How to Remove a Unicorn Tooth

by Skywriter

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Cadance, Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 10953

Three missing pieces, two loving alicorns, and a single stupid decision that will set young Princess Cadence on a fresh new course.

Three missing pieces, two loving alicorns, and a single stupid decision that will set young Princess Cadence on a fresh new course. Story One of the "Cadance of Cloudsdale" cycle.

Cadance of Cloudsdale (so far!) is serialized in Spanish! See here for the Spanish translation courtesy of SPANIARD KIWI!

Published 2012-12-27 21:40:02 UTC
Last updated 2012-12-27 21:40:02 UTC

How to Remove a Unicorn Tooth

* * *
How to Remove a Unicorn Tooth

by Jeffrey C. Wells

* * *

I awake in the morning, and my kingdom is missing.

It is still missing when I push aside the sumptuous and pointlessly fluffy comforters that have cradled me all night. It is still missing as I part the heavy velvet curtains of my canopy bed and greet the daytime sun, brought to us all courtesy of my Aunty just as sure as last night's moon was. It is missing for the entire duration of my brisk, pegasus-grade wing-calisthenics routine, and It is still missing as I brush my teeth, the taste of teaberry and soda filling my mouth. A good, long, steaming-hot shower, heady with great clouds of fruit- and herb-scented steam, does not bring It back, and as I stiffen my lip and start in on the first step of my onerous fifty-seven step daily beauty ritual, a full thirty-three of which involve cucumbers in some way, shape or form, It is still as gone as ever.

My kingdom remains gone as I swing open the doors of my inner chambers and meet the crowds of functionally-anonymous hoofmaidens assigned to my person with a genuinely pleasant smile. It does not return as they primp my mane and tail and affix my regalia for my daily token appearance at Court: four little hoofboots, one, two, three, four; one simple breastcollar bearing the stylized insignia of the Fire of Friendship; one hateful little tiara, for no other purpose than to signify my honorary (and meaningless) title of Princess of Equestria. Glittering bits of gold to mark me as a very important pony, which is fortunate inasmuch as nothing else in my life does.

It is still missing throughout the tortured Small Breakfast with Aunty on the Ivy Veranda. Parenthetically, there is no such thing as a non-tortured Small Breakfast. The conversation is always either stilted or uncomfortably probing, often both in the very same meal, and the food – while always absolutely exquisite, prepared as it is by one of the five finest chefs in the Hegemony – comes in ludicrously tiny portions. This morning, Aunty breaks her fast with seasonal berries, crème fraîche, and black tea. Mine is slightly larger, at Aunty's request: fresh orange juice, a single soft-cooked egg in a cup with a plate of miniature toast soldiers, a little pot of cranberry marmalade, and a saucer of hot farina cereal topped with a swirl of very good maple syrup shipped in from Whitetail. As usual, I am unable to enjoy any of it, for the simple fact that I know I will remain unsatisfied when it is finished.

But... this is not a private meal, where I can feel a bit more free to surfeit myself on sprouts and yoghurt and cracked wheat to feed the all-consuming inner fire of my alicorn magic. This is a public breakfast, and I am a Princess of Equestria, and Aunty is a Princess of Equestria, and we are the only two of our kind in the entire world. We stand in quiet representation of an entire lost tribe of Pony, and we must be what the world wants us to be. Civil. Dignified. And not, not ravenously, mindlessly hungry.

I endure this as I tap quietly at the shell of my egg with the back of a tiny golden spoon, miserably failing to even crack the shell. I endure the torturous breakfast and the aching hunger just as I endure the daily fact that It is gone, forever, never to return. I hide that which I endure so well that no mortal pony could possibly detect even the faintest eddy of the howling storm of bright, animal pain twisting just beneath the surface of my milky-pink and rose-scented pony hide.

Aunty is no mortal pony.

"Did you sleep well, Mi Amore?"

I abandon my frustratingly adamantine egg. Aunty's questions are like snowflakes. Beautiful, delicate, sharp-edged, and, extremely dangerous in large quantities. I make a noncommittal noise because there is no way to win one of Aunty's games once you begin to play. Brain spinning with furious plans as to how to best allocate my limited supply of toast (lacking as I do an egg), I wrap the marmalade pot in a tendril of cerulean magic from my horn and shuffle it across the table toward me.

"Manners, Cadence," scolds Aunty, gently, with a smile. I look, and eventually concur that if you were to have gotten out a straightedge and a protractor, you probably could have proved (with considerable mathematical difficulty) that the center of the marmalade pot had been just slightly on Aunty's side of the table, not mine. I drop my magic with a dull whine.

"Might-you-please-pass-the-marmalade-pot-Aunty-Celestia," I say, a bit woodenly.

"Happily," says H.R.H. Celestia, with great grace. Celestia's own golden magic bathes the marmalade pot, lifts it, and deposits it right at my hoof. I don't even want the marmalade now, after that little display, but I am trapped. I spoon a thimbleful of the stuff onto my scant ration of toast and bite down, the fresh cranberry tasting like ash in my mouth.

There is silence for a time, broken only by the crunch of toast and the clink of flatware against fine Qilinese porcelain.

"You have grown so much since arriving here from Reduit," says Aunty, proceeding on with the conversation as though I were a willing participant. "As you grow, it will be natural for you to dwell on your lost nation a bit, both asleep and awake. An alicorn's kingdom is a piece of her, after all."

I force myself to swallow the cranberry toast. It's not what I want; I want the egg, darn it. Scowling slightly, I levitate my unused butter knife and begin picking at the top of the shell. When this yields no better effect than the spoon, I plant the knife firmly against the egg and begin tapping on the butt end of it with my fork.

"Manners, Cadence," scolds Aunty again. A flash of gold and her telekinesis overpowers mine, pushing my utensils firmly to the crisp linen tablecloth. She takes up my spoon and successfully breaches the shell with three little taps. Now I don't want the egg, either. I eye my hot cereal, cautiously, wondering how she plans on taking that away from me.

"We are like dragons, you and I," Aunty pontificates, heedless of my breakfast quandary. "More fire than flesh. We grow great when we are protecting important things, and not just in spirit. You were a small child for so long, locked away in that hidden sea-fortress. The experience of coming into full alicorn flower may be unsettling to you. I would talk with you about it."

