After it all, after what I had to do to protect my realm, she promised me quit, a treacherous voice hissed. She promised me that I would be mourned, my duty honoured, and my life forgotten. How easily the trappings of power overcome such a promise.
After it all, after what I had to do to protect my realm, she promised me quit, a treacherous voice hissed. She promised me that I would be mourned, my duty honoured, and my life forgotten. How easily the trappings of power overcome such a promise.
A mare with a past, Carmen Heartstrings is recalled to her duty by her Liege, without regard for the life she has built for herself in Ponyville. As she prepares to leave, faking her own death in the process, she feels that, even if her small daughter Lyra cannot ever know the truth, she must somehow explain.
“Wait in there, Ra; I’m just going outside for the mail”.
Laughing, she closed the heavy oaken door on her incorrigible daughter, Lyra Heartstrings; by the sound of it, currently demolishing her furniture. Let the girl play, she thought. She’ll grow up soon enough, just as we all do. As we all must.
The autumn evening was brisk, almost unseasonably cold, as she trotted out to the mailbox. She was a tall mare, streamlined but not quite svelte; anypony could see the sinuous muscles curving underneath her cerulean hide, and the military certainty in her posture, however, only a careful observer could have seen the hundreds of small, silver, faded lines streaking across her legs, rump and neck as she moved. Her cutie mark, partially obscured by her unusually large wings, featured a stylised archaic sword, angled towards her back. Carmen Heartstrings was a mare with a past, one she had long since left behind, and had no intention of revisiting.
The mailbox was of a standard make: tin, with a small red flag hugging the side, resting on the timbre post that supported a picket gate. Instead of immediately retrieving the mail, she leaned against the post, and surveyed the street: a wide, shady avenue, lined with young oaks and crisp, well-loved homes.
This region of Ponyville was fairly new, with the land on which it was built having been reclaimed from the Everfree only twenty years ago. Almost unconsciously, her eyes drifted to its menacing shadow in the distance, shivering, lost in unwelcome remembrance.
As she was gazing off, distracted, a familiar young filly in a mailmare’s cap flew past, and, calling out her salutations, deftly left a small bundle of letters balanced on the post in her wake. Smiling, Carmen mentally shook herself, returned the greeting, and a small voice inside reminded her: now is for the present. The past is beyond even Celestia’s reach.
Sorting through her mail at the gate, she idly greeted the citizens of Ponyville that had dared to venture out on this crisp, admittedly beautiful evening. The trees towering above her were young, but vigorous in their growth and adorned with profusions of dying leaves, ranging from the darkest red to a mild yellow, with a few intermittent patches of resilient green.
Bills... Bills... she perused the erstwhile contents of the letterbag. A flash of something black. Carmen stopped, ranged back through the letters and saw it: a simple piece of thick black paper. A cold shudder ran through her spine and she stamped her back hooves, then fell deathly still. On the card, just as big as her hoof, was embossed an insignia she instantly recognised as the Princess’s own: a silver, abstract representation of the sun, with fiery bolts shooting from it. Underneath it, in elegant calligraphy: Five days. Although she already knew what she would find on the reverse side, she flipped the hoof-pressed paper over, seeing in the same practised writing: I am sorry.
She had five days. Five days. That was three travelling, as of course she would go by the forgotten routes, avoiding spies, and travel to the heart of Canterlot Mountain. She would ascend via the Ruins and meet her Liege, and fulfil that which was asked of her, again.
Carmen caught her mind in the military pattern it had slipped so easily into- with terrifying ease, she had forgotten all but her loyalty to the Crown, to the Princess. But I no longer live in the days where loyalty is all and everything.
There was something else, something to be accounted for: the tearing of her heart in two. Ra could not go with her if she were to obey the summons, likely they would never see each other again. Would she sacrifice yet another loved one in the course of her duty?
How dare the Princess ask such a thing? After it all, after what I had to do to protect my realm, she promised me quit, a treacherous voice hissed. She promised me that I would be mourned, my duty honoured, and my life forgotten. How easily the trappings of power overcome such a promise.
This terrifying and exhilarating power rushed through her veins, such as she had known only twice before: the iron strong determination to resist, to refuse, to run and hide away from such a harsh reality. To disobey.
