//------------------------------// // Interlude – What do you do for a distant sailor? // Story: Washed Up // by ambion //------------------------------// Luna felt the anxiety. It was a constant, quiet thrumming in the crystals – or crystal, singular – that made up the castle at the heart of the Empire. The smooth floors, the flawless steps, ever perfect, seemed somehow brittle under her hooves. They never showed the slightest change, never the slightest threat of cracking, breaking, sending her tumbling down into a jagged blackness; in a dozen different ways she knew it as a fact that they would not, but... Luna could not shake her but. It was not hers, this anxiety, but still she felt it. Everpony did, certainly those within the castle proper, and it reached farther out into the castle’s environs. The castle thrummed in harmony with Cadence. Not alive itself, but certainly...coloured by the life within it. Affected, might be the word. Attenuated. Sympathetic. The changes of the last month were subtle, perhaps surreal. To Luna’s eyes – accustomed to the fickleness of dreams – the differences were like that between night and day. Huge and manifold; where light had spilled gaily, now it trickled. Shadows huddled together in high corners where, a season ago, no such shadows had hid. The crystal ponies walked more and ran less, save when moving alone, in which case they adopted a hurried, get-there-already sort of canter. Laughter had not abandoned this place, but it echoed with a note of embarrassment these days, an I’m-not-supposed-to-be-here self-consciousness. It was a sort of laughter that could easily be made to flinch. Luna could well empathise, in a way no other Equestrian – not even her resplendent sister – could. After all, for Equestria, the evil king Sombra was a story. A horrible story, but one swallowed up by the gulf of more than a thousand years. For these meek and sparkling ponies, his memory was barely a thousand days old, let alone such a grandiose measure of time as months or years. Temporally speaking, he was still quite near to them. This generation that arranged flowers, tended colourful sheep, reached with mitted hooves into glowing ovens, and carefully copied the notes from a millenium of missed classes had also been the one to break stones and shuffle along in chain-gangs. Shining Armour and Mi Amore Cadenza had inherited a gentle, peace-loving, and fundamentally spooked people. Such thinking left Luna sullen and going no where. Her habit of wandering she put to use. She smiled, and said soft words, and did little things to ease the worries of those crystal ponies she passed. This was not her house to put in order – some small part of her resented the imposition upon her nature; felt angry and put upon – but in the month since Shining Armour’s absence she had promised dear, wise, passionate, silly young Cadence her help. Even if what ‘help’ meant had expanded a little around the edges; had come to mean not only looking for Shining Armour a world away, but looking out for Cadence herself, right here in her own home as well. As needs must, so be it. Luna, walker of the maze of dreams, had not learned the layout of the castle in all this time. She had not needed to. Her mind elsewhere, she patrolled her wandering, hours-devouring circuit. Shining Armour was proving frustrating, and stubborn in the extreme. In the first days, the task of finding him had seemed so easy. It would have been, had there been anything normal happening. Luna had first stepped through Cadance’s own fretful dreams, seen the beguiling, smiling, elusive stallion as Cadance saw him, and walked headlong into the dreaming equivalent of a brick wall. Twilight Sparkle. Spike the Dragon – Hero of the Empire himself – the Element bearers; a hundred friends and family and acquantinces of Shining Armour; every attempt to bridge their dreams to his had met with the same infuriating, same impassable result for Luna. She had never seen such a defence. Her power could break through it, but there, the world was a different place. Shining Armour was not in a burning down house, where the walls might be knocked in or the door kicked down, and he scooped up and rescued unharmed in the hooves of his wife. In the world of dreams, the pony was the house, and the pony, and the fire, all at once. It didn’t have to make literal sense. Luna understood. She was the only one that truly did. Sufficed to say, force was not an option. The filly had proved a timely discovery. Not a lucky one, as another might have considered her, for Luna did not believe it to be luck when she had trawled, proverbial nets wide, all up and down the far-distant, oft-forgot Coral Coast for such a span of time, dragging the pink alicorn along all the while. It was Cadence who had first tickled the small, nameless foreigner from the masses ‘beneath’ them. “How did you do that?” Luna had asked. The answer she got, of light and love images and love lines was as vague and unsatisfying to Luna as, she begrudingly realized, her explanations of dreams and their ways had likely to been to Mi Amore. Even so... cautiously, carefully, the two alicorns had treaded their magics together. Fitfully, inconsistently, they made progress. Why a child would dream of Shining Armour at all, how she knew him, why Luna could step through her and not be hindered, when the unknown defence had stopped the same passage from all others... the questions hung heavy around them. Shining himself raised even more. He had been off-putting, even eerie when Luna had finally popped the latch and stolen in through the proverbial window of his metaphorical house. Finding him should have been the end of it. Instead, Shining Armour, in his dreams, had proven evasive, skittish, and – Luna lacked a better word – distorted. There was no such thing as ghosts, yet, even so... something haunted the stallion. He was a far-cry from the straight-laced, uncomplicated, noble and life-affirming fellow she had first shortly following her own return to the world. Wherever the two alicorns met, Cadence asked constantly, “check again.” Luna