Oh, you did not just say that, I think, fuming. Yes, Aunty Celestia, I was a tiny little filly for somewhere around, at best guess, a millennium. And yes, when you found me and brought me to Canterlot for "safekeeping", I quickly became something more. Yes, when I started growing, I was confused, but then I visited the archives for a copy of Dustbunny's Her Royal Person: A Study of the Unique Thaumaturgic Biology of the Crown Princess, and it set me, if not straight, then at least firmly crooked. It is embarrassing enough to try to understand what's going on in your own body by reading a book about your aunt – if she even is that, we haven't quite determined – and the thought of actually talking to Aunty about it makes me want to curl up and die. I grab up the spoon again and attack my cereal while it is still available to me, slurping it a little in my eagerness.

"Manners, Cadence," says Aunty, distantly.

I fix her with a look, dropping the spoon to the tablecloth with a dull and linen-shrouded clatter.

Then I plunge my snout into the farina and begin noisily devouring it like the beast I am inside. It is a stupid stunt. It is burning-hot and the syrup gets up my nose and I end up wasting most of it, which is horrible because it was the last thing on the table I could eat. In a matter of seconds, my world becomes colored with gold as Aunty grips me bodily in her aura, forces me back onto my sitting-cushion, and then sternly wipes my face with a napkin she has dipped in her water-glass. Once finished, Aunty releases me and gazes at me with a distinct lack of amusement.

"And maybe," she says, infuriatingly wry, "you have not grown as much as I think you have."

"Can this be over, now?" I say. "Please? I'm probably going to be late for posture class as it is."

"You may tell Madam Decorum that you were detained on princessly business," says Celestia. "I hear that my name carries at least a little weight in this town."

She shakes her head, then, smiling a little helplessly at me. I am pleased, because I want her to be a little helpless sometimes. "Cadence," she says, "what am I going to do with you?"

"I don't know," I say. "Keep me here in your city and sit on me, if history's any judge."

"We do not even know who you are, Mi Amore," says Aunty. "I should like to discover your actual identity before granting you a formal position in the Court. Politics are a complicated beast; I have given you the title of Princess by dint of your biology alone. Your actual lineage is unknown to any of us, and there are a staggering number of retroactive missteps I might be making if I assign you your royal duties too hastily." She smiles at me, less helpless and more genuine now. "Besides," she says. "You have a job. You spread love and light wherever you go. And when that was not enough for you, I permitted you to foalsit for some of the minor noble houses. If I'm not mistaken, you are scheduled to do so to-night, yes? House Shine? Twilight Velvet's young daughter?"

"Foalsitting is nothing like a position in the Court," I say, inwardly distressed at the fact of how microscopically aware of my schedule Aunty is.

Aunty chuckles, musically, and I hate her for it. "You would be surprised, Mi Amore."

"So you want to find out where I come from," I say, scootching my cushion away from the table. "Fine. I get that. Maybe you could finally let me see some of the artifacts of the Pre-Classical kingdoms some day. See if anything jogs the ol' memory."

"I don't wish to seed false thoughts in you," says Celestia. "I want your impressions to be pure. And that is why I would hear of your dreams, when you have them."

"I don't have dreams," I mutter, rising to my hooves and trotting to the edge of the veranda, looking out over the impeccably-manicured gardens of my Aunty's home. "Not of It, at least. I know you're hoping that some day I'm just going to wake up and be able to point to a spot on a map and say, yes, there It is, but it's not happening. It's just a huge black space, a big missing piece of me. You have no idea what that feels like."

Aunty blinks at me. She makes a false start, thinks better of it, and tries again. "Perhaps I don't," she says, and her voice is oceanlike. I've touched some sort of nerve, and I don't know what it is. Part of me wants to gloat at having wounded her, and part of me is horrified that I feel that way.

I call it a draw and press on. "Look, exactly how many possibilities are there?" I ask. "Just how many nations did you go around overthrowing, back in the day?"

"You do not understand," says Celestia, and I can practically feel the sights and smells of battle begin to flicker across the back of her mind as she plumbs the depths of her impossible memory. It is always strange to picture my refined and restrained tea-sipping Aunty as a world-striding armored warrior-queen, and I can never quite get the picture to resolve in my head. "The land was in chaos in the wake of Discord's reign," she continues. "Once-strong empires were brought to their knees. Corrupt advisors and ambitious majors-domo seized entire royal households from within, and populist tyrants rose up to seize them from without. Many noble families went into hiding, in fortifications much like Reduit. We... I... could not recover them all in the unification efforts that followed."

Aunty bites her lip, then, swimming up again from the depths. "Yours is a particularly perplexing problem," she says. "Reduit was a tiny, remote, self-sustaining community with virtually no contact with the outside world. We literally did not know of its existence until I discovered you there a few decades ago. It was clearly intended as a bastion, a place of retreat, but the cloistered nuns who tended you and raised you were frustratingly obtuse when questioned, as though the entire community were gripped by some form of collective amnesia. Their foremothers did not note anything of your dam other than that she died within their walls bringing you into the world. Your sire, as best as we can tell, never even arrived there; he may have stayed behind in a vain attempt to defend your homeland, or he may have been the first victim of some form of treachery. All records of your bloodline were apparently lost in the hegira. Reduit's geographical position on the western ocean limits our list of potentials, but not enough that I can say with certainty whose national redoubt it was. And all the nuns could remember was that you were a person of importance and needed to be protected, across the centuries."

Aunty smiles. "And that much would have been obvious merely by looking at you," she concludes.

"Suppose I'm not looking for a position in Court, though," I say. "Something where my specific ancestry doesn't matter as much. There are plenty of things to do outside the walls of Canterlot."

"None suiting a young mare of your station," says Aunty.

A tiny fire flickers in my breast. Finally, an opening.

"I don't know if you've been keeping track," I say, shuffling one booted hoof against the smooth flagstone of the veranda, "but Her Excellency Sunny Smiles is stepping down from her position as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the City-State of Cloudsdale."

"You're being a silly filly again, Mi Amore," says Aunty, chidingly. "Of course I've been keeping track. H.E. Smiles is the voice of Canterlot in Cloudsdale's Senate, after all. She is a strong and dependable right hoof to me, and I keenly feel her loss. But, the embassy is currently under the capable watch of the Resident Minister, R.M. Weather Eye, and I have faith that said stallion can keep the place from falling to pieces while we search for a suitable replacement."

"You'll need to find a pegasus pony with cultural and diplomatic training," I say. "One raised here in Canterlot, probably of unicorn parents, so that they will have the appropriate sympathies, just like H.E. Smiles was. How rare of a duck is that?"

"Possibly a rare duck," admits Celestia. "Your point?"

