//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: The Jeweled Flower 
// Story: Oathbound 
// by ChronicleStone 
//------------------------------//

Home of Lily Pond, Canterlot
April 15, 12:13 PM

The sudden knock at the door drew her attention from the half-full bowl of cider on the floor.  She straightened up slightly as the furry monochrome cat beside her meowed in protest.  She hadn’t been expecting anyone.  She was due at the jewelry shop in half an hour; she didn’t have time for any unexpected visits from friends.
But her mouth didn’t seem to register her brain’s opposition.  “Come in,” she heard herself say.
As the door opened, she was surprised (and greatly relieved) to see the familiar form of Sky Streak appear against the glare of the sun.  “Hey there,” he said in a pleasantly chipper voice.  She smiled as he pushed the door closed behind him, allowing her to see him more clearly.  He looked taller than he had just last week, and a recent manecut had removed most of his hair from his neck so that it was only on his head, giving him more of a clean-cut appearance.  His turquoise eyes seemed to be alight with a certain electricity that caused them to be visible even in the deepest darkness.  And, of course, that perpetual smug grin of his was plastered across his face.  If she hadn’t been around to have seen him with different expressions, she would have sworn that he couldn’t make any other face.
Lily placed the pitcher of cider on a nearby counter with her magic and walked over to where Sky stood.  “Well, I didn’t expect to see you,” she said, rubbing her nose against her boyfriend’s.  “Did your shift end early?”
Sky shrugged.  “A bit.  Ring Tone got there early so I could leave.  Of course, I might’ve mentioned something about wanting to see you before you went to work today.”
Lily blushed slightly.  Behind her, an annoyed meowing reminded her of a certain feline that was intent on receiving a full bowl of cider before her owner left.  “You’re sweet,” she said to Sky.  Then, turning around, she said in an exasperated voice, “Yes, Cuddles, I hear you.”
“Whatever it is that you put in that stuff, it seems like that cat is addicted to it,” Sky commented.
“She’s just used to it,” Lily corrected as she resumed her pouring.  “Cider is to her what milk is to most cats.”
“Weird.  Anyways,” Sky said, turning the conversation back to the matter at hoof, “it had been a while since we’d seen each other enough to do more than wave, so I thought I’d come pay you a visit.”
“That’d be fine, Sky,” Lily replied, “but I’m about to head off to the jewelry shop.  My shift starts in about twenty-five minutes.”
There was a short pause before Sky’s voice returned, though it was softer and less energetic.  “Oh.  That’s…earlier than I thought.”
Lily finished putting the cider away as Cuddles excitedly lapped up her serving of the apple-flavored beverage.  A thought crossed her mind.  I hadn’t intended to show him yet, but he’s right: we don’t see each other nearly as much as I think we’d like.  This is probably as good a time as any.
“You know,” Lily said, slightly lowering her eyelids as she returned to the foyer of her home, “I still have to get to the shop.  And I wouldn’t mind some company along the way.”
She almost snorted as Sky’s right eyebrow arched mischievously.  “Is that so?” he asked.  “Well, I’d hate for you to be late.  How long does it take for you to get there from here?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
“That leaves us a few extra minutes, so we can take our time.  Need anything before we leave?” Sky asked, reaching for the door.
“Not that I can think of,” Lily replied.  “Pretty much everything I need is at the shop.”
The door opened once again, allowing the sunlight to spill into the room.  “Then shall we be off?” Sky offered.
“A wonderful idea.  Be good, Cuddles,” Lily called as she cast a quick glance into her home.  Cuddles was unmoved, unwilling to be distracted by anything until she was satisfied that she had managed to clean every inch of her bowl of cider.
“Has that ever been a problem?” Sky asked, looking a bit skeptical.
Lily pulled the door shut, then turned to the street as the latch locked with a reassuring click.  “What’s that?”
“Cuddles.  You told her to ‘be good.’  Has she ever not been good?”
She chuckled to herself.  “You obviously don’t know much about cats.”
“Well, alrighty,” Sky remarked as they began their stroll up the street.  He hesitated before letting the matter drop.  “So, how have you been?  That’s not really how I like to start our conversations, but I really don’t know how things have been with you recently.”
“No, it’s fine,” Lily replied.  “We’ve just been missing each other for the past two weeks or so.  I’ve been okay, though I’ve missed our times together.  I’d love to be able to go on a picnic again.  It’s getting to be warm enough for it now.”
