The pearly-white veil floating along the top of Aunt Celestia's mane made Cadance think of foam on a gently lapping sea. Her every other thought, however, spun and sputtered. "You're getting married?? To Prince Golden??"
Aunt Celestia's eyes sparkled in the full-length mirror, her nose crinkling with one of her enigmatic little smiles. "You'd object to having Goldie as your uncle?"
"That's not it at all!" Cadance realized she was shouting, but in her aunt's room, she knew they wouldn't be overheard. "I've liked him ever since you introduced us after he graduated from your school thirty or forty years ago!" She waved at the over-sized dressmaker's dummy, a gown laid out there as light and lovely as a summer cloud, a golden sunburst tiara balanced on its brow. "But you don't love him!" Lighting up her horn, Cadance searched once more for any shiver of that emotion in her aunt's demeanor, and when she still didn't find it, she stomped a hoof. "And that's terrible!"
The temperature in the room dropped, and Aunt Celestia turned from the mirror, the blank expression on her face not quite hiding an anger Cadance hadn't seen there since the day of Aunt Luna's banishment just over two hundred years ago now. "I love all my little ponies, niece," her aunt said quietly, but the words hit Cadance like a slap.
Ears folding, Cadance bowed, her wings clenched against her sides. "You're right, Auntie, and I'm sorry." Swallowing, she forced her head up, met her aunt's calm but still ferocious gaze. "I have nothing but respect for both you and Prince Golden, and while I know you'll make each other very happy and I'll be honored to be your bridesmaid, I...I don't understand how you and he...why you and he are...are doing this."
Another splintery instant, then Aunt Celestia's head drooped, her anger gone like it had never been there. "Mostly politics. As long as Luna—" Her voice caught, but with a clearing of throat, she went on: "As long as Luna and I kept to our castle, the royal families here in Canterlot could pretend we didn't exist when it suited them. But now that I'm not...using the old castle any longer, there's been a movement gathering among certain unicorns over the last century or so to challenge my right to be called 'princess' within the city limits." She cocked her head. "I'm sure they'd object to you using the title as well if any of them could remember your name: you really need to get out more, Cadance."
It took Cadance some effort not to stomp again. "You mean to say you're only marrying Prince Golden so you can officially join the royal families?"
"So you and I both can officially join the royal families." Her horn glowed, and her veil wafted over to drape across the head of the dressmaker's dummy. "We need their support more than ever till we can devise a cure for Luna, and after Goldie and I are wed, every newborn princess and prince will be my niece or nephew and your cousin. And since Goldie is the direct heir to Princess Platinum, our titles will no longer be in doubt for those so mired in tradition that such things matter."
As with everything her aunt did, it made perfect sense, but— "I'm sorry again, Auntie. It just seems...it seems a cold reason for a marriage."
"I won't deny it." Aunt Celestia sighed, leaned forward, touched her cheek to Cadance's. "But Goldie is the finest pony I've ever known, and—" She chuckled, her breath warm along Cadance's neck. "To tell the truth, he and I have been quietly and pleasantly courting the past several decades."
Something finally tickled Cadance's magic—not quite love, but one of its close relatives—and seeing a blush turn her aunt's neck pink made Cadance giggle. "Courting? Is that what you kids are calling it these days?"
Clearing her throat, Aunt Celestia stepped back with a tap of her horn against the top of Cadance's head. "I did say the marriage was mostly political, didn't I?" Her expression grew more serious. "It means a great deal to me, Cadance, that you'll be there beside me. Thank you."
Shifting her hoofs, Cadance forced a smile. "The vernal equinox, you said?"
Aunt Celestia nodded, and Cadance took a step back. "I'll go mark it on my calendar right now. Then I have some business to see to, and I'll be back in time for sundown." She let her power spring forth, slipped through the slits it made in space, and blew out a breath to feel the sweet green grass of the Realm Between tickle her fetlocks.
The hum in the air pricked her ears as it always did, but after more than a hundred years, she found it kind of soothing. With the rustle of the forest on the hilltop above her little house and the in-and-out whoosh of the water down along the bay shore, it had become the sound of home: the clean, dry scent of the hive, too, stretching up into the trees after so many years and spreading out from there. Cadance took a deep breath, smiled, and pushed her front door open.