"I could be your suitable replacement." I unfurl my bright pink wings and rustle them a little in the morning breeze. "Aunty, what better symbol of the unification of unicorn and pegasus culture than us? You've been drilling diplomatic lessons into me since you brought me here to the Mountain. And I know how to comport myself in high society."

"Your rather unconventional cereal-eating habits notwithstanding," says Aunty.

I snort to cover the palpable touch. "Oh, I don't know," I say. "You know the pegasus reputation for decadent feasting. I can't imagine that a little bit of mouth-gobbling doesn't go on."

"You have a point," admits Celestia.

"So you'll consider it?"

"Nonsense," says Aunty, dashing whatever hopes of mine had been starting to build. "Cadence, I am not going to assign a ranking Princess of Equestria to an ambassadorial post."

"'Princess of Equestria' is an honorary title," I counter, grabbing up a napkin from the table in agitation. My telekinesis tends to get fritzy when I'm upset unless I busy it with something, and the napkin seems innocuous enough. "You've bestowed that title upon plenty of ponies with a drop or two of royal blood in them."

"Yes, but we are quite nearly certain that you are a verifiable princess, Cadence," says Aunty. "Your at-present honorary title is temporary. Just until the day we can positively prove your lineage. I have every faith that that day is coming very soon."

"Until that 'very soon' day," I say, "would it be so horrible for me to have a title I've actually earned? It's not like it would be a difficult posting. We have a long and cordial relationship with Cloudsdale. It's practically part of the Hegemony."

"It is a pegasus city," says Aunty, carefully. "Things are different, there."

"A pegasus city run by Canterlot unicorns."

"A Canterlot unicorn," corrects Aunty. "Unless I miss my guess, you're referring to Portolan, Duchess Blueblood, Chairmare of the Weather Corporation?"

"Everypony knows that the Senate is just a puppet body under the C.W.C.," I say. "An ambassadorial post there is title and token responsibility for me, without any actual risk to you. How much could I really mess up with other unicorns in power already running things?"

"There is more peril to us in Cloudsdale," says Aunty, "than you know."

I begin working the napkin into a series of overhoof knots. "Forgive me if I speak plainly, Aunty?" I say.

"Now you ask?" says Aunty, amused. "By all means. I would have nothing less."

"You're spooking at shadows, Aunty Celestia. It's unbecoming for a politician of your station. This is 988; we aren't in the dark ages any more. We are living in an age of unparalleled peace and prosperity. Our relations with all our neighbors are happy and unstrained. Canterlot has no enemies of any note."

"Aha," says Celestia.

"There is nothing to fear, Aunty," I persist, drilling her with my most earnest glare. "Not now, not soon coming."

"I see."

I bristle at her tone. "So, what," I say, pulling the knots in my napkin tight. "What are you afraid of? I suppose next you're going to tell me that Nightmare Moon is going to swoop down from the sky and gobble us up?"

Celestia rises from her cushion and joins me at the edge of the veranda, staring out at the grounds with me. The very tip of her ethereal mane licks at my shoulder.

"Wouldn't that be ridiculous?" she says, distantly. "I suppose it would."

"Of course it would," I say, snorting a bit.

From a tree somewhere nearby, a chickadee gives it his all. Behind us, whisper-swift and ghostlike, the servants begin clearing the remains of Small Breakfast from the table. I want to shout at them to leave it alone, to tell them that I'm not finished, but I have already met my daily allotment of princessy snits, and odds are I wouldn't actually have eaten anything more anyway. I magic the knotted napkin over to the cleaning cart and forget about it; untying knots is servants' work. We stand in silence for a time, looking out over the green.

"Please," I say, my voice small. "Please. I need this, Aunty. I wake up hungry every morning, and I don't think it's just the food any more. I need a place of my own."

"You need your own place," says Celestia. "Literally. The dragon-like part of you needs to sit upon the hoard of a nation, a pile of citizens to watch and count. Cloudsdale will not serve you well in this office. I know you, Cadence. I know you better than any pony on the surface of this world or in the skies above it. Because you are me, and I am you, and we are the last of our kind."

"If you understood me," I say, "you would know that I can't live here forever. You would realize that giving me a responsibility is the right thing to do."

"You have a responsibility."

"I am a foalsitter," I say, trying and I think succeeding to keep the scowl from my voice.

"You seem to enjoy foalsitting."

"Sometimes I get lucky," I say. "Sometimes I don't. That Lulamoon brat is an absolute monster."

"House Shine has always treated you well, though?" says Celestia. "What is the filly's name you're with to-night? 'Twilight' something, I expect?"

"Sparkle," I say, grudgingly. "She's wonderful. Apparently, she was so smitten by your appearance at the last Summer Sun Celebration that she has announced her intention to learn 'absolutely everything' about magic." I shake my head. "Actual spellcasting is going to be a hard road for her, I'm afraid. I mean, I can't actually sense any real power in her, but she is blisteringly smart. Probably going to become a great theorist at the University some day. She's a special filly. One of many. That doesn't change the fact that this is fundamentally silly work for me to be doing."

"My sending you away to Cloudsdale would not be without sacrifices, was my point."

"There are always going to be sacrifices," I say. I cannot even put into words how frustrating this mare is.

Celestia shakes her head. "You're not ready," she says.

"I'm not ready?" I say, now at last exceeding my snit allotment. "What if you're the one who's not ready? I know you want to keep me close to you. I know you were overjoyed when you discovered me. I know because I felt it, too. I was so alone in Reduit, surrounded by cycling generations of little ponies, ponies who provided for my every need but never bothered to know me, to be friends with me. I kept dreaming that some day my real mother would come back and actually love me, and when I first saw you, I thought you were her. I know what it's like to be you, to feel like you're all alone in the world, Aunty."

"No," says Celestia, in a voice like a hammer. "You do not. You have no idea."

I back a few steps away. It is not a tone I have ever heard her use.

"Cadence, I have considered your request," says Celestia, calmly, her nightmarish voice gone as though it never was. "I am sad to report that you have not yet shown me that you are either responsible or mature enough to represent the Mountain to a foreign power. I commend your ambition, and encourage you to continue to seek out healthy opportunities to express same, but for now, you will remain with me in Canterlot."

"So you can continue to spy on me," I say. "Monitoring my every move."

"You are given an unbelievable degree of latitude," says Celestia, her mien absolutely blank. "I allow you to wander Canterlot Town without guard and without retinue. I could require both of you. I often think that I should. But I restrain myself, because you are of a certain psychological age now, and I know you would rankle under it. And I do not, I repeat, not have 'spies' watching over you."

"So you say."

"Yes," says Celestia. "I do say."

Behind us, the servants complete their cleanup of Small Breakfast, removing everything up to and including the table on which it was served. The Ivy Veranda is an empty space again. Places like this have no actual practical function in the day-to-day life of the castle. They are "special occasion" spaces. The Ivy Veranda is beautiful and clean and full of potential, and will wait, idle and wasted, until someone decides to use it for something. I feel silly feeling kinship with a chunk of architecture, but there you have it.

"You will tell me your dreams," says Aunty Celestia. "Won't you."

She does not exactly make it sound like a question, and so I do not give her the satisfaction of an answer. "Um," I say, quivering a little. "Really late for posture now, Aunty."

Celestia nods and makes a diffident gesture with one of her great sail-like wings. For a moment, I try to see myself in her: pink instead of white, but similarly tall and regal and alien and strange.

When I have a throne of my own, I think to myself, that is the creature I will become.

For a moment, I am scared. Shut out either the horn or the wings, and I am already not quite the same as other ponies. While it is nothing on Aunty's broad and practically Arabian face, I find my muzzle to be a bit coltish compared to other mares of my general shape and size. How different will I look a thousand years from now? Like her? Do I really want to become such a thing?

What does the seed feel, looking upon an apple tree? Is it, too, afraid?

Does it have a choice in the matter?

Celestia glances down at me, misunderstanding my hesitation. "You may go, Mi Amore," she says.

I nod and do so, trotting back into the close indoor air of Canterlot Castle, departing the veranda feeling just as hungry as when I arrived at it; but at the very least I can sense the winding spring in my breast uncoiling proportionately with my distance from my Aunt. Give me a thousand pointless posture classes over one more breakfast with Her Highness. The mare puts demons in my head, and simultaneously prohibits me from exorcising my own.

As I understand it, this is the purpose of family.

It doesn't matter. Just a few more hours until foalsitting. Until Twilight. And I am ashamed to admit it, but I absolutely cannot wait.

* * *

"And thus concludes my brief seminar on the topic of my loose tooth," says the heartrendingly adorable violet unicorn filly on the makeshift stage in front of me, delicately spitting her pointer into the utility tray of her My First Presentation Pad. "More specifically, why it needs to be pulled tonight as opposed to any future night. I am now accepting questions from the audience."

Twilight Sparkle gazes out at her audience with grim solemnity, an audience which consists of exactly two individuals, one of whom is a button-eyed sock doll.

I politely raise one hoof; Twilight nods to me. "Yes. With the blue mane-scrunchy."

"I'm afraid I'm a bit confused as to the symbols you've written in the 'pro' column," I say, lowering my hoof again and resting it daintily on the cushion in front of me. "Could we go over those one more time?"

She sighs, a bit theatrically. "Very well," she says, plucking the pointer up with her lips and anchoring it in the corner of her mouth once more. She reaches up to indicate the first in a series of crude crayon-drawn bullet points. "Once more. This picture on top represents the urgent biological need for me to exfoliate my deciduous teeth. As you can see from my diagram, my permanent teeth are beginning to bear down on the roots of my milk-teeth as they grow in from above, causing root resorption." She then indicates a second picture below the first, batting at the presentation pad with her pointer and generating a soft "paff" noise. "As you can see here, the tooth in question is presently being held in place only by a gross little string of what I call 'stuff'. Clearly, it is not long for my mouth, and we risk future malocclusion if we let it stay in place for even an instant too long."

"I see," I say. "And the next picture? The bag with the money signs on it?"

"This picture represents the efficient monet— monetina—"

"Monetization?" I hazard, absolutely ordering the corners of my mouth to remain level as I do so.

"Yes," says Twilight, slightly relieved. "Efficient monetization of my dental assets. As you may be aware, Mom and Dad are taking me to the Canterlot County Faire tomorrow. I anticipate purchasing cream puffs." The little filly gazes archly at me, and it is all I can do to keep from both snickering and squealing in delight, simultaneously. "Several cream puffs. If I wait until tomorrow night to remove my tooth, the Tooth Flutterpony will arrive too late for me to purchase cream puffs with the bit coin it will invariably leave behind. I need access to the Tooth Flutterpony's liquid assets to make the most of this opportunity."

"I guess that makes sense," I say. "Last picture?"

"This is a picture of me falling asleep tonight without having my tooth pulled out and then having my tooth fall out while I'm asleep and then it gets sucked into my windpipe and I choke on it," she says, admiring her hoofwork. She turns to me again. "The X's on my eyes mean that I'm dead."

"Aha," I say.

"I think you'll agree that this is a fairly respectable portfolio of arguments," says Twilight, spitting the pointer back out. "Also, it feels really weird when I go like this." She bares her horsey teeth at me and flagrantly wiggles the problematic incisor with her tongue. "Glar glar glar glar glar," she says.

"Well," I say, "you've convinced me. If you trust me with it, we'll get a little gauze from your medicine cabinet and I'll see what I can do."

Twilight shakes her head at me. "Cadence," she says, a bit matronizingly, "there is a procedure for this sort of thing." She turns back to her presentation pad, squints her eyes, thrusts her neck forward, and attempts to invoke a telekinetic grip on the top sheet of the presentation pad. A second later, my own horn flares, and together, Twilight and I flip the paper over.

"Thank you," says Twilight, primly. "Now as you can see, on this paper, I have graphed out some blueprints for a proper tooth-pulling apparatus."

I squint at the confusing tangle of crayon-lines. "Is that your bedroom lamp?" I say, getting up from my cushion and sidling up close, trying to make sense of the mess.

"Mm hm!" she replies. "Pushing the lamp off of the bedside table kicks off the chain reaction that will eventually culminate in my tooth being removed from my mouth." She gives my foreleg a reassuring pat. "Don't worry, Cadence. This oval represents a pillow on the floor underneath the lamp."

"The safety of the lamp actually alarms me less than the fact that it kind of looks like you're counting on the ceiling fan to do something."

"Yes," she says, tapping her chin. "Well, we needed something with a consistent motor drive to get the flywheel up to speed."

"Aha," I say. "You're sure you don't just want me to try it with the gauze?"

"I don't think you appreciate," says Twilight, "exactly how much work went into this blueprint."

"Okay, my little engineer," I say, playing humble. "I'm on board. But all this machine-making looks like it's going to be hungry and thirsty work. What do you say we whip up some strawberry juice pops in the icebox to sustain us?"

"An excellent idea," says Twilight, trotting purposefully over to the sock doll. "Smartypants can help."

