Opaline roused slowly from unconsciousness. Awareness came without annoyance, excitement, or any other particular feeling. Her cot was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. Her eyes opened to a beige ceiling.
No reason to get up. No reason to stay in bed. She sighed and rose. Purple magic glowed at her horn, righting her hair with practiced ease. Braided circles around the ears, each with an expanding swirl down her neck. At least she hadn’t lost her own small magic in the final battle.
A sharp breath fled her mouth, almost like a laugh. Her eyes traced the bars of her cell.
‘Battle?’ What a joke.
She remembered the mad, manic joy barely a week now gone. The incredible rush that flowed through her with each cutie mark, and she had stolen ever so many. As her power grew, so did the speed of her harvest. One fueled the other, fueled the other. She was a blazing comet, the true Alicorn of Fire charging swiftly and inevitably to victory. Surely this was the end. Perhaps that odd half-alicorn Sunny could have rallied some defense, but Opaline struck hard against her allies. First those puny pegasus sisters, and then…
Misty.
And that was that, she supposed. Not worth pondering.
Small. Blue. Looking to her with fear.
Opaline scrunched her eyes closed, forcing the memory away. Not. Worth. Pondering.
She pushed the door, and the unlocked bars opened without a sound. The Maretime Bay sheriff oiled the hinges on his jail cell regularly. Opaline walked the darkened hall, only belatedly remembering to flick on the light switch. Her own castle lacked such conveniences. Past the first door into the main room, she saw the sun was high and the police station open for business. The sheriff was an early riser. Opaline very much was not.
One high-backed chair that she gathered belonged to a former deputy sat turned away from its empty desk. On the other sat a pony already hard at work.
Opaline nodded to him. “Sheriff.”
“Just Hitch, please.”
They had this exchange every morning. To Opaline, the lack of title felt somehow wrong. Like she would insult him by skipping it, despite his preference to the contrary.
Hitch shot her a boyish grin which she was quite sure stole the heart of every single one of his male-preferring friends. “Two more doughnuts in the box, I saved them for you.”
Disgusting sugar bombs.
“Thank you,” Opaline said.
“The coffee’s on, too,” Hitch added. “I’m about to head out on my rounds. You know your schedule for the day?”
Opaline loved tea as much as she hated coffee. “Trash duty in the park. Then meet Sunny for my therapy.”
The first order was assigned by Hitch. An hour per day of community service for a month. Even in her lethargic state Opaline could not help but be awed at how ridiculously soft these ponies were.
Hitch chuckled as though she had told a joke. “Not therapy. Just a little chat, to see how you’re doing.”
‘To try and figure me out,’ Opaline thought, then smiled thinly. ‘Five bits to the girl if she succeeds so long as she shares the answer.’
She let it go without debate. Hitch seemed to have forgotten she was there, busying himself with forms and papers, then pausing by the mirror to make sure his badge was at a perfectly jaunty fifteen-degree angle. Then he was off.
Then he ran back and collected his satchel full of more forms and papers, and was off once more.
...Such an odd mix. A whirlwind of law. A chaos for order. A panicked, excitable do-gooder, anxious to improve the world one proper protocol at a time.
Opaline had no idea why she hated him. Something about his little eccentricities annoyed her to no end, far more than they should.
No point in thinking on it now. Opaline had another visitor who announced their presence with slow claps of hoof on hoof. The deputy’s chair spun, revealing a white pegasus with a swirled mane and smug smile.
“I have to hand it to you, Opaline. You’ve got him fooled.”
Opaline hid her smirk behind a light bow. “Princess Zephyrina.”
The smug expression folded at once into a groan. “Zipp. Every time. Call me Zipp. If you didn’t do the same thing to Hitch I’d swear you’re just annoying me on purpose.”
It was a genuine hang-up with Hitch, but Opaline was just annoying her. All the other ponies were full of awkward smiles around the fallen queen, but Zipp Storm made her suspicion known from day one.
That made her fun. Zipp’s interrogations were the only times Opaline enjoyed herself since the battle, and a little needling made them all the better.
