When Flurry Heart was not quite two years old, there was a great war between the Crystal Empire and the Northern Changeling Hive. The Crystal Empire lost, and to secure peace, Cadence was forced to agree to a humiliating list of demands.
One of those demands was that she would raise a changeling grub as her daughter, and that when that changeling came of age, they would be a full member of her household. They would be considered a part of the Equestrian royal family. They would have a claim to the throne.
So it was that Flurry Heart gained a sister. Her sister’s name was Cheval.
Queen Amaryllis hoped that Cheval would provide legitimacy to her future attempts to annex the Crystal Empire. Perhaps, ponies speculated, Cadence and Flurry Heart might suffer fatal accidents and thereby allow Amaryllis to claim the Empire outright. But even if such a thing did not come to pass, it seemed obvious to many that Cheval would be a valuable asset for the hive.
When Cheval was twelve and Flurry fourteen, that plan fell apart.
“I will die before I acknowledge you as my queen or my mother, you murderous whore,” Cheval said. She was remarkably well spoken for her age.
Cadence, caught totally unprepared, spat her water up her nose. A reporter captured the whole thing with his camera, producing crisp photos of little Cheval making a rude gesture to Queen Amaryllis, and of Cadence hacking and wheezing after. In the moment, Cadence demanded Cheval apologize, and snapped that she raised her better than that.
In private, once the children were asleep, Cadence and Shining cried because they were happy. They loved both their daughters.
When Cheval was sixteen and Flurry eighteen, the Sparkle family decided to have Thanksgiving in the Crystal Empire. It was a contentious decision. Twilight Velvet said that the Crystal Empire always felt too formal. There were servants to do the dishes, everything was neat and pretty, and it didn’t have that cozy feeling of the old family dining room. But the family had grown, and with everypony there, they simply didn’t fit in the old house anymore.
And so Cheval stood in the corner of the royal suite, soaking in the ambient love while everypony else waited for the solid food to be ready.
Her grandparents were fussing over Shining. Twilight Velvet and Night Light were both past seventy, and their age was starting to show. Their manes had more grey hairs than not, and Shining had to raise his voice to be clearly heard.
Twilight Sparkle—simply Twilight to most, as her mother went by Velvet—was zipping from place to place. She’d lost a gift, and was panicking about it like an anxious teenager. She was a teenager, in many ways. Her ascension had halted the aging process at sixteen, and she would never mature a day henceforth. She never appeared with a stallion or with children, and no matter how many times she learned the same friendship lessons, they caught her by surprise yet again.
Light Step and Double Time were there as well, celebrating their sixteenth year as friends with benefits who refused to even acknowledge they were in a relationship much less consider getting married. Light was sketching Shining on a notepad while she waited for dinner to start. Double Time was trying to rescue him, interrupting the fussing with a story about the time Cadence put her in a jar.
Cadence was attempting to have a talk with Flurry Heart, which is to say, she was talking at Flurry Heart while Flurry sulked in the corner. Eyes downcast, wings against her sides, she acknowledged her mother only with monosyllabic utterances. Yes. No. Fine. Sure. Born an alicorn, Flurry had the unique power to age, maturing like a normal pony even as Twilight and Cadence sat frozen in time. Perhaps, ponies thought, she would one day find her level.
The whole family was together, babbling and whining and talking over each other. A servant came in and whispered in Cadence’s ear, and she raised her voice to say that dinner was ready. Everypony piled in.
Cheval too. She couldn’t eat, but the servants gave her a glass of water and put rose petals in it. The petals made it special.
“Hey,” she asked Flurry when they sat down together, “are you, you know?”
“It’s fine,” Flurry said, staring at her plate.
“Right.” Cheval buzzed her wings. “Sorry.”
“Why do you keep saying sorry for something that wasn't your fault?” Flurry snapped. She didn’t lift her eyes from the table.
