"Oh, Atalanta!" Haralson clasped his hoofs to his chest, the evening breeze whispering through the boughs of the apple trees above and around him. "You've made me the happiest pony in Equestria!"
"No, I haven't!" The honey-gold mare wrapped her front legs around him and hugged him tight. "Because right now, I'm the happiest pony in Equestria!"
Covered in shadows several yards away, Cadance almost leaped out to tell them they were both wrong, but she contented herself with a quick and silent little dance. Giving the couple one last look, she wafted a few waves of concentrated love toward them as a wedding present and slipped into the spaces between space. After all this time, all the ponies she'd nudged toward each other in the hopes that they would click together, it still gave her the sweetest sort of thrill when they actually did. And this time especially: for three generations, she'd been trying to unite these two unrelated Apple families, and now that she had, it opened up so many possibilities, she was going to need another notebook or two just to track them!
The grass of her front yard soft beneath her hoofs, she stood and stretched a few kinks from her legs—it had taken Haralson forever to pop the question, Cadance sweating there in the earth pony's orchard and hoping he wouldn't lose his nerve like he had the last five times he'd invited Atalanta out for an evening stroll! Bending her neck, then, Cadance found herself gazing upward at the moon, and her throat tightened, Aunt Luna's profile still as crisp and distinct there as when Aunt Celestia had put it in place that first evening just over seven hundred years ago now.
"Soon," she whispered, swallowing against the tightness. "But not too soon, I hope..."
Still, getting Haralson and Atalanta married was such a wonderful step in the right direction that Cadance couldn't keep anything even remotely melancholy in her thoughts. With a skip, she trotted down the front path and pushed the door open, her mind already composing the entries she would spend the evening putting into her ledger—
And stopped at the sight of two changelings standing on either side of the closed door that led into her workroom.
They stared straight ahead like the ones who guarded the passageway back into the hive, but this was the first time she'd ever seen any up in the front of the house like this. Hoping everything was OK—she'd sent some Calls to Chrysalis while waiting for Haralson to get his nerve up, but she hadn't felt anything other than Chrys's usual acknowledgement—Cadance put on her gentlest smile, stepped up to them, and asked, "Is there anything I can help you with?"
The one on the right blinked once. "Have you an audience?" he asked—at least, the baritone tones behind the buzzing made her think the changeling was a stallion.
Feeling the corners of her smile sagging, Cadance managed to repeat, "Audience?"
A sigh from the changeling on the left. "Audience," this one said, her voice definitely a mare's. "With her Majesty."
Before Cadance could do more than blink, the doorknob glowed green, the door swinging open, and Chrysalis stood there, a mildly annoyed look on her face. "What did I tell you?" she asked.
Cadance opened her mouth to let Chrys know in no uncertain terms that she hadn't told her anything, but Chrys held up a front hoof, pointed it first at the changeling on the left, then at the changeling on the right. "Either of you?"
Both changelings did some blinking of their own for another moment, then the mare said slowly, "You told us to ask any changeling who came along if they had an audience."
"Very good!" Chrysalis aimed her hoof at Cadance. "Now, does this look like a changeling?"
"It could." The stallion squinted, green fire rippling over his shiny black carapace, and as Cadance stared, he shifted into a version of her: not quite three-quarter size, bright orange, and grinning widely. "See?"
The mare changeling giggled, and Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "All right," she said. "I'd say we've had just about enough fun for one evening."
"But Mom!" the pint-sized Cadance blurted out, then dropped to the carpet and burst back to his regular shape, clamping both front hoofs over his snout. "I'm sorry! Your Majesty, I mean!"
It struck Cadance all at once, then: she wasn't talking to a mare and a stallion. "These are hatchlings!" she couldn't keep from exclaiming.
Chrysalis smiled, and while this Chrysalis had never been shy about using that expression—she could be positively jolly, in fact, especially when compared to some of her predecessors—none of the changelings ever looked quite right to Cadance while they were smiling. The smiles were usually warm, of course, and seemed to convey a certain amount of fondness or friendliness, but even now, watching Chrysalis smile at these two young changelings, Cadance felt no love there. It was more than a little disconcerting.
