//------------------------------//
// III - Her City 
// Story: Lily's Letter 
// by Miller Minus 
//------------------------------//

The tunnel looked like I imagined the castle itself did: outdated architecture, oppressive white marble walls, and a carpet that felt like almost-dry glue sticking to my hooves. The only thing it was missing was a series of portraits of Celestia hanging on every wall.

Lily ran so quick that she almost left me behind. Her dress swirled in her wake like blue fire. The candles lining the walls automatically lit as she passed them, like children waking up at a noise on their roof on Hearth's Warming Eve.

Every step she took brought another memory back to me. The time we broke into a bakery and ate ourselves sick. The time we hopped the fence at the Canterlot Zoo and flooded the jungle exhibit with the laughing gas we lifted from the chem room back at school. She was always running ahead, taken over by her own giggling. I realized I'd missed her, and I was angry at myself for letting us drift apart.

We walked normally after a while—tiring way faster than we used to. At least we were both out of shape, I thought.

"So how are things?" she asked, like we'd last seen each other a week ago as opposed to seven years.

"Fine, I guess."

"Okay... what have you been up to?"

"Um... well, I graduated as you know, studied business at Canterlot U, got a job, worked my way up a bit... and now I'm here."

She stopped walking so she could give me an incredulous look. "Did you just summarize seven years in one sentence?" she teased.

"Hey, I'm an adult now! I'm boring and stuff; that's how it works."

She laughed, but her smile faltered. "Don't say that."

"Why not?"

"Just... shut up."

We pressed on, turning at forks in the tunnel in whichever direction she decided. I was left with the unwitting feeling I had just offended her.

"How about friends?" she continued suddenly. "Got any new ones since magic school?"

I laughed poignantly. "Yes, I've managed to make some friends."

"Well, good! I was worried about you. Tell me about them. Who's your favourite?"

My mind played back the previous night at the bar—the seven or eight… or so of us sitting at the table, eating peanuts and drinking bad local cider. Their names came to me, but their personalities didn't come with them. All I saw was myself reading Lily's letter, and occasionally glancing up at a bunch of copies of the same uninteresting pony sitting around a table.

"Eh... I dunno, they're pretty standard. Just friends from work, and a few of the guys from magic school, but… they're all pretty boring."

"Oh... that sucks."

"Yeah, they'd probably say the same thing about me to be honest, haha."

I inhaled sharply. I figured she detected the fake laugh.

"They're not your friends then," she stated.

"Uh..." I squinted ahead to see what face she had given that comment, but she wasn't even looking back.  I swallowed and agreed, "More like fake friends... yeah."

"There's no such thing as fake friends. Only incompatible ones. If you don't care about each other, you'll drift apart, and you won't be friends. And then you'll find better ones."

"...Yeah, I guess so." A rather difficult question formed in my throat, and I swallowed it away.

We advanced under the careful flames of the candles and said nothing else, until she announced, "We're here."

Another large metal door stood in our way, but not in hers. It was labelled:


YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT A DEAD-END. THIS DOOR IS MERELY A DECORATION. 


Followed by:


OPENING THIS DOOR IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. 


I snickered, and Lily fumbled with the keys.

We emerged inside one of the castle's corridors—slowly and carefully, of course. Lily warned that the guards patrolled here once every few minutes. She creaked open the door and squinted through the brash glow of the corridor. Her eyes flashed at the backside of the guard turning right around a corner and out of sight.

"Come, come," she whispered. "I know somewhere outside their patrol."

"How?"

"Because I'm a joint caser and I case joints."

I stuck my tongue out at her. "If we get caught, I've never met you before in my life."

"Uh-huh. What was your name again?"

"Funny. You already said it, though."

"Yeah, but my memory's never been the best."

Again, I didn't catch her expression.

We ducked into the corridor and she closed the door—or rather the giant piece of wall—behind her. It sealed so flush it was like we had just warped inside.

I was about to make some comment about the castle, but I was swiftly made speechless for two reasons—both of which were Lily. The first was just her, shining in the harsh white light of the castle like she never had before. Lily the filly: The girl from magic school who never wore make-up or clothes or bothered to present herself to anyone. She was still under there—the fact that we were trespassing was proof of that—but there was so much in the way. Her blue-and-yellow dress and the matching flower in her hair that made her look like she was from Costa Rienda. The make-up that was so caked on her face she might as well have been a dessert. Even her eyelashes were extended. But there was something about the challenge of looking past it all to see the real her—of knowing who she really was underneath, that was so exciting. I decided I liked the change. And I liked it more and more whenever she looked at me.

