She could only pretend that the winter was dying.
It was something which often happened in Celestia's presence. To be accompanied by the Solar alicorn was frequently to walk within a mobile micro-environment, one which was just a little warmer than the rest of the world. The Princess had full control over the effect -- although palace rumor suggested that her rare flares of temper produced a result opposite to Luna's: instead of ice creeping across the floor, there would be heat haze spreading through the air, and a truly furious Celestia had supposedly been known to make tapestry fringes send up plumes of smoke.
Full control meant she understood when not to use it. Being near Celestia during the Weather Bureau's cruelest excuse for a summer day (and Twilight wasn't sure what purpose excess heat was meant to accomplish) wouldn't put any additional sweat into a pony's coat. But when the world was cold, when chill wind seemed to blast through flesh to embed itself in bone... in those times, being near the alicorn would make you warm.
In the years before her change, Twilight had simply seen it as an inherent part of who Celestia was. Shortly after she'd finally started to study the means by which pegasus magic functioned, she'd realized that she didn't know how the alicorn's effect actually worked. Any pegasus who knew the appropriate techniques could alter the local temperature. But they would be working with what was, within their range, a finite resource. A pegasus shifted heat. You made one area warmer by taking that energy away from somewhere else. For every hot spot, there was an area of counterbalancing cold, and quite a bit of what made heat-shifting complicated was fending off the continual attempts by physics to even things out.
Luna's anger created cold and from what Twilight had been able to determine, it was creation. There was no sign that heat was being sent anywhere else: the dark mare simply radiated chill. Celestia didn't seem to be focusing warmth out of the air around her: the giant form silently generated it.
Energy couldn't be created from nothing. It was possible that in a similar fashion to the way normal ponies channeled the calories from consumed food into their magic, Celestia was directly converting some portion of her personal stores into heat. But that still didn't explain the younger of the Diarchy, because cold represented the absence of a quality. With Luna, if energy hadn't been relocated, then it was effectively being destroyed and you couldn't do that either.
So it felt as if there were two possibilities: either the sisters were effectively operating under their own rules, or their magic had found a pair of subclauses which nopony else understood. It was just that most ponies didn't think about how alicorns functioned. They accepted what should have been strangeness as something perfectly natural, because alicorns were different and so why wouldn't their magic follow suit? In Celestia's case, you simply recognized the background presence of something which had been true for the whole of your life. Questioning the magic of the Solar Princess was like asking about the color of the sky: there was a short, simple answer, and anypony who tried to understand the more complex one might find their investigations taking them down some very strange trails.
Most ponies didn't think about it at all. But Twilight had seen what happened when somepony truly began to consider not just what alicorns were, but how they might have come to exist in the first place. There were ways in which her own existence was the result of that question, and...
...there were times when she hated the way her own mind worked or rather, her failures in stopping it. The myriad ways she could obsess over a single concept: obsessively, compulsively circling the same thought as the invisible pacing groove steadily wore into her sanity. It meant there were things she didn't want to think about because she might need days to get the thought out, and when she was trotting through the Acres in the company of the Princess...
It was warm near the white fur, because that was simply the way things were. If they stayed in any one place for too long, then the snow began to melt. Steady drips fell from overhead, or clumps of snow crashed from bracing branches. The heat was real -- but in a way, it was also illusion. When the Princess left, the cold would return. There was fresh snowfall scheduled: the storm would begin slightly before Sun-lowering, and the new accumulation would easily come up to Twilight's knees.
For now, they were trotting together, with the largest pace carefully dropped so smaller forms could keep up. Twilight was on the alicorn's -- the second alicorn's right, and Applejack established a guardian border at the librarian's other flank. Caught between two larger forms, but one of those overshadowed her within the normal pony scale, and the other... had been casting a deeper shadow for years. Something which moved with Twilight wherever she went, down all the paths of her life.
The cold always came back and as three ponies quietly moved through whitebound silent, sleeping Acres, the librarian waited for it to reach her mentor's words.
"I'd like to have the device back. If you're done with it."
It had been almost casual.
"I --" She had been expecting anger. Direct orders. Enough of the Royal Voice to clear all snow from the trees in a single localized avalanche. Casual was beyond her.
