Crystalline Dreams

by Ice Star

Agápē

"Do you think that anypony could love somepony forever?"

My question must have surprised Cadance, because I hear her muffle what sounds like a chirp of confusion in her throat. "Mhm? Whaddya mean?"

Ah, how to phrase this for her? She may be both friend and family to me, but there were always things that we never got about one another, and misunderstandings could still pepper our interactions.

The two of us lie on the strange 'ground' of this world borne from sleep. We stare up at twirling wisps of light and mist exactly like the ones that were below us, beneath an invisible barrier we could not slip past or probe. It merely was. How curious a thing, and yet my question plagues me more.

"I speak of romantic love," I clarified, and with Cadance, it was something I spoke of often. "Might two creatures be in love forever? My kind often are, and are prone to great monogamy and relationships that stretch from their start through eternity. That is what I have learned from Alicorns older than I."

Over the centuries, this baffled ponies as to why. I am asexual, and to the inevitable fools that are sown with every generation, there are always some who I must find standing in my shadow, as ignorant and ridiculous as ever. These are the fools that are puzzled as to why somepony 'like me' would frequently ponder the subject. There are an even more select few that have had the audacity to ask such a thing with my beloved present, and those are ponies that I despise, and remove from my company as a used napkin is discarded without care. I never have to think about them again. They only occur like blinks. Every so often I shall find such an idiotic question posed an even more idiotic pony, one that unfortunately is my subject, and yet was unable to be impacted by living in the nation. Here in Equestria, we have the greatest means to educate its subjects. But like blinks, they were brief, and I was always glad.

"Mhm?" she prompts again.

"After Shining Armor died..." I paused, hesitating for a second as my word choice struck me. Cady knew I was an honest mare, but sometimes confusion overcame in times like this, when death was to be acknowledged and brought up again. Celestia always wasted words, throwing out 'passed away' and 'departed' among countless other euphemisms. Those condescending little barbs only made me wish I could kick myself, so that I might be spared them.

"...You have never seen anypony else the way you saw Shining." You grieved. You accepted. Your happiness returned, and you lived again, though you did not love again.

"I just... didn't feel anything for anypony else. I tried, Luna. Gods, you know I did... and nothing else ever replaced Shiny."

She sighed, and there was a weight to the sound, a fond nostalgia that slipped into her voice and her eyes around ponies who would soon find themselves told the tale of an empress and her prince. "I miss him," she whispered.

"Me too," I added quietly, and that was something I could say about few ponies.

"What happened with me..." she hesitated, no doubt because of the vivid memories that bubbled to the surface, immortalized and important to her with all their old emotions. Though, I imagined she was hunting for the best words, too. Why, on more than one occasion she called my skill enviable in that regard.

"Is rather uncommon?" I suggested.

"Yes! I used to get letters from ponies who lost a long-time spouse... and they just had the deepest possible devastation all wound up in everything else. Some never felt for anypony else enough to try for another relationship. Others attempted it but never got anywhere. The grief can pass, but those ponies, they never sought another. I never thought I would be one of those ponies. Even with Shiny's death, I don't feel like I am really parted for him. We're just at an intermission. I just kept thinking..."

"Kept thinking what?" I asked softly.

"I kept thinking I would just... find the right pony. Again. I know I'm not, like, eternal. Not like you... but I still have lived longer than any normal pony... and it never happened. I'm not even sad about it. I thought that was so... peculiar. There was so much opportunity, and I just convinced myself I was wasting so many chances, or maybe I was too picky... and it wasn't that. I just have never loved anypony again. The feelings of romance are all gone... and I'm not upset. Those others I tried with weren't. I'm one of those ponies... and we're not upset. All the feelings of romance in my life are a closed book that just ended so, so long ago. Sure, I guess I can reread it whenever I want. That doesn't stop me from knowing where it ends, and that it does."

"Well... is that not wonderful for you? You do not feel bad, as you have just assured me."

"Kind of. Though..."

I tried to bite my lip gently to avoid smirking or giggling when I hear the mischievous edge creeping into her tone, mingling with the earnestness still in her voice.

And then, with a resounding bwap, bwap, bwap a pink foreleg is brought down. Cadance is playfully jabbing at my stomach and I flail about, defeated and giggling.

"...Though, maybe if either of us had ever been remotely polyamorous and I had ever been, well, a lot less, uh, straight things would have been different! You and your hubby are the sorts all the poly ponies I knew would have could have fallen in love with." She laughed too, but I still thought I heard a hint of melancholy in it. "Things would have been really different," she mumbled, but not unhappily.

