Calling You

by AugieDog

Sixth Century

"Well, all in all,—" The genealogy chart covered five generations now and had gotten so big, Cadance could actually feel her magic straining to unfold the thing against the throne room wall, the only space tall enough to hold it. "The project's been going pretty well."

"Goodness!" Aunt Celestia's horn glowed, and the chart's weight vanished, her aunt lifting it with seemingly no effort at all. "But what am I looking at here, niece?"

Stepping back into the otherwise empty chamber—Aunt Celestia had told the current Seneschal that they were holding a 'Princess Summit' this afternoon—Cadance let a spot of light sprout from the tip of her horn and used it to underline the seven hundred and fifty names written in small letters along the top of the chart. "It's the result of me realizing two things: first, that I usually only meet ponies on the worst day of their lives, and second, that ponies are more themselves when they're grieving. Getting to know these ponies here while I was Calling their relatives, I couldn't help but notice their great kindness, loyalty, generosity, honesty, good humor and gentle magic."

She didn't mention, of course, that these were largely the grandfoals and great-grandfoals of the first group she'd tried to run through this whole project, but, well, Aunt Celestia didn't need to know all the details...

Focus! she told herself urgently, and continued: "So I went looking for other ponies who displayed these same qualities and did what I could to arrange meetings between those I thought would make good partners. Sometimes, it was easy." She moved her light from one pairing to another. "These two grew up on neighboring farms, for instance, and these two lived just a few blocks away from each other in Manehattan. Others took a little more doing."

Unable to stop a grin, she pointed to two of her favorites from the last hundred years. "Flare kept talking about how she wanted to go the Canterlot and become a singer, but that was all she ever did: talk about it! I knew she'd be a perfect match for Minor Seventh, who was here training to be a xylophonist, so I kept popping into Flare's bedroom while she was asleep and whispering to her to follow her dreams. When she finally did, I made sure she saw the flyer Minor had posted in every coffee house in town looking for ponies to join his new band. The spark between them at her audition was unmistakable; I nourished it a bit with my magic, and the two of them were married less than a month later."

"I remember," Aunt Celestia said softly. "Their group was a fixture at the Vine St. Bistro for more than three decades." The slight distress in her voice made Cadance stop, click off her light, and turn, the single wrinkle on her aunt's brow starting a trickle of sweat under the tight braid of Cadance's mane. "I do have to wonder, however," Aunt Celestia went on, "what you would have done had that spark not appeared."

Ears folding—at least it was a question she'd expected—Cadance blew out a breath. "That happens." She powered up her horn again, pointed to some of the branches on the chart that just trailed away. "If two ponies don't hit it off, I step back, sigh, and move on." Most of the time, at least: unwilling to give up on the humor and determination she'd sensed from Azure Skies over two hundred years ago, Cadance had followed that pegasus's bloodline for nine generations now without ever once managing to get any of Azure's descendants to fall in love with the pony she'd thought would be perfect for them! "Still, I'm seeing some promising trends now that I'm following your suggestions about expanding the program."

"Oh, Cadance, this is...it's..." Aunt Celestia's eyes wavered, and Cadance couldn't help staring. In all the nearly two thousand years that she'd known her aunt, this was the second or maybe third time Cadance had seen her speechless. "And that you're doing all this without coercion or restricting anypony's freedom of choice—" She fixed her gaze on Cadance. "I've never been prouder of you, niece."

Cadance had to look away. "I...I've been tempted to force things along more than once..."

"But you've never crossed that line." A lilac-scented breeze brought Cadance's head back up, her aunt smiling beside her: Aunt Celestia had gotten even taller and more regal since that day just over six hundred years ago now when Cadance had held her collapsed and weeping aunt after she'd exiled Aunt Luna. "You've respected the lives of our ponies as completely as you respect their deaths, and through your efforts, for the first time, I..." She shivered, something else Cadance wasn't sure she'd ever seen. "I have every reason to believe I may yet behold dear Luna alive and herself again." Bending her head, Aunt Celestia brushed her cheek against Cadance's, that amazing mane of hers shimmering and flowing all around.

"Thank you," Cadance murmured, muscles loosening that she hadn't even known she'd been holding tensed. "We can't give up hope, Auntie. We...we can't."

