//------------------------------// // Chapter 27 // Story: Ghost Lights // by Winston //------------------------------// Ghost Lights Chapter 27 For maybe ten minutes I did nothing but hold Azure in my hooves while she cried. It wasn't the most comfortable thing for me. I don't usually have to deal much with crying ponies. Still, though, I just tried to do the best I could. I knew enough to be aware that this is part of being a big sister and the duties that come with it. How I felt didn't matter, all that mattered right now was what she needed. While this was happening I couldn't think of a whole lot to say, but I doubt a whole lot was expected. It seemed to be more important that I was just there. I rubbed her back and gently rocked her slowly from side to side until her sobs quieted down and became less frequent, though her breathing was still hitching and ragged. Tears had left a wet spot on my coat where her face had been pressed to my chest, but I tried not to pay that any attention. Over time, her breath slowly evened out and calmed down. Eventually she wiped her eyes and sniffed away the last few tears. "Thanks for being here for me," she finally said. "Any time." I ran one hoof through her mane trying to be comforting. It was still soft and silky, surprisingly, despite the weathering we'd both been subject to out here. The faint smell of mist and rainwater lingered in it, but nothing else. With nothing but the waterfall to the north to shower in we'd both long ago lost even the faintest trace scents of soaps, shampoos, conditioners, or anything artificial. That, though, was just a passing idle observation that I brushed aside. It wasn't important now. I kept holding Azure in a hug, while she hugged me back. After a few minutes I leaned back a little bit and looked at her face, with tears streaked down her cheeks and her eyes red and puffy. It wrenched my heart to see her like this. The only thing I wanted in the whole world was for her to not hurt any more. I kissed her on the forehead, just wishing I could make that go away. "It's not easy being one of those upper-class unicorns, is it?" I asked quietly. "No." Azure shook her head. "I think really I hate it." Her voice was rough and congested from crying. She rested her head against me again. We stayed that way together for a little longer, until I felt something sharp poking me, starting to dig unpleasantly into my skin. It was fairly obvious what it was. I didn't like having to mention it, not with what she'd just said, but I also couldn't really endure it much longer. "Ouch, horn," I said, reminding Azure while wincing slightly. She pulled her head back a little bit and changed the angle, turning the offending appendage away so it no longer stabbed at me. "See?" she laughed a little bit, through her lingering tears. "This stupid thing always ruins everything." "It's alright. I don't mind." I pulled her back in closer to me. "And for the record, I don't think your horn is stupid. I've always been impressed with what it can do. Or I guess I should say what you can do with it. You've really got a gift, you know?" "That's what they tell me," Azure agreed, with a sad note in her voice. "Sorry," I said. "I guess that's the last thing you want to hear right now." Azure just nodded, so I stopped talking. After another few minutes of hugs, Azure let me go, more or less, but she stayed close to me for a while. There wasn't much said, but my presence seemed like it reassured her. At some point we ended up sitting on the floor side by side with my wing wrapped around Azure's back, just quietly relaxing against each other. She spent a while just staring down at the stone floor and looking pensive, like she was trying to decide something. "What I said earlier wasn't really true," she told me, speaking again at last after a long time. "Deep down, I don't actually think that when my mom let me become Princess Twilight's student, it had anything to do with her career. That was the last thing on her mind. She didn't want it for herself, she just wanted what she thought was best for me." Azure scuffed at the floor idly with one hoof, scraping against the stone. "If she didn't really want me, or didn't really love me, she wouldn't have kept me and raised me by herself until I was almost seven. She could have found some other way to shift me off on somepony else long before that. If nothing else, I could have been put up for adoption as soon as I was born, and nopony would have ever even known I was hers. But she didn't, and ponies did know. The truth is she loved me more than anything and I can't even understand how hard it must have been for her to have me leave and live with Twilight instead." "That makes her sound a lot better than before, I guess," I said with a smile. "Yeah," Azure smiled back, just a little. "I remember when I lived with her. Every time she put me to bed, she said 'I love you' and kissed me goodnight. I know she meant it. Every time she came up with some new line of dresses or whatever that was 'in' that season, she always made one for me. It was a one-of-a-kind, the only filly size version of whatever she thought the best piece was. It was a lot of extra work and I never even got a good chance to wear some of them, but she always made them. It always seemed to make her more happy than anything to make something beautiful just for me." She was quiet for a moment, running her hoof in a circle around the smoothly polished floor. "I think feeling like I wasn't wanted is just an excuse to keep being secretly upset with her even when I know I shouldn't be and even though I try to tell myself I'm not. It's weird. It's like the thoughts I think when I'm trying to be logical fight with the feelings underneath that I don't always see and it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's so confusing sometimes. I don't even know why I feel the way I do." "That's alright," I said. "For a long time I didn't know why I felt the way I did about some things, either." "Sorry to be like this," Azure said, with a sad shake of her head. "You must think I'm pathetic. I sound like such a spoiled brat. I feel like one. I have this perfect life just handed to me and I whine and cry about it. That's so screwed up." "Not at all." I rubbed her shoulders with my wing. "When I said you could talk to me about anything you need to, I meant