Admittedly, he was now a bit older than in those images, but then again so was I. Of course he would have changed. He was now a decade older than he had been when they were taken, at least. I stood there, a confusing mixture of emotions whirling in my heart.

"Oh my hoofness," I said quietly, still trying to process what was going on. "It's him."

"Mom? What's going on?"

I had rather hoped it was obvious. After so long away from each other, I had finally found my one true love once again.

Hold on a minute. What had I just said?

One true love?

I hadn't even known this pony apart from a photograph and some second hand evidence. And yet somehow it felt as though I had spent a lifetime with them. Emotions and feelings utterly alien to my mind were arriving, and as much as reason was telling me this was nonsensical there was a part of me that wanted to run with it.

After all, back in the previous world I hadn't exactly been lucky with love. Love was something that seemed to escape me, as I struggled with socialising a lot.

And yet now the world was handing me a romance ready to go. A stable life. A chance to start anew.

Who cared if the genders were switched? If this was as it all seemed, I had finally found a significant other.

I was a little surprised when the Colonel spoke. "Your Majesty, should we let him closer?"

I noticed Zipp had moved a bit, presumably to let this figure forward, so I glanced back and forth. The first thing I noticed was that we were on a cliff edge. And it was a bit thin. Not exactly the most suitable of places for a romantic reunion, so I thought for a bit and then had an idea.

"Perhaps we should avoid doing this on a rocky ledge where there isn't much clearance," I said. "After all, it would be a shame if this reunion were cut short by falling off a mountain." Not to mention it would be a disaster for figuring out who would take the throne next. I doubt Pipp would be quite ready for the pressures of ruling a country, after all.

"Capital idea," Golden said, glancing over to one of his soldiers. "In fact, I know of just the facility we can use for getting caught up on our respective pasts. I imagine we have a lot to catch up on."

He looked over to one of the soldiers with him, the one who had spotted us first. "Captain Feldsturm, lead ourselves and the guests into The Nest."

After some movement we were on our way, and soon vanished from view from the outside world and into a maze of tunnels. These tunnels were seemingly full of wires and pipes, and appeared to serve some sort of purpose. Though was it military or industrial in nature? It wasn't all that clear, so I was keen to find out the answer to that one.

Lights glowed on the walls, lighting our way through the tunnels of this facility, and we turned many corners until we reached what appeared to be a central room. I spotted the room was filled with damaged aircraft, so this was some sort of airbase. But I hadn't spotted a runway on the way in, so I was very puzzled.

"Launch ramp, Your Majesty," one of the soldiers explained. "The aircraft would have been loaded onto a ramp, then connected to a catapault. This would then have launched the aircraft into the air at speed, eliminating the need for a runway. Allows us to keep the brain fryers off guard!"

Well, that was another one. It seemed that 'brain fryer' was another derogatory slur used for unicorns, alongside 'mind readers.' Based on my observations unicorns weren't able to do either.

Boy did we have our work cut out for us when this was all over.

In the meantime, we had stopped in what appeared to be a rest area. Tents and sleeping bags were set up on one side of the chamber, and on the other side were tables and what appeared to be food preparation facilities, useful if keeping an army fed. After all, an army marches on its stomach.

As we stopped, Golden turned to look at me, his face formed from the sort of happy smile two lovers would have after being separated for so, so long. "After all these years... I found you again," he said, his voice filled with joy. Well, why wouldn't they be? I was his wife, after all. "Merry... you're just as beautiful as the day I last saw you, all those years ago."

Well, things must be getting serious if he used my given name in front of others. Normally protocol required the use of titles instead of names. But this was hardly the place to be getting into niceties over small things like that.

We spent what felt like hours in that embrace, tears leaking down each other's faces. But as I say, not of sadness, but of joy. I also knew it was only a few minutes as I could see the base clock behind us.

After we were done, we stopped in position and talked for a bit about the facility, but we talked for a bit longer about how they managed to survive out here for all those years. Seems they are quite the resourceful bunch.

