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Part One3,556 words
Part Two3,131 words

Part Two

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Indiscretions, Part Two

by Jeffrey C. Wells

"Your sister," I said.

The firesphere dropped into my crucible with a heavy thunk. It began, quietly, to sizzle.

"Excuse me?" said Sola, her haunches still turned.

"Pardon, Highness," I said. "Did I not enunciate well? The father of the child is your sister, Princess Luna. You didn't render my foal sireless when the Forest claimed Everfree, or in the hegira that followed. You rendered her sireless the instant you lit this dread fire that now consumes us. You banished my child's father to the moon, Sola. And I will never forgive."

Sola was silent for some time.

"Disgusting," she eventually said.

"Ah, so now the enlightened and liberal monarch shows her true colors," I sneered. "She who delivered the much fawned-over 'Love is Love' proclamation from the steps of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters once upon a time. When it comes to her own sister, though, how quick her airy words turn to accusations of abomination and fillyfoolery."

"You are a dolt, Cadence," she replied. "I expected so much better from that mind. Love is still love, although in these dark times I would certainly encourage any prospective fillyfoolers to have a fruitful dalliance or two with a stallion on the side first. What disgusts me is that these are the depths to which she'd sink." Sola began pacing through my workspace. "Shapeshifting," she uttered, as though the word were an oath. "The very apex of Discord-magic. Turning herself male, and for what? Was endless night not enough for her? Did she need an heir as well, need it so badly that she would sleep with the enemy in such a way?"

"Thank you," I said.

"Not you, you foal," Sola said. "I mean to say, 'throw in with the dark arts of our adversary'. Wholeheartedly."

"It's not what you think, Sola," I said.

"Then tell me," said Sola, rounding on me, "what it is."

I paused, willing my treacherous jaw to cease its trembling.

"She looked at me," I began. "For years, she looked at me. Ever since I entered marehood. I don't expect you even noticed. At first, I thought that they were the affectionate glances of a patroness of science toward a skilled pupil of the discipline. It would be vanity to think otherwise, blasphemy. Even when she invited me to come adventuring with you, back when Auric and I served as your retainers while the two of you went off questing for the Elements together, I thought it was the height of folly to think that there was anything more to it than that.

"For years, I was so convinced. Until one night at the Everfree Gala, the last one ever, in fact, though we were oblivious of it at the time. I used to always dress in my Academy formalwear for the occasion, remember? But that year, my good friend Exquisite demanded, just demanded to fit me with a proper ball-gown for once in my life. So she created this… thing, with silk, and pearls, and crinoline."

"Yes," said Sola. "It was striking."

"It was ridiculous," I said. "Never again, I promised myself, and how true that ended up becoming. But my tastes are not the world's tastes, and I was afforded some measure of celebrity because of my gown's perceived beauty, and I would be a liar if I said I did not enjoy the attentions. I was even approached by your sister, the Princess. And she was shy and recalcitrant, as always, and she masked it by using that thunderous voice and formal manner of hers, as always. And then she requested we quit the party for a time, to 'catch up'. We were all so close when we were questing, just her, and me, and you, and Auric. Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"We quit the ballroom for the Salon of the Constellations, and we sat on a divan together beneath the starlight, and we talked, for what seemed like hours. At first it was trivia, what had happened to us since those days on the road, our triumphs and setbacks. And then it became more… intimate."

There was a long pause, of my own making.

"Details?" said Sola, eventually.

"No," I decided. "They are not for your ears. What you must know, though, is that at the end, she asked me to dance with her. Out on the ballroom floor, in full view of everypony. And I was terrified, Sola. To be seen dancing with a Princess of the Realm would be a thing of incendiary scandal, the height of indiscretion. I would be devoured by the Court, eaten alive by gossip. But I was a loyal servant of the Crown, and to refuse her request was anathema. So I was taken by panic, and I blurted out the first thing that came to mind."

I swallowed, hard, trying vainly to move a lump.

"I… told her to ask your permission, first."

Another silence.

"That was the end of it, I wager," said Sola, quietly.

"We did not speak again," I said. "Not until Night Eternal, when she was already half-gone, and I could not tell for certain which words were hers and which the Nightmare's. She came to my tower in the final hours before Twin Skies; if my understanding of the timeline is correct, it was her very last act before going to meet you there.

"She gloated, or the Nightmare did. She boasted of her inevitable triumph over you. She said she had 'special things' in mind for me and that I would rule at her right hoof when she returned. She offered me half the sky, Sola. She told me that as Princess of the Realm, I would no longer have need to fear the silly courtesans, that I could dismiss or even execute any of them at my whim, any that violated my tiniest pleasure. Then, she said, we could finally have our dance."

