then. Her expression is visible now, as she’s looking back at you, and at her sister, with a troubled expression. “What’s wrong?” ”Exile is a very serious punishment, more serious than his crime deserved. We were harsh. However…” Her expression regains a bit of her usual calm. “…I believe firmly that ponies can be redeemed, and I modify my punishments accordingly. Sometimes this makes them less severe. Other times, like this one, it makes them moreso, but only conditionally. Should he learn the two lessons I set for him, and should he serve Cadance and Shining as well as he served us, his life in the Crystal Empire will be comfortable. Should he refuse those lessons, and refuse to serve, he will feel the full weight of his sentence, and it will crush him. Those two are aware of the circumstances of his crime; we discussed all this beforehand. They’ll ensure he’s handled properly. However, the core of his sentence remains the fact he is never welcome back into the country he loves, forever distant from the sovereigns he served his whole life.” Luna finally stirs. ”Don’t sleep yet, sister, we still must make it back. We were going to watch Anon work today, remember?” Ah, yes. Today’s the day you must tell them what you and Twilight have planned. “Damn if this camera isn’t shit.” You reach up and flip a switch on your blindfold. The world goes dark. You shove the blindfold – festooned with jury-rigged wiring – up to sit on your forehead and open your natural eyes. Sometimes you have to admit biology’s got you beat, or has whatever Asian country your phone came from beat. You’re amazed the thing works as well as it does, but you still notice all those fun ways eyes beat cameras. You swear you can still see the faint color-static noise you’d occasionally noticed, if you squeeze your eyes closed hard enough. Having to turn your head for every little thing instead of just moving your eyes was a lot more irritating than you’d expected. You needed to test this vision and hearing replacement system at length, but earmuffs didn’t block out all the sound you were trying to listen through the microphones, and you kept having to switch back to Eyeball Mk.1 to continue your work assembling these legs. At least they work. “I feel bad for the ponies we’re going to stick with this garbage.” ”It’ll be better than what they have now, Anon.” Celestia’s laying on a big pile of bedding she’d teleported into one corner of your workshop, to stay out of your way while she watched you work. Luna lays beside her, head and neck draped across her sister’s back, sleeping. “Well, I can see and hear. I’m not going to give it any credit beyond the fact that yes, it achieves basic functionality.” ”Is that a problem with the spell?” “Hell no, the spell’s incredible. It’s like I’m actually looking at its screen in camera mode, but it’s piped directly to my mind. All the phone’s automatic adjustments and everything work as they should. Those functions are actually more responsive than I expected. It’s just a cellphone is a multipurpose device. It can do a lot, but it doesn’t do any of it particularly well. A proper camera even with half this one’s resolution is going to take images far better, just because it has better quality components; its chief concern is taking a good picture. The phone’s camera’s chief concern is being flat. I’ve worn headsets with better microphones than these, and unlike the camera, the microphone has a lot less ability to adjust to different noise levels. I expect the speakers to be strictly okay, and the spell for them is ready, but we haven’t tried testing it to replace voice yet.” As if explaining it resigns you to its use, you pull the blindfold back down and flip the camera on, feeling your closed eyes wince to no effect as the camera adjusts its sensitivity downward to the current light level, then adjusts its focus. Celestia cocks her head. “Who did all this spellcrafting, anyway? I don’t doubt the capabilities of my former student, but she only has so many hours in the day, and tends to obsess over details.” ”Nah, not just her. She worked with some unicorn named Starswirl on them, over the past several weeks.” “Ah! I was wondering when those two would get a chance to collaborate.” You turn your head towards Celestia. Differences in how the camera handles motion threatens a brief bout of mild dizziness. “You’re familiar?” Celestia laughs. “Oh yes. Starswirl was our mentor, Anon. And, I might add, a childhood idol of Twilight’s.” “Holy shit, is he immortal too?” ”No, he was just trapped for a long time. He’s freed now, obviously.” “You know, if I knew he was your mentor, I would have been more concerned about him jacking up my brain with magic. Y’know, in case he’s the protective type or something.” ”Twilight wouldn’t let him harm you.” “Is she stronger than him?” ”Of course.” “Good.” ”Only by a little bit.” “Okay you didn’t have to tell me that, I was enjoying my too-brief moment of relief.” You shake your head, then freeze when you risk disorienting yourself again. “Just wish I had the means to make something better than this crap. Ponies are going to expect to be able to see and hear, when we tell them what we’ve done. This is a poor excuse for it.” Luna stirs in her sleep, but settles down against her sister once more. Celestia eyes the legs you’re working on. ”I hope you’re not planning to test those on yourself, either.” “Ah, no. This is for something else.” ”Oh? This secret project you and Twilight have been working on?” “What?” Celestia’s eyes gleam. “I’m quite observant, and both you and Twilight are bad at hiding things from me.” You sigh, then grab the rolled up plans next to you. “Alright, fine. Can you wake your sister up? This is for both of you to hear.” She cranes her neck around to nuzzle her sister’s cheek. Luna starts awake and looks around blearily, before returning the nuzzle. “Hey there, sleepyhead.” ”Mrph.” “Yeah, you too. Here, I got something to show you.” You turn the camera off again, then remove the blindfold, placing it on the workbench. Luna perks up when you hop off your chair, and you point the rolled paper at her as you approach. “Yes, you. And I don’t want to have to repeat myself.” You pull a couple pillows off the pile, sitting on them and crossing your legs. “Okay, so, about a week ago, Twilight and I reworked a project I had been sitting on for awhile. We didn’t tell you right away, because we weren’t sure what the end result would be like, and then she left for Ponyville, partially to get some parts for this. But she told me I could fill you in, and I’m not going to keep it from you.” You unroll the updated plans, then turn it for them to see. Celestia’s eyes widen. Luna still looks half-dead, but by her ears you can tell you have her attention. “She and I want to, uh… We want… We’re gonna give you – us – a kid. Er, a foal. A filly. Even if nature won’t let us.” Luna’s finally awakening to the idea, as Celestia looks back and forth between the plans and the legs you’d been assembling. “But she’s so big,” Celestia breathes. “Yeah, well, metal can’t grow, and we’ve got some size constraints as it is. A weight-reduction spell means she’s not going to crush us, at least. No magic, either, so we’ve designed her as a pegasus rather than an alicorn. Uh, sorry.” Celestia smiles, but she’s craning her neck to the page, presumably to examine it in detail. “A shame, I like the little ones.” “You seem to be taking this pretty calmly. Twilight started crying.” Celestia looks up at you, then, giving her sister’s nose a chance to smell the ink instead. “I’ve been helping raise fillies for a long time, Anon. My students always started young. I very much enjoyed it, and I’ll happily do so again, even if I won’t get to see her grow.” She looks back at the page. “It’ll be nice to call one my own, no matter how unusual. My… little princess.” Ah, there’s her eyes swimming. “Not ready to be a mother.” You and Celestia look at a slurring Luna. Then you look back to Celestia and tap the top of the page. It starts glowing with her magic, allowing you to let go and sit by Luna’s side. Luna’s nearer wing almost instinctively wraps around your back, as you hug her neck where it meets her body. Celestia looks over. ”You were the one more eager for the prospect, when we were younger, sister.” Luna buries her face in a nearby blanket. “And then we know what happened,” she mumbles into it. You stroke her ethereal mane with your free hand. “Come on, you’ve got the rest of us helping you. I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a father, sure as hell not an Equestrian one, but I want to give you three this. Something to re-” Celestia gives you a flat look. Yeah, you don’t need to finish that sentence. “We’ll do the best we can. And if, by the end, we think we could have done better, well, we can give her a sibling.” ”Things are very different than they were, back then. You have more than just me to care for you, and I’ve learned my lesson from then too.” Luna just snorts into the blanket. “Besides, Twilight and I designed her so she doesn’t need to sleep. She can stay up all night with you.” Luna pulls her head out from the blankets lightning quick, looking first to you, then to the page in Celestia’s telekinetic grip. “Truly?” “Why would I lie to you? Twilight said we could stick a big enough gem in her head that it could act as a magic reservoir as well as the spell focus, that it’d be necessary so the spell doesn’t run down quickly and she, er, ceases to be. She thinks we can get a month of life in there, though we’d be topping it off regularly anyway. Big enough reserves she can be awake twenty four hours every day without us worrying. No organic body to maintain, after all.” Luna looks back to you, searching your expression for even the tiniest hint of dishonesty. You give her your warmest smile, and reach up to play with her ears. “Your filly as much as ours.” ”She… she won’t be able to dream.” “We don’t know that. For all we know sleep is something she’ll still be capable of, even if unnecessary. We’re in uncharted waters, here. But that’s not going to keep her from you; she could always be at your side.” Luna stares at you for a little longer, and you catch a brief glimpse of a trembling smile beforeshe shoves her face into your side, head twisted so she doesn’t gore you with her horn. You can feel her sobbing under your arm around her, and look at Celestia. She’s studying her sister with that warm smile you’ve come to associate with their love for each other. Not distant, but preoccupied, full of memories. “Hey.” She switches her gaze to you, and her expression changes, though it’s no less caring. “What do you think?” ”I think you just made my sister the happiest mare in the world, Anon.” You pat Luna’s side, but remain looking at her sister. “And you?” ”How could I say no to that? And it’d be nice being… on the other side of the relationship, for a change. The one whose filly is being taught.” She chuckles. “But with a herd like ours, who needs mentors?” “I think we’ll do just fine.” ”Awhile back, Anon, I helped you with one of your projects. A simple task. You and Twilight have come a long way, since then. I don’t know how I’ll be able to, but I want to help again.” “The wings and that sensory system over there, those were the most complicated bits. We’ve got everything figured out, it’s just getting it all together. For that, we’d love your help. Luna’s too, if she’s willing.” You can feel the blue alicorn nod into your side, breathing calmer now. “Then she’ll have all four of us involved in her conception. What other herd can claim that?”
