A Different Goodnight Two Bravi

A Goodnight, Manifold Two Bravi

The two couples parted company in the Entrance Hall, eight pairs of hoofs clinking good night to wakefulness. Flash thought he saw Cadence flick a knowing smile in their direction out of the corner of his eye.

At the doors to their rooms, Twilight sighed and turned to face him. “Thank you for taking me to the play, Flash,” she said, smiling warmly, a faint redness dusting her purple fur. A similar smile graced Flash’s muzzle, prompted by a force stronger than the moon tugging at the hidden tide between them.

“It was a ple-, an honour, Twilight,” he replied. Careful, he cautioned himself.

Twilight’s smile broadened. The dusk tint to her fur deepened. Silent seconds stretched.

Flash yawned, hiding it well with his fore-hoof. He was about to pivot on his hoofs for his calling bed, when Twilight suddenly cocked her head to the side. Flash fixed his eyes on her, waiting and pondering.

“I just thought,” she said “You still haven’t seen much of the Empire yet, have you?” she queried her escort. Flash, surprised, shook his head, long-sharpened and honed wariness flicking its ears to the wind.

“Oh, well, um . . . would you fancy a tour of the Crystal Empire f-from me?

Flash’s blush ran through his body, a cosy heat.. B-but that means hours and hours or a whole day, maybe , with her talking to me, and smiling, and laughing. A mental image came to him: The two of them sitting on a hill overlooking the Empire, wings tucked over each other, her head resting on his shoulder . . . Flash thrust the picture away like it was a bomb, clamping and taping his wings to his side, willing his syntax to be calm and measured.

He felt his lips melt in a welcoming smile and his voice say: “Of course, I would like a tour, Twilight.”

A second grateful grin, before it faltered. “Oh, this is going to put my studies back a bit, though,” Twilight murmured, before perking up. “But I could always spend a little longer here.” She beamed at Flash.

“Thank you so much,” she cried ecstatically. “You’re quite the gentle-colt, aren’t you?” she teased.

Flash’s smile broadened to an embarrassed grin, trailing a hoof along the floor, scorching heat swirling through his chest and cheeks. Did that just happen? Or have I fallen asleep again? Well, I know I am tired, but –

“Aww, you look so cute like that,” Twilight cooed, more to herself, but Flash heard it all the same.

He froze, one hoof-tip on the corner of one crystal square, and the three squares surrounding it. I’m dreaming, he thought, Yes, I’m asleep, I was talking to her, and now I’m in bed, dreaming about her invitation . . .yes, that -

A soft clinking drew his mind out of the squares, though not his eyes. It was a clinking drawing nearer and nearer.

An out-of-focus purple hoof glided in to his gaze. Flash felt it under his chin, lifting his eyes from the colours of the gem-inlaid floor. Twilight Sparkle looked at him, warm black pools of immeasurable kindness almost reflecting the poor, cursed stallion staring helplessly in to them.

A blush adorned her muzzle as before. And her lips were parted just a little.

Flash’s brain sputtered and choked up.

She’s so close gleamed bright and clear through his mind.

Then he noticed, of all terrible and divined circumstances, she held his chin with that hoof; the hoof he had dishonoured and sullied with his hopeless affection.

Twilight slowly lowered the hoof, rubbing the fur of his neck, and resting it on the blue star insignia of the Royal Guard. Flash bit down an involuntary groan as she grazed him.

“Don’t look so sad, Flash,” Twilight murmured. “You really are sort of cute; smart, loyal, compassionate, polite…” she giggled.

Flash could not think, his heart throbbing so painfully from her confession. He was lost in her words, melting his wit to a syrup-thick quagmire.

He saw Twilight flick her eyes over his face concentrating. Her horn glowed purple. A purple aura flushed around his helmet, and Flash felt the metal lighten and lift.

A gurgle of sound rose in his throat: “Twilight?” he began curiously.

“Sshh,” she whispered, the zephyr brushing and tickling his muzzle. Twilight inclined her head towards him, her eyes closing and her lips puckered and dewy. Flash’s breath stiffened in his throat but his heart continued to beat painful pulses.

He felt the silk-like touch of her lips on his cheek, soft and warm. Although it was silent, it cracked and boomed and howled with all the thunders of Heaven and the shattering of long-ossified custom. She, a princess, had defied the Order and scorned the highest of Celestia’s teachings. It was a political act.

Flash realised his eyes were closed too. Upon opening them, he saw her muzzle only inches from his, as if thinking, but really pausing. The mere sight of her so close sparked a hopelessly dreamed-of urge within him; first after kissing her hoof, the second on the train. When he had almost given in.

Twilight noticed him looking, and giggled. A bright rosy blush glowed under her fur. Then she was cantering across the floor and vanishing in to the cave-dimness of her room. Flash stared after her, hoof raised to touch the blessed spot. A wide and true toothy grin, his first for months; and he weighed as light as golden air. Treading slowly through his room, detaching his armour, the redeemed stallion could think about the kiss.

“Oh, what did I do? What did I do?” Twilight murmured distractedly pacing her room. All euphoria was gone to be replaced by anxiety. She liked Flash, true she did. But did she like him in the way which merited her pecking him on the cheek? Would it sabotage her friendship with a genuinely nice stallion?

And then there was the Order…

This would be the first time in her small circumscribed life she had flouted the Order. What would Celestia say, on a small act of affection given to her Guard?

As she reached up to rumple her mane, the room swam about her and she gave vent to a huge yawn. “I’m too tired for this just now,” she conceded as she crawled in to bed. Twilight instantly fell asleep.

Flash woke up, the feeble light of dawn creeping through the window. For a moment he could place the reason for his elation. Then he remembered the warm kiss. Rubbing his muzzle in to the pillow he allowed himself a grin of glee. His lungs soughed with sighs of ecstasy.

Does this mean she likes me too? The answer seemed to be tantalizingly obvious.

Flash needed a moment, just a moment in the glorious early morning sun.

But he could not lie in. He must fulfill the duty of escort. Flash rose, gathered together and clicked on his armour.

It was a bashful Twilight Sparkle which gave good tidings outside her bedroom door several minutes later.

“Flash,” the alicorn began, as they kicked up a trot for the Dining Hall. “What I … what I …why I did that thing last night … because I like you, I like you a lot – but I need to figure how that will change things between us … you are still my Guard,” she said.

Flash nodded, every nod heavy and understanding.

"But you are still my Princess," the orange one countered in his brain.

The two entered the Dining Hall, where cadence and Shining armour were already ensconced. Why, Flash wondered, is she smiling such a subtle crafty grin?

A Different Goodnight Manifold Three

View Online

A Different Goodnight, Manifold Three

Twilight stepped closer; eyes closing, lips puckered and dewy. Flash’s breath stiffened in his throat. It had all jumped forward with wit-quick suddenness. A chorus of exultation lit chamber after chamber in his mind. They had been talking, she offering an invitation, he accepting, and her pleased and flattered smile . . .

Cool vacant darkness. A pause, the pulses of a delighted heart now-awakened to bright possibilities measuring and counting the beats, first clamouring instants, and . . . throbbing slower to seconds and to epochs and to a standstill.

“Come on,” Flash’s errant and impatient brain flickered. Hesitant, he peeled open a lid. Twilight hung back, purple muzzle screwed with indecision. Her eyes for the first time dripped distress.

“Twili-,” Flash started, pebbles of sound chuckling down limp tongue. A hoof was raised, wanting to wrap itself over her shoulders and pin her to his chest.

“I – I’m sorry, Flash, so so sorry - but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Twilight squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head, and turning away.

His body cramped with a cold, clammy molass, dragging down the two traitors once unruly, and now splayed in the revel. The river of blood now thick and clotted; limbs ready to sag to the floor and fossilise thereupon the crystal, ugly grey on the cheerful colours.

Flash viewed her departure, her head low and tail limp; as if out of a glass pony-shaped shell, and only void within. A void warming up with smoulders of disappointment and anger. It had meant to be a special moment, and she had refused him it.

Unintentionally, he gritted his teeth and the husk quaked with the harpy of silent fury. A harpy lashing at the very superstructure - foundation, facade and summit - of all his forbidden longing for the kind, soft-voiced and most beautiful of Princesses. And where she to topple it, he would begin to resent her, and end it with hating her. It left him suddenly, and the orange husk bloated and sang with greater emptiness.

Flash hung his head, and trailed to his chamber and to his bed, where he would weep at what should have been.

Yes … yes, it had been the right thing to do; despite Cadence allowing mixed couples to break the Order behind closed doors, it still felt far too new for her to show such affection to Flash.

A pony stallion: kind, reserved, polite, clever and cute; but still her Guard.

It would have been my first kiss, Twilight thought, and a thrill jumped and tingled in every cell and nerve. B-but with him? True, I li-like him, but not in that way

Unknown to her, a pair of furtive tears spoke to the moonlight and showed the lock on her heart.

Twilight broke the counterpane of the bed with her magic, and climbed in, fluffing the pillows.

“It was the right decision,” she boldly announced to the darkness; a darkness where lies could lie and be silent. But her mind could not cover up her emotions. If had been the right thing to do, then why did she feel miserable, and above all, cheated?

----

For the first time since coming to the strange land, the stranger had bad dreams. He dreamed the dream that always made him weep and his heart sing and beg. What is more, he saw with his mind's eye what could have been...

This time Twilight took the step forward, and demurely looked him in the eyes. Locking her sight on to his, she tilted her head, pressing her violet lips to his own.

Every atom in his body blew up in hot glorious supernovae. And it was so, for beyond the rest of Time.

And when Flash woke up the next day, he found his wings heavy and clammy with the night's sweat. The fur under his eyes was dark with new, but familiar tears. Groaning, he turned over before rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Flash took a moment to force the ghost of the dream from his mind.

Flash looked outside. Celestia had not raised the sun yet, but the time was close. The few clouds in the sky were gently lined underneath by golden luminescence and the pink of primulas flushed the sky. Despite this, Flash could only think: "How could she, how could she?"

The hot torrents of the shower washed away the sweat, the tears and the sadness. But it could not wash away the grime of disappointment and exasperation. Flash walked back to his room, cocking an ear to hear if the Princess was awake and up out of bed. It did not sound like it. She needed to explain what had happened last night.

Flash was just clicking the breast-plate on and sliding his hoofs in to the slippers, when he heard a door open and sharp clinks scatter across the floor to his room.

"Flash?" came the voice of the mare, it still made his heart pulse a little harder and his mind run with small thoughts of anger and petty revenge. Flash shook his head; he should not and would not fall to so low a depth. He had a duty as a Royal Guard to a Princess, and a duty to Twilight as her friend. Even as he resolved to hold himself up, his heart swelled to thoughts of forgiveness.

"Wait a minute," he called as he tightened the slippers round his hind-hoofs. Next he checked the straps and the shine of the armour. Finding himself gleaming and immaculate as always, he walked briskly to the door, opening it to see a sad Twilight on the other side, her eyes melded to the porcelain floor. Her wings rustled, uncomfortable in the abject sad slump of her body and his sudden gaze.

Princess Twilight glanced up at the stallion she had suddenly jilted, and winced from the interview now to take place.

"Good morning, Your Highness, " Flash said, promptly, coldly and correctly.

Twilight flinched at the words. She glanced at his face again, before looking away.

"Flash," she said, holding up a placating hoof, "I want to say, before Shining's guests go down and see us here, how very, very sorry I am for ... what happened last night. Truly sorry. I did not know what I was doing, and why I was doing it. I see you as a friend, and after the play, and everything Cadence dropped on me yesterday, i - it - it ... was too much for me. I couldn't do it."

Flash listened with a stern face but an ear that did not turn deaf.

"Despite that, I want to put that behind us. I still want you to be my friend."

Twilight finished her speech, and looked him in the eye, hoping for forgiveness.

Flash waited as the speech dissolved in his ears, and the blood bore the letters to his brain and heart.

What she said was true, for in his heart he still wanted to talk to her, make her laugh, and a myriad other things.

A smile wandered to his mouth, and both he and she knew it was a real smile. A rich forgiving smile.

A Sharp, Steel, and Flash Fragment

View Online

A Sharp, Steel, Flash Fragment

"We're so glad you're back, Flash." Sharp said thumping a leg over the light-orange stallion's withers.

"And...um, you...look like you had a good time in the Empire," Steel put in, who had seen with pleasure how happy and relaxed his friend was. Flash looked and sounded much upbeat than the morose Pegasus Guardspony with exhausted eyes every few days they had known before he went to the Crystal Empire. Part of him wanted to hold, control, and stash away the desire to know exactly what or the why had changed Flash Sentry, their cheerful partner and friend in basic to advanced training to graduation in to an unhappy inward-drawn loner. The other, larger, stronger part of him ached to know.

One of Flash's ears cocks backward to catch and note the hesitation in his friend's speech. "Why do you say that, Steel?"

Steel almost trips to a stop. Mouth shut and throat tight, heart yammering. Caught red-hoofed, tongue-tied. Now he has to answer. Steel traces the toe of a shod hoof on the stone floor, thinking quickly. Sharp Spear turns to regard him.

Steel Wind purses lips to select words carefully.

"Just...you seem more bucked up now...There were times - before you left, when you were so down. The bags under your eyes, listlessness, not wanting to come out." And like that, the mood of camaraderie slips away and thickens.

Flash's pace slows as Steel's speech spiels on. The smile and the looseness of his gait stiffens. "Yes...back then I was very down," Flash replies. Steel mutters in consternation at the predicament. He hadn't really wanted to bring up this tangential questioning of his friend. Flash continued, bracingly: "But I'm much better now. Fresh cool air, mountain scenery, new friends to make, heh." The mood between the three would not recover, though.

"You...never would tell us what was wrong," Sharp puts in too slowly to realise the contribution was not particularly needed, but stepping quickly to dodge a an admonitory hoof-kick from Steel.

Sharp Spear and Steel Wind see Flash crawl to a stop. Their light-orange bosom-buddy, pauses, not speaking or affirming Sharp was right. His head looks on ahead, not seeing them or the stone corridor ranged with torches and occasional window.

"If you do want to know..." he says at last. "If you do really want to know." Flash nods his head down the corridor. "I'll tell you in my room."

The metal-grey stallions breathe a little easier, but not too easily. Steel knows it is something wrested kinda-sorta contrary to whether Flash wanted to tell them, or not.

In the small recognisable room, Flash dumps saddle-bags on the floor, no formalities in here. Flash leans on the side of the bed to prise off golden horse-shoes. Flash lifts body up on to the hard mattress and beige blanket. Sitting on haunches, hoofs in a line on the sheet. Steel Wind and Sharp Spear file in to the small room behind him.

"I suppose I should tell you now," Flash says laconically. Steel Wind and Sharp Spear sit down in front of him.

"It is just very simple." Two metal-grey stallions lean in.

Flash blushes a little from the attention of his audience, and not just that...He opens a wing, inspects the feathers, lifting a hoof to nudge the smallest feathers. "Just a pretty mare I saw one day, and my heart...just flew out to her. Before I knew it...I was head over hooves for her."

Steel Wind and Sharp Spear choke and breathe in deep. Both goggle at Flash.

“You were in love?” Steel cried incredulously, eyes wide.

Flash bowed his head, not out of shame, but out of dread for the next question, and the three terrible words it would haul up in to the glare of Celestia’s sun.

“We were worried about you, Flash,” Sharp Spear put in. “All those months looking miserable and aloof, refusing our help every time we tried to help you.”

He touches Flash on the shoulder. “We thought you were ill, or worse. And now you tell us you were in love?”
Flash, gaze still smelted to the flags, replied: “It’s somepony I shouldn’t, but I cannot help but love her.”

Here it comes, he thought, Solaris and Galaxia help me.

“Who is it, Flash?” the duo asked tentatively, breaking a bond as hard and thick as stone.

Flash lifts his eyes to them, four eyes waiting wide and two maws tensely half-open. Once he spoke the three words, Ironhoof’s realm of iron and stone would rust, crumble and sink beneath spreading flowers of future joys.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle.” The second he said it, he was sure somewhere hour-glasses tilt over and time for the Order patters out, sprinkle by sprinkle.

The weight of the words almost topple Sharp and Steel on to the floor, armour clattering an awful cacophony. No crash and cracked armour, but the delicate silence of Sharp and Steel’s drawn out gawping. Flash waits, wondering which one would crack first; with sympathy or gobsmacked trepidation.

There were no stereotypical gasps, only squeaks.

“Pr-pr-Princess Twilight Sparkle,” Steel says.

He turns his head to stare at Sharp Spear, hoofs pushing him on to haunches so he could raise both to his mouth.

“Oooooh,” Steel breathes. A pause, and he sets his hoofs to the floor. “I - I … I see. Oh, Flash,” he sighed.

"B-buh-but, there's love, and then there's love." Steel said. "C-couldn't you, you know, tell yourself that she just way out of your league...and move on?"

Flash shakes his head, his stiff blue flag of mane flopping leisurely side to side. "Not with her." He turned his face away, drawing thoughts together. The stallion turns to face his two friends again, trying to get them to make them understand.

"I mean, it was like, just one moment, just one moment,
that day. It was her Coronation. Do you guys remember the Coronation?"

Steel Wind and Sharp Spear both nod.

"Well, I was in the guard detail outside, on the public Mall. She flew out of her little carriage, trotted with her friends the Elements in that line-up...then flew off. All that time, she was happy; grinning and happy, so carefree...like nothing in the world could trouble her. And she was so beautiful!"

"Waaaaiit," Steel breaks in, stopping. "Flash," looking up to see if they were alone, looking back at him, pursing dry lips, eyes entreating, wings wide and feathers flexed. "Flash...does she" he gulped, a dry sound, "...does she know?"

Flash doesn't say anything. Sapphire eyes meet the wide eyes of his friend. He had been true with them, revealed what had plagued him those terrible months of tears and shame. It had been plain he had worried them sick. Didn't they deserve the whole truth? But if he did tell them, wouldn't that worry them more?

"Promise you won't worry?" said Flash, knowing saying that would make them worry. "She knows." Flash started to add more, but both Steel Wind and Sharp Spear groan in despair, clapping legs over their eyes and muzzles. Flash closes his mouth, and sighs. His two friends had assumed the very worst. That the Princess of Magic had learned of her Guard's crush on her, that she had repulsed him, and told him he would be her Guard for the remainder of the study-holiday, and when they got back to Canterlot that he, Flash, would forget, not should forget, his feelings were fantasy, and she could never return his crush.

Steel Wind vents a huge sigh. "...Everything we did, it was great... just brilliant." He sighs again. "Alright, Flash, tell us...just tell us - when are you leaving the Guard? We sure will miss you." Flash knows both Steel and Sharp are now thinking of the forebidding future of disgrace and loneliness now "open" for their friend.

Flash's mouth twitches upward at his friends working themselves up. He pushes himself off the bed and claps hoofs on Sharp's and Steel's shoulders.

"Hey, hey, hey...Steel, Sharp, cheer up. Listen, I'm not leaving the Guard."

Sharp sniggers hollowly, "Oh, good one, Flash."

