It was a good morning Candle Light opened her eyes to the next day, one where she found her hooves wrapped around her wife for the first time in ages. Was it strange that it no longer felt like all that long ago? The decade it had been seemed like only a few months now. It felt long enough that she missed the feeling, but not so long that she would start sobbing.
Only months since she slept with her wife, yet it still felt like years since she’d parented her daughter when Warm Spell emigrated. It was strange that different members of her family gave her different perspectives on time. But those perspectives hit her in just the right somehow. She knew what word she would use to describe it.
Pancakes were what she had for breakfast with the two of them before sending her daughter off to school. She did notice a few people missing from the scene though, something that was harder to ignore now than it was before. It was much more difficult to separate her life in Equestria from her life with her family in the Outer Realm when half of them weren’t in the Outer Realm anymore. She blinked and avoided sighing sadly.
Crystal Clear seemed to read her mind, and let out a long breath. “I’m sorry,” she immediately apologized, dropping her head and pointing her eyes at the table. “I shouldn’t have done this yet. I should’ve stayed on Earth with them…”
“It’s fine,” Candle Light assured her gently, placing a hoof on her shoulder. She wasn’t actually sure it was though. She could imagine what Daphne might be thinking, and it wasn’t good.
“I’m sure she’ll understand,” the unicorn continued anyway. “Especially when they all get here. Then there won’t be anything to worry about anymore!” Wasn’t that what Rising Ranks told her a few months ago? And now here they were, showing up.
“I bet it won’t be that long either,” she finished with a grin. “Before you know it, they’ll be here.” She might have actually believed it, too. She imagined that, within the next year, they’d almost certainly all be living here and be one big happy family once again.
Was it weird that the thought of that now made her kind of nervous? Candle Light had changed so much in the decade she’d spent without them.
Crystal Clear finally looked up at her again and put on a little smile. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she nodded. “You’ll be all of our heroes once everyone’s here.”
Candle Light tilted her head at that, but continued smiling. “I’ll be your hero?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure you guys are my hero, since you all put me in here. I’d be dead without you.”
Her wife’s smile grew. “And I’m glad I did. I’m sure you’re right. It won’t be long. Speaking of which…” She stood up and looked herself over carefully. “Celestia told me the second I got here that I should probably actually think about what kind of pony I wanted to be, since I didn't before." Then she looked right in Candle Light's eyes and finished, "And we still need to choose what you're gonna be, too, honey. I can't believe you've stayed a girl for so long."
Candle Light’s grin dropped. Her wife saw it immediately, and dropped her own smile. Even without a reply spoken yet, she was sure Crystal Clear already knew what she would say. How could she not by this point? To be fair though, it took Candle Light having it explained to her by Soft Step to piece it all together herself.
Her wife blinked again as she stared back at the mare. “You’re gonna change back into a stallion, right?” she asked, a hopeful smile putting itself back on her face as she pushed her eyes into Candle Light’s emerald ones. “Right?”
Candle Light had a thousand words– no, a million– that formed in her head as an explanation. If she was ten years younger, she might have used that many to get across what she wanted to say. However, Equestria's perfection up until very recently had given her a lot more confidence than she might have had otherwise. It took only one word to say what she wanted to say.
"No."
“Oh…”
Her wife barely said it– barely whispered it even. She looked away, glancing down at her hooves as tears quickly started to form in her eyes. Now Candle Light blinked in confusion. She thought her wife would be upset, but not tearful. She expected frustration from her more than anything.
“I… kind of figured that…” she started as she glanced between the unicorn and the floor. “When you said you were getting close to that other stallion, I figured… but I also thought that we could–”
“I’m not leaving you!” Candle Light interrupted, unable to suppress a laugh. "Why would I have sex with you if I was? I'm just not gonna change who I've been for the last bunch of years. I like who I am and what I look like right now."
"Oh. Good. I don't know why I thought– good." Her let out a relieved sigh, sniffed, and blinked away her tears. "Sorry. I just thought that… sorry. Um." She looked around uncomfortably for a moment and asked, "Why would you wanna stay a girl though when you could be a guy?"
"Well," Candle Light started, "why would you wanna be a girl when you could be a guy?" The question got Crystal Clear to smile again.