“Because I am sorry,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”
Cadence cleared her throat and gave the opening speech. Everypony had to talk about what they were thankful for. Twilight was thankful she found the gift she lost—it was a bundle of books for the children. Everypony hugged and smiled and ate bread that had a lot of garlic in it. There was a main course of artisanally woven buttered catgrass, which Night Light complained was much too fancy.
After dinner, Velvet insisted on doing the dishes. It was a family tradition, she said, and an inherent part of the Thanksgiving experience. Cadence wasn’t about to let a seventy-two year old mare do the heavy lifting, but Velvet physically would not let the servants get near the dirty plates.
“Grandma,” Flurry was saying, her voice strained, “come on. Sit down. You can tell us about your new book. Servants are… you know. It’s a palace. Your kids and princes and princesses. So there’s servants, right? It’s normal.”
“It’s not what the holiday is about.” Velvet stood her ground. “Thanksgiving isn’t about food, it’s about being together as a family. Through thick and thin. And doing a giant pile of dishes is perfectly enjoyable when the ponies you love are there to do it with you.”
“Mom and I can do it,” Cheval said. Her horn glowed a soft blue, and from behind Velvet’s back, she snatched up the entire table’s worth of dirty dishes. “See? Sit down. Talk about your new book. We’ll be right back.”
“The hot water will ruin your shell,” Velvet grumbled. “It’ll hide those pretty colors.”
“Ah, but that’s how you’ll know Mom and I actually did them.” Cheval’s tone was upbeat and friendly, showing none of the strain that Flurry did. “No cheating. I promise.”
After a bit more grumbling, Velvet gave in. Cheval and Cadence collected all the dishes, sent the servants away, and undertook the long walk through the palace to the kitchens. When they arrived, they found dirty dishes everywhere. Though Thanksgiving was an Equestrian holiday, crystal ponies considered it very trendy to do whatever Princess Cadence did. The whole palace was celebrating, and there were ten kitchen servants on cleaning-duty alone.
“Let’s give it fifteen minutes,” Cadence said, with no intention whatever of doing the dishes herself. “That’ll give your grandma some time to get into her story.”
“Yeah,” Cheval said.
“You want to go for a walk outside? It’s nice.”
“No,” Cheval said. Her wings buzzed, and her gaze went down to the floor. Then she added, “I mean, yes. I mean, thank you. Sure. But, no.”
“Something wrong, dear?” Cadence tilted her head. “You know you can always talk to me about whatever’s bothering you.”
“I, um… yeah.” Cheval lifted her head, and looked at her mother head on. Her eyes were solid orange, lacking any pupils or irises. “I wanted to talk to you about something. I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. I wasn’t going to bring it up. But with what happened with Flurry…”
“Of course.” Cadence stepped forward, putting a hoof on Cheval’s shoulder. “What is it?”
“I think this would be a good time for you to send me into exile.”
“Ploughing time doesn’t stop at night!” Or so the propaganda poster said. Stuck up over a fresh concrete wall, it depicted a cheerful looking griffon driving a tractor through a field, his path lit by electrical lights.
Cheval didn’t see any rich fields on the rocky mountainside. But, in fairness, she didn’t see any tractors or electrical lights either. A sign in a cafe window informed passersby that the milk ration had been halved, and so tea was available only with lemon.
“Next!” shouted the customs griffon at the head of the line. A pony stepped up and handed over their papers.
The Griffon Nation was a country in transition, trying to catch up with its far more prosperous neighbors. Whatever the new government was doing seemed to be at best a partial success. All the buildings were very modern, made of fresh concrete and fitted with sockets for electrical lamps—but the lamps had evidently never arrived. All the guards had snappy new uniforms, but they seemed to be short of hats. Everygriffon had fresh sunglasses to keep out the mountain glare, but their winter clothing was threadbare and worn.
“Next!” the customs griffon snarled, evidently in a poor mood. The line advanced a step. Cheval was next.
In the few moments she had before she was called, she inspected her passport. The form she’d chosen for her time away was a unicorn. If she wanted to fly, she could always impersonate a griffon, but finding an excuse to practice magic would have been harder. The picture made her look a bit plain—not ugly, but academic. She had a blue coat, a sandy mane, and an unfeminine tail whose hairs stuck every which way. Her cutie mark was a collection of abstract symbols. She hadn’t put a lot of thought into it.
