//------------------------------// // 7: Discussions (Hypothetical - Familial - Conciliatory - Cryptic) // Story: Alchemical Empire // by NineOneThree //------------------------------// Twilight's alarm clock buzzed, waking her in a comfortable but not-very-familiar bed. It had been a few days since the HIMS Inner Truth arrived; Twilight had remained in Canterlot with her fellow alicorns, but the other Bearers' duties called them home to Ponyville before long. These few days had been... strange. Generally nice, but very strange in some ways. Drawplate, Chassis, and Beta talked with her now and then, but it was Crown Princess Template with whom she ended up spending the most time---whether she liked it or not, she thought with a wry face. She found herself feeling a little too harsh on that point in a moment, though; after all, the Equinculus meant no harm and was very sweet, if a bit clingy. Twilight felt she might be starting to get over the whole "uncanny valley" aspect of golems by this point, but still Template was just a little unsettling... but Celestia seemed quite taken with her, so could there really be anything bad in her? 'Yes,' she thought, 'there could. After all, the Princess selected me as her personal student and has no qualms about letting me know how much I matter to her, and I've got flaws upon flaws to spare. She focuses on the good she sees in ponies, it's what she does. She shines her light on my creativity and diligence and intelligence instead of my paranoia and ego and obsessiveness.' Dragging herself from bed, she stumbled into the shower with a yawn. Even as an alicorn, she was still the same old Twily, not always the biggest morning pony. Letting the hot water wash over her, she smiled. No, Template was no more perfect than she herself was; she was clingy and naive and occasionally clueless. But she was curious and honest and cared about others, especially her subjects. "Not a perfect pony," she found herself saying out loud, "but a nice one, a good one. Perfect ponies don't exist, after all..." ... Not even Celestia? Oh boy, this was gonna be fun to rationalize, and since she'd started talking out loud, well... "Okay, no, no, not even Princess Celestia... if she'd been perfect, she... she would have stopped Nightmare Moon from happening in the first place, and she would have stopped Discord's escape, and she would have seen through Chrysalis's schemes right away... but but but." She paused, hoping nopony could hear her debating herself in the shower. "She is not perfect, but she is as close as I've seen any pony get, and that means a lot. She tries her best like we all do, and it's just that her best is very, very, very good. In fact, I don't think we need a perfect princess. I'm happy with the one we have already, thank you very much!" Debate over! Twilight Sparkle gets all the points, all of them! Yay Twilight, you're so smart, you're gr--- "Princess Twilight, is there... anything you might need?" Horseapples, why did the maids have to have such good hearing? One was at her bedroom door, and somehow had been able to hear her over the white noise of the shower water. "U-Um, no, I mean, um... I'm fine, thank you..." Or, she thought, maybe it was her own loud mouth to blame. Yeah, okay, it was definitely her loud mouth. --- Celestia took a deep breath, inhaling a wonderful mixture of cool morning air and the aroma of the exotic tea blend the Imperials had brought; it seemed their country was based in an island group southeast of Neighsia, though their almost total lack of contact with other nations explained how they had so long been only a vague rumor to the sun goddess herself. But now the isolationism was over, it seemed; hopefully they might start commerce with their neighbors, establish good trading relationships... especially if it meant being able to get this tea regularly. She took a long sip before speaking, not needing to turn her head or even look to her left. "Trouble sleeping, Luna? You really should be in bed..." Her sister sat beside her, rubbing her eyes a little. "I will, but first I think it best we talk." "If I were not always ready to talk with you, Lulu, what sort of sister would I be?" Celestia turned, glad to see at least a brief smile from her sister. "... I have the feeling I already know what you wish to talk about." Luna sighed just a little. "Celly, do not tell me this matter has nothing of alarm in it for you. The princesses and prince of an empire we only thought a vague rumor until just now arrive at our doorstep, hailing you as their mother, and one in particular can't stop fawning over you and Twilight? By the stars, their empress's name is apparently Aleph... there is no room for coincidence in this." "I understand your concerns, and I do agree that considering this a coincidence is naive at best... but that doesn't mean one cannot be optimistic about this situation, Lulu." The sun goddess leaned over to nuzzle her younger sister. "If this Alchemical Empire does indeed have some connection to those we lost so long ago, then have we not some reason to be glad now that we have found them again---or rather, that they have found us?" The smaller alicorn frowned just a little. "Yes, but your optimism may be colored by your gladness in being so openly called 'mother' by somepony, Celly. Frankly, the amount of attention the Crown Princess devotes to you borders on unsettling." "Well..." Celestia had to think about that. It was true, she was so happy when she heard that voice calling her 'mother' like an echo of the distant past... but was it such a bad thing? She smiled a little. "True, but Template