"Yes," Chrysalis was saying. "Just two weeks out of the egg, the both of them."
The little changelings gave sweet but loveless grins. "But!" Chrysalis wagged a hoof at them. "That's no excuse for them to be forgetting their lessons! What have I told you to do if you ever meet Princess Cadance?"
"Princess Cadance??" they both gasped at the same time, and the filly went on: "You mean this is Princess Cadance??"
Cadance couldn't help laughing. "Yes, I am, and I'm very pleased to meet the two of you."
She wasn't sure she'd ever seen a changeling blush before, but they quickly pulled themselves together, bowed, and said in unison, "Thank you, Princess Cadance, for making us."
It caught her more off-guard than seeing the miniature orange version of herself had. Chrysalis gave a crisp little nod, then gestured down the hallway toward the hive entrance. "Now, that's enough for today. We'll have more practice later in the week."
"Yes, your Majesty!" the little filly chirped. She and the colt bowed, turned, and scampered for the back of the house.
A sigh beside her pulled Cadance's gaze to Chrysalis again. "I have high hopes for those two," the changeling said quietly. "The female may in fact be good enough to become me in another few decades."
Cadance was still stuck on one particular phrase. "Two weeks out of the egg??" She waved a hoof at the end of the hall. "You weren't as big as that filly when I took you on your first Call, and you were twenty years old at that point!"
Chrysalis shrugged. "Evolution in action. I mean, look." She drew herself up to her full height, and Cadance noticed for the first time that she had to tilt her head back just a bit to meet the changeling's eyes. "One of the perks of serial immortality: you get to trade up physically every twenty-five or thirty years." She winced. "I'm sorry. That probably still makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it?"
Sighing, Cadance couldn't do anything else but return her friend's shrug. "Yeah, but, well, like you always say, you're not ponies." She nodded to the room behind Chrysalis. "So, can I get an audience with my ledgers? Or are they otherwise occupied?"
That got a laugh out of Chrysalis, and her black horn glowed, green fire shimmering over the door and pulling it the rest of the way open. "They await you with bated breath."
Remembering what she had to record in those ledgers brought the smile back to Cadance's face, and she bowed to Chrysalis with the sort of hoof-waving flourish she'd seen from some of the more sycophantic members of her aunt's court. "I thank your excellency."
"Don't remind me." Chrysalis blew out a breath, Cadance gliding past her into the workroom. "You might not believe it, but ever since you anointed me queen, my subjects have started whining about the need for more pomp and protocol in the hive." A familiar thump and squish told Cadance that Chrys had flopped onto the sofa. "Audiences and titles and rubrics and who knows what else! That's why I had the kids here playing doorkeeper: I mean, a royal court doesn't just spring up on its own! Not without some practice first."
Her horn flaring, Cadance flipped open her ledger and took up a quill. "I'm sure you'll do fine. If there's one thing you changelings are, it's adaptable."
Another laugh behind her. "From your good mood, I take it tonight's matchmaking went well."
"Oh, Chrys!" Cadance whirled, her whole body as light as a soap bubble. "It was so romantic! The moonlight, the lightest little breeze in the apple blossoms, the two of them just being absolutely cute together: they're gonna be the start of a dynasty like Equestria's never seen!"
Chrysalis's smile was quirked and sideways. "Sixth time the charm for our stalwart Haralson, then, was it?"
"Cynic." Cadance stuck her tongue out. "I'll have you know that Atalanta enjoys the strong, silent type."
"Which you know because you've been reading her diary."
"What? No!" Being pink, Cadance didn't show blushes as strongly as some ponies, but she could always feel the heat of them in her face. "I...just overheard her talking about him to some of her friends..."
"Ah." Chrysalis nodded. "Eavesdropping. Much better."
With as delicate a snort as she could manage, Cadance turned back to her books. "After the solid mass of problems I've had the last eight decades with these unicorns, I'll take one thing going right on the earth pony front quite happily, thank you." Not to mention her continued attempts to work with Azure Skies' descendants, several of whom, despite their stubborn ability to turn away from the ponies Cadance thought would be perfect for them, displayed even more strongly the characteristics she'd found so appealing in their ancestress.
