Corruptive
She was sketching, and doing so in order to keep herself from thinking. That didn't work either.
But when it came to any real attempt at self-distraction, the sketchbook was all she had. Cerea was under orders to lift nothing heavier than a quill: any temporary load of ink had been calculated as part of that package. There were ways in which it frustrated her: the clearing of the barracks wasn't exactly complete, she wasn't training, she wasn't studying (or rather, she couldn't until Nightwatch came in -- although any such session might wait until after something had been read aloud), she wasn't doing much of anything...
In the household, a moment when you relaxed enough to stop looking for the next disaster allowed that probability to become the current one. Within the gap, she was supposed to remain busy at just about all times, because laziness was hardly a knightly virtue. Reading counted for activity and so had offered her some level of retreat, but with pony books... she could pick out a few words, here and there: trying to intuit everything in between was beyond her. She suspected her current reading comprehension level was somewhere between kindergartener and foal who had just grasped that the symbols might have some meaning: the only real question there was whether the local educational system allowed for a kindergarten.
She wasn't allowed to work, because it was supposed to be two days (or more) where she was just resting and healing. But the lack of activity within the barracks created silence. Without sounds to serve as another level of distraction, her ears twisted and turned, trying to focus on anything available. For the most part, they rotated into the past, and so heard her mother not-quite-demanding to know why she wasn't doing something.
But you had to follow orders, if you wanted to be a knight. She had been ordered to rest, and her body was doing its best to obey. Her mind just wouldn't cooperate. There was simply too much to think about, and some of those thoughts made her want to move. Ideally, to leave the palace: the recurring fantasy usually had the capital's ponies panicking just enough to clear a path. Something which would give her the chance to hunt, because there was somepony to hunt for. Somepony who had a new reason for fear.
Nightwatch had made a promise during the bath: that the little knight would tell Cerea what had happened on the next day. And when the Guard had come back into the barracks some time after what was guessed to be sunrise, weary and ready to close out her shift, the centaur had held her to it.
For an outsider who was sufficiently educated to read two sets of body language, it would have been hard to say whom the words hurt more. Both had been making some degree of effort at concealment: the Guard trying to pass off what had happened to her home and possessions as something utterly minor: nothing which couldn't be replaced, and the important thing was still being alive. Another centaur (or even a human, if it was one of the few who were capable of seeing from any perspective other than her own) would have looked away from legs which had been forced into a statue's rigidity and focused on the girl's hands: the wringing of fingers and twisting of wrists, all of which were bending just a little too far. Added to the slow inward curl of shoulders and the bowing of the upper back, it indicated a centaur who had taken on that much more of a burden, desperately trying to find some way of apologizing for her mere existence --
-- right up until the moment when Nightwatch had told her about the foal.
The pegasus knew more about centaur body language than anypony alive. Cerea was almost certain that exposure hadn't been enough to let Nightwatch spot the signs of a repressed panic attack.
It felt as if it had taken every bit of strength she'd had left just to keep her arms at her sides and her breathing at some level of regularity -- and that was just for the initial surge. She wasn't sure what she'd been drawing on to keep herself at tail flicks and clenching hands until the pegasus had settled into sleep, and then she'd still been unable to make a full-speed gallop for the nearest private space because the sound of pounding hoofsteps would have woken the little knight up.
She'd wound up in the bathroom. Half-collapsed into front of the sinks, staring at the mirror into the reflection of a monster.
And there she'd stayed.
For two hours.
When it came to what Nightwatch had suffered through... there were things Cerea could do, at least in theory. But the first had already been rejected: the pegasus had refused to accept the money from Cerea's training salary. The centaur had desperately argued that she had no personal need for it: she had housing, food, clothing -- and when it came to shopping for anything else, how was she even supposed to step into a store without starting a riot? She didn't need anything important, not when Nightwatch had lost nearly everything...
But the offer had been refused. Equestrian law allowed Nightwatch to collect some degree of restitution from the guilty party and no matter what Cerea might want to believe, that wasn't her. So when the unicorn in question was caught, several kinds of payback would be guaranteed. Now, when it came to Cerea's needs -- exactly what were those, anyway? Because Nightwatch could go into a store, and would bring back receipts --
-- as rather obvious attempts at changing the subject went, it had been an exceptionally awkward one. The only thing which managed to temporarily slow both of the trains hurtling down parallel tracks of embarrassment was Cerea timidly confessing some minor desire for a hoof pick.
There was nothing she could do for Nightwatch, or at least nothing where the little knight would allow Cerea to act. But they spent time together, and...
(She'd stared at herself in the mirror. Ears which didn't have the right shape or placement. Tears streaming endlessly, running down a face which was like no other in an entire world.)
...they were... friends.
She... hadn't really had those.
Not in the herd.
Never in the herd.
Not until...
...they spent time together. It meant there might be a chance for Cerea to repay some portion of the debt.
But with the foal...
Every moment I exist here, ponies are being hurt.
She'd said as much to Nightwatch, and done so for the second time in less than a day. The little knight had a simple response for that: it was nothing Cerea had done, and she didn't control what others did. She wasn't at fault.
Which didn't take into account the fact that none of it would have happened without her presence. She had inspired the act. And now there was a foal in a hospital, struggling to breathe. Because in every moment Cerea existed in this strange place, ponies were being hurt -- even if they were hurting each other.
She couldn't visit the hospital. (She had asked if it was possible to clear the area just long enough for somepony to teleport her in, while remaining silent about needing to see what she had done. Nightwatch had simply told her that the Solar Princess had been there already, met the parents, and... it hadn't gone well.) Her memory had delved for any medical knowledge acquired from every form of media she'd ever encountered, and it had turned out that ponies already knew about oxygen therapy. She possessed no magic of any kind, and any healing power sought in dream might as well be set to turning back time so that she would have never arrived in this world.
The bounds of reality gave her no means of atoning. But in fantasy...
