“And after the three villains were defeated, Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends lived happily ever after.” A soft smile crossed Argyle’s muzzle, and he let the cover of the book fall closed. He looked down at Sunny, who smiled sleepily up at him, her cardboard horn askew.
“I love you, Daddy,” she mumbled, already halfway to dreamland, and he leaned down to kiss her on the brow.
“I love you too, sugarlump,” he whispered into the pink tresses of her mane. Then he got to his hooves and turned slowly for the door.
She mumbled something else and he turned back, hoof already on the light switch. “What was that, baby?”
She sighed happily from beneath her mound of duvet and pillows, the Twilight Sparkle doll wedged firmly between her forelegs. “Happy birthday, Daddy,” she said softly, before rolling away to bury her face deeper in the comforter.
Argyle smiled. “Thank you, Sunny. It’s been a wonderful day.”
A soft snore was his only answer. Still with that thoughtful smile on his face, Argyle pulled the door shut and slipped his own fluffy wings off. He folded them carefully and placed them just outside Sunny’s room, in case she wanted them in the morning.
Then, his fatherly duties complete for the night, he turned to head up to his study. The stairs creaked out their familiar, comforting rhythm beneath his hooves, worn smooth by generation after generation passing over their silky wooden surface.
The night air flowed in clear and cold through an open window, and Argyle couldn’t help the small shiver that passed over him as he emerged into his sanctuary. The lamp, taller than he was by a head and a half, revolved on its base with a reassuring regularity. Argyle’s sketches and notes, pinned to every available wall and surface, rustled quietly in the night breeze.
His hooves tracing the familiar path, Argyle settled himself at his desk and pulled his most recent notebook over to himself. He had spent the last few nights reading a fascinating book a wandering trader had sold him. It was on the lost culture of Yakyakistan, an ancient civilisation in the frozen wastes to the north of what had once been Equestria. The book had been written by a pony scholar, and the hints dropped by the author about her own life in ancient Equestria were almost more compelling than the information on the yaks themselves.
Argyle tried to smile as he turned to the correct page of the book and readied his own notebook, quill and ink to jot down anything interesting he might find. But somehow the expression wouldn’t come, and he found he couldn’t settle to the task.
He gazed out of the window, watching the lamplight flash periodically across the waves below, dark and fathomless. The peace of his evening with Sunny was already fading, and Argyle was left with a vague discontent that seemed to haunt him every year on his birthday.
Everything was as it should be, but somehow he still felt strangely hollow. It had been the same for almost as long as he could remember. A subtle malaise that dogged his steps once a year — a persistent feeling that an indefinable something was missing.
Perhaps it was just that he missed his family. He had Sunny, of course, his little angel and the light of his life — but everything had been worse since Morning Bright had…had gone. She had been the darling of Maretime Bay, beloved by everypony, and without her…Argyle was just the strange stallion Morning had brought back from the north, living alone with his daughter in the lighthouse on the hill.
Argyle’s own family were far away, deep in the snowy lands to the north — not so far north as Yakyakistan had been, all those centuries ago, but still further north than most living ponies would ever travel today. Argyle remembered his childhood well; days spent cuddled before the log fire with his parents, nights spent telling stories to the other village foals, snow ponies built and igloos dug in the garden, punctuated by brief flashes of a wintry summer.
But before he knew it a beautiful orange-coated mare had burst into his life, bringing the sun with her as surely as she stole his heart. Morning Bright was an adventurer, bringing friendship to the northern earth ponies — and to Maretime she had brought a northern pony, the stallion she made her husband.
Argyle didn’t regret his choices. He loved his wife, even now, and he loved their daughter more than words could say. Sunny was like her mother; a creature of the summer. She loved the sun and the grass and the rich lands of the south. She would not be happy in his homeland, and she was far too young to attempt the journey anyway. No, their home and their life was here, and here they would stay.
But despite his confidence, Argyle still found himself gazing up at the north star, suspended high above the sea, just as it always was, and wishing for…for something.
