Heavyweight trotted slowly along the corridor, a large silver platter of lettuce sandwiches held tightly in her teeth. She asked herself—as she often found herself doing, when a task she had been assigned seemed particularly unnecessary—why the staff even needed serving-mares to carry things, anyway. For unicorns carrying a tray was easy, because their hornglow could carry all of it at once, but when an earth pony like herself picked up a tray in their teeth, the weight was constantly pulling it down, and the strain on their jaw after even a few minutes could become quite uncomfortable. Not to mention the difficult balancing act of carrying a tray whilst walking, without upsetting the delicate arrangement of the items on it.
Because that’s how unicorns were: anything that they could do easily but that bored them, they made others do, even if the others were less-suited to the task. Even if it hurt them.
She let out a slow breath through her nose, and tried to relax. It wouldn’t do to get upset in front of the students. Not only were they unicorns, but some of them were her elders, and it wouldn’t do to disrespect them.
Even if they could take away one of your greatest joys in life on a whim, without concern or afterthought.
Turning the corner into the Hall, Heavyweight kept her posture as perfect as she could manage as she strode purposefully, if slowly, towards one of the serving tables. There was something at once both pleasant and deeply uncomfortable about being so unnoticed that one could walk through a crowded hall of students this slowly, and yet not a single head would turn to track you. It was lonely… but she supposed it could be worse.
As she set down the tray, she noticed the room’s background chatter fall to a whispered hush. Despite herself, she looked up, worrying that she had done something wrong, but the first student that she saw was not looking at her, but watching a young mare walk deliberately up towards the staff table.
The mare’s soft blue coat seemed familiar, but there was something in the way that she was moving that threw Heavyweight, and made her struggle to remember the mare’s name. She was sure that she’d seen her recently…
Heavyweight watched, mesmerised, as the young mare approached the Headmistress. She appeared… not confident, but certainly not afraid, almost as if she were very deliberately keeping her emotions in check. There was a slight tension in the tight line of her lips, but otherwise her expression was as clear and blank as Heavyweight’s own.
Heavyweight tore her eyes away from the sight, and turned to leave the Hall. There were more trays to carry, waiting for her back in the kitchen, after all.
At the top of the Southern Tower of Canterlot Arcana, there was one room that had only two high, small windows, between which a breeze would occasionally blow. What little light entered those windows diffused through the room, but only enough to cast shadows in the darkness. Each morning, its lone inhabitant would rise and light the candles that floated on permanent Enchantments around the room, flickering and wobbling, but otherwise providing steady light, until the candles burned through and needed to be replaced.
That was how Zama knew that it was time to eat, at least.
Silently, she closed the book that she had been reading, and walked over to the fireplace, grasping one candle in her teeth and lighting it with utmost care and practice, even if it were mostly out of habit than safety: the fire was charmed that it should never burn her, or a student.
She’d made it three candles around the room—almost a quarter of the way around—when she heard the gentle knocking at the door that meant a serving-pony had arrived with her lunch. She smiled and returned the candle she was carrying to its original spot, before trotting briskly over to the door to greet the serving-pony. With a smile and a nod, she took the tray in her teeth, and moved to put it down by her cushion.
Three candles would be enough to eat by.
“So I heard back from administration.”
Em looked up from her salad and shot her partner a withering look. “Alex, can it wait? It’s lunch. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to think about this case while I’m eating.”
For a second, a dark look fell over Alex’s eyes. For the first time that day, Em thought she could see the subtle shimmer of a glamour Illusion that was beginning to fade beneath his eyes. She frowned. It wasn’t like Alex to miss out on sleep—and it certainly wasn't like Alex to let his Illusions fade. He was usually the kind of stallion who would be in bed comfortably just an hour or two after moonrise, and he’d be up as the sun rose.
“I know,” he said softly, setting down his tray and sitting down on the cushion across from her. “Neither do I. But this is important: we’ve been given the all-clear for the Starswirl Wing.”
Em froze.
The Starswirl Wing. It had seemed so much less frightening when it was just a possibility, a mere concept, and not a place that she would be going. A part of her hadn’t actually thought he’d been serious about researching there—or she wouldn’t have if she hadn’t known how seriously he took his work. She certainly hadn’t expected them to be allowed access, no matter how much they might need it to solve the case. She knew veteran Adstra who had needed to use the Starswirl Wing for some of their cases, and none of them had ever wanted to talk about the experience.
“By the Source, Alex,” she whispered in shock. “They’re actually letting us in there?”
“Yeah,” he said. “This afternoon, too. Apparently they’re really worried about this case and are willing to do just about anything to get results.” Even letting two rookies, barely out of training, into the Starswirl Wing. He hadn’t said it, but she knew that was what he was thinking.
“Well then,” Em said, picking up a slice of tomato with her hornglow. “I guess we’re spending the afternoon researching. It’s not all that different from what I had planned anyway.”
Alex hummed, and nodded in agreement, tucking into his own meal as the pair lapsed into a familiar, pregnant silence. Em didn’t want to break it—to talk about the Starswirl Wing now seemed almost as bad as the case—but behind her carefully-composed features her heart was throbbing in terror. There were things in the Starswirl wing that unicorns were simply not meant to know…
And the worst part was that they might not have to forget all of them.