Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds!
Lo, as the barque, that hath discharged her faught,
Returns with precious jading to the bay
From when at first she weigh'd her anchorage,
Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs,
To re-salute his country with his tears...
- Titus Andronicus, Act 1, Scene 1.
Steel-shod hooves tapped softy on old granite, a sound lonely and distant in the echoing emptiness of the once-great hall. It had been a place alive with voices raised in song and laughter and good-natured boasting, where once grand tapestries depicting the heroes of the ages curtained the walls with scenes of greatness resplendent in every colour imaginable. Pillars, once mighty, now shattered and useless, strewn upon the barren floor like so much gravel amidst the ancient slate they had supported, much of it still glowing softy green and grey in the false-light of the moon, covered as they were by moss and lichen.
Shattered now, silent and empty save for the slow, even beat of her step. Moonlight glittered off gold-chased armour, caught gemstones of a hundred hues and cast the filtered light to every surface around her. Perfectly and artfully crafted was her armour, yet the scars of war showed the true nature beneath; not soft gold but cold, dull steel rent and torn in places: cut here, dented there, a deep gouge scraped into the scaled metal that protected her long, elegant neck. Not all the colour upon her was gold and gemstones either; splashes of red somehow redder than any ruby stained her ivory coat, was spattered across her shoulders and flank.
How many years had it been since they had ran through this archway? Old stone somehow more familiar than any face she could remember, etched with a simple knotting pattern that wove in and around itself from floor to peak and back again. They had laughed as they ran, she recalled; a two small fillies at play, wild with abandon and breathless with the chase. They had knocked over a suit of armour just there in their mad rush, and had very nearly tripped the old seneschal as they dashed passed the next arch. What had been his name? It felt like an age since she had seen that kindly old stallion, since she and her sister had sat fidgeting with impatient energy as he droned on with their lessons. Always so eager to be away, to have fun and play. They had done so poorly with their letters to begin with, distracted as they were with the need to move and run, until that wise old pony had turned it into a game made all the more intriguing by the rewards of fresh peppermint leaves to nibble when a right answer was given or a difficult word successfully penned.
She stood in the doorway to that old room, its contents long crumbled to dust under the weight of the years. The roof had given way on the far side, and whatever had been above it tumbled down in a mess that hid the wall that had once held the huge black slate board that had so often been the source of the tormenting squeaks and shrieks of chalk. Perhaps it was still buried there under the mess, though likely shattered and rendered nothing more than just another small weight of rubble within the pile.
It was strange though, how standing here in the false silence of the old castle's embrace she could taste peppermint upon her tongue; the sharp, somehow frosty bite of it in her mouth, the delightful scent that had filled the entirety of the world with every tiny nip of the soft, fuzzy leaves.
Further beyond now, a long hall with many doors, here a door long rotted away to dust. Laughter here in the years gone, though not the exuberant and wild squeaks of foals at play, but the furtive giggling and conspiring whispers of fillies doing what they had been expressly forbidden to do. The kitchens had always been a hive of activity; the great kettles set upon their iron racks, the fires beneath them crackling and glowing like the mouths of an unusually polite and helpful hell. A dozen ponies could be moving within the great room, shunting and bustling between the trestles and counters, their work a blur of metal and wood and food, all to the riot of shouts and crashes and curses of everyday life in a kitchen. It had always been the pastries that had their attention though, and always made for the best challenge to get. She was always the taller of the two, of ivory coat and flowing pink mane, and so always made for the best distraction while her sister, small and dark and cunning, crept and moved between hooves and beneath tables, stealing away one or two treat to be shared in the secret of their chambers. She remembered how once, they had managed to come away with an entire platter of carefully cut and arranged pieces of cake, enough to feed a substantial table full of ponies. They had reduced it to so much crumbs and stomach aches in a matter of minutes.
Sick for days, scolded by their mother, shut within their rooms with not a book nor toy for two whole days, and made to apologize to the entire table full of important delegates for whom the cake had been intended... and yet awful as all of those punishments were, the memory still brought a smile to her lips. They had well and truly destroyed those cakes in moments, had laid on their backs with the fat stomachs and silly smiles of fillies who had no idea just what the repercussions for their actions would entail, and who truly did not care a whit, for they had the cake and it had been good.
The bedroom had none of the warmth and protection that memory held, not any longer. The far wall had gone, crumbled and collapsed outwards to the ground far below, leaving a gaping wound in what had once been their shared sanctuary. Ancient grey wood was scattered upon the floor, much of it in the corner still protected from the worst of the elements by roof and remaining wall, yet still bleached by the sun and rotted by the years. All that remained of her bed wasn't enough to feed a fire for more than a few moments. It had been a good bed; big enough to make for a ship sailing beyond sight of land to new worlds unknown, at least in the excited imagination of a filly. The sheets had been her sails, the posts her masts, her sister the noble first mate on their long voyages and adventures. Such storms they had weathered, such fierce creatures of the deep they had battled, some cunning enough to take the shape of their father clad all in blankets to try and lull them into a false sense of security. Not once had the their ship been taken, never had it been sunk. Fierce and skilled were the Storm Sisters, ever victorious...
There was no silence here; the wall of the sanctuary had been shattered and torn away by the deceptively slow fury of time, letting the cool breath of the night in, and with it sonorous voices raised in song. It was not the bright and boastful war ballads that had filled the once-great hall, nor the soft and sweet lullabies of a smiling mother guiding her cherished foals into sleep. The song in the midnight air was a chant, low and deep and somber, mourning the passing of brave friends and foes alike. It was an old tradition, and one that felt somehow right, buried together as they would be here in the old heart of the kingdom.
After all, it had been kin fighting against kin, and hot and hateful as the blood might have burned in the veins of the living, much of it now lay cold and dark in pools across the parched earth. A hated enemy one moment, now a lost brother or sister, father or mother, never to be seen again.
Celestia drew the helm from her head, let it fall to the cold stone with a clatter that rang like the toll of some great bell. Unbound, her long mane of many colours flowed and shimmered gently, caressed by the soft silver false-light cast by the moon. She turned her eyes upwards, out through the shattered walls of the ruined sanctuary, out into the fading midnight now cut with the first tremulous rays of a sun that had been trapped and caged far below the horizon for many, many days.
There, hanging in a dark sky steadily brightening, the face of the moon now changed: marked with the silhouette of a mare's head... so very familiar yet so very strange.
Author's Note
Inspired by and written to:
Also: an IRC friend (QS) just passed me a link to a song he had re-written and had someone sing. It is quite possibly the perfect follower to this fic:
