MORNING WAS an uneasiness. It was a feeling that something would happen soon - that I should get back to my room before Opli Dexia came for us. We couldn’t see any hint of morning in the windowless underground room—it was just a terrible thing that we knew would come, because it came about this time every day.
I leaned over and kissed Peach on the shoulderblade. She shuddered.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, hoping to hear something like I’m just so happy.
“I’m not ready to lose you,” she mumbled.
I kissed her in various places around the back of her neck, near the base of her mane.
“Every kiss you give might be the last one,” she said.
“Well, this one isn’t,” I promised, and kissed her again. “Because this one comes right after.” Kiss.
“But maybe that one was!”
I drew my arm around her chest and sat there, holding her. “It’s probably morning,” I murmured. “Opli could find us here together.”
“Would that be so bad?”
I breathed. “She’d be upset with us.”
“She can be upset. We’re more important than people being upset.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I put my face in Peach’s hair and squeezed her tight. I gave her one more kiss. And then I got up.
She repositioned herself in bed so that her front hooves were just hanging off the edge. “Where are you going?”
I’d just stepped over to the vanity. “There’s a book on here.”
“It’s not mine,” said Peach.
I read the title aloud: “History of the Crystal Empire: A Primer.”
“They left us a history book? Wonder if it’s always in here.”
“I guess they’re a proud people. Proud of their history.” I opened the book and showed Peach the impressionistic frontispiece of a smaller, younger Crystal City, painted in pastels.
She slid forward, peering. “It’s pretty.”
I read from the introduction. “A primer, of course, is an introductory text, meant to ‘prime the pump’ of curiosity, so to speak, in young foals and others new to the subject at hoof. By providing a foundation of information, the reader is enticed to study further in order to satisfy the craving for knowledge which has, hopefully, been ‘primed’. However, where this particular subject—the Crystal Empire and its history—is concerned, the term is especially fitting. The nature of crystals is like curiosity in that once one is begun, it can only grow, and this process is both natural and beautiful. Crystals are ordered structures to which like substance adheres and conforms when it happens to come in touch; if traces of the substance of a crystal are to be found in air, some of these traces will eventually contact the crystal through sheer happenstance and will henceforth adopt its structure and become a part of it. This property of crystals is not absent from the Crystal Empire itself, and indeed could be deemed the very reason why it is an Empire, and has not remained a mere Kingdom.”
Peach slipped from the bed, her hooves clacking on the floor. “When was that book written? Was it before the Empire disappeared for a thousand years?”
I opened to the Table of Contents and skimmed to the end. “Looks like it’s from before King Sombra,” I said, not seeing any mention of his reign.
“The writing seemed old-fashioned,” said Peach.
“It reminds me of how Catholics write,” I told her. “Remember how I said they make everything seem like it all fits together and makes perfect sense?”
She nodded. “Like a crystal.”
“I guess like a crystal.” I thumbed through the book, pausing on the smeary yet beautiful pictures of towns and towers and battles and mountain passes. Then I closed it and set it back on the vanity. “Do…do the ponies here take crystals really seriously?” I asked Peach. “Do they have, like a sort of crystal pride?”
Peach shrugged. “Search me. We could ask, I guess.”
“How did people react when this place came back after a thousand years? I can only imagine how something like that would go over on Earth.” Well, actually, it would probably be a lot like discovering that ponies were real. It would shake everything up.
Peach sat back against the bed. I admired how casually a pony could go from standing to sitting. Just because of that, a part of me wanted to make love to her again. “It got us talking, that’s for sure. Some of my neighbors started talking about how they thought they had ancestors from the Crystal Empire, and maybe they’d try to get in touch.”
“Wow. I hadn’t thought of that—ponies meeting their own ancestors from a thousand years ago. Do you know if they ever did?”
Peach shook her head. “It was pretty much just something to talk about.”
“Didn’t it… amaze anyone? Did it turn anything upside-down?”
“I know they sent Princess Twilight out here to protect the place before she was even a princess. It was like a test for—Oh wait, you know that, it was in the show, right? Well, Cadance and Shining Armor went to reestablish their government and everything after the Heart was working again. There was a big rush to get a train line up here. A lot of folks went north to sell modern technology and spells to the crystal ponies, but I got the sense they didn’t make a whole lot of money. I think the crystal ponies like getting by with their own ways, like Princess Cadance said in her speech. Oh, our local petting zoo did get a couple of their dwarf sheep, so there’s that. There was a green one and a yellow one.”
“You have petting zoos?”
“Sure, why not? We like petting things. It’s good for the hooves. I don’t know how humans even came up with the idea of petting, since you don’t have much hair.”