---- ---- ---- ----

It was deep in to the night. The endlessly beautiful and absorbing night sky sprayed with stars and where gossamer and evanescent clouds roll as whales and leviathans roll and breach in the deep blue. It was only marred by the white pocked moon showing half of her powdered face. Half white and grey mares and sinii and oceanus, half coy shadow gaze down impassively as it has age-in, age-old.

On the boulevards and the snickets of the great Avalon-lofted capital, the bars - both club and dive- - were ushering their patrons and party-goers out in to the cool night and shutting out the lights almost in respect for the serenity of the night. Ponies trot or fly home.

The Palace lowers over the metropolis, as understanding and amused at the ponies' antics as an old aunt. It was ever-present, unmoving, and as unchanging as the mountain it was built from. Like the night, it too is silent. The Night Guard even treads lighter on the stone flags, the beat of thestral wings soft as the pulse of a heart and the sputter of the torch-flames. The Solar Guard in their cells sleep peacefully; of hopes, friends, family, loves, fantasies... Some sleep less soundly. Some are even awake... the black walls of the cell, the warm weight of bodies stowed and tucked deep in bed, maybe watching a crooked shape of silvery light glide across the wall and ceiling.

Sharp Spear was such pony unable to sleep. His other half, slumbers above him, bunk bed bowed, snuffling, "Mmm, you'rr a really cute mare, Miss Rose Linden...mmm, oh, Rosalind!, heh, suhs'rree. Well, y'still very cute, even with your mane up like that....nn...whh...th'ssay...strait-laced mares cuttin' loose. Oh, whoo's'is. Why'ssee frown...buck! issee your coltfriend? Oh, yuhr brudder, Robert..."

"Steel,...you awake?"

The muffling breaks up with a snort. Several seconds pass. "Sharp? Did you call me?"

"Yeah".

"Sharp Spear, it is - too - late for pranks now. Go back to sleep."

"But I can't."

"That thing's bugging you,"

"We'll never see her in the same light again, will we?"

"There are times, Sharp, when you are too right."

"The Princesses...they are on a pedestal for us to admire. Like, they're untouchable, above us, they love us, we love them, but it's not romantic love. Know what I'm saying.?"

"Now, Flash tells us he's in love with Princess Twilight Sparkle of all mares. I never expected that. Sure, she's a...," Sharp trails off, silence in the cell. A sigh. "Steel...surely, you must have seen she's, like, a really eye-catching mare."

"Sharrp," Steel hisses in warning, sitting up now, mane brushing the vault ceiling. "We're not supposed to think of the Princesses that way."

Sharp snorted. "That didn't stop Flash. And you have thought she's totally gorgeous."

"Now..how do we go on from this?"

"Accept it. We must. We can't stop being friends with Flash. He won't stop feeling that for her for our sakes'."

"What if he is found out? What happens then, what happens to us? Will we be fired from the Guard too?"

"We knew about them. That could lead to some sort of action."

The stallions shift in to an easy sleep, but once they wake up, they remember the anxious conversation of the night before.

"N.S.Q.S.R.A." Chapter One Day Train

View Online

The trumpets sounded, and Celestia surrendered to her sister Luna; and Luna spread her wings wide, and it was night. Sharp Spear and Steel Wind trotted out and out of the Royal Court; the promise of hot delicious food pulling their metal horseshoes down and down and down.
It had been a long day at the Royal Court. Several ponies had come over planning permission, a family separation, a will settlement case, and a little harmless public concern over foreign relations with other countries.

“That poor foal,” Sharp Spear began. “Her mother caught her father with another mare, and now she has forbidden her daughter from seeing her father at all!” They had both been there. The mother had scarcely comforted her precious little filly at all. The filly had wept unceasingly, shaking her mane in to snakes and staining the carpet with snot and tears. The father had tried to pull her in to a comforting wing-hug, but his wife, glaring with all the poison of a Borgia, had yelled at him. She had yelled for him not to touch her, “lest he infect her with the daemon of adultery.” Sharp Spear’s eyebrows were almost tilting his helmet back with incredulity.

Steel shook his head, in pain, and in pity.

Celestia had done her share of shouting. She had called the mother’s conduct opposed to a proper mother’s care and love. Celestia had ruled the daughter could see and stay with her father while the mother was burdened with therapy classes.

“That foal will have nightmares of to-day,” Sharp Spear announced sagely. “Her mother put her through more pain than the mere discovery of the adultery.” Sharp sighed, and Steel acknowledged with an eye-brow raise of his own. “Iron Hoof shall be gloating of this when he hears; ‘the philandering and weak morals of pegasi’,” he finished, hairs on the back of his neck rising and fluffing in distaste.

Sharp Spear’s wings half-unfurled, as if to strangle Iron Hoof in a bid of autonomous anger. “That pompous bastard goes around saying how great unicorns are. He is the pony who is disgracing the whole unicorn caste,” Sharp spat under his breath as he ended this tirade.

“Sshh,” Steel cautioned. “You will get us thrown in to the dungeons with Orion and the other criminals with that talk.”
Sharp grunted at his partner’s reprimand and reproof.

Now it was Steel’s turn to sigh. He tried to put up with Sharp Spear’s rebellious and pointless spouts but it was so difficult sometimes, for example late in to the night after lights out; all he could do was listen to him or clamp the pillow over his ears and beg sleep to come. Being a Royal Guard in the Eleventh Century, Celestial Era meant knowing an unwritten truth universally acknowledged that nearly everypony in the Guard hated Captain Iron Hoof in some form or hue. And nearly every one of those ponies almost never admitted this dislike some way or another.

Wait, what is that noise? Is that somepony humming?

A faint melody wafted along the corridor, sculling under the crackle of the torches and braziers.

“Steel?” Sharp asked curiously, but Steel ignored him. He twisted his head around to see who was humming.

And he saw a distant Guard, with gold armour, and fur so light they seemed to blend together…
Steel realised who it was, realised that he had come back, had come back out of the frozen north with Princess Twilight Sparkle.
Before Sharp could follow his eye-line and the same jump, Steel was cantering down the corridor towards his old friend.
Sharp watched Steel go, surprised. He scrutinised the Guard, who had turned round to see who was raising the cacophony. And only then did Sharp recognise him.

By the time Sharp Spear reached the rejoicing pair, Steel was laughing and clapping Flash on his plated shoulder. Flash was grinning in pleasure and gripping Steel’s foreleg with his own.

“How are you, Flash? “ Steel was asking delightedly. “It’s been boring without you these four weeks. Aah, it’s been ages.”

“Hi, Steel. Hi Sharp,” grinning with glowing molars and incisors. “Yes, yes, I feel excellent, really…excellent.” His grin stayed fixed, but his eyes clouded over – and his wings definitely twitched. “It was a fascinating trip, seeing all the Empire, and the Crystal ponies, and the mountains…wonderful.”

“Cool!” Sharp beamed. “It sounds like you enjoyed yourself to the full up there.”

“Well, we did spend most of our time in the library, but Twilight and I –,” the traveller halted suddenly, white and sapphire eyes widening. A pause split and bridged one moment from the next, sharp and Steel followed in rapt surprise. Flash had committed another offence, if anypony counted him breaking the spear. He should not have spoken her name so casually, so intimately, to save the situation.

Flash sucked in a quick breath. “But the Princess and I managed to explore the Empire and round-a-bouts,” he finished limply.
Steel sighed out, susurrations warping the turgid air. And the stainless stallion chuckled. “First-name terms, eh? You must know her pretty well to call her that.”

“It was her idea, she didn’t want me to repeat myself two hundred times a day,” Flash replied, besting a chuckle of his own. “And, yes, I do know her very well.”

Sapphires clouded and tarnished, and the smile of the impeccable Knight stretched wistfully. You could almost say his wings were curling from embarrassment.

Flash’s smile was not the only one to stretch. The stainless Guard was just beginning to copy him in honest humour, at his fellow’s predicament…

Sharp Spear’s stomach growled and gurgled, eliciting a louder and deeper sound from its holder. “Oh, heehaw; we’d better get down to the Hall before there’s nothing left.”

Steel agreed with gusto, rubbing and smacking his own belly. “Joining us, Flash?” he enquired.
“No, no, I only want to go to my room and sleep. It’s been a too-long ride up here, and I ate a little on the train. I’m beat.”
“Okay, Flash,” the stainless stallion settled. “See you to-morrow.”
“Good night,” Flash called to his friends, as they stepped past him down and down and down towards the Hall. The two inseparable companions gave their answer, as his hoofsteps and armour faded in to the loving dusk.

Minutes later, once they were seated at the table, plates of steaming mash before them, did Steel venture an observance: “He looks and sounds a lot better, don’t you think?”

Sharp did agree, once he had shoved several spoons worth of hot mash in to an even hotter maw. And he knocked the statement with his head, as a hammer would a nail.

“Maybe he’s asked a mare out at last!” His eyes shone, his empty mouth grinned and his ears perked up. Steel did not reply immediately to his bunk-mate’s hopes, whether to join him or shoot him down. Flash had given a tiny thing away, and he almost had his hoof on it.

"N.S.Q.S.R.A." Chapter One Night Train A

View Online

Steel Wind cantered down the corridor after the rest of the Royal Guard. The few pegasi and many unicorns in charge of Canterlot’s weather had blessed the Avalon-lofted Capitol a mild cloudy day with spells of sunshine. The sunshine gleamed through the windows, against the opulent tapestries and the bland ugly stone.

It had, he mused, been four weeks exactly since Flash had to go with Princess Twilight Sparkle up to the Crystal Empire for a research trip. Flash had been so lucky. Ordinary Royal Guards would never get that amount of free time racked up. Maybe being a personal bodyguard to one of Equestria’s Princesses granted privileges…

Steel broke trot and skidded – horseshoes squealing and screeching on the rough flags. Steel blinked, certain he had missed something, a little obvious something. He cast back his mind: Flash…bodyguard…same grey stone, bright blue and gold blur bobbing past the corner of his eye --- yes!

Steel swung his head to the right to a draperied colonnade, as the orange blur slipped behind a marble column. Past the other side, Steel saw the bright blue crop of mane, and the square muzzle and orange coat of one of his best friends, Flash Sentry.
Hardly registering his wings snapping out from his sides in excitement and pleasure, Steel’s brain snapped on and in to overdrive. Steel, entirely for-going considering the consequences of the next action, sucked in a massive breath and blew it out in one:

“FLASH!” Steel bellowed.

The few Royal guards in the Hall flinched at the noise, and glared at him. Even the fires in the lanterns and torches and braziers shivered.

Flash jumped and spun round in the air, his landing a loud clank. His eyes darted everywhere, ears flicked back: textbook fight-or-flight.

Flash saw Steel waving, or rather, a stallion doing his hardest to lob his fore-hoof off. Flash meekly returned a wave of his own, a self-conscious grin on is muzzle as a side-dish.

Steel looked round at the hostile glares of the surrounding Guards and mouthed “See you later at dinner” to Flash. Steel went on his way to his post, muttering obsequious apologies to other passing Guards.

Flash trotted up the stairs and cross the gallery, chuckling: “Oh that Steel Wind, just like him to give me a welcome like that.”

“Sir Flash Sentry,” a peremptory command barked in his ear.

The said Royal Guard failed to hide his surprise as he turned to face the Captain of the Royal Guard, Iron Hoof. Iron Hoof still wore the purple armour with gold trim, polished always to a vanity-flattering luster. It, however, contrasted with is cold-grey coat and colder-grey unshorn hoofs and mane. Iron Hoof’s usual disapproving expression broke in a little and swiftly-murdered smirk.

Flash recovered his composure, and straightened; before bowing deep to the floor, pushing his eyes to the floor. He had been humiliated, just for a moment, by his superior officer and his greatest enemy.

“Flash,” the Captain repeated, pinning Flash with a quelling look. “I see that Princess Twilight Sparkle and you have returned from her research trip. I trust the Princess was able to find the answers to her questions?” Flash, throat vibrant with response, opened his mouth.

“No matter,” Iron Hoof cut him off, curtly. “Report to my office to give a full account after dinner this evening.” He walked past Flash before remarking, “And who was making that Galaxia-dammed noise like a mud-pony mare in the height of heat?”

Flash crushed a detesting shudder shimmering through him, before replying in the most level and respectful of tones, “I do not know, sir, I did not recognise him, sir.”

Iron Hoof grunted dismissively, continuing to clop on his way. Flash picked up his route again. Oh Steel Wind is in for a Tartarus of a time if Iron Hoof ever finds out.

"N.S.Q.S.R.A." Chapter One Night Train B

View Online

Steel broke trot and skidded – horseshoes squealing and screeching on the rough flags. Steel blinked; certain he had missed something, a little obvious something. He cast back his mind: Flash…bodyguard…same grey stone, brightened by blue banners and red carpets…strange - but familiar – orange and gold blur bobbing past the corner of his eye…yes!

Steel swung his head to the right to a draperied colonnade, as the orange blur slipped behind a marble column. Out the other side, Steel saw
the deep blue crop of mane, the golden gleam of armour, the deep yellow coat of his best friend, Sir Flash Sentry.

Hardly registering his wings snapping out in excitement and pleasure, Steel’s brain flicked on with adrenaline.

Steel lifted a hoof to attract his eyes, and mate his own wave. Then he heard something most odd. A soft melody, now reaching his ears, wafted from Flash’s own person. Steel gaped, Flash was actually humming. Was that a spring or a skip to his hoof’s trot? Was that an easy smile splitting the muzzle so often stricken by that inexplicable woe of the past months?

Steel Wind was stunned.

What had brought this about?

Steel found himself at a loss. He couldn’t talk to Flash right now. He would have to wait to corner Flash at dinner and enquire. Until then, he was forced to marvel.

Oh, and he had to seek out Sharp Spear and tell him.

Crystal Pinnacle

View Online

Crystal Pinnacle

Breakfast on that weekend was a quiet meal on a mandatorily quiet day. Flash escorting Twilight down to the dining hall crackled with talk and banter. Mare and stallion seated themselves at the table filled by Shining Armour and Cadance.

Courses appeared, were eaten and the dishes taken away as talk rolled round the table.

“Shining, did you show Flash the whole castle?” Twilight asked suddenly, fork floating beside her head and heavy with dripping pancake.
Shining turns away from Cadance to pause, reply.

“What makes you want to know that, Twily?”

Flash scoops another spoonful of nutmeg-scented and syrupy oats, looking from Captain to Princess and back. He swallows the hot oats, as he, in turn, starts to think.

Well, we did tour the barracks, the various halls and galleries, the drawing room, the state room and the throne room…yeah, I’d say Shining did show me the whole castle.

“Oh, just wondered if Flash went up the Crystal Tower, the one you get to from under the throne room. Where Spike and I found the Crystal Heart.”

The young Princess gulped down the pancake and grinned round at Flash. A sliver of syrup still moistened one edge of her lips. He felt the familiar groaning tremor in his wings and his smile pulled in reply.

Twilight spread her hoofs, her wings flaring in response. It wouldn’t have been surprising to see white stars in her pupils.

“There are wonderful views of the Empire from the pinnacle up there, you can see every mountain to the north and the tundra to the south,” she said, lightly clopping her hoofs on the table. “I wish I could have spent a time looking properly, but Spike was saving the Empire and I was trapped in a corrall.”

Twilight tittered, in a what-can-you-do way.

N-No, we never went up there. Trapped in a corrall? Poor Twilight…

Shining cleared his throat and faced his yellow-orange comrade.

“The stairs appear to be in hidden dimension rolling endlessly up inside the outside wall of the Castle. Twily, …. Yes, Flash?” Shining broke off as Flash looked baffled.

“You said it’s an endless stair, sir, then how did Twilight and Spike reach the top of the tower?”

The white shining Captain chuckled, “I was just getting to that, Flash,” he mildly admonished.

Flash nodded and lapsed to listen.

“Twily cast a gravity-reversing spell to lift and attach her and Spike the underside of the stairwell,” he said shaping a blue helix with thaumic energy. Shining indicated with a toe of his hoof one edge of one curve of the helix, lifting the toe almost to the next curve above. Twily broke the hex…he cast on the stairs, and slid up to the top of the tower.”

Twilight giggled, clopping her hoofs, stamping them on the table. “It was brilliant, Flash. Just like a helter-skelter at the fairground!”

Shining quenched the magic helix, smiling fondly at his little sister’s excitement. Cadance, who had been silent all this time, tittered also.
Shining’s smile lasted so long, then lips, jaw and brows drew in sombrely. “But the only way to those stairs, is under the throne-room. And the key is Dark magic, which may not be the best thing to show our beloved subjects."

The lavender-coated mare drew her fore-legs under the level of the table, “You aren’t holding Court to-day are you?”

“No, you know it’s the week-end.”

“Oh well, we aren’t studying at the library to-day, and I’m not leisure reading this morning, Flash and I could go see it.

The final dishes were taken away, and the checker-board was revealed, Shining and Cadance settled down to lose and win.
The trot through cavernous crystal atrium and hallways palace was quick and quiet. Twilight and Flash hardly met or passed barely any of the serving ponies. They soon reached the equally cavernous throne room.

Together they crossed in to the room.

The doors slammed shut.

Twilight faced the throne, mouth tightening.

“Flash, don’t be alarmed.”

Should I be? Youuu know what you’re doing

She faced the throne again, drew in a deep breath. Horn sparked, glow of magic coating it. Magic brightened in over-glow. Magic dimmed, darkened. Black static charges crackled round her horn, pennants of purple smoke poured from the corners of her eyes and her irises changed from soft purple to hard green and red. Black beams of light shot from her horn to the jewel in the throne’s arch. It fizzed and boiled. The gleaming aura of the throne dulled and a long shadow spread down the front, the leg-rests, the seat, and the steps. The shadow widened, sweeping under mare and stallion. It rose up their legs from hoof and fetlock to upper leg and gaskin. Any other ponies would have skittered.

Twilight glanced behind her. Flash copied.

And he gaped. A large rectangular hole yawned in the white and sky-blue tiles, as if eaten away by acid.

Mare and stallion walked up to the brink.
A deep dark well of broad and thin stairs winding down. Featureless walls of dark grey stone sheered down and down.

Flash jerked back from the edge, apprehension gathering a tiny lump in his throat.

“Ready, Flash?” Twilight asked, wings snapping open, bending her knees of her forelegs and stretching her hind-legs from hock to coronet in pouncing pose.
“Ready,” the stallion replied. Ready for adventure.
“DIVE!” the alicorn cried, wings lifting and pushing her forwards and downwards in to the pit followed by her stallion.

Darkness lined with black races up and past him. A deeper darkness looms up, both ponies bank wings and pull up legs. Keratin strike unknowable stone with rough "clop"
.

The bottom of the pit was dank and featureless. Except a stainless pitch-black wooden door framed by small grey stones. On the left-side at pony-height, was a large circular iron knocker in an equally blocky iron square.

Flash turned to Twilight, expecting her to unhesitatingly trot up to the door, and swing it open with her magic or a tug of her leg.

She stood were she landed, wide eyes fixed on the knocker as if it would morph in to a pony’s head or something. The stallion knew something was wrong.

“The…door,” Twilight shuddered. “Sombra showed me my worst fear. Celestia declaring I had failed the test and I no longer worthy to be her student. It was so awful.”

