Whiteout

Princess Cadance was a morning pony, which would’ve been fine if Mi Amore Cadanza had been one too. For the Princess, every workday began at sunrise, and after years of dedicated service to the residents of the Crystal Empire, her internal clock had an alarm permanently set for the time near dawn where the adjective “crack” might come prefixed with “ass,” even on days when she technically didn’t have to be up until noon.

And Princess Cadance was fine with that—early to bed and early to rise, yadda-yadda-yadda, so on and so forth. But the thing was, Mi Amore Cadanza might rejoinder—muzzle probably buried in a twenty-ounce coffee mug with “I’M A WITCH I’M A BOSS” stenciled onto it—she was pretty healthy and wealthy already, and as her many interactions with the Empire’s landed gentry had made excruciatingly clear, wisdom was by no means a prerequisite for either.

And so the two metaphorical timberwolves inside her warred with each other, and the cute little roasteries in walking distance of the Crystal Palace stayed financially solvent. It was a tense relationship, but a functional one. At least, Shining Armor told her it was—and probably not just because she’d physically threatened him the last time he hadn’t.

To his credit, Shining was a dream of a husband most mornings, always rising before her and kissing her gently on the forehead before going to get his morning workout in. Even on days like today, when they both could’ve luxuriated in the soft—and, as they’d reestablished the night before, springy—bed provided for them in one of Ponyville Castle’s guest suites, he was already up and about by the time she awoke, carrying a steaming cup of dark roast and an endorphin-fueled glow. One thing both timberwolves agreed on, at least: a stallion bearing coffee and baring his chest could do anything to either of them he damn well pleased.

“Morning, Cady,” he said as she groggily sat up, his magical aura bumping against hers as he passed the coffee mug over to her. “How’d you sleep?”

“Rock-like,” she mumbled as she took her first sip, waiting a moment for the first jolt of caffeine to hit her brain before continuing. “Is Flurry up yet?”

“Figured I’d, uh… let her sleep,” Shining said, putting on a toothy grin a second too late. Cadance smiled too. Shining was a great dad, eternally supportive and proud of the young mare they’d raised together, but the “mare” part still threw him off his rhythm sometimes. With how much he’d doted on Flurry when she was small, he could be forgiven a bit of discomfort with what her not-so-small self got up to after dark.

“I’ll go check on her,” Cadence said with a knowing smirk. “Can you get breakfast?”

Shining didn’t bother hiding his relief. Breakfast, he could handle. “Egg sandwich over medium, pepper jack and grits?” he asked.

Cadence leaned forward and pecked him on the lips. “You know me so well,” she said once they parted. Shining smiled, offered a mock salute, and went off on his mission. Cadence, after a big slurp of coffee and a vertebrae-popping stretch, started on her own.

Flurry’s quarters were a bit of a hike from Cadance’s, and had been since the younger Princess had turned fourteen and become mortified that her biological parents lived on the same planet as her. Nowadays, it was more a matter of courtesy between adult family members: neither told the other about their plans for any particular evening, and neither felt the need to know.

At least, that was how it was supposed to work. But every time they came to Ponyville, Cadance couldn’t help but snoop a bit—not because of what she thought she might find out, but because of what she already knew.

Sure enough, a telltale flutter arose in her chest the moment she rounded the corner and got in eyeshot of the door to Flurry’s room, and the feeling only got stronger with each step forward. By the time Cadance grasped the doorknob and cracked the door open, the sensation was overwhelming, radiating out of the darkened space beyond like heat from a roaring fire.

Flurry was fast asleep in bed, tucked under covers striped by morning light poking through the half-drawn curtains over the window. A sturdily-built pegasus stallion with a beige coat and a blown-out brown mane lied behind her, forelegs wrapped tightly around her torso and chin pressed the top of her head.

The sight of her daughter sharing a bed with another pony was hardly a new one, or even a particularly rare one. But this wasn’t just any stallion she was with now, and it wasn’t Cadance’s eyes that told her so. It was her heart—or rather, Flurry’s heart, and the waves of ephemeral energy it gave off.

The same energy that Cadance sensed every time she passed a couple cuddling on a park bench or sharing a sandwich at a café table: love, raw and pure, so thick in the air around both slumbering ponies that even someone without Cadance’s special talent should have been able to feel it.

She’d been so excited the first time she sensed that spark coming from her daughter—years ago, on a train ride back from Ponyville, when Flurry had fidgeted and stared out the window and dodged every prying question from her mother about whether she’d enjoyed the Summer Sun Celebration and the fireworks show after. But of course, as Cadance had reminded herself when they’d disembarked back home, teenage love was its own unique beast, wild and passionate and liable to flit from one fixation to the next with little warning or fanfare.

Predictably, the same spark returned—not quite as strong, but present nonetheless—when Flurry talked to a cute mare at a concert some weeks later, and then when she hit it off with a colt who’d asked her to a spring dance at school, and Cadance thought she’d been wise to think little more of it. Until, that is, they returned to Ponyville for the next Summer Sun Celebration with that colt from school in tow, and the spiny lump of despair that opened inside Flurry when they arrived almost knocked Cadance off her hooves.

