Regularly-Scheduled Tyranny

by Estee

Rating: teen
Tags: Drama, Misty, My Little Pony: A New Generation, Mane 5, Slice of Life
Length: 7097

Her mark says she's supposed to be capable of change. So why can't Misty get her internal clock off Opaline Time?

She isn't free. It's a prison sentence with furloughs, and how is she supposed to enjoy time away from the castle when she always has to go back? There's also wardens watching her on both ends and somehow, the pegasus is the less reasonable of the two. And when she's been doing the same things for as long as she can remember...

It's four a.m. That's when the servant polishes the throne room.

Maybe Misty Brightdawn wouldn't be cleaning. But the unicorn mare still doesn't know who that is.

(Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.)

Mark interpretation by Sol-R.

Published 2023-10-14 23:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2023-10-14 23:10:02 UTC

Milk Glass

The unicorn mare didn't want to be awake. 'Want' never had anything to do with it.

It was never completely dark in the Brighthouse, and she supposed that was fitting. If she were to look up (instead of keeping her head buried under twisted blankets, hoping the shadows would give her mind the hint), she would find a very soft shine coming from the ceiling: something just a little dimmer than starlight, which mostly served to show the ceiling was there.

The -- wrong ceiling --

-- there was no electricity involved in that radiance, nor had any purposeful enchantments been arranged to create it. From what her current, more voluntary host had said, purposeful enchantments were still extremely rare, and most of the functional ones came from truly ancient pieces which had responded to magic's return through starting to work again. The modern residents of Bridlewood were more prone to imbue power within the inanimate by pure accident: this was followed by trying to figure out exactly what they'd done and, for the stallion who'd essentially invented the Perpetual Pursuit Self-Kicking Horseshoes, how to make it stop doing that.

Nopony had enchanted this ceiling. But the beacon which made all of the magic work was directly above the sleeping area, and it had ways of making its presence known.

Purposeful, reliable magic was still rare -- here. She'd grown up surrounded by it, and so that was what she felt to be normal.

Being awake at four a.m. was also normal, and the mare dearly wished she could stop.

Polish the throne room.

She assumed it was four in the morning -- or rather, close enough for pony intents and purposes. Something which very much left alicorns out, because there were subjects upon which the unicorn mare had been given a rather thorough education. One of them was time.

And for those who had to spend their lifetime in operating on an alicorn's schedule, four in the morning didn't exist.

Or rather, it only existed as a concept. You couldn't point to a single second on the clock and say 'That's four a.m.' because as far as the alicorn was concerned, a full second was granting far too much leeway. The alicorn had many powers and in the verbal category, one of the more subtly devastating was the capacity for slicing time. What you'd thought was the right moment was actually a half-second late. Any attempts to continue closing in would be trying to pinpoint a target within a temporal smear. You could be within thousands of a second and it wouldn't matter. The unicorn knew about femtoseconds, mostly as a runup to zeptoseconds. It was possible to slice time into infinitely finer gradients and still never, ever wake up at exactly the ordered hour of four a.m. Which made the unicorn mare into a failure (again), and...

She had lived in a world of finely-carved moments, and still believed herself to have discovered the shortest measurable duration of time which could possibly exist. It was the exact interval required for the alicorn to become disappointed in her.

Polish the throne room.

That was what she was supposed to do after waking up at four a.m. Or rather, after failing to meet the exact temporal requirement, because the inanimate had the patience which the alicorn lacked and furthermore, wasn't going to go polishing itself.

She was still in bed --
-- she wasn't supposed to be --

-- the throne room, the castle, everything she knew was on the other side of a barrier: a blockade which only existed for the alicorn. The unicorn mare didn't need to do anything --

-- polish the --

She didn't need to do anything.
She wanted to cry.
Crying was what you did when you were sad. You cried until the tears ran out, and... that was nearly all which would happen. You would still be sad, maybe a little thirsty, and... nopony would have come to see what was wrong. Nopony ever did.

She'd cried a lot, when she'd been younger. And then she'd stopped.

The sleeping area in the Brighthouse was never completely dark. Some of that was due to the sub-star glow from the ceiling, with rather more credited to the arrangement of nightlights around one of the beds. The younger princess had made a few noises about living in a new place, not being entirely sure where everything was, and clearly having no need to scrape her perfectly-hooficured keratin on any unexpected obstacles. None whatsoever. So there.