So, together, the three of us puree some strawberries and set them up in an ice-cube tray with a little sheet of cellophane stretched over the top, and we stud the thing with colorful party toothpicks and pop it in the freezer. Smartypants helps us by overseeing the affair and making sure that we don't do anything wrong. Then we while away a couple hours discussing force and torque and other physical properties and analyzing the tensile strength of various brands of twine and dental floss that will be used in the construction of our tooth-extraction machine, which is to say, we hold them up to the light and gaze at them critically. Twilight switches the ceiling fan on and makes a show of selecting which of the three speeds would best suit her purpose (the fastest of the three, Twilight decides) before I am finally able to convince her that ceiling fans are dangerous and should not be incorporated into any household device, no matter how well-intentioned. I offer to spin the flywheel myself instead, a situation which seems to be globally acceptable to both Twlight and Smartypants. We carefully position the stool on which Twilight will be sitting when her meticulously-planned contraption reaches its final functioning stage. And then we retire to the kitchen for strawberry juice pops.

As we lick delicately at our tiny cube-shaped treats, Twilight rhapsodizes excitedly to Smartypants and me on the amazing history of modern dentistry, referencing (where appropriate) textbooks that would be rather too advanced for a filly twice, or perhaps even three times, her age. This is just one more reason I love to foalsit for Twilight Sparkle; every night we spend together she teaches me something new about the world, something I would not have even thought to research on my own. However honest my rapture, however, I still have room in my scheming little mind for ulterior motives. Aunty would be proud. Quietly and subtly, I move from licking my strawberry pops to biting down on them, sinking my teeth deep into the ice, which is stiff but just pulpy enough to be a little forgiving, exactly as intended. I can see Twilight watching me do this even as she continues her lecture, and sure enough, with the next juice pop she selects, she bites it rather than licking it, just like her cool foalsitter does. Same with the next...

...and then, it happens: right in the middle of a rather fascinating bit about the low instance of tooth decay in communities whose groundwater contains high levels of certain naturally-occurring minerals, she stops short.

"Ow," she says, more startled than hurt.

Then tears begin to well up in her eyes. "Ow," she says, again, now more hurt than startled.

I move quickly to her side and inspect the dislodged tooth, plucking it out of the frozen treat and rinsing it in the sink. "Suck on the ice pop," I instruct her. "It'll numb the pain a bit." I quietly commend myself on the strawberry idea, because her blood is invisible against the red. It's less traumatic that way. I am a professional at this sort of thing; for Twilight Sparkle, this is a first, but I have done this many times before.

"It still kind of hurts," says Twilight. The tiny professor is gone now, leaving nothing but a scared little filly in her place.

I find a soft cloth and dab at her cheeks, kissing away a stray teardrop that escapes my first pass. "It will, for a while," I say. "But not for long."

Twilight Sparkle permits herself a little smile through the tears. "It came out all on its own," she says, eventually.

"Yep!" I agree, out loud. With a little help from the world's best foalsitter, I add, to myself.

Twilight nods firmly. "Well," she says, "on the bright side, this will give me time to perfect my string-based process for the next loose one."

"Plenty of time," I agree.

The bleeding soon stops, and the night rolls on. We put away all the now-superfluous twine, clean the pillows off the floor, and spend the rest of the evening staging an impromptu puppet show for our own entertainment. Our masterwork sports a formidable cast of hoof-puppet actors: ponies and animals and just-scary-enough-to-be-antagonistic monsters. It is basically agreed that Smartypants steals the show in her dramatic portrayal of an evil giant. We fix up a huge tureen of popcorn, covered in butter and salt and other bad-for-you things, and between the two of us we eat it down to the hulls. For a just few precious cricket-touched hours in the gathering dark, I no longer feel hungry. Not in body, not in spirit. This little filly is all that I need in the world.

We do the ladybug dance. She insists on it. Every time.

And then I supervise her preparations for bed, helping her scrub up her teeth. She cannot resist poking at the unfamiliar hole in her tooth-line as she does so, running her tongue repeatedly up and over the smooth pink bar of gum.

"Weird," she says. "It's weird when part of you is missing."

I blink.

Despite a belly full of popcorn, the hunger returns to me in force, a knife driven into my gut.

"Yes," I say, trying not to betray any emotion. "Yes, it is."

The rest of Twilight's bedtime rituals are entirely mechanical on my part. We place her shed tooth carefully in a little casket at her bedside to wait for the Tooth Flutterpony. We find her favorite set of ducky pajamas and slide them over her head. We get her a glass of water. We tuck her beneath the covers. And at last, she is settled.

"Tell me a story, Cadence," she says, snuggling down beneath her blankets.

I swallow the lump in my throat. "What kind of story would you like to hear?"

"A princess story," she says.

I nod, quietly.

"There once was a princess of a faraway kingdom," I begin. "She was taken away from it when she was very young, and then the entire kingdom vanished from the face of Equestria because of an... an evil spell that was cast on it. And so the young princess went to stay with her aunt, who was a princess too, just like she was. But her aunt was... scared for the young princess. She didn't like to let the young princess out of her sight. And so when the young princess had a chance to become a princess of another, different kingdom, far away in the sky, her aunt didn't want her to go. And this made the young princess very sad, so her aunt told her to seek out the most beautiful, talented, intelligent, specialest filly in the entire realm and to be her personal princess. And so she did. And everyone was very, very happy, for ever and ever."

I smile at her gently, and bop her on the tip of her little horn. "The end," I say.

"Is it?" asks Twilight, quietly.

"'Is it' what?"

"The end," says Twilight. "I bet if the special filly knew that the young princess really wanted to go to the sky-kingdom, she wouldn't mind not having a personal princess, for instance."

I clench my molars together. "She wouldn't miss her personal princess, you think?"

"A little," says Twilight, blinking softly, as sleep begins to claim her. "But maybe the young princess is so special that the little filly wouldn't feel good about having her all to herself. And maybe there's a different ending where the faraway kingdom comes back some day, just like my tooth is gonna. And the princess goes back and rules over everyone with love and everypony in the entire kingdom is happy, for ever and ever. Maybe that's the end of the story."

"Maybe," I say, suddenly wishing I had somepony right at hoof to wipe away my own tears. Just in case.

"I bet she's a wonderful ruler," says Twilight Sparkle, starting to close her eyes.

"I... I don't even know if she is," I say.

"I do," says Twilight, with the firm confidence of the very young, as her eyes fall gently shut. "And she is."

I sit there in Twilight's room for a time, soaking up the perfect hush of a space where a child has just drifted to sleep.

"Good night, Twilight Sparkle," I whisper.

She does not reply.