"For purposes of getting all of the evidence in one place," Celestia added. "Because there's an investigation under way and we are trying to examine the evidence, so it would help to get the missing piece into the set."
The farmer glanced directly across and up: Twilight's minimal height didn't create any real barrier to be cleared. "Where are y'startin'?"
"Currently? From just about every direction at once," the white mare told them. "We're still trying to identify the stallion. However, given what's just about an exacting physical resemblance and the fact that --" the hesitation lasted just long enough to be noticed "-- a mark was erased, we also have to consider something else. Something nopony wanted to think about, but..."
Celestia's head dipped. Her eyes briefly closed, and the flow of the pastel mane slowed.
"...when you've been at this for -- a while... you learn to think differently. So we had to look at a related possibility."
The glance down at Twilight was both automatic and, for the party on the receiving end, familiar. The mentor wishing to see if her student could answer the unvoiced question.
"That..." She swallowed, and the warmth of the air did nothing for the cold which slid down her throat. "...the mark might have been... changed."
The white mare silently nodded, and two Bearers momentarily stumbled in melting snow.
"Is that possible?" Applejack barely breathed. "Ah mean, Ah know it's possible t' switch 'em. We learned that the..." and the hat shifted forward, shading that much more of her eyes. "...hard way. But that fell apart so fast, t' instant we started actin' like ourselves again. Maybe..." This time, the farmer swallowed, and needed two efforts to prevent it from becoming a choking mass. "...if he was switched, an' he died before the spell could be broken... maybe that's how it ends. Other pony's got his mark, keeps it, and the switched one jus'... jus'..."
They all stopped. Gave her a moment, until the nausea pretended to fade.
"I don't know," Celestia finally said. "The --"
Stopped. Closed her eyes again, and the huge right forehoof stomped against half-frozen ground.
"The -- first time..."
Again, harder, and white fell from nearby branches.
The giant mare breathed. Her ribs shifted as if breath was all there was, while those who were just a little more than her subjects watched.
She isn't like this, she isn't like this, she isn't...
A familiar thought for Twilight in the moons since their return from Trotter's Falls, and one which had an assigned suite of emotions to accompany it. Worry, confusion, fear --
"-- everypony has things they don't talk about," Celestia quietly told them, eyes still tightly shut. "Not in public. Secrets, personal privacies. There might be a friend or two who already knows, a confidant -- but..."
One more breath.
"I'm asking both of you to imagine something," the eldest alicorn softly requested. and they could hear the pressure in the quiet words as every syllable was forced into fast-heating air. "Imagine you had a secret. Easy enough for you, Applejack, and I think Twilight has her own acquaintance with the concept. But one of you can speak with every other earth pony, the other has her friends and family -- and for this secret, across almost the whole of your life, there is, at most, one other pony you could ever talk to. One. And that's not a constant. The identity of that single pony changes. They come, they go, they --" and the edges had been smoothed away from the pain through the grinding of the centuries, leaving only a perfect cutting blade "-- die. Time passes without having a confidant. Years. And eventually, on the most longed-for day of your life... the number goes to two. But that other pony knows the secret because she was there for almost all of it, and she doesn't necessarily want to speak about those things at all. Because it's fresher for her. It hurts that much more."
The purple eyes opened as the white head turned to regard them both, and a stilled mane failed to shift.
"If you can feel any echo of what that might be like," the oldest mare in the world asked them, "then I want you to go a little further. Imagine that the subject of that secret -- was your life. The earliest part of it, the most crucial. Something you can never return to, because there was only ever one spell which did that, a gift from a dear friend, and I've already used it. Something you still find yourself longing for, even when you know how much of it was pain. Because it was pain shared, and... the ones you shared it with are gone. Still with you and gone, Twilight. It isn't a contradiction. All you have left are..."
The half-tangible mane drooped. Collapsed. Solidified.
"...shadows."
And they were staring at her. The dipped head, so low that it seemed as if her neck could no longer bear the weight. The tears which were slowly soaking into white fur. But as much as anything else, the brown of mane and tail, multiple horrible shades of brown which had been stolen from the full palette offered by every quality of manure. It was thickly tangled around itself, displayed too many natural knots to count, laughed at brushes and forced combs to choose suicide over battle. They were the single ugliest combination of mane and tail which the mares had ever seen, and they were also busy beating up anypony stupid enough to dream of second place.
