Curvature: The First Colony

The Weight of Worlds

A My Little Pony fanfiction by LysanderasD

Curvature: The First Colony

220 AL

It was incredible what ponykind could accomplish in two decades, Curvature thought. She stood ready to disembark as her bus approached the terminal.

Around her sprawled the beginnings of a city—not just of stone, but of metal and cloudstuff too. It was not large—not yet—but it would grow. In the warm amber of sunset, everything gleamed. Here, in the governmental sector, the buildings soared highest, the tall spire of the space agency seeming to pierce the dome of the sky. Habitation blocks had recently given way to apartment complexes. Most of the market area did not rise above two storeys, at least not yet. Cities have long gestation periods; this one had merely had a bit of a head start.

Here and there arcane projections painted neon-colored advertisements across the sides of buildings. Pegasi flitted from building to building while elevated transports sped flightless ponies along their way. Here, on ground level, ponies trotted, or rolled along in carriages—both traditional and self-propelled. Larger omnibuses like the one Curvature was riding in vied with them all for space on the roads.

Kilometers of space around the city had been zoned for planned expansion in the coming years, but from certain points in the city, higher than she was now, one could see farms planted firmly near the edge of the horizon—earth pony families that had worked land for generations generally being the sort to stick to tradition, even here, on soil that, in geological terms, had barely felt the first hint of pony magic.

Far outside the city, atop hills in the distance sat the ship that had borne them all to this planet, its massive engines silent. Even from here, at a distance where its name was barely legible, it seemed to loom, like a lazy dragon sprawled out on a mountain range. Much of its hull and inner workings had been stripped to help get a head start on the city, giving the ship a faintly skeletal look which was offset somewhat by its warm coloration, deliberately evocative of Canterlot Castle back home. For the arrivals, it was a symbol both of their journey and where they had come from. For the ponies born here, the ship held an entirely different meaning—more for some than for others. The ponies who had come here did not, after all, intend to leave—certainly not for a very long time.

Just over twenty years ago, none of this had been here. Only the ship, descending laboriously into the atmosphere, laden with ponies and dreams. They owed much to the Princesses, without whom they would never have made it this far.

Curvature was just shy of being first-generation native. She had been a filly when the EMS Eternal Hope had exited arcane space in orbit above the planet, and she remembered, if only vaguely, the visages of the elder alicorns as they blessed the voyage, and (this stuck in Curvature's head more clearly) the feed from the viewscreen showing the complicated emotions warring across Princess Twilight's face as the Eternal Hope left its dock and pointed its bow toward a distant star. The ship and the materials and arcane technologies it employed and carried with it had been her greatest endeavor, after all.

The bus rolled to a stop. Curvature swung her bag over her shoulder and stepped off into the street, making a beeline for the gleaming spire of the aeronautics headquarters. This close to the end of the day, on-hoof traffic was minimal, and the orange-coated earth pony only passed a singular pedestrian—a unicorn stallion engrossed in his wireless terminal—before ascending the steps to the headquarters of the New Equus Equestrian Space Agency with its name proudly proclaimed in shimmering arcane letters hovering just off of the building's surface far above. The glass doors slid soundlessly apart for her, and she entered.

In the burgeoning city, space was at a premium. Nevertheless, and this perhaps had to do with much of the building being salvaged from the Eternal Hope, the entrance to this particular structure was cavernous. The architects, or more likely the interior designers, had chosen to fill the space with a massive orrery—a mechanical model of the solar system. Despite the fact that she had seen it before, and not an insubstantial amount of times, she stopped and stared.

The orrery had been an early project, put together when the ESA building hadn't even been here, when the space the city occupied was still mostly unworked plains. The ponies who had put it together based it on what they had seen of the system at the time, defined by the astronomical data available before the ship had ever launched. The part that gave her pause was the star, set in the middle of the orrery, around which the system's four planets spun.

Heliocentrism, the phenomenon was called. Planets orbiting their sun, rather than the other way around. What wonders the universe held.

Of course, she mused, it wasn't that way any more. That particular problem had solved itself, in its way. Curvature's head slowly lowered and turned to an enormous window overlooking the city. From her position inside the building she could see the distant shape of the Eternal Hope, gleaming in the twilight and looking for all the world like the castle she remembered from her foalhood.

"Miss?"

The distant stallion's voice pulled Curvature from her thoughts. She blinked, mouth agape just slightly as she brought herself back to the here and now. She looked across the entrance hall to the receptionist's desk, behind which sat the thin-looking blueish unicorn who had called her.

"Can I help you?" he continued. He sounded slightly hoarse, which Curvature knew suggested a busy day. He looked tired, but his face and his question were genuine. "The center isn't open to visitors after sunset, so if you're here for a tour..."

He was new, she reasoned. Any other receptionist would at least have known her name. She strode forward with purpose, fishing her ID badge out of her bag and offering it to him. The badge shimmered in the unicorn's egg-blue corona as he pulled it closer. She grimaced when she saw him double take, no doubt having spotted her name. His eyes flicked up from the image of her cutie mark—stylized concentric circles reminiscent of orbital lines—to find her own eyes.

"Miss... Curvature." He seemed surprised by the name, giving her another curious glance.

Ah, she thought. There it was, the old familiar question. “Yes,” she intoned. “That Curvature. Apparently astrophysics runs in my family.”

His brow furrowed. "I... see," he said. He gave her badge another glance, murmuring something before returning it.

"I'm here from the observatory.” She tried to push past the topic to move onto the task at hoof.

When he replied, he sounded a little more sure of himself. "New astrological data? You know you could have sent it through secure post, right? Or over the wireless. You didn't have to hoof deliver it."

"When Horizon sees this, he'll understand why. He hasn't gone home yet, I hope. I did call him before I left."

"No, he's..." The unicorn glanced down for a moment as if checking. "No, he hasn't left. I'll call ahead and tell him you're on your way."

She gave the receptionist a nod and made her way around to the ramp which lead to the elevator bay.

"Er, Miss Curvature?"

She looked back. The stallion gave a smile. "I appreciate your family’s work.”

Curvature tried smiling back, but it felt fake.

Far Horizon was a green-coated pegasus, bent over his desk, paying absolutely no attention to Curvature as she stepped into his office. His narrowed eyes and furled brows suggested more than a little frustration, and the earth pony paused.

The most impressive thing about Horizon’s office was its back wall, occluded by a state-of-the-art fundamentally entangled illusion, an exact copy of what the optic jewel in its orbiting satellite was seeing—the sprawling surface of this planet, New Equus. Blue and green she shone, not unlike the planet some dozen lightyears hence which had birthed and sheltered ponykind. The angle wasn't right to see the city, but even if it had been, the young demesne that would one day be a bustling metropolis was simply too small to show up on the feed except as the smallest pinprick of light against the dark of the falling evening.

The rest of the office was a model of neat efficiency. The space was sparsely filled. Benches for visitors, drawers for storing hard copy, and little else. The desk was an import from Equus, brought on the ship at great expense on the part of its previous owner, Horizon’s father: genuine oak from the Whitetail Woods near Ponyville. It took up most of the office’s remaining space, all solid angles and hard lines, deep brown in contrast with the smooth curves of the space center itself. Curvature imagined was by design; it tended to ground ponies in the here and now so that the view from behind the desk didn’t carry them away.

“Is now a bad time?” As soon as she asked, she knew she was right.

His eyes flicked up to her, peering over the edge of his glasses. He didn’t need glasses, of course; at its worst, pegasus eyesight merely required flight goggles to keep track of moving objects in midair. Ground-bound and standing still as he was, the lenses were more for the effect. Somehow, it completed his image: despite the deep forest color of his coat, he always seemed distant and unapproachable, more like the Everfree than Whitetail. Curvature’s ears pinned back.

“I should have been home an hour ago,” he said, every word pointed and precise, little nails he used to hang this offense squarely on her. “First Green Tea delivers yet another report from the princes, and then you call and tell me you have more bad news. What is it?”

Curvature tried not to sigh. Far Horizon was not the ESA’s first choice for governmental liaison, but he was the best choice. His predecessor, a unicorn mare named Glib Glam, had done the, well, the liaising well enough; she’d been everyone’s friend, to a fault, and as such had consistently failed to get anything done. Horizon, while he lacked the interpersonal skills one might expect for his position, was better able to apply himself, and thereby the appropriate pressure, to make sure ponies acted on what he said.

The earth pony slung the bag forward and fished out a manilla folder. He stared at it warily, eyes narrowing with premeditated dislike.

“If you’ve already heard from the princes, then this probably won’t tell you anything you don’t already know,” she offered. “Unless Prince Dreamchaser didn’t tell you about how the fourth planet’s moon nearly escaped again.”

Horizon opened the folder and groaned. “No, no… he did. Of course he did. You could have just sent me this to corroborate. It’s always hard copies with you.” He jerked his head to the side, and Curvature followed the gesture to a file cabinet. “The whole top drawer is stuff you’ve given me. You know we can work with the numbers better if we don’t have to put them into the simulations ourselves.”

“There’s not much to simulate,” Curvature said, a little harshly, trying to overpower the pegasus’ bad attitude. “It’s happening right now. Telescopes can see it, satellites can see it, Dreamchaser can feel it.” She saw him look back down at his desk, his face twisted into a scowl. She pushed on, leaning closer to him with every word. “You’re the only one who regularly gets to talk to them, Horizon, and you have to make it clear that the slightest mistake could be fatal! The prince is treating the bodies of this solar system like they’re marbles in a game—”

She actually jumped when Horizon’s hoof impacted the desk. “I know that! He knows that! How many times do you think we’ve had that exact conversation, Curvature?” He stood, moving around the desk and toward her, wings twitching at his sides. “I shouldn’t need to remind you that we are literally on the frontier—not only in a physical sense, but in a magical sense as well. Or should I get a unicorn to explain the finer points?”

Curvature took a deep breath. “I understand that the princes are the first of their kind…”

“The princes,” Horizon said, slowly, straightening his glasses, “are pushing the boundaries of what we know about magic in every way. They are a problem we could never have expected to have to deal with. We are in the midst of learning, on the fly, some of the most fundamental aspects of alicorn magic, and there are bound to be some bumps along the way. Surely, Curvature, you understand that.”

The earth pony stood her ground. “If he’s not careful, all it will take is one particularly nasty bump and we can kiss this entire colony goodbye.”

Horizon’s wings flared with enough force that the folder behind him on the desk saw its contents scattered by the rush of air. “You know what,” he snapped. “If you want to impress that on him so badly, maybe you should speak with him.” He took a deep breath, holding a hoof to the bridge of his glasses and closing his eyes. His wings folded back up along his sides. “Maybe…”

There was a hint of desperation in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

“Maybe he’ll respect his cousin more than a stranger.”

Curvature was exhausted by the time she got home.

