//------------------------------// // Fifth Century // Story: Calling You // by AugieDog //------------------------------// "More tea, Cadance?" "Yes, thank you." Levitating her cup, Cadance could scarcely force herself to meet her aunt's gaze. But then she'd had the same trouble for most of the past two hundred years... Still, she managed a smile, but when her aunt returned it, Cadance had to stifle a shiver. Anypony else would probably have called Aunt Celestia's smile gentle and contented, but after five centuries, Cadance had become attuned to every tiny shift in her aunt's mood, could sense them as easily as she could feel air currents flowing through her pinions when she was in flight. And the subtle scent of unhappiness in the room at that moment scraped the inside of her nose as if somepony in the neighborhood was spreading compost. "All's going well?" Aunt Celestia asked, the curtains behind her billowing around the open door of her sitting room balcony, the twilight of a midsummer evening slowly fading to the full and starry night Cadance had helped her aunt set up earlier in the week. Which was one reason for that quiet little stench, Cadance knew. Ever since the Elements of Harmony had begun their slow slump into uselessness, she'd been assisting Aunt Celestia in her task of setting the cosmos on a more automated path, of trying to find ways for the sun and stars to rise and set on their own. We have five centuries, her aunt had said to her one morning eight or nine decades ago after their last attempt to pre-program the sun's movements had resulted in a whirling, sparking solar display that had confused every rooster in Equestria. Luna and I will likely destroy each other when she returns in madness, so my only real hope is that I can leave behind a simpler mechanism for keeping the world working. "Cadance?" "Yes!" Jolted from her reverie, Cadance gave her aunt a smile so phony, it felt like a porcelain mask, cold and heavy and too-perfectly formed. "Everything's quite well, thank you!" Except, she didn't say, for the way she'd largely abandoned her own long-term project to solve the problem with the Elements of Harmony. After that horrible, horrible revelation from the creature who'd been calling herself Chrysalis a hundred years ago, Cadance had starting bursting into cold sweats every time she so much as thought about those monsters she'd created. She'd spent less than an hour a week, she guessed, in the Realm Between since that day, and those few times she couldn't avoid the current Chrysalis, it was even harder to meet her gaze than Aunt Celestia's.... Cadance hadn't abandoned her duties, of course, so many Calls coming in these days, in fact, that she often needed three cups of Aunt Celestia's powerful tea just to keep up. She was visiting a lot more of the country, too, since Aunt Celestia had authorized the construction of the intercontinental railroad some sixty years ago, and with ponies more easily able to move around Equestria, the population pressures on the cities of the living world had receded. Still, on a good day, Cadance could maybe manage a quarter of the Calls she received—all nine of the changeling teams were working day and night to guide ponies into the Groves Beyond—and Cadance, she just...just— Her jaw tightened. 'Hate' wasn't a word she used as a general rule, but every time she went out on a Call recently, it seemed, two more came buzzing at her horn! With no choice but to conjure up messages for Chrysalis giving the locations of the other dying ponies, well, 'hate' was the only word Cadance could think of for the feeling that coursed through her. "You're certain?" Aunt Celestia asked, that same gentle smile on her snout, and staring at her, Cadance couldn't remember what she'd last said out loud, didn't know if she'd missed something else Auntie had said, wasn't certain where— An all-too familiar itch tingled the base of her horn, and for the first time in her long, long life, Cadance felt grateful for it. Standing, she let her tea cup settle to the table and bowed her head. "You'll forgive me, Aunt Celestia, but some business has just arisen." "Of course, niece." The dampness of her aunt's quiet unhappiness still floated in the air like a light mist. "Shall I see you at dawn?" The plaintive note in her question, Cadance thought, would've surprised those who seemed to revere Aunt Celestia as some infallible divine empress, and the first real smile Cadance had felt in quite some time tugged at her lips. Leaning across the table, she kissed her aunt's cheek. "I wouldn't miss it." A fair percentage of the gloom around Aunt Celestia whisked away as if a breeze had blown through, and Cadance activated her horn, let the lightness in the air bear her through the spaces between space till she stepped out into a shabby little one room cabin, a bed its only piece of furniture. Equestria's far west coast, the salt scent in the air and the in-and-out whoosh of waves within easy trotting distance told her. The boughs of pine trees waved late afternoon shadows through the dusty windows, but the unicorn on the bed absorbed her attention immediately, a grizzled old stallion named Dory, she knew as she always did, the cutie mark on his sweat-grimy flank a small boat of some sort. That he lay alone in the house—alone in this whole stretch of woods as