"Um," Applejack said, and Twilight instantly envied her friend's ability to come up with even that much.
A half-smile briefly crinkled one side of Celestia's mouth.
"I did say something about not wanting to lie on your land." The white head slowly shifted: left to right, then back again. "You've both taken custody of so many secrets already. So here's one of the silliest, because you already saw Luna's natural colors, on the day of the Return. It took a while before she had the full strength of her magic again: enough for the stars to come back. That's all it is, you know. Carrying a little too much magic, and so some of it expresses itself wherever it can."
(It was at that moment that Twilight became simultaneously, horribly aware of three things: that her mouth was slightly open, she didn't know how long it had been that way, and she seemed to have lost all capacity for closing it again.)
"Incidentally," the alicorn added with what Twilight perceived as purely incidental (and completely unnecessary) cruelty, "because I knew I was going to do this today, what you're seeing is post-styling." And because there didn't seem to be such a thing as too many upended nails directed at the center of their hooves, "What do you think of the look?"
Which was when the white mare tossed her head in what was clearly meant to be an attempt at assuming a glamour pose, sending the mass of the horrible mane up and into the nearest branch.
There was a cracking noise. Twilight desperately wished for it to have come from her own spine.
Eventually, the last of the dead twigs stopped raining down, with the exception of the ones which had gotten stuck.
Celestia glanced back at her own hair. Regarded the trapped debris.
"Hmm," she considered. "Distinct improvement."
There was a moment when there were only two sounds on the whole of the Acres. The first was a horrible sort of half-choke, the gasp of somepony who was trying to hold everything back and knew that to let anything more escape was death, it was everything like restrained, helpless, doomed laughter, it had come from Applejack's throat, and Twilight knew exactly what it meant because it had emerged about a half-second after her own.
The oldest mare in the world looked directly at them. Grinned.
Somepony snickered. The longest second of Twilight's life eventually let her identify the source as having been extremely local.
And then they were laughing.
They were all laughing, and she'd heard the Princess laugh before, but it was usually such a restrained thing: the sound of mirth which had to retain a level of public decorum, where laughing too loud or too hard simply made others wonder exactly how much they should be laughing along. But this time, the open laughter was permission, and Applejack nearly dropped to the ground from the force of the mirth, Twilight became aware that she was half-weeping and didn't know why, while Celestia simply laughed as the winter around them temporarily faded away.
It was a laugh which came across as something natural. A joy which hadn't been moderated through careful practice, and so Twilight wondered just how often such laughter truly emerged.
Not often.
Not in public.
It was the newest lesson from somepony who, on some level, might always be her mentor. A Princess wouldn't laugh this way, and so they were in the presence of the mare.
But eventually, the laughter stopped.
"Our laughter died first..."
"I planned on doing that," Celestia quietly told them. "I know it's a little thing, but... I'm hoping you'll both see it as a token of how much I do trust you. But it's also because of something else. When you can't talk about something with anypony, when you effectively train yourself not to talk about it, to not even think about it so much of the time..."
It was strange, watching such large forehooves scrape at what little was left of the snow.
"...then when the time comes to talk -- you can reach the point where letting a single word out has you fighting yourself. The last time I started speaking to somepony about my life was nearly three decades ago, because I have to have a confidant in every generation. My seneschal. The one pony whom I can trust to see me and not the crown."
"...who?" struck Twilight as a perfectly natural question.
With a small smile, "Who came when you asked for the pony I trusted most?"
Fancypants.
Of course it was the noble. If it was going to be anypony --
-- it wasn't me, she didn't trust me --
Nearly three decades ago. When it came to not having spoken to Twilight at that time, the white mare had a rather solid excuse.
"But it's still hard," Celestia continued, and they could both hear how the steadiness had been forced into her voice. "Even with Luna, it can be hard, because we were both there for so much of it, and that means there's things which we both don't want to talk about. Because that brings it all back. We --" and her head dipped again "-- didn't talk about Star for nearly two years..."
The librarian's next words were just below a whisper. They were barely audible, and yet something about them felt completely unstoppable.