15 The Herd“Anon!” Twilight canters onto the boarding platform, straight into your open arms. You close them around her as she closes her wings around you, and she nuzzles the side of your head as you stroke her mane. “Welcome home.” The two of you pull back and touch noses, and you kiss the top of her head behind her horn as you stand. ”Oh! I got you something!” She levitates a bundle out of her saddlebags, and drops it into your hands once you hold them out. It’s very hard, heavy, and bigger than one of your closed fists. ”You said that human couples give each other rings with jewels, and, well…” You unwrap the paper surrounding it to behold the biggest faceted gemstone you’ve ever seen, colorless and clear. “Holy hell, Twilight. What is this, diamond? How much did this cost?” ”Nothing. A friend and I grew it, though it took all day, then she faceted it the next. Pure sapphire – corundum, not diamond – has no color. Not as hard as diamond but more durable. It’ll be perfect for a spell focus.” The two of you turn to head towards the palace, after you place it back in her bags. “Which friend is this?” ”She’s the one I got the shroud for the claws from, to protect the internals. She made shrouds for the whole body while I was there, as we needed. If you ever wondered if cutie marks were always accurate, she’s a tailor with a cutie mark for gemstones.” “Seems odd.” ”She’s in fashion, so I guess it works. I told her our plans and she said she’d never worked in metal before, and then went to do just that. So now I have some orders for the smithy.” “Heh, we’re dressing her up already and she isn’t even born yet.” ”And another one of my friends already wants to race her.” “She’s going to have to wait a few years.” ”And another wants to throw us a celebration.” “I’m not big on formal occasions.” ”Don’t tell her that.” You smile as the two of you walk out of the station into Canterlot’s streets, lit by a setting sun. “Sounds like your friends all took it well.” ”Of course they did, they’re happy for me. They’re going to miss me when I start spending more time here, but I’ll make enough time for everyone.” She chuckles. “Besides, how else would they react, knowing I’m in a royal herd?” “No idea. This is entirely outside the realm of my experience, Twilight. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all.” She nuzzles your side as you approach the palace gate. “You’ll be fine.” After making a quick detour to the smithy to drop the new orders off with a note they’re to be prepared as soon as possible, the two of you make your way to the workshop. The sisters are inside, eyeing the mare’s body, without legs or a head, currently hanging from the ceiling, wings spread. They both turn and smile as you and Twilight enters. Celestia meets Twilight halfway. ”There’s our wayward leader. Was your trip productive?” ”Yes! I got everything I needed, and then some. Everypony sends their regards and well-wishes, Princess.” Celestia shakes her head. “You don’t need to be so formal, Twilight.” ”I… sorry. Habit.” You walk around them as they nuzzle each other’s necks, over to Luna’s side, wrapping an arm around her neck to scratch her cheek and play with an ear, while you look over the body suspended in the middle of the room. “Looks like you two have been doing good work.” She resettles her wings in a shrug-like gesture. ”We merely put pieces together.” “You’d be surprised how bad some people I knew are at that, even with clear directions.” ”My sister has been doing more work than me, for sure…” You laugh and pull her head into your side. “Any contribution helps.” The other two alicorns join you, on the body’s other side. Twilight’s horn glows, and then pieces of the body match its light, flashing across many for the briefest of moments before moving on. ”I don’t feel anything out of place,” Twilight says. “This is a huge help.” Luna beams, while Celestia simply nods. “Anon has been helping us understand all you two have accomplished. I knew your achievements weren’t just limited to magic and friendship, Twilight.” Twilight’s turn to smile, as she climbs up on a nearby workbench to inspect the body from another angle. “It looks like most of the inner body shell is done.” “The legs are ready for assembly, they’re just waiting on your shrouding.” She lifts the relevant pieces of fabric from her saddlebags, then floats them around the benches. “Then lets not waste any more time!” “You should sleep.” Luna looks at you with concern, standing next to the stool you’d just sat heavily on. The light from her horn fades. Without it, the workshop descends into gloom again. Good lighting was one of the things you still missed from back home. You’ll have to see about rigging something up, sometime soon. “I’ll be fine. I just need a moment.” ”You look exhausted.” “I can’t say I’m not. But if I go to sleep now, you’ll be here all alone. I’ll stay up as long as I can, that way we can still get work done, and you’ll still have company. Then when the other two wake up, they can take over, and Twilight can guide Celestia.” You look over to the pile of bedding Celestia had moved into your workshop several days prior. She and Twilight are sleeping soundly. Twilight’s curled up into a little ball. Celestia’s stretched around her back, hugging the purple pony to her belly and chest, with one wing draped over her. Their peaceful repose and quiet breathing bring you a weary smile, before you look back to your work. “Alright, gimme some light again, please?” Luna’s horn resumes its glow, illuminating the body casing. Little motes of light drift off her horn, floating into and around your work, hanging in place once they reach suitable locations like a swarm of obedient and very bright fireflies. You look back inside to the freshly-mounted and already-spinning generator, glancing over all the fasteners one more time. You’d already secured the larger cables in place, providing main power for the wings. They’d be disconnected from the rotors for years, until your filly-to-be can learn how her body works, and not hurt anything or herself. It’s still easier to get them in-place now, rather than when that time comes. You don’t know how she’ll take to being partially dismantled after all. What an unusual thought. Satisfied, you pick up your soldering iron once more, and reposition your stool to give you easy access to the row of contacts coming off one side. “Alright, now hold this wire for me right here.” You tap one of the contacts with the tip of the iron. Luna grabs one with magic, placing its stripped end against the contact. You solder the thick stranded wire to the contact, and Luna retrieves another wire. Once this process is completed for all the contacts, you sit back, place the iron in its stand, then rest your head against a hand. “Alright, you should be able to put that frame piece on the front now. I’ll start running these to where they need to go, down the side.” ”Remember the ones for the neck!” “Ah, yeah. Right. What would I do if you weren’t here.” She eyes you with concern. “Sleep, as you should.” You wave her off, then move to the body’s side, sitting on a new chair. “I’ll be fine.” ”I shall tell Twilight to check your work, come the morrow.” “Yeah, please do. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked this late.” You reach over and grab Luna’s chin, pulling her head over and up to look into her eyes. “Too busy spending time with you.” She smiles, but eventually shakes her head out of your grasp. “If you insist on working, then let us work.” “Yeah. A’ight. Four wires, the ones off contacts three through six; those go up to the neck through the frame gap on the right side.” After watching Luna to be sure she knew where you were talking about, you turned to the flank before you, and start threading the wires here to the proper places. ”Anon?” You look over to her, but you can tell she’s already done what you asked correctly. She’s looking over the body in general. “Yeah?” ”She may standeth at my side. The three of us together, since you have been staying up for me. I never had anyone for company, before you started doing that, and you need sleep too. But if she can stayeth all night, as you say…” She looks at you then, with a trembling smile. “Just thinking about it…” You hop off your stool and move to her side, hugging her. She hugs you back with her wings. “You won’t be left out. Not anymore. She’s for all of us.” Luna nods, over your shoulder. “Thank you. For everything.” “No, thank you. You were a big help in showing me this world. This is the least I could do to repay that, to help you realize what you deserve.” ”You are starting to convince me of that.” “Of what?” ”That I deserve this.” You tweak her cheek when she pulls back from you. “Hey, look, progress all around, right?” She nods, smiling. “And eventually, I shall make a proper stallion of you.” “Is that a threat?” ”A promise. Now let us get back to our collective whimsy.” There’s something off about this hip joint. Or maybe how the leg’s attached to it. You figured you should have left the leg connecting to the morning crew. You’ve only got one attached, and it hangs a bit awkwardly. Maybe you misread the plans. You know the plans aren’t wrong, you and Twilight had gone over every little detail when you reworked them, but for some reason this connection just doesn’t look right, not to your tired mind, your heavy eyes. Luna, beside you, looks to something at your back, but that detail seems really far away. Everything does. ”Good morning.” Celestia’s voice right next to your ear makes you jump. You’d have fallen out of your chair if a big white wing didn’t catch you. “Is… is it already?” ”Yes, silly.” You look out the window. The sky beyond is starting to light with the colors of dawn. When you look back, Luna is giving you a flat glare “And now you may sleep.” “Something’s off about this-” ”Now!” Anger flashes across her features. You hang your head, nodding against your chest. “Yeah. Sorry.” She comes to your side as you slide off your chair, her wing replacing her sister’s as she half-guides, half-pushes you towards the big plush pile Twilight’s still resting in. You drop to your knees then crawl around it on all fours, ending up roughly where Celestia had been, as Luna returns to her sister’s side. ”Lets do our dance,” Celestia says to her. “Together.” You nudge Twilight. “Hey.” ”Hmph?” You kiss the sleepy pony on her cheek, then collapse back on the bedding behind her. “Shift change.” ”Hmph.” Twilight gets to her feet, shakes her head, and drags herself out of the cushions. “Can you check my work, when you’re fully awake? I’m pretty sure I screwed something up with that hip.” ”Stallions...” The two of you look out the now-open door, then, where Celestia and Luna sit on the grass just beyond the packed earth path. They sit side-by-side, leaning on each other. A wing of each is wrapped around the other. Their horns glow as they look up to the sky, with small traces of glowing color drifting upward from both now and then. The sky fills with tiny sparks corresponding to their magic hues, as they do their work. Not for long, maybe just to put a little more spin on things already in motion, but for as long as the effect lasts, it’s beautiful. You only led your eyelids’ weight take over when it’s complete, and Luna’s walking back to you, while Celestia and Twilight head towards the palace. Your fatigue-scrambled mind takes an abominably long time to realize why. Yeah, breakfast is probably important. You and Luna haven’t eaten since a midnight snack, but you’re too tired to care. You’d already fallen halfway asleep by the time Luna reaches you, and she drops down on the pile, snapping you awake again. As you open your eyes again, she puts her nose to yours, looking into your eyes. ”Now you can rest.” Your turn to give an indistinct mumble of a response, like Twilight’s before. Luna laughs, then rolls over to shimmy her back towards you. You reach out and pull her against you, burying your face in that cool, nippy mane. The little pricks of sleet-like stars keep you at a modicum of alertness. After a moment, she half-turns her head to you. “Do you enjoy that sensation?” “I’ve been coming around to it. It’s… unique. It’s you. You can do this thing no other pony can, and I’m going to experience it as much as I can.” ”Doth it bother you, then?” “Nothing about you bothers me. Only things I need to get used to.” She squrims against you a little more and drops her head back to the bedding. “You are too sweet.” “Just sweet enough. Love you.” She nickers quietly, not loud enough for you to hear with one ear buried in a pillow and her facing away from you, but you can feel it where your hand rests on her chest. “I love you too, Anon.” That she said it feels so far away, as you’re already falling asleep. You gently, so very gently, slide the brain’s frame into the back of the head. Two phone motherboards are angled to fit against the inner walls of the head, against rubber plates for impact protection. Between them is a large ring with innumerable contacts, wires extending off them from both the top and bottom of the ring. Some travel to other parts of the head. Most of them run into a hard, segmented conduit that will plug into where the neck meets the body, once you get the neck assembled. For now, however, the head rests disembodied on a workbench. Once it’s inserted, you start securing the fasteners on either side of the exterior, then work the final attachment points for the fabric shroud between the inner and outer frames. Twilight floats her massive sapphire to the back of the head, and slowly places it at the center of the ring. Then you hear the click of its retaining bracket snapping into place. “Snug?” ”It’s secure.” Twilight’s horn continues to glow as she closes the head’s access hatch, and then you see a magenta flash as she magically seals it. Wouldn’t do to have just anyone able to poke around her head. You and Twilight join Celestia and Luna , where they were watching you from the other side of the bench. “Looks better than I expected, being honest.” Celestia looks to you. “What do you mean by that?” “Well, back home we had this principle called ‘uncanny valley.’ If you make something perfectly lifelike, it looks okay. If you make it look not lifelike at all, it looks okay. But if you make it look somewhat but not quite lifelike, it’d look repulsive. Twilight and I designed around that; it’s one reason why we have framework over the protective shroud, why there’s no mane but there will be a tail, and so on. Needs to be obviously artificial in some respects.” You look to the three, then. “But I’m not a pony, so I can’t really say. What do you think?” ”I will admit,” Celestia begins hesitantly, “that it will be difficult to ignore her nature no matter how she looks. Perhaps it was best to emphasize it, then.” “Yeah. No pretenses. Will it, uh, get in the way of any motherly instinct?” ”She’ll have a strange scent,” Twilight says, returning to the suspended body and circling it, “and she’s already the size of an adult. But that’s only part of it. There’s still our awareness of what she is, and the bonds we’ll be nurturing. And the care for a creation exists beyond just that of a parent and child, I imagine doubly so when the creation can care for you back.” She shakes her head, then. “But who am I to say? I never really thought about motherhood before. I’ve just read some books.” You look to the sisters. ”I love all my little ponies,” Celestia says, “and this one will be mine moreso than the rest.” She leaves it at that, as if it was self-evident. Luna’s looking intently at the face of the head in front of you. “If she will looketh upon me as her mother, I shall see her as my filly.” Then the three look at you. You look at the head yourself, and sigh. “I’m going to be a terrible father, an Equestrian one especially. But that’s not going to stop me from trying my best. Back home we humans would get attached to all sorts of things, even robots, which is similar to what she will be like. They didn’t have to look human, or even like an animal. Soldiers would get attached to bomb disposal robots. Millions of people followed the misadventures of robots in development, would get upset when the engineers and techs had to abuse them for tests. I think Twilight’s right; it’s about how you view it and what you go through, more than anything.” ”So this is not the first time your people have built things like this?” Celestia asks. “No, but it’s the first time it’s going to be, well, alive. Thinking, presumably feeling. Just plowing ahead as we are would get me skewered back home; half the world thinks making thinking robots would bring about the end of everything.” ”Then we’ll just have to raise her right.” You chuckle and shake your head. “Yeah. It still feels so surreal. I’m glad you’re so sure of this, Celestia. I’d be halfway insane by now if I was doing this alone.” She smiles a warm, gentle smile at you. “I have faith in my herd.” The four of you continue looking at the head, once Twilight stops her circling. The black fabric sandwiched between the two frame layers contrasts with the steel of the outer frame atop it. You’ll have to keep her clean. Maybe not polished, but you’ll have to stay on top of any potential corrosion. Regular maintenance is essential, and you’re not sure how much she’ll be able to do herself. Not that you’d do any less than everything, to keep her in top shape. Even if not in a tub full of water, that’s like bathing your filly while she’s still unable, isn’t it? Maybe you could do this fatherhood thing after all. You shake your head and stand. “Alright, onto the neck.” Her completed body lay on the pile of bedding. The pile had been moved to the middle of the room, rearranged so all the pillows were at the bottom with all the blankets spread on the top in successive layers. Hopefully this would minimize any confusion on the part of its occupant. She looks, frankly, beautiful. The contrast of black fabric under bright steel framing had only been heightened by the workshop’s delivery of Twilight’s rush orders, from her friend. Brass and bronze filigree patterns lay over the steel frame, its curves and arcs thick enough to resist everyday damage but still looking delicate as it winds in its own intricate, looping designs. Wings excluded, of course, which are still unadorned aluminum. Sometimes functionality cannot be compromised in the slightest. Moving her into place hadn’t been difficult. With the weight-decreasing spell, she was heavier than the similarly-sized Twilight, but not by much, somewhere just over Luna’s weight. Her head rests on the blankets, neck outstretched forward of her body. Her legs are folded beneath her. This had been Twilight’s idea; she said the awareness the spell creates would likely try inputs at random at first, gauging responses. Restricting certain ranges of motion may prompt it to explore other avenues first. This would lead, hopefully, to her eyes opening and head moving as one of her first actions. Beneath her as they were, you can’t see her quartz hooves. It was such a simple thing, but you are inordinately proud of them; they sounded more natural than steel would have, their mounting provides a bit of shock resistance for the leg, they enable walking to trickle-charge a small backup battery in case the main generator fails, and they look good to boot. Her talons are tipped with quartz as well, one claw on each rotor hub on her wings. They aren’t the best pressure sensors designed, but thanks to magic, you could do more with the piezoelectric effect than back home. You haven’t yet figured out how to electrically monitor magic in a crystal, but Twilight had figured out how to magically monitor electrical charge in one. She said the talon-tips were necessary because she was tired of having to guess how much force she applied with her own claws. Those wings are held to her sides by way of a small hook protruding from the body between it and each wing. A temporary measure for the filly to rest her wings until she figures out how to hold them in place on her own. Then she could make a decision whether or not she wanted to keep them. You still need to get used to the idea of your creation making design decisions for herself. Her inert form looks very dignified in its repose. But the time has come to give her the spark of life. Celesta and Luna stand to either side of her, heads low and horns pointed towards the open access hatch at the back of her head. Twilight sits on the ground in front of her, her own horn up under the head’s upper jaw. Besides the back hatch, this was the only way to access the core crystal. You’re crouched at Twilight’s side, steadying her with an arm around her midsection, as she starts to speak. ”Okay. Casting the spell is going to take a bit of time. Celestia, Luna, I need you to fill the crystal with as much raw power as you can. Once the animation spell takes hold, the amount of power you’ve managed to put into it will set its reservoir capacity. Don’t worry about breaking it; I’ll be draining it as I cast the spell, so I don’t have to rely on my own power exclusively. I’ll need to cast three more spells; two for the sense-sharing spells for each other part of the brain, and then closing up the head, and I can’t be exhausted for that. I’ll know if the first spell worked – or, I should say, if it didn’t work in the manner we intend it to not work – if I can target it with the spells to come after.” You hug your arm around Twilight’s midsection a little tighter, to comfort yourself more than her. Her wing around your shoulders hugs you back as she closes her eyes. It’s all out of your hands now. Everything leading up to this moment you’d been an integral part of, alongside Twilight. Your initial designs, your tech, the progress of which had been under your direction, using your knowledge. The very idea was a slice of home, that you could make a construct of copper and steel instead of crystal and magic. Two of the three major parts of the brain were duplicated from the one significant piece of your world you had left to yourself, but you’d done all you could. It’s up to your three mares now. No, not yours. You were theirs, truly, something you’d been realizing as this project had unfolded. You gave direction, and you still did a good amount of work, but Twilight did just as much as you on both counts. The three of them, though, they’d tackled this project you’d given them with an intensity beyond mere work, or even enthusiasm. They had taken it from you exclusively, and made it their own. As they’d worked, as you spent the time between tasks together, ate together, and slept in pairs on the same makeshift bed, even while building this echo of your world, they’d taken you from that world, and made you their own too. So much for your antiquated notions. Twilight’s horn starts glowing magenta, followed shortly by Celestia’s glowing yellow and Luna’s blue. After hearing the quiet thunk of the generator’s contacts engaging, you can feel Twilight’s breathing quicken, and become more labored, under your arm. Her wing feels like it spasms around your shoulders, and you bring up your other hand to close around the end of the limb, to steady it, but she makes not a sound. The sisters to either side look less troubled, but their eyes are closed in concentration. You’re crouched here with no way of knowing what’s going on. The wait is torture. What if it fails here, at this final step? What if something goes wrong, and they have undo everything, killing her as soon as she’s born? Your mind is flying through the plans, thinking of every place something could have been screwed up. It could all end before it even begins. Twilight’s eyes snap open, and as she pulls her head back out of the filly’s mouth and upward, the light of the three horns fades. ”I’ve got it!” Twilight’s horn lights up again, three flashes in rapid succession, the last eliciting an echoing burst from the back of the filly’s head. As it fades the body’s already moving. The sisters come around to either side of you and Twilight as you watch the haphazard twitching. True to Twilight’s prediction, the little nudges and rocks of flexing leg joints, beneath the body, don’t turn into larger movements. A minute motion here and there from the neck, or the back where the body’s front half and back half meet, disturbs the blankets she lays on. Then her left eye opens. She goes still, and stays still for almost a