Questions, children, life and death-- none of them wait for the moment we would prefer.
"Not a story, daddy," Flurry Heart pleaded. Her nose scrunched, her lower lip quivered, and her eyes managed somehow to widen. "An explanation." She wriggled about, secure in the loving strength of her mother's arms.
Mama's warmth, pink hide and high pride everywhere, might be shared with more than Flurry and her daddy, but that was fine. Her mother was love, and she couldn't be greedy enough to hold it all. She knew that mama had plenty left over for them both. Daddy always had the silliest smile when he looked at mama.
Or at Flurry herself, come to think of it. And even at four years old, she knew that her mother's love followed her everywhere. Sometimes when running down corridors, she'd look over her shoulder as though she expected the looming pink hugeness to be ready to hug her at the drop of a bit.
Thinking about it made her feel like mama was hugging her, but Flurry preferred the real thing.
Daddy smiled, and the smile was somehow even bigger than mama's. He wasn't so big as mama, but his smile didn't seem to have an end. That felt important right now.
Earlier today she'd seen it. A pony, or something like a pony, had suddenly become so bright that Flurry could see him even though he was very far away. And then he was gone, not even the little glow that most ponies were.
That was worrisome. So she looked to daddy now; she needed an explanation. She was pretty sure she remembered where the pony was supposed to go; she just wasn't sure what that meant.
"Okay," he said, the gentle baritone reminding her even more than mama's hugs that she was safe and protected. She'd seen her father's shield spells at work; had struggled to produce her own. He'd even helped her make her first-- so that part of him would always protect her, even when she stood on her own.
"Okay," he repeated. "We'll start with that, but the dreaded Snugglemamagus may start hunting us both if it takes too long and you're not ready for sleep. What do you want to know about?"
Rolling her eyes, Flurry tried to squirm out of her mama's grip, only to be squeezed and kersnuggled all the more. Mama's voice was higher than daddy's, but it enveloped her even more. "That's right!" she said cheerfully. "Gonna snuggle you all up, Chirpy Bird!"
Flurry stuck her tongue out, but settled back onto mama's lap. Snugglemamagus indeed, she huffed to herself. That's just mama giving tickle-snuggles. Not a friendly monster who will hug me until I zonk.
She was four. She'd stopped believing the Snugglemamagus story ages (months) ago. She snorted, nostrils flaring, and pointed at daddy. "Better be the right explanation, then," she chuffed, and then folded her wings back against mama. "What are Elysiuns like?"
Shining Armor smiled again. He really had a hard time doing anything other than smiling around his wife or his baby girl. Both of them together? Doofy-face Shiny, all the time. "Elysiums, huh?" he asked, not overly emphasizing the m, just gently redirecting. "It is daddy night, but that's more of a mama question…"
A cleared throat, a gentle glare, and he knew Cadance wasn't going to let him wriggle out of this one. A not-so-gentle, but still fiercely adorable glare from Flurry let him know she wanted what she'd asked for: a daddy explanation.
"Okay, okay," he repeated yet again. Time to stall for time. "Well, an explanation like that does require Careful Consideration and Reference to the Source Materials." It was a hedge, but it was a hedge made in his best Auntie Twilight Silly Imitation voice, which got a smile and a giggle from both of his ladies.
Shining added "less reliance on falsetto" to the list of benefits of having a baby sister nearly a foot taller than himself. The goof had grabbed him a bit of time. Time to think.
A tough one, indeed. The Fields of Elysium had always been there in the background his entire life. Ponies didn't talk about them much, because Celestia didn't like talking about spiritual matters except in a technical sense. You couldn't be a soldier without thinking about them, though.
Unicorn, pegasus, or earth pony, everypony was born with an immense amount of magic. That both meant that ponies' souls were very easy to sense, and that pretty much every pony could feel those souls in passing. Which, come to think of it, means we've just been running on borrowed time. She must have been seeing these all the time.
It was horrible to lose a spear-sister or shield-brother in battle, of course. The pain and the trauma was bad enough; the separation, the sudden yawning gulf until the next time you'd see a good friend again… it was a wound, like any exile.