The unicorn mare suspected Pipp was slightly afraid of the dark.

The newest occupant of the sleeping area had grown up among shadows. The dark held no real terrors for her. Her fears focused on those things which were capable of lighting them up.

A common sleeping area. (In the castle, she had her own room. The door was mostly present to lock her in or, if the alicorn desired entrance, to prove just how futile doors were.) Anypony looking in the right direction could see what anypony else was doing. All the time.

If she got up...

...but they were sleeping. There was a muffled rustle in the air: downy feathers shifting under blankets. Izzy occasionally made little noises in her sleep: 'Snrk!' was common and made about as much sense as most of what the crafter said while awake. Sunny was exceptionally motionless: the earth pony typically picked a position, closed her eyes, and didn't shift again until sunlight reached her bed. And the last one --

-- the unicorn mare tried to peek out from under the blankets: an awkward process, with her horn snagging fabric several times. But eventually, she got a look at the final bed. There was a mound under those sheets: a fairly sleek one. It wasn't moving much.

I don't have to get up.

She wasn't in the castle. There were no chores to do. Or rather, there were, but they were piling up because the alicorn considered them all to be so vitally important that they would just have to wait until the unicorn mare got back. And did them herself. Incorrectly.

She always did things incorrectly, except for when she did them improperly. She wasn't entirely sure there were any other ways.

Polish the...
...there isn't any...
...I don't even really live --

-- the kitchen had needed cleaning anyway.

Maretime Bay had something called a 'hygiene inspection' and in order to legally sell smoothies from her semi-mobile trailer, Sunny was required to pass it once a year. The unicorn presumed magic was involved because when it came to the earth pony's home, Sunny couldn't boil water without involving two burners, three pots and, somehow, one colander.

The results of such efforts would be normally-boiled water. Sunny could cook -- on the level of a mare who lived alone, had a mostly smoothie-based diet and knew that if all else failed, she could just go outside and nibble on the local grass. But everything she created required up to six times the normal utensil count. (The unicorn mare was still trying to work out utensils.) And when it came to the mess...

The grass was easier, although Maretime Bay's varieties mostly came across as lightly salted. (She was also trying out grass, because very little grew around the castle. Bridlewood's blades mostly tasted like regret.) It also required considerably less cleanup. And with so many mares using the kitchen, even when one only did so intermittently because she had to go back, she always had to go back and every time she did so, there was a chance that she would never --

-- it was sometime after four a.m. and she was cleaning. That was --

-- she was staying here. (As descriptive terms went, 'living' was overqualified.) There was a certain obligation to be a good guest, especially when any impression she left might be the last one. Cleaning was just being fair, and she was up anyway, it was something to do...

She tried to slide her hooves as she moved about the cluttered kitchen. That made less noise. She had to be very careful about noise, because there was an alicorn and you didn't want to wake her up --

-- there were residents. She didn't want to wake them up either. And the more noise she made, the harder it became to hear anything from the upper levels. At one point, she'd almost sworn there had been a sound of shifting wings, and then she'd lost it in the cabinet clicking closed.

"Make less noise, Misty," the mare muttered to herself. "And be careful about the hornlight." Because being able to make things adhere to her hooves left her moving on a maximum of three, and that made practicing magic into something necessary. Glowing objects were bobbing across the kitchen, being dipped into running sinks -- although she had to be very careful about that last, because the sinks were rather crowded and water had weird ways of interacting with hornlight. It mostly flowed around the outside of the glow, which didn't do much for cleaning. "It's helping you move things, but if any of it reflects to the sleeping level --"

"-- it could wake somepony up?"

The unicorn mare froze. The older princess finished her swoop, and four rather unpolished hooves not-so-smoothly slammed into the floor.

"You talk to yourself a lot," the white mare harshly stated. "Why?"

Her awareness of her own spoken words was generally subconscious and whenever it rose above that, she tried to stop. But it hadn't worked, not for more than a few hours at a time. She spoke to herself, and did so out loud. At least that way, she knew somepony was listening.

"I'm just cleaning," the unicorn quickly said. "There was a mess, and I was up anyway --"

The angry syllables hit like rocks: meant to bruise, or at least bring forth a yelp of Explanation. "-- why were you up?"

I have to polish the throne room.