far as Cadance could tell—was bad enough, but her blood almost froze at the sight of the glowing strands binding him to the vast mosaic of love that surrounded all ponies living and dead: as threadbare as his blanket, the strands barely shone, shakier than the breaths he took. Without another thought, she leaped to his side, slipped her magic around him like a sling. "Dory?" She wasn't Calling him yet, not in this weakened condition. "Can you hear me?" "Help." He groaned, the sound low and rusty as a long-disused gate. "I...I don't...don't—" "It's all right, Dory." Wrapping the slightest sliver of power around his few feeble strands for fear they might snap, she traced them to a long-dead father, mother, and brother, all of whom Dory had argued bitterly with before striking out on his own...and none of whom he'd ever seen or spoken to again. "Don't..." His eyes came open almost as creakily as his voice. "Don't wanna die alone..." "You're not, Dory." He'd never married, she discovered as she inched further along the strands, had never socialized with the other fisherponies in the town not far to the south, hadn't spoken more than six dozen words to the shopkeeper there over the five decades he'd lived in this cabin. Not good. Not good at all. With a flick of her horn, she opened the way through to the Groves Beyond to see the parents and the brother waiting there silently—Fly Tier, Caster, and Tackle Box were their names, but the rest of their information didn't spring immediately to mind. Because she hadn't Called them, she realized suddenly, her panic inching up another notch. That meant one of the changeling teams had escorted them, and Cadance had spent so little time in the Realm Between the past century, she couldn't recall the last time she and Chrysalis had gotten together for an update session, those quiet little sit-downs where they magically exchanged the details of the Calls they'd separately performed. So she didn't know these ponies, their expressions hard even in the soft green shadows of the Groves Beyond, and the air around them smelled of nothing but dry duty, Cadance barely able to find a speck of love in them. And if she couldn't cocoon Dory in that gentle envelope, the very fabric of the Groves themselves— Could he even go there without being firmly enmeshed in love? It was a question she'd never considered in all the thousands of years that she'd been Calling ponies. Cadance could tell that Dory's body only had another few moments, but with no love to embrace him, could he enter the Groves? Another wheezing breath from the bed, and Cadance shook herself, touched her horn to his, said "I'm here, Dory." Dory wasn't looking at her, his attention fixed on the ponies standing in the shimmering doorway to the Groves. "They never wanted me," he grumbled, Cadance's ears twitching, his words hollow and echoing as if coming up from behind an iron wall of grouchiness he'd built around himself. "And I never wanted them. Never wanted nopony..." Taking a breath of her own, Cadance shoved her panic aside and knelt beside the bed. "But Dory," she murmured. "You just said you didn't want to die alone." His eyes wavered, and Cadance wove her magic through the quivering strands of his love like a gardener placing supports under the drooping vines of some failing plant. "Think of it this way," she went on, raising her voice enough to reach Dory's relatives watching from the Groves Beyond. "Love—real love—is less an emotion than it is an act of will, a conscious choice. Love is a way of looking at the world as it really is and accepting it, accepting that we're all a part of it and all a part of each other. Yes, it's hard; yes, it can take an effort. But while I've seen how ponies can survive without love, I've also seen how they can't live without it. And they can't die without it, either." The ponies on the other side were quivering a little now, but Dory seemed to have relaxed, his eyes closed instead of clenched, his breathing shallow but not gasping. Cadance took the strengthening bonds on both sides and coaxed them along as gently as she could. "Things happened," she said, "between the three of you. But who was right and who was wrong, none of that matters now. It never really did. What matters is that you're a family. Maybe you don't like each other, sure, but love...love is deeper than that. Love is a connection that binds every individual mind and body to every other individual mind and body and to the entirety of the universe. It's a connection you can feel right now despite everything if you...if you just let yourself feel it." The effort of nursing their love along made sweat start over Cadance's brow, but when the bare embers she'd sensed upon entering the cabin flickered into the tiniest tongue of a flame, she felt her neck muscles unknot just a bit. "Talk to one another." She gave Dory's cheek a kiss and turned to see similar tiny flames hovering above Fly, Caster, and Tackle. "Now that the pressures of life are gone, you might find it a little easier." Pushing herself up onto all fours, Cadance spread her hoofs on the cabin's splintery floor. "Dory," she Called. "It's time." Dory gave one last exhale and sat up, a younger but still somehow grizzled-looking version of himself stepping from the body he was leaving behind. He didn't rush toward the three waiting