“Wait in there, Ra; I’m just going outside for the mail”.
Laughing, she closed the heavy oaken door on her incorrigible daughter, Lyra Heartstrings; by the sound of it, currently demolishing her furniture. Let the girl play, she thought. She’ll grow up soon enough, just as we all do. As we all must.
The autumn evening was brisk, almost unseasonably cold, as she trotted out to the mailbox. She was a tall mare, streamlined but not quite svelte; anypony could see the sinuous muscles curving underneath her cerulean hide, and the military certainty in her posture, however, only a careful observer could have seen the hundreds of small, silver, faded lines streaking across her legs, rump and neck as she moved.
Her cutie mark, partially obscured by her unusually large wings, featured a stylised archaic sword, angled towards her back. Carmen Heartstrings was a mare with a past, one she had long since left behind, and had no intention of revisiting.
The mailbox was of a standard make: tin, with a small red flag hugging the side, resting on the timbre post that supported a picket gate. Instead of immediately retrieving the mail, she leaned against the post, and surveyed the street: a wide, shady avenue, lined with young oaks and crisp, well-loved homes.
This region of Ponyville was fairly new, with the land on which it was built having been reclaimed from the Everfree only twenty years ago. Almost unconsciously, her eyes drifted to its menacing shadow in the distance, shivering, lost in unwelcome remembrance.
As she was gazing off, distracted, a familiar young filly in a mailmare’s cap flew past, and, calling out her salutations, deftly left a small bundle of letters balanced on the post in her wake. Smiling, Carmen mentally shook herself, returned the greeting, and a small voice inside reminded her: now is for the present. The past is beyond even Celestia’s reach.
Sorting through her mail at the gate, she idly greeted the citizens of Ponyville that had dared to venture out on this crisp, admittedly beautiful evening. The trees towering above her were young, but vigorous in their growth and adorned with profusions of dying leaves, ranging from the darkest red to a mild yellow, with a few intermittent patches of resilient green.
Bills... Bills... she perused the erstwhile contents of the letterbag. A flash of something black.
Carmen stopped, ranged back through the letters and saw it: a simple piece of thick black paper. A cold shudder ran through her spine and she stamped her back hooves, then fell deathly still. On the card, just as big as her hoof, was embossed an insignia she instantly recognised as the Princess’s own: a silver, abstract representation of the sun, with fiery bolts shooting from it. Underneath it, in elegant calligraphy: Five days.
Although she already knew what she would find on the reverse side, she flipped the hoof-pressed paper over, seeing in the same practised writing: I am sorry.
She had five days. Five days. That was three travelling, as of course she would go by the forgotten routes, avoiding spies, and travel to the heart of Canterlot Mountain. She would ascend via the Ruins and meet her Liege, and fulfil that which was asked of her, again.
Carmen caught her mind in the military pattern it had slipped so easily into- with terrifying ease, she had forgotten all but her loyalty to the Crown, to the Princess.
But I no longer live in the days where loyalty is all and everything.
There was something else, something to be accounted for: the tearing of her heart in two. Ra could not go with her if she were to obey the summons, likely they would never see each other again. Would she sacrifice yet another loved one in the course of her duty?
How dare the Princess ask such a thing? After it all, after what I had to do to protect my realm, she promised me quit, a treacherous voice hissed. She promised me that I would be mourned, my duty honoured, and my life forgotten. How easily the trappings of power overcome such a promise.
This terrifying and exhilarating power rushed through her veins, such as she had known only twice before: the iron strong determination to resist, to refuse, to run and hide away from such a harsh reality. To disobey.
But just as strong within her was her conditioning, her ancient loyalty, and her love for the Princess. Despite the bitterness it caused, despite the anguish she felt, again she must become an instrument for the workings of fate, whether she would or no.
Which would she decide to follow: her duty or her heart? For a moment she teetered upon a precipice, as like to fall either way.
In all her years of service to Equestria, in all her years of exile, Carmen had been secure in the Princess’s word. And that she should break that word, now, meant that indeed a desperate time had come. The final measure...
Equestria is in grave danger and the Princess feels she has no choice. The Princess’s will must be obeyed.
And so, as she had practised in her training, in the cruelty of her youth, Carmen shut down her heart, closing it against appeal. She could feel it screaming in protest as, within her mind, she snapped the threads that bound her here, and resumed the mantel she had shed long ago.
Her duty would govern, and she would obey the Princess, but there would be a reckoning. There would be a price to be paid.
How easily I return to the guise of vassal. How easily I cast aside my daughter.
Then, in the muffled background, a door slammed shut, a small voice shrieked in pain. Carmen’s head jerked around, and she found herself drenched in sweat, in tears, in the darkness, her body rigid and shaking and the paper that had been in her hoof shredded beyond recognition. She has panting as if she had cantered many leagues.
The spell shattered, but her resolve intact, she fled inside to tend to her beloved daughter, for what she knew to be one of the last times.
I will leave in two days.