Pearl looked up as Twilight stomped into the room. She didn’t look very good. “What happened to you? You look like crap.”
Twilight shot her a bloodshot look. “Pearl Rose. I love you. But do not test me right now. I am not in the mood.”
Pearl glared right back. “Who pissed in your coffee?” Sitting back in her chair she crossed her front legs.”So I take it the girls did not take it so well?”
Twilight shook her head. “They took it as well as could be expected. Fluttershy wasn’t happy, to say the least, and I’m afraid of what this might do to our friendship.”
Pearl’s ears fell as she moved over and pulled her marefriend into a hug. “We knew she might react like this. Forestsong left a while ago looking like the weight of the forest was on his shoulders. I don’t want to think what might happen if they meet.”
Twilight lightly stiffened in the embrace but leaned back nevertheless.
“So what has your nerves in such a bunch. I doubt it was your friends given how you snapped at me.” Pearl rested her head behind Twilight’s, lightly kissing the back of her princess’s neck.
“It’s Luster.” Twilight sighed, bowing her head. “That girl, she's… she..”
“She’s you. As you used to be. If what you told me about your youth is to be believed.”
Twilight nodded sadly. “She is. Maybe I’m biased, but I believe she might be worse than even I was. She called friendship a waste of time, and that if friendships fade, then what’s the point?”
Pearl pinched her snout. “Oh for the love of… Where did she get that idea? I know her parents would never teach her that.”
Twilight nodded. “She made it up herself, based on the fact that I rule alone and that the girls and I don’t see each other as much as we used to.”
Pearl pounded her head on her chair. “That filly ... If I’d known it was this bad, I would have said something sooner. Us students of yours need to stick together. I’ve tried. Goddess above knows I’ve tried to be friends with her. And for a bit, I thought we were.”
Twilight sighed. “I think she’s jealous of you. That I give you more attention than I do to her because you’re a Pegasus. I saw it in her eyes. She’s afraid she’s been replaced in my heart with you. But she still wanted to get together with you on something. She wanted to go with you on your trips to the Dragon Lands.”
Pearl smiled. “Well if she got that stick shoved up her flank removed, I’d consider it at least. I don’t know why she’d think that. I’m not mad you have her as a student.”
Twilight chuckled. “I know. But her feelings aren’t telling her that. She sees you, and she sees someone taking me away from her. Someone who shouldn’t be doing that in her eyes.” She sighed. “Luster called you an air-headed featherbrain.”
Pearl jolted upright, scowling. “She what?! Doesn’t she know those are the worst insults you can call a Pegasus?!”
Twilight nodded gloomily. “She knows. I don’t think she cared. That was all I could take. I can just about take her views on friendship. But nopony calls any student of mine that. I transferred her from the School of Magic to the School of Friendship.”
Pearl nodded. Finally. “Is she still your student after all of that?”
Twilight slumped in defeat. “I don’t know, Pearl. Where did I go wrong? I haven’t held anything back from her. But it’s like looking in a mirror. I see everything I used to be. And there’s no convenient returning evil to help Luster change her views either.”
Pearl smirked. “You sure? Celestia and Luna have to have something left over they forgot to tell you about.”
Twilight giggled. “They don’t. I asked them not long after I came to the throne. We have faced and defeated almost everything they once did. The rest are either dead or are permanently banished to the Outer Dark.”
Pearl rolled her eyes as she lay her head on Twilight’s neck. “You sure about that? Those two are so senile that I wouldn’t be shocked if they forgot about something.”
Twilight sighed. “Pearl. Can you please be nice to them? I would normally not say anything, since I know you do love them. But I am not in the mood today.”
Pearl leaned in and rested her head next to Twilight’s. “Did Luster’s rant really unsettle you that much? If I meant half the stupid stuff I said when I was her age, I wouldn’t have been your student very long.”
That managed to get a smile out of the alicorn. “But that is what worries me. Luster meant every word of what she said. I know she did. Her magical skill is unparalleled amongst her class. Yet she blatantly ignores anything and everything that has to do with friendship. And I don’t know why.”
Pearl’s ears fell. “Maybe if me and Starlight talk to her…”
Twilight shook her head sadly. “She won’t listen. At most she might listen to Starlight. But therein lies the problem. You’re a Pegasus.”
Pearl blinked, before unfurling her wings. “Um. Yeah? Always have been, and I don’t plan on changing that anytime soon.”
Twilight giggle snorted. “That’s not what I mean, Pearl. You being a Pegasus is a problem for her. It’s not tribalism, that I am sure of. It’s what you did for the position of Personal Student to the Princess.”
Pearl blinked. “What did I do?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Think about it. For over a thousand years, the position was held exclusively by a unicorn, since the very foundation of the School of Magic. Even with me, I continued that tradition with Starlight. And then you came along.”
Pearl rolled her eyes. She’d heard it all before. “Like I could care what those idiots think of me. I didn’t then, and I still don’t.”
