Seashell (print rewrite)

SEASHELL

Excerpt XIII
From the journal of Sunburst, August 21, YS 1329:

Here’s a little bit of an interesting thing I’ve learned: the princess likes burgers. She loves them. I mean in a serious way. They’re her favorite, especially with a big pile of hay fries fresh out of a deep fryer. The greasier and more ketchup slathered, the better, too, both the burger and fries. A frosty cold chocolate milkshake more often than not rounds it all out (if you can call that a ‘rounded meal’).

Captain Dash likes that kind of food, too.

I guess I’ve known this for a while, because maybe once a week or so if there’s nothing else keeping them too busy, the princess and the captain get together and have a feast of takeout burgers and fries from a fast food place not too far from here. Ostensibly, it’s so they can turn the daily security and logistics report from a usual brief few notes into a working dinner where the two of them go more in-depth into things.

Tonight was one of those nights.

I was on the evening shift. It’s my favorite shift, I think. This time of day is nice and quiet; not as quiet as the midnight shift, when everypony but the guard is asleep so there’s nopony to have to worry about babysitting (aside from the occasional foal who’s up past her bedtime), but nowhere near the noise and commotion of the morning and afternoon shifts with all the business of the day still going on. The random timer we use to make security sweeps less predictable had just gone off, so I was walking through the halls on a patrol. I try to be as unobtrusive as I can. I like to think I’m pretty good at it and my presence usually goes unnoticed. As a result, once in a while I catch certain bits of conversations that maybe I wouldn’t if the participants knew I was in earshot. Fortunately—well, no, not ‘fortunately,’ more like a basic requirement of being a good guard—I’m not the kind to go blabbing.

Who would I tell, anyway? Except maybe this journal, I mean. You don’t count, journal. Sorry.

I went through the big assembly hall first, but the princess doesn’t exactly hang out there after the day’s business with dignitaries and whoever else needs attention is finished. She doesn’t like the official areas, the big dining room or the ministerial offices or anything. Unless she has to do some sort of official entertainment like a state dinner or something, she prefers to eat in one of the smaller, more personal rooms off in some corner of the palace. It’s more private that way, I suppose, and privacy is valued because it’s hard to come by for a princess. It makes me feel a little guilty about intruding, but it’s my job.

I’d just as soon leave her to whatever comfortable solitude she can find within her shell, but that’s not always how it works, here in this cage.

And so, I was walking down one of the corridors and I caught that smell… greasy fast food. That’s how I knew it was burger night, and it didn’t surprise me to find them together in one of the viewing rooms. They were sitting at a table just big enough for two ponies, in front of the huge windows looking out over the gardens with a breathtaking scenic view of the flowers glowing in all their bright colors in the last of the day’s fading sunset fire.

I only took a quick look at them through the doorway and I didn’t hear all that much, just a few words passing between the two. I wasn’t there to eavesdrop, I just happened by pure chance to see and hear what I did.

Captain Dash said something funny. I couldn’t hear all of what it was. Princess Twilight did. She swallowed her bite of burger and let out a tiny laugh in response. That intrigued me. It’s so rare to actually hear her laugh. I couldn't help but for my attention to be captured by it.

And… I’m not sure I even feel comfortable writing down what I’m about to. As stated before, and as I’m starting to be too insistent about, I don't mean to spy. If it’s only for myself, though, just for this journal and nopony else will ever see it, what harm can it do?

The princess said something after she laughed.

“Oh, Rainbow, that’s just too funny.”

Those were her exact words. She didn’t say ‘Captain Dash.’ It struck me how she wasn’t being formal because it wasn't a superior and a subordinate having a structured professional exchange. Instead, it was two friends: old friends, best friends, the kind of friends who knew each other better than a lot of ponies know their own families.

It wasn’t just the words themselves, either. It was the way she said them. I’m not sure how to describe it other than this: it wasn't the voice we hear at court. There’s a certain kind of voice that goes with the public face a princess wears. There’s a persona to it.

But this? This was more. This was something else that fit her in a deeper, truer way.

This was her real voice, undisguised.

It seems strange—because how can a pony have more than one voice?—but I’ve been around her long enough to know it’s true. This real voice comes out in rare fleeting moments once in a while. Sometimes it’s with her student, for example.

Tonight, especially, it had something in it that I will never forget.

It had a lot of genuine happiness in it.

Right now, for this one moment, for those few words, it wasn’t a mask. It wasn’t hiding any feelings, and it wasn’t being wielded with restraint to remain detached. For this one moment, right here, right now, she was truly happy and it truly showed. The real pony shone through like the sunset blazing in the windows, showing all her real colors, all the real warmth of the fire of her soul inside, alive and vital.

And it was so beautiful.

It was in her eyes and the way she looked at Captain Dash. There was something in her smile and her body language. She was relaxed and comfortable and letting herself slouch just a little, and not worrying one bit about holding her posture up in the supremely perfect poise of a princess. She was a whole different pony.

When she was with Captain Dash, I caught a glimpse of the real flesh and blood Twilight Sparkle.

For all the time I could spend writing about it, the truth is, the whole thing lasted barely a few seconds while I was walking through the hall, passing by the doorway to the viewing room. But that was enough. In what I saw and heard in those few seconds, I knew that to the princess, this wasn’t just a meeting to receive some report, it—

No.

I’m being silly.

I should scratch all of this out, and maybe burn the page. Nopony would ever dare to call it anything else, not even the princess or the captain, because of course it wasn’t anything else. Proper separations of personal life and professional duty need to be maintained, and propriety must be strictly enforced. No one knows it better than ponies like them. As far as what could be happening, it was all business, nothing more. Certainly it could never be suggested that anything more personal could be taking place.

I’m sure everything I’ve written is all just in my head, and all just overactive speculation arising from reading too much into tiny meaningless things. I must be crazy, to be basing all this on just a few seconds I happened to catch.

You know what? Yes. Obviously, I’m mistaken about all of this. All I was seeing was a very dry discussion about the security and logistics report. I have to be wrong and there was no sense of deep-running bonds, no feeling of warm friendship, no intimacy, no closeness, no sense of joy in just the presence of the other pony.

No, none of that at all. I know there was no way that, on at least some unspoken and maybe even partly unconscious level, the princess was on a date with Captain Dash.

It’s as plain as the sunlight on a clear day that this is impossible.

I shouldn’t be writing down such obviously untrue things.

Should I?

But how else… how else can I explain now, what I heard from Azure? I admit, I held out on completely believing her at first. She’s a child. Misunderstandings happen. Ponies can be misheard. Things can mean something else when the context is missing. There could have been any number of reasons not to take what she said at face value, even if she is simply curious and well-meaning.

Once you see it with your own eyes, though…
 
 
Enough dangerous thinking for today.