minute. The four of you, in unison, dip your heads to look into that one eye. It flicks to the left, then back ahead. Down, then back. Then in two small motions, one horizontal and the other vertical, it looks at you. One of you, at least; it’s difficult to tell with the light reflecting off the glass eye’s surface, but definitely in your direction. One ear swivels and flexes in seemingly-random directions, before turning to face you. The other shortly follows suit. Then the other eye opens. You suppress a snort of amusement when you see the two eyes aren’t looking in the same direction. This quickly corrects itself; the second eye apparently not needing the experimental motions first, just like the second ear. As soon as you’re looking into both those eyes, staring back at you, you get the feeling everything is going to work out just fine. Luna, on the other side of you from Twilight, sits heavily on the floor, then lowers the front part of her body as well, laying down. You put your other arm around her and scritch at her cheek. From the tension there, it feels like she’s holding back tears. Twilight’s panting turns into a quiet laugh of relief. It’s Celestia who takes the first meaningful action, though. She walks up to the filly’s side. Those glass eyes snap to her, tracking her in halting jumps as she moves until she’s out of their range of motion. The neck twitches one way, then cracks all the way in the other direction, eyes now closed. Celestia kneels down beside the filly and murmurs something in her ear. The head jerks back towards her again, but in slower, more measured increments, as Celestia lays down beside the filly. You lean in to whisper to Twilight, who’s breathing is only now coming under control. “There’s no way she knows words yet.” ”I don’t know, Anon. We don’t really know much about how this works. Nobody’s ever wanted to fail casting a spell before, let alone one this complex. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t” Celestia’s face is alongside the filly’s now, and Celestia nuzzles the side of her head. The filly’s head twists the other direction, overcompensates, then slowly tilts back to level. Upon discovering this new function, the filly starts tilting her head by small amounts in every direction, returning to level after every adjustment, and opens her eyes again once she’s finished, finding Celestia’s own close eyes easily. The white alicorn then nudges the filly’s front half to the side, pushing the closest leg out with her snout and dragging it out in front of the two of them. The filly looks down at it and slowly, experimentally, flexes the leg. Twilight tenses up in your grip “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” “Think of what?” She shakes her head and laughs quietly again. “She always finds a way to remind me that I was the student. I explained to her how, with theoretically unlimited channel space, we decided to just give every actuator a magical position sensor, instead of having to compromise as we did with the claws. That’s one to one with every way the body can move. From how quickly her opposite eye and ear were able to train, it seems like she understands that, in a way. Celestia caught on, and decided to show her those movements.” “Why is she using her nose, instead of her magic?” Twilight shrugs her wings under your arm. “I don’t know. Maybe wanting to bond as physically as possible, even if the filly can’t feel it like natural ones can. She wont know what all that means, but when she watches us give each other affection like that, she’ll understand eventually, and want it for herself, even without all the physical and chemical reinforcement behind it.” “So what you’re saying is-” This sounds ridiculous, especially with how much it fills you with hope. “-we can teach a robot to love?” ”I think she already knows that, in the sense of family bonds. That’s what I focused on when casting, as you said when you first showed me. Love, that she’s a pony, and that she’s our daughter.” Luna stands again and leaves your side, at that. She settles herself down on the filly’s other side from Celestia, but doesn’t mirror Celestia’s actions, instead just watching the two of them. The filly’s actively turning her head and eyes back to Celestia after each action, now, to see Celestia smile, for the princess to touch their noses together. By the third time this action’s repeated, the filly’s stretching her own head out for the contact. When you and Twilight edge closer, head-on, however, the filly’s attention snaps to you, and she brings her head up and back. You stop and look to Luna, who’s watching the filly intently. Then, thinking on what Twilight said about learning affection by example, you reach out and caress the side of Luna’s head. She automatically leans into it. You keep your hand there, playing with Luna’s ear, as the filly’s gaze travels down your arm to where you touch the blue alicorn, then slowly back up its length to meet your eyes again. Then you let go of Twilight and slowly reach your other hand out to the filly’s own head, hooking your thumb around her ear just as you had Luna’s. She doesn’t react, but neither does she move any further as you and Twilight come up to the filly’s front, with her settling down on front of Celestia and you in front of Luna. The sisters have their wings over the filly, by then, so she’s completely surrounded by her family but for her head sticking up and out of the feathery mess. When you pull your hand away from her head, she chases after it a short distance, drawing a laugh from more than one of you, and you realize that feeling that drove Luna to the ground, when the filly had first looked at you all. An eerie, almost crippling feeling of love. Like you just want to exist in this moment for all eternity.Surrounded by the mares of the herd in one big pile of love, at your collective creation’s – your child’s – moment of birth, with so many possible futures stretched out before you and the past that led to this moment feeling inconsequential. Luna drops her head across your thighs, and tilts her head to look up at you with one eye. It’s a silent question. ’You feel it too?’ You nod and rub the side of her neck, then look to Twilight and Celestia, leaning into each other as Twilight’s started trying to get the filly to mirror her head and ear motions, her forehooves resting on your shins near her chest. One moment of perfect bliss. But, ah, you’re ever preoccupied with work, aren’t you? There is still a task left unfinished. You sigh and clear your throat. This gets all the ponies’ attentions, including the filly. With a soft smile, you look over them all, your new Equestrian family. “So… what do we name her?” END
EpilogueFifty-one years later... The thumping of your twin rotors drowns out all other sound, though there isn't much competition atop the table mountain, an hour's flight from Canterlot. An hour's flight for Flurry Heart anyway, who touches down beside you. When your rotors spin down, you unlock your wings and fold the blades away, then use the claws near each rotor hub to take your saddlebag off. Flurry does the same with her magic, though she's only carrying a heavy metal slab. You may be much faster, but she has a much more generous payload capacity. Synthetic muscles ripple the array of small segmented plates that form your new body's shell as you look around the area. This body’s only a little over a year old, a fiftieth birthday present of a proper mature alicorn form, horn and all, like your mothers; your father made it because he said he couldn't bear the thought of anything being considered his magnum opus but you. Once it was finished, he never entered your shared workshop again, and you took on full-time the job of helping ponies you’d been aiding him with for decades. His life's work was complete, he said. He was finally happy with everything he had built, and felt he needed to make nothing more. It was the last big gift he ever gave you. As of a week ago, he can never give another gift again. You complete your survey of the immediate area. "I think this will work." "We're far enough away it shouldn't be disturbed, either. Nopony comes out here." "Not unless they know what they're looking for." Only Raven knew you two were out here, what you were doing. Her faculties had only grown sharper with age, her function helped in no small part with how many of your father’s works she’d voluntarily taken on. She wasn't going to tell a soul. You'll tell your mothers and the rest of your family, eventually. They'll want to know what you've done, but they're dealing with the loss in their own way right now. You wanted something you could have to yourself, for a time. You paw at the loose earth with a crystalline hoof. Then, nodding, kneel and start scrabbling away with the claws on your wings. Flurry Heart walks in front of you, then starts digging a furrow with her own hooves. You didn't need to dig too deep. Father had been cremated, according to his wishes. Those ashes had been scattered days ago, far from here, in a ceremony attended by thousands of ponies whose lives his creations had bettered. The exoskeleton he used to carry out his later work was slated to be enshrined in the palace. He’d even be memorialized in the stars themselves; Luna selected a human-shaped constellation from his home to add to the night sky. You still feel the need to make a grave, of sorts. One that represents the connection between you and him specifically. With a delicacy only your new body can afford you, you remove an old, battered smartphone from your saddlebag. The only thing your father had with him besides the clothes on his back, when he came to Equestria. The original, from which parts of your brain, your eyes, your ears, your voice were cloned. It had stopped working long ago, changed out for a backup, which itself had been replaced, and so on. Its memory card was gone, shuttled on to newer copies through the years. But the rest of it is just as it was when he arrived. You turn it over in your claws. Every tactile detail is apparent as you gently dragged a quartz-tipped talon across its edges, handling it one last time. With a reverence reserved for newborn foals, you place it into the pit you'd dug. Flurry finishes her own work, and shoves the metal plate into the dirt on the other side of the pit from you. "Get behind me, please. I don't want to risk hurting you.” Your cousin and best friend complies, coming around to stand behind you, turned the other way. You bring your horn close to the plate, and ready one of this new body's greatest gifts, the pinnacle of Twilight and your father's cooperation. Your own 'magic', unique to you. After disengaging the frequency doubler, adjusting the focus, and increasing the power, you start firing the laser in your horn in pulses. Though these bursts are invisible, unlike the usual green beam, the effects it has on the metal plate are unmistakable; ablated spots discolor the surface. Moving your head precise distances allows you, very slowly, to write on the plate, punctuated by the rapid snaps of laser discharges. H.E. ANONYMOUS FIRST HUMAN OF EQUESTRIA HIS CREATIONS LIVE ON It’s straightforward and simple. Just the way he'd want it. You shove dirt back into the shallow pit with a hoof, then after a couple steps back, sit to look over your work. You have to lock your joints in place to prevent yourself from collapsing, right then and there. He wouldn’t want you to lose it, not with how you were your family’s rock right now. Your composure is helped by the fact there were some things even this new body isn’t capable of. "Flurry." "Yeah, cuz?" "I can't cry." "It's okay," the empath replies. "You don't have to." You let yourself down to the ground slowly, wanting nothing more to bury yourself beside the artifact. To be left here until your magic reserves ran out, until you died. Maybe then you could see him again. You still had so much you wanted to build for him, to show him what you could do. So many plans, so many things from his old