"I'm not him."
Soft contact against her flank. The farmer's powerful form getting into position.
"In some ways," Celestia quietly said, "you do remind me of him --"
Her heart began to collapse, the lack of blood flow did something to all four knees and Applejack was the only thing keeping her up --
"-- but it's usually the ways in which all who love magic are alike. The passion. Searching for not just the answers, but to see if the questions were the right ones. I see that in you, Twilight. The usual problem in getting you out of the basement, because you'll spend weeks seeking any part of the solution to the Last Question..." The head shake came across as somewhat bemused. "...while forgetting to devote a single hour towards looking for lunch. Once Star had a laboratory again, it was an ongoing challenge to get him out of it. Luna learned to escort, and he figured out a working which blocked her. I don't think anypony else has ever cast it -- and on the good days, he would just -- forget he knew it. He hated being interrupted, and yet he would allow it, because there was a time when he understood the why. That we were trying to get him out under Sun and Moon because we still loved him, and he..."
Stopped, just long enough for one more tear to fall.
"...he loved us. I... think that was... even part of the problem, in the end. Or even at the start of it. That there was love, and... for him, it was..."
The heat vanished.
"...no," the white mare half-whispered. "Not that. Not yet. We -- stick with what we need right now. Because the longer you stay silent, the easier it is to remain that way, the harder it becomes to speak -- and I think you understand that, Twilight. Just about as well as anypony in the world. We talk about the things related to today, as much as we can. I just... I wanted to show you..."
She was so large.
She was shivering.
She was so small...
"...that I'm trying. Please... it's going to take time. It did with Fancypants. Moons, and he still doesn't know all of it. But for today... the things we need, as much as I can. Will you grant me that?"
Farmer and librarian exchanged a glance, one where it was easy for each to see the other reflected in opposing eyes. Went back to the white mare.
"I'm trying," Twilight quietly offered.
Celestia's smile was weak, and felt all the more true for that weakness.
"I'll take it."
They were trotting again. Applejack had to force herself to keep the pace. (The problem wasn't the speed: it was not stopping to make spot checks of the trees.)
"The first time that spell --" and the white mare almost spat the words "-- was used, there were no deaths. We came close, though. It was similar to what happened when you tried it, Twilight. Too many targets and a confusion of memories. It's just that on the original casting, there were more than a dozen ponies affected. Some of them nearly died because they were trying to use talents they didn't have, dangerous and rare skills. But we managed to get everypony sorted out in less than a day. And since nopony died, I can't say what it would look like if the spell wore off on a corpse. But it's something to keep in mind. We know Doctor Gentle found some of Star Swirl's research, and nopony living -- Luna and I included -- can say where every last note might be hidden. It's not impossible for somepony else to have learned how to cast it."
Twilight just barely managed the nod. "And... disease? Are the doctors sure --"
"As much as they can be, with something new," Celestia answered as she ducked under a low branch. "But they're still worried. Just trying not to show how much they're worrying, which makes it all the more visible. It's just like it was with Joyous --"
"Who?" was Twilight's automatic contribution. It was also instantly derailed by the other voice.
"Her?" Applejack asked, right on on top of Twilight's lonely syllable. "What 'bout her? What did she do?"
The friends looked at each other again.
"Y'ain't seen her?"
"Her who? Joyous? I don't know anypony named --"
"-- she's kinda hard t' miss, Twi --"
"-- there's thousand of ponies in this settled zone, more every moon and since I -- changed, they just keep coming! I can't keep up --"
The white mare audibly cleared the world's largest pony throat.
"Joyous moved here a few moons ago, on a group recommendation from Luna, myself, and her therapist." Celestia stated. "At a guess, she hasn't made it into the library because she spent nearly a year trying to get through makeup classes. The thought of reading for fun may not occur to her for a while. A metallic dark blue pegasus, Twilight: that should make her easy enough to sort out of the herd. And she was the focus of the last time we thought there was a new disease which could affect a mark."
Twilight blinked, and did so largely because most of the other options suddenly seemed to center around yelling.
"There was -- there was a new disease which affected a mark --"
"-- it might have been closer to an allergen --" didn't feel like an acceptable excuse.
"-- and you didn't tell me?"