"Cady, Cady, Cady." Cadance could hear the swish of Chrysalis's mane as the changeling shook her head. "I still don't see why you insist on making this process so difficult. I mean, we are talking about saving the world from the wrath of your insane aunt. Surely you could devote a little more of your personal energy toward getting these ponies to see things your way when it comes to whoever it is they marry!"
Dipping her quill into the inkwell, Cadance tapped the excess ink from the nib. "True love can't be rushed," she said.
"Love." Chrysalis's tone—not quite disdainful, but something awfully close—made Cadance look over her shoulder at the sofa, the changeling's smile gone, her eyes narrow. "The more I hear you talk about it, the more I think you don't know what the word actually means."
That brought Cadance all the way around. "Excuse me?"
"Love!" Chrysalis waved a front hoof. "It's not some mystical commodity that needs shepherding and nurturing! It's as common as air, Cady, and with a little thought and effort, it's pretty easy to control: like building a dam to control a river."
"Ah." Cadance turned back to her books. This again. "I know it seems that way to you since you only deal with one of love's aspects, but while the love ponies feel at the end of their lives is vitally important, there's so much more to the—"
"Yes, yes, yes." The haughtiness in Chrys's voice nearly got Cadance to turn around and call her 'your excellency' again. "We've been having this discussion for something like half a millennium, you know."
"Really?" Cadance deployed a little archness of her own. "Why, it seems like only yesterday."
"But!" The word snapped out like the single, martial note of a trumpet, the shock of it upsetting Cadance's concentration and almost jerking her pen to smear ink across the ledger. "I have further proof for my position this time."
Carefully, Cadance directed the quill back into its stand and turned, Chrysalis on her hoofs, her smile wide. "If it please the court," the changeling added.
Cadance heaved a theatrical sigh. "This is gonna be something I should sit down for, isn't it?"
"You might want to, yes."
Moving to her chair, Cadance settled into it and arched an eye ridge at Chrysalis.
Chrys gave as over-the-top a bow as Cadance had earlier and straightened again with half her seaweed-green mane cascading around her horn and across her face. "For it was not long after we first had this discussion that you took me with you to your aunt Celestia's wedding. Do you recall that?"
"Of course." Though with all the excitement of the Element Bearers program the past few centuries, she had to admit—to herself, at least—that she hadn't thought about that day in quite a while.
"At that time," Chrysalis was going on, "you said it was important for me to understand how love worked among mortal ponies before their deaths in order for me to truly understand how it worked at their deaths." She waved a hoof. "Or words to that effect. This ringing a bell?"
"Yes..." Again, it was the vaguest sort of memory. "I had thought that you and I should go out into Equestria so you could see how ponies live." With the heat she was feeling from her face, she was fairly sure her blushes were plainly visible. "I'm so sorry, Chrysalis! We never did anything like that again, did we?"
"It's quite all right." Chrys gave a crisp nod. "Because I've been doing it myself."
Every bit of heat in Cadance's body went cold. "What?" she asked.
"I started small." Chrysalis shimmered and flowed into a bright-eyed pink unicorn with a pale-yellow mane and tail, her cutie mark a single, lit candle. "For more than two hundred years, whenever I had a chance after a Call, I would venture forth into the streets of whatever city or town was nearest the recently departed's home, and would simply allow myself to move through the patterns created by the vast sea of living ponies all around. And I must hereby admit—" She shivered, green sparks washing over her and changing her back to herself. "You were right, Cady. Ponies create an absolutely profligate amount of love as they go about, living their lives."
Cadance's first, dagger-sharp stab of panic slowly began easing, and she started feeling the more familiar prodding of guilt—of course Chrysalis wouldn't have gone running amok in the mortal world! She wasn't a pony, yes, but as Cadance had been telling herself over and over again for centuries, she wasn't a monster! It made perfect sense that, after Cadance had given her a taste of regular pony life, Chrysalis would have found a way to quietly and discreetly observe more of it.
