[Visions]
Stanley closed his eyes as he loosened his shoulders, adding a few careful breaths to allow in the smell of the sea overtake him. Having nothing particular in mind, he let his thoughts wander. As unorganized and stale as they were, the cool air massaging his muscles acted like a natural filter, helping to bring out the good and discard the bad. Ever since the first time he found this spot on the hill, it was the only place that felt right. It provided just enough comfort for him to think with far more clarity than other stressful environments, which happened to be everywhere else but the hill. Until recently it had been a sanctuary for peace and quiet.
He thought about the grinding issues troubling him. One in particular was the flying blue equine that had no regard for his life and acted under her own interests. He felt that what she said back there was not sincere enough to redeem her contrasting behavior. More like a forced apology that was read like a malformed appeal to self rather than an enriching soliloquy that suggested something from deep within. He could tell her facial expression contradicted her underlying message.
If it wasn't for Lucas standing right beside him, the outcome of the confrontation would have resulted in a broken spirit—and quite possibly broken bones. Now that he had more to live for than a meager search for unfounded purpose, the road ahead was far less bumpy than before, even if it meant improving his inhibition.
There were a lot of things going on. Stanley wished everything would just slow down. People need a break before they break apart. With the days that brought him sorrow, there would always be days of cheer. It didn't matter to him how many days that would last, it matter more on how much longer he'd have to wait.
Stanley slowly rubbed the space between his eyes and leaned back to crack his neck. The pain of having to deal with this new problem—his disdain of the rainbow pony—never ceased to leave him alone. He hoped it would, but problems were never good at solving themselves. Running a hand through his short hair, he tried to think of something else to keep his mind from slipping into rage.
While trying to relax in the exact spot he would sit and empty this thoughts, Stanley felt something brush up against his arm. His immediate assumption was Lucas.
“I'm not in the mood, man,” she said, refusing to open his eyes. “Go away.”
What was odd was how he was able to hear the fluttering of wings instead of the familiar wrinkling of clothing to clothing contact. That little detail ripped his eyes open. He promptly turned to find the rainbow pegasus sitting right next to him.
“OH jeezus!” he yelped, leaning as far away from the pony as he possibly could without falling over the edge. “What the hell!”
Stanley continued to scoot over until her voice stopped him.
“Sorry,” she squeaked. “I didn't mean to scare you.” Rainbow pointed down with a hoof. “Is it alright if I sit here?”
The man was about to crawl up and walk away again when he saw that she sat perfectly still, showing no signs of attack or sudden movements that implied attack. She simply looked at him calmly. Now over two meters away from her, he retorted.
“You shoulda asked me before sneaking up on me. And no, it's not alright,” he snarled.
“Please... I'm not here to hurt-”
“No!” Stanley interrupted, slicing the air with a hand. “Just stop.” He paused to breath normally again and calm down as best as he could. The unexpected jolt really sent his heart pumping. “We told you never to do that again.”
“I'm sorry.”
“If you say that one more time, I swear I'm gonna-”
“I really am!” she exclaimed, eager for him to listen. “Please, if you just give me the time, I... I can explain myself.”
Stanley looked at her critically. He noticed her posture mimicked his very own before being startled. Along with a guilty complexion and her body resting comfortably on the grass, she let her wings droop from her back as if she had lost the ability to control them. Her display of sorrow and the cold wind loosened him up a little. He almost forgot how sensitive he was to both.
The navigator sat up straight and adjusted his sitting position on the cliff. By the time he brought himself to his previous relaxed state, the awkward silence was chewing at Rainbow Dash's patience.
“Look, I know we got off on the wrong hoof,” she began, rubbing her forehead.
“Let me stop you right there,” he said, raising a hand again. “We? Who's we? This is all your fault. You're the one who attacked first and starting acting like a paranoid brat.”
“I—“
“Let me finish.” Rainbow closed her mouth to let him speak. “You bit by finger, invaded my dreams, and insulted me and Lucas.”
“Wait, I never insulted you,” Rainbow challenged.
“You called me a giant monkey.”
The pegasus frowned. “How was I supposed to-”
“Are you kidding me?” Stanley roared. “You're never seen a monkey before? I look nothing like one. But you had to go and say it anyways. You pissed me off.”
Things seemed to get worse. Rainbow expected to have gotten on his good side by now, but her monotonous approach and choice of words stretched that goal for Celestia knows how long. She could not see an end to this bickering that carried more weight than she thought. She had a tough time presenting herself in a way like how each of her friends taught her; how to be logical from Twilight, how to be truthful from Applejack, how to be optimistic from Pinkie Pie, how to be selfless from Rarity, and how to be considerate from Fluttershy.