But it was a reassurance in its own way. Most other Eponan species had some degree of magic, more or less. The least, oddly enough, were one of the cousin-tribes, the donkeys. The technomancers among them were given to fits and starts of almost insane creativity with the physical world, but all but the most dedicated simply couldn't do anything with the preternatural.
Shining sometimes wondered that would be like, living like an asinian, not being able to see or feel or hear the soul of one of your fellows when they left. Not being able to know that when that last, shuddering breath left, and the indignities of age or injury ceased, something went on. Having to rely on others' testimony. Terrifying, he imagined.
Oddly enough, it gave him the courage to formulate an explanation that might not drown his Chirpy Bird in fear of loss. Nor, hopefully, require an emergency call to Auntie Fluttershy to put up the necromantic equivalent of a baby gate. He smiled down at Flurry Heart, gently smoothed an errant lock of mane away, and kissed her forehead.
Expectation shined back at him, expectation and trust. He could feel the warmth in his wife's face more than see it, but there was no tension in the arms that held their child, and he was again honored by the trust of goddesses-- and their love.
"Okay, sweetie," he said, and reminded himself that if three times was the charm, five okays in a row would probably be a good time to stop babbling. "Sorry about that little delay." He saluted his daughter gravely, every bit as crisp as the first time he'd saluted Celestia, just oriented down, rather than up. "Had to re-form the little troops running around in my brain. They got the wrong tactical orders on that question, and…"
"Daddy!" The protest was accompanied by what was, in Shining's opinion, the most adorable scrunched muzzle that ever did wrigglesnoot up. Flurry did not have the burning glare of irritated mother or OCDing aunt yet, but Shining's nonsense defenses were just as shot. That face.
He laughed and winked. "No," he said finally, "It's a bit more that-- well, it's much of the same. Elysiums are the places where stories meet, and grow, and become something new."
That brought a soft ooh and a strangled question, the noise a parent learns means "I want more!" coupled with, "I don't want to interrupt."
Shining explained, "Every pony, from silly ponies like your daddy, to Verra Ser-e-us ponies like your crystaller, to amazing ponies like your Mama and Aunty, to super-duper-ultra-amazing ponies like you, Chirpy Bird…" And before Flurry could protest this title, her mother rapidly re-oriented their child in her embrace, letting Shining zerbert the suddenly vulnerable tummy.
Teamwork, he thought, rising his head to smile at Cadance. The light that waited for him in her expression was all the reward he'd ever needed. The giggles of their daughter the bonus reward he could never have dreamed. So he explained.
Every pony, every person, lives their own story. We are all heroes, whether tragic or triumphant, of our own existences. Sometimes, when you're very sad, you might wonder if anypony or anyone knows your story at all, or if it is going anywhere, but it is still your story.
Life and living isn't perfect. Can't be, or we would all be so much the same that the next story of you would be the same as the next story of me. And that would be boring.
But it wouldn't be fair if that was the only type of story. Sometimes, stories can be very tragic, indeed. Sometimes they're written into dark places; sometimes, they end more randomly than daddy's dice that Flurry Heart isn't supposed to eat.
So when the story is done, when the character that is you is finished, it's time to go somewhere very different. A place that pain can't touch, that lies never darken so much as to even reach grey, and that the worst anypony can do to you is ignore you. Even then, it's a very special place, so you'll never be alone, unless you really want to be.
And your story is heard there. Everyone's as important as everyone else's. No one's story is lost; no one is without, and everyone gets what they need. Very different from the stories we have while we live. So a pony who's gone to the Elysiums becomes a part of those new stories, those new mysteries. And the stories never end.
Flurry Heart's eyes went wide and sparkly. That kind of place was a good thing; that sort of story seemed to promise a happy ending. Or not-ending?
This was why daddy explanations were best. Not counting Aunty Twilight explanations of technical matters that you needed to know everything about. Or Aunty Pinkie explanations, which always, always involved cake in some manner.