She lived on the third floor of a ten-floor apartment complex. Perhaps it was the earth pony heritage, but she didn’t feel comfortable living any higher. Normally, she’d have taken the stairs, but after dealing with Horizon, the best she could do was drag herself over to the elevator and gently lean her forehead into the button, closing her eyes and breathing deeply until the gentle chime told her her ride had arrived.

The ride was a slow blur. When she got to her floor, she shambled out and down the hall. Her head hanging even as she opened the door to her apartment. The earth pony pulled her wireless terminal from her bag, then slung the bag over her shoulder and away. By the time she made it to her bed, her vision was swimming.

When Curvature was roused again, the sky in the window was as close to black as the glow outside allowed. Tidbits gently brushed his forehead against her shoulder until she raised her face to blearily look at him. The tabby meowed pointedly, giving a knowing look.

The clock told her she’d barely been out for thirty minutes. She shook her head and raised a hoof to pet the cat. “Sorry, Bitty Kitty. I’ll get your food in a second.” It took her longer than that to gather herself and push herself over to the floor again. Tidbits mewled plaintively, hopping to the floor with much more grace than his owner. She rubbed at her eyes and moved to the kitchen.

On the bed, forgotten for the moment, her terminal chimed quietly as it received a message.

Curvature,

I’m sorry I yelled at you. However, I really do think that the princes might respond better to someone closer to them. I know you don’t get to see him often, but Dreamchaser asks after you whenever I visit with him, and Green Tea says he mentions you a lot.

I know audiences with the princes are meant to be registered through official channels, but being liaison lets me skip the line every once in a while. Meet me at the ESA building at eight tomorrow. I’ll get us a shuttle.

Just do me a favor—next time you’ve got numbers for us, just send us the Tirek-damned numbers. That filing cabinet is getting dangerously top-heavy.

Far Horizon

Curvature: The Price of Freedom

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Curvature: The Price of Freedom

220 AL

Curvature paced.

She was not, as a rule, particularly prone to pacing. Nevertheless, here she was, tracing a now-familiar path back and forth across the ornate atrium of the Eternal Hope.

It was a vast space, originally intended for both the boarding and disembarking of thousands of colonists. But that purpose had been fulfilled decades ago, now; instead, on most days it was filled with petitioners and would-be courtiers to the princes, all seeking admission to fawn or plead with the colony’s erstwhile rulers. This morning, by royal order, the only two guests were Curvature and Far Horizon.

Like the ship itself, the atrium was styled after Canterlot Castle; the grand entryway, with stairs (escalators, in this case) leading up and further into the ship. The sound of Curvature’s hoofsteps echoed off of the vaulted ceiling.

She reached the end of her path and turned, about to start anew, when she felt Horizon’s hoof grab on her shoulder. “Enough,” said the pegasus firmly.

It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get her to stop, but this time she acquiesced, taking a deep breath and sitting on the chair beside Horizon. She fidgeted, and beside her she knew Horizon was rolling his eyes.

In the chair beside her were her saddlebags, laden not just with yesterday’s data but with the data from all the observations she’d made over the past months, as well as those the observatory had from years prior on the behavior of the system’s bodies. Each had a folder, a date, and—this thought made her wince—a big red label marked with an incident number.

Yesterday, when the only target of her anger had been Horizon, it hadn’t seemed so bad. But now, given that a meeting with Dreamchaser loomed ahead, something like shame was warring with her, fighting to the forefront of her mind. She felt like a teacher having to hand back a semester’s worth of F’s. No, she corrected herself. She felt like a doctor having to deliver bad news to a hopeful patient. No, that wasn’t right either. She frowned, eyebrows knitting with nascent frustration. What did it feel like?

It felt like she was here to condemn her family. She realized with a jolt of guilt that it really was that simple. She chided herself for trying to deflect her feelings behind the guise of professionalism.

In her kitchen, she knew, there was a trashcan full of unsent letters. Her terminal’s draft folder, too, was packed with things unsaid. So many times she’d tried to reach out, only to be unsure of what to say. A bin full of unsent letters, yet here she was with reams of paper criticizing his work...

Once, when they were both younger, they had talked so regularly, so freely. About anything and everything. They had been family. She felt another twist on the guilt lodged deep in her gut. Now, when it mattered most, she did not want to say anything. She did not want to go.

Or, the greater part of her said, the part that was still angry despite her anxiety, the part that understood what the colony required, or you could go up those steps and do your job. He’s an adult now. He’s an alicorn to boot. He can take what you have to dish out—he has no choice.

Still, as she sat there and waited, it felt like a great weight had settled somewhere deep in her barrel.

Other than Curvature and Horizon, the room had only two occupants, both royal guards, as stoic and impassive as the ones Curvature remembered faintly from her foalhood. For the princes, equity and duality were paramount, and here was no exception: one was a grey-coated unicorn stallion dressed in Stargazer’s red and bronze, and the other an earth pony mare, the star silver and lavender of her armor standing out against the cool, deep brown of her coat. The stallion’s gaze was distant, focused but absent, while the mare had done almost nothing but watch Curvature since she’d arrived.

Curvature shuffled uncomfortably in her seat, trying to look anywhere but at the eyes she knew were on her. The attention put her teeth on edge. And, she thought, this isn’t even the most important pony who’s going to be staring at me today. Beside her, Horizon sighed, and Curvature huffed, crossing her forelegs.

“I took a job working with satellites and telescopes so I wouldn’t have to talk to ponies,” she muttered, brows knit unhappily and a scowl on her face. “You know I’m not good at it.”

The only response from Horizon was a click of the tongue. Curvature’s left ear flicked irritably.

Motion from the guards drew her eyes forward again. The stellar guard pressed a hoof briefly to the side of his helm, nodded, and murmured something too quiet for Curvature to hear. But it was the somniant guard who spoke.

“The Princes are ready for you,” she said, and both she and her counterpart stepped aside, tacitly granting access to the escalator behind. “Green Tea will meet you in the lift bay.”

“Finally,” Horizon muttered, pushing himself off the seat with his wings and stretching as he trotted forward without waiting for Curvature. The earth pony scrambled to her hooves, pulling her saddlebags up and over her shoulders, onto her back, where they settled unevenly. She trotted hurriedly after her companion, staring down at the floor to avoid the gazes of the guards as she passed. By the time she reached the top, she’d lost track of Horizon, and scrambled in the direction of the lifts.

Green Tea came into view as she rounded a corner, the deep brown of her coat standing out prominently against the silver-white of the ship’s interior. Curvature slowed to a stop and looked up, mouth opening slightly, as the elder kirin caught her gaze and gave a slow nod.

Kirin had a tendency to look sleepy, and, despite the fact that she was tall enough to look Princess Twilight in the eye, Green Tea was no exception. The shape of their faces, with the wild, lion-like mane, curved horn and scaled snout, drew one’s gaze inevitably to their eyes, which, even half-lidded, put the lie to the look. Green Tea was watching Curvature intently, her eyes—the same deep color as the kirin’s namesake—seeming to immediately catch on to the turmoil in Curvature’s own.

All she said, in a voice as serene and mellow as a Zen garden, was, “Good morning, Curvature.”

Right now, Curvature wished for some of her preternatural calm. The earth pony had to blink a few times to draw herself back from Green Tea’s deep gaze. “Uh… hi.”

She looked away from the kirin. Horizon was leaning lightly against the wall, watching her with his usual dour look. His head jerked back in Green Tea’s direction while he raised a hoof to indicate the arcane symbols on the wall, showing the lift descending from some higher deck. Slowly, Curvature placed her attention back on Green Tea.

The kirin watched her for a moment, then slowly said, “The princes have been informed of your coming.”

“Good,” Curvature murmured, ears pinned back.

Green Tea gave a gentle smile and turned. The doors next to Horizon opened soundlessly, and the three moved onto the lift. Curvature came last, fumbling for something to say, before settling, somewhat lamely, on, “You haven’t changed at all since the first time I met you.”

Green Tea seemed to consider this for a moment. “It is said in kirin legend that our forebears were dragons,” she mused. “Whether it is true or not, it is a useful means to explain our longevity, which is great even in comparison to that of earth ponies.” As they ascended into the upper decks, the window in the lift’s back wall shimmered and turned translucent, showing the city in the distance seeming to descend beneath them. “I was a student at the School of Friendship the year Lady Luster Dawn moved to Ponyville,” she added.

She said it casually, throwing Curvature off balance. She found herself staring open-mouthed at the kirin.

“If you are keeping track,” Green Tea continued, “that puts me at slightly over two hundred years old. So I suppose, to you, I have not changed. I was assigned to the princes to be a landmark, an island of constancy in a world that, for them, will devolve into rapid change.” She seemed totally unperturbed by Curvature's shock, and finished her thought, voice turning briefly dour. "Though even then, if they are anything like Princesses Celestia, Luna, or Twilight, one day they will need to learn to live without me."

The statement seemed to fill the space of the lift, bouncing back and forth from wall to window to doors. The elder kirin had said her piece, descending into inscrutable silence. Curvature hunched slightly, unsure what to say, or if there was anything to say.

This, the earliest planetside memory:

She’d been all of eight, a good three years before her cutie mark and a further three years before she could really grasp what it meant to have an alicorn for a cousin.

There had been so much fuss. The ship had landed just weeks prior and only the most basic of structures had been laid down for the colony. Everypony still lived on the Eternal Hope, the habitation blocks abuzz with excitement and hope and expectation, waiting for what could be. So much was yet to be and ponies kept themselves busy with dreams, and rumors circulated about the cramped blocks like wildfire. Two mares had conceived during the voyage, and both, it was said, had gone into labor within minutes of each other.

Comet Chaser and Golden Hymn had been escorted out of the hab blocks and to the medical wing, and the whole ship waited for the first foals to be born under an untamed sun. But from the medical wing had come only an awful, terrible silence. A telling silence.

Rumors circulated, as they were wont to do. Assumptions made, of tragedy and horror, a slow upwelling of regret, an influx of doubt.

Curvature’s mother had been pacing about their hab for what felt like days when the comm crystal for their room lit up, flashing urgent red. Her family had rushed to the device, crowding about the crystal and blocking Curvature’s view as the hologram flared to life.

She didn’t remember the conversation that ensued, the hushed, urgent tones exchanged between adults, words and ideas that sailed far above her head. She pushed against her parents, trying to find a way through to see her aunt. Comet Chaser sounded exhausted and anxious, and no one would tell Curvature what was happening. Her father’s umber corona kept grabbing her and gently pushing her back. She fussed, using her earth pony strength to push back against his magic. It availed her nothing except a bruised snout when she toppled after her father finally yielded, her parents parting to allow her, at last, to see.

Comet Chaser was a pegasus, her coat the pale blue of the sky in the moments just past evening twilight, her mane a deep violet streaked with silver. She was sitting up in one of the medical ward’s beds, holding her foal in her forelegs.

