When Cheval was six and Flurry was eight, there was a coup in the Crystal Empire.
Flurry had just had her birthday party, and her grandmother had given her a chest full of wooden shapes. With rectangles, cubes, cylinders and cones, Flurry built a castle in the middle of the living room. She took her wooden soldiers, and placed them on the battlements. Then she sat on Shining’s favorite chair that the children were not supposed to sit in, and declared that she was the ruler of the Crystal Empire because her mom was taking a nap.
Cheval tried to make her own castle. She wasn’t as coordinated as her older sister, and her first few block towers fell over. Instinctually, she stuck the blocks together with changeling resin. She’d just undergone metamorphosis into a nymph, and along with growing legs, she’d discovered the ability to secrete all kinds of liquids.
But her efforts were to no avail. Her block tower, while solid, was lopsided and ugly. It also smelled a little bit like pee.
“Can I play in your castle?” she asked her sister.
“Nuh-uh,” Flurry said in her best princess voice, which was meant to sound like Cadence when she scolded them—lots of tsks and sighs and exasperation. “You have your own castle. Mine is better.”
“But I wanna be princess!” Cheval pleaded. “I’d be really good at it.”
“No way. I’m the crystal princess.” She fluffed her wings and turned up her nose. “You can go be princess of the lumpy kingdom with its lumpy tower.”
“Or I can be princess of two kingdoms.” In a flash of green light, Cheval turned into a perfect copy of Flurry Heart. A grin on her face, she reared up and proclaimed, “You’ll play with blocks in the dungeon!”
“Oh nooo.” Flurry giggled. “Knights, protect me!”
Her horn glowed, and with her uncoordinated telekinesis, she tossed the wooden knights generally in her sister’s direction. A few bounced off Cheval’s shoulders, and she let out a high pitched: “Aaah, quit it!”
Then she crashed through the castle, sending blocks everywhere. The two of them chased each other around the living room, knocking over towers and crawling over the couches.
“Girls. Girls!” Cadence’s voice emerged from the hallway, already exasperated in anticipation of what was to come. She soon appeared in the doorway, and looked at what had become of her living room.
A broken castle. Fallen pony knights, scattered over the ruin. Two identical copies of her daughter struggled with each other, and one of them said: “The throne is mine!”
For half a second, Cadence had no idea if it was Flurry or Cheval who said it.
She found out a moment later, when the other one turned back into a changeling. “What’s wrong?” Cheval asked, her voice fearful in that way that children are. She rushed up to Cadence, sniffing at the air, smelling some emotion that ponies could only infer. “Mom? Mom? What’s wrong?”
Then, she said: “Why do you love me a little bit less?”
Cheval never turned into Flurry again.
The Griffonstone Institute of Science had a demanding curriculum. It was the best school in the world for studying the non-magical disciplines, and it accepted only the most gifted students.
Cheval and Gia’s alarm clock went off at 6:00 every morning. In mutual silence, they brushed, preened, and bundled into their winter clothing. Faint pre-dawn light illuminated the campus as they marched to class, snow crunching under them with every step. Thousands of other students marched with them, forming grey processions across the ice.
Cheval would have hated it. She loved sleeping in, and thought very little of the color grey. But at the Institute, Cheval didn’t exist. Instead, there was a pony named Cross Product.
Cross Product was a straw-haired, slightly buck-toothed unicorn, and she was a morning pony. She was energetic, she was friendly, she took deep breaths of the frozen morning air, and while other students were busy finishing their homework, she made fresh morning pancakes.
“You’re exceptionally peppy this morning,” Gia said as they shuffled to class, a few bits of pancake still on her beak. Cross Product wolfed down her own breakfast before any griffon was around—a touch Cheval was quite proud of, as it explained why she was never seen in the dining hall—but she was happy to share the surplus.
“It’s our first week of class! How are you not excited?” Cheval bounced through the snow and giggled. It was an absurd thought, but in the moment, she felt it. She felt it from her imaginary skin to the bones she didn’t have. Cross Product’s relentless energy melted some of the ice around Gia’s heart, and a glimmer of friendship stirred inside her.
