Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky
Interlude - Absenteeism
* * *
The trek back through the forest was uneventful, which given the eventfulness of their stay in New Selene was just fine by Starlit. Sun especially looked like he needed the rest and a chance to process everything that had happened to him, so Starlit didn't bother him.
The fog gate into the Golden Oak's glade parted like water as soon as the pair approached, and Starlit found that Twilight had left her front door unlocked. Sun said nothing as he trudged up the stairs to the guest room where he had stayed, while Starlit found that her pile of pillows amongst the books on the ground floor was mercifully undisturbed.
Starlit slept for hours upon hours, grateful to give her weary bones some rest. Redheart's spare cot had been comfortable enough, but the pillow pile absorbed and cushioned her body in just the perfect way. It was like sleeping in a cloud, and not even the light of day streaming in through the windows could disrupt her.
The sun had already gone below the tree-line when Starlit awoke, blinking crust from around her eyes and yawning. Nopony had tried to disturb her, which she was grateful for, but the Oak felt quiet, quieter than she expected it to be. She got to her hooves and started shuffling around, looking for any sign of Twilight or Spike.
"Hello? Anypony home?" Starlit called, poking her head into the kitchen. Nothing was prepared for a meal, and the place looked like it hadn't been touched in days.
Her pulse quickening slightly, Starlit walked up to the guest space. She didn't disturb Sun, but checked throughout all of the upper floors and still found nopony. She beat hooves down to the ground floor and finally into the basement, where she found Spike walking around and looking at a few of Twilight's devices.
"Oh thank goodness, somepony's here," Starlit said, relieved.
Spike jumped when Starlit entered, the light of his projected body intensifying as he did. Starlit saw no sign of Twilight anywhere, which begged the question of how Spike was active.
"Don't scare me like that!" Spike chided.
"Apologies, I was just worried. I woke up and nopony was around, so I might've gotten a tad antsy. Do you know where Twilight is?"
"She went out yesterday, said something about some things she needed to check up on, typical vague wording and whatnot" Spike answered. "She said it might take a while, so that's why she set me to make sure that if you got back before she did I'd be able to take care of you. I just didn't want to bug you while you were sleeping."
"I appreciate your courtesy, but there are a few things that I need to discuss with Twilight about our visit to New Selene. Did she give any timeframe on when she'd be back?"
"Sorry, but nothing definitive," Spike answered sheepishly.
Starlit snorted, irritated but not angry. She'd just have to be patient.
"Very well then, I'll leave you to your work," Starlit replied, turning to go back upstairs. "I'll be in the kitchen making supper if you need me."
"Can I help out?" Spike asked. "To be honest with you I was just fiddling around with some of the stuff down here, I'd love to help."
"If you're that bored, then feel free," Starlit answered, gesturing him forward.
Starlit felt an odd tingling as Spike ran through her, the lines of light from his body dissipating and reforming as he made his way up the stairs.
"If I might ask, but how can you help, exactly?" Starlit asked as they got up to the ground floor. "After all, it isn't like you can pick things up if you're made of light."
"Selective permeability," Spike replied. "Part of the spell that makes my body also lets me pick when I can go through things or not. I wouldn't be that good of a helper to Twilight if I couldn't go grab books for her."
"She really is a talented sorceress, I'll give her that much," Starlit said.
The kitchen was cozy compared to the rest of the Oak's common areas, but it had a nice wood-burning stove and a well stocked pantry. Starlit grabbed a large stock pot and ladled water into it to form a base for some vegetable stock.
"Spike, could you get me a few onions, carrots, and some celery?" Starlit asked. "And a bag of flour while you're at it."
"Can do, ma'am!" Spike replied, diving into the pantry and coming out with his tiny arms loaded down. He carefully laid them all out on the counter and took the initiative to cut up the vegetables on his own.
"Spike, if it wouldn't be too rude to ask, but how did you and Twilight first meet?" Starlit asked as she floated the vegetables to the pot and set them boiling along with some dried spices. "She obviously cares very much about you."
"Oh, it was centuries ago at this point, just before the Unification," Spike answered. "The Princesses were still figuring out how to piece their separate kingdoms together, and Celestia made the troubling discovery that her kingdom bordered on the Dragonlands, just beyond the Flamepeak Mountains."
"There's a whole nation of dragons?" Starlit asked, the thought chilling her to the core.
"There was, but they did something during the war that split their nation off from Equestria and they just floated out to sea. Nopony knows if they're even around anymore, and I was the only one left in Equestria when the war broke out."
"You see," Spike continued, "when Celestia figured out that Equestria was about to share a border with the dragons she went out to them with a diplomatic delegation to let them know about what was happening. Dragons aren't the friendliest bunch by their very natures, but they agreed that as long as Equestria kept its problems to itself then there would be no trouble. As a peace offering they offered Celestia one of their eggs, which they said wouldn't hatch but would serve as a symbolic gesture of connection and trust."