“Curvature,” she said, her voice tired and strained, but with a wild and fierce pride in her eyes. “This is your cousin, Dreamchaser.”

His colors were almost the same as his mother’s, but… somehow more vibrant. A deeper blue to his coat, more silver shot through his plum-colored mane. At first, she thought he was a pegasus. Then she saw the nub of horn poking out from his forehead.

“He’s an alicorn,” said Curvature’s mother, voice wavering, as though she could barely believe the sight.

Curvature stared at the foal, watching him squirm restlessly, his teal eyes alight with curiosity. She didn’t understand.

There wasn’t much of a throne room.

Back when the ship was still serving its primary purpose, the space had been the captain’s quarters. The captain, a unicorn stallion, had something of a predilection toward luxury, and the utilitarian design of most of the rest of the ship gave way here to paneled floors and walls, real wood from trees lightyears away. It was a large room—certainly larger than Curvature’s own foalhood hab elsewhere in the ship, large enough to entertain audiences, though now, save for Curvature’s entourage, it was empty. In the intervening years, since the princes had formally taken up residence aboard the Eternal Hope, it had become slightly more ornate, draped in royal purple and gold, and decorated here and there with sigils of the blazing eye and the winged galaxy, the princes’ cutie marks.

Like Horizon’s office, the back wall was a projected image, this time a view of the colony in the distance. Where once there had been one chair, now there were two daises, and upon them sat the colony’s own princes.

“Your highnesses,” intoned Green Tea, bowing her head slightly. Behind her, much closer to the door, Curvature and Far Horizon knelt. “I present to you Curvature of the Astrological Society, and Far Horizon of the Space Agency.”

Dreamchaser spoke first. “Rise,” he said. The enthusiasm in his voice was unmistakable. Curvature stood and stepped forward as Green Tea stepped aside. The kirin moved around the edge of the room, taking a seat close to the back wall in a less ornate seat halfway between each of the princes’ own.

The somniant prince was leaning forward in his seat, wings spread slightly in a mix of curiosity and excitement. He was smiling, an enthusiastic and infectious smile that Curvature almost reciprocated. He was larger than she was now. Not by much, but it seemed, at last, that his growth to full size was beginning in earnest. Dreamchaser’s teal eyes seemed to glow against the deep blue of his coat, but Curvature couldn’t meet his gaze. A sudden onrush of guilt turned her head away, toward the only other figure she could see.

Prince Stargazer wasn’t looking at her, but that came as no surprise. Stargazer rarely looked at others. His ears, at least, were still pointed in her direction, but his gaze was aimless, directed somewhere over Curvature’s shoulder, distant. Unlike his counterpart, the stellar prince leaned back upon his dais, regal and disinterested. His coat was bright white and immaculate; not the gentle off-white of Princess Celestia, but sheer, clean, almost painfully bright. His mane and tail were the color of fire, orange and red intermingling untamed, masking the fact that he was the smaller of the two.

“Curve!”

The earth pony let out an undignified squawk as she found herself grabbed by a deep blue corona and dragged forward, toward the darker alicorn. Her saddlebags slipped off, landing with a weighty thump on the floor. Dreamchaser hopped off of his throne and pulled her into a hug.

“Sun and stars, Curve,” he said warmly. “It’s been too long. I missed you.”

She raised her forelegs to return the hug. Some of the knot in her chest loosened. “Hey… Uh… I’m here on business…”

“I know,” he admitted, only a little petulantly. “But let me have this, for a sec, okay?”

His hold was firm, but restrained. She remembered the last time she’d seen him, his hug felt like it had nearly snapped her spine. He’d also been much smaller, then…

Sure enough, after a moment, Dreamchaser let go and stepped back. Curvature let out a nervous chuckle and returned to her saddlebags, clearing her throat as she opened each side.

“If it please you…” she started, but Dreamchaser spoke over her.

“Curve,” the somniant prince said, waving a hoof. “You know what would please me? Relax. There’s no pretense to uphold here. You know I don’t like it when you treat me like a prince first, family member second.”

This comment earned a reaction at last from Prince Stargazer, whose eyes flicked briefly in his counterpart’s direction before settling off again.

Curvature swallowed. “Unfortunately,” she said, “what I need to say is something that I need to say to the princes, not to my family member.”

Behind her, very faintly, she heard Horizon’s sigh of disapproval.

Prince Stargazer murmured something too quietly for Curvature to hear. Dreamchaser’s ear flicked in the stellar prince’s direction, but his only response was a slow shake of his head. In the expectant silence that followed, she reached into her bags and pulled out a single folder. As she looked up again, she could already see the way Dreamchaser’s ears pinned back.

“As you know,” Curvature began, opening the folder and holding it out toward the alicorns. It glimmered green as Green Tea’s corona grabbed it, floating it forward. “Unlike our home system, this system possesses multiple planets and satellites. Since your ascension, the… well, what appears to be the natural order of the system has been disrupted, and those bodies have fallen under your control…”

“This is about last week, isn’t it?” Dreamchaser asked, resigned.

“The gravitational fields of large bodies,” Curvature continued, trying to keep her voice firm, “have a substantial effect on each other. Princess Twilight Sparkle manages both the sun and the moon back in Equus System, and though she does have magical aid and the assistance of the princesses emeriti Celestia and Luna, she has gone on record multiple times stating that even after centuries of practice, finding a delicate balance is difficult.”

She paused. Prince Stargazer’s lips moved, and she heard, very faintly, “...lecturing us about basic physics…”

“That’s enough,” said Dreamchaser firmly to the stellar prince, before turning his attention back to Curvature.

She pressed on. “This being the case, and being that you, Prince Dreamchaser, are responsible for two bodies and five satellites, including this planet’s…” She took another deep breath. “I understand your job is difficult. I can only imagine the delicate balance of the system you’ve had dropped onto your shoulders—all I have are numbers and projections, and you have something much more intimate.”

Dreamchaser seemed to have shrunk slightly upon his dais. Prince Stargazer’s face had gone from dispassionate to slightly annoyed. The knot in Curvature’s chest began to tighten again.

“Eight days ago, it was observed that the third body’s moon slipped out of its orbit for a period of about an hour,” Curvature went on, pulling another folder from her bags and offering it to the elder kirin’s corona, which took it and passed it on. “This happened late at night locally, and while the effects weren’t noticeable to the naked eye, they were very noticeable from the observatory. The entire system wobbled in space while you… struggled to grab hold of that moon, like a top teetering on its point.”

For the first time, Stargazer spoke up, though he still refused to look at her directly. His voice stood in sharp contrast to his fiery, bright appearance; it was high and cold, a silvery tenor, and it put her in mind more of a frigid mountaintop than the sunlight he supposedly embodied. “It was an honest mistake.”

“With respect, your highnesses,” Curvature said, “whether it was an honest mistake or not is irrelevant.” She tapped the side of her saddlebags. “The Astrological Society has records on your activity going back fifteen years, and while it—while we…” She had to stop and take another breath. “I acknowledge that you’re still learning, and that you’ve had to learn a lot very quickly, the lives of thousands of ponies are in your hooves every day. An honest mistake could kill us all.”

Stargazer’s expression hardened further, but Green Tea chose this moment to step in. The elder kirin, taller than both of her charges, stepped between the twin daises and rested a hoof lightly on the stellar prince’s shoulder. “Let her speak,” she said gently.

Green Tea was attendant to the princes, or, put in terms that more accurately described her job, their handler. Few ponies were allowed as close to Dreamchaser and Stargazer as she, and she took to the job with more dignity, grace, and patience than the alicorns she served. In many ways, she seemed to embody the ideals of her kind: reserved, quiet, a pinnacle of self-control, with a legendarily long temper. Not once had Curvature ever heard of Green Tea going nirik. The princes only rarely left the ship; more often, among the ponies of the colony, Green Tea was their face and their voice, her muted amber mane and brown coat standing at odds with the two she represented.

Curvature squared her shoulders and continued. “A moment’s lapse means a planet flies away, alienated from its system, lost forever. A small blink in concentration could lead to moons colliding and sending shrapnel to who knows where. There will come a time when you don’t have to foalsit an entire star system, when every local body will settle into its new routine, but right now your attention to it is paramount.” Curvature’s gaze was steadily sliding downward, away from the princes and toward the floor. “I know you’ve heard this before. I know others have told you. I thought maybe if I came myself, it would be different. I… I just want you to understand.”

She did not dare look back up. She could practically feel the shape of the silences in front of her. Stargazer’s was seething, and Curvature felt an urge to back away, to flee from it; Dreamchaser’s was awkward, abashed, and she wished, she wished very badly, that she could go to him and tell him she didn’t mean it.

But she did mean it. She had to mean it. If she didn’t mean it, then why was she even here?

Stargazer broke the silence. “If you intended to come in here and lecture us about how to do our job—”

“No, Star,” said Dreamchaser. His voice was still firm, and Curvature could feel his intense eyes trained on the top of her head. “She’s right. Curve…” He paused, giving her a chance to reply which she did not take. “Curvature. Look at me, please.”

The knot in her chest felt like it was weighing her down horribly, but she did, eventually, bring her head up to look at the somniant prince. Dreamchaser smiled a sad smile, which sat uneasily on his face. His ears were still pinned back.

“I don’t…” He trailed off. “I don’t know quite what to say, except that you’re right. I’ve made quite a lot of screwups, and I’m in a position where any mistakes I make are, you know… a big deal. I promise it’s not for lack of trying, and I’m doing better every day. I know you’re concerned. You have every right to be concerned. But I’ll get it right this time, okay? I promise.”

His smile had turned from apologetic to hopeful. But there was something about it that bothered her. She raised a foreleg, still looking at him, and felt her hoof brush against her bags, against the last fifteen years of honest mistakes.

The knot in her chest snapped. Before she could help herself, words tumbled out of her mouth.

“Don’t give me platitudes! Don’t give me that—that look, that tone. You’re just—you’re just placating me, ameliorating me.” She stomped the floor, and her saddlebags tilted, spilling files across the carpet. “I’m trying to get you to understand and you’re up on your throne treating me like a foal—”

She knew immediately that she'd crossed a line, her hoof clapping across her mouth as Dreamchaser flinched. Despite the size difference, he seemed somehow smaller all of a sudden, like he was looking up at her rather than down. She had a flash of a memory, a much smaller Dreamchaser bouncing at her hooves, begging for her approval, and then with a flash of gentle blue the alicorn in front of her was gone.

"Dream, wait—" she began, too late.

The wing buffet caught her across the jaw before she could properly see it coming, sending her tumbling backward hooves over head. She caught herself, just barely, as her back hoof brushed against the wall. She rubbed her cheek for a moment, working her jaw to make sure nothing was broken. There was a blur of motion in front of her, and her gaze was drawn inexorably upwards to meet Stargazer's.

