Perhaps the Most Convincing Case in Favor of the Solar Empire

by WingsOnTheBus

VI: Love

Twilight set hoof outside the Pit, as she’d taken to calling it in her boredom-battling conversations with herself inside, for the first time in hours. Naturally, the ground was so hot that she had to pull the hoof right back and dart under the nearest tree. She turned to face Cadence.

“What was that all about? I’m guessing we--hah--have something to fear from the castle guards now?”

“Actually, Twilight, we do. Why--huh--did you think I didn’t just see you off on the--hah--train to Saddle Arabia?” Cadence’s eyes again found the red ceiling of their new hothouse world. Her voice hushed.

“She sees everything within her systems, and she--hah--can’t be trusted anymore.”

Spike and Twilight started talking over each other at the princess. He was terrified. As for Twilight...well, even her mask of loyal fury was beginning to crack into bewilderment and defeat.

“Calm down!” Cadence looked around, folding her wings back up. “I can--hah--explain, but not right now. Haah...” She straightened and a glow of peace washed over all of them. Twilight rolled her eyes inwardly at the same time as the happiness forced itself up into an outward smile. She knew that if she could have, she would have been ticked that she no longer held the will to continue her interrogation. It was just like the Crystal Princess to reserve her emotional power for times like these.

Cadence smiled. “Come on. Let’s head home.”

One alicorn can only soothe the moods of three beings for so long, however, and before another half hour had passed, Twilight’s was beginning to wear again. The heat had slowed them to a panting stop twice already--Twilight had shaken herself as if soaked and drained another of the twenty canteens in futile efforts to dispel its hold. She cursed herself for not having mastered a single close-range temperature spell, but Equestrian weather was almost never too cold or too hot anyways!

Spike didn’t say anything, but Twilight gradually noticed that he didn’t seem to be affected at all--probably due to those fireproof dragon scales. She was glad that if one of the three was going to have protection, it was him, because she found that she would hardly have been able to worry about him in this state: between keeping pace with Cadence’s lead and trying not to think about the distant cries and whimpers of beasts, her concentration and energy were already fully occupied. That the horror-sun now had an entire stretch of brushy, open flat across which to pour itself over them wasn’t helping.

And that wasn’t even all--as much as she’d pushed it down, that pesky voice of reason was seething back up to buzz at the back of Twilight’s mind.

“You know, Twilight, you’re going to have to face facts sooner or later.”

“What facts? No, wait, don’t--”

“You can’t ignore that big ball of flame above you forever, and you also can’t ignore the fact that it’s Celestia’s.”

“It most certainly is not, not right now. ” Twilight gave an agitated tail-flick. “Can’t you see that some new threat is manipulating her--or maybe it’s taken control of the sun entirely! You can’t possibly be aware of the--”

“You know her too well; you feel it. She’s behind this. You hate the thought so much that you can’t accept it. Your beautiful, kind, brilliant, perfect princess has finally fallen.

“Shut up!”

“She doesn’t care about the kingdom anymore. She doesn’t care about friendship.”

“SHUT UP!”

“But what you really dread--what you’re afraid of the most--”

“I DON’T FEAR HER!”

“--is that she no longer loves you.”

“BE QUIET!”

Cadence and Spike stopped ahead and turned to stare at her. If her face could have turned any hotter, it would have. She hung her head, feeling the prick of wetness in her own eyes. Twilight would not let that voice get under her coat anymore.

“It’s--hah--fine. I’m--hah--fine.”

“Twilight, you just yelled at the air to ‘be quiet.’ Are you sure?” Spike asked. Cadence’s brow furrowed.

“You’re panting harder than ever. We can take--huh--another break--”

“No! I mean...no, no reallyI’mfine.” She gasped. Had she made it subtle enough?

To her relief, the others merely exchanged glances and continued east. What was more, the exposed rocks and weeds were coming to an end, and the familiar, shady treeline opening up before them. As they crossed it, Cadence’s shoulders relaxed just a little. But the change--if admittedly miniscule--in temperature seemed to make no difference to Spike, supplying even more evidence for Twilight’s dragons-are-immune theory.

She focused her mind on such things, locking the voice out of it with an iron wall and her eyes straight ahead, for three more rest stops. By the fourth, they’d hit a dry track between trees and everypony’s eyes, nostrils and throat had been invaded by the dust. Coughing replaced conversation. A vague scent of smoke and ash drifted in the air, as if the trees themselves were starting to singe. Twilight didn’t remember this at all from the way in--perhaps Cadence was leading them down a different route?

