Cadance's first action was to fall slowly to the ground, moving to help Fluttershy land and hold her in an embrace. She held the mare gently, wrapping her wings around Fluttershy and thinking, her mind racing as she supported the pegasus.
The second thing she did was return to the dining room.
"Please, Cadance," Fluttershy called, galloping after the marching alicorn. "There's no way she could known Spike would react like that! I know that she didn't mean-"
"Didn't mean to call my little brother a monster?" Cadance asked coldly, not breaking stride. "Didn't mean to confirm his worst fear, his darkest dream? Didn't mean to break his soul, like she broke his heart?"
"Cadance, of course she didn't!" Fluttershy yelped, now using her wings to augment her run. "Why on equestria would she have said that if the thought even occurred to her?"
"I don't know!" Cadance yelled, stomping a back leg. She pulled the limb out of the crater swiftly, crumbs of stone and crystal following the hoof. "But I'm going to find out!"
Panting, Cadance reached the door and yanked it open, her eyes darting over to the white mare currently hunched over the table with her shoulders shaking.
"Wh-!"
"Cadance," Shining Armor called out first, and she turned to look at the stallion who had moved to take her space at the table. "Ladybug."
Fluttershy ran up to the panting alicorn. "Cadance, please-"
Shining Armor held up a hoof, still watching his panting wife.
Slowly, she raised her foreleg out in front of her, then drew it to her chest as she breathed in. Stretching her leg out horizontally again, she breathed out, her eyelids fluttering closed as she repeated the physical mantra until her breathing calmed down.
"Now sweetie, I'd really like you to listen to me on this one," Shining said carefully.
"Mmm?" was her reply, hummed out in between motions.
"Swap out," he said, and her eyes slammed open.
"Excuse-"
"Swap. Out," he said, steel in his eyes and pleading in his voice. "You're too close to this one. Let me handle it, or a professional, but not you. Not for a while."
She stared down her husband, her lips moving as her eyes narrowed, speaking under her breath as she looked over at the pale mare.
Snorting, she stomped her back leg again, not breaking anything this time, before she stalked over to the chair opposite of Rarity, where Spike had been sitting. Not saying anything, she gestured to Shining Armor, who nodded and breathed out through his lips.
"Fluttershy, Rarity, ladies? This is feeling like it's going to be a long conference," he started, waving to the same guard next to the kitchen. "I'm going to go ahead and order some sandwiches and tea. Does anyone want anything else?"
Flurry Heart slowly raised a hoof. "Should I, uhm, be here?" she asked. "This seems like a lover's thing, and that's something I'm still very, very new to?"
Shining Armor furrowed his eyebrows, blowing air out through his pursed lips. "Mmm, I'm going to say your call. Probably not in the lover's area, but you still know Spike well enough to hop on my and Twilight's letters to each other, plus you talk at least weekly."
"Okay," she murmured, shifting a bit before she asked, "Is this one of those gross snack food for dinner nights?"
Shining snorted, and even Fluttershy smiled a tiny bit.
"Nah, but I'll make sure you get in on some ice cream later," her dad, nodding to the guard, who slipped her head through the doorway for a moment before she closed it, nodding at Shining.
"Alright, with blood sugar and hydration taken care of," he said, checking off an imaginary list, "we need to get into the meat of the conversation, no dancing around I feel.
"Miss Rarity?" he asked, the hiccuping mare slowly pulling her face out of the table. "I am very sorry, but I think everyone at the table needs this conversation. Do you think you can pull through for us?"
Slowly she nodded, lighting her horn and floating a wad of fresh linen napkin towards her. She swiped at the makeup streaking down her cheeks first; Cadance's gaze softened as she saw the large, purple bags underneath the other mare's eyes. She then blew her nose, hard, before tossing the cloth back on the table near her setting.
"I am, afraid of dragons," she admitted slowly. "It started with that large, red brute we had to deal with right around the time we first met Twilight," she said, turning and speaking with Fluttershy. "When I saw it just scare poor Rainbow away, I thought the mon-" she flinched, glancing at Cadance, "I-I thought he'd killed her, suffocated her with it's smoke. For weeks after that I needed to sleep with a little bit of wine in me to get through the night, and I couldn't light my candles because the matches and the smoke reminded me of that cave on top of the mountain.
"And then there were those awful teenagers," she said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "They were so talkative, I felt for sure that we'd stumbled into an actual society, something civilized. But while the others were busy watching over Spike, I saw..." She shuddered, her eyes squeezing together as she stuttered out, "I-I sa-saw what some of th-the adults were eating.
"Not just gems," she whispered. "That might have been the first time I saw a changeling, and one of the first times I saw one of the deer." She wiped at her eyes with the napkin in front of her. "They were being eaten. Leg by leg. Thankfully they weren't... alive, anymore, and I didn't really see any need to let poor Twilight and you know," she said, looking over at a pale Fluttershy. "But from then on, I couldn't look at a dragon the same way."
She wiped at her nose again.
"But Spike was different," she said, forcefully. "At first he was just so round and cute, and I never felt even a twinge around him.
She grew quiet.
"And then he wasn't," Fluttershy said, laying a hoof on her shoulder.
Rarity shuddered, nodding. "And then he had that greed attack. And he said how much he wanted me, of all ponies, and all I could imagine, all I could think of, were those changeling and deer that that adult was eating..."
She sniffed heavily.
"I was so scared when he changed back, that I almost couldn't bear to hear him speak. I had to shush him up there, or I'm afraid of what I would have said. Do you know, I gave him a kiss on the cheek after that? I felt like I had to, I mean he had sort of saved me, in a round-a-bout way." She was silent for a moment. "I vomited that night, thinking about how close I was to his teeth and how easily he could have just torn my face off."