The alicorn loomed in front of her, and for the first time, Curvature understood, really understood his name. The prince's eyes were smoldering orange, and as they bored into her Curvature felt her whole body tremble under the terrible weight of the sun. This was why Stargazer never looked at anyone: when he saw you, really saw you, there was nothing to hide. The burning gaze of the stellar prince stripped away pretense and left guilt standing naked in its place. Unlike his counterpart, Stargazer had taken quite quickly to the natural authority that followed alicorns around, and he wielded his anger like a weapon deadlier than any blade or spell.

"How dare you?" he demanded.

Her mind was blank as she struggled to pull herself back from the intensity of his gaze. Unconsciously, she shoved herself back against the wall.

“Lest you forget,” the stellar prince snapped, “we are not here by choice. We have been elevated to this position due to the circumstances of our birth. Our horns and our wings have marked us as princes, and you have turned us into slaves. You came to another planet hoping for change, but when fate gave you alicorns, you set about re-establishing again the very thing you left behind, placing burdens on our shoulders, weighing our blundering against the experience of centuries. We are the price of your freedom—freedom to embrace what you are too afraid to release.”

Stargazer took a step forward, but, from beside her, so did Far Horizon, opening a wing and interposing it between Curvature and the prince.

“Out of the way, pegasus,” Stargazer commanded.

“I don’t think I can do that, your highness,” the pegasus replied firmly.

“My temper is directed at the mare, little pony. Do not make me direct it at you.”

Horizon’s wing was blocking Curvature’s view, but she could feel the prince’s burning stare all the same; his voice was like sunlight on snow, distant, cold, but blindingly, horribly intense. Even with her vision blocked, the earth pony raised a foreleg to cover her eyes.

“I know a thing or two about being frustrated with Curvature,” said Horizon sharply. “But at no point does striking anypony even cross my mind.”

“I do not need this insolence—”

“STARGAZER.”

The voice rang out across the room in tandem with a wave of heat. Horizon took a step closer to Curvature, keeping his wing raised. Curvature slowly lowered her foreleg. What she could make out of Stargazer indicated that his attention, too, had been pulled away by the outburst. Further forward in the room, in front of the daises, she could discern the source.

The light bent strangely around Green Tea, the elder kirin’s eyes blazing white as the space around her seemed to darken. The air around her face seemed to shimmer with heat. Looking at her hurt, somehow. To Curvature’s eyes, it seemed as though she could not decide what colors to be, flickering back and forth between her normal colors and a photo negative of herself. Through it, her eyes remained steady, solid white.

“That’s enough,” she said, with an air of finality that brooked no argument.

The stellar prince didn’t say anything right away, nor did he move. His gaze was fixed on that of Green Tea’s, and Curvature could only imagine the terrible war being waged between blazing orange and brilliant white. But he did, in the end, yield, turning his head toward the floor, expression sour. When it was clear that no more argument was forthcoming, Green Tea relaxed as well, and the light in the room slowly returned to normal as the elder kirin’s strange flickering ceased.

“I’m sorry,” Curvature said, or tried to say. It came out breathy and weak, and she could not bring herself to pull away from the wall. “I’m sorry.”

Stargazer said nothing.

Green Tea took a deep breath. “It seems we have all lost our tempers somewhat,” she admitted, though whatever had possessed her before seemed to have totally gone, and she was as mellow as she’d been when Curvature had first seen her belowdecks. “Perhaps a recess.”

“Why?” asked Stargazer, not looking at Curvature. “I am fairly certain she has made her point.”

“I’m sorry,” breathed Curvature again.

She was dimly aware of Horizon placing a hoof on her shoulder. “Are you alright? … Curvature?”

The earth pony didn’t look at him. Her eyes slid off of Stargazer and past Green Tea to the empty dais marked with the winged galaxy.

“I’m sorry, Dream. I’m so sorry…”

Curvature: The Weight of Worlds

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Curvature: The Weight of Worlds

220 AL

Here was the rub, and it was really quite simple: The relationship had drifted. Tilted off kilter, wobbled like a top teetering on its point.

It wasn’t broken, not really, or that was what Curvature told herself at any rate. It hadn’t collapsed suddenly from any malicious action on either party’s part. No. The simple fact of the matter was that she and Dreamchaser walked different paths, lived different lives. He was a prince… whatever that meant, here, lightyears away from Equestria. And she was a scientist. She had a duty. She had to care about the colony (so did he, said a part of her), and she had to care about the colony more than she cared about her relationship (so did he) because if she didn’t keep them informed they would be in danger.

That was the long and short of it. They were far from home, there was no way to call back, and they had to make do with what they had. The fact that there were suddenly alicorns in the colony actually came as something of a relief. Curvature had been too young at the time to really understand, but as she’d gotten older her parents had tried to explain it to her.

Ponies had studied other star systems for—well, for centuries, and that was a fact. And though Luna painted the skies every night, yes, the stars were still there; she worked with what she had, and she had never claimed, as some believed, that she’d ever created any. No. The stars were; and while they generally remained where they were, she was able to paint the sky anew every night by changing luminosity, density, color—to paint a canvas using existing materials. Recycled art, drawn from reality, from the work of Harmony. It was beautiful, in its way.

But belief is a hard habit to break. Ponies believed Luna created the stars, so when it was observed that, elsewhere, the planets seemed to move around their suns rather than the natural order of things, well, she had no answer, and ponies were stunned. How could Princess Luna not know?

Herd mentality, her father had said. Complacency was the worst and easiest snare. Ponykind was so used to being shepherded that learning to think for themselves out here was frightening. So when Dreamchaser and Stargazer were born, and when the planet’s rotation began to slow as Stargazer looked up to the sun and—across all that distance, as a foal—grabbed it in his corona and gently pulled it down toward the horizon, well, that was just the solar system bending to the way things ought to be. They hadn’t planned on having alicorns. But now they had them, and had to deal with them, and ponies had dealt with alicorns one way and one way only for over a thousand years.

So… princes. They were not brothers, but lifted up onto pedestals as they were, offered reverence, isolated, they had no choice but to become family. And it just didn’t seem right to talk about Prince Dreamchaser as the naggy little colt he used to be, the little adventurous idealist, the one who always coaxed Curvature into tag and hide and seek even as she was preparing her doctoral dissertation on planetary forces and the effects of magic on gravity. The system changed. Why it changed was anypony’s guess. No one thought to wonder; this was, after all, how life had always been. Even before Celestia and Luna, there had been Starswirl and the high mages of Unicornia. The sun moved around the planet. That was how things were.

And so Dreamchaser came to orbit Curvature. Distant. Always present, but always at arms’ length. And then she got her degree, and the Observatory nearly bent over backward for her brains, and now Dreamchaser wasn’t just the prince, he was also one of the ponies keeping the solar system stable. Things changed. Things became the same.

And she thought—for so long, she’d imagined—that he felt the same way. That things had to be this way. That, yes, they were family, even if distant family, but the responsibility was to the colony first and family second. They couldn’t be close, because he was a prince, and he had to focus on making sure the planets didn’t collide and the moons didn’t fall out of orbit.

But then she saw him on that throne, and he was smiling, and calm, and—

She’d always had this image of Princess Luna, though she’d been born long, long after the Lunar Princess’ so-called retirement and had never actually seen the mare. Stories were told, though, of her regality, her natural authority. Stargazer seemed to embody that ideal. And Dreamchaser—

He was still, well, chasing dreams. Still idealist. Still the mediator. Still full of hope, bouncing impatiently on the edge of his seat, waiting for the adventure.

It wasn’t fair. He had so much responsibility shoved onto his shoulders and he’d managed just fine. It was she who’d changed. And she’d missed out on so much because of it. And then she’d snapped, and said those awful things, and he teleported away—

Horizon’s wing gently slapped at her face. It didn’t hurt, but the shock was enough to pull her out of her spiraling thoughts. “Curvature!” he said, desperate, even a little angry. “For Harmony’s sake, come on, snap out of it.”

She blinked. She was seated—somewhere. Back against the wall. Far Horizon seemed to fill her vision, brow knit with concentration and worry, but when he saw her eyes focus, he pulled back with a sigh, straightening his glasses.

“There you are. Thank Celestia. You were muttering to yourself…”

“What happened?” she asked. “No,” she added. “Don’t—don’t answer that. I remember. Where is Dreamchaser?” Then, “Where are we?” Curvature looked around.

But no, she knew this room. At least, she had an idea of what this room was. The most important ponies had lived closest to the Captain’s quarters. This might even have been his hab. It was certainly fancier than the room she remembered traveling in. More space. Of course, it was empty, now, save for the messaging crystal embedded on the wall.

“Green Tea called for a recess,” Horizon explained. “Stargazer was livid, but between me and Green Tea I think we got him covered for now. Dreamchaser’s probably in his quarters. It’s only been a few minutes—the attendant left to check.”

Her ears flicked, then flattened. “I… right.”

After a moment, she added, “...Thanks. For standing up for me. For getting between me and Stargazer.”

Several expressions rushed across his face. He blushed, looking momentarily surprised before coughing and shaking his head. “Curvature,” he asked, “what the hell happened in there? I know you’ve got a temper, but you just spoke out to a prince! And your cousin!”

“I know.”

“I thought you might be able to talk sense into him, not scare him. What is wrong with you?”

“I know.”

There was a pause. Curvature rubbed at her face for a moment, but Horizon gently moved her hooves aside, pulling a kerchief from his vest and rubbing at her cheeks, not roughly, but—a delicate touch he was not.

“Oof. Hey,” she complained.

“Sorry, just…” He pulled back, putting the kerchief away. “You were crying.” For once, the pegasus looked abashed. “Seriously, Curvature, what happened? I’m worried. And not even angry-worried, just… worried.”

She took a deep breath, trying to meet his eyes, which were, behind the lenses he wore, the softest she’d ever seen them. But she couldn’t hold his gaze, turning her head to the side and staring at the matte white of the door-side corner.

“I… It’s complicated.” When, in the corner of her eye, Horizon looked to be about to protest, she raised a hoof. “I’m trying, okay? I’m trying. It’s… I guess I’ve just come to a lot of realizations about myself, and under the pressure, I… snapped. At him. Because I thought he could take it.”

“Clearly not,” Horizon muttered dryly.

“Obviously,” she replied in the same tone. “Look, I… He’s my family. I should have treated him like family. Instead I treated him like…”

Another quiet pause.

“I treated him like a prince, and I expected a prince,” she said. “Or… what I was told to expect, what everypony from Equus Prime expected. Alicorns are a certain way. Dignified. Regal. But Dream… Dream’s a gentle soul. And I should have known he’d still be a gentle soul.”

Horizon sat back on his haunches, fluffing his wings. One hoof rose to take off his glasses, and he pulled the kerchief back out of his vest to try and clean them, paying no mind to the tear stains. “So what we have here,” he said finally, “is a failure to communicate.”