The second reason she left me speechless was that she ran off, heading in the direction of the guard but turning at the other corner. I chased after her, making quick glances behind me for the next member of the patrol. I hoped there would be another chance to see her in the light and tell her she'd taken my words away.

I thought wrong.

"Here!"

We darted up a tight spiral staircase—out of the carpet and marble and into the good, old-fashioned bricks. We kept rising and rising until we came to a lookout tower, and I nearly crashed into her.

It was one of the smaller towers—meant for defense more-so than tourism. It had four openings at each cardinal direction. The deathly white moonlight shone in from the south window, and the two of us found ourselves drawn to it—the window that overlooked Canterlot.

Lily glided past me like a ghost. She folded her hooves over one another and leaned over the windowsill. Her hindlegs buckled gently, and she slumped her body into the stone. She rested her head on her hooves—her mane spilling down the outer wall. I meekly took up a spot next to her, but I stayed standing.

The entire city was in view—uptown and downtown. Tiny lights pockmarked cobblestone streets, concrete and wood buildings, and the occasional ponies of the night, travelling in groups. Further away were the lights of Ponyville, which started to flicker when I looked long enough, like they were either struggling to reach us or just unsure of how bright they wanted to be. There was yellow, red, green, and blue—some moving, but most just still and blinking like horse code.

I exhaled, and when my breath obstructed my view, I held it. I started to think about how every place you find yourself in is just the result of all your life's choices. For a brief moment, I thought that I couldn't have been doing so bad if I was up here with this view.

Lily seemed to be thinking about the past as well. "Remember magic school?" she breathed.

"Um… do you mean, have I blocked the entire experience out of my mind? No, but I'm working on it."

"Hah… It wasn't that bad." She re-positioned her hooves and her head. "We had a lot of good times."

I scoffed. "Don't forget the bad times. Or the bad ponies." I waited for her to add something. When she didn't, I continued: "Remember that group of uptight jerkwads who always sat together at lunch?"

"…Vaguely."

"Vaguely! Lily, those guys made our lives downright impossible sometimes. All the name-calling, and the nasty rumours they started. I'm still called a bedwetter sometimes. And the worst was how they flaunted their money and nobility around like it was everypony else's fault that they were so fortunate."

Lily exhaled fervently, and with a shiver. I could tell she was remembering them now too. She was bullied the worst, after all.

I didn't stop there: "What were their names, there was… Diamond Dare; she was a piece of work. Civil Tongue; that guy could cuss. And let's not forget the ringleader himself! Freaking Fanny. What a pompous name for a pompous twit."

"That's not his name, though," Lily said flatly, like it wasn't even directed at me.

I swallowed. "Yeah, I mean… I know that's not his name, I just called him that because it pissed him off like nothing else. Besides, he had his own names for me, and none of them were Streak."

"…Can we not…"

"Huh?"

Lily wasn't looking at the view anymore, not really. She was looking through it—subtly downwards. I never knew her to be standoffish, though. If she was upset, she would tell me, hard. Or at least, the old Lily would have.

I tapped her on the shoulder. "Lily? What's—"

She cut me off with a sudden turn of her head. She smiled wide. "Look, I can angrily recall magic school with the best of them, but that doesn't mean that I want to, you know? I wanna have fun tonight, just you and me. Forget I brought up magic school."

I frowned, but I nodded. "…Yeah, okay. That's a good idea."

"Bad for your health anyways."

"Yeah, exactly…"

I noticed my shoulders were tensed. I rolled them out, and then slouched against the windowsill beside her to get reacquainted with the view. It all still looked so bright, and still so unsure of itself.

I nudged Lily playfully. "You always could find the best seat in every house," I told her.

She gasped, abruptly springing to her hooves. She smiled at me accusingly. "This isn't the best seat in the house," she said.

"It's not?"

"…You're in a castle. The best seat should be obvious."

My mouth fell open. "You're not serious."

She nodded over my shoulder. "Check it out."

Past the east window, the throne room was in plain sight—most of the windows were stained glass, depicting scenes of the Princess that were nonsensical without context. But there were a few plain glass windows—through which I could see rows of benches with wreaths hanging on their sides, glinting faintly in the inconsequential light of night-time candles.

"That's the throne room," Lily confirmed. "Best seat in the house. I mean, the throne's been moved, so it's not actually there right now, but…"

I stared at her quizzically. "Have you been here tonight already?"

She smiled innocently and pointed down the window.

I looked out over the edge. There were green vines hugging the wall of the tower, and a rooftop with a shallow angle leading to the throne room windows. Shreds from the vines were on the roof below us, like somepony had traversed them within the past few hours.

"How's your parkour?" she asked, putting a fancy accent on the word.