//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10 
// Story: Paths Less Travelled 
// by Botched Lobotomy 
//------------------------------//

Years pass. Spring turns to Summer turns to Autumn of your lives. It is strange, each memory with Vinyl: shared with the pony you are meant to be with, yet not shared as they should have been. What will Shining Armour think of this, you wonder—do you think that you can tell him? You have to. Even if you weren’t such a transparent liar, secrets that big don’t do anypony any good; that’s like, Marriage Counselling 101. A conversation, anyway. You think that things will be all right, in the end.

{It’s kind of peaceful, here.}

{Quiet.}

{Where is everypony?}

{I’d say that maybe there’s a DJ-pon3 concert on, but...}

{No royal ceremony, neither.}

“Do you remember the day we met?”
Vinyl shrugs. “Which one?”
“Our proper meeting.” You lean your head where best it fits, and murmur to her hoof against your mouth, “You know, at the restaurant.”
“I’d met you before then, sweetie.”

{Bleagh!}

{Shhh, let’s listen.}
“Not properly, not really.”
“There was that one time in psych class—”
“Celestia spare me from that one time in psych class!”
“You know.” Vinyl is grinning, “when Poindexter stood up in that suit and—”
“I was trying to be romantic, here.”
“You’re always romantic. It’s like your whole thing.”
“Hmph!”
“Aww, don’t get huffy. The restaurant, remember? You’d just been stood up by this cute mare that you were seeing...or wait, hold on, that was me.”
“What was her name again?”
“Octavia Melody.” You say it as if each syllable requires at least two hooves of personal space.
“Octy, that was it! The grey earth pony with the—the thing—”
“The mane, yes. Quite what you saw in her, I don’t...”
“You don’t need to be jealous of a mare I dated forty years ago.”
“I’m not jealous! Just...protective. You didn’t deserve to get stood up.”
“Eeeh, I might have done. Probably did, I wasn’t very nice back then.”
“You weren’t so bad.”
“You weren’t so bad. Standing there in all your dresses, looking like a night out at the opera.”
“Never hurts to be prepared! And I had just come from there, to be completely fair.”
“Good opera?”
“Okay. That new baritone was coming up, Shining whassisname.”
“Not a clue.”
“Shining Notaclue, the very same.”
“Handsome colt, wasn’t he?”
“If you go for that sort of thing. I was more into dishevelled mares in denim shirts, back then.”
“Lucky for you.”
“Lucky for me.”
“Do you remember what I said to you?”
“What sort of question is that! Does the Princess of Love remember what her wife said on their first date!”
“Go on.” Vinyl turns to you with smug satisfaction. It looks good on her. It’s always looked good on her. “What did I say, then?”
“You said something very eloquent I’ve remembered for the rest of my life.”
“Which was...”
Hazard a guess. “‘Got a light?’”
{Now that was definitely a snrk.}

{Shhh, I’m trying to listen.}

“Okay, sure, I did say that, but that wasn’t the first.”
“No?”
“No. Before that, I said something else.”
“‘I didn’t know angels got to keep their wings?’”
“Before that.”
You study her. That bright white coat, electric mane with streaks of silver. Smile creases round her eyes. That wrinkle on her nose that only shows when she’s about to tell a whopper. Vixen ageing gracefully. “Go on,” you say, “what was it?”
“I don’t know where it came from, really. It certainly wasn’t true.” But you remember, suddenly, in that memory before, there hadn’t been that telltale wrinkle when Vinyl had come up to you and said, “‘I saw you in my dreams, last night.’”
“‘Oh? Why, what was I doing?’”
“‘Falling,’” you reply, “‘except I didn’t know that angels got to keep their wings.’”
“‘How classy.’”
A grin. “‘You got a light?’”
And the two of you sit and watch the red leaves blow, huddled close as afternoon turns evening. And though the wind is cold, up in the Crystal Empire, you hardly feel the chill: whether it is magic, body heat, or something else, all that matters in the end is that the two of you are here, together, warm.