Seashell
V
From the journal of Sunburst, May 30, 1329 YS:
Today, as I write, I'm feeling somewhat confused. I've seen something I know was not meant for my eyes. It sheds a good deal of light in some ways, but raises more and stranger questions in others.
What would a palace be without all the little extras to make it elegant on the outside just as much as the inside? A well-groomed and maintained garden would be essential to that, and of course this palace has one. It isn't terribly big, since this isn't a really huge palace with particularly extensive surrounding grounds, but it is very nice. It's a good place to just think about things in the quiet splendor of nature for a while, and soak up some of Celestia's sun. That is, if you have the time to spare for that kind of thing.
The morning shift starts at 6am, about when the sun rises. In the first light of today's particular morning, the rosebushes in the center of the garden revealed that they'd opened a profusion of fresh new blooms, the first ones of the year. The new flowers showed that all those central bushes were white roses. They shone brilliantly and cleanly. Morning dew glittered on their petals like little diamonds.
I was also surprised to find Captain Dash and Princess Twilight out there in the morning, enjoying the same sight. The two of them were on the ground, standing side by side in front of those rose bushes. I'm sure they thought they were alone. The gardens have some pretty good hedging around them. From the ground it's about impossible to see in from outside.
Of course, I was observing this from the air, flying around on a grounds security patrol, so the hedges didn't stop me. Me being a scout trained to spot and observe didn't help their privacy either.
Captain Dash is pretty consistently confident and outspoken with a tough skin. Nothing seems to get her down. It really threw me, then, to see her staring so sadly the way she was at those roses. Even at that distance I was from her, I could tell she wasn't her usual self, but I couldn't understand it at first. It seemed to have to do with the flowers, because the princess was staring at them too, also seeming pretty somber. Was something wrong with the roses, I wondered? They were so beautiful, the response just seemed out of place.
But if that seemed strange, what happened next was downright shocking. The princess said something quietly into Captain Dash's ear. Captain Dash looked at her and nodded, and I swear, tears filled the captain's eyes. Yes, Captain Rainbow Dash, the Advanced Combat Flier, toughest of the tough, fearless, invincible - and she was on the edge of outright crying, in front of our princess no less!
The princess hugged the captain and nuzzled her cheek, then kissed the side of her head, in a gentle way. They embraced for a long moment, while the princess cradled the captain's head against the side of her neck just above the shoulder and softly stroked her rainbow hued mane, then released. They stood side by side again, close together, and the princess put one wing over the captain and rubbed her back comfortingly.
My blood almost ran cold, it was so unexpected. The princess is, as far as I'd ever seen, supposed to be this high, isolated, distant figure. Nopony touches her, and she doesn't touch them. The only exception I've ever seen is maybe occasional brief contact with her personal student, momentary hugs of comforting or affection. Nopony else. Especially not a mere member of the guard. Yet here it was, happening.
That moment triggered something in me. I think it drove home in a real way, beyond a mere superficial intellectual book-fact kind of way, that she's flesh and blood like all of us. She's a real pony after all. I guess she's not always made of ice, at least not in the few short moments when there's nopony around that demands that she be. A moment of empathy for her washed over me for the way she has to hide her real self. It must be hard on her.
After a minute or two, the captain said something to her, quietly. The princess reluctantly withdrew her wing and folded it. The sun was getting higher in the sky and the morning was getting brighter. The day's business would be starting soon, and it was almost time for Twilight Sparkle to turn back into ice and go be a princess for the day. I'm going to guess that the captain was reminding her of that, because she begrudgingly nodded slightly in agreement, then they parted from each other and walked out of the garden in opposite directions. I immediately understood why. Nopony would see them leaving together that way. It wouldn't be dignified, after all, for a rumor to spread of any undue familiarity.
I blinked a few times, once they were gone, and shook the surprise out of my head. There was still work to do, whatever I'd just seen. I kept on with the security patrol, methodically searching around the perimeter of the palace grounds.
I tried to get through the watch without being too distracted. It was tough. The rest of the day wasn't eventful, fortunately.
