I didn’t get to spend the night in Princess Shahrazad’s room. It would have been nice, but the chances of us having a sleepover dropped to precisely zero when her father walked in to check on us while we were talking about the very special spells that Equestrians were supposed to know.
For the record, Celestia didn’t teach me any of those spells. I’m like ninety percent sure she hasn’t even had a special somepony before. Cadance, I am told, knows dozens of variations. I haven't asked to see them, for obvious reasons.
I thought I’d be going back to the embassy after that but instead, I was escorted (in the nice sense, not in the ‘under armed guard directly towards the dungeons’ sense) to another room close enough to Shahrazad’s that I’d be able to hear it if she yelled for me. Not ideal if I was really going to be a bodyguard, but at least I wasn’t in the other wing of the castle.
For lack of anything better to do, I tossed my cloak and bags on the bed. I’d been carrying them all day and they were starting to feel like I’d stuffed bricks into them instead of books. The heat hit me the second I took the cloak off, the room going from comfortable to stuffy.
“Great,” I muttered to myself. I’d make a joke about it being the only intelligent conversation I’d had in a long time but I’d made too many stupid mistakes in the last few days.
I pulled open the doors to the balcony to let the breeze in. The air was cool outside, the castle’s wall constantly buffeted by the sea breeze, and the room’s balcony was large enough for a table and chairs, a small garden, and the pony leaning against the railing and giving me a wink.
“Hey there!” Arch said. “I was just passing by and thought I’d check in on you.”
I blinked several times, half-expecting her to vanish. I held up a hoof for her to wait a moment, then stepped over to the railing and looked down and around. Just like I thought, there wasn’t any way for her to have gotten to the balcony.
“Just passing by?” I asked.
She nodded. “What can I say? I have lots of friends in high places. Just look at how far up we are!” Arch motioned out to the city. The sun was setting, and part of me was half-convinced I could feel Celestia’s magic pulling it below the horizon. The lights of the city were coming alive, like a sea of stars.
It was such a beautiful sight that for a moment I forgot that Arch Standin had apparently broken into my room in the middle of a heavily secured palace.
“How the buck did you get here?” I asked.
“Well, now I’m not sure I should tell you,” Arch said. “I mean, I don’t want to get you in trouble, Princess Sunset. You have started calling yourself that, right?”
“I’m not a princess!” I snapped.
“Hey, don’t bite my head off!” Arch held up a hoof and took a step back. “I’m just kiddin’. Believe it or not, I think I know how you feel.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Ponies are coming up to you and telling you how lucky you are and how happy you should be and for what?” Arch shrugged. “Yeah, Princess Shahrazad is cute, but it isn’t something you decided for yourself. And any time you bring it up…” she shrugged. “It’s like being beaten with a carrot because you didn’t smile enough when someone made you eat the stick, am I right?”
I sighed. “Yeah. It’s all… backwards.”
“If I were you, I’d feel like it’s even worse because you can’t talk about it with anypony. Not to mention the mess that’s gonna come down on your head once news gets back home.” Arch smiled. “I bet there are a lot of ponies in Canterlot that are gonna hear about this and think you’re taking advantage of a poor, innocent Princess.”
“I didn’t even think about that,” I groaned.
“You’re gonna be lucky if Celestia doesn’t show up and drag you all the way back to Equestria by the ear. Mare’s got one heck of a grip.”
“Yeah, and-- wait, how did you know that?”
“So many questions!” Arch groaned. “I came around to ask you how you were doin’, not to get interrogated.”
“I think you at least owe me an explanation. Like, for example, what’s that sound?” It sounded a lot like bells. A lot of bells. And ponies shouting.
“Sort of a long story,” Arch said. “If I had to guess I’d say it’s probably an intruder alarm. Some degenerate must have gone and broken into the palace.” She shook her head and tutted with disapproval.
“I can’t imagine who might have done that,” I muttered.
“Could have been anyone,” Arch shrugged. “But just in case it’s me, how about we have a polite agreement that you aren’t gonna snitch on me? Normally I’d just trust you not to say anything, but you didn’t stand up for those ponies last time I was around and it makes me a little worried, you dig?”
“I didn’t-- that’s not fair.” I looked away. “It wasn’t my place to interfere.”
“It wasn’t your place to save Princess Shahrazad from those assassins, either,” Arch said. “You didn’t have a problem stepping in for her.”
I didn’t have an answer to that.
