Candle Light always worried about Night Watcher, but that didn’t mean she stopped living in her absence.
The end of the party was a letdown though, enough so that both she and her wife cried after it ended and the morning came with the pony still being absent. It didn’t last for too long though; Candle Light of course remembered what Celestia told her. The way she said it and told her to put her concerns away, the princess seemed sure that Night Watcher would emigrate at some point. The only question was when. That would be up to Candle Light to figure out, with the help of some of her friends, of course.
Not right away though, or anytime soon. It took her decades already to think of the idea of finding Night Watcher in the real world on her own. It might take decades longer to come up with something else. She had a feeling the same thing wouldn’t work this time if it didn’t work last time. Not unless she could come up with a unique angle to take with her daughter.
She had no idea, but she’d figure it out. Celestia seemed sure of that, and Candle Light trusted her.
She also had all the time in the world, and so focused on the two kids who just showed up to Equestria for now. It was so nice to see their faces still filled with wonder and awe when she woke up Silver Light and Sweeping Skies the next morning. They had slight looks of disbelief mixed with excitement that made all three of Candle Light, Crystal Clear, and Warm Spell laugh. She cooked breakfast for them before lighting her horn to teleport them to the beach she went to every morning, and asked what they were thinking as they walked along the sand with her.
“Obviously you two need to finish school,” she said, “but also, I think you should live in Summer's Edge for a few years either way, until you're comfortable enough to live in your own shards.”
Silver Light laughed at that. “Yeah, Dad… err, Mom, that was the plan,” he said. “But I don't really see why we'd have to go to school. You don't even have a job, last I checked.”
“And wouldn't Celestia just give us free money anyway?” Sweeping Skies asked.
Now Candle Light giggled. “You don't have to if you don't want to, but I'm pretty sure you'll like it. You can learn about basically whatever you want, after all. But if you did want a job, the places in Summer's Edge require actually knowing what you're doing.” Then she shrugged, and said, “Or you could just ask Celestia to give you the knowledge automatically, but how satisfying would that be?”
“I guess not very,” Silver admitted before glancing behind himself to his wings. “Maybe after I figure out how to fly and meet people and talk to my friends though.”
“Yeah, me too,” Sky nodded in agreement. “A lot of my friends from school emigrated a while ago, after they started banning PonyPads, and I wanna see them again first. Hey, do you think there's a way to find out where they're at?”
“And, uh, will it have been a whole lot longer for them than it was for us?” Silver asked, slightly nervously. Candle Light giggled again. She enjoyed their naivety.
“I'm sure it won't have been if you don't want it to have been,” she said. “And you can just ask Princess Celestia to see them if you're not sure where in Equestria they're at.”
“Or there's also a place in Canterlot you can go to to meet ponies,” Crystal Clear brought up. “Warm Spell showed me. Anypony that's registered will show up in the system, and most ponies who visit Canterlot sign up.”
Warm Spell laughed too. “And most ponies visit Canterlot at least once in their lives. Ma practically lives there with Rising Ranks sometimes, she goes so often.”
“Like you don't like visiting the college there, too, Spelly?”
“Also, can I say that it's very weird to see you so much older than us?” Silver Light brought up. “Like, it was a little weird playing Equestria Online, but it's super weird in… real life, I guess?”
Warm Spell only stuck her tongue out at that. “I guess you should've listened to Ma and uploaded sooner, then,” she told them.
“She's got you there,” Candle Light agreed. “But it's okay, because you're both here now.”
Candle Light noticed the entire group avoided mentioning who wasn't there.
They continued on into the town, with Candle Light showing them around, as though they hadn't been here before. She tried to act as their guide, with the help of her wife and daughter, and answered most of the questions they had. She didn't get too deep into just how limitless Equestria was yet though; she didn't want to overwhelm them with all the possibilities, knowing they'd figure it all out for themselves soon enough.
There was an interesting one though that Sweeping Skies asked, one that Candle Light asked herself a few times before. “How long are we gonna live here? I mean, in Equestria? How long are our lives?”
She was sure there was a bunch of smart ponies at the university in Canterlot that could give an exact answer to that question; it wasn't one Candle Light herself sought out to learn just yet. But just knowing what she knew about Equestria, she knew how to answer.
“As long as you want,” she told her foals with a soft smile, “and much longer than you think you have. You don't need to worry about how long there is to live.” It was probably longer than Candle Light even imagined was possible.
So long, that even if Night Watcher took another fifty years in Outer Realm time to get to Equestria– however long that was in Summer’s Edge’s time– she wouldn't have missed a thing. It was only a matter of her finally showing up. Candle Light needed to work on that for her.
But not today. Today, she spent her time with her children, just like she did the day after that, and the year after that, too. Just like with her wife, they took time to get used to all the changes that Equestria brought, both big and small. Part of that was Sweeping Skies’s decision to live in her own shard, and Silver Light’s decision to, interestingly enough, live with Candle Light as a young teenager again. She had a feeling why that was his decision, given how old he was at her cancer diagnosis. It seemed like his plan was to set back the clock by a few years and experience it again. Candle Light thought it was adorable.