He must have fallen asleep like that, because when a blast of icy wind awoke him, the moon had climbed much higher in the sky, and the waves were lashing the cliffs below. Papers, torn loose from their moorings like boats in a storm, swirled listlessly around the room. The air was frigid and Argyle realised with a start that he was utterly frozen. He jumped to his hooves and hastened to close the window. He should have been in bed hours ago; Sunny was an early riser, and experience had proven that she was not against jumping on his head with all four of her sharp little hooves if he didn’t get up quickly enough.
The wind howled as he trotted over to the open window, and a particularly harsh gust of wind yanked at his mane and the medallion around his neck as he fought the casement shut. Argyle grunted and shoved — clearly all these days in his study were not doing his muscles any favours — and as he finally managed to slam the latch into place a sudden flash of yellow light lit up the room.
Blinking and rubbing at his eyes, pushing his glasses aside to do so, Argyle stumbled backwards. Lightning? Now? It was bizarre; the wind might be high, but the skies were clear. It didn’t make any sense.
He took one more pace backwards, and then his leg collided with something that shouldn’t be there; something solid, and warm, and very, very tall.
Argyle froze in place. Somepony was in his house. Somepony was in his house. But who? Nopony from town cared enough to come and visit him, even on his birthday — and certainly not at three o clock in the morning.
“Argyle Starshine,” a voice said softly, and it was so rich and deep and full that Argyle knew at once that it could not come from pony lungs.
A small squeak of fear escaped his lips. Argyle was not a cowardly stallion, but he was a realist. He knew that his chances of taking on whatever sentient predator had broken into his home and winning were slim. But he had to try and distract it — had to try and cause enough of a ruckus that it would wake Sunny, and pray that she had the sense to flee down the hill and into the town, rather than coming up here to investigate.
Unless — unless — and here his blood ran cold — this thing had already gotten to Sunny? Dear Celestia, no. Not his baby. Please, goddesses, let her be spared, and he would do anything, endure anything — just let his Sunny live.
“Argyle Starshine,” the stranger said again, and her voice held a deep, ineffable sadness. “Will you not turn around and greet me?”
His breath hitching in his throat, his legs trembling with every step, Argyle obeyed. Perhaps if he complied, the monster would spare them both. He did not want to leave Sunny an orphan. She had lost enough for one lifetime.
His gaze was fixed firmly on the floor, but he saw the shining horseshoes first. Wrought of pure silver, titanium or some other unbelievably precious metal, they shone like starlight and curled up over the hooves and pasterns of the wearer, filigree and delicate swirls carved into every surface. They clothed legs of a frosty pale pink, longer than an antelope’s, and when a shivering Argyle followed those legs upwards, what he saw drove him to his knees.
An alicorn.
An alicorn, here in his study. A living goddess. Proof of everything; the legends he had studied for all of his life. All of them were real. For here was an alicorn.
“Your Majesty,” he whispered. Nopony had believed him. They had thought him a madman. But here she was — history made flesh. He should wake Sunny; this would be a dream come true for her as well as him.
“Argyle Starshine,” she said for the third time, and her voice was so filled with sorrow that Argyle thought his heart would break. What must this creature have witnessed — what must she have endured, to imbue her beautiful voice with so much sadness?
“Y-yes, Your Majesty,” he answered, only now realising how strange it was that she knew his name.
She looked down at him through a sea of soft pink and purple curls, each one moving slowly with its own breeze, though the window was long since closed. Her pale blue eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “Do you know me, Argyle Starshine?”
He stared up into those huge blue eyes, as deep and fathomless and blue as the ocean itself, and he wished with all his heart that he could answer yes — if only to alleviate a little of that sadness, if only for a moment.
But he did not know her. He had never seen that soft pink-white face before, as youthful and as ageless as only an immortal could be. Her fur was almost white, but she did not look like the legends said the Sun Eternal had looked. Her mane contained only half a rainbow.
“I…I don’t,” he said at last.
A single one of those tears brimmed over at last, and wended a solitary path down her smooth, unlined cheek. “Of course. Of course.”