She had literally none of those qualities.
Her way with dealing with emotions was more rigorous than preforming a sonic rainboom—and she's only done it three times throughout her life. Her innermost feelings were what kept her and Stanley apart and she didn't quite know how to fix it. She was lying when she said she could. In reality, the wall of contention that separated the two of them was as thick as a high level storm cloud.
The wind blew her multicolored mane to the side. The view was almost exactly like how she remembered from her childhood. Up in the clouds, she was in perfect harmony with both herself and nature. On the coast, that feeling multiplied tenfold. Nothing like the beauty of the oceanic landscape and a great view to make a pegasus drown in bliss.
Only this time, she wasn't the only one who had the same idea.
“Why are you still here?” Stanley finally asked, more composed than he was a few minutes earlier. Rainbow looked at him from her soothing reverie and gave a warm smile. She decided that the only way this would ever work would be to step out of her comfort zone.
“The view is amazing,” she said. “It reminds me of home. You?”
Stanley sighed. “I come here to unwind and let go.” He was neither angry nor aggravated. Those last few seconds of silence was all he needed to recompose.
It was then that he remembered she and her two friends were from some far off fantasy land called Equestria. “You miss home that badly?”
“Yeah. My friends must be worried sick. Pinkie is probably ripping Ponyville apart looking for me and Twilight. If only there was a way to tell them we're alright, I'd won't have to worry so much.”
Rainbow Dash took a deep breath and lowered her head.
“I never told my friends how much they really mean to me, even when I don't show it all the time. Everyday I wake up, I always want to go back to sleep and wait for when for when we spend our time together. We see each other a lot, but as we get older, they will never know how lost I'd be without them. They made a big difference in my life. If you told me I could never see them again, I'd go crazy.
“I think you've already seen that happen. I know Twilight is here with me, but with her more worried about the Princess, I hardly have anything left inside to help myself with. I owe my friends everything, but I have nothing to give them.
“My dad used to take me San Franciscolt to see the Wonderbolts preform their annual acrobatics show near the city, and when the show ended, he took me to the beach to watch the sunset. I always enjoyed the sunset. I loved my dad more than anything else in the world.”
Stanley had fallen absolutely silent while hearing her story. He found it hard to look directly at her forlorn figure when her words were uttered. Her slumped position on the grass was a result of trying to replicate how she spent her days with her father, savoring in the coastal breeze. Although, he had an idea what she meant with her story.
“When I got older, things happened that nopony, not even Princess Celestia, could predict. Our family sorta faded until day I entered Summer Flight Camp when I was nine. It was a chance to follow my dreams. When I finished flight school, I needed a place to go. My first bet was to stay with my folks in Cloudsdale, but I found a job in weather management. Later I found a place of my own where I can live up to my name, build by career, and make some friends. Luck came through when I first met Twilight Sparkle in Ponyville.”
“Wait,” Stanley jumped in. “You didn't say what happened with your family, or your dad.”
“That's, uh...” Rainbow faltered over her words. “...something more personal.”
“Care to share it anyways?” he calmly asked. “I mean, it'd make more sense if I knew that part. You seem reluctant to tell me.”
“Well—“
“I mean if you don't want to, I won't make you.”
“No no, you're right. I shouldn't keep it bottle up inside. Like my friend Applejack always says, it's better to be honest with yourself than to hide behind your fears.” Rainbow looked away for a second before continuing. “So to be honest, I don't know what happened to my dad. The day I went off to Flight Camp was the first time I left home. He always wanted me to aim high and become the pony he could never be and the daughter he could be proud of. That's why I try to make the best of myself.
“But ever since left home for good, I've been distracting myself to keep myself from finding out the truth.” Rainbow sighed heavily, readjusting her posture by leaning side to side.
“The truth about what?”
“The truth about my father. The last time I visited my old home, which was about three years ago, it belonged to a different family. The only original item left from our old family possessions was a picture of my dad and I were on a trip to Canterlot. It was left in a closet in his old room. I look at it for hours before hiding it under my bed at night.” With one last pause to make sure she articulated her message as genuine as possible, she looked down at the crashing waves below the cliff. “I never saw him again.”
Stanley rubbed his eyes in the excuse that something was caught in them. He never thought a being with such a tough and lawless personality could open up like that so fast. Over the past fifteen hours, she's been nothing but trouble, but now he it seemed the mask had been lifted to reveal what she was really about. Her arcane tale caused him to think about his own past.