This part of the house still looked very much the same—chairs, tables, sofas, bookcases—but Cadance kept going down the hall past the kitchen and the bedroom she rarely used anymore to where the back rooms and back porch had been originally. This part of the house, it wasn't really made of wood anymore, hard and smooth and shiny like glazed ceramic or chocolate brown marble. The back door was now a slightly mooshy substance—very much like wax, Cadance had always thought—and two of her changelings stood outside it as they always did, one on either side.
They bowed in their soft, rustling way, and she nodded in return, asking "Is Chrysalis in?" She hadn't had any itches at the base of her horn for over an hour, of course, so she knew the changelings wouldn't be out on a Call. But they might be busy with other things, she supposed....
"Indeed, princess." One of the changelings squinted, green fire wavering from his horn—or maybe her horn; Cadance still couldn't tell without looking more closely than was polite. The door melted out of the way, and Cadance stepped through before it squished back into place.
Lumpy, brown and winding, the corridor beyond reminded her of caves she'd read about, but it was made from the same resinous substance that encased the back of her house. Green magic crackling along the walls gave the place the shady light of a deep forest, and she smiled at the activity. With Aunt Celestia asking her to handle more duties in the living world over the past hundred years, Cadance had come to rely so greatly on her changelings, she couldn't see how she'd ever managed without them. Yes, she still handled the more delicate Calls herself—any time foals were involved, for instance—but however oddly the changelings worked with the basic fabric of love, they got results very similar to hers.
And, she had to admit, she'd become rather fond of the changeling leaders she'd worked with since the beginning, getting to know them and watching them grow—the first and second were much more insectoid than the last several, but the way they all called themselves Chrysalis, she guessed it had become as much a title as a name.
The thought brought her up short just outside the entrance to the chambers at the center of the hive. She had dealt with four Chrysalises before this one, hadn't she? And yet she'd never run across any of them in the Groves Beyond.
Of course, the Groves Beyond were vast—infinite, really, in their own way. But friends could always find friends there, so it seemed odd that she'd never seen even one of the changeling leaders on her visits. Or any other changeling for that matter...
Shaking her head, she stepped into the antechamber, the two changelings on either side of the entryway snapping to attention. The most recent Chrysalis rested across a sofa made of something semi-squishy and yellowish-green, her strangely pock-marked front legs crossed as one of the smaller changelings polished her shiny black hoofs. "Princess Cadance!" Her face almost literally lighting up, Chrysalis slid forward and stood before bowing, the smaller changeling scooting out of the way. "Always a delight to welcome you to our humble hive!"
The first unforced smile Cadance had given all day crossed her muzzle. "Thank you, Chrysalis. I just wanted to—"
She stopped again, suddenly realizing that she had no idea why she'd come back here.
Chrysalis cocked her head. "You have another Call for us?" Her black tongue flickered over her sharp little incisors. "More love we can spread?"
"No, actually. I—" Her thoughts still refusing to settle, Cadance blinked at the changeling. "Might we talk a bit? If...if you have the time, I mean."
Those odd blue and green eyes widened. "My time is your time, princess, and always has been." Chrysalis stepped away from her couch, gestured to it with a front hoof. "Please, make yourself comfortable." She glanced at the three other changelings in the room. "Would you rather we were alone?"
Spreading her wings, Cadance rose and let herself drift down onto the spongy green sofa, quite soft and pleasant, she was a little surprised to discover. "I..." She felt a blush start along her cheeks. "I don't want to be a bother."
A half-smile wrinkled Chrysalis's stubby snout. "Think nothing of it." She nodded to the others, but they were already trooping for the entryway. Chrysalis's horn glowed to seal the waxy door, and she turned a concerned look on Cadance. "Is everything all right, princess?"
Cadance opened her mouth, still not sure what might come out, and found herself telling Chrysalis all about Aunt Celestia's plan to wed Prince Golden. "He's a wonderful pony," she finished after a long stretch of explaining the situation. "And while I can understand what Aunt Celestia's doing, marrying a mortal pony just seems...seems..." She had to let her voice trail off, still not sure why the idea struck her as wrong.
Chrysalis had stood quietly the whole time, her translucent wings folded against her sides, but now she cocked her head. "Marrying?" she asked into the silence.
"Ah." Cadance backtracked a little in her thoughts. "Two ponies get married when they love each other so much that they want to spend the rest of their lives together."
"Lives?" Chrysalis shook her head. "Surely if you're talking about love, you must mean their deaths. For love and death are as intertwined as those braids in your mane. In fact, I've often wondered how anything that living ponies feel could truly be called love at all." She shrugged. "If you'll pardon me saying so."