But just as strong within her was her conditioning, her ancient loyalty, and her love for the Princess. Despite the bitterness it caused, despite the anguish she felt, again she must become an instrument for the workings of fate, whether she would or no.
Which would she decide to follow: her duty or her heart? For a moment she teetered upon a precipice, as like to fall either way.
In all her years of service to Equestria, in all her years of exile, Carmen had been secure in the Princess’s word. And that she should break that word, now, meant that indeed a desperate time had come. The final measure... Equestria is in grave danger and the Princess feels she has no choice. The Princess’s will must be obeyed.
And so, as she had practised in her training, in the cruelty of her youth, Carmen shut down her heart, closing it against appeal. She could feel it screaming in protest as, within her mind, she snapped the threads that bound her here, and resumed the mantel she had shed long ago. Her duty would govern, and she would obey the Princess, but there would be a reckoning. There would be a price to be paid.
How easily I return to the guise of vassal. How easily I cast aside my daughter.
Then, in the muffled background, a door slammed shut, a small voice shrieked in pain. Carmen’s head jerked around, and she found herself drenched in sweat, in tears, in the darkness, her body rigid and shaking and the paper that had been in her hoof shredded beyond recognition. She has panting as if she had cantered many leagues.
The spell shattered, but her resolve intact, she fled inside to tend to her beloved daughter, for what she knew to be one of the last times.
Carmen Heartstrings was woken by the soft whimpering in the room across the hall: tonight, as every night, Lyra was shaking in fear, hiding from the monsters of the Everfree. These night -terrors had begun after her partner, Lyra’s father, Tomlin Bard, disappeared into the Forest two months ago.
His absence was in itself an aching, hurtful presence that shadowed Carmen throughout the day, constantly reminding her that he was gone. In addition to this, Lyra’s grief, violent and unrestrained, in the manner of children, continued long after the traditional period of mourning and prevented the wound in Carmen’s heart from closing.
Lyra had not understood that her father was dead: she would ask Carmen each day when her father would return, unable to comprehend that he could actually have been torn from her life forever. Each night, she whispered to her mother in the darkness, that tomorrow, surely, her father would return.
In the face of such certainty, Carmen herself would have almost suspected him to be still alive, had she not lead the rescue party into the Everfree Forest and recovered his maimed, tattered body. Had she not, crazed and fearless with grief and fury, ran into the darkest place of the Forest in order to recover his missing limbs, and to fruitlessly pursue whatever foul creature had slain him.
Tomlin had been slashed into pieces by some unknown denizen of the Everfree, most likely a chimera, while wandering the edges of the Forest, in an area deemed to be safe. On many occasions, he had ventured further in, as he said the calm of the Forest provided him with inspiration, and no creature had ever harmed him because of the sweet music he made. This time, at Carmen’s own asking, he had stayed to the sunlight boundaries.
“I don’t you want you to be eaten by some ferocious beastie, now, and leaving me all alone with little Lyra”, she had laughed, sending him on his way with a wicker basket of baked goods; Lyra pretended to chase him to the threshold, impersonating a dragon.
And then, little more than four hours later, the mayor of Ponyville had come to her door with the terrible news that someone had found that wicker basket in the woods, torn and saturated in blood...
She hadn’t shared such gruesome details with her daughter, but the Forest’s terrible reputation and the hushed whispers of the town had created a fragmented reality that haunted Lyra in the night hours. In her dreams, her father fled a terrible, formless monster-now with claws, now with wings; now with six heads, now with none- and she stood by, unable to prevent what she knew must come. Carmen was at least relieved that Lyra always woke, screaming, before the monster ripped Tomlin’s head off his shoulders.
...
“Ra...Ra... Shh, it’s me. I’m here: nothing will hurt you now”.
Lyra continued to sniffle and moan, rocking backward and forward, cocooned in blankets. Carmen encircled her quivering daughter, blankets and all, stroking her forelock and murmuring gently. She knew from experience that it could take hours to calm Lyra down and soothe her to sleep.
She knew it was useless to matter platitudes or consolations: neither grief nor fear listen to reason. They just needed to be felt, and overcome.