The idea of petting was actually very enticing just then. “What about that ‘Skin’ poem? Isn’t not having hair a plus?”
“Yeah! But that’s caressing. Caressing is different from petting. Why do humans pet animals?”
I considered. “I guess you always want what you don’t already have.”
“Either that, or you don’t appreciate what you’ve got around you until you lose it. Or you meet someone without it.”
I stared at Peach, amazed anew by our chemistry and the way it had of crystallizing from out of nowhere. She was looking backwards at me, swiveling her ears slowly forward as if to say who-knew-what, when we heard the outer door scraping open.
Peach’s expressive ears poinked straight up. “It’s Opli!”
I hurried to the door. “I’ll—wait, it’s too late, isn’t it? She’ll just see me leaving.”
Peach clopped up beside me. “Stay strong! You’re in love and you’re not ashamed!”
I grinned. “Yeah.”
I heard a rapping on a door that wasn’t this one. “Mr. Pfeffer? It’s time to wake up.”
The truth was, we hadn’t had a lot of sleep. Nor had it felt like we’d needed much. I pushed open the door. “I’m in here, actually.”
Opli Dexia, now dressed in a tight-waisted transparent blue gown that sort of shocked me, turned sharply toward me. “Are you in Miss Peach Spark’s room!?”
“I’m sorry,” I began. Wait, what was I saying? “No, I’m not sorry. I couldn’t resist.”
She stared at me, aghast. “And did Miss Spark feel similarly? Are you in there, Miss Spark?”
She joined me promptly. “I’m here! We were just reading history together.”
Opli Dexia frowned. “Well, I’m glad someone appreciates the complimentary texts. Was that all you were doing?”
We looked at each other, all too aware that we hadn’t actually gotten to the history part of the book. “It might not have been quite all,” I said.
Our chaperone struck the stone floor with a -CLACK!- “You have made your bed, and you will now lie in it,” she said. “Please don’t blame me if your separation proves painful.”
“Ouch,” said Peach.
The royal assistant looked grave, but a little apologetic. “Her Serene Highness has expressed an interest in meeting you over breakfast,” she informed us. “You will therefore be prepared to depart within ten minutes. You may leave your things here.”
I sighed. Well, we were getting it out of the way sooner than later. I was a little relieved—I’d been worried about spending the whole morning tense, waiting for the hammer to fall.
“I guess that was the last kiss,” moped Peach as we hurried to get presentable.
I leaned over quickly to steal one more.
There was a door at the end of the underground passage, and past it a flight of stairs covered in lavender velvet. A couple of narrow passages beside us led to other dungeon-like hallways, but we took the stairs. Immediately, things were better lit and there were fantastic paintings on the walls—ponies twirling through the air with wild curling manes and tails. I thought they might be acrylics, but when I peered closer, the texture looked strange. Were they made from crystals?
We passed by an inviting arch and climbed instead to the second floor. From there, Opli Dexia led us into a wide hallway with transparent light fixtures and layers of transparency in the floors and walls, blocked by buried blue and pink panels. We didn’t stay there long enough for me to contemplate the walls, though, because Opli then took us into a much narrower passage that might have been for servants, then out into a round yellow room that felt like being inside a honeypot. There were two differently decorated rooms adjoining it; we could see doorways through doorways forking in at least four directions, each room a different color. Opli Dexia told us to wait on a huge tuffet that reminded me of a flower blossom.
It was too big to easily sit on the edge, so Peach and I climbed right into the middle and lay together. I stroked her rump idly and she looked from one door to the other, nervous.
There was a perfunctory blast on some kind of horn—a flugelhorn?—and we heard tromping hooves approaching from the right. From two rooms away boomed a gruff voice: “Her Serene Highness, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, and Prince Consort Shining Armor.”
As we turned in the heart of our tuffet, a rank of lightly armored guards, all either white, gray or pink, marched through to take up positions at each doorway. They examined us warily, as if judging nothing about us but our potential ability to make trouble.
A sizable white unicorn strode easily through the checkpoint; he was wearing a brown silk shirt with a deep V-neck, and could only be Shining Armor. “Oh!” he said, peering at us, and then he called back through the door. “Cadance, it’s your eight o’clock!”
We heard her voice, then, distantly. “Yes, I’m coming. You can go ahead; I’ll see you at lunch!”
“Gotcha.” Shining Armor turned back to us. “Good luck, you two. Er, and, on behalf of the Crystal Empire, I apologize for any inconvenience.” He bowed and closed his eyes.
“Oh, it’s fine,” said Peach. “It’s all been worth it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate being allowed to visit.”