"Nor shall we." Aunt Celestia straightened. "I must ask, however, about the time frame. Wielding the Elements at this point feels more to me like juggling stones than anything else, so I honestly can't say how many more centuries it might be before they cease responding entirely."

Swallowing, Cadance refused to let any panic show. "Twenty to twenty-five generations is what I've been thinking from the start, so, yes, another four hundred years." Turning to the chart, she slipped her magic through Aunt Celestia's and began folding the giant parchment. "By then we should have at least six ponies more perfectly attuned to the Elements than even the three of us ever were."

"Can you imagine it?" Aunt Celestia was looking at the stained glass windows, the afternoon light casting a wash of colors over her. "Mortal ponies truly and solely in control of the most powerful magic in all Equestria. The prospect fills me with both joy and trepidation." She cocked her head, turned those deep eyes of hers onto Cadance. "You were still serving solely in the Groves Beyond when Luna and I were forced to intervene with King Sombra, weren't you? The depth of his sorcery was indeed impressive, but he employed it only toward enslaving others and increasing his own foul influence."

Cadance shrugged, focused on folding her chart into a cube a hoof high on each side. "Well, how 'bout Clover the Clever? She summoned us into this world in the first place and was the original Element of Honesty. And her mentor, Starswirl the Bearded? I've gotten to know them quite well in the Groves Beyond, and I wouldn't hesitate a moment to trust any of the Elements to either of them."

Silence then, and Cadance looked over to see Aunt Celestia smiling, most of the sourness cleared from her scent. "As always, niece, you reassure me." She nodded to the bundled-up chart. "Let me know if you need my help at all on this project, and I'll ask that you pencil me in for another update early in the next century."

"It's a date." Cadance activated her horn, slit the air, and opened the way into the Realm Between. "I'll be back for sundown and supper if I don't get a Call." Stepping through onto the grass of her front yard, she waited till she was sure the gate had closed completely behind her before she did a little dance and kissed the magically-compacted chart floating beside her. Turns out organization had been the key after all! And now that Aunt Celestia had given her approval to phase one, Cadance could start into phase two!

Pushing open the door, Cadance floated inside and around the corner to what had once been her sitting room. She'd kept her big armchair and the sofa, but the bookcases had gone decades ago so she could cover the walls with cork and pin up her working charts—the ones she used every day to track all the couples and single ponies in the program, not the giant presentation chart she'd made especially for today's meeting with Auntie. File cabinets filled with the notebooks she'd been keeping sat snugged against all four walls, and she kept her main ledger on a desk she'd put together especially to hold it—

A desk that Chrysalis was standing in front of, the green magic of her horn flipping through the ledger's pages.

Which was perfectly fine with Cadance: she'd been planning on heading into the hive next to tell her friend the good news. "Chrys!" Bounding into the room, Cadance slid up beside her, pulled open one of the desk drawers, and dropped the chart in with a thump. "Thank you so, so much for covering all the Calls today! 'Cause Aunt Celestia loved everything about the plan, and she thinks it'll work! She really thinks it'll work!" Overcome, she hopped closer to Chrysalis and gave her a hug and a nuzzle. "Isn't it great??"

As always, Chrysalis seemed more to tolerate the embrace than anything else, wiggling away almost immediately. "In the first place," she said in her buzzing voice, "there no need to always be thanking me for taking your Calls. It's what we changelings do, Cady: end of story. And in the second place, why are you so surprised she approved your plan? When has your aunt ever disapproved of anything you've done?"

With a laugh, Cadance shook her head and settled into her chair. "Fine. I've been panicking all week for no reason: is that what you want me to say?" She grinned and bounced against the cushions. "But this is it, Chrys! I mean, if I can keep on top of all this information and keep helping these ponies help themselves, we'll not only have the Elements back at full strength, but we'll have Aunt Luna back being her old, not-trying-to-shroud-the-world-in-eternal-night-or-whatever self!"

"Well, well, well." Chrysalis flashed the briefest of smiles—this Chrysalis, Cadance had noticed years ago, seemed really self-conscious of her snaggly teeth, so Cadance took it as a personal triumph every time she got the changeling to grin. "Does this mean you'll finally stop underestimating yourself?" Chrysalis asked. "Will you finally realize that you're one of the three most powerful beings currently working their wills in the world and begin comporting yourself accordingly?"