Flash hesitated, appalled, then stepped up to Twilight’s side, wing against her side, foreleg wrapping round hers above the knee.
He whispered, breath to her cheek.
“I’m here with you.”
His mare relaxed, drawing back her neck to momentarily nuzzle his cheek, “Thank you, Flash.”

Flash watches his mare face the door, spark her horn again, aim it at the crown arch. Patches of fur shift as muscles strain and wings unfurl, a brace against expected danger.
The lock clicks, the door swings open, stone and iron hinges creak shivering along bones. Brilliant white light spills through the gap. Both ponies wince, and squint. Nothing.
“Huh,” Twilight murmurs, nonplussed. “Sombra’s magic is gone.”

Flawless snow-white marble stairs joined to perfectly crisp hoary walls curving round and round out of sight. A stair rising and rising in dazzling void.
“I wonder if when he was defeated, the hidden spaces reverted back to what they were before,” Flash mused.

On the first treads, the lavender mare turned to him.

She proffered dextrous primary coverts.

Her Guard, in turn, tendered his left wing-tip to her. Lavender feathers closed over light orange ones. A thin magenta rope issued out of Twilight’s horn, snaked round their held feathers, binding them.
I now pronounce you… one part of Flash’s mind remarked.

“The string is to prevent you falling off,” she explained.
Flash opened his other wing, raising an eyebrow. “Why, at all? I could just fly.”
Twilight groaned, and facehoofed. “Flash, where is the fun in flying apart, when we could slide down (or, rather, up) together? I want you to have fun with me, your Princess!”
The stallion laughed a low giggle.
“Well, with logic like that…,”
“Hold on tight, Flash.”

A magenta sphere enveloped him and her. Flipping them upside down. A weird switching of a force Flash had known all his life, felt in his bones and muscles. Now, what had been down was now up.

The underside of the stairs, sleek and smooth, and a long, long ramp heading down.

Immediately, wind rushes past him, cracking open his unbound wing. Stomach lurches, as eight hoofs gobble up the crystal ramp. Tears streak from squinting eyes.

Yet there was more, and more, ever more hurtling from the right.

Flash’s heart swells, lips drawing open, white teeth aching from the wind.

Excitement soared up and up, matching hers.
Crows of glee burst from two throats. On and on and on.

A split-second sight of a large semi-circle of deeper lilac…

The view reversed: marble below, sky above.
The two ponies, mare and stallion, dropped, hoofs clacking on to grey marble.
Bright blue met with deep purple. Before Princess and Guard fell over, foreleg over the other’s shoulder, mouths yawing, chests in stitches, heaving from blind merriment.
“Sooooo amazing!”

Mare and stallion, Princess and Guard shared a look, a knowing look. A look of the affection they shared, the affection of friends and the affection of mutual adoration.

A wide silver-grey floor, and twelve elliptical floor-to-ceiling windows, between tall columns braced by stalagmite and stalactite, itself the longest of a troika of quartz spikes. In the centre of the chamber, a circus-top circle of cyan-blue and sky-blue sections, and split by a white six-pointed star.
“The hiding place for the Heart,” he heard her whisper.

“See what I mean by the view?” she said, sweeping her hoof round the panorama.

Flash could only nod, dumb-struck. While the view was not as spectacular as it would be hundreds of feet above the coruscating Empire, it was still magnificent.

Flash saw the regular snowflake shape, the avenues shooting out to the points of the star, and other boulevards meeting and passing the line of the star itself. And the minute islands of house, tree or arbour or lawn and parkland floated as if they were stationary plates of ice.

Every domicile and edifice that was a cell in the Empire’s being, looked tiny, almost as if they were spiky quartz beads of rock candy. Even if the buildings towered over you at ground level, extravagant examples of abstractionist sculpture. That was not thinking of the other shapes; the blue crown of the spa, the heptagonal theatre of the creative arts, the cross-shaped Library, the drum-like figure of the sports hub, conical Nightmare Night hats, cubes and cuboids with sweeping sheer buttresses, domes, diamonds, and countless spare.

Beyond, the pleasant rolling yellow and green fields nipped by squares of lazybeds, were ringed by bigger steeper hills, and higher hills, to the statuesque mountains to the North, the barrier between Equestria and the Frozen North proper, (not that said mountains were a barrier between Equestria and Yakyakistan).

Farther to the south, the green fields and pasture ceded, faded and died under the gelid arctic tundra. But not before he could espy the pinpricks of the border posts and the scratch of the train-station.

“Oh, wow, I don’t know how to describe all this! So much to see!”
“I knew you would love it, Flash,” his mare replied, hugging him with a leg.

Much later, stallion and mare wander down from the tower's pinnacle, down the staircase, and back up the second staircase. Near the top, Twilight sparks her horn, and the rectangular slab of floor above lights up, becomes clear as water. Sets of hoofs crossing the floor stop, heads jolt downwards. Cries of surprise and fear float faintly to their ears.

"Whoops!" Twilight mutters, before bolting up the last few stairs through the hole in the crystal floor in to the throne room, Flash following. The ponies who had cried out now cower shaking where they had stood, fore-legs over their heads and eyes.

Flash looked down, and whistled, wings snapping out, instinctively to catch him for the fall. The floor was still solid, but now it was as clear as ice. What he sees is darkness stretching down and down, nothing to suggest a solid surface between him and the bottom far, far below.

Twilight canters over to one of the cowering ponies, reaches out to rub the withers reassuringly. The mare snuffs her horn, and the transparency spell ends. The floor is again dazzling white and lilac pink. "Sorry, sorry, sorry!" Twilight murmurs frantically, like a rosary. Flash walks over to the other cowering pony, a servant. A leg round the other's shoulders, he says "Hey, you're safe, Twilight's cancelled the spell."

As he says it, a heavy gallop of hoofs and clattering armour blows in to the room. "What's going on here?" a deep voice bellows.

Twilight looks up from the pony she is calming to see the big Crystal Guardspony and his comrades. A bashful smile hitches to her muzzle. "Heh heh heh, really should have checked if there were ponies in the room before making the floor see-through."

"Everypony's alright?" the Guardspony asked.

"Yes," Twilight said, as the pony next to her raised hoofs from his head, saw the crystal squares, tapped them with a toe, before sighing a long sigh.

Later, Flash heard a knocking on Twilight's bedroom door. He heard Shining Armour's voice. "Twily, are you in?"

The door opens, conversation just heard, Shining Armour laughing, "Oh, Twily, still causing trouble."

The Twily Fly and the Flashie Fly

View Online

The Twily Fly
(Written on 2018.11.08, 2018.11.17, and 2018.11.19;
Keyed up on 2018.11.21-22, and 28)

Twilight’s horn glows.

A point of purple light the size of a glowworm shines there. It does not grow or shrink. A moment later, three tiny needle-points slide out of the central dot. As they thicken, Flash sees they are different colours, now they lengthen to spokes.

The white beams of the spell faded, now resting on the tip of Twilight’s horn was a mote of purple light with three wings poking out. One wing is indigo, the second hot magenta-pink, and the third is midnight blue – all three colours of Twilight’s mane.

The alicorn mare flicks her horn in Flash’s direction and the three-winged mote that looks like a fly buzzes in long bouncy arcs toward him, all three wings flapping and blurring.

Flash keeps his eyes on it until it lands on the end of his nose. All three wings buzz to a stop.

Flash grins, crossing his eyes to look down at it.

“Cuute,” Twilight murmurs, sighing. A second flick of her horn, a flash of light and she stores the image in her memory. Twilight should now be able to recall the image mentally, and rebuild it with bits of magic light.

Flash uncrosses his eyes at the pulse of visual radiation to look across at her.

“Yes, this little critter is cute, isn’t it? So…what is this, and why did you give it to me?”

The mare stands to saunter over to the stallion, seating herself next to him close enough for their flanks to touch.

“A memento, Flash. To remind you of me on the days we don’t see each other. I know you think of me when we are not together.”

Flash thought of chipping in the beautiful, smart, kooky mare occupied his wishes and dreams many hours of the day, and that the memento was an awfully sweet thing from an awfully sweet mare, but as his love was in the middle of talking he kept his mouth shut.

Twilight continues: “It’s long-lasting and powerful magic too, it will not wear out or dim, staying at a constant pulse of radiation emission for sixteen months at most.”

Flash, with one eye, watches the mote’s wings lazily rise and fall with the motion and breathing of his body.

“This is made from your magic, Twi; it has your colours…it looks like a bug, a cute bug too…wait wait,” the stallion chuckles, before laughing. “It’s you, Twi. It’s a Twily Fly!”

The alicorn mare stares, before seeing Flash was right, and she laughs in turn, clapping hoofs to her muzzle. “Oh my goodness,” the mare squeaks, “So it is, it a Twily Fly!”

She leans in to gently bump her snout with his.

The Twily Fly skips in to the air, buzzing, neon wings melting in one wide psychedelic fan. Both mare and stallion grin at the angry Twily Fly, and at each other. The Fly comes to rest on their snouts, one wing resting along the curve of the nose.

It was silent now. Peace between two ponies who love each other as well as the mark of one’s love to the other.

Whenever and every time they did this, Flash found them at once both solemn, precious. Yet fun and silliness were roiling at rest behind the peace. Flash feels warmth in his snout and in his heart.

Twilight slowly breaks away leaning back with the Fly on her nose. Before Flash could utter a mock-offended “Oi”, she blasts the Fly off its perch with an upward gust of sudden hot breath from her mouth. The Fly plummets upward before steadying.

Both stallion and mare watch it for a moment.

“Looks lonely, doesn’t it?” Twilight says.

“If…you say so,” Flash remarks, shrugging.

A faint sheen overlays Twilight’s horn.

A golden-yellow point of light swells from infinitesimal size to an ember. As Flash watches, three wings fold out, navy blue, a lighter shade of blue, and weak barley yellow. The colour of the fly changes to a light orange gold.

“Behold, the Flashie Fly,” the lavender mare announces proudly. “One for you, love, and one for me. Now, I think it’s time for them to be acquainted, don’t you?”

“Yeah, do,” Flash rumbles.

A flick of her horn sends it upwards to the same level as the first fly.

The Flashie Fly and the Twily Fly flutter closer and closer, find each other and begin circling the other curiously. Beneath them, Flash and Twilight meet gazes and smile.

“Seems they like each other,” Flash says.

The mare’s shoulder roll in pleasure. “Good.”

A second time, the mare leans in, and for the first time that evening, kisses Flash lightly on the lips.

In return the stallion nuzzles her on the nose.

Grinning, the two look back up to the Flies, now pinging off the other and rolling wide orbits. They watch for minutes.

“Enough interaction for now, you two,” says Twilight.

Another flick of her horn jettisons the Twily Fly from its spot, caroming it towards Flash’s ear. Before it could twitch the irritant away, Twilight’s magic ricochets it off and buries it in to the stiff vertical wave of his deep, blue mane.

“Should be safe in there. Nopony should see it now,” she says, as Flash raises a hoof to run it through his mane. “I rumple my mane hard enough, and it comes out?” Flash asks.

“Yeah, better be quick and catch it on your hoof.”

“I never said ‘thank you’, Twi.”

“Darling, you know it does not matter.”

“Hmm, thank you, Twi.”

“You’re so welcome, my love,” Twilight assures, taking down the Flashie Fly, and, in turn, hiding it under her bangs.

- -

On the evening of the next day, Flash was quite happy to go with his friends Steel Wind and Sharp Spear to the voluntary evening exercise, which were twice a week, in the Royal Guard's training grounds outside the Palace.

The three of them chose towels and tracksuits and presented themselves on the field along with the rest of the volunteers in a line. In the corner of his eye, Flash could discern a table loaded with glasses and two carafes full of water, in the middle of the oval running track. The grass of the field was short, and cool under his hoofs.

Everypony stiffens as their trainer walks in front of them and stops facing them.

"Right!" the P.T. sergeant bellows. "Everypony, forty laps of this 'ere track, quick. Once you've done that, you can come and get a drink. Then another twenty laps. After that, we do thirty wing-stretches and thirty wing-ups. Move."

At the end of practice, the Guardsponies troupe back in to the changing room, laughing, panting, and reeking.

Flash is talking to Steel Wind and a creamy white healthily-minded pegasus named White Gauze turns his head at the wrong moment and seems to catch a glint of purple-pink in the deep blue mane.

As Flash continues talking to Steel, he does not suspect White Gauze behind him squinting at a part of his mane. Eventually he speaks up.

“Excuse me, Flash, but I think a fly is in your mane…,” he opens his wings and lifts up with a draught.

Hovering just above the ground, he bats a wing down a little hard on Flash’s mane, just enough for the stallion to stumble.

“Take it easy!” Flash protests.

"What's the deal, White? Want Flash here to smell your sweat?"

The curious White Gauze says, " I saw something in his mane. Pinky-purpley thing."

What do I say? Should I say it’s a parasprite?....oh, who am I kidding? Twilight told me they devastated Ponyville. I could start a panic…

“Well?”

“Oh, um, I really couldn’t tell you, White.”

“If it is an insect, remember to shake it out, or you’ll be calling in sick from a blood complaint or a skin rash.”

“Okay, okay, White, I promise.”

“What was that all about?” Sharp asks as they jog away across the wide sports’ field. “Attracting flies is serious, Flash. Hay, I know a locker-room can get smelly with forty sweaty stallions in it but not so bad as to attract a few flies.”

"We can deal with flies no problem," Steel scoffs, demonstrating with his thick grey tail.

“It’s not really a fly, guys. It’s…something different.”

Flash withdraws the little skittish magic insect. “Meet the Twily Fly, guys…likeable, don’t you think?”

“What is it?”

“Hang on…Twily?”

“It’s from…,”

“Yeah,” Flash rumbles, “her, guys. A little something special from her.”

When they went in, Flash Sentry promptly turned his heels for a cubicle of the showers. The stallion showered long. The stallion showered hard. All for the approval of White Gauze and the P.T. sergeant. What if word got back up to Iron Hoof? He had to catch the Twily Fly avoiding the hard jet of steaming hot water and making a bee-line for the ceiling. Flash set it on the highest basket of the rack where the soap, body wash, mane conditioner, and brushes were kept.

When it was all over, and Flash was lying on his bed in his Guard’s cell, he reaches up to his mane and pulls out the Twily Fly, where it had taken refuge in the thickest part of his mane.

“That was close, wasn’t it, little guy?” he whispers.

A Load of D'Aawwwww

View Online

“I know of a place where ponies go for photographs,” said Twilight eagerly, stopping her walk and pronking on the spot. “Good”, Flash says, smiling widely.

During the breakfast of treats, Twilight turns to Cadance and said:

“Flash said he wanted to get his photograph taken, with me in it. I know a place, Kodak Daguerreo’s, we’ll be going there for a bit,”

She falters before Cadance’s knowing smirk before the pink alicorn replies, “That’s sounds brilliant, Twilight. I hope you enjoy yourself with Flash.” The Princess’s pink irises sparkle with humour.

Thus, after breakfast and checkers, with Twilight leading the way, Flash following, they head off.

The place Twilight seeks is on a thoroughfare just off one of the wide avenues, where a sale is being organised. A few ponies raise their heads, and wave to the two of them. Admittedly, more still wave to Flash the Royal Knight than wave to the Princess of Friendship. The mare lets a small disgruntled scowl mar her snout, before reshaping it to a tolerant smile.

This Flash sees, and sympathises.

“Ah, that looks like it,” says Twilight, perking up minutes later.

The name on the wooden board ran Kodak Daguerreo’s Crystal Empire Snaps and Studios. “As Sharp, Clear, and Colourful as Crystal!” Through the glass, the mare and stallion could see green felted prop stands edged in brass.

Pasted on the stands were scores of photographs. Fillies, totie enough to wear their best festival dresses and bows in their manes; older fillies holding certificates for some merit, white toothy ear-to-ear grins stretching across muzzles…young mares and stallions, both blushing and grinning,…a courting couple, then.

A foursome of young stallions fore-legs in the air, mouths open, teeth visible in a silent cheer, for what purpose, unreadable. A second couple, mare in a white dress of foggy white and veil; the stallion in black suit, behind them, mares in bright skirts, around the bench were bunting and plates of cake…a wedding party.

Flash’s gaze slides off the stands and sinks in to the electric light bulb-lit cave of the shop. A simple layout: a carpeted floor, ponikins, more stands for photographs, old azure-blue wallpaper, at the back, a long high wooden counter with a till. He could just see a pony bent over a book open on the counter, pencil in his/her mouth, filling in prices or accounts.

Flash turns from the window to the door, forehoof nudging the door open. A bell trings above his head.

The elderly mare looks up and speaks in a Prance-ish accent. “Good morning, Chevalier, ahh!, forgive me, Your Highness, I did not see you there.” Kodak Daguerreo really did look like she had stepped out of an old black-and-white photograph, a light grey coat, a black bun tied up in pins, where thick white forelocks which had escaped bobbed up and down. The mare wears an old-fashioned hoop skirt trailing on the floor, long sleeves for her forelegs, puffs at her shoulders, and a white blouse. The collar of which is cinched with a dark purple bow-tie.

“It’s alright, Miss…Daguerreo.”

“How may I help you this day? And it is Madame Daguerreo, or Madame Kodak, Chevalier.”

“My companion Flash Sentry, and I, would like our picture taken.”

“Of course, Your Highness, Sir Flash Sentry. Do the Princess and the Knight wish for a standard imperial portrait, one of front-page newspaper size, a smaller postcard one, or of timbre size?”

“Oh, I fancy a postcard size,” Twilight decides. “What about you, Flash?” The stallion nods in approval.

“Formal or casual?”

“Casual, please,” says Twilight, causing the Prance-ish mare to push herself away from the till, lift her eyebrows, and stare at her, a bit scandalised. At the scrutiny, the alicorn chuckles, “Yeah, we are not just Princess and bodyguard, I wanted to be Flash’s friend. If that’s alright with you, Miss Daguerreo.”

Twilight half-wondered if the photograph mare would be an old stick-in-the-mud for rank and manners between the pony-tribes.

Mme. Daguerreo nods, tapping tiny crystal knobs mounted on the till; little pastel-hued pieces of paper jump up in the glass – screened box as she adds prices. “I heard that their Highnesses Cadenza and Shining Armour were the same,” Madame Kodak says, smiling.

“Would the Princess and the Knight like a backdrop to their portrait?”

Flash nods, “Yeah,” he rumbles.

A clear ding! from the till.

“Plain, domestic, chateaux, arbour, garden, or exotic?”

“Umm, domestic, s’il vous-plait.” Madame Daguerreo smiles, pleased at the bilingualism. Glancing at the stallion, Twilight explains, “More casual, don’t you think if we are seated on the same couch, rather than me on the chair and you on the floor?”

Flash nods again. “Oh, yeah, friends wouldn’t do that.”

“Please follow me, Your Highness, Sir Knight.”

A not-too-spacious studio, filled with stands, benches, short plaster columns, potted palm trees, and chairs. The room was clear towards the back where a pair of simple folding summer chairs where placed before a large curtain – or a pardu - patterned with griffins, hydra, manticores, phœnixes, and … “Flash, come and look!” Twilight cries excitedly, “Spike’s on this!”

