//------------------------------// // Unloveable // Story: Daily Equestria Life With Monster Girl // by Estee //------------------------------// She waited until the last echoes of their hoofsteps had faded, gave herself a little time beyond that as her hands clenched ever-tighter with effort, ragged fingernails nearly cutting into her palms, and knew it didn't matter. There were guards outside the cell, and while they seldom made any attempt to look inside -- -- because none of them can stand to look at me -- -- they could hear so much of what she did. She would be unable to conceal all of it from those high-lofted twisting ears, and she didn't doubt that every last bit of what they observed would be reported to their leaders. In that sense, there was no privacy, no hopes for concealing what was about to come. But the dark mare and white horse didn't need to hear it directly. She couldn't stand the thought of having them as any degree of true witness, not for this. And so Cerea waited until she was sure they were gone, that the only ones watching her were those who always did, and it was only then that she allowed herself to collapse. As it turned out, the bed had a purpose. She couldn't really sleep on it, and it didn't even serve as a decent place for waking rest. But with all four legs folded under her body, her upper torso fallen forward as much as it could, arms reaching out for anything which might serve as her bruised breasts painfully compressed against the mattress -- there were worse ways to futilely conceal tears than by sobbing into a pillow. Her face was buried in fabric. She could smell feathers and soap and bleach, the ancient pillowcase was still mostly white and so the ponies had bleach, but she couldn't smell detergent or softeners or any of the thousands of chemical combinations which had assaulted her during those first days among humans, a sensory near-overload which had just about put her on edge from the moment she'd stepped into it, something which had made it so hard just to be polite when nearly every part of her had wanted to run away, gallop until she'd escaped from the horrible stinking world... I... She tried to rally, because she knew how it looked from the outside (not that anyone wanted to see her). A weakling. Someone who couldn't deal with the most minor problems. A filly whose response to the smallest push was total collapse. ...knights don't -- they don't cry... Strictly speaking, this wasn't true. Knights in stories were permitted tears or rather, rare circumstances would permit them to indulge in the singular. Watch an ancestral home burn, mourn the lost potential of those whom destiny had selected to be their foe, perhaps think about the bonds of duty, and a single drop of unwitnessed moisture was perfectly appropriate. Inelegant sobbing, however, seemed to be the exclusive realm of the ones who sat in their cells and waited for rescue. Knights didn't cry, not on this level. But she wasn't a knight. She never would be. Lost. Displaced. The terms she had been using for her situation were lies. She had been kidnapped. And it had been days now, days which could turn into months or moons, she might as well start calling them moons because days would accumulate, press down on her with their unrelenting weight, press her deeper into truly foreign soil until her hooves were mired beyond extraction. Until everything was buried. She had allowed the first seeds of hope to bloom, after that initial meeting with the Princesses. They wanted to send her home, and so it seemed possible that she could go home. But it was magic they didn't understand, created by ponies they might not be able to find, ponies who could find her first. Or it was possible that she had never been the intended target, everything which had happened was simply a grotesque accident and the ones who had destroyed her life would never know. They would resume their casting, try to bring in whatever they had been seeking, and her presence was nothing more than a headline which triggered shivers in all who read it. Instinctive fear of the monster. She had permitted herself the dubious blessing of hope, and it now seemed as if that had been the mistake. Hope was pain. Hope was self-directed torture. Hope was what had sent her out into human society in the first place: savage, desperate, unreasoning hope. Hope was the refusal to accept reality because you had lied to yourself until the falsehoods accumulated into something very much like belief: the lie that there might be something better out there if only you tried... Hope had bloomed. But those new shoots were fragile and as Cerea's tears soaked the pillow, the afterthought nose starting to run (because that always happened when she cried for too long, it made her look stupid and she hated it), inner hooves stomped down every sprig of green they could find. They would look for her: that hoped-for love, friends and rivals, their assigned government liaison and all the forces under her command. In time, her mother would arrive in Japan because