“It is only proper,” Opaline replied smoothly. “Although if you wish for a more martial bearing in line with old pegasi traditions, ‘Queen Storm’ will have quite the ring to it when your time comes. Perhaps change the order for dramatic effect: ‘The Storm Queen.’”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Zipp said, reclaiming the initiative. “Hitch, though. He thinks you’re just as you seem. Same with Izzy. Nothing like a convenient change of heart to put all water under the clouds.”
Opaline raised an eyebrow. “And you think otherwise.”
“I know otherwise.” The challenging grin Zipp shot her was, frankly, adorable. “We weren’t even slowing you down. You were kicking our flanks and getting stronger from it. You gave a cheesy villain monologue right in my face, then five minutes later you’re staring at Misty like you dropped your ice cream. Like you were suddenly reminded of your motherly love for her and repented, or at least that’s what ponies started saying. Never you, though. You never told us why you stopped.”
‘I have no idea,’ Opaline thought.
Instead, she purred. “Surely I’m allowed to keep some secrets.”
Zipp growled. “Take this seriously. Nothing says the cell can’t be locked, you know.”
“Your friends would never go along with that. Not while I’ve been good.”
“You haven’t been good,” Zipp snarked. “You’ve been mopey and passive, doing everything we tell you to then hanging out alone by the ocean.”
‘Mopey,’ hit home, not that Opaline would admit it. She played just a little more of her old arrogance into her voice. “Good is relative. I’ll tell you what, though. Tell me what you suspect, and I’ll say if you’re right.”
Zipp brightened, evidently heedless to the fact Opaline could simply lie. A ‘detective’ more suited to those trendy puzzle rooms than actual interrogation. Although she did apparently stalk Opaline without tipping her hoof, so credit where it was due. At any rate, Opaline had no intention to lie.
‘Tell me why I gave up.’
‘Please.’
“You ever hear of Occam’s mane brush?” Zipp began with confidence. “It’s a concept that says the simplest explanation–”
“Is the most likely, yes.” Opaline had heard of it, she just did not know where.
“Exactly. Occam’s mane brush says you’re faking. Sunny told us you were a problem during Twilight Sparkle’s reign. No, you were the problem. You’re the reason Equestria fell apart. Bookkeeping is fuzzy but that was hundreds of years ago. So you mean to tell me an ancient power-hungry alicorn who was about to get all she wanted choked at the last minute because she got guilty over the girl she kidnapped and brainwashed?”
Maybe Zipp was needling her right back. If so, it worked.
“First of all I didn’t kidnap Misty,” Opaline snapped. “I found her in the woods. There were timber-wolves and dead unicorns, so forgive me for making the compassionate and logical conclusion she had no one left but me.”
She did feel for Misty. Not as a mother. A favored minion, perhaps.
Zipp’s facts were wrong, however the conclusion was right. Opaline wouldn’t have stopped her quest for ascension just because Misty got in her way.
Shouldn’t have, anyway.
Opaline reclaimed her poise, making her second point with a snooty air. “Secondly, I didn’t ‘tell’ you anything about feeling guilty. You ponies produced that happy little answer for yourselves.”
“You finished?” Zipp asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Anyway,” Zipp pressed, her face growing uncertain. “Maybe the magic of all those cutie marks was destroying you and this is your backup plan. Release the power, pretend it was a big favor for us, then get in all friendly-like and conquer Equestria from within. But that raises its own question: you’re not ‘friendly-like.’ You’re quiet and boring unless someone gets a rise out of you. If you were faking I’d think you’d be chummier. You’d be gushing about how the light of friendship reached you and you want to be the friendliest friend who ever friended a friend.”
Opaline smiled indulgently. “Maybe I knew you’d be suspicious of enthusiastic redemption, and this is all part of my plan.”
“But you wouldn’t suggest that if it was true!”
“Maybe I knew you’d think that as well.”
“Then you wouldn’t…” Zipp caught herself and groaned. “Oh, ha-ha, very funny.”
“Fascinating conclusions, Princess. I am faking my redemption while simultaneously not faking it.”
“That’s not the conclusion.”
“Then what is?”
A white hoof rose and poked into Opaline’s chest floof. Zipp smirked up at her. “Working theory? You don’t know why you gave up.”
Happy to go out on a dramatic note, Zipp strode from the station with her head held high.
