The trumpets sounded, and Celestia surrendered to her sister Luna; and Luna spread her wings wide, and it was night. Sharp Spear and Steel Wind trotted out and out of the Royal Court; the promise of hot delicious food pulling their metal horseshoes down and down and down.
It had been a long day at the Royal Court. Several ponies had come over planning permission, a family separation, a will settlement case, and a little harmless public concern over foreign relations with other countries.
“That poor foal,” Sharp Spear began. “Her mother caught her father with another mare, and now she has forbidden her daughter from seeing her father at all!” They had both been there. The mother had scarcely comforted her precious little filly at all. The filly had wept unceasingly, shaking her mane in to snakes and staining the carpet with snot and tears. The father had tried to pull her in to a comforting wing-hug, but his wife, glaring with all the poison of a Borgia, had yelled at him. She had yelled for him not to touch her, “lest he infect her with the daemon of adultery.” Sharp Spear’s eyebrows were almost tilting his helmet back with incredulity.
Steel shook his head, in pain, and in pity.
Celestia had done her share of shouting. She had called the mother’s conduct opposed to a proper mother’s care and love. Celestia had ruled the daughter could see and stay with her father while the mother was burdened with therapy classes.
“That foal will have nightmares of to-day,” Sharp Spear announced sagely. “Her mother put her through more pain than the mere discovery of the adultery.” Sharp sighed, and Steel acknowledged with an eye-brow raise of his own. “Iron Hoof shall be gloating of this when he hears; ‘the philandering and weak morals of pegasi’,” he finished, hairs on the back of his neck rising and fluffing in distaste.
Sharp Spear’s wings half-unfurled, as if to strangle Iron Hoof in a bid of autonomous anger. “That pompous bastard goes around saying how great unicorns are. He is the pony who is disgracing the whole unicorn caste,” Sharp spat under his breath as he ended this tirade.
“Sshh,” Steel cautioned. “You will get us thrown in to the dungeons with Orion and the other criminals with that talk.”
Sharp grunted at his partner’s reprimand and reproof.
Now it was Steel’s turn to sigh. He tried to put up with Sharp Spear’s rebellious and pointless spouts but it was so difficult sometimes, for example late in to the night after lights out; all he could do was listen to him or clamp the pillow over his ears and beg sleep to come. Being a Royal Guard in the Eleventh Century, Celestial Era meant knowing an unwritten truth universally acknowledged that nearly everypony in the Guard hated Captain Iron Hoof in some form or hue. And nearly every one of those ponies almost never admitted this dislike some way or another.
Wait, what is that noise? Is that somepony humming?
A faint melody wafted along the corridor, sculling under the crackle of the torches and braziers.
“Steel?” Sharp asked curiously, but Steel ignored him. He twisted his head around to see who was humming.
And he saw a distant Guard, with gold armour, and fur so light they seemed to blend together…
Steel realised who it was, realised that he had come back, had come back out of the frozen north with Princess Twilight Sparkle.
Before Sharp could follow his eye-line and the same jump, Steel was cantering down the corridor towards his old friend.
Sharp watched Steel go, surprised. He scrutinised the Guard, who had turned round to see who was raising the cacophony. And only then did Sharp recognise him.
By the time Sharp Spear reached the rejoicing pair, Steel was laughing and clapping Flash on his plated shoulder. Flash was grinning in pleasure and gripping Steel’s foreleg with his own.
“How are you, Flash? “ Steel was asking delightedly. “It’s been boring without you these four weeks. Aah, it’s been ages.”
“Hi, Steel. Hi Sharp,” grinning with glowing molars and incisors. “Yes, yes, I feel excellent, really…excellent.” His grin stayed fixed, but his eyes clouded over – and his wings definitely twitched. “It was a fascinating trip, seeing all the Empire, and the Crystal ponies, and the mountains…wonderful.”
“Cool!” Sharp beamed. “It sounds like you enjoyed yourself to the full up there.”
“Well, we did spend most of our time in the library, but Twilight and I –,” the traveller halted suddenly, white and sapphire eyes widening. A pause split and bridged one moment from the next, sharp and Steel followed in rapt surprise. Flash had committed another offence, if anypony counted him breaking the spear. He should not have spoken her name so casually, so intimately, to save the situation.
Flash sucked in a quick breath. “But the Princess and I managed to explore the Empire and round-a-bouts,” he finished limply.
Steel sighed out, susurrations warping the turgid air. And the stainless stallion chuckled. “First-name terms, eh? You must know her pretty well to call her that.”
“It was her idea, she didn’t want me to repeat myself two hundred times a day,” Flash replied, besting a chuckle of his own. “And, yes, I do know her very well.”
Sapphires clouded and tarnished, and the smile of the impeccable Knight stretched wistfully. You could almost say his wings were curling from embarrassment.
Flash’s smile was not the only one to stretch. The stainless Guard was just beginning to copy him in honest humour, at his fellow’s predicament…
Sharp Spear’s stomach growled and gurgled, eliciting a louder and deeper sound from its holder. “Oh, heehaw; we’d better get down to the Hall before there’s nothing left.”
Steel agreed with gusto, rubbing and smacking his own belly. “Joining us, Flash?” he enquired.
“No, no, I only want to go to my room and sleep. It’s been a too-long ride up here, and I ate a little on the train. I’m beat.”
“Okay, Flash,” the stainless stallion settled. “See you to-morrow.”
“Good night,” Flash called to his friends, as they stepped past him down and down and down towards the Hall. The two inseparable companions gave their answer, as his hoofsteps and armour faded in to the loving dusk.
Minutes later, once they were seated at the table, plates of steaming mash before them, did Steel venture an observance: “He looks and sounds a lot better, don’t you think?”
Sharp did agree, once he had shoved several spoons worth of hot mash in to an even hotter maw. And he knocked the statement with his head, as a hammer would a nail.
“Maybe he’s asked a mare out at last!” His eyes shone, his empty mouth grinned and his ears perked up. Steel did not reply immediately to his bunk-mate’s hopes, whether to join him or shoot him down. Flash had given a tiny thing away, and he almost had his hoof on it.