The Night is Passing

by Cynewulf

XXXIII. In the Shadow of that Hideous Strength

XXXIII. The Shadow of That Hideous Strength

TWILIGHT

She watched and she waited.

How long had she done both? How many times, in the agony of impatience and the anxiety that comes with potentiality--how many times had she waited and suffered? Would Celestia return? Would the world be swallowed up? Would she wake up in the morning? Would Spike be real tomorrow? Was she real? Would she be herself tomorrow or somepony else? A mare, a stallion, a gryphon, an idea--

Twilight chuckled and shook her head. She had been in a morbid mood recently. It was hard not to be, in fairness. Not with the news she’d received.

There were two things the poets were silent on, Twilight found. The first was, of course, the matter of cheese. But the second was on the passing of hours. Oh, sure, so much had been written on how they stretched or lingered or died, whatever. Child’s play. But the fact that time moved at all was something to ponder. The hardness of it, or the lack thereof--that was something to contemplate, but what got her attention could be summed up as potential. With every passing second anything could happen. A non-zero chance of anything at all points. This was obviously an exaggeration, but the fact that potentiality was a part of time was itself unsettling.

It had made waiting a maddening experience for her. Ever moment held the possibility of Celestia’s return. Every single step could be echoed by her beloved teacher. Every courtyard and walkways could be filled with her sacred visage. Every single shadow could be Her resting place.

She was lost in stupid circularity because Abdiel had been the one to waker her this morning. After some halfhearted teasing--”Always, always you are the last to rise, my fair lady!”--he had informed her in a strange dull tone that Jannah would be in sight tomorrow or the next day.

Was she waiting for Celestia, or was she waiting for Jannah? Were those the same things, even?

The city had been in her mind since the night before the journey had begun. Luna had brought her into the dimly lit chambers of her own private sanctum, her home, and spoke in hushed and weary tones.

Jannah, she said as one spoke of nightmares. Jannah, in the West, the city that birthed all cities--the universal from which the concept of cities sprang. Urban sprawl which grew like the roots of a tree from a great tableland upon which the Alicorns themselves had come. She spoke cryptically, always cryptically. At the time, Twilight had not understood, but now she felt she did.

How much did Luna know, really?

There were gaps in her knowledge. Twilight knew there had to be--or rather, things she chose not to remember or think about. Because she would say Jannah was haunted, but not haunted. That it was cursed, but not in any sense that would make sense to Twilight’s thaumaturgic knowledge. Things walked its streets but not walking in any sense that would, well, make sense.

Foolishness. Or so she’d thought in darker moments on the road.

But now, looking at the swift rising sun, she wondered if it were all true. If what she found would be beyond her understanding.

The world made sense. It was a puzzle. She had begun to doubt that but she was sure now. If enough evidence could be gathered, if enough data could be recorded, if due diligence was done--then the Truth would be teased out from the tangled threads of creation. When she had thought of Jannah, that had been her final conclusion. Over and over, every time so very final. When she had thought of it directly at all. It had been on the horizon of her thoughts, as it was now on the horizon that her eyes could see. On the edge. Something which wasn’t close enough to harm, like the sun was not close enough to burn you to a crisp, but close enough to be inescapable. Or maybe so big that it warped everything about it, pulled everything down and down into a gaping maw--

Twilight closed her eyes and laid her head on the deck. It was cool to the touch.

She had to stop thinking so much. Impossible for one such as her, yes, but she really really had to stop thinking.

SPIKE

The air was cool. Spike noticed, but it did not bother him overmuch. Fire slept lightly in his belly, and a dragon could endure many things. So could a pegasus, he had found. Soarin’ and he made good watchmen over a quiet winter’s night.

Quiet. That was such a funny word to him now. It implied peace. At least it implied peace to the ignorant. But Spike knew better now. Oh, he knew better. Quiet meant deserts. Quiet was the moment before the axe fell.

He tried not to think too much.

Instead, he and Soarin’ had enjoyed this brief respite from intrigue and plots. It had been Soarin’s idea, really, not that Spike minded. If anything, the air would clear his head. He’d never had a chance to know Soarin’ as much as he would have liked to.

Conversation had stayed tame and safe. By tame and safe, Spike meant that neither of them had cared to discuss the obvious topics and had instead moved on to deciding how many House Iron guards Spike could deadlift. Spike said five. Soarin’ said two. Spike found this highly insulting but also probably more accurate than he’d like.

When he came around to the topic that had plagued him since the walls had come in sight, he did so in the most eloquent way imaginable. “So, like, you’ve been with mares before, right?”

Soarin’ gave him the look that that question deserved. “I was and am still technically a Wonderbolt.”

“Yeah, but--”

“Wonderbolt,” he insisted.

Spike got the picture. “Right.”

“Tons. Like literal mountains of mare--”

“I have recieved,” Spike interrupted, “the message, loud and clear. Got it. Crystal.”

Soarin’ laughed. “Sometimes I forget that you’re younger than you seem.”

“I seem older?”

Soarin’ shrugged. He ruffled his feathers a bit. “You’re big,” he said, after a short pause. “It makes you seem older, at least to me. But you’re like, what, nineteen? Twenty? I guess? I… wow, I’m not sure. Do dragons age the same?”

“Yes, that’s why the live basically forever and take naps that last decades.”

“Right.”

“But,” Spike continued, “it depends. My, uh, subspecies? That’s a weird word. Our lifecycle is pretty similar to ponies for the first few decades, and then it slows down a lot. So, yeah, basically. I’m not actually seventeen. I’m sixteen, actually. Similar, but faster growth.”

“I mean this in the most friendly way imaginable, but that’s super weird.”

Spike smiled. “It is. Life is, they tell me, strange.”

They walked on. They nodded to the guards they passed. Most were Lunar guards, and Spike trusted them. A few were house levies, and these he did not trust. He gave a pony wearing the insignia of House Blueblood a hard glance and felt both pleased and chagrined when the mare flinched out of his way.

“Why do you ask?” Soarin’ said. “I’m sensing you don’t want to hear of my amazing escapades in the bedrooms, backrooms, hotels, and clouds of Equestria. Which are all wonderful places, I might add. Also, I tend to exaggerate, but not about clouds.” He whistled. “Great things, clouds. Glad we invented those.”

“We didn’t invent… agh. I asked because I figured you knew more about romantic things than I do. To preface, my motherly figures growing up were Princess Celestia the shiny and perfect and Twilight, the librarian. Who really, really liked being a librarian.” He had also liked being a librarian… assistant. “Because I’m way out of my depth.”

Soarin’ seemed to process this. He flared his wings, looked at one of them--Spike tried and failed to deduce why he did this, exactly--and then folded them neatly. “So, seeing as how I have never seen a female dragon like you, I’m going to assume it’s a pony. Who? I’m curious.”

Spike was beginning to be more than embarrassed. He worried, but the thing was out in the open, after a fashion. He would have to continue. “Applebloom. Uh, Applejack’s--”

“I know her,” Soarin’ said. Spike focused on his tone. It seemed… thoughtful? Maybe.

“We grew up together. I don’t know, it just sort of happened. Probably because the world is ending,” he said as he passed a guard who looked like he did not wished to be reminded of this fact. “I’m not really sure what to do.”

“With your hooves?” Soarin asked.

“What?”

“Sorry. It’s a stupid, old joke. Well… what do you want to do? No, strike that. I mean, you two are kids. Sort of. In that weird boundary between kid and adult, where you get treated like your grown but you’re not really grown all the way. You don’t have to rush. Just…” Soarin’ paused. “I feel a little hypocritical talking like I know what I’m doing. I’ve had a lot of mares, Spike. That doesn’t mean I loved them. I appreciated their fine legs, maybe, but...”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’. But I think it’s both more complicated and less complicated than you think. Spend time together, you know? Go get something to eat, take a walk, get away from the world. Be together, and you’ll figure it out.”

They walked in silence for a bit.

“That sounded terrible, didn’t it?” Soarin said. “What I said. Not the last bit, what came before it.”

Spike was honest. “Yeah, sort of.”

Soarin’ sighed. He no longer looked ahead as he walked along the wall. “I’m not the best pony. I’m not… I don’t think I’m a bad one. I’ve changed a lot. I’ve been happy-go-lucky my whole life, and I’m aware of that. Most ponies think I’m a chump who loves pie and eats too much. They are actually totally right about all of those things. Just because I didn’t really love them didn’t mean I… most of them were friends,” he said, haltingly. Like he was figuring it out as he went along, as if this line of thinking was like an old wound. “I didn’t really get most of them from being a Wonderbolt. I stretched the truth a bit, mostly for comedic effect. There were a few. Spitfire gets most of the tail from fans,” he added, and chuckled. But it faded. “Or well, I guess that should be past tense. Mostly I got food, which was awesome. I got the best pie once after a performance. We were in Hoofington, and I swear it was the worst show of my life that I didn’t end up injured at the end of, and I come back to the rooms and find that some little old housemare sent it to me with a note about how much her son enjoyed our flying. That thing was heaven.” He sighed the way one sighed about a long lost lover.

Spike laughed, feeling lighter than before. “I can only imagine.”

“Yup, cause I ate that thing in about four bites and they were pretty great. I wanted love. I mean, I really wanted to find somepony that I felt I wanted to live with, but I just… never did. I found ponies who were attracted to me, that I was attracted to, and we enjoyed each other. It wasn’t hollow. Mostly. I don’t know. But Applejack changed that.”

“She’s pretty great. Also crazy about you.”

“I’m crazy about her,” Soarin’ said. “Spike, I was actually… I mean… could you do me a favor?”

“Sure,” Spike said, curious.

“It’s true that Luna can enter dreams, right?”

Spike nodded. When he remembered that most ponies didn’t have his nightvision, he spoke. “Yeah.”

“Could she… you know. Take me with her?”

Spike was a step ahead. “Take you to Applejack’s dreams?”

Soarin’ nodded.

Spike thought, and then shrugged. “I’ll ask her. I have no idea. But, asking can’t hurt. If she can, I’ll convince her. I think Applejack would like that.”

“As would I,” Soarin’ murmured. After a few beats, he groaned. “And now I don’t feel like making any innuendos or asking off-color questions about your preferences. What a waste. It’s tragic.”

“I’m sincerely glad about that.”

“You would be. Bleh.” His tone shifted. “I keep looking out there. Do you?”

“I try not to.”

“I can imagine why,” Soarin said.

“No,” Spike said, and looked out quickly, and then down at Soarin. “You really can’t, actually.”

“It’s tightening. I’ve been reading the reports. Have you? The ones you didn’t more or less write yourself, I mean.”

He had. “The noose, you mean. Yes, it’s tightening. Did we really have to start talking about it that way? Noose? Who the hell thinks of this stuff?”

“Ponies have great imaginations so they can talk about things they don’t want to think too much about,” Soarin’ offered. “Like hiding in plain sight. If you talk about it you don’t have to actually examine it. Well, for most folks.”

Spike listened to the clack of his claws on the stone. “You know, we could sweep them away. Just set up a battery of guns in the valley and blow the town to bits. March a division of rifles down there. Two or three, even--it would work.”

But Soarin’ shook his head, as Spike expected. “It wouldn’t work. I think you know that.”