Opaline was unwilling to enhance the detective’s victory, and so held in her grumble until the door closed. “That doesn’t help me at all.”
Of all the inane busywork Equestria’s young heroes had foisted to keep Opaline busy while they tried to figure out what in Twilight’s name was going on, trash pickup in the park was the best. Really just walking down paths with a bag that only half-filled by the end of it with errant cans and bottles. No company but her own, just the way she liked it.
Opaline’s mind moved as it always did, chasing the prelude and aftershocks of the fateful day while averting metaphorical gaze from the battle itself. Before – the revelation of a way to steal cutie marks and the magic within. The plot that now seemed pathetic, the grand speeches she could scarce imagine giving today. The infernal ambition to conquer Equestria, an idea she now viewed as utterly ridiculous. What tax code would that megalomaniac idiot produce? How would she handle agriculture subsidies? Old Opaline had never given a thought to such things.
It was like a leg had been kicked from her psyche, bringing it crashing down to Earth. The self-awareness brought no comfort. If Opaline was not to be an overlord, not to be a sneering, triumphant villain, then… what was left? Passive and boring, as Zipp had said.
Opaline felt a bit of petty annoyance at the slight and seized hold, dropping the trash bag and winging to the air. She flew to the ocean, planning a long, lazy circle before returning to town in the evening. Nowhere to go, and honestly she doubted Sunny would care about skipping her chore. A tiny defiance, but it made her feel a little more alive. Not quite as deep in the depressed rut she found herself in since that day.
Fresh air, and the pleasant scent of salt water. Perhaps today she would figure things out.
Yet her mind drifted. The smell, the infinite blue beneath her… she loved the ocean.
At least, she remembered loving it. Opaline’s far memories were a jumble, to be honest. She recalled Celestia clearly, and while she didn’t remember their relationship she despised the mare now. The good, wise, and just Celestia who decided to try her hoof at being god-queen of a near-utopia and actually got it to work because she’s just so perfect. A cooling ember of wicked glee remained in Opaline’s heart at how badly her work fell apart. Opaline didn’t even know what hoof she played in it, though that barely mattered. She remembered Twilight screaming at her, a magical battle.
Her memory in that direction grew muddy, so she turned back to Celestia and found it muddier still. Opaline had told Misty that Celestia rejected her, but wondered now if that was real. She recalled no fights or arguments between them. ‘Skyros’ stood in her mind, but today the notion of a great city of alicorns seemed like a fairy tale. She could not remember its streets or shops. There was just Celestia and...
Luna, that was the name. Opaline did not feel so bitterly towards her. She did not pretend or try to be perfect. Opaline had fights with Luna, even some very nasty ones. But they always made up. Opaline could not remember, but she had… memories of memories, she supposed. The feeling of laughing with the overshadowed sister, of sharing some undefined joys. Like a foal’s first friend, whom thirty years later they can barely recall.
She was blue, at least. Blue Luna.
Blue Misty.
A connection, and perhaps not a wrong one. Opaline was never one for saving foals in distress. Roasting the timber-wolves was a fun exercise, but raising Misty from infancy had been anything but. Yet Opaline never questioned herself, never looked back. She cared for Misty only as well as an idiot egomaniac ever could, yet that Misty found even a small softness in her heart was retroactively astounding.
Almost unnerving, actually. That nostalgia for a mare she could not clearly remember drove Opaline to years of diaper duty made her wonder how else she had manipulated herself. At the very least, the uncharacteristic quasi-adoption now made a bit more sense, justified by her past self as recruiting a minion.
Opaline drifted down, letting her hooves skid atop the water. White foam sprayed in her wake, forming with her slow turn into a long crescent moon.
White and Blue. Celestia and Luna.
Why did her thoughts keep circling back to them? Whatever Opaline’s past relations with the sisters had been, she barely considered them leading up to the battle. The pair were ancient history, even for her. Deluded priestesses of a failed philosophy, empowering their lessers under the presumption such would make them strong. Alicorns were to rule, not retire. They were to seize all power, conquer all lands, rule all forever, for in their majesty they were the only ones who could truly rule well.