Carefully, "I was just awake. I'm not used to sleeping with so many ponies around --"

She wasn't used to doing anything with so many ponies around. Numbers higher than 'one' could easily put her on edge --

"-- too many witnesses?"

She listened to her own words, and that made her completely unlike Zipp.

With the younger of the siblings... Pipp absolutely listened to ponies, and did so in the same sense that somepony watching a stream for passing fish could be described as listening to a river. The younger princess would allow the babble of conversation to flow through her, and it was difficult to tell exactly what was staying behind -- but she was constantly on the alert for any flashing, flowing word which could serve as the most vital cue. And while she waited, there would be enthusiastic nodding, quite a few wing twitches, and maybe she would hooftap a few details into her phone -- but she was always waiting for the prompt to go by. Because as soon as you brought up your mane, or a dress, or possibly just something you'd heard other ponies mention as trending on social media (whatever that was) -- Pipp would snatch her fish out of the river and fully join the discussion, because she could finally start talking about herself.

Zipp didn't always seem to pay a lot of attention to words. She was generally looking for clues, which seemed to be somewhat more ephemeral and were presumed to be mostly carried within tone. And once she decided she had a clue, she refused to let it go. Pipp tried to snatch vital words out of a river: Zipp somehow managed to get airborne while hauling several nets of red herrings. Never dropping any of them, just in case they turned out to be important later.

"Count the plates," the unicorn mare said. (The glow set all of them down. She'd noticed that held objects tended to shift when she became emotional and when Zipp was around, it was hard to be anything else.) "I'm sure you've already counted the beacons before coming down here. And the lantern. There's still one of each. You could count the utensils if you wanted. Right in front of me. And if you're going to do that, I'm still trying to figure out what that one fork is for --"

"Tell me about Opaline."

Zipp didn't drop whatever she thought might be a clue. She didn't do much better with topics.

"It's four in the morning." The unicorn briefly considered adding a reassuring smile to that, and then decided against it. She'd recently been informed that the only thing more fake than her fake reassuring smile was the generic fake smile, and wasn't entirely sure how that worked.

"But you're up anyway."

Zipp's smile, however, was a little closer to the end product of somepony who'd never actually seen a smile or ever naturally smiled themselves -- but all of the muscle movements involved with the expression had been explained to them in great detail, so going through those meant smiling had to result. It did not.

"And we've got time," Zipp added. "Before anypony else gets up and interrupts. So let's start with -- oh, I don't know -- everything?"

"-- we've been over this," the unicorn interrupted. "I can't tell you everything about her while I'm reared up on my hind legs and trying to hop. It doesn't work. I'm always going to crash back down."

The older princess almost appeared to consider that.

"I could get some rope and hoist your forelegs up."

Almost.

Law enforcement visits here regularly. The real kind. Checks on all of you. On everything.
Hitch watches me less than you do.
Trusts me more.
But with you...

"Does she control minds?" the pegasus abruptly half-barked. "Let's start there."

The unicorn blinked.

"No..."

"Well," Zipp immediately decided, with wings flaring at the same speed as the tail lash, "that's exactly what somepony who was controlled would have been ordered to say..."

Most of the light in the kitchen came from hornglow. It gave the world sharp, shifting shadows, and did so while stealing all the warmth from Zipp's eyes.

"So she took over my mind," the unicorn tried, "in order to make me break all of you out of that bubble. When she already had Sparky. When she'd won. So that she could give up on the full victory, and just send me out as a double agent. In case there was an even better total triumph waiting somewhere else."

An attempt was made to meet the cold gaze, and it took an effort not to flinch. She should have been more accustomed to cold gazes, especially when it was so much of what she knew.

"While knowing that you of all ponies would never trust me," the unicorn finished. "Since I'm guessing you've decided she also knows everything."

The pegasus almost seemed to be thinking that over.

"Well," Zipp finally said as the cold eyes narrowed, "when you put it that way -- it's really cunning."

You call yourself a detective. You catch a hoof in a pothole and call it a clue, because potholes surely wouldn't just appear. And you ask question after question, listening for changes in tone instead of words, because surely somepony being constantly barraged with angry questions would have to answer the same way every time...

Zipp, in the unicorn's opinion, was a very bad detective. The problem was that when it came to deception, the unicorn was even worse.

'Misty Brightdawn.' Her formal introduction would have been significantly different if her frantic, darting line of sight had located a manure cart.

