Little Nickering hadn't changed.
It was the first thing Morning Glory noticed as the Luna's Grace settled down on the village green, in a rush of air that set the grass waving and scattered the white cotton-wool seeds of thistle and dandelion to drift like snow around the ship's windows. She watched them for a while, lost in the familiar sight.
The green was lush and thick with life, while the trees scattered around the village were heavy and full, with the last remnants of spring blooms peeking beneath the bright foliage. Villagers drifted around the periphery and a pavilion of sorts was under construction near the Chapel of the Sisters, in preparation for the solstice. Spring had gone, summer was just around the corner.
"Well now," said a mare behind and to her left. "It must be nice to finally be home after so long."
Morning Glory grunted, barely listening. She stepped closer to the glass to watch a trio of ponies cautiously approach the ship's lowering gangway. The mayor, his wife, and a colt barely older than sixteen who probably represented the Chapel. His bags fair bulged with ledgers and folders stuffed with paper and parchment. Odd to think it was still being used after so long.
"It's like I never left," she said, before turning from the view. Her companion, a Lieutenant of the royal guard, flicked an ear in her direction before nodding slowly.
"A secretary will liaise with the mayor. If you wish to reconsider your escort—"
"No escorts," Morning Glory said. She raised her head, brooking no dissent, the way Twilight always did when she had decided an argument was ended. The Lieutenant nodded again. It was clear she was trying to suppress a smile.
"As you wish, my lady," she said, bowing deeply.
Morning Glory rolled her eyes and stomped past the guard. No matter how long she had to live with it, she didn't think she would ever get used to the bowing and scraping everyone insisted on when they were around her. With a final huff and a snort she abandoned the lounge for the ship's interior.
It was empty, mostly. Unlike the Celestia's Radiance, which nearly never left dock without a significant chunk of the royal household on board, the Luna's Grace carried only its crew and the bare minimum of staff necessary to care for its few passengers. Usually it served as a tender to the Radiance, transporting cargo and the numerous low-ranking functionaries, journalists, soldiers, or whoever else might need to be along for the ride. For this trip it carried Morning Glory, six guardsponies and almost nobody else. The trip was to be as quiet and private as possible. It was a promise she had extracted from Queen Twilight in exchange for unspecified 'favours' that she knew would definitely come back to haunt her one day.
Not that it was possible to be particularly discreet when you landed a four-hundred metre airship in the middle of a village at the height of noon, but at least she'd made the effort.
The mayor and his entourage had already been intercepted by a functionary of some sort and were being ushered down a corridor to the rear of the ship when Morning Glory stepped out onto the gangway. She peered back into the gloomy interior for a moment, then stepped out and down to the ground. When she reached the green her eyes were already on the chapel, and before long she found herself at the threshold of the chapel yard. A pair of wildling apple trees stood each side of the gate. They bore their age well, though the tree on the left was starting to twist and gnarl just a little.
Morning Glory's eyes fell from the still-blossomed apple trees to the yard beyond, and the ranks of stones that filled it in close procession. For a moment she hesitated, with one hoof hovering uncertainly just past the gate, while she fought against the instinctive urge to flare her wings. Running wasn't something she did, not any more. Instead she forced herself forward and walked the path past the stones, ignoring the delicately carved dates and the faint glow of preservation magic that hung around them. Her path took her to the chapel door, and then through to the dimly lit interior.
The circles of seats around the chapel's central pavillion were empty, though a few small candles burned at the feet of the three alicorns that stood in the centre of the building. Morning Glory stared at them as she moved around the periphery, until she stood before the wall roughly opposite Luna, and beneath a relief of the virtue of Honesty. The wall below the relief was covered in sockets, a few still bearing the waxy remnants of votive candles or the tight-rolled scrolls of prayers waiting to be collected at the end of the day. Her magic summoned a slender candle from a nearby shelf, set it in the nearest socket and then lit it, all in a single fluid motion.
Morning Glory looked up at Honesty while the words of the prayers she would have once offered trailed through the back of her mind. How would the pony behind the virtue react, knowing she was expected to guide the conscience of uncountable ponies? She'd probably wonder if they wanted her to cure gout as well.
"Guide my words that I might ever speak true," she murmured, closing her eyes. There was comfort in the words, even if no spirit would ever hear them. "Guide my heart that it stay ever open. Guide my mind that it ever chose the path of virtue."
After a moment of silence, she looked up one last time to Applejack's empty face, then turned from the shrine and back to the Chapel door.
Morning Glory winced as she stepped out into the sun, so bright after the dim interior of the chapel. She looked back and forth until her eyes accustomed to the glare, then cast her gaze over the neatly arranged headstones. The progression of years was obvious as she looked from one end of the cemetery, where the stones had turned a uniform murky brown from exposure to the elements, to the other end, where a patch of bare earth marked a plot laid not more than a few days prior. She wasn't sure what to feel about them. She might never be sure.
With a last glance toward the chapel, Morning Glory turned and trotted back out toward the green. A few steps beyond the trees she upped her pace to a high-kneed jog, before spreading her wings to take to the sky. Few ponies saw her taking flight – the village was mostly deserted, its denizens either locked away in the few workshops lining the road or out in the distant fields to work – but she was sure those that did couldn't fail to recognise her.
Her forelegs clawed at the air as her wings drew her into the sky, raking imaginary divots from the distant ground below. She ignored the instinctive motion, though she'd always found it odd, and focused on the road trailing out of Little Nickering and away to the east. In the distance she could just make out a little brook that emptied into the river, and beyond that the low slopes of a vineyard. A few ponies wandered the vines, barely visible as tiny shadows bobbing up and down between the green rows.
The road led her east and the north, to the peak of a hill overlooking the vineyard, and a plain but sturdy cottage. A yard surrounded it on two sides, and a clapboard shed stood opposite, gleaming in a fresh, bright coat of blue and white paint. Morning Glory dropped down to the road a short distance from the cottage and then stopped and stared along an avenue of tall hedges that marked the final approach to it. She closed her eye and took a breath, and in a few bounding steps she was in the courtyard.
Gritty sand crunched beneath her hooves on the yard's broad paving. She found herself slipping into the shallow path worn by countless years of ponies moving from the gate to the door, from the door to the shed and out to the fields. Paths swept clear by constant use. By the door she leaned down to snuffle at a planter filled with rich herbs: basil, thyme, coriander and mint. She could remember nibbling at the mint when she was a foal.
Morning Glory lifted her face to the door, noting the fractal patterns burned into the doorframe. Hard to believe it had been over a year. She was just raising her hoof to knock when the door swung open, revealing a greying, light-blue unicorn. The mare stopped with one hoof raised. Her magical grip on the door faded as her eyes grew wide. Slowly, she lowered her hoof and placed it on the threshold.
"Mona?"
"Hi mom," said Morning Glory.