“I gotta get going, kid. Tell you what - tomorrow morning I’m gonna be at a little dive bar called the Long Haul. You ask around and you’ll be able to find it. You wanna save up all your questions for then, I’ll be happy to give you answers.”
“Maybe even some true answers.”
“Let’s not go too crazy!” Arch said.
Somepony knocked on my door. Arch glanced at it, then gave me a smile and jumped off the balcony.
I reached for her on instinct, rushing over.
She was already a hundred feet down, her body covered in a soft green glow as she drifted to the ground like a falling leaf.
“Self-levitation,” I mumbled. “Neat trick.”
The door opened, and ponies stormed in. I wasn’t surprised that Sirocco was the first one to walk in.
“You know, in Equestria it’s customary to wait for somepony to answer the door,” I said.
Sirocco looked less than amused. “Where is she?”
“If this is about the Princess, she’s still in her room. At least, I think she is.” I frowned. “I guess she did sneak out once already. The important thing is that she’s not here.”
“This isn’t--”
“And I swear that despite what she says, I really don’t know that kind of spell!” I sighed. “I mean, I know everypony makes those jokes about Canterlot unicorns and the kind of things the nobility does behind closed doors, but I don’t even get invited to that kind of party!”
Sirocco took a step back. “What?”
“I wasn’t a party girl,” I explained. “I didn’t really have time. I was focused on my studying, and I thought I’d have time for it later. Do you know how long it took for me to even get my first kiss?”
“No!” Sirocco snapped. “This has nothing to do with--” She stopped and rubbed her temples. “I don’t have time for this. Have you seen any strange ponies tonight?”
“I’m pretty sure I’m the strangest pony here.”
“At least we can agree to that,” Sirocco said. “I apologize for intruding.” She nodded to the big, muscley guards behind her, and they left. She shot me a look while she was leaving. It was the kind of look that said ‘I know you’re up to something and I’ll figure it out and you won’t like it when I do’.
I smiled and waved. It was what I was there for.
I didn’t sleep all that well. Part of it was sleeping in a strange bed, part of it was stress, and part of it was just thinking too much about Shahrazad. She was playing me, and I knew she was playing me, but was it really that bad? I spent a lot of the night in a half-asleep daze hugging a pillow and whispering sweet nothings into its ear while dreaming about a mare I barely knew.
When the sun rose, I got up with it. I’d been mostly waking up every hour anyway, and seeing the sun crest over the sea motivated me to roll out of bed. More accurately, it was a sign that I should just give up on sleep because it wasn’t gonna happen.
I stumbled out onto the balcony with all the grace you’d expect with my bad leg numb and tingling like I’d slept on it wrong.
“I never want to see another stairway,” I mumbled.
That was when I remembered that I’d agreed to meet Arch. I shuddered at the thought of going down the long stairway, and then back up again. My legs might literally fall off if I tried that. But there was another way, wasn’t there?
I smiled and lit up my horn, surrounding my body in my own aura and lifting gently.
“Gently, geeeently…” I whispered as I eased my way towards the ground. At first, self-levitation had seemed so easy. It turns out it’s a lot like holding a weight with your hoof straight out at shoulder height. Even a light weight starts to feel really heavy after a minute or two, and if I let go…
Well, it was a long drop and I didn’t want to have to figure something else out on the way down.
I just needed to keep it together for a little longer. And just like an idiot, I started to panic right at the finish line. Two stories up, my grip faltered and I fell with my cloak billowing out around me. Ponies on the ground yelled something and got out of the way and I landed on one knee, hard enough to send a cloud of dust billowing out from my crash zone.
I’d seen ponies land like that before. I very quickly learned it was murder on the knees. Ponies stared at me. I got up and brushed myself off, trying to play it off like it was no big deal.
“Say,” I asked the nearest pony. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a bar called the Long Haul?”
“This place is a dive,” I said.
Arch looked up at me from where she was sitting at the bar. She smiled and waved for me to sit next to her. The only other pony was the bartender, who was either asleep or dead, his head down on the bar and saying nothing while Arch poured wheat-yellow liquid into two glasses.
“That’s unfair,” Arch said, once I’d sat down. “You get a good look at this place on your way in?”
“It looks the same as every other building,” I said.
Arch nodded, tapping a hoof against the rough, unfinished wood of the bar and pointing to me. “Yeah! Exactly! The same as every other building. More than half the buildings in the city are all completely identical.”