isn't exactly snubbing you either, 'Auntie Luna'." Luna blew a strand of her starry mane out of her face, rolling her eyes. "I will admit I find her disposition... pleasant, her affection perhaps endearing... though I do not envy Twilight Sparkle. Does Template not understand how easily most of her actions toward our newest Princess could be interpreted as expressions of romantic intention? Even after a thousand years away from society, I never reached such depths of cluelessness." She huffed. "I may have to talk to her about that... the first few times were honestly kind of cute, but at this point it just seems to reflect a problem with a culture so heavily golem-dominated, and perhaps the remaining social awkwardness of a certain violet alicorn." Celestia winced slightly, then noticed her sister's yawn. "Come now, Lulu, back to bed with you." --- Twilight ate her breakfast in the dining room of the royal quarters as she had the past few days, enjoying the beautiful view of the mountains. Template usually would be here by now, being her innocently unnerving self, but so far she was nowhere to be seen. Twilight found herself awash in calculations, finding the average time of the past three days between her starting breakfast and being accosted by the Crown Princess, then comparing the resulting number to the current time-since-breakfast-start... it seemed Template was fourteen minutes late and counting... and there she was. The jade-eyed grey Equinculus walked over rather than trotting, looking a bit less excited than usual---perhaps a little nervous. "Twilight?" She asked, shifting on her hooves a little. Twilight's eye was briefly caught by a blink of white by a corner, but she turned her attention back to Template rather than letting her squirm. "Er, good morning, Template..." Template took a breath before speaking. "I'm sorry about the way some of my actions have made you uncomfortable, like how I'm always nuzzling you, or how I walk and sit so close, and especially that kiss... oh, sorry, I'm rambling. Uh... I'm sorry about how all that made you feel uncomfortable, and I never wanted to make you feel that way, I didn't understand those things had romantic implications and, um... I guess I hope you can forgive me for being so clingy and inadvertently flirtatious." Twilight needed a moment to take the whole mess in. She'd kind of guessed that Template wasn't really trying to hit on her in the first place, and the idea of golem culture being deficient in its understanding of romance sounded fairly logical. It was nice to hear the Equinculus come out and own up to it all, though, even if it sounded half-rehearsed with a certain solar deity's guidance ('inadvertently flirtatious' was a bit of a giveaway). The violet alicorn smiled, nodding. "I forgive you, Template, and I understand... though let's try to keep our hooves and lips to ourselves, okay?" "Oh, thank you!" Template smiled back, relieved. She got her own breakfast and sat with (but not too close to) the young alicorn, slipping into a fairly comfortable conversation. Inside, she was so glad to have someone to talk to besides her siblings; she loved them, but nopony could survive talking to their family alone. Thinking of that, she wondered how their big sister was doing back home. Was she lonely, would she need them back soon? --- Her Imperial Majesty Aleph IV was smiling today. For a ruler like Celestia, that was the status quo. For one like the fearsome Dragon Queen, it was something to hope for---a pleased mega-dragon monarch was generally preferable to an angry one. For Queen Chrysalis, it would mean she was up to something nasty and it was going her way. For this Empress in particular, though, it was almost unheard of. She had not smiled when they conquered their neighboring islands, nor when she had almost entirely cut off her nation from all others. Three years ago, upon the redemption of Princess Luna, she had been said to smile for a brief time. Now, however, she had been smiling since her handmaids had woken and attended to her. Even in her platinum greaves, collar, and crown she didn't look particularly regal; her surface was so pale grey as to nearly be white, her dourly straight mane and tail a faded indigo, her eyes pale cobalt with dull, flat black pupils. She was an Equinculus in the standard earth pony frame, no bigger than the average, nor was her trigram (☵) Cutie Mark more ornate than those of her siblings or subjects. But today, smiling, she looked perhaps a little more impressive. "What brings such a smile to your face today, Your Majesty?" A pegasus mare---normal, not a golem---asked, checking that the obsidian set in her Empress's collar was shined to a perfect finish as always. Aleph looked at her, those flat eyes taking too long between blinks. "The Mother Sun will be coming before long. I have been preparing for her since before you were here, Noon Sky." The blue pegasus was a little confused, but smiled all the same. Her Empress was often a bit cryptic, after all. "Princess Celestia herself will be coming? How soon, though? It did take the Inner Truth several weeks before they sent back a confirmation of arrival at Canterlot, so won't it take that same amount of time before they can return with her, even if she went with them right now, Your Majesty?" Shaking her head slightly, the Empress continued to smile. "She'll be here sooner than that. I'll be fetching her myself, after I help Template coordinate a sendoff spectacle for her." Noon Sky found herself no longer very keen on asking questions; for one thing, that smile was becoming more than a little unsettling.