it wasn't as if that parent was going to trust anyone to retrieve her daughter properly. They would search, they would do everything they could and then they would -- -- give up. That's already started. It's been too many days. Too long with no signs, no clues. They'll start to think I was taken out of the area. They'll expand the search. But in their hearts, it'll be something else. They won't let themselves think it, not for a while, and even Lala might need another week to say it. But she'll be the first, because she'll decide she has to make them confront it. To turn them away from hope so they can face reality. She'll tell them that -- Hope was over. -- I'm dead. They need to recognize that I'm dead. (Powerful hands clutched at the pillow. Little rents opened in the casing, and multihued down began to drift onto the blankets.) Would there be a funeral? She couldn't see her mother permitting it, not in Japan, for none of her kind had been interred away from that overcrowded cemetery, and there was no body to bury. It was hard to even picture allowing a simple marker for such a disappointment and -- she loves me -- even if it did happen, her beloved wouldn't be allowed to attend. No human would be brought into the gap, not for that, not when her mother might blame humans for having allowed it to happen, if any time could be taken away from blaming the lost daughter for having been so weak as to die -- she loves me she loves me -- and to permit other liminals... no. There wouldn't be a ceremony, any attempt to say farewell. It wasn't as if anyone would even attend because when it came to interaction with her peers, her life had been filled with forced competitions and contests against those who so often crossed the finish line first. None of that had allowed her to make any... ...to make... She would never go home. She would never be a knight. She would spend what little might be left of her life among those who could only see her as a monster. And there was more than that. No one will ever love me. There was nothing in her which could argue with that. Not now, not here, not among ponies. With humans... ...why hadn't she wanted her own kind? Yes, stallions were coarse and rough and frankly stupid, but that was just how they were and mares had managed to deal with it for centuries. There had to be a way of looking at a stallion which made you feel something other than revulsion, and she'd never found it. She'd gone among humans to seek love, and I didn't know I didn't know she'd been so stupid. To think that because some part of her body was familiar to them, that because her features were right I'm not beautiful or pretty or and her upper torso could be seen as but they don't see it that way, not where I that it would be a place to start. That they would first look at what they knew, and eventually they would come to love the whole. To love her. Except, of course, for what had just occurred to her as an extremely practical and rather belated realization: they could kiss her and cuddle and hug (for she so loved to be hugged) and there could be so many expressions of affection granted to familiar anatomy -- but at the instant it went any further, she would have been asking someone to have sex with a horse. He loves me. He cares about me. All of us. And away from house and world, divorced from all hope, the next thought finally arrived. But that doesn't mean it's love. He -- could have loved me. I thought that if we just had enough time, if I could get him away from the others, if he just got to know me -- -- why would anyone who truly knew her ever bother to love her? He held my hand. He held my hand and I never wanted him to let go. That was over too. No one will ever even touch me. Kicks didn't count. How much contact had there been, with her beloved? A fair amount. Never enough. And looking back, forcing herself to be honest at the end of all hope -- so much of it had been initiated by her. She'd asked for his help in grooming, because she wanted him to become accustomed to touching that part of her body: that horrible hope that it would help him to love all of her. It was also another reason for getting him on her lower back, and -- -- how many times did he grab at me, when I shifted too fast for him to adjust? How many times did I shift on purpose? She put him at risk of falling and he grabbed for purchase. Grabbed at her breasts. Had she wanted him to touch her there? To have him long for armfuls of softness? The first time, a true accident, because she hadn't considered what would happen after a lifetime without a rider, she'd been angry with him and it had taken a long time to get past it -- but after that? Had it all been a ploy on her part, a subconscious game to make him touch her there? To feel how human she was, at least in that part -- except that as far as he's concerned I'm -- and want to experience it again? She loved hugs, she loved being hugged, but she seldom got the chance, hardly ever had anyone who would touch her and -- -- how many times did I pull him against me? To