I closed my eyes and turned back to my balcony. "And when she said those words, a softness came over her. Perhaps she remembered the night of the Gala, how close we almost were, before I ruined everything. I thought for a moment I could sense Princess Luna again, underneath the sneer and purr of the Nightmare.

"She lifted me, bodily, with her magic, and carried me to my own bed. She told me that, inevitable triumph or no, all things must eventually pass, and she would need something of herself to carry on into eternity when she was dust, and it was then that I knew that she feared you, feared you more than anything. She set me down, and lay with me, hide to hide, and I felt… something pass between us. It was warm, and light, and it felt like a dram of distilled joy.

"And that was it," I concluded. "She told me she loved me, kissed me softly, once, and then left my chambers. I never saw her again."

The firesphere crackled in its crucible, filling my rude apartment with warmth. I took little comfort from it.

"Did she request this act of you?" said Sola. "Or command it?"

"I was a loyal servant of the Crown," I whispered. "Absent you, they were one and the same."

"I see."

After a time, Sola joined me at the balcony again. "You realize," she continued, calmly, "that you should have told me that you were carrying the child of the Nightmare long before this."

"It's not the Nightmare's child!" I snarled, the tears coming at last. "It's Luna's! It's your sister's! This is your niece, Sola, and if you so much as lay a hoof on her, so help me, I will destroy you, or die trying!"

"That… was a very uncivil thing for me to have said, wasn't it."

"Yes," I said, trembling.

"Forgive me."

"No," I said. "Again, no. A thousand times, no, no, no."

"I will say another uncivil thing, then," said Sola. "The child of my sister, even diluted with mortal blood, may have enough of a command of the Stream that she could sit on the Solar Throne. I will make good on Luna's promise to you, Cadence. I will give to you and to your descendants half of the sky, as she offered."

"And who would teach her to use your artifact of power?" I said. "You, of course. I will not have my child become a student of yours, Sola. You will not touch her."

"Consider, Cadence. I offer you and your descendants a great gift."

"You offer them a great burden," I said. "This isn't benevolence. This is you, staring down the abyss of ages, unable to comprehend the task of managing both the Day and the Night for all eternity. Are you tired already, Sola?"

"Yes," she admitted, her voice small.

"Good," I said. "We'll both suffer together, you and I. We can be Suffering-Friends. As the world's foremost authority on the Elements of Harmony, I should inform you that you have not imprisoned your sister 'forever'. Years from now, a particular stellar conjunction will disrupt the harmonic energy of the binding spell you cast upon her for long enough for her to break it, if she is clever, and prepared. Luna is both. Mayhap she will have been chastened enough by that time that you can give her half the sky back. Or mayhap not."

"How long?" asked Sola. In all my years of knowing her, I had never once heard that pleading note in her voice. "How many years?"

"A thousand," I said. "Nine hundred ninety-nine, now."

Sola shook as though struck.

"I shall never last," she said.

"No," I said. "You shan't. And neither will our race. We will all be dead and gone by then, and Nightmare Moon will be queen of the insects that remain."

"I will not believe that," said Sola, mustering her resolve. "I cannot. I must begin making preparations, even now."

"Go, go," I said, reaffixing my bored and cynical mien, leaning my elbows on the railing, my ponderous belly nearly pulling my spine out of alignment. "Do what you need to do. Occupy yourself with games. I'll be here if you need to alternately threaten and cajole me further."

Sola crossed to the door. "Cadence," she said, at the last, "what am I going to do with you?"

"Endure me," I said.

"Indeed," replied Sola. "Good evening to you."

I heard her footsteps cross the threshold, her ponies-at-arms – doubtless posted on either end of the hall leading to my quarters – snapping to attention as they did.

"Thank you," I called out, abruptly, "for the firesphere. I… don't actually enjoy the cold."

"You are welcome, Cadence," said Sola. And then she was gone.

I gazed out over the cloud sea in silence for a time as the steel-shod hooves of the Princess's guards retreated into the depths of the National Redoubt.

"I need to wee," I said, to nopony in particular.

A shadow dislodged itself from the rocks outside my window, flitted down to my balcony, and lighted upon it.

"What an absolute cock that mare is," said the shape, coming into the glow of my lamps.

"Hello, Auric," I said, to my best friend in the entire remaining world. "You heard, then?"

"Every word," he said, vainly inspecting a wing, then knitting up a single frayed primary with his beak. "Odious."

"She called my foal a child of the Nightmare."