The prince looked up curiously at us. “Well, I hope you get a happy ending,” he said. While I was considering whether and how to answer, he slipped past the guards through the other door. Peach and I watched him go.
We turned back to the right. The graceful, pink slip of a living thing that was Princess Cadance appeared, Opli Dexia beside her in her wispy dress. Cadance was wearing the same royal regalia as when we’d seen her before, but somehow her manner was easier. Behind them walked two unicorns murmuring to each other—Pink Coil and a stockily built periwinkle mare with a cudgel for a cutie mark—and at the rear came another trio of guards.
The princess came into the room and looked at us. I moved self-consciously to sit on the edge of the tuffet, and Peach crept up beside me. She wasn’t nearly as excited to talk with a princess this time.
“Here they are,” said Opli Dexia.
Cadance smiled at us. “I remember them. Peach Spark! The poet blogger! And Ron Pfeffer, who was good enough to accompany her to my speech.”
I nodded, but when I saw Peach bowing, I bowed too, still sitting. I wondered whether we should have stood up when she came in.
Cadance looked between us with soft pity. “Oh, look at you. I feel so bad about this. When I met you before, I couldn’t tell whether you were a couple, but now, it’s written all over you.”
The periwinkle unicorn stared at us from the door and murmured something to Pink Coil.
“I’m more totally in love with him than I’ve ever been with anyone or anything,” said Peach.
I wanted to touch her, but it didn’t feel appropriate. “I’ve gone gonzo for her too. The week after you caught us in that spell was maybe the best week of my life. I mean, I’ve fallen in love before, but it wasn’t like this.” I spoke softly. “Do you really have to undo it?”
Cadance’s expression fell, her eyes teary. “I never seem to learn,” she uttered. “Love is so beautiful, but it can’t be forced. Ultimately, the beauty you get will be false if you do.”
Peach and I looked at each other. Were we emanating false beauty?
“There’s something I’m not clear on,” said Peach. “Were you… casting a spell on those arguing ambassadors, and we just got caught in the crossfire? Or… was the spell meant especially for us?”
Cadance closed her eyes nearly all the way. “It was for you. I was frustrated by the idea of a twosome so close to love, but letting it fall apart through arguing.”
“Were we arguing?” I asked.
She faced me. “Yes. Pink Coil says that you don’t remember, but you deserve to know. You were planning to move back home, to wherever you came from. Peach, you wanted to know whether you would ever see him again.” Cadance was having trouble getting her words out, obviously pained. “You had both been… bickering loudly for some time, and it was so clearly wrong. Whatever had come between you was something that could be discussed, and should be discussed, and Ron, you were prepared to leave town with no promise that Peach would ever see you again.”
Did I really say that? Would I really have done that? I slid over next to Peach and squeezed her with one arm. She hugged me back tight, teary.
“It felt like that would have been a needless tragedy,” continued Cadance sadly. “And I was too distracted to mediate, so I… took action. But I struck you much harder than I should have… and perhaps I should have let the tragedy take place, regardless. Because your lives belong to you.”
“Why were you going to leave?” whimpered Peach.
“Probably because if I didn’t have you, what would I have?” I answered.
She shifted in my grip but said nothing.
“I’m prepared to undo the love spell,” said Cadence. “I know that Pink Coil told you why it’s necessary. But you have to understand, it may be difficult for you afterward.”
“I know,” I said. “Believe me, we’ve thought about it.”
“Actually, Pink Coil didn’t tell us why we had to have the spell canceled,” said Peach. “It was my friend Second Sight that convinced us.”
Cadance raised her eyebrows. “Second Sight? Who is that?”
“She’s a unicorn who knows a lot. She can see how people are feeling.”
“And what did she tell you?”
Peach looked down. “That our love is just grafted on. That it’s causing emotional jerkage.”
Cadance’s eyes fluttered in puzzlement. “That isn’t terminology that I’m familiar with! But… I think I can see what she means.”
The periwinkle unicorn spoke up for the first time. “I’ve heard it before! It means some groups of subconscious emotions are triggering their non-counterpart conscious emotions.”
Cadance nodded seriously and opened an utterly pink wing toward the unicorn. “My royal mage, Shillelagh.”
“Wow,” said Peach. “We’ve got the monarch of the Crystal Empire, her royal mage, and her mage emeritus. All in the same room, just for us.”
Pink Coil cleared his throat. “We have no doubt that Cadance could handle this on her own, but your case is of academic value. Shillelagh and I wished to observe.”
“I’m really good at force magic and scrying, but enchantments are a weak point,” said Shillelagh, her voice husky. “Didn’t Sunburst want to watch, too?”