protect him. To thank him. To check for fever. To have an excuse for having him touch me. It was worse than that. How many times did I put myself in a situation where I would be embarrassed and start to blush, just so he would hold my hand? Rachnera would catch me, and he would free me. He would help groom the silk out of my fur. He would be brushing me and telling me it was all right and he would hold my hand and I'd tell him there were some strands over there and he could try to remove those too and if he just touched me enough, if there were enough excuses for making him touch me, it was time together where he was touching me and if we had enough time together and he just got used to me he would love -- -- he -- -- he didn't love me. (Perhaps he had.) He never would have loved me. (Perhaps he could have.) (It didn't seem to matter any more.) No one will ever love me. Three fingers went through the pillowcase. She raised her head just enough to blow her nose. ...who did she want him to love? It was a strange thought, and all the stranger for how sudden and sincere it was. But she wanted him to be happy. She'd lied to herself about being the one who could do that, along with protecting him: something else where she’d failed over and over. But she was no better than second to anyone, and when it came to protecting... ...no. She wouldn't. When it came to familiar anatomy, Tionishia almost had everyone else beaten. With the exception of the lone horn protruding from the forehead and some odd angles on the ears, everything the ogre had was human: there just happened to be a lot of it. And she could certainly protect. But there was also a certain innocence there, and it existed on a level which made dating difficult: Tionishia's idea of a good time was a tea party, and there was still a chance that half the attending guests would be made of rags and porcelain. Zombina, however, was very much an adult in body and mind. And she was fully human, or had once been. She also happened to be dead, which presented a certain barrier to many forms of intimacy: for starters, love bites were right out. And neither she nor the ogre were actually part of the household. Not Suu. Not Papi. Not Mero. She shuddered. Not Rachnera. Not that she felt Rachnera truly loved him, at least not so much as the arachne loved getting in the way. Rachnera's passions centered around inducing reactions, and it now seemed as if constantly trolling the others by making them think she was a true part of the game... It gave her frequent cause for satisfaction. Rachnera respected their host, and that was rare enough for one of the spiders. But she didn't love him. So it was Miia or Lala. And Miia was almost like a sister to Cerea, albeit a sibling of a separate species who had a bad habit of sleepily wrapping her on cold mornings. She knew Miia wasn't a bad match for him, although there was a risk of death which was constant and dual: being on the receiving end of her loving or eating her cooking, make your choice. But with Lala... In body, the dullahan was effectively human: just with a different skin color and strange sclerae. (The fact that the head was detachable was something you almost got used to: coming across that head in unexpected places guaranteed the adjustment process was never complete, and Lala had refused to explain that one time with the dishwasher.) Admittedly, she had something which almost approached an inverted aura: the opposite of presence. If she wasn't talking, it was possible for the housemates to forget Lala was in the room, or even within the residence. And she had a propensity towards drama which was generally found in the worst of teen vampire romance novels or worse, those who had recently read them -- -- but she was kind. As patient as the grave. Just about as all-embracing. And when it came to protecting, she would guard her beloved unto death. And beyond. Lala or Miia. It would never be her (and she had almost convinced herself it never could have been), so she wanted it to be one of them. She was almost glad to have settled it. Her ears twisted, tilted back and focused on the sounds coming from the hallway. Awkwardly-shifting hooves, almost shuffling in place. As she'd expected, they'd been able to hear her crying, and none of them had any idea what to do about the situation. After all, who could understand what would upset a monster? It was best not to come in, really. No one should get too close, lest she rip their magic away. She hadn't been expecting any of them to enter anyway. Not during the day shift. Cerea cried for a while, because her home was forever lost. She cried because she would never see her family again, because she would never have anyone love her, because everything and everyone she knew was gone and she would forever be looked at as being nothing more than a monster. She wept into the pillow because to believe all of that would be true forever was easier than feeling it could change, because hope felt like poison. It was the sugar which sweetened a future she could never