She checked her timepiece out of need for something to do, and found that it read...5:30? But the light and heat still glared down from a position appropriate for high noon...She swallowed. Don’t look up, don’t look up, get home to your friends…

“Um, Cadence? Do you--hah--think it might be time for a--hah--food-and-drink break?” Cadence looked startled.

“Oh, yes, um, of course! Oh, that’s right, you were--huh--out during lunch, so you haven’t eaten at all today! Let’s see here…” Her cyan magic fumbled through her sacks for canteens as Twilight pulled a few cans from hers.

“Can I help?” Spike’s feet halted their idle dust-kicking in his eagerness.

Twilight smiled and pointed out where he could assist. She supposed that no matter how terrifying this situation was slowly becoming, some things would never change.

When the three packed up after eating and dizzily resumed their trek, Cadence’s supply of water had dwindled to just a dozen canteens’ full...and Twilight was still uncomfortable with thirst. She stored away how the princess had ever planned to make it across the whole of the Everfree with a supply like that in the ever-growing pile of questions that had been left unanswered since the beginning of this mess. She wondered if even she would eventually run out of room in her head for them all.

Twilight was yanked out of her thoughts by an increase in the strength of the ashy smell. Cadence was carrying on as if she didn’t notice, but Spike was already holding his nose and wincing.

“Ugh, what is that?” he asked nopony in particular. “Smells like it’s coming from…” He gestured broadly up ahead and to the right. “...somewhere over there.”

As they drew closer, Twilight realized he was correct--how many advantages did dragons have in the hothouse?

“Hey...Cadence, do you mind if we--hah--veer off for a minute and go check out the source of this--huh--smell?” Maybe she was just starved for answers lately, but Twilight’s curiosity was getting the better of her on this one.

Cadence only gave her and Spike a sad, silent nod, making it clear that she would be waiting where she was. Luna’s warning and Zecora’s haunting speech ran all at once through Twilight’s mind. Even in the apocalyptic heat, she shuddered. But she was through with giving up in her pursuit of knowledge; now, no matter how harsh, she wanted the truth.”

“No matter how harsh, huh?”

“You have no truth to tell me. And I thought I told you to SHUT UP.”

“Alright, Spike. Do you--hah--want to come with...?” He was already gone. Twilight followed in his wake.

It was a dead timberwolf. She should have known.

Spike’s tears over the blackened creature could do nothing to extinguish the flames that had seared their way through its wood hours ago.

The scorch mark Twilight had found on a nearby tree suggested that the poor wolf, in its dash for shade, had scratched bark against bark too quickly and ignited the fire through the friction compounded by the already-precarious heat.

After he calmed down, Spike found flowers.

Twilight just sat there in the browning ferns, staring at the body that was in the limbo of life’s spark lost but worm’s riddling kept, so far, at bay. She was unable to cry, even to think anymore. Contact with the ethereal, black finality of death, even in such creatures as birds and mice, was rare and hard to come by over the decades. One of the fillies in her class had a cousin die so many years ago. She’d once been to the funeral of an old raccoon of Fluttershy’s. She knew that Applejack’s parents had met their time...and had suspicions about Scootaloo’s.

But this...was a fresh body. Its spirit was gone, and wherever, if anywhere, it was now, it wasn’t coming back, banished from its home in its prime for a reason as frivolous as chance contact with a spark. And because of this ceaseless sun, she feared it wouldn’t even receive a proper grieving night or thunderstorm.

Now Twilight didn’t want to think about why she wasn’t hearing quite so many of those distant cries.

She stood. The first flickers of anger at whatever had ended this existence, like a split tail hair, before its age, made themselves known.

Twilight hoped that whoever--

“Celestia.”

--had done this would come to know exactly the tragedy they’d wreaked.

And she hoped that, however the timberwolf had lived its snipped-off life, it had someone who loved it.

Author's Note:

So, first off, no hint at anything more than a deep mentor-mentee bond was intended--no offense at all to Twilestia or those who ship it, though.
And as for all the sadness over the timberwolf--well, I think that based off the lighthearted tone and lack of mention of death in the canon, it must be, erm, rare, and heavily grieved over whenever it does happen. I don’t believe that Twilight Sparkle, at any point, would be one to shrug off the death of a fellow creature no matter where it had come from--life and death mean something, are precious, in Equestria, no matter what kind of spirit or body they belong to.
So...yeah.
It’s kind of shameful that 1,700 words is long to me.

Comments

[Balancer]

interested!