“Like you would have?” she murmured, and smiled without mirth. Her reign would have crumbled well short of Celestia’s record.
Why the change, though? What had shaken loose within Opaline to wake her up from comfortable madness to realize she was just a dull old mare with clouded memories? It was night and day, a moment passed in a heartbeat.
She closed her eyes, pretending to trot along the water while her wings held her aloft.
Enough circling. Enough hoping the answer would drop into her lap. Focus on the day, the moment.
Opaline didn’t remember what she said to Misty during the battle. Embarrassing drivel. She remembered Misty’s reply a little better, but it was just as bad. Nonsense about the magic of friendship and pitying Opaline, of all the silly things. She remembered striding close to the girl, raising her head high to drive home just how small and puny Misty was. A full-grown alicorn versus a smaller-than-average pony.
Misty had shrunk back reflexively, making her seem and doubtless feel even smaller. Her determination could not hide the fear in her eyes. She had done wrong and would be punished. Powerless, puny, and…
And that’s when Opaline supposed she snapped. Nothing maternal, just a huge well of nostalgia and indifference sapping her will.
She squeezed the memory, turning it round and round in her mind. After a week of refusing to think of that day, it was infuriating to force herself forward only to find a new dead end. She shook her head, opened her eyes. Sighed, and guided her long turn back to the shore.
Then she sighed again at seeing an orange earth pony flying out to meet her. Magic for a horn and wings, only summoned at will or need… did Sunny Starscout really count as an alicorn? Certainly she shouldn’t.
“You okay?” Sunny ventured as they drew close.
Now pretending to skate along the water, Opaline passed her by. “Well enough.”
Sunny turned and easily caught up. “Hitch says you skipped out on garbage duty.”
“I gave myself the day off for good behavior.”
“Well, I hope you’re still coming to our daily chat.”
Opaline smiled cattily, eyes forward. “I don’t think I need to. I’ve been very good.”
“Oof, that’s a shame.” Sunny swept down alongside her, though kept her hooves tucked up to not touch the water. “I just finished baking a red velvet cake and now I need to find someone else to eat it with.”
Opaline glanced to the side to find Sunny eyeing her with an easy smile and one raised brow.
Opaline did not have much of a sweet tooth. In fact, the modern pony trend of mass-producing (and mass-consuming) doughnuts and cookies was something she found nauseating.
She was, however, exceedingly fond of a well-made cake. And Sunny made them very, very well.
As a rule, these little chats were awkward to the point of being pathetic. Sunny never pressed Opaline for answers, instead asking about the weather, how her day went, and other busywork for the mouth. Always idle, but always poignant, as if she expected Opaline to spill her guts any day now.
Or maybe she was smarter than Opaline guessed and was trying to bore her into surrender.
Today, though, Opaline was feeling… not good, but alive. This was her first day since the battle feeling both bitter frustration and the coy triumph of her little acts of defiance. She felt sharp and scrappy. She did not want to be bored.
“You’ll never get anywhere with how you do things,” Opaline said. She licked the delicious white frosting from her lips.
Sunny had asked about the weather. “Pardon?”
Opaline peered intently at her host, partially to help ignore the terrible interior decorations of Sunny’s lighthouse home. “As an alicorn. You can’t rule by asking nicely, you must have some kind of authority or no one will obey you.”
“I don’t want to be a ruler.”
“I don’t see how that matters,” Opaline admitted. “We’re alicorns, and all pettiness aside I’m pretty sure you count. There isn’t an alicorn in history who hasn’t ruled, or tried to.”
Sunny looked flatly to her. “Is this seriously your plan? Fake being reformed so you can try a ‘come to the Dark Side’ with me?”
Opaline leaned forwards in the chair, surprising herself with her own interest. “Humor me. You’ve spent your life working for unity among ponykind, you achieved it, and now you embody it. Forget nonsense about force and conquest, they would rally to you.”
“I. Am. Nineteen.”
“Yes, but you won’t be for long. A figurehead at first while older heads do the hard work of uniting their governance. At their hooves you’d learn the task of statehood, slowly assuming more until you rule them all, to thunderous applause.”