Sky nodded thoughtfully.  “I’d love to be able to take you on one, but it seems that the only way we get to see each other is when we happen to be going to the same place.  Hard to have a picnic when you’re on the move like that.”
She made a face, though she couldn’t find anything wrong with his logic.  For the first few months, she and Sky had been able to spend plenty of time together.  He somehow had managed to make every outing special in some way, though the most memorable time was when they had been invited by Octavia herself to be special guests to her concert.  She had nearly fainted in surprise when Sky gave her the news.  The concert was excellent, and both she and he had thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it.
But after that night, something changed.  Sky suddenly seemed…not distant, but thoughtful.  He was constantly in a retrospective mindset, bringing up events and circumstances of the past, as though he were trying to piece together a mystery hidden in the whirlwind of the past year.  His duties in the guard had also picked up, gradually at first, but eventually, she realized that it had become uncommon for her to see him for more than a fleeting moment.
Her own job had become busier at about the same time, as it was apparently the norm for ponies to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and a myriad of other special days during the late summer and early fall.  And after that, the holidays piled on, with Nightmare Night, Hearth’s Warming Eve, New Year’s Day, Hearts and Hooves Day…
She felt her heart rate quicken from just thinking about it.  She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself.  She was here with Sky, for once, and it was important for her to cherish the moment.
“Hey, you okay?” she heard Sky ask from beside her.
“Yes,” she replied, focusing on steadying her heart rate with the clopping of her hooves on the cobblestone road.  “Just remembering what the past year has been.  Ever since Octavia’s concert, our lives have been one big blur.”
“Ah,” came his brief reply.  “It was nice back when we had all that time and could really be together whenever we wanted.  Sad that had to change.”
She formed a half-smile and shrugged, leaning into him.  “Yeah, but that just makes times like this that much more special,” she countered.
“Can’t argue with that,” Sky replied, flashing his trademark grin.
“So,” she began again, “how was your shift?”
“Oh, pretty standard.  Stand around, look official, salute or bow whenever you’re supposed to…you know, more of the same.”  He kept his eyes trained on the road ahead, never looking at her once as he spoke.
Lily had become rather skilled at reading Sky.  Not that it was difficult; his emotions were usually as evident as his wings at full spread.  But whenever he was either trying to hide something, or be discreet, or just plain lie, his mannerisms would change.  His emotions would suddenly become muted, and he almost found it difficult to look her in the eye.  It was as though the effort to conceal something from her was too painful for him to manage.
“Is that so?  No secret meetings or special missions today?  They didn’t send you out on a quest to save Equestria from a horde of ravenous dragons threatening to destroy the Crystal Empire?  Not even a fight with a mutant cockatrice?” she half-teased.
She thought she saw him glance at her from under his eyelids, but if he did, it was quick, almost unnoticeable.  Aside from that, he made no indication that he had even heard her.  It was mildly frustrating.  She knew that he was part of something important; that much was obvious.  But his stubborn resistance to letting anything slip was borderline maddening.  She had tried many times to pry something loose from his lips, from subtle hints to clever suggestions, but whenever she so much as approached the subject of his alleged “secret work,” his mouth locked up tighter than the palace vaults.  She sighed, a verbal white flag.  “Fine, I’ll stop,” she stated simply.
Sky smiled sympathetically and nudged her, causing her to swerve off her course, nearly crashing into a street vendor selling various baked goods.  “Hey, watch it!” she shouted at the snickering pegasus, with a hasty “excuse me” aimed at the surprised vendor.
“I was watching,” Sky retorted as she returned to his side.  “I apparently didn’t push you hard enough.”
“Hey!”
“Kidding,” he quickly replied.  Then, receiving a hoof in the ribs, he added, “Ow!”
“You just can’t seem to grow up and be serious, no matter how hard I try to force it upon you,” Lily complained.
“That’s part of the problem,” Sky countered.  His eyes rose to the air, where a trio of pegasi chased each other around in what appeared to be a game of tag.  “Whenever I’m around you, I just feel so happy that I can’t be serious.”
Lily groaned.  “Ugh, how can you be so cute with so little effort?”
“It’s a gift.”
“A curse on those around you.”
“Hey, we can’t all have the gift.  But to be fair, your own cuteness is what makes me so giddy,” Sky replied with a wink.
She let her head drop.  “I give up.”
“Aw, is that any kind of attitude to have on your way to work?” Sky asked, draping a wing across her back.  “How do you expect to get anything done without any motivation?”
She smiled in spite of herself.  “You’re here with me…I’m sure that’ll be enough by the time we get to the shop.”
