Cadance
Cadance
There are alicorns and then there are alicorns. There are those who may hear songs and those who heard the Song at the dawn of time.
Oh, but our bed is so cold and like animal magnetism at work I can feel the empty imprint you leave when you go. It’s like a hole dug by hooves and everything leans in towards, even me.
Shining is gone. He’s out there, wandering. Doing something. Being elsewhere and our bed is so cold. I’ve retired and court is long over and our rooms are empty. I ate lunch alone, and I stare out the window alone. Lonely the head that wears the crown.
But there are alicorns and there are alicorns and it is different. My aunts can stay alone for a long time, but I’m just a pony. Ponies were not made to live alone; mutual help and companionship.
I roll around in our bed and think about Shining. It is completely beneath me, but it’s fun and I laugh.
But he’s out in the cold, and I wonder what he’s doing.
I used to love watching him on the parade ground. It’s my curse: I can’t resist a stallion in armor. And how heroic he looked, those bright and alert eyes. How straight and tall he stood, proud and how he smiled at me when he knew no one could see him.
So he was a fool too, but a good fool.
This is a routine now for us. We sit together on the dual throne for a few weeks of happiness. But then he will fidget. Court will seem overlong. I’ll catch him staring out the window. Sometimes he’ll accost some poor guardspony to spar with and I have to help bandage the innocent and I fuss and Shining feels foolish but nothing changes. He starts to walk more slowly.
And of course, in the end, I always let him go. He skips off to patrol or war or whatever it is like the colt who used to pull my tail when we were young.
I ask him why this happens but he won’t tell me. Or at least I think he won’t, for his answers have words but they mean nothing and his shrugs tell more than they do. He tries to tell me that he’s restless, but I know he’s not without rest because he sleeps whenever I let him and he’d never leave bed if I didn’t prod him to. He tells me that he feels useless but I need him. This always makes him sigh when I say that he’s helping me. I hate that sigh. He makes me angry, but he knows that and we feel foolish and I let him go without being mad at him for leaving and he thanks me and in the morning...
In the morning he is gone to do whatever it is that tugs at him.
The mountain gods worry me. But Shining will come back.
I know he will. He must. The Dual Throne sits half empty and the bed has only his imprint and these things mean he must come back, because nature abhors a vacuum and it is very important. He’s brave. He’s strong.
It is sad that we call them that because they are not. The Mitou are just things that cannot decide how many legs to run on and how we should not fear. No, I suppose fear, but not live in fear of. They can die just as we can.
Shining isn’t afraid, not in a visible way. Mostly, he wears a stern face or a kind one; masks, but both are lovely. They comfort my ponies and give them hope. Hope is like love. I understand hope. I think.
Hope hope hope.
It’s rare to have so much time to myself. I’m lucky, really, that the Empire doesn’t work quite like Equestria. Ministers and offices work for me. A whole system in place to help.
Time passes and the sun sinks lower in the sky. It worries me.
Of course, he won’t be back for some time.
The Empire is warm, and the city itself is in Spring, but I know outside the border where he is it must be snowing. Snowing reminds me of—
—We were young and Twilight was so small. I wasn’t babysitting then, I just wanted somepony to play with. I still had my Henosian accent and I’d only been in Canterlot for a few months. But Twilight was asleep or had the cold, I don’t remember. But Shining wanted to play and we ran—
I haven’t thought about Henosis in a long time. Well, no, it hasn’t been something I have actively thought about. But I’ve seen it in dreams. I see it whenever Shining is gone too long out there in the snow. I see the Grand Hall of Dawn Castle and Mother smiling from the Throne of Gold down at me. I dream about tapestries that go on for miles and being a filly with wild hair and little wings that I cannot use yet.
My hooves always sound so loud in the quiet empty halls. Dawn Castle is so large and there are not as many ponies in it as are in Canterlot Palace. Canterlot will frighten me with it’s crowds. Here I spend much of the day in the company of only a few ponies or all alone.
I look out the window again, suddenly tired.
The sun is slowly sinking. Aunt Celestia is letting it go to bed. Like a foal.
The word foal makes me sad.
I will tell Shining all about Henosis when he gets back. He likes my stories. I think.
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This looks incredible. Will read!
Probably soon at that.
And I'm busy
And this looks worth it
But when dont your stories?
No no seriously, continue this.
I REALLY like it.
2080825 Shhhh
You calm down over there with comments.
I'm finishing it.
I think you're missing an "is" there.
Wasn't the second one italicized before?
Cyne...
What?
Double spaces.
Is Cadence pregnant?
2081601 She's not.
2081610
Awwww.
2081612
Will she ever be?
And you say I'm fast! This is your second story in two days! Enjoyable, nonetheless.
2081885 The difference is that I spam a bunch of crap and you write ponies goin to Cracker Barrel and it's beautiful
2081904 but... but those fancy words and all those... what do you call them... feels! I just write about Mac and his pegasus fetish/Twilight and hers. Everypony loves pegasi.