Sunny gave a small, distant smile. “According to my dad’s books, that’s what happened with Celestia. She became an alicorn at eight years old, so the tribes all shared custody and responsibilities until she became old enough to rule. Not only did her lessons let her see wisdom from all sides, but her agelessness let her stand above selfish ambitions and rule with genuine goodness. Thus was born an empire that lasted a thousand years, until she passed it to Twilight.”
Who didn’t make it to a hundred, but Opaline was curious. “What about Luna?”
Sunny warmed to the history lesson. “Luna was just a unicorn until she was in her thirties, so she never got that intense treatment. Once she became an alicorn they kind of shoved her in alongside Celestia with a lot of mixed responsibilities between them. You can see why so many ponies viewed her as just a spare wheel.”
Sudden chill gripped Opaline’s reply. “Celestia should have been a better sister. She should have seen Luna’s jealousy and done more to help it.”
Sunny looked at her with a pleased expression.
Opaline swallowed hard. ‘Oh no, we’re making progress.’
Sunny’s gaze went to the side, her face turning wistful. “To be honest, I would expect Celestia to be the jealous one.”
“Absurd.”
“Maybe to you. But Luna got to grow up free of expectation. She got to play in the mud while Celestia was bombarded with teachers. Then she went on to be a cool adventurer with excitement, stories, and travels to far-off lands until the wings grew and the whole world decided she had to rule because that’s what alicorns do.”
Sunny shook her head, breathing out slowly. “I wonder if Celestia became bitter. No childhood, no choice. A tool to bring happy endings to every story except her own because she was never allowed to end.”
“But she did,” Opaline ventured. “She retired and disappeared from history.”
“Well, she did that even though she wasn’t supposed to. We’re both right.” It was Sunny’s turn to lean forward, her own thoughts having crystallized over the conversation. “The point is, I don’t want to be Celestia. I want to have fun with my friends and do good, not be groomed for a job I think I’d hate.”
“You’d rather be Luna? Thrown into it unprepared?”
“No,” Sunny voiced firmly. “I’m not going to rule over anyone, and I’m sure not going to get ordered into it. And I won’t be a Twilight or Cadence either, promoted to royalty because an older alicorn says I should. No offense.”
Opaline didn’t follow her logic. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to live, Opaline.” Sunny reached over and gently touched her shoulder. “And I want you to start living with me.”
Opaline blinked.
Sunny jerked back the hoof. “Metaphorically, I mean. Sorry about that. I don’t want either of us to go all Nightmare M–”
Opaline didn’t hear anything else, nor her own fumbled excuse. Something about a stomach ache.
She flew right for the ocean. Huge, comforting, why did she love it so much? It couldn’t protect her from that name. The memories. They chased her, whispered it between her ears. Nightmare Moon. It didn’t even mean anything to her, with no face or strong emotion attached.
The name made her think of Luna: tied, linked, two puzzle pieces fitted together without context. Luna, so small before her like Misty was, looking up to Opaline so helplessly afraid as Misty did.
So strange and frightening. Opaline recalled battling Luna more than once. Yet she felt such love. The relief on Misty’s face when she learned it would all be alright, after all. The warmth as Luna pressed herself to Opaline. But they had been enemies…
“Perhaps I was Nightmare Moon?” Opaline asked. Waves rustled beneath her. Somehow they seemed to doubt it.
One answer, at least. Love or at least the memory of love was what stopped Opaline. Love for Luna, of all the unlikely potentials.
Perhaps they had been ‘frenemies’ as the new saying goes. That made some sense. Politics might have turned them into foes, but Luna had been an easy mare to like. Her brash demeanor, at least when free from the palace where she was always in the shadow. Impulsive courage carrying her to triumph or injury, with the latter at least winning a good story. Her paintings were subtle and subversive, her observatory a wonder of the ancient world. And she was so cute when she thought no one was watching her devour whole boxes of blueberries.
Far more lovely than Celestia, though Sunny’s words had at least softened Opaline to her old foe. What a terrible life: raised almost from birth to bear the world on her shoulders, never to set it down. She must have cursed her fate, but perhaps only in moody piques. There was hope, after all. New alicorns to be schooled and groomed. A coming day when the burden would be passed to another.