"What can she do with minds?" the pegasus demanded. "Can she change the way somepony thinks?"

And the "Yes," slipped out.

Zipp was staring at her.

"How?"

There was nothing the unicorn could do. Nothing except -- finish.

"She says words which make you feel really bad about yourself," the unicorn said. "And then when she's not around, the words are still there."

The stare hadn't stopped, exactly. It had just become somewhat... confused.

She'd put the plates down, for safety. But the glow was still around them, it was getting brighter, the light was rippling across the glass and she almost thought she heard something crack --

"I'm cleaning the kitchen, Zipp," the unicorn stated. "That's something which ponies who aren't princesses do. They clean up after themselves. So since you're not going to do it --"

"-- I didn't want you living here." And there was something unsteady in the angry words. "Your father --"

Alphabittle. 'Father' still didn't fit.

"-- called the others. Sunny. Izzy. Pipp. Not me. I wouldn't have put you in here. I would never let you get close to Sparky --"

"-- Sparky's forgiven me."

Both wings were at full span now, and it almost seemed as if tiny fragments of bluish-white sparks were dancing on the tips.

"Sparky's too young to know better."

"Or maybe you're too old to remember what forgiveness is," the unicorn almost shot back. "Forgiving means letting things go --"

This was ignored. Zipp usually ignored whatever she didn't understand. Zipp ignored ponies a lot.

"-- tell me about Opaline."

"When I'm ready."

There were sparks on the feathers, accompanied with a faint scent of ozone.

"And when is that going to be?"

"When you finally figure out --"

"And she's back to the mumbling," the older princess hissed. "Maybe I just have to wait until you say all the good stuff to yourself --"

"-- when you finally figure out that you need to stop asking!"

Both wings refolded in an instant, slamming against the white flanks. All of the sparks vanished. Two plates broke themselves. And when the echoes for all of it faded, they heard hooves moving across the upper floor.

Neither mare moved.

"Is something going on?" a half-yawn called down. "I thought I heard --"

"-- it's just Misty, Sunny," Zipp's tight voice announced. "She was cleaning the kitchen. Because she was up anyway."

Her wings flared, flapped. There was a backblast of wind. And the pegasus was gone.

Third day of the week, 10 a.m.: go into the archives. Make sure all of the volumes are dusted. Refill ink pots. If necessary, make more ink. Evil Pie Charts use a lot of ink. And if that has to be done, get it finished within the same time allotted for the dusting because otherwise, I'm galloping behind the schedule.

I'm always galloping behind...

10 a.m. Maretime Bay. Replace the plates.

She still got lost in the shore town, because... she was a unicorn and she was supposed to get lost. If you weren't an earth pony, then you'd grown up somewhere else, you had that memorized, and everywhere else was new to you because you weren't supposed to have ever gone anywhere else. Getting lost regularly had helped to maintain her incredibly fragile cover.

It would have been a lot harder to explain getting lost in Bridlewood. Most of what she remembered about the forest was...

...she didn't remember.

The alicorn didn't control minds. But she did have a certain way of taking over memory. She made sure she was always around, constantly there, and then she became the only thing you could remember at all.

...almost always there. She didn't come when the unicorn was crying. Tears were a sign of weakness.

Weakness had stopped early.

"You can do this, Misty. It's just shopping..."

Nopony's ears perked up when she said that. But she did turn her head to find a few staring at her, because she'd held off on speaking the words until she'd had the chance to shove her snout into a convenient bush.

It wasn't just shopping. It was also being out in public. Among the public, and that was a word which existed in a state of permanent plural. There were a lot of earth ponies around, a few pegasi were on (and over) the streets, it was possible to spot the occasional unicorn, and the totals added up to something much more than one.

Shopping. You found a store. You located the price. Was the price a good one? How was she supposed to tell? Finding out would mean going to another store. And that required dealing with extra ponies, possibly several, and it was really just easier to pick out the first plates which sort of matched the colors for the broken ones, then buy a full set of those because the plates were probably supposed to match --

-- maybe the plates had come from Sunny's father. (Everything seemed to have come from Sunny's father.) Sentimental value. She might have broken an heirloom --

-- maybe they were part of a replacement set, because so much had been replaced after the original lighthouse had been destroyed.

Maybe the unicorn just broke things. All the time. Magic seemed to make the process easier.