“Bogged down,” Spike grumbled. When a dragon grumbles it sounds like an earthquake, or molten rock knocking on a wall with a coiled fist. “Yeah. I get it.”

“We could do it, under different circumstances,” Soarin’ continued, as if he hadn’t heard that rumbling. “I understand your feelings about what’s going on down there. And yes, I know it would be ideal to break up the party before it gets bigger.”

“Which it will.”

“Also something I believe. Spike, please, trust our judgements.”

“I’m trying.”

The air was thick now. How quickly that had happened!

Spike thought of Luna grimacing as he argued before the table strewn with maps. It had been a long week, hadn’t it? Returning from the abyss, having a dozen strange conversations--each stranger than the last, culminating in a walk down shady boulevards with Applebloom--the numbness of survival, two lovely breakfasts, and at the end… An argument over Luna’s strategy (or lack thereof in Spike’s opinion) and then now, this walk.

Soarin’ spoke slowly, not as if to a child, but as one who wished to be understood. Who needed to hear himself say something as much as he needed it to be heard--or so it seemed to Spike, at least, who was reminded for the umpteenth time that intention was opaque. “We can’t rely on the House levies outside of the wall, and we can’t leave them unwatched here. Even if the houses that don’t like Luna aren’t up to a coup, imagine what they might do to the Houses they don’t like.”

“And you really think they’ll be fighting in the streets? Luna said it wouldn’t go that far. Which is why I was so frustrated.”

“To be blunt, I think Luna forgets that no one remembers the old rules. It used to be that Houses almost never fought out in the open… but that was when there were hundreds of years of codes and rules--unwritten, but still important--and open warfare was beneath them. As in,” he said, waving a hoof, “it wasn’t just something they said with a sneer, it was really a waste of their time. They were masters. They did with spies and parties and a few good lies what Wonderbolts do in the air. Easily. At least, if you believe the history books.”

“Twilight always did,” Spike said mildly.

“Librarians always do,” Soarin’ replied. “But now? The Houses are so…”

“Childish.”

“Yes. Foals. Angry and loud and useless at the best of times, let alone the worst.”

Spike sighed. “I get it. It only takes one.”

“It may even start as an accident, or a brawl in the streets between some hotheaded levies or something. Anything.”

“And we come back to the city up in smoke.”

Soarin’ nodded.

“But maybe not,” he said. “And if we wait… More come every day. The pegasi agree with me now, you know. I saw reinforcements marching when I got there and a whole troop of raiders wandering in when I left.”

“I don’t doubt you.”

It would go nowhere. It wasn’t really his choice to make anyhow, he knew. He could only do what was in his power to do. He said as much to Soarin’, his voice flat, his eyes ahead, his steps lazy on the great wall.

“Well, that was some nice exposition,” Soarin’ said. Spike smiled. Briefly. “Why bring it up? I mean, it goes--”

“Nowhere.”

“Yeah.”

Spike shrugged. A very pony action, he had been told by Luna. “Because talking is what you do instead of thinking?”

“Maybe.”

“I just wanted to fill the silence, then. And put off bed, maybe. Prolong a walk with a friend. Maybe I don’t even know,” Spike said. “The last is probably the best of those.” Or maybe it was he had felt a noose around his neck in Luna’s war room, its rough un-cared for rope on his scales, and he could feel it again now.

They came to a watch tower, tall and imposing in its frightful spire. He could see in the dark, but he still experienced it as darkness, and so was impressed by the shape of lighter darkness against the void. The Out There, that void.

There would be much to do in the next few days. Maybe only two, maybe as many as a week. If they were lucky. They were never lucky, of course.

“Thanks,” Spike said at last.

“For what?”

“You’re a good stallion. Whatever happens, I’m glad you and AJ got together. I’m glad you said yes to me, too.”

“I’m glad you grew up to be a big scaly badass.”

Spike snorted.

“We’ll see what tomorrow has in store for us, badass or not,” he said.

IXIL

The walk to work every day was difficult, to say the least. She walked slowly, as one did under a great weight. Her steps did not proceed so much as miraculously manage to find their places. She was a mountain climber in a body not meant for sheer cliff faces. Sometimes it felt like staggering into a headwind.

She was very tired.

Also, starving. Not literally, not yet. Her pay would have been enough to secure a nice life in another time, but the world had become small and dark and crowded.

She groaned but did not stop. She hated this street. Every day she walked it, and she could feel how it weighed on her. It was a cancer, a whole street of cancerous growth that looked like the miserable old and the uncomfortable young, the cracked stoops and the bleary eyes of addicts peering from their holes in the alleys. One could feel, with the right imagination, the despair like one might feel rain or sleet beating on the back and head. It drained her. It made her want to stop and go home.

She hadn’t been attacked here, not ever. Not a single molestation had been enacted on her person--but the threat was always there. One day, she thought, some drunk would see a mare with a tavern uniform and he would do what the broad barkeep would not let him do before. Some child would delay her, and she would be alone in the dark. Beggers would turn into cutpurses.

She did not fear this as much as she simply hated the air, but she thought about it. Sometimes. It made her feel smaller to think such things, as if it hurt her as much as it might hurt them.

But soon the street that the sneering patrons called Saddlesore was behind her and she was on another street, a street that was a little brighter. She felt that it was easier to breathe.

The Antean Inn was up ahead, with its happy little sign of a giant green pony with a mop of hair towering over a little farmhouse. She liked the sign. The giant pony was a myth, obviously, but he smiled and the little pony coming out of the farmhouse was waving to him. She wished he was real. What a strange thing that would be, to see giants in the land! Giants that smiled and waved and were your neighbor. Most of the giants in this world did not smile or wave, and they were not the neighborly type, in her experience.

When she entered the warm little pub, she was greeted by at least a dozen voices. The cleaning lady from down the street said something in her strange northern argot which she did not understand, but she smiled regardless .A greeting is a greeting, and she accepted it. The other barmaids chirped at her--she enjoyed that mental image for a moment, as a few of them were pegasi--and she responded much in kind, her voice light as clouds and bright as the sun. Their genuine cheer at seeing a friend washed over her. She felt better. It would be a good day, she thought.

And it was. She worked in the late mornings and early afternoons normally. She worked nights when she had to, but she preferred not to. She had things to do at night, she said, or she needed her sleep. Health concerns, she would say with a wave, and give a little smile. She knew it made her seem just a little bit more fragile, that smile. She was good at it.

There were things one learned living as a transient that were miraculously useful living a normal, settled life. Lightness of navigation she had learned, and not once did she stumble along the floor, even in the crowds of laughing ponies. No lunch crowd took the edge off of her streetborn alertness, nor did her sharp sight miss anything. But she needed no tense watchfulness. A transient, a tramp, she knew how to appear nonchalant. A vagabond running with the land knew how to hide weakness, potential or actual.

But mostly she just enjoyed her job. History was never dead, but for the moment simple enjoyment was enough.

Lunch came and it went, there was more beer than before the collapse. It was one of the few things that managed to flow in troubled times. Oh, sure, ponies talked here and there about there being a shortage, but anypony working in a tavern could tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there was no such thing. Some taverns and bars just charged more now cause they were nervous and they could. Of course, this was because few knew about the caskhalls. She knew about them. They were like wine cellars, and she knew quite a bit about those. She had a warm place in her heart for dark, quiet, safe wine cellars.

The afternoon creeped in as it tended to, like a foal on his way to school after a beautiful summer. It was a good day indeed: the sun had been up all day. That was becoming more rare. Winter, on top of the peculiar state of the world, had made a good sunny day even more of a blessing.

Personally, she preferred the evening. Afternoon was just too hot. The sun left the highest place in the sky only to feel somehow hotter, and her uniform never seemed to fit as well after two compared to how it felt at nine in the morning.

“Amity, you still living on the other side of that eyesore?” grumbled the pony at the bar. He was large, and his voice always seemed muffled by a mustache she found highly unusual.

Amity Fields. That was her name. Twenty four, single, spoke with a slightly rustic accent that became more noticeable with heightened emotion. Bright blue ice eyes, shades of green for mane and coat, like a big bush. Smiled a lot. She thought these things rapidly. That was who she was.

She spoke as Amity. “Yessir. Still living in old lady Saffron’s building.”

“Lady,” scoffed the stallion as if that was the biggest lie he’d heard all day. To be fair, he hadn’t had many drinking ponies today so it was possible it was the most stretched truth he’d heard all day.

Amity thought Saffron was nice. In a cranky, old sort of way.

“It’s cheap,” she said with Amity’s characteristic optimism shining through with a smile that was double-meant. “It’s convenient for me, and it’s not so bad. Any place can be a good place if you make it good.”

That part she believed. That last part. Her apartment’s cheapness was not in question, but its convenience was debatable.

She felt more and more alive. Everyone here was happy, even with the outside so close. The barmaids chattered when the lunch crowd cleared out. The old ponies smoking their long pipes in the corner, sitting in their accustomed places, the bar keep who treated Amity and the others like a great herd of sisters, the regulars who knew names and enjoyed banter over hayfries and dark brews… there was an easy, rich flow of affection in the Antean.

She hummed as she wiped the tables down.

Time continued, as it always did. She swept, she cleaned, she walked food out and she served drinks when the sun began to fall.

When night came, the atmosphere changed. It became less like a happy family outing and more like a race. The ponies came in from the streets, putting off the work of day and slipping into worn booths, clutching cold mugs and complaining.

Marigold came to relieve her an hour before the first hints of the dinner rush. She said goodbye to all of her coworkers, who smiled and chirped, and to the barkeep, who told her to look after herself, and the patrons who did not seem to mind her going.

It was time for dinner, wasn’t it? Amity disappeared. She had never truly been there, anyhow, had she? Just a mask, a coat one put on and then could slouch out of at will.

The pony who wore a cloak called Amity smiled as she stepped out into the darkening streets. The sun was gone, just a hint now, and the street was filling up. She licked her lips. She never had a lunch break, because she didn’t want one--she would eat later, she had explained with Amity’s smile. Always later.

She was so very hungry.

She felt it more and more these days as heat and an aching emptiness. It was a little like how the throes of sexual need struck the ponies around her. She knew what that was, but did not experience it as they did. They felt it in their loins, but she felt a tightness in her chest. Like a hot vacuum, she felt her hunger. She felt it along her tongue, long, pointed, coming out as hot breath. She had only sipped. She could not say why, but she had not drunk deep. But it was time now.

The wearer of the Clock took a deep breath, tried to steady herself. It would not do to pant like an animal in heat on the street. She hoped no one had seen. Some things were hard to explain. She knew this painfully well.

She walked down the street, breathing steadily but deeply. Where, where, where? Anywhere could do, but tonight she was starving. She chuckled to herself. She was hungry for something wholesome, which ruled out going to about half of her haunts. That meant a neighborhood. A nice stroll through a residential zone, like any pony might take.

It took a few moments, but she found a perfect street. Idyllic, well-lit, safe and warm. Perfect. She walked under the lights, looking from side to side.

There.

A direct observer would have seen what happened next as one saw a dream--impossibility that happened anyway. One a smiling Amity walked the street. She became haze, a blur. She was gone--it took the single blink of an eye.

She was herself now. She was Ixil, and Ixil laid flat on the sloping roof of a family home, and she felt the little lives below. They were warm! So warm! Endless and burning like tiny suns!