I glanced around the stark white walls. There’d been an effort to paint them at some point, but it was flaking and falling off like a snake shedding its skin.
“Most places, you see bars and stores and houses get built as ponies need them,” Arch said. “This whole city was built without any idea what they’d use it for, and ponies just move into the empty spaces and set up shop. A whole city of squatters.”
“Are you going to tell me why you were at the palace last night?” I asked.
Arch nodded and tossed back her drink. “Yeah. Glad to see you came alone. Didn’t like thinking you might be a snitch, but I had to be sure and didn’t want nopony else involved. Finish your drink and follow me.”
She got up and threw a few coins on the bar, a mix of bits and old griffon imperial talons and the weird puzzle-piece coins the minotaurs used. The bartender mumbled something in his sleep and swept the collection of loose change up, the only sign of life I’d seen from him.
“You coming?” Arch asked.
I downed the glass, tasting something like rosewater and sharp lemon, then followed her out into the street.
“See, this is sort of like an education,” Arch said. The market was crowded this early in the day, ponies going from one stall to another and arguing loudly about prices. “Tell me what you see.”
“A bunch of market stalls,” I said. “Nothing special.”
“Okay, let’s say you were out here in the early morning, what’s the first thing you’d want to buy?”
“I don’t know. Breakfast?” I glanced around at the shops. The jewelry and pottery wasn’t very interesting, but the book stall caught my eye. If I’d been smart enough to bring bits I might have been tempted to go take a look.
“Yeah! Let me tell you, I could go one of those Prench pancakes right now.”
“Crepe.”
“No need to insult me. Most ponies find me charming. So what kind of food you hungry for?” Arch motioned out to the tents and signs. I looked, then looked harder, then walked into the next aisle of stalls. They had toys and artifacts and clothing and a bunch of other stuff.
“There’s no food,” I muttered.
“Weird, isn’t it?” Arch asked. “It ain’t that people are poor. If people were poor they wouldn’t be buyin’ jewelry.”
“This doesn’t prove anything. Maybe all the food is an aisle over. I don’t know the city.”
“You could look all day. Truth is, all the food goes to the palace. Officially, anyway. If you go to the docks you might be able to cut a deal but I wouldn’t count on it.”
“But the ponies at that party--”
“Yeah, they had food. Everypony gets a ration, and they pooled theirs for their little celebration. It’s probably how those Aretic mules found them.” Arch shook her head. “The official line is that Saddle Arabia makes sure its ponies are fed.”
“And if they’re not good ponies, what, they don’t get dinner?”
“You make it sound awful sinister,” Arch said, without offering another explanation. “Anyway, we lost the pony trailing you, so let’s go.”
“What pony trailing me?” I looked back the way we came.
Arch patted me on the back .”Don’t worry about it. You’re a VIP. You think you can just sneak out of the palace with nopony noticing?”
“Yes! I used to sneak out of Celestia’s palace all the time!”
“That just means her guards were better at not being spotted,” Arch said. “Or that you’re just bad at spottin’ ‘em.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
I could feel it before I saw anything. It started like the tide rolling in, shapeless and without direction, a blanket of magic covering everything. Arch picked up the pace, and we ducked off the main street, running through back alleyways towards something. Something big.
It broke all at once like a volcanic eruption, magic crystalizing into shape. I could only catch the edges of it, but it felt almost formless, like a ragged crystal growing in a geode instead of the geometric shape of a real spell.
“Darn, we missed it,” Arch sighed. “I told them to hold off until we got there, but…” she shook her head, slowing down.
“Hold off on what?”
We walked through an empty gateway where no door had ever been hung, and I caught the tail end of it. Food and wine materialized out of thin air like it was burning in reverse, smoke spiraling down onto empty plates and becoming steamed buns and rice and ripe fruit. In seconds, an empty table had been filled with a feast almost identical to the dinner I’d eaten the night before. Dozens of ponies cheered. I hadn’t even noticed them while I was distracted by the spectacle of the magic.
It took me a moment longer to see how thin they were. All of them looked half-starved. For some stupid reason, it made me feel guilty. I don’t know if I felt guilty like it was my fault they were hungry or just for not having seen it before. Cadance would have cared more about the other ponies than the food on the table.
Like a real princess should.
“You said you wanted breakfast, right?” Arch asked.
“I’ve never seen magic like that,” I muttered, watching as the Saddle Arabians swarmed the buffet table. I wasn’t sure, but I think the food was actually slowly replenishing itself even while they were eating, like the scoops they were taking out of the piles of pilaf and noodles were healing themselves.