...buying a full set of plates might be the fastest way. Or she needed to learn exactly where the originals had come from, then match. She didn't know.

Not that Sunny had asked.
Not that Sunny knew that two plates were broken. The unicorn had hidden the evidence. Deception wasn't anywhere near her best skill and maintaining a fragile cover story had often felt impossible, but she was good at hiding evidence. She even had new places to hide things in. Sites which hadn't been memorized by an alicorn over the course of multiple centuries. And that time had apparently also been used to learn the natural patterns for any falling dust...

It was just buying plates. Even when her funds were running low.

(She would have to say something about needing more funds. Maybe kick in a few details about bribing ponies.)
(Which would also require bringing the alicorn a few details on what bribed ponies had said.)
(The unicorn wasn't good at that part.)

Anypony could buy plates.

12:17 p.m. Prepare lunch for Opa Mostly finish putting plate shop back together.

The schedules did possess a certain amount of overlap. It was going on three in the afternoon, and the weather was twisting. Autumn did that, and the process seemed to be more dramatic near the ocean. Cold salt winds would blast in off the water, umbrellas would shift over the cafe tables they were supposed to be shielding and the more anchored ones would jump, the boardwalk would start to empty out...

The sky tended to go grey in Maretime Bay, once the autumn winds came in. The unicorn wasn't used to that. Everything around the castle was so much darker.

And if she'd been there...

3 p.m.: try to remember something about myself. Fail.

Who had she been? It was a question which had arisen with sufficient regularity for her to edit it in, especially since nopony knew she was doing so -- for that value of 'nopony' which always equaled one and, for all she could recall of her life, only. And she had failed, because it didn't take magic for somepony to put themselves in her head. They just had to be there. All the time. Watching, sniffing with permanent disdain, and forever disapproving. Of -- everything.

The alicorn disapproved of the unicorn's existence. Of everypony's existence, really, but -- the unicorn was the one who was there. Nopony else was, and -- the alicorn couldn't reach any other ponies. Ever. This meant all of the disapproval had been focused on a single target. Everything the alicorn hated about ponies, about the world, and most especially about Twilight Sparkle, who had effectively imprisoned her -- all of it had landed squarely on the unicorn's head.

Twilight Sparkle had been a unicorn once. She'd been told that. And the information had come with a glare, just in case the castle's only other occupant was thinking about becoming something else.

About -- changing, and doing so in a place where everything was always the same.

She had her mark now, and had to hide it whenever she went back.
(She always had to go back.)
A mark which was supposedly tied to change.

Her memories hadn't changed.

The pony who filled them never would.

3 p.m.: try to remember something about my father.

It had become an assigned hour because when Alphabittle dropped by, he tended to do so around three in the afternoon. Something in the big stallion's soul revolved around teatime, and his daughter --

-- the daughter who still didn't remember having been his filly --

-- could barely stand the taste.

He'd offered to give her some distance. To let her live with friends, as much as she could -- and that didn't mean very much, not when she had to keep going back and when at least one of them wasn't her friend at all. He'd offered her distance -- but he hadn't said anything about not crossing it. And so at least once a week, a very large hoof would knock on the door. Looking for a little... family time.

Not that she was always there, because she did have to go back. Again and again. But he couldn't schedule for that, and didn't try.

She wasn't sure he even knew --

-- the boardwalk was mostly empty. The air was cold, most of the scents were based on salt, and the unicorn drank them in because the air around the castle mostly smelled like somepony had been using the same oxygen for a very long time.

She looked up and down the near-vacant travelway. Draped her body across the whole of a bench, and found portions dangling over the edges.

She... hadn't thought she was tall.

Of course she hadn't. What did she have to compare herself with? An alicorn. A mare who was larger than just about everypony in the world, and had a very special way of making others feel that much smaller. So coming into Maretime Bay and finding herself looking down on anypony was...

...she -- wasn't comfortable around ponies who were significantly larger than she was.

The stallion --
-- her father --
-- she had to remember he was her...
...she stared out at the greying sky. (Grey like his fur.) Tried to remember anything about him.

She failed.

5 p.m.: look for extra work I can do.
5 p.m.: look for work.

"You didn't really put anything down under 'skills.'"

"I can clean."

She could feel the weight of the stallion's gaze on her exposed hip.

I just got my mark.
I have a mark and I don't know what my skills are.

"Are you good at it?"