“He decided it was more important to stay with the child,” said Opli Dexia.
“He really has become an invaluable babysitter,” said Cadance, smiling. “And I’m glad to have you here for the difficult magic operations, Shillelagh, just in case.”
“Shall I tell the cooks to have breakfast waiting?” Opli Dexia asked the princess.
Cadance squinted. “No need to trouble them, given that we don’t know how long we’ll be. We can go out for breakfast.”
“You’re already going out for lunch!” the adjutant pointed out.
Cadance looked at her. “It’s summer! I enjoy going out.”
Opli Dexia nodded and hurried off, presumably to tell the cooks.
“Do you suppose we should give them something to calm down?” asked Shillelagh.
“Not yet,” said Cadance, looking between my heart and head. “I need them alert. If they aren’t alert, their feelings won’t be fully active, and I won’t be able to see…” A tendril of turquoise magic reached out and… invaded me. “…where the natural feelings end and the magical ones begin.”
I made an effort to hold still. “Are you starting?” I asked apprehensively.
“I haven’t changed anything yet,” said Cadance. She stood very seriously and faced both of us. “Are you certain that you want me to do this?”
I had a flash of unreality—was one of the four princesses of Equestria really asking my permission to do something to me? But when I’d said we’d thought it over, I’d been telling the truth. “Yes,” I nodded. I wanted to give Peach one last kiss, but then she would know all too painfully it would be the last.
“I’m certain,” said Peach sadly.
“All right,” said Cadance softly. “I’m going to ask some questions. Please try to remain calm and think seriously about the answers. Peach, if you feel the urge to sing at any point, go ahead and we’ll wait.”
“I’ve only had six songs,” Peach mumbled.
Cadance turned back toward Pink Coil, inclining her ears. “What do you think, Pink? Should I open with hypotheticals?”
“That could confuse the issue,” advised the mage emeritus. “With respect, I recommend getting straight to it.”
Cadance nodded and returned her attention to us. “Peach? Am I understanding things correctly in that you told Ron at one point that he couldn’t be your boyfriend?”
Peach concentrated visibly. “Hard to think about that kind of thing. But yeah. I guess I maybe didn’t say it directly. But I told him somepony else was my special somepony.”
“But Ron wasn’t trying to take you away from an established relationship, was he?”
She shook her head. “They asked me to choose between them. I told them I had a lot on my plate.”
“What, exactly, did you have on your plate?”
Peach blushed. “My blog. My quest. Like I said at the mixer.”
Cadance looked at Peach’s cutie mark, with its two towers. “Sparking a connection between the two worlds.”
“Yeah. I know it sounds really… conceited of me, ‘cause I know there’s already lots of connections, but…”
“But you feel you have something to add?”
Peach looked up boldly. “I feel like we don’t understand the whole thing yet.”
Cadance blinked. “How do you mean?”
Peach waved her hoof. “Us. Them. What our relationship really is. How we should be treating each other.”
“And… is that why you were hesitant to love a human? Because you weren’t sure that love was part of the… of the proper relationship?”
Peach looked ashamed. “Yes. Well, that and—that and, the other guy seemed really neat at the time. He really impressed me with all his travels and experience and all the stuff he can quote. But he’s not right for me. He’s seven years older than me, but Ron and me are the same age! And besides, he’s a seducer. He’s a nice seducer, but that’s what he is, and I’m not the kind of girl who should be seduced.”
“Is anyone?” asked Cadance.
“Well, yeah! Some girls say, ‘I want a stallion to sweep me off my hooves!’ Well, they should get one! They should end up with someone like George, but I need a partner. Someone to build up ideas with. Someone to go have random fun with.” She lowered her voice and her head. “Someone who doesn’t have any more of a plan than I do.”
A turquoise tendril reached from Cadance’s horn to Peach’s, then dissolved. “And is Ron this person without a plan?”
She only turned her head slightly toward me, as if ashamed to look me in the eyes. “I guess.”
Cadance turned her attention to me. “Ron? Is any of this a surprise to you?”
“No, not really. I didn’t realize Peach thought about George quite like that, but it makes sense.”
Cadance weighed her words. “When it comes to your life in general, is it fair to say, as Peach implies, that you don’t have a plan?”
It stung, but it was something I’d known about myself for a while. “Yeah, it’s true. Whenever anyone asks where I see myself in five years, I don’t know.”
“I like that, Ron,” emphasized Peach, whomping her tail against the tuffet. “You shouldn’t know.”
Cadance continued. “And when it comes to your relationships in general?” she asked me. “Are you the sort of person who knows just how he’s going to win the girl? Or do you proceed without a plan?”
