Flight was only just beginning to enjoy the spa visit when Lotus seemed to notice something. “Ahh, Princess?” She sounded distinctly uncertain.
“Mm?” she answered. She had, about a minute before, climbed onto the massage table next to the one Rarity was on.
“You… You have been eating healthy, right?”
She blinked. “I normally do,” she muttered. “Why?”
“Well-!” Lotus began, but Rarity cut her off.
“Normally?” She sounded mildly alarmed.
She nodded lightly. “I… haven’t had anything to eat since I, ahh, got lost.”
Rarity seemed to be stunned into silence by that.
Not Lotus, though. When she spoke, she did so haltingly; it sounded like she had been shocked, and was dreading the answer to her question.
“How… How long ago did you… get lost?”
“Eh,” she muttered, thinking back. “It was… about three days ago.”
“And… what about… water?”
“That’s been…” She paused. “I’d say hard to find, but that’s a bit of an understatement.”
“You- You mean- you haven’t had any food or water for three days?” Lotus asked. She still sounded like she dreaded the answer, but her tone had picked up a note of urgency.
“Yeah, right about.” Then she looked sideways, at where both Aloe and Rarity were staring at her, their jaws hanging. “What?”
“Three days…?” Lotus muttered. “P-Princess, you need to eat something,” she stated. “Probably the only reason you’re still alive right now is that you’re an Alicorn. Anypony else would be already dead.”
“Okay,” she muttered.
“No, Princess, it’s not okay,” Lotus retorted. “You need to eat something, and you need to eat it now. Your life is at stake if you don’t. I’m putting this visit on hold for you- you head for Sugarcube Corner or something. I’m sure Pinkie Pie will be willing to feed you without any questions… or payment.”
She tilted her head, climbing off the table. “Pinkie Pie? Who’s that?”
Lotus looked at her. “Ahh… she’s a very pink pony that works the counter at Sugarcube Corner. Are you sure you haven’t met her…?”
She put a hoof to her chin. “She… doesn’t happen to wear a camouflage hat and use binoculars to look around corners, does she?”
“... Sometimes. Why?”
“Huh. So what’s it mean when she makes a really big gasp and disappears?” It seemed like the perfect opportunity to understand what the pink mare had done in that alleyway.
Aloe, Lotus, and Rarity all facehooved.
“She will definitely be willing to serve you,” Lotus said decisively. “And you don’t want to keep her waiting.”
She didn’t miss Aloe looking at Rarity. “Shall we put your visit on hold too?”
Flight scowled, while Rarity nodded. “Why would she be waiting?”
“Because… You’ll see.”
“C’mon, D- er, Princess,” Rarity pleaded, leading the way towards the exit. “You do not want to miss it.”
“But-!”
“No buts,” Rarity declared. “We can come back here tomorrow.”
She scowled, and followed. “Alright then.” She hoped Rarity wouldn’t turn out to be like a lesser version of the dark diarch.
She had worried that Rarity was dragging her to Sugarcube Corner because she was trying to decide for her what was good for her.
She needn’t have worried.
From the moment she stepped in the door, the pink pony was back. So was a large amount of confetti, a bunch of streamers, a great big banner with ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ written across it in large letters, and no less than three towering cakes.
“Welcome to Ponyville!” Pinkie announced. “And Welcome to your Welcome to Ponyville Part- Wait, you’re a Princess? Ohno!” She promptly vanished. Three short burps, in quick succession, disappeared all three cakes, before a pink blur blazing around the room replaced all three with much bigger, fancier cakes, and completely redid the decorations in about seven seconds. Finally, a red carpet unrolled to a stop at Flight’s hooves, and Pinkie landed next to it with a bow. “Welcome to your Welcome to Ponyville Party, Princess!”
Flight just stared, for several seconds, before she shook herself. Her horn magic most definitely did not make her better than anypony else, if an earth pony could do that.
Then, she sighed, and looked at Pinkie. “Please don’t worry about that,” she asked. “I’d much prefer it if ponies would treat me like they would anypony else.”