I did, however, detect a shift in tone partway through the conversation. "But enough about us," Golden said. "How are you two here?"

Well, time to spill the beans, so to speak. "Golden, there's been a coup in Zephyr Heights. Rogue portions of the military overthrew the government, and their leader is planning on bringing about the end of the world. I've been able to find allies to help up, so we were heading there when we got shot down."

"History truly does work in cycles," Golden mused.

What I was about to say was possibly the strangest sentence I had ever said. "I'm not asking you this next question as a ruler, but as your wife. Please... will you help us?" I never thought in all my years I would say that."

Luckily, Golden nodded. "Restoring order to our homeland and removing those who hurt you? Say no more. We're in."

Considering the supplies they had on hoof they put together a surprisingly good meal. We relaxed in the chairs after eating, whilst we all started swapping stories.

"How far things have come since I met you on the campus, eh?" Golden laughed. "I never thought I'd get the chance to meet royalty, and yet by the will of Faust there was a princess taking the same course as me. And get this- they wanted her to marry this stuffy duke from the north!"

Interesting. It seemed we met at university and I somehow wriggled my way out of an arranged marriage.

"I never knew that, sir," Opwinden said, as he glanced to his bottle. "Slightly emptier than before."

"Probably because you've been drinking from it," Zipp pointed out.

"Still, I'll always admire the way Merry succeeded in defying them. She bucked tradition and married for love- which surprised my parents, of course. In a few years I'd gone from nothing to a prince. But if what I recall of Zephyrina was anything to go by the apple didn't fall too far from the tree."

Princess marrying a commoner. Well, that's a satisfying inversion of the usual narrative. Normally it's the other way around in stories.

Once we were done, I headed to get my sleeping bag ready, before I suddenly spotted Golden heading for the exit. I put min down and decided to follow him out there, weaving down the tunnels in the same order I had arrived.

Once outside, I found him looking up at the night sky. "Stunning, isn't it?" he said, pointing a hoof upwards. "Imagine, for a moment, how long they have been there. The stars are the silent observers of the past of the universe, and yet the record of their stories survive in the light that we receive. In a sense, we are looking back into the past, as we always do."

He looked to me. "Did they ever get the observatory moved? The light pollution in Zephyr Heights was rarely low enough to do proper stargazing."

Truth be told I wasn't aware there was an observatory. Another thing to find- provided Gulfstream hadn't blown it up. "I'm not sure, actually."

Golden continued looking at the skies. "This is really a reminder of how small we truly are. Against the infinity of the cosmos, we are but specs, a player who frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. Shows it's important to value life, eh?"

He turned to me, his eyes filled with joy. "The skies may be beautiful... but they'll never be as beautiful as you."

Author's Note

Well, the big moment- we've met Haven's husband. Although the show isn't giving us any real hints about who he was, the fact she's openly dating again in MYM and TYT suggests he's either dead or they divorced quite a long time ago. Funnily enough, royal divorces are not unheard of; probably the most infamous was the separation of Prince Charles (Charles III) and Diana Spencer, partly for how very bitter it was. I am aware that this decision to have him alive sinks the AlphaHaven ship, but I still think this is an interesting narrative idea to follow.

The airbase launch system is inspired by an idea the British experimented with for interceptor aircraft in the 1950s. The theory was that an aircraft launched in this manner would be almost undetectable and wouldn't need a runway. Although the idea was never used, a similar system was used in many Cold War-era aircraft carriers. The English Electric Lightning also had a near vertical climb rate, so the system was somewhat unnecessary.

Seeing as a common trope of fairy tales is the 'prince marries a commoner' narrative, I thought it would be fun to do a gender inverted version. As historically noted, royalty were usually pushed to marry other royalty, which was a handy way of forging alliances. This is how, for example, most of the monarchs of Europe ended up related to one another, with Queen Victoria sometimes being referred to as 'the Grandmother of Europe.' It is only more recently that this restriction on the common folk has been lifted.