I was less ashamed to answer this one. “Love is best without a plan.” It struck me that I was talking to the princess of love, and wondered whether she would agree.
“And was that also true about your relationship with Peach?”
I had to think back to the beginning in order to answer honestly. “Yeah. It is. I didn’t even know it when I started to fall in love with her.”
Cadance’s magic flashed and sparked in my head. I struggled not to panic or shake. “Did you have any reservations about it when you did?”
“I don’t think so…” I murmured. “Just that she might not want me. I’m kind of a loser.”
“You are not,” snapped Peach.
“Well, in some ways, no,” I admitted. “But I could be a lot more impressive.”
“You’re wonderful,” cried Peach. “You’re wonderful the way you are.”
I was feeling vulnerable, but somehow it didn’t keep me from opening up. “I wish I had a job I actually liked.”
“I wish that too! We can get one for you! We can work on it together.”
“I wish I knew what I wanted to do with my life,” I went on, feeling tears form. “I wish I knew what my cutie mark was. If I had one.”
“Not everypony knows what their cutie mark means!” objected Peach. “I’m only just starting to understand mine!”
“I have a royal post and I still don’t know,” put in Shillelagh.
Cadance touched me softly with her wing feathers. “Is it possible that your quest is Peach’s own? To forge a connection between our worlds?”
I wanted to touch those feathers with my fingers, but I didn’t. “I’ve thought about it. But I don’t think humans have destinies.”
“Does that mean they can’t be part of anyone’s destiny?” asked Cadance.
I was silent. I didn’t know.
A flash of white over bubblegum pink shook me. I felt my thoughts being jostled, uprooted. I shut my eyes and tried to keep my breathing steady. What had I been thinking about?
I heard Cadance speaking to Peach. “Do you think you’re following a destiny?”
“I don’t know. How can I know? Does it feel different from when you’re just doing normal stuff?”
“…It… there are moments in your life when… everything becomes crystal clear, and you know exactly what you have to do. I’ve experienced a few of those myself. But I believe that a pony can be working toward her destiny for much of her life and not be aware of it at all.”
There was silence for a while. Then I heard muffled crackling and sparkling, and I opened my eyes. Cadance had her horn touched to Peach’s breast, and the two mages were pressing up to watch. Shillelagh was wide-eyed, while Pink Coil was quietly attentive.
“I want to fulfill my destiny,” said Peach Spark.
“You will!” said Cadance. “You can’t help it. That’s what destiny is.” And then a few moments later, she whispered: “I see the problem.”
I saw snaking, grasping tendrils of turquoise sift through my girlfriend’s head and ribcage, bobbing and yanking. I felt a growing pain I couldn’t identify. I was getting tenser and tenser.
Pink Coil whispered to the princess, pointing toward me. She quickly paused her business with Peach and turned to me, concentrating. A film of magic spread toward me and through my face. I felt the pain open, the substance inside welling out, and I moaned aloud.
“There, there,” said Cadance. “It’ll be all right. Think about Peach.”
So I did. I thought about how she wanted to open the world with me, to eat things from east, west, north and south, to ride subways, to take trips. If we went to Atlantic City, she would gamble with me. She wasn’t like Cindy. Peach was fun and exciting. She was a mystery because her life was a mystery. I didn’t know what to do with my life because I’d never found a long-term plan worth making, but Peach didn’t know only because there were so many paths in front of her she couldn’t choose.
I loved her so much. If only she weren’t an ugly horse.
Oh God, did I really think that?
I hadn’t meant it. She was a pretty horse, really! Not ugly at all, for a four-legged work animal. She was slim and had big eyes and was really expressive…
Work animal?
The princess of love was squinting into my eyes. “Bit for your thoughts?” she asked.
I couldn’t say what I’d just thought. I shook my head.
“I feel like we’re almost there,” she cajoled. “I just want to make sure I cleared it all out.”
I moaned and felt tears coming out. I wiped them clean. Oh. Oh, this was what Second Sight had been talking about.
“You know Peach’s friend Second Sight?” I said weakly. “She told me there was something big built up in me that I was ignoring. Something that made… love impossible.”
Cadance nodded, her amethyst eyes probing curiously.
“I just realized what it was.” My mouth was dry. “I forgot. I’m not attracted to ponies.”
Cadance’s eyes flicked in Peach’s direction, but I couldn’t look.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I just don’t find the… the pony body type sexy. I know ponies are people through and through, but the way you’re built… it just says ‘animal’ to me.”
Cadance gave a tiny nod and reached into my head with turquoise tendrils once more. “So you’re saying that you find Peach attractive emotionally, but not physically?”