“I’m not a diplomat, Horizon,” she said weakly. “I’m not. I’m a scientist. I’m not good with ponies. I’m good with numbers, and models, and projections. Those are controllable, those are easy. Ponies are… complicated, unpredictable, irrational.” She scoffed. “As I so keenly demonstrated.”

She took a deep breath. “I… need to give him what he deserves.”

“And what does he deserve?” Horizon asked, putting his glasses back on his snout.

She closed her eyes. Here, elsewhere in this ship, she’d grown up with him, at least for a while. At least until actual structures were set up for the colony. They were both only children, and so they bonded—like siblings. She wasn’t just his cousin. She was his big sister. He looked up to her, tried to pattern himself off of her, even though he knew he wasn’t as smart, even though he had wings and a horn and she didn’t. Sitting on that throne, he still wanted to be just like her.

She thought about the throne room. How the tension between Dreamchaser and Stargazer had been almost tangible. The constant muttering. The admonishments. Dreamchaser and Stargazer had had to think of themselves as siblings, but Stargazer wasn’t his brother, not really, and he resented being put on that spot. So when the chance came for Dreamchaser to have a sibling again, a real sibling, a sister, the sister he’d grown up with, of course he’d take it, of course he’d try to appeal to her, to promise he could do better—

Her eyes opened. “I’m giving him his family back,” she said. “Starting with me.”

The princes’ quarters were on the same deck of the ship, though some distance from the so-called throne room. Their rooms were next to each other, but different and distinct as the alicorns themselves. Like their guards, one door stood red and gold with the burning, stylized eye-shaped sun; the other silver and lavender, emblazoned with the winged galaxy. There were guards outside each, two per door, and all four eyed Curvature with suspicion as she approached.

“You’re not supposed to be here, citizen,” said the guard closest to her, one of Dreamchaser’s. “These quarters belong to Their Highnesses.”

Behind her, she heard Horizon suck air in through his teeth. “Does it have to be right now?” he whispered.

Curvature stood her ground. “My name is Curvature. I’m here to speak with my cousin Dreamchaser.”

This time it was one of the somniant guards that reacted. “You will address him as Prince Dreamchaser—and in any case, His Highness is not seeing guests at the moment.” She tapped on the door to demonstrate, which let out a discordant beep. The sound of a locked door.

“He’ll want to see me.” Curvature stared daggers at the mare.

But the somniant guards weren’t easily intimidated. “His Highness is not receiving guests at this time. Please leave.”

She grit her teeth—then let out a long, slow breath. “I—alright, different approach. Just ask him. Please, just ask him. It’s—” She hesitated. “Tell him—Tell him that I’m sorry… for everything. And that I’d like to catch up with him. If he wants.”

The other somniant guard, this one a stallion, carefully raised a hoof to his ear. His compatriot shot him a dirty look, but he spoke into the communicator on his fetlock all the same. “Your Highness, there’s a Curvature…?”

Almost immediately, the door slid open with an acquiescing, pleasant hum. The guards blinked, with the mare in particular looking abashed. “I… Right this way, then, please.”

“I’ll stay out here,” Horizon said. “I… It’s not my business. But… Good luck, Curvature.”

She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

The somniant guard didn’t have a chance to follow. The door slid shut behind Curvature and she heard the quiet hiss of the door lock engaging.

The room was dark. Painted in the same deep blue of the rest of the somniant prince’s regalia, but more than that it was dark—the lights were dim, and painting everything in a faintly eerie glow. She stood in the long hallway at the entrance to the luxurious hab, and swallowed.

“Dream…?” she called out.

Only one door opened, at the end of the entry hall. She obediently followed, carefully putting one hoof in front of the other in the blue-tinted darkness, until she reached the door and turned in. If she remembered this part of the ship right, this would have been the master bedroom for the luxury habs, and…

The first thing she saw was the orrery. Unlike the one that hung in the Space Agency, this one was a hologram, spinning slowly, suspended from the ceiling like a chandelier, glowing faintly in a dim goldish color. The lighting wasn’t any better in here, but the extra illumination from the orrery tinted things a little closer to true white light and made the shadows a little less leery.

Dreamchaser was on the bed. She had often wondered how he slept, or how a prince was supposed to sleep. She expected something grand and luxurious, but Dreamchaser’s room struck her as strangely spartan. The bed was sized up, probably a queen size originally but now a king size, presumably designed so that Dreamchaser would grow into it. As it was, he still looked a little small on it by himself. He was lying belly-down, hooves gripping around his pillow and comforter and bunchign them up near his head. Only one eye was visible, which was looking at her uncertainly. He said nothing.

She shifted from one side to the other. “I… Hey.”

When she waited, he still gave her nothing.

“Can I join you?”

No answer wasn’t a no, per se. So she trotted over, underneath the orrery, and climbed up onto the bed so she was sitting next to him. One of her hooves reached out and settled on his shoulder, and he didn’t protest.

“So,” she started, still feeling awkward. What happened to the fire that she’d had outside the door? Now she was here and she didn’t know what to say. At least in the throne room she’d had her documents. What should she say? Agh, but sometimes the simplest thing is the right thing. “I’m… sorry.”

Finally he stirred, turning his head to the side and resting it on the pillow. From there, he looked down at her, blinking rapidly, eye still slightly teary.

“I had…” Curvature continued. “No, that’s not fair. Not just me. All of us have this. But right now it’s about me, okay? I had… expectations of you. Expectations that have been placed on you. Ponies… fall into habit, right? We take the easiest path. And we just… I think we just fell back into our own ways, ways that aren’t fair to you or to Stargazer. And we’re going to change that, I promise. And it’s going to start with me.”

Finally, the alicorn sat up. She kept her hoof on his back, lightly rubbing between the bases of his wings. “I… thought that it was more important that we weren’t family first. I thought that we needed to talk about the colony, and that there wasn’t any room for us to be friends, or for us to be… you know.” One hind leg, still hanging off the edge of the bed, kicked awkwardly. “We were so close when we were foals. But then we grew up, and I thought, well, responsibility comes first. And it’s not like I shouldn’t be responsible, but…”

She looked up at the orrery.

“I thought what you were carrying was just the weight of worlds. And that’s a lot of weight. An impossible weight. I can’t imagine what that’s like, to have to worry about all of that angular momentum and orbit lines and the effects of gravity. To me, those are just numbers, points of data on a graph, but to you, they’re real, they’re the here and now. And I thought for sure that that was all you had. But you had more than that, because you had all of this responsibility and no outlet.”

She rubbed at her head with her other hoof. “But even Princess Twilight had friends. And I’m sure Princess Luna and Princess Celestia did too, back when they were in charge. We just never saw it. We saw what we wanted. And we tried to shape you into being just like the alicorns back home, without realizing what that meant, without realizing that you’re not the same and we shouldn’t treat you like you are. And we all have to apologize for that. But I have to apologize because I wasn’t giving you what you… what you needed, because I was so blinded by what I thought I needed.

“I thought… to be an adult, to be responsible to the colony, I had to hold you to task. And it’s not that you don’t have a lot on your plate… But… You should have time to be you. Especially now, when you’re still, you know… young. For alicorn standards. I shouldn’t have let my responsibility take our relationship apart. So… I’m sorry, okay?”

Curvature took a deep breath. “So… I don’t know what this means. Going forward. There’s a lot of precedent, even if most of it is just in our… what, our cultural subconscious? We have our biases, our predilections, that we need to overcome. But ponies follow the herd. So if I have to be the one to step out of line to show them the better way… if I have to show them a path away from what we’ve always known… I’ll do it. And I’ll start by being the sister you should have had. Okay? I don’t… We’ll have to figure out what that means. It’s not going to be easy. But I want to try, okay?”

The words finally stopped tumbling out of her mouth, and she gave a hopeful smile up to the alicorn. After a moment, he returned it, wrapping the earth pony in a massive wing and holding her tight to his side.

“Hide and seek?” he asked, only a little bashfully.

When she returned home, Tidbits mewled at her petulantly. She knelt and ran a hoof along his fur, and the tabby purred, mollified, if only slightly. “There we go, Bitty Kitty. I’m sorry I left you home all day. I’ll make it up to you, okay?”

She stood. “But first I need to lay down, okay? I had a long day too, Bitty Kitty. Probably longer than yours. And at least you have your automatic food dispenser.”

Tidbits replied with a long trill and a flick of the tail. She gently booped her hoof against his nose, earning another trill as the cat turned and padded away.

Actually, she decided, food sounded better than rest. So she dropped her saddlebags off on the bed and ducked into the kitchen.

In the bag, her terminal vibrated once.

Curvature,

I’m in the process of arranging meetings with relevant councilors and other ponies of note. If I have to drag them in here by their tails, I’ll do it—but I might want your help. And you’ll need to be there anyway.

I know you don’t like meetings and the council has been pretty rough on you in the past, but I think rough is what we need right now. Harmony knows you deserve a go at them for all the times they’ve yelled at you in the past—and you’ve got more than enough reasons to yell.

I thought about what you said, about how we need to shake ourselves out of our habits. We’re on the frontier. I told you as much. And it turns out that a lot of the stuff that worked back on Equus Prime isn’t going to work out here, and we should stop trying to fit alicorns into square shaped holes and such.

It’s gonna be a bumpy road. You know how some of these ponies were noble families back in Equestria, and nobles are famous for nothing if not sticking their heads in the sand. But we need to do this right, and right isn’t the same thing as easy—not by a long shot.

Thanks for the wakeup call. And on the subject of calls, I phoned into the Observatory—looks like things are back on track up in space. In fact, things are lining up better than they ever have. We’ll have some pretty neat planetary alignment coming up in the next few months, and the system looks to be settling into a self-sustaining orbit again.

Whatever you said, it’s like you took the weight of worlds off of Dreamchaser’s shoulders. Literally, too, I guess.

Anyway, business aside… I’m sure we’ll both have headaches after the meeting. You wanna get drinks afterward? Maybe a bite to eat? I’m not a bad chef and I don’t know if you’ve ever had pegasus cuisine.

Give it some thought, huh?

Far Horizon

Supplement [A]: On Pony FTL Travel

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475 AL | 2486 CE

09.21.86 18:31 | TERRA Transcript Starts [poweron]
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18:32 | TERRA Transcript Pauses [waiting]

HPOCAMP [Hyper-optimized Precision Orientation Across Multiple Portals]

[Work-in-progress excerpt, translated from data logs shared with us by Princess Sparkle; check footnotes for additional information. - H. Davis]

[Translator’s Note: Where referenced, pony units have been translated to human SI units for ease of understanding. Also, yes, somehow when I translated the name of their tech it turned into a horse pun. I swear to God I didn’t stretch this—the acronym in Ponish really is a play on their word for “hippocamp.” If anything, I had to stretch to maintain the pun—it doesn’t really roll off the tongue in English and I couldn’t think of a way to render it, as, say, CPNY.]

