Ghost Lights
Introduction
What's it like being a guard for Princess Twilight?
That seems to be the topic ponies find the most fascinating once they learn what I do. They always ask that question.
I'm not entirely sure how to answer it. I'm not even always sure how I should answer it. Truthfully? It's a job. I work a six hour shift every day (or night, depending on the rotation), then I'm done and I go home, and do... Whatever. Work out. Fly for fun. Eat. Read books. Walk around Canterlot. Watch the rich mares go around in the ridiculous hats that sophisticated unicorns love so much. Stop to talk with the earth pony friend of mine who works at a florist stand on the corner. Take a nap.
You know, real life. Interesting things. Stuff I'd rather be doing than working. Nopony wants to hear about those, though, they're too mundane.
How I think I'm supposed to answer is to enthusiastically affirm that getting to hang around a princess all day is the greatest privilege a pony could have. I'm supposed to entertain and regale with amazing stories of what happens inside the palace walls. Exciting adventures and the grand decisions that shape the fate of Equestria, that's what goes on here, right?
Well... it's not a bad job to have, but it's not always all ponies assume it to be, at least not for a mere guard. I don't feel comfortable exaggerating things for the sake of an image, and I never have, so I just tell them the truth: it can be pretty dull. Sometimes they're disappointed but they get over it.
This isn't to say I don't feel dedication to my service or attachment to the ponies I protect. I've done it for a long time now because what I do satisfies me. It matters in some way, or at least I feel like it does. There's pride and a purpose here. It's just not all that exciting most of the time. Honestly, though, that's a good thing. Guards don't want their lives to be very exciting. The excitement that guards get to deal with isn't the fun kind.
No, boring and uneventful six hour shifts are completely fine with me. They just don't make good stories.
The funny thing about a good story, though, is that sometimes it's hard for a pony realize they're in the middle of one while it's going on. It's hard to see the forest for the trees and it's only in hindsight that there's some realization of the significance to seemingly disconnected events coming together.
When I try to pinpoint where to begin telling the story I need to tell, I keep finding myself coming back to the thought of my feathers and Azure's fascination with them. That, though there was no way of knowing until all was said and done, was possibly the first glimmer offering a clue about what would happen.
I think it was a feather that sealed her decision and her destiny, so many years ago.
If not for a single feather, carelessly shed by happenstance at the right time, all this might not have happened. The lives of certain ponies might not have taken uncertain and unplanned turns, and futures thought set on particular tracks might not have been upset and possibly turned upside down. I suppose I could throw in, a little on the selfish side, that I might not have gotten to see the Seawall yet again, so I'm not without my own stake in this.
All this disruption and chaos, though, may be exactly what needed to happen for everypony's happiness and for at least one pony's innermost desires to come to light, instead of lies being lived in silent misery.
The last time this happened, all those years ago, it was roses. Now it's a feather. Fate gives us the most unexpected of weapons in the fight for the truth about ourselves, doesn't it?
I only hope that, like the roses all those years ago, my feather has opened the way for all to end well.
Despite temptation, though, let us not jump too far forward or too far back right now. The beginning is where any story, rightly told, should begin.
So that's where we'll start.
Unlike the story I've told previously, this will not just be direct copies of my journal entries. There would be too much superfluous material in this instance, I think, and extensive editing would be called for anyway, so I've decided instead to just use a combination of material from my journals and my memories to retell a more direct narrative of events as I encountered them.
Forgive me if I miss a few little things, or if small details are not quite right at times. Nopony has perfect memory. Besides, it's not the point of this effort to just be a dry and passive record of facts. What's more important than literalness is that it actively reveals what really matters most, the deeper truths underlying some ponies I've been blessed spend many years of my life sharing experiences with. It's true that I spend most of my time and live most of my life alone, because that's just how I am, but that doesn't mean that I don't care about anypony else. I do, very much. I want this to help us all grow in the understanding of one another and come closer together, maybe, in this odd sort of... family, for lack of any better word, I can't help feeling we've become in some way through such long proximity and friendship.
I hope that for those who need to understand what's happened and need to know what I've come to know now, this telling of the story will be found sufficient. I've done the best I can.