He bit his lip, still wrestling with the question of whether or not he should go and wake his daughter. To meet an alicorn was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — once in a thousand lifetimes — but this creature must be here with some specific, world-rending purpose in mind. What else could cause a goddess such distress?
“Let me…fix that,” was all the alicorn said. And then she lit her horn, yellow-gold magic curling around it, and then a single bolt of power flashed out and hit Argyle square between the eyes.
“Gah!” Still half-bent into a bow, he staggered and fell onto his side, his head swimming as unwanted, foreign images forced themselves into his mind. One vision after another took him, leaving him utterly incapable of defending himself, no matter what the alicorn might have in mind.
Argyle had grown up far away, deep in the snowy lands to the north — further north than most living ponies would ever travel. He remembered his childhood well; days spent cuddled before the log fire with his parents. His father, a grey-coated unicorn with the kindest eyes. And — and his mother, a vast presence with wings wide enough to blot out the stars and a horn taller than he was. A mane that billowed in a wind of its own creation and a heart full of love. A heart on her flank, too, a cutie mark exactly like the broken crystal she kept beside her throne. A heart full of stories — of the past, of the place their home had once been, of his grandparents and his great-aunt, of her friends the heroes. Argyle remembered those long winter nights, curled up close with his parents, listening wide-eyed to his mother’s tales. When Aunt Twilight fought Tirek — when Aunt Twilight saved the breezies — when Aunt Twilight learned how to make friends.
He remembered, too, when Morning Bright came. How she fell through the ceiling, followed by a huge sled packed full of her supplies — how shocked she had been at the crystal wonderland that lay beneath the frozen wastes.
He remembered showing her his home. The hidden city within the glacier, the palace at its heart. The beautiful, echoing, lonely chambers where he had lived his life.
She was an explorer, and she made him long to explore. She filled his head and she filled his heart with her stories, tales of summer skies and flower meadows and the camaraderie of other ponies. And unlike his mother’s stories, hers were real. The ponies she spoke of weren’t all dead and gone. It took him time, and it cost him pain, but when she said that she was going home, he knew that in the end he must follow her. He wanted to go and live the stories. To see what it was like.
In a breaking voice, his mother had told him what it would cost. The world outside was too different. There was no place there for beings like her. The ponies out there did not believe in alicorns, did not understand them — and that which they could not understand, they would destroy.
“I understand,” he said, though he had not understood at all. How could he grasp then what it would cost?
Her blue eyes had filled with tears, but she had accepted his decision. She and his ageing father must stay here, where it was safe. Their location could not be revealed. The secrets the last alicorn had shared with her son must stay buried, and nopony could know. Not even Argyle.
He had bowed his head. He told her, again, that he understood what it must cost. He asked her to help him. To make the changes that would allow him to go with the mare he loved.
When he awoke, his memories were gone, altered into some pleasant fiction that would satisfy Morning’s kin and the world beyond. His true parents had vanished, left beneath the ice along with the horn that he had been born with.
His mother had been true to her word.
Argyle gasped for air, pulling in one shuddering breath after another, his mouth full of the taste of bile and his fur drenched with tears and sweat.
His every joint aching, he pulled himself to his hooves and looked up at her. “M…Mother? Mom?”
Only then did she truly begin to cry.
“Happy birthday, my baby,” she said, and Argyle finally began to weep in earnest.
“Mom,” he said again, and she opened her arms and he climbed into them, as small as a foal compared to her regal form.
“A-and Father?” he whispered.
He felt, rather than saw, the shake of her head. He pulled in another shaky breath and shut his eyes. His head swam with freshly returned memories, and to his horror, there it was. Six years ago, only two years before Sunny was born, on the strangely empty day that came once a year, was a new memory.
“Your father is gone, my darling. He wanted you to know how much he loved him.”
“Tell me,” his mother murmured, releasing him from her embrace, “Tell me about your year. What have you been studying? How is Sunny?”