it. Anything. That includes crying and whining and bitching about whatever. It's okay not to be rational once in a while. It happens." "I just feel like I'm torn in half sometimes," Azure said. "I'm supposed to... I'm supposed to want this. It's a good thing for me. I try to, you know? I really do. I've tried to be a good student. Learning as much about magic as I can has been the only thing I let myself work on. It's all I've ever told myself I want. It's what I have to want." "Is it, though?" I asked. "I guess it's because I never had a choice," Azure said. "I just... it hurt to be away from my mom. Maybe the irony is that it was hard because she did love me so much and I knew it. If she really hadn't wanted me, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad. Or maybe if I'd understood that it hurt her just as much and she only did this because she very unselfishly wanted the best life she thought she could get for me. At the time, though, that didn't make any sense to a little kid. I just knew she was leaving me there and walking away and I was being told this was supposed to be good for me but I couldn't really feel it. I acted like I did, because I thought I was supposed to, but I didn't really. Nopony ever asked me if I ever wanted this, it just kind of happened and I felt like I couldn't say anything." "That sucks," I said sympathetically. "And you're right, it is ironic that your mom hurt you like that because she loved you. I guess that's life sometimes. I'm sorry." I nuzzled her on the cheek. "I think I've always resented it in some ways, I was just never really aware enough to be sure," Azure said. She stared distantly out one of the windows for a few seconds, then spoke again, slowly. "I remember once, after I was a student, Princess Twilight and I had been studying math. She gave me a puzzle she said would be fun. It was an encrypted message and she wanted me to figure out how to crack it. It took me a long time. I had to look through so many different books and compare it to a bunch of different cipher systems to try to narrow down what it was. I did frequency analysis and digram counting and looked for four-square patterns and everything. I learned more than anypony ever wanted to know about codes and codebreaking." "And you broke it, I assume," I said. "Yep." Azure nodded. "But for some reason, I just... never told Twilight that I did. I know she was looking forward to the day when I'd come up to her and give her the deciphered message, and it never happened. I just kept it to myself. Eventually I guess she stopped waiting and forgot about it and we moved on. I don't know why I didn't just tell her. Every time I thought about it I felt angry for some reason. I felt like I didn't want her to know I could do this. I never understood why not, just that I couldn't stand to give her the solution she was hoping I would find. She just wanted it to be a fun puzzle but I felt bitter about it and I didn't even know how much I did." She kept staring out the window, just watching the clouds drift by outside, and sighed. "Have you ever talked to your mom about this?" I asked. "Are you kidding me?" Azure shook her head. "I'm still just figuring it out myself. Being out here is the first chance I've had to take the time and just think about it, away from... away from being in the middle of the situation. I feel like this is the first real break I've ever had. Besides, even if I'd known what to say, I'm not sure I'd have been able to. My mother and I are just both on such weird busy schedules. In the last thirteen years I've been Princess Twilight's student we've only been able to get the timing right for her to come back to Canterlot to see me maybe half a dozen times. We write letters back and forth, but that... that's not really the same, you know? That wouldn't be how I'd want to tell her. And every time we see each other in person, she just seems so proud of me. I want her to be. I wouldn't want her to think I'm unhappy because then she'd hate herself for it. So I guess... I guess I pretended to myself and everypony else that it was alright. I don't know what else to do." "What about Princess Twilight?" I asked. "I mean, you've read what happened in those old journal entries, with Captain Dash. She knows what it's like to not be able to really understand and just say how you feel. I'm sure she'd get it." "Same thing." Azure shook her head. "Didn't even really know it myself, so how was I ever supposed to tell her?" "Yeah." I nodded. She had a point there and I realized it was sort of a stupid question to have asked. "You're the first pony I've ever said anything to," Azure said. "I think you're the first one I've ever just trusted enough to be okay with it." "So do you feel better now?" I asked. "Yeah." Azure nodded. "A lot better. A lot clearer. I guess there's still a lot to think about, but now I can really start, you know?" "Then it sounds like this did you a lot of good, I hope," I said. "Maybe, yeah," Azure agreed. "I'm still sorry I unloaded all this on you, but thanks for listening. It means a lot." "That's what sisters are for," I said. She smiled appreciatively and hugged me again. "I do have to ask one thing..." I hesitated a little. "Is... this what the whole being a pegasus and flying thing is really about?" "Maybe in some ways it is," Azure said. "But not completely, I think. I really do enjoy it a lot. I mean, I think it's been pretty good for me." "I think so too," I said. "But there is something I think you should take a while to consider. You can probably guess what it is." "The towers," Azure said. "Right." I nodded. "You still want to get there? Risks like that aren't something you should take on if you're not sure about why." "That is a good question," Azure agreed. "Maybe I do need to think about my reasons so I don't do it for the wrong ones. For now, I think I want to say yes. It's hard to say if it'll stay that way, and maybe I'll just have to see, but I do want to keep training for it in the meantime." "Alright. Well, at least you chose after the workout to fall apart." I reached up and ruffled Azure's mane a little bit. "So we don't lose any time if you just take it easy for the rest of the day and calm down a little." "I think that sounds like a good idea." Azure nodded, and smiled tiredly. "After thirteen years, I could really use a chance to finally calm down."