Far too calmly, "I don't tell you everything. I can't."
Implied permission to treat somepony as an equal seemed to suggest a license to raise her voice. "You don't tell me anything! It was something which affected her mark! Why didn't you call me in? The Doctors Bear asked for me when you didn't, so this is at least twice --"
"Because," the too-even voice cut her off, "we thought it was a disease, and that Luna and I had already been exposed. And that meant the most crucial thing in the world, to potentially save the world, was protecting you."
Whatever had been wrong with Twilight's jaw control seemed to be turning into a recurring issue.
Applejack waited a moment to see if any words tumbled out, then risked a breath.
"What did the allergen do?" the farmer asked. "Joyous don't talk 'bout herself much. Mostly likes t' chat 'bout whatever's goin' on around town when she picks up her apples. Ain't hardly ever seen such a mare for small talk."
"Because she didn't really get to speak to anypony for several years," Celestia told them. "Her condition amplified mark magic. Increased the strength of her talent, to the point where she had no control over it. A passive talent, so it just went on constantly, and..." The ugly tail twitched. "Applejack, I'm presuming she hasn't told you what that talent is."
Amplifies mark magic? There was half a wonder there, matched against half a horror, added to a moment when Twilight's deepest instincts weren't sure which part was winning.
Which got them both a quick head shake. "Ah thought tail groomer. Weird mark for that, though. And it ain't somethin' passive, so --" The farmer visibly thought about it. "-- no idea. What is her talent?"
"I'd rather leave that to her --" and just ahead of both inhalations "-- because in this case, it is private. But it's about the nature of what we thought was a disease. It amplifies talents. For an active talent, it forces you to perform, much like Cutie Pox, except that for the stages we saw, the victims still got to sleep. Luna and I both have active talents, Applejack, and one of the worst cases was that we wouldn't be able to stop ourselves from using them as much as we could." The white mare's tone dropped fast enough to slam decibels into exposed soil. "Imagine if Sun and Moon just started to accelerate."
They both did. And then they both wished they hadn't.
"It was an allergen, in the end," Celestia continued. "Something which doesn't leave the body, and needs to be neutralized. Ultimately, the Doctors Bear isolated both cause and cure. And we had to keep you away from us, because if it had been a disease, you were the last pony in the world who could be exposed. We didn't involve you because we couldn't, and I didn't tell you until now because you have more than enough in your life to worry about. Some of which we're going to discuss right now."
Passing thin-trunked trees, ones with oddly striated bark. Twilight wasn't sure what those were.
"The Royal Physicians are investigating," the white mare told them. "There may even be something specific to look at. Did you notice the corpse's puncture wound?"
Twilight nodded, concentrated on the inner image. "There was red around the edges. Almost like he'd been burned."
"But without an actual burn," Celestia observed -- and a faint hint of red underlit white fur. "I'm... something of an expert on burns. The doctors feel the reddening looks like another kind of reaction. It's possible that the wound represents where something was introduced to his body. So they're trying to isolate that. With Joyous, the ultimate cause was a plant: this could be similar."
"Twi told me his hooves were dirty," Applejack recalled. "If it's a plant, that could be another clue. Anypony lookin'?"
The white mare nodded. "We've sent out soil samples. Trying to figure out where the plant might have been growing. But those just went out today. We're not expecting immediate results. And as I was about to say before -- we're working under the theory that if we're dealing with something which also changes marks, then this could be Linchpin. So that means an investigation team trying to gallop down his life. Right now, we know he left Canterlot about four years ago. We don't know why, or where he went from there."
"And the notebook pages?" Twilight asked.
"We recovered a few more scraps from between the stones. One of them was legible: that's been added to the list. Somepony's trying to reconstruct the watermark." Celestia glanced down at the little mare. "We do know what we're doing, Twilight. These are basic investigation procedures. It's something where a hat doesn't help."
It took a few seconds before she could manage so much as an "Um."
"You did write me about the hat." There was no effort required to look over Twilight's back at Applejack either, especially from that height. "The other hat."
The farmer indulged in a soft snort.