"Good point," she admitted. She wiped her eyes and shook her head, as if clearing it of the previous though. "But seriously. I don't get it. You could be, like, a thin muscular guy instead. If anything’s possible here, right?"
"And I told you before," Candle Light said, a little sass in her voice as she smiled back at the earth pony. "I'm okay with being a pudgy, unmuscular girl. I like how my body is right now a lot. I know you and I didn't pick it out, but I learned before that Celestia is pretty good at finding out what a pony wants. And what I wanna be is me as I am right now. I think I’m trans, actually." More like she knew that’s what she was.
Crystal Clear stared at her, surprised by something. "Wow, you've… really changed a lot, haven't you?" she said. The unicorn shrugged, and her wife smiled once again. "It's like you're a teenager again. Or twenty years old. I'm gonna have to get used to all of this. You’re acting so differently."
"Well I love you, so that hasn't changed about me," she told her. Then she leaned in for a few kisses as she nuzzled her nose. Crystal Clear blushed bright red and grinned sheepishly, to Candle Light's interest.
"I, uh, guess I kind of imagined last night as a… one time thing, you know?" The unicorn tilted her head as her wife's face went more red. "I guess I can try to get used to you being a girl forever though," she finished. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but was too shy to continue. Candle Light had a good idea about what it was.
“You don’t have to be a lesbian, silly,” she told her, a chuckle in her voice. “It’s cool if you’re not.”
“Well, I’m certainly not gonna turn into a guy. I was just joking about that before.”
“What I mean is,” the unicorn continued, “I’ve been getting close with Rising Ranks. I told you about him before. You could get close with other stallions, too, if you wanted. Equestria is completely different from how the Outer Realm works.”
Her wife stared at her like she’d just grown a second head. “Wow, honey,” she said. “I know I said you could experiment and stuff with stallions before, but.. you’ve changed a lot. You act like you’re a teenager again. It’s strange.” The only emotion in her voice was deep, genuine surprise.
“You already said that,” Candle Light laughed, throwing a grin her way. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll change too. Then we can both be teenagers again.” She didn’t know how Crystal Clear hadn’t noticed her changing before though. Hadn’t Daphne said as much to her before?
The earth pony seemed like she wanted to talk more about it, but didn’t go much further into the conversation. After a statement about how Candle Light was the only mare for her, she pressed the picture of Celestia’s cutie mark on the wall to call forth the AI goddess. The alicorn princess showed up quickly, bringing back with her the mirror they used before. This time, Candle Light’s wife was the one who went through the options, the unicorn standing back and carefully watching the choices she made as she went through them.
She didn’t even think about being a stallion, of course, and didn’t take much time at all to decide actually. It was probably only five minutes or so before she was done. She changed her coat color to dark brown, like it was in the Outer Realm, but kept the white mane and blue eyes. Candle Light of course suggested to her being a unicorn, but instead, the mare chose a pegasus with long feathery wings. Most interesting of all was her decision to continue looking in her forties.
That brought on a strange thought. Wasn’t Candle Light technically in her fifties now? She didn’t feel it, and certainly didn’t look it. She didn’t notice herself aging, but she did see some of the ponies around her age sometimes. Not Careful Calling or Rising Ranks, but Misty Rose and her family seemed like they aged a little bit. Maybe Soft Step somewhat? Candle Light couldn’t see herself going down the road to becoming an old lady– not yet anyway. Maybe at some point. However long in the future ‘some point’ might be.
She was sure Celestia could make it happen if Candle Light wanted. What couldn’t Celestia do to bring satisfaction?
She took her wife to the beach and walked along the sand with her. Afterward, over a lunch of baked ziti at a place one of Soft Step’s very recently emigrated friends showed her, she introduced Crystal Clear to her closest friends. She seemed to take particular interest in Rising Ranks, probably for the obvious reason, but also looked like she clicked with the other three. It made her smile to see.
It was a simple day they spent together after Candle Light showed off her friends. They spent more time at the beach before Warm Spell came home, then visited their daughter’s shard for a few hours before they had dinner and read a fiction book together. Her wife didn’t seem to have that much trouble figuring out how to fly throughout the day; in fact, she seemed like she was a natural at it. Candle Light might have considered what that meant before, but only smiled now at her wife’s huge, satisfied grin. She knew what that meant.