She fed. She sated herself, dipping and absorbing a family’s love, strong as iron and life-giving like the sun which had left them all behind. She did not take--she tried never to take--but she skimmed and she let it passively sustain her.

It was not enough to feel the power and the godlike ecstasy of the old life. But it was good and she was happy and a little drowsy. She laid spent upon the roof, unwilling to move for a moment. She would not need to feed again until the next night, but that was alright. She had grown more accustomed to feeding regularly. She would not destroy lives to put off feeding for a week. Even in these days there was enough love and happiness and hope for one like her.

She slipped away, and became Amity again. Amity hummed, her pony throat approximating the eerie sing-song of the Hive, the great Gestalt. The song had no words. Most of the songs she knew had never had words. But pony songs often did. They were strange things, pony songs. So short, small, like little worlds cut off from the whole--

She noticed the guard come down the street and only with practice and skill did she avoid flinching away in mindless terror.

They passed by. Ixil thought briefly of two armies passing each other with no light, no moon. She tried not to hold her breath. But nothing happened. He had nodded to her as he might any other citizen, and she had nodded back. Nopony was coming for her. She was safe. She would go home, she would sleep--

When she turned towards the “eyesore” and home, they caught up to her.

She had a moment’s warning. Her ears, her eyes--her senses were sharp, yes, but in ways beyond a pony’s ken. She had a sense for danger, and she used it. But it was not enough. Not even a long warning would have helped her, for they moved swiftly. Her own swiftness, so greater than that of most ponies, was dwarfed in the same way she had lorded it over her neighbors in secret.

By the time she realized that they were upon her, it was almost over. They had hauled her into an alleyway. A hoof was over her mouth. She bit it, but barding repelled her serrated fangs. She tasted cold iron and writhed. Something--a hoof, a hammer, something--hit her between her back and she went sprawling. Amity vanished in a veil of green flame and Ixil was laid bare again, chitin cold in the winter. She stopped moving long enough to find her attacker.

Any hope of escape that she had vanished when she looked up. Any struggle she had left in her simply died. She looked into the face of a nightmare, a myth out of the darkness, something she had heard of in the Gestalt as only an echo of a memory of an echo.

It looked like a pony but was not a pony. The physical similarities to a batpony were there, yes, but they were immaterial. Eyes that were red as hell glared down at her, glowing faintly in the night. A sneer, fangs smaller but somehow just as frightening as her own, features somewhere between the fragile haughtiness of royalty and the hard lines and savagery of a beast. It was hungry. Ixil knew she was going to die. This thing would devour her.

“Are you done?” it asked. Its voice was a lie! Soft and feminine, like music. Like a brook. Ixil knew about traps and lies! It was a lie! This was a beast, she knew this deep down, in the dark parts of her mind where she herself was an animal on the run.

She did not respond.

“Looks like it,” said another voice, another mare. Not a mare. Huntress, monster.

“Can’t talk? I thought changelings could speak,” said the first. She bent down. Her eyes, like little fires, were right in Ixil’s sight now. She wanted to squirm.

“I can talk,” she said. Keep them talking. Stay alive.

“Oh. I guess you can.” The first smiled at her. “Well, good evening, miss…. Amity, is it?” The smile died. “Tell me something. Be honest or I’ll know. Trust me, I’ll know. Was Amity a pony you hurt? Did you steal her life?”

Ixil wanted to bite her face. Just a little bit. “No. Amity was not a pony,” she hissed back. “Amity is Ixil is Amity.”

“Ixil,” the first huntress said, letting it roll over her tongue.

“Well, rook, you done talking to her? Give her the choice and lets go. We need to make tracks.”

“Fine, fine. Sorry, it’s my first night on the job,” said the first hunter conspiratorially. She winked, which was rather non-threatening, Ixil had to admit. She admitted this grudgingly, of course, and with a dab of bewilderment. “Yeah. Whelp! Coming with us, you are. Sorry, no way you can avoid that. You can either go with your head in a bag draped over my shoulder, or you can go without a bag pumped full of sedatives. If it helps, I’ll cut an airhole in the bag.”

Ixil whimpered. Dangerous and confusing.

The huntress cocked her head to the side, looked up at her companion, and then sighed. “Look, its not bad. Just take the pills. Go quietly. I’ll carry you myself and you’ll be fine. I swear to you that you won’t be hurt. Alright? If you struggle, you will get hurt and this time it won’t be the nice rookie catching you, okay?”

Ixil had no choice. She took the pill when it was offered and waited for sleep. It came, without dreams.

TWILIGHT

Twilight stared at the wall.

She couldn’t sleep. Night was gone, the crew was sleeping all around her, and Twilight Sparkle wanted to sleep. Yet she could not force herself. Not even with magic. She’d tried. But an hour later, her eyes had opened.

Twilight knew what insomnia was like. She’d suffered it before. Insomnia felt like a waking dream, where nothing connected and everything was a sort of borderless haze, where you walked from room to room looking at nothing and waiting for sleep. But she did not feel that flat, miserable waiting. She felt…

What did she feel?

Maybe she was afraid. To sleep? That was stupid. She was not afraid to sleep. She was not afraid of how it was right on the horizon. Yes, it. Jannah.

When she woke, it would be visible at last. Small, way off in the distance, but undeniably there. And here at the end, she wasn’t sure how that should feel. Or even how it felt at all. It was so immense. But it was really too late to be thinking about that right now, wasn’t it? She groaned quietly into the darkness. Why couldn’t she just… not be here? Just for awhile. Everything kept dragging her back out and making her think and do and she would do and think but right now it was night and she just wanted to sleep. She would be responsible and wise and useful tomorrow. Why couldn’t her stupid body and her stupid brain understand this? It was very simple.

She pulled the pillow out from beneath her and dropped it on her face.

Yes, that was better. Lots better. It had covered a multitude of problems, both figuratively and metaphorically, as all of her problems were her self. Twilight Sparkle was smart like that.

She would just try magic again. It had worked before. But it took a little out of her and kind of defeated the purpose of resting if it only worked for an hour or so. But still, she had to to try. So she did. Her horn glowed in the darkness for a moment.

Twilight lay in the grass.

She blinked, and knew at once she was in the Dreaming. It was too bright--unnaturally bright. Everything about her felt too real, just a little too real, enough so that it was overwhelming. She had to focus on one thing at a time here.

And in that vein, she rose quickly. She found herself in the courtyard of a castle that she did not recognize. She gazed around, humming. Of course, Luna would be here. Twilight couldn’t yet will herself into Dreaming without her help… or could she? Twilight paused. Had she done this herself? But then why the castle? She hoped Luna was here. Dreamwalking was nice, but it was lonely if one could not leave the confines of one’s own dream.

But Luna was easily found. The courtyard was overgrown, and the castle itself was ruined--had been ruined, in fact, for centuries by Twilight’s estimate--and Luna had found an apple tree on the grounds. When Twilight approached, she was picking one of the shining red fruit from the boughs with a smile that could only be called cheeky.

It vanished quickly when Twilight greeted her. Luna jumped, the apple forgotten. Her wings flared out, and her horn glowed. Twilight felt the world around her tremble and for the tiniest second, she could almost feel herself bound in deep chains.

But then the feeling passed, and Luna relaxed. No, she slumped. “Twilight! By the Stars above me, your presence was not expected! You startled me profoundly.”

Luna sat back on her haunches and searched for her apple. Twilight, rooted to the spot, wasn’t sure if she was… welcome. Luna had attacked her. Just a little bit. Only now did she feel afraid. She wondered what would have happened if Luna had been a little more frightened. Those… the feelings of chains. What would have happened to this world? To herself?

“Are you… alright?” Luna asked her. Twilight realized that she’d spaced out again. Dreams reflected the outside world. Art reflects life, she thought in Celestia’s voice.

“If I startled you, you startled me. I’m sorry,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “I just… wait. How…? But you brought me here, didn’t you?”

“I swear to you on my sister’s--”

“Please don’t.”

“--majestic white fine. It’s not really white anyhow. Ponies these days.” She bit down on her apple. “Even a fright will not deter me. You know, I do love apples. I didn’t bring you here. On the contrary, my bosom companion,” she continued, rising and walking towards Twilight, “I must confess that I am very, very confused as to how you arrived here. This dream should have been closed.”

“Closed?”

Luna seemed lost in thought for a moment. “It is closed, I have just checked. Yes, closed. I may lock dreams from outside interference. Very useful, believe me! Considering what once roamed the aether and stalked the dreams of mortals… and what may yet still. It is an old trick, but it does have limits. For instance,” she gestured to the castle’s courtyard, “I must be within a dream to seal it, and whilst the seal is there I cannot escape. To leave, I must first undo the seal. It takes time, and I am vulnerable.”

“Couldn’t you just break out?” Twilight asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Alas, no. I have tried, but magic is not so precise as you and my sister like to think. The world, in fact, is not so neat.” She smiled. She took another bite, swallowed, and then looked Twilight over. Closely. Twilight flushed a bit.

“Uh, what--”

“You are Twilight, aren’t you? I doubted, but you seem in every way either the most perfect of illusions or my own Twilight. My beautiful lover, it has been so very long since you shared my bed,” she added, her voice changing. It was so obviously fake, so obviously over the top.

Twilight fell backwards, scrambling, confused and horrified. “Luna, what? I--hold on, what? Are you--”

Luna fell to the ground, apple once again forgotten, laughing loudly. She rolled, tears streaming from her eyes as Twilight recovered her now shattered dignity. “One last chance! An illusion would simply parrot and adapt to my suggestion that thou and I had--oh, my sides!” Finally, she lay on her back and breathed deeply.

“Luna, you really freaked me out. It’s me.” Twilight frowned. “You could have just believed me, you know.”

“If it was indeed you,” Luna countered. “You admit that this is odd.”

“Yes.”

“But if you were truly an illusion, I would know. To be honest, I will be very concerned about this later. At the moment… I am glad to see you. Come lie in the grass? It is awfully comfortable.”

Twilight did so. Not reluctantly, but feeling a bit silly. Luna was right--it was nice and soft, and there was even a slight breeze. The sky was full of big, puffy, beautiful clouds. Great towers of them, even.

“What is this place?” Twilight whispered, as much to herself as Luna. She felt like being quiet here. It felt… it felt like nothing bad had ever happened here. Ever. It had never been anything but a ruin.

“It is probably gone now,” Luna said. Twilight felt the barest tinge of sadness in the Aether. “This is where Celestia and I played when we left the Well behind. You know we are not born as foals, yes?”

“You mentioned that before.”

Luna nodded. Her mane spooled about her like a dark halo in the soft, green grass. “Well, I have said we were born adults, but that is not entirely true. My mind, firstly, was not a child’s mind--but it was no true mare’s mind. Too empty, too vacuous.”

“I can’t think of you as being vacuous,” Twilight said, smiling. “You’re so focused.”

“I am distracted now. How ironic,” Luna countered, softly. “But I was also different. Hm. I will show you.”

She rose, and while Twilight looked on, she changed. She shrank--her wings and horn became smaller, her long legs still long but now they seemed less regal and more… adolescent. Her face softened, and her mane was short now. Twilight oggled. She looked younger. Much younger. Nineteen? No, maybe? Ageless, but young. And her mane! Like some tomboy at school! Twilight laughed. “Wow,” she said.