Pinkie looked up at her, seeming shocked, with tears beginning to appear in her eyes.
She smiled. “But thank you anyways. You didn’t know that, and this does look fit for a Princess. So, um…” She looked around. “I’ll have to admit, this is the first true party I’ve, well, ever been to. Lead the way?”
Pinkie looked like she might explode with the excitement.
As it turned out, the party was so much more than Flight thought it ever could be. Pinkie had shown her to dozens of different party activities she could participate in, offered her enough cake to build a pony, and showed her around the refreshments. Flight politely declined to participate in many of the activities, telling Pinkie that she was still exhausted from her long journey- and so would be content to sit and watch, and let other ponies enjoy those activities.
So it was that, somewhere around half an hour later, she was to be found lounging at a table near the refreshments, watching everypony else enjoy what was ostensibly her party and sipping on a mug of apple cider- her favorite out of the refreshments provided.
“Good evening, Princess,” a carmel-colored stallion asked, seating himself at the same table with his own refreshment. “I hope you’re well?”
One eyebrow raised marginally- from his tone, he almost sounded like her medic. “Certainly better than I was this morning,” she answered softly. One of the strangest things she’d noticed about the Equestrian ponies was that all the older ones seemed to have images on their flanks. Plenty of other ponies her size didn’t have those images, though, so she didn’t stand out- and she hadn’t seen what his was before he sat down. She did wonder what they meant, if anything.
“I noticed you don’t seem to be… well, eating very much?”
She nodded. “I haven’t eaten in three days,” she answered. “If I eat too much right now, it’ll just come back up again.” She shuddered. “And I don’t want to do that.”
He nodded. “A wise choice. May I ask what happened?”
She looked at him. “How do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Well, if you haven’t eaten for three days, and have quite so many bruises… though most of them look like old bruises from here, soo…”
She blinked. “... Oh. Um… I learned to fly. That… that made most of the bruises.” She grinned.
He nodded. “I take it you weren’t born an Alicorn?”
She shook her head. “Unicorn. But I learned to fly- then, that became very, very important.” She shuddered. “I… got separated from my crew. Speaking of which, if you see any dark-furred ponies with catlike eyes, bat wings, and sharp teeth, let me know, because that’s probably them.” She paused, looking at him.
He scowled. “I… can’t say that’s familiar. Would they be a fourth tribe, or…?”
She nodded. “Yes- they’re Thestrals. Pretty similar to pegasi, and nocturnal.”
“Huh. Learning something new every day, I suppose.”
She grinned. “I guess.”
“Anyways, what happened when you got separated?”
“Well, I… spent half the day fighting your dark Diarch, then all the time since hiding from her. Then I got here, and… everything has been getting rather rapidly better since.”
“ ‘Dark Diarch’?” he asked. “You… You’ve never heard of Princess Luna?”
“Princess Luna?” she asked. “No, I don’t think so. So, what’s her lighter-colored sister called?”
“Ahh… that’d be Princess Celestia. You must be from pretty far away if you’ve never heard of Princesses Celestia and Luna.”
She grinned. “Well, I’m from so far away that if you take however far away you think I’m from, then multiply it by the largest number you can think of, you’ll probably still come up short.”
“Really?” he asked. “I know some pretty faraway places.”
She nodded.
“And some pretty big numbers.”
She shrugged. “Big enough and far enough to multiply to make the distance that light would travel in a dozen years?”
“Uhh… Isn’t light instant?”
She grinned. “It’s not- it’s just fast enough it looks instant at a planetary scale. If…” She looked up. “Yeah. If the light were to make a curved trajectory just outside the planetary atmosphere- which it never would, but if it did- it’d take something like a tenth of a second to wrap around the entire planet, and get back to where it started.”
“... Wow. How long of a walk would that be?”
She let out a snort of laughter. “If it were physically possible to walk it, very long.”
“Ahh,” he muttered. “Um… Do you mind if I take a look at some of those bruises?”
She raised an eyebrow at him for a second, evaluating him, then shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”