It had been a few days since the arson and as with the signatures created by magic, scents faded: the heat wouldn't have helped. But if she could get somepony to take her to the burn site... every species smelled a little different, each gender gave off its own odors, and individuals could have olfactory signatures of their own. She already knew she had to pick out a unicorn mare. Bring every such resident of the building before her, then let her check the access ramps which led to Nightwatch's floor. Process of elimination...
Realistically, she knew it was too late: time, heat, and the hurried passage of emergency crews would have ruined everything. Even if she somehow managed to find some undisturbed pocket of air, she still would have needed to use the gathered information to track. Head out into the street -- and find thousands of criss-crossing trails. Plus if there had been some degree of wind, any rain at all...
She was a centaur and in this case, that didn't represent 'bloodhound.' If she had been chasing down somepony within a minute or two after the mare had left, there would have been a chance. But days after the fact, with normal weather, a city's population and the heat of the fire to reckon with... no. That was the reality of the situation. The best she could hope for with some faint impression of the mare's scent was matching it to an apprehended suspect. One more piece of confirmation, presuming a pony court would be willing to accept a centaur's senses as evidence.
That was the reality of it. But in fantasy...
...they scatter before her, clearing the path, and the target senses something is wrong. Ponies are a prey species, and the fact that centaurs are mostly herbivorous doesn't change the rest of the facts: forward-set eyes, ears meant for directional focus of sound, added to speed and strength and power.
There are many ways to create a monster, and the one the girl knows best is rather basic: you tell someone they're a monster over and over again, then wait to see how long it takes before they agree with you. But there are other methods. For starters, you could take any creature in the world and meld in a human aspect, because the girl has felt that monstrosity describes the worst of what humans are.
You could create a monster that way. But even with something which can just barely make itself consume meat, you still might get a predator.
Prey knows when it's being hunted, and so the unicorn glances back. Sees what's charging it, and the horn ignites -- but there is a sword, and every desperate attempt at projecting the corona is deflected, parried, rendered into the sort of fading light which might be seen in dying eyes. The centaur charges, it's faster than any unicorn in the world, and it can't be stopped. Nopony in the city will try, because there are invisible walls bordering that charge path and they are being maintained by fear.
The unicorn mare is small, because they're all so very small. The centaur could pick her up with one hand if she gets the leverage, slam her into a wall and then just because the sound produced by the impact is so pleasant, she could do it again and again and again. The ponies have magic -- but for so many of them, it's the only thing they have at all. Take away that power and what are they?
Something you could hurt.
Something you could dominate.
Something you could be in charge of, if you weren't so nice...
In fantasy, she could take revenge.
In reality, she had spent hours with the sketchbook, because if she kept trying to draw, then her mind had to eventually focus on that. And she'd tried. She'd turned back to the first page, the image which still wasn't right, and she'd blurred sections out and started over, repeated that action a few times, and nothing she did made the creation focus. She'd tried to capture the most vital aspect, the thing even her poor skills should have been able to render with no effort at all, and it just wouldn't emerge. Nothing she did with that sketch worked. Nothing at all -- but as soon as she tried to draw anything else...
Hours with nothing else to do. Most of them had been spent in the bathroom or the hallway outside the barracks, because Nightwatch was sleeping. It had meant they were hours which came with occasional interruptions. One of them had been expected, and felt somewhat overdue. (As a special bonus, it had been made by Glimmerglow, and Cerea had inspected the 'most beautiful' Solar Guard as closely as she could get away with. She just wasn't seeing it.) A second had come from Barding, who was somewhat out of the information loop and wanted to know when work would resume in the smithy. She'd had to tell him about the forced days off, and he'd left muttering to himself as he tried to find his way back to his kingdom: some of the darker vocalizations suggested he'd mostly located the barracks through process of elimination. Also that there were several mares in a locker room who weren't entirely happy with him, and he wasn't sure why.
Cerea still decided to count him as a visitor, if only for lack of other candidates.
She'd missed seeing Nightwatch wake up, and suspected she'd been taking one path back from the kitchen at the same moment the little knight had been heading towards it. But the empty bunk told her that the Guard was off getting her breakfast (or whatever Lunars called their first meal after waking), so all she had to do was wait until the pegasus got back. And until then...
There had been a lot of sketching. And all it had done was put her back on that first page, trying to find some way of fixing her mistake. The only thing in her existence which she could fix, and it wasn't yielding. Nothing she did made it right, every effort seemed to make it worse, all of that felt far too much like a perfect summary of her life and...
She could swear the paper was getting thinner.
The familiar scent reached her just ahead of the sound: approaching wingbeats. Cerea quickly turned the page.
"What are you working on?" the little knight carefully inquired, touching down just inside the barracks' doorway. (With the only other occupant awake and about, the centaur had felt free to go back inside.) And with a little smile, "Did you draw me yet?"
The blush instantly began to rise. "...no. I keep meaning to, but there's been so much else. It's -- not because I don't want to --"
"-- is that hard? When everyone can see how you're feeling without really trying, because you don't have fur there to block some of it?"
The question didn't hurt. There were too many other things hurting for the question to really get a word in and besides, they'd promised each other that they would both keep asking things. Because they were friends, and understanding each other was their best hope to remain so.
"Yes," Cerea sighed. "It's even worse because I'm so pale." A slow head shake. "According to the stories, centaurs originally had darker skin. But every herd changed a little, depending on where their gap was. It took centuries, but... the ones in my part of the world lost a lot of their melanin. Did 'melanin' translate?"
Black ears twisted. "'Substance which darkens skin.' It's probably a word which the doctors would have known."
That was possible: when it came to vocabulary, Barding had received more about metallurgy from the disc than Princess Celestia. "I barely even tan. I mostly just wind up with sunburn." Quickly, "Did --"
"-- yes. It's a problem for ponies with thin fur." Nightwatch began to trot forward. "Or anypony who shaves their coat a little too close to the skin. Um. That's been a trend a few times. Ponies shaving most of their fur. Sometimes almost all of it. Or trying to make patterns. It usually starts in spring. And stops in summer. You can draw me whenever you're ready, Cerea. It doesn't have to be any time soon. Just... before you go home."