“What a grand reaction,” Luna groused. “A laugh and an offhanded ‘wow’.” She posed. “Come now, are we not the very image of youthful joy, of all things carefree and courageous?”

Twilight smiled. “An image, to be sure.”

“Bah.” Luna laid down again, a little closer this time. She did not change back to her older self. “I was a child. This was where I played. It is in the west. If there were time, we could see if it stood, but I doubt it. The creche lives on in my mind, regardless, and that is good.”

“You do look nice though. It’s an obviously younger Luna,” Twilight said, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “But I can’t pinpoint an age.”

“Few could.”

Twilight smiled. “This is a nice place. I like it a lot. Were the apple trees there when you were young?”

“Aye,” Luna replied. “They were, and I did love them. There are others outside. I planted a whole orchard. It was a right mess, I confess. The lines were haphazard, but the apples were good.”

Twilight closed her eyes. What was this like? The turn from spring to summer, she thought immediately. The grass near the road to Ponyville. Applejack and Rainbow Dash in some silly play argument over some feat of athleticism, Rarity and Fluttershy chattering on over tea on a neatly placed blanket. Pinkie Pie doing cartwheels and Spike being impressed by said cartwheels. And Twilight, sunning herself, feeling drowsy in the sun. As she often did.

Luna spoke. Her voice was slower, lazier, at ease. “I am amazed--truly!--at your time, Twilight. Such wonders, and yet I am told that you no longer roll upon the prank like yon cats are wont.”

“What?”

“You’ve never rolled in the grass, then?”

Twilight laughed. “I mean, I did as a child, but--”

Luna bumped into her, and when Twilight opened her eyes she found that the princess of the night and stars, the shephard of the moon, Luna Songbourne… was rolling in the grass with a fool’s smile. Like a foal.

Twilight laughed earnestly, without fear. She felt younger herself.

“Well, come on!” Luna said. Twilight joined her without a second thought.

“You seem younger,” Luna said.

“I feel a little younger. I feel like I’m a teenager again, except I’m a little happier than back then, and a lot more energetic. I wasted quite a few nice summer days back in the day.”

“Ah, but the acquisition of knowledge is not a waste, my dear friend!” Luna wobbled.

Twilight took a leap of faith. Her hooves found the step across the divide, and Luna clapped for her. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Bravo! You have braved these stairs like the warrior you are!”

Twilight stuck her tongue out. “Where are we going?”

“I wanted to explore the keep, and you tagged along,” Luna said. “You didn’t bother to ask before, so I figured you would eventually.”

Twilight fell into line as Luna proceeded. The keep was tall, its walls fallen but not uniformly. The stars were a maze of hazards, but they proceeded without a scratch or with any sense of peril. Twilight, not content to follow all of a sudden, moved up and walked by Luna’s side. “I’m really glad I found you.”

“Hm?” Luna stopped, and Twilight felt a little surprise in the Aether.

“Oh, I meant… I was having trouble staying asleep. I’ve woken up all night and this is the longest I’ve managed to stay asleep… I’m glad. I was worried I would be exhausted.”

Luna seemed to understand. She smiled. “I am glad to be of service,” she said with a little bow.

Twilight snickered. “So formal, have we not earned a little easy companionship?”

But this seemed to mean something different. Luna’s eyes bulged for a moment almost comically, and then she turned around. “Ah, but we have a ways to go.”

“So, you think that my need may have been the trick?” Twilight asked. “Like, if I’m following you, I tricked myself into coming here somehow because my subconcious knew it work?”

“I know little of the psychological arts these days.”

“Science. It’s a science.”

“They were not divided when I was sent away.”

“That’s right,” Twilight said, mostly to herself. “It’s strange to think that philosophy--” she stepped gingerly over a rather sinister looking crack in the masonry--”and science were all just philosophy one way or the other, back then.”

“I wonder if it was such a good divorce,” Luna said.

“Hm?”

“Do you wonder sometimes, if reduction does not, well, overlimit?” Luna asked.

Twilight frowned. “Elaborate.”

Luna nodded, and then looked about. “I think this is the way. There’s an observatory up here…”

Twilight blinked. She grinned. “And I don’t suppose you could make night come?”

Luna grinned. “Absolutely.”

And Twilight did a little dance of victory in the manner of a sprightly child. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Please, lead the way. Also, you still have to explain.”

“Well, I was baffled by this idea when I awoke, that only those statements that could be empirically verified were meaningful--”

“But you see, the field of opinion is rather wide,” Twilight said, shrugging. “The Positivists really don’t have that much to say these days. I’m a scientist and a thaumaturge, but beyond a simple rationalism, I have issues with that sort of thing.”

They sat against the wall in the grand observatory. Or, well, it had been grand. Perhaps. Now it was only a moderately large room with an ancient telescope that seemed to Twilight to be the epitome of mystery. It was ancient, obviously so. It was also vastly more advanced than she had anticipated. The excitement of youthful stargazing was coming back to her.

“I think I begin to understand. My reading was a bit out of date, I see.”

“Subjectivity as the basis of truth is a more modern concept, to be fair,” Twilight said. She paused. “Well. Kind of. Newly fashionable, maybe? Certainly reformulated.”

“I did not know you read the philosophers until now, Twilight. I thought your learning was more grounded, or magical.”

“Well, really it is. I majored in Thaumaturgy after all,” Twilight added brightly. “But I read other things. I make it a point of honor to read a little of everything. From the worst to the best. I have to collect it all. Somepony put a bit of themselves into it, and… its sad, how the old books fade away. So many ponies disappear and no one remembers them. I want to try. For a little while. Before I go.”

Luna nodded. “That is a beautiful sentiment.”

Twilight felt her face and found it warm. She looked away, but smiled all the while. “Thank you.”

“That time that you speak of is a long way off,” Luna said. “I promise you.”

“I believe.”

“Good!” Luna sprang up, and grinned. She was young again. “Come, the great telescope awaits!

SWEETIE

Sweetie steeled herself. She took a deep breath, felt air filling her lungs, and let it go slowly. Rarity had taught her that deep breathing could calm even shattered nerves. Count to five, Rarity had said. A Lady, if you forgive me saying so, must always appear calm. Breathe, breathe slowly, and then let it go. Look the part--

“And soon it shall not be a part,” Sweetie whispered.

“You say something?” Scootaloo asked.

Sweetie glanced over at her. Scoots had taken her new role surprisingly seriously. When Sweetie had come looking for her in the early morning, she had found her friend polishing her light, colorful barding. Singing, unfortunately, but Sweetie knew better than to say anything. Sometimes a voice’s beauty wasn’t in its ability to hold a tune but in its willingness to try to hold one.

“Nothing really,” Sweetie said. She sighed. Deep breathing helped, but it did not make one’s problems vanish.

“You’re gonna do great, Sweetie,” Scootaloo said. “Seriously. You’ve got this.”

“For the record, I agree with your marshal,” Head Maid added. “The last week of preparation has put us into a good position. If anything, we have been far better accepted than anyone could ever have expected.” Sweetie noticed how she paused just a beat too long. It was a small thing, but she noticed. “You will be accepted into the highest council of the land in a fraction of the time it has taken some of the greatest ponies to walk these halls. My lady, please, keep your wits about you.”

Scootaloo shook her head. “Nah, she’s got it. What are they gonna do, sneer? They can’t do anything. Luna’s got us.”

“The Princess does indeed, ah, have us,” Head Maid acknowledged and then pursed her lips. “And yet, and yet. You will be best served by caution regardless. If nothing else, we would rather not bother her overmuch.”

“Agreed.” Sweetie looked to Scootaloo. “Thanks, Scoots. I wish I could take you in with me.”

“Yeah, I’d rather be there too,” Scootaloo replied. She frowned and looked away.

They had already arrived, but Sweetie Belle had asked for a moment to prepare herself. To that effect, they had stowed away in an unoccupied cranny. Sweetie idly wondered what purpose it had, but regardless she was glad for the quiet privacy.

“I’ll be back soon. Well,” she chuckled and then continued. “Not soon. It’s going to take forrreeevvver. But as soon as I’m done listening to the most boring thing ever, I’ll be back. You’re gonna be busy while I’m gone, right?”

“Yeah,” Scootaloo said.

“Take AB to lunch or something,” Sweetie continued. “Stay busy. Don’t worry, okay? I know you’re going to.”

“It just sucks, Sweets. Sucks that I can go in there with you. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know this is really important and I know you’re nervous.”

“I know you aren’t dumb. I’ve never thought so,” she replied. She smiled, as softly as she could. It was time to leave. “I’m serious, try not to worry too much. Nothing is going to happen to me. If I make a fool of myself, I’ll come home and bitch about it, okay? We’ll figure it all out. But nopony is going to touch me while I’m in chambers. Promise.”

Scootaloo grunted.

“If it would please my lady, I could keep watch for the two of you,” Head Maid said flatly. Sweetie glared at her, and Scootaloo fidgeted. For her part, Head Maid seemed untroubled by both of these things. Sweetie couldn’t tell if she was serious sometimes. “To keep your dalliances sub rosa as it were.”

“It’s… uh,” Scootaloo, so easily embarrassed. Surprising, but true. And so selective, that embarrassment.

What the hell? Why not? Sweetie nuzzled Scootaloo, cheerfully touching their noses together, and her marshal went stiff with surprise. “No one sees, I promise. I won’t let your secret out,” she added in a little singsong. Scootaloo growled.

“It’s not… ugh. You two are lame.”

“And you’re a fillyfooler.”

“That’s a stupid word.”

“I concur,” Head Maid said, with a kind of dead seriousness that was impossible to take, well, seriously.

Sweetie laughed. “Yeah, it is. Wish me luck. Time to go.”

“Good luck,” Scootaloo said forlornly. “I guess I’ll go count hoofblades or something.”

Sweetie began her retreat. “Go bother Bloom! Seriously, now you can tease her about you-know-who like three times as much!”

That seemed to work. A little. “Huh. Guess so.”

And she was gone. Sweetie approached the guarded door. One of them looked at her, seemed confused, and then spoke.

“My lady? Lady… uh…”

“Belle.” Sweetie said in a very different voice. A lower one. Her Rarity voice. “Sweetie Belle, of the same house, coming in place of my sister Rarity who is serving the realm abroad.” She gave the guard a firm and iron smile. “If you would be so kind as to be the one who announces me?”

“Oh, yes’m,” the guard said, practically tripping over himself. Hm. Not bad. I knew practicing that voice was a good idea. Scoots can suck it, she thought with a little satisfied smile.

The morning session was not as boring as she had expected. It was open to all of the Houses, as well as to the upper echelons of Canterlot’s merchants and her leading citizens--there was no voting or litigation involved. Rather, it was an open forum. In theory, any citizen owning a home in the city (and in the realm at large) could attend and bring an issue to the assembled nobility at large. Further, it was a rare moment of truly even-field play: no noble, no matter how great or powerful his house, could silence even the lowest dirt farmer who had gained the floor by proper procedure.

If anything, Sweetie would have found this bedlam rather fun, if the situation had been different. There were only a few commoners here today, and all but one were from the larger mercantile joint-stock ventures still operating in the city. That one (not including herself, she realized. She had already begun to think of herself as… something. Nobility.) was rather loud and incensed.

