A bead of sweat dripped down Celestia’s brow and fell to the cushion beneath her. Another knock came at the door, and a quiet “hello?” sounded.
“Cadance…” Celestia whispered to herself, “I can’t have this information compromised. No. She mustn’t know.”
“But there’s really nothing here that could possibly do any harm,” she whispered, turning towards the door. She took a couple steps. “Doesn’t Shining Armor need to know about this?”
She stopped short, lowering her hoof and turning back. “If you allow them to meet, the information of what you did will spread, and that’s a problem.”
“But does Twilight have any intention of revealing it to Shining Armor?” She leaned towards the door.
“We can’t take that risk.” She shrunk back. “Think about it, Celestia. Imagine what would happen if word got out of what you have been doing for the past centuries. Unrest, distrust, rebellion, they all would occur. We’d look like a despot to them.”
“You make some sense…”
“We have to dispose of this letter, posthaste.” Celestia stretched out her legs and stood tall. “But how…” Celestia took a frantic look around the room.
“The fireplace!” Celestia whispered to herself. She turned to the left wall. She shut her eyes tightly and her horn glowed with flame. She waved her head and sent a ball of flames towards the kindling piled behind the mesh screen. It hopped over the screen and lit the wood, burning brightly.
“Your Majesty? Are you in there?”
Celestia remained silent as she walked over to the fireplace, the letter floating beside her. She glanced at it again, the glowing flames illuminating its cursive text. “It’s entirely harmless. Why am I doing this?” She held the letter a few inches above the fire. A flame nearly licked its edge as she lowered it gradually.
The sound of the door creaking open made Celestia jump. She spun around, lifting the letter out from the fireplace and passing it behind her. She beheld Cadance standing in front of the door with a perplexed look. Her eyes instantly darted to the letter, then to the floor.
Her perplexity became meekness as she lowered her head before the massive alicorn. “I-I apologize, Your Majesty,” Cadance said, stammering. “I didn’t want to barge in, but I smelled burning and got no response from you.”
“It is quite alright, Cadance,” Celestia said, forcing a smile across her face.
Cadance turned towards the open door behind her. “If this is a bad time, I can speak with you later, and next time I’ll make sure you know of it first.”
“Oh, no need. No one deserves my attention more than you do this very moment.” Celestia blinked slowly and grinned wider. She tucked the letter discreetly behind her wing and pressed it against her side. She approached Cadance and tapped the side of her head with a hoof. Cadance turned to face her.
“Alright then, I’ll gladly stay,” Cadance said, inching her head away from Celestia’s hoof and stepping into the room. “It’s clear I came for something other than firefighting. I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here.”
“Very much so, though an unannounced visit for just a chat is fine by me.” Celestia said, stepping back while still facing Cadance. Her flowing tail slowly swished behind her as she spoke. “What, pray tell, are you here for, Cadance?”
Cadance spoke quietly, her voice maintaining its meekness. “I came here on the subject of Shining Armor.”
“Oh?” Celestia cocked her head. A sickened frown appeared on her face for an instant and quickly twitched back to a smile. “What about him?”
“Well, Celestia,” Cadance tilted her face to level the plane of their eyes, “the truth is I’m immensely worried about him.”
“I imagine so,” Celestia said, averting her gaze and making a weak motion with her hoof, “The situation with Twilight Sparkle has affected all of us.”
Cadance leaned forward and crooked her neck to meet Celestia face-to-face, “I was wondering, do you have any information about her? Anything at all?”
Celestia paused briefly. The long white feather of one of her wings brushed circles on the carpeted floor. She held her head down despondently. “No, I’m afraid.”
Cadance imitated the gesture, heaving a sigh. Her voice was filled with disappointment. “Is that so?” She raised her head, “there must be something you can do.”
“I’m afraid not,” Celestia said, and her eyes pointed towards the floor, then ceiling. “A survey of Ponyville by both land and air by my guards has turned up nothing.”