When noone was looking, she made one small tweak to her form to make it look more like the passport picture. Then the customs griffon called. “Next!”
She stepped up. “Papers, please.” He extended a talon, and she handed over her passport and transit permit. “Reason for visit?”
“I’m a student at the Griffonstone Institute of Science.” She flashed him an awkward smile and cleared her throat. “I’m studying math.”
After asking several more questions, the customs griffon stamped her passport twice and her transit pass once. Both documents were returned to her, and she was pointed to the exit.
It took several hours wandering the streets of Griffonstone before Cheval was able to find the campus. A gate guard checked her papers again, and pointed her to her dorm. It was one of the new buildings -- a twenty-story tall monolith made entirely of concrete. Its windows were narrow horizontal slits. The hallways were painted, but they were also painted grey. It could hold over two-thousand students.
Eventually, she found her dorm room, numbered 1432-A. She had only one small set of saddlebags for luggage, and fumbled around inside them for the key she’d been given.
Before she could find it, the door opened on its own. A small, grey griffon stood on the other side, wrapped in a purple scarf. Her frame was so slight, and her scarf so long and puffy, that it seemed she might vanish entirely into the fabric. Her coat was of a far less attractive shade, and covered in patches of dust.
“Hello?” the griffon said, her tone curt. “Can I help you?”
“I’m, uh… Cross Product,” Cheval said. “I’m your new roommate. You must be Gia.”
“Yup.” Gia stepped out the doorway and pointed back into the room. “It’s a bunk bed. You’re on the bottom.”
Their dorm room was smaller than Cheval’s closet had been back home. The bunk bed was shoved into one corner, and working space was provided in the form of two “desks” against the wall. They were not true furniture, but wooden boards mounted on hinges and affixed with chains, which could be folded up or pulled down as required. The space was so narrow that, when pulled down, the desks blocked the corridor to the bed.
“Well, it’s not a palace but… we have a window!” Cheval said, keeping her tone bright. Five feet off the floor was a narrow slit in the concrete wall, through which a small sliding pane allowed fresh air to carry. “So what are you studying?”
When Gia didn’t answer, Cheval looked back. The room and the hallway outside it were empty. Gia had wandered off.
She bit her lip and tossed her bag down onto the bed—lower bunk. There was a pile of paper on the pillow. Most of it was forms from the school, but she spotted a sealed envelope under the clutter. It was addressed to her, with an Equestrian stamp.
The picked it up and tore the top off, her eyes scanning over the letter inside.
It was from Flurry Heart.
Huh. Well let us see what new things this universe has to show us.
Definetly some questions about the exile.
So happy to be back in this universe.
So is what happened with Flurry meant to be a mystery at this point, or did I miss a story?
9527423
It's meant to be a mystery at this point! Something that had Flurry out of sorts, to be sure.
9527368
So am I! I wasn't sure I could write a third story in it, but I ended up feeling very happy with this one.
9527366
It's a very nice exile. You know, considering.
"She was a teenager, in many ways. Her ascension had halted the aging process at sixteen, and she would never mature a day henceforth. She never appeared with a stallion or with children, and no matter how many times she learned the same friendship lessons, they caught her by surprise yet again."
...Well, that took a sudden turn! :D
I suppose that's one way to continually embody friendship...
edit: (...Though I don't remember off the top of my head whether we already knew that. Well, perhaps not to this extent, at least.)
"wings against her side, she"
"wings against her sides, she"?
"Your kids and princes and"
"Your kids are princes and"?
"ponies you love and there to"
"ponies you love are there to"?
"you about something. “I’ve been thinking"
"you about something. I’ve been thinking"?
"informed passerbys that the"
"informed passersby that the"?
"Five feet off the floor"
Hm. What's the average pony height in this universe? Or griffon height? Can they even see out of that?
