To Chain the Sun at Midnight

Sundancer and her daughter Willow Wind were escorted into the Empress’ courtyard during the dark and quiet hours of the early morning, an hour or so at least before the sun would rise. She had been allowed to go home, under escort and guard, to collect her daughter in person. A small mercy that would allow her to say her goodbyes before Willow was taken from her and given over to the care of Matron Rosemary Flint.

It wasn’t something Sundancer had known beforehand, nor was it widely publicized, but the palace was home to an orphanage meant to serve the children of royal guards, aristocrats, and palace staff who had no relatives to care for or adopt them if their parents passed on. Sundancer was, of course, still alive, but no assurances had been made that she would be allowed to see Willow when and if she had any downtime.

That this was the last time she might get to spend any meaningful time with her daughter was a thought that haunted her, but she had cried herself dry on the trip out to her small village on the edge of the Everfree Forest, and now she gathered courage from the knowledge that Willow would be well cared for and fed.

One of the three guards escorting her—a surprisingly young bat pony whose scowl could not quite hide the laugh lines around her eyes—had been slightly less hostile towards her than the other two. She had told her that the matron of the orphanage was strict and uncompromising but also fair and that she always tried to raise the foals in her charge the right way. What exactly the right way was, she hadn’t said, but Sundancer chose to interpret it in the most hopeful way she could.

She had relayed this information to Willow on the way back to Canterlot, holding nothing back, and though Willow too had cried, she had been brave, offering no protest and simply nodding in agreement when Sundancer told her that this would be a good thing, that she would be fed three times a day, be well taken care of, and that she should treat Matron Flint with the same respect she afforded Sundancer.

Willow Wind was small and rather weak. Some of the smallness was a result of malnourishment, but some was genetic, and some was because of her age. She still had not received her cutie mark and was yet too young to worry about such things. The all-night trip to Canterlot was long and hard for her—they had been made to walk and were not allowed to take the train—and she spent much of it riding on Sundancer’s back, falling in and out of sleep.

During the trip, the guards shot the little one an occasional glance, but only the eyes of the less hostile bat pony ever showed anything resembling sympathy. Not for the first time did Sundancer think that she wasn’t terribly sorry about the guard who had lost his life when trying to apprehend her. It mattered little that Sundancer had never meant to kill him. She had simply kicked out in fear when he grabbed her wing in his magic to keep her from flying away.

She remembered the feel of the kick vividly, the way the bones in his face had faltered under her hoof, the sound it had made. She suspected it wasn’t something she was likely to forget anytime soon. But she told herself that, like so many of the Empress’ other guards, he likely deserved it. How many ponies had he imprisoned or hurt simply because they were homeless and starving? The thought made her steel herself to any regret she might otherwise have felt.

Despite the early hour, the courtyard was filled with a sort of hushed and hurried hum. Guards and functionaries scuttled about, but they all took special care not to step too loudly or speak above a whisper. Magically floating lanterns spaced too far apart along the walls did little to drive away the creeping dark, and Sundancer was certain the light from the stars and the moon had dimmed the moment they’d passed through the gates.

The shadows between the orange lantern pools never seemed to settle either, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn they seemed to move with intent, blindly grasping their way along the cracks between the polished marble cobblestones.

The whole place reeked of shame and fear. Most of the ponies she saw kept their heads low, trying not to accidentally draw the attention of their absent mistress or anypony authorized to speak on her behalf. Only the guards stood straight and tall, though she thought their eyes seemed unusually vacant... even for guards.

Two of her three escorts broke off immediately and headed off towards a large metal door that looked out of place amongst the otherwise elegant architecture of the palace, but the bat pony guard stayed with her, stopping under one of the lanterns but saying nothing to either Sundancer or Willow.

Using one of her wings, Sundancer gently helped Willow down from her back, making sure the exhausted filly kept her balance. Her daughter’s dirty green mane hung down over her face, obscuring a pair of tired and wet eyes. For a moment, the little one said nothing, and Sundancer herself didn’t know where to begin. How did you say goodbye to your only child?

She wasn’t sure what Willow saw on her face—hesitation, maybe, or even fear—but the filly raised her chin and looked Sundancer straight in the eyes.