reach, even as it steadily rotted everything from within. She cried because in so many ways, every dream she'd ever had was dead, and there was only one person who cared enough to mourn. She cried until the tears ran out, until all she could do was sniffle against saturated fabric. And then she forced herself to stand up, went into the restroom and filled cupped hands with water, splashed it against her features until her face was clean. Some time was spent in attempting laundry. She'd both soaked and stained the pillow, along with causing a degree of damage. She wanted to be a good guest. And then she waited for sunset. For the arrival of the only voice she wanted to hear. She finished her recounting, and the deep black pegasus awkwardly stared up at her. "Um," Nightwatch said. "Why?" Cerea's initial response was to simply tilt her head in confusion: the realization that the expression probably wasn't recognizable came a split-second too late. "Why...?" But the tone was asking for clarification. The wings twitched into a minor adjustment of position: feathers rustled. (Her wings were always moving when she was near Cerea: slowly, often subtly -- but they moved, and so the air around the pegasus' body shifted to suit.) "Why do you want to know what I think?" She managed to fake a weak smile, and realized that meant nothing either -- but did so just in time to recognize that having had it be a tight-lipped one was a good thing: she understood something about horse body language, she was among ponies, and showing teeth could be taken as a sign of aggression. "There are worse things," Cerea quietly said, "than seeking the counsel of a knight. What do you think I should do?" The pegasus slowly, unsteadily sat down. The tail splayed a bit. Her wings kept moving. "The cells aren't realistic," the Guard finally said. "Not forever. Sometimes ponies on the staff -- um. They... um. They take --" and it was just barely possible to spot skin going red under dark fur "-- breaks. Together. They take breaks down here, because they think most ponies have forgotten the cells are even under the palace. And they're right, mostly. But eventually, there's going to be ponies who take a break, and -- somepony will say something. Eventually." Cerea silently nodded. "There's lots of islands," Nightwatch continued. "Places off the coast which are legally part of Equestria --" (Which finally told Cerea the nation's name, or at least what the translator had decided to provide for it.) "-- but aren't ever used: only two islands have settlements, and nopony was planning on starting a new one any time in the next few years. There's legends which say the Princesses used at least one for a private prison --" Stopped. Blinked. "-- um..." The centaur remained quiet and still. She was standing at the furthest point away from the door, hindquarters half-pressed into a corner (and part of a bookcase), and she hadn't taken a single step forward since she'd heard the Guard arrive and softly called out the request to have that pony enter her cell. It seemed best to keep some distance between them. To make the meeting that much less disturbing. "...anyway," the pony forced herself to go on, "they're very private. And some of them are kind of pretty. So it wouldn't be hard to find a nice one for you, something where anything harmful could be cleared out. It's not impossible for somepony to find you there, or someone from one of the other nations. But spells could be set up to fight that. Make it a little more hidden..." "Creating a gap," Cerea quietly said, "in the world." The pegasus blinked again. “...yes." The centaur waited. "It would be pretty safe," Nightwatch said. "And warm, if they picked a good one. Plus I -- guess it's possible to get used to wild weather? But it would be -- um. It would be... you'd just be -- there -- are you okay?" No. "I'm fine," Cerea lied. "Why?" "Because..." The tail shifted somewhat. "...I usually can't really tell what you're feeling. Not from your face. But just now, you looked -- you almost looked like someone who was -- hurting." More awkwardly, "Or like someone who'd already been hurt, and they were remembering going through it. Someone who didn't ever want to do that again..." It was Cerea's turn to blink. I'm trying to learn how to read them... The process wasn't exactly one-way. "It's nothing,” she lied again. "And the -- other option?" The pony was quiet for a while. "What did you do?" The dark head tilted up a little more, made eye contact. "In your home. Um. I mean for a living." Cerea sighed. "I... didn't." The shame started to rise up again: she knew how much she cost to house, all the damage she and the others had caused, how little she'd contributed in return -- It doesn't matter. "I was a student," she made herself finish. "An exchange student, if that translates." The pegasus nodded. "We have a few. Um. Not very many. But sometimes, one of the other nations will agree to a swap." So at least that had been understood -- but it was about to get harder. "It's..." How could she