My jaw trembled. I forced myself to turn my head, to look at her. She looked vulnerable, shocked, afraid. I was so ashamed.
“That’s right,” I said.
There was the feeling of digging, of troweling, of reaching through loose soil to pluck out a plant by its roots. Then there was a tug, and I felt hurt, but no longer tense. I twitched and breathed heavily.
“You don’t think I’m pretty?” Peach asked, even while Cadance turned and dipped her head to probe her magically.
I didn’t want to talk about it in front of these other ponies, but like Opli Dexia had said, I’d made my bed. “You’re pretty for a pony. But that’s not right for me.”
Peach chewed her bottom lip. “You called me pretty before. You called me beautiful. And you rubbed me all over. You kissed me. You even boinked me. A bunch of times.”
I felt so feeble. “I was under the spell,” I explained.
“Crepes, Pepper!” There was so much pain in her eyes. Was she really that sensitive about her appearance, or was the spell making her react like this? “You said you loved me! Through and through! You even wanted to be my boyfriend before the spell! Why would you say that if you don’t like the way I look?”
“I don’t know! Because we were developing a relationship! Because you’re so deep. You’re kale and you’re marshmallows. You can make an amazing tiny picture on a grain of rice and you’ve got a way of talking that…” I shivered. “…thrills me.” If only you were a woman, I wanted to say. “I hadn’t ever met anyone like you before, and… and I was able to be a friend to you, and it meant so much to you, and… I guess I found it meant a lot to me, too. I really needed a friend like you.”
I saw a tear run down her peach-colored coat, Cadance’s horn at her breast. “I needed you too. I still need you. I was being dumb. I blamed my parents and I blamed George and I blamed my quest and really I was just afraid.” She was speaking through sobs. “I was afraid to fall in love with a human. In case that was the dumbest thing ever and would only end in heartbreak. I was afraid to let it happen because everything on Earth was so new and so I kept putting it off and saying no to love… and now it’s heartbreak after all, isn’t it? It’s heartbreak anyway, only it’s my fault, it’s all my fault for being afraid!”
She was weeping openly and I could hardly wait for Cadance to finish pulling the spell out of Peach so that she finally could be at ease. “Cadance,” I said. “How much longer is it going to take?”
The princess stood before Peach, her shoulders slumped wearily. “I’ve already finished. Perhaps twenty seconds ago.”
“Seriously?!”
Cadance nodded at me, biting her lower lip.
“But… she’s still saying she loves me!”
The princess met my eyes. “Then she does. You’re lucky, Ron Pfeffer. Not everyone gets to know true love.”
I was so confused. Shillelagh broke in: “You’re sure you got all the traces? From both of them?”
Cadance sighed. “Yes. My ill-advised spell is undone.”
“But it was a love spell, and there’s still love left that wasn’t there before,” the periwinkle mage objected. “What am I missing?”
“You heard her,” said Cadance quietly. “She had been afraid to love. My spell unlocked that fear. The spell is gone, but the source of the fear crumbled and cannot return.”
“Oh, I get it! That’s… that’s a pretty ideal outcome, isn’t it?”
Cadance nodded deeply. “If the only barrier to love is a mutual emotional wall, yes. Celestia and I decided that such circumstances were the only ones that truly justified a love spell.” She looked at me. “I made a spur-of-the-moment judgment at the mixer, Shillelagh. And I was only half right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only one of the two lovers was suffering from an emotional wall,” Cadance told her mage softly. “The other was depending upon one for his love.”
“He was?” asked Shillelagh. “Ohh. No, I get it. He was walling off how he didn’t find her sexy.”
Cadance gave a mournful little nod.
Peach leapt off the tuffet and stood facing me. “So where does that leave us?” she demanded, her ears back.
“I’m afraid that’s up to you and Ron,” said Cadance.
I swallowed. “You still love me? Even now that the spell’s gone?”
The quivering of her cheeks turned into a spastic nod. Then she reared up and put her forehooves in my lap and her head against my chest. She cried into me, and I hugged her gently.
“I love you too, Peach. You’re my best friend. My very best friend. But…” I had to steel myself to say it. “…when it comes down it, our apartment’s too small.”
She looked up at me, eyes wide and wet. Then she closed her eyes and sank into my belly, sobbing.
Cadance raised an eyebrow to Shillelagh and gestured toward us. Shillelagh stepped forward and cast a spell that washed over us, and I was struck by a sense of tranquility and distance. I didn’t want to cry anymore or think too hard about my problems. I just held Peach and stroked her hair. It was nice hair, really. Almond brown and full of swooshes, like it was ready to change the world.