“I — I—” Still reeling, he searched for the words. But Sunny grounded him. She always did. “She’s bright, M-Mom. She’s so bright. She’s clever, and funny, and kind—” his throat grew tight again. “—Just like Morning.”
“I would like to look in on her, before I go.” His mother’s voice trembled with suppressed emotion. “I…I have missed you so much. Both of you.”
Argyle’s breath caught in his throat, and he gave her a tight, watery smile. “I missed you too, Mom,” he said, and though he had known it only for a minute, it was no less true.
She smiled down at him, and for a second the sadness seemed to leave her eyes. “How is your work going?” she asked, glancing toward the window. “Do the ponies here…listen?”
Was that an edge of hope in her tone? Argyle felt a flutter in his own breast. She had lived a thousand years alone beneath the glaciers, and still she hoped. He sucked in a breath, and shut his eyes for a moment, swimming in the sudden clarity.
He knew now what he worked for, why he believed, at his core, that ponies could be reunited. In his waking life, in the dream that he truly woke from only once a year, he believed with a deep-seated passion that ponies could be better than they were. But only on these nights, when his mother lifted the fog from his mind, could he see why.
Ponies could be better because she had told him so. Her Aunt Twilight had made it so. And Argyle himself was living proof. The migraines that plagued him, the inexplicable stabbing pain in his skull that crippled him on random days — beneath his unblemished skin, sealed with alicorn magic, was a wound that would never heal. Argyle was a unicorn, and he had loved an earth pony so much that he chose to change his very nature.
“Yes,” he said, and he knew now that it was true. No doubts could assail him now that he remembered. “Or at least, they will.”
“That’s wonderful,” his mother replied. Her gaze flicked once more to the window, and she drew in a breath at some imperceptible lightening of the sky. “I should go.” She shifted her hooves, but reluctance was evident in every feather of her wings.
Though it still felt new and strange, he reached out and pressed his hoof to hers. The titanium — no, he remembered now: starmetal, from a meteorite that fell to Equus eight hundred years ago — was cold beneath his hoof. “I wish you could stay here with us.” He wished Sunny could know her. A grandmother was not a mother, but it was…it would be something.
Her eyes slid shut, and her lips trembled. “I…you know why I can’t, Argyle.” She looked back down at him, her eyes a sudden, shocking blue, and her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. “Unless — unless you’ve changed your mind…?”
“Changed my mind?” he echoed blankly.
“Last year,” she prompted in a low voice, suddenly seeming almost ashamed to meet his eyes. “I asked you last year…a-after Morning…”
“Oh.” Unbidden, the memory swam to the surface, like a fish surfacing from the bottom of the pond where it had skulked for years.
“Would…would you like to come home, Argyle? You and Sunny both.”
For a moment, he pictured it. No more unanswered questions. No more research, never quite grasping the reason why he felt so driven to search for the knowledge he had lost. No more empty birthdays. And his mother, no longer alone. The echoing crystal halls alight once more with the laughter of a foal.
But then he tried to imagine Sunny in that place. Bright, vital little Sunny Starshine, locked away in a tower beneath the ice, sealed in with the relics of things long dead.
And the answer came to him as suddenly as the memory itself had done. “No, Mom. I’m…I’m so sorry; I know how lonely it is there. But we can’t…we can’t do that to Sunny. She needs to stay here, with Morning’s people. She needs to have friends. Real friends.”
His mother’s mouth twisted in a small, heartbroken smile. “You’re very like your great-aunt, you know, Argyle. When I first saw you, that was the very first thing I thought. You look just look her.”
Argyle gave her a tremulous smile of his own and touched his hoof to the medallion that hung around his neck. “I think I’m a lot like you, too, Mom.”
Another tear slid down the immortal cheek of Princess Flurry Heart, and she pressed one single, icy kiss to his cheek.
“Goodbye, my son,” she whispered, and before Argyle could open his mouth to reply, the yellow light flashed again.
And then Argyle was sitting, as he always did after Sunny went to sleep, alone in his study, watching the waves break against the cliffs far below, and wondering why his birthday always left him feeling so…so hollow.