His muscles had gone stiff, but he lacked the will to relieve the tension. Stanley just let his body and mind absorb the hurt she was feeling from her loss. The thought of never having a father to see her grow up to become the pony she is today was heartbreaking. Never being able to relish the love of a proud parent and never knowing what it meant to be happy.
This was the first time he met someone who he can relate to. That someone was a flying blue pony no less. He took a conscious breath in order to bring himself to the same level.
“My father...” he wiped a tear from his eye. “...was the opposite. All my life he wanted me to grow up just like him so I can do his job one day, but that wasn't the life I wanted. He saw me as unworthy of a son if I tried to do something that was different from what he wanted. I told him many times that I didn't want to work in marketing. I hate the advertising business.”
Unaware of his surrounding, Rainbow Dash slowly got up and walked over to him, plopping down close to him to listen more intently. Stanley stared straight ahead, leaning his elbows on his knees and rubbing his hands together.
“When I graduated high school, I went to live with some friends to avoid my dad's disappointment of not following in his footsteps. He wanted me to skip college and get a commercial job in downtown Wellington so that I might be like him someday. God knows that didn't happen. I went through a couple semesters at university, but when I found out I had no money to pay for it, I dropped out. My dad was really pissed when he heard about it.”
“What did he do?” Rainbow asked, startling him. Stanley jolted up in surprise, but immediately felt his rapid heartbeat slow on its own. He took advantage of the interruption to stretch his back and arms, washing the stiffness that conflicted with his ability to stay focused.
“He didn't want me around anymore,” he responded. “So he kicked me out of the house. He said never to come back until I'm ready to be a real man. He yelled at me a lot, too. I didn't know what else to do.”
“Oh.” Rainbow's ears fell flat. “Does he still love you?”
“I'm not sure. He said nothing personal about us, just a lot of complaining and arguments. I still consider him a good guy, even with his bitterness, but he gave me no choice but to leave. I had no where else to go but up.”
“You reached for the sky too?” She cocked her head slightly.
“Not exactly.” He laughed. “I mean up north to the unknown. I left the city and traveled up the coast to find a new start and to get away from all that stress. I always wanted to explore new places and travel, so I tried my luck at different ports. My luck came through when I met Lucas at a restaurant a few miles from here. It wasn't until later we found his mother was my dad's sister. I don't know if that factored in his decision to hire me, but I got the job as navigator. Then I met Kate. She asked if I wanted to be chief navigator of her fishing boat and a full-time member of her business.
“The rest is history. Been working here ever since.”
As Stanley finished, he took off his heavy backpack and pushed it away, not wanting to deal with the acing pain of carrying all that weight. The light-blue pegasus next to him watched him rest his head on a hand in deep thought.
Although Rainbow was embarrassed by her past, sharing a similar abandonment by family had mitigated her burdens of having to feel like the the only one with such loss of love. Their respective histories would haunt them as long as they live.
“I'm sorry for treating you like that,” Stanley shamefully muttered, expressing his long awaited conviction with a furrow on his mouth. All his emotions were drenched the pity that controlled him like a puppet. Although far from lifeless, he made no significant movements to shake off the creeping sense of solipsism. Stanley knew better than to be reduced to a weeping ball of sadness “It's just that things were getting hectic before you showed up.”
Rainbow Dash looked up at him.
“Is that why you were angry, too? Because of your dad?”
“Somewhat.” Stanley broken his linear gaze and glanced her. “But my case is more messed up than yours. At least you had a dad that wanted nothing more than to see you grow up and not care about who you wanted to be as long as you were happy. Or to put it bluntly, he loved you no matter what.”
Stanley reached over for his backpack to grab his water bottle. He opened it to take a refreshing sip.
“Hm.” Rainbow put a hoof to her chin. “You're cousin was right about you.”
Stanley nearly chocked on his drink, spilling some water on his lap. Much to his surprise, the thought of this whole conversation being set up by Lucas from the very beginning did more to enrich his gratification rather than anger him.
“What did he say about me?”
“He said I should think less about myself and more about others. He said I should come over and make you feel better.”
“Is that what he really wants for me? To feel better?”
“Did it work?” Rainbow said, turning her whole body towards him. His body movements were more fluid and relaxed, replacing the tension in her bones that sought to trap her in a rigid prison of distraught.
“Well yeah, but, how- how did he know it would?” Stanley put a hand to his forehead again, having a hard time thinking of anything negative.