“Oh, yes, Spike the Brave and Glorious was added to that six months after the Crystal Heart was given back to us,”

Madame Kodak said, walking over to a cupboard door, pressing a crystal knob on a panel beside the door and stepping through the grey door-frame. “I keep the cameras, the tripods, and the shrouds in here.”

“Huh,” Flash says, peering closer to the stitched picture. “Spike’s sure is a little guy.”

“Spike’s seventeen or eighteen years old,” Twilight bats back in quick riposte.

In an undertone: “I hear ponies call him a baby dragon, well, he is, by dragon standards, but by pony-standards, he’s a teenager. Though, it is unknown when a young dragon matures, or not. Not many ponies travel to the dragon-lands. And, I was his age when me and my friends defeated Nightmare Moon. Now was that before or after I turned eighteen?”

Madame Kodak pokes her head out of the cupboard, “Bless me, I never knew that, Your Highness. Young to be a saviour of Equestria with your friends. But, I hear Your Highness was around the same age when Lune de Cauchemar came back. Oui, tres jeune. Dix-huit ans et une heroïne d’Equestrie!

Flash looks back at her before ducking his head closer to Twilight’s. “Uuhhh, what did she say?”

The younger mare giggles. “Didn’t you learn Prance-ish in school, Flash?”

“Well, I did…but I’ve forgotten, heh.”

Twilight smiles kindly. “Oh, Flash…what she said was “Yes, very young. Eighteen years and a saviour of Equestria!”

“Oh, right. Wow, eighteen…and, um, what did she say before that, “Loon de Coosh-something”?

“Nightmare Moon, Flash,” Twilight says, whispering the phrase.

Flash nods. “Ah, right.”

At that moment, Madame Daguerreo steps out of the cupboard, lugging out a wooden-legged tripod collapsed in to a thin fasces, a camera and shroud balanced on her back. She approaches a part of the studio where a large slender bench sits in front of a hanging depicting a fireplace, a desk, and a case of…

“Ooh, books!” Twilight murmurs excitedly, and before Flash could say something she had panged loudly away from his side to re-appear reared up on the bench straining to read the titles. At the sound of Madame Daguerreo tutting, she looks behind and down at her.

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but you could have warned me before you did that.”

“Oh, um,” Twilight murmurs, contrite, before her ears lay. “Sorry. Whenever I see books, I get excited.”

“You should have seen her when she arrived at the Crystal Empire library,” Flash pipes up.

“Oh, really?” Madame Daguerreo says as she sets up the tripod and kicks the legs out so the points formed a equilateral triangle.

"Oh, shush, Flash!"

Next she balances the camera on top, with her teeth she hurls the shroud over the camera. It was just a bit taller than her.

“Next, the magnesium ribbon,” she murmurs.

“Do you have some flash powder and dry cell batteries?” Twilight asks, bringing her front hoofs down to the bench-seat.

“Hmm, no, Your Highness, very old materials those, too volatile, could start a fire.” The older mare looks at her contemplatively. “You know a little of the history of photography?”

“Definitely. My home in Ponyville has a book for everything.”

“Hmmmhm, does it now?” the mare mutters as she heads back to the cupboard.

Twilight catches Flash’s eyes, flaring her wings out she shrugs her shoulders to mutely suggest What can you do? Flash mates her grin. The mare pats a space on the bench to her right.

Flash walks over and makes himself comfortable. “That nice mare certainly likes old-fashioned cameras,” he says. “How does everything work?”

“Madame Daguerreo does not use flash powder, or magnesium-chlorate, that’s what ponies used in the real real old photographs. They would hold up the flash-powder on the tray above their heads and ignite it when they got a decent exposure.

Decent exposure, a good photograph. Here, I expect she takes the picture with the shutter, that ignites the magnesium ribbon, which is not like flash powder that used to be used, Flash.”

Madame Daguerreo re-appears with the tray, wire, and box. Beside the tripod and camera, she sits down, sets the tray’s tripod on its legs, opens the box and picks out a short black stiff object which she drops in to the tray. Next she links one end of the wire to somewhere under the black shroud.

The mare ducks beneath the shroud, the black fabric neatly hiding her shoulders and her front.

“I’m ready for you now, cheries!” she said.

The smile on Flash Sentry’s muzzle twitches to left and right. Next to him, Twilight slightly turns her head, towards him, her head remaining on an angle to the camera.

Twilight subtly leans in, not too quickly to spook Flash or cause him to lean away in response or turn his head to her. The moment before the magnesium burned out and both of them were blinded, she touched her purple muzzle to his cheek.

Two pairs of large wide eyes are dazzled by the magnesium igniting. A second later, black spots jolt in front the mare’s and stallion’s eyes.

Mare and stallion blink and rub toes in to their spotted eyes.

“Heh, wow!” Flash said, turning his head to face the purple alicorn. “That was fun.”

A pause as he gingerly raises a hoof to his cheek. Confused, he asks “Twilight, did you…just nuzzle me?”

His sole reply is a coy chuckle from the mare.

“Thank you!” the proprietrix said, flipping the black blanket off her head. “That was the first one, for the second one, could I ask you to be more relaxed, please?”

If she wants us to be more relaxed, so…

Flash wraps a arm round Twilight’s shoulders, curling a wing over her wings; a moment later, she curls one wing round
him.

Beneath the thick black shroud, the elderly mare smirks as she squints through the tiny square of glass. “Friends with your Knight, are you, Your Highness?...or something more?”

Again, in the seconds before the magnesium burn-out, the purple mare turns her face slightly but, this time, purses her lips minutely, and pecks the yellow-gold stallion on his cheek. Does she hear her friend gasp involuntarily at the contact?

As the mare looks over the second photograph, Flash whispers to the lavender mare:

“Twilight, um, are you doing that on purpose?”

“You’re one of my best friends, Flash,” Twilight said, rubbing a wing up and down his back.

The lavender mare allows a smile to show on the side of her muzzle nearer the camera, she turns to her stallion again, she kisses him on the cheek, lips open in a pink circle. Does she feel the rise in temperature of Flash’s skin when he blushes? Does she feel the pulse in his cheek speed up?

Her eyes are dazzled for the fourth time. Breaking away, toe on her left eyes rubbing, the mare sees the stallion red across the nose, red-tipped ears pinned back, gratuitous grin only for the serotonin and the dopamine rushing in his blood, all from the cheeky administrations of this beautiful mare.

Twilight only knows she loves it, and only doing it for Flash to love it, because Flash loved her.

Reveries are broken by the camera-mare giggling, blushing too. “May I ask you not to be quite so affectionate from now on, please, cheries? You two are lovely together.”

“I’m finished now, Miss Daguerreo,” Twilight replied.

The last few photographs just involved no hugging, pecking, or kissing.

Twilight and Flash sat straight but relaxed, smiling broadly for Kodak’s camera.

The photographs were developed much later, in a secluded room at the back of the shop in the solemn ruddy light.

“The photographs will be delivered to the Castle later to-day, Your Highness, Chevalier.”

“Thank you, Mme. Daguerreo.”

“I honestly can’t wait,” said Flash, before glancing pointedly at Twilight, who blushed.

The mare smiles at the two ponies before saying:

“Your Highness is more than a friend to your Chevalier, are you not? Ponies may nuzzle and hug another, but there is something different here. I see ponies court, and I am surprised a Pegasus would be bold enough to woo a Princess, no less. But, I remember hearing of the story of Shining Armour courting Princess Cadenza, and oh, how my heart thrilled with joy for them.”

Twilight cuts across her, “Thank you very much for the pictures, Madame Daguerreo; umm, I have books to leisure read, if you wouldn’t mind. And, ummm, if you could keep this…the two…Flash and me secret if you know what I mean…”

Madame Kodak smiles indulgently, “Worry not, Your Highness, I would never betray secrets of ponies. Monceleste, the very idea! Ponies would not come to me if I talked to ponies about others’ secrets.”

“Twilight? Are you coming?” Flash asks, turning back to the counter.

The sun was shining brightly as they walked back to the Castle.

Stallion and mare find Cadance in the lounge, deep in a book.

“Oh? May I see them?” Cadance said innocently, wide eyes boring in to Twilight’s, lips twisting upward.

“Oh, we don’t have them yet. They still…need developing.”

“Aand? When they are finished will you allow me to see them?”

“Heh, maybe I will, Cadance.”

Much later, from the knocking on his door, Flash Sentry knew what it was for. He opens the door to see Twilight and Madame Kodak in the hallway.

Highly-coloured squares float in Twilight’s aura, with a brown paper envelope monogrammed with Kodak’s Crystal Empire Snaps and Studios.

Upon seeing him, Twilight nearly thrust them on to his eyes, “Lookat them, lookit them, Flash, aren’t they amazing?”

“I will leave you, cheries,” Madame Kodak says, smiling broadly. “It is excellent my art still excites ponies. Bonsoir et au revoir, Chevalier.”

When Flash does get a proper, informed perusal of the photographs… “Oh woow!” he murmurs, “We look sooo sweet together.”

A Dream of Ruin

View Online

A Dream of Ruin

One night when Princess Twilight Sparkle was away in the Crystal Empire on her second vacation to see again brother and sister-in-law, and interviewing and researching, Flash Sentry dreams a dream unlike what he dreamed before.

It was not the dream, which once hollowed his eyes and haunted him with shame; though now it left him content and vigorous. It was another dream; the polar opposite.

Flash Sentry finds himself at a well-scrubbed and unclothed trestle table in a crowded but not noisy restaurant, groaning with plates, pans, and dishes steaming, fragrant and bubbling. Eyes wide and mouth wide open, Flash takes in salad from every part of Equestria and across the sea.

A dish in front of him levitates, held in lavender magic tendrils. Twilight tips most of the food on to her plate.

"Have trouble choosing, Flash? Don't blame you."

A second plate levitates, and several spring rolls fall on to her plate.

The stallion stares at her as scores of hammers march in wide lines over the table following a young shaven-headed stallion all in black with an armband of crossed red hammers. He was barking in to a loudspeaker something about waiting for worms.

Huh, can you order worms here?

"W-What is this place?"

"River of Dreams," Twilight replied, pointing to the back of the Hall.

A bare brick wall covered with posters of a middle-aged stallion in worn black shirt and fleece. His mane was black and puffed up in a large greying curly perm. From his place, Flash could see the bags under his eyes. The posters cried out titles of songs and albums, silhouettes of the stallion, mouth open belting out a song, one red background while his mane and sunglasses were in yellow.

"A live music act?"

"Yeah, Joel Bronco. He writes superb music."

Flash finally sees something he likes, tipping sliced and destoned peaches and nectarines stuffed with crushed ginger biscuits on to his plate. He saw bits of cress there too. Looking over the table again, he sees a bowl of limp crescent-shaped objects a dark golden-brown colour. The smell was...so scrumptious his stomach almost growled. Right away he knew it was rum-fried bananas, and he chose that to eat for pudding.

As the stallion tucks in, Joel Bronco strides on stage in to the light to the stamping and the cheering. Tapping the microphone with a toe, he said in a deep Manehattan accent. "Thank you, big crowd to-night. Let's start with the old favourites...,"

A piano started tinkling in slow slinking tune.

Much much later, but no time at all, Flash and his mare walk out of the maze. No Guards in sight. Statues, the soft light of the yellow lamps, faraway tinkle of water in fountains. All of Luna’s stars blaze above. Bright dazzling mermaids and sea-ponies glide above the same way bricks do not and clouds do. Gleams from their tails and fins dapple the lawn at his hoofs. Bellies full and warm of pasta, salad and sea-food, hoofs heavy from, waltzing, jiving and quick-stepping.

“Who were those two, the Luteces?” Flash asks. -The Luteces were/had been/will be an act in the saloon-bar where they had danced. A sky-blue mare and a sky-blue stallion, auburn-maned, and blue-eyed. The mare wore an old-fashioned brown dress down to the floor, long chemise, shirt,-and sleeves, green tie. The stallion was dressed similarly. Not that you could see beneath the two blackboards he wore strung over his withers. The mare levitated a plate with a hoof-full of bits.

They had stood at the back next to the bar. The mare would offer the plate and the customer would pick one. Mare or stallion was supposed to flip it. The sky-blue mare would offer “Heads?” in a Griffish Isles accent and the sky-blue stallion would quip “Or tails?”, in an identical accent. In an unspeakable act of sorcery, dream-logic or something else, the coin would always -always- turn up heads. Twilight had tried, with no success and a lot of groaning. As he led her away, Flash heard the mare, Rosalind?, say “Do you not find the dimensions of the creative designs of a slumbering brain quite convivial for some rest and relaxation, brother? -

“Where they brother and sister or something?” Twilight asked, leaning in to him, scratching a nuzzling itch.

“I dunno,” her stallion admitted. “I mean, they were like, more than brother and sister, you know? They were finishing each other’s sentences, and knew the other’s mind perfectly.”

“Lots of mixed siblings are like that, I’ll have you know,” Twilight said, grinning up at him. “Me and Shiny, for instance.”

“Well, Steel and Sharp do that too. And they’re not brothers.”

Flash Sentry, who had never known the frustrations, the wheedlings, the sweet gestures, the meannesses of either brother or sister, whether elder or younger, nodded.

“Well, we weren’t finishing each other’s sentences."

"Well, perhaps not yet."

Twilight places a hoof on his cheek. The stallion leans in to it. The mare smiles, falters a second, then..

Mouth shaping a single soundless syllable. Silent, but understandable.

“Now”

And the purple rouged mare blushed. And she leans in. Flash Sentry leans in too.

Twilight slides her hoof round her lover’s neck, capping the frog on to the back of his head, keeping him there as their lips danced.

As they kiss, once light, now deeper and deeper, sea-ponies and mermaids explode, colouring the heavens with sky-filling fire-works.

A squat shape of darkness rises out of the ground, in the bar of the shadow cast by the Two Leaping Fillies. Red lights gleam out of the shape. A dazzling whiteness opens below. The mote steps in to the swimming azure, turquoise, and lavender washing over the lawn.

A silver-grey stallion, dark-grey tail, body clad in the gold-edged night-coloured armour. Flash recognises him. He is not surprised, thus not alarmed to see Captain Ironhoof in the grounds. Flash obediently bends his knee, lowering his naked body to the grass. There he stays, as the earth jolts more and more as Ironhoof approached.

The earth shakes once more, and Ironhoof is in front of him and still Flash waits for the order to rise.

Flash’s front legs begin to whine from strain, but this was far from the extended bowing he had to do for basic and advanced training. The stallion quietly clears his throat, “Good evening, Captain”. Glancing up, a tiny breach of protocol,

Flash sees the Captain’s eyes, claret-red, shooting fury down at him. Anxiety seeps in to him, his stomach curling, Flash
thinks, “What have I done? Quick to answer his own question: Well, become romantically interested in Princess Twilight who I know he is pursuing, but apart from that…

“You may get up, Flash Sentry,” the gruff voice from above at last commands.

Sighing, then grunting gratefully, the light-orange Knight rises from the dewy grass. Facing Ironhoof, his expression has not changed.

Flash settles his features in to the stoic neutral glare of the ever-dependable Royal Guards stallion.

“Come with me, Flash Sentry,” the Captain rumbled, through white clenched teeth. “I have something to show you”.

Across the wide, wide entrance halls, grey stone below and grey stone above, ornamented with identical white Pegasus stallions, granite become themselves. But Flash could feel pairs of eyes upon him as he follows the Captain, like a procession of damnation. Towering stone walls close in, choking the streams of stone in to narrow corridors, flickering circles of yellow light every twenty paces uncurtained of tapestries. Iron Hoof is silent as the trees, and grey as the crypt. “This is the way to the dungeons, not his office,” Flash realised suddenly.

At long last, the long stream runs slap up a wall, two torches right and left of a door of plain bright varnished wood. The brass doorknob is swallowed by Iron Hoof’s thaumic aura, twisting it, unlocks with an innocuous click. Brown wood swings over, a rectangle of blackness. Nothing to be seen, or could be seen.

Captain Iron Hoof turns his great grey head to face the Knight.

“In there, Flash Sentry”, his voice rough. “The lights will come on when you go in.”

Breaking eye-contact with the Captain, Flash Sentry looks in to the deep void inside the door. He strains to see anything at all. The last torches were still twenty and forty paces away; too far to throw light. Apprehension prickles at the root of his mane. Flash hears the dry rumble of the Captain’s voice yet again.

“Do you doubt me, your Captain, Sir Flash Sentry?” Looking back, Flash sees Iron Hoof glaring at him. Iron Hoof tips helmeted head forward, “The lights are ready to go on upon entry. Obey me,” he growls, gritting front teeth, and clenching those at the back, steel as well as iron pouring in to Flash’s eyes, polluting mountain burn with mercury and fly-ash.

Insides wriggling, mouth and throat dry, heart nervous to right the perceived insubordination, Flash swallows silently, murmuring “Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” as he bows. Straightening, hoofs and shoes squealing on the stone, he walks, towards the black open portal. No sound but the scrape of his metal shoes. All at once, Flash feels the stone run under his hoofs, carrying him, blackness zooming towards him. At the edge of the worn stone, and the doorway, Flash feels the stone river pitch him head over heels over in to the void. Flash thumps hard on to solid ground under his hoofs, haunches, and chin.

He lifts his head, straining it left and right, waiting for the torches. Clouds of white vapour rush in to the room over his head. The Knight whinnies in surprise. His heart beats slower

But no torches flare or even sputter to light. Flash waits. The darkness persists. No torches light up. Flash is unable to even see the brackets holding the torches. Frowning, Flash wonders if the torches need unicorn magic. Turning round, he sees Iron Hoof right outside the door.

“Sir?” Flash asks.

A squeal of rusty metal in the lintel, and a portcullis of thick bars slam down between the Knight and the Captain.

"Sir?" the stallion asks, panic and terror rising.

"I saw you with her. Despicable that one of my favourite Guardsponies should be degenerate enough to seduce one of the Princesses of Equestria."

"I didn't seduce her," Flash cried, too quickly.

"You seduced her and that is the end of it. I always knew you had a nose downwind of her. Now get out of my sight, snot-nosed whorse's whelp. You will never see Twilight, me, or daylight ever again."

And he turned away.

Flash Sentry woke, stiff with fear, among rumpled sheets, muzzle rammed in to pillow. Subtle but sharp odour of a stallion’s sweat hanging...Wing unfurled but folded round and under his abdomen, aching. The other bent at obtuse angle up the wall. Adrenaline rich in his veins. The stallion pants, snorts hot on his muzzle.

What was that? Oh...oh, buck. Iron Arse.

A feeble voice filters through the wood and weave: “Sir Flash Sentry, may I come in? How are you this morning?”

Galvanic impulse dies. Flash crashes back on to heaped blankets.

Oh, okay. Panic over. Why would I think it was the Captain? Oh, that was a bad dream.

Flash Sentry takes a deep breath, thinning the adrenaline, holding, and expelling.

“Come in, Greyhoof. A good morning to you.” The stallion glances at himself in the mirror across the room, searching for grey gouges under hollowed eyes and sweat-stickened feathers.

No.