Bile scorched Opaline’s throat. She swallowed it down. She suddenly felt twitchy, trapped. Like she had been held still for hours with a body that screamed to move, though she was flying as fast as she could.
A terrible feeling. She turned swiftly back to land, clutching her head.
Then she battered it with her heavy hooves. Stop the feelings. Stop the memories. A terrible sense of being on a precipice from which there was no return, tipping slowly into the dark.
It seemed a comfort to mock from a distance, and so she laughed. “It all ended so well for you. Didn’t it, Celestia?”
Opaline landed atop a cliff facing the shore. A deep breath in – the lovely sea breeze, wafting even up here. Something was lost when flying above it. The ocean smelled better in relaxation. Even Celestia knew it, for she had retired to a lonesome beach. Salt water and happy, carefree days. Equestria in the hooves of others. The reward, so long in coming. The only time in that poor mare’s life she had ever been at ease.
Opaline remembered
‘No!’
She recalled
‘No I don’t!’
She was lounging on the beach when Twilight Sparkle approached her. Equestria was cracking. An oversight had been made. The thousand-year kingdom had evolved and grown alongside Celestia, adapting the whole of her being into a government she could guide with greater instinct than her own four hooves. A puzzle of insane complexity, and Twilight was a piece from a different board.
The pathetic new princess was so desperate she begged Opaline of all ponies to save her! Opaline could remember distinctly now, the young alicorn looking to her on that beach with such certain adoration.
She laughed, loud and cruel.
Then grew still.
Then she trembled. Like the anxiety from before, and so much worse. Her limbs were numb and cold. Her chest boiled with HATE.
All that the old Opaline ever wanted. Why was the memory so dark? Why did she hate poor young Twilight – that whirlwind for law, that chaos for order – with such fanatic enmity?
Twilight’s soft, weak approach had crippled the kingdom. She tried to be Celestia, and was not. Now it was Opaline’s turn. But even if she could be Celestia, it was too late. Broken glass cannot be fixed with glue.
Strength was needed. Opaline was needed. No matter how much she HATE HATE HATED being there. How she was FREE FINALLY FREE AND THEY STOLE IT FROM HER.
She was flying again. She did not know when she took off. Over the ocean already, towards the setting sun. Somehow it called to her. Somehow she knew she had touched it before, once and many times. ‘The Alicorn of Fire,’ after all.
“It was you who trained Twilight!” Opaline shrieked. “It was your fault!”
The answer erupted in her brain. THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH STARS DAMN YOU MUST I RULE FOREVER OR BE BLAMED FOR THE FALL?
The system failed. Celestia looked on her long work and knew only strength could save it. Obedience, authority, will. Opaline battled Twilight for its fate, and both were defeated.
Opaline’s fractured mind had clung to what it could remember. She must reign as alicorn master, for all other ways had failed. Twilight had proven the weakness of harmony. A gifted amateur, no match for Opaline whose very purpose since childhood was to rule. No choice but to forget the HATE.
Opaline reached her feeble magic to the sun. There was no connection, no touch. She felt so alone. Like a life-long love had died, leaving their empty place on the bed.
“I did what I could!” she screamed to the silent sun. “All that I could. Then I took it up again! Other great alicorns, a world of mortals… do none but me own the defeat?”
The sun dipped, then disappeared. Opaline kept chasing it, hurling curses and magical grasps, all in vain. Long into the night she sped, losing direction and eventually circling back to Maretime Bay. The stars were out by the time she found the cliff, and she collapsed on its top. She wept bitterly until exhaustion turned wails to sobs, and her chest stilled its quiver.
At the end of it all, she raised her eyes. Past the cliff, ocean, and night sky to the bright and silver moon.
She closed her eyes.
Warm blue wings engulfed her.
Startled, she looked again. Nopony around, yet she felt watched. She looked around, up.
A light twinkled upon the moon.
“Luna?” Opaline gasped. Hope she had long forgotten lurched in her breast, only to fade. Not Luna. A memory, a fragment. A piece of her magic made one with the moon after so many years shepherding it across the sky.
The presence saw right through her, though Opaline felt no judgment. Not even forgiveness, for she felt Luna’s sense that there was nothing to forgive. Everything ended, reigns and kingdoms, and that was alright.