I spent my life cleaning a castle. Why didn't I get a mark for that?
Maybe because according to the expert, I never did it right.

The next words felt as if they were choking her. "I'm not bad..."

Blue eyes moved to the next part of the application.

"You also didn't put down anything about available hours."

I have to keep going back.
I should head back tomorrow morning.
I don't want --

"My schedule is... irregular..."

She glanced back after clearing the door, and so got to see the paper being dropped into the trash.

"I don't blame you..."

6:25 p.m.: arrange mane brushes. Make sure Gertrude is clean. If there's any lost hairs stuck in the bristles, destroy them before they're seen. Ponies lose hairs all the time, and they grow back. But she thinks they're a sign of aging, and if she thinks she's getting older...

Sunny generally brushed her own mane and tail, because she'd lived alone for a long time and there had been nopony else to do it. They were brushed regularly, which usually meant once a day whether Sunny felt they needed it or not. She had exactly one style, and the unicorn suspected that number wasn't going up any time soon. Sunny would allow Pipp to do 'the usual'. Nothing else. And she'd tried to dye the prismatic streaks away, but the dye had evaporated on contact.

The earth pony was waiting outside the Brighthouse.

It wasn't the least common place to find the activist. She liked to watch the sunset, and only occasionally complained about how the beacon's colors kept messing up the view. But she was sitting by herself, a short distance away from the entrance. Waiting -- alone.

"Sit with me?" her host asked.

The unicorn slowly trotted over. Took a position next to Sunny, and sat down. It put the earth pony in her shadow.

She's shorter than I am.

That didn't feel natural either.

They faced the sunset. Watched the light change, and the rainbow dancing across the sky.

"I just took a delivery," Sunny said. "Of plates."

The guest winced.

"I didn't mean to --"

"-- they were just plates," Sunny quietly said.

"Oh."

Silence. Portions of the sky tilted into rose.

"I feel like I should have asked this weeks ago," the activist restarted. "Misty -- where are you getting money? Because Opaline can't get here, and she can't bring things out." A careful breath -- and then, just a little too quickly, "Hitch would have figured out if you were stealing --"

"-- Zipp would have followed me around forever to catch me stealing," the unicorn decided.

The orchid tail twitched.

"...yeah," Sunny eventually admitted. "So where does the money come from?"

"She gave me things to sell. Old ones. I just traded them at the antique shops." The unicorn indulged in a breath of her own, shook her head until tight curls shifted away from her eyes. "There was so many things coming in for the first time, nopony questioned a little more. Especially from a unicorn. But I'm running low again, and there's only so much she'll give up." With a soft sigh, "Most of what she wanted me to get rid of was my old toys..."

Sunny blinked.

"You had toys?"

"Toys. Books. But it was all -- old. Older than anypony..."

She'd wondered about it, once she'd learned that the alicorn couldn't reach any of the remaining pony towns. About where it had all come from.

About... who might have used it first.

'Misty'. That was her name, and it had even turned out to be the real one. But she still had trouble thinking of herself that way, because -- the alicorn was the one who'd used it, at least when she hadn't been pulling out various synonyms for 'failure'. She'd thought that the alicorn had given her the name, and...

...she didn't know how she'd reached the castle.
But there had been toys and books and a bedroom waiting for a filly.
The alicorn was centuries old. Possibly millennia. And her name had crossed the temporal distance as an unbroken line.
The name 'Misty' had been presumed to possess a few gaps. Times during a new filly had yet to be snatched into a life of perpetually producing disappointment, with the last failure still rotting in the ground.

The unicorn didn't think of herself as 'Misty' because she didn't know who Misty was supposed to be.
She'd found her mark. The defining moment of a life. And she still didn't know who she was.
She was somepony who was still failing.

"I can't picture her giving you toys."

The unicorn couldn't either.

"Does she have toys of her own?" Sunny asked. "Things she likes to do?"

You're trying to make her into a person.

"There's two entertainment quarters. East and west. West is the one with the spiders."

"...what's the entertainment?"

"She watches me clean them out."

The sun got that much lower in the sky.

"She reads," the unicorn finally said. "There's a few games, but they're things she can play by herself. And she makes Evil Pie Charts. For fun."

"Evil Pie --" Sunny uncertainly began.

"-- that's what she calls them. I swear --"

"-- I was just thinking that calling pie charts evil is mostly redundant."