“Because I trust him now.”
Stanley looked at Rainbow for a second as if she told the worst joke of the decade. She was smiling meekly up at him. He raised an eyebrow.
“You serious?”
Rainbow decided this was the right time to conclude her judgment with the words she had waiting to say for while now.
“I trust you, too. I don't see you as a threat anymore.”
“After unloading my miserable life on you?”
“You deserve my trust,” Rainbow Dash said, confidently. “I'm sorry for everything I did to you. Why don't we start over?” She stood up and extended a hoof. “Name's Rainbow Dash.”
The man smiled and shook her soft hoof. “Stanley Clarke. Nice to meet you.”
“All this sappy stuff is getting to me now. I already miss home as much Twilight and the Princess.”
“We do have much in common after all.”
“I swear, I meant every word.”
Stanley hesitated to give his final answer, but he finally came to an agreement with a slow nod. The colors of her mane and tail appeared less pale than before. Perhaps it was his mind's way of telling him that things were already looking brighter. He then laughed at himself.
“I feel stupid for yelling at you now. If I would've known that personal part of you sooner, we'd be best friends.”
“So we're friends now, right?”
“Close, but let's worry about that later, we have other things to take care than sitting here and griping about our own lives and work on the bigger issue.” Stanley swiveled his head behind him and checked his surroundings. “Where is Lucas anyways?”
The moment he tried to stand up, the porous soil and slippery grass suddenly caved in from underneath him, sending Stanley tumbling to the rocks below. He screamed as his whole body dropped straight down.
“Stanley!” Rainbow cried.
Rainbow Dash immediately flared her wings and bolted as fast as she could after him. In less than a second she was able to wrap her hooves around his arms before impacting the ground. Rocks continued to rain from the top of the cliff into the ocean. The pegasus pulled the human with all her might back to the top of the hill where she gently set him down on the grass.
Stanley and Rainbow laid on there backs, coughing heavily from that terrifying turn for the worst. They could still hear muffled splashes of rocks hitting the water as a pair of deep stomps ran up the hill beside them.
“What the hell just happened!?” Lucas exclaimed. He found his cousin and the rainbow pegasus laying side by side on the grass covered in a layer of dust.
Stanley rolled his head right to left, blinking in rapid succession. His head was spinning as he applied pressure to his stomach like his was about to throw up.
“Ughh... ouumph.” He rolled to his front, pressing his face into the cold grass. He grunted a few times before sitting up straight with some help by the blue mare. “I did NOT see that coming.”
“What happened?” Lucas repeated, exchanging concerned looks between him and Rainbow Dash.
“The cliff buckled.” Stanley replied. He then pointed at the pony next to him. “She saved my life.”
Lucas sighed in relief and helped his injured cousin to his feet. With a sprained ankle, Stanley had to used Lucas as a crutch when they limped over to retrieve his backpack.
“How did you make her come over here?” Stanley whispered in his cousin's ear. “There's no way in hell she'd talk to me if she had a choice.”
“I needed you to shape up.” Lucas whispered back. “What did you guys talk about anyway? You're don't look like your grumpy old self anymore.”
“Uh, you know, just some stuff.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “It's a long story, and I mean a really long story.”
“Good to see you're getting along.” The captain smirked.
After a few grunts on pain, a struggle for balance, and an end to their sour misunderstandings, they sluggishly made their way back to the station with high spirits. Rainbow trotted behind them.
There was nothing but a white blur. Every now and again an image would flash like a subliminal message being burned into the mind of unsuspecting viewers of a clever commercial on television. Only this wasn't television. The images gradually lasted longer and longer until they were coherent pictures.
Lost in awe of what she was seeing, Kate couldn't make out a single reference point to give her any idea of where she was. The view in front of her blurred to white again. Intense flickering of colliding colors caused her to blink rapidly. The flashes lasted only a second, but when another series of images slowed down to show another location, Kate was able to decrypt the information.
It was a memory.
Kate could hear nothing but a distant disembodied voice and a rhythmic humming sound. The location plastered over her eyes was not the pile of books she was staring at a minute earlier, but a fuzzy version of a brightly-lit room with three unrecognizable figures approaching her. She did nothing but stare at the undefined shapes by narrowing her eyes to the perfect angle, hoping to clear up the smudged figures.
Kate realized that each shape had a unique color to them. One was definitely a bright shade of pink—which was also bouncing around the most, another was an unsaturated violet color, and the last was sky blue for sure. While still blurry, they appeared to use asynchronous forms of communication through expressive gestures and head movements. Or at least, she thought they were heads.
