This is the middle of the story.
The old mare's eyes opened wide. She jerked her hooves away from the crystal ball as if burnt, and pawed at the edge of the table, leaving long scratches on its surface. Cheap wooden figurines and jars of powders clattered on the shelves looming over them to each side as she fell to all fours and stumbled backwards, running into the bare adobe wall behind her.
The prince stretched his neck forward across the table in alarm. "Miss Farsight! Are you hurt?"
But the fit passed as quickly as it had come. She stood up straight again and regarded him calmly, her frail frame suddenly full of strength. Blueblood had the uncomfortable feeling that he was still looking into Farsight's face, but meeting someone else's eyes. She wore a smile that did not quite reach them.
"Ooh! Feisty, that one! Put up quite a fight." She waved a hoof dismissively. "Hopeless, of course. Now, where was I?"
Blueblood drew his head back and glanced to either side, as if there might be some other pony he hadn't noticed yet in the tiny room. The fortune-teller had a reputation for oddness, so he let her statements pass.
"I was told you had vital information for me," he said. She continued to stare at him with that unsettling gaze, stroking her chin with one hoof, as though she were pondering not his words, but his existence. "Regarding the upcoming Gala."
"Ah, yes. Specifically, regarding a mare."
The prince lowered his eyes, absent-mindedly blowing away the hank of mane that fell into his eyes as he did. "It is always about a mare, isn't it?"
" A dressmaker from Ponyville. And an element of har-mony." Farsight stretched the last word out as though she did not entirely approve of it.
"Does that signify in this?" he asked, raising his head quickly.
"Depends what you want," she said. "Legendary ponies are notoriously hard to bed. But she's got quite a flank, I will admit."
He dismissed her lewd implications with a snort.
"Her name is Rarity. You will see her at the gala."
"I shall see every pony at the gala, as I do every year," he said without enthusiasm, and glanced at his watch. It was strange how everypony believed that they knew some mare who was perfect for him, and that he would be incapable of noticing her on his own.
Farsight's wandering eyes locked onto his, her palsied lip straightened, and for a moment she stood taller. "You shall see her," she repeated, emphasizing the verb, "as I see. Your lifelines are drawn to each other so strongly that even a unicorn could not help but feel it."
Blueblood realized he was holding his breath. He quickly snorted it out and tore his gaze away from her piercing eyes, tilting his head away from her. He gave her only occasional sideways glances as he spoke. It was a trick he used on ponies who tried to push him, to give them the impression that they were merely one of several things on his mind. "Miss Farsight. You were highly recommended by reliable ponies, else I would already have departed through that curtain of fake jewels behind me. Do not mistake me for the vacant, impressionable wastrel I sometimes pretend to be. If you aim to manipulate me into falling for some empty-headed glamour mare after a title, I advise you to stop... now."
"If you say so." An iron file appeared in one of the earth pony's hooves, and she stood on her rear legs, as if it were the most natural and comfortable position, and began filing the edge of one hoof. "After all, you're doing perfectly fine on your own in the love department, aren't you? What's one soulmate more or less?"
He stared back at her with a steady gaze that said, Yes, in fact, I am doing fine. She smirked, and his gaze fell to the floor.
"As I was saying. You will feel a pull when she draws near. You will feel doors opening, doors closing, all down the corridor of your future."
"You need to work on your sales pitch. I'm not sure that sounds like a good thing."
The teller cackled, her left lip drooped back into a sneer, and she dropped back into her lazy slouch. "I'm a fortune teller, not a referee, dearie. Good and bad are a bit out of my jurisdiction. That's more your aunt's thing. And I'm telling, not selling. Don't jump to conclusions. It's a long way from warm fuzzy feelings on a dance floor to a happy ending. But let's see what we can see, shall we?" She raised herself up on her hind legs again and leaned towards the crystal ball in the center of the table.
Blueblood blew out heavily through his nose, knowing he would hear her out, knowing some part of him would cling desperately to whatever false hopes she threw his way, and already disgusted at himself for it. "Rarity," he muttered. "An intriguing name."
The mare waved one hoof at him dismissively. "Hush, now, Mommy Farsight's seeing." She put her hooves onto the ball again and gazed into it. "Hmm... yes, I think I see something. Yes... yes, I'm sure of it."
He raised his ears. "Yes?"
"Cloudy, with a chance of rain."
Blueblood stamped one hoof.
"All right, all right. Some ponies can't take a joke." She looked back down into the ball before her. "I see you and this mare, this Rarity, having a perfectly wonderful time together at the Gala. Isn't she charming in that burgundy dress? This cobbler doesn't go barehoof."
"Go on."
"Oh, you want to get on to the good parts, do you? I don't imagine they're very far off, with the way she's eying your—"
"Miss Farsight," Blueblood said carefully, tensing up. "please speak more respectfully of my—potential future associate."