"And that egg was you, I'm assuming," Starlit replied.
"Now I know why Twilight picked you, you're really quick on the uptake. Yes, that egg was me. For a while I just sat around in the palace on Celestia's mantle, but a couple hundred years after the Unification Twilight asked for Celestia's permission to do some experiments on my egg to see if she couldn't get it to hatch."
"According to her it took weeks of careful study and experimentation, but by the end of it she got me to hatch, and once I got old enough I started helping her out around the palace and… well, you know what happened later."
"Right," Starlit replied, adding some salt to the bubbling pot.
"It was pretty rough there for a few years, since I was being raised like a pony but had the temper of a dragon. I set more than a few things in Twilight's library on fire when I'd get out of hoof, but she was patient and kind and I eventually came around."
"Would you say how Twilight was then is much different compared to how she is now?" Starlit asked.
Spike made a motion like he was going to speak, but then stopped for a moment. The lines of light that made up his form halted for a second or two before continuing on as if nothing had happened.
"Spike, are you alright? You locked up there for a bit."
"Never better! Now what do you want me to do with these potatoes?" Spike cheerfully replied.
"You didn't answer my question," Starlit replied, feeling somewhat concerned.
"What question?" Spike asked back.
"Was Twilight much different in the past compared to how she is now?" Starlit reiterated. Again, Spike made a motion to speak and then froze in place before returning to the potatoes he was cutting up.
"Spike, what just happened?" Starlit asked again, more forcefully.
"What are you talking about, I'm just cutting up potatoes," Spike sheepishly replied. "If you want them smaller I can do that for you, no need to get testy."
Starlit was about to restate her question but bit her tongue. Something about that question was throwing Spike into a loop of some kind, and there was no way she could think of to rectify it. She'd have to wait for Sun to get up and ask his advice, preferably away from Spike.
"It was nothing, the potatoes are fine," Starlit answered. "I'll get to collecting the stock if you'll work on the roux for the stew."
"Can do!" Spike replied, eager as always.
* * *
Sun woke up just as Starlit and Spike we're finishing dinner, and judging by how voraciously he ate he needed a good, hot meal. There was little talking around the table as Spike busied himself in the kitchen before going back down to the basement for the evening.
With a satisfied belch Sun flopped back to the pillows that he'd set up behind himself for just such an eventuality.
"I'll take that as a compliment on my cooking," Starlit said as she cleared her dishes.
"If there's one thing that coming on this trip has taught me, it's that near-death experiences and aching hunger are the best seasonings. Thank you for the meal, it really hit the spot."
Starlit chuckled softly to herself, but it was a half-hearted effort at best. She had to tell Sun about what happened to Spike, but at the same time worried that he had too much on his mind after New Selene to stomach another problem.
Starlit came back into the room to find Sun still on his back, staring up at the ceiling and a thousand feet past it.
"Bit for your thoughts?" Starlit asked, sitting down next to him at the table.
"Right now my thoughts would be worth an entire chest-full of them," Sun replied.
"Then what say we trade a thought for a thought, hmm?"
"Fair enough, you first," Sun said. Starlit laid down on her back and stared up at the ceiling as well, noticing how it tapered off into the branch structure of the tree.
"I'm worried that Twilight isn't here," Starlit said. "There's things I learned about in New Selene that I need to talk with her about, and it's eating me up inside."
"Twilight's an alicorn with more power than either of us could ever hope to imagine having, let alone actually possess," Sun replied. "She'll be back before you know it, and you can spill your guts to her then."
"In your patience possess ye your soul," Starlit quipped. "It's an old saying from my grandmother, and I always had trouble following it. You next."
Sun breathed deeply, wiggling slightly to get more comfortable.
"Silence is still in my head, even after I gave back the magic I had gotten from the amulet. She told me Luna gave you a crystal from the Crystal Empire that might help with the fact that I'm slowly losing my magic, but with that combined with Silence's offer to add her power to mine I'm worried that I'm growing more dependent on outside sources for something that used to define me."
Starlit furrowed her brow, trying to remember when Luna gave her something. She had only really spoken with her physically once, but all Starlit remembered was Luna dropping that crystal and then spinning it around in her magic.
Quickly Starlit levitated her bags over and rooted through them, and sure enough she found that same crystal. Luna must've slipped it into her bag when they'd hugged.
"Sun, we all need a leg up in life, some more than most," Starlit said, setting the crystal onto the table. "Just because you need one now doesn't invalidate who you are or what you can do, it just means you need a little more help with it than before."
"Easy for you to say," Sun replied. "You didn't accidentally kill somepony because a voice in your head used their magic, magic that you've come to rely on, to do it."