The memory ended and she was thrust into another similar location seconds later, this one more defined than the previous. One thing she noticed about this memory was the scale of the room she was in. It looked like a huge palace encased in a transparent material like glass prisms or diamonds, or ice. Taking a closer look at the door frame that was getting closer with each step, the structure was built out of a more natural substance, behaving more like giant crystals growing out of the ground than meticulously crafted glass beams.
She noticed the conspicuous brown door in front of her was beautifully carved into a work of art rather than a usual entrance way. It was like she could reach out and open it.
Come to think of it, and ghostly pink hoof stretched from her first-person perspective to touch the door, and when it did, the vision faded away completely.
“Katherine?”
“Oh!” she snapped her head when a blur of purple was waving in front of her eyes. “Huh?”
Kate looked at Twilight and Cadence like she made a shocking discovery. In truth, it was the other way around.
“What did you see?” Cadence asked, crawling over to her.
“Uh... what?”
“You were staring at the wall for three full minutes. We believe you just had a resurgence of memory. You're horn was glowing as well.”
“I-it was?” Kate stammered. “But I never been to... wherever those places were.” She scratched her head with the tip of her hoof.
“Can you describe what you saw?”
Kate cleared her throat. “Well... it was really weird. I was in a big white room, at least, I think it was white. Everything was fuzzy, totally incomprehensible. Then I saw three figures, they were each a different color. It looked like they were talking or playing a game of charades, I don't know. And later I was standing in front of a huge door with gemstones on it. The door frame looked like it was made out of crystals, or glass.”
“The Crystal Archive,” Cadence muttered with a hand to her chin.
“What?”
“It's the main entrance to the castle library, known as the Crystal Archives, located at the heart of the royal palace in the Crystal Empire. I believe that is what you have seen. Did you see anything else?”
Kate made an 'O' with her mouth. “No. All I saw was a pink arm, or hoof, reach out and touch the door...” She looked at her own forelegs. “And then everything went back to normal. How did I do that anyway? It felt so real.”
“You may have retained unicorn aptitude along with her memories.” Twilight hypothesized.
“Unicorn aptitude? You mean I'm become more like her?” Kate pointed at Cadence, who cracked a smile.
“A unicorn has more than five senses.”
“So do humans.” Kate added. “Are you telling me you have some sort of freaky supernatural sixth sense like psychic powers or voodoo magic.”
“It is an empirical and quantifiable area of the brain that connects natural born unicorns to the mana-space around all things giving off magical signatures, not an uncanny perception of the supernatural. It is certainly not voodoo.”
Kate stared at Twilight. She noticed the lavender pony furrow her brows. The mare was a tad bit ticked off by having to correct her with a highly intellectual explanation. She regretted mocking her intelligence with condescending tone. If she looked close enough, she could almost see the heat sizzling off Twilight's fur.
“I didn't understand a word you said, but I believe you. I'm just saying that most people just think of it as mumbo jumbo hocus pocus.” Kate crossed her invisible fingers, hoping the pony wasn't familiar with those words.
That didn't seem to do the trick. Twilight still appeared to be indignant and Kate was still an idiot. She was now afraid to argue with the highly questionable logic of magic, because the more she attacked it, the further the bubble was close to bursting out of the purple unicorn mare known as Twilight Sparkle.
Cadence laughed nervously. “I think we're getting too far ahead of ourselves. Let's take it easy here, girls.” She placed a hand on Twilight's mane and ran her palm over the palpable imperfections of each thread. The unicorn shuddered when the surprisingly delicate skin came in contact with her hair, calming her down far more efficiently than a hoof had before.
Twilight finally breathed in. “Did you see anypony else with you? What were the colors of those figures you mentioned?” she asked, bringing the conversation back on topic.
“Bright pink, uh, light-blue, and...” Kate squinted her large eyes. “...purple, just like you.”
“That's it!” Twilight shouted. Her smile grew wider as she settled down. “I may have found a connection.”
“What kind of connection?” Cadence asked, picking up on the her friend's brightening enthusiasm.
“If what Kate saw was your memory, and her memory was consistent with mine,” Twilight tapped a hoof on her chin. “Then that means the last place we were before we teleported here was in the Crystal Archives.”
“But how can we know for sure what exactly happened inside the library shortly after that particular time in your new memory? I'm still curious as to how and why you, I, and Rainbow Dash transported at the same time and arrive at the same point in space, and who the original caster of the spell was. Was it an accident or did we intend to come here?”