oft had the same reply. “They’re not sleeping. I looked to their dreams five minutes ago, when last you asked.” “They could be asleep now. Or her. Or him. Check again.” Luna sighed. Closing her eyes, she let her consciousness prod gently at the dream. “No. Still not.” And, because she could not stay mad, she added, “I’m sorry.” Cadence's head fell. “It’s alright.” She nodded, as if in agreement. She turned and stared at the empty throne, perhaps to listen to it. “It’s alright.” Taking her seat, she cradled the velvet the cushion from his, twin to her own. She hugged it, buried herself in it, until only her eyes peered out over the top, hidden in the shade of her pink hair. The impression she gave was of a child. To Luna, she very much was. A sad, wise, heartbroken child. The eyes of Princess Mia Amore Cadenza were narrow, and they were focused. Luna was more intrigued than worried, but there was some worry. Some. “Punch?” she asked. Cadence was slow to respond, as if her thoughts had needed to return from many miles distant. In all likelihood, they had. “Sorry? Luna gestured the grand door, thrown open and empty. “I believe I saw some made downstairs. I intend to have a glass, perhaps two. Shall I bring you some? It had a most promising fruity hue. Perhaps strawberry, or watermelon?” “No... I, thank you, no... I just need to think. Thank you, Luna. Thank you.” “As you wish.” Cadence’s ears flattened back. She sat in silence, squeezing the pillow of Prince-Consort Shining Armor to her, and found little succour in it. Luna left her be. Cadence did not speak, because a distressed and royal figure speaking to themselves in a setting and context such as this has a decidedly different sort of implication about it then, say, a normal pony speaking to themselves and their audience of house-plants after getting home from the shop with their groceries. It would have been too alarming, somewhat melodramatic, and, at the end of the day: rather corny. So Cadence did not speak. Instead, let us burrow into her mind for a moment – quite harmlessly, rest assured – and borrow her thought. As she sat huddled, sullen and squeezing, her thought was thus: My Shining Armour... She squeezed tighter, she could just about scent a cold trace of him from it. She breathed deeply of it. They're not going to like this. She'd have to ask one more favour of Luna, a big one, from she who had already given her so many in this trying time. Cadence considered whom she was dealing with. Actually, she might like it. Maybe. When the runner came she reluctantly set the pillow down and adopted an appropriate poise. The runner bowed. The rush she had been in was evident at the edges of her otherwise formal voice. "It's the Grey Port griffons, your highness, as requested." "Wonderful, yes, thank you. Send Burgomaster Gadroon to me right away. He knows the way around." Cadence actually smiled despite, for the last month, her frustrated dealings with the inky-grey griffons giving her little reason to. Certain slanted questions on the burgomaster's part regarding Shining Armour's disappearance had been...less than well considered. "Shall we arrange a platter for the griffons' refreshment?" "Yes, please do." Cadence pieced together her plan. Images flashed in her mind (which we, in the narrative, have since withdrawn from, more's the pity) and she felt better already. Luna went where she pleased, and here and now, it pleased her to return. A pitcher of punch and a series of matching crystalline cups drifted after her. The runner to whom she nodded acknowledgement – who was named Snow Sprinter – lowered her head and stepped aside, then hurried away with Cadence's requests. "The mystery is solved: it is both strawberry and watermelon, and the ice cubes are shaped like little flowers. Is it not cute?" She jiggled the pitcher and it made a sound of clinkle-clankle. "Of course it is. Importantly, however; it is refreshing, for brooding is thirsty work." A table, plain and wooden, drifted through the ornate doors and planted itself shamelessy at Luna's side. On it she set the assorted things. Juice and ice sloshed and settled. She leaned closer to Cadence. "Somewhere between us and the Coral Coast there is a lie, or an evil, or a most terrible string of chances. Mind who you trust." Their eyes met. Cadence whispered, "I will." She flicked her eyes to the door. And on as quick a cue as that, Luna twirled about. "Ah, Burgomaster Gadroon. A pleasure. Before things begin, I insist, try the punch." The Burgomaster, who was not a young griffon, wrinkled and probably a bit dry of tongue, took the offer. Luna was, partially, fishing for a spit-take. Certain smidgens of her modern education had come from Pinkie Pie, after all. And, at the moment of Cadence's discretion, the raven-coloured burgomaster did not dissapoint. "Are you sure?" Luna asked, neatly sidestepping the juice and nudging the spluttering, squirrely old griffon to his feet. What she asked was rhetorical, she knew, because there was fire in Cadence's eyes, and a smile on her lips. "I'm serious. No more waiting, Luna. No more relying on magic and laying here, moping. Celestia's agents, the reports from your griffons, Gadroon, which, might I add, are lately beginning to contradict one another, except on the point of finding my husband – none of it's worked!" "Now, it's very simple. I'm going to make a request. You will oblige it. It's really quite reasonable. Then I'm going. I'm finding him, and I'm bringing him back." She paused. She sipped at a glass. "Mm, oh my, that really is good punch." "Did I not say thusly?" Gadroon had been Burgomaster to the sleepy, frosty fishing city of Grey Port for forty-six years, and for a solid four decades plus change of that it had been a remote and content city-state, two hundred miles from the nearest Equestrian habitation. Two hundred frozen, stark, impassable, lovely miles of good fencing and quiet living. Then the neighbours had moved in. Gadroon choked off an unhappy sound as he regarded Princess Cadence's mostly friendly, slightly crazed eyes, and tried to stop the shaking of his knees.