The morning had passed mostly with this one pony, Stardust, trying to find some support for her complaint: there was a new gang of some sort in the lower city, very organized and mysterious. They wore white, and talked to a pony like strange itinerant preachers. Sweetie was reminded of the wandering priestesses of Gaia that Apple Bloom had told her about once, the ones who called earth ponies down to the river to sing and remember their ties to the land.

But Stardust contended these new folks were nothing like those itinerants. Ponies had disappeared, some only moments after talking to these newcomers. No great robberies, no arson, no extortation (that could be proved) had been traced to them, but missing ponies was no simple thing. Their rhetoric was confused but revolutionary. Violent, even. Often violent.

The reaction to her tales was mixed. Some of the smaller houses seemed enraptured. Sweetie herself felt a sinking feeling. Luna had not revealed all of her cards, so as to keep some things in as few minds--so easily plundered!--as possible, but she had mentioned something like this.

“The evil that lives beneath creation works through others, a snake that slithers into puppets formed like ponies, hollowed out stallions and mares and foals. It invades dreams and thoughts. I am not sure of all of its ways. Perhaps it could corrupt by words?”

Luna’s voice left her. She ground her teeth together. Well, at least that bit made sense now.

None of the great houses seemed to care. Houses Epona and Iron asked questions, but mostly to Sweetie it seemed they did this more out of a sense of duty to the whole process than out of any actual interest. Lord Blueblood--that Blueblood, the one her sister had fumed about so long ago--openly mocked the commoner. It made Sweetie want to levitate him and drop him on his stupid overfed ass from high up. To this slime, Stardust was barely a pony. She was just a commoner after all, wasn’t she? Dirty, uncivilized, without graces or money or title, and thus too ignorant to know her own business.

Sweetie never wanted anypony to ever think of her or her sister that way. Ever.

When Sweetie had asked Head Maid what to expect, she had received one very clear directive: never mention Luna. Outside of that, Head Maid had said that she should speak. At least a few times. Don’t be invisible, that had been the idea. But don’t try to clamber up on top of everypony either.

So she waited for a good moment. Lord Dawn asked Stardust, who still held the ancient medal that bore Celestia, the symbol of the right to speak, if any of this had anything to do with them. Who cared? Wasn’t she being a bit presumptuous? A few ponies ran away from home or joined a club, or maybe just moved. It was a big city, filled beyond reasonable capacity. There was no crime to be seen, no conspiracy. Just a foolish mare who thought too much.

When he finished with a sweeping gesture, there were a few chuckles. Sweetie stood immediately, wincing. Stardust was a bit too distraught, a bit too emotional. Dawn was a bit too funny, a bit too much like one of those rock stars who can get a crowd to watch his every motion. She felt bile rise in her throat and burn.

“Arbiter, if you would, I would like to ask a few questions, as well as make a general comment,” she said with as steady a voice as she could manage.

“We welcome both,” said the old pony who sat on the high bench. He wore a wig--she found it ridiculous--and seemed about to nod off to his final sleep at any moment.

“Firstly,” Sweetie began after a deep breath, “I would think that the concerns of any pony would be worth listening to, at the very least. Assuming the pony in question to be reasonable, sane, and willing to tell us, obviously. I would remind certain ones among us that nary a pegasus waffles in the wind that we should not be concerned.” She smiled. It was a cold smile. “But I understand that strength of heart and character are not as equally distributed to ponies as I would like. Perhaps, like rain, it avoids the heights and floods the valleys.”

If there was chattering she did not notice, because she focused on Stardust. She was a batpony, the same height as Sweetie, a similar build. She stared Sweetie down. Exhausted. She’s exhausted, Sweetie realized.

“You have good reason to believe these ponies are dangerous. You’ve seen them on multiple occasions with multiple ponies that later went missing. How long have they been gone?”

“It depends. None of them have come back, but some have only been gone a day or two. The longest time is a month or so.”

“What do they talk about? You mentioned it was strange. What do they say?”

She danced from hoof to hoof, as if not wanting to say. “It’s… uh…”

Sweetie waved. “It’s fine. Don’t worry. I just want to know.”

“Sometimes they just talk about how bad the streets have gotten. They want them to be better…” she began. A murmur rose, but Sweetie focused on Stardust’s eyes. There were only two ponies here. Stardust continued. “But they talk about how it isn’t just bad ponies doing bad things. That someone is making them… no, more like… I don’t know. They talk as if all of the crime in the lower tiers is all the fault of the highest one.”

More voices, angry and incredulous. Sweetie continued staring. “And what do they want to do with that?”

“I don’t know. They never say.”

“It’s almost as if we’re all connected, living in the same city in everything,” Sweetie said, loudly, to the air while staring a fuming Lord Dawn down. It was easy to hate that face. But she continued. “We don’t have enough information to act efficiently. Would you think that investigating the manner, simply a concerted effort by the denizens of the Celestial tier to gather facts, would be warranted?”

Stardust nodded.

“I think so too,” Sweetie said. “I’m done. Thank you, Stardust. Your honor,” she said, nodding to the Arbiter. She sat.

Lunch involved a lot of mingling, and Sweetie Belle did alright. At least, he felt like she did alright. Only a few sought her out to talk to her, all of them minor houses. They seemed friendly enough--she had met a few of them already. A few of them mentioned her indirect address in the general assembly, and they spoke of it glowingly. She felt that it had not been persuasive at all, but she supposed that anything said against somepony that you hated sounded like music in your ears.

On the advice of Head Maid, she inserted herself briefly into other circles of larger houses and spoke to most of the mercantile representatives. All the while, also as she had been advised, she remembered names and tied them to impressions. Few if none of these seemed to resent her presence. While no house who could afford a true compound or keep went out of its way to speak to her, none of them rejected her. Neutrality, but a friendly sort. It was a start. A good one, even.

Lunch passed and the High Assembly began. The Houses Major gathered in another room, each with their own place set in a circle.

Sweetie walked among the grand chairs, raised above the ground slightly. They were really beautiful. She had to remember what they looked like. Applebloom could make something just as grand as this.

But she also counted them. One was missing.

Sweetie blinked, confused.

“Have you noticed yet?”

Sweetie turned. Lord Dawn smiled at her. Blueblood was at his side. It was Blueblood who had spoken.

“Perhaps,” Sweetie said, cautiously, but also automatically. She knew exactly what he meant. Immediately, it came to her as if it were lightning striking a tree. Burning it. She felt oddly cold. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

She was trapped. They wanted a reaction. What kind?

She honestly didn’t know. If she was indignant, would they respect her demands or mock her for a childish display? If she was cool and collected, would they say she was weak or accept her patience?

Lord Dawn was grinning besides Blueblood, waiting. What a joke he had helped in! What a good way to show an upstart to talk to him so rudely.

“Why, there seems to be a chair missing,” Dawn said at last, his giddy cheerfulness shining through. Blueblood glanced at him.

Sweetie Belle’s mind raced. Jokes. A laugh. “Oh!” She turned, and made a show of counting. “You’re right. Forgive me, you caught me quite by surprise. I’m so glad you noticed. It would be dreadfully embarrassing if one of us found himself without a place to park himself.”

Blueblood’s smile froze. Then it died. He tried to resurrect it, but something was different now. Dawn kept on babbling.

“But there’s just enough for those Houses that are supposed to be here, aren’t there? All the ones that deserve to have a seat in these chambers have a seat, don’t they?” he said.

Blueblood and Sweetie Belle realized together that the joke was not a joke anymore. It was an embarassment. Dawn had been too loud and gone too far. They locked eyes. Blueblood shrugged and left. Dawn looked at his retreat with confusion.

“Hey, where--”

“My lord, I believe he’s off to his seat,” Sweetie Belle, and idea overtaking her. “As I am to mine.”

She plopped herself right down on the chair marked with the Dawn heraldry. The Lord of the House stared at her. The action had drawn attention. Everypony in the chamber knew what had occurred. Why not say something? Because they were all curious as to what she would do. And so she did it.

“It’s very kind of you, really, to alert me to this accident. You saved me quite a bit of embarrassment, and I’m sure you were only ever motivated by the most gentlemanly and honorable motives. Especially in offering me your seat to replace my own, which has been so rudely forgotten, of course by accident. I accept, obviously.” She leaned on one hoof. Acting, acting. “And you, being a gentlecolt, offering your seat… I am very impressed at how generous you can be. A lesser lord would have greeted me with a foal’s vindictive glee, but you have safeguarded my dignity. Thank you. Sincerely.”

He gaped. Across the circle, the Lady of House Rowan-Oak snickered. Everyone heard it. Sweetie Belle smiled at Dawn the way that one might smile at an intruder at the end of one’s rapier. Right, of course, before stabbing them. She waited, and when it became clear he would only humiliate himself, he left to find the chair made for her that he had stowed away.

IXIL

Ixil groaned.

The sedative had been a pill, innocuous, simple, and brutally effective. It had only taken a few moments to work--she suspected it was magic. Now, as it wore off, her whole body felt sluggish and drugged. It took a lot to knock a Changeling out, but when you did… A Changeling did not wake quickly. They lingered in dreams.

But there had been no dreams. She realized this and shivered. It was… confusing. Frightening.

Her legs did not work. This was not mere sleepiness or the hazy moments after waking. They physically refused. Her whole body did. Damnable drugs. But the hunters had not harmed her. Ixil grimaced, and was glad that if nothing else, her face still obeyed. What frightening things. It had not been so much what they looked like so much as the aura they gave off. She wondered if it was because she was a changeling. Would other ponies notice? Was this an instinctive emotion preserved in the Gestalt? Perhaps. Probably. It still felt like her own unique fear.

She let out a low whine. She chittered, as changelings were wont to do. It helped to make noise, somehow. No, it did not make her feel better. Not really. But it was somehow good.

She was in a cell. It was well furnished--a real bed, a spartan sink. A privy, she thought, but wasn’t sure. But the bars were there as well. Beyond them, her nightvision had no need to adjust to the lack of light and see a surly guard in Lunar barding. So. Luna who saw all things had finally seen her.

Ixil knew she was going to die, but a new thought occured to her now. What if they didn’t simply let her die? What if they paraded her out in the streets? Don’t hate and fight, look, a new thing for you to all hate together! The monster in your midsts! She wanted to cry, but Changelings cannot cry. But they can sing so she sang. There were no words, only her voice without the burden of language, so foreign, so alien to ponies but the only one she had that was really her own.

When she was done she laid on the floor. She thought of moving to the bed, now that her legs were moving, but decided against it. They would just come for her soon, anyway. This was temporary. They hadn’t even bothered to light more than a few candles.

She did not know how long she laid there before She arrived. The only pony, in retrospect, that could arrive.

Luna entered without an ounce of ceremony. The Princess waved the guard away with a “thank you for your vigilance” and sat in front of the bars. She did not light any additional candles. She didn’t speak or do anything at all. She simply… watched.

And Ixil watched back, knowing her eyes shone in the darkness like little fires.

Luna cleared her throat. She made several attempts at saying something, always coughing and wincing. Ixil stared, confused. One moment the Princess was all steel and ice and the next she was… well, not intimidating at all--

“Ah, yes, I remember again,” Luna chittered in Ixil’s creche-tongue, the insectoid chittering that she had never heard a pony make.