After I was relieved by the afternoon shift, I took a walk in the city, thinking about what I'd seen. I do a lot of my best thinking when I can pace around aimlessly by myself. That's another virtue of the life lived alone, I guess, plenty of time for reflection.
At some point along the path of my wandering, I saw a little flower shop at a streetcorner. It was more of a stand than an enclosed building. It had an open storefront and there was a pale pink earth pony with a deeper pink mane standing behind a wooden counter. She was surrounded by an immense multitude of all kinds of flowers. Among them I noticed that roses were the most numerous, scattered around in all the various colors they come in - red, yellow, pink, oranges, lavendars, and white.
I walked up to the stand. I stood there for a second and looked around at all the different varieties.
"Hi! How can I help you?" The pony behind the counter welcomed me cheerfully. I noticed that she had pretty jade green eyes.
"Your roses are interesting," I said. "They sure do come in a lot of different colors."
"Oh. Yes," she nodded. "Almost all of 'em, except black and blue. The growers haven't quite figured those out yet. I think those are a pipe dream, myself, but ... you know. The gardeners will keep trying just so somepony can say they were the first to breed a truly black rose." She shrugged. "I'm not sure what we'll ever do with them once somepony does, though. I can't see it being a very attractive flower, honestly."
"I'm guessing there's more demand for red," I noted the most abundant color.
"There definitely is," she nodded. "Red roses are pretty much the classic standard for saying 'I love you' in that special somepony kind of way. We sell a lot of those, the most out of any of our flowers."
I'd suspected as much already, partly because it's a well known stereotype and partly because it's just logical. Red is a strong color, after all. It's the color of blood, and the heart that pumps it, and the feelings of passion and strong emotions and lusts associated with those things.
White, though, seemed so quiet and reserved by contrast. It was almost a contradiction for a flower like a rose.
"What about white?" I asked. "What, or who, do ponies buy those for?"
"White?" She thought for a moment. "Well, a couple different things. Sometimes we do them for funeral arrangements. It's a mourning color. But it's kind of funny, because on the other hoof, we also use them for lots of weddings. It's... You know, like the reason a bride wears a white dress. It's a pure color, it's clean and fresh. It's supposed to be more innocent. I guess it's not always totally platonic like 'let's be friends', but also not like how red is more direct and kinda says 'I'd like you in bed with me'. It's more subtle. Love but not lusty."
I stood there pondering the roses, white and red and all the other colors, in the stand.
"Anything else you'd like to know?" The pony behind the counter asked politely, after a few seconds.
"No," I shook my head. "That's alright, thanks. You've just given me some things to think about."
"Not a problem," she smiled at me. "Come by anytime, I'm always here. Me and the roses."
I nodded and walked on, thinking about the language of flowers and the vocabulary of their colors.
I drifted my way on down the street and considered what she'd said about white. Subtle, was it? The color was, maybe, yes. The things it reflected, though, those certainly were not necessarily so. It was muted on the surface, but underneath there was a strong undercurrent of feeling. Captain Dash hadn't completely broken out crying, but the tears - those were in her eyes, sure as anything. Her response to those white roses was like the flowers themselves.
What was that response about, though, exactly? That was tricky to tell.
Mourning. Pure, high love. Either one of those could fit.
Either one, or both. Sometimes the intensity of one emotion tends to fuel another.
Princess Twilight seemed to know what it was, in the way she was comforting Captain Dash. I began to wonder just how close the two of them were.
They came from the same place before they came here, after all.
Maybe the princess isn't so completely alone as I'd thought. I hope not, anyway, for her sake. I guess hoping is about all I can do.
I thought about all these things for a while, while I walked. But then not too much later, I passed a pair of elegant-looking unicorn mares in funny hats walking side by side with their snoots in the air, chatting back and forth, something about how dreadful the hors d'oeuvres were at last week's high society parties. Giggling inside and trying not to let it show sort of broke my concentration on more serious subjects.
Canterlot sure is an interesting town.
I guess that's interesting enough for today.