“I, uhm...” She swallowed and trailed off, then shook her head and started again. “I’ll be good to the matron, and I’ll be just as brave and strong as... as you are. So you don’t have to be sad. See.” Willow tried her best to smile through her dirty, tear-streaked face, and it was all Sundancer could do not to start weeping herself. Instead, she smiled back, though it was tremulous and weak.

“That’s right. You’re my big girl. Strong, just like me, and just like the roots of a real willow.”

“That is good to hear,” a severe voice interrupted, loud enough to make several nearby ponies flinch and hurry on their way, though the grim-looking unicorn had only spoken at just above a normal conversational tone. “This is a place where the strong tend to do well.”

Matron Rosemary Flint looked more like flint and less like rosemary. She was uncommonly tall for a unicorn, with a slate gray coat and a pale mane that looked like it might once have been a rich blonde color. Said mane was worn in a tight bun, and she was dressed in a dark purple frock cut in such a way as to make it clear she was in uniform.

She turned her electric blue eyes on Sundancer, looking her up and down, blatantly evaluating her and passing some secret judgment. Her expression did not change in any way, so Sundancer could not tell if she had been found wanting or not. The matron then turned her attention to Willow.

“I presume you must be Willow Wind.” It was not a question, and so she did not wait for a response. “Judging by your wing growth and stature, I would guess you’re only six or seven, but I’ve been told you’re nine. That is a pity, but one must bear the lot in life that the universe has seen fit to grant. It will take some time to reverse the effects of starvation, and I fear you may never grow as much as you should have.”

Sundancer had the distinct impression that the matron was the kind of pony who would expect a boulder to move out of her way if she came across one on her path. If Matron Flint said that she would make Willow healthy, then Sundancer felt compelled to believe her.

“You will care for her?” Sundancer found herself asking.

“Of course,” Matron Flint said, scrunching her nose and huffing dismissively. “The Empress decreed it, and so it will be done. The novitiate sisters of the orphanage will attend to young Willow under my guidance and direction.”

“Are you... are you taking her now?” Sundancer tried not to let the fear she felt make itself heard in her voice, but the reality was that her child was being taken from her to be raised amongst the ponies she despised the most in all Equestria, and she could do nothing about it and had no guarantees she’d get to see or interact with Willow ever again.

“I am,” Matron Flint said, nodding, and whether it was real or simply wishful thinking, Sundancer thought the mare’s eyes seemed to soften just a little when she said it. “I will give you some privacy to say your goodbyes.”

The unicorn turned her back on Sundancer and Willow and walked a few paces away. Not so far she couldn’t still hear them, but far enough to create the illusion of privacy. She grimaced and scrunched her nose once more when the bat pony guard failed to do the same.

“Moss,” she said, “if you would come join me over here.”

The bat pony guard—Moss, apparently—shot Sundancer and Willow an uncertain glance before nodding and walking over to the matron, who leaned in and whispered something that caused Moss to hunch her shoulders and hang her ears.

Sundancer put it from her mind and turned her attention back to Willow. Oh, how the child tried to stand tall and look brave. She was so small and weak, but her eyes burned with determination, and though her knees shook, her mouth was set against the anguish of farewell.

Sundancer knelt and wrapped her child in her forelegs, hugging her tight to her chest. Willow held on just as tightly.

“Your mommy loves you,” she whispered, her tears falling into Willow’s tangled mane. “I will always love you. Remember that, even when I’m not around.”

“Maybe... maybe I’ll get you see you in the palace sometimes?” Willow whimpered, the question coming out as a small and desperate plea.

“Yeah,” Sundancer answered, pulling back from her daughter so she could see her face. “I’m sure you’re right.” She tried to keep smiling for Willow to show that everything would be alright, but she feared it was hardly convincing.

“Will the Empress be... uhm, will she be nice to you?”

Sundancer wasn’t sure how to answer that. She doubted the Empress would be kind to her, just as much as she doubted the Empress would be cruel to her. Very likely, the Empress would treat her the same way she treated everypony else, like furniture that could walk and talk.

“Probably not,” she said, mustering a chuckle despite it all. She tried never to lie to Willow, even when it was unpleasant. “She’ll probably forget I’m even there, but don’t you worry about that, Willow. I don’t want you to be thinking about me all the time. They’re going to let you attend school, so I want you to focus on that. Take care of yourself and focus on your classes, okay? Can you promise me you’ll do that?”

Willow nodded. “I promise.”

A cleared throat announced the return of Matron Flint.