I offered a noncommittal hum in response, sneaking one of my own forelegs over to jab at her side to see how she likes it. As I attack her with a barrage of pokes and jabs, my vengeance overcomes her ability to fight back, and she loses her ability to form coherent surrenders with her laughs. The space between use becomes a proper no mare's land, but that is mostly because it stretches across a true void.

It stopped, after a time, and there was a short stretch of silence between us when our laughter had faded. I prompted her once again.

"...Do you have a proper answer? I understand that many ponies do have only one love, but what about a love that is not lost? Do you feel any match could be made for anything near eternity? Oh, I suppose eternity is a touch of a stretch, but just for ages and ages to come?"

Mortals are positively ignorant when they think they can say 'all things come to an end' and other trite lies. This is especially true when it is said to the face of an eternal being like myself, one who deals with every possible facet of 'forever' in every second of existence. To wish water to be dry would make more sense. Thankfully, that particular folksy falsehood is largely dead. Those who resurrect it and think it wise are both bothersome and dense.

Cady has been one of the wondrous exceptions, who can be found only from distant era to era, so that they might be savored. Her company is far more like that of a treasured family for it. So unusually wise in matters of the heart for the longest time. Her insight into romance has always been apparent. Even when I felt nothing for anypony, she could manage to make love sound so rich and varied and real. When I did not believe it was true, I still had some faith in her. Though it was many centuries ago that I doubted 'love' as anything more than creatures in lust trying to justify themselves.

If there was anypony who I could entrust with general matters of the heart, it would always be her.

"Yes, yes, I do have one." She gave a thin, muffled laugh. "Has this been troubling you so much you couldn't wait another time to ask about it?"

"Perhaps," I mumbled, testing the word. It lacked my usual confidence, but I felt it... fitting. "I find it permeates my thoughts more than I expected. I knew not when I would let it slip to you. Sometimes, it lingers and I cannot shake it... yet, I'm not sure I want it. So it lurks within my musings... and sometimes, I find myself thinking on it longer than usual. Was it ever like that with you? Do you know these thoughts?"

"I do," Cady replied quietly, breathing the words out in a heave. "Just... from a different point of view than you're used to having."

Silence passed between us, and I heard Cady shift a little. I'm not positive it was one of total understanding, but something was there. For some time, we let it carry on. Cadance eventually broke it, and I did expect her to. She does not have my patience or appreciation for it, though the mare has grown rather contemplative with age... and with loss.

"Luna?"

"Yes?"

"I think it could work, a relationship like that. Most do, if you can work, commit, understand, forgive, and be honest. Even in the face of ridicule, taunts, separation, difficulty, and time... there's still a chance. I wouldn't call it 'happily forever after' and I wouldn't call it a curse, a bad union... or whatever you want. Being that used to somepony and that trusted by somepony could be wonderful, if you grow together like that and feel..." Her voice grew quiet and shaky, trailing off at the last few words.

My chest felt heavy. I knew why.

Most ponies didn't know how to 'handle' Cady when she was like this. Once they were out of earshot of her, that is exactly how they would phrase it. Unlike me, she has always had rather high faith in ponies, and for that, I have pitied her. Though it has been lowered by the years, I could never hold back empathy for her, knowing that she could be treated so in the whispers and sycophantry. Such annoying behaviors were always clear in some fraction of the population. How my sister ever saw the latter trait as a boon, I know not. I would say it is like a pebble in one's boot. Even after time on the road, one pebble is still bothersome. Any more and it becomes understandably unbearable.

She is truly a happy mare, and is excitable and social. She chats up her crystal pony subjects more than the Empire's current ruler, Queen Amora, one of Cady's own direct kin. Her husband and prince-consort, Trilliant Topaz could be counted in as well. Yet, I do not think the both of them combined talk nearly as much to ponies as the 'Beloved Crystal Empress Mi Amora Cadenza, Mother of the Royal House of Snjórinn'. The crystal ponies do have more extravagant titles than that for her.

So few ponies know anything of sorrow until it creeps upon them, often sprung from a loss of the irreplaceable. I know it, and I see it exposed, and I work with those locked in more beyond grief. I have lived over four thousand years, and still, one of the cruelest things I have both seen and experienced in that time the treatment of those who are sad, and those who hurt. There are precious few who will ever share sadness, and fewer who can understand it, but those that do are worth more than the Elements of Harmony to me.

Perhaps that comparison means little on the surface. The Elements are unusable, and have been for some time, not merely because they sit still in the Tree of Harmony. Twilight Sparkle's map calls no more Bearers, and she is the last of them still alive.

