Ghost Lights

by Winston

Chapter 3

Ghost Lights

Chapter 3

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I spent most of the rest of that day's shift wondering what kind of consequences Azure Sky was going to catch for her little mistake.

Well, no. Truth be told, I didn't just wonder, I worried about it. I worried about her.

Once I'd taken off and put away my armor after being relieved by the oncoming shift, I had the feeling for some reason that I should go and see if she was alright. I thought she probably would be, but even so, it'd be nice to talk to her, and I wanted to be sure. She's my friend, after all, one of only a very few close friends I have, and I'd hardly so much as seen her around in the past few weeks.

Maybe I kinda found myself missing her, to be honest.

I walked to her room, the same room of the palace she'd had since she moved in as a filly to begin studying under the princess. Pausing for a second and listening, I heard only silence. I lifted one forehoof and knocked a couple times on the door. There was a faint sound in response from within, quiet hoofsteps moving, and the door opened a little way while Azure looked out to see who it was. We looked at each other for a quiet fraction of a second, then Azure opened the door fully and stepped backward to clear the way for me to enter.

"Hello Sunburst," she greeted me.

"Hi Azure," I responded. She closed the door behind me after I was inside.

From the first time I'd ever seen it, her room has always been an interesting study in organized chaos. The exact nature of it has shifted over the course of years. When she was little, stacks of books formed precarious towers clustering around the bed by the far side of the room from the door. She's gradually acquired numerous sets of shelves that line every available inch of wall space, and the books, while always growing in number, have largely migrated to those instead, leaving more floor space for an ever-changing collection of other magical devices, tools, and scientific instruments. Some were in one piece, a few were in various states of disassembly or construction. Most also served as paperweights holding down loose sheets of notes about that particular item. Much of it was indecipherable to me, though to Azure I'm sure it all made perfect sense.

"Sorry about what happened today," she apologized. "I know it makes your job harder, as a guard. That's not what I wanted."

"No, it... well, yeah." I shrugged. "It was a little hectic. But I can't be mad about that, everything turned out fine. I was kinda wondering more how you're doing."

"Me?" Azure seemed surprised. "Fine, I guess. Considering."

"... Considering what?" I asked.

She sighed. "I don't know. Nothing."

Everypony makes mistakes now and then, but Azure is a highly talented unicorn. She tends to take it more harshly on herself than most when it comes to magic. After an experiment has gone awry her moods are difficult to predict.

Also, Princess Twilight's inquiries a week ago were still on my mind.

"You sure you're alright?" I asked her.

"Yeah, mostly." She shrugged. "Guess maybe I've just been working pretty hard lately."

"Well, you're always working hard," I said. "That's nothing new. The last three weeks seem a little different, though. Seems like you've been hiding out a lot. I've got to be honest, Princess Twilight asked me if I knew if anything's been going on with you, actually."

"She thinks I'm 'hiding out'?" Azure asked with a note of curiosity.

"Well, my words, not hers," I said.

"What'd you tell her?" Azure asked me, maybe a little suspiciously.

"Nothing," I said. "Because I don't know anything. Which is why I'm here."

"What are you going to tell her?" Azure continued.

"Again, nothing, at least not if you don't want me to. Look, I'm not gonna spy." I rolled my eyes a bit. "Besides, hasn't she just asked you herself?"

"... What if she just wants to see if the answer I'd give you matches up with the one I'd give her?" Azure pondered.

"I'd say that kind of duplicity seems much more Mareiavellian than the way Princess Twilight does things." I shook my head.

"Yeah, probably," Azure laughed. "I've just been reading too much old unicorn history. There's some real pieces of work in there. It's enough to make any pony a little cynical."

"Heh. I've been in Canterlot for a dozen years, you think I haven't noticed some of the ponies Twilight deals with in her court? There's still some real pieces of work in circulation," I pointed out. "Ever met Prince Blueblood? 'Cause I have, if by 'met', I mean I was incidentally in the same room with him for a few minutes and came out wondering how I managed not to drag him away by the scruff of the neck and throw him out of the palace with orders not to return. I guess I shouldn't say things like that about royalty, but I guard for Twilight, not him, and... yeah, not pleasant."

"Wanna know a secret?" Azure asked me.

"What?"

"I'd have liked to see that," she admitted. "I shouldn't say such things either, and it wouldn't be politically wise or acceptable to do it, obviously. But yes, I've met him. I had to sit through a ridiculous seven-course dinner with that... err, fine gentlecolt in attendance. Things only got more interesting the more wine he guzzled. He kept trying to schmooze with the envoy from Cloudsdale but all he could seem to do when he was talking to her was keep putting his hoof in his mouth with offensive pegasus stereotypes. It kept getting worse and worse the harder he tried, too. I thought she was going to throw down on him for sure. I was secretly really hoping it would happen. She looked like she could take him with one good kick. Would have made the night a lot more exciting."

I started thinking about the mentioned royalty at a fancy formal dinner, delivering a stream of alcohol-fueled backhooved comments while wearing his ever-present slight grin of superiority. Then I thought about the food itself, forgetting about the oaf of a prince to focus on that instead, and my stomach grumbled a bit.

I thought that my body probably had a good idea, there.

"Hey, you wanna go somewhere and get dinner?" I asked Azure. "I just got off shift, and I don't know about you, but I'm starving."

"Ehhh... I don't know if I should right now," Azure said doubtfully. "After what happened this afternoon, it might be a good time for me to lay low."