Cheval ate it.
“Well,” Gia said, “maybe rein it in a bit. This isn’t a class where you giggle at the professor.”
“Don’t worry. I got it.” Cross Product threw a mock salute. “The Party is the shepherd of the people, Comrade.”
Cheval and Gia were studying different fields—math and civil engineering, respectively—but as first-year students, they had many classes in common. Monday, they took Introduction to Calculus together. Thursdays, they had Statistics.
Friday, they had Political Education, where young griffons and their foreign comrades could master the dialectic and, through it, understand permanent revolution.
“What,” the professor asked on their first day, “is the single most valuable trait a leader can possess?”
“The unquenchable revolutionary spirit!” shouted one griffon in the second row.
“Yes yes.” None of the students were brave enough to roll their eyes, but the professor was. “You’re very loyal. But perhaps someone who can think for themselves would like to answer?”
A talon went up in the third row. The professor pointed. “Intelligence,” said one of the students, who decorated her beak with lines of red makeup. “So they can, like, make the best decisions.”
“A very valuable trait,” the professor agreed, “but if you know your history, you’ll know that Hepatia the Lawgiver was a tremendous queen, despite being just a little bit thick. She turned the harpies into a great empire, and in doing so, disproved your hypothesis. So, maybe not. Other theories?”
In the fifth row, some griffon put up a talon. “Emotional maturity,” she said when called. Her natural fur was exceptionally fluffy, and puffed out around the sleeves of her coat. “An even temper. No griffon can be a good leader if their emotions are making their decisions for them.”
“Another good guess.” The professor lifted a single claw to the air, drawing out the word, “But another miss. Griffus Augustus was a great leader, and he was depressive, moody, erratic. Once, after a crushing military defeat, he chased General Gerar through the palace in the middle of the night, screaming ‘Where are my legions!?’”
The professor did a halfway decent impression, and the class laughed at his antics. Talons went up, and he pointed out another student. Strength, the student guessed, which was wrong. Education, wrong. Class loyalty, wrong. Popularity, wrong. Vision, wrong.
“Maybe one of the foreign students.” Like all the foreign students, Cheval sat in the front row. “What about you, Comrade Cross Product? What’s the single most valuable trait a leader can possess?”
“Oh, uh…” She furrowed her brow. “I’m not sure. This wasn’t in the pre-reading.”
“Well, let’s talk it out, shall we?” He walked up to her desk, laying a talon on the wood. “Think back. Why were all the previous answers wrong?”
“Um…” Cheval worked her jaw from side to side. “In every case, you agreed the trait was important, but cited an example of a leader who was successful without it. So I think you’re looking for a trait that every successful leader must possess. One with no exceptions.”
“Good. Go on.”
“And given how many different kinds of leader there are, I don’t think it has to do with leadership style. It has to be something…” She bit her lip, taking advantage of Cross Product’s expressive pony face and big thoughtful eyes. “Inherent. Like, ‘all good leaders were able to effectively guide their people.’ Because if they can’t do that they’re not a leader, right?”
“Very good!” The professor nodded to her, and then repeated what she said to the rest of the class. “You’re so close, but not quite there. Can you boil that sentiment down to a single word?”
“One word for, ‘able to effectively direct a nation.’” For a long moment, Cheval was silent. Then her ears shot up. “Oh! Power. The most important single trait for a leader to possess is power, because without that they cease to be a leader.”
“Precisely. And now let’s see if you can cap it off.” The professor animated, gesturing wildly so the whole class could see. “Because there are tyrants who enforce their commands with the threat of brutal violence. And they claim they have power. But they cannot, as you have so elegantly put it, guide their people. They don’t have true power, merely naked force. Comrade Cross Product, can you tell me the sign of true power? How do we know a leader is able to lead?”
“Oh, uh… if her people do as she says.” Cheval twitched her ears. “Right? The tyrant doesn’t have real power because people don’t obey him unless he’s threatening them right then.”
“Flawless.” The professor made a fist with a talon, slowly lowering it to her desk. He looked over the rest of the lecture hall, raising his voice to be clearly heard. “The most important single trait for a leader to possess is power, and the symptom of true power is obedience. When a leader can trust their decisions will be effectively executed, without dissent or disagreement, then they can focus on guiding their people.”