"But we're missing a piece of evidence," Celestia solidly continued, and the brown tail very visibly failed to lash. It was a little too easy to see where the lash wasn't. "Which I'm almost completely certain you have, Twilight, and possibly in your saddlebags because you weren't sure you could trust the tree's security. So. To save Spike the time and trouble of a scroll which I'm sure he really doesn't want to write -- would you mind telling me what you found?"
It took a while. By the time they finished, the device fragment had been returned, and the very top of the main barn was just starting to come into distant sight.
"Congratulations," the white mare quietly offered. "I'd thought about it. Going to Ratchette. And I might have done it, but -- from me, it probably would have been an order. You managed to find a way where you could just ask. " The huge rib cage slowly released the sigh. "I've been thinking about her every so often since I read the transcript. There are things in the armory which are isolated because we're not sure what they do. Or we're aware of their function, but not how we could get them to stop. There's dozens of devices like that. Some of them are ancient enough to be pre-Discordian, or they were made by ponies who simply didn't think of things like leaving notes any more than they were concerned about how to make that one sphere stop exploding."
"...stop exploding," Applejack eventually managed, and only after Twilight's ears had flicked into a position of visible helplessness.
"When it's solid, it's about a hip across in all directions and covered in tiny cracks," Celestia told them. "It looks like a jigsaw assembled from pieces a little wider than two tail strands. But when you turn it on, every piece it's made from moves outwards at about five gallops per hour, to a distance of ten body lengths. Fast enough, and solid enough, to go through most of what's in between. Then the pieces collapse inwards to reform the sphere. And then, depending on how much charge it has, the whole thing happens again. Possibly faster. So it explodes. Then it explodes twice. The maximum anypony ever witnessed and lived was seven. And it's very easy to set off. What we don't know is how to transport it without setting it off, which means it usually has to be moved from a fairly great distance. There's all sorts of mysteries in the armory. And when I read about Ratchette --- I thought about what it would be like to potentially solve every last one of them."
"So why haven't you?" escaped Twilight's lips one crucial second before the actual reason flashed across her mind.
Her expression collapsed into horror. It left her with just enough strength to look up at the white mare's wry, thin smile.
"It turns out I have a natural objection to asking one of my subjects to cut herself," Celestia stated. "Over and over, especially when nopony's sure if there's any long-term consequences attached to that magic. But if it was a disaster -- if the nation was at risk, or the world -- then I would have asked." With a smaller sigh, "It's just something which tends to come across as an order. But she did it for you, Twilight. And now we know. It's a teleportation conductor."
The white mare looked up. Purple eyes visibly took a sighting on the barn.
"I should be presentable," she decided as her lips quirked, and something began to shimmer at the very tips of the manure-brown mane. "But I can go back for the crown later. A teleportation conductor, Twilight. That's a huge leap forward. There have been ponies working on that theory for centuries. The escort network's tried to shut down research a few times, because they're afraid it would put them out of business. I've always tried to tell them that the cost of that device would probably be beyond what most ponies who use their services could afford, and that's even considering how much the network costs to access. But they're still afraid. And now it's here..."
"Here and broken," Twilight sighed. "And if it can't be repaired or charged, and there isn't enough left to get all the way back to the point of origin, and I could only take three ponies --"
Both of the white mare's eyebrows went up.
"Three?"
"It's all I'm licensed for. I could only afford the three-pony level of the escort test. You know how fast the cost goes up when you want to bring more ponies along! I've been saving for the six, but it's going to take --"
The oldest mare in the world was just looking at her.
"The escort test," Celestia said, "is issued, standardized, and has all fees paid directly to the government."
"I know! That's why I would be breaking the law if I --"
Gently, "-- Twilight -- given that you would have mainly been acting in government service -- did you ever think about asking the palace to waive the fee?"
There was a good chance that whatever had happened to the stallion's mark hadn't been from disease. It also seemed possible that there had been something in the surgery which had affected Twilight's facial muscle control and at the moment Applejack caught sight of that expression, it also had the side effect of sending the farmer into a hysterical bout of laughter.
The little mare froze. Looked from smiling white face to raucously-shifting blond tail, and considered that the only permanent cure for humiliation seemed to be death. She was almost completely sure that meant her own.
