Be Still

by AugieDog

2 - Shun

"Now that," Smolder says, crooking a claw at my mobile self from where she leans against my wall, "is what I'm talking about."

I've stepped out of the opposite wall after having manifested with another of the potential ball gowns she's been describing. Fortunately, Ocellus has begun providing sketches to illustrate a few of the more rococo elements of Smolder's designs.

Silverstream has her forepaws pressed to the side of her face, her eyes shimmering in the light from my fixtures. "It's so amazing! Like a whole cake come to life!"

"Hmmm..." Yona narrows her eyes at my mobile. "Yona not sure. Making dress all from magic seems like cheating."

"Oh, c'mon!" Little gray puffs rise from Smolder's nostrils. "Tree's nothing but magic! You try to put real cloth on her, it'd just fall right through or something!"

With a nod of her big head, Yona sits back and smiles. "True. And prob'bly better this way. That much fabric tip anycreature but Yona right over sideways."

Ocellus is looking back and forth between her drawings and me. "It is kind of a lot when you see it put together like that, isn't it?"

"What?" Smolder pushes away from the wall, her arms akimbo. "It's perfect! Tree, tell 'em it's perfect!"

It's not, of course. The folds of peach-colored taffeta, the layers of caparisons, the lace and the brocade work and the tassels and ribbons and bows: even with it and me being completely insubstantial, it feels too unwieldy to allow for easy movement. Seeking a gentle way of conveying this idea, I reach for humor and nod to Silverstream. "Well, I'm certain that I'd find it uncomfortable to be mistaken for a cake."

The only one who doesn't giggle is Smolder. Instead, she rolls her eyes and says, "Fine. If you wanna do something boring." Her expression softens, looking upon my raiment much like Gallus looks upon Silverstream when he thinks she won't notice: he and Sandbar, I was informed when the girls arrived, have been dispatched to Ponyville this evening to procure reservations on some appropriate tuxedoes for the upcoming soiree. "But c'mon, Tree!" Smolder is continuing. "You've got a chance none of us could ever even dream about! You could wear something literally impossible! I'm talking frou-frous and gee-gaws and accessories up the wazoo!"

"Wazoo?" Silverstream blinks at her. "Is that near Griffonstone?"

Smolder puffs more smoke at her before turning back to my mobile. "The point is: this is your opportunity to show Equestria something they've never seen before, and it's something only you can do! Don't waste it!"

For the second time in as many days, I find myself flustered. The way she presents this outlandish costume makes it sound like a positive, but I can't quite bring myself to see it that way. I recall my bubble analogy from last night and begin wondering if I can similarly select the positive portions of this dilemma while eliminating the negative.

While I'm still searching for a way to do this, Silverstream lands beside Smolder. "That's one fun thing about Tree, sure," Silverstream says. "But another fun thing about her is that she's a tree! A magical tree that can reach out with a part of herself that's an even sparklier version of Princess Twilight—" She gasps and clasps her foreclaws. "Sparklier than Sparkle! Tree, you should totally get a shirt that says that!" Blinking, she shakes her head. "But sending her to a party with all her natural magic covered up, that's like, oh, I don't know, like putting hats and gloves on flowers." She leaps into a hover. "Which would be the cutest!"

Focusing on our faces, I adjust my mobile's expression to reflect the blankness I see from most of my friends.

Silverstream continues clapping her paws and giggling for a long moment, then she again blinks and shakes her head. "I mean, cute for flowers. But Tree's already all glowing and twinkling and everything. Do we really want to hide that?"

"Hmmm..." Smolder rubs her chin. "Yeah. 'Cause why bring the Tree of Harmony to a party if nocreature can tell she's the Tree of Harmony?" Eyes partially closed, she points a single claw at my mobile self. "I'm seeing a wreath of leaves around the top of your head—simple, classic—and golden shoes that lash up over your fetlocks."

Ocellus is sketching away frantically, her magic flashing her pencil around. "Like this!" she says, and her pad of paper spins to show a short alicorn figure dressed in the just-mentioned wreath and shoes.

Less than a moment's thought produces the items upon my mobile self. "Less cake-like," I say, "but very nice nonetheless."

The others are nodding, and Yona stomps a hoof. "All Tree's friends can wear same sort of shoes!" She cocks her head. "Well, not Sandbar. And not Gallus. That style shoe not go with tuxedo." Blinking, she looks at Smolder. "Smolder ever wear shoes?"

