No Sun-Queen Shall Rend Asunder

by Plough and Stars Pony

A Load of D'Aawwwww

“I know of a place where ponies go for photographs,” said Twilight eagerly, stopping her walk and pronking on the spot. “Good”, Flash says, smiling widely.

During the breakfast of treats, Twilight turns to Cadance and said:

“Flash said he wanted to get his photograph taken, with me in it. I know a place, Kodak Daguerreo’s, we’ll be going there for a bit,”

She falters before Cadance’s knowing smirk before the pink alicorn replies, “That’s sounds brilliant, Twilight. I hope you enjoy yourself with Flash.” The Princess’s pink irises sparkle with humour.

Thus, after breakfast and checkers, with Twilight leading the way, Flash following, they head off.

The place Twilight seeks is on a thoroughfare just off one of the wide avenues, where a sale is being organised. A few ponies raise their heads, and wave to the two of them. Admittedly, more still wave to Flash the Royal Knight than wave to the Princess of Friendship. The mare lets a small disgruntled scowl mar her snout, before reshaping it to a tolerant smile.

This Flash sees, and sympathises.

“Ah, that looks like it,” says Twilight, perking up minutes later.

The name on the wooden board ran Kodak Daguerreo’s Crystal Empire Snaps and Studios. “As Sharp, Clear, and Colourful as Crystal!” Through the glass, the mare and stallion could see green felted prop stands edged in brass.

Pasted on the stands were scores of photographs. Fillies, totie enough to wear their best festival dresses and bows in their manes; older fillies holding certificates for some merit, white toothy ear-to-ear grins stretching across muzzles…young mares and stallions, both blushing and grinning,…a courting couple, then.

A foursome of young stallions fore-legs in the air, mouths open, teeth visible in a silent cheer, for what purpose, unreadable. A second couple, mare in a white dress of foggy white and veil; the stallion in black suit, behind them, mares in bright skirts, around the bench were bunting and plates of cake…a wedding party.

Flash’s gaze slides off the stands and sinks in to the electric light bulb-lit cave of the shop. A simple layout: a carpeted floor, ponikins, more stands for photographs, old azure-blue wallpaper, at the back, a long high wooden counter with a till. He could just see a pony bent over a book open on the counter, pencil in his/her mouth, filling in prices or accounts.

Flash turns from the window to the door, forehoof nudging the door open. A bell trings above his head.

The elderly mare looks up and speaks in a Prance-ish accent. “Good morning, Chevalier, ahh!, forgive me, Your Highness, I did not see you there.” Kodak Daguerreo really did look like she had stepped out of an old black-and-white photograph, a light grey coat, a black bun tied up in pins, where thick white forelocks which had escaped bobbed up and down. The mare wears an old-fashioned hoop skirt trailing on the floor, long sleeves for her forelegs, puffs at her shoulders, and a white blouse. The collar of which is cinched with a dark purple bow-tie.

“It’s alright, Miss…Daguerreo.”

“How may I help you this day? And it is Madame Daguerreo, or Madame Kodak, Chevalier.”

“My companion Flash Sentry, and I, would like our picture taken.”

“Of course, Your Highness, Sir Flash Sentry. Do the Princess and the Knight wish for a standard imperial portrait, one of front-page newspaper size, a smaller postcard one, or of timbre size?”

“Oh, I fancy a postcard size,” Twilight decides. “What about you, Flash?” The stallion nods in approval.

“Formal or casual?”

“Casual, please,” says Twilight, causing the Prance-ish mare to push herself away from the till, lift her eyebrows, and stare at her, a bit scandalised. At the scrutiny, the alicorn chuckles, “Yeah, we are not just Princess and bodyguard, I wanted to be Flash’s friend. If that’s alright with you, Miss Daguerreo.”

Twilight half-wondered if the photograph mare would be an old stick-in-the-mud for rank and manners between the pony-tribes.

Mme. Daguerreo nods, tapping tiny crystal knobs mounted on the till; little pastel-hued pieces of paper jump up in the glass – screened box as she adds prices. “I heard that their Highnesses Cadenza and Shining Armour were the same,” Madame Kodak says, smiling.

“Would the Princess and the Knight like a backdrop to their portrait?”

Flash nods, “Yeah,” he rumbles.

A clear ding! from the till.

“Plain, domestic, chateaux, arbour, garden, or exotic?”

“Umm, domestic, s’il vous-plait.” Madame Daguerreo smiles, pleased at the bilingualism. Glancing at the stallion, Twilight explains, “More casual, don’t you think if we are seated on the same couch, rather than me on the chair and you on the floor?”

Flash nods again. “Oh, yeah, friends wouldn’t do that.”

“Please follow me, Your Highness, Sir Knight.”