“I am afraid the time has come for me to take young Willow away. Do you have anything else you wish to say to your daughter? If so, now is the time.”

Sundancer shook her head and kissed the top of Willow’s head. “No. I’ve said what I need.”

“Good. Come along, Willow. There is much to do, and the day approaches rapidly. I abhor a laggard.”

Willow hesitated, looking up at Sundancer, then hugged her one more time as tightly as her little legs could before turning and following Matron Flint.

Ignoring Moss, who was signaling for Sundancer to follow her, she stared after her daughter until she disappeared out of sight around a corner.

“May the Sun, the Moon, and all the Stars watch over you,” she whispered, drawing the shape of the sun on her chest.

Moss hissed and slapped Sundancer’s hoof to the ground.

“Are you crazy? You’re lucky I’m the only one who saw that.”

“Yeah,” Sundancer answered, voice flat and empty. “Lucky me.”

-

Twilight Sparkle stared at the tattered old copy of The Empress: Element of Magic - Vol. 873. It was the earliest extant volume of this particular publication in the world as far as she was aware, and she had spent a long time looking. Her life was a thread that stretched back in time so far even she couldn’t see where it had started, and this dingy old annual was the end of that thread... or the beginning, depending on how you looked at it.

She’d never bothered putting it on display or setting it in a protective glass case or any nonsense like that. Unbreakable preservation spells protected each and every book in her prodigious personal library, and so eight seventy-three, as she’d taken to calling it, usually sat on her bookshelf, indistinguishable from any of the other books there, starting the very long set of shelves containing the rest of the annual chronicling of her own life.

She often wondered why it was in such a poor condition or why it was the earliest book in her collection. The spell to preserve a book was simple, and she could not imagine she’d been Empress already for eight hundred and seventy-three years before learning it or that she’d decided not to retroactively apply it to the rest of her collection if that had indeed been the case.

So what had happened to all the books she had owned before eight seventy-three?

Not that she was even certain the book’s numbering was an accurate account of how long she’d reigned in the first place. The interior title page said it was part of an annual publication, but she could not be certain the series actually began its run upon her ascent to the throne, nor did the content of the book ever clarify whether the series had indeed been published uninterrupted every year of her rule.

The department of the imperial bureaucracy currently tasked with distributing new volumes of The Empress had even scarcer records than Twilight did, only able to trace their own history back a couple of thousand years, and not a small amount of them were certain that the Empress was eternal. Fools and sycophants, the lot of them.

She opened the book and let her eyes linger on the gentle cursive signature on the interior of the cover that spelled out Twilight Sparkle. She had a stamp for that now. It was more uniform that way. There had been something else written under the signature at some point, but it had been scribbled out hastily and with enough force to tear the paper. To repair it with magic, she would have to remove the preservation spell, but she feared doing so would make the truly ancient book crumble to dust.

And so this was all she had. Aside from a few stone carvings and statues, it was the oldest record of her existence.

“Empress?” A soft and musical voice said. “Do you wish that I should return at some later time?”

Her name was Elderflower though she was still very young, which Twilight found amusing. She was also Twilight’s seamstress, dressmaker, and a well-trained courtesan, something the Empress took occasional advantage of. That was the purpose she’d been summoned for this particular night, though Twilight had almost forgotten she was even there. It happened sometimes. Her thoughts would run away with her, and the world around her fell away.

It was difficult to stay grounded when the only thing not terrifyingly transient was herself.

“Stay,” she said, and though she spoke quietly, the sound filled the entire room with its presence, creeping into every nook and cranny. Others had called it eerie when they thought they were safe from her attention. If she hadn’t always been as she was now, perhaps her voice had once been able to convey something like warmth, kindness, or even love. Now, however... It wasn’t a harsh or hateful voice, nor was it icy and cold. It simply was, as the Empress herself simply was, fixed and indifferent.

She floated the book back to its empty slot on her bookshelf and turned to face her bed. Elderflower lay on top of the covers, dressed in a diaphanous white gown hemmed with large, shimmering pearls. She had a coat to match the dress, a white so brilliant it too possessed the rainbow qualities of nacre, and her long purple mane was tied up in an intricate updo that the Empress knew would collapse into a natural glossy curtain with the pull of just a single golden hairpin.