home you wanted to try to realize. An entire world died with your father, one you and your family will never again be able to experience. Earth, that wonderful and terrible world of humanity, is forever lost to you. "Besides," Flurry finally says, her breath hitching, "I'm crying for you." When you turn back to look at her, she's smiling at you, but that smile doesn't reach her eyes. Her tears flow freely. Seeing it is like a knife in your quartz heart. Flurry recoils away from you, shaking her head, when this new feeling of yours hits her. "What would your dad say, if he knew you let your emotional defenses down?" "I have to feel what you're going through. Maybe it'll help you, in some little way." She shakes her head again, slower this time. "I need to get used to it. He's getting old too, cuz. I don't think it'll be long until our places are reversed." "Why would you want to feel this twice?" "I don't have a choice. I miss him too. So does mom and dad. I'm just choosing to feel it more." She lays down beside you, covering your back with one of her wings. You adjust the rotor-blades of your own wings so she doesn't have to worry about any of her feathers getting caught. You can feel her touch, no matter how light, now. Even the warmth of her body is evident to you. Yet more gifts of this marvelous new body. For a time, the two of you are silent, listening to the wind, Flurry’s breathing, and the quiet whir of the generator in your chest. If you listened hard enough, you swear you could hear the beating of her heart, alongside the soft pinging of your own, a totally superfluous conceit your father had insisted on for your new body. If you could have stopped yours to restart his, when he’d passed, you would have. In a, well, in a heartbeat. "It's not fair." "What isn't?" "That the stallions in our families are the only ones cursed like this. It should be a mare's thing, something for us to face for them. Why do they have to be the ones who... end?" "Don't think like that." Flurry's wet eyes meet your glass ones, before she leans into you and nuzzles your neck. "It's not an end. Not really. It's more like... the end of the beginning. That's you, cuz. Everything he’s built, all the ponies he’s helped, and you. That’s his legacy. And you can choose how his legacy plays out." She's right. You still know everything he's taught you, and then some. You knew all the mechanisms and devices he and your mom – and later, you as well – had developed to help ponies in need. You could continue to make them, ensure his work still had meaning. Maybe someday you could find a stallion who could love you. A unicorn, or with a herdmate who was one. You could build a child of your own, using his work on you as a foundation. You could improve on his work yourself. You feel Flurry puff up beside you, heartened by your hope. Yes! There's always something new to be made, boundaries to be pushed, frontiers to explore. It didn't have to end here. You'd do it all, even without true magic of your own. Because that's what he did. You are Nova Spark, and you are your father's daughter.
9 Opening Move”Do Their Graces need to bring anything else to this council’s attention?” Raven asks the ducal representatives around the table. They shake their heads. ”Excellent,” Celestia says. “This council is adjourned.” The representatives always left first, as was custom. As they’re filing out, you see Raven and Prince Blueblood arranging their various papers to leave. You’re nervous, but this is a familiar nervousness. What’s coming, at least, is something your past life prepared you for. Past life… are you really over it now? Something to think on later. What matters is the challenge before you is a familiar one. All you’re doing is selling a project to management. Simple. Though you’ve never tried to be this flashy or grandiose about it before. Just as the last of the representatives leaves, Raven looks at the other five individuals remaining. You, her, Blueblood, the two princesses, and the commander of the guard. ”Now for matters at home,” Raven says. “What must we address?” “Yeah, if I may.” You stand from your chair and pull a small circuit board from your pocket, a bit smaller than the palm of one hand. You flip it to the table casually, aiming for its center. Twilight had duplicated it already, this piece is expendable for showmanship. At least she could clone the board itself without passing out. “Stallions and gentlemares, this is the single most sophisticated piece of hardware in the world, right now.” You point at the chip where it landed. “That is a copy of the heart of this.” You pull out your smartphone, unlock it, then slide it across the table to rest near the motherboard. “This is human magic.” Thanks for the line, Twilight. You have everyone at the table’s focused attention. You realize Twilight’s the only one who has seen your phone work, besides Celestia knowing about the flashlight, and you having waved it in Raven’s face a week ago. None of the royalty participated in your arrival interview. You suppose Luna may have seen it working in your dreams, but she seems just as fascinated with the real deal as the others. “Basically, we could make sand think. Unfortunately, we can’t make new ones with the technology you have, and I don’t know enough about the theory to train up a suitable scientific base and skilled labor force to open a factory for it on my own, and I wont bore you with the details about that. That’s a project that will take at least two generations, and I don’t have that kind of time.” Celestia flinches at that, subtle enough you almost missed it. Raven gives you an unamused sidelong look. You didn’t intend that line to be about mortality. Time to pull out the positivity. “We can, however, make copies of it with duplication magic. This isn’t as useful as it may sound, because there’s a lot locked in; these things aren’t just blank slates. But what it can do is interpret other devices that my phone has built in. I’ve been learning a lot about your magic from Twilight. I’m astounded you can replace limbs with simple materials and a single spell; back home prosthetics were still an evolving field, and we couldn’t yet perfectly duplicate natural movements. But she gave me a lot of ideas, and during this week she’s been away, I’ve been making plans.” You retrieve the phone from the table, open and start the voice recorder app, then aim the camera at Celestia and snap a shot. Turning the flash off was a good idea; the table hardly reacts to the whole process. “Twilight tells me that limbs are about your limit. You can’t help lame pegasi fly again without more involved magic, which can be very awkward for them to adapt to. She also tells me you can’t replace lost senses.” You slide the phone back into the center of the table, this time displaying the picture you just took. “That’s where this comes in. Look at that; it can interpret the image and knows how to present it in a form you can comprehend. The screen provides a working model your scholars can study to create a spell that will allow you to imitate it. The chip at this thing’s heart can interpret and output the camera’s signal with that.” Once they’ve had a look, you reach over, flip the photo app away, and hit playback on the voice recorder. ‘Twilight tells me that-’ “It can also hear sound and process that as well. A spell to interpret its sound output would be, I expect, trivial, if doing things with magic is as simple as the technological foundation used. Speakers are easy, and I know some unicorn musicians already make use of them with their own magic. In short, if my projects work out, I can let your blind see, and your deaf hear.” You’d normally pause for some sort of reaction here; you intended that to be a punchy line. Instead, you have three ponies staring at you with rapt attention, a big ol’ princess and her secretary looking thoughtful and a touch proud, and a prince wearing a scowl. Ah, hostile management at the table. “I’m also designing a system that can serve pegasi who cannot fly. That one will need considerably more work on my end than the other systems, which would lean on your mages, but that just means it’s working off proven principles, just in a novel way. It still won’t be as natural as a working wing, but it’ll give them a lot more freedom than the awkward levitation spells you currently employ.” You put both your hands on the table’s surface and lean on them, bringing you down to their eye level. “To do all this, I’m going to need a proper workshop, a space I can test everything in safety and store all the equipment I’ll need. Building the initial demonstration model will take a lot of time and resources. I’ll also need another talented unicorn earmarked to study whatever Twilight passes them about potential magical theory; Her Serene Highness-” Thanks, Raven. Lets end on a respectful and humble note. “-already has enough on her plate, and I’ve been taking too much of her time with this stuff already. I haven’t been much use in matters of statecraft, but this is something I can do to help the country.” ”Absolutely not!” You – and five ponies – turn to Prince Blueblood. ”We simply do not have the resources to dedicate to your absurd projects, let alone the space to provide. I will not enable the use of this strange technology we have no knowledge of! We don’t know what could go wrong, not without years of study by all the scholars of the land, which will be disruptive enough-” ”Your Excellency,” the commander of the guard begins. The stallion looks up at you with an expression more guarded than during your presentation. “Give me an excuse to put your work under my supervision, and you’ll have everything you need.” You look back and forth between him and Blueblood. Is this going to devolve into Equestria’s version of a catfight? “Well, I, uh, I could probably design weapons and armor, but I don’t think-” ”The last thing we need are weapons!” Yeah, Blueblood was right, there. ”If you’re going to let this chance to better our people slip through our-” ”Please, stallions,” Raven butts in. “We can go over this later, just the three of us supervisors.” She turns to you, then. “Thank you for bringing this opportunity to our attention, Anonymous.” You know a dismissal when you hear it. You retrieve your phone and the spare motherboard, then sit back down. Raven looks to the two stallions at the table. ”I ask you two to assess what spare material and manpower you have, and report back to me. Then we can discuss what we shall do about Anonymous’ request. This task should take you the rest of the evening; for this reason I suggest we table the rest of our business for now.” She looks to Luna. The princess nods, then everypony stands to leave. Neither the commander nor the prince look very happy. Stallions really were moody, huh? You’re still getting the hang of the different gendered behaviors. As you’re leaving, after most others have already gone, you feel a tug on the back of your shirt. Raven stands behind you, wearing a conspiratorial expression. ”You use the prosthetics as a pretense for something else,” she says, barely loud enough to hear “What makes you say that?” ”You told me a week ago that you cannot make this project, with your phone and senses, known to Twilight. Now you tell this whole room, and say you have worked with Twilight this whole time. Something else lurks beneath all this.” “Uh, yeah, but I wasn’t lying when I said all that. They’re just pieces of a bigger puzzle. But don’t tell any of the princesses your suspicions. Don’t tell anyone. I could probably get in a lot of trouble, and it’s going to be hard enough keeping this from Twilight, who’s going to be helping me. The stuff I intend to work with was a big point of contention back home, involving several scientific fields that were just coming into their own. But while we were having trouble with it back home, I might be able to pull it off here. I just need time to get everything together.” ”If your activities jeopardize our work or the palace, you