Chrysalis was still talking, her eyes positively glowing: "So, over the past three hundred years, I've developed quite an interesting system to investigate these matters. I and one of my lieutenants wander in disguise together through a crowded place—a park or a seashore or a carnival or some such—until we spot a couple of ponies so deeply in love, the air around them practically curdles with it. We cloud their minds just a bit so they don't notice us, then we follow and observe them, watch how they behave toward one another, try to discern what it is in their actions, large or small, that conveys the love they feel."
The part about clouding minds made Cadance's shoulders tighten, but trying to be supportive—and having finally regained control of her voice—she nodded. "You're trying to learn how love affects ponies and how ponies reflect that love in what they do, is...is that it?"
"In part." A snake-flick of her tongue. "And that's the part, by the way, that proves my side of our argument. Because what we do next, you see, is nudge our two pony lovers into separate paths. In a crowd and usually so besotted, they hardly know where they are to begin with, this isn't much of a task, and we really only need them out of each other's sight for a moment so we can transform ourselves into their partners, occupy their attentions, and draw them further apart for our own experiments in—"
"What??" Cadance had no memory of crossing the room, but suddenly she was hovering in the air above Chrysalis and no longer seemed to be having any trouble with her voice. "You change yourselves into the couple??"
Chrysalis blinked up at her. "Well, yes. I take the part of the mare and draw the stallion away while whichever of my lieutenants has proven himself worthy recently will become the stallion and draw the mare away. We will then—"
"No! You will not!" Cadance could hardly see, she was quivering so hard, her wings buzzing behind her at least as fast as any changeling's. "Are you out of your mind?? You can't go around impersonating ponies and kidnapping their spouses or significant others or whatever! It's completely unacceptable!"
With a puff of breath, Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "We don't hurt them, Cady." That odd smile danced across her muzzle. "In fact, judging by their reactions, they seem to enjoy what we do with them as much as we do."
Images flashed through Cadance's mind faster than she could push them out. "You don't mean that you—!"
"And when we're all sated and exhausted, my lieutenant and I reunite the happy couple and slip away under cover of another bit of a brain cloud. The two ponies then go on their way, and the experience they think they've just shared with each other seems to aid them in rebuilding their stores of love." She shivered again, her smile so self-satisfied, Cadance could hardly keep from slapping her. "These excursions have proven quite popular with my lieutenants, and we've taken to going out in much larger groups lately, splitting up into couples, and—"
"No! You can't! This is the worst abuse of the abilities I gave you that I can even begin to imagine! Forcing yourselves on ponies that way, it's—"
"Forcing?" Chrysalis's ears folded. "Not at all! And that's exactly my point!" She poked a hoof into the center of Cadance's chest. "If this love you keep harping on about is so all-powerful and all-encompassing, why can I milk gallons of it out of any pony I want to with a little shape-shifting and a little play-acting? If love is what you say it is, why is it so easily fooled?"
Cadance smacked the other's hoof away. "We're not discussing this, Chrysalis! This is me telling you! You and all your changelings will stop doing this right now and forever! And that is final!"
In the silence that followed, Cadance tried to slow her panting while she watched Chrysalis's eyes narrow. "I see," the changeling leader said. "So what you're doing—manipulating ponies for some vast purpose that you're going out of you way to conceal from them—that's fine. But what I'm doing—giving a few ponies an experience they will remember only with warm fuzziness for the rest of their lives in exchange for a substance they're literally spraying out almost unnoticed over the ground behind them—that's wrong? Your silent conspiracy is better than my spreading a little fun?"
Teeth clenching, Cadance settled to the floor. "You know that's not what this is."
"Do I?" Chrysalis rose, suddenly seeming even taller than she had just a few moments before. "Well, I guess I don't know as much as you think I do. Because I know for a fact that you don't know as much as you think you do." She turned, her jagged horn glowing to pull the door open, and marched out into the hall.
Every part of Cadance felt both frozen and melting at the same time. "What have I done?" she murmured, dragging her gaze away from the doorway to stare in horror at the file cabinets surrounding her.