I want to go home.
She recognized that the little knight was trying to keep her spirits up, making Cerea feel that a return passage was still possible. And because that was the tone which Nightwatch had come in on, the girl understood they wouldn't be talking about the foal for a while. "I should still do it soon. I need to start drawing anything connected to Equestria. It's mostly been..."
Blue eyes closed. Silver ones watched closely.
"Your home?"
I haven't sketched one thing from the gap.
One person.
I haven't even...
"...Japan," Cerea softly answered. "Maybe because that's more recent. It's easier."
As opposed to capturing things I saw day after day for just about all of my life.
"So what was it today?" the pegasus gently inquired.
The physical pain had lessened somewhat. But there was emotional agony added to a new portion of self-blame, and so the word slipped again. "Who."
And before she could even think about trying to recover, "Another one of the exchange students?"
Cerea's eyes opened. "Yes."
"Can I...?"
The girl nodded to a bunk, and they took up what was becoming the standard position: centaur low on the floor, pegasus standing on the mattress.
Cerea started to open the sketchbook. Hesitated.
"This... may be hard for you to see," the centaur said. "Like Papi was, only in a different way. It's how she looks. You had trouble with a human leg before --"
"-- it was mostly the feet," Nightwatch countered. "Um. I don't like feet. It's not being speciesist. They have all those wriggly bits at the end which don't do anything, and... there's usually a smell..."
Cerea, who had eventually begun to secretly sprinkle powder into shoes, declined to comment. "-- and when it comes to her body, she was the closest to human. She could have passed." Which led to some rather quick thought. "With a lot of makeup. On every bit of skin which was exposed. Plus hair dye. A scarf. And contact lenses. Did 'contact lenses' --"
"-- we use them for plays and cinema," the pegasus responded. "But nopony can wear them for very long. They're uncomfortable, and you can get all sorts of diseases when air doesn't reach the eye."
Which confirmed the local existence of movies. Cerea was willing to wait a while longer before asking if ponies had managed sound reproduction and color film. (CGI was lacking the necessary prerequisite, but there might be illusion spells. She hadn't seen anything resembling a television or radio.) And it meant that their contacts were likely made from thin, finely-carved glass: no air-permeable plastics...
Do they have plastic at all? Could you have film without it? Cerea didn't know what the chemical composition was for modern film, although she vaguely recalled silver nitrate being vital to some of the earliest productions. Also that such film liked to decompose rapidly or, just for variety, explode. "So when I turn the page," she cautioned, "for a black-and-white sketch, it's going to be just about like looking at a human. There's just... one vital difference."
It was possible to hear feathers vibrating. "Um. What's that?"
"Her head."
"She's human," Nightwatch attempted to summarize, "except for her head."
Cerea winced. "Her head is human." More than her own, since the ears were right. "It's just... misplaced most of the time."
"Um..."
The vibration had turned into more of a rustle, and bare skin had no trouble with picking up on the first gust of wind. It made her fingers move quickly, just to get it over with.
Eventually, Nightwatch blinked. It was particularly noticeable because it came following a rather long-seeming period in which that hadn't happened.
"...does it..." The pegasus swallowed. (Cerea tried to ignore what her nose was indicating about what had been swallowed.) "...ever go on the neck?"
"Yes. She uses scarves to cover the seam, or wears blouses and jackets with really high collars. But it can be removed pretty easily." Cerea sighed. "It's why I drew her holding it off to the side, as if she was about to frame it on a doorway or something, to startle whoever looked in that direction. She's a little... dramatic."
"How..." Another gulp. "...how does she eat? Breathe? How is she even... alive?"
"Magic." A little more quickly, "There's all sorts of theories. One of them has air and everything else sort of teleporting across, constantly. Another says there's no real gap on the spacial level: just a visual division which only exists in our world." (She was not going to try and find out what might happen when the disc attempted to translate 'pocket wormhole'.) With a faint smile, "She's sort of the worst person to ask, because she'll just say whatever feels most impressive on any given day. Lala likes to make herself sound like she's more mysterious than she really is. Most dullahans do. But 'magic' is good enough to explain it."
"Um. Is she... nice?"
Which was the same thing Nightwatch had asked about Papi -- but this time, Cerea had to give the answer somewhat more thought.
"She's kind," the centaur finally said. "That's not always the same thing as nice. She tries to dress it up in drama most of the time, but she's always trying to do the right thing. It's just that... her idea of what's right doesn't always match what anyone would think of as being nice. There's times when you almost forget she's there --" because the dullahan possessed something very close to an anti-aura, which made it surprisingly easy for people to dismiss the blue-skinned female with the fake scythe in the room "-- but once she focuses on doing something, it's almost impossible to look anywhere else. But she plays herself up too much, like she's a filly trying to get attention. The worst part is that she doesn't need to. Not with just being a dullahan. With what they all are..."
She trailed off. Looked down at the sketch, and the thin smile she'd put on the other girl's lips. It was almost always a thin smile with Lala, when she allowed herself to be caught smiling at all.
In immediate retrospect, "...what are they?" was a question she should have anticipated.
Cerea took a breath.
"I'm sure this isn't going to translate."
Carefully, "Try?"
"Psychopomps."
She waited for the disc to stop hissing. It took less than two seconds.
"Those who travel with the dying," Nightwatch quietly stated. "The companion for the last trot into the otherrealm/afterlife/shadowlands."
It was the centaur's turn to blink.
"Yaks believe in them," the pegasus softly continued. "That everyone has their own. Invisible, intangible, watching from the moment of your birth. Because they want to make sure you always have one friend who'll be with you from the first to the last. And when a yak dies... they meet that friend for the first time, and they talk about all the best times of the yak's life as they walk together into the final fields. Yaks believe in them... but they say there's only one way to see your friend. And it's the one where they don't get to tell anyone after." Just barely reaching a whisper, "Yours are real?"
The blue eyes slowly closed again.
"She says so. She says a lot of things, but..."
The household had been through a lot. Too much, in some ways. But there were those who said the experiences which didn't kill would strengthen bonds. And when you encountered something which could kill...
