A gleaming, luminous silver crescent rose over the Crystal Empire and bathed everything in the gentle, lesser light of night. For the first time in her life, young Flurry Heart looked up at the moon and felt hope, which was an odd thing to feel. In her mind, every word that Dim had said echoed through her grey matter and left her thoughtful in a way that she had never experienced before.
The night held promise.
During the daytime, the very sorts of ponies that gave her fits and caused her so much grief were out and about, gossiping, planning, and plotting. But at night… at nighttime, those same ponies were asleep. Well, most of them anyhow. Most ponies, crystal ponies especially, were scared of the dark and terrified of the night. Skyla was. Little Skyla required a nightlight or else tears were sure to fall. Flurry needed no such comforts and was capable of making her own light. Overhead, wispy clouds acted as prisms to scatter silver rays and Flurry noticed for the first time the beauty that the night had to offer.
Under the cover of the dark, sacred night, she would be free to work, to do her job, to be the protector that Equestria needed, and those with wagging tongues would be tucked away in their beds, snug, secure, and safe thanks to her efforts. She began to see the appeal and she also began to understand Dim. This, in and of itself was confusing, because she didn’t know if this was a good thing.
Ponies were terrified of Dim—Kommissar Dim, Hero of the Battle of Menagerie—and for good reason. Dim, like Luna, had embraced the night, and ponies feared the night. Flurry, little Flurry whose mind was not fully developed and who did not possess a wealth of intellect, she struggled to put it into terms that she could understand. Coffee or tea. Straight or gay. Day or night. Equestria was full of choices that defined you, choices that would set you apart and make you stand out as a pony.
Flurry began to see the appeal of the night…
A single choice could define a pony and Flurry had an inkling of how this happened. She had been around her mother long enough to know that coming out of the closet was a big deal. For some, it was a moment of terror and anxiety. It could also be a moment of profound relief. For Flurry, it was the only association that she could make that she could understand.
Dim had made her aware that there were other choices—there were other lifestyles that existed with ponies happy to live them—and that she could make a transition. She could make a choice. Embracing the dark had a certain appeal and Flurry was enchanted with the very notion of such a thing. With a wide-eyed expression of wonder, she stared out of her narrow window and wished that she could be outside enjoying the cool night air. She wanted a balcony, but the fear of intruders was far too great.
“I thought you’d be up.”
Her father’s voice was quiet, little more than a whisper, and it only existed inside of her ears. Soft as it was, It still startled her, but Flurry contained herself somehow and did not allow herself to spook. Turning her head around, she saw him approaching, stepping over the clutter scattered across the floor. Skyla was careless with her dolls and tended to leave them where ever it was that she had played with them last.
“My adorable little pink snow cone… I had a talk with Dim.” Magic kept Shining Armor’s voice from going anywhere but into his Flurry’s ears, and Skyla’s sleep was undisturbed. “He had a lot to say. Some of it I agreed with. Some of it angered me. A few parts infuriated me. So, here I am to have a talk with you.”
“Mom won’t listen to Dim,” Flurry said to her father in a low whisper and she sensed that her voice was muffled by magic.
“No,” Shining replied, shaking his head, “your mother has her own aspirations and desires for you, and what Dim has to say crushes her hopes and dreams.”
“And does anypony even care about what I want?” Flurry asked, even though she feared the answer.
“Well, Flurry, what do you want?” Shining Armor pulled up a cushion and sat down beside his daughter in front of the narrow window. Once he was settled, he leaned down his head, kissed her, and then scooted a little closer so he could be nearer to the one he so loved.
“I don’t know what I want,” she huffed, and this made her father chuckle.
“This is why nopony asks what foals want.” Turning his head, Shining Armor looked up out of the window at the rising moon. “Most foals have no idea what they really want, and so we parents try and do what is best for them. We provide them with what they need. Maybe not what they want, but what they need is given. At least, with good parents that is.”
Hearing these words made Flurry feel sulky because she didn’t know how to refute them. Even though she wasn’t the smartest little filly in the world, Flurry knew without a doubt that her father always did what was best for her. “I don’t want to marry Sumac and I don’t want the nobles deciding what I do.”
“Would it really be so terrible, Flurry?”
“Daddy?” She looked up at her father, wondering what he was getting at, but he did not look her in the eye. No, he was staring at the moon.
“Now, I’m not saying that you have to, I am just asking you a question with the hopes that you might examine the situation. You are an alicorn. Sumac is an alicorn. I think that pretty much everypony would be relieved and overjoyed if the two of you did gross stuff like kissing and having foals. It’s more than falling in love and having a fairytale wedding where the princess marries the handsome prince. In this instance, the prince is a male alicorn and such a union might mean the eventual restoration of an ancient tribe.”