Sky snorted lightly, but the smile on his face was one of complete satisfaction.  She didn’t need to feel his emotions to be able to know that.
They walked together down the lanes and streets that led to the jewelry shop in silence.  All the way, Sky’s wing remained draped across Lily’s back, gently pulling them closer together.  It was a gesture that he had begun last summer, when their dates still occurred with regular frequency.  She had missed the sensation, and feeling his body next to hers with his wing curling around her made her feel more complete than she had in weeks.
Suddenly, she noticed that Sky was not wearing his usual accessory.  “Hey,” she commented, pulling away just enough to see his bare neck, “where’s your wrap?  Did you not wear it today?”
Sky blushed slightly as he looked her in the eye.  “Oh, well, I was wearing it last night, and I kinda had a bit of a clumsy spell while having soup for dinner, and, well, one thing led to another, and…it’s in the wash,” he finished simply.
Lily shook her head, though she couldn’t hide her laughter.  “Sky, what am I going to do with you?”
“You should probably just put me in a bubble so I can’t keep finding new ways to destroy my surroundings,” he replied.  When Lily had first met Sky, he had struck her as one of the most composed and organized ponies she had ever met.  He had a plan for everything, and his ability to stay cool even in the midst of very dangerous situations had left its mark.  It had been one of the things that had caused her to fall for him.
But after spending some time with him, she had seen that even a pony as initially impeccable as Sky was still as fallible as any other.  And in no place was that as evident as the kitchen.  In spite of his best efforts, he always found a way to leave a significant mess when it came to food preparation.  His most infamous snafu came on her birthday, when he had tried to make her a nice dinner, but had only succeeded in ruining one of her tablecloths and proving that apple cider could catch on fire.  It was a memory they laughed about now, but at the time, she had been so upset that she had kicked him out of her home for a week and refused to speak to him for several days.
“I think we should just leave the cooking to me,” Lily offered.
“I like that idea better,” Sky replied.  “Everypony gets to eat, and there’s a much lower chance that a house gets burned to the ground.”  There was a short pause.  “So, why’d you want to know where my wrap was?”
Lily smirked.  Can’t get anything past him.  He’s much too suspicious for that.  “Well, I have a surprise for you, and they’re a bit easier to keep with you if you’d have that wrap around your neck.”
“They?” Sky echoed, sounding intrigued.
“Yes, they,” she confirmed.  “But you’ll have to wait until we get to the shop to see them.”
“Fantastic,” he replied, jumping up and down in an exaggerated display of excitement.  “The anticipation is killing me.”

“Lily…”
“No peeking!”
The various pieces of jewelry throughout the store glistened like stars in the dim ambience.  The manager of the store had often said that leaving the main lights down brought out the beauty of the gemstones beneath the intense lights of their displays…and she agreed with him.  Even now, the spectrum of colors from beneath the glass coverings bathed the room in rainbows.
But her attention was devoted to the contents of a lone file cabinet against the back wall of the store.  Gently, she removed a pair of small black boxes and set them on the glass counters near where Sky patiently stood with his eyes…mostly closed.
“Hey!” Lily shouted, causing Sky to recoil and slam his eyelids shut.  “I said no peeking!”
“Oh, come on,” he whined, making a head gesture usually accompanied by an eye roll, “the fastest way to make somepony do something is to tell them not to do it.  How did you expect me to respond?”
“Obediently,” she responded without hesitation.  Shutting the cabinet, she sauntered back beside her boyfriend, who had begun stretching each wing separately, apparently in a childish act of boredom.  Several of the other customers in the store eyed him curiously, causing Lily to blush in embarrassment.  “Alright, you can look now.”
“Okay, let’s see what all the fuss is about,” he muttered.  Almost instantly, his eyes fell on the twin boxes on the glass counter in front of him.  “Aw, those are some great-looking jewelry cases you got there, Lily.  Bravo.”
Lily groaned.  “Do you want to see these or not?” she asked in frustration.  Sky’s smile did not fade, but he seemed to understand that her patience was beginning to wear thin, so he merely nodded and withheld any more of his witty commentary.
“Here,” she said, magically lifting one and placing it on his outstretched hoof.  “Have a look.”
She watched with an air of satisfaction as Sky opened the box.  As he did, she caught the glint of light reflecting off the surface of his eyes as he beheld her finished work resting in the box.  “Oh, wow…” he said, apparently speechless for the first time all day.