Wide eyes and mussed velvet fur. Presentable for another day beginning with “y”, guarding the useless and unusable Blue Blood.

Flash Sentry drags limbs on to the floor. Flash grins truly to greet Greyhoof.

“A good morning to you too, Sire. Did you sleep well?”

The taste of Twi’s kiss, the softness of her lips…Ironhoof’s fangs gritted to snapping point, dark-grey fur blackened to storm-clouds with rage,…the agony…

“Yes, Greyhoof, well – just a bad dream.”

Greyhoof nodded. “Nothing too troubling I hope, Sire?”

No, he could handle this.

“No, Greyhoof, not at all.”

All that day, déjà vu of the dream is in the small place at the back of Flash Sentry’s mind. The stallion turns ears back at the giggles and the sighs of relief and bored groans from the Prince. Turns ears forward, to silence; the murr of a Princess as he takes her first kiss.

Flash's heart skips a beat and throbs harder. Ever since that day weeks after the Coronation and had he had caught himself imagining talking to Princess Twilight, her beautiful adorable face alight and open with interest, what it must be like to put one arm round her shoulders...what it would feel like to touch those soft warm lavender lips with his own and he had realised he was in love with her; the desire to kiss her had been there. Now, the stallion wonders what was like to kiss mare. Flash had never gone out with fillies in his school. His dislike of The Order had put paid to that.

A minute flex of his wings to make sure they would not snap out in a wing boner. Oh no, he did not want that happening in front of Prince Blue Blood.

On other occasions on that long, long, day, he wonders, should he tell Grey Hoof or his friends about the dream.

Well, a good and gentle friend Grey Hoof might be, but he was old, worn out from work, and tired.

Sharp Spear and Steel Wind could be better, but for them it was only recently since they had learned he was in love with Twilight. And a little more recently than that, they had learned she may have feelings in return. they might shy away, be reluctant to listen.

Heresy!, Part One

View Online

“Hello, Twilight.”

Pulled from her intent reading, Twilight looks up to see the pink Princess of Love coming approaching the two of them.

“Cadance!”

Flash lowered the books as swiftly as he was able to, rising from his haunches to his hoofs. He grunts as pins and needles jab inside his leg. Admonishing himself, Flash slowly walks up to Cadance.

Twilight is already there, leaning down to the floor in front of her sister-in-law;

“Sunshine, sunshine…”

Cadance joins in, hopping from hoof to hoof with Twilight, covering then removing hoofs from her eyes;

“…ladybugs awake!”

Sitting upright on their haunches, the two mares clap hoofs together;

“Clap your hoofs…”

Twilight and Cadance stand up, turning away, shaking their tails and hindquarters;

“…and do a little shake!”
Twilight and Cadance plonk themselves down and throw arms round each other, beginning to laugh. It was short-lived.

Flash sees the playing out of the old nursery rhyme between the two Princesses, grinning, and amused, recalling Cadance had used to foalsit Twilight years and years ago.

The grin falters as he sees the two alicorns face away, leaning down, chanting “…do a little shake!”, as they waved their rumps, shaking their tails.

Flash saw Twilight stretching her shapely flanks, the curve of her rump exposed as her swooping three-colour tail whips back and forth.

Uh oh

Pomf!

Flash’s wings snap upward and outward as his snout reddens at the lovely luscious lavender sight.

Did that just…

The stallion’s eyes widen as both alicorns’ laughter choke out, and they straighten to stare at him with astonishment.

…

Oh no, oh no, no no no, don’t tell me, oh, Galaxia please…

Princess Cadance and Princess Twilight had seen him accidentally declare his feelings for Twilight.

The humiliation was total. His reputation as a loyal, stoic, golden Guardspony crumbled, blew away on the Princesses’ gazes. Flash could feel himself grow hotter and hotter as his inside cringe and twist in to unbelievable shapes.

Flash sees, as Twilight stares still at him, Cadance bring a slippered hoof to her lips to stifle a titter. In that hyper-real moment, Flash could see the tousled hairs in her pink and yellow mane, the bags under her eyes.

He stumbles back on weak, trembling legs, wings flapping woodenly. He couldn’t be with them any longer.

Pivoting on his shod toes, Flash sprints away, in to the library.

“W-wha-what…,” Twilight stammers, blushing.

“Oh, who was that, Twily?”

“Flash Sentry,” Twilight answers, still staring after the light-orange Pegasus.

“Twilight, I’m not sure how to break this to you, but I think you have a serious admirer,” Cadance says, one eye on Flash’s empty wake, and the other on Twilight. Her grin, white and knowing, bends over her face.

The lavender alicorn blushes more furiously. “Oh…um…uh…right then…ah.”

“Ever had an admirer before, Twily?”

“Nnn-nnuh-no no no.”

“Mmm, how long have you known him?”

“Three days, only three days.”

“Ooaah, hoo hoo, really?”

Flash Sentry only stops running when he reaches the back of the library, hidden by mountainous walls and walls of books and tomes. Seeing nopony else, he chooses the furthest corner where one bookcase slots against the wall, the carpeted floor in deep grey, cool shadow. Isolated, quiet, hard-to-find.

A near-perfect hiding-place.

The disgraced stallion heads heavily in to the dimness. He curls up on the floor, arms and hoofs drawn up under his chin, wings unfurled clasping himself. Flash sighs, and closes his eyes. He does not want to, but the lyrics of the nursery rhyme ring merrily through his mind, Twilight and Cadance waving their tails, the wingboner, and the disgracing sprint away.

Flash groans, wanting to banish it from memory, space, time, but wholly unable to.

Flash knows he cannot continue in the Royal Guard any longer. Five years or so of service, since he was eighteen, standing quietly in the background, a dizzying appointment to Princess’ bodyguard…the most lovely, beautiful mare he had ever seen…the green shoots of a possible friendship…and now this.

Second day on the job, and I bucking blow it!

Twenty-three years old, with the prospect of resigning in shame and dishonour, stained by the fact he could not keep his traitorous wings down.

…This is the worst day of my life.

Flash lies there stewing in silence before…

What will Iron Hoof think? Well, wave me off with a sneer. Oh no, what about Dad? He’ll look at me in disgust, say harsh words, and turn away. What will I do now? Who will guard Princess Twilight now?

Lying down huddled, muzzle resting on his arms slowly draws Flash’s eye to his two golden horseshoes. What a proud, upstanding, loyal Guardspony would wear. Not one who had to hide a love he should not be feeling, one who was ashamed at that love, and one who had disgraced himself in front of two Princesses.

I should not be wearing this, I have disgraced it.

Hooking a toe of one hoof in to one shoe he levers it off, pushes several inches away to the crook of the wainscotting. He does the same with the second, and then two more, each pushing them away from him. Momentarily gazing at his front hoofs, he raises them to slide off his helmet. Setting it on the floor, he unbuckles the straps keeping the breast- and side-plates joined. Completed, the piles of metal glimmers dully. Flash, now naked as when he came in to the world, feels marginally cleaner, lies down again the floor, legs and arms under him, facing away from his armour, idly scrutinising a primary feather as his thoughts turn over and over.

“Apt? Did you see where Flash went?”

The library-stallion looks behind him and adjusts his spectacles, confused.

“I’m afraid I did not, Your Highness. Did…did he leave?”

Cadance’s mouth crooks upwards at the corners.

“Sort of.”

“Well, I never saw him, You Highness, I’m afraid.”

“It’s alright, Apt.”

“I will look for Flash. He cannot have gone far in this library.”

“Should I come too?” Twilight asked.

“Thank you for being spirited, Twily, but no. After what happened, the sight of you may make him more nervous. I think it
is best if I talk to him alone. Flash will calm down better if he is in a one on one chat.”

“Oh, okay.” Twilight’s ears flop to the side of her head. She rubs one arm with the other. Cadance reaches over to rub a hoof on her shoulder. “I know you have the best intentions, Twily.”

“Flash?”

The stallion slowly raises his head, feeling his body begin to shiver with dread and his insides twist anew.

Cadance stands mere feet from him at the end of the bookcase, standing in the light, outside of the deep shadow cast by the lamps. Tall, pink, shining resplendent. He, huddled, in dimness, ashamed. Beside him, armour he had taken off.

“This is where you got to.”

“Your Highness,” he croaks, not meeting her eyes.

“It appears we have not been introduced, Flash,” the alicorn said, smiling, cheeks dimpling, head on one side. Flash cringes, shaking. Cadance lifts an arm and leaves it in the air in front of Flash, waiting. “Pleased to meet you, Flash,” she said. Flash paused, before he lifts an arm to fit the hoof in to hers. Flash clears his throat, and tries to keep his voice steady. “Pleased to meet you too, Your Highness.” The Princess tries to shake, but the two jerk out of time. The two hoofs let go. The pink hoof slowly touches down to the carpet again. The orange-gold hoof folds under Flash’s barrel, as if it was embarrassed by what had happened. “Well,” said Cadance softly. “At least that wasn’t worse.”

Flash was too full of dread to even think of grinning.

The gentle, gracious, understanding alicorn walks toward him, before kneeling down and scooting the last few inches. She was now right in front of him. Flash could not turn his head to either side without seeing her.

“Flash, I think we need a little secret talk. Right here is comfortable.”

The abased Knight, cringed again, trembling. He tried to move backwards, but his rump strikes the wainscoting, unable to move any more. Flash clamps down on the whine rising in his throat.

“Flash, there is really one question I need to ask: do you have strong feelings for Twilight?”

The stallion does not answer. A blush rises to his face, eyes skitter down to the floor, insides boiling and seething, a funny tinge of nausea rising.

“Flash,” Cadance says insistently, but not raising her melodic voice, eyes fixed upon him, “Answer me”.

“Yes!” Flash forces himself to say. He opens his eyes again and made himself continue. “I love her. I love her very much.”

Cadance is silent for a few seconds. Then she hums softly, lifting her crossed arms to meet her chin. She still looks at him, not cross or angry, not judging, just patient.

Flash just happens to notice the dark deep circles under the pink Princess’s eyes under a layer of makeup. Her blond and pink and mane were…faded. Flash remembers how bright and bouncy she had been at the wedding interrupted by
Chrysalis. Cadance looked tired, so very tired.

The Princess meets his gaze, her eyes purse just slightly. Flash frowns as he felt a peculiar sensation of being scrutinised second by awkward second. He couldn’t avoid a nervous cough. Oh, Celestia and Galaxia, what is thinking? What is she planning on doing to me?

The thrill dies down. The noise of Cadance breathing in. “You are in love with Twilight, Flash. I’m sorry I had to use my magic to find out if it was true. I won’t use my magic again right now.”

Cadance hums a second time. “Well, isn’t that something? I don’t hear something like that every day, Flash.” A pause, several more seconds for Flash’s heart to pulse, his belly to knot sickeningly.

“Flash, why don’t you tell me how you fell in love with dear Twilight?”

The gold-yellow stallion squirms, folded arms and wings tightening together, shuffling uncomfortably. What had been deathly tightly secret between just him and Greyhoof for months, she wanted him…

“Flash, I should let you know we don’t have much time. So, please, tell me, quickly.”

“It’s been months, Your Highness, since…since…Heh, I had been…noticing – seeing her before. She stood out to me.
Bright, sweet, so kind, and…so beautiful, more beautiful than any other mare I’ve seen.” Flash breaks off, eyes glazing over, his ears flopping back, full force of the love a great warm bloom in his chest, his cheeks and ears, the mental pictures of Twilight chorusing to the loud sympathetic thumping of his heart.

Cadance smiles to herself on the inside. He did look cute like that. She smiles more deeply as an amusing thought strikes her. Soo, the wingboner was for Twilight. Imagine if it was for little old me. Well, I know I’m pretty head-turningly hot. Would I mind? heh heh

Flash continues. “I wanted to get to know her better, pony to pony, I didn’t mind much she had been taught by Celestia, or she’s saved Equestria. Then, she solved that thingy down in Ponyville, and became a Princess…You must know, Highness, it was her Coronation – that – that changed everything.” The stallion sighs. “You were there. I was there, Guarding the Presentation Room, you were there, I don’t need to describe it. My thoughts were, when she was on the dais and during her speech to all those ponies, of how proud, how happy she looked, so confident and yet so nervous. I felt…I wanted to help her. So much. I kept thinking of her at that moment, over and over.”

He hesitates and swallows, even though his mouth his dry. Picking up he says,

“I started…um…these dreams of her; and me…just doing things. It was painful to me. Weeks passed before I realised what had happened. I didn’t want to believe it. Pegasi are not supposed to fall in love with Princesses.”

Flash sighs heavily, again feeling the shame that had settled on his shoulders at that time.

“If I may, Your Highness, please don’t tell the next stallion Iron Hoof sends to guard Twilight I told you this. And…please don’t tell him how I disgraced myself.”

“The…next Guardspony, Flash?”

“Yes. How can I guard after – that?”

“I think I will not be bothering Auntie to send up a new Guardspony, Flash,” Cadance replies, corners of her lips darting upwards.

“Huh?” Flash blabs, then dumbly astounded. He fails to understand her. How could a Guardspony not be sent up?

“Well,” said Cadance before her smile widens to a small grin. “May I tell you a secret, Flash?”

Eyebrows still drawn together, Flash, perplexed, answers hesitantly, “Y-Yeah…what is it?”

Cadance leans close to him, and the Princess of Love whispers:

“Not in the Crystal Empire, Flash.”

“Wait, what do you say?”

“Here in the Crystal Empire, we encourage our little ponies to follow where their hearts take them.”

Flash Sentry stares at her, mouth open.

“One last thing, Flash Sentry…I will be watching you. We don’t want any more wingboners do we?” A broad smile splitting her muzzle, and then she winked at him.

Flash found himself smiling too. A half-embarrassed laugh forced itself out of him. “R-Right, I gotcha, Your Highness.”

“Hmm-mm, Flash?”

“Your Highness?”

“Please, do call me Cadance. Shining and I are very informal up here in the Empire.”

“Ah, right…I gotcha, Cadance.”

Cadance rises to stand, Flash rises a moment later, both grinning. Both walk back to the waiting ponies at the entrance.

“There you are!” Twilight cries as she sees Cadance walk in to view with Flash Sentry a foot in tow behind her.
Flash swallows, again seeing her surprised face moments after his treacherous wings flared. Thick hot shame roils inside him, the stallion brought so low, now risen up, pushes it down. No, not now. I must apologise to her.
Flash meets the lavender alicorn’s eyes. Bowing his head low so the tiles filled his vision, he pushes out his arms in front of him.

Twisting his lips, clearing his throat…

“Twilight, I am so very, very sorry for what happened. I swear I will make sure it never happens a second time.”

“W-What…did you do, Flash?” he hears Apt ask, tremulous, anxious. Then… “Bishe!”

White fur darts in to Flash’s field of view, tiny fangs, pink tongue, hot sharp smelly breath. Flash throws his body upward, out of the little dog’s attempts at licking him while he was down. Bishe bounces upward, trying to catch the elusive muzzle, but fails. Bishe settles for lapping the breastplate, placing pads on Flash’s elbows and wagging his tail.

“Bishe!” Apt Drop repeated heatedly, as both Cadance and Twilight couldn’t chain back their laughs. Flash halfheartedly joined in. “Sorry for not…,” he said, when the laughter ended. “Your Highnesses, I’m sorry. Bishe is rather…,”

“Hey, we understand, Apt,” Cadance says, sweetly.

“Um, w-what did Flash do?” Apt asks again.

“Oh, it’s not important, Apt.”

Apt Drop purses his lips a second. The librarian then asked: “Oh, aside from that, is Your Highness attending the play at the theatre next weekend?”

Cadance’s eyebrows jig up, her smile widens, the tension of the put-down melting away. “Oh, you didn’t mention a play before, Apt. What is this play about?”

Apt Drop breathes more easily, “It is called “A Stallion and His Mare”, Your Highness, written by my friend, Quartz, who will also be starring in it. I have seen the setup of it, and it is very beautiful.” A blush brightens his cheeks.

"Well, we all will look forward to seeing it, Apt." Cadance glances at both Twilight and Flash. "Are we ready to go?"

On the affirmatives, they said good days to Apt and left.

The three ponies walked back to the Palace in the slanting beams of the setting sun, orange sky above, orange snow below, shadows pulling away from houses up and down the street. Flash Sentry realised Twilight and he would have to have a frank talk when they were alone again, before they turned in for bed. It should be a chance for him to apologise to her again, explain his now-apparent feelings, a thorny issue for them to discuss. Brave Guardspony he may be, but he was not looking forward to it.

Shining Armour greets them at the Palace door. “Where were you?” he cries as Cadance, Twilight, and Flash walk past the floating Crystal Heart. “Did you need that search party to find Twily and Flash?”
Cadance titters. “No, we did not, dear. I was just greeting Flash.”

Heresy! Part Two

View Online

Supper a while later was served in the Hall. Flash kept himself to himself as usual. He was too embarrassed to look up at
Twilight and Cadance. Even so, he heard Cadance’s giggles and saw the glances she put his way. Twilight looks his way a
few times before snapping her head away. Shining curiously follows his wife’s and sister’s gazes to the golden-yellow
Pegasus.

Flash pays more attention to his stew, the salad, the garlic bread on the table in front of him. He kept notice to only speak
when spoken too. When he was full, and offered more food, he was wise enough to decline. He would be helping Lieutenant Shooting Star with the recruits for the Crystal Empire Guard to-morrow. He shouldn’t have a full belly.

He hears both Cadance and Twilight giggling together, attempting and failing to hide grins behind fore-hoofs. Shining

Armour huffs impatiently.

“Are you full now, Twilight? Or have you started to take after Auntie Tia, now?” the pink alicorn teases.

“Yes, yes, I’m full, thank you,” the younger mare asserts, blushing.

“Shiny tells me you had three plates of pancakes for breakfast. Are sure you do not want pudding?”

“You just have extremely-talented cooks, here!” Twilight says testily.

“Oh, we do try to rein in the best, Twily,” Cadance laughs. Turning to Flash, she asks, “Are you full, too, Flash?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“That’s good. Lieutenant Star will be driving those recruits to exhaustion to-morrow, if I know him.”

“Good to hear, sir. I’m looking forward to it too.”

Cadance turns back to Twilight. “How would you be up for a little evening-flight, Twily? You and me?”

Twilight looks her sister-in-law over. “Are you sure?” she asks hesitatingly, a tiny bit worried. “You still look quite tired.”

This makes Flash look over in his turn. While she had brightened up from their first meeting, Cadance was still paler and
exhausted-looking than the bride she had been on her wedding day, after the memorable grapple with the Changelings.

Cadance smiles, “Oh, I’m still hale and hearty, Twily. And how about you? You said in your last letter that you needed more
flying practice - ,”

Did Twilight glance over at him for a second?

“ – and I would love to borrow you to discuss some things.”

The lavender alicorn frowns and quirks up an eyebrow, “Okay…as long as you feel up to it; and um…what things?”

“Oh, wait for it, Twily,” the pink mare chuckles as she jumps up, pecking Shining Armour on the cheek. “We’ll be back later, love.”

“Okay, have a great time, you two,” Shining says waving as the two mares left. Flash waves goodbye too, but stops when he sees Twilight’s wave hesitate on seeing him wave.