“You want me to get you a plate?” Arch smirked.
I frowned and scanned the table with a quick spell.
“It’s cursed,” I said.
“It’s not cursed, it’s just, you know, not entirely real,” Arch corrected. "Sort of like stories about elk-gold."
“It’s taking magic from the ponies eating it to become real.”
“It’s barely anything. Basically harmless.”
I frowned and studied it more. It was more or less harmless, but all the magic wasn’t going to the food. Some of it was going somewhere else, but the spell was so complex and messy I couldn’t tell where it was being siphoned off to. That might not seem too bad, but imagine if you found out someone was embezzling from a blood bank - even if the ponies donating blood aren’t getting hurt it sure raises a lot of questions about who’s running the show and where it’s all going.
Arch pointedly grabbed herself a plate.
“Not bad,” she said. “They must have wished for a feast just like you had, your highness.”
“Don’t call me that,” I grumbled.
She laughed and kept stuffing her face, talking and eating at the same time. “You got a title you prefer? Monster slayer? Prodigal child?”
“You could use my name.”
“I could,” Arch agreed. “But what’s a name, really? Just what you want other people to call you.”
“I can see why you wouldn’t care, Arch Standin. If we’d been standing somewhere else would you be calling yourself something like Mulberry Bush?”
“That’s sort of an interesting philosophical question. Who can say?”
“You could. You could say. You could just tell me your real name.”
“Well that just seems like you don’t trust me none. Sunset, trust is somethin’ that doesn’t come from learning names.” Arch put a hoof around my shoulders, still chewing even while she was talking way too close to my face. “It’s somethin’ that comes from actions like not snitching about me to any authorities to show you trust me, and I show you all the good parties in town because I trust you. That’s what it’s all about. Trust.”
I tried to give her the same kind of flat look Celestia gave me when I was being particularly dumb. It lasted until the first explosion.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Ah.” Arch tilted my head up. Out past the open window frames, I could see fireworks in the sky. “See, that there is how our wonderful Aretic Order sends up the alarm.”
“They sensed the magic.”
“If there’s anything they especially hate, its ponies making wishes,” Arch sighed. She let go of me and clapped her hooves loudly. “Hey, everypony! We got trouble on the way! If you wanna make it out of this safe-like, you come with me and do exactly what I say, right?”
“Are you sure about--” I started. Arch waved a hoof to cut me off.
“Hey, I didn’t give them a wish just so they could get hurt because of it,” Arch said. “You think you can keep the Order busy for a few minutes while I move everypony out the back?”
I saw the ponies I’d failed last time this had happened, and I nodded. Arch patted my back and started ushering ponies away from the front door. There was a knock, which almost immediately turned into banging, then kicking.
The cheap wooden door cracked, the lock popping free and skipping across the floor. I opened the door with my magic before the next kick came, and the pony on the other side fell in.
“Do you crash parties professionally?” I asked.
“Sunset Shimmer. I wish I could say this was a surprise.” Sirocco Mandala stepped over her prone underling lying on the floor. “You have a habit of turning up in interesting places.”
“Princess Celestia encouraged me to be curious,” I said.
“I had a feeling you’d be causing trouble.” She walked past me, stopping at the plates of food. “Were you feeling a little hungry after skipping breakfast? It’s the talk of the palace. Do you know there are already two rumors going around about you?”
“Anything good?”
“One rumor says you fled the nation to avoid the marriage. The other one suggests you were killed by the assassins that were after Princess Shahrazad. Obviously the ponies spreading the rumors aren’t aware of your reputation.”
“You’re right. Otherwise they’d know I’d never be killed by an assassin.”
Sirocco made a noise in the back of her throat. “Mm. Not the reputation I was thinking of. Regardless…” She motioned to her soldiers. Or thugs. I wasn’t sure what the right term would be for secret police muscle. “Destroy all of this.”
“Woah, woah,” I said, putting up a wall of magic. I had to slow them down a little. “This is food. Aren’t there starving ponies that could use this?”
“All of this stinks of dark magic,” Sirocco said. She tapped the wall. “Though you don’t seem to be tainted yet.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Very little does.” Sirocco tapped again, and my spell shattered like glass. I felt the recoil shoot through my horn with the body-shocking jolt of jumping into a pool of icewater.
“How did you--”
She raised an eyebrow. “My job involves dealing with dark magic every day. Are you really shocked that I’m not helpless when I encounter simple spells?”