even put it? "...new. I was one of the first. It's..." The pegasus was waiting. Cerea sighed. Just try. If only because trying was a prerequisite for failing. "There's a dominant species, where I come from. And centaurs aren't it. There -- aren't all that many of us, compared to the humans." "Humans," the pony carefully said. "We don't have those. What do they look like?" Cerea carefully brought her right hand to her waist, leveled her open palm, then slowly raised it until her fingers brushed against her hair. "Only with different ears," she said. "And no horse bodies. Two legs." Which was when the centaur truly learned what pony nausea looked like. "Oh," Nightwatch tried. "Um... how many are there?" "Enough to hide from," Cerea quietly replied. "And it wasn't just centaurs. There were a lot of species, like the gryphons I know. Ones who were a little like humans, but not enough. We thought -- they would be afraid of us. They were, once, and then there were so many more of them, enough to destroy us. So we hid ourselves away. But we couldn't stay hidden forever. Something happened, and -- we came out. A few of us were chosen to go into human cities as the first wave of exchange students. To become part of their world. To let them get used to us..." To find the ones who would love us. Who would love me. And she'd failed. "So that no one would be afraid any more," the pegasus quietly finished. Cerea nodded. Almost too softly, barely audible at all. "Did it work?" Seconds passed. Time in which they were just looking at each other. "...no." Cerea's head dipped, eyes nearly closing. "Some people accepted us. Others didn't. It was never going to be everyone: it never could be. There were a lot of humans who hated us. Hated me. But there was one man who --" and stopped. It hadn't been in time. "Who what?" "It doesn't matter," Cerea said, because she'd told herself it didn't. "Not now." And then, with open bitterness, because she'd spent so much time in inner cursing against her luck after she'd found out, "Besides, he was into legs." Nightwatch's silver gaze moved down. Very, very slowly. "But you have nice legs," the mare awkwardly decided. "Um. I mean, they're a little long, but they're very shapely. Strong. Powerful. They're good legs. Um. Better than mine. And he didn't like them?" Cerea winced. "It's..." and sighed. "Here..." She forced her hooves to move forward, because the cell was well-furnished and in a touch right out of the best stories, those furnishings included a writing desk, so that the prisoner might write long letters to their beloved regarding their sad fate. Destined never to be mailed, of course, but the important thing was that you got to write it down. Besides, it allowed the author to quote extensive tragic passages and those gave Mero something to do, which was mostly quoting them all over again. She awkwardly angled her body, adjusted a few times until she was at a roughly appropriate height and could see what she was doing. Dipped the quill, then began to work. Because a proper knight (which she would never be) was expected to master more than combat. You had to know the ins and outs of courtly etiquette. It helped to have some understanding of politics. And it seemed to be an absolute requirement that each candidate master at least one artistic skill. In Cerea's case... she could sing, but that was true for just about every mare: the flexibility of the centaur voice box gave the species a rather impressive range. Still, she was better than average there. Just not first. But she could also sketch. Not well: she wasn't particularly good at composing from pure imagination, considered herself to be rubbish with color balance, and often required a model. But it was enough to reproduce something she'd seen a few times, with a fair amount of detail. The quill moved. She tried to fix a few errors, wound up mostly smearing them into different errors, and eventually started over on a second sheet. "Human leg," she eventually said, and held up the paper. "And that's one of their ears on the right." The pegasus stared. "Ugh," Nightwatch opinionated. "Oh... feet... ugh... um..." A quick swallow, which trapped most of the increased nausea. "So you were a student...?" "Sort of," Cerea sighed, placing the sketch back on the desk. "I didn't actually get to attend the schools. They were refitting houses to accommodate us, but the schools were taking too long and some of the principals for the prestigious academies were actively fighting having us there. They had enough power to stall. It meant I wound up taking --" and her next words made the wire hiss "-- a lot of online courses. By email." The little Guard tilted her head to the right. Shook it a few times, twisted her ears back and forth. "You went to school," she eventually said, "by sending mail through the air with electric fire?" Cerea blinked. They don't have computers. "...yes?" "Your home," a sincerely-impressed pegasus decided, "has more in common with us than I thought." And before Cerea could respond to that, "What were