will make me very cross.” “Look, the stuff I’m going to be doing might get me called a mad scientist back home, but I’m starting to get the hang of what’s possible here, with a fusion of magic and technology. I’m not going to let these possibilities pass me by. It’s curiosity, not ambition or malice. I promise.” ”Should my assumptions prove accurate, some might call you mad here too.” “We’ll just have to see, huh?” She gives you a long, hard look. “But should those assumptions prove accurate, you might do what no pony ever could before. And – to the extent I can ascertain what you do will benefit the lives of Their Majesties – I will back you. Your presentation here represented your opening move on Blueblood, no?” “Can’t get it by you, huh?” ”You pushed him on the issue where the few who had power over him observed, a smart tactic. Now all present know his angle, but you have not gotten any closer to understanding his motivation or resolving the issue. But I must warn you; he will not stop even if denied here, when he argues the point with the commander and I. You made an escalation play, and that can prove dangerous with the power those at that table wield.” “I’ll be careful.” ”I wanted to stay out of this conflict of yours, Anon. The proper functioning of this palace hinges on Blueblood, the Commander, and I all getting along. You drove a wedge between those two, on an issue of great interest to me.” “Oh. Sorry.” ”I can deliver you this victory, but I ask you resolve his problem with you sooner rather than later. And do not expect my direct help in the future; I can do much for you behind the scenes, but a great deal of my effectiveness in the palace relies on my abstention from petty intrigues like what animates Blueblood to stand against you. Power thought a threat proves more effective than used as fact, often, for every use diminishes it in more ways than one. I have pulled influence for you before, but I cannot play champion for you in courtly disputes. I have acted only to allow your project a place to succeed; my interest lies there.” “Were you the one to finally get me my parts?” She dips her head in acknowledgment. “Ah, thanks.” “I simply wish to keep your conflict with the Prince contained, rather than eventually involve Their Majesties. The core battle remains yours to fight alone. Do so.” She walks around you and out the door, then. Figures that keeping your secrets will get you in over your head, with this crowd. You stalk off towards the room where you and Luna discuss administrative matters in the evenings. Maybe things really were easier when you were concerned with matters of state. Once more you find yourself stargazing, back home. For some reason, your bed is on top of your apartment building, now. Further, the building is no longer in the city. You’re surrounded by some sort of wilderness. The setting reminds you of younger days, when you’d go out on camping trips and hikes, or riding your bike through trails. There’s no light pollution, and the sounds of the city in which you used to live are absent. You can see every star in a nearly pitch black sky, now. A shimmering sheet of aurora borealis covers the sky’s northern quadrant. You’ve never seen an aurora before in your life, so you have no idea how it’s in this dream. Dreams are pretty fucking weird, but you’re not complaining. You’re just relaxing in your strangely-sited bed, looking up at a stunningly beautiful night sky. Now would be an excellent time to test some hypotheses. “Hey Luna, wanna stop by? Hang out for a bit?” You’re about to laugh your silly idea off when you notice something about the moon. Its features changed; there’s a dark crescent covering the right arc, with some sections that extend leftward. As you’re observing it, the disk of light flashes. Then a pony climbs out. Luna practically falls out of the moon as if it were a giant hole in the sky, then catches herself with spread wings, and glides down to you. “Thou callest us, Anon?” “You know, I didn’t expect you to actually be listening in, but I thought it was worth a shot.” You look back up at the moon. It’s returned to normal. ”We have kept an eye on thee since thy nightmare’s return.” Time for hypothesis number two. You scoot over in your bed and pat a hand on the vacated spot. Luna hesitates for only a moment before clambering on. She eventually settles down next to you, her spine against your side, her rear near your knees, and the wing of the side she’s laying on sprawled across your lap. “You must have seen some, uh, interesting things.” She cranes her neck around to look at you with one eye. “What dost thou mean?” “Well, I, uh, sometimes have dreams of, er, indecent nature.” She grins. “Anon, seeing such is part of our talent. Thou art not the first, nor the last. We have learned to glance before diving in, and look away when prudent.” “Well hell, I’ve had to explain why we wear clothes for modesty to Twilight, and here you are knowing me at my most immodest.” You pause for a moment, letting that sink in with its own sinking feeling. “You never, uh, watched anyone, have you?” She looks offended. “Why should we?” “Well, everyone has needs.” ”Dost thou see our mane?” “Yeah, but I don’t see how that’s relevant.” ”When alicorns mature, we gain a great deal of control over our bodies. That is how we achieve immortality. We can choose for ourselves how our manes appear.” Her star-flecked void of a mane flashes. Left behind is normal blue hair, spilling across your chest. ”This is a sign of our mastery over ourselves. Our sister also has this ability. Twilight and Cadance have not yet grown enough.” Another flash, and once more a starfield cascades from her neck and tail. ”We chose these stars ourselves. Our sister chose a rainbow through morning mists. This is just a trapping, of course, but we use it as an example. Another thing we can control is our… needs, as thou callest them. We keep them suppressed. We are sure thou art aware how inconvenient they can be.” “Er, that’s something guys have to deal with, back home. I mean, moreso than usual. It’s considered a guy thing at least.” She looks surprised. “Thou hast thy own cycles?” “Hell no, it’s always on. I’m not sure what you mean by cycles, being honest.” ”Thou dost not mate at certain intervals?” “Oh, no, we just do it whenever we want. I guess women do have a sort of monthly cycle but it’s not like we only have sex at certain times of it. Actually it’s more we don’t have sex at certain times. That can get, er, messy, and not in a good way.” Luna’s confusion is writ plain across her features. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t really feel like explaining.” ”Anon, that thy drive is ever-present beggars belief. Thou art always so reserved.” She thinks for a moment. “Well, it explaineth thy socks.” “No, the socks are just insulation and such, I swear. I had your tailors make me steel-toed boots for my lab. They’re pretty uncomfortable barefoot, and then my shoes would always be sweaty. Why is it hard to understand? We manage.” Luna turns away from you “Anon, for ponies, it doeth… it leaveth us stricken.” “Oh. Huh. Well then, I see why you’d want to avoid dealing with it.” She looks up at the sky you were admiring, before you summoned her. “Thy stars are beautiful.” “Yeah, this is what I wished you could see, when I was explaining them all to you.” You turn to her then. “This was a test, you know.” She looks back at you, surprised. “Did we pass?” “Not that kind of test. When you first saw this bed, I said you could sit on it.” You chuckle. “You said no, because you had too much tact to enter a stallion’s bed. Guess that’s changed.” Luna looks shocked, then chagrined, and starts moving to get up. You wrap an arm around her neck and pull her back down. “I think I know why.” She doesn’t struggle, instead relaxing more than when she first laid down. “How didst thou know?” “Eh, a little birdie told me.” ”If thou meanst our guards, Anon, they are not pegasi, they-” “No no no. Forget it. Look, I don’t really know how pony courtship works. Twilight told me monogamy wasn’t really a big thing here, so it’s not like it’s costing me anything. I’m not really comfortable enough to do anything serious. I’m still getting used to all this. But if you’re feeling lonely… I tested it.” This still doesn’t feel right in a way. You were already doing something with Twilight, and no matter how much she says it’s okay – how much she was expecting it, and conditioning your relationship on it, even – you can’t help but feel this is off, no matter what you feel for Luna. This is as much a test for you as it is for her. ”We didn’t want to say anything. A grand gesture is required, per the old ways. We have not done such for thee. It is not yet time.” “Old ways. Yeah.” You drop your head back to the pillows and look up at the stars. “I was thinking, in the meeting this evening, about how I’ve started to see all this-” You sweep a hand across the sky “-as my past life, like I’m living a new one. I thought it meant I was getting over everything. Then something comes back to remind me. I’m still tied up in it, in some ways.” You pat her side with the arm you still have around her neck. “I feel stuck, when it comes to stuff like this. Your customs fight my customs, and they both fight my feelings. The time we’ve spent together means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me. But I’m lost, and I don’t know how to express it, or whether or not I should.” Luna remains silent, but you can see she’s watching you, from the corner of your eye. “You know, when I was a kid, I was fascinated by the night sky. I wanted to go there, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. What little boy didn’t? As I got older I figured that wasn’t my path, but it’s why I went into engineering. I wanted to be part of something sent up there. Something that went beyond the world I lived on. To play a tiny part in something that we threw out into space, or sent to the moon, or another planet. Those things will be there forever, immune to all the chaos of my home. There’s a permanence in that, in being part of that accomplishment. In making something that outlasts you. A creation that outlives you. That’s an ironclad legacy.” You shake your head and close your eyes. “I don’t know what I’ll have, here. I’m flying blind. I can only hope that, in the end, everything works out. I’m still tied to that dream that’s now out of reach.” ”Anon, thou-” Luna tenses up, then quickly moves to get off the bed. You prop yourself up and look over to her as she quickly preens the wing that was across your body. “Is something wrong?” ”Our duties call.” She looks at you, her eyes now glowing bright white. “Thou art needed.” “What’s that supposed to-” A terrible shriek rings out like the world is ending. You get a sensation that feels like hours compressed into a fraction of a second. The environment jumps and scrambles itself like static, and you feel a terrible sense of dissociation, like you’ve been violently torn from your own mind. The shriek ends with a thunderclap ringing out, as if its bolt hit the ground right next to you. The violent thump almost throws you off your bed. A bed which no longer sits on your apartment building’s roof. Your night sky is still there, but everything else has changed. You’re outside a small cemetery of some sort now, surrounded by trees in autumn colors. Luna is already striding through its gates. A voice from within calls out. “Must your entrance be so dramatic?” ”The dream merge was rougher than expected. My apologies.” Luna only dropped her thees and thous for one pony. “Merge? Sister, why-” You slide out of bed and look to where Luna was heading, just in time to see a white face over a slender neck turning to look back at you. Luna looks back at you as well, and waves you over with a wing. You scramble to their side as fast as your legs can take you. As you reach them, you notice Celestia had been laying down in front of a specific headstone. She’s standing by the time you stop, and