A not-too-spacious studio, filled with stands, benches, short plaster columns, potted palm trees, and chairs. The room was clear towards the back where a pair of simple folding summer chairs where placed before a large curtain – or a pardu - patterned with griffins, hydra, manticores, phœnixes, and … “Flash, come and look!” Twilight cries excitedly, “Spike’s on this!”

“Oh, yes, Spike the Brave and Glorious was added to that six months after the Crystal Heart was given back to us,”

Madame Kodak said, walking over to a cupboard door, pressing a crystal knob on a panel beside the door and stepping through the grey door-frame. “I keep the cameras, the tripods, and the shrouds in here.”

“Huh,” Flash says, peering closer to the stitched picture. “Spike’s sure is a little guy.”

“Spike’s seventeen or eighteen years old,” Twilight bats back in quick riposte.

In an undertone: “I hear ponies call him a baby dragon, well, he is, by dragon standards, but by pony-standards, he’s a teenager. Though, it is unknown when a young dragon matures, or not. Not many ponies travel to the dragon-lands. And, I was his age when me and my friends defeated Nightmare Moon. Now was that before or after I turned eighteen?”

Madame Kodak pokes her head out of the cupboard, “Bless me, I never knew that, Your Highness. Young to be a saviour of Equestria with your friends. But, I hear Your Highness was around the same age when Lune de Cauchemar came back. Oui, tres jeune. Dix-huit ans et une heroïne d’Equestrie!

Flash looks back at her before ducking his head closer to Twilight’s. “Uuhhh, what did she say?”

The younger mare giggles. “Didn’t you learn Prance-ish in school, Flash?”

“Well, I did…but I’ve forgotten, heh.”

Twilight smiles kindly. “Oh, Flash…what she said was “Yes, very young. Eighteen years and a saviour of Equestria!”

“Oh, right. Wow, eighteen…and, um, what did she say before that, “Loon de Coosh-something”?

“Nightmare Moon, Flash,” Twilight says, whispering the phrase.

Flash nods. “Ah, right.”

At that moment, Madame Daguerreo steps out of the cupboard, lugging out a wooden-legged tripod collapsed in to a thin fasces, a camera and shroud balanced on her back. She approaches a part of the studio where a large slender bench sits in front of a hanging depicting a fireplace, a desk, and a case of…

“Ooh, books!” Twilight murmurs excitedly, and before Flash could say something she had panged loudly away from his side to re-appear reared up on the bench straining to read the titles. At the sound of Madame Daguerreo tutting, she looks behind and down at her.

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but you could have warned me before you did that.”

“Oh, um,” Twilight murmurs, contrite, before her ears lay. “Sorry. Whenever I see books, I get excited.”

“You should have seen her when she arrived at the Crystal Empire library,” Flash pipes up.

“Oh, really?” Madame Daguerreo says as she sets up the tripod and kicks the legs out so the points formed a equilateral triangle.

"Oh, shush, Flash!"

Next she balances the camera on top, with her teeth she hurls the shroud over the camera. It was just a bit taller than her.

“Next, the magnesium ribbon,” she murmurs.

“Do you have some flash powder and dry cell batteries?” Twilight asks, bringing her front hoofs down to the bench-seat.

“Hmm, no, Your Highness, very old materials those, too volatile, could start a fire.” The older mare looks at her contemplatively. “You know a little of the history of photography?”

“Definitely. My home in Ponyville has a book for everything.”

“Hmmmhm, does it now?” the mare mutters as she heads back to the cupboard.

Twilight catches Flash’s eyes, flaring her wings out she shrugs her shoulders to mutely suggest What can you do? Flash mates her grin. The mare pats a space on the bench to her right.

Flash walks over and makes himself comfortable. “That nice mare certainly likes old-fashioned cameras,” he says. “How does everything work?”

“Madame Daguerreo does not use flash powder, or magnesium-chlorate, that’s what ponies used in the real real old photographs. They would hold up the flash-powder on the tray above their heads and ignite it when they got a decent exposure.

Decent exposure, a good photograph. Here, I expect she takes the picture with the shutter, that ignites the magnesium ribbon, which is not like flash powder that used to be used, Flash.”

Madame Daguerreo re-appears with the tray, wire, and box. Beside the tripod and camera, she sits down, sets the tray’s tripod on its legs, opens the box and picks out a short black stiff object which she drops in to the tray. Next she links one end of the wire to somewhere under the black shroud.

The mare ducks beneath the shroud, the black fabric neatly hiding her shoulders and her front.

“I’m ready for you now, cheries!” she said.

The smile on Flash Sentry’s muzzle twitches to left and right. Next to him, Twilight slightly turns her head, towards him, her head remaining on an angle to the camera.

Twilight subtly leans in, not too quickly to spook Flash or cause him to lean away in response or turn his head to her. The moment before the magnesium burned out and both of them were blinded, she touched her purple muzzle to his cheek.