beyond the wavery doorway as most other ponies did after she'd Called them, but bowing to her, he walked to them, more than a little uncertainty in the set of all their shoulders. Still, Cadance didn't take another breath till he'd actually stepped through into the Groves, the curtain drawing closed and leaving her alone in the cabin. She was shaking, she realized, her muscles still tight and bunched like rocks under her skin. Needing to stretch, she stumbled to the cabin door, pushed it aside with her magic, and forced herself outside into the scant sunlight, big clouds drifting through the afternoon blue above the pine trees. Her lungs sucked in air with a gasp, and for all that she didn't want to think about it, she couldn't help the panic flashing through her brain. What in the wide, wide world of Equestria had just happened?? Had she really come within a hair's breadth of losing Dory?? A throat cleared ahead of her, and Cadance's head snapped up. Had Aunt Celestia followed her?? Had she seen the—?? But it wasn't Aunt Celestia. The current version of Chrysalis stood at the edge of the pine forest that pushed close around Dory's cabin, her black hide standing out against the softer gray shadows of the trees, her green eyes seeming to glow slightly. "Nice job in there," she said. Cadance couldn't move, couldn't think, wasn't even sure it was her voice she heard saying, "I'm sorry, Chrysalis, so...so sorry." Chrysalis did some blinking, her expression as blank as any Cadance had ever seen. "For what exactly, if I might ask?" "Everything." Stepping toward the changeling, Cadance didn't try to stop her own shaking, didn't try to push the image from her mind of this Chrysalis quickly and efficiently cracking the skull of the previous Chrysalis and swallowing down whatever she found inside. "I won't lie to you, Chrys, and say I'm OK with how you changelings deal with your dead. But you and I have to work together for the good of all ponies everywhere. I mean, if we'd been holding our regular update sessions, I could've addressed Dory's problems years ago, and that...that...that—" She couldn't find a word for the fiasco that had nearly just swallowed up Dory, so she settled for waving a hoof at the cabin behind her. "That would never have happened!" "I agree." Chrysalis sidled into the fluky sunlight of the clearing, her gaze flicking back and forth between Cadance's and the ground. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I didn't find a better way to tell you. But you have to know, Cady—" Like the last few changeling leaders, this Chrysalis was Cadance's height, her luminous eyes now looking straight into Cadance's. "The one time I tried Calling one of us the way we Call you ponies..." Her voice trailed off, and Cadance saw those green eyes waver. With less effort than before, Cadance took another step toward her, Chrysalis breathing in and out. "One of my first lieutenants, he...he wanted to pass as you ponies pass." Her ears folded tight into the spongy hair of her mane. "And we tried, Cady, we did. But the love, it...it didn't swirl the way it does during a Call, and it didn't...didn't taste right at all. And when he...when he breathed his last, he just...there wasn't...he didn't...didn't—" She stopped, closed her eyes, opened them again, and fixed them on Cadance's. "We're not ponies. We never have been, and we never will be. But we need each other, ponies and changelings, and you need to remember that." "I will." Taking another step, she leaned forward, touched the side of her neck gently to Chrysalis's. "Can you forgive me for forgetting?" The quickest of nuzzles, and Chrysalis slid away, a smile curling around the points of her teeth. "I'm sure I'll think of a way you can make it up to me someday." Her smile faded. "But you're absolutely right about our update session. The sooner, the better." "Give me half an hour." Cadance powered up her horn. "I need to talk to Aunt Celestia." Chrysalis started, her gauzy wings shooting out. "Really? You...you're finally going to tell her about us?" "Oh." Cadance swallowed. "No, I...I was thinking of my plan for the Elements of Harmony." That got her an eye roll from Chrysalis. "Of course you were." "But it's because of you. Because—" Cadance stopped, swallowed, realized that she needed to say this. "Because I...I've been thinking of you as monsters for a while now." Heat splashed across her cheeks, but she forced herself to hold Chrysalis's gaze. "I thought I'd made a mistake when I created you, and I didn't...didn't trust myself to do any work with ponies." The woods had gone completely silent, quieter than Cadance had thought a spot in the living world could get, and Chrysalis wasn't moving at all, even the usual buzz of her wings suspended. "I used to think that," Cadance finished. "I don't anymore, and I...I'm so sorry that I ever did. I...I hope you can forgive me for that, too?" Another stretch of stillness, then Chrysalis gave a sniff. "I'll add it to your account." Her horn glowed green, the air darkening around her. "And I'll see you back at the house in half an hour." The darkness shimmered into a globe, surrounded her, then whisked away, leaving Cadance alone in the woods. Feeling better about, well, about everything, really, Cadance split the air open and stepped back to the aunt's rooms at Canterlot Tower.