Smolder points at my mobile's hooves. "For this, I'll make an exception." She smiles slowly around at the group, her teeth sharp and gleaming in my light. "'Cause when we're all done up, we're gonna hit this party like a pyroclastic flow." Flaring her wings, she springs for the door. "Tree, we'll see you tomorrow, but right now, we've got fabric to hunt down before the stores close!"

Yona and Ocellus follow her laughing, but Silverstream calls, "You girls go on ahead! I've got to grab my exotic flora textbook, then I'll catch up!"

"Okay!" Ocellus answers, and I watch the three of them charge downstairs, across my main room, and out the front at the same time as I glance around my several study rooms for Silverstream's book.

Not finding it, I look more closely at her flickering eyes and the tightness around the base of her beak. Is she employing subterfuge? "Silverstream?" I try to inject some warmth into my tone, but as always, I can hear no change. "Is something wrong?"

She settles lightly to my floor, her usual exuberance gone. "I just...I wanted to ask..." Her swallow is so loud, I can clearly hear it. "How do you do it, Tree? How?"

A quick review of the evening's conversation up to this point doesn't provide me any antecedents for the pronoun 'it.' So I say, "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"You!" Her wings flap her once more into the air. "You're so important and ancient and big and everything, but you're still friendly and fun and great to hang out with! I'm never gonna be like that! Never!"

Uncertainty bubbles through me now, and it's much less pleasant than my previous two batches of imaginary bubbles. "First, I'll thank you for the compliments, but after doing that, I'll have to dispute the notion that you're not friendly and fun and great to hang out with. Because I would consider you such, and by all indications, our friends consider you such as well."

"Well, now, sure!" She waves her forepaws. "But what about when Aunt Novo retires and Skystar becomes queen and I have to go back to Mount Aris and Seaquestria and join her court and be the princess who went to friendship school and knows everything about how hippogriffs and hippocamps can better reintegrate with the other cultures around us? What about when I hafta stop being silly and cute and hafta start being serious and stone-faced? What about then, huh? What about then?"

Her steady wingbeats become jittery, and she drops to my floor, her paws covering her face. "I can't go back! I can't! So I'll stay here and I won't answer Skystar's letters and when she sends guards to come looking for me, I'll put on a pair of glasses with big, bushy eyebrows, tell them my name's Polaris, and say that I work in the school cafeteria!" Her voice gets shakier and shakier. "I'll never see Mount Aris again! Not ever! And my mother and father and brothers and cousins and aunts and uncles, they'll all be so disappointed! And they might never learn the right way to be friends with yaks and dragons and changelings if I'm not there to help!"

She sucks in a massive amount of air, then sobs it out with the words, "But that...that's okay if it means I don't turn into somecreature Gallus—and the rest of them, too—wouldn't ever wanna be friends with anymore!"

Her mounting distress triggers me to throw my mobile forward that I might wrap her in a hug as a friend ought. Halfway through the action, however, I remember that I'm as insubstantial as a sunbeam.

But to extend the analogy, sunbeams are also warm and comforting, and I concentrate on being those two things when I reach her: a slight alteration of my usual manifestation spell generates a small amount of heat, and I lower my voice, attempt the sort of modulation I hear from others in these emotional situations. "You'll always be you, Silverstream, no matter what role you have to play. I'll offer as an example for your consideration Princess Twilight. Has she seemed appreciably different since assuming sole dominion of Equestria?"

"She...she hasn't..." Silverstream isn't leaning against me, but she is leaning into me, her hide and hair and feathers pressing the external envelope of my mobile most unusually. I have no solid surface, of course, but the warming effect I've added to the spell seems to be interacting with her outermost subatomic particles in a way that on a macroscopic level is indistinguishable from...from—

From touch. We're not just interacting. We're touching.

With a sniff, she nestles her face against my chest. "You really think I can be as good a princess as Headmare Twilight?"

Unable to keep my mobile's hoof from shaking, I reach up and stroke the edges of Silverstream's mane, the sweet tickling sensation sending actual sparks flickering throughout my entire complex.

She's asked me a question, though, and as a friend, I must defer my own enjoyment until I have helped alleviate her unhappiness. "You're already a good princess," I tell her, and an example of her aptitude for the position stands ready for me to offer. "Consider a few moments ago when you mediated the dispute between Smolder and the rest of us about my gown for the ball."