They'd been through a lot together. And the dullahan was too dramatic for her own good, put on airs like a middle-schooler who was one unneeded eyepatch away from claiming Mysterious Powers -- except that there was something at the core.
"...I believe her. I think most of us did in the end, except for Rachnera." With the smallest of snorts, "Probably because it couldn't be her. But Lala cared about all of us, in her way. And when it came to him, she didn't really see herself as part of the competition because as far as she was concerned, she'd already won."
With an extra decibel or two, "How?"
The smile surprised her. "One of us could have him in life. She got him after." And before the pegasus could think about that too much, "But she cares more than she usually lets herself show. She always wants to help. It just doesn't always show itself in ways which humans would see as nice, because... it's hard for humans to accept death."
"It's hard for just about everyone," Nightwatch quietly stated.
"It's harder when they start assigning blame." Her own volume was dropping. "If humans start thinking about dullahans too much, they usually wind up at the wrong conclusion. They decide a dullahan kills. That their presence causes death, or that they set people up to die. They don't. They don't bring the end. They just make sure someone's there to see it. So you don't have to go alone. And... that's why they retreated to their gaps. There were humans who hunted them, and --" the next part hurt "-- a few liminals. The craziest ones thought that if all the dullahans were gone, there wouldn't be any death. It's why so few of them came out when the program started: because they know some people still think the worst of them. The ones who are ready to blame them all over again."
The girl shivered.
"Sometimes I think she plays it up so much because she wants to look like a caricature. Something humans have to laugh at. If they don't take her seriously, then... they might not be afraid. Did 'caricature' --"
Gently, "-- yes. It sounds like you miss her."
I miss...
"I was almost looking forward to seeing her last night."
The black wings flared, and the left one hit the back of Cerea's head.
"OW -- !"
"-- see her? How could you see --"
The centaur's torso twisted towards the sound of tortured springs. "Nightwatch, calm down!" The pegasus couldn't just go compulsively trotting in place on a mattress like that -- okay, it was a pony mattress: there was a good chance it had been made to stand up to such abuse. But the reaction... "It's okay! You intercepted the lightning, you weren't hurt, and I didn't --"
But the silver eyes were wide, frantic, showing extra white at the edges. A pony in near-panic, and if not for speech and wings, it would have been the closest Nightwatch had ever been to acting like a terrified horse. "-- how?"
With a human, she would have gripped their shoulders, pulled them against her, rocked them gently until either calmness returned or a muffled complaint about oxygen deprivation drifted up. With the pegasus... the friendship was new, felt somewhat fragile --
-- she sang.
There were no words in the melody, for her knowledge of lyrics was just slightly more scattershot then her acquaintance with literature. It wasn't too hard to get a radio into the gap, at least no harder than anything else -- but intercepting and retaining signals could be just about impossible. There was also the question of lining up a never-ending supply of batteries, because truly portable solar chargers had only come into fashion just before the exchange program had begun. It meant there were any number of human songs which Cerea knew fragments of. The majority of those were in French. And when it came to centaur music... she was certain that the disc wouldn't allow any of the translations to maintain rhythm, meter, or rhyme.
So it was a series of notes, rising and falling across a portion of the impressive octave range provided by flexible vocal chords. Something slow and comforting, the sort of music which her mother had sometimes made when a filly had truly done her best before failing yet again, on those rare nights where second place had somehow been almost acceptable.
She sang as her mother would have, and so homesickness began to saturate every note.
Wings stilled, folded back into the rest position. Black-furred legs came to a stop.
"...um," Nightwatch said. "Sorry. Um... you sing for a really long time on one breath. I just..." One last tremble of feathers. "It was just the way you said it. Like you could go to see her at any time. But that would mean you know how to go home, and you don't. Unless there's only one way, and -- you said lightning..."
Cerea stopped. Sighed.
"I wouldn't go to her," the centaur softly explained. "She... made a promise, to everyone in the household. It was after... it was a bad day: that's all I want to say about it right now." Something where there had been more trouble than usual, and Lala had been most of it. "She was trying to apologize. She said... she loved us, all of us, and she just had trouble showing it sometimes. But she cared about every one of us, and... she promised that no matter what happened, no matter who won or lost, where we were, or how it all ended... she would be there for each of us when we died. So we wouldn't be alone. And that was the best way a dullahan could show how much they cared. So when I realized the lightning was coming down -- I thought I was about to see her. I didn't want to die. But... I believed her, in that second before you swooped in. That she could find me. I just..."
She paused. Brought her right hand up to her face, and wiped away the first tear.
"...don't know. Because I'm so far away..." And this smile was a weak one. But it didn't feel forced. "So I can't go home. I could just try to go see her. And then I'd never be able to tell you if it worked."
Silence.
The pegasus awkwardly nuzzled the back of the girl's head.
With open concern, "Did I hurt you?"
"The wing? You mostly just startled me." Which had been a deliberate understatement: with more distance to work up swing speed, it would have been like getting hit by a swan.
"Do you want me to read you some more of that story? Before the lesson starts?"
There were ways in which she wanted that more than anything. To lose herself in the life of another for a while, because reality was under no obligation to provide a happy ending and there was a chance the story's author would be somewhat more kind.
"Not tonight." Her right arm gestured. "Glimmerglow brought those down while you were sleeping. Somepony put bookmarks at the right pages. But I know I won't be able to read anywhere near enough words, and the Sergeant will probably ask me about it on my first day back..."
They both looked at the short stack of books. For Cerea, there was also the olfactory residue of a thousand other phantom volumes, waiting for their siblings to return. But in isolation, it was simply the scent of paper which was more than a century old.
Volumes were interred in the Canterlot Archives, awaiting their chance of being needed one more time. Unearthed when that opportunity came, with their contents laid out for final autopsy.
"Please," the girl gently requested. "Tell me about Blitzschritt."