maneuvers to put herself between it and you. She’s wearing one of those smiles her eyes betray as false. “Anon, you have no idea how proud you made me, this evening. You pledged to find some way to use your technology to help Equestria. I’m happy you’re making progress to keeping that promise. Already you exceed my expectations.” You look around. Her speech is entirely at odds with the setting. “All respect, Celestia? I know what your sister’s job is. This is a nightmare. One of yours, I’m assuming.” The false smile falls away, and she looks around herself. “Ah. Yes. It’s… I’ve lived a long time, Anon. Many ponies have left me behind.” Her shifting stance lets you catch a glimpse of the headstone she’s hiding from you. It has your name on it. Your blood runs cold as you take a step back, closer to Luna. “So, uh, what’s, what’s all this? Is this-” Luna interrupts. ”Sometimes it’s a dream, and she remebereth those who hath gone before. Sometimes it’s a nightmare, and she mourneth those who hath not yet passed.” ”She brought you,” Celestia says, sitting down, “to snap me out of it.” She looks at you with a weak smile. “Hard to argue the matter when you’re right in front of me. You said something, during the meeting, about not having time. This is what somepony not having time looks like, to me.” Luna walks past you to sit down at her sister’s side, leaning into her and hugging her with a wing. The size difference – Celestia has easily a third again her wingspan, and a foot over her when standing – makes the gesture somewhat awkward, but only more touching for that. You crouch on the ground in front of them. “Yeah, I guess that’d be… if you live forever, you’re going to see a lot of ponies go, and you care about your-” ”Anon, thou art a dolt. Look around thee. There are few here, not the multitudes of a ruler mourning her people.” ”That’s a different nightmare,” Celestia mutters. ”These are those she careth for.” ”Before my sister’s return,” Celestia says, slowly, “I never had relief from this, when it occured. I would wake up and think a friend really was dead, until I ran into them in the palace halls, or the gardens outside. That crippling depression, that sudden shock,” She shakes her head, though she’s smiling. “I’ve made a fool of myself in front of dear friends many times.” Luna hangs her head. “I must do everything I can to help you.” ”Only so far as it’s your job, sister. I’ve told you I forgive you.” Celestia looks up to the sky, then. “These aren’t your stars.” ”They are Anon’s.” ”They’re beautiful.” ”Yes, they are. He was explaining their patterns to me. I am thinking of using some.” You’ve never seen them like this before, side by side, physically close. During official functions they were never far apart, but it always felt like they insisted on a certain polite distance. You’ve never seen them in casual sorts around the palace in the flesh, either. You know Celestia met with Luna’s occasional gaggle of guests, and you’re sure she’s as good friends with them as Luna, but you were never invited, so you couldn’t say what went on there. Here, now, they really feel like sisters. Do they spend all their time in the palace apart, just to spend time together while Celestia sleeps? Not that it was much different between you and Luna, either, though you knew based on your clearer recollection on waking that Luna generally walked your dreams after sunrise, ever since you shifted your schedule. It hits you, then, just how much that meant. Those times she spent in your dreams before you started waking later, that was time she couldn’t be with her sister. Even back then, she considered you Celestia’s equal. Like family. ”Anon, here we are not in thy dream. We are in hers. We can hear thy thoughts, and control this space.” Luna’s head is cocked to the side, smiling. ”Thou assumest much, but not entirely wrongly. Our uniquely shared circumstances warranted curiosity.” ’So I can just…’ You think the words, as if reading them off a page and sounding them out in your head. ”Clever colt, but that would maketh thee rude to our host.” Luna inclines her head to Celestia, who looks between you two in confusion. “Ah, yeah. Sorry. I can’t help but experiment, Celestia. No offense intended.” ”None taken.” She blinks. “I think.” Luna laughs. “I assure you, sister, tonight I have learned he is unreasonably innocent, despite his carefree attitude to our positions.” ”You know how much I respect that.” ”Indeed.” “I’m not sure if I should take that as an insult or not,” you grumble. ”Innocence,” Celestia begins, extending her neck toward where you crouch to meet your eyes at your level, “Is a prized virtue in a stallion.” “It’s the ‘unreasonable’ part that gets me.” At this, they both laugh. “I was just thinking that I never get to see you two acting so sisterly. Was it in here, in your head, all along?” ”When we first took up ruling Equestria, we found we never saw each other. This was Luna’s solution. It’s kept us sane, when our shared work separated us. I stopped her once, for a time, and...” Luna leans her head into the side of Celestia’s neck. ”So we do it as much as we can. A private retreat, just for us, inside my dreams.” She looks around again. “No matter how grim. She brightens them all.” “You two are lucky to have each other.” “We learned it the hard way, but we learned it,” Celestia replies. “You have no idea how lucky we are.” Your workshop is almost entirely empty. Everything was moved out earlier in the day, with the help of a few guards. Their attitude towards you has turned around massively; the jeering ones are reserved, and the skeptical ones more willing to voice positive comments. In the end, their commander didn’t do much for you but find you an unused building. His attitude must have trickled down, though. It was nice to get some respect around here, for once. The guards helping you even told you some of the choicest gossip, as you moved everything out to the new workshop. The list included gems like… Not only had you almost killed Twilight, but Celestia too, with some sort of magic-stealing weapon the princesses defused at the last second, or that you saved them from with a change of heart just in time. You aren’t allowed outside the palace grounds without escort because you’re under house arrest for a terrible crime, but maybe one you didn’t commit. You were sent to gather information for your home, as some sort of advanced contact. As hideous as your body was, it was merely a projection for ponykind’s convenience to comprehend, masking a terrible true form. Your upright stature was a handicap, to put ponies at ease, or perhaps to disguise your incredible abilities when on all fours. Humans were a mythical race from before magic, and you were a harbinger of their glorious return, but only if you judged the world worthy. You might have come here from a parallel reality, to prepare ponykind for magic disappearing. You secretly had wings, but they were ephemeral and no good for flight. Any pony who managed to touch them would die, or maybe live forever. You were a… well the explanation was a little long, but some rough equivalent to a succubus. The princesses may or may not be under your sway, or trying to contain or control you. Eating meat gave you power, and once you’d eaten the meat of every sentient race of the world, you’d become an anti-deity like Discord. Who the fuck was Discord? Many variations on similar themes. It doesn’t help that Twilight is your primary contact, in their eyes, and she’s is a living superweapon who exists more or less to deal with dangerous unknown entities like yourself by way of reforming them. One of the guards helping you admitted he invented a couple himself, just to see how far they’d go. He was proud to report the Commander himself believes one of his fables, but wouldn’t tell you what it is. You’re starting to understand the meaning of ‘whimsy’, and how the Royal Guard was the greatest concentration of it in Equestria, when they were off duty. Once you’d warmed up to the idea, you got them back with some carefully-curated facts and myths from Earth. Humans and ponies had lived side by side for most of history, but ponies became obsolete. You refused to elaborate on what obsolete ment. You got some good reactions when you showed them the height of an average horse, and talk about how humans would ride on their backs all the time without phasing them. You never did, of course, because they were all obsolete, remember? You even spiced it up with what little art you had on your phone of knights and such; a couple of them want full body armor now. You told them about the Four Horsemen, though you may have tweaked the colors a bit to something they could relate to better, like certain royal coats, just to get them back for the one saying how you were going to end their world. You told them about centaurs, which apparently spooked one of them, who told you about some ancient enemy. The others treated him like a fucking nerd, so you’re not sure if this is historical or fiction. You’ll have to look through Celestia’s private collection for it, later. For now, though, the fun’s over. You sit against one wall, watching the only thing that hadn’t been moved. Your original workbench is still in the center of the room. The generator you and Twilight built still sits on the shelf underneath it, humming away under its sound-dampening dome. Frequently, a snapping sound can be heard despite the dome, as a bright spark flashes inside one end. After so much constant use, the commutator is showing some wear. You’ll have to replace it with a spare Twilight duplicated, when you move it. The sparking spooked the guards, who refused to touch it, though one pointed out it’d be difficult to dispel the soundproofing dome if Twilight was the one who’d cast it. Watching it was relaxing, in a way, even though the sparks did not fall into a regular pattern. It was nice to focus on something external, even though it let your thoughts drift to some less than pleasant subjects. You were looking forward to Twilight’s return today, but knowing she was some sort of weapon of last resort bothered you in more ways than one. Is that why Celestia first introduced you two? You know it’s not the only reason she sticks around – you know her well enough to appreciate her genuine interest in what you do – but it could still be one reason among several. Besides that, what if she gets hurt doing whatever it is she does? What would you do if she dies out there? On that note, death was another thing occupying your mind. You’ve caught some sort of thinking-about-mortality bug from the dream you’d spent with Celestia and Luna, a couple nights back. Seeing your name on a headstone was disconcerting and sobering, and it hurt knowing that the limitations of your body would let those who care about you down. Thinking about your place with them was uncomfortable in its own way. It probably wouldn’t look good for royalty to be romantically involved with another species. Immortality and the redundancy of three in one place meant heirs wasn’t a problem, but that was just one of the concerns. You’re still trying to wrap your head around the idea of it being okay to split your attention between both the mares who’ve expressed interest, let alone how to manage a relationship like that, and they both were still holding back on you besides. You’d been throwing yourself back into your work again to deal with it – or to avoid dealing with it, as usual for you – as unhealthy as you now realize it to be. This forced stop to open the new workshop today is probably for the best. You just know you have to leave something meaningful behind, before you die here. Your old dreams can have a new form. Maybe not one object you’ve touched, but many; you’ve done more design work on the articulated tiltrotor ‘wings’ for pegasi, but you’re waiting on anatomical measurements from Twilight. You weren’t putting all your eggs in that basket, though. You had something special in the works. From down the hall, you hear a pony