you going to do when you graduated?" She wasn't a knight. She had never been one. She never could have been. "It doesn't matter," the girl quietly replied. "I... was trying to do something stupid. Something I wasn't right for. I just didn't figure it out in time." "You can fight, though," Nightwatch said. "You could have --" "-- I lost." Blue eyes briefly closed. "A lot." "You're breathing," the pegasus gently countered. "That usually means you won." It usually meant I'd been humiliated. And that her blouse had been torn again, with everyone staring at what shifted with every breath. "And you carry -- that thing," Nightwatch continued. "You're good with it." Thoughtfully, "Did all the students carry one? So they could defend themselves if someone --" Cerea's response was instinctive, unstoppable, and both dark ears flattened against the skull. "-- that's what it sounds like when you laugh," the pegasus forced out. "I'm sorry --" "-- or when you laugh and you're not happy." The wings stretched, continued their slow shifts. "When you laugh because you hate something and laughing feels easier than screaming." The girl stared at the adult. "I laugh like that sometimes," Nightwatch evenly stated. "On the worst days. Why did you laugh?" The centaur took a slow breath, felt the shirt pull against her. Watched the mare listen as Cerea told her about the laws. "That's not the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Nightwatch said. "Really?" "No. I've been guarding Princess Luna since two weeks after the Return. I've spent a lot of time with her, so I'm usually there when somepony opens their mouth and lets their dumb fall out. I've heard a lot of stupidity." The dark tail was lashing. "But you did just take over second place. First is still that griffon astronomer who tried to get into the Lunar throne room so he could lecture her about how Moon didn't exist. He never got in. She came out. And he left. Faster than he'd arrived. And that was with his legs iced up." "...oh." (She didn't have trouble with the idea of someone having said that a perfectly visible celestial body wasn't real. There were still humans insisting that a lot of their kind had suddenly chosen to move around in rubber suits.) "You can't even protect yourself," the mare slowly said. "That's... that's just..." She took a deep breath. "But you want to know what I think. About your staying in Equestria. About trying to just -- be. Um. Being yourself while you're here. Among us." And again. "You really want to know?" Cerea nodded, because that was the same for both. Waited. The little pegasus took one more breath. Gathered her strength, and said what had to be said. "You scare me." Cerea's eyes closed. Her shoulders slumped as both hands fell open, and a blonde tail went limp. "I..." She heard the pegasus swallow. "I was there. When Tirek... he..." And now those wings had accelerated into something approaching a flap. "...Guards... get in the way. We buy time. It's what we're supposed to do. I got in the way for somepony else when I knew what would happen, and he... it was like being kicked by a mountain. Kicked in my soul. I go back there sometimes when I sleep, and... there's too many of us. She can't help all of us, not every night. I see you, and I think about him. I see you and I'm scared. The first time I opened your cell door, I used my magic to shift the air around me, so you wouldn't smell how scared I was, because sometimes we can smell fear on each other and I thought you might be able to do that too. I move the air all the time when I'm near you, enough that it makes my wings ache after I leave. I'm scared..." The weight of that unscented fear multiplied itself by the unknown population of a nation, pressed against the full length of Cerea's back, began to drive her into the floor -- -- and then the wingbeats stopped. Feathers rustled. Stilled as they moved into the rest position. "Wait a few seconds," the little mare softly said. "Just... wait. Let the air currents go back to normal. Please." It wasn't that she waited, really. She was in a cell. She had nowhere to go, nowhere she could ever go, and so the time simply passed until the fear filled the air again, went into her nostrils and soaked into her brain and -- -- the blue eyes opened. Looked into silver. "You're scared," Cerea quietly stated. The pegasus silently nodded. "But you're... you're not that scared," the girl softly observed. "It's closer to being nervous. Worried --" "-- you didn't have to save us, in the forest," Nightwatch said. "You could have run. Nopony could have stopped you, not in time, not when we couldn't think. It's hard to fight a neurocypher directly, even for an earth pony: it takes so much strength to crack the shell and it's a bad idea, just staying close. But you went after it. With that -- thing... with a sword which doesn't even have an edge. For the second time. Ponies could have died, and you fought." More softly, "You were trying to drive it back, weren't you? Away from us. That's why our heads cleared, because you were