After a while, she began instinctively: “A very long time ago, a little filly just a bit older than you came without her mother or father to Canterlot city. She was going the see the Princess Celestia, to become a warrior and protect those who were weak and vulnerable.”
She peeked down at her daughter, still safely enclosed in her arms. Lyra had stopped shaking and was listening to the story. “But... wasn’t she frightened? Without her Mama?”
“Well, she was a little. She knew she wouldn’t see her again for a while, but she was a very brave filly. And she knew that no matter how far away she was, her mother would always keep her in her mind, and in her heart. But shh, now, listen:
“She travelled for days and days in a huge carriage empty of impractical possessions or reminders from family. All she had in the world was in a pair of crisp saddlebags at her hooves, with a silver buckle featuring the family crest: a serpentine figure coiled around a rugged monolith, wings half-furled, fangs bared and dripping venom.
“These were filled with the things she would need in her training: a sturdy leather writing-case, which housed a quill and an ink-stone; a small purse of bits and a worn dagger.”
Carmen took a deep breath, about to go on, but a small sigh stopped her. Lyra had curled up in her arms, snuggled up and fallen asleep. She held her delicate, lovely daughter in her arms all night in an effort to guard her against the night-terrors.
...
Carmen hadn’t been able to sleep, and ran to her daughter the moment she woke, screaming. Lyra crawled into her open arms, sniffing and hiccupping, and looked expectantly up at her. For a time, they simply held each other; Carmen thoughtful, Lyra tearful.
“The filly’s name was Artemis Longhaven, and she had long dreamed of serving her princess in the Equestrian guard. When she was no older than you, she used to get up early and canter the breadth of the Longhaven Castle keep, her ancestral home. She had trained with the Castle man-at-arms until she was as fearsome as any colt, even one who was years older than her.
"At eight years old, she left the Castle to receive an audience with Princess Celestia so that she could train as a warrior. Her elder brothers were a knight and a squire, but she wanted to serve the common ponies of Equestria rather than command an army or serve as a strategist.
"She reached the outskirts of Canterlot, a grand city even then, and she wondered at the soaring, shining, fluted towers of Canterlot Castle, which seemed to her too ethereal to be solid.
" When she was led into the Royal Throne Room, she could barely keep her composure: there were so many nobleponies gathered around, some smiling at her eagerness, other frowning at the sight of a noble filly wishing to serve as an elite warrior, not a military strategist or figurehead. All of them were extremely beautiful, and dressed in fine and exotic fashions that reflected their status as among the most powerful in Equestria.
"Strewn between them were emissaries from foreign nations: a minotaur chatted effusively with a group of noblewomen; a griffin seemed to be engaged in some sort of debate with a group of young noble men involving resources; a zebra duelled an older statespony at chess. Flying above the elegant crowds were svelte and diminutive breezies, and in deep, clear, flowing pools along the edges of the room lounged sea ponies, conversing in song with the poets of the court.
"She marched all the way up that very long room, treading softly on the thick, finely embroidered, richly coloured carpet and keeping her head down. When she reached the end, she bowed deeply and rose, scared to look at the mighty ruler of all that she knew.
" ‘Lady Artemis of Longhaven’, the Herald announced. There was silence as Artemis stared fixedly at a particularly exquisite design on the carpet; a vividly flourishing vine of some exotic crimson flower.
" ‘There is no need to be frightened, Lady Artemis’, proclaimed a sweetly musical and understanding voice, ‘I know why it is that you are here. You have come to train as a Warrior: this I will gladly grant.’
"Artemis glanced up, taken aback by the kindness of the Princess: she had expected someone a little more... terrifying. There was, however, an unmistakeable regality about her that brooked no underestimation. There was wisdom in her eyes, but there was also acceptance, and love. She immediately felt calmed, and worthy to stand in the court, young and unproven as she was.
I will serve this goddess until the end of my days, she thought.
" ‘Your Highness, I must protest!’ exclaimed a white unicorn stallion with a cobalt, elaborately styled mane and a cutie mark of a silver candelabra.