Twilight nodded, as she kissed her cheek. “And that is why I love you. But there are things about that time that you don’t know. There were genuine threats on your life because you weren’t a unicorn. Not all of the conspirators were caught.”
Pearl gave her mentor a look. “You think Luster would buy into any of that?”
Twilight shook her head. “No. Not when she is thinking clearly. But she sees me spending more and more time with you, somepony different from her. Somepony that can’t use the same magic like her. She sees you stealing me away from her, and she can’t help but think the worse.”
Pearl’s heart dropped like a rock, as her ears fell. It was a feeling she knew well, long ago it may have been. “I’ll talk to her. I don’t care if she doesn’t respect me, or won’t listen. Luster needs to hear it from someone who's been in her shoes before.”
Twilight smiled as she kissed her forehead. “Thank you. I know it wasn’t easy for you back then. I won’t give up on Luster. I know she has a good heart. She only needs to find it.”
Pearl nodded and sighed. “But if we’re talking about worries, I’m worried about Forestsong. He hasn’t said anything. But I can see it.”
Twilight looked at her marefriend in concern as she heard the hesitation in her voice. “See what?”
Pearl shook her head. “Being here. Trapped as he is? It’s hell for him. Oh, he hasn’t said anything. But I can see it in his eyes. Maybe it’s that stupid racial attitude towards other species of his. We’ve helped tone it down. But it’s still there.”
Twilight shook her head. “Pearl. It’s how he was raised, as was all of his family. We can’t hope to change that.”
Pearl nodded. “I know, and I’m trying to understand it. But he doesn’t make it easy. Sometimes I think it was better that they lost the wars. Even Discord was better at his attitude towards everyone else.”
“Yes but Discord watched ponies grow and evolve. He was here through the centuries and millennia, Forestsong wasn’t.” Twilight sat down beside Pearl and wrapped a wing around her. “Imagine you're wandering through the forest, and you suddenly are plucked up and dropped tens of thousands of years in the future. You’re parted from everything you knew and loved, and the individuals you loved. How would you react, how would you see the other races? Would it be so different from how he’s behaving?”
Pearl thought for a moment, before shaking her head and sighed. “No. I’d probably be the same way. It was hard enough for me when we moved to Ponyville. I can’t even imagine something like what he’s going through.”
Nodding softly, Twilight rested her head atop Pearls. “It’s also not like he hates the other races. He just sees us differently. He sees us as less advanced, I'm not too sure he’s wrong. And that’s something I can understand. Even after becoming an Alicorn, I've seen the other races differently. How far above them I am now, it’s difficult. But I do my best to not let it interfere with how I treat others. ”
“Huh?” Pearl smirked.
“Well, he’s talked about it. He is from a very aristocratic family. One that ruled over these lands for who knows how long. And when they disappeared they didn’t just die, they took to a higher plane of existence.” Twilight rubbed her hooves together slowly. “When I see him, I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if his family survived. What kind of knowledge they could have taught us. How much of all that history has been lost to us. All that culture, not to mention all that magic.”
Giggling softly, Pearl leaned into Twilight. “Leave it to you to wonder about all the magic that’s been lost to history.”
Twilight ruffled her mane. “What can I say? It’s my thing. I was into magic long before I was into anything else. Reading of course came number one, and I can’t help but wonder what was lost during that time.”
“You know, something’s kinda burning in my mind right now. If the other Kitsunes were destroyed. How is it that his family ascended?” Pearl looked at her hooves. “I’ve read a few texts in the Dragon Lands, at least the ones I could lift. And they mention a purge. How is it that one family survived while the others didn’t?”
“I guess we’ll never know.” Twilight sighed and looked out the window.
“It was because of my okaasan.” Forestsong yawned as he walked into the room and flopped himself down into a nearby chair. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. But you were wondering how my clan ascended when the others didn’t?” Both Pearl and Twilight nodded.
“Well, it goes back to the day Tiamat was about to initiate an oath that would have wiped us all out.” Looking down at his paws, Forestsong closed his eyes. “But because she and mother had a longstanding relationship they were able to talk to each other on a level no other had. Tiamat told mother that she would give our clan a chance to ascend past our physical bodies. As a last favor for all the advice and help that she had formerly received. I can’t recall much. I was kinda busy chewing on her tail at the time.”
Both Twilight and Pearl looked at each other rather nervously.
“Mother argued for the time needed for me to reach an age of ascension. Meaning I had a thousand years before she would invoke the oath and kill all of our kind. Tiamat did keep to her promise, but that didn’t stop her children from seeking out the other clans. Thankfully our valley was so well hidden. A dragon could have been dead center in our throne room and seen nothing but forest. After I got my ninth tail, ascending was rather easy. Rosey didn’t care for it since she couldn’t ascend. But since her river ran through my forest, our souls still had each other.”
Twilight leaned over at Pearl. “Rosie?”