"C'mon," I prodded her. "I think you've been laying low for weeks, the break and some time outside might do you some good."

"Oh, but what would the other unicorns think of me if we were seen?" Azure asked. "A promising young mage they expect to be future nobility, going on a dinner date with a commoner pegasus mare? They'll assume I'm taking up exactly in the hoofsteps of my fillyfooler alicorn teacher and the captain of her guard. I'll be scandalized, Sunburst," she said jokingly.

A pegasus as solitary as me, accused of trying to date a young pretty unicorn so far out of my league? Now that would be ironic comedy. "Yeah, right," I laughed at the thought. "Just tell them I was giving you a stern talking to about the importance of not disrupting the palace's decorum and orderliness with childish stunts like blasting feathers everywhere."

"Okay, fine." Azure shrugged. "So where do you wanna go?"

"Oh..." Honestly, I hadn't really thought that far ahead. I wasn't feeling very particular, just hungry. "Someplace with food, I suppose."

"I think a city the size of Canterlot might have a couple of those." Azure nodded.

We left the palace together when it was almost on that line between the day and the night, the sun hanging on the horizon and painting the sky in a last flare of amazing brilliant warm colors to tint our walk into downtown Canterlot. Just when it was getting dark we found a small restaurant that didn't look too busy. It seemed like the kind of place that's a step up from fast food (neither of us really shares Princess Twilight's love of things greasy and deep-fried) so we stopped there. I don't remember what it was called, but it was nice without being formal enough to feel stuffy, and operated by a family of earth ponies who knew their cooking.

The host greeted us and showed us to a table, leaving us with menus. It was a pretty thin crowd, so there were no other ponies very close to us. I found that preferable. I just feel uneasy in really close quarters. I always have. I like open spaces, I like my distance.

After a few minutes, the waiter came around. I ordered a combination dish of grilled eggplant and peppers that I thought looked good. Azure got a big spinach leaf and flower petal salad, which she put a lot of honey-mustard dressing on. I remember that tangy-sweet smell.

"So..." Azure finally said, after our food arrived, "Aren't you going to give me the stern talking to you mentioned?"

"Oh, right." I nodded. "Well, I'm sure Princess Twilight and Captain Dash probably already spoke to you about what happened. Suppose I just say I agree with them and leave it at that. I'd imagine you feel bad enough without needing to hear the lecture all over again."

"Yeah." Azure nodded weakly. "They tag-teamed it and talked to me together. I got the whole 'we're not mad at you, young mare, just disappointed' routine. I couldn't really disagree. I'm pretty disappointed with myself, actually. I really thought that spell would work. It's complicated, but, you know... not that complicated. Shoulda been easy for me."

"Don't let it get you too down." I shrugged. "Everypony makes mistakes. Things happen."

"Yeah, but not like this," Azure said. "At least not to me."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I'm not supposed to. I'm the best. That's what they expect. I don't screw these things up, I get them right. I always do." There was an intensity in her voice that wasn't loud, but carried a dire seriousness.

I didn't know what to say. The silence for the next few seconds was uncomfortable.

Azure finally took a breath. "Sorry," she said. "I just... get... wound up too tight about this stuff, I guess."

"No. It's alright," I said. "There's a lot expected from you, being Twilight's personal student. That must be like getting trained to fly personally by the captain of the Wonderbolts. That's... that's intense."

"Everypony's always telling me how lucky I am," she said quietly. She looked down at her plate and picked carefully at her salad, finding that the spinach leaves suddenly demanded her concentration.

I focused on my own food for a little while.

"Just out of curiosity, what did happen, anyway?" I finally asked. I had the sense that it wasn't the best of subjects to prod at, but the fact is that I tend to be socially awkward sometimes, and I felt pressed to talk about something and couldn't think of a lot else at the moment. "Obviously I'm no unicorn, but I thought conjuring simple objects was supposed to be pretty easy stuff. Did you just get distracted at a bad time or something?"

Azure shook her head. "Conjuring simple objects, sure, I wouldn't have screwed up. Feathers aren't simple, though. They're organically grown biological constructs, and those tend to be very complex. They're not just one or a few solid pieces. They're thousands. Millions. Ever stopped to look at a feather and how complicated they actually are?"

She was right, of course. I know all about feathers and how they're made up - a hollow central shaft, with thousands of barbs branching off on opposite sides, and each barb with thousands of little hooked barbules and barbicels to hold everything in place in a flexible way. I just hadn't realized it made magic concerning them so challenging.

"Ordinary conjuration doesn't really work," she continued. "It would take too much energy and be way too hard. But there are tricks and special techniques that can get around problems like that sometimes. They're pretty advanced, but it's stuff I've done before. I thought I had it all figured out for what it would take to do something as tricky as feathers, and it actually did work, in the sense that some feathers were created. Something about part of the process backfired like crazy, though, and... it all got pretty out of control. You and everypony else saw what happened."

"Well, you'll figure it out," I said. It know I sounded kind of lame and generic without actually helping, but what's a pegasus supposed to say to a unicorn, especially one like Azure? Might as well have an earth pony giving flight tips to Wonderbolts.

"I... I'm not sure if this one is really meant for me," she said. She studied her salad again with a strange look on her face, appearing lost in thought.

I wasn't sure then what she meant, but nopony likes to be stuck thinking about failures and I thought she'd probably had enough of that particular topic, so I let it go and we moved on to other things.