Everypony knew the Empress’ favorite colors were purple and white, and everypony knew the Empress preferred mares. And so, of course, everypony knew exactly why Elderflower was her favorite. It was Twilight’s opinion that everypony tended to be too certain of the things they thought they knew.

Elderflower smiled at the Empress through heavily lidded eyes. It was an inviting and seductive smile, but it was an act. Well, at the very least, it was a trained expression that Elderflower had used on countless occasions with almost all of her clients. Twilight wondered briefly what a normal pony felt when they saw that expression, when they touched Elderflower's coat or kissed her lips. Surely something... more?

She raised a hoof and waived Elderflower off. “Not tonight.”

The young unicorn’s eyebrows furrowed over her large green eyes, a brief moment of candid surprise, but she bowed her head to acknowledge the command.

“Music,” Twilight said, gesturing towards a large golden harp in the corner of her room near an opulent crystal water fountain.

“As you wish, my Empress.”

Elderflower maneuvered off the bed with incredible grace, and as she passed by Twilight, she flicked her tail so it lay out across the Empress’ chest and shoulder before sliding off slowly. It was a pleasant sensation, and Elderflower giggled when Twilight raised an eyebrow at her. The sound of Elderflower’s giggle was pleasant as well.

“Does the Empress have any requests?” she asked, seating herself by the harp.

An unformed melody teased at the edges of Twilight’s mind. A song from eons past, no doubt, one that she would never remember but that would taunt her until the end of time. Just like all the rest of them. She realized she was in a mood tonight, and she wished to stew in it.

“Something slow,” she said, climbing onto her bed and lying on her stomach so she could face Elderflower. “Something dreary.”

It was Elderflower’s turn to raise her eyebrow. She looked at the harp, then back at the Empress, then back at the harp.

“Empress, this is a harp. I don’t think it can do dreary.”

Twilight felt her jaw tighten and recognized the slight tugging sensation just under her brows that always precipitated a flaring of the flames around her eyes. It was simple to relax her jaw and slow her breath, preventing the flare-up, but Elderflower—always quick to read and react to the moods and expressions of her clients—schooled her face to stillness and nodded meekly. Twilight wasn’t fond of her subjects being clever with her, even ponies with as much leeway as her favored consort. Elderflower wasn’t an idiot and well knew this, but she had an unfortunate tendency to push her boundaries.

“Forgive me, Empress.”

“Play,” was all Twilight answered, and the unicorn did as instructed, plucking a quiet and slow tune that had something of the darkness of winter in it, though she had to admit it was more gentle than it was dreary. After a pair of measures, Elderflower added her voice to the music of the harp, singing softly in an old, dead language that only Twilight could recognize. Well, Twilight and one particularly eccentric linguist she happened to know.

Twilight was the one who had taught Elderflower, specifically so she could sing songs and read Twilight stories from some of the older books in her library. Though it was true that Elderflower had taken to the language with surprising speed, it hadn’t come as a surprise to the Empress. She knew she was an excellent teacher, at least when the students weren’t too frightened to actually pay attention.

For some time, the Empress lay on her bed, listening to the velvet voice of Elderflower and the aching notes strummed forth from her harp. Though she was incapable of true sleep, a weighty, warm darkness soon embraced her, clouding her thoughts and melting the cold ire that made residence in her chest at all other times, an intrinsic part of her that only receded in stolen moments such as this.

A tiny brass owl—a clockwork figure next to the inkpot on her personal desk—came alive and hooted twice, disrupting her reverie. Somepony was approaching her quarters, and she would need to be alert for that, so she shook off the immaterial trappings that swaddled her and climbed out of the bed, taking a breath and stretching her back and then her great dark wings.

Elderflower, hearing the owl as well, let her voice trail off but kept playing the harp at a slightly lower volume. Background music, unintrusive and easily forgotten, but still present to establish a mood, a sense of effortless confidence and power. She really was very good at her job. Twilight let the flames run wild around her eyes and prepared to receive her new guest.

-

Sundancer followed Moss through the winding palace halls. Their baroque majesty, veiled in shadows and flickering orange light, passed her by unnoticed. All she saw was Moss ahead of her, and even that seemed ethereal as if they walked through the crevices and in-between places of an afterlife that had somehow claimed her still-living body.