She was lucky, she knew; she had a daddy and a half. During the day, her daddy-daddy had a lot of work to do, as did momma. They both tried to spend time with her, but sometimes they couldn't, and that's where her crystaller, a kind of half-a-daddy came in. The only reason she hadn't asked Uncle Sunburst was that the flare of the pony who'd gone off to the Elysium seemed to make him very sad and more than a bit nervous.
Flurry Heart didn't really want to think about how much Uncle Sunburst's fear had made her nervous, too. So, just like when Smarty Pants had been worried about shadow things and Flurry had to ask Momma about it, or when the doll had been having very bad dreams and Daddy needed to kiss them away, she leaned on that fear.
"Daddy?"
"Mmm-hmm, Chirpy Bird? That all make sense?"
"Uh-huh. But… But why was Uncle Sunburst so sad and afraid, then?"
Cadance loved her husband dearly. Gentle and strong, giving and devoted, her goofy unicorn was a strong foundation, like a rocky outcropping holding up a lighthouse. She was ridiculously glad that Flurry had chosen to ask this line of questioning at him.
Probably something to do with improvising. Her sweet Shiny-- and her very fierce Shiny, when necessary-- was always very good at improvising, suddenly and shockingly and all over the place.
She hadn't been looking forward to the death question, not one bit. Among other reasons, she didn't really have a parental example; at least, not one she wanted to use. Her adopted aunt was many things, and a large portion of those warm and compassionate, but she was never comfortable with her spiritual dominance in ponydom. Those parts she couldn't ignore or suppress were usually held at bay through dry, abstract scholarship.
As a result, Celestia's intensely technical response to Cadance asking death and the afterlife as a teenager had made Cadance feel simultaneously lonely and paranoid. Sure, it was even more detail to the usual pony self-security in the certainty of a hereafter, but that just made it inevitable and precious alike. It made her feel like she would forever be building up relationships with ponies, just to watch them travel off into the distance.
Yes, it was nice to know that the soul existed, and even nicer to know how it worked and how imperishable it was. Better yet, to know where it went after death! But even immortals can fear loneliness, and perhaps especially immortals can fear alienation, fear that friends and loved ones will change beyond recognition when they come to such a fundamentally different context.
Aunty Celestia had been very grateful for the chance to switch to talking about that context in detail and at length. Qualities and quantities, not meaning and symbology. The lack of pain, the unbound resources, the mutability of time, the compassion and empathy and… and everything so different for ponies already so far away from a young Cadance.
The fact that unlike most ponies, she could visit the dead on a regular basis didn't help, Aunt Celestia! The reason Cadance could visit the dead was, of course, that like Celestia, the only other alicorn present at the time, she would be responsible for shaping, maintaining, and protecting the afterlives of all ponies. Keeping them safe in their eternal reward, until That Beyond shall alleviate even immortal burdens.
It wasn't something Flurry needed to know right now; just like she didn't need to know the heartbreaking, if only temporarily, stories of the Soons or the Bereft or the Eaten or… Before the thought of those interruptions along the path to eternity could more than shiver Cadance's broad shoulders, the gentle princess held her daughter close and luxuriated in the warmth there held. Not to mention the warmer-yet refuge of her husband's loving smile.
The cadence of the gooficorn's story-- explanation-- seemed to be relaxing Flurry Heart. For that matter, it seemed to be relaxing Cadance, too. Their bright little girl might or might not stay awake until the ending of this story, but Cadance was relieved that Shining had found a good metaphor to help explain matters.
Whether it was completed tonight (and they both got a bit less sleep), or Flurry drifted and returned, as laser-focused on The Answer as a teeny Twily had been decades past, Cadance knew this at least: Shiny's unique bridge between mortal and immortal would make whatever sleep they or Flurry had far better, far more secure and restful than it might have had otherwise under the unflinching weight of That Question.
It had been going well. Shining's quiet explanation of mortality and immortality, of body, soul, and story, had reassured Flurry Heart, and, slowly, had matched Cadance's rocking rhythm and sent the littlest princess closer and closer to dreams. Brought Shiny closer and closer to quality Spouse Time.