If Ixil had been standing she would have fallen in shock. “But how?” she asked in the same way, frightened.

“When you live as… ah, as long as I do, you learn many things,” Luna said. “I know many things about you. Some of them approximate, some of them exact. Your name is Ixil. Is this correct?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Luna coughed. “I should have brought water. This hurts my throat a bit, but it will not stop me.”

“You shouldn’t be able to do this at all!” Ixil said, a bit too loudly. “How? No normal pony can do this. They aren’t built the right way.”

“Who said alicorns were built the same way as regular ponies?” Luna asked. She smiled. In the darkness, Ixil saw her teeth like a flock of sheep rolling down a hill. Or gravestones. Honestly, she was too flustered to handle metaphors. Or images. “But, if it will calm you, I have dealt with changelings many times. Most of those times involved… violence.” She sniffed. “A few required discussion. I can think of a very few that were actually rather pleasant. So I learned. It was a little difficult, I admit.”

Ixil didn’t even know where to begin to respond. This was not how she had seen this conversation happening.

“I do not understand,” she chittered.

“I know. This is a bit unorthodox. I wanted to ask you a few questions. We’ve known of your presence in the city for the last four years. When did you arrive?”

Ixil groaned. Four years. She had tried to be careful… she had tried, honest she with the Gestalt she had left behind! “The wedding.”

“And you escaped the destruction of that army how?”

Ixil barked a laugh. “I was in a wine cellar. I was seperated from my wing during the first rush and crashed in an alley. When I woke, I wandered until I found a house. When the Hive was defeated, I hid as Amity and said I was hiding in the safest place I could find. I had hit my head, you see?” Ixil rapped on her head softly with a chitinous hoof. “Yes? I did not need to act afraid.”

“You were afraid.”

“Yes.”

“And why have you stayed? Because you would be a traitor for not joining in the exile?”

Ixil shook her head. She chittered, but not saying any words. Just a sort of uncertain noise, a way to fill a void. “I wanted to go back, but now I do not. I would be welcomed as a long lost sister, princess.” The word was not princess. She hoped that Luna understood. There was no word for princess. There was only broodmother or queen. “The Gestalt sings to us, and we sing back. We dream together and wake to find ourselves still dreaming. Even now I am dreaming. Dreaming is everything. We feed on the happiness of others and find our dreams are bright, we starve and the dream becomes dim and it hurts us with its needs and its great hunger. There are dreams, and there is nothing else. But for me, who cannot touch the Gestalt as I once did, all of the dreams are my dreams.” She paused. “I like my dreams.”

“So you are no spy, no fugitive. Just a mare living in the city like any other,” Luna stated. She raised an eyebrow.

“I have an apartment and a job,” Ixil said as if that cleared the whole matter up.

Luna looked at her. Or rather, Ixil thought, the princess looked through her, as if she weren’t there at all. Could Luna see her as she really was? As a dream inside a shell? Would Ixil even want it to be seen, this private dreaming?

“My sister issued a pardon,” Luna began, “for all the changelings willing to identify themselves. We left the rest of them alone, unless they gave us a reason to detain them. You? I believe you. You indeed have an apartment, a job, and friends. You have favorite restaurants. You’ve even gone on a few dates, or at least, so the report says. Do you feed or do you skim?”

“Skimming is safe,” Ixil said. “Is sad when love is gone, it grows back slowly.”

“Acceptable. You will never feast here. Do you understand? To us it is punishable by… well. It is punishable.” Luna smiled. Ixil did not like that smile. “But you know that. And you have not done it, so I will not bother you about it anymore. So we may turn to the real reason my Duskwatch brought you here.”

Ixil’s wings fluttered. “What? I am not under arrest?”

“No.”

This time, she spoke in Equestrian. She was more used to it now. “Oh, thank you,” she said with a tongue not made for pony words. “You are merciful.”

“Sometimes. I brought you here so that you would know what I have not done. And… so you would have deniability. If you do not say yes, you may go, and you will have been picked up by us, so they will assume it was because you are a changeling. What they make of that? I care not. But your new home needs you, changeling. It needs the services only one of your kind can provide.”

“You need me to be somepony?” Ixil chittered.

“I need you to be yourself, or rather, Amity. Have you seen the strange ones who wear white?”

Ixil, startled, shrank back. “Yes! You want me to go to them? Ponies disappear… they vanish and never come back…”

“We need to know what they are doing. I think I know, but I need confirmation. I need to know when,” Luna said. She stomped on the stone. “I will not be blind. No longer. If you agree, the Duskwatch will help you join their ranks and will try to extricate you from their clutches in the event you are discovered.”

“Who are they?” Ixil asked. “They scare me.”

“Revolutionaries,” Luna hissed. “I have seen their types before. Ponies say the word freedom… they think that they know what freedom is, but what they want is license. They know nothing of what a republic looks like. That is what they are preaching, changeling. As if they know what that word means.” She ground her teeth together. Ixil scooted away. “As if they had seen the Federation with their own eyes and known its good soul… no, they are just clinging to anything that looks like hope in a vast darkness, but they will find that the Good Pony is not either of those things. You! You, Ixil, if you will aid Equestria, shall be the knife I set against their soft loins. I will be ready to plunge it right into them, cut up and spill their life on the floors of every market and in every dusty street. If they wish to buck me off my chair, they will be made to fight for it.”

Ixil thought, as she nodded dumbly, that Luna seemed like Chrysalis. Like Mother.

Luna smiled then, a grateful smile. She unlocked the door with her magic and beckoned to Ixil, who came out. They were close now. It felt a bit like standing next to the open maw of a tiger.

“If you will allow me, I will explain what I know. It occurs to me that a changeling knows little of revolution, or of any ideals it might have. You will need to know a bit, before we thrust you into the middle of it all.” And with that, she was led out into the winding catacombs below the palace, where Luna instructed her, and Ixil again felt she was with Mother, and that perhaps Luna was more like her than she thought. The Good Mother who taught and sang, and would slay without mercy anything which came into her Hive without her blessing. This was good. It was nice to be under Mother’s care again.

TWILIGHT

They looked up at the stars and Twilight felt… strange.

She already had felt strange, but this strange was different. There was anxiety, as before, but it tasted like other things. She was apprehensive, yes, but less. She thought of Jannah, but in her mind it had shrunk.

The strangeness was something like happiness. It was warm to the touch. It had made its nest in her heart like a foreign bird of paradise. If she reached out and touched it, feeling its warmth, she noticed that it was also shy and did not wish to be caught, pinned down, examined too closely.

This obviously made her want to examine it even more. Twilight thought that truth was interrogation and confession, either one or both.

So she chased it, and it fed her clues. That it wanted to be named, but would not name itself. That Twilight had to figure the world out for herself, that she had to find the truth that was true for her, for which she would sing or die. Morbid, but she felt that the warmth in her breast was important.

*

“It will be dawn for you, soon,” Twilight said once.

“I know.”

“Will you go?”

“Not right away,” Luna said. She sighed. It was such a heavy sigh for such a young and lithe form. “I have to raise the sun. It is still mine to do. But I will return. If you wish me too, of course.”

“Of course.”

*

“Luna, are you afraid of death?”

“Alicorns think about death constantly. I daresay we have thought more of death than all of the mortals that have ever been have thought about it.”

*

“The constellations are different now then they were for you.”

“Yes, partially because of my own influence.”

“So not totally.”

“They would shift on their own.”

“Would the sun and the moon move without Celestia and you to guide them?”

“Eventually. But the world would be different. No mare steps in the same river twice. It is a different mare and a different river everytime.”

“Who said that?”

“Someone. It was a long time ago.”

*

“If things can change, Twilight, perhaps the meaning they hold can change.”

“But how would you measure such a thing?”

“I suppose by experiencing it. In my day, experience was how one knew the world was real.”

“You know, Day Carts wondered if the world could be proven real, or if you could disprove that it was all a very intricate dream.”

“He sounds like a fool. I have seen the Dreaming and know the difference.”

*

“So, what’s that one?”

“That isn’t one at all, Twilight. But you see, the line I draw with this hoof? It goes… there, guess.”

“It looks kind of like a stick.”

“All constellations look like sticks.”

Twilight laughed. “Weird sticks, Spike said that once. What is it, Luna? What did you call it?”

“It was Bootes, the herdspony.”

“We still have one called that. It looks very different. You mean there are two? That’s amazing! I didn’t know. How old are these skies?”

“They are not old at all. They are young. A mare and a river, my friend.”

*

“You know, the only date I’ve ever been on was stargazing?”

“You speak the sooth?”

“The sooth,” Twilight said, giggling. “It was nice. He was a little too shy and I was a lot to inept at social interaction, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t mind at all.” She paused. “Also, he was a colt, and it would have to be a pretty special colt for me to be interested.”

Luna mumbled something that sounded pleased.

*

“Did you name this place?”

“Of course. And, of course, being as I was a child in the spring I named it after myself. Celestia rolled her eyes, but youth does not notice such things.”

Twilight laughed. “It seems fitting. Here you are again. I love it, Luna. Thank you for letting me stay.”

“How could I ever turn you away?”

“This feels like that night, that one date I had.”

“Do you like this night? I did not make it. This is one of the ones I remember, but…”

“No, not the night. Well, yes the night. Enjoying the stars and laying out next to a telescope. I like it. I enjoy… doing it with you, especially.”

*

“I am glad you that you found my younger form pleasing. Do you prefer it?”

“Not really. I like both. Younger you has its charms, but older you is the one that I always thought was grand and mysterious and full of…”

“Hm?”

“I’m not sure.”

“And you find my forms pleasing, hm? That is good to know. Time has not changed so much that a mare does not find herself flattered in every age that is and shall be.”

“Well, you know I think you’re beautiful. Surely you’ve felt that in the Aether. Have I never said?”

Luna hummed. “Perhaps, perhaps not. To hear a thing is to savor it, maybe. Thou are no burden to my ancient eyes either.”

“How kind.”

They laughed.

*

Have you ever asked yourself how connection to another mind is measured?

Had she weighed out the bonds of love? Could she measure them? Could they be inspected in situ, or dissected to discover their inmost secrets? If a light was shined upon these threads would they shine or remain dull, absorbing all light, ambiguous and uncertain to every faculty and to the knowledge of knowledge itself?

Chasing the lump in her throat, the longing in her chest, she found herself catching and releasing. Warmth became fire. It escaped, leaving a little of itself behind, little gifts.

And Twilight was no fool. She knew that she had felt this way before. She had felt some of this ease, some of this anxiety before--she had talked with Luna at length in the Dreaming and felt herself feeling much the same as she did now. She had read her letters underneath the birch and by a candle, she had feasted on stories and grown drunk on poetry written in tongues which perhaps only they remembered.

Before Ponyville, they had shared many days together in hope. Drank from the same wine at minor victory and mourned together in the terrible dark night of the soul as cities fell or turned their backs on their countrymen and were lost to silence. Those times had felt so intimate. Much as this did.

Twilight Sparkle had an idea of what it was she felt.

And that feeling was the most terrifying thing she had ever felt.