The central magics that power and orient HPOCAMP drives originate from the genius of Princesses Twilight and Luna respectively, but the actual hardware owes its design to a team of hippocampus/hippogriff engineers.

HPOCAMP’s basic principles are rooted in unicorn teleportation magic, for which Princess Twilight always had a notable gift. Teleportation is natively faster-than-light, but neither subjectively (that is, to the subject) or objectively (to the outside world) instantaneous, i.e., there is an observable span of time where the subject does not appear to “be” anywhere; the “faster than light” trait of teleportation only becomes observable over substantial, usually intercontinental, teleports. During the teleportation, the caster temporarily occupies an alternate, spatiotemporally compressed plane, classically known as “between,” but, once formal work on HPOCAMP began nearly 250 years ago¹, has since been relabeled “arcane space.”

The precise nature of arcane space is not well-understood as, by definition, one cannot spend an indefinite amount of time inside it; but it has been observed as a generally bright “tunnel” through which the teleportee travels, with the direction one is heading glowing brightly in the color of the caster’s corona², while the direction “behind” glows more dimly. It has been established that arcane space is essentially created and destroyed by the act of teleportation, meaning that it only exists while occupied and ceases to be when not in use. As a happy consequence of this, there is no fear of collision with other ships or stellar bodies when using HPOCAMP, as for all intents and purposes the ship and its occupants are isolated in a personal pocket dimension for the duration of the translation. Moreover, it is impossible to be stranded in arcane space; teleportation spells must by definition have an exit point. As a general rule, however, information, even fundamentally entangled³ particles, cannot independently enter or exit arcane space—while translating, subjects are explicitly isolated from reality.

In a fleet of ships, HPOCAMPs can be linked together to ensure entry and exit at relatively identical points, though such ships will not exist simultaneously in the same arcane space (i.e, they cannot perceive each other). This is a departure from the normal properties of teleportation, as all subjects of a singular spell travel arcane space together; however, in the case of HPOCAMP translation, strictly speaking, multiple spells are cast in parallel so as not to metaphorically put all eggs in one basket.

It is impossible for a teleportation spell to “telefrag”⁴ any participants or would-be victims. Normal teleportation spells will fizzle⁵ if the subject(s) cannot occupy the intended space or if the intended space is already occupied⁶. In the case of long-range teleports in general, and HPOCAMP in particular, if the intended space is occupied, subjects are shunted an arbitrary but safe distance away into space they can safely occupy. While such “near misses'' tend to be mildly traumatic for the subject of a standard spell, modern HPOCAMP engineering offloads the magical and kinetic strain into specially designed sinks; metaphorically, it is akin to a train stopping a short distance from its designated stop and asking the occupants to walk—inconvenient, but not necessarily dangerous.

Nevertheless, arcane space does not follow conventional thermodynamic or thaumidynamic⁷ laws, and without proper shielding, exposure over long periods can result in one’s inherent magic becoming incoherent and unusable, not unlike a radio broadcast distorting into static over sufficient distances⁸. Eye strain has also been noted as a side effect when accessed via ponies with bright coronas, so eye protection is recommended for those who intend to observe the space itself for sufficient spans of time. Furthermore, despite its appearance, travel within arcane space does not necessarily constitute travel in a straight line in real space, given inconsistent spatiotemporal compression between planes. Put another way, when teleportation is involved, the shortest distance between any two points may not necessarily be a straight line.

Thus the navigational aspect of HPOCAMP was devised by Princess Luna, whose affinity for the stars (and the charting thereof) and ability to seamlessly navigate her own personal “arcane space” in the Dreaming granted her a particular talent for finding a way through seemingly impossible mazes. All ships with installed HPOCAMPs have an arcanotech map that intelligently charts efficient routes through arcane space.

Though teleportation in principle is not a difficult spell, not all unicorns can teleport; the spell requires both a fair amount of magical stamina and that the user have a firm grasp of their intended destination, unless they are aiming at a “teleportation beacon” (itself the result of a highly complex spell). It is widely believed (though this has been proven untrue) that only those with a magical talent can become efficient teleporters. The fact remains that though the spell is widely known and inherently safe, few unicorns possess both the thaumic stamina and the necessary ability to envision their destination.

The earliest drives were powered primarily by stores of Princess Twilight’s magic, and thus the traversed arcane space was always noted to be a particularly soothing shade of magenta. Most recent personal HPOCAMPs are efficient enough to be charged by small groups or even singular ponies, allowing the traversed space to be any color, or even a spectrum of colors.

As the name implies, travel through HPOCAMP technically constitutes repeated small jumps through arcane space. The incredible distances between stars necessitate long stays in arcane space, and early colonizers did not know the potential effects of long-term extraplanar exposure. Rather than take the risk, early HPOCAMP models necessarily spent periods in and out of arcane space, dropping into deep space between stars both to recharge the drive and to give those on board a reprieve. As technology advances, Equus ships are able to better shield themselves from the pure magical energy of arcane space, as well as set up long-range teleportation beacons, allowing ships to travel faster and in fewer jumps.

Notably, despite being charged with a tremendous amount of magical energy, the very first HPOCAMP model, used aboard the Eternal Hope, had to be regularly recharged throughout the voyage, and ponies aboard were asked to donate small portions of their magic during regular physical checkups in order to keep the drive operating at full capacity. In effect, though this is somewhat romanticized, that first voyage was literally powered by ponies wishing to travel faster than light. It was also notably the slowest drive, taking slightly over a year to travel from Equus Prime to the closest star with a suitable planet for habitation, some six lightyears away. Even by the time the Eternal Hope had arrived at its destination, marked improvements had been made to the technology; by even a century later, the prototype HPOCAMP that moved the first pony settlers to another word was considered a fossil by comparison.

Some claim to hear the sound of the drive spooling up as a very distorted “shoo be doo,”⁹ but this is subjective and just as many cannot discern the sound. Nevertheless, the drive having been designed partially by seaponies¹⁰ and iterated upon endlessly by successive generations of hippogriff engineers, some prefer calling HPOCAMP drive translations “shoobies” rather than the more traditional “jumps,” “poofs,” or “pops” (themselves derived from slang for unicorn teleportation).

In comparison to human FTL drives, HPOCAMP drives are generally larger and less sleek, requiring more space and generating more heat than human drives of comparable power, but drawing less energy from the ship itself, relying instead on internal batteries which can be recharged by the latent or active magic of any Equus-native creature. In general, HPOCAMP is increasingly more efficient than human drives the longer the intended trip, while human drives are more efficient for shorter trips. Efforts to engineer HPOCAMP technology usable by humanity are underway as part of Princess Twilight’s technology-sharing initiative.

¹[TN: They base their years on time passage on Equus Prime kind of like our galactic standard references Earth. You probably know this, but it’s pretty shocking that their years line up almost perfectly with our own. Strictly speaking, I think we drift by a couple fractions of a second, and they don’t have leap years because the whole geocentrism thing lets them define their own time, but we generally average out to about the same. I think there’s talk of us trying to establish timescales we can use together, but for now just assume their year is our year—let the historians and scientists argue about the accuracy.]

²[TN: “Corona” as in the glow around a star, not in the sense of a crown—though it is part of a phrase that refers to a unicorn’s horn. It’s the literal term Equestrians use to describe the magical glow unicorns have—can also be read as “aura” or “radiance” or “brilliance” etc. depending on context; diminutive variations of this word seem to be common unicorn names; think, say, Sparkle, Shimmer, Glimmer, Glow, or maybe Luster; seems to be used here as shorthand for the color of a pony’s magic, even for pegasi and earth ponies. Adorable trivia: They describe pregnant ponies as glowing not unlike we do in English, except that the word they use is one that otherwise refers only to magic. “The miracle of life,” eh?]

³[TN: “Fundamental entanglement” is their term for what we call quantum entanglement. So close, but so far.]

⁴[TN: “Telefrag” is our word, which I inserted for convenience—the original language dances around the idea, but they don’t have a singular word for trauma caused by two things trying to occupy the same space, presumably because their magic literally doesn’t allow them to do that. When I told my Equestrian equivalent that we actually had a word for that idea, she seemed surprised and a little disturbed. Made me feel bad. Note to self: Ponies are really good at the whole puppy eyes thing.]

⁵[TN: The actual term used is a form of onomatopoeia—it seems that a spell failing to cast really does make a sound not dissimilar to blowing a fuse.]

⁶[TN: There is an unspecific, arbitrary definition for what counts as “occupied space.” According to Princess Sparkle, unicorn scholars have been arguing about micromatter for centuries, but the upshot is that teleportation magic seems to be “smart” enough to distinguish between “empty space” (which doesn’t exist, of course, even in a vacuum) and “space that might as well be empty”—the point is that a HPOCAMP teleport can’t drop you on top of another ship, an asteroid, or even some unfortunate EVA victim in the wrong place at the wrong time. The magic actually can’t hurt anyone.]

⁷[TN: Literally “laws-of-how-magic-moves.” It’s hard to transcribe the native word they use for measuring magic, so we’ve taken to calling the unit “thaum” and anything related to measured magic “thaumic” or some derivative—we got the term from an old fantasy book, don’t sweat the details. As Equestrians define them, thaums can function like Joules, newtons, or volts depending on the context—I’m told it’s giving our physicists migraines. But to dig a meme up from its 500-year-old grave: It’s magic; I ain’t gotta explain shit.]

⁸[TN: This is their metaphor, not mine—it seems Equestria developed radio and then started making a beeline for networked terminals without stopping at TV on the way; doubly strange because they developed film and cinematic theaters, they just never thought to put them together like we did.]

⁹[TN: That’s as close as I can come to transcribing the onomatopoeia. Ponies like to use sounds to describe things and they can make phonemes we just can’t. As far as “shoo be do” goes, it seems like some kind of inside joke—whenever I ask an Equestrian, they break into giggles, but I don’t think the joke translates across cultures. We’ll just have to chalk that one up to “you had to have been there.” I did my best with “shoobies,” but translation is a game of context as much as it is one of correctness.]

¹⁰[TN: “Seapony” is a made-up word. In context it is an adorable diminutive of their equivalent of “hippocamp”—think of it like slang or shorthand. It’s surprisingly informal for this type of document, but not rude or disrespectful. It’s a pun that doesn’t really translate, but it contains idioms for “ocean” and “pony,” and “seapony” felt like the best way to preserve the intent. A more literal rendering might be something like “pocampie.” I dunno, I like “seapony” better.]

19:11 | TERRA Transcript Resumes [usercall]

Yes, Hayden?

Understood. The order has been placed and your work saved.

You have a message pending from Princess Twilight Sparkle. I believe she wishes to take you up on the opportunity for the interview. Shall I affirm your continued interest as well?

Understood.

Enjoy your meal, Hayden. Let me know if you need anything else.

USER: HDavis
SESSION SUSPENDED [”I’ll be back after dinner, Terra.”]