The unicorn turned her head just enough to stare at the earth pony.

"I tried to study economics a little," Sunny said. "Because I was running a business. And because being an activist means you should know where the money is going. But it mostly made my head hurt." She sighed. "I thought that with the smoothies, I was probably okay as long as I had more coming in than going out. Does she have any pets?"

I don't count.
Pets were something you loved.
I don't count --
-- there were toys. And time on the schedule when I wasn't working, to play with them. Or read.
Why would she ever have given me toys?

"...she named her favorite mane brush. Does that count?"

"She --"

"Gertrude."

The sky was rose and orange and pink and, because the beacon was going, a streak of rainbow. Posey had already complained about light pollution.

"If you name a mane brush," Sunny softly considered, "you're either insane or -- very, very lonely."

Nopony said anything for a while.

"Did she give you any instructions?" Sunny finally asked. "On how to approach us?"

It was easier, when it wasn't Zipp. Zipp pushed. Sunny simply asked, and -- not all of the time. Not every minute, as if it was the only thing anypony could ever find important about the unicorn at all.

"Most of her instructions were for me to think of something."

Because that way, any failures were my fault.

She'd arguably failed.
No -- indisputably.
Becoming a double agent definitely hadn't been any part of the plan.

"She's..." The hesitation stretched out. "...no. I can't be sure. We've barely interacted. But it feels like she's not very smart, Misty. Like she's lived so long, and -- she hasn't learned from any of it. And every time you go in the castle, when we know you're a bad liar..."

I had you fooled for --

-- she was going to need something smaller than zeptoseconds.

Sunny's forehooves awkwardly shifted. The single-style mane was tossed back.

"I was asking Pipp about the doors," she said. "The giant ones you shut with your magic, because you didn't want to go out into the Cutie Blossom Bash."

I hate performing.
I'm not good with crowds.
She shoved me into a world where I was on stage in front of a group all the time, with the world's worst fake smile...

"She said all that weight is balanced to swing easily -- when you push on a certain point. You didn't. Misty --" very carefully "-- if -- something happened, and she found out -- how strong are you --"

"-- not alicorn strong," the unicorn quietly answered. "So it doesn't matter."

Blues and deep purples began to take over the air. A cold sea wind rustled their fur, ran through the strands which defined their marks.

And then the earth pony was standing. Facing the unicorn directly, staring down.

"You don't have to go back," Sunny fiercely stated. "From what you've said, she can't follow. You'd be safe --"

"-- and then nopony would know what she's planning," the unicorn instantly countered, and felt her left forehoof trying to jab out: movement as punctuation. "Nopony else can enter the castle. There's no choice."

And she might... take another filly.
...did she take me?
She can't reach --
-- how did she find --
-- how many...
...why were there toys?
Did she ever have --

Slowly, Sunny sat down, then lowered her body further. They were facing each other now.

"You're very brave."

"I don't feel brave."

"So?"

The stars were beginning to come out, and not enough of them were visible. It was possible that Posey had a point.

Turquoise eyes closed. Reopened. And then Sunny said what the unicorn had been waiting for.

"Zipp came up to me." Paused. "Stormed up, really. Not that she sees the joke. And told me what happened before I woke up."

The unicorn waited for the rest of it.

"She doesn't want you in the Brighthouse because she never agreed to it and she thinks it puts you too close to everything," Sunny finally went on, "and she doesn't want you anywhere else because that puts you out of her sight. Zipp is --" and trailed off.

"Zipp thinks she's a detective," the unicorn observed. "I read a really old book about a detective once. And when I think about that book, and Zipp..."

"I wish you could bring some of those books out of the castle," Sunny sadly said. "Something about the story made you think of her?"

The unicorn searched for words.

"Zipp," she said, "is the kind of detective who would chase somepony for a lifetime because she'd seen a filly steal a loaf of bread. And if that filly ever got to really talk -- if she explained that she'd been starving, and she'd only stolen food to keep herself alive -- Zipp would go to court. Get every charge dropped."

"I'd like to think so --" Sunny just barely got to start.

"-- and then she'd clamp the world's loudest alarm around the filly's foreleg, because it was set to go off whenever it was within three blocks of anything baked."

Growing up with an alicorn as sole company hadn't done much for the unicorn's self-esteem.

But it was fantastic training in the art of Dramatic Pauses.

"Just in case."