"Sun, you can lay there feeling sorry for yourself, or you can try and do something to rectify this situation. We'll find a way to fix your magic, but for right now you have options available to you."
Sun cast a sidelong glance at Starlit, flicking his eyes over the small blue crystal as he did. He didn't stir.
"I know how much death hurts, Sun," Starlit continued. "I've seen it play out on a near-constant basis for most of my life. My grandmother, friends I grew up with, even just seeing a pony on the street an inch away from Wasting completely and knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it. At least Chirox died for something she believed in, rather than fading away like so many others."
"It wasn't even that I did it, it was that I had no real choice," Sun replied. "She lunged, bit down into my neck, and I just felt Silence take over from there. Do you know what that's like? To have your agency taken away from you and have somepony die because of it?"
Starlit rolled the crystal across the table with her hoof, idly fidgeting with it as she tried to come up with an example.
"I don't," Starlit admitted. "I don't know what it's like to have somepony make your choice for you. I've been the master of my fate for all my life because I had to be, so I can't say that I can understand that feeling."
Sun sat upright, his expression neutral as he stared at the crystal on the table. Slowly Starlit pushed it towards him, its surface clinking against his bowl as she did.
"I don't know what that's like, but I can empathize with it, and offer some advice," Starlit continued. "Take some of that agency back. Use the crystal, and become the master of your fate."
Sun picked the crystal up in his hooves, turning it over and gazing at its facets. With a sigh and a tired smile he put it into one of the pockets of his cloak.
"I'll think on it," Sun replied, "but I must say you're putting up a really good argument."
"Comes with being a parent, I suppose. The best way to get a child to do what you want is to frame it in a way that points out the benefits for them."
"So I'm like a child to you now, huh?" Sun said coyly.
"Everypony is like a child in certain respects, Sun. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others. Speaking of which, best clean up your dishes or else you'll have to go to time-out."
"You're not my mother, I don't have to do what you say!"
At Sun's faux belligerence Starlit screwed her face up into a countenance of extreme dissatisfaction and disappointment, an expression that had easily been able to cow her daughter and her husband.
"But I'd be happy to do it out of the kindness of my heart," Sun hastily added. "Good grief, if looks could kill…"
"Then I'd have an appreciable body count," Starlit said. "Go clean up, then I'll handle the pots when you're done with your things."
With a bit more speed than was strictly necessary, Sun cleared the table and washed off all of the dishes before retiring for the night. Starlit busied herself taking care of the mess she'd left in the kitchen, her mind able to wander as she did her menial work. For now, at least, she had a semblance of normalcy back in her life, and Starlit relished it.
* * *
The next few days were filled with the sort of domesticity that Starlit thought she had left behind on her farm, not that she was averse to the idea of quiet. Together with Spike and Sun she planned for the next leg of the journey, which she and Sun unanimously decided would be going to the Crystal Empire. With Sun's waning magic becoming an issue and Luna's hints that some answers regarding Starlit's amulet could be found there it seemed the only logical choice.
Sun and Spike had spent a few days gathering together whatever cold weather gear they could find. Starlit had felt the chill of winter before but Sun had lived in a desert his whole life, and the climate change would hit him harder than it would her. It seemed that for every piece of gear she brought to combat the cold, he would bring two.
It was the evening of the fifth day back that Twilight finally returned home, stumbling her way through the front door as Starlit and Sun were sitting down for dinner.
"You're back!" Spike exclaimed from the kitchen as he came to investigate the noise.
"I was actually starting to get worried," Starlit added. "Where were you for so long?"
"Food first, explanations later," Twilight huffed as she off-loaded her things. Her saddlebags sounded like they were filled with stones as they hit the floor, and her traveling cloak had a few noticeable tears and stains.
Twilight sat down heavily at the living room table as Spike bounded out of the kitchen with a fresh garden salad and a hot bowl of potato and leek soup. Twilight ate in silence while Starlit and Sun sat uncomfortably before continuing with their food.
The tension in the room grew so thick that Starlit could practically feel it settle on her shoulders, until Sun finally broke it as Twilight finished the last of her dinner.
"So, where were you?" Sun asked.
"Surveying," Twilight answered tersely. "Taking stock of the country, seeing how or even if Celestia's return to Canterlot was having an effect on the ponies and the land."
"And your conclusion?" Starlit asked, trying to mask the anxiety in her voice.
"Some areas are starting to stabilize, particularly around the Searing Plains. There's more vegetation, although it is distinctly from arid climates. I suppose it was too much to ask it to become the breadbasket of Equestria in the space of two weeks, but it's progress."
"Hopefully the same will start happening in New Selene now that Luna's been convinced to return," Starlit replied. "She said she was going to stay and stabilize the city after overthrowing their government, but would return in good time."
