Gallus wants to ask Silverstream to the Amity Ball their sophomore year without embarrassing them both to death. Silverstream wants that, too. The Spirit of the Tree of Harmony, learning of this, wants to help.
Gallus wants to ask Silverstream to the Amity Ball their sophomore year without embarrassing the both of them to death. Silverstream wants that, too, but neither of them has any idea how to even talk about what they want without causing the aforementioned death by embarrassment.
Fortunately, the Spirit of the Tree of Harmony wants to help. Though "fortunately" might be the wrong word...
With a groan, Gallus slumps backwards in what I believe is meant to be a dramatic posture and sprawls across the floor of this room perched at the back of my complex, a lovely view of the moonlight-drenched forest visible through the balcony doors. His cry of "Doomed!" serves to cement in my mind the impression of theatricality.
'Cement.' That could be seen as humorous, coming from a mineral-based being such as myself. I'll have to remember it for future use.
Here and now, however, I continue my clandestine observations as Sandbar sighs from the other side of my table. "We haven't even started yet, y'know."
"Ha!" Springing into the air, Gallus spreads his feathers and paws so that he resembles the spherical flowers that sprout from the crocodahlia, one of the several indigenous Everfree species I've been studying since gaining my new vantage point above the area. "It started when Tree gave us that test under the school before Cozy Glow went crazy! 'Cause that's when I saw how fierce and funny and strong and soft and perfect Silver really is! She's like...like nothing in my whole world ever has been, and like nothing in my whole world is ever gonna be!" He's spinning, a pinwheel of blue and gold, a whirlwind rather than any sort of creature.
Along with humor, I've lately grown quite fond of analogies.
"And that?" Gallus swirls to a halt, and he's so near the ceiling that I can feel the bristly tips of his crest feathers brush my crystal. "That's why I'm doomed!" Wilting like one of the aforementioned crocodahlia blossoms, he tumbles once more to the floor.
Still, since my friends have spoken my name aloud, it would be impolite for me to remain aloof. Manifesting my mobile form, I step from the wall, point my pony-shaped face at them, and smile. "I trust that, despite appearances, all is in fact well?"
"Huh?" Sandbar turns to my mobile and blinks before returning the smile. "Oh, hey, Tree. Yeah, we're fine. How're you?"
"Excuse me?" Gallus has one arm draped across his face. "We're not fine. We're doomed. Or at least I'm doomed."
My belief that I've correctly interpreted the current set of circumstances falters, but I'm able to rally. After all, I've often found that when organics can't agree among themselves, it's because the situation is ongoing or in flux. Decisions have yet to be made, and nothing, as they say, has been set in stone.
I enjoy that expression a great deal. Almost as much as I enjoy helping my friends...
A stirring among my older, colder, more crystalline parts, however, tempers my enjoyment. These are the deepest parts of me: not just the roots that stretch down into the bedrock of the cave where I was first planted, but my sapwood and heartwood as well, if I might employ another analogy. These are the parts of me that cling most tenaciously to the memories of my shattering, the fiery destruction rained down upon me by that arch-fiend Sombra, the physical death that necessitated my reaching out to my friends and resulted in my eventual reconstruction.
In the aftermath of those events, these stodgier parts of me have begun steadily counseling a turning inward, a more constrained lifestyle, and less interaction with flighty, ephemeral, organic beings. Be still, these parts of me murmur in low, thrumming tones. Be still. Their concerns have kept my roots from extending back to the school as they once did, have in fact separated me from the castle and map that I created specifically to continue my growth into the larger world, to move from mere sentience to true sapience, to help establish the harmony that throbs at my central core and—
Be still. The message wafts from my depths like dust. Be still.
Refusing, I focus my attention externally upon Gallus and Sandbar once more. "Perhaps I can be of some assistance," I say aloud, not framing my utterance as a question. This, I feel, will make it more difficult for them to refuse, for how can they deny my request if I've not actually made a request?
Sandbar rubs his chin. "I dunno, Tree. Gallus just has cold hooves is all."
"Hello?" Lying on his back, Gallus waves all four of his legs in the air. "Paws and claws over here."
I watch Sandbar roll his eyes. This tells me that their words contain more than their denotative meaning. But I've learned that I can get them to explain their actual meaning if I frame a statement that hinges upon the literal and therefore incorrect meaning. All of which reasoning leads me to ask, "Shall I adjust the ambient temperature?"
Gallus groans again. "That's not—"
"He's scared," Sandbar says.
"Hey!" Leaping once more into the air, Gallus crooks a talon at Sandbar. "I'm not scared!" Folding his wings, he falls back into a heap upon my floor. "I'm terrified!"
I look from one to the other, the interplay of their motions and emotions as always stirring me in ways that nothing else has in the nearly dozen centuries of my existence. Getting to know these young creatures continues to intrigue to such an extent that I might very well call it the defining experience of my life!
"The school's Amity Ball is in two weeks," Sandbar is saying, "and Gallus wants to ask Silverstream to go with him."
"Which is impossible!" For the third time since they arrived and climbed my stairs to this back room, Gallus bursts into a hover. "Im! Poss! Ible! I can't just ask her! Not me! And besides, that's not something that ever actually happens! Not in real life!"