getting it out of range and you were wounding its magic with every blow. You tried to protect us on instinct. And..." Her wings flared. Flapped. They were still looking at each other: direct eye contact. But there was no longer any need to look down. Nightwatch hovered, just about two feet away from Cerea's face. It was close enough for the wind from her wings to ruffle blonde hair, even as it blew the papers off the writing desk. "...it's harder to be afraid of someone," the little mare quietly observed, "after you've read her a story. After you've seen that she's... scared too, scared without a flock or herd she can ask for help. Scared because she's so far from home and alone, scared because there's monsters, things she doesn't understand in a place she’s never known, and still, when something happens -- she doesn't run. She fights. For the ones she's afraid of." And Cerea couldn't move. She just felt her hair shifting across her face, blown loose from the pins. The warmth of the pegasus' breath. "It won't ever be everypony," Nightwatch told her. "There's always going to be ponies who are afraid of you, and so it won't ever be everypony who accepts you. But... it also won't be everypony who's afraid of you. Not forever. And if there was somepony who tried to bring you here, on purpose, if they come to take you -- I’ll fight for you." Silence, but for the soft sounds of the hover which created the face-to-face meeting, a hover which never should have worked. Something which only magic allowed to exist at all. "...you're crying." Cerea nodded. "Is it because you're sad?" "...yes." With a weak smile, one which was careful not to show teeth. "Mostly. And scared. Lady --" With a little huff of insistence, "Guard. Um. Nightwatch." "-- what am I supposed to do now?" Cerea wondered if the pony's expression represented a smile. "I don't know. What did you decide?" "So we are now in a regretfully familiar place," the dark Princess said from her place sitting high on the raised throne. "Needing to keep the secret while simultaneously expanding the conspiracy." "We're buying time," the white horse (standing near the throne's base) added. "Part of that is for making you presentable." Cerea looked from one to the other, felt the breeze from the ongoing hover at her left side, produced by the only Guard who had entered the meeting. "Presentable?" "You are still injured," the elevated mare stated as the dark gaze moved across bruises and contusions. "Visibly so. You heal rather quickly, but you have yet to finish the process. And one could argue that bringing you to the populace in such a battered state would be preferable because they would see that you can be beaten -- but I would prefer for you to be healthy." "We also need to begin educating you," the taller observed. "Not just about our nation and the world. About what you're facing, and who." The dark mare nodded. "Additionally," she said, "while the initial portion of the proceedings will be concealed from sight, the legality of the total shall be visibly brought over the stile. As of this moment, you are no longer intruder or invader. But in order to grant you our full protection, it is necessary to apply another definition. One which comes with its own paperwork --" The cool gaze turned into more of a squint. "-- is that a wince?" Cerea tried (and failed) to force her features into some form of neutrality. "I ask because in order to more properly understand each other, it is necessary that each of us become educated in the other's expressions," the dark Princess declared. "Also because I am fairly certain you are wincing." I just did this... "Yes." She was probably going to be introduced to the pony equivalent to Ms. Smith. Cerea wondered if it would be possible to get that mare out of bed for the first meeting in under a week. "Good," that mare decided. "So that is a wince. Be assured that I will remember what it looks like. You will also require a tutor --" "-- I can do some of that," Nightwatch quickly said. Which was followed by a more awkward "Um. Well. I spend a lot of time in her cell anyway." Hastily, "Outside her cell." A deep breath. "...in?” Both Princesses were now looking at the pegasus, and Cerea couldn’t figure out the identical expression. “A portion,” the dark mare slowly said. “As you wish, Nightwatch. But your mark is hardly for teaching, and you are known to be less than fully expert in history. We may need to add experts at a later date, especially given the legal requirements.” (The pegasus nodded.) “But with your participation, we can begin immediately.” And she looked at Cerea. “We will continue our efforts to send you home,” the dark Princess stated. “But until that night arrives -- welcome to Equestria, centaur.” The silver-shod left forehoof came up, briefly pressed against the moon-embossed metal plate. “Let us hope none of us have too-frequent cause to regret this.” In a way, that was when it all truly began. And when Cerea looked back at the last, she would realize it had also been the moment when it all ended.