Though living was perhaps a strong word, considering the gaping agonizing wound she felt where her heart should be. Her thoughts lingered with Willow, as they would every day she spent in this forsaken palace, and she found herself incapable of doing anything but worry for her daughter’s safety and well-being.

“Is your daughter really nine?”

The question caught her off guard and felt somehow like a violation in these otherwise silent halls.

“What?” she said, unsure she had heard correctly. Moss hadn’t stopped nor turned her head towards Sundancer, so when she spoke, her voice echoed away from Sundancer and down the hall, though it was a quiet echo, returned to her as almost a whisper.

“Matron Flint said your daughter is nine, but she looks... well, not nine.”

Sundancer sneered and shook her head. “It’s crazy what happens when you don’t have enough food to eat.” She let her words drip with venom, having no patience for those raised with silver spoons in their mouths. Moss’ relative kindness was starting to seem more a case of buffoonery than actual compassion.

For a second or two, Sundancer thought Moss would leave it at that, but then the guard spoke up again, still in the same quiet voice.

“This was my first time outside of Canterlot. I was raised here. I trained in the palace and have lived here since. I didn’t know villages could be so small... or dirty.”

Sundancer felt a growl manifest in her throat, but she forced it down.

“You’re a fool,” she said instead, to herself as much as Moss. The guard’s ears wilted somewhat, but she did not respond, and they wandered in silence until they reached a massive marble staircase veined through with gold and amethyst. Moss stopped before the lush plum-colored stair carpet that ran up the length of steps as they curved up and out of sight into what Sundancer assumed was the central tower of the palace.

“I was told not to follow you up,” Moss said, turning to look at Sundancer, though she seemed hesitant and quite unsure. “It’s, uhm, it’s going to ask you for a password, but it’s different for everyone, so I can’t tell you what it is. The Captain said you’d be fine though.”

Without explaining any further or waiting for Sundancer to ask any questions, Moss took flight down the hallway they’d come from and was quickly out of sight.

Alone for the first time in days, she tried to ignore how small she felt as she turned to the giant stairs. They were clearly built for someone much larger than her, but fortunately, she had wings and so could bypass the laborious climb. Or so she thought.

No sooner had she flapped her wings and passed over the first step than did her wings clamp tight against her sides and cause her to crash violently face first into the stairs. She thought she was very lucky to land on the runner, which helped soften the fall somewhat, though the warm, wet sensation under her smarting nose made it clear she was bleeding.

The air around her seemed to shiver, and when she gingerly climbed to her hooves, she thought she heard a soft jingle like tiny bells. A spell, no doubt, to prevent flight, but why it was there, she hadn’t a clue. With a deep breath, she resigned herself to climb.

The walls of the stairwell were engraved with strange painted figures engaged in stranger activities. One carving was of a group of ponies with minotaur horns cavorting under a fiery red sun. The longer she looked at it, the more she was certain she could hear their gleeful manic cries and see their bodies undulate as they danced. Another carving was of a dark alicorn with moons for eyes. Gold seemed to run like tears from her eyes as she crushed a heart between her hooves, and—though she didn’t know how—Sundancer was certain the heart belonged to the alicorn.

She saw a giant snake swallowing a herd of screaming earth ponies, an alicorn foal in her crib strangling a swan with her hooves while surrounded by robed gargoyles, and a unicorn weeping as a hundred books burned around her. There were dragons, griffons, and changelings all engaged in confusing but terrible acts, yet none of the carvings were of the Empress, none but the very last.

At the top of the stairwell, a massive carving covered the entire wall and depicted the Empress, haloed and surrounded by rays of light. She stood over the bleeding body of a monstrous serpentine creature, holding in her magic an intricate spear that pierced the creature's chest. Hundreds of small butterflies sprang forth from the wound, each one set like a shimmering gem in the wall.

Once again, the longer she looked at the carving, the more it seemed to move, the Empress’ mane catching in the wind, the butterflies flapping their tiny wings, and the serpent’s goat-like face twisting in agony and despair. For a moment, she thought the same look of despair was mirrored on the Empress’ face, but it quickly disappeared, replaced with the same disinterested expression Sundancer had seen during her trial.

She stepped out of the stairwell into a new hallway, but when she turned her head to catch one last glimpse of the carvings, she froze in her tracks. The walls were completely smooth, any trace of the carvings having vanished into thin air. It seemed that if Sundancer were to make a new life for herself within these walls, she would need to acclimatize quickly to the strange and unpredictable vagaries of magic.