* * *

Blankly, I pick my way downstairs and take a seat on the overstuffed living-room couch, perfectly upright, my back not even touching the cushions. I do not light a single lamp.

I sit there in the darkness, unmoving, for another two hours.

Knight Light and Twilight Velvet eventually return from the theatre, and I quickly turn on a light and plaster my face with my best smile. I tell them about the lost tooth, which spurs Knight Light to run down to the corner shop and obtain an appropriately shiny bit of change to loan to the Tooth Flutterpony, as well as a little cash for my own saddlebags. I show them Twilight's blueprints for the tooth-extraction apparatus, and I caution them to be on the lookout for any possible future attempts to tie things to the ceiling fan. I desperately want to share a moment of bemusement with them, to bond over the wonderful strangeness of their daughter, but I cannot bring myself to part the shroud of my mood. We exchange final pleasantries, and I am graciously ushered out into the night.

I carefully cross the street, duck into a nearby alleyway, and sag against the scrubbed white brick of a Canterlot townhouse wall. I permit myself one single, deep sob.

"Miss?" comes a warm tenor voice from quite nearby. I look up, blinking. The voice belongs to a young, snowy-white unicorn stallion with navy hooves and a mane of electric blue. He wears a duffel bag across his back and is dressed in the simple coat-and-sash uniform of a Royal Officers' Training Corps cadet. A guard. A royal guard.

A spy. The one Aunty assured me did not exist. My vision is momentarily obscured by a wall of white-hot rage.

The newcomer squints into the darkness of the alley, lowering his head to get a better look. Then he startles. "P— Princess Cadence?" he stammers.

I rise up from the wall, my legs and spine going ramrod-straight, my wings unfurling in agitation. "What, surprised to find me outside?" I say, marching up to him. "Lost track of time, did you? Maybe you got a little bored staking out the house, took a little 'personal' time with your guard buddies, thought you'd be back in time to see me leave?"

"What?" says the colt, shaking his head.

I stand before him, quivering in wrath. "You tell that mare," I say, raising an accusatory hoof, my voice trembling along with it. "You tell her that I will not be treated this way!"

The colt's jaw falls open slightly. "Miss," he says, "Highness, I would be, ah..." He shakes his head and starts over. "Do you... are you in need of an escort back home to the castle?"

"No!" I practically scream. "I have a home! It's not there! It never will be there!"

The young guard composes himself. "All right," he says, backing away to a safe distance. "I'm going to call this in, but I'm not leaving you alone in this state. Just... please, Highness, come out of the alley and walk with me to the next call box. We'll get Canterlot Castle on the tubes, sort this out, whatever it is. Yes?"

"No!" I shriek, again. I launch myself out of the alley in a flurry of wings, knocking the young guardstallion to the street and upsetting his duffel bag. Kicking off of his broad, white back, I spread my wings and soar up into the night, my pinions beating at the air as though I hold it personally responsible for all the hunger and the pain and the betrayal I'm carrying in my chest. Up, up I go, until Canterlot Town is nothing but a matrix of gleaming lamps far beneath my hooves, nestled in the shadow of the Mountain.

It is a beautiful kingdom, but it is Aunty's, not mine. Nothing I have ever seen or known is mine.

I howl into the dark and then fold myself into a breakneck dive off the edge of the Celestial Spire, pulling up just short of the green foothills at its base. The fall is exhilarating, and the flood of chemicals it releases into my brain gives me a moment of clarity, if not lucidity. Not even knowing where I am going, I angle my burning wings, execute a steep bank, and soar off to the north, toward the Crystal Mountains.

I fly for many pained hours, ice and moisture gathering on my wings and face. After a while, I cannot even tell what of it is cloud and what of it is tears. For a moment, I think I may be headed back to Reduit, back to the place that I called home for a thousand years of life, but I know in my heart of hearts that that, too, was an illusion. Reduit is not my home, no more than Canterlot is. My home is gone, never to return. Nevertheless, I streak forward on my mysterious-even-to-me mission, racing against the moonlight, until the ground turns to rock, and then ice, beneath me.

Finally, just as I crest the Crystal Mountains, a vicious rogue snowstorm boils up, pelting my face and my coat with stinging crystals of frost. I snarl and spit into the wind and press on. I force myself forward even as the cold splits and cracks the exposed skin of my lips and thighs, as it nips and then numbs the tips of my ears, as it seeps into the stinging joints where my wings meet my shoulders, causing them to stiffen and ache, even as they work ever more furiously to keep me aloft.

My wings feel like lead, dull and heavy. The ice has worked its way into the space between the feathers. Soon, I am not strong enough to keep myself airborne, and I plummet to the surface of the glacier below, landing hard and poorly. Nothing breaks, but it scarce matters; I am too stiff to move.

For a moment, there is nothing in the world but the howling of wind. Then the cold begins to attack me in earnest. The crystalline pendant at my neck—a protective charm gifted to me by my first teacher—flares, valiantly attempting to ward off the injurious cold, and it sustains me for a time, but warding magic has never been my strongest suit. My sphere is Love, not the elements. What defenses I am able to raise are soon sundered by the impossible arctic chill.

A tightness grips at my heart. I am going to die, I realize. After a thousand years of life, I am going to die, here, never having seen my home.

Maybe, I think, as my eyelids begin to flutter, it is all for the best. I am an alicorn, after all. I am my nation, my nation is me. And if it does not exist, why should I?

I want to squeeze some final comfort from this thought. I want it more than anything in the world. But I feel nothing but blackness.

As the snow begins to mound against my side, I lower my chin to the ice and close my eyes.

And then...

There is a noise like thunder. My eyes flicker open and are instantly seared half-blind by a pulse of intense white light, rimmed on all sides by the faint prismatic streaking of sundogs. A thirty-foot circle of snow surrounding me is suddenly reduced to water, and out of the light strides Aunty Celestia, her horn blazing like a beacon.

She lowers her head to my level. Her face is stern and white and grim and utterly terrible, and no longer do I feel the disconnect when I try to think of her as an all-conquering warrior-goddess. Feebly, I lift my neck from the ice and try to meet her gaze.

She shakes her head, and I cannot tell if it is at me or at herself. Then she gathers me up in her huge white wings and steps back into the light, and together, we cross leagues of space in a heartbeat, finally emerging from the astral corridor onto the warm mosaic tiles of Aunty's private baths.

The blistering light winks out.

"A— Aunty Celest—" I attempt, my voice croaking in my throat.