How did one wrestle with something that had no substance? How did one investigate something that was so elusive that to touch it was to see it wilt? Or, rather, something that you were afraid would wilt if you touched it, because Twilight could claim no certainty. Not now. Perhaps not ever. She had always known that anxiety was somewhere towards the center of life. Anxiety was as much the fear of the guillotine as it was the breathless anticipation of a foal at Hearth’s Warming. She felt a little of both. She felt potential--the potential for chance at all, the possibility of possibility.

She felt dizzy.

Anxiety. The dizzying height of freedom, the point at which all things done and undone are laid out and paths stretch out into the horizon. One could go any direction, try any route down. Crawl and carefully navigate, or be a boulder careening. But she found this mountain was hard going for the careful, always with another danger for the slow. The quick and the dead, the quick and the dead--she thought about that phrase a lot. She knew it meant the living and the dead--the quick meaning those with the quickening of life!--but she thought it was true as it was now understood. The quick and the dead.

She had never liked the idea of a leap of faith. You had to gather data. You had to calculate.

Yet Celestia had encouraged both in her. Learn, gather the lore and science and magic of all bygone times, forge new ones on the foundation of your intellect, she had been so very supporting of this.

Twilight, there will come moments in your life when you will have to stop thinking so very hard. I don’t mean you do foolish things… no, I take that back. I mean exactly that. If foolish is something spontaneous, something that is alive, then do that thing. A pony must learn to think, but most ponies already know how to feel.

“Princess, I know what emotions are. I have them, even, I promise!”

“Yes, Twilight. You are alive. You are a wonderful pony, and you are becoming a wonderful mare.” Twilight smelled a library where the sun shone in through high windows. “But you simply must learn not to simply be alive. You must live! Take a leap of faith. Talk to someone new, that’s the smallest sort of living I can think of, really. And I know how huge that is. Trust me, I too was a stranger to many once. My sister and I… well. I was once mostly alone in this world. If I had counted every risk, I would have never left my bed in a thousand years. If I had taken them seriously.”

“Luna,” Twilight said quietly, “I am glad you taught me to dreamwalk.”

“I was very glad that you wished to learn,” Luna said.

“And… thank you for letting me stay, again. For letting me sleep.”

“So close to Jannah, I had found you hard to pin down. But now you are easy to find. Strange, but I will accept any blessing.”

“Luna, did your sister ever tell you to take risks? Leaps of faith? Anything like that?”

Luna paused. She did more than pause, she hesitated. She rolled onto her side. It was very dark. There was not even a candle to be had--Twilight relied on her nightvision, which was surprisingly mediocre.

“She did, once or twice,” Luna allowed.

“I was thinking of that earlier.”

“Why? If I might ask.”

Twilight sighed. Do or do not, either way--regret. She’d read that somewhere. She believed it.

“Can I ask you a question, Luna? Honestly. And you answer me honestly. I know you will, I just want… to hear.”

“I give my most solemn vow. You have my word of honor.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Do you like me, Luna? You know what way I mean.”

She didn’t take a deep breath before saying it. In fact, she barely steeled herself at all. It just happened. The words left her as any other words might. They were alive in the air like fireworks, destructive and bright and… and…

“Twilight?”

“Luna?”

“Yes.”

Twilight shook a little. Yes. She had been right.

“Why?”

“There are a lot of reasons. I have been in love many times and still I cannot tell you all there is to know of it. Love is not… it is not a feeling, not totally. It isn’t a disposition, a sentiment, so much as it is an exchange. I could no more explain why I love you then I could explain who I am and what I am. I could say that I love you because of your earnest seeking heart, the way you smile when you discover something new, the way you became the friend of a lonely mare like myself lost and adrift in a new world… I could say many more things. Did I love you because of those, or because of love did I appreciate them twice as much?”

“I don’t know.”

“I also do not know.” Luna sat up. “Twilight, I did not plan to say this to you. I am… thou hast--you have caught me off guard. Very off my guard.”

“I know I have. I’m sorry, Luna.” Twilight also sat up. They sat facing each other in the dark.

“I have felt this way for some time,” Luna continued. “But the world was different, and I was afraid. I have been afraid every time, because love is not something one measures in ‘times’ or appearances. You were Twilight, and so I wanted everything to be perfect.”

Perfect. Then I will be perfect and Celestia will love me.

“I think I know what you mean.”

“Where are we? What now shall we do? Will there be a lovestruck confession under the stars? Shall you reject me, or shall I run? What story are we playing out?” Luna asked. Her words came quickly.

“This isn’t a story out of a book, Luna. It’s just… it’s you and me. Here. Do you think I’m upset?”

“I do not know. I fear you may be.”

“I’m not.”

“I am relieved. My attentions… I know that they can be burdensome.”

“Hardly. I’ve missed you.”

“I am glad to hear this.”

Twilight sighed. “I don’t really know what to do or say. I’m sorry, Luna. I’m not… not good at this sort of thing. I’m really, really not.”

“Is anyone? I think not. And I would know after so long, I think.” She smiled. Twilight made it out barely and it lifted her spirits a bit out of the muck of her own uncertainty. “What a world is this, love blossoming in the middle of battlefields, talks on the edge of hell, symposiums by the chopping blocks? What a world.”

“What a world.”

“Beautiful, yes. What do you feel? About me. I would ask you to do as I have done and be honest,” Luna said.

“I…” Twilight groaned softly. She regretted. There wasn’t enough time to prepare. What would she say? “I don’t… I don’t know. I love being with you. I like our talks and this dream has been the best I have had in… maybe forever. I’ve never been in love--”

“Please love me,” Twilight whispered. “Please love me, Princess. Please, I’ll do anything. I would be happy just to be your slave, to lick your heels. I will do anything. Please love me.”

“--but I think this may be just that,” she finished, a little breathless. Why now? Why remember that now?

“You are uneasy,” Luna said. Her voice… what was she thinking? Twilight couldn’t tell. She felt… she felt so little through the Aether now. Did Luna guard her heart? Did Twilight just not see?

“I’m scared,” Twilight said, practically spat. “I’m scared, Luna. What if I say yes, and this is all just… just the end of the world and danger and you leave me behind? Or I make the wrong choice? What if it’s the right choice, then what? A whole… a whole lifetime of being with someone, of walking right beside them… I don’t know. I’m just scared.”

Luna touched her cheek and Twilight shivered. When Luna retracted it with a look of alarm, Twilight grabbed her and held the hoof to her face. It was comforting. Her heart beat so fast in her tiny chest. She was so small. Luna towered over her, and Twilight wanted her to be that tall, imposing warrior, like a tree to hide in.

“I am not worth your fear, my love,” Luna said, and Twilight looked at her with wide eyes. Luna flushed, perhaps, for her face screwed up into a look of utmost embarrassment. “I’m not going… I wouldn’t hurt you. You know that.”

“I’m not afraid of you, silly,” Twilight said. Was she…? No. She was not going to… “Dammit,” she said. “Damn. Damn.” There they were. Had those tears been hiding all along? Who the hell cared? She was pathetic. She had risked, asked a question, and now she was crying. Like a foal. Like a miserable, useless foal. She was so useless and she hated herself.

“Then of what, sweetest Twilight? What is there to fear?” Except the obvious.

“I think I’m afraid of everything.” Twilight sniffed. She tried to furiously wipe the rogue tears away. There were not so many. Luna stopped her and made soft, shushing noises. Twilight wanted to die. Luna knew she was just a child now. But the princess who watched the night, her friend and her confidant, brushed the tears away and gestured for Twilight to scoot closer and Twilight obeyed as she always did. This time it felt…

A hoof brushed her mane. Twilight was reminded of how Rarity would play with her mane when she was upset. Or how Fluttershy would make her tea. Or maybe how Applejack would let her have some of the cider reserve and a nice chair and listen, eyes like green emeralds dancing in the evening light.

“Everything?”

“All of it. I’m afraid of tomorrow and yesterday and Jannah. I’m afraid of my friends and the ponies who don’t like me. I’m afraid of what I’ll find and what I left behind with you. I’m afraid of you and I’m afraid of me. I’m afraid of what Celestia will say when I find her, and I’m afraid of what… if I don’t…”

“My sister lives,” Luna said. Her voice sounded so strained.

“I want to be happy but I’m afraid to,” Twilight continued. “One of the reasons I worked so hard, studied so hard, was that I hoped one day I would understand. I would get it. The whole… stupid… damn world. It would make sense and then I wouldn’t have to be afraid. I would know what would happen.”

“You cannot understand the heart in books of lore, Twilight.”

“Maybe not,” she confessed like one confessed a sin on the lip of hellfire’s pit.

“Twilight, do you love me? Could you? What do you feel? What do you think?”

“I think you make me happy. I think I don’t really know what I feel. I think I could. I’m sorry they’re not in order,” she added with a sniffle.

Luna sighed. “I have always wished to make you happy.”

“I’m not leaving. Twilight, calm down. Let us talk about this…”

She was filthy. Dirty. Impure. She felt the corruption in her heart, in her mind. On her skin. In the heat that creeped from her loins up her spine. In the way her legs shook and her head throbbed.

Unclean, unclean, unclean.

“I’m not good enough,” Twilight whispered. “Of course you wouldn’t… Of course… but please, Princess, have mercy. I know I’m worthless. I know I would never be a lover worthy of you.”

“Twilight, you’re a wonderful mare. I—”

“Take me anyway. I would be a plaything in your hooves, a throwaway and I would be pleased.”

“But what if you can’t? What if I can’t, either?”

“I can give my whole self to it.”

“But you can’t just… you are a pony too. Ponies can’t just empty themselves like that. It’s too much. It’s too heavy.”

“I can lend myself unto death, Twilight. My reserve of strength is great. But you are right, in some ways.” Luna continued to stroke her hair. It made Twilight happy. It was a very simple feeling. “But I love you, Twilight. I wish that you would love me also. I think… I think I could make you happy, and I know that you have made me glad. But… I also remember what it is to feel frightened in the face of life. I would never push you. Not intentionally.” Luna nuzzled her. “Even this is perhaps too much. I wish I could bring you the comfort your friends could.”

“I like it,” Twilight said like a child.

“Good.”

They were quiet for awhile. Twilight did not move.

“I have something big to do. Something really big. I need to see with my own eyes, Luna. What’s… what’s in there.”

“In Jannah?”

“Yeah.”

“I understand. You must see my sister. Do you feel for her? I think you do. Do not be afraid to tell me, Twilight. I have long suspected.”

“I don’t know. I… I’ve dreamed about her. But I felt so… so awful. I was so dirty.”

Twilight’s tears returned. She felt her throat seizing up, stopping.

“Dirty? Unclean? Twilight, I had thought the world had moved beyond--”

“It’s not because she’s a mare,” Twilight said, or managed to say as she sniffed and shuddered. “Like… I mean… but she’s like my mom! And I feel… but… I don’t know.” Twilight closed her eyes. Do or do not. Regret, regret. Regret. Everything. “Can you love more than one pony? Can you love a pony but be afraid of ever telling them and never tell them and just bury it? I’m awful. I’m worse than awful. And here I am telling you.”

“I asked. Twilight… sweetest Twilight, I am ashamed. I had no idea that you held all this.”

“I don’t… I don’t talk much about anything, do I? She wanted me to. I don’t want to be the Apostate. It’s a cold word. I want to talk and laugh and maybe love and I don’t know anymore.”

“There may yet be time in which to know. Or approximate that knowledge. How close is Jannah?”