...Well, I assume that what's going on with Flurry and the exile will be explained eventually. :)
Wasn't expecting to see this story! :D
It takes a certain philosophical and aesthetic mindset to paint concrete gray.
Loving this already, Jaxie.
Naming your filly "Cheval" , when you are a pony like race.... It's like a human naming their child "Monkey" , you have to wonder if they are cruel or just that lacking in the naming department
Is twenty years right? If Cheval is sixteen that doesn't seem right since Light Step and Double Time didn't get together together until after Cheval was given over to Cadence and Shining Armor.
Also makes me wonder how Light Step and Twilight get along now that Light Step is physically more than twice her sister's visible age and (hopefully) mental maturity. It makes her the big "little" sister.
This part hit me unexpectedly hard. Poor Twilight.
9527425
It is a pretty nice exile; she’s not even imprisoned!
Well, except for having the bottom bunk. That’s like being imprisoned, kinda.
I'm not sure I buy what you're doing with Twilight, from a canon standpoint. We've seen in the show that her character has grown both physically (her model has gotten taller) and mentally since season three. It's a really interesting idea, though, and I wouldn't mind if this was an AU. Still, I'm definitely hooked so far.
I really wnjoyed the previous two, so I'm looking forward to this one. Anyone getting a communist vibe from the Griffons here? GLORY TO ARSTOKA.
Also, damn, that short mention of Twilight is kinda depressing.
>Your kids and princes and princesses
should probably be "your kids are"
9527480
Recall that in the last story, Twilight was afraid this was the case. Now it's confirmed!
And Cadence is forever in her late twenties (or early thirties, I don't have a specific age in mind), just at the age when ponies are getting married and really coming to understand love.
In her mind, she and Shining will always be newlyweds.
See this is why you're awesome and in the forward of my anthology book. :D
I’m excited to see what happens..
9527619
To quote the last story:
9527693
Whoopsiedoodle. That's a plot hole. Corrected, with thanks.
They get along a lot better.
Twilight is forever sixteen, but she knows she's forever sixteen. She can't stop getting flustered over boys and friendship problems, but she can recognize that she's doing it. Having a "big sister" around to talk her through things is helpful. It gives them something to bond over.
Light, for her part, isn't sure how to feel about Twilight's eternal youth. She both pities and envies Twilight.
9527842
Just to remind you what kind of story this is!
9527896
"Papers, please."
Also, thanks for pointing out that typo. Corrected!
9527889
Added the AU tag for clarity. That was my bad! Glad you're enjoying it so far.
YAY SEQUAL.
Ooooooooooh, you liar. You said you hadn't been writing.
…
…
9528176
I wrote this right after that conversation!
9528202
More please
9528202
How the hell crystal empire lost war again changeling
9528277
This is the third story in a series! You don't need to read the first two to understand it, but if you want to read the first two, they explain the war.
9528289
What i know is that changeling need love
Seems bit edgy and directionless. Why did she had to be adopted? What's up with "exile"? One paragraph she's celebrating with her family, next - she's a runaway.
9527996
"Recall that in the last story, Twilight was afraid this was the case. Now it's confirmed!"
Yay? :D
(And thanks for the reminder.)
(And neat. :))
"And Cadence is forever in her late twenties (or early thirties, I don't have a specific age in mind), just at the age when ponies are getting married and really coming to understand love."
Ah, thanks.
I wonder what ages Celestia and Luna stopped at, if they have the same effect?
"In her mind, she and Shining will always be newlyweds."
:)
"See this is why you're awesome and in the forward of my anthology book. :D"
Heh, thanks. :)
9528002
"Whoopsiedoodle. That's a plot hole. Corrected, with thanks. "
Oh, whoops! Sorry for not pointing that out. Particularly since I did at first think it sounded a bit odd but then (apparently unfortunately mis)remembered a way it might work, and was too low on time to check.
"Light, for her part, isn't sure how to feel about Twilight's eternal youth. She both pities and envies Twilight."
Yeah. I mean, on the one hoof, it is better than eternal life at, say, a creaky ninety-five, but...