“Well just have to wait until a new piece of our memories emerges.”
Kate sat on her haunches, more confused than she was before Twilight started to explain the visions. Whether or not they felt real, they were not her own memories. What frightened her the most was who they belonged to.
At the same time, the experience was unlike anything she could imagine. Sure it was easy to look back on past events and remember them rather ambiguously, but to have memories manifest into vivid imagery like they were really happening all over again was most illusive, even if the process reduced you to a lifeless statue.
“Does this happen all the time?” Kate said, blinking away the dryness that tainted her eyes. “These lifelike visions?”
“Only unicorns experience them under extreme circumstances,” Twilight answered. Her knowledge of the particular subject was limited, but her studies on unicorn development was sufficient enough. “They occur at random intervals when a pony has suffered short term memory loss or mild brain damage. I guess the former accurately describes our current situation.”
Kate's equine stomach growled loudly. She crinkled her nose and let out a small chuckle.
“I forgot I haven't eaten all day. I don't think I can last much longer on an empty stomach.”
“Of course, we can talk about this later,” Cadence agreed. “The books can wait.”
Twilight pouted. She really wanted to start reading the books in front of her, but she could deny her hunger no longer. Kate rose to her hooves—wobbling in place as she did, and slowly made an effort to properly walk forward.
Upon arriving at the hallway door, Kate was about to extend a hoof to physically twist the knob when a blue glow encased the entire door instead, pulling it wide open. She was immediately surprised by this, rapidly backing up and bumping into Twilight, sending the poor mare into Cadence, thus knocking all three of them into a pile of limbs.
As they rolled off each other and regained their balance, what followed after the staring contest was a fit of giggles. Their combined laughter evoked the brightest light within each of them to counter the stress of the past hour. They were so lost in the brief moment of elation that they hadn't noticed the absence of a certain rainbow mare.
The vocal laughter fade, but snickers still escaped their lips. Twilight and Kate helped Cadence to her feet.
“I'm not gonna ask how that happened, so I'm just gonna say it was magic. Can you walk right?” Kate asked.
“I don't know how you humans manage without a tail.” Cadence twisted her body around a few times.
“You'll get used to it. Just don't lean forward and only bend your knees when you're taking a step. Your tail is beautiful by the way.”
Cadence smiled. “Thank you.”
“You know, I can just bring the food to you so you won't have to walk all the way to the kitchen.”
“No, I can do this.” She carelessly took her first step and faltered instantly. Thankfully, she had Twilight and Kate on either side of her for support. She leaned on Kate's back, careful not to touch her damaged wings. She set her sights on the first few steps, but after a several more for practice, she was practically walking on her own.
“Yay!” Twilight clapped her hooves. If she had a quill and parchment to document this as her first official observation of human, her paper would be on fire. Although teaching a full grown human to walk again may not be the most exciting display ever, but it was a display nonetheless. With legs like a human, their hands must be their most powerful tool? Her dragon assistant Spike was quite dexterous with those tiny claws of his. If they can build enormous cities as depicted in the atlas she read, who knows what else they are capable of?
“Now,” Cadence began. “Shall we proceed to our destination?”
“Follow me.”
The pink alicorn led them through the midsection—or corridor—of the station. Cadence trailed after her while Twilight took the rear to watch over Cadence's wobbling steps. The narrow hallway that connected the lounge to the kitchen received poorer lighting than any other room on the first floor. Fortunately, the floor was free from obstruction that would otherwise complicate their short journey down the hall. The walls were close enough to use as a brace for when Cadence needed to readjust her balance.
She could hardly feel her feet. She wore extremely comfortable rubber and velvet shoes as opposed to her cold, golden slippers. Much like the other two humans, she was wearing a simple dress which appeared more as a casual outfit than formal attire. Now that she no longer possessed her horn and wings, she felt robbed of her identity while stealing the identity of another. Somehow, things would return to normal, but for how long was a question without an answer.
When arriving at the fairly large kitchen—yet small than the lounge, Cadence did what Kate told not to do and leaned forward. Consequently, she tumbled forward, but not before she caught herself by holding on to a nearby chair. She pulled the wooden chair from underneath the table that was the centerpiece of the white room and sat herself down. Oddly enough, it was an instant relief upon easing the strain in her legs.
There was a bowl of oatmeal and a half-eaten bagel resting on opposite side of the table.
“It's too late for breakfast, and apparently the guys didn't bother to clean up their mess,” said Kate. “You hungry for some fish?”