“And the sooner, the better,” she muttered to herself.

The opulent windowless hallway she found herself in was smaller than the cavernous vaulted monstrosities that crisscrossed the public sections of the palace—smaller and unmistakably older. Veined marble had been replaced with dark polished wood, and where before there had been stained glass windows and gargantuan stone effigies, there were now shelves and pedestals covered in books, oddities, and antiques, all of which exuded an aura of forbidden knowledge and ancient wealth.

Despite her feelings towards the Empress and everything she stood for, Sundancer couldn’t help but be impressed... and curious. So many strange-looking devices, the purpose of which she was sure she would never guess in a million years. Though some were familiar, such as the clocks, compasses, and astrolabes that were strewn about the shelves seemingly at random.

She noticed several frames hanging on the wall, all of them covered in tasseled miniature curtains to hide the paintings within, though she thought the raised paisley pattern on the fabric was beautiful enough on its own. The soft velvet runner beneath her hooves swallowed the sound of her steps, and the silence was deafening, interrupted only by the steady tick-tock of the various clocks and Sundancer’s surprisingly steady breathing.

The doors at the end of the hallway were made of the same dark wood as the rest of the halfway and looked sturdy more than anything else. She’d expected gold filigree and intricately sculpted door handles, maybe a decorative knocker. Not this level of practical simplicity. On a pedestal to the left of the doors, encased in a bell-shaped glass cloche, lay a gold-plated skull.

It was a pony skull, no bigger than her own head, and she was quite certain it was real. As she approached, two small flames sprang to life within its eye-sockets, and a soft chime rang out through the hallway. No doubt this was what Moss had been talking about, but it felt unnecessarily grim to Sundancer.

“Who approaches?” the skull asked in a surprisingly soft voice.

Sundancer matched the skull's quiet tone and introduced herself.

“That is an unusual name. Your parents must have been either very brave or very foolish.”

“Not really either,” she replied. “They were just regular ponies trying to make the best of a raw deal.”

“Not you, though? Regular ponies don’t often kill guardsmen, nor do they end up indentured to the Great Mistress.”

“Yeah, well, like I said. A raw deal. Are you going to let me in?”

“Unfortunately, no. The Great Mistress likes her games, so I am bound to require a password from any who wishes to pass.”

“How am I supposed to know a password that’s different for everyone when no pony gave me mine?”

“That’s not how this works,” the skull said. “How well do you know your Carangiformes?”

“What?”

“Carangiformes, in particular the ray-finned fish. Do not fret. Correctly answer the question I ask at the end of this story I’m going to tell you, and I’ll grant you access.”

“Sure,” Sundancer said, though she felt nothing of the sort. Annoyed was more apt. She had been forced here against her will and now had to prove something or guess some riddle correctly just for the privilege of gaining access to her own punishment.

“One day,” the skull said, “a suckerfish arose from the dark and saw the vessel of a great griffon fisherman who had in prior days caught much of the suckerfish’s kin. Though it was perhaps foolish, he grabbed hold of its hull and struggled with all his might to delay its journey home, for he knew a storm drew near, and he wished for the winds and the waves to batter the vessel and cast the griffon into the depths.

“Despite his small size compared to the boat, he was successful in his endeavor. The wind and the lightning struck down the vessel and tossed not just the griffon but also his two sons—who had journeyed out with him—into the sea, and the suckerfish watched as all three of them drowned.

“What did the suckerfish feel in his heart as he watched the griffon and his sons perish?”

Sundancer sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her hoof.

“That was an awful lot of work for a really bad pun.”

“Please answer the question.”

“Remorse,” she answered, unable to keep the frustration from her voice. “The remora felt remorse. But I don’t, so I’ll thank you to keep your passive-aggressive insinuations to yourself.”

The skull was just a skull, but Sundancer was certain she saw its dead grin deepen.

“You’re not an idiot, at least, though I should hardly be surprised. The Great Mistress tends not to attract fools into her orbit.”

Before Sundancer could respond, the light in the skull’s eye sockets flickered and died, followed by a soft click from the doors, signaling they were now unlocked. This was it, she thought to herself, the beginning of the torment that would constitute the rest of her life.

“For Willow,” she whispered, trying to bear her trepidation with grace. Of this, she was certain; for Willow, she could endure anything.