Ghost Lights

by Winston

Chapter 4

Ghost Lights

Chapter 4

---

In the quietest hours of my midnight shifts sometimes I come across a sight that, although long since familiar by now, has never really stopped having a certain kind of eerieness: the pale blue glow of Azure Sky's magic, emanating from her horn just brightly enough to light her way and gently bobbing up and down with her almost silent hoofsteps through the shadowy palace halls. It mingles with silvery moonlight coming in through the windows, making her seem ethereal, like a ghost.

Sometimes when I see that light I have the strangest feeling: the premonition of Azure as a princess herself, but something unlike any of the others, not one that takes after her teacher. I don't know why I see this. Maybe there's no real reason. Just my imagination being silly, I think.

They say the greatest mages are the most eccentric, creatures of odd habits and odd hours. Azure doesn't disappoint in perpetuating that image. When she was a filly her nighttime wanderings were rare and whenever me or any of the other guards found her, we would send her back to bed. As an adult they've become more common and we've gotten used to just letting her go about whatever it is she's up to. Usually it's nothing more than a late-night trip to the palace libraries or a raid on the kitchens to grab a midnight snack to fuel her studying, so nopony thinks much of it.

For the whole week of my midnight shift rotation after her feather explosion mishap, though, it seemed like she'd been up late more than ever. It was as if that became her routine. She hid in her room during the day, and she haunted the halls and the libraries at night, when everypony sleeps but the midnight shift guards.

During that week I often wished I knew what was going on with her.

One night I saw her coming back in from outside the palace, very late - so late that there was less than an hour left in the night before sunrise. I hadn't seen her leave, so it must have been before I was on shift. I asked her where she'd been and she said she'd gone to the palace shared by Luna and Celestia, to search for a few particularly uncommon books in the larger royal library there.

With what was going on, I wasn't too surprised to be called to Captain Dash's office one morning right at sunrise, just after my shift was relieved. I was expecting it to go something like the conversation I'd had with Princess Twilight. I'd be asked if I had some sort of insight into Azure's behavior and I wouldn't be able to provide any real answers because, as much as I wished I did, I really didn't know.

I was wrong.

I never would have guessed what it actually turned out to be.

Captain Dash's office has a window facing east, and the light of the rising sun shines in. That light was drenching the small room with the glowing promise of a fresh new day as we spoke that morning. That's always been one of my favorite things, that radiance of the new-rising sun, Celestia's gift to us all. I remember it meshing in Captain Dash's mane, shining from it with every color of the rainbow. I don't know why I remember that so vividly, but I do. Maybe it mostly has to do with the impact of what she asked me. These kinds of events tend to burn themselves into your mind.

I stood in front of Captain Dash's desk while she stood behind it. "Sorry to keep you here after your shift," she said. "I know you worked all night and you probably just want to go get some sleep, so I'm just gonna get right to the point here. There's been some... discussion... between Princess Twilight, myself, and her student. Things have been a little strange lately."

"I've noticed Azure's changes, if that's what you mean," I said. "Staying up all night, spending most days in her room alone. I've been wondering about it, but I don't really know what's up any more than anypony else. I've been worried about her, honestly."

"So have we." Captain Dash nodded. "I think we sort of brought things to a head yesterday, though. The three of us... Azure, Princess Twilight, and myself... finally had a sit-down and, uh... figured some things out. Not gonna go through all the gory details but something that came from it is that it's gotten pretty clear that Azure needs a change of pace. She's ready to spend some time working somewhere that's not here in the palace. We talked about it and worked out some ideas. The one Azure was most inclined toward is something nopony is probably more suited to help with than you."

"Me?" I asked curiously. "What would I be good for?"

"Would you be willing to do another tour on the Seawall?" Captain Dash asked me.

The Seawall.

The words rang in my ears suddenly like a roar than engulfs the world in silence. The question stunned like a hammer hitting me in the forehead.

I felt a small hit of adrenaline surge in me. My heart beat hard and I was breathing a little faster. I didn't really know what to say. Time felt like it froze, standing there in front of Captain Dash.

Was this real? Some voice of doubt in my mind was sure I hadn't heard those words right, that this couldn't be happening. It disbelieved and resisted, afraid to get worked up only to be let down, even as the more optimistic parts ignored it and started to buzz with an undertone of primal excitement even at just the hint of the place.

"You can say no," Dash told me eventually, looking a little disappointed by my silence. "Nopony would blame you. I know you've already done two tours and it can be a pretty tough thing to be stuck out there. If you don't want to do it again, that's entirely understandable."

"It's not that..." I spoke up quickly, eager to dispel her misconception. My voice was almost shaking. "I want to. I would definitely want to. It's just... if this is about Azure, should I be assuming she would also come?"

"Yes." Captain Dash nodded. "She would."

As charged as I'd suddenly felt, that thought raised questions that tempered me with some hesitance. "Does that really seem like such a great idea? And why the Seawall, of all things?" I asked. I was honestly very confused, and I admit a little suspicious, by the prospect of what was being suggested. "Why wouldn't she go somewhere else? Like... anywhere else still in civilization?"

"Believe it or not, the wall is her first choice," Captain Dash said. "She wants to do something to serve Equestria. I think it's kinda crazy to pick that way of doing it, but... It seems like her mind's made up."

"So she'd be the unicorn half of the team?" I asked.

"Right," Captain Dash said.

"How would she have the qualifications for that?" I asked. "She's not military. Is she really going to be alright out there and be able to do the job?"