Pearl leaned up to Twilight's ear. “A river dragon spirit that he was mated to. Apparently, she looked a lot like me in terms of coloring.”
“Ah,” Twilight nodded before feeling as if a hammer had struck her head and turned back to Pearl. “He was mated to a dragon! How… that makes little sense after just hearing that.”
“An eastern dragon whose family moved out this way to escape the wars out there. He told me about it a few days ago. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”
Twilight’s mouth opened and closed several times, looking for all the world like a fish out of water, her brain apparently unable to process what she had just been told.
Pearl giggled helplessly at the sight. “And that right there? Totally worth it,” she said, grinning at Forestsong, getting a chuckle in return.
Twilight finally got her brain to reconnect and shook her head in disbelief. “But what could cause Tiamat to order the extermination of an entire race? It doesn’t seem like something she would do on a whim.”
Pearl shrugged. “Who knows? They only called it something beneath a race such as them. And that’s it.”
Forestsong didn’t say anything. Some things were best left forgotten.
Pearl smirked as she remembered something from a few days earlier. “So whose tail were you chewing on? Seems kinda rude to do that to your mom. Especially at a time like that. And, well. I can’t see Tiamat putting up with it. Not in the mood she must have been in.”
He only smiled. “Oh, no. I was chewing on Tiamat’s tail. She would never have admitted it, but she had a soft spot for, as she called me, “That annoying puffball.” Her relationship with mother also worked in my favor. So she did her best to ignore it.”
Pearl’s eyes began twitching, while Twilight just looked horrified. “You chewed on Tiamat’s tail?!”
Forestsong just nodded happily. “Oh, yes, Don’t tell me you never did anything when you were younger that was dangerous? I once honked her on the nose and called her a big rainbow lizard.”
Strands of Twilight’s mane began popping up uncontrollably. “You what?!”
Forestong just smiled wider. “I was three and didn’t know any better. This was long before that second time, however, so I had more leeway.”
Pearl watched as Twilight’s brain came to a screeching halt, her eyes twitching uncontrollably. She giggled as she patted the alicorn’s head. “I think we’ve officially broken her now.”
Chuckling Forestsong leaned back. “Then my job today is officially done.”
Twilight groaned as the two broke into laughter. “You two are made for each other, you know that? If I didn’t know any better, I would say you’ve been doing this for years.”
Pearl just smiled as she placed a kiss on the alicorn’s lips. “But you love me anyway.”
Twilight only pouted, getting another giggle from the Pegasus.
Pearl, though, finally decided enough was enough for now. “So did this help loosen you up after dealing with Luster?”
Twilight smiled after a moment. “As much as I want to say no, you’re right. I needed this. I just hope that I haven’t made a mistake in doing this.”
“Then you need to talk to her, Twilight,” Starlight said as she entered the room. “I’ve given Luster a room to stay in tonight. But right now? She’s not in a good way.”
She was going to say more, but her eyes finally fell on the semi-solid form of Forestsong, who just smiled up at her. “... Am I missing something? Do you two see the fox in here? Or is it just me?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Starlight, this is Forestsong. Forestsong, this is Starlight Glimmer. Please play nice with each other.”
Starlight looked back and forth between her teacher and the fox in question, who only smiled wider. “How are you so calm about this, teach? I’d be a little more freaked out.”
Twilight only shrugged. “What can I say? I guess I’m just used to things like this. Have you not seen what happens in Ponyville? This barely qualifies as one of the top twenty weirdest things I’ve seen.”
Starlight wanted to ask about that but decided it probably wasn’t worth it. “Well, Forestsong. You’re a lot shorter than I thought you’d be.”
Smirking a little Forestsong sat up straight as a flurry of leaves circled all around him for a split second. As the leaves vanished he was there in all twelve hooves high. Lowering his head down he looked Starlight in the eyes. “Was this more to what you were expecting?” Despite his size, his voice hadn’t changed at all. Being younger than what his size depicted. The kitsune’s nine tails swishing behind him.
Starlight gulped, as she smiled sheepishly. “Um… Yes?” as she blinked she noticed Forestsong had returned to his smaller size.
“You can see why I don’t stay that size, rather unsettling for some ponies.”
Starlight could only nod. This was way out of her paygrade, but he was being nice, so she tried to relax. “How many ponies even know you, though? I would think Ponyville wouldn’t stop talking about it if they knew.”
“That is why I try to not let many know about me. The fewer that know, the less chance of panic. Only those in this room and Fluttershy have seen me.”
Pearl tapped her chin. “How did she take seeing you? And what happened to Discord?”
His head bowed. “She was not happy of course, at first. But I believe she came to accept it in the end. And she reacted about the same way you did, Starlight.”
That managed to get a smile out of the unicorn. “Fluttershy deals with a lot of creatures that come from the Everfree. You might take the cake as one of the more unique ones for sure. But she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”
Twilight smiled, slipping out the door as the trio continued to talk. As much as she wanted to stay, she knew there was somepony else who needed her far more right now.