"Mediated?" She pulls back, her eyes wide and glistening. "I just...just said what I thought was right! I didn't, y'know, get all pondery and brow-wrinkly and everything."

"And I?" I can feel the warmth I'm generating soften my smile, can hear it inflect my words. "Do you see me pondering and brow-wrinkling?"

"I don't see that..." Stepping back even further, she peers intently at my forehead. "But, I mean, you're a tree. Can you wrinkle your brow?"

At this point, I feel as if I can do anything, but since I wish to make a point, I say, "I don't think I can. Because I don't need to." Reaching out, I very carefully touch my hoof to her chest just below her pearl-shard necklace. "And neither do you. Your enthusiasm for the world will touch your fellow hippogriffs, will melt their fears, and will help lead them forth to embrace the magic you've already found."

She quivers in place for a moment, then she's swarming around me, arms, wings, chin, neck, her entire body hugging me. And while she does largely pass through me, the sensation is not unlike that of the breeze from off the Everfree rustling my leaves and boughs. This is much gentler, however, while also being more solid, a pressure that braces me rather than jostles me. And do I feel the drops of her happy tears along the curve of my back? There's something there that's both similar and dissimilar to the rain that splashes against me when the unnatural nature of the Everfree allows such things.

With so much surging through, against, over, and around me, I fantasize briefly about breaking my upper portions away from my roots, about sprouting legs and arms and taking to the open road with Silverstream and Gallus and the rest of my friends riding along. Be still? I want to shout to my older, colder, more crystalline parts. How can I possibly take such ideas seriously? How?

Nonetheless, the vibrations from deep within me continue resolving themselves into those two words: Be still. Be still.

I continue to ignore them.

With a sniffle, Silverstream sits back on my floor and wipes her eyes. "Thank you," she says. "I've been kind of a little bit worried about this."

Flush with success, I decide to try another analogy. "And like Princess Twilight, you'll have your friends to help you when you become the hippogriff princess in charge of foreign affairs. You'll have trusted contacts in high places throughout the known world whom you can approach about any matter." I manage a shrug. "Well, except for Gallus, of course."

Her mane and crest feathers bristle. "What do you mean by that?" And I can't help but notice the slight edge that comes into her voice.

Oh, how it thrills me to be practicing subterfuge! "That he's a wonderful friend, nocreature can deny. But as Griffonstone has no discernible government, he will be unable to assist you in any official capacity the way the others in our friend group will."

"So?" Her bristling relaxes, but she still looks as if she wants to complain about something even though she isn't quite sure what. "You said it yourself: Gallus is a wonderful friend. I never would've made it through that test you gave us last year if he hadn't found me, and he's strong and smart and supportive and cute—" Her pink face goes even pinker, and she clasps her paws before her chest. "And you can't tell him I said that! Ever!"

"Of course not." Winking at her just then is as easy as adjusting the nitrogen content of the soil surrounding me and a great deal more satisfactory. "That's what friends are for."

Comments

[RainbowDoubleDash]

Yeah, I am definitely loving the Tree in this.

Though it does strike me as a little odd that no one is bringing up that the Tree looks like Twilight and therefore Gallus will look like he’s attending the ball with a doppelgänger of Twilight.

[Scyphi]

What about when I hafta stop being silly and cute and hafta start being serious and stone-faced?

What, you think Skystar will one day be serious and stone-faced? Really? It's adorable you actually think that, Silverstream.

For that matter, Novo wasn't even really all that serious and stone-faced herself, though she did certainly understand that there was a time and a place.

Which I already know Silverstream understands too, so she's not giving herself enough credit here, but still.

[Ri2]

The thought of Novo retiring surprised me...but then again, Celestia did, so I suppose it's plausible.

[Evil Paladin]

As the Tree is giving Silver Stream a hug, i imagine the tree maintaining its creepy wide open unblinking smile.

Its creepiness and its excitement at interacting with the Student 6 in different ways makes the Tree adorable!

[Yoshifan30]

So basically the tree is having One of those feelings that she never Experience before and its pretty sweet how she Develop more emotion and feelings When she's like this to see more character in her and its also cute how she tried to comfort silverstream when she was upset thats sweet

[Yoshifan30]

The tree of harmony almost remind me of a game called Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity when the Hydreigon is the Pokémon form of the Voice of Life And became a solid pokemon to help the heros which thats awesome

Which that really blows my mind now the tree of harmony can do that too 😀