Cadance had to blink. "Well, technically, Aunt Luna isn't in the world right now, the way she's exiled to the moon and all."

Clearing her throat, Chrysalis arched an eye ridge.

"Eep." Cadance's face heated up. "I'm sorry, Chrys. 'Cause you're totally right. Without you and me and Aunt Celestia—"

"Yes, yes." Chrysalis waved a front hoof and turned her attention to the ledger. "You've got too much on your mind these days, I suppose, to remember that we three are the glue that keeps Equestria from spinning off into a morass of madness and horror." Green fire flickered down her horn, and the ledger flipped to the last few blank pages. "But I take it from your outburst that this whole Elements of Harmony business is going well?"

"Oh, better than I had ever dreamed it would!" Cadance couldn't keep sitting, had to leap up to show Chrysalis the latest results. "Just in the last three months, I've managed to—!"

"I'm sure you have." Chrysalis tapped the empty page and gave Cadance a sideways glance. "I can't help wondering, however, if you've thought at all about the endgame."

That got Cadance blinking even more. "These ponies," Chrysalis went on, her green fire scattering out to lick every one of Cadance's file cabinets. "Once you're finished having your way with them— And, yes, I know." She held up a hoof so fast when Cadance opened her mouth to complain that Cadance could hear air whistle through the holes. "For me to use the phrase 'having your way with them' grossly distorts everything good and noble that you're trying to accomplish with this project. I'll stipulate to that, and we'll move on."

Pursing her lips, Cadance didn't bother to keep her ears from dipping. "To your point, I'm hoping?"

"Exactly." Chrysalis more glided across the room than walked, stretching herself out on the sofa like a cat. "A few hundred years from now when your Element bearers are living their quiet and unsuspecting little lives, how exactly are you planning to inform them that they've been chosen by one of Equestria's immortal deities to save the world from another of Equestria's immortal deities?" She cocked her head at Cadance. "Invite them over for tea the afternoon before your aunt returns with her mind set on destroying everything they've ever known?"

"What? No! Of course not!" Though Cadance had to admit that the question hadn't even occurred to her. It ricocheted around in her brain, knocked over other thoughts and ideas, and she found herself speaking them aloud, trying to get them organized. "Because the Elements exist as a relationship: using them by herself is what started them going stagnant on Aunt Celestia. The Element bearers can't be strangers to each other, or the essence of Harmony won't—"

That thought, though, lit up a whole new area of concerns she hadn't thought about before, either, and a sudden burst of nervous energy pushed Cadance to begin pacing back and forth across the carpet. "But they can't know each other all that well before Aunt Luna arrives, can they? The true bonds of Harmony have to be forged in dialectic, in instinctive reaction to a perceived disharmony! Clover and Cookie and Pansy, they couldn't've discovered the Fire of Friendship without the threat of the wendigoes literally freezing them to death, nor could they have created my aunts and me and started with us on the path to discover the Elements without Discord standing right there, breathing that noxious, rotten-banana breath of his down their necks!"

Knees shaking, Cadance collapsed back into her chair. "We can't just...can't just assemble them a few years before Aunt Luna breaks free and start training them to use the Elements against her! That would vitiate the Elements' organic nature...like trying to grow flowers by putting the seeds on a strict exercise regimen! It would be absolutely antithetical to the very nature of Harmony itself!"

Chrys was staring at her with very wide eyes. "I'm guessing that all means something."

Cadance waved her hoof, her mind racing to reconcile the contradiction: how can they be friends but stll not know each other very well? "It's that the six have to be friends, but their friendship can't begin till the very moment Aunt Luna is flexing her wings and shrugging off her restraints! Otherwise, that first spark won't occur in opposition to her, and the Elements...they'll be powerless!" Another surge of nerves pushed her to her hoofs again. "This is terrible! I'll need to change my approach entirely! I've got to tell Aunt Celestia and—!"

"OK, Cady." Green light surrounded her, seemed to solidify the air and hold her in place. "Let's have you just sit down and breathe for a minute."

It took some effort, but Cadance got her head to turn and her eyes to focus on Chrysalis, looking very stern and serious. "Please?" the changeling asked.