Even memories. The glimmer in the moon began to fade. The tiny piece of Luna’s magic, aroused to one last act for the sister she loved so very much.
“And then I’ll be alone,” Opaline sighed.
‘Not unless you make it so,’ said the Luna that remained. ‘For you are young, Opaline.’
There was meaning in her use of that name. A fresh start. A new horizon. Somehow, Opaline pictured Luna raising one eyebrow at her with a playful smirk.
The image blurred.
“I love you.”
Luna loved her even more. Forever and ever.
Then Luna was gone.
Opaline woke early the next morning. She left her cell, sat and waited until Hitch arrived with the morning doughnuts. She allowed the sheriff to remove two before burying her face in the box, snarfing and swallowing.
Celestia did not like doughnuts. Opaline found she liked them very much.
She did not look at Hitch. The whirlwind for order. It was not his fault he was so much like Twilight Sparkle. Opaline would have to come to terms with it one day.
Not today. She put the box on her head, spearing it with her horn. The impromptu hood hid the sheriff from sight until he left for his rounds. Doubtless his first stop would be to let Sunny know of her antics.
The door closed. Opaline threw off the box, lurched to the deputy’s chair, and spun it around.
No Zipp.
“Looking for someone?”
Hitch’s chair spun slowly towards Opaline, revealing Zipp and her challenging smirk.
“We missed something yesterday,” Opaline said quickly, not caring anymore for their little game. “I said I’d tell you if you were right. You said I didn’t know why I surrendered. Fair is fair: you were right. The fact is I lost my wish to rule, and without that I don’t have a good idea who I am supposed to be.”
Zipp registered her victory with a confused blink, then quickly rallied. Her eyes met Opaline’s curiously, as though this was their first meeting.
“Well, who do you want to be?”
“Baby steps, Princess Zephyrina. I can’t know that until I know who I am now. Hoof me that pen, will you?”
Zipp obeyed. Opaline sat opposite her, scribbling on a notepad. “I have a small list of things that I can start with. Things I, Opaline, actually want to or feel I should do separate from any world conquest. I’m curious which you think is most promising.”
“I don’t pretend to follow, but...” Zipp shrugged. “Okay. Hit me.”
Opaline peered at her own atrocious handwriting. “One: While I was a very poor parental figure for Misty, I did raise her and I know she wanted me to do better. Therefore, I must marry Alphabittle and become a good mother.”
Fortunately, Zipp had already swallowed her coffee. “Maybe put a pin in that one. Next?”
“Doughnuts may have earned a stay of execution, but mass-produced cookies are still terrible. Therefore, two: blow up a cookie factory.”
“Yeah, no. Next.”
“Learn to surf.”
Zipp’s ears perked up. “You serious?”
Opaline nodded with determination. “I love the beach. I still do. Maybe I fell in love on my own, maybe I got it from… someone who I used to be. But I can’t just lounge around all day like some old mare. I want to surf.”
Zipp smiled easily. “You don’t know that you’re looking at Maretime Bay’s premier surfboard instructor, do you?”
“I didn’t.” Opaline smiled back, meeting her gaze. A connection, as bizarre as the notion once seemed. Perhaps the beginning of a friendship.
Opaline didn’t mind. She was tired of being alone. Maybe one day they’ll be good enough friends for Zipp to hear the whole story, once Opaline is ready to tell it.
Zipp laughed. “Alright. The water’s gonna be freezing right now, but I can’t imagine that bothering the great Queen Opaline.”
Opaline shied back, grimacing as though struck. A bitter new reflex.
“Fine, but...” she looked again to find Zipp gazing back, her teal eyes full of concern. “Call me Opaline. No ‘queen,’ just Opaline.”
A shudder passed through her. A weight suddenly shed that she did not realize she held all those years. It was uncomfortable, a sudden feeling of dizziness. Her limbs felt light enough to float.
The discomfort passed, and she felt good. No queens, here.
“You’ll have to start calling me ‘Zipp,’ then.”
“Deal.”
They left the station, chatting first of the task before them, then of anything and everything which caught their minds. Zipp and…
Well. Whatever she used to be, she was Opaline now.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading!