It wasn't the usual route to the Solar Courtyard, nor was it Celestia's typical hour for hosting a press conference. She preferred to have the gatherings close to Sun-raising, because her own Courtyard existed in perpetual dawnlight -- at least for any hour during which it would have been under Sun at all. Part of the typical scheduling was to make the environment a little more natural, and most of the rest came from petty vengeance: if she had to be up at that hour...
(Night assemblies always went to the Lunar, because the Solar Courtyard under Moon was something which made ponies deeply uncomfortable. The grey light of the midnight sun came with centuries of emotional resonance attached, and spending more than a few minutes there would have ponies bringing back everything they regretted in their own lives. Celestia supposed it might potentially be a good place for extracting confessions -- if the pony asking the questions didn't keep stopping to wail over That One Broken Plate.)
In this case, it was about ninety minutes before Sun-lowering. Early-arriving Lunars were getting ready for their shifts, Solars had started to think about what they would do with the evening, and Celestia had gotten stuck with paperwork -- but she'd known that the deluge was coming, and had scheduled the gathering accordingly. It still gave her enough time to check on the protests and then get to the conference. She needed to survey the situation and -- this was the most important part -- had to do so before Luna got there.
So far, the protesters had been going home as Moon approached. But the exact time at which the crowd began to break up for the night had been moving progressively closer to Lunar hours. Celestia wanted to see the state of the (stlll-increasing) group because she needed to make an estimate: how long she had before retiring to her own bed would leave the whole still-active thing pressed solely between the younger's hooves. Or, in the worst case, under.
It left her trotting towards Apex Tower, and doing so along the public route because there was too much hallway traffic for casually slipping into a passageway. (Teleporting tended to be noticed: most unicorns could pick up on the burst of thaums from a departure, and there was just about nothing which could be done about the flash of light.) And she did so while casually dodging around smaller ponies on something very close to instinct, because part of her was still going over some particularly vital paperwork.
Emery had filed his post-exercise report.
He hadn't been the only one. Nearly all of the Guards involved had written a summary of their own actions during the fight, along with a few general impressions and reviews of personal tactics. The exception was Squall, because the counseling sessions took priority and Emery felt that filing an official report required being off probation.
'Centaur panic.' It felt as if her tongue had just coated itself in sewage. The counseling might help, and the extra training sessions with Emery might wear him out to the point where he can't even think about being afraid. Or about anything which isn't finding a bed. Most of the sigh was kept internal: the rest served as a little extra propulsion for getting her around part of the Solar accounting department. We've been so focused on getting Equestria to accept her -- and that reminded her: both sisters had to review the latest version of the still-undistributed one-sheet when it came off the printing press in the morning -- that we didn't look closer to home. Or in it. We might need to gather both staffs for a talk. Dryly, Shortest possible version: 'This is Cerea. Please don't kill her.'
Some degree of editing seemed to be required.
That may not be able to wait until after the training wraps up, especially not after getting the first teacher's letter back. If she's going to be meeting fillies and colts, she may need to meet some adults first. Her mind, which was already preparing for edit mode, managed a neat last-second removal of 'supposed'. And I have to contact the school, make sure all of the parents know exactly what's going on, this is going to be a permission slip for the ages and we'll be lucky if a third of them sign...
There was too much to think about: something which often held true when approaching the end of her hours. Some of it even concerned the press conference, because that was the chance to step into something approaching normalcy and besides, if she had to suffer through the details of negotiating trade revisions with Eeyorus, then she owed a Courtyard's worth of reporters the joy of writing it all down. But she was also thinking about Emery's quickly-jotted plans to explore the possibilities offered by Cerea's olfactory capabilities, a few brain cells were wondering when the best time to personally speak with Squall would be because he'd had a rough year-plus to begin with and now this, but she also had to find some way of talking to him where he could still be a Guard at the end of it. Because if things kept going forward --
-- how many will just quit?
The thought didn't make her break stride, mostly because it wasn't the first time she'd had it.
If she makes it through and joins the ranks, how many trot and fly away rather than serve with a centaur at their side? Not necessarily because they hate her, but because they can't live with the fear. They can't work when it's less than two body lengths away and casting a shadow across their backs. They can't think...
She suspected the number was going to be something higher than zero. Part of the fallout would be determined by shift --
-- her peripheral vision just barely registered the off-hues through the doorway, and mostly because the tail had flicked into sight at just the wrong moment. Celestia's horn ignited, and she took no small pleasure in the frustrated scrabble of elevated hooves.
"Two floors down, Wordia," she smiled as her field deposited the mare in front of her. "I know you're familiar with every last path to both Courtyards. And yet you still find creative ways of becoming lost." A small head shake. "Fortunately, none of them have ended with my locating you in a restricted section, because there's laws on the books about going into those without authorization, clearance, or possession of the proper workings. Try not to stumble into any?"
Her inner self, which felt free to be much more truthful about things, added Because I'm completely aware of the consequences which would come from a solid moon of Tattler headlines, and I'd still love to personally show you at least one trail into the cells. Just long enough to watch your face when you realized I was actually locking the door.
But you know that. And you've been careful.
So far.
"My apologies, Princess," Wordia openly lied, adding that special smile to the end of it. "But as it turns out, it all worked out for the best! Because I got lost looking for you. I was hoping to get a few minutes alone with you before the conference started." The sound of the notepad and quill emerging from her saddlebags was nothing like the sword emerging from its scabbard, mostly because the sword couldn't do as much damage. "Now. About the centaur --"
"-- tonight is for Eeyorus, Wordia," Celestia smoothly said. "The only news on Cerea is 'training proceeds'."
"Despite the injuries she's caused to the Guards?"
The Solar Princess maintained the smile. It had taken centuries of practice to keep that smile in place, and Wordia's presence tended to force the mastery time required into something closer to an eon.
Setting out bait based on knowledge of typical proceedings, or does she have another source?
"Combat scrimmages are part of normal training," the alicorn stated. "I suppose there's going to be one eventually, if there hasn't been already. The associated paperwork may even be on my desk. Which I would discourage you from attempting to reach."
Please try to reach it.
"And do you feel it was worth risking damage to the nation's relationship with Mazein? Having their ambassador injured in a 'combat scrimmage'?"