Awww they're so cute together
I wonder if they'll stop being stubborn and marry before the parents get too old.
Poor Twiggles, her friendships must be getting weird. And her toy collection big.
Well, that's certainly different from how we were last left off in their relationship. I thought they would never see each other again.
9528002 What kind of a changeling fic would it be without holes? :)
Ooooh, loved the first two, very excited for this one.
Heh, that bit with Cheval telling off her bio mom was priceless and heartwarming. Definitely a win for nurture over nature.
9528509
For the adoption part, go read at least the previous story. Preferably both previous stories.
As for the exile, it seems to be implied that it will be explained later, so just quit whining and be patient.
Hmm... is the picture on the cover of Cheval correct? I wish to draw her but seeing that she has orange eyes in the story gives me pause. Or is that just her changing it up?
9530016
It's more or less correct -- I wasn't quite able to find a picture with the eye color I wanted. But she's a shapeshifter, so let's say she's trying something new.
Can I read this without reading Courtesans? I read The Tird Wheel and loved it, but sex makes me uncomfortable, unless it's a very brief mention.
Well now. Always nice to see more of this universe, especially with an opening like that. I like Cheval already; I especially like how in terms of both her attitude towards her family and her approach to education, she's Light Step's polar opposite. I just hope she doesn't starve to death halfway through her first semester.
9527842
Agreed. That's the kind of twisted curse that only the truly devious cook up. "May you live forever, your mind eternally that of a teenager." And I can only imagine how it strained her relationship with her friends as they outgrew her.
9530157
Yes, you can read this story without reading the others.
9527425
Is it just me or does that "student building" look more like a converted prison than anything else? A few bars and iron doors is all that's missing.
9530219
They probably used the same blueprint, with the absolute minimum effort put in to convert it away from being an actual prison. Kind of interesting to see really, the similarities to the Soviet Union are not coincidental here, this sort of thing tends to be the result when a massive country subjects itself to forced industrialization.
9530219
9530335
Yup. Communist brutalist architecture is fascinating to study -- not so nice to actually live in.
9528289
Think I will, cause i like the premise but confused in some areas. Like if the Queen wanted the kingdom, why didn't she just take it since she won the war? Was it a Pyrrhic victory and all she could do is demand they take her daughter as an heir?
9530418
Probably more like continuing the war to the bitter end would have turned it into a Pyrrhic victory, with one side being severely mauled and the other being annihilated. Real life is often like this, wars rarely drag on to the bitter end with one side or both refusing to back down; as doing so can inflict catastrophic damage to both sides.
Things are looking up for this family, and im glad things are starting to work out. Its also nice that Amaryllis' little plan didnt work out the way she wanted, hehehe. Im looking forward to seeing what happens next!
Read through the trilogy so far yesterday and really enjoyed it! Looking forward to updates from here on out
I was attracted by the concept alone. Interesting stuff — my eyebrow is r a i s e d
This chapter is kind of paced kind of... weird. I just felt like not enough time was spent getting intimate with the story. Way too much cold narration. Fortunately, that's about the only problem I spotted.
And I am in LOVE with this description right here:
This is actually brilliant. I could pick apart how this is such great "texture," but I'll look silly. Ask me if you want me to praise it, cos I will do so gladly. I promise there was more to enjoy than just that, though!
9530214
Oh, thank you! How strong is the 'sex' in Courtesans? I love your work, so if it's just talking about sex, then I'll probably read it soon!
9531469
One short scene no explicit description. No smut to any degree, just veiled references.
9531586
Right, will be reading it pronto! Thank you again!
For a species that feeds itself by giving love, I wonder if that leaves them somewhat vulnerable to abuse (making themselves see the good in persons in which there is none, or they starve). In which case, Flurry's letter is all the more touching.
Unless you decide to gauge out my heart next chapter and have Flurry's letter be a dramatic reveal that she has pony cancer.
9527842
Same. As someone who's less than pleased with the latter seasons, I was about to comment on exactly that almost word for word.