Ghost Lights
Chapter 8
I was up just before dawn the next morning and met that cold faint grey light that diffuses across the sky before the sun rises. I used an old 'pegasus alarm clock' trick: I drank a lot of water before I went to bed the night before so that needing to go to the bathroom would force me to wake up. In retrospect, I suppose I could have just asked to borrow a real alarm clock, but those were the kinds of low-tech tricks we were going to have to resort to for the next six months, so I guess I thought I might as well get started on getting used to it.
I'd left everything ready the night before. All I had to do was put on my saddlebags, then I headed over to Azure's room to wake her. I found that she was already up. She was packed, squared away, and had her gear on her back.
There didn't seem to be anything left but to leave, so I decided to just cut straight to it.
"Ready?" I asked.
She just nodded slightly in response. The look on her face was that neutral kind of not-quite-awake-yet, still tired and with heavy eyelids. Clearly she hadn't been up very long.
"We should get moving," I said. "The sooner we start, the sooner we get there. And I can promise you, the ponies waiting for us to relieve them really want us to get there." Azure still didn't say anything, just followed along behind me while we walked to the front entrance of the palace.
I was working on the assumption that all our goodbyes had been said yesterday and it was expected that we'd have disappeared by the time everypony else was up. It seemed other ponies had other plans, though.
"Hey!" A voice called out from behind us. "You're not gonna leave without letting us see you off, are you?"
It was Captain Dash. Princess Twilight was with her. Azure and I both stopped and turned to face them, then kept moving again once they joined us. They walked us to the front doors of the palace and a short distance outside.
The sun had just barely crept a little bit of its edge over the horizon by then. The four of us stood there on the palace grounds in the first light of the dawn. A coat of glittering dew lay on the grass, the sky was clear, and the air was a little cool but warming up. It would be a fine day, I could already tell.
"So I guess... this is it," Princess Twilight said. She embraced Azure Sky in a hug.
"I guess it is." Azure Sky nodded and hugged the princess back.
"My student is finally all grown up," Princess Twilight spoke softly. Her voice was half pride and half lamentation.
"You knew it had to happen some time," Captain Dash said. She reached up and rubbed Princess Twilight's shoulder with one foreleg.
"I know..." Princess Twilight said quietly and nodded, still holding onto Azure. She sighed. "I know."
While the two of them embraced, Captain Dash walked up a bit closer to me. "Hey, keep an eye on Azure out there for me," she said quietly into my ear. "Make sure she doesn't break or anything. You know unicorns. Sometimes they're kinda..." She lifted one forehoof and rolled it in a circular coo-coo motion by the side of her head.
"Hey! I heard that," Azure said from inside Princess Twilight's embrace.
"I heard it too," the princess added.
"Yeah, don't act like you don't know what I'm talkin' about," Captain Dash teased them with a smile on her face.
Azure just scrunched up her muzzle and stuck her tongue out for a second in response.
"Anyway..." Captain Dash gave me a brief hug. "We're gonna miss you around here in the guard. We'll be waiting for you to get back."
"Thanks, Captain," I said. "I'm looking forward to seeing the wall again, but I'm sure that after six months I'll be looking forward just as much to coming back to the palace."
There was a long silence. Azure was still wrapped in Twilight's embrace. Me and Captain Dash just kind of stood there, watching them.
"Umm... Princess," Azure said at last, "not that I don't appreciate all the affection, but you're gonna to have to let me go at some point. Otherwise I'll never get to the Seawall."
"Oh... yeah... I guess that's true," Princess Twilight admitted, sheepishly. Still, though, she held Azure tightly for a few more seconds. "I'm gonna miss you," she said quietly.
"I'll miss you, too, Princess," Azure replied.
Finally, with watering eyes, Princess Twilight sniffed heavily and released Azure from her hug. She swallowed a lump in her throat, then gently kissed Azure on the forehead.
Captain Dash stepped forward to give Azure a quick hug, then a small kiss on the cheek. "Take care out there, kiddo. Good luck."