All right: that one would have been a little easier for her to learn about. "Ambassador Power likes to meet people," Celestia observed. "It's part of why he's an ambassador. And as with every minotaur who's been part of Guard training, he volunteered, and he's taken hooves to the legs before this. Some pony, some minotaur, and I'd imagine there's an assortment available beyond that. His only complaint to me was that he didn't get to ask her more about centaur wrestling styles, which he tells me are largely arm-based. And apparently involve tables. I'm not sure how."
Ponies flowed around them. When you had that level of immovable objects in the middle of a river, the water tried not to get too close.
"Incidentally," the Princess added, "I read your latest opinion column. The one in the late edition."
"It pleases the Tattler to count the palace among its audience," Wordia smiled.
At full subscription price. Which the owners have tried to raise for us alone and when that didn't work, they attempted to perfect the delivery charge. That got pulled back after I started trotting two blocks to the nearest newsstand every morning. "So, just to make sure I'm not misinterpreting your opinion, because they can be such subjective things..."
She took a breath, one deep enough to fully expand her rib cage while adding a touch of rustle to the wings. Tilted her head slightly to the right, allowing herself the demeanor of open, polite curiosity. And loomed.
"...you feel the foal's condition is Nightwatch's fault?"
Wordia looked directly up into her eyes.
"Well," the reporter calmly began, "if one happens to somehow believe that the fire wasn't started in a deliberate attempt to shift pity onto the centaur and those who... might be advised to not be so public with spending time in proximity -- then the fire wouldn't be Nightwatch's fault, because she didn't set it. The foal, however..." The unicorn shrugged. "It's rather basic, Princess. If one's chosen lifestyle is something which others might disagree with -- when somepony is, shall we say, standing apart from the herd -- then one shouldn't live near normal ponies. Because doing so, should others respond in their own, clearly-criminal ways to that perceived deviance, is endangering them. She certainly can't control whether somepony sets a fire, even if she should have had more discipline about behaving in ways which wouldn't make others consider the act. But she can certainly choose not to be around anypony who could be hurt."
The mare's lips curled.
"I'm sure you understand that, Princess," Wordia added. "Or the barracks wouldn't exist in the first place."
The temperature in this hallway is stable.
The temperature in this hallway is stable.
The temperature in this hallway is stable.
"The central purpose of the barracks is allowing Guards to sleep in the palace during a siege," Celestia calmly stated. "We haven't had a siege in --"
"-- oh, is that the reason?" Wordia merrily interrupted. "How interesting! Well, I'm sure they might come in handy sometime. Possibly soon, especially if any nation takes the centaur problem as a reason to -- well, I'm sure everypony hopes that won't happen. And knows the best way of preventing it, which the palace won't take. Actually, I'm not sure how much good the barracks might do against a rebellion from within. But I stand by my opinion, Princess. Those who are different? Shouldn't be around those who are normal. And Guards... they don't think like normal ponies, do they? They can't. So... perhaps they should take more care about what they associate with. Or simply choose to exist in isolation, so that the rest of us can lead our normal lives without fear."
The phantom points on the smile became sharper.
"Now that I think about it, Princess," the mare concluded, "you've been isolating yourself for a very long time. I suppose that means you agree. Well, that's my exclusive. I'll see you in the Courtyard!"
Her neck almost snapped back into a normal position, and she moved around Celestia's left flank, merging with the flow --
"-- that's not a good year for Tyrconnell."
The reporter's left hind leg momentarily hitched.
"They've made better whiskeys," Celestia added. "Far better. In fact, the general opinion is that since the 1258 was bottled at the time of the ownership change, that was as close as they ever got to rotgut. But it did come in the largest of their bottles, as they were trying to get rid of it in bulk. So if your goal as a consumer is sheer quantity, then..." The alicorn shrugged. "To each their own, I suppose. Even if it results in danger to those in the consumer's general proximity. Especially if that party is standing too close to a fire."
The mare's gait straightened out again. She moved --
"-- I'm going to ask again, Wordia," the Princess softly said. "The same thing Princess Luna and I requested on the night we introduced Cerea to the nation. You have sources which we don't: you've taken some pleasure in proving that over the years. So if you do learn something about the criminal matter of the fire -- we would appreciate being told."
-- stopped. Staring straight ahead, as the long tail twitched.
"Or," the alicorn added, "if you happen to know something now."
The silence was deep enough to hear invisible acid pouring into the diminishing flow.
"At a guess," Wordia Spinner finally said, "I know about as much as you do. Since there's been no arrests. Right now, Princess, all I can do is distribute the existing information. Spread the word into my readership, and -- see what they do with it. Maybe some of them will act on what they've read."
The unicorn took a slow breath.
"Wouldn't that be interesting?" she asked, carefully-groomed legs starting to shift again. "Until the conference, Princess."
The oldest mare in the world reached the balcony. Looked down at the protestors, without the protection of illusion or company, waiting to see who spotted her first. How they would react.
There were more of them, because there were more every day. And they marched and flew and chanted, because the truest subject of their fear was beyond their reach and so any suitable target would do. One which had been brought down in Palimyno, brought down by ponies and if they could repeat that miracle while adding a more suitable conclusion, the fear might go away forever...
Hundreds of them now. It would probably be a thousand tomorrow, moving in patterns of rage --
-- it was the lack of movement which caught her attention. And once she saw it, she couldn't stop. She came within minutes of being late for the press conference, had to teleport to make up some of the time, and as she smiled and calmly discussed trade, the image continued to burn against her mind.
There was a place where there was no marching line or improvised air path occupants trying to block the view. There were simply ponies standing in formation, silently staring up at the palace. At her. And the border had their bodies arranged in a surrounding circle, while the core gathering came across as something which had five living projections: four in one direction, another on the side at an angle. With a little hollow in the center.
It was very much like a hand superimposed over a hoof.
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I googled it and just got something related to Warhammer
There are therapists! Always nice to see.