"Yes, that is fortunate. Tell me, what did you find in New Selene, and particularly what sort of state was Luna in?"
Starlit and Sun exchanged a glance, trying to parse out just how much to tell Twilight about Luna, Sun's new friend, and what was being done to the thestrals in the city.
"Well, she had been sealed away in a crystal prison by her bat-pony guards after she tried to destroy the whole city after the war via magic from the Crystal Empire," Sun answered. "The whole city was being controlled by a iron-hoofed Council that was also converting dead thestrals into a new line of automatons. I was nearly killed by a pocket of magical gas exploding in my face, and apparently the bit of magic I absorbed from Starlit's amulet back in Sunspire gave me a weaker version of her resurrection ability."
Twilight and Sun stared at each other, incredulity on her face and stony stoicism on his. Starlit could feel the tension come back twice over.
"And… what say you, Starlit?" Twilight asked. "Any life-changing revelations on your end?"
"Only that the answers about Sun's waning magic and what this amulet did to him are in the Crystal Empire, and we were planning on having that as our next objective."
Twilight tapped her hoof against the table nervously, muttering to herself in deep thought as she stared into the grain of the wooden table.
"We would have to go up there eventually to find Cadance, so we figured this would be akin to killing two birds with one stone," Starlit explained. "We've spent the last few days getting together whatever cold-weather gear we need for the trip, and Spike has been a big help."
"It's not you that I'm particularly worried for," Twilight cut in, "but Cadance. She was always a sensitive mare, it came part and parcel with her role as the Princess of Love. I'm just concerned that she might be… compromised, at least more so than Celestia or Luna were."
"How do you figure?" Sun asked.
"Over the centuries I've tried to keep tabs on the other Princesses, or at least their lands. As I explained, I try to take stock of the country I once ruled whenever I can, but the Empire is obscured to me. Every time I get anywhere near it I end up losing my way, no matter how many maps I bring or spells I use to try and hold my course."
"Then how are we supposed to get there?" Starlit asked. "I don't particularly care for the idea of freezing to death on a wild goose chase."
"I'll have to take a look into some of my old tomes for any spells Cadance or the sorcerers of the Empire may be using to hide it, but that could take weeks that we simply don't have."
The trio sat in uncomfortable silence for a time, each mulling over their options. Starlit despised the impotent feeling that was settling into her stomach, and decided to make the first move.
"If there's something in your dusty old books that can give us safe passage into the Empire, then I'll help you look for it. We can get started tomorrow, but for now I'm going to sleep," Starlit added, getting up from the table and going over to her pillow pile.
"I'm with Starlit," Sun added. "Besides, it's been too long since I did some proper research; I can feel my brain getting lazy from it all."
Sun too got up, ascending the stairs to the guest room with, from Starlit's viewpoint, a little more spring than had been in his step since returning from New Selene.
"What did I ever do to deserve the two of you?" Twilight mused, her tone relieved and content. She too left the table, extinguishing the downstairs candles as she bade Spike a good night and dispelled him after his extended service. Like a familiar blanket the darkness of night settled onto Starlit, and she fell into a deep slumber.
* * *
Sun had been asleep for a few hours when the pressure in his mind settled, and a familiar voice echoed through his weary subconscious.
"You didn't tell Twilight about me," Silence stated. "Why?"
"Because I didn't want to, now go away," Sun replied, stirring in his bed to try and shake Silence away.
"Sorry for the intrusion, I'm just… grateful that you didn't."
"Your welcome. Good night, Silence."
"Good night Sun. Stay safe, and stay wary. I've taken a shine to you and I'd hate to lose you like I nearly did in New Selene."
The pressure ebbed out of Sun's mind just as swiftly as it came, but it took Sun a while longer to truly get back to sleep. It was the first time Silence had ever spoken to him in a way that seemed earnest, and he found her echoing, discordant voice comforting for the first time since she'd taken up residence in his head.
When Sun went back to sleep, he did so smiling.
* * *
Starlit had been asleep for a few hours, eyes shut and ears listening. She was waiting for all the sounds of the Oak to fall silent, particularly from Twilight's room, before she made move.
Moving with the sort of practiced silence that comes from trying to keep a fussy child asleep as one walks past their room, Starlit tiptoed down the stairs to the basement, searching for a particular item. The desks and shelves were in their usual disarray, making Starlit's job that much harder, but she eventually found her prize.
Floating in her magic was an opal stone on a golden chain, the very same that Twilight had stored Spike's consciousness inside of. It was a simple thing, but much like the obsidian amulet it held an air of grace in its simplicity.
"You're going to answer my questions Spike, one way or another," Starlit muttered to herself before stashing the necklace away in her saddlebags.
* * *