Two pairs of large wide eyes are dazzled by the magnesium igniting. A second later, black spots jolt in front the mare’s and stallion’s eyes.

Mare and stallion blink and rub toes in to their spotted eyes.

“Heh, wow!” Flash said, turning his head to face the purple alicorn. “That was fun.”

A pause as he gingerly raises a hoof to his cheek. Confused, he asks “Twilight, did you…just nuzzle me?”

His sole reply is a coy chuckle from the mare.

“Thank you!” the proprietrix said, flipping the black blanket off her head. “That was the first one, for the second one, could I ask you to be more relaxed, please?”

If she wants us to be more relaxed, so…

Flash wraps a arm round Twilight’s shoulders, curling a wing over her wings; a moment later, she curls one wing round
him.

Beneath the thick black shroud, the elderly mare smirks as she squints through the tiny square of glass. “Friends with your Knight, are you, Your Highness?...or something more?”

Again, in the seconds before the magnesium burn-out, the purple mare turns her face slightly but, this time, purses her lips minutely, and pecks the yellow-gold stallion on his cheek. Does she hear her friend gasp involuntarily at the contact?

As the mare looks over the second photograph, Flash whispers to the lavender mare:

“Twilight, um, are you doing that on purpose?”

“You’re one of my best friends, Flash,” Twilight said, rubbing a wing up and down his back.

The lavender mare allows a smile to show on the side of her muzzle nearer the camera, she turns to her stallion again, she kisses him on the cheek, lips open in a pink circle. Does she feel the rise in temperature of Flash’s skin when he blushes? Does she feel the pulse in his cheek speed up?

Her eyes are dazzled for the fourth time. Breaking away, toe on her left eyes rubbing, the mare sees the stallion red across the nose, red-tipped ears pinned back, gratuitous grin only for the serotonin and the dopamine rushing in his blood, all from the cheeky administrations of this beautiful mare.

Twilight only knows she loves it, and only doing it for Flash to love it, because Flash loved her.

Reveries are broken by the camera-mare giggling, blushing too. “May I ask you not to be quite so affectionate from now on, please, cheries? You two are lovely together.”

“I’m finished now, Miss Daguerreo,” Twilight replied.

The last few photographs just involved no hugging, pecking, or kissing.

Twilight and Flash sat straight but relaxed, smiling broadly for Kodak’s camera.

The photographs were developed much later, in a secluded room at the back of the shop in the solemn ruddy light.

“The photographs will be delivered to the Castle later to-day, Your Highness, Chevalier.”

“Thank you, Mme. Daguerreo.”

“I honestly can’t wait,” said Flash, before glancing pointedly at Twilight, who blushed.

The mare smiles at the two ponies before saying:

“Your Highness is more than a friend to your Chevalier, are you not? Ponies may nuzzle and hug another, but there is something different here. I see ponies court, and I am surprised a Pegasus would be bold enough to woo a Princess, no less. But, I remember hearing of the story of Shining Armour courting Princess Cadenza, and oh, how my heart thrilled with joy for them.”

Twilight cuts across her, “Thank you very much for the pictures, Madame Daguerreo; umm, I have books to leisure read, if you wouldn’t mind. And, ummm, if you could keep this…the two…Flash and me secret if you know what I mean…”

Madame Kodak smiles indulgently, “Worry not, Your Highness, I would never betray secrets of ponies. Monceleste, the very idea! Ponies would not come to me if I talked to ponies about others’ secrets.”

“Twilight? Are you coming?” Flash asks, turning back to the counter.

The sun was shining brightly as they walked back to the Castle.

Stallion and mare find Cadance in the lounge, deep in a book.

“Oh? May I see them?” Cadance said innocently, wide eyes boring in to Twilight’s, lips twisting upward.

“Oh, we don’t have them yet. They still…need developing.”

“Aand? When they are finished will you allow me to see them?”

“Heh, maybe I will, Cadance.”

Much later, from the knocking on his door, Flash Sentry knew what it was for. He opens the door to see Twilight and Madame Kodak in the hallway.

Highly-coloured squares float in Twilight’s aura, with a brown paper envelope monogrammed with Kodak’s Crystal Empire Snaps and Studios.

Upon seeing him, Twilight nearly thrust them on to his eyes, “Lookat them, lookit them, Flash, aren’t they amazing?”

“I will leave you, cheries,” Madame Kodak says, smiling broadly. “It is excellent my art still excites ponies. Bonsoir et au revoir, Chevalier.”

When Flash does get a proper, informed perusal of the photographs… “Oh woow!” he murmurs, “We look sooo sweet together.”

Comments

[Ultimate Warrior of Zera]

Madame Daguerreo does not use flash powder

Yet, you later say she does.

Once again, this is sweet.