"Honestly, Prince." She spat the word "prince" like an insult. "If I had to speak respectfully of every mare you've associated with, I'd have no fun left at all."
Blueblood narrowed his eyes and scraped one hoof on the floor. "You know nothing of my personal life."
"Oh, but I do. All you ponies are open books." She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. "You have no idea how nauseating it is to be aware of your every pathetic guilty desire every time I look at one of you!" She jabbed one hoof towards him. "You fancy yourself a bold leader, but you haven't got the nerve to read the kind of books you like without trying to hide them from the maid under a stack of diplomatic reports. She found them anyway, by the way."
Blueblood laid his ears back and bared his teeth. A half-dozen rejoinders of outrage or astonishment stumbled around in his head and collided into an impotent sputter.
She smiled and turned back to the crystal ball. "I see you and Rarity having many other perfectly wonderful, respectful times together. You're such a gentlestallion. I'm afraid she'll die of boredom."
"It's called romance," Blueblood managed to choke out.
"Oh, you poor fool. Wait, what's this?" She leaned and peered more closely into the ball. "There may be hope for you yet!"
"What?"
She drew back from the ball and raised one eyebrow at Blueblood. "You sly dog."
The prince shook his head, then cleared his throat. "Miss Farsight. I do not know what my maid may have told you, but I fail to see your purpose. If I will feel this instant connection, as you say, there is no need to delve into my future."
"Ssh! You're interrupting the good parts!"
He stomped his hoof, harder this time, and the clay figurines rocked on their shelves.
"Spoilsport." She reached out towards the figurines with one hoof, and they all stopped rocking at once.
Blueblood looked from the figurines, to the earth pony mare, and back, widening his eyes.
"Magic?” She threw a hoof up in dismissal. “Pah. I've got something better than that. I'd show you, if you'd stop wasting my time with your pride and your paranoia."
"Wasting your time? You're the one making crude jokes and innuendos!"
"Oh, that, now that's not a waste of time." She grinned gleefully. "You should have seen your face when I called you a sly dog."
“Really.”
She nodded.
“Entertaining, was it?”
“Very.”
"I think,” the prince said, “that I have had quite enough." He began to turn carefully around in the small room.
"Fine, go then," she said, gesturing to the exit behind him. "Go back to your palace and your papers and drown yourself in your duties. Maybe you can bury your feelings so completely that someday you'll be able to walk past that old couple that feed the pigeons in the gardens and not even remember how desperately you wish you could trade places."
Blueblood stopped, statue-still, then turned slowly back to the table. Farsight had picked up two wooden pony figurines off a shelf and had one in each hoof. She held them muzzle-to-muzzle and shook one figure at the other. "I'm an old earth pony! I can see your future!"
Blueblood sighed.
"That's nothing," she said in a low voice, shaking the other figure without taking any notice of Blueblood. "I'm a prince! I am mysteriously popular even though I'm pretentious and boring!"
Blueblood sat on the bare dirt floor across from her and waited.
Eventually, she looked up. "Oh, are you still here?"
He nodded toward the crystal ball. "If you would continue," he said.
"Hmm." She pondered her toys. "I don't think he likes us," she whispered to them loudly. "He didn't use the magic word."
"If you would please continue," he said, gritting his teeth.
"Well, if you insist." She placed the pony figures back on their shelf and leaned toward the ball again.
"I see all the nobility of Canterlot, lined up on both sides of the red carpet down the great hall of the castle. What bright colors! You're there, and your old aunt is standing there at the front, wearing that same old smug smile, like she'd just founded another orphanage over breakfast. Your worthless drinking buddies are up there on the dais with you. Sober, even! I wonder what you threatened them with. The Elements of Harmony are lined up on the other side, minus the one. Everypony who's anypony seems to be there! Except me, of course."
Blueblood said nothing.
"Oh, don't apologize, please. Nopony wants a fortune-teller at a wedding, not a real one. Too risky. And here comes the bride, your darling dressmaker! Everypony is so happy, I'm surprised they're not wagging their tails."
"And... Rarity? Does she seem happy?"
"Like a sow in a wallow. Oh, I'm sorry, I mean like a princess in a shop of very expensive things. But that's not really better, is it? I need to work on my idioms. She's happy, you're happy, everypony's happy."
Blueblood stared at the ball, but could make out nothing except a crazily-distorted and upside-down refracted image of Farsight.
"Are you sure you want to hear more? Maybe I'm just a crazy old mare wasting your time."
"Please," he said again.
"All right. Do let me know if I'm boring you." She peered back into the ball. "I see you and her living together at your estate. Each morning you going off to manage affairs of state, her to her workshop. What a diligent mare! How hard the hours are for you when you're apart! Such a happy couple when you're together. It's good to see somepony still has family values."