In the box sat a pin, no larger than a bit, but it glistened with tiny gemstones of green and white set within a golden frame.  Along the bottom, emeralds filled an oblong shape, while sparkling diamonds stretched up in curved triangular clusters.  After a few moments, Sky managed to regain his composure enough to speak again.
“This…this is beautiful,” came his remark.
“Do you recognize it?” Lily asked anxiously.
“Recognize it?  Of course I recognize it,” Sky said, looking surprised by the question.  “It’s your cutie mark.”
“It certainly is.  And it’s your birthday present from me.  Happy birthday, Sky,” Lily said, smiling broadly.
A look of confusion crossed Sky’s face.  “Birthday?  Lily, my birthday isn’t until the sixth of May.  You’re about a month early.”
“Nopony ever said that birthday gifts had to be given on your birthday,” Lily protested.  “Besides, with our schedules, we might not even see each other.  I just figured since I had them, I’d give them to you now.”
Sky’s eyebrow rose dramatically.  “What do you mean, ‘them’?”
It was Lily’s turn to give her boyfriend a smug grin.  “Two boxes, two gifts,” she said simply.
Sky slowly closed the first box and returned it to the counter, then hesitantly lifted the second, never taking his eyes off Lily.  His curiosity was as palpable in the air as the humidity after a summer storm.  His gaze reached right into her, relaying a question as understandably as if he had spoken it aloud: What HAVE you been up to?
And as the lid reclined back on its hinge, she felt his shock like a wave wash over her.  “Oh my…”
The box teetered precariously on the edge of his hoof as he stared at the contents of the package, spellbound beyond words.  She gingerly nudged it back into the center of his hoof, hoping to prevent any accidental drops.
“Lily...by the stars, how did you make this?” Sky whispered.
“I had some help,” she replied softly, coming around on his right.  She peered into the box, setting her gaze on the very object she had toiled over for weeks on end.  It was a perfectly circular pin.  Offset from center, touching one side, a large, flat, black opal sat alone amid a sea of glittering diamonds, arranged into a distinct shimmering crescent.  It didn’t take a genius to recognize the design.  And to Sky, it was something that he fought for every day.
“Princess Luna,” he muttered.  “This is Luna’s mark.”
“These are why I wanted to know where your wrap was.  I wanted to be able to pin these on so you could wear them out in public.  That is,” she quickly added, “if that’s what you want.”
Sky turned to her, looking startled.  “Why wouldn’t I want to show these off?  The marks of the two most important mares in my life?  I’d be willing to pin these straight into myself just so everypony could see them.”
“Let’s not go that far,” Lily replied.  “If you’d just do your laundry, your problem would be solved.”
“I told you, it’s in the wash!” he protested.  Then, softening up, he leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.  “But they’re wonderful.  Thank you.”
She blushed brightly as she saw several nearby customers smile knowingly.  “You’re welcome,” was all she could manage.
“But,” Sky said, his face darkening into a concerned frown, “how did you afford these?  These are probably worth a small fortune.”
Lily smiled knowingly.  “You’ve got your secrets, and I’ve got mine,” she replied.  “But remember, I had some help.”
Sky looked at her curiously, perhaps guessing more than she had said, but if that was the case, he made no indication of such.  “Well, judging from the clock on the wall,” he said, redirecting the conversation, “you’ve got about two minutes to clock in and get to work.  So I’d better let you get to that.”  He picked up the pair of boxes and gently placed them into his saddlebag.  “I’ll head home and do some laundry immediately.  These things shouldn’t be kept in a box any longer than they have to.”
Lily couldn’t help but smile.  As silly as he so often was, Sky had a knack for showing a deep sincerity whenever he needed to.  And this was certainly one of those times.  “Maybe I’ll stop by tonight to show you, if I can catch you in the three minutes between when you get home and when you collapse in your bed,” he said, turning towards the door with a wave.  “Have a great day!  And thanks again!”
“You too!” she called, heading to the back room.  She found that she had a slight spring in her step now, and the corners of her mouth were constantly tugging in an attempt to break into an involuntary smile.  I don’t know if it was his reaction to the gifts, or if it was just being with him, but I don’t care.  He brightens up my day every time I see him.  I hope he knows that.

Sky stood outside the jewelry shop, staring longingly into the window.  She really is special, he thought to himself.  She never thinks of herself; just how she can brighten everypony else’s day and make Equestria a nicer place for all.  And every moment I spend with her is special.  There’s not a pony in Equestria I’d rather spend my time with.  I hope she knows that.