"But… But why was Uncle Sunburst so sad and afraid, then?" Flurry's scrunching unscrunched, but only to make a chubby little face tense, little lines that belonged nowhere on his baby girl's face shown in stark relief by the glow of her horn. A much-used and much Needed doll made its way up in Flurry's golden magical aura was levitated up to Shining's eye-height, and then rotated around for his inspection. "Smarty is also too and I don't know why."
"Oh, sweetie," Shining said softly. He kissed Flurry's head again as Cadance readjusted her embrace, letting Flurry squirm around to hug tight onto Smarty Pants. The doll, in turn, was raised slightly once more, hugged by Flurry as Flurry was by Cadance. Knowing his role as much as any he'd ever played, Shining kissed the raggedy doll on the forehead too.
'Smartie' was afraid, of course, because loss doesn't have to be permanent to wound. Fear knows all ages, and loneliness is the first fear for many a pony. But how to tell a child that? Especially, a child who might decide to try to ban death. Causing a diplomatic incident with Princess Fluttershy was not on Shining's 'good' list, especially if it resulted from a terrified filly.
Metaphor and simile, empathy and engagement with a young brain nonetheless bright as a button, that was the ticket.
"I'm sorry, Smarty," Shining said gravely to the doll and via doll, daughter. "I should have explained some of the other things about Elysiums. They're verrrrry far away just like they're verrrrry special, and they're places for people to get very nice stories. With me so far?"
Flurry's hands shifted, and she nodded Smarty's head. "So because they're very far away, and the ponies there have finished their life stories, well-- you know what a grumpus your momma--oof…" A quick Cadantic poke in his ribs reminded Shining not to put everything on his wife there, "And your daddy turn into when someone steals your dreeaaaams."
A snort and a giggle was followed by a wriggle, and Flurry huffed at him. "Smarty doesn't have dreams, daddy," she told him. "She's a doll."
"Fine, when someone steals your dreams, Chirpy Bird!"
Further huffing followed. "They don't steal my dreams!" she protested. "You're being digressive again!"
"Well, it's kinda similar. Super-special ponies like your mama, and your aunties, don't like it when those new stories get poked by people here. You have to wait until you're a part of those stories, too. So it isn't allowed much if at all. Which means…" Shining knew that the hope of a reasonable bedtime was disappearing, but the best strategy he could have to avoid bawling and foal-based necromantic catastrophes was to keep Flurry thinking about rules and reasons, an interest she'd inherited from her biological aunt.
"They don't get to see the gone ponies for a long time," Flurry concluded. "And they worry that gone ponies won't… like them anymore? Won't know them?"
Shining smiled, despite the slight hint of worry in the last two questions. 'Gone ponies' would work, he suspected, and as usual, he was so proud of how smart Flurry was; at how easily she thought of others. A selfish princess was almost impossible with the power of Harmony inundating her very soul, but it could happen, and the thought of it would break his heart.
Still, Flurry was not going down that road, but there was that worry. "That's some of it," Shining said. "There's a lots, 'cos, well. Those adults. They're so sillllly and all the THINGS!"
Huge eyes rolled and Flurry stuck her tongue out at Shining. "You're an adult!"
"Can't make me!"
"Mommmmmm!"
Cadance laughed as well. It was a good start. A laughing daughter was, hopefully, a distracted one.
No such luck. Flurry demanded details, Twilight Sparkle's niece incarnate. Unsurprisingly, among those details was what a princess, like Smarty-- with her two new wings, sewed on by the same Rare hand that had repaired and reinforced Smarty Pants for an alicorn owner-- of course, might have to do when she grew up. Which Flurry was certain would be just soon for Smarty. And Flurry, too, thereby.
Shining hoped it wouldn't be quite so soon, of course, though his heart did melt, re-melt, and was ultra-melted by how Flurry held up Princess Smarty with her hands, and had her telekinetic glow around the little pencil and notebook. Had to take notes on a new Princessing job, right?