19:13 | TERRA Transcript Pauses [waiting]

Gregory of Raven's Landing: Primaries

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Gregory of Raven’s Landing: Primaries

275 AL

His terminal was ringing.

Gregory shot up on reflex, bashing his head against the machinery above him with a resounding clang and a spike of pain. He cursed under his breath, staggering backward out of the maze of machinery that constituted the piece of the HPOCAMP drive to where he’d left the terminal, sitting idly on the workbench by the wall.

Once he was sure he was in range, he waved a talon and grumbled, “Answer it!” before bringing his claw up to rub at the spot on his head that hurt worst.

Gideon’s hologram flickered into view over the terminal’s screen. “Gregory, where are you?”

He flushed a bit under his feathers. “I’m at the workshop.”

“The workshop?” Gideon seemed incredulous. The image flickered, the brown-feathered head scowling in displeasure. “Do you know what time it is? We’re supposed to be departing in a couple hours. Did you spend an entire night on your stupid antique?”

“It’s—what?” Gregory scrambled forward to grab the terminal. As he picked it up, Gideon’s image faded, returning to two dimensions on the flat surface. Gregory’s thumb talon swiped down from the top. “It’s seven… oh, flockmother.”

“Don’t you flockmother me, you birdbrain.” Gideon drew a claw down across his face. “It’s fine. It’s fine. You can sleep once we’re underway. Just… go make sure you’re packed and dressed, okay? The Papilion is already docked and ready for our departure after your speech.”

He was still muttering when he hung up. Gregory put the terminal down, trying to brush his pale-grey plumage back into something presentable and coming away with grease stains on his talons. Well, he had time for a shower, anyway.

The sun was rising as he emerged from his little workshop at colony’s edge. He paused and took a deep breath of the chill mountain air as a way to clear his head, then raised a talon up over his eyes to hide the worst of the glare as his eyes followed the sun. Yes, it was about seven. Curses!

He fumbled for his terminal again as he took off, flying back to his home near the center of the city. Thought I’d set an alarm. What happened? Did I really forget? Today of all days?

Without looking up, he ducked under a small flock of griffons headed the other way.

Calendar, calendar… there it is. I didn’t—Oh, there it is, that’s why. You birdbrain, you can’t set an hour reminder for this sort of thing!

Raven’s Landing spread out beneath and around him. Ponies preferred to build their colonies on plains, with plenty of grazing space. Something about being surrounded by nature, which was important to them even as they put down new metallic roots powered by arcanotech, taking new worlds and twisting them into reflections of Equestria they’d left behind. Not so with griffon colonies.

Oh, griffons built their homes out of metal, too, and there was no shortage of arcanotech, at least not without that particular, slightly roughshod griffon tweak here and there. But griffons built their colonies into mountains and near crevices, like the ancient kingdom back home. Sightlines, visibility of prey, a feeling of pride and domination—all things critical to the griffon worldview, and even on an alien world under an alien sun, griffons would exert control when, where, and how they could find it.

Not that they were obsessed with the old world and the old ways. No; they were out here because they wanted to get away from such things. It was just that sometimes old habits died hard, and griffons were nothing if not stubborn. Equestria had been a cultural melting pot for centuries, and griffons had been among the first races pulled into Princess Twilight’s eclectic mix of cultures. This wasn’t just a griffon colony, just mostly a griffon colony. Some of Gregory’s grandparents had been ponies. Well, legal grandparents, anyway, there had been adoption somewhere along the way.

There was room, now, for colonists to start having individual homes or hobby spaces like Gregory’s isolated little workshop. Some had already drilled out parts of the canyon wall nearby for nesting space. But Gregory had grown up in the middle of the city, at the top of the tallest building in the residential sector, and even if he lived alone now, he didn’t want to lose out on this view.

He landed on the embarkation pad on the eighth story, grabbing his terminal and swiping it up against the glass. There was a compliant ding, and he pushed inside as the door slid soundlessly out of his way. Most of the early morning traffic was already passed, but he did slide by one of his changeling neighbors, chittering animatedly to their unicorn companion. The ‘ling smiled a toothy sort of smile, and Gregory waved, though it was mostly a token greeting. The changeling might have said something, but he was already hustling past at speed.

He tumbled into his unit with a frustrated groan. “Shower, shower, shower, then clothes… Thank the spirits that I already packed, at least… Birdbrain, idiot, next time pay attention…”

His closet was halfway open and he was already reaching for the tailored suit when he hesitated, noticing again the grease tarnishing his plumage, and he gave himself a glance over. Eugh. No, don’t touch the suit, he told himself. Just get into the shower first.

Normally he sang in the shower. Part of his family history might have included a few songbird griffons, though until the last century or so no griffon “worthy of the name” would have ever put that in their genealogy. But not now. His brain was racing.

At least most of the actual preparation was already done. HPOCAMPs were over fifty years old at this point, and what had once been a trip of several months was now just a matter of a couple weeks plus change, accounting for dropout time and potential recharges. But space travel was still space travel, and so most of what Gregory would need was already aboard the jumpship that would take them from Raven’s Landing all the way back to Equus Prime. Him and his entourage, which basically just meant Gideon, and whatever griffons were coming along for security.

Last time there’d been a summit, nearly a decade ago, it had been Gideon getting on the ship. And he’d had an entourage of a dozen, and more than just guards. But time passed and, well... the political climate changed. There was still plenty of love for the homeworld, but the griffons of Raven’s Landing strove to live in the here and now, to look to the future. So the position had sort of fallen into Gregory’s lap, though he had only a passing interest in politics and probably only stood a chance because he was friends with Gideon beforehand. And Gideon came because... well, Gideon actually liked the hobnobbing.

He was out of the shower faster than he’d have liked, but as he brushed the condensation away from the mirror he had to admit he’d cleaned up pretty well. Stylize the plumage and get his rear half properly brushed and no one would be able to tell that, thirty minutes ago, he’d been tail-deep in an old stellar travel engine.

But, his brain continued, going over the script as rehearsed so many times by so many griffons, appearances were still important. Press mattered, and on this planet, the press was booming. Griffons might have gotten over their… what, their territorial aggression back when Equestria opened its gates and the Council of Friendship had started formal international relations, but if there was one thing they still valued, it was space. Most of this continent had griffons on it now, and the network architecture was expanding. There’d be griffons (and, he thought, let’s be fair, changelings and ponies and probably the occasional kirin) watching as he and his predecessor hopped up into the jumpship and zipped off back to Equus Prime, and there were appearances to consider.

So he had to fuss with the suit and the necktie (at least they’d bothered to give him something tan to play nice with his feathers and fur), and even though everything practical was already aboard the ship, he still had to have a suitcase with his terminal to look “sufficiently professional.”

But, he admitted even as he groused, it wasn’t every day that you got to go back to the homeworld to hang with the princess. Well, hang with might have been the wrong phrase. But it was the spirit of the thing. A meeting from colonies. All the colonies, all thirteen of them. And he got to represent Raven’s Landing.

For a moment he stopped again, wondering how he’d ended up in this position. He was a mechanic by trade. He didn’t even like politics. But, then, he supposed, most griffons didn’t, and to the griffs on the committee, if somegriff had the patience to dig around in a 50-year-old ancient HPOCAMP for fun, then surely that griff had the patience to deal with the pony princess. Even if he was a little young to be playing politics. Even if he had no formal training.

Besides, he had Gideon help write his speeches.

His talons fumbled as he tried to straighten his tie. Maybe he wasn’t ready for this.

But his terminal was already ringing again. He picked it up and the Incoming Call message shifted smoothly into Gideon’s face. The tawny had already gotten into his own suit, brushing his plumage out into something professional. He was at least a decade Gregory’s senior, but his face retained at least some of the youthful charm that had won him the same seat Gregory now occupied the last time there’d been a colonial summit.

But privately he’d told Gregory that he never wanted to go again. Well, too bad for him—but at least this he only had to write the speeches.

“You coming yet?”

“I’m just about done,” Gregory said, tilting the terminal to show himself off.

“Hey, looking pretty good there, birdbrain. Alright, security birds are on their way out there to escort you to the port. There’s already a crowd and the cameras are rolling, so let’s get this show on the road and make it a good one. You got my message?”

Gregory rolled his eyes. “Yes, I got the speech.” He hadn’t practiced it, but Gideon didn’t need to know that detail. He’d memorized it, at least. “I’m gonna head out. See you in a few.”

He closed the call and slid the terminal into his saddlebag, then pulled it up and got it settled. It made his suit chafe against the joining point of his body and he groaned. Just gotta keep up appearances, gotta give a speech about the hope and future of Raven’s Landing, and get aboard a jumpship without making too much of an ass of himself.

Gideon had done this once. How hard could it be, really?

Once upon a time, the griffons had a king.

He united us under a singular banner. All the flocks, all the warring tribes, united under a single cause, serving a single leader who brought great prosperity to the highlands.

Of course, we all know how that turned out. Grover couldn’t keep the power or wealth he’d amassed. And the glory of the griffon kingdom faded. Not lost in some great war with the yaks as our ancestors might have longed for—but slowly ground away over time, as we strove to hang on tight to the wealth and power and prestige slipping out of our grasp.

And that turned us miserable, and being miserable turned us into misers, and for years we were miserable, angry, and poor as dirt in the highlands. And ponies saved us.

I see that look in your eye. I hear that grumble in the crowd. Even centuries later, knowing that griffons owe their success to ponies ruffles feathers who still cling so resolutely to griffon pride. But we are here, today, standing where we are, on this planet over ten lightyears away from the world our forebears were born on—we are here today because of ponies, and not merely because of our own strength.

Oh, yes, we’ve hewn the stone of Raven’s Landing by our own strength and with our own talons! But even then, we are not merely griffons. Among you are changelings and kirin. Among you are ponies. Raven’s Landing is an extension of Griffonstone, and Griffonstone owes its newfound prosperity to the goodwill of ponies and the providence of their Harmony.

What we have built, we have built for ourselves. Already, settlements are popping up all over the southern continent as we spread to take hold of this new world, not even fifty years settled. A great hunt! A great conquering! And as we have been shown, as griffons have been taught, a bounty is best shared and not hoarded, for the whole flock grows in might and mind!

So I stand before you today, two hundred and seventy-five years after the liberation of the Mare in the Moon, to say that we of Raven’s Landing will share of our bounty with Equus and with all of our brother and sister colonies amidst all the stars! Our strength, our cleverness, our shrewdness, all of these are made more when we extend our talons in friendship rather than hoard them for ourselves!

So Raven’s Landing shall answer the call of our fatherland! And when I step on the surface of Equus, I will represent all of you in establishing what Grover could not—a lasting legacy for griffon and pony alike!

He sank backward into the seat with a sigh as the seatbelts snapped around him with mechanical precision. One talon came up to rub between his eyes as the ship around him began to shudder and lift off.

“All set, lads?”

