Egress

by Grey Vicar

Chapter 14: Flurry Heart

Tea and crumpets. This soon in the morning. She had barely raised the sun, barely taken the time to appreciate her work before being pulled into a nightmare with tea and crumpets. Flurry Heart silently sipped her tea in front of her, taking her time, like she was mocking her. Twilight was cold. Cold and empty, like the dead of space.

She sipped her tea. She’d rather have had coffee. Coffee made her feel good. Coffee took away that pounding headache she had every morning. Coffee allowed her not to think about things she did not want to think about.

“Auntie—“

Twilight must have glared at her, for Flurry stopped in her tracks, smiled wanly, and took a sip of tea before continuing. “—Princess Twilight, it’s good to finally be able to see you. It’s been what, almost five hundred years now since I’ve seen you last?”

“Why are you here?” Twilight stared at her tea, pointedly avoiding Flurry Heart’s gaze. There was a cold anger inside her, threatening to start boiling over at a moment’s notice.

She’d rather her aides did not have to witness that.

“I am here, as I said, on a diplomatic visit.” Flurry Heart sipped her tea. Somehow, she managed to make the small dainty sip sound like a ringing bell in Twilight’s ears. “I am also here to visit a family member that has, for all I can tell, decided to remove me entirely from her life.”

“When something causes a patient pain,” Twilight said, “the first step to recovery is to remove the object causing pain.”

Flurry didn’t show any sign of even having heard her, and sipped at her tea with infuriating grace. She bowed her head to the servant who refilled her cup, and her small silver spoon traced an elegant arc in the air before stirring the tea in such a way that it actually made the steam from the hot beverage take the form of a trail of small hearts fading into the air. The display brought some hushed whispers of amazement from the nearby servants. She had to stop herself from openly sneering. Simpletons, awed by the simplest display of royalty. She mostly stopped herself because the relations between Equestria and the Crystal Empire were tense lately, due in no small part to her continually ignoring the small city-state. She had enough decorum not to cause a diplomatic incident because of her displeasure. Besides, Noble Duty was watching from the corner, silently scribbling in her notepad and scratching her head with her pen. Twilight would get a talking to if she wasn’t on her best behaviour. She idly wondered how Noble Duty took notes despite her blindness, but she must have simply had so much practice it was as natural as breathing to her.

“I trust you’ve been doing well?” Flurry Heart wiped the little spoon on a napkin and set it back on her saucer, never breaking eye contact with Twilight. “Equestria’s golden age has been the talk of the world for some time. It’s good to see your health has improved. After the first fifty years of isolation, I thought you had contracted an incurable debilitating illness and that you would step down from the throne, but it seems my fears have been unfounded, and you are well on your way to become one of the most acclaimed monarchs of this land.”

Twilight felt herself redden. It was true, she had often lied and feigned illness to avoid visiting the Crystal Empire herself, and avoid meeting with its envoys. To see Flurry Heart call her out so callously on it though… then again, ironically, the brat had no heart. How could she simply go about like nothing ever happened while… Sparks ran over Twilight’s cup and the tea started bubbling dangerously inside. She closed her eyes and forced herself to take a deep breath. In… Out… Calm down. Calm down. The bubbling receded. When she opened her eyes, Flurry Heart had an eyebrow raised at her. She took a sip of tea, gestured for a servant to refill her cup again. Twilight had barely touched hers. “You didn’t really believe that. We’re alicorns. We can hardly ever get sick except if we strain ourselves past our limits.”

“Indeed.” Flurry Heart let out a hearty laugh. “Hence why I thought you had contracted an incurable, debilitating illness.”

“I know my limits.”

“Clearly not.” Flurry Heart looked at her in disapproval. “I’ve heard of the things you do. Ponies here are… eager to talk about how worried they are for you.” She looked away, idly stirring her new cup of tea. “I was particularly surprised by the maids telling me they always take back your plates to the kitchen half-finished, except your morning pancakes. What happened to the Twilight who would take me to visit the local burger joints and empty their reserves because she was so hungry from all the work she was doing? From what I’ve heard, you’ve been pushing yourself even harder, and you eat just a fraction of what you used to eat. How can you do that? I know how much alicorns need to eat.”

“I’m simply not very hungry these days.”

“These last few hundred years?”

Twilight looked away. Her entire body ached. Stars, she needed to get away from here. What was she even doing entertaining Flurry Heart’s stupid fancies in the first place? “Maybe I’m trying to be careful about my weight,” she said with more bitterness than she intended. She couldn’t find it in herself to care. Not for somepony who clearly did not care about anything important herself. How the Crystal Empire had not yet fallen with an unfeeling brat at its head was a mystery to her. “Or maybe some alicorns don’t need to eat that much in order to function properly. Maybe I’m taking it easy, trying to see if the easy princess life is better than working hard. We both know I wouldn’t be the first one to test that theory.”