“Maybe she’s not in Ponyville,” Cadance said, “she may have misspoken, or lied.”
“Something tells me she is in Ponyville, Cadance," Celestia said, her feathers twitching and tapping against the letter beneath.
Cadance turned and muttered to herself. Celestia’s ears perked up, but caught none of her words. Her brow furrowed. Cadance turned back around. Celestia’s frown wiped off and her face returned to its gentle sternness once again.
“So, how is Shining Armor taking this? I have not spoken to him since our last meeting.”
Cadance lowered her head even further, as if lying prostrate before the Princess. “He’s not doing well, Your Highness. The news that even you could do nothing to help find her hit him very hard.”
Celestia raised a hoof over her head dramatically. “It pains me so that I can do nothing but sit here and hope, Cadance. I am supposed to be the kind overseer of this land, but when one unicorn, of immense importance, mind you, leaves my sight, all I can do is wait.”
“I’m sorry we’ve both been asking a lot of you, Your Highness,” Cadance said, raising her head up to her aunt’s neck. “I know it must be hard on you, as well.”
Celestia lowered her head, resting her chin on Cadance’s ear. “You have no idea,” she said, nearly whispering. She whimpered slightly, her lip quivering for a moment before she drew her head back.
“Did Shining Armor tell you what she had said before she left?” Cadance asked.
“No, why?” Celestia tilted her head.
“Well, she said some strange things, and neither of us could decipher what they could have meant.”
“Oh?” Celestia’s eyebrow raised.
“Well, this was heard second-hoof, but I hope you could make sense of it.” Cadance put a hoof under her chin and looked at the Princess pensively. “She said she needed to make friends. That’s why she’s going to Ponyville, at least, what she claimed.”
“That’s a strange statement, to be sure,” Celestia said, imitating Cadance’s gesture. "I can't say why she would say such a thing, or feel the need to leave without giving any more information than that."
“That's exactly what is bothering both of us. Why would someone wake up from a coma and instantly resolve to go make friends? I know she did not have the most friends beforehand, she pretty much only spoke with her dragon companion according to my husband. But why, on the moment of awakening?”
Cadance nearly fell face-first onto the floor and sobbed slightly. “So, then, I thought, what if she doesn’t want to see any of us again? What if she was hurt that I married her brother while she was in an unconscious state? What if she thought that, maybe it was our fault she had so much difficulty connecting with others? And what if that’s true? I don’t know, auntie. I just don’t know what to do about her. She’s tearing us all apart. She’s not here, she’s not there, she’s fallen off the face of the earth and I want to pull her back up so we can be a happy family, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen anymore.”
Cadance gripped onto Celestia’s hooves, tears rolling down her face. “So, please, Celestia, there must be something you haven’t thought of, some way to find her, just to see that she’s alright. I don’t care if I don’t get to hold her in my hooves again if that’s not what she wants. But just to know that she’s safe and secure, please, there must be something.”
Celestia’s body shook madly. She turned her head, shooting glances all around the unchanging room. She clenched the letter tightly beneath her wing. Her feathers quivered and trembled. She looked down on the desperate alicorn that lay groveling before her. Cadance muttered some words to herself, what appeared to Celestia to be a nursery rhyme.
"Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake. Clap your hooves and do a little shake."
Her mind raced. Cadance's words echoed in her mind in an endless loop. She darted a glance to the fireplace. The flames seemed so inviting, as if they would consume the root of a problem before its branches could reach out and strangle her and ensnare her livelihood. But beneath her, the dejection on Cadance’s countenance, the ease of simply dropping a scrap of paper as salve for her wounds, also tempted her.
Celestia stood, her body rigid and shaking heavily. She glanced over to the fire, then down to Cadance. She did this repeatedly, sweat forming on her brow. She muttered incoherent babblings quietly to herself. She took one last long glance at the flames, then at Cadance.
She released the letter from her wing and shook Cadance off from her hooves. She began to walk towards the door.
“This is for Shining Armor. Bring it to him at once.”