" ‘We will allow a Lady to become a Knight, and that has proven successful, I will grant. But as a Warrior, a mare’s natural sensibilities would surely be overcome by the gruesome nature of the duties! And a noblemare no less! No filly should be raised so uncouth as to-’
" ‘Lord Blueblood, have you so soon forgotten that I have served as a Warrior? That I have proven myself worthy in battle time and time again, while your ancestors still served as commoners in the Army?’, smoothly interrupted Princess Celestia.
" ‘I will tolerate no opposition on this matter. She will serve as a Warrior if she so wishes, and she shall acquit herself admirably!” Here Celestia’s tone took an almost angry edge, but she reined it in to turn back to Artemis, as the disgraced Lord sank back among the crowd of Nobles who were clearly savouring his humiliation.
" ‘I must ask you this: are you sure in your ambition to become a Warrior? It is a hard and violent path for a filly to resign herself to so soon in life, as Lord Blueblood has kindly pointed out. I will support you in your goal: I only wish to determine the reason behind it- why have you chosen to become a Warrior, and not a Knight? ’Tis an easier path.’
"There was some murmuring among the Nobles at this, but it was quickly silenced as the Princess waited patiently for Artemis to formulate her thoughts.
"Artemis swallowed back her anxiety and spoke. She wanted to show that the Princess had been right in trusting in her, and in defending her against the elitist Blueblood.
" ‘Y-Your Highness, I... I wish to become a Warrior so that I may help those in dire need. The army is only mobilised in hours of peril for the whole of Equestria, with Knights to lead and guide, and yes, fight alongside, but a Warrior may, no, must always help those weaker than themselves, whether in a time of warfare or no.’
"She paused, knowing that she had not yet answered the Princess’s question. She had heard from her brothers what the life of a Knight had been reduced to, now that the nobles had mobilised in order to hold positions of power with minimum risk to themselves.
" ‘The Knight’s path may be easier, as your Highness says, but I wish to help ponies with my hooves, not with reams of paper, nor with plans that require approval from three different authorities. I wish to see that my acts are of use, and not to sit three months waiting for a report on the matter.” "She bowed her head. A splutter could be heard from the crowd of onlookers, but otherwise the room was silent except for the rippling of water and the rustling of the breezies’ wings.
" ‘I see. It shall be done; Clerk Scroll, see to it. Guard, accompany Lady Longhaven to the training barracks. I shall arrange for your equipment to be sent to you. Goodbye, Lady Artemis. I expect we will be hearing more of you shortly.’
"Artemis bowed; feeling relieved, she followed the guard out of a discreet side door. That had been less stressful than she had imagined, however the brevity of the Princess’s reply had taken her aback. Her new life was to begin with nary a hiccup.”
Carmen fell silent, lost in long- repressed memories and smiling with nostalgia. With a gentle movement, she alighted from the bed and walked to the door. Lyra had long ago fallen into an untroubled sleep: she had most likely barely heard the beginning of Carmen’s rememberings. Carmen left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
...
And so it went until Lyra no longer woke screaming in the dead hours of the night, and as the filly grew, the tale of Artemis Longhaven was left behind with her grief, not forgotten but rarely thought of.
Cantering back up the path, Carmen threw the cards and letters behind her and they fell in her wake, barely meeting the ground with a dull thump before she leapt onto the porch. The creased and weathered stone magnified her clattering hoof beats so that they rang through the hall of her home, echoing crisply. The front door had creaked open while she stood at the mailbox, in defiance of the tarnished brass lock it bore, and it whined as she flung it back with such force that it swung into the wall behind, adding to the din.
Having overturned a crooked hall-table, she now clattered noisily through the hall, checking doors to the right and left; all were open, and revealed empty, simple, but cosy rooms. Lyra’s crying was sounding closer, but still muffled.
“Ra? Ra, where are you?” she gasped out.
The last door, at the end of the hall; the dining room. Lyra was curled on the hearth stones cradling her hoof and sobbing, with a curious contraption which was obviously broken on the floor beside her. The door to the adjoining terrace was very firmly shut.
Carmen scooped her up and plopped her back down on the large teak table in the centre of the room, taking care not to step on the twisted device which she surmised was of Lyra’s making. As she hastily retrieved the first-aid box she kept in a nearby chest for just such eventualities, she felt her racing heart and her gasps for breath begin to grow calm.