"That's one of the ways where you're not like him," Celestia gently told her. "He would have decided that he had the power and skill, then just tried for it. Oh, he would have tested, if he hadn't been desperate enough to reach for the number all in one go. One, then two, all the way up to six. When he was with us, trying to shift that much weight in rocks before he risked a living body. But if he was desperate enough... six."
The bright eyes clouded, and did so at the same moment the side fall of pastels crept up past her chin.
"We were six," the white mare softly stated. "Seven, because we had our own protector. But in soul and shadows... six."
I...
...I want to say something.
Something which makes it right.
I want to say anything.
That could be me. Enough time, and... it might be me. Just standing in the snow, looking so...
...lost...
"...Celestia?"
The white head tilted slightly to the right.
"They're old memories," the mare sighed. "It gives them a certain weight. Twilight, if you think you're ready for the test, I'll put the paperwork through. That's all it takes."
She knew it was possible to say the next words too carefully, that going direct was just as bad, and so mostly said them to get it over with.
"So when you're ready for us to track this down, we'll all go --"
Firmly, determination returning at the same moment the tail began to flow again, "-- I still haven't decided."
Both Bearers stared at the white mare.
"I understand why you want to go," Celestia said. "It speaks well of you --"
"-- Ah want in on this too! Ain't right, what happened t' that poor stallion! It can't happen t' anypony else, ever --"
"-- but this is deep magic," Celestia cut in. "Things which affect marks are among the deepest magic known to ponies. They're things which should only be investigated at times of great need and yes, Twilight, I see your mouth opening and I'm still not sure this is it. There's a risk in tampering with marks: there always has been. There can be a price to pay, and I never want to see any of you paying it. There are ways in which you aren't him, Twilight. You don't have his ego: it's something closer to the opposite. You know the switching spell was his. He kept going from there, and that was the road which led to the Amulet. There were a few stops along the way. The pony who put it on wasn't the pony we loved, and whoever took his place effectively died at the moment that thing went around his neck."
"I'm --" was almost all she had, and "I'm not...!" didn't feel any better.
"No," her mentor gently said as the last of the mane was restored and debris dropped through the shifting colors. "Not in that way. But if you start looking into mark magic, if something goes wrong... Twilight, I call the missions. Or Luna, because she has that authority: she just hasn't used it. Marks are a subject Discord doesn't want to be involved with, and I'm speaking from experience there. But Luna and I have talked about this. We acknowledge the possibility that the Bearers may need to be brought in. And if that doesn't happen, if we can solve it without you, I'm grateful for the information you provided. But there is a risk here, something I'm familiar with. Something I don't want any of you to face."
The white mare began to move a little faster. Crossing the last of the snow, closing in on the barn, and Twilight realized it was because the best way to end the discussion was to bring it into potential range of public hearing. The price of a secret.
"There are things I don't tell you because you shouldn't be involved --"
"-- it was his mark! It's -- it's practically his soul --"
The snow vanished.
It happened all at once. There was white here and there, near their hooves, coating portions of the trees. And then there were wisps of steam rising from bark and mud.
"-- and now it's soul magic, Twilight." It wasn't the Voice. The Voice would have been so much easier to deal with than simple statements delivered with subtle force. "There are things I don't tell you because you shouldn't be involved. Others where I want you to have some semblance of a normal life, more than a few where I think it would be nice if you could just sleep at night, and the price of tampering with a soul falls in every single category. Do you want to know what part of that price is?"
"She's jus' tryin' t' help!" Applejack desperately protested. "Y'can't be a pony if y'don't want t'--"
The white body turned, and the mare's eyes flashed flame.
They pulled back from that blaze. From the heat. From the hatred, with every last bit of that fire directed inwards --
"I know about that price, Twilight. I paid it. And I will do whatever is necessary to keep you from going through those dreams for the rest of your life."
The oldest mare in the world twisted, faced forward again, marched towards the barn at a speed which showed just how much she'd been holding back the whole time, just how much she always held back. Those who had walked with her scrambled, tried to keep up, but there was nothing which could stop the alicorn from pulling ahead, pulling away...