Once they were gone, Shining gestures for Flash to stand. “Now we have the place to ourselves, I think this is a perfect opportunity for me to show you the Palace, Flash.”

Flash nods. “It sounds like an excellent idea, Your Highness. Thank you.” He follows the white Prince. This place is indeed wonderful, it would be nice to see more of it as blue frogs and yellow-gold frogs click again and again in unison on the crystal floors.

Cadance quickly took to the air the minute they were outside, up, up, up, and up, till they were level with the top of the Crystal Castle's tallest tower. Cadance patiently waited for Twilight to catch up. Twilight was still getting used to her wings. They felt too big and cumbersome to a body which had been a unicorn's for one-and-twenty years. Her take-offs were still ungainly.

Twilight complained as much to the other alicorn. Cadance was quick to reassure her: "You'll soon gain the hang of it, Twily. I used to crash in to everything when I was learning flight."

"Sounds just like Rainbow Dash, she has lived through some crashes in her time, like our first meeting. Oh, well, I am learning through books on flight-mechanics. The landings, I'm finding a little difficult still."

Cadance smiles. "You'll get there in time, Twily, don't worry. Now, are you coming?"

"Sure!"

"Follow me!"

Cadance shot off steadily in to the snow-filled orange dusk, her big pink violet wings beating majestically, as Twilight matched her, though with uneven flaps compared to her.

Twilight let the sweep of the empire's spires and roofs hued in the violet light fill her vision and mind. It drifted inevitably to the Crystal ponies she had come up here to study.

"Breath-taking, isn't it?"

Cadance's voice pulls her out of her reverie. Twilight jolts her head up to see Cadance staring at her, grinning.

"Oh, oh, yes, it is." Twilight swallows quickly. "Spectacular."

"What were you thinking about?" the pink alicorn asks as she steers towards a particular peak in the mountains.

"Is it true, the myth that the Crystal ponies wandered out of the Crystal caves and came to life?"

The other wrinkled her snout, deep in thought.

The two alicorns crest a thermal and glide in to a cave scooped out of the granite face of the mountain. The floor covered in untouched snow. A ledge juts out, lip just stopping, straight out in to a high drop down to the snow and boulders beneath.

Cadance lands with the skill of the professional. Twilight skips on her landing and bounces several paces, stopped by Cadance's wing-tip. Twilight smiles a little embarrassed.

"I'm not sure, Twily. I'm more concerned with the Empire's present, than the deepest lore. I guess it will be in the library."

Pink and lavender alicorns turn to take in the view.

Twilight speaks up, barely wanting to break the peaceful scene. "Now...what did you want to talk to me about, Cadance?"

"Hmm, first of all...thank you for coming up to see me and Shining. I haven't seen you for ages. I am really ecstatic you're here. Right now, it's the best time you could have come up."

Twilight hums in pleasure, leaning forward to nuzzle her second-oldest friend. "I missed you too, Cadie. It's really nice spending time with Celestia and Luna, but I'm not seeing you, who I've known for years and years."

Cadance wide toothy smile lingers, ears flopping sideways. A moment later they perk up.

"Now to business," Cadance says. "Hmm, Twilight, I'll need to ask you a couple of things concerning Orion."

Twilight stiffens at once, smile thinning and curling to contempt.

"What about him?"

"Twilight, what are your thoughts on the case? What do you think his punishment should be?"

Twilight hisses. "How complicated is it? He attacked me. It's black and white!" she spits angrily. "Despite that, Orion's trying to deny the charges, but there were three other ponies as witnesses. the law is crystal-clear. It'll be seven years for him if he pleads innocence to the end and loses the case -,"

Cadance nods once, before shaking her head. "No, Twilight," she interrupts. "What do you think, honestly, about his circumstances? About Orion and Clover?"

Twilight opens her mouth, before frowning. "How do you know? I haven't been up-to-date with the Canterlot Times, but, I haven't seen mention of his...stunt, yet."

The pink mare shrugs. "Auntie and I have been sending letters to each other, discussing it. I'm curious to learn your feelings in the matter, Twilight."

The lavender mare also shrugs. "I don't know or understand why Orion came to me after Celestia turned Clover down. Why should Orion think I would grant him the marriage where Clover failed? All me and Celestia did was uphold a law that's nearly two thousand years old. And that law is the law of the land."

Cadance breathes a deep breath through her nose. "And Clover, Twilight?"

"Clover is fine. She didn't break any laws, Cadance."

"Hmmm,...I meant, what should Celestia have done to dissuade Clover from trying again through another way?"

"I think Celestia handled the matter properly. She explained the law to Clover, and said how deeply sorry she was, and suggested a second way for her. Anyhoof, Clover should be happier with an Earth-pony stallion."

Saying that, Twilight feels the creeping cold for a moment.

Cadance wrinkles her snout again, and smirks. "You know, that sounds decisive and bold coming out of the mouth of the mare who used to hold a crush on the Earth pony colt next door."

Twilight blushes furiously, pupils shrinking. "I only a little filly then, Cadie. It happens to everypony when they young!"

Cadance smiles until she resumes the stern business, playing Discord's Advocate.

"So, this is just a naïve part of her life Clover is going through. Thus, why should she be chastened for this naivety? Even if her romance and engagement with Orion is wrong. Why should she suffer?"

Twilight knew this game. Cadance and she had played this years ago. Good practice for a filly to take somepony's skin and walk about in it, and much else.

Now, Cadance's words, and the roleplay were irritating her. "

"Cadance, nopony is ever going to punish Clover! Maybe she will be set up with a matchable stallion by her friends, and that is all!"

Silence, save for the heaving of heaving breaths and hot vapour in the freezing cold. Cadance looks back, silent, big black eyes wider. The other alicorn roughly calms herself with slow breaths. She didn't want to start fighting with her old foal-sitter.

Cadance was still calm, despite Twilight's outburst.

Twilight groans, sighs, rubs her frogs in to her cheeks and shut eyes. "I'm sorry, Cadance."

“Think no more of it, Twily,” Cadance murmurs comfortingly. “Well, if you’ll excuse me asking, just who is that Flash Sentry?”

Twilight feels herself tense up slightly. “Oh, you know he’s my Guard, Cadie. Celestia assigned him to this vacation…two days ago. And he…saved me from Orion’s rant…four days ago. Seems longer, you know?

“Iron Hoof and Celestia tell me he is an exceptional soldier, he’s been five years in the Guard and he’s always polite and respectful to everypony, does everything asked of him, at his post on time,

“Mmm, that’s the Guard,” Cadance says. “But what about the pony, Twily?”

Twilight purses her lips for a second, collecting her thoughts on the findings gathered from the past few days.

“Um, I only know a little about him just yet. But I do know he really likes to read, like me, that he’s interested in history, oh, he agreed to help me in my project while we are here. Not only that, he’s interested in the Empire too.”

She rolls her shoulders, shifting her wings just enough to shake a dusting of snow off the feathers. They seemed a bit stiff.

“Just maybe, I could – show him round the Empire one day.”

Cadance grins. “That sounds wonderful, Twilight. He’ll be eagerly looking forward to that. And did you ask him to call you by your name? He doesn’t say “Your Highness” to you.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t want a friend addressing me with such formality about a hundred times a day. So, I asked him to call me by my name. It would be suffocating, being with him reading books for eight hours every week-day and still feeling as isolated as I do in Canterlot.”

“You’re feeling isolated?” Cadance asks abruptly, staring at her, concern in her wide eyes, surprised drop of the jaw.

“Yeah…,” Twilight admits, sheepishly shrugging her shoulders, frog of one hoof embarrassedly scritching and rubbing a spot on her bangs.

Cadance without pausing pulls the smaller younger lavender mare in to a tight hug. “Oh, Twilight, I didn’t know. Tell me everything.”

“Thanks, Cadance.” Twilight answers, voice muffled in the chest fluff. “It’s just…living in Canterlot Castle, it’s crammed with Guards and servants, and I have only three friends, Celestia, Luna, and Discord. All the others, I only talk to them to wish them a good day or to ask somepony to fetch something for me, I don’t get the chance to know any of them any more than that. And I wanted to know somepony as a friend who was completely ordinary.”

Cadance rubs her chin along the crown of Twilight’s frizzy navy-blue and magenta mane, nuzzling up stray hairs. “When was the last time you saw your friends, Twily?”

“Oh, I would say a moon or so ago, which is sad. I still write some letters to them.”

“Say, Twilight, promise me you’ll visit Ponyville to see them soon, maybe after this vacation ends.”

“Yeah, okay, Cadance, I promise.”

Cadance releases Twilight, Twilight scoots a little away, shaking her wings back in to shape to trap heat beneath the down feathers. Turning to Cadance, she raises a hoof to make a cross over her abdomen before covering an eye with the same hoof. “There, official now. Pinkie Promise.”

Cadance laughs. Twilight grins in return.

“Back to Flash, though,” Cadance says, before stopping.

Twilight could tell the other alicorn was building up to something.

“And…?” she enquires.

Cadance pauses a little more, before going on, “And Flash…appears to have a crush on you, Twilight.”

Twilight’s insides clamp and twist in painful twinges and pangs. She sits up straighter, wings stiff behind her. Again she
recalls, from earlier, looking up from their rhyme-and-prance to see Flash Sentry with wide-open wings and red muzzle.

Speechless, swivelling tail and galloping away, wobbling in his run.

“Does he now?”

“How does that seem to you? It’s not every day you find a colt is burning a torch for you.”

"Any chance you could return his feelings, Twily?”

“No, I won’t.” she says. Cadance looks taken aback. Twilight continues, “It’s just a silly crush he’ll grow out of and someday he’ll find a nice Pegasus mare to settle down with. I want to get to know Flash better, but as a friend.”

Silence between the two mares again.

Did she feel the cold especially just then?

“I’ll leave it at that, then,” Cadance concedes in a low voice. “Maybe, I’ll raise the topic at another of our little talks, Twi.”

“Huh, if you insist, Cadance,” Twilight grudges.

“We’ll talk about silly, cute stuff too, Twily. For example, would you and your friend like to come along with Shining and I to
see the play Apt mentioned in the library. It’s on next Friday.”

“But that’s only week away. I…shouldn’t like to skip any time of my research for…,” she trails off when she sees Cadance’s wide white eyes and grinning teeth, eagerness beaming out. She was forced to concede.

“Oh, oh…of course, Cadie. One night off shouldn’t derail my research.”

The other claps her hoofs excitedly, “Fab! If Flash wants to come along too, let me know. Shining’s bringing some of his friends from the Guard.”

“W-well, I suppose I’ll need to ask Flash if he…,”

Cadance spreads her wings. “Keep me updated, Twi.”

Twilight spreads her wings too, and follows Cadance to the edge of the cliff, feeling the cold of the falling night on the underside of her feathers, hoofs crunching the squeaking snow. Soon the two are gliding up and through the indigo dusk, back to the Castle.

Meanwhile, in the Castle… “And this is the barracks, Flash. Room for thirty Guards.”

Flash looks in.

Two rows of neatly made up bunk-beds down the walls, separated by a wide aisle. The bottom beds had a chest at the foot, while the upper beds had an overhead locker bolted to the wall. At the other end of the room was a large window overlooking the lines of tents in the policies below the Castle.

“What we discovered on recruiting was that more ponies than expected turned up, so we had to move them in to the tents outside. It’s a temporary measure.”

“I see, what are the lights in the tents, Your Highness?”

“Each of the tents has a light-emitting gem inside. The Crystal pony recruits appear to be afraid of the dark. We’re slowly getting them used to the dark. But that’s enough for to-night, it’s late now. Twi and Cadance should be back soon."

Twilight turns their conversation over in her mind. She wasn’t sure if she was looking forward to the next “special” conversation, seeing how this one had run over such aggravating topics. Beside her, Cadance was visibly struggling to stay awake as she flew.

Flash and Twilight swop good nights with Cadance and Shining before escorting Twilight up the long staircase to their rooms. Flash rehearses the words he had thought up to himself. Was it just him or did he imagine the tiny amount of tension between the lavender mare and himself?

They reach the two doors opposite each other. Twilight turns to smile at Flash. “Well, good night, Flash. See you to-morrow.”

Flash draws in a nervous breath, cold in his mouth and throat.

“Before you go, Twilight, I – well, I wanted to deeply apologise again for my “accident” in the library. It won’t happen a second time.”

Twilight’s smile slowly slides off her face. A tense pause.

“I would say just forget about it, Flash.”

“O-Okay, Twilight.”

She stops. She turns her head back to him.

“One thing. Do you have feelings for me?”

A tremor quivers up and through Flash. Asked by the mare he desires most in Equestria. This was harder than when
Cadance had asked him.

“Yes,” he replies. “Yes, Twilight, very much so.”

The trembling inside grows stronger. What every colt in love feared from his crush. The damning rejection. Despite the trembling he was tense on the inside

The lavender mare sighs, flicking deep blue bangs out of her eyes. The sigh snaps the tension in the stallion’s shoulders and chest.

“I’m sorry, Flash,” she says, lovely limpid eyes looking at him sadly, almost pityingly. “I am so sorry. But we can’t be together. I only want to be friends. I’m sorry.”

It was worse than he had imagined. The pain inside him blooms and flares, spreading slowly, pain waxing out of his heart and chest. Shoulders sag down, and Flash drops his eyes from her. He just didn’t want to keep eye-contact with her.

“Okay, Twilight…I understand.”

The words were painful to say.

“Hey…,” she says softly. “Don’t be like that.”

He hears the click of hoofs on the crystal tiles, a breeze on his neck, Twilight coming closer to him, sad eyes and empathetic smile.

“Come here, Flash.”

Warmth loops round his shoulders, and a heavier warmth higher up his neck, hair tickling his ears and the nap of his fur, a deep bass note rumbling in his ears.

Flash gasps. Twilight is hugging him. Twilight is hugging him!

Heart banging on ribs, breath croakily tearing in and out, mind slow then racing ever-faster.

This never happened. Princesses never hugged Guardsponies. Never. The only time Flash had seen a Princess hug a Guardspony was when Celestia had hugged Lieutenant Shooting Star when his beloved father had died.

Hooves jerkily moved to meet round Twilight’s neck.

“I just want to be friends, Flash. I hope you understand.”

“Okay, Twilight.”

Mare and stranger break part. Twilight smile broadens.

“Hey, you’re smiling again!” the mare says, all too sweetly.

Flash couldn’t help his smile widening too.

“Thank you, Twilight. Thank you.”

“Good night, Flash.”

Flash passes over the thresh-hold, leaves the door to close, before leaning his weight to shut it. A few seconds he pauses.
“Wow” the stranger in a strange land murmurs.

A Longing Look

View Online

A warm starry night for the Grand Galloping Gala. No clouds to hide a single constellation.

That meant that many of the nobles and celebrities (including many ponies that knew how bone-poundingly dull the Gala was, but could not avoid going; and those who were putting up with it) were outside under a marquee drifting, talking, grazing the buffet, or admiring the light music provided. More walked the bounds of the Gardens coruscating by small multi-coloured fairy-lights. There was those V.I. ponies who were wondering what would go wrong this year, remembering with a shudder the animal rampage and a bored pink Earth pony mare.

Celestia, freed from the endless line of ponies to shake hoofs with, serenely walks through the high-ceilinged glittering ball-room and the thinly-scattered crowds. As she passes she nods to first one group, then another. She could not see Twilight and her friends anywhere in here. They must be outside. The Solar alicorn changes her path to a balcony overlooking the gardens. Once there, she sees the warmly-lit paths around the marquee surrounded by the deeper dimness of the wider policies. Singles, couples, and larger groups wandering here and there. Plates of snacks and glasses of either wine or cider floating in scintillating auras.

Unicorn, unicorn, unicorn, unicorn, Wonderbolt, unicorn, unicorn, Applejack, unicorn, one pink alicorn - Cadance - ... now then, that was something, her little niece had been awfully keen to have a long chat with Twilight on their own with the other Element-Bearers the last two nights, after the preparations for the Gala were completed. Why Cadance wanted an extra-long time like that with Twilight, when Twilight had taken the time to visit her in the Crystal Empire twice in the last several weeks, baffled her. And there had been the ponyhoof number of times, that she had seen most of the Element -Bearers snickering, smirking, glancing at Twilight, and nudging her conspiratorially.

And Celestia had been meaning to ask Cadance the question that she had been discussing with Luna the same seven-or-so weeks concerning Twilight's odd behaviour since she had come back from her second holiday to the Empire. Celestia and Luna had well-founded suspicions stemming from long, long experience of knowing ponies. They had both confirmed what they suspected with each other. Luna had wanted to let Twilight know, but Celestia had wanted to wait to let Cadance in to their circle. Celestia had idly wondered that Cadance would be thrilled to learn what her two aunts had seen in the young lavender mare. She sighed. That could wait for to-morrow. It was too late at the moment to broach the subject.

Celestia decides to go down and inquire of Applejack if she knew where her other friends were.

Twilight had shaken Iron Hoof off with a plea of taking her closest dearest multiple Equestria-saving damsels of friends a walk round the fairy-lanternlit paths of the policies to catch up on things. She knew Iron Hoof couldn't bring himself to object to that, and he had allowed her to. And they had done that. Most of the time had been excited whisperings and giggles focussing on her deep feelings for, and young relationship with a certain golden-yellow Pegasus Royal Guard. They had gladly expressed their deep pride in her, bringing hot blushes to her face. To the point that she ducked her head down to the ground, hiding under her midnight-blue bangs, grin so wide in her face it was starting to hurt, her lavender cheeks boiling with heat, eyes swirling in moisture threatening to overspill.

Twilight had told them of the juiciest occasions of what she and Flash, her friend - her lover, her colt - had got up to in both the policies and in her chambers since she had seen them last, in Ponyville. Her friends had gasped, tittered and roared, slapping her withers with hoofs and wings, causing curious glances from the unicorn nobles nearest them. Twilight grinned along with them, see-ing again the moment, she and Flash in their special moment of claimed eternity in mind's eye. Again her nerves blaze, pink lips tingle, heart jangles faster, four hoofs itch - a desire to dance. Eyes close to the mantra sounding inside, the three-word mantra that was now greater than the need for food and drink, the three words she thought every day now, the words she would never tire of hearing...

In time, they draw near the marquee once more. Ten or so unicorn and others cluster round one of the fountains, talking of boring stuff. Ducking inside, Rainbow zipping off once she sees the other Wonderbolts, Twilight stacks up a plate of sweet and savoury snacks from the buffet as her ears tip to the adagio out of the grey Earth pony mare's cello on stage, Octavia glaring at Pinkie, who remained oblivious to her. The lavender alicorn spots the gambogee Applejack outside through the transparent side of the marquee.

Plate and snacks floating in her magic, Twilight snags a cup of fizzy wine or juice and heads out. Blue Blood trudges in right then, right there. Customary rose in lapel of solitary tie and collar, forelock drooping down his bored sneering face, the spotlights shining on the white poll between his down-turned ears. Just like that he barges past her. Twilight hops back, snatching plate and drink back out of his path just in time. "Hey!" she protests under her breath, annoyed.