He turned away from Cheval, walking back to the chalkboard in preparation for the next lesson. “We can see this in practice in—”
“But that’s not true,” Cheval blurted out. Reflexively, she covered her mouth with a hoof.
Whispers ran through the classroom. The professor paused, turning back to face her. “Oh?” he asked. “Do you have a different answer?”
“Love,” she said. “The most important trait for a leader to possess is love.”
The professor glanced at her bag, which was sealed with a quartz clasp. “You’re from the Crystal Empire?”
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Cheval answered, “Yes.”
“A world where love is power. Both for you and your changeling rivals.”
Quieter, she said, “Yes.”
“You would have been raised to believe that love is the most important trait for a leader to possess. You’ve been told that love is the most valuable trait for a leader to possess. Told from a young age. And that doesn’t mean it isn’t true!” He raised a talon as though to ward off offense. “Our parents teach us many things, after all.”
After a long pause, he finished: “But you’ve never had to choose between them.”
Gia had a boyfriend named Gideon. He was a second-year student, studying management theory as part of an officer training program. One day, if he did well, he’d get to be a member of the secret police. Every time Cheval saw him he was in a cadet’s uniform, clean and starched with little blue squares on the collars.
He was also an enormous griffon, standing a head’s height over the other males, and most of it was muscle. As a couple, he and Gia made a sight that was both comic and adorable. Her petite frame barely came up to his shoulders, and she loved to snuggle in under his voluminous wings.
He loved her, and he said so. She didn’t love him back, so she lied. It wasn’t that she disliked him, but she was mostly in it for his looks. Her lust had a tart taste—like Shining’s when Queen Amaryllis visited.
One day, Cheval suggested that they all go explore the campus together. Gia was still her only friend, and she needed another food source. Or, as Cross Product put it: “I’m not going to eat this whole pie by myself. I mean, I’m a pony, so I totally could because wow, we love sugar. But it took my entire cream ration for the month to make it so I’m not going to hog it like that. You should come!”
They went up to the overlook, at the far edge of campus, where the mountain came to an end. There, beyond frozen fields of leafless trees, there was a thin metal rail.
Beyond the rail there was nothing. The cliffs went down for thousands of feet. There was only the air and the wind and the snow, and a spectacular view of the mountain range. Dozens of peaks could be seen, each beautiful and snow-covered and dotted by little griffon settlements.
When they were again among the trees, each produced a lunchbox. Cheval’s contained a pie. Gia had fruit. Gideon had a flask. Bite by bite, when no one was looking, Cheval teleported her lunch over the cliff behind them. The flask she refused. Gia drank her share.
“You’re very needy, you know that?” Gideon said. It was out of the blue. They’d been making small talk.
“I’m not…” Cheval froze, Cross Product’s giddy smile half-on and half-off her face. “I’m not needy.”
“So, what do you call it when you desperately want people to like you?”
They were all lying together in the snow. Gia was under Gideon’s wings, tucked into his side and half asleep. Gideon’s head was resting on the snow, one eye cracked open to watch his surroundings. Cheval was lying on her back, staring up into the overcast sky and watching the snow fall.
“Wow,” she finally managed to say. “You’ve got some way to say ‘thanks for dessert.’”
“It was a good pie,” Gideon shrugged. “I’m just saying. You made us pie, you’ve flattered us every which way. Gia says you’re a ridiculously considerate friend. And you seem afraid. Like we’ll hate you if you’re not happy all the time.”
“I know I’m not happy all the time. But it’s my first month in a foreign country. I want to make friends. I’m not needy, I’m…” She paused. “Lonely. And honest.”
“Lonely, maybe,” Gideon drew out the words. “Not honest.”
“No.” A snowflake landed on her nose, slowly melting into a cool drop. “Sorry. No. Have I offended you?”
“No. Most griffons lie all the time too.”
In the silence after that, Gia cracked an eye open, glancing between Gideon and Cheval. “You two going to have a problem?” she asked.