"Uhh..." Sandbar points a hoof over his shoulder. "I asked Yona to the dance last year."
"Well, duh!" Gallus glares at Sandbar, but I sense surges of shame and fear curdling the air around him rather than the anger I might've expected from the tone of his voice. "You're a pony! The world's designed for you! You make the grass grow, you make the rain fall, you make the freaking sun and moon move!"
Sandbar's eyes have gotten even wider than usual. "I do?"
Gallus smacks himself in the face. "Not you you! You ponies!" He whirls toward me. "Who planted you, Tree? Way back at the beginning of whatever?"
Had I a heart, it would be racing. This free-flowing exchange has been the goal I sought ever since I first began interacting with organics back when there were so much fewer of them!
'So much fewer'? That can't be right!
I'm flustered! It's wonderful!
"The Pillars of Equestria planted me!" I announce, though I notice at once that my voice sounds no different than it usually does. Proper inflection continues to hold a place near the top of my list of personal improvements.
"See? Ponies!" Gallus drops so firmly to my floor that I'm hard-pressed to muffle the delicious shiver that wants to rattle me from roots to crown. "You can ask the girl of your dreams to the dance and spend the year cuddling her and snuggling her and whatevering her 'cause you're a pony!"
He leans into the edge of the table, his warm and roughly soft feathers provoking me to muffle another shiver, and begins to tap a foreclaw against my surface, one tap for each name as he says it. "Princess Twilight, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Princess Cadance, Princess Flurry Heart, Shining Armor, Starswirl the Bearded, the other Pillars, our former professors, even Tree here! The most powerful creatures in the world are all ponies—or, y'know, identify as ponies—except for Discord, King Thorax, and Queen Novo."
His limbs spread, he falls backwards, and all the willpower in the world is unable to keep my entire complex from quivering when he hits. "And Queen Novo, bringing us back to the point, is Silverstream's aunt! Which means Silver's some kinda princess or something! While me, I'm..." His voice drops to a whisper. "I'm nothing."
Into the silence that follows, Sandbar says just as quietly, "Whoa."
"Yeah." One arm over his face again, Gallus raises the other arm and flicks his claws. "So, you were gonna tell me why it wasn't impossible, why I'm not doomed, why I shouldn't just crawl back to Griffonstone and accept the way the world works, right?"
Sandbar merely blinks.
So I step forward, deliberately ignoring my own cold hooves by going into motion. "The obvious answer, Gallus, will have you asking me to the Amity Ball." And for the reasons stated earlier, I once more don't frame the idea as a question. Not to them, and most certainly not to my deeper self.
An even thicker sort of silence falls over us, the two of them staring at me as if they don't regularly converse with a flex of lavender harmony magic made to look like the new ruling princess of Equestria. Simultaneously, my colder, older, more crystalline parts gape in sluggish wonder, their questions beginning to thrum at certain of my innermost frequencies.
But I'm in no mood to explain myself to myself! I'm busy! I'm alive! I'm interacting!
"My plan," I say, spinning it into being even as the words describing it chime from my virtual larynx, "will require next to no subterfuge from any of us and will therefore be almost immune to error." I conjure up a holographic image that includes us three as well as the four absent members of our friend group. "You will go to the others and explain that you were discussing the Amity Ball in general terms while relaxing here among my rooms. I became interested, expressed a desire to attend, and provided a means by which I could do so."
The merest sliver of my concentration causes six objects to secrete from my walls and float there before us: six stones of appropriate hues set in necklaces of blue crystal. They're not the Elements of Harmony, of course—I doubt I could recreate those items even if I wished to. No, these are new objects, different and shiny with potential.
"You six," I continue, moving Gallus's image to the darker of the two blue gems, Sandbar's to the green one, and the other four to the colors associated with them, "will come here before the ball and will each don one of these neckpieces. The resonance they create will allow me to manifest my mobile self"—I touch my translucent hoof to my equally translucent chest—"within your company, and when you move from here to the site of the ball itself, I'll be able to accompany you." I cause the small image of my pony form to appear within the circle I've created from the other images.
"Tree!" Sandbar's smile bursts not just from his lips but from his wide eyes, his perked ears, the stretch of his spine, and the bend of his knees as he gives a little hop. "That'd be so great! You can meet Headmare Starlight and Vice Headmare Sunburst and Councilor Trixie and—"
"Yeah!" The enthusiasm of Gallus's response seems more than a bit artificial. "Not to mention all the flowers you won't be able to sniff and food you won't be able to eat! Oh, and one other little problem." His entire physiognomy darkens, and he waves his claws. "How is any of this s'pposed to help me ask Silverstream to the dance?"
Sandbar blinks some more. "Oh. Right." He turns once more to me. "You have any ideas for that, Tree?"
"Several," I reply, gesturing toward the parade of images I've created. "We will all, for instance, need to be in somewhat close proximity for the resonance to remain in effect. This will disallow Gallus and Silverstream from getting too far apart during the festivities." Concentrating, I manage to wink one of my mobile's eyes at Gallus instead of blinking them both. "Should you care to offer her a cup of refreshment or engage her in chatting or dancing or any other suitable social interaction."
