“All unicorns can grow beards,” I said simply, folding my forelegs over my chest emphatically.
Shining Armor rolled his eyes. “I know that, Twily. I trimmed mine this morning.”
“So did I!” I argued. “And I have every morning almost as long as I can remember. I’m sick of it!”
Shining Armor said nothing, just arched a single eyebrow at me.
I huffed lightly. "Did you know that anypony with unicorn ancestry can grow a beard? Sometimes it takes a little magical encouragement, but--”
“Twilight.” Firm, yet kind. Shining Armor’s specialty.
I sighed.
“Why are you doing this?” Shining asked. “You can tell me anything, y’know. I just-- ponies are talking. You’re making a statement, but nopony knows what it is.”
I scratched at my chin. The fur there was long enough. Now, to slip over my hoof and offer some resistance. Perhaps not more than half an inch… but it felt like some much more than that. I was obsessed with the feeling.
Shining Armor grimaced as he watched me admire my own beard.
I scoffed. “Sunburst doesn’t trim his beard.”
“Sunburst isn’t a public figure,” Shining gently reminded me. “Or a girl.”
“Girls aren’t allowed to have beards, now?”
“You know what I mean.”
I growled softly to myself.
Shining Armor leaned back in his chair. His eyes scanned the room slowly, carefully. He had been here hundreds of times as a member of the royal guard, and yet he always seemed to regard the throne room with an indescribable wonder.
The royal throne room was not one of my favorite places.
It was mine, of course. I had been given it in a whole to-do. The ponies of Equestria didn’t think of it as ‘The Royal Throne Room’, they thought of it as ‘Twilight’s Throne Room’. The thought of those words on other ponies’ lips sort of made my skin crawl.
Because it wasn’t mine. I just worked here.
It was far too big and lofty. Even the lightest and most careful of hoofsteps would echo tremendously.
And it was too ornate! All crystals and scrolls and stained glass and carved columns… I was a simple pony. I felt at home in cozy little libraries with smoldering fires and the occasional breeze from an open window. Not this great, big, empty place.
I suppose, for the princesses before me, it felt full. But that was just a guess.
I had tried, over the past few years, to make it feel less like an altar to myself and more like a place of business. Some curtains here, some tables and chairs there. A few couches around a coffee table. This was a place for leaders to communicate, for minds to meet, for history to be made!
And yet… it still felt like a throne room. Just a throne room with a bunch of my junk in it.
I looked back at Shining Armor. "How come you aren't growing out your beard, hm?"
The question seemed to catch him off guard. He blinked a few times and had trouble meeting my eyes. "Well, 'cause-- just 'cause, I-- y'know, I never have before. Force of habit, right?" He chuckled, but it didn't sound the least bit natural to me.
I squinted at him carefully and stroked the short hairs on my chin. It was a satisfying feeling… I could see why Sunburst liked to twirl his beard around his hoof while he worked or read. A little flicker of giddy excitement kicked up within me at the thought of having a beard as long and silky as his.
"But you're a royal, now," I said. The hairs pricked and poked at my skin. "On two counts! Through me and through Cadance. Don't you want to have the royal beard?"
Shining Armor was picking at his own chin, now, though the action seemed beyond the reach of his active mind. "No? Not really."
"Well, why not?" I asked. "You're a stallion. It wouldn't stir up any weird controversy. And you wouldn't have to think about trimming it anymore."
Shining made a low, non-committal sound. He was looking at my chin, fooling with his own. Then, as if a switch were flicked, he snapped back to my eyes and dropped his hoof on the table. "Hey, quit pulling those mind tricks on me. Changing the subject, all sneaky…"
"It's not a trick!" I exclaimed. "I don't get what the big deal is! Beard, no beard-- a third of the population grows them, and most of them just cut it right off! So why do you?"
Shining Armor shifted. "I-- I tried. Growing a beard. I didn't like it."
I paused. My shoulders had been tensed up near my ears, and I tried to relax them. "You-- what?"
"Y'know, I think you should put some bookshelves in here," Shining said hastily. "It's not really you. I mean, it's more you than it used to be, but--"
"Now who's changing the subject?"
Shining Armor heaved a sigh at having been caught. "Cadance doesn't grow hers. She's a royal."
"I didn't ask Cadance," I said. "I asked you."
My brother was breathing deeply and steadily, his eyes focused on a point somewhere behind me. He leaned back into the chair.
My hoof cut through the beard hairs again. Silky, prickly, thick, and thin. A rich and varied texture. Tangible.
"Y'know, Cadance was never the 'damsel-in-distress' type," Shining said, a little smile curling at the corner of his mouth. "She looked the part. And a lot of ponies thought she was. But she wasn't… she was just kind and sweet and good, and other ponies thought that made her-- made her vulnerable or naive or something.
"Even after we got together, she would never let herself lean on me too hard. She didn't need to. Actually, for the first time in my life, I really felt like I could lean on somepony else; being an older brother, all that on the royal guard… I never had the chance to lean. I always had to stand by myself.
"My buddies from the royal guard teased me for it. Nothing too bad, just a little ribbing." Shining paused to chuckle. "It honestly made me laugh, the stuff they said. But I felt like I had to do something to prove to them I was still in charge. That I was still a stallion and stuff."
He stopped a moment, then leaned forward to rest his chin on the table between us.
I did the same, on top of my folded hooves.
"I started growing a beard. Caddy asked me why, and I didn't exactly have a good answer." He shifted his head slightly, casting a sideways glance down at the table. "And I think it was then that I realized how much I hated it. Not the beard, exactly, but the idea that being a stallion was my job or something. Like there were certain things I had to do just because I have a-- well, y'know."
I snickered.
"Shut up, Twi," Shining scolded through his own stifled laughter.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
He did the same.
We giggled together for a moment. It was nice. It didn't echo the way it should have, though… it didn't rattle around in here the way it did when somepony shouted to me from the doorway. Princess this, and princess that… bouncing around inside this room for hours at a time.
"Sorry," Shining said. "Probably sounds stupid. Feels stupid."
"It's not," I said. "I wouldn't want to be a stallion. I don't even really want to be a mare, I guess. But… I dunno. I don't think anypony really wants either of those things, right? They're just made up."
Shining scoffed. "Yeah. Can't imagine anypony really wants that junk."
"Maybe Rarity," I said.
"Maybe Rarity," my brother agreed. He cast his glance back in my direction, and laughed. "So that's what it is, huh?"
I was silent. My beard rubbed against the back of my hoof, all tingly and satisfying and perfect. "I just wish ponies would call me 'Twilight' again."
"So… you started growing the royal beard to get out of being called a princess?" Shining surmised.
"Well, you're a prince!" I argued, lifting my head from the table. "And a captain. But ponies don't call you by title, they call you by name. Why don't I get the same choice?"
A look of confusion passed over Shining's face, and a little twitch at the corner of his mouth. "And the beard is helping that… how, exactly?"
I flushed a little bit. "Uh… it confuses them?"
Shining laughed a little. I laughed with him.
"You'd better hope they don't catch onto 'your highness'," Shining said with a sly grin.
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, shut up."
With Shining, the throne room didn't feel quite so big. In fact, it almost felt like mine.