"Oh good, look at that, food," the prince drones in a murmur, not seeing her. "Food that isn't prepared by a lowly dirty peasant pony," his eyes flick to Applejack, who meets his eyes a moment through the plastic wall. He didn't see that Rarity is also glaring at him, teeth threatening to grind like a lathe, Fluttershy patting her shoulder to comfort and to distract. The white unicorn turns on the buffet table. "I'm hungry," Blue Blood says. He walks over to pick up a plate in one hoof and the other hoof reaches for the plastic pair of tongs plunged in one of the salad bowls.

Twilight is not looking at him anymore.

Her eyes had been rivetted to the Royal Guardspony behind him, plodding resigned in the spoilt Prince's wake. The stallion who was once, and would evermore be her Guardspony. Twilight sees him, at once, brighter than should be possible from the fairy-lights available. Flash shone, his gold armour gleaming, fur and feathers brushed and groomed almost to a shimmer.

Flash sees her.

His arms and legs straighten at once, his shoulders rolling back. A corner of his mouth twitches and curls for a second. He couldn't risk a full smile at her, let alone a friendly grin, not here, not now. Twilight also couldn't risk a smile for long, even though she did want to ask him how his evening was faring. Instead, she too smiles for an instant. "Flash Sentry," she says in a voice of neutral remark.

Flash looks at Blue Blood heaping his plate and talking to a blue unicorn stallion with a wavy mane who had come over; his gaze holds for a long pause. Flash glances to the mare who would always be his Princess. Looking in to her purple-ringed pupils for a heartbeat. Iron Hoof had arranged so they would be separate for the whole event. Yet here they were, close enough to acknowledge each other, yet not close enough for him to feel the heat of her barrel and flanks. The Pegasus indicates with his eyes Blue Blood, now stepping away from the table heading to a quartet of stallions and mares led by the blue unicorn. He quietly sighs, breath rushing out of him, his pose sagging. Twilight nods once, rolling her eyes.

Flash looks at her once more. His eyes hold her gaze a heartbeat...two heartbeats...three heartbeats. Flash sighs a second time, looking searchingly in to her eyes. As if to say I want you. I want to be alone with you. Just the two of us here, now.

Twilight sees, she reads the unspoken wish. Now it's her turn to sigh sadly. I know Twilight mouthes to him. Twilight shrugs. Just wait, Flash Twilight mouthes. Just wait.

Flash nods once. He steps forward to catch up to Blue Blood.

Twilight watches him go, not-at-all-admiring his legs and thighs framed by the armour he wore. it was just one evening, then it would be over.

A Stolen Kiss (Totally Not An Official First Kiss)

View Online

One peaceful evening one month before the Grand Galloping Gala, our heroine and hero sit on a bench in the deepest secreted part of the Royal Palace policies. They had come together a half-hour after their suppers, met up and, together, wandered deep in to the gardens until they had found just the right spot.

Twilight and Flash could see only the tips of the highest penanced towers of the Palace. Tall trees rear all around them, leaves barely fluttering or sloughing, roots knotted in the banks of the small decorative ribbon-lake. Luna's moon was not in the right position to reflect on the water, but Twilight thinks it is lovely enough. The grey-silver aura is, however, shining down on the long scamandering path, straggling through the trees to the Palace, dappled by the trees.

It was almost religiously tranquil. Flash had only vaguely known it was here. As a Royal Guard, he of course had to memorise the policies' plan in case of an emergency or a break-in. He hadn't recognised the dim path under the trees, had looked at Twilight curiously, she only smiled pleasantly. Flash confessed he didn't recognise the place, had said it was not on the plans. Twilight only replied it was a secret meditative cubby-hole for the Princesses. Celestia had taken her here several times in her youth.

Flash had sighed in wonder. Twilight pulled him close with her wing for a moment, then had let go.

The two had spent the time, seated on the bench, reading the same book, leaning in to each other, wings draping round their backs, feathers placidly mixing. Twilight resting her head on her stallion's shoulder, Flash, in turn, resting his head on the poll of hers. Twilight's horn did not bother him at all. Both bask in the warmth leaching in to them. Not that the night was very cold.

In the stillness, the only words spoke were whispers of "Finished yet?", and either "Not yet," or "Yes". A horn would light and a page would flip.

Sound of breaths or sighs and random breezes, feeling of hearts' canals flicking in cheek or arm or leg. Hooves of arms braid the others.

Uncountable time later, Twilight whispers "Okay, that's enough for one night," closing the book, lowering it out of sight, stashing it at the far end of the bench.

Now instead of the sand-coloured paper-page book, the two dovey ponies see the long lake rippling ahead of them, in the distance it fades in to the lower boughs of the furthest trees.

Stallion and mare remain, still sitting and cuddling, not wanting to end it just yet.

Twilight lifts her head to nuzzle the side of her colt’s neck. Down below, they still hold hooves and fetlocks. Flash turns his head to look down at her, fondness and love shining in his eyes. He gently kisses the poll, where her magenta stripe narrows to a point in the midnight blue.

Twilight blushes, mouth curving in a happy smile, gazes in to his sapphire eyes.

Flash grins too.

Slowly and gently, their snouts touch. The two ponies blush all the more. The gaze of amethyst- and sapphire-ringed darkness holds. The warm pants of one tickles the nose of the other. Each feel their heart pulsing passionately. Grips on hooves subtly tighten.

He and she sense the giddy airiness, the joy, rising and rising in their lungs and they both know what is about to happen.

Both mare and stallion know this feeling. They had felt it before, when under the Aurora Borealis, in the Crystal Empire. Two ponies in love, on opposite sides of the greatest distance ever conceived, on the brink.

Twilight still looking in to Flash’s eyes, huffs in amusement, and slightly inclines her head. Flash recognised the sign – and drew his head back.

“Twily…do you want this, to do this? Um, the last time, I tried to…you didn’t want me to do it. The Aurora, remember?”

Twilight, pausing when he had moved, grinned again, by accident. They had sat here, virtually snuggling, in this peaceful, quite romantic, lakeside spot for ages, alone. The way her heart had beat for him since her second vacation, the way she had thought about the compassionate, bookish, young, handsome Guardspony nearly every day since then. To spend time with him, to talk to him, to be close, to laugh or discuss anything at all with him, to feel her heart to thump and sing, how happy it made her – surely Flash had felt the same she was feeling, her, now; all through the whole time they had been here?

The amusement she felt had this burst out in laughter. Free-ing her arms, she wraps them round his back just under his wings, left toe trailing the soft down in the middle there. Flash’s confusion melts in a replying laugh of his own.

Twilight leans forward to nuzzle the yellow fluff at the base of his throat and the fuzz on his neck.

“Oh, Flash, you silly silly silly pony,” Twilight whispers, the fur muffling her words. Nuzzling the other side, she says, “Yes, I want to, yes, yes, I want it; yes, I want it with you, I could think of no other pony to give my first kiss to.” The words sent indescribable shivers down Flash's withers and back. Drawing away a bit, Twilight locks eyes with Flash again. Right toe tracing patterns in the nap of fur there. “Yes, Flash, my first kiss.” Hoof flattens on his pecs. “Great responsibility there, buster.”

Flash chuckles. “No worry, babe.”

A pause.

“I suppose, if you’ve gone first, then I should…I haven’t kissed a filly or a mare before either.”

“Really? That makes two…Why weren’t the fillies flocking to a handsome Pegasus colt like you, Flash?”

It is Flash’s turn to nuzzle Twilight for a second. In deep seriousness, he answers. “You know I only crush on unicorns. Bit hard for a Pegasus to ask the pretty unicorn fillies out for dates, you know.”

“Aaaaww, Flash,” a hoof rubs his shoulder.

“The same for you, then? Well, those young colts missed the chance of their young lives not asking you out.”

“I was Celestia’s personal student. I guess they were a little intimidated, and I was buried in my books and my studies, and didn’t look beyond the next book or assignment, and besides there were other pretty fillies they could try their luck with.”

Twilight smiles. “But now I have you, Flash, my love.”

Flash’s ears twitch, his flush darkens, the stallion grins.

“I love you too, Twily.”

The first time those words had been spoke. The confession, the declaration. Stallion and mare gaze at each other, up and down, shyly, at and away.

Twilight leans in again. Flash leans in too.

Overcome, both ponies feel their eyes close, hearts thumping, nerves and bodies blazing with excitement. Both ponies, exultantly joyful in love, both impatient to express it, to claim this instant of eternity when their courtship ended and their dating began.

Both mare and stallion feel the other’s, their lover! , soft lips brush their own. Only enough time to feel it: the slow dance, the heat beginning to leach in – when they break apart.

Only an instant apart, but each feels the other’s breath panting and heaving in joy.

Only an instant apart, but it is too long, mare and stallion crave it a second time, they dip their heads to kiss again. The second time, a little longer. This time, the texture of the lips is felt, and enjoyed, more deeply. Each feels the other’s heartbeat pulsing in time through their lips, through the enwrapping feathers.

Flash circles his arms round Twilight’s, his mare’s, waist beneath her wings. Not tight or loose, just holding her.

Twilight opens her mouth at the considerate touch, prompting Flash to open his mouth too.

Mare and stallion break apart a second time. Faces dark under the shadows of the trees and the blushes of their love. Both smile.

They lean in yet again.

The kiss is the longest yet. A proper slow dance, savouring the small kisses and the longer ones on top of them.

As the dance felt so natural, it was then only so natural that Flash head tilts to one side. Twilight is forced to tilt he head too.

And it was only then, that their lips mould perfectly, just perfectly, in to each other.

Over the top of their thumping pulses, there was almost no sound in the trees and the lake. Like the world was holding its breath.

The time came when they decided late was late and they should get back to the Palace. Unlacing arms and furling wings, rising from the bench, tearing their braided tails apart.

Still, a lazy stroll up the dappled path to the gate under the arch.

Flash said in a low voice:

“May I be so bold as too escort Her Highness back to the Palace?”

“Oh, you certainly may, Flash, my love,” she says, slipping her arm in to his. “I’m sure we can get away with this just once.”

And so they had walked, together, out of their hiding place, back to the lights, in to time, and the responsibilities and the roles the Order had tunnelled for them. Known to only a few, they both had carved out a hollow knot in the stifling unrewarding society that Celestia had allowed to hold Equestria in for over one thousand years.

In the open squares of lawn between topiary bushes and hedges, no Guards to be seen just yet, Twilight spoke up.

“Flash?” Twilight says softly. “I just want to say thank you so much for this evening.”

“No, thank you, beautiful,” Flash replies. “Thank you so deeply for this magical evening.”

“Oh, Flash, you don’t need to say-,”

“Shoosh, it’s true. It wouldn’t have happened without you. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

At the first Guardspony they saw, they quickly unhooked their arms and stepping apart, stumbling just a bit as they had unconsciously been leaning on the other.

Through the trails of the Guardsponies on their patrols, the heads cased in gleaming metal turning their way, the large eyes following them just for a moment. The scattered bows and the murmurs on their hoof-beats.

“I can take it from here, Flash. Thank you, and good night.”

“As you wish, Your Highness. Good night.”

He nor she moved for several seconds in silence.

Twilight chuckles. Turns away.

Flash allows a final smile to split his muzzle, before his caution wipes it off, becoming once again the stony silent stoic standard Guardspony. With nothing left to do he marches to his quarters. When he sees the sparseness of the hallway of Guards or other ponies on this week’s evening, it is only then he allows himself to cut loose. Allows his wings to unfurl to their fullest extent. To sweep the tips up and down, front and behind. Not walking, but hops and skips.

It was the night when he had made Twilight his own, nopony else’s. Iron-ass could never have her now. This is victory. Isn’t it so sweet?
…
When can I kiss her again?

Happy, he half-dances down the corridor to his room.

Happy, he unlocks the door and swings it open in a flourish.

Happy, he swaggers inside and closes the door.

Alone, Flash continues his dance, shake, and shuffle.

Plenty of time yet until he decided it was time to bunk down.

She felt so light.

This needed checking off the Checklist. The long secret Checklist that only she and Cadance knew about, and that Celestia and Luna didn’t. The secret Checklist in a secret place. “First Kiss (First Base)”…

Speaking of which…Twilight levitates the book that she had brought with her that evening and had read with Flash and…the secretive shy smile twists he muzzle again. He had kissed her. She had kissed him.

Twilight rests the book beside her cheek and sighs. Floating the book in front of her again, “I love you,” she said before kissing the cover, her mind on Flash embracing her, him kissing her, the loving look in his eyes. “I love you,” she says again, kissing the book. It had brought them together for that. She was so light and happy and silly she could sing. Twilight floats the book round to nuzzle it again, breaking in to a canter, wanting badly to be alone.

Twilight had not noticed the Guards during this. One of them glances over to his mate beside him surprised, seeing a surprised and half-disturbed look in his. Cupping a hoof to his mouth, he mutters “Should we be concerned?”

“Hmmm, nnaaaah,” his mate answers, wide eyes on the spot where she had vanished from sight. “I know she likes books. But I didn’t know she liked books that much.”

“She’s a weird pony.”

“Was she always this weird?”

“I dunno. Priness Celestia sure doesn’t seem to mind, though.”

“Quiet,” a third Guardspony hisses. “You are on duty, soldiers.”

That shut the two blabbermouths up.

Twilight’s magic floats the big Top Secret Checklist Scroll out of its hiding place. Unrolling it from the top, she absently notes the milestones she and Flash had passed and she had checked off until she reaches a blank box beside the mesmerising cursive First Kiss (a.k.a. “First Base”).

A swish of the quill.

“Check,” Twilight whispers.

Flash wakes on the trumpet-blast. As he had done on countless mornings in Canterlot Palace. Like all the times, he sees himself in the wardrobe mirror. Mane-hair tousled, eyes blinking away the dust in the corners. On mornings past, he had seen himself with grey shadows under his eyes, fur matted with tears and sweat. Not this morning. Flash sees his blue eyes bright and sparkling, his fur and feathers pristine…hah, sparkling! The stallion breaks in to a huge grin as last night surges through his consciousness. “Oh, you absolute mare-slayer, you,” he mutters. Flash laughs, sitting up, stretching his arms and wings.

A knock on the door.

Continuing to stretch, Flash calls out “You can come in, Greyhoof. Good morning to you.”

The lock clicks and the door squeaks open.

“Good morning to you too, Sire, and how are you?”

“Never better, Greyhoof, never better.”

“Glad to hear that, Flash.”

“Greyhoof nudges open the wardrobe and takes out the mane-brush. “Do you want me to, or will you do it yourself?”

“No, you do it, Greyhoof.”

“Of course, Sire.”

Thus, Greyhoof tidied his master’s and his friend’s mane, Flash looking away, his eyes strangely glazed over, an unreadable enigmatic smile spread across his muzzle, sighing at the calming strokes the brush made.

“What will you plan to do to-day, Sire?”

“Oah, take it easy to-day, it’s Celesday. Maybe go for a short fly, later.”

“Okay, Flash. That sounds nice. I might be able to take it easy too, heh.”

“That’s good, Greyhoof. You…don’t want to hurt yourself.”

“I’m getting on years, Flash, you can say it.”

“Okay, Greyhoof.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind this morning?”

“Heh, heh, maybe.”

“Will you be taking breakfast in the Hall or in your room?”

“Down in the Hall.”

“Okay, does your armour need polishing? No? Shall I put it on for you?”

“Yeah.”

Minutes later, armour donned, he left Greyhoof to head down to the Hall.

All Flash wanted to do was lie in his sheets, for hours and hours, eyes tracking the shifting column of sunlight across the wall. All he could think of was the night before: the reading and the snuggling and the kissing and the snuggling. That moment…his heart thumps joyfully, his arms itch to hold her again. His wings stiffen and stretch open.

Most of the way there, he came across Steel Wind and Sharp Spear, leaving their room.

Flash finds his lips couldn’t stop tingling. He couldn’t forget the feeling of Twilight’s lips moving on his own. He finds couldn’t help himself from tracing them with a wing-feather, as if to reassure himself he really had kissed her.

Every few minutes, the longest feathers would be tracing his lips. This, Steel and Sharp couldn’t help but notice.

"Your mouth a bit sore, Flash?”

“Oh, heh, not reeaally,”

“Then why d’you keep touching your mouth like that?”

“Oh, I…dunno, Steel,” Flash says, feeling his cheeks warm.

“You’re acting oddly to-day, Flash.”

“Am I? Oh, heh heh, right.” His cheeks begin to smoulder.

“Did anything happen that you want to tell us?”

The cheeks pass smouldering and on to burning raging heat.

“…yeah…something did…h-haappen,” toe of a hoof pawing the ground, finding he couldn’t look at them. His secret, his and
Twilight’s secret, the secret his friends had figured out.

Sharp walks to the front of him to peer closely.

“Flash, is it to do with her?”

“Uh…,” the burning raging redness spoke for him. “Yeah.”

Steel throws a comforting wing over his friend’s back. “So, what’cha get up to? You can tell us. We won’t tell anypony.”

A long pause.

“I kissed her. We kissed, Steel, Sharp.”

“Ooaaah ho ho, did you now?”

“Wh – what…was it like, Flash?”

“Just – just a…amazing!”

“Flash, you’re red as a tomato, honest.”

“Did - did…she, well, did she, you know, like it?”

“Uh – yeah, yeah, she did.”

“Tell us, Flash, what did you wish for?”

“Wish for? What do you mean, Sharp?”

“You got a kiss from, well…you know who, and that gives you a lucky wish. Didn’t you know?”

“Kissing Twilight gives me a lucky wish?”

“Well, it’s an old nag’s story. A pony being kissed by an alicorn, and that pony can wish on anything he wants.”

“Really? To be honest, I wouldn’t want to wish on anything.”

“I always kinda thought those shy colts who want first kisses from pop-stars were, you know, pathetic.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely, Steel.”

Twilight’s magic floats a scroll of parchment out of her writing drawer. As per her agreement with Cadance, she would be penning a letter to her former foal-sitter to tell her, as circumspectly as she could bear, about the latest developments in her and Flash’s affair.

Parchment flat on the desk, ink-well full and uncapped, quill hovering in the air.

Dear Cadance,
I hope you and Shining Armor are very well and that the Crystal Empire is fine too. I am very well too. There is something I have to tell you about what Flash and I did last night -,

Twilight stops, brings the quill high in the air above the sheet. How could she put this? To put in words her first kiss with a stallion to her second-oldest friend. Twilight found her cheeks a little warm. She couldn’t tell Cadance everything - that would be too embarrassing. A long description was out then.

Logically, the only remaining conclusion was it to be short and succinct sentences. In the form of – Last night, I was out with Flash in the gardens and we kissed…or…I was out in the gardens with Flash. We were reading one of my books. One thing lead to another. We cuddled, we nuzzled, and we kissed…

Along the lines of that, yes.

Her magic directs the quill in web-thin loops and curves.

Twilight gasps, as if she had been holding her breath.

There. He thoughts, now down on parchment. A infinitely tender moment, preserved in the amber of memory, now shared to the sheet before her. A sheet that could be read by her, Cadance…Shiny…anypony. It would still be a secret, a large secret…but still a secret. What was the quotation from the hugely popular book series that had had everypony enthused, quoting it, playing it out, writing fanfictions, drawing out scenes? “It’s not a secret anymore, it’s information.”