For the first time since entering me, Gallus's crest feathers perk the way they ought to. "So...Silverstream and I could go to the dance together, and she wouldn't even have to know about it!" He breaks into a smile that I think might very well show every one of his teeth. "Tree, you're a genius!"
His praise causes a feeling of lightness throughout me. To employ yet another analogy, it's as if bubbles have begun to rise within my assorted structures, but only in a positive sense. Actual bubbles would destabilize me in ways that would likely be dangerous both to myself and to whatever of my friends might be enjoying my accommodations at the time.
Such is the beauty of analogies, I find. They allow me to pick the parts I want to use in my comparisons while discarding the rest.
"Umm..." Sandbar says, and were I not a multi-ton crystalline entity, I must admit, his voice would've startled me sideways: I'd forgotten he was in the room with us. "I mean, this is a great idea, Tree, and it'll be great being a part of it, but..." He shrugs. "It doesn't really solve the problem, y'know?"
"Hey." Gallus flicks his foreclaws. "It gets me and Silver to the dance at the same time without me having to ask her. If there's another problem, I don't wanna hear about it."
Sandbar's forehead remains wrinkled, but he doesn't speak.
Which is fortunate since it means I don't have to talk over him or interrupt him, something that friends, I've observed many times, try not to do to one another. "Please let the others know." I nod my mobile's head, more of the positive-bubble feeling effervescing throughout every wall, floor, and ceiling of my structure. "If we have two weeks, perhaps we can also meet here in a few days for some sort of rehearsals. So we can enter the affair with a certain showiness." I try to wink at Gallus with my other eye, but observing my mobile from the walls, I see myself blink instead.
There's always more to practice.
"Yes!" Gallus has taken to the air in a much sprightlier fashion than he has at any previous point this evening. "We'll tell the girls, they'll love it, and we can all spend more time together helping you get ready!" He does a flip, and I have to fight the urge to join him: as the eldest among my friends, I feel an obligation to maintain a certain dignity. "This is gonna be so incredibly great!" he crows.
"Now that," Smolder says, crooking a claw at my mobile self from where she leans against my wall, "is what I'm talking about."
I've stepped out of the opposite wall after having manifested with another of the potential ball gowns she's been describing. Fortunately, Ocellus has begun providing sketches to illustrate a few of the more rococo elements of Smolder's designs.
Silverstream has her forepaws pressed to the side of her face, her eyes shimmering in the light from my fixtures. "It's so amazing! Like a whole cake come to life!"
"Hmmm..." Yona narrows her eyes at my mobile. "Yona not sure. Making dress all from magic seems like cheating."
"Oh, c'mon!" Little gray puffs rise from Smolder's nostrils. "Tree's nothing but magic! You try to put real cloth on her, it'd just fall right through or something!"
With a nod of her big head, Yona sits back and smiles. "True. And prob'bly better this way. That much fabric tip anycreature but Yona right over sideways."
Ocellus is looking back and forth between her drawings and me. "It is kind of a lot when you see it put together like that, isn't it?"
"What?" Smolder pushes away from the wall, her arms akimbo. "It's perfect! Tree, tell 'em it's perfect!"
It's not, of course. The folds of peach-colored taffeta, the layers of caparisons, the lace and the brocade work and the tassels and ribbons and bows: even with it and me being completely insubstantial, it feels too unwieldy to allow for easy movement. Seeking a gentle way of conveying this idea, I reach for humor and nod to Silverstream. "Well, I'm certain that I'd find it uncomfortable to be mistaken for a cake."
The only one who doesn't giggle is Smolder. Instead, she rolls her eyes and says, "Fine. If you wanna do something boring." Her expression softens, looking upon my raiment much like Gallus looks upon Silverstream when he thinks she won't notice: he and Sandbar, I was informed when the girls arrived, have been dispatched to Ponyville this evening to procure reservations on some appropriate tuxedoes for the upcoming soiree. "But c'mon, Tree!" Smolder is continuing. "You've got a chance none of us could ever even dream about! You could wear something literally impossible! I'm talking frou-frous and gee-gaws and accessories up the wazoo!"
"Wazoo?" Silverstream blinks at her. "Is that near Griffonstone?"
Smolder puffs more smoke at her before turning back to my mobile. "The point is: this is your opportunity to show Equestria something they've never seen before, and it's something only you can do! Don't waste it!"
For the second time in as many days, I find myself flustered. The way she presents this outlandish costume makes it sound like a positive, but I can't quite bring myself to see it that way. I recall my bubble analogy from last night and begin wondering if I can similarly select the positive portions of this dilemma while eliminating the negative.
While I'm still searching for a way to do this, Silverstream lands beside Smolder. "That's one fun thing about Tree, sure," Silverstream says. "But another fun thing about her is that she's a tree! A magical tree that can reach out with a part of herself that's an even sparklier version of Princess Twilight—" She gasps and clasps her foreclaws. "Sparklier than Sparkle! Tree, you should totally get a shirt that says that!" Blinking, she shakes her head. "But