Taking a deep breath, she started to say something in return, but her words failed her and came out as a lip-flapping raspberry. When her father put it this way, it put a whole new spin on things, and Flurry didn’t like it, not at all. Frustrated, she couldn’t even figure out why she didn’t like it, and she sat there simmering with her growing annoyance.
“Sometimes, for the good of others, we must sacrifice what we want; our desires, our dreams, our hopes, and our fondest wishes… it’s awful, Flurry, but there are times when it must be done. Those with the most potential, those capable of doing the most, they are usually the ones asked to sacrifice the most. It’s awful, it isn’t fair, and it is unpleasant, but this is how life is and I can’t protect you from that. One day, in some way or another, you are going to learn this lesson in some meaningful way, and when it sinks in, it is going to hurt.”
Her father’s words confused her, but she didn’t doubt him. He was telling her like it was and this was something she appreciated a great deal. Her father was at his best when he wasn’t pulling any punches and he was being direct. Sometimes, sometimes, her mother candy coated stuff to make a bitter pill easier to swallow, and Flurry hated that.
“If you asked me to marry Sumac, I would, and I would make the most of it. Is that what you want?” Mid-sentence, Flurry’s voice cracked as her insides began to twist and clench from fear. She found herself trembling, terrified by what she had just said to her father, and with each second that passed that he did not respond, her terror grew by leaps and bounds.
“No,” Shining Armor replied, and Flurry almost began sobbing with relief. “Sumac is a scoundrel, a rogue, and a scamp. The two of you would get into no end of trouble and my mane would turn grey in the first week.” Shining Armor began to chuckle and he looked down at his daughter, who sat with her barrel heaving. “No, Flurry, what I really want you to do is take your time and figure out what you want. I’m open for almost anything, but if you join the Underwatch, I am not saving you from your mother. Daddy has needs, Fluffalump.”
“Daddy… did… did… did Dim talk to you about the darkness?” Flurry asked and she had a pitched battle just to get the words out. Her panic was almost unbearable at the moment and fear made it hard to breathe, much less speak.
“He did,” her father whispered, and he turned away once more to look at the moon.
“What if I became like Auntie Luna and threw away all of my responsibilities of rule so that I could focus upon protecting? What if I did like she did? What if I embraced the dark? What would you do?”
Reaching out a foreleg, Shining slipped it over his daughter’s back and replied, “I would get you a lamp, so that you might do your job well…”
It was not yet dawn and the train trundled along the tracks, heading north towards the Crystal Empire. Sumac yawned, somehow both wide awake and sleepy at the same time. Beside him, Pebble had already succumbed to sleep and Silver Lining was losing the battle as well. The colt let out a startled snort when Lemon Hearts grabbed his injured foreleg, lifted it up, and held it against her barrel.
“I can’t believe that Meg did that to you,” Lemon Hearts whispered.
“She’s done worse—”
“I know, it’s awful.” Lemon’s words were almost hissy.
“I’ve done worse back.” Sumac turned to look at his mother, Lemon, and watched her as she hugged his leg. “You know how we are. We do things for realsies so that if we ever get into trouble, real trouble, we know just what to do. Meg has split my head open and I’ve given her electrical burns so bad it made her blister. We trust each other, Lemon… we trust each other so that we can learn the hard lessons.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Lemon whined.
With a turn of his head, Sumac glanced over at where Boomer hung from the luggage rack overhead. She was sound asleep, wrapped up in her membranes, and below her on the seat, Spike dozed while making smoky little snorts. It had taken all of Boomer’s courage to ask Spike to be her date for the cotillion, and they agreed to ransack the buffet tables together.
“What were you thinking, Sumac?”
“What?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
Lemon sighed, shook her head, and sighed again. “When you were little… after Manehattan… when we were trying to sort everything out… you went up to Meg and told her, ‘I want you to hit me as hard as you can.’ Why did you do it? What were you thinking? She about broke your nose—”
“I wanted to learn how to take a punch,” Sumac said before Lemon could wind herself into hysterics. He thought back to that day and how liberating it was to have his face smashed. He had learned an awful lot about himself in that moment, and it had set off a lifetime of full contact learning. His crashes, his failures, his daredevil attitude, it all went back to that moment, and he was a better pony for having experienced it.
Lemon was still squeezing his injured leg, fretting over it, and Sumac wasn’t sure how to make her feel better. She had been extra smothery as of late, her moods kept changing, and she had been acting a bit peculiar. He didn’t know what was up, but worried that poor Lemon might be under a bit of stress, perhaps because of her job as a teacher.
Hearing the sound of cards being shuffled, Sumac tuned to look at Trixie and Twinkleshine, who were playing cards with one another on the little fold out table. Trixie liked playing cards a great deal, and had a constant, worthy foe with Twinkleshine. For the past few years, this was their happiness. Rain or shine, good times or bad times, up or down, no matter what happened, those two would play cards and everything would be okay. For Sumac, the sound of cards being shuffled was the sound of normality, of happiness, it was the sound of a happy home.