"Not be called love?" A second of incomprehension, then Cadance thought she had it. "Oh! Because you've only ever experienced the web of love at the end of a pony's life! But you see, it's during their lives that ponies spin the strands that support them at the end, that connect them to their families and friends in the Groves Beyond, that allow us to guide them on into their final positions in that web. The amount of love that most ponies create while they're alive is simply enormous!"
Chrysalis was staring, her forehead wrinkled and her mouth partway open. Cadance flared her horn. "Let me see if I can show you." Summoning one of her art books from the front room, she flipped it open to a photograph of the unicorn sculptor Obsidian Shard standing beside a chunk of marble three times larger than she was. "As ponies grow, they build a block of love as big and solid as the stone in this picture. They love widely, deeply, sometimes even extravagantly, building the love that supports the entire foundation of the cosmos."
"That—" Chrysalis's eyes flickered back and forth between the picture and Cadance. "That can't be right!"
Cadance sent out a pulse of magic to turn the page. "But by the time you and I get to feel that love, right at the end of a pony's life—" The photo there had been taken six months later and showed Shard standing beside the sculpture she'd called First Flight, a pegasus foal reared back on her hind legs, her wings unfurled, her front hoofs reaching for the sky. "By then, they're refined their love, perfected it, carved it away to the essentials, and formed an exquisite piece of art from it."
Other magic began tugging at Cadance's, and she let the book go, let the green glow from Chrysalis's horn support it in front of her, the changeling's wings open and fluttering behind her. "You...you mean to say that this child-sized object—" She tapped the photo with a hoof. "This is as much love as a pony has at the end of its life? While this—" She flipped the page back, her hoof shaking as it touched the picture of the original chunk of marble. "This represents the amount it creates before it reaches the end of its life??"
"'Its life'?" Cadance couldn't help asking, a little chill whisking down her back.
Chrysalis waved a hoof in the air. "His, hers, whatever." She brought the hoof back down, practically caressing the photo of the big stone block. "But are you seriously telling me that this is analogous to how much love a pony will generate before that pony dies?"
The word 'generate' made Cadance a little uncomfortable, too, but that, she couldn't deny, was her own fault. "Chrysalis, I need to apologize to you."
"Princess?" Chrysalis looked up from the book, the confusion on her face even bigger.
"I've neglected your education." Cadance shook her head. "To truly Call ponies at the end of their lives, you need to understand the rest of their lives, too. So—" Taking a breath, Cadance blew it out, pushed a front hoof through the air to symbolize pushing the past away. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask you to join me at Aunt Celestia's wedding."
"In...in the living world?" It didn't seem possible, but Chrysalis's eyes grew even wider. "You...and I?"
Cadance nodded. "You need to see love outside the context of death, and while Auntie may not really love Prince Golden—"
"Oh, but she must, Princess!" Chrysalis's magic flared, the book spinning around to show Cadance the first photo to Obsidian Shard again. "If ponies build up these blocks of love when they move through life only to then focus them down into smaller objects when they move toward death, then a pony who doesn't die must continue building an ever-greater block of love!" Chrysalis was shivering, her scent strange and ticklish in Cadance's nose, like the air just before a thunderstorm. "Can you imagine how great your aunt's need to expend that love must be?"
"But..." Cadance swallowed. "I'm a pony who doesn't die, too...."
Chrysalis's wings froze in place, the odd note in her scent crumbling away. "Ah. Yes. Well. Perhaps the comparison between love and marble isn't quite one-to-one. Still, I would very much like to see your aunt's wedding, thank you." She glanced down at herself, then flickered to become a pink unicorn just slightly smaller than an adult mare. "Something like this, I suppose, would be more suitable?"
It took Cadance some effort to rise. "Yes, that...that should be fine. The wedding's not till the vernal equinox, so I'll...I'll write it on the calendar in the kitchen."
Whether Chrysalis bowed to her or not as she left, Cadance wasn't sure. She also realized when she reached the back door that she'd left her book behind. But flexing her magic to melt the door out of the way and reform it after she crossed into her tidy little house once more, she was too busy thinking about love. She could sense it the way sunflowers sensed the sun, could detect the pull of it like hummingbirds flocking to honeysuckle, could move it around and channel it like pegasi working a storm front, but—
What did it feel like? What was it like to be in love?