They both skipped the festivities altogether that year. Flurry had vanished after dinner with Princess Twilight and her friends, and Cadance had found her alone in her room, completely beside herself, wailing into her mother’s chest as soon she sat down next to her that she’d ruined everything and he hated her now. Not the boy she’d brought along from home, but the one she’d left behind here—the one she’d loved, and then tried to forget, and now lost forever because she wasn’t patient enough to deserve him.

And now that colt was a stallion, and Flurry was a mare, and they still played this game with each other every time royal business brought them close together. Flurry had had other partners in the years since, of course, some that she’d even stayed with long enough for Cadance to meet, but the relationships never lasted, and the spark never burned so brightly as it had on that train ride back from Ponyville.

But even now, after so many encounters with each other that became less and less subtle over the years—seriously, Cadence would need to talk with Flurry later about being slightly more restrained at a gala for a Friendship School, of all things—their distinct, discreet sparks never combined into a fire. The obvious connection between the two of them remained unspoken, for reasons Cadance could only guess at. Shame? Fear? Sheer impotent momentum? Whatever it was, it was certainly consistent—and at least partially because of that, it was quite frankly exhausting.

Another thing both timberwolves inside her agreed upon: situations like this were the worst part of the unique position she held. Cadence knew better than anypony that you couldn’t force love, even between ponies who already felt it for each other. No matter how hard you hinted or how repeatedly you shoved them together, in the end love had to be a decision two creatures made for and with each other, and sometimes you couldn’t do anything but watch two hopeless lovebirds be hopelessly in love in perfect parallel to each other, never intersecting and never making that final essential choice.

Stars help her, Cadence had tried anyway. She’d dragged Shining away to insufferable afterparties, whispered in the right ears to get just the right catering service hired for various local events, even one time arranged a minor diplomatic incident just for an excuse to stop overnight in Ponyville on the way back from fixing it. The Deervish still had a testy relationship with the Crystal Empire to this day because of it—and Flurry still hadn’t come clean about her feelings, and nor had the colt she so desperately adored.

Cadance sighed quietly, sipped her coffee, and gently shut the door to Flurry’s room again. This was getting a little ridiculous. She needed a new approach.

The so-called Princess of Love finished her coffee just as she reached Ponyville Castle’s guest kitchen-slash-breakfast nook, and since the bottom of her mug had held no brilliant insights on how to get her kid to stop being so dumb, she figured it couldn’t hurt to see where a second round got her. Just as she finished stirring a lump of sugar into her refilled cup, she heard a knock at the door separating this private area from the Castle proper. Cadance cracked a wry smile. She had a feeling she knew who her unexpected guest might be.

Sure enough, she opened the door to find a compact unicorn mare standing outside, looking like she’d been awake and working for a couple hours that day already. A neat blue bow held her frizzy orange mane away from her face, and her body—lithe and hard, compressed like a diamond under constant pressure—told a story of somepony who knew herself and what she could do better than anypony around her, and wasn’t shy of showing it off when the situation called for it.

Put simply, she was hot in a way that terrified stallions and unseated mares from their conceptions of themselves. It was a good look, Cadance thought. She really made it work for her.

“Morning,” said Pumpkin Cake, one-fourth of Cadance’s favorite Ponyville catering service and twin sibling to someone her daughter knew very well. “Is my idiot brother here?”

“Yes, he is,” Cadance replied, her tone familiar and familiarly worn out.

“Are they still pretending they’re not obsessed with each other?”

“Seems like it.”

Pumpkin’s eye roll came off as more of a reflex than a gesture of genuine frustration. This wasn’t the first time she’d made this early-morning walk across Ponyville, or even the first time it had included more or less this same conversation with Cadance. “Figures,” she grumbled. “Just hose him off and send him to the Corner once they get up.”

“Shouldn’t be long now,” Cadence told her, before gesturing with her head towards the breakfast nook. “Join me for coffee?”

Pumpkin shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll take green tea if you have it.”

Ponyville Castle did have green tea, and Pumpkin took it black and near-boiling hot. She sipped her drink slowly once she sat down across the table from Cadance, not to savor it but seemingly so she didn’t lose herself inside it, like she knew the moment she relaxed would be the moment somepony interrupted her. Secretly, Cadence found her fascinating: a perfect stereotype of a gum-cracking take-no-crap small business owner, but a little too perfect, like it was an air she was simply accustomed to taking on rather than who she really was.

Hiding a bit behind her own coffee mug, Cadence let her innate magic do its thing and sate her curiosity. Vague visions that were more like feelings flooded through her: black rubber, white feathers, metal and pleather and shamed depraved moans—and Pumpkin behind, above, and all over them. Yeah, that tracked. Lust magic wasn’t as perceptible or as potent as love, but it sure painted a pretty picture sometimes.

“So how was the reception?” Pumpkin asked, breaking the silence. “Last night, I mean. I wasn’t there. Held down the fort at the Corner.”