His mother still hadn’t given him his injured leg back.
With a yawn, Sumac poked at his breakfast but wasn’t sure what he wanted to eat. The cabin on the train was filled with sunlight, which streamed in through the windows to his right, with his right facing east. The cabin was big enough for four, but they had eight. His three mothers, himself, Pebble, Silver Lining, Boomer, and Spike. The dragons had already destroyed their breakfasts and now, Boomer was eyeing his plate.
Pebble and Silver Lining sat beside one another, crammed together on the other side of the small fold down table. His mothers were using the enormous steel trunk as a table, and their plates clattered upon its mirrored surface. With a gurgling belch that caused adult eyes to roll, Boomer excused herself from the table, lept upwards, and pulled herself up into the luggage rack overhead. Her prehensile tail wrapped around a brass rail and then, hanging upside down, she stared out of the window.
“What’s wrong, Sumac?” Pebble asked as she leaned over the table.
“A lot,” he sighed in return, and he shook his head from side to side. “This whole gala thing scares me a bit.”
“You are an excellent dancer when you let me lead.” Pebble’s injection of dry snark into her words did not go unnoticed by Sumac and he let go of another sigh. When he looked into her eyes, he heard her say, “Look, I know what you are really afraid of and I know what is bothering you. It’s hard being an introvert attending a social event, and this is even worse because pretty much everypony in attendance is expecting something from you.”
“Yeah,” Sumac nodded, “they are.”
“Let’s go over that, shall we?”
“I’d rather not,” Sumac started to say, but Pebble had already started.
“You, Sumac Apple, are an alicorn,” she said in a bored sounding monotone that was reminiscent of her mother’s, but different somehow. “Flurry Heart is also an alicorn. You are male, and she is female. The aristocrats of the Crystal Empire and most of the aristocrats of Canterlot want you to stick your alicorn peepee into her little alicorn weewee—”
At this point, Sumac lost it, he began to snicker, and so did his tablemates.
“—the weewee is what is important here, Sumac, because if you stick it in her pooper—”
“Pebble Pie!” Lemon shouted while choking back her giggles and covering her mouth with her hoof.
“Quiet, you giggly girls, adults are talking over here!” Pebble shouted as she threw a glance back over her shoulder. “Now, what was I saying? Oh yes, if you stick it in her pooper and drill for oil, the hopes and dreams of many will not be realised. All of Equestria is hankering for alicorn foals and you and Flurry are the best possible option to get more of them.”
The laughter of his mothers made Sumac’s ears perk and right now, it was hard to breathe. Spike covered his mouth with his claws, made a horking sound, and then almost fell over with laughter. There was a wicked, perverted gleam in Pebble’s eye and the filly was elbowing Silver Lining, who trembled as she tittered.
Overhead, Boomer sneezed out a jet of flame that she tried to hold back with her claws and then she too, was overcome with chortling. Chuckling, Sumac took a bite of breakfast—he didn’t even notice what he had stabbed with his fork—and it was only after he had stuck it in his mouth did he realise that he was eating cantaloup.
“Now I understand that there is a lot of pressure, Sumac, and I am not going to tell you to not worry, because that will only make you worry even more, so the only thing I can say is that I’ll be there for you and I hope that helps.” Lifting her napkin, Pebble wiped her mouth, smiled, and then batted her eyelashes at the colt across the table.
“Sumac,” Silver Lining asked, her voice both shy and sweet, “if you had to, would you?”
“What? Marry Flurry?” he replied around a mouthful of melon. Swallowing, he felt a tremendous lump in his throat. “She’s my friend. I guess if I had to, I would, and I would try to make the most of it, because I understand the importance of being a good lord for Lulamoon Hollow. I guess. I dunno.” He shrugged and stabbed something else on his plate without looking down to see what he was doing.
This time, it was a whole pickled egg, and he crammed the entire thing into his mouth in a way that only a distracted, hungry colt could. Pebble let out a groan of disgust and Silver Lining watched in awe as the seemingly impossible task was accomplished. Even Spike seemed impressed.
While Sumac chewed, Spike said, “Twilight Velvet and Night Light won’t be coming to the cotillion even though Mom was supposed to give a speech there about all of the promise and hope of a new generation. Mom is peeved because all of her socialite friends are pro-wedding and Dad told me that ponies are petitioning Princess Celestia to create a new law.”
Pebble rolled her eyes so hard that her scalp quivered and her mane wiggled.
“For the longest time, there was just one alicorn, and now there are a few of them, and they are considered an endangered species,” Spike said while he shrugged. “Poor Twilight is getting it too and almost every day she gets letters from concerned ponies stating that she ask Gosling for a little donation.” The dragon shuddered and looked disgusted.
“It’s like everypony is gripped with alicorn fever,” Trixie said from where she sat, “and nopony cares what the alicorns themselves want.”