“I’m sorry,” said Princess Cadance, watching us. “I was hoping it would work out better, but this kind of thing rarely does.”
“It’s okay,” mumbled Peach, muffled by my body. “You warned us it’d hurt. I just didn’t know it’d hurt like this.”
She laid her wing on Peach’s back and joined me in stroking her. “When you’re ready, we can go out to breakfast,” she said. “I know a nice place.”
Do I seem like a horrible person, telling the story this way? I went to Cadance’s mixer with unrequited love; Cadance bandaged it with a spell, and when the bandage was removed, Peach’s love was unrequited. It was funny, really, from a certain perspective we were both a million miles away from reaching. For now, it was complicated by the fact that her love wasn’t really unrequited. I did love her, just not as a lover. I loved Peach as a dear friend, but, as I explained as gingerly as I could over breakfast, if I was going to share a cramped studio apartment with someone, it would have to be a girl I was crazy for. Because, let’s face it, I said. The way we were living was crazy.
“Crazy isn’t always bad,” pled Peach.
“I know. That’s what I’m saying. It was working, for a while. But I don’t think it’s going to work any more.”
“So what are we going to do? Are you going to move out?”
I’d been trying not to think about it. “Probably. That’s probably best. I’ll go back to Trenton, and live near my family again.”
Peach reached out across the large marble table toward me, but let herself be defeated by the distance and picked up her stone tea mug instead to slurp a little. We were sitting outdoors in view of a market. Now and then crystal ponies passing by would come up to Cadance and say something nice or giddy, and she’d always respond in kind. It was uplifting just having breakfast with her.
I brought out our gift for Cadance and presented it quietly. She took it with her magic and gave me a sporting, quizzical look, as if she was amazed by the idea of a gift and suspected it was a trick. When she opened the bag and looked in, her pristine face contorted into a wiggle-mouthed grin. “Kumquats!” she exclaimed, and poured some of them out on the table. “How did you know I enjoy these?”
“I guess they just spoke to us!” offered Peach.
“We were tipped off,” I admitted.
She had one crushed between her teeth already. “They’re piquant,” she said. “Do you know that word? It means, ‘pleasantly provocative, or stimulating to the senses.’”
Peach and I admitted that we did know the word, yes.
“The best part is that it’s seven letters long, ends in a ‘t’, and even has a ‘q’ in it!” Cadance continued, passing around kumquats to everyone, including a couple of ponies randomly passing by, who gasped in delight. “Kumquats are the perfect example of piquantness, and ‘piquant’ is the perfect word for a kumquat!”
“Do you like piquant things?” asked Peach.
“Piquant things are the best things there are,” Cadance replied coyly. “They make life as a princess almost bearable!”
So that was Cadance. As for Shillelagh, she was a lot more naive and open than I would have expected a royal mage to be, especially after meeting Pink Coil. In practice, she told us, she often operated in tandem with Mage Counsel Sunburst, “…as the magical brawn to his magical brains, so to speak.”
It was she who eventually asked the question I was afraid to ask: “So, Peach, to make sure I understand correctly. You are attracted physically to Ron?”
I focused on my eggs for a moment, artfully studded with fennel and peppers and poured over with two sauces. “Yeah,” said Peach. “I’m open-minded like that. I like how he’s tall and thin and his arms are nimble and his feet are big like dragon feet and his nose sticks out all funny-looking. I like how he shifts his weight in bed.”
“Out of curiosity,” asked Pink Coil, “do you feel any different now that the spell is removed?”
Peach swallowed with pain. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was doing a number on me. It was making me forget all Ron’s weaknesses. All the things that aren’t so great about him. But—” She looked at me, and I was brave enough to meet her eyes. “That sort of thing isn’t polite to talk about.”
“As opposed to how a person behaves in bed,” quipped Opli Dexia from the end of the table.
Cadance snickered. “Yet you would still take him, for all his weaknesses?” she prompted.
“Yeah,” said Peach. “In a heartbeat.”
Whatever my feelings, no one had ever talked about me that way before Peach. I slid over next to her and offered my shoulder. She leaned on it.
"Maybe we can go on another date or two,” I suggested. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what? You turn out to think I’m sexy after all?”
Admittedly, as I thought back on having slept with her, I couldn’t see that happening. “Maybe we’ll think of something. I don’t know.”
Cadance watched us, but didn’t interfere. Instead, she pointed out shops and attractions visible from our table. “And there’s the Green Pie, where my husband and I will be taking our daughter for lunch! Green Pie is also the proprietor. He makes pies out of greens, like chard and spinach.”
“We’re about twenty minutes behind schedule,” said Opli Dexia. “You may need to get a pie to go.”