“But… with just a hoof?” I mumbled.
“You shouldn’t look down on earth ponies. Just because unicorn magic is more obvious doesn’t mean other ponies can’t be just as powerful in their own way.”
I frowned and tried to figure out how she’d done it. I mean, it had been a sort of sloppy shield spell, but it still should have been able to resist any physical force short of siege weaponry. There were maybe four ponies in the world who could have thrown together a better wall without preparation and three of them were alicorns. It shouldn’t have been possible for her to just knock it over like it had been made of glass.
“Some kind of weakness in the spell?” I mumbled.
“You didn’t wish for this, so who did?” Sirocco asked. I didn’t say anything. The thugs in the doorway were starting to look impatient. If their boss hadn’t been there, they might have tried something stupid. “Do you know how dangerous wishes are, Miss Shimmer?”
“I think feeding the hungry isn’t a dangerous practice.”
“Dark magic always has a cost. These wishes aren’t free. Someone always ends up paying the price. Yes, this food isn’t… particularly dangerous.” She nudged a plate of rice and ran her hoof along the tablecloth. “But that’s not the point.”
“And the point is?”
She sighed. “Imagine if the pony who did this wished for something else. Something dangerous. Imagine if they’d wished for the king’s head on a pike, or ten tons of gold, or…” she glanced at me. “Imagine if they’d wished to become an alicorn. Think of the price that would have to be paid for that. The scar it would leave on the world.”
“Are you implying something?”
“No. I’m informing you, so you can make the correct decision.”
“I don’t know where the ponies are that wished for this. I do know that if they’re in such a bad place that they’d wish for food over power or money or immortality… we should be helping them, not trying to throw them in prison.”
Sirocco made a thoughtful sound. “Well. I suppose I can let it go for now. Once this has been destroyed the danger will be behind us. I do have sympathy, Miss Sunset. In fact, what I would be very interested in is the identity of the pony who had the wish magic to begin with. You might see this as harmless right now, but that is because the ponies involved have only had very small dreams.”
“It wasn’t small to them.”
“Of course not. Everypony has something they want most in the world. We’re simply lucky they wanted a feast.” She nodded to her thugs and they started carrying the platters of food away. “Incidentally, I’m curious - what would you do if I decided to have you brought back to the palace in chains?”
“You could try doing that,” I said. “It wouldn’t end well for you.”
“I wonder if it would.” She smiled slightly. “Be well, Sunset Shimmer. I would ask you to be good, but I suspect that is beyond your means.”
I watched Sirocco and her thugs burn the food, and we didn’t say anything to each other the whole time. When it was over, I left and took a route that I was pretty sure would throw off anypony trying to follow me. I threw in a few teleports out of line-of-sight just to make sure of it. Part of me worried that I’d somehow been the reason those starving ponies hadn’t been fed, and the walk gave me plenty of time to start really feeling awful about that.
At least I didn’t have to look far to find Arch when I was ready to actually go and talk to her.
“Hey there, sister,” she said, when I walked into the dingy bar. We were still the only customers, though the bartender looked more alert than the last time I’d seen them. Arch waved for me to sit next to her.
I slid onto the barstool, not sure what to say.
“Sorry about the trouble,” Arch said. “And… thank you. A lot of innocent ponies owe you their freedom. Maybe their lives, too.”
I nodded glumly.
Arch motioned to the bartender. “Let me buy you a drink. I know a little something that’ll help you relax even with all that zebra alchemy in you.”
“Given my experience with Luna, it usually takes a whole bottle of- wait, how did you know about that?” I felt the fur along my spine bristle in alarm.
“I’ve known a few zebra in my time. You don’t get that kind of jewelry as a gift, it’s something you have to earn.” She nodded to the bangles I was wearing. I'd almost forgotten about them. They were like a part of me. The pendant Princes Shahrazad had given me felt like a brick around my neck in comparison. “Now that’s somethin’ to be proud of. Impressing Celestia is easy. Impressing a shaman is a lot harder. They’re as unflappable as a pegasus with two lame wings.”
“What?”
“Is that not a saying anymore? Well, whatever, I can’t keep up with the lingo you kids use.” Arch shrugged. A metal cup was put in front of me, the contents murky and bubbling in the way a chemical reaction did and a drink didn’t.
“You can’t be serious,” I said, looking at it from what I hoped was a safe distance. Did I need a fume hood? I should have been watching the bartender to see what he put in it.