“No problem,” Cheval said. She bit her lip and added. “It runs in the family. My mother and my sisters are all huge liars too.”
“Is that why you left home?” Gia asked. “We don’t get a lot of foreign students, you know.”
“No. I um…” Cheval drew in a slow breath. “Wow. Answering this honestly is really hard. Um… I guess I uh… I left home because of one sister. One in particular.”
“Didn’t get along?”
“We got along great. But I… hurt her. By accident. She acted like it was nothing. Accidents happen. You know? But I didn’t want to be around her anymore.”
“Hurt her how?” Gideon asked.
“I wanted people to like me.”
He shifted in the snow, squeezing Gia tighter against his side. “You ever considered people might like you more if you said what you were actually thinking?”
Cheval broke character -- just long enough to roll her eyes and let out a sharp snort. “And what if what I’m actually thinking is, ‘I will be anyone and anything if it gets this person to like me’?”
Gideon paused for a moment to nuzzle the top of Gia’s head. She purred, then snuggled tighter into his side. “Then I don’t think you know who you actually are. Deep down.”
Cheval thought that over, and finally said: “I guess I don’t.”
Cheval didn’t answer Flurry’s letter. But she kept it in her bag. Several times, she took it out to read.
“Please come home. I’m really worried about you,” Flurry wrote.
“I don’t understand why you need to leave all of a sudden. Mom and Dad won’t tell me ANYTHING. Is this about that stupid interview? I’m NOT MAD. I don’t care. You’re my sister and I love you and I want you to be here, not thousands of miles away pretending to be a random pony.
“What if you get caught? How would we even know you were in trouble? How are you going to eat? And don’t tell me you’ll make friends. I talked to Double Time and she said that surviving on casual college friendships is like surviving on nothing but soup crackers. You’re a SOCIAL ANIMAL. You need ponies who deeply care about you.
“I don’t know what I did wrong. Whatever it is, I’m sorry. Did I make you feel like you weren't part of the family? You are.
“Please come back.”
At the end of the second week of school, a parcel arrived from Cadence, delivered by dragon-mail to keep it from the censors and mail-snoops. Inside was a box of a half-dozen muffins, with a note saying they were made with a mother’s love. Cheval didn’t need the note — she could smell that Cadence had enchanted them, turning them into vessels for her sustaining power.
She was the daughter of the Princess of Love. For her entire life, she had never once experienced hunger. But when she smelled the deep affection wafting off the care package, it suddenly occurred to her how long she’d been sustaining herself off of casual friendship. There was an empty feeling in her gut, and she didn’t like it.
She threw the muffins away.
“You can do this,” Cheval whispered to herself. “It’s in your blood.”
In a flash, she turned into Gia. Locked in the bathroom, she spent several minutes examining every detail of her form, from the spots on her feathers to the slightly crooked toe on her left-rear paw. Then she addressed the mirror.
“Hello!” she said, with Gia’s voice. Immediately, she scowled. “No. That’s wrong. Gia never says hello. And she’s never that enthusiastic. Uh… hi? Hey there… um…”
Clicking her beak together, Cheval gave her reflection a faintly irritated stare. She raised one eyebrow, tilted her head just so, and let her tail flick freely behind her. It was only after a half-second had passed that she asked, “Can I help you?”
It was perfect.
She left the bathroom, walked up the hall, and headed to the student lounge by the entrance. Gia’s normal study group was there—a half dozen griffons sitting around a folding table and working on their civil engineering homework.
“Hey,” said one of them, whose name was Griz. “I thought you were sick.”
“I am sick,” Cheval replied, keeping her eyes glassy and her manner sluggish. “Just had to check. I can get a copy of the homework when you’re done, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Griz said. Of every griffon in the group, he was the one who was actually Gia’s friend. It was a shallow thing, but when he saw her weakened shuffle, he felt a slight twinge of genuine concern.
Cheval ate it. Griz, suddenly tired, yawned.
“Okay,” Cheval said. “Cya.”
She turned and walked away, and none of them suspected a thing. When she was back in the bathroom, the door thoroughly locked, she turned back into herself and laughed.