"I appreciate that you want to get involved. I understand, I do. I'll keep you appraised on our progress, in so far as it may help to keep you out of this if you know what the palace is trying. But for now, there is no reason for you to --"
It was the word which saw her clear the treeline. It was also the one where she stopped moving. She was trotting, then she was still, the two Bearers had to veer so as not to slam into her hind legs and then --
In the time to come, there would be talk of destiny. Predetermination. Things that were meant to happen. And if something was meant to happen, then the next question might become how that decision was made. Start to think about that and eventually...
There would be talk of destiny, and Twilight would come to loathe just about all of it. But for what happened next, she would ultimately consider it to be nothing more than a case of spectacularly bad timing.
None of them were moving. Two bearers flanked one Princess, and they all stared at an equally-frozen Spike, stopped on the cleared path between barn and farmhouse.
With the little dragon, the frozen state was very nearly literal. Twilight tried to keep him indoors as much as possible during the winter, did her best to layer him whenever he had to go out. He didn't deal well with the cold, didn't have enough inner fire to casually fight it off yet, and even a relatively mild winter day could find shivering scales rubbing against each other's edges. There was snow on the ground, grey gathering overhead to deliver more, and he had come all the way to the Acres from the tree on foot...
He was shivering, even within the thick garments which Rarity had so carefully fitted to his form. The tail had clearly been dragging through white for some time. There was a lightly claw-scored envelope in his right hand, he was looking directly at the three of them as if deciding in which direction to bolt, and he did not move.
The Princess took a breath.
"I would normally assume you were coming to warn her about me," she gently told him, "but I avoided the tree on the way in and I'm sure none of the Guards would have alerted you. So this is a delivery, and something where you couldn't risk a scroll. What is it, Spike?"
Green eyes darted from side to side. They checked the farmhouse, the barn, and every improvised path which a small body could take between the trees. Searching for an escape which could never come.
"...she knows everything, Spike." They were reluctant words, a statement delivered in the cold knowledge that they would bring her sibling no warmth at all. "We were talking about everything. If it's so important that you had to reach the Acres and say it to me, then you might as well say it in front of her. It'll just... save time --"
The envelope...?
It was too large for a scroll, along with being too flat. There were no stamps visible. All things considered, it was just about the right size to hold an enlarged --
"-- those are the pictures, aren't they? Of the device."
He looked at his sister. Stared at the mare who had been his teacher. Back and forth, until he finally nodded.
"Tell us, Spike," the Princess softly suggested. "Please."
"It's..." He swallowed. "It's the color. When the pictures came out, I saw the color of the field around the device, just before it went between for a second. It's... Twilight, it's turquoise..."
It took a few seconds before Twilight broke the silence.
"...and?"
He was staring at her.
"Spike, I saw that. I was there, remember? It's turquoise. So?"
Her little brother took a slow breath. Shivered, pursed minimal lips. It was possible to watch him resist the urge to blow flame across exposed claws.
"...I..." Another gulp of air, saliva, and stranger chemicals. "...I need you to listen, Twilight. Everypony to listen. Just for a minute. Please."
The mares looked at each other. Went back to him, just before the nod turned triple.
"I... I see color a little differently," the small dragon said. "It's sharper for me, the same way it is for Rarity. With her, it's part of her mark, and it only came when the mark did. For me, it's just biology. It's been like that my whole life. We both need to spot exact shades. It helps me figure out how good a gem is. She uses it to balance out the hues in her designs. We remember colors more clearly, exactly. We've talked about that. It's one of the reasons she asks me to help her. Because we see things the same way."
A little time passed. Just enough for Twilight to be the one who decided she had to be the one who said the shameful-seeming words.
"I don't get it."
"I see colors more sharply," Spike told her. "I remember them exactly. There's a dozen red unicorn fields in Ponyville, and I can sort out individual casters by shade. Twilight -- Scootaloo had me try to send that one scroll to her parents. The one which just asked them to come home, the one which hit a lockdown bounce and came back in pieces. When it came back, it flashed turquoise. The same turquoise in the picture. The exact shade."
Twilight simply stared, theories and implications flooding her mind to the point where the swirling mass didn't seem to leave much room for her. Applejack's tail lashed once, and the green eyes narrowed with barely-repressed, half-borrowed fury. But it was the Princess who finally breathed first.
"So," Celestia softly declared. "It seems as if there might be a reason for the Bearers to become involved..."