“I’d promise it wasn’t poison, but any kind of drink strong enough to make you tipsy is gonna be enough to do a number on a normal pony. But if it makes you feel better…” Arch grabbed the cup in lime-green magic and took a long sip, grimacing as she put it down and wiped her lips. “Can’t say much for the taste but its got a heck of a kick!”
“Well I guess I can’t refuse if it didn’t kill you,” I said. I took a cautious sip of what was technically a drink in that it was being served to me in a cup. I don’t know if I can even start to describe the taste. It was more like a whole-body sensation of trying to swallow a thunderstorm with the lightning scratching and raking all the way down. I coughed and I swear there were sparks.
“Not bad, right?” Arch asked. I nodded in agreement. She was right about the kick. My whole body was starting to tingle with a pleasant numbness.
“So do you want to beat around the bush and avoid telling me anything until I leave?” I asked. “Because I’m getting real tired of it.”
“Nah. There ain’t a lot of ponies I’d call a friend, but you’re one of them.” She leaned on the bar. “You been outside the city?”
“Has anypony here?”
“I have,” Arch said. “Saddle Arabia’s a big country. Used to be almost the size of Equestria. Guess it still is, but it’s only a name on maps. You leave the cities on the coast, there’s just sand from horizon to horizon.”
“It’s a desert of course there's sand.”
“Hah, yeah,” Arch smiled. It looked a little sad. “You know what you find if you go digging out there? Ruins. Everywhere. It don’t look like it, but if you dig far enough down through the sand you find streets and buildings. In some spots you find dead grass. Whole trees, leaves and all. You got any idea what kind of crazy disaster can do that?”
“A volcanic eruption?” I guessed. “Some kind of giant sandstorm?”
“Maybe. But you know how they survived? They wished for it.”
“I’ve wished for a lot of things,” I said. “Pretty sure just wanting it isn’t enough.”
“You know what kind of wishes I mean.” Arch looked around like she expected to see somepony walk in on us. “You know what a Djinn is?”
It sounded vaguely familiar. The buzz in my head from the drink didn’t make it any easier to remember. “It was some kind of spirit?” I ventured. “A trickster, I think. I only know some really vague old legends.”
“Well, what the Djinni did was they made Saddle Arabia great. They wandered the land and granted wishes to ponies on a whim. The whole country was green and fertile and every day there’d be a new story of somepony coming into some grand fortune or the sick being healed.”
“You know, if a lot of ponies were getting rich there are some serious economic issues,” I said. “There’s currency devaluation, inflation, wild swings in the prices of trade goods--” Arch was giving me a look. “I had to study a lot of stuff about economics on the way here. I thought I’d be negotiating a treaty and so I crammed!”
“I’ll keep that in mind, hotshot. Point is, there used to be Djinn. There used to be wishes. Now there aren’t. All the Saddle Arabians have is a few cities around the edge of the ocean and they try to sell ponies on the idea that they’re still some great power. They even got you ready to kowtow to them just for what, silver?”
I blushed.
“The wishes went away and the good times went with them,” Arch said. She sighed. “And the Aretic Order aims to keep things like they are. I like the idea of shaking things up a little bit.”
She reached into her robes and produced two silver boxes.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Wishes. I smuggled three out of the palace when I was visiting. Gave one to those starving ponies because I wanted you to see a wish in action. Each one of these can change the world.” She started juggling the boxes, the metal catching the light as it spun through the air. “I don’t know how much good they’re doing right now. Maybe I picked the wrong ponies.”
“I don’t think trying to help starving ponies was a mistake,” I said.
“No. I guess not. But it didn’t even end up helping. I did some soul searching and I decided that because I trust you, I want you to take this.” She tossed a box at me. I barely caught it. “Better if each of us carries one so the Aretic Order can’t nab both at once.”
“What?”
“To be clear, it ain’t for you. If you have something you really want, I think you’re strong and smart enough that you could get it on your own.” Arch slipped the third box back into her robes. “I want you to find a pony who really needs it and give them that wish. You tell ‘em if they open it, they’ll see what they want most and it’ll grant it to them. Just make sure it’s a pony who wants somethin’ worth a wish, dig?”
“How am I supposed to decide that?”
“Follow your heart. Or guts. Whatever organs you like best.” Arch shrugged. “Don’t get caught with it.”
“What if I decided to use it myself?”
“I’d know if you were that kind of pony.” She winked. “I trust you.”