Blueblood stamped a hoof, this time in excitement. "Yes," he said, "go on."
"I see a day when she can no longer go to work, her belly too swollen with new life. I see a foal—a colt. He grows to be a fine young stallion, the darling of the court, noble, powerful, and brave."
"If this comes true, Farsight, I will reward you in any way you desire. I will—"
She cut him off with one hoof. "I'm not finished."
In the sudden silence, Blueblood stared into her eyes, and it seemed he caught reflected in them a glimpse of the room, and of himself, inverted: him the commoner and her the nobility, his finely-tailored silk clothing a childish imitation of her rough cotton shawl. The lifelike statues in his estate gardens, carved by the greatest sculptors in Equestria, seemed like clumsy attempts to capture the sentience in the eyes of the crude carvings staring down on them from the shelves.
She smiled tolerantly at him, like one would at a colt who had offered a hoofful of dandelions for a masterpiece because he liked the frame. Then she gave him a lewd wink with her ancient face that made him shudder, and she was once again just a half-crazy old earth pony with a crude sense of humor. "Besides," she added in a cracked voice that she might have meant to be sultry, "you couldn't handle my desires."
Blueblood stretched out his neck and pressed his nose to the cold glass ball. He still saw nothing, felt no charge of magic. But he had no more doubt the old mare spoke truth.
"Patience, prince. You're getting smudges on my ball. Well, let's hit the fast-forward on this thing." She reached forward and tapped on the crystal ball with one hoof, then stared into it, frowning.
"What? What do you see?"
She shook her head sadly. "Oh dear. It seems your son will live in, as the zebras say, interesting times."
Blueblood twitched his ears. "So long as he does his duty."
She threw one foreleg across her eyes dramatically. "Ever the slave of duty! Wait; I know. You should name him Frederic!"
Her words chilled Blueblood. It was not their meaning, which was obscure, but some wrongness in their being spoken at all, as though she had deliberately torn them from some other reality and brought them here where they did not belong to amuse herself.
She dropped her false smile, and went on in a lower, more even voice. "I see Equestria ruled by tyrants, whose every word is law. Their might is unassailable. Those who oppose them are condemned to a fate worse than death. Not one pony speaks up against them, not one."
Blueblood gaped at the fortune-teller. "How? Impossible! What see you of Celestia? What of Luna?"
She seemed to have fallen into a trance, and took no notice of him. "I see one, only one, with the strength to oppose them. Only one with a might to match theirs, one hero who can free Equestria from their rule, who lays them low and casts them down from the throne that they stole."
"And that one...?"
"Your son..." she began. Blueblood inhaled sharply. She raised her eyes to meet his. "I see your son come to the aid of the tyrants, and drive out that lone hero."
"No," he said, sweat rising on his forehead, and took a step back. "No. Not my son."
She smiled sympathetically at him, as if he were a colt who had dropped the ice-cream from his cone. "Oh, well, dearie. You win some, you lose some. He looked very dashing while doing it, if that's any consolation. At least he inherits some fashion sense."
The prince bowed his head, and for a moment he looked defeated. Then his eyes turned cold and hard, and he stood up straight and shook his mane proudly. "Can these shadows be changed?"
She looked at him again with those penetrating, alien eyes, and shrugged. "This strand of fate is thick and strong."
He began to pace like a tiger in a cage, ears alert. He turned to her. "But there must be ways to change this. Loving parenting... Instilling him with a strong sense of duty... Forbidding any martial training... There must be a hundred ways to prevent it."
"Very possibly," Farsight said. "Maybe even probably. I'm sure no pony would blame you for putting all of Equestria in danger, if they knew it was for the sake of true love." She clasped her forehooves together and sighed dreamily.
"Farsight, please. I'm sorry that I'm pretentious and boring. Just please, please, tell me what I must do."
"Must?" She raised an eyebrow. "I don't believe in that word. I've told you what I see, as I see it. Do as you please. Just don't blame me if you don't like the results."
He stared back at her, his nostrils wide, his breathing heavy.
She smiled wryly. "What has happened to my reward now, Prince? If I had held my tongue, I could have collected... what was it? Anything I desired?"
He pulled out a bag from his vest, full of jingling gold bits. He emptied it onto the table in a glittering river of precious metal, a sum greater than the fortune-teller would ordinarily see in a year. "May it do you more good than it has done me."
She did not even look down at it.
Blueblood hung his head, staring at nothing. There were still five days remaining between himself and the gala. Tomorrow it would be only four. But it wouldn't change anything even if it were a hundred. He knew what he would have to do. He turned and pushed his way out slowly through the hanging curtains of cheap glass jewelry.