It was something she thought about doing herself once or twice, but decided it wasn't the right time yet. She had all the time in the world to do that again whenever she wanted to, all the time in the world to set back the clock to when she got her cancer diagnosis and raise her children again. Things like that could wait for her.
At the same time, she spent more time with Rising Ranks, eventually becoming engaged to the stallion. She was the one who proposed to him, and offered to let him live in her home with him, something Crystal Clear didn't mind. Her wife was spending a little more time away from home than before, sometimes a few weeks at a time, with a different stallion she met. It only meant that some nights Candle Light would be in one of the guest rooms with Rising Ranks instead. Or some nights they'd all be together in the main bedroom. That was fun.
In the meantime though, Candle Light found herself very interested in brain structure, and read books about it for hours sometimes. How the neurons interacted with Equestria when a pony was uploaded, what kind of limits there were to uploading; there was some interesting stuff in here. She didn't have all the details just yet– she wouldn't for a long time, maybe decades– but it seemed like there was probably a way to upload somepony upon body death. She'd need to speak to Celestia about that.
But not right now. Not until she got more information. Right then, she visited Careful Calling and Soft Step for a little get together on the beach, something they'd recently been coming to do once a month or so. They swam in the water– well, Candle Light did mostly– and ate food for a picnic and talked about their friends and new things they were doing and everything else under the sun.
“Apparently Agile and Stellar are gonna get married soon,” Careful Calling said as she turned to her marefriend. “When are you gonna marry me, Soft?”
Candle Light giggled at Soft Step’s little blush as she stammered, “I, uh, I don't know. M-maybe some day?”
“It sounds like it's gonna be someday soon,” Candle commented. “Who's bridesmaid do I get to be?”
“You'd get to be mine, and Misty can be the flower girl, since she plants the best roses of anypony I know.” Careful Calling told her. Then she smirked and said, “I think Soft Step would probably choose Agile as her bridesmaid, since she still likes her, and pick Bright Sky, too, to cover it up.”
“I don't like her anymore! Not like that!” Soft Step protested, her face bright red now as Candle Light and her friends laughed softly. “She’s also not poly anyway. Not that that would change anything.”
“Oh, I'm suuurre it wouldn't,” Candle Light teased.
“Maybe she'll change on that in the future?” Misty Rose said. “I don't know that pony, but I do know most ponies like to form herds, at least, the Equestrian born ones do. Maybe ponies from the Outer Realm are different.”
“Yeah, I doubt Agile would change,” Careful Calling shook her head, then wrapped her hooves around Soft Step. “Guess you're just stuck with me.”
“So when are you gonna propose to her?” Candle Light asked. “I proposed to my wife on a beach in California, and to my fiance a few months ago on this beach. You could make it nice and romantic.”
It was funny how Soft Step was trying to hide her embarrassed smile. “I don't know!” she got out. “There's a lot of stuff we need to do first! Things to see, places to visit!”
“We don't have to settle down just because we're married,” Careful told her with a genuine smile. “What do you wanna do that makes you think you have to?”
“Well, have foals of my own for starters,” she said bashfully, a feeling Candle Light knew well herself these days. “Being pregnant would be nice… and maybe see some new exotic places? Sparky and Frame travel all the time. And open a flower shop with Misty like we've been talking about, and go to university like Candle Light, and become a chess grandmaster, and find a shard I can play Mario Kart Wii in, and a whole bunch of things!”
“Hehe, those aren't things you need to settle down to do,” Careful Calling laughed. “Candle is married and has foals, and does some of those things right now.”
“We could go to college together, in fact, all of us!” Candle Light added. “I heard earth ponies have ambient magic that Misty could learn about if she wanted, and you'd get a lot of business for a shop with her in Canterlot! It would be fun!”
Soft Step seemed unable to argue with that. “M… maybe I'll have to propose to you soon then,” she said quietly, happily.
Candle Light was happy, too. This was nice, a nice feeling she never really thought about much before. Being a wife and a mother and a potential bridesmaid to her friends, doing makeup with her daughter, being pregnant with a foal once Night Watcher got to Equestria; it all seemed so nice. A little like her heart was beating with excitement just thinking about it. She'd been missing this for so much of her life before, almost as much as she missed her kids now.
“Not yet though,” Candle Light continued. “About university in Canterlot I mean. I wanna let my son grow up again for a few more years before that. Maybe sometime down the line.” Years were nothing in Equestria, yet every day was still so long and full of experiences.
“Well, if you're gonna be a bridesmaid at my wedding, then Careful, Misty and I are gonna be bridesmaids at yours,” Soft Step decided. “Those are the rules.”
It was rules that Candle Light abided by. She and Rising Ranks married about a year later, with Crystal Clear as the maid of honor, of course. Her wife held her close while Candle Light cried as she got her all dressed up in the most beautiful white dress she'd ever seen. And then before she knew it, she was walking down the aisle– she didn't know they had churches in Summer's Edge, these ones dedicated to people who wanted to worship Celestia– and kissed Rising Ranks like it was her first time doing so again. It was so perfect, minus the absence of one pony who she wished was there.