Silence.

And then the earth pony laughed.

It was a merry sort of sound, bright and quick and not looking to truly hurt anyone. The alicorn didn't laugh that way. She couldn't --

"-- she'd try!" Sunny gasped. "Pipp and Hitch would eventually talk her out of it, but -- she's not good with ponies, Misty. She tries, but... that's the mystery she can't solve. Everything else is easier, so that's what she tries to work out. Everything else..."

The unicorn wasn't good with ponies.
How could she be? All she'd known was...
an alicorn
a monster
a --
...Opaline...

...soft fur was being pressed against her face.

"What?" The word was oddly indistinct. "What are you --"

"-- you're crying," Sunny half-whispered, and the earth pony's snout absorbed another tear. "You just started crying..."

Neither mare moved for a time.

You cry, and somepony comes.
So you stop.

Finally, Sunny pulled back. Just enough to let the unicorn see her smile.

"Zipp spent her life lying to nearly everypony, about her flight," the activist said. "So she assumes nearly everypony is lying to her. It's -- not a good way to live, and she's trying to get better. But it's hard. And I told her that I want you here. I think..."

It was an exceptionally deep breath.

"...I think you're supposed to be here," Sunny finished. With a much fainter smile, "You may be a little late..."

And all the unicorn could muster was a single, indistinct "...what?"

"Six places in the Marestream," Sunny softly told her. "Not five. Six. I wondered about that. And my dad... there were things in his notes. Something about the power of six, With Twilight Sparkle, there were six. And when it started with us..."

Decibels were dropping away.

"...it was five. Just five. And maybe that's why I'm not -- stable. Why I can't..."

Light briefly twinkled on the earth pony's forehead, sparked near her flanks. Vanished.

"We don't know enough," Sunny continued. "The one pony we could ask -- Opaline would lie, or wouldn't tell at all. But I think... maybe it's still supposed to be six."

"Six with marks," the unicorn argued, because that was the best way to make sure nopony counted on her this much. "Even if I'd been there, I didn't have my --"

"-- why did you think Opaline could give you a mark?"

"Why wouldn't I believe that! I didn't know anything else!" Her forehooves were starting to gesture. She hated that. Opaline always said it made her look too dramatic and just take a look at the judge rendering that verdict! "And there were pie charts! Evil ones! You haven't seen what she's drawn up --"

Volume dropped again. "-- did she say she'd done something to you? That your mark was blocked until she took a spell off? And that meant it was under her control?"

Silence.

"...I'm sorry..." Sunny whispered. "I'm... Misty, please look at me... please -- stop crying..."

And then they were nuzzling again.

It was night now.

"It's getting cold," Sunny said.

"I hadn't noticed," the unicorn told the tightly-snuggled earth pony.

Both mares breathed for a while. There was time for that.

"You do need a job for when you're here," Sunny considered. "Something with irregular hours." She thought about it. "Writer?"

The unicorn blinked.

"...why?"

The giggle formed an underlayer to the words. "Foal books always need evil villains. The kind with easily foiled-schemes, who only hire incompetent minions..."

"I usually can't figure out where commas go."

"...oh."

"Opaline edits my reports."

"...oh."

"She says she won't let me make pie charts until I can reliably place semicolons. That'll prove I've mastered evil."

Sunny stretched out all four legs, slowly began to stand up. The unicorn reluctantly rose.

"I'll talk to Zipp," the earth pony said. "Make it clear that you're staying."

"Will she listen?"

"Not the first six times. But with Zipp, it's about persistence. When do you have to go back again?"

"Tomorrow morning."

Sunny slowly turned towards the Brighthouse entrance. Took three steps, paused, and looked back.

"It scares me," she stated. "Every time you leave. Not knowing if you're going to..."

The sentence trailed off, and turquoise eyes briefly closed again.

"It's cold tonight," the earth pony said. "Is it usually cold in the castle? When we were there, it was..."

The alicorn of fire.
Living within shadows.
Light without heat.

"Yes."

"It's warm in the Brighthouse. With hot food, and -- new plates. Come inside."

7:30 p.m. More or less.
Have dinner with...
...friends?

She still wasn't sure, especially with Zipp involved. She kept waiting to be turned away. To -- fail.

(She always failed. Always disappointed.)
(She didn't remember how to do anything else.)
(It was just a matter of time...)

Misty went inside.