“Tomorrow? Maybe? The next day?”

“Close. It weighs on you. I cry your pardon a thousand times that I am not there to help you with that weight. I wish that I were able.”

“You helped a lot,” Twilight said. She rubbed her eyes. “Just by being here.”

“And I will continue. I will watch over your dreams. Those in Jannah are not lost to me. My friends should not wander into the abyss alone. None of them.” Luna squeezed Twilight tighter.

“Are we still friends? Whatever… whenever I figure out what I feel? I don’t know. I can’t give you a good answer right now. Not with all of this. Not with Jannah, and the world, and… its…”

“I have never even entertained the thought that it should ever be otherwise between us,” Luna said as gently as a pony could say anything, it seemed.

“Thank you,” Twilight said.

“I will wait. I have waited long for lesser things. We shall always be friends. I shall love you always, in one way or another, and the world will move on. I shall be sad beyond any normal sadness. It is my… right. But even I may survive a great wound. I hope for you to see your own heart and know what it is you want, Twilight. I would only wish you to come to me a whole mare, or mostly whole, not a slave but a lover--without tearing your self to do it.”

“Thank you,” Twilight said, because it was all she could say, and the hour was late, and Jannah was there.

“You are welcome. I am sorry, Twilight. I do not know if it is wrong to fear, but I wish you could rise above that fear. We will talk… when you come back from that place. Is that alright? And if you have an answer, I will gladly take that answer.”

“Okay.”

She looked up. Luna smiled down at her. Twilight smiled back, and then she laid against Luna. Yes, this was alright. For now. But then… Jannah. Celestia. Eon.

And when she woke up it would be there waiting. And there was more. Beyond it, above it, this did not matter.

She was in the shadow of that hideous strength and Luna held her and she knew that she would not be the same, that she could not be the same, for a mare crosses the river and cannot do so again, for it will be new water and a different mare. And she trembled. Fear, and trembling, and working out her own heart, and all of this she knew would end, one way or another.

Slave, lover, friend, penpal, whatever, liege and lady. She thought of her sordid dreams. She thought of Luna’s gentle touch. She thought about Applejack telling her she was blind and she couldn’t revel in her own misery. She thought of Tradewinds who wanted to be her druhznik, her fealty-sworn, and she thought of Pinkie the bard who just wanted her to smile.

It was enough. It would have to be enough.

Author's Note:

I want to say that, for the record, I am apologizing for the TONS of shipping in the last two or three chapters. I know that's not what some of you signed on for. I know.

But all things must see their completeness in decency and order.
The couplet in question, "The shadow of that hyddeous strength, sax myle and more it is of length", refers to the Tower of Babel.[3]

There are no nights now when I don't dream & wake in the darkness to find I've been weeping. But it has been ages since I've cried while awake, cause centuries wear on the heart, they erode it away.
"They would say," he answered, "that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience."
Jannah is next. I need to lie down. It is coming and I will need my strength.

Comments

[Cynewulf]

6291127 glad to hear it

It's 300 thousand words long.

I don't believe my eyes. Or my fingers. where did it all come from

[ANearPerfectStudent]

“This isn’t a story out of a book, Luna. It’s just… it’s you and me. Here. Do you think I’m upset?”

Twilight, you sit on a throne of LIES!

[Cynewulf]

6291380 I've done this a few times throughout. It's fun

[lilmagi]

Hell, It's about time.
Well this is exactly what I came in for. Ever since I saw that romance tag and twiluna group tag.

[TheLastBrunnenG]

6291135
There’s a Romance tag. Took you long enough! And every blessed syllable worth the wait.

[Biker_Dash]

I want to say that, for the record, I am apologizing for the TONS of shipping in the last two or three chapters. I know that's not what some of you signed on for. I know.

What I have signed on for is an incredibly well written story, and what I have received with each and every chapter is an incredibly well written story. I, for one, welcome the shipping within this story, for it is done surpurbly well.

ScootaBelle next?

[Pearple Prose]

Oh man, I love just how much weight you gave their confessions of love. It's like releasing a long held-in breath. This whole chapter was awesome and I can't wait to see Jannah.

[Cynewulf]

6292200 bruh Scootabelle is already theerrree

6291961 yeah yeah! But Luna's side was there all aloooong! But yes I deliver.

6292614 I have poured all of my anxieties into one great pot and called it this story, I felt every bated breath and every stuttering heartbeat. This was painful.

[TheLastBrunnenG]

6292914
Oh, I know, believe me. Every time they stared across those magic-mirror srcying stones, Luna's longing was palpable.

Also, this is officially the longest pony story I've ever read. I was never into the doorstoppers like FoE or SS&E's Noble Jury series or any of the other enorm-o-fics, but this? This, I could read again. Will read again.

[Cynewulf]

6292971 I'm honored. Legitimately and deeply. Thanks for staying with me.

On a side note, some of the long fics are very worth it. I've been rereading Background Pony and the feelings are just as raw as before. SSE helped fortify my belief that the emotional impact of shortform fiction can and should be a part of even the longest, most epic story--Background Pony tore me to shreds in the day. I've never written anything as heartbreaking or as deeply, deeply meaningful and I may never. For me, this is a process of infinite approximation.

Luna's longings were better down then the Raridash, I think, which surprises me most of all. I didn't totally drop the ball on them, but for a ship I KNEW was going to happen from the first outlining to be supplanted in scope and depth by one that only came into the frame later is interesting.

[neokiva]

I only ask you don't hurt luna when the time comes I want Twilight to Love Luna or at least realise it, I want celestia to hold twilight and tell her that she has her blessing. I want eon to stop being mysterious and aloof and I hope twilight becomes an alicorn so she can stay with Luna for all time.

[Cynewulf]

6293028 I think Twilight does realize it, myself. Why do you think she is so afraid? Aside from the obvious, which is because of everything.

[neokiva]

6293032 the fear she is exhibiting is of the unknown and of what celestia will think of her, or how to deal with her dirty dirty mare on mare action with luna dreams. she is scared of more ponies calling her apostate when all she does is loving celestia's sister and is still loyal to celestia. that in itself is the reason twilight is looking for celestia really, even though she also is doing it to restore order.

[Cynewulf]

6293065 I think you're mostly right.

I think love is absolutely terrifying, really. Don't you? At least a bit.

And dreams with Luna? They could have been Celestia. Hell, she saw Tradewinds for a bit. The ones at the beginning of this act were a bit more ambiguous. Or, well, I meant them to be.

[neokiva]

6293093 It was ambiguous I just thought of Luna first rather than Celestia.
As for love being terrifying perhaps it is and perhaps it isn't it's all very subjective.

[TheLastBrunnenG]

6292980
Part of the dilemma of the RariDash in TNIP is your own history with it *. My theory is this: you've put these two through so much already that all their deep development is already done and foregone, to you, even in an unrelated (?) story - lilies and feelings and foxes and hearts and mighty flames, and such - and you're fighting to avoid repeating yourself.

* and the bits you stole from an ever-so-willing Razed.

[Cynewulf]

6293140 I think that is right on point! Yes, I have been cautious to avoid ground I've tread before (and tread again now). Though I took more from Master Gardez than my friend Razed. We drank from the same well.

[Carbon]

6293093
No Twilestia here?

[Cynewulf]

6293177 You guise

How long have I been around? Certainty is not what you want if you're reading me. I rarely give it. Partially cause I'm not sure I believe in it when it comes to this mortal coil.

Twilight may love Luna. She may love Celestia. She thinks Tradewinds has a hot bod. But has she acted on it? Nah. She has put it off, all of it, until her quest is done. Or tried to.

I don't know. There will be that confrontation, Celestia the Sign and Celestia in Twilight's mind. Ask rather if you think they are the same, and what that conversation will be like, then you'll have your answer.

[Carbon]

6293186
Yea, Sure , but we still dont get Celestia*s perespective about this situation. And this stii big mystery of all fic. ( Why she abaddon all ponies, what think about twilight etc. etc.)
And if next chapter about Jannah, i sure Twilight meet that misterious alicorn from dreams. That will be very interesting.

[Iron Nebula]

Good God, the weight of uncertainty on top of Jannah is so palpable I can taste it. kind of sharp, a little bitter, and with an aftertaste like cheap whipped cream; a coating on the tongue that takes forever to wash out. Can't wait for the next chapter!

Also: GO SWEETIE BELLE! You kicked so much political, smarmy, under-handed ASS!!

[ponygrad]

>implying I didn't come for the shipping

[Backlash91]

I loved this chapter for three reasons.

1. Ixil: I have always liked changelings, and I get to add one more Ling to my list of great characters. Thanks^^

2. Twiluna AND Twilestia vague mentions? In one story? Awesome.

3. In depth writing. When one writes a story that makes me see things from a completely different perspective, it makes me smile. Twilight is lost, she wants answers, but knows that knowledge is one of the more illusive things in life. It is its own battlefront.

She will have to fight for the truth.

[NikitaKitten]

Apologizing for shipping? Please. This is exactly what I signed up for. Adventure with ships.

[Some Jerk]

At some point Soarin became voiced by H. Jon Benjamin doing Sterling Archer in my head.

It made everything way better with him.

[Swarthy Skies]

Alright back to getting caught up with this monster.

Unicorn Twilight and young Luna being adorable and stargazing? This is bringing me back to my season 1 Twiluna days. I did enjoy their interactions a lot this chapter, though it is making me more... anxious for the coming meeting between Twilight and Celestia. Onwards to Jannah!

[Commander Darklight]

ok well this is strange i picked this up in a twilestia group yet the shipping appears to be twiluna hmmm maby it will be a twilunestia

[Lord Midnight]

And so this is the end of the house of Belle, the bloodline anyway.

[Swashbucklist]

I want to say that, for the record, I am apologizing for the TONS of shipping in the last two or three chapters. I know that's not what some of you signed on for.

This wasn't the first thing on my mind, but I will accept your apology for making the romance scenes so damn long. I sign on to dystopian stories for action and adventure. Where are all the flame-throwing Mustangs with tank treads? The dune buggies mounted with grappling hooks? I got the impression that Twilight wanted some Road Warrior fetish gear...

Please, I’ll do anything. I would be happy just to be your slave, to lick your heels.

...but I still can't picture her behind the wheel of a semi truck with steel spikes welded all over it. Everyone's just sitting around talking about their feelings.

[Scarheart]

And here is where I stop reading. No disrespect to the author nor the story, but too many same sex couples in this story to make it believable. I'm just finding the slew of stories like this raking me out of enjoying the main storyline.

[Shinzakura]

I'm in agreement with 7000715 as it feels way too shippy and unbelievable. Granted, while I have zero issue with same-sex relationships...the level you've got strongly indicates that it's about 60% of the population, and thus there would be no population. Furthermore, from a writing standpoint, it feels like a bad mashup of a dystopia and a romance novel.

6763956

And so this is the end of the house of Belle, the bloodline anyway.

Actually, in most nations with a nobility system, it would be the end of the house, period, as said system requires a bloodline to continue. An example of this is the UK, where actor (yes, I know he's American, but he's also a British lord) Christopher Guest's heir to the barony is his younger brother. While Guest has two children, they are both adopted and thus do not qualify for the title.

[Ice Star]

Oh no
They most definitely are going to be in the wrong neighborhood