"No," she says, simply. Her voice is soft and final, like a burial cloth. With frightening economy, she wraps my entire body in the glow of her magic, strips me of my now-battered saddlebags, and sets me in the bath like a newborn foal. Dimly and intellectually, I am aware that the water is no more than lukewarm, but to my frost-nipped skin it feels burning hot. Celestia presses me back into the water and washes me all over with soap and water and soothing preparations of aloe, working out the kinks in my mane with tiny tooth-nibbles in the common earth pony way. I do not know how long it lasts. It feels interminably and unbearably long, but yet at the same time I want it never to end.

Eventually, she drains the water away, gathers me up again, towels me off, re-oils my wings, and clothes me in a thick, soft robe of white terry. Without a word, she strides off in the direction of the Night Kitchen. My knees shaking beneath me, I follow her, feeling a bit like a baby duckling as I do.

When we arrive at the Night Kitchen, she dismisses the entire staff with a few clean words, granting them all an evening of paid leave with the land's highest conceivable blessing. Then, she locks all the doors, sits me down at a tiny chef's table in a clear space near one of the preparation lines, and begins, herself, to cook.

The sight of Aunty Celestia dicing onions and firing a pan of melty cheese is so strange that I cannot wrest my eyes away from it, and I briefly wonder if I might be hallucinating, freezing still to death on the surface of the glacier. But the food, when it arrives, is real enough: a beautiful cheddar rarebit with onions and garlic, plated with a small mound of savory dill cornichons and, because this is Canterlot, a sprig of parsley. Rarebit is my single favorite food, and Aunty knows it.

I look down at it. She nods to me.

"Eat," she urges, gently.

I do so, lifting the bread up with my hooves instead of my magic and consuming it in great hungry gulps. It is crunchy and oily and salty and it is the best thing I have ever tasted.

For a moment, there is no noise but that of my desperate consumption. Then, Aunty breaks the peace. "The young guardstallion you startled outside the Shine residence," she says, "was Twilight Velvet's son, on his way home after an unexpected reassignment. He is not a spy of mine. He was outside the house because it is his house."

I begin to cry. I do not know what else to do. The tears fall into and mix with the salty cheese of my food, but I do not stop eating, either, because I simply cannot.

Finally, after demolishing the entire rarebit, I put away three cornichons in quick succession and wash the whole affair down with a glass of tepid Pfrench mineral water, which Aunty has also provided me. I am left staring down at an empty earthenware plate.

"I'm sorry," I say, pathetically.

"As am I," says Celestia. "I'm afraid I have not always... shared as much with you as I might have." Celestia lowers herself to the floor near the chef's table until her head is level with mine, folding her long legs beneath herself like a butterfly.

"Cadence," she says, "I want you first to know that I have changed my mind, and I will be shortly signing a commission appointing you Envoy to the City-State of Cloudsdale."

I nod, miserably. I no longer capable of knowing whether or not this is welcome news.

"It was not good of you to vanish without trace," she says. "It was not good of you to make those who care about you worry for your life. It was not good of you to go flying off the handle on the strength of a patently ridiculous assumption alone. These are not the actions of a princess. I will be signing this commission on the condition that you never do these things again, Mi Amore. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

I nod again, still not meeting her eyes.

"That all having been said," says Celestia, softening, "I have to admit that I have not been entirely forthcoming with you. And I imagine that you've felt this, deep down, and that it has added to your headstrongness of late. And so I will tell you now, Cadence, that there is something approaching us on the horizon. An old..."

Celestia pauses, considering.

"An old adversary of mine," she says, finally selecting a word with a sort of for-better-or-for-worse shrug. "I have been preparing for this mare's return for almost a thousand years, and yet all my divinations suggest that I will not be able to resist her. In exactly twelve years, I will require a champion, a redeemer, someone to stand in my place when I am unable to act. When I discovered you at Reduit, I thought certainly that you were that pony. A miracle-child. Out of nowhere, a second alicorn to be at my side. It seemed... logical enough."

I nod, quietly. Part of me wants to feel betrayed, but most of me is simply happy to hear Aunty expressing a raw truth about something, at last. "And what about now?"

Celestia shakes her head. "I do not know," she says. "More and more, I feel as though I'm on the wrong path with you. Keeping you here in Canterlot is making you patently unhappy, and worse, it is stifling your growth. I need to send you out into the world, to learn about love and friendship in ways that I can never teach. Maybe Cloudsdale will be a good first step. Perhaps, in twelve years, an older and wiser Princess Cadence will be beside me as I face down the coming threat."

She shrugs, seeming to wither a little. "And perhaps not. I must admit, Mi Amore, I am no longer at all certain that you are even the pony I am looking for. All my divinations have eventually failed, bent entirely out of shape by the raw destiny this mysterious figure emits. As of to-night, I have a new divinitory strategy: wait and see. I now believe there will come a day when I am trotting down the street, minding my own business, and I will see something extraordinary, and I will simply know."

"It seems like a very little thing to hang your faith on," I say, my voice still thick with tears even as my brain spins in trying to understand what my Aunty is saying. "Who is this 'adversary'?"

"Somepony I miss," says Celestia, almost too quiet to hear. "Somepony I love."

I shake my head. "I... I don't understand."

"Put it out of your mind, then," says Celestia, her brisk tone returning. "There is little to be done about it now, and nothing at all to be gained with worry. Suffice it to say, you are not my missing piece, Cadence. I wanted you to be my missing piece, thought certainly that you were. But I have been lying to myself and to you, and it has made me hold on tighter to you than I ought to have. The right piece is the only one that will ever truly complete me."

I scrape the surface of my plate with a fork a little, trying to dislodge some last residue of the cheese. I am, as always, still hungry.

"Even if it hasn't been perfect," I say, my eyes fixed on the plate in front of me. "Even if I'm not the piece that completes you, I want to say that... that, for me at least, it's been better than being all alone."

Celestia places her wing over me and holds me close to her warm side, nuzzling at my mane. "Yes," she says. "Yes it has. And this was the logic that led me to change my mind about your commission to Cloudsdale. Cloudsdale will not complete you, Mi Amore, but perhaps it will be better than no nation at all."

"As long as we're telling truths," I say. "Coming clean about things. Do you really have no idea where I come from?"

Aunty smiles a little. "Actually, I know more to-night than I ever have. I don't want to encourage this sort of behavior from you, but your performance earlier this evening was actually somewhat enlightening. Did you have a reason for flying where you did, Cadence?"

"I don't know," I say. "I don't even know what I was doing."

"I think you were flying home, Mi Amore," says Celestia. "First, you and I will clean these dishes together so as not to leave a mess for the Day Kitchen when they soon arrive. And then, I have something to show you. Something that you've been wanting to see for a long time."