"I will, and I'll be fine," Azure said. "You don't need much luck when you have the most awesome magic teacher there is, right?"
"Yeah, she's pretty great, isn't she?" Captain Dash looked at Princess Twilight and smiled, then leaned forward and gave her a kiss on the lips. I think the princess actually blushed a little, though almost imperceptibly, and smiled back.
"Right," Captain Dash said, getting a bit more serious. "Well, you'd better get going."
"Yep." I was in agreement with that.
After a few last waves goodbye, we finally started walking away down the path that led off the palace grounds and into Canterlot. Princess Twilight and Captain Dash stood there watching us until they faded away into the distance, out of sight. That was it, the last we would see of them for months. We were on our way to the Seawall, and with every step I felt a little tingle of excited anticipation bubbling up inside of me. The morning sun never seemed so great and so bright, and the colors it painted on the world so vibrant. I felt like Celestia herself was giving us a send-off. That seemed like a good sign.
We passed through the streets of Canterlot while it was still very early morning and they were almost completely empty. Seeing the normally busy city so oddly quiet and devoid of ponies was an interesting prelude to the isolation I knew we would only find more and more of as we got closer to our destination.
After we reached the city limits and passed beyond them, we started hiking the descent down Canterlot Mountain and into the lush green fields that surround it. Like much of the settled areas around Equestrian towns, it's a mix of farmlands and grass covered meadows. The roads are very well-trodden from frequent use and easy to travel.
Around mid-morning we took a break from walking to eat breakfast. We stopped and went a little off the road into a field covered in thick grasses and small wildflowers. The grass was mostly fairly new growth, not too tough, and the little flowers punctuated the flavor here and there with small bursts of sweet nectar. It may not have been anything fancy, but as breakfasts go it's certainly possible to do worse. The two of us ate in silence. After about fifteen minutes of grazing, we'd filled up pretty well, so it was time to get back to the road and keep walking again.
Azure had been quiet all morning. That was just fine with me, I'm used to long stretches of walking without any talking. It's what most of patrolling the palace on guard shifts is composed of. In living my life mostly alone, I've realized how much I appreciate spending time moving in silence. It's easy for me, comfortable. I've gone days at a time without talking to another pony.
Some ponies don't handle it so well.
It's not just not talking that really does it, though, it's when there's nopony else talking either. It's easy not to talk when there's something else to listen to, but when there's nothing, a lot of ponies seem to have this need to have that empty space filled with something, anything, and it drives them nuts if nopony does.
I found myself hoping for her sake that Azure wasn't one of the ones who gets slowly driven stir-crazy by long silence. It was going to be a long six months for her if that was the case. I felt like with all her experience studying, though, there shouldn't be too much to worry about.
I supposed she'd make some noise when she finally really needed to, anyway. I'd let her be the one to decide that.
It turned out that it didn't happen, at least not that first day. We walked all day, making our way northwest, in a silence I found very pleasant. I just enjoyed being out in nature on a nice day. The longest break we took was to graze on grass again at lunchtime, and otherwise we made great progress and covered a lot of miles.
It was almost sunset when we came by chance through a mostly earth pony little rural farming town. By a stroke of fortune, this town had a small hotel in it. I'd planned on probably ending up sleeping outside, but when I saw the possibility of getting an actual room, I supposed that if we were going to be this lucky, well, why not? We weren't going to do any better in the time we had left before it got dark.
"Guess we'll stop here for the night, if that sounds good," I said to Azure. Those were my first words since we'd left.
"Yeah," she responded. "This looks fine to me."
So that was decided. We went into the lobby and got checked in (and got at least a couple of curious glances, due to the bags and gear we were carrying). We found the room, dumped off our luggage, and went down to a small restaurant attached to the hotel where we ate dinner. I don't remember what it was that we had, it was pretty nondescript: not bad, but not great. It wasn't grass, at least, so that was something. By the time we were done eating it was dark outside, so I thought it best if we tried to go get some sleep at that point. Tomorrow would be just like today had been, we would need to be up and moving again with the sunrise.