After hours spent circling the shores of Lake Filliesbreath, Cadance decided to, finally, give voice to the thought that'd been looping endlessly through her mind.
"Auntie Celestia is going to kill me."
She wasn't sure why she thought she needed to say it out loud. Maybe she assumed that doing so would finally get it out of her brain, and she could move forward and think of an actual solution to her predicament. Maybe she just wanted to make herself as used to the idea as possible, to come to terms with her own impending death.
Neither really seemed to happen. The thought continued its endless circuit around her mind, just as she continued her endless gallop around Lake Filliesbreath, as if she could outrun the consequences of her actions by running long enough in a big enough circle. Worse, the notion of dying young, with so many years of high school ahead of her, with so much of her potential unspent, without ever having ascended to her throne, without even attending her debutante ball, was still just as unpleasant now as it had been before.
She never should have taken that flight – should have known better than to take her auntie's sick, dying phoenix on a joyride. But Philomena had been cooped up for so long, and besides, maybe she was just sick, not dying. A little fresh air couldn't possibly hurt; maybe it would even help her recover!
Cadance couldn't say for sure whether the fresh air was what killed Philomena, or if she just happened to die during the flight, but the bird was dead. If the matter ended there, it would have been no trouble at all, but she somehow managed to take a controlled situation, and make it worse.
She couldn't be blamed for reacting how she did in the heat of the moment. One minute she'd been chattering away to Philomena about her hopes for the future, gushing about hunky colts, and venting about the tedium of etiquette lessons ("we simply must use different forks for salads than for entrees, never mind the scullion who has to wash all the silverware!"). The next minute, she'd been flailing and wailing and flinging herself into Lake Filliesbreath to escape the sudden burning sensation sweeping down her coat.
And as for Philomena, well... Somehow, she doubted a phoenix could reconstitute after its ashes were dissolved, like a packet of instant soup mix, into a lake.
Maybe if I had a giant spoon, she thought, slowing down casting a look over the lake's surface. I could stir her ashes into the water, and she'd be reborn as a water-bird. We could even change the name of the lake to Lake Philomenasbreath.
The thought made her perk up, briefly.
...Or maybe Auntie Celestia is just going to kill me.
"Oh, son of a diamond dog," Cadance grumbled. She resumed her endless gallop.
Maybe if she said it twice, that would get rid of the thought. She slowed from a frenzied gallop to a slightly less frenzied canter, and took a quick look around to make sure she was still alone – even orphans know that aunties always have spies watching when one least expects. Satisfied she was all by herself, she took a deep breath.
"Auntie Celestia is going to kill..."
She slowed, stopped, frowned.
"Auntie Celestia is... definitely going to kill me?"
Something was still off.
"Auntie Celestia is certainly going to kill me." A little better.
"Auntie Celestia is absolutely positively one hundred percent going to kill me."
Still better, but not quite there. She took a deep breath, and tried to project as much of a Royal Canterlot Voice as she could.
"AUNTIE CELESTIA IS GOING TO MURDER ME!"
Her voice echoed across the lake. Murder me, murder me, murder me...
"Auntie Celestia will not only kill me, she will do so gruesomely," Cadance whispered. "She will kill me in such a terrible, torturous manner that anybody who sees my remains will forever remember what it means to get on her bad side."
Cadance cast a look over the lake; though she'd stopped moving, her heart raced on. Saying that she was definitely, certainly, absolutely positively going to die seemed to give her looping train of thought a little more direction, but now she didn't know where the train was going. The boundless possibilities for how she might meet her torturous end now presented themselves, and every destination that train could possibly arrive at was horrible, more horrible than the last.
"Auntie Celestia is going to slow-roast me over an open flame and serve me at a banquet. But since I permamurdered her pet phoenix she's gonna be really ironic about it. I read once that the Pantherans like to grill chicken wings and glaze them with sauce made from honey and molasses and hot chili peppers, and serve them up on these flappy paper plates with corn bread and potato salad. And if I know that, then there's no way she doesn't know that."
She paused to lick her lips – her mouth was a lot waterier than it should have been. Cadance decided not to think too much about why.
"And she's always calling nobles 'cannibals' anyway, so it'll be extra ironic when she serves me up to them at the banquet. All those snooty courtiers won't know any better, so they'll all chow down on 'Honey-Glazed Wing-Amore Ca-dinn-za,' and they'll all love it, of course, because I'm a legit snack even before you glaze me with honey. They'll all say 'Your Majesty, what is this delectable course you've set before us, and why does it resemble meat off the bone so much? Surely you didn't kill, butcher, and serve some poor chicken!' And she'll say..."