Just hearing that word from her normally-brusque friend was enough to make Cadance sink back onto her cushions. "Now." Chrysalis stood, her green fire vanishing and letting Cadance move easily again. "I admit to not understanding these Elements of Harmony, but, well, as we've discussed, I'm not a pony, so I don't feel them the way you do. Nor do I understand this magic of friendship that underlies the Elements: it's not quite the magic of love that we deal with every day, but it's similar in enough ways that I can see its potential." She moved to the desk and tapped the ledger again. "All that aside, I find that your basic approach to this project is sound, and I agree that it's Equestria's best chance to survive your Aunt Luna."

"But—!" Cadance began, her mind still churning.

"All you need," Chrysalis interrupted with a grin, "is to stack the deck."

Forcing her panic away, Cadance blinked. "You...you have an idea?"

"You mentioned some centuries ago that Nightmare Moon was even then becoming more folk tale than history." Chrysalis stepped forward, an eagerness in her face that Cadance didn't often see there. "We need to encourage that trend, need to start tales of our own connecting her return with the Elements of Harmony, and need to make those tales as common as the air. If these tales are a part of the cultural background, when your Element bearers are born four hundred years from now, they'll have an unconscious understanding of the situation, an understanding that has seeped into them from foalhood."

Cadance felt herself quivering on the edge of her seat. "They'll know it without knowing it. So when they meet, the pieces will just...will just slide right into place!" She leaped to her hoofs once more. "It'd be like Hearth's Warming Eve, something foals will take part in year after year! It would center on a fairy-tale version of Nightmare Moon and would give our Element bearers a basis to build on when the real Nightmare Moon comes back!" Laughing, she dashed over and threw her front legs around Chrysalis. "You're a genius!"

"I'm many things," Chrysalis murmured, not pulling away from the hug for the first time that Cadance could remember. "A de facto princess, one might even say."

That got Cadance to pull away, but only enough so she could look into Chrysalis's eyes. "I...I beg your pardon?"

"Aren't I?" The green glow in those eyes reminded Cadance of the sea down at the bottom of the hill on those winter afternoons when she would allow a storm to blow in. "I'm doing the job of a princess when I answer your Calls. I show every sign of living as long as your aunts and you in my own way. And I have a whole hive of followers who look to me for guidance." She gave another of her snaggle-toothed grins, and Cadance had to grin back. "And besides, doesn't 'Princess Chrysalis' have a certain ring to it?"

Flushed with happiness, Cadance poked Chrysalis in the chest with a hoof. "Now who's underestimating herself? I mean, c'mon, Chrys! You're descended from bees! You should be 'Queen Chrysalis' if you're anything!"

Chrysalis froze, her ragged wings sticking straight up into the air. "Oh, I like that," she whispered, poking a hoof of her own into Cadance's chest. "I like that very much."

Comments

[AugieDog]

I've said it before:

And I'll say it again: what could possibly go wrong?

Look for "Seventh Century" on or about July 6th!

Mike

[TheStratovarian]

Huh, fun little pokes here and there.

[Music-and-magic]

Everything's going suspiciously well between those two.

[AugieDog]

2781622

Thanks!

I try to throw in lines here and there that work in context but also mean more to us readers since we know where this is all heading. Although--

2781724

I am and hope always to remain a "happy ending" kinda guy, "Canterlot Wedding" notwithstanding. Maybe I've just peered too often down the barrel of my head canon at that scene in part two where Cadance and Twilight burst in on the wedding, but I see so much hurt between Cadance and Chrysalis that I had to imagine a prior, long-standing relationship.

Mike

[Lainofthewired]

I know for certain this will end well for all parties concerned.

[Puzzle Reader]

...Chrysalis wingboner? I enjoyed the chapter, but after getting to the end, that's all I can think about right now.

[TheStratovarian]

2782369 It fits thought, in the nature of what is established. Taking certain lines, foci, and even how perception works in a social setting to what is considered verbatim.

[Lurks-no-More]

Uh-oh.

[Razzy]

2782369 You're my kind of writer, then. I can hear through a lot of sadness if there's a happy ending. Nothing gets me down more than a sad, tragic ending.

Cya
Raziel-chan