Her children grew up, just like they always seemed to do, Warm Spell taking her status as the oldest in stride. She helped Candle Light to show the two pegasi the different things they could do in Equestria, from communicating their desires to Celestia by just thinking about it to all the different places they could visit and go to if they wanted. Despite what Candle Light thought, it was Sweeping Skies who was more interested in those things, like Warm Spell was. Silver Light seemed to project an attitude of being ‘too cool’ for things like that, instead spending his time hopping between Summer's Edge and his mansion in the clouds. He didn't even seem to mind the idea of technically being the youngest now.
He wouldn't be the youngest forever though, if Night Watcher took a while longer to get here.
Sweeping Skies aged normally, although Silver Light seemed to go more slowly, barely looking a year older over the next five. It didn't change much; Candle Light still used the next few years to spend as much time with her children as possible. She might not have been the biggest adventure fan– something that was sure to change if she asked Celestia to make her just a few years younger– but the excitement of exploring new places and seeing sights and doing thrilling things was something to be had. How many other ways were there for her to live, besides perfect normalcy? She didn’t know, but she knew how many different possibilities there were once every day things got stale. A life as a private investigator or a doctor, as a witch in a fantasy world, a shard where each detail was part of a larger story, like one of the computer games she played in the 1990s; maybe even an existence that she couldn’t comprehend yet? She knew the things she could do was an uncountable amount. Maybe someday she’d be able to count them.
But something that would never, ever get stale was learning. She might not have been terribly interested in it when she lived in the Outer Realm, but it was definitely her favorite pastime activity for the last… going on thirty years now? Probably more than that. She was definitely losing track as she spent many days cuddled up in bed, reading with Rising Ranks or visiting Canterlot for a presentation. Once Silver Light was older again, she'd be heading back to Canterlot for more classes. She still has interests in the Outer Realm to take care of.
Her son might have been a teenager, but it was a good twenty years before the pegasus grew up enough to live on his own in his shard. Candle Light didn't mind one bit. She had all the time in the world to put her focus back on Night Watcher. And focus she did. She took courses under Celestia herself about Outer Realm maintenance and affairs, along with Rising Ranks, and lived in Canterlot for months at a time. All of her focus was on Night Watcher now. She was going to get Daphne in here, no matter what it took.
Candle Light hadn't received much news, if any, about the Outer Realm in the couple of decades her other children uploaded, and so it was interesting to hear, if not a bit jarring. It turned out that her children weren't the only ones who emigrated recently. There was almost no one left living on Earth– relatively speaking anyway. Granted, eight hundred million was still a huge number, and tens of millions still lived in the United States, but the United States had over three hundred million people just a few years ago. The world was heading into the next decade with barely ten percent of the people it originally held.
Hopefully that number would shrink by at least one more person.
Or two? Maybe three total. It wasn't as difficult as she expected to get a good look at Daphne, with the control Celestia had. She was living in North Dakota now with some guy, near an oil field that was currently being hailed upon by an intense thunderstorm. She had to be outside to work closely with the guy, and was taking shelter under a metal awning at his discretion with him. She looked pregnant, probably closer to her due date than she was from conception, and allowed the guy to wrap his arms around her and touch her stomach, even if she looked a little uncomfortable. Interesting.
“What are you thinking, Candle Light?” Celestia asked as she settled a wing onto the mare's back. It wasn't just the two of them in the room, but it sure felt like it right now as she looked down at her child. She was still out there, still not safe yet.
Candle Light didn't need to answer, but she did anyway. “Would she be able to upload if she was pregnant? Probably not if she wanted to keep her baby, right?”
“It would be more complex, but doable,” the large alicorn answered. “I don't believe she would allow such a thing however, no matter how much she knows her current situation hurts her.”
Candle Light nodded sadly, and sniffled back tears, but didn't cry. “I think I know how to get through to her,” she said, “but I don't know how to put the whole idea together in a presentable way she'd like. Do you know what I mean?”
“I understand perfectly. Any failsafe would require what you're thinking, and I think that would push her away.”
“And it makes sense why,” Candle Light agreed, but didn't comment further. Instead, she stared silently down at Daphne, watching her finally push away from the guy to go back into the hailstorm without protection. She hoped she would be safe in the meantime, but Candle Light just didn't know.
She finally turned back to look into Celestia’s eyes. She didn't have to even ask her question, and didn't want to. She just wanted to know.
“I think the injection is a great idea,” she said softly, “one that will greatly increase the amount of ponies who emigrate to Equestria, bringing satisfaction to those who might otherwise never receive it. In regards to Night Watcher though, it's a bit more complex. She is dealing with immense pain, and won't be cajoled into emigrating, even through an injection. You will have to firmly assert that she must do this. She needs somepony to take charge of her.”
Candle Light nodded again, definitely crying now. “I'll be that,” she said tearfully, before wiping them away. It wasn't a stellar plan, but it might work. It had to work. She was sure she wasn't going to get a third chance to try to get through to her.
She was going to need to learn some new spells.