"Yeah, I brought up those same doubts." Captain Dash shook her head. "But she made a pretty good argument. The two of you might actually be the ideal team, when you think about it. You're the right pegasus for the job, a strong flier that already has experience at the wall. Nopony would say she doesn't have the magic skills to do what's needed on the unicorn side. And yeah, technically it's a military posting, but it's low risk and non-combat. It doesn't exactly seem likely that she's gonna have to fight. She needs some of the basic training to get the minimum baseline military qualifications, but the next rotation out to the wall isn't for a couple months and until then we can send her to a kind of mini bootcamp with a Dawn's Hammer detachment just outside Canterlot. They oughta be able to work her up. It was a good enough plan to convince Princess Twilight to okay it, so it's good enough for me. I've learned to trust her judgment."

"Even still, I'm not sure if Azure knows what she's getting herself into," I said doubtfully.

"I don't think anypony can know exactly until they've done it themselves," Captain Dash said. "I sure wouldn't, and I don't know what she's expecting." She sighed and looked out the window briefly. "What I do know is that Azure's not really doing so good here lately. She's always been a hard-working student, but it seems like she's finally reached her limit and burned herself out, honestly. Princess Twilight is worried that she's out of balance and losing perspective. She needs some time away from everything, or at least away from here, to cool out, you know?"

"Six months out there alone on the wall is a bit more than just cooling off time," I said, "but if that's really what she wants, then yes, I'll go."

"Great!" Captain Dash said. "Princess Twilight'll pull the strings and you'll get the orders when the time comes. Thank you for doing this."

"Not a problem, Captain," I responded.

She dismissed me from her office and let me leave after that.

I walked home through the streets of Canterlot halfway in a daze. I think I was lucky just to not collide with any other ponies.

---

When I got to my apartment I was still having difficulty in getting what had happened to fully sink in. Usually I like to collapse into bed for a nap after I get home from a midnight shift, but I was too excited to rest. I stayed up for a while, slowly pacing around in aimless patterns, just thinking.

A mixture of feelings taking me by surprise was welling up inside me. A kind of deep longing, fitfully asleep for years, was reawakened by the call of finally having what seemed like a realistic chance of soon being fulfilled. This was mixed up with the anxiety of things that came along with it: changing my situation, anticipating the work of making arrangements to be gone for six months, and the possibility that maybe, even being the loner I am, I would truly miss some of the ponies around the palace.

These thoughts gradually gave way to just daydreaming about being there at the Seawall. I'd thought about it progressively less over the years I'd been here in Canterlot, never having too much of a practical reason to dwell on it, but now that it was my focus I found that time hadn't diminished my memories of it even a little.

I recalled the usually grey skies, overcast with the thick clouds that form from the humidity that rolls in off the warm waters of the ocean. On the inland side of the wall, I thought about the character of the land, the sandy rocky soil covered in short scrubby bushes and grasses with occasional stands of ragged windswept trees. There was the wall itself, the thousand meter stretch of stone and concrete forming a barrier from one high sheer coastal cliff face to another, constructed two thousand years ago to block off the only useful passage from the ocean to the inland. Then on the other side, there was the beach, sandy and beautiful.

That beach was where I'd found the seashell I still have from the first time I was there. Suddenly aching to see it, to hold it and hear it once again, I got it out from the small drawer where I've kept it for a long time carefully wrapped in a soft cloth to protect it.

I unwrapped it, and just stared at it for a while. In the mother-of-pearl rainbow shimmer of the shell matrix, I could see the light reflecting in gentle ripples off the water. In the barest phantom of a scent the shell still bore, I could recall the seaweed and the salt-spray lingering in the ocean breeze. I picked it up gently in my forehooves and held it slowly to my ear. In the faint stir of echoes the large shell forever resounds with in its spirals, I could hear the sound of the sea, the ever-present white noise of the rolling waves rushing forward and receding backward on the sand.

In that seashell song, I heard the emptiness and loneliness, the isolation and the distance from everything and everypony. It sang a sad but uplifting hymn of a mysterious land on the far edge of the world, and the distant ocean that meets it. It told of the empty, wild sky, and the solitude, and the silence, and all the freedom that awaited in that refuge.

The emotion in all of this was very intense, welling up in a warm feeling deep in my chest. Finally, it overpowered me. My eyes were suddenly stinging and watering with tears that broke over them, and I cried. I cried for many reasons. I cried for the reawakening of my longing for the sea. I cried for the rousing of those powerful memories of the place I love that still ebb and flow in me like the endless motion of the waves crashing on the beach. I cried with relief and thankfulness and amazement that the mercy of fate would let me see it again at last.

Most of all, I cried tears of joy because it was my happiest day in years.

I was going back to where I most belong in the world.

Comments

[Silent Wings31]

Hmm...might I ask for Rainbow Dash's age during this story?

[Winston]

5131970
Hmm... Let's see if I can do the math on that question!
This is a sequel to Seashell, which begins in 1328 YS, which in the introductory note says that season 1 of MLP:FiM began 1310, so that's 18 years. Ghost Lights mostly times itself off of the last tour Sunburst did on the Seawall, which began in 1329 YS. That's 19 years from season 1, and Ghost Lights takes place 13 years after that, so that would be 32 years passed total.

So Rainbow Dash's age is whatever it was in season 1, plus 32 years. I think that would put it at around 50 if you assume she was 18 years old during season 1. Different people will have different opinions on her season 1 age, so maybe she's a little younger or a little older depending on who you ask and how you want to interpret it, but somewhere around that general area at least.

[Silent Wings31]

5132976 Ah. Because it seems to me that Ghost Lights was written in past tense, and that made me think Rainbow Dash-at least this Rainbow Dash-is now dead. Or an alicorn. I hope for the second.

[Silver Flare]

This is a very touching chapter. I love the imagery and emotion tied up in a simple seashell. Excellent writing here.