Flurry Heart stiffened. “You don’t mean that.”

“What if I do?” She tasted bile. “Did you know how hard I had to work to be taken seriously? I was a nobody, ponies didn’t even want to acknowledge me as their princess at first. I gained their trust and respect because I made them happy, because I took care of their problems. Because I cared. I wish I had been lucky enough to be the long lost daughter of some queen who everypony worshiped as soon as she stepped on the throne.” Her teacup cracked between her hooves. “And even then it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Even now it’s not enough. There’s always more to do, there’s always more to… Maybe I just decided to take a page out of her book and spend my days attending tea parties and looking pretty.” She hissed. “It worked for her, hadn’t it?”

Flurry Heart’s voice grew cold. “The Crystal Empire needed a figurehead more than it needed yet another functionary. Spearheading diplomatic relationships with other countries, drudging back a long-lost history and making its children fit with the modern era was more important than drafting a slightly different administrative document every day. You haven’t seen how much it weighed on her to be a strange pony from another time needing to guide traditionalist strangers into the modern age.”

“She was all but prophesied to lead the Crystal Ponies. They would have followed her off the ledge of a cliff if she’d told them it was what was good for them. All that work you talked about, that could have been accomplished by a pretty statue. While she was pretty sitting on her throne and batting her eyelashes, somepony else did all the work. Who spent his youth patrolling dangerous wilderness? Who came close to death time and time again keeping the borders safe? But no one remembers. No one cares about him. It was always about the precious little princess.”

“Are you still bitter about that?!” Flurry Heart slammed her hooves on the table, and every servant in the room hurried away from the two royals. Doors slammed as they deserted the area. Noble Duty kept watching, her quill scratching away. “He loved her! He chose her!”

“He did all the work!”

“Just because she wasn’t going around kicking monsters or working herself sick doesn’t mean you get to speak about her that way! What’s wrong with you?” Flurry Heart’s teacup had stopped steaming. Frostbite was making its way up her hooves and down on the table’s varnished wood.

“I’d rather work myself to death to serve my people than sit around looking pretty,” Twilight snapped. “What’s the point of immortality, of being an alicorn, of being a princess, if I don’t use it to help? Why should I sit on my flank like a lifeless doll, basking in the glory of the throne while others risk everything for my sake?” She closed her eyes. Gold and white. The entirety of Equestria resting on her shoulders. Strong like a monolithic fortress. Twilight herself wasn’t strong enough. How dared that prissy princess pretend like she had been handling nearly that same pressure?

Flurry Heart stayed silent for a long moment. “So, that’s how you saw her? That’s really how you saw her?” The look on her face was one of utter shock and confusion. “For almost a hundred years you two were so close. You were… you are family. The best family I’ve ever had. Or at least I thought…” She gritted her teeth. “Was that all an act? Did you really hate us like that?”

Hot tea was dripping on Twilight’s thighs. Her cup had long since shattered, a puddle of scalding liquid dripping off the table’s edge. “You were the best family I had… until you weren’t. And when push came to shove, she chose the easy way. She left me behind. That put things in perspective for me.” She looked away, through the window. The sun shone bright today. Its light was warm. Searing. “They all left me behind.”

Flurry Heart took a deep breath. “Alright. Alright then. I can see this is going nowhere for now.” She rose, and nodded to the servant picking up her cup. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? You—“

“While I’m here,” Flurry Heart said, removing a scroll case from somewhere under her fine silken cloak, “I might as well pass some new agreements I drafted to your ministers. Hopefully this will smooth out the relation between our realms.”

“‘While I’m here’?” Twilight scowled at her. “This was never a diplomatic visit in the first place, was it?”

“I never pretended it was.” Flurry Heart looked at her flatly as she rose, and her horn shone briefly as her magic smoothed out her cloak. “I know you’re too smart to fool, auntie. This is me trying to help you. Despite everything, this is what I need to do. This is what I know I need to do, even if you— . I’m sorry you felt so insulted by somepony trying to help you that you felt you had to—“ She bit her lower lip and looked away. “I’ll be in my rooms. If you’ll excuse me, Princess.”

She tossed her mane and walked out, trailed by her attendants. Twilight wanted to scream at her to leave and never come back, but something held her back.

Her niece’s perfect composure at cracked if only briefly, and in that moment, Twilight had seen herself.

Comments

[Quill_Weave22]

Read the entire thing in one sitting, eager to see where this goes! 👀