While the Royal Guard plot line and public relations plot line is getting plenty of screen time, I wonder what's going on with the ones who summoned Cerea? And Discord? Hmmm.
One of these days, Wordia, you're going to deeply regret your habit of getting lost.
Things that are lost don't always get found again, especially if they've been moved ever so very far away from where they belong. and when they DO get found... Well, sometimes they're no longer in working condition.
I’m afraid I don’t understand the significance of the pony formation at the end. Can anyone spoon feed it to me?
Aside from that, your Celestia’s relative powerlessness or perhaps more accurately tolerance for what is essentially a bigoted paparazzi of a propaganda rag is infuriating. Why does she continue to allow this mare anywhere near the palace if she has a history of obvious snooping about in restricted areas under the flimsy pretense of being lost?
At the very least, she herself should’ve been formally banned from ever stepping hoof in the premises, if not her paper at large. I mean yes, it makes for some aggravatingly engaging drama, but I still don’t understand why this waste of flesh is given this much leeway. Anyway, excellent chapter.
10401905
Wordia being tossed out is possible. The Tattler being banned will likely never happen, as that just fuels the argument of the Palace Silencing Dissent.
10401905
Because when a government threatens to ban one news organization from a gathering, the typical response from all of the others is to close ranks and demand full access for all. Regardless of how they feel about the coverage and slant of a given group, most journalists recognize that if one of them can be locked out of the pool, any others could potentially be next. In a nation where the executive branch is, put mildly, stable, this would create some minor worries about creating long-term grudges.
Celestia could potentially block Wordia out, especially if she caught her in a restricted area. But there's a 'better the Tartarus cell for which you've almost worked out the key' aspect at work here -- and regardless of how she ultimately treats Ms. Spinner, she can't exclude all future representatives of the Tattler.
ETA: The palace also has sections which are accessible to the public. Like many such buildings, it conducts tours: the admission fees help to make the structure a little more self-sustaining. So in quite a few cases, those snooping around are hoping someone left a file in the wrong place.
10401919
10401929
Yeah I get that banning the whole paper is bad optics, but Wordia is quite a different matter. Take this bitches photo and post “Do not admit” signs with it at every entrance and every major office already. She could obviously still send proxies to do her snooping, but a case should’ve been built against this mare by now.
And so Lala has been revealed and created quite the shock.
Can't wait for the information to reach Celestia and Luna.
Wanting to hunt and brutalize the criminal is normal. You don't need to be human for this.
And I so hope Wordia and the Tattler will get what is coming to them. One mistake. And the way she 'spinned' the words with those who are being 'abnormal'... I want to punch her in the face. I guess thats the same feeling as wanting to punch a nazi.
But the protest at the end, it's getting out of hand. All thoughts of Harmony is gone and there is no help at the horizon.
I sincerely hope that before you put the Triptych-verse to bed you give Wordia the cosmic-level beatdown she so richly deserves. Kudos on writing such a despicable character so well.
Dont forget that Wordia's on track to be arrested as an accomplice to arson, possibly murder (unless she, the arsonist, and any others who are also helping the arsonist are better at covering their tracks and lying about things than i think they are). Probably wont stop the Tattler in full, but taking her out of the picture defangs it quite a bit.
And unless pony livers are a lot better at handling alcohol than ours, she probably wont survive the prison sentence.
I love the interactions between cerea and nightwatch.
That depends on the pony alphabet. Unless you assume Equestrian is like ancient Chinese (one grapheme (letter) = 1 word, you should be able to sound it out. Of course, this assumes that you can speak the language -always a BIG help. (I've got the same problem reading foreign languages. Just because I use the same alphabet doesn't mean I can read it)
This is one of the drawbacks to using a translator -without it you're lost.
10401929
Hilary Clinton. The hope isn't always misplaced.
10401905
The symbol of a hand superimposed over a hoof is the same symbol, presumably meaning Centaur, which the arsonist attempted to burn into the wall of Nightwatch's apartment, implying that this group may know the arsonist or otherwise have ties to her or her backers
Wordia Spinner is one of the biggest karma houdinis in this universe and it would give me great, personal pleasure to see this festering, pus-filled scab of a mare begging for mercy from the Daybreaker. And receiving none.
10402001
Ah, I must've forgotten. Thanks!
One thing Celestia may not realize is the common pony may indeed be afraid of Cerea at all times and builds all kinds of fantasy delusions about how terrible she is, but the common guard in the castle is the best of the best, sort of the Canterlot Marines. If there isn't a line forming outside of Emery's office with filled-out request forms for the next sparring session, I'll eat their horseshoes, because every one of them will be thinking, "Sure, she kicked Bob's rear. I'm a lot better than Bob, and when I beat her, I can rub it on Bob's face for weeks." And that's not to mention the minotaurs lining up with bags of Skittles, ready to settle the dispute about who's strongest the usual way.
*know exactly.
Man, I forgot how much I loath Wordia. She’s up there with Coordinator. CUNET’s old name describes her perfectly.
On a much happier note, it’s nice to see Cera doing...better. Mostly. Though if Cera has fantasies about causing gross bodily harm to you, you’ve really fucked up, bar Emery, of course.
10401857
He's the Ibex that Left the Mountain to become a Guard.
10401935
As tempting as that is, it’s implied that Wordia has managed to not get caught snooping around restricted areas or otherwise done something (and get caught doing it) that would justify banning her from the Palace.
Someone's going to try for her head, aren't they?
10402133
Blitzschritt was a doe(/whatever female Ibex are called?)
You know, seeing Barding out of the smithy could be considered progress for his case.
And this is exactly the kind of document Wordia shouldn't get ber hooves on. Celestia reaction was mild (or maybe we missed the initial one) but it's hard to truly surprise her anymore after a 1000 years. Other might find it... terrifying.
But still, how did Wordia got wind of this? I am getting worried about just how deep her sources goes.
Of all the internal litanies I've seen, I think this is my favorite.