She rolls up the scroll, draws out a ribbon tying it in a bow on the creamy neck. Next, she levitates up the wax pencil used for sealing documents. The glow of aura is replaced by a small flame. Wax dribbles on to the ribbon. Twilight presses her personal seal to the wax

All ready to be sent.

Remember, here "policies" refer to a Scottish dialect word for grounds and gardens surrounding a manor or mansion.

Guess Who is Seen Together?

View Online

One month after their first kiss, and soon after the Grand Galloping Gala, our young heroes draw near the borders of the open part of the policies. Ahead of them, lay the shaded pathways on the terrace. Two wide stairways sweep up from the lawn to a landing, crossing to sweep up again to meet the lip of the terrace.

Nopony, especially Guardsponies, were in sight.

Our heroes feel they can talk freely while still out in the open.

"I can make my way from here, Flash," the lavender alicorn says.

"Of course, Twilight," her tangerine gold stallion replies.

They know that there are certain times they could be seen together. They were not many. Only time remained until they felt confident enough to go public to the rest of the Palace.

"Again, thank you for another wonderful evening."

"The pleasure is all mine to give, it makes you happy."

Aawwww, Flash. You are one of the best friends for me."

"Thank you, love."

A surreptitious glance around.

His mare's smile is sweet.

"I give you my hoof to kiss, Sir Flash Sentry," she says grandly, holding out her forearm and hoof.

Flash bows like the courtly gentlecolt, and the honoured Knight he is expected to play. He cups the Princess's hoof in his frog, he bends his head forward, gently pressing his lips to the lavender nap just above the boundary of the keratin.

Once the courtly kiss is performed, it is customary for the one honoured to withdraw their head. However, Flash does not do this. He lowers his head further to nuzzle her arm.

Twilight chuckles.

With her other hoof she strokes it through his stiff blue mane.

Flash never wasted any opportunities to demonstrate his affection for her, did he?

The seconds drag by, the last of what the special someponies could eke out of each of their meetings.

Finally, Twilight decides it was time to end it.

Stopping her mane-stroking, she whispers:

"Hey, Flash, could I have my hoof back, please?"

"Heh, yeah. Here you are." The Knight raises his head from the appendage.

"How say we pick this up next time?"

"Ha, great idea, Twilight. Are we going out or staying in next time?"

"Hmm, I wouldn't mind staying in this time, Flash."

"Okay, then, it's a date!"

The old joke between them. See-ing each other for simply, innocent, friendly dates, but not calling them as such, knowing they were an excuse for two ponies in love to take time out of their day to see and catch up.

"It's a date!"

Mare and stallion, Princess and Knight separate on their individual ways in to the Palace. Ready to meet up the next time.

Under the shadowed walks on the terrace, a lone Guardspony stand unseen. He had seen everything. But not heard anything clearly.

Pharos had ended his shift a few hours ago. He had been taking a walk in the policies on a cool early summer evening.

Pharos liked being in a tunnel of leaves and flowers, sloughing in the slightest wind, especially with the view over the topiary, and lawns of the grounds.

He had been standing there when he had saw two ponies emerge from the hedges and pause near the foot of the staircase. Their coat-colours indistinct and their cutie-marks blotches in the darkness. But he had seen the wings of one and the horn and wings of the other.

Pharos had seen the Pegasus with a upright stiff mane turn to the alicorn. The unicorn with the long indigo bangs had raised one hoof, the Pegasus had bent his head down to it that could mean only one pony.

The Pegasus kissed the Princess's hoof, but had not immediately raised his head and had kept it down...what?

Pharos saw the Princess look down at the Pegasus...and begin stroking his mane? Pharos finds himself staring at the two, unable or unwilling to look away; breathing out loud, but unheard by the Princess and...her friend? Her favourite? Her...coltfriend? Shock and unease twists and bubbles in his stomach and lungs.

The Princess stops stroking the stallion's mane, and a moment later, he lifts his head from her arm and steps away from her...who? His Sovereign? His friend? His marefriend?

Pharos sees the dazzling enamel-white glint of toothy smiles.

The Pegasus stallion turns away to climb the stairs. The Princess takes to her wings and shoots up and over the terrace towards the Palace. The unknown stallion briefly looks up at her flying form.

Pharos turns way, and whole barrel tensed and hunching on hooftips, hurries away. The intimate sight is branded on to eyes and brain, playing over and over. Who had that Pegasus been? Pharos was sure he should be able to recognise him in the daytime.

And just what was that he had seen? Flirting? An overly-extravagant acceptance of a Princess's favour? Close friendship?

Immortality Blues

View Online

Javelin Prick strolls in to the fountain pavilion.

A long rectangle of closely-mowed grass bordered by topiary bushes, coruscant in bright blooms.

A huge fountain sat and rose at the middle. The pouring water seemed especially bright in the gloaming. Four tiers and basins of stone.

The highest and smallest was the brightest white marble, held up by carvings of the Royal Pony Sisters. The water spurts out of a gem pipe carved in to the shape of an alicorn’s horn, Faust’s horn.

The second-highest was highly-polished ivory, to represent the wide and varied unicorn family. Bas-reliefs of historical unicorns, such as Starswirl the Bearded and Mistmane, Lydian and Dorian Mode decorate this tier.

Below that a basin of mixed chalcedon and tourquoise flecked with quartz, to represent the wide open sky and the clouds, therefore, the Pegasi tribe. Select Pegasi, like Flash Magnus streaking flat, the Netitus held out in front of him, Somnambula, and the first Wonderbolts were here wings and arms outspread, hoofs pushing away curly fluffy clouds. There were Mr. and Mrs. Shift, the first weather pioneers. Behind the Pegasi and the clouds were the symbols of the varied weather.

The bottom one was jasper and tourmaline, carved with famous Earth ponies: Rockhoof rearing – shovel in mouth, Mage Meadowbrook, open tome in one hoof and glass flask in the other. A braid of flowers curl through her mane and tail. Followed by famous farmers, scientists, painters, musicians, poets, novelists and all sorts else.

Eight parkbenches sat round the circular basin. All for ponies, or other creatures to sit at…

Jav saunters up to the basin. Looking down, he could see his dark face reflected in the water, and below him the innumerable discs, dark and white gleaming together. He shakes his head, how adorable of foals, and grown mares and stallions to believe that by thinking intently on a desire and throwing a bit in to the water, that desire would come true.

He had certainly done that when he had been younger, he couldn’t deny.

Jav lifts his head to take in again the columns and tiers of marble, the pouring fonts of spuming water.

The water did have a slight blue shine.

In the bottom cascade as the water sloshes in to the basin…

But not up at the top cascade…

What was going on?

Curious, eyes on the water, he walks counter-clockwise round the basin. The direction of the light leaves the water. Jav follows it…

sees over the bench on the far side under a glowing cyan blue dome…

sees the two ponies underneath it…

recognises the midnight blue and magenta striped mane and lavender fur and wings…and the six-pointed star cutie mark.

Javelin had seen it around the Palace and policies on shields and banners…

It was Princess Twilight!

Javelin steps further to the side silently, taking in his Sovereign and her companion.

Princess Twilight sits hunching forwards towards her companion, a golden-tinged Pegasus stallion with a dark blue stiff wave of mane. Javelin could swear he had seen him before, in the Palace.

A sniff, a shake, and a sob?

Lines of fur on her cheeks and his cheeks were matted, glistening…

She was crying. Her friend was crying too. Heads together, eyes closed.

Javelin now feels the strain of his wide-open jaws.

Princess Twilight was crying.

Javelin stares. And stares. All a sudden, gasping soundlessly, he closes his tired dry mouth.

Princess Twilight was crying!

He had never seen this, hadn’t imagined, couldn’t imagined any of the Princesses would ever weep. They were always so strong, reserved, dignified, powerfull.

The Pegasus stallion ducked his head. His nostrils flare, sniffling.

What could they possibly be crying about?

Javelin has the feeling that he shouldn’t be here, watching a Princess and a stallion cry their eyes out.

But on the other hoof, he was sworn to aid and serve the Princesses any way he could.

Thus, he steps forward. Walk up…tap on the force field…and find out what’s wrong…yeah…that won’t go wrong.

The Pegasus straightens up, holding the alicorn’s hoofs in his own, back quivering, wings drooping down at his sides. He says something, words muted by the force field. Tears drip one-by-one off his jaw-bone. If Javelin didn’t know any better, he could say the colt was begging her.

Princess Twilight sniffs too, draws a long breath, fresh tears trickling down her face, speaks in return, words also muted by the spell.

She pulls her hoofs free from the stallion’s hold, a frog pressing momentarily to his chest, before her arms loop round his shoulders. Princess Twilight tightens the hug, dragging the Pegasus closer to her, bringing her mouth right next to his ear.

Javelin sees her lips move again.

Javelin had never seen a Princess hug a pony before, not a unicorn or Earth pony or Pegasus. That was another thing. This all seemed quite…intimate.

Up close to the field, Javelin hesitates, taking in the hugging and crying one last time. But resolved, he lifts a sabot-clad hoof and taps against the thaumo-electric membrane

The tiny kaleidoscope of snowflakes drifting on the surface shudder to a halt, only briefly, before resuming their courses. Ripples ooze across the face lit by the smallest sparks of static.

Princess Twilight jolts upright, eyes snapping open, tugging her arms loose from her friend’s neck. In the same twirl, she faces Javelin Prick. The stallion slips a little on to her side as she turns to face the other Guardspony. Frowning, he opens his eyes, and he too saw Javelin. Eyes widening, he shoves himself back to the end of the bench, leaving several inches of space between himself and the Princess. Yeah, if your tryna hide somethin’, it’s too late, buddy.

Twilight’s horn glows and the shield winks away. Her face of shock is giving away to an angry scowl.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the alicorn snaps ferocious, just as her friend (Princess Twilight’s coltfriend…or special somepony?) shouts “Oi, what do you think you’re doing?”

Javelin feels himself shudder under this, ears momentarily folding in to his poll, before laying back against his neck. “Javelin Prick, Your Highness. I came by here and I saw you…and…your friend. Is anything wrong, Your Highness?”

Princess Twilight pauses, glances at the young stallion beside her on the bench, before turning to face Javelin again. An arm comes up, bending to her streaming eyes. The lavender alicorn wipes her cheek and eye with her knee, sniffing. Twilight puts the arm down, coughing.

“No,” she says, crisp and tightly. “Nothing is wrong, Javelin Prick. I was a little upset and Flash here got a little upset too. We’re fine now, aren’t we Flash, dear?”

Twilight jumped a little then, guiltily. To cover it up, she plasters a beaming smile over her face. She turns the lamplight smile on Flash, who slowly smiles back.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re totally fine,” the Pegasus says, waving a hoof.

Twilight gives a tiny nod of her head, still smiling.

Javelin Prick looks unconvinced. Nodding his head uncertainly, he glances at the entrance to the lawn. “Well…,” he says, “if that’s the case…good evening, Your Highness…Flash,” acknowledging both ponies. Javelin bows low to the ground.

“You may rise,” Twilight orders after a beat, flicking a fetlock.

Javelin rises, turns to go.

“Oh, and Javelin?”

The Guardspony snaps his eyes back to the young alicorn.

She levels a hard stare in to his eyes. “You never saw us two here, you never saw what we did here, do you understand?”

“Your Highness?” The stallion looks confused. Eyebrows bunching together as his forehead furrows. “Why?”

Princess Twilight purses her lavender lips, rustles her wings tight to her barrel, straightens to her full sitting height.

“Javelin Prick of the Canterlot Palace Guards, are you questioning my orders, the diktat of a Princess?” the alicorn demands severely, jabbing a toe and frog at the stallion.

“No no no, no, Princess Twilight,” the stallion says, shaking his head, eyes wide, mouth gaping in provoked panic.

Princess Twilight leaves him silent, squirming, hanging on her words. She speaks in a lower, firmer tone.

“Do you realise that one short meeting with Princess Celestia could demote you or cancel your leave, you understand?”

Gasping, the pony cringes, pinheads of sweat cropping up on his forehead, Javelin sinks to the grass, virtually kowtowing.

“Yes yes, yesyes, Your Highness, I know, I know, I understand,” he blabbers muzzle jabbing the earth as he nods.

Twilight keeps her knee-bent arm lifted quite Princess-like, as she looks down at the pony, holding him down under her words.

Finally, she decides he has had enough, Twilight relents. “You may rise, Javelin Prick of the Canterlot Palace Guards. I require you to think deeply on what I said. Ensure you do not make such a mistake a second time.”

Shivering, Javelin Prick jerkily stands. A proper drop of sweat dribbles down between his eyes and muzzle. He is panting in fright, eyes wide and iris-pupils drawn to peppercorn-size. Twilight meets his gaze cooly, expressionlessly. Javelin Prick notices that the Pegasus Flash beside the Princess. The stallion is staring at the mare, dumbstruck, mouth hanging open, eyes wide, wings wrapped tight round his barrel and chest. Even his tail was tucked over one of his pasterns. As Javelin continues to watch, Flash steadily shuffles his way backwards to the very edge of the bench, until his haunch hangs off the bench.

“Final question, Javelin Prick.”

Javelin’s attention darts to the severe lavender alicorn.

“Your Highness?” he inquires.

“Did you see or hear anypony in this place to-night?” Twilight clops her frog on her folded hindhoof.

Javelin is silent, eyes passing from Twilight to Flash back to Twilight again. He

Seconds pass, tension trickles and heightens.

Javelin clears his throat, “I saw nothing and nopony, your Highness.” He shivers one last time.

Twilight’s grin, splitting her sombre and haughty expression, makes it a little creepy. “Goood!” she chirps, clopping her forefrogs together. “I’m glad you learned your lesson, Javelin Prick. Never question a Princess’ orders. Good night and see you soon.”

“Good night, Your Highness.” Javelin Prick says. Turning, he walks slowly out of the fountain garden. He only makes it a short way past the entrance, when his legs give out under him. His back sags gratefully against the hedge. His hoofs cup his cheeks then cover his face. Unsteady breaths deafen him. A minute, then two pass. Javelin lowers his hoofs to the ground next to his cannons, staring at the garden around him.

“Buck, he whispers. “Buck. Bucking buck, that was so close.”

Twilight lets out a long sigh. She turns to Flash, only to see him staring at her in amazement and horror.

“What?” Twilight asks.

“Who are you and what did you do to my cute precious Twilight Sparkle?” the stallion asks.

Twilight stares curiously, before chuckling. “Oh, Flash, Flash, my dear. I’m a Princess, I have to keep our little thing secret and how else do I do that without making sure the Guard toe the line?

Flash breathed out a long sigh.

“It sure spooked me, babe.”

Twilight smiles sympathetically. An idea appears to strike her.

“Watch this, Flash.” She covers her face with her arms folded at her knees, wings wrapping her chest and barrel. Silence stretches.

“Uhhh…Twilight?”

“BETTER NOW!” Twilight cries, flinging out her arms and wings, mouth open in a toothy dazzling grin.

Flash stiffens, before relaxing.

Mare and stallion both laugh.

“Did you see that stare I gave him? Heh, if I work on it, I could give Fluttershy a run for her money.”

Mare and stallion laugh again.

Twilight beckons him. Flash dutifully shuffles closer to her once more.

Sitting there, croups touching, listening to the plinkle and plosh of the fountain-water. Their conversation of earlier floats through their heads…

“Have Cadance and Shining Armour done this? Had this talk?…

Silence…

“They know it is a risk to take. They have made their peace with it.”…

“Don’t end it. Please don’t end it. I don’t want it to end, Twilight darling”…holding Twilight’s hoofs in his own…

“Flash, Flash, we’ll think of something, my dear”…sob… “Let’s just take one day at a time. One day another after another, okay”…her arms over his shoulders, holding him so close…

Their heads dip…and rest on the other.

Pretty sure our tails have braided again.

“It’s been a fruitfull discussion tonight, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yeah, it has been…Sad, though.”

“I knoowww,” a wing unfurls to wrap a back in a wing-hug.

“We have each other.”
Until we don’t…

Twilight leans in to Flash’s crest, nuzzling him.

Flash smiles at the pleasant contact.

"Heeeeyyyy,” Twilight murmurs, perking up, leaning out. “That’s the spirit. Face me.”

Flash does so.

Twilight wipes away the last of his drying tears from his red puffy eyes with a frog as a primary covert wipes away the residue of her own.

“All better now,” she says, smiling a true smile, both frogs resting on his jaw, cupping his cheeks, drinking in his face.

“And even better, you know what makes everything alright?” the mare asks, voice dropping to a throaty whisper.
Flash, her golden paramour, picks up on it.

“No, what makes everything alright?” one corner of his mouth smirking.

“Close your eyes,” the Princess whispers under her breath to her stallion; pink rising to her cheeks, her ears involuntarily perking up at the front.

Her Knight and stallion seemed to guess what was coming. His cheeks darken too, his ears also perk up. His small smirk widens to a furtive yet smug smile. His wings, drooping at his sides, shiver up to a slight lift.

This does not escape the mare. “Hehhehheh, gotcha,” she pants, chuckling, wings, twitching upwards.

And with that, the mare guides her stallion’s mouth to her own. To an observer, it appeared to pass over an age, but it couldn’t have been more than two heartbeats of the two lover’s hearts. As their open hot panting mouths near, her, then his eyes, drift shut, preferring the blindness, knowing that they would not be needing eyes to know love.

The mare, the Princess, takes the lead at first, sensuously dancing on her stallion’s, her faithfull Knight. Her two hooves still hold his face. Long and wide lavender wings rise and stiffen to a feathery concave. So too do the Pegasus’ wings. The golden stallion shuffles an inch forward, primaries of his wings lightly touching hers, folding over the tips of her wings. A hoof raised to her chest – over her heart. Its companion goes to caress and stroke the down of the lesser coverts and then the axillaries of Twilight’s right wing. The Knight’s lips begin to dance too, head dipping to the side.

Instant upon instant succeeds instant, they break apart.

Air mists in fog above them, both mare and colt pant. Both pairs of limpid eyes wingding in mutual adoration.

Twilight leans in this time, bumping and resting her snout against his.

“Do you feel better?” she asks her lover.

Flash grins confidently, “Hey yeah, I feel better now, Twily. Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome, Flashie. I love you.”

“I love you too, Twi.”

How many millions of kisses shall we share, until we part?

“As nice as this is, shall we get going?”

“Yeah.”

No Sun-Queen Shall Rend Asunder

by Plough and Stars Pony

A Different Goodnight Two Bravi

A Different Goodnight Manifold Three

A Sharp, Steel, and Flash Fragment

"N.S.Q.S.R.A." Chapter One Day Train

"N.S.Q.S.R.A." Chapter One Night Train A

"N.S.Q.S.R.A." Chapter One Night Train B

Crystal Pinnacle

The Twily Fly and the Flashie Fly

A Load of D'Aawwwww

A Dream of Ruin

Heresy!, Part One

Heresy! Part Two

A Longing Look

A Stolen Kiss (Totally Not An Official First Kiss)

Guess Who is Seen Together?

Immortality Blues