"Oh, yes, quite outrageous of her," said Auric, yawning. He began counting points off on his aquiline claws. "I mean, all you did was tell her that the Nightmare came to you moments before she was banished, made some cryptic statements about how she was going to endure forever no matter what was to come, then held you down, had her way with you, and impregnated you with dark magic. Why should she be concerned?"

"Don't say that. I was a willing participant."

"Impossible," said Auric.

"I gave my consent!"

"She was royalty, no matter what demon lived in her. You said it yourself: your consent was a meaningless act. It was rape, Cadence."

"Droite de seigneuse," I said.

"Potato, po-tah-to," replied the griffin, boredly. "An unimportant distinction, since all you eat is rockweed, and there's only one way to pronounce that. You're certain I can't interest you in some lovely fresh hyraxes? They're quite delicious, I assure you."

"The child is Luna's, Auric. Not Nightmare Moon's."

"I know, love," said Auric, his voice turning serious. "You've known the child for a year. The rest of us haven't even met her. If she comes with your recommendation, that's good enough for me."

"Thank you," I said. "So what was 'odious'?"

"Hm?" he said, looking up from his inspection of his improbably-impeccable manicure.

"If you mock me for calling Sola's reasoning baseless, what was 'odious'?"

Auric gestured flamboyantly. "The tiresome fact of her, in general. She doesn't need to do anything special to be odious, although I am increasingly put out by her use of the words 'hair-thin forbearance' when describing me. Me! The first griffin to desert Team Discord for her camp! I even brought a gift from the horde when I broke rank! That giant three-headed… dog… thing!"

"Cerberus," I said. "I never asked how you secured that beast's loyalty."

"Venison," replied Auric. "Lots and lots of dry-aged venison, from my private larder, now lost along with the entire rest of the country, damn this unstoppable Forest." He shook his head. "Imagine! Calling me a 'flip-flop'!"

"The Princess is a simple creature," I said. "Like an animal. Doubtless she feels that if you betrayed your masters once, you have the capacity to betray again."

"'Flip-flop'," said Auric, stuck in a rut of umbrage. "I think she's the flip-flop. Psychotic one minute, patronizing the next. I must admit, I wish you'd reconsider letting her teach your foal the secrets of the Solar Throne. Then we'd at least have a choice of Princesses."

"Spoken like a true and loyal subject," I said, imitating Auric's laconic drawl. "Oh yes, calling you a 'flip-flop'. Quite outrageous of her."

"Don't be a loon. I'm not going to add 'civil war' to our laundry-list of hardships. But I hope you know there's going to be some serious foal-worship among the people when the child comes and she spreads those wings of hers for the first time."

"Feh," I said. "The foal will be a unicorn, Auric. Nothing more."

"Poo," he replied. "I was so hoping you'd let me be her first flight instructor."

"You haven't studied immortal metagenetics, Auric. The chance of any random pairing between deity and pony producing a mortal alicorn is minific, infinitesimal. My family line could continue for hundreds of generations without seeing such a thing."

"Luna knocked you up with unknown and arcane demon-sorcery, love," said Auric. "Not science. In my book, that means all bets are off."

I know when I am beat. I turned away from the griffin and stared back out over the clouds at the now-setting crescent moon.

"I'm intruding on your sky-watching time," said Auric, joining me.

"Yes," I said, "but it's fine. You're a friend, Auric."

"Nevertheless," he said. "You need your time alone with her. I'm going to hie me back to the aerie, and incidentally, that makes me a poet when I didn't even know it." He gave me a quick peck on the cheek, more-or-less literally. "I'll be back at moonset, with a jug of rockweed moonshine. We can pretend it's claret."

"I'm pregnant, you bastard."

"More liquor for me, then," he said, spreading his wings. "Ta-ta, Cadence the Elder. And say hello to little Princess Cadence for me, next time you're talking to your grotesquely distended abdomen."

"I hate you."

"You love me."

"Yes," I said.

He grinned rakishly at me, gave his wings a few quick flaps, and was gone.

I returned my attention to the moon. My back was clenched, my ribs ached, and I needed to make water even more urgently than before. But I would be damned if I let being great with foal rob me of my last few minutes of moon-gazing to-night. Because moon-gazing is all I have left of her. I have lost interest in stars, their names and colors. I only look at the moon. And I will look at it, every night, until the day that I die.

I took one shallow breath of icy air, a mouthful of wind from the top of this forsaken mountain, and used it to shape words that Luna had never heard me speak, knowing full well even as I did that she could not now, and would not ever, hear me say them.

"I love you, too," I whispered.

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