* * *

In the cold small hours before Aunty commands the dawn, we stand in the echoing vault of Canterlot Tower, the uppermost stronghold of the Court of Day. Sumptuous scarlet carpeting muffles the noise of our hooves, and all about us rise darkened stained-glass windows depicting the great heroes of the realm, pivotal events of history. For a moment, and as for the first time, I glance at the ancient depiction of Harmony Victorious Over Discord, and I realize with perfect clarity that there are two alicorn mares depicted there, not one. Exactly the same as on our banners, I further realize, on our royal coat of arms. One mare is light, one mare is dark, and they dance about each other in a circle, two halves of a greater whole. All my heraldry classes have authoritatively identified these figures as stylized representations of the Sun and the Moon, the two great celestial objects under the Princess's charge. But what if...

...I mean, Aunty's Cutie Mark is the Sun; the Moon is nowhere to be seen on the royal flank. What if my heraldry professors are wrong? What if all these things aren't stylized, symbolic depictions? What if...

...and it becomes too much to think about, and I am too tired. Aunty leads me along to the backmost wall of Canterlot Tower, where a locked vault awaits the imprint of her alicorn magic. She inserts her long, spiraling horn into a shaft in the door, and the portal opens before us in a blaze of aquamarine light, revealing a space little bigger than a closet. There, on a tiny pedestal, is a glass bell jar containing a lone, straight fragment of some unidentified lilac-hued crystalline substance. Aunty removes the jar and plucks up the fragment with her magic, hovering it down to the carpeted floor and standing it on its end. I look on, mystified.

"The spot where you fell to earth," says Celestia, "is the exact geographic location of an ancient Pre-Classical kingdom, existing well before the era of Discord. It was known as the Crystal Empire."

I shake my head. "There were no ruins," I say, trying to get the world to make sense again. "No signs of settlement. Did the glaciers take it, or something?"

"No," says Celestia. "It was consumed in a retributive strike, a final act of vengeance by a false usurper when he was cast down. The Crystal Empire was removed from time and causality, unmade as though it never was."

I want to laugh and cry all at once. "Vanished because of an evil spell that was cast upon it", I had told Twilight. How many of my unconscious, idle choices, how many thoughts that bubble unwittingly to the surface of my mind, are anchored in some sort of sense?

Aunty allows me a moment to steady my emotions, and then forges ahead. "This is the only remaining fragment of the Crystal Empire. It is a piece shattered from one of the Empire's tallest spires, and it survives only because it was embedded deep within my flesh when the curse took hold."

I blink, angling my head at the spindle of crystal, which suddenly seems much larger than it did before. "That was inside you?"

"It was a considerable wound," says Celestia, wincing slightly at the memory. "But a fortunate one, in retrospect. The curious thing about crystals is that each shattered piece retains an unbroken image of the whole." Aunty waves a hoof, dismissively. "There is something holographic or quantum about it. I do not profess to understand. I leave these matters to the unicorns at the University. The point is, I can show it to you, if you like."

"You can show me... the Empire?"

"Yes."

I ponder, for a moment.

"You are certain this is my birthright?" I ask. "Even... even though it's gone? Forever?"

"No," admits Celestia. "I am not certain. The Empire was wiped clean from the face of Equestria. No records exist of its history. There are no legends of a deposed queen-in-exile who fled the fall of the kingdom while great with foal. We have no specific reason to believe that you are any sort of a lost heir. But... there are your instincts. And the Mark on your flank is very distinct, even though we have no larger context for it. It is not merely a heart, representing your sphere of Love. It is a crystal heart, specifically. This may be a critical fact."

"My first teacher gave me a jewel heart charm, the day I earned my Mark."

"I've seen your amulet, of course," says Aunty. "But the design is not similar enough to your Mark to signify only that. There may be something in the memory of this shard which will open both our eyes."

"Even so," I reply. "I am desperate for a place of my own, Aunty. Too desperate. If... if I see something, I'm going to latch onto it, true or not." I shake my head. "I... am not trustworthy in this matter."

Aunty picks the crystal from the floor. "And your saying this makes me trust you all the more. I will not force you to look upon what you're not ready to see, Mi Amore. But... perhaps you would consider taking the crystal, at least?"

I blink at her.

"It may or may not literally be your birthright," she says. "But perhaps it will be a symbol to you of your birthright, whatever it is. Something to meditate on while you are in Cloudsdale. A compass, of sorts, or a guiding star. Will you accept this as my gift, Mi Amore?"

"It's yours, Aunty," I say, watching as she twirls the crystal shard end over end in the air between us. "You bled for it."

"A loan, then," says Celestia. "You will know when to return it to me."

"All right," I say, wrapping my teal magic around it and supplanting Aunty's gold. I stow the shard in my saddlebag. It feels warm against my hide, even through the canvas.

"And now, I need to put away the moon and raise up the sun. And you, young princess, need to sleep. It has been a long day for you."

I nod, silently. Aunty sees me back to my chambers, bids me good night (even though it is now morning) and closes the door behind her as she leaves; and the day is over.

I slump against the door for a moment, breathing deep of the last air of night. Then, I perform the most rudimentary of bedtime rituals. I do not even floss, and I always floss. My little preparations complete, I drape myself in a soft flannel night-dress and crawl beneath my blankets, leaving the curtains on my bed open despite the oncoming dawn.

A moment later, I rise back up, remove the crystal shard from my saddlebags, and balance it upon my bedside table so that it will be the last thing I see before I finally drift to sleep. At the same time, I imagine my Aunty, gazing at the far-off moon as she quietly tucks it below the horizon. I imagine little Twilight, rousing herself from slumber for just long enough to peek at the tiny casket at her own bedside. And somehow, in that moment, the three of us are one pony, and the tears begin to come again, and I cry into my pillow with great gasping sobs without even really knowing why. I guess that I'm crying for a lost kingdom, a lost and unknown moon-princess, a lost tooth sitting in a tiny casket near the bed of the most heartbreakingly wonderful filly in all Canterlot, perhaps all Equestria. Three missing pieces, leaving empty spaces behind. Spaces that may, some day – if we are lucky and loving – be filled again.

I sleep, and finally, I dream.

Author's Note

Thanks to S.R. Foxley and Ghost of Heraclitus for the beta. If you enjoyed this work and would like to be notified of future stories as they are posted, consider joining the "Cadance of Cloudsdale" story group! The cycle continues with "Lady Prismia and the Princess-Goddess".