Cadance struck a pose, held a hoof to her mouth, tittered behind it.
"'Oh goodness, no! I'd never think of harming a poor, defenseless bird!' And then under her breath she'll add 'But a poor defenseless teenage filly who definitely has it coming, that's another story.'"
She dropped her hoof, flattened her ears, and stared out again across the lake.
"And they'll take her at her word, and won't think about it anymore, because the food is just so tasty that they don't care where it comes from. And maybe someone notices that I'm missing a few weeks later, but nopony really cares, and my picked-over and butchered remains rot forever in that abandoned mine underneath Canterlot Castle!"
Cadance settled down on the earth, folded her legs beneath her body, and sighed.
Strangely enough, this didn't seem to be making her feel any better.
"Maybe I could just... stay here. Live by the lake." She flicked a pebble with the tip of her hoof and watched it bounce and roll into the water. "Yeah... yeah, nopony knows where I flew out to. I could hide here, by Lake Filliesbreath, and live here for as long as I wanted to. They'd never come looking for me, and even if they did, they'd never find me. I could... I could become one with nature. One with the lake."
A breeze rustled past, and she fluffed her wings for warmth.
"Yeah... I could hold an endless, silent vigil for the poor, dead Philomena. The only one who knows where she went and how she died. It's a secret I'd carry with me to my own watery grave. And as long as I live..."
...Cadance trailed off. She tugged her forehooves out from underneath herself, folded them in front of her, and rested her chin on them, frowning.
How long was she supposed to live?
Auntie Celestia would never say how old she was, but she had to be at least a thousand. Would Cadance live quite as long as that, too? Or was it different for non-naturally-born alicorns? Would she live a natural lifespan, or would she one day evolve into a big, leggy pony with aurora-hair like Auntie?
And if that were to happen, could she really bear the guilt of causing Philomena's permadeath for that long? It had only been a few hours, a few short hours into her new life as a murderer on the run from the royal barbecuer, and the guilt and anxiety were already strangling her.
If this was how bad it got after one afternoon, how was she supposed to live with it for a thousand years?!
Cadance pressed her face into her forehoves and groaned. She got some dirt in her mouth in the process; she sputtered and spat and wiped her tongue with her hooves and that only succeeded in getting it even dirtier, but that was okay, because she was a murderer, and a little gritty bitterness in her mouth was the least punishment she deserved.
"I'm clearly not cut out for the life of a fugitive. The life of an exile."
Cadance, slowly, stood up, shaking and brushing off as much of the dirt in her coat and her wings as she could.
"I should go home. Face the music. Get it over with. Maybe Auntie will reward me for turning myself in by killing me before she butchers and serves me for dinner."
She stretched her wings – her precious wings, soon to be honey-glazed and devoured by well-heeled and unknowing Canterlot cannibals – and cast one last, lingering gaze across the lake – the bubbling, steaming, unusually hot lake.
"...Uh?"
A pillar of steam suddenly shot from the lake's middle, the heat emanating from the body of water so intense that it stung Cadance's skin. She took to the air and flapped away, putting some distance between herself and whatever phenomenon she was looking at. Peering closely, she saw a glowing golden sphere at the heart of the pillar, a sight which transfixed her.
"Whoa..."
A gust of wind swept away the pillar of steam, and there, floating above the muddy grater that had once been Lake Filliesbreath, was Philomena: a shining, red-gold beacon. Flapping once, she streaked toward Cadance, pausing inches away from her face.
"...Oh. You're not permadead. You can come back after being mixed into a large body of water like instant soup mix." Cadance waited for a reply that never came, then grinned. "Which means I won't get cooked alive and eaten. Awesome!"
Philomena cocked her head.
"Never mind." Cadance's grin turned sheepish. "Sorry for barrel-rolling into the lake and losing your ashes in it, Philomena. Are we cool?"
Philomena jabbed Cadance's muzzle with her beak – a peck, but whether it was meant to be loving, or angry, she couldn't say.
Either way, it hurt.
"Well, I guess I deserved that."
It was then that the reek rising from the lake, the stink of hundreds of flash-boiled fish, assaulted Cadance's dainty nostrils. She wrinkled her muzzle and plugged her nose as best as she could, and turned in the air toward Canterlot.
"Let's not mention this to Auntie when we get home."