Cadance looked like she was in physical pain, listening to Rarity. Fluttershy had long since just rested her leg on her friend's shoulder, and even Shining looked to be glittering around his eyes.
"But that isn't Spike," Flurry said, shaking her head. "We both know he's vegetarian, he's been on protein pills and legumes since he was born! He's told me about one of our griffin buddies offering him some cooked game, but he turned her down, flat. He's no interest, says the thought makes him-"
"He never told me," Rarity said, just loud enough to be heard. "I never talked to him about his diet, we never had reason to. He just liked to cook what I liked."
Shining held up a hoof.
"Let's table that for now," he said. "Regardless of his actual diet, Spike has always been vegetarian, though, as far as I know" he said, nodding towards Flurry as she opened her muzzle to argue.
She nodded, leaning back in her chair.
"Let's move on, Rarity," he said, voice even and soft. "After his greed incident?"
"Well, there's not much to say until I finally folded to his feelings," Rarity said, a little stronger now. "Of course I'd realized about his crush, he was a darling child but not very surreptitious, you know? And even after we had to deal with that large red male I continued to think he was cute, and I figured he'd move on at some point.
"Once the dragon migration happened, that changed a little. I found myself watching him, waiting for something to happen," she said, coughing a little.
"Uhm, my throat...?"
"Ah, right," Shining said, looking over at the mare near the kitchen. "Status?"
She nodded, dipping out of the room for a moment before returning with a uniformed stallion pushing a tea service along on top of a metal cart.
"The tea migh' be a little weak," he said apologetically, using his wings to serve out saucers and cups with small strainers covering them. He started to move the cart around, but Shining picked up the rest of the service and set it in the middle of the table while floating the other cups around.
"Thank you," said Shining with a dip of his head. "If you could keep some water on the back-burner as well, that would be nice."
"O-of course," the stallion said, with a dip of his head. "Uhm, the food'll be in soon, as well."
"Thank you," said Shining again, and the stallion bowed his way out of the room with the cart.
Rarity levitated a spoon with syrupy honey towards her cup, before pouring the light, steaming liquid into the cup. She hummed at the sight, then removed the strainer to sip lightly at the hot beverage.
"It is a touch weak still," she mentioned softly, before sipping at it again.
"Uhm, right," she said, nodding to herself. "I started noticing myself watching Spike as he assisted me around the shop. I'd watch him as he helped me cut fabric with scissors, and whenever he'd distract Opal by playing with her." She scoffed at herself. "There was an evening I had a nightmare, where he ate my entire stock of gems, then my cat, and then... And then my sister, and he finished it off with eating me," she said, closing her eyes and shivering as she relived the memory.
"And I still didn't quite realize what was wrong those few months, until I saw him enwrapped with greed and grown to his monstrous form," she said, not able to see Cadance's frown with her eyes still closed.
"That was the day I realized, and the night that I couldn't sleep," she said, opening her eyes and taking a larger sip of the tea. "That was the night that... that I bought something a little heavier than wine to help me to sleep."
"Rarity," Fluttershy murmured, leaning over and wrapping her forelegs around the seamstress.
Rarity quickly returned the hug, shivering a little as she squeezed her friend.
She pushed away after a minute, clearing her throat.
"From there I attempted to get him together with a couple of other mares," she said, taking a sip of her tea, "but he wasn't biting. As the years passed he grew, and even through my fear I could tell he was a very handsome drake. He kept up, always there but never pressing the issue, just trying his best to be my perfect match. I gave in. We dated. We slept together, and I drank myself to sleep on those nights. Then, I found myself not needing it, and towards the end, I found myself trusting him to keep me safe.
"Do you know how terrifying that was?" she asked the table. "To finally feel safe, with something that I'd had nightmares about for years, always afraid he would kill me. He'd kiss me, and I wondered every time where he would stop; at my neck, my torso? Maybe all the way down to the hooves?"
There was silence for a while, broken by Fluttershy.
"Why didn't you tell him? Or anyone?" she asked. "I would have listened, Rarity. Twilight would have listened, or even Starlight, or-"
Rarity snorted, quietly.
"Because I hated myself for it," she said, evenly. "I hated so much how scared I was of that poor, sweet boy, for something as little as what he was born as. I hated how I nearly wet myself whenever he leaned too close to me too quickly, how I almost wished he would just bite me and get it over with. I hated..."
She sobbed, once.
"I hated how much I hated him for making me feel so scared when I knew damned well he had no say in it. I hated how much I had to drink, and then I hated when I didn't need to touch a drop and still lingered in his kisses. I hated my friends for not ever noticing, and I hated myself for every lie I told to make sure none of you knew."
"You were caught in a maelstrom of your own creation," Cadance said, her voice croaking a little from both the lengthy silence, and the outpouring of emotion from the mare.
Rarity nodded, miserable tears falling from her fatigued eyes.
Shining looked around the room, then gently clopped his hooves together.
"I think that's enough for now. Rarity, you must be exhausted, and I need to figure out what to do about Spike. I think we should eat now, and maybe talk about what to do with salvaging yours and Spike's relationship."
Again, Rarity snorted.
"No, he's right," Cadance said, surprising everypony. "There's still something there, or he wouldn't have reacted the way he did. I think right now, we should figure out where he is, where he's going, and how to get him back here. Or get us there, whichever needs to happen."
Lowering her head, Rarity stared into the table before she muttered, "Thank you. I know I don't deserve this..."
Flurry Heart chuckled and looked at her mom while she said, "Love isn't a thing where you can do something to deserve it. And between companions, or between friends, love is love."
v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
Spike flew south. On the horizon, he saw a small town in the shadow of a large mountain. Turning to the mountain, he sped towards Canterlot.