“So, what were you trying to do this time?” she asked in a deliberately light and casual tone, turning back to grasp Lyra’s foreleg and rotating it around to see a shallow gash along the upper of the inside. Dark beads of blood were slowly squeezing themselves out of the wound, contrasting strongly with her beautiful, minty green skin.
“I was...trying to close the door.” Lyra hiccupped, looking carefully away from her leg, which was being washed with a damp cloth in preparation for dressing, and staring instead mangled metal on the stone floor.
“Well, you certainly succeeded in that, Ra.” Carmen said, letting a smile creep in to her voice.
“But why not simply pull it shut? Why not ask me for help?” She knew the answer; Lyra was an independent little filly, but combined with an almost uncanny ability for crafting with her bare hooves, that made for a very interesting parenting experience.
Carmen wouldn’t be surprised if she would go on to earn her cutie mark in such a field; in fact, she expected it to occur. The wound clean, she was now unwinding a thick roll of white bandage, stained from previous use on wounds much more serious than this. “I wanted to close it using the handle, like a big pony. So I stood on the table, and stretched, but I wasn’t long enough. So I-” muttered Lyra, eyes on the strange pile of squashed metal, while Carmen bandaged her leg.
“So you made this”, prompted Carmen, pinning the bandages in place and walking over to the device and picking it up. It looked like a fork, some fishing wire, two nails and a long strip of scrap metal had been hastily cobbled together to form some sort of... extra hoof? The fork and nails at the end made rough prongs that she could see would have been intended to hook around the terrace door’s handle. There was blood on one of the nails.
“I found some things, and made a Hoof-Extenderer-With-Attached-Poky-Bits, and I stood on the table. I could reach it, but when I tried to pull it back, I lost my balance, and the Poky Bits poked me.”
Carmen suppressed an internal sigh: it was typical of her daughter. Ingenious, creative, but at the same time, so poorly thought out. “I’m glad that you‘re okay, Lyra, but that wasn’t very safe. You hurt yourself, but it could have been a lot worse. What if you’d landed badly? You could have broken something; you could get an infection from that metal you used- really, Lyra, was it from the back garden?”
Lyra’s head drooped lower and lower up on the table, her hoof scuffing at a raised point on the unvarnished surface.
“But...” there was a change in the timbre of Carmen’s voice. Lyra looked up to find her smiling with pride at her daughter.
“It was a clever piece of machinery. The hooks were a good idea, although I can see that gouge in the door now, and it’s good that you wanted to solve the problem yourself. That shows ‘moral character’. ”
She booped her daughter’s nose and looked her in the eyes.
“Next time Lyra, tell me if you have a problem, and we’ll solve it together, just so that I know that you’re safe. I’ll tell you what- tomorrow is Celestia’s day, so you won’t have school: let’s go to the forge and pick up some metal for your next experiment. We’ll clean this one and keep it as a prototype, so we can build you another, better Hoof-Extendy-Whatsit.”
“With-Poky-Bits, Mama.”
“We couldn’t possibly forget the poky bits, Ra. The poky bits make it great.”, intoned Carmen solemnly, looking down at the face of her daughter, which was radiant at the prospect of working on a project together.
Before her resolve- and her heart- broke, she placed the Hoof-Thingummy on the mantel, making a mental note to clean up the resultant blood-stains, swung Ra onto her back and trotted to the kitchen.
“Now, who wants muffins?”
... Later, in the cosy, warm and aromatic kitchen, gobbling up muffins and animatedly countering a proposition that Lyra was definitely old enough to weld, so please, please, could she, Carmen felt more content, more at home than she ever had in Ponyville before. And that terrified her.
Nothing had ever been, nothing could ever be as important as the Princess's will, because the Princess was Equestria, and Equestria was her realm. Her duty had been a part of her life for so long, and even with so many years in the shadows it was as strong and uncompromising as iron. She must leave.
Nothing was greater than Equestria, and nothing could interfere with her duty. Not love for a partner. Not even love for a daughter. And she knew the Princess would never have taken summoning her lightly.
After all, it takes a grave matter indeed to force the dead to walk again amongst the living. I am now the only option.