“Nonsense,” said Cadance.
“I really love Equestria so far,” I remarked. “And the Crystal Empire is wonderful. Do you enjoy running it?”
Cadance gave me a coy look, as if to say, Oh, look at you, hobnobbing with royalty. “It’s my place in life! But I have to admit, I’ve enjoyed branching out into Terran diplomacy. What good is running a happy empire if you can’t share your good example with the rest of the multiverse?”
“Aside from the intrinsic value of happiness,” remarked Opli Dexia.
“Right—aside from that,” agreed Cadance, popping a stuffed mushroom into her mouth.
As we were heading back to the palace, Pink Coil asked us whether we would mind having our case written up into an academic treatise—with our names disguised, of course. Peach gave it some thought and shrugged one shoulder. “Sure. Might as well make us into a cautionary tale.”
“Can you send me a copy when you’re done?” I asked.
“Certainly. Just provide a lock or two of hair, and you’ll receive a scroll when I’m finished.”
So I clipped off a little hair, and he finally excused himself with nothing more than, “It was a pleasure. Goodbye.” Peach and I decided that despite his occasional brusqueness, Pink Coil had liked our company.
Cadance stood with us at the entrance to our little dungeon hallway in the basement of her palace. “I know you’re under orders to go straight home,” she told me. “But I think if you’d like to make time to visit Peach’s family, it could be arranged.”
Peach looked awkwardly at me. “I don’t know about that.”
The truth was, I didn’t really relish the idea of meeting a family full of ponies who might be biased against humans and explaining to them that I had been Peach’s boyfriend, but only because we’d been enchanted, and now I was her ex-boyfriend, yet here I was anyway to say hi, how are you? “Yeah, I don’t think that makes a lo—”
There’s a part of every person that sits there like a kid in front of a television, just watching most of the time, but sometimes, occasionally, it reaches out and tugs on you from the inside and says NO. Usually when that happens, it’s because you’re about to hurt yourself by falling off a high place or running into a fire, something like that. But sometimes… on occasions that are way too rare… that little part of yourself reaches out and grabs you to keep you from missing out on something amazing. Usually, we don’t need that part of ourselves to tell us to do amazing things, but sometimes we get so tied up in knots that we manage to convince ourselves it’s a bad idea… and on those rare occasions, the tug of the angry inner child becomes a welcome friend… which is an amazing feeling in itself.
“…hell.”
“What?” said Peach.
“Excuse me?” said Princess Cadance.
I smiled and felt myself getting teary for the second time that day. “I’d love to meet your family, Peach.”
She looked hopeful. “You would?”
I put my hand tentatively on her mane. “And see your hometown? Yeah. Because a princess of Equestria—” I wanted to say fucking Equestria, but caught myself in time. “—is good enough to give me the chance, and when am I ever going to get that again?”
Peach looked a little bittersweet. “But we’re not a couple anymore, are we?”
I rubbed her head gently. “We’re a couple of close friends.”
She took a quick breath, letting her shoulders rise and fall. “I’d miss another day of work.”
Cadance smiled beatifically. “We have resources. We can take care of it.”
“You’re too kind,” I said.
“I know. It’s a fault of mine. Even princesses aren’t perfect.” She winked at Peach. “But we’re better than worstness, in spite of our firstness.”
Peach beamed. “You read my poem!”
“I made sure to read all your poems,” said Cadance. “I think you’re brilliant, Peach.” She tousled my hair with her wingtip much like I’d tousled Peach’s. “And you’re lucky to have a top-flight friend like Ron.”
This seemed to bolster Peach. “You know I’m gonna blog about this,” she warned.
Cadance composed herself, folding her wing. “I look forward to it.”
The sky was cloudy outside the train windows. It felt really empty with just Peach and me in the compartment, the rumbling of the train augmented by occasional thunder. I’d been issued a visa with strict instructions to disembark the train at Long Hedge and catch a particular train the next day; if it wasn’t hole-punched by the engineer, it would magically alert the Bureau of Human Visitors. Because of this, we didn’t need a chaperone, and the train felt much lonelier than it had on the way north.
But I didn’t feel alone.
“Dear readers,” said Peach, standing on her seat without writing anything down. “On Tuesday, a human put me in the friendship zone. This probably shouldn’t be a surprise. Humans know that we ponies are really into friendship. They would probably be constantly putting us in friendship zones if they thought they could get away with it. But it still took me off guard.”
“You’re not gonna forgive me, are you?” I interrupted.
“Nope, I’m not,” said Peach.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“Because you can only forgive someone once, and I already did,” she explained.
In my breast, I felt the sun coming out.