//------------------------------//
// Interlude 
// Story: The Good, The Bad and the Princess 
// by BorealStargazer 
//------------------------------//

I stand by the marble balustrade above the sea of fires and watch as my light wanes. Daybreak is not quite there yet, no reason to hasten it. Today I'm not in the mood to delay though. I've seen enough of the fires, enough of this air crackling of expectations. The miracle is about to happen.

Can you chalk something up as a miracle if it happens on a schedule, to the nearest minute?

I have hundreds and thousands of enlightened faces in front of me. I see patches of light inside one mare's eyes, cast by the candle she's holding. She chews on her lip in anticipation. All manes are grey in pre-morning dusk, but I know her hair to be rich carrot orange.

I also know every night she has the same dream. The dream filled with biting snaps of her father's belt. The one where her mother locks herself in the kitchen, heedless of her desperate cries for help. Did I say has? She had one. I took her pain from her. Let her night be a tranquil one.

There are vastly different ponies in front of me. Torturers and victims. Alarmed parents and scared fillies. Gregarious ones and independent loners. They believe they've never met me in person. Yet I know some of them better than they do.

There are times when I feel I know much more than I ever bargained for. Privy desires. Fears. Temptations. Regrets. Hatred, deeply suppressed. Jealousy. Old guilt. There are times when I wish to doze off myself, to fall into a dreamless slumber. To forget anything and everything I've ever seen.

It's at these times when somepony whispers that it is too much for one mind to bear. That I should stop before it's too late. It's at these times when I buck that somepony, and she goes quiet for a while, granting me a moment of silence. I shall not forgive myself if I leave them to their fate. I never asked for this, that much is true. Nopony could. Yet I cannot wish such a fate for anypony else.

All I wish for now is to be left alone.

Seconds last for hours. But even hours have their limit, and there's a gleam crawling through the sky in the east, just behind the towers. I put on my practiced smile and disappear behind the curtain, missing the majestic alicorn soaring up above the city fell silent. Soaring up to freeze there for a moment at the highest point, above the sharpest spire, above the glistering tiled roofs, pulsing in the warm glow. Then the glow fades not to overshadow the spreading light. A disk of fire rises up from behind the houses to transfix itself in its rightful place, and an excited, exalted stomping of thousands of hooves greets it.

Perhaps I need to have something to eat but I feel sick. My head throbs as if it was I that had just made Sol rise to the sky. I look inside these lifeless eyes of mine and I don't like what I see. I don't like my haggard muzzle, my tumbled brittle mane, the bags under my eyes.

Poor poor thing my rump.

Without a second thought I unerringly crunch my mug inside the twisted mirror frame, finding remote delight in watching the shivers crumble.

All you need is some sleep. Some good healthy nap.

My eyes slip to the rumpled bed and I start shaking.

“Are you all right?” there goes knocking on my door. Not now. Please, not now. I want to be left alone. “I've heard something.”

“It's okay Tia,” I repeat the alien words, never thinking about their sense, and feel smile crawling back onto my face. “Dropped my cup. No worries. I'm just tired. I'm tired, that's it.”

“Won't you open?”

“Need some rest,” a funny wish if one considers the noise of festivities from the window. Hurriedly I draw the gauze curtains and pull down the heavy winter blinds. The room instantly grows darker, leaving some ardent beams of light to shine from the slits between folds of fabric. “Wake me up when my shift starts.”

The door is silent for a while, then asks in Tia's voice:

“I might sing your favorite if you want me.”

“I'm no child, Tia,” I smile although the pony behind the door can't see me. “I'll be fine. Don't you worry about me.”

“Goodnight sis,“ the door tells me. I hear the hooves clopping away.

My legs feel like wood when I approach the bed but still I smile. I drop on the sheets without undressing, hug my blanket, curling into a ball, and writhe in pain.