“It was good,” Cadence politely replied. “The food was incredible. As always.”

Pumpkin allowed herself a small, proud smile. “If you’re talking about the main course, that’s all Pound. Dumb as he can be sometimes, he’s a genius over a stovetop.”

“I’ve always preferred dessert, actually,” Cadence said, smirking a bit herself. Pumpkin’s smile grew. The feelings in Cadance’s head were slightly less vague now—and a bit more pink and purple in hue.

“Me too,” Pumpkin said, and then she sipped her tea and settled herself down. She needn’t have, though. Cadance was used to being lusted after, and frankly relished any time it wasn’t a self-centered stallion imprinting his painfully boring tastes on her.

After a minute or so of shared silence, Pumpkin sighed, and Cadance knew all too well why. “This is so stupid,” she muttered. “They’re so fucking stupid.”

“Love can be complicated,” Cadance said, with as little conviction as she could muster.

“Not this complicated,” Pumpkin replied. “They’ve been doing this for years, and they’re gonna keep doing it. And we just have to… let them.”

Now that was interesting: not Pumpkin’s frustration itself, but rather the source of it, the little flare of passion it inspired in her for an alicorn other than the one sitting nearby. It wasn’t love by any stretch, but perhaps there was more than one Cake family member who Flurry had strung along in her tempestuous young life.

And suddenly, Cadance had an idea. A terrible idea, even a downright manipulative one—but hey, what was love except mutually agreed deconstruction of the self? Or… something else like that. Fuck it. She wasn’t a poet. But she did want her daughter to be happy, and sometimes when love wasn’t enough to get someone there by itself, lust could help close the gap.

“What are you doing tonight?” Cadance asked Pumpkin, who blinked and furrowed her brow. She was sharp enough to know something was going on, but patient enough to let it play out a bit before acting on her instinct to stop it.

“Not much,” Pumpkin said. “Pound owes me an evening shift. Figured I’d get a couple drinks, maybe see a movie.”

“How does a party sound instead?” Cadance said, gears spinning in her brain as her idea crystallized into a plan. “Here at the Castle. You’d be our guest, of course.”

“Aren’t you going back to the Crystal Empire today?”

Cadance shrugged. “Politics move infamously slowly in Stalliongrad. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to delay our summit with them until next week.”

“What a pleasant coincidence,” Pumpkin intoned.

“What can I say? I like Ponyville. I think Flurry does too.”

Pumpkin set her mug down and leaned forward. “And what are you hoping Flurry likes about this town tonight?”

Cadance laid out her scheme and Pumpkin’s role in it, and the more in depth she went, the wider Pumpkin’s eyes got. When the Princess finished, Pumpkin took several seconds to respond.

“That is, uh…”

“Unconventional?” Cadance suggested.

“... a very polite way of putting it,” Pumpkin said, though she didn’t reject the idea immediately. Instead, she sat with it a bit longer, mulling it over, and then met Cadance’s eyes with complete sincerity in her gaze. “You really think this would work?”

“I know my daughter,” Cadance told her. “In some ways, better than she knows herself. And you know both of them.”

“Not quite in that way,” Pumpkin wryly remarked.

“You know what I mean. You’re a smart mare, and a capable one. If anyone could talk sense into both of them, it’s you.”

“Except with one of them, there wouldn’t be a lot of talking.”

“Well, whatever you feel is appropriate. You seem trustworthy too.”

Pumpkin chuckled, and Cadance could feel the mare’s more primal self going to war with her better judgment—and winning. Finally, she chuckled again and shrugged.

“No promises,” she said.

“Of course,” Cadance agreed. “But you’ll try?”

Pumpkin answered by tilting her head and smirking. “I’ll see how hard I need to.”

And with that, the matter was settled. Cadance sat back in her seat and swirled the last of her coffee around in its mug, preparing to gulp it down—and suddenly, Pumpkin laughed.

“Sorry,” she said once Cadance looked her way. “Just… it’s funny. Usually I don’t have this kind of conversation with a girl’s parents until after I fuck her.”

“I usually try to not have these conversations at all,” Cadance shot back, though not without a bit of mirth in her own tone. “In any event, I ought to be going. I need to check in with the Stalliongradian ambassador.”

“And I have a party to get ready for,” Pumpkin gamely replied. Both mares stood, and the shorter one made for the exit. Just before she slipped out of sight, Cadance called out to her.

“Oh, and Pumpkin?” she said, waiting until the young mare turned around before continuing. “Feel free to stop by anytime we’re in town, not just to pick up your brother. I could introduce you to my husband.”

Cadance packed every bit of implication she could into her expression, and Pumpkin caught it all and ran with it. “You could,” Pumpkin pointedly replied, and Cadance felt her desire so vividly that she shivered a bit as it radiated across the room towards her. Stars, this lithe little mare did know what she was doing—and in all likelihood, Flurry would have no idea what to do with her later. Exactly as planned.

Pumpkin left without another word, and Cadance—a bit breathless, despite herself—finished her coffee in a single swig. One last thing both timberwolves were on the same page about: she was great at this Princess of Love shit.