It was like that for several weeks. Candle Light couldn’t exactly call it normal; this hadn’t been her life for a very long time. Her life for many years had been only talking to her family once every few weeks in between hanging out with her friends and going to college and learning everything there was to learn about Equestria. And recently it had been humoring her daughter and adventuring and exploring with her for the last few months. Normalcy felt strange.
But there was something kind of fun about getting back into it and spending all day with her wife. There was a lot more time to be intimate with her than there ever was in the Outer Realm, and a lot of things to show her. Crystal Clear didn’t seem to understand just how limitless Equestria was; Candle Light still didn’t either. But she figured it wouldn’t be long before she started to get it.
She knew before she changed a lot, but being next to Crystal Clear, day after day, made Candle Light realize just how much she had changed over the years. She was not the same pony she was when she first arrived in Equestria. Being around her wife fully illuminated how different she was to her now. As silly a thought as it was, it almost seemed like her wife had changed instead of herself.
It was none of the big things, of course. Candle Light was just the same person as always in all the large ways, and so was Crystal Clear. They still both listened to country music and liked the same foods and parented their children in similar ways. It was just that her wife acted twenty years older. Or more accurately, Candle Light acted twenty years younger.
Her wife said the unicorn acted like a teenager again, and comparatively, the earth-pony-turned-pegasus was more like Misty Rose than she was like her anymore. Crystal Clear might have humored Candle Light’s explanations about how their world worked and went with her meeting ponies and doing what she liked to do, but it didn’t seem like it was because she wanted to actually do those things. It was more like she just wanted to be around Candle Light.
Was it weird to feel weird about that? Was there a difference between doing something because you wanted to and doing it to make somepony else happy, or just to be close to them? Especially here in Equestria?
Candle Light didn’t know, but she did bring it up one afternoon while her wife looked over her shoulder as she read.
“You know, you don’t have to do everything I wanna do,” she said casually, looking up at her with a small smile on her face. “You can do whatever you want here, actually, like I was saying before. Equestria has unlimited resources.”
“I know.” Crystal Clear shuffled her wings anxiously. “I just don’t really know what I’d want to do without them. Our kids,” she said. “How can you go so long without seeing Stevie and Daffie and Liana? And Warm Spell and I? Weeks at a time?”
Candle Light shrugged. “Celestia just fixes it so that I see you guys whenever I wanna see you. And so I do.”
“But don’t you worry about them?”
“Well, yeah, but it’s a few weeks at least usually in here before one day passes out there, so I’m not too worried. They’re not gonna change drastically when they show up again.” The unicorn paused and tilted her head, her gaze shifting away from Crystal Clear to nothing in particular.
“I am worried about Night Watcher though. Especially since you’re not out there. She said she hated me…” Candle Light scrunched up her face, then shook her head clear. “With enough time though,” she finished, “I bet I could convince her to emigrate here. It was probably only a few days ago from her perspective, so while it is a little scary, I’m not too worried about her. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She kept to herself the thought that it would've been better if her wife hadn't shown up yet.
“How can you be so confident?” Crystal Clear asked, almost sounding exasperated. “How can you be so sure of yourself? You talk about it like it’s not a big deal!”
Candle Light shrugged again, this time able to give no response. “I just am,” she said. “It’s not a big deal.” Crystal Clear stared down at her with a sad, unsure expression, and Candle Light moved to kiss her. It got her wife to smile for a moment.
"Thanks," she said. "Just… you know…"
"Do you think you'll be too different when they get here?" Candle Light asked. The pegasus shuffled her hooves at the question and stared at the ground.
"It feels like you and I already are," her wife said, just above a whisper. Candle Light might have frowned at the idea before, but now she only grinned.
"It's okay if we're different," she said. "We don't have to always be together. You can do all the things you want and I'll still be here whenever you want. And you already know I basically did as much while I waited for you to get here."
Crystal Clear glanced back at Candle Light, and continued to fidget her wings. "Are you sure about everything you’re saying?"
The unicorn's response was to pull her in close and kiss her deeply for a long minute. When she finally pulled back, she nuzzled her wife and said, "I'm positive. It'll be great. Trust me, Equestria is absolutely perfect."