10401905
My potential theories are someone trying to frame cerea by mind controlling thousands of people, or the less likely one i think, is a subconscious effect of cerea being there? But idk, we’ll see in the next chapter
10401929 Is the Freedom to Abuse the Press covered exclusively by the Solar Court? Because, otherwise, I can't see any good reason for Luna to not dismantle the whole thing (especially since even Celestia doesn't remember why she ever thought it was a good idea in the first place). Causing grudges among a press that can no longer harass "public figures" or print "opinions" that encourage murder and riot strikes me as vastly preferably to the BS situation that Equestria has now.
Nobody who drinks like that does so because they enjoy drinking. They do it because the drinking is better than not drinking. I asked before and I ask again, what would you do if you had a Mark that you could not live with? A Mark is an expression of the soul after all, to deny it is to deny oneself, to embrace it is to fall into your own reflection. If your soul Marks you as one who exists to bring fear, anger, and misery, well, would you not start by bringing misery to yourself?
Aiet, not all Marks are blessings.
Very accurate, especially when you acknowledge that the source material for Cerea is that on an Earth with multitudes of intelligent species the humans, without magic, had won and everyone else had been in hiding until recently. It gets worse when you realize that was relatively "ancient" humans that had done that and they had only gotten more deadly with time, which paradoxically had allowed them to "mellow out" enough for the other species to come out of hiding. By contrast, Cerea is actually one of the safer things to come from Earth.
I'm not certain if this is a typo or done on purpose.
Um, is the Harpy, Pappis name used in several places where Lala, the Dullahans name should be?
Better watchout for Buckball season?
The reporters words of Normal and Different though. Thats a division of a peoples within themselves. Thats the definition, in extremis, of Civil War?
10402362
How sure are we on what her mark is for? We know Marks can be twisted, a bit... Writing, but then focusing just on Slander... Or Parties, but focusing just on child-style... Or went utterly against as Triptych shows...
----
I wonder if Hoof and Hand might actually turn into Discord's symbol...
If he has the right appendages... He sorta does... Overlay them on each other... Or just a Dragon's Claw in a Hoof... DraconEquis, after all...
----
Really wondering how all this is affecting Discord... And how this protesting is affecting the economy... But then, the street theater nature of ponies means the protestors would have food and water and stuff...
----
The protesters learning that ponies decided to summon Cerea in... I wonder what that'd do...
Wait... Multiple Unicorns / (ponies?) working together?? ... CUNET??? Lol?!?
What species could Nightwatch have encountered that had (smelly) feet rather than hooves?
Also, I truly hope Cerea introduces the concepts of defamation/slander/libel to the Princesses.
Oh good, the foal's still alive. Not sure if that was ever explicitly stated before. (Probably was, given my track record.
)
Hmm. I wonder if chaos magic has a scent. Or, more pertinently, a consistent one.
Cerea's definitely helping pull Barding out of himself, even if he isn't happy about it.
Oh, honey, you do not want to get into that.
Interesting. And what happens when a journalist pushes forward a less-than-popular opinion, Wordia?
Cerea's body may be healing, but her mind and reputation are doing anything but. Hopefully this first school trip will help... though if it's from the school I think it is, she'll be in far more danger than the students. (Cutie Mark Crusader Centaur Slayers, anyone?)
10402283
I must not burn. Burning is the herd killer. Burning is the little death that brings oblivion to everypony else.
10402493
Dragons. Diamond dogs. Hydras...
So... is Wordia trying to tell Celestia to retire somewhere out of sight of the common pony?
No, I realise that she's not; that she's talking about Cerea. But I can see Celestia deliberately misunderstanding that that way, just to see Wordia's response. (Wordia being Wordia, I also suspect that her response might be "Yes, please do, your Majesty")
Victim blaming at its truly slimiest. Truly a disgusting suggestion.
10402451
No, the implication is that this isn't the first of her fellows that Cerea has drawn for Nightwatch. Papi was first, as she was less outrageous of a form than Lala is in some ways, I believe the author got all the references correct between the two of them.
10402536
Remember that little jab there at the end. Wordia basically said that she's going to write that Celestia is already isolating herself by living in the palace, and thus agrees with the concept implicitly.
10402526
Those don't wear shoes so there shouldn't be a smell.
I feel that Celestia’s motto should be “this too shall pass”. She has the singular privilege of outliving the majority of her enemies after all.
"she had spend hours with the sketchbook"
"she had spent hours with the sketchbook"?
I continue to enjoy this story; thank you for writing. :)
10402523
To be perfectly fair, Celestia is presumably okay with being the herd-killer, so long as she can save the ponies that make it up.
10402016
I'm hoping we just need to be patient. Remember how long it took before we got to see Coordinator's wickedly satisfying demise?
10402710
That was a good death.
Wordia is reminding me so much of a cross between Dolores Umbridge and Rita Skeeter.
10402592
It gets worse when you realize the reason Cerea's mother pushed her so hard was to cover her own ass for mating with a human.
Thankfully, Wordia's definition of normal is entirely subject to her own whims, so she's easily able to determine who is "not normal" as the situation dictates! It's a win-win for her at any time (every time) of her choosing!
...
I wonder how effective some counter-propaganda would be in pushing the idea (and probable truth) that Cerea is (will be) a sworn enemy to Tirek and all his ilk.
10402523
Only as it pertains to when the Princesses have it together, IIRC. The meal serves the same purpose, and its name makes no reference to the time of day, so I'd expect the same word to work.
10402642
More like they don't have constantly active sweat glands there. Smell is from that and microorganisms preying on it
I don't know where your profile picture is from, but for some reason, every time I see it, my brain goes "Twilight can't enjoy her sandwich" >.<
10403667
I'm pretty sure it's from when Dash was trying to butter her up for Gala tickets and Twilight saw right through it.
10403092
Heck, one could easily argue the definition applies to her as well. After all, how many ponies are drinking themselves into a stupor trying to fight their own cutie marks?
10403808
10403667
Both correct. It's from season 1 episode 3. She's annoyed at Dash's blatant bullshit and right after this, Twilight's sandwich gets soaked in rain.
10404452
I wonder if it was animator's intent to hide meme, huh