//------------------------------//
// Cadance 
// Story: The Sweet Softer Ground 
// by Cynewulf 
//------------------------------//

Cadance



There are alicorns and then there are alicorns. There are those who may hear songs and those who heard the Song at the dawn of time. 


Oh, but our bed is so cold and like animal magnetism at work I can feel the empty imprint you leave when you go. It’s like a hole dug by hooves and everything leans in towards, even me. 


Shining is gone. He’s out there, wandering. Doing something. Being elsewhere and our bed is so cold. I’ve retired and court is long over and our rooms are empty. I ate lunch alone, and I stare out the window alone. Lonely the head that wears the crown.


But there are alicorns and there are alicorns and it is different. My aunts can stay alone for a long time, but I’m just a pony. Ponies were not made to live alone; mutual help and companionship.


I roll around in our bed and think about Shining. It is completely beneath me, but it’s fun and I laugh.


But he’s out in the cold, and I wonder what he’s doing. 


I used to love watching him on the parade ground. It’s my curse: I can’t resist a stallion in armor. And how heroic he looked, those bright and alert eyes. How straight and tall he stood, proud and how he smiled at me when he knew no one could see him. 


So he was a fool too, but a good fool.


This is a routine now for us. We sit together on the dual throne for a few weeks of happiness. But then he will fidget. Court will seem overlong. I’ll catch him staring out the window. Sometimes he’ll accost some poor guardspony to spar with and I have to help bandage the innocent and I fuss and Shining feels foolish but nothing changes. He starts to walk more slowly. 


And of course, in the end, I always let him go. He skips off to patrol or war or whatever it is like the colt who used to pull my tail when we were young. 


I ask him why this happens but he won’t tell me. Or at least I think he won’t, for his answers have words but they mean nothing and his shrugs tell more than they do. He tries to tell me that he’s restless, but I know he’s not without rest because he sleeps whenever I let him and he’d never leave bed if I didn’t prod him to. He tells me that he feels useless but I need him. This always makes him sigh when I say that he’s helping me. I hate that sigh. He makes me angry, but he knows that and we feel foolish and I let him go without being mad at him for leaving and he thanks me and in the morning...


In the morning he is gone to do whatever it is that tugs at him.


The mountain gods worry me. But Shining will come back.


I know he will. He must. The Dual Throne sits half empty and the bed has only his imprint and these things mean he must come back, because nature abhors a vacuum and it is very important. He’s brave. He’s strong. 


It is sad that we call them that because they are not. The Mitou are just things that cannot decide how many legs to run on and how we should not fear. No, I suppose fear, but not live in fear of. They can die just as we can. 


Shining isn’t afraid, not in a visible way. Mostly, he wears a stern face or a kind one; masks, but both are lovely. They comfort my ponies and give them hope. Hope is like love. I understand hope. I think.


Hope hope hope.


It’s rare to have so much time to myself. I’m lucky, really, that the Empire doesn’t work quite like Equestria. Ministers and offices work for me. A whole system in place to help.


Time passes and the sun sinks lower in the sky. It worries me.


Of course, he won’t be back for some time. 


The Empire is warm, and the city itself is in Spring, but I know outside the border where he is it must be snowing. Snowing reminds me of— 


—We were young and Twilight was so small. I wasn’t babysitting then, I just wanted somepony to play with. I still had my  Henosian accent and I’d only been in Canterlot for a  few months. But Twilight was asleep or had the cold, I don’t remember. But Shining wanted to play and we ran—


I haven’t thought about Henosis in a long time. Well, no, it hasn’t been something I have actively thought about. But I’ve seen it in dreams. I see it whenever Shining is gone too long out there in the snow. I see the Grand Hall of Dawn Castle and Mother smiling from the Throne of Gold down at me. I dream about tapestries that go on for miles and being a filly with wild hair and little wings that I cannot use yet.


My hooves always sound so loud in the quiet empty halls. Dawn Castle is so large and there are not as many ponies in it as are in Canterlot Palace. Canterlot will frighten me with it’s crowds. Here I spend much of the day in the company of only a few ponies or all alone. 


I look out the window again, suddenly tired.


The sun is slowly sinking. Aunt Celestia is letting it go to bed. Like a foal.


The word foal makes me sad.


I will tell Shining all about Henosis when he gets back. He likes my stories. I think.