The Papilion’s pilot was a pony, a chipper unicorn stallion with a brogue that Gregory couldn’t place. He wasn’t a native of Raven’s Landing; by that accent, he was probably Equus-native.

“Asking to be polite, are you?” Gregory opened one eye to watch the stallion, whose attention was firmly on the controls, hooves and horn manipulating the ship with a precision that boggled Gregory’s sleepless mind.

He and Gideon, alongside the four taciturn guardsgriffons there mostly for effect, had been greeted by this stallion, wearing a huge smile and bowing gently, just inside the airlock, and they’d made a beeline from there straight to the bridge, passing through utilitarian hallways and past several redundant airlocks. Until he’d settled down in his seat, he’d been concerned the princesses had sent him an uncomfortable junker. That turned out to have been a needless worry; as a political figure, and as an invitee of the Princess, there was something to be said for the luxurious seats and excellent view.

“Once we’re out of atmo,” the pilot continued, yellow coat and green corona reminding Gregory vaguely of lemon, “you’ll be good to head back to your personal quarters. ETA is about ten days, so there’s plenty of time to get comfy.”

The ship was already pointed upward and Gregory could feel the way the artificial gravity and inertial dampeners kicked in to keep the local sense of “down” pointed toward the floor. Reflexively, for a moment, his wings spread, but he grumbled a bit and shook his head, folding them back up.

Gideon was still wheezing behind him. Even over the sound of the engine and the omnipresent light twinkling sound of the unicorn pilot’s corona, Gregory could hear the breathless, gasping laughter of his advisor.

“Shut up,” Gregory muttered. “It’s not like anygriff will remember, anyway.”

“Oh, they’ll remember.” Gideon chuckled a wheezy sort of chuckle. “They’ll use it to take the mickey out of you whenever they get the chance. You know us griffons—always willing to point talons when we can make fun of someone else.”

It wasn’t that Gregory didn’t believe. Griffons were a stubborn lot, but over the course of generations even they could learn that the philosophy espoused by Princess Twilight, the Harmony that almost tangibly radiated outward from Canterlot, was in their best interest. But that didn’t make the message seem any less cheesy.

Gregory preferred to work with his own talons. Physical things were things he could understand. Even magic had rules and could be measured and tamed by those without horns. The HPOCAMP in his warehouse was testament to that. But great speeches weren’t made of material things; they were made of the spirit, and Gregory had never been sure about spirit.

Gregory shook his head. “Whatever. You—pilot. I never caught your name.”

“That’ll be Solar Streak, your excellency.” A pause, as the stallion manipulated a few buttons. “There we are. The spinning sensation will pass once we’re in zero gravity and the artificial gravity can stop fighting the planet for which way should be down, if you follow.” Apparently content to let the arcanotech pilot itself for a while, Solar Streak swiveled around, still secured to his own chair. “Ever traveled by HPOCAMP before?”

“No,” said Gregory. “But I know the theory.”

“He’s got a fossil of a drive locked up in his workshop planetside,” Gideon added.

Solar’s eyes widened.

“I like to tinker,” Gregory admitted, waving a claw dismissively. “I was an engineer before the colonial council strong-armed me into being the politician du jour. Griffons will do everything in their power to make the actual running of things someone else’s problem. Not big centralized government types, us, you know. We’re lucky we even have a governor.”

“If you say so,” said Solar thoughtfully. “Well, it’s pretty painless, and the drive’s charge should get us there without having to recharge in deep space. Once we’re in arcane space, there’ll be some filters put over the viewports to reduce eye strain, and we’ll be dropping out for about an hour once a day during the trip. But the dampeners should soak any excess momentum, so you’ll barely feel a thing.”

“Is it just you?” Gregory asked. “I thought perhaps we’d have more of a crew.”

“Oh, there’s a few of us. The ship’s not large, so I’m sure you’ll meet the rest of the crew before long. But I’m the only trained pilot in the group, so when there needs to be somecreature at the helm, it’ll be me.”

The navigation panel chirped. Solar’s seat spun back around and he nodded. “There we go. A few moments for us to get into optimal positioning, and then we can start the first translation. Once we’re in, we can release the seatbelts and be about our business. I’ll show you around if you like. Now, what’s this about you having a fossil of a drive? Torque will want to hear about this.”

Gregory had always thought that calling it a jumpship made it sound small. From the point of view of technological progress, he supposed it was; the colony ships that had housed the oldest HPOCAMPs had been most of the size of Canterlot, and while technology had improved by leaps and bounds, the ship carrying them back to the homeworld was still the size of an apartment building.

Most of the size of the ship was to simply account for the size of the arcanotech drive. The whole ship spanned four decks, and most of the back half was a singular chamber housing the thing currently propelling them at a ludicrous speed outside of normal spacetime.

The rest of the first day was spent catching up on sleep, but after that and a meal—vegetarian, courtesy of their Equestrian hosts, but griffons could subsist on greenery if they had to—Gregory spent most of the second in the back engineering bay, getting to know Torque.

Torque was an earth pony, and Gregory immediately felt a sense of camaraderie, not only because Torque was finally someone he could geek out about arcanotech with, but because he only had one name, an increasing oddity among ponykind. It was a strange thing to get hung up on, and he never brought it up with the steel-colored stallion, but it was on his brain nonetheless.

The drive was suspended, bound loosely by cables but floating essentially on its own, locked in place by a combination of electromagnetism and a spell of particular complexity that Gregory would never claim to understand. It could be said to be a sphere, studded with dozens of tiny metallic spirals that brought to mind unicorn horns. And like unicorn horns, each stud glowed with a weirdly shimmering corona, dancing between an array of colors that only occasionally shifted to Solar’s lime green or the ruddy orange of Torque’s toolbox cutie mark. The whole room vibrated gently with the hum of a large-scale spell, waves of magic pushing and pulling from the HPOCAMP.

“They’re really making strides,” the engineer said admirably, leaning over the railing on the second floor of the engineering bay. Gregory had been standing and watching the drive at work, and hadn’t even noticed Torque come over. “Used to be, not too long ago, it all had to be one unicorn’s magic, you know. Of course, no unicorn can charge any jump worth making on their lonesome, so it was all Princess Twilight, sometimes Luna or Celestia. Now, though, now…”

He pointed a hoof. “That’s all of us. Well, us as own the ship, you know. Solar, me, Primrose, Odonata, Driver, and Wedge. Plus all the other crew, you know, can’t fly a ship this size with only a hooffull… All our magic, blended together. Easier on the eyes than you’d think, huh?”

“I suppose,” Gregory said, tapping a talon against the railing. “I’ve got… Well, I say I’ve got a whole drive in a warehouse, but really it’s part of the guts of something much bigger. A whole drive is too much for one griffon, even as a passion project.”

“Oh?” The earth pony’s ears perked up curiously. “Did hear Solar mention something about that.”

“Well, the Raven’s not going anywhere any more, especially since ships of that particular class are becoming obsolete.” Gregory watched the crew’s collective corona shimmer for a moment. “So I got permission to take a part of it out, tinker with it. Fascinating stuff. Obviously it wouldn’t work without the shell, and we’re mostly a griffon colony, so finding a creature that can cast to get things charged can be… arduous. But I like to tinker all the same.”

Torque gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. “Tinkering’s the best part, eh? Well, that and listening to the thing power on. Makes me laugh every time.”

Gregory had never been able to hear the alleged shoo be doo of a HPOCAMP charging, so he chose not to pursue that particular topic.

“Is it weird?” he asked finally.

The earnest smile on Torque’s face slipped somewhat. “Is what weird?”

“Our star system’s heliocentric.” Gregory pushed himself back off the rail, giving himself room to stretch his wings. The ambient magic in the room tickled his primaries, and he felt himself involuntarily fluff up. Blushing and brushing his coat back down, he added, “You know. Unlike the mostly pony-settled worlds. You guys have alicorns that take the local stars and stuff. We’re just… floating on a rock in space. A moving rock, orbiting a sun that’s standing still. Relatively speaking. Isn’t that weird to you?”

The earth pony hummed, hooves still draped over the railing. “Well, I’m no scientist, me, but… The way creatures talk, it sounds like we’re the weird ones. I’m no astronomer or physicist—and, forgive me for saying so, your excellency, but you don’t strike me as the type either, but…”

Gregory waved a talon dismissively when the earth pony hesitated.

“Seems like it only happens to pony colonies. Like… So far as anyone’s able to tell, Equus Prime was one of a kind before we started branching out and all. And of course, only about half of the colonies are primarily ponies. But among those six, there’s always two alicorns, one for the star and one for… other stuff. And even if we wanted to, ponies couldn’t leave it be, because the whole system changes, you know? The planet stops spinning and everything adjusts…”

Gregory nods. “I’ve heard. Dreamchaser and Stargazer, Solem and Selene, Zenith and Nadir…”

Torque tapped at the floor. “Nopony’s quite figured out how the gravity works, I think. Most ponies I know just sort of accept it. Natural magic, that sort of thing. Like what we use to make gravity work in spaceships, only, you know… planetside. And yet…”

“And yet it doesn’t happen in the other seven colonies. Raven’s Landing, Mnemone’s Hive, Second Stream—all places with population majorities other than ponies,“ Gregory finished. “I don’t like accepting things just so, but… it’ll take someone with a horn to figure out why.”

“D’you reckon they’ll talk about it at the summit, your excellency?”

Gregory hesitated.

It seemed beyond foolish to admit it now, but it hadn’t really dawned on him until that moment. What was the summit going to be about? He’d been selected to attend the joint summit on behalf of the colony, and, griffons being griffons, they had responded on his behalf with an affirmative, ticking the box without actually reading the contract. Not that he was any better; he’d just taken the election as fact. He’d volunteered on a lark, but—well, he’d made his bed, and now he had to lie in it.

What were they going to talk about? That seemed like crucial information. And yet. He racked his brain, trying to remember.

He excused himself from engineering and worked his way to the quarters, fumbling for his terminal. The doubt from his room the morning of the departure crept back in. And when he dove onto his bunk and pulled up the messaging, he paled underneath his feathers.

He’d assumed, well, it would be about… what summits were normally about. Talking about stuff. Arguing about that stuff. Signing accords and agreeing to do better, and honestly Gregory was prepared to go along with the flow and maybe offer a few ideas himself—hopefully more grounded things than the idealistic ponies might bring to meetings like this.

But what information was there was… distressingly barebones. Political pleasantries, vague statements. He’d glossed over it before because he’d assumed that was just how things were, but what if it wasn’t? He supposed he could ask Gideon, but...

That’s just politics, isn’t it?

But the doubt wouldn’t go away.

Maybe he wasn’t ready for this.

The Weight of Worlds

by LysanderasD

Prologue: Voices, as from far away...

Curvature: The First Colony

Curvature: The Price of Freedom

Curvature: The Weight of Worlds

Supplement [A]: On Pony FTL Travel

Gregory of Raven's Landing: Primaries