It was not what had initially sprung to mind: I had been thinking of how it was the power of the Elements that had saved me from a corrupted eternity no other force could free me from, reuniting me with my sister and the world I never thought I would see again. Even if I could, I certainly hadn't thought I would do so as myself.

Reaching out, I extended a hoof toward her. Mine did not quite touch her, but I grazed a lock of her mane and was surprised to note that it did not feel quite like I recalled her curls to do. She had a vivid imagination, and a remarkably above-average recollection that was expected to coincide with being a demigod, but the feeling was... off. I knew what her curls of old had felt like as easily as I knew my daughter's name. Feeling that Cadance's own mind had not quite captured the feeling I knew to be true held something haunting, if not unpleasant.

"Were Shining still among us, I do not imagine you two would be apart. You say such a bond is highly unlikely, not impossible, is that not so?"

"That's right," came Cadance's hushed voice, "I like to think he and I could have still been together, even if something about us was different. You just... Luna, when you're like me, you cannot help but wonder what those things could be like. The what-ifs get stuck in your head. You start to think that maybe you had gone through a door to the right and not the left, you know? Even if the door is impossible. I still think things might work out for you. Maybe not. Maybe forever... and maybe not quite that long, but long enough. Didn't you say that the Alicorns of old usually mate for life, anyway?"

"Yes," I murmur. Part of the reason these thoughts could creep upon me was that it was natural for my kind to settle down with another, eventually, the one with whom they would try to share eternity with, in whatever way they could manage it. I make no exaggeration when I say that everlasting creatures will often hold love eternal. Though, the 'other' in question for this was almost always another Alicorn in those ancient times. There were many differences between then and now, not that such a tradition is any less admirable. In fact, it was still an understandable expectation, when xenophilia was only more accepted, not necessarily more common. To prefer one's own species was expected when that was a proven natural inclination.

I think I hear her move, and give something like a shrug.

"...I think I understand." And I do, because I have seen Cadance, who still celebrates her husband's birthday, anniversary, and who still visits where he is buried. Sometimes, I have gone with her. She does not talk to a wall when she talks to me, and there is a look in her eyes, and her whole entirety when she is saddened that is raw, vulnerable, and uniquely her.

Time creeps on, I know not what hour of the night it is, or the movements of time within this dreamscape, only that a somberness has stolen our laughter. Our own quiet reflection rules our present, yet I do not find it unwelcome. Cadance does not appear in need of consoling, just companionship. We've moved, and together we sit upon the invisible plain of dreams, our manes buffeted by the wind. Each of us has folded our wings neatly. Cadance looks a little glum, but not overly so. Her head is ducked slightly, and she toys with her curls.

I silently watch the way the wind swirls the starry lights up above us, and how their gusts toss them about with an enchanting sort of strength. There is quiet awe in such observations. Content, though not feeling so high-spirited any more, I let the chill of wind ripple through my coat and tease my feathers. It is still a feeling that inspires energy.

For a time, we share this tranquility... until the alarming moment when all the dreamscape fell away before I even had the chance to call her name.

Author's Note:

[Revised for print on 11/29/2020]

Comments

[CoffeeBean]

For a time, we share this tranquility... until the alarming moment when all the dreamscape fell away before I even had the chance to call her name.

Don't fucking do it. Don't you do it, Ice.

[Ice Star]

9106618
S M U G G I T Y S H R U G S H R UG

[nebulaegalaxy]

i like the fact that the chapter title in the url is agp

also
pan/polyam cadence is my hc u can't change my min d

also also
i s2g don'T DO THI S

[Ice Star]

9107954

pan/polyam cadence is my hc u can't change my min d

straight monogamous cady is mine~

AND I ALREADY AM

[nebulaegalaxy]

9107958
,MNJHBGFDSEWSDXC

[Ice Star]

9108147
Yes.

[Odd_Sarge]

Nah.

[Ice Star]

9120606
'Nah' what?

[Odd_Sarge]

9120618
Naht my Cadance.

i'll read this at some point, no bulli

[Ice Star]

9120625
What a nice planet.

[Gay For Gadot]

One of the coolest things about reading your stories is seeing how the characters grow over time. Luna being so open about her asexuality, and talking so freely and openly with Cadance about love, is such a stark contrast between their dynamic in things like Love<3Less. (I think that's how you'd write it out? You know what I mean.) And, as always, you sprinkle in such delicious headcanon/worldbuilding (like the bits about alicorns usually mating for life, with other alicorns) that it makes reading your work even more of a delight.