2081974 Nah this one sucks
but it's been sitting in my Gdoc
2080942 Wow I managed 4 comments in 10 minutes AND read both halves
I feel great
2083476 I love As I Lay Dying and I was reading it coming home from Texas (fitting, no?) and I came to this one line
And it's one of my favorite. I put my book down this time in the plane and had a weird sort of vision (it helps that I had earlier been thinking about the line "Give me love over life; the sweet softer ground!" from a Coheed song) of Cadance languishing on their bed while Shining is off in trouble, but she doesn't know and all she can think about is how this time she feels like he ain't comin' back and her thoughts turn inwards towards Motherhood and all that sort of conjugal stuff
I write female characters because I do not understand
and also you liked that line? I thought it was sort of overdone/cliche.
2103770 I think I got that off of Star Trek or Star Wars and corrupted the spelling
I have no idea.
They're abominable snowmen!
Very nice. Not much else to say, really. Keep it up, Cynewulf.
2158472 For me, I'm using it as her homeland.
You have given me permission to introduce you to my favorite artist!
Henosis, by Equestria Prevails
S/he has kind of made up a bunch of realms in this world around Equestria, and it's really neat! You should totes check Equestria Prevails out. Henosis is that picture though, and you can see both her "mother" and her home. (Cadance being her daughter is something I made up.)
This, on the other hand, is pretty damn perfect. Cadance is a princess but a relatable princess, one who connects with mortal ponies and whose character feels like one of them more than Celestia or Luna ever do, and you've definitely captured that here.
2180783 This whole fic was an excuse to write this weird Cadance stream of conciousness
Okay, this could be either the sleep deprivation or my raging pro-Faulkner bias talking, but I don't think it is: You may just be the best author on this site. I've been watching you for a long time and have read almost everything you've posted, all the while mentally indexing you as One Of Our Greats and/or A God Among Ponies-- but it only hit me today, as I lingered over the imprints and the vacuums and the silent pleas in this underappreciated treasure, that you might be actually the best. Your delicate characterization, your ear for poetry, your always chilling choice of words, and your ability to hint at complex, ambiguous emotions only half-understood by the ones who hold them all leave me in awe. Everything you write is suffused with a dull gray light, sun locked away behind clouds. I love the atmosphere you create. Thank you for writing, and thank you for sharing with the rest of us.
2617697 I'm really grateful for your kind words!
This story means a lot to me, though it doesn't seem like it.
It was kind of how I escaped from my grandmother's last days. Sitting in the plane, writing about Shining and Cadance, missing my own specialest of someponies and wondering about how it would be like to be someone different.
Thankya, sai.
Short, and not that good, but sad
For a man who loves to be at home, you have remarkable insight into the mind of someone driven to go out from a warm place and do what has to be done. You say it more through Cadance's voice, but... there is that compulsion, the inability to sit at home and be still.
I don't do vacationing well because of it. It's why I drive through the night, and why I leave a warm dent, caffeine awakening the latent feelings of resentment and anticipation. Her voicing is an excellent representation of the dance of so many couples who find themselves pulled apart, more than the normal daily routine would, and puts one in a measure of danger.
I can see that Cadance's portion was the core of what you wanted to write. The emotions were richer, more slowly developed and examined. Shining's part, though... Contrasts. I do like the contrasts. Cold vs warmth, companionship vs loneliness (though in his own way, Shining is very much alone, being in command. Ours is not to wonder why...), urgency vs ennui. And the organization of his thought, even in the midst of a stream-of-consciousness pondering, vs her sedate wandering through a seriies of thoughts, though they all orbit around the empty spot in her life.
Duty. Though it's not the same sort, I know that sense of duty and "do what must be done," but I find myself also projecting in the guilt I feel for leaving that empty spot. I half-expect, I want Shining to express it too, but that may not be in character. A weakness, perhaps, that he can't afford, when he's already letting himself get distracted by reminiscenses.
As a vignette, I do like this very much. I'm not a fan of darkness, but you handle it very well, a light touch and a backwards look, rather than a gleeful painting of the snow. Thank you. It's not a fit fate for a pony. And as much as I'm curious how this would resolve, I fear that to drag it out much further would take away from the... the timeless feel it has. You've done a very good job, even when referencing time, of making time a non-issue here. The thoughts could be near-instant, they could stretch out. I sort of get the feeling that for each of them, they are the opposite of what they'd like- Cadance's would fly by, and Shining's would drag out, matching the hours he has remaining, distracting him the whole time.
Very, very well done. I want to go back and linger over Cadance's part again.
2083994
When I saw the title, I was wondering if you gleaned inspiration from No World for Tomorrow. The lyrics are "The sweet soft of ground", as a disregard for death, but this corruption is more fitting to the premise.
I enjoyed the integration of Coheed lyrics. Otherwise, the story is too repetitious and I find their inner monologues a tad melodramatic for my taste. Faulkner used the writing style to frame the limited cognitive capacity of the narrator. This was... I don't know. One up tic: Shining Armor’s apparent mild OCD. I guess it runs in the family.