Fortunately, Shining had already learned to appease a filly's desire to be treated respectfully with a filly's need for sleep. This wasn't too different from conversations with Twilight around bed-time, oh, so many years ago, after all. It wasn't hard to stay away from the mechanics, and talk about the infinite libraries of the afterlife of Magic, the shining halls of Nobility, Perfection's endless spaces, open to all-- the fun side of an alicorn's unending duty to their subjects.
Which lead-- as such things do, when told carefully-- to a subject very near and very dear to Shining's heart. Perhaps too close.
"And mama's?"
Shining smiled. "Your mama's Elysium is the roads, Chirpy Bird," he explained gently. "Your mama's paradise is the connection between all of them, letting ponies exist on in peace and still be able to find friends and family, pets and passions, everything that they loved, and the loves that grow yet after the last heartbeat stops."
Flurry's eyes grew wider still as she took that in. She was a smart foal, he knew, and had interrogated her Auntie Fluttershy sufficiently to have no real fear of death the process. But he'd been dancing along the edge of death the transformation, because-- well. Because I am mortal, even if I doubt I'll ever age except through worry again.
Maybe it was time to tell the rest. He reached over, and clasped Cadance's closest hand, his strong fingers interweaving atop and with her longer, more slender digits. Their eyes met, and she nodded slightly.
So be it, Shining thought. He leaned over and kissed Flurry's forehead. "There's a little space that's just hers, though. Most ponies who say they live for love really tend to fall under Great Auntie Luna, Auntie Twilight, or one of the others." A wry chuckle escaped Cadance's lips as Flurry looked up, and his wife nodded her affirmation. "Even most Crystal Ponies honestly will find their way elsewhere."
"There are some," he continued. "So there's a couple of Beloved Halls, places that look out on all the other paradises with their own Soft Roads to find ways to still seek to share love with everyone. But…" He chuckled. You shouldn't fear death either, he told himself, but it was still hard to talk about; he was a soldier, and knew his risks. "There's a quiet place, a little cottage on a cloud."
Cadance's gentle smile became poignant, and she clutched her fingers tighter at his. Her eyes softened, light worry, not for loss, because it would never be loss. Just the knowledge that some day, magic and miracle would fail, or chance might send him into pain and breaking. He smiled broader, taking strength against his own fears knowing that he would never be beyond her reach. And in needing to be a warmth for the chill that those thoughts gave her.
He wasn't really looking at Flurry, though he could feel her squirm impatiently under his wife's hand. "Daddy, the cottage?" she pressed.
"Sorry, Chirpy Bird," Shining said and coughed again. His eyes looked out to a place that-- well. Was a place, but not as he or any other mortal ponies knew them. "It's as near as thinking and as far as breathing from the Beloved Halls; there's an empty blue sky all around the clouds, shade in the trees by the lake, and green, open spaces under glittering sunlight or soft moonlight-- depending on how your mama wants it."
Curiosity burgeoned, and his daughter asked "Mama?" Wide eyes turned on Cadance again, who smiled.
"It's a special place," she said softly. "When you're ready to walk between the physical and the metaphysical, I'll show you how to get there; you'll be welcome, sweetheart. Always."
Flurry Heart yawned, stretching out, blinking. A curious child, but the explanation had gone long. Shining was sure she was close to sleep. Finally. She frowned to herself, nose scrunching up and eyes trying to focus again. "And Daddy?" she asked between further yawns.
Shining Armor closed his eyes and rested his head against his wife's sturdy shoulder again. "It's for me, Chirpy Bird," he said softly. "I will be with you both, as long as fate allows me to stay on Epona, but eventually, I have to go to the same rest as every other mortal pony. When I do leave flesh behind, I will still be with you. Not just what I've given you, not just what I've taught you, but love and soul, always. And when you need me, you'll know the way."
Big eyes closed; oversized wings folded. Cadance began to slowly rock Flurry back and forth, singing a very old lullabye indeed.
Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian phoenix tend thy Harm'ny,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and dale in slumber sleeping
I my loved ones' watch am keeping,
All through the night