approach. Not the measured strides of guards, but a trot. A quite lively one, too. All those terrible thoughts fade away, driven from your mind by those hoofbeats, for you know whose they are. By the time you’re off your butt and turned towards the door, Twilight appears. You spread your arms and kneel at the same moment she half-extends her wings, looking like they were just opening for a downstroke. She gallops all three strides to reach you, rearing back as you wrap her in a hug. She wraps her forelegs around your neck, and her wings around your body, nuzzling the side of your head and nickering. You can feel the metal talons on each of her wings on your shoulderblades. “Welcome back!” ”I missed you!” She pulls away from you and composes herself to what you’ve come to know as Proper Princess Poise. Not as calmly dominating in presence as Celestia, but prim in its own way. “I did not, however, miss teleporting between Ponyville and Canterlot twice a day.” “Yeah, well, long distance relationships suck.” She cocks her head at this, and you belatedly realize what you said. Getting ahead of yourself again. It feels more natural than it did before, though; progress. She didn’t even object. You reach out to tousle her mane around her horn, then stand up as she looks around the empty room. ”Where’d everything go?” “Oh, do I have a surprise for you. C’mon, follow me.” She follows you out of the room, adopting that bouncy trot you find so cute. “I’m surprised you’re still wearing those. Showing off the claws to your brother and his wife?” ”They were fascinated, though they questioned why I’d need them. Obviously, with magic and all. They understood I was just testing them, but honestly I haven’t taken them off the whole time.” “You even slept with them?” ”It took some getting used to, but yeah. I’d take them off every morning to preen my wings and readjust the straps, but I tried to wear them as much as possible, even though the power was disconnected a lot to save battery life. We need to know what heavy wear would do.” “I’m worried about your wings a lot more than the talons.” ”I’m fine. If you want to be sure, you can look when we get to wherever we’re going.” You two make your way through the palace, then out to a flattish area behind it. Turns out the guard had been much larger before Luna’s return. Made sense, when you thought about this reclusive tribe she’d brought back into the ponykind fold with her return, all of whom seemed to be devoted to her. The royal guard had shrunk by a third. Luna’s devotees, however, had claimed a cave system inside the mountain the palace is built near. These had apparently been their domain before her banishment, and they were more than happy to take the place up again. This had left several of the guard’s buildings dormant, and while many were torn down for materials to use for later maintenance on the rest, a couple had remained, now overgrown and forgotten. You walk towards a somewhat isolated barracks building with Twilight. Over the door, a stenciled sign reads WELCOME TO EARTH. When Twilight reads it, she starts bounding ahead of you towards the door. “Skies above, I didn’t know you were getting an upgrade!” “We just moved everything out this morning.” She stops inside the entryway, marveling at the room. The place is all now-pristine stonework, this first room being easily three times the size of your old shop. Shelving lines one wall, stacked with test equipment and various parts. Two massive stone tables sit in the middle of the room, with just enough space between them for you and Twilight to stand back to back. Or, back to rear. “I decided to make this common room the main lab. There’s a room that I suppose was a workout or dining area that we’ve cleared out to be a testing area. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the various individual rooms down the hall there, but I suppose they could be parts and material storage, as well as places for finished projects. I’ve taken over what I think was an office as my own bedroom. This little embassy also has the small adjacent grassy area, in case we want to test something outside. It’s not a lot, but it’s way better than what I had.” She turned all the way around in the room, before trotting off to inspect the rest of the small barracks building. “This is incredible! How did you convince them to let you have all this?” “Easy. I told them what we were planning.” She pokes her head back into view from down the hall. “They agreed?” “Well, agreed to let me prove it’s worth something. If I can get them proof of concepts, they’ll take things as they come. Now get over here and let me look at your wings.” She returns to the main room, and climbs up on a chair near where you’re sitting. She puts her back to you and extends both her wings out. You pull your chair up right behind hers, so your legs are on either side of her chair. Then you gently pull one of her wings back towards you to examine. She’s managed to find a way to arrange the straps better between her primary feathers so there’s minimal interference, with the upshot that the straps are almost entirely hidden from view. It takes you some effort to undo them all without causing undue discomfort, but eventually you have it off her and placed on the table beside you, followed by the other. “What’s with this fabric wrapped around them?” ”Oh, a friend of mine works with textiles and tailoring. I had her make that as a protective covering. It’s water-resistant, too.” “When were you going to tell me?” ”Whenever you asked.” “Hah. Got me there.” You look over a wing in detail, now, picking through the feathers she’d strapped the claw near, making sure everything looked proper, compared against other feathers that wouldn’t have been impacted by the straps. Twilight’s fidgeting a bit with your ministrations, but isn’t saying anything about them. “So was this some official business, or just visiting family?” ”Just a visit. I’ve always been close to my brother, and Cadance and I go way back. And I like to keep up with Flurry, she’s growing so fast. She’s important, you know, besides just being a princess herself. The first natural-born alicorn we’ve known, she’s amazing.” “Wait, alicorns can be born? Celestia told me you all become that way. That you three were unicorns, and Cadance a pegasus.” ”Yeah, and that’s all we knew, until she and my brother had their foal.” Shit. Maybe the heirs thing was a problem after all. “Hey, uh, can we talk about something?” ”Aren’t we already?” “No, uh, I mean, specifically. There’s been a lot on my mind.” Twilight turns herself in her chair, looking at you with concern. “What’s wrong?” “This is my first time learning about Flurry being, well one of you. I, uh, you know if we ever decide to, er, go through with this… We’re probably not that compatible, being two different species from two different worlds.” ”I’d figured, Anon.” “And that doesn’t bother you? If Flurry’s an alicorn, that’s an incredible opportunity. I’d think you’d want to, y’know, try for some of your own. Perpetuate the tribe, or something. I wouldn’t be able to do that for you, if you decide to end up with me.” She looks at you and smiles. “It’s fine. It’s not like the ones already around are going anywhere.” “Yeah, uh. Immortal. Right. About that-” ”Anon-” “You already know humans don’t last forever; our life cycle and such was one of the things in my arrival interview you said you’d read, and-” ”Anon, don’t-” “It doesn’t feel right expecting you to-” ”ANON!” Twilight’s wings are still folded, but lifted off her back, angled forward. Her head’s dropped a bit, quite close to you. Her eyes flick between the two of yours. “Anon, just… calm down. You act like I haven’t been thinking about this myself. It’s okay. Once everything’s settled out, we’ll take it as it comes. I haven’t thought a lot about foals. Maybe I’d want one someday, but if you’re my stallion, that decision’s already made.” “Just doesn’t feel right. I’d be tying you down, in every sense of the word. Until I’m not anymore.” You chuckle weakly and lower your gaze to the floor. “I guess my mortality’s a blessing, looking at it that way.” She scoots forward on her seat and drops her head so she’s looking up at you, blocking your floor-bound gaze. “Don’t say that. It’s our choice, and we’ll make of it what we can.” Her breathing’s matched yours, in those pauses between speech. It’s a strange sensation, but you think you know what it means, now. It’s comforting. ”So please, don’t worry about yourself on my account. I had a lot of the same thoughts you did. When I was away, I talked to Cadance about them. I’m a scholar, Anon; if I have questions, I ask an expert and study.” “Heh. I can’t imagine what she must have thought of that.” ”She wants to meet you.” You pull your head back in surprise. Twilight scoots forward a little more and raises her head again, smiling as she follows you back. ”Really! What did you think she’d say?” “I don’t think you’d appreciate hearing it.” She laughs gently. “No, probably not. Your strange alien nature aside, Anon, her and Shining weren’t that different. She’d already become an alicorn by the time they were dating; she’d gotten her horn even younger than I’d gotten my wings. My brother and I had some status due to our positions, which elevated our family a bit, but we weren’t nobility, let alone the royalty she was entitled to by her achievement.” Her expression falters. “She’s going to outlive my brother, too. As am I.” That sadness lasts only a moment. “But they worked out. They’re exclusive, that’s Cadance’s right as a princess, and I don’t think either of them would want it any other way. I’ve never met another pair more in love with each other than they.” She recovers her smile. “You should sit down with my brother, when they arrive. You two could have a lot to talk about.” You crack a thin smile, yourself. “Meeting your family, huh? It sounds like you’ve already decided what you want. How long until I have to face your parents?” ”I still intend to wait a bit on everything. The social obstacles aside – knowing who else wants to claim you – we’re still feeling things out, so taking things slow is just smart, but...” Her face is still close to yours. Very close. Not that she can see, with her eyes closed now. Wait, hold on, you’re experienced enough to recognize this. How the fuck do you even kiss a pony? Instead of the usual head maneuvering, though, Twilight just slowly, very gently, pushes her nose into yours. She holds it there, for several moments, your breathing again synced with each other. You’re not sure if it’s just carbon dioxide rebreathing or something more, but your chest feels awfully light. When she pulls her head back, she’s smiling, but her head’s tilted down, and her cheeks have that strange undercoat coloration you’ve been assuming is blushing. Her demeanor looks somewhere between demure and embarrassed. ”Your standard, before I left, was ‘does it make you happy when I do?’ So I ask you, does it?” You smile back at her. “Well, I sure felt something that I wouldn’t mind feeling again.” ”As you said then, that’s enough for me.” You hold each other’s gaze with your soft smiles for some time. Then some more time. It’s getting awkward. Come on, you’re smoother than this. How did you even score back home if you were this much an artless mess? You two break eye contact and look away at the same time. “Well, uh, now that you’ve seen the place, lets break it in, huh?” Her eyes, now wide as dinnerplates, snap back to you, along with her ears. Her wings flinch outward at strange angles. “I got some plans I want to go over with you, I need your help refining them. I’ve drawn up initial designs for the replacement wings, and other limbs to boot. And I’ve made some revisions to what we were thinking for sensory apparatuses. And we gotta move the generator out of the old room, sometime today.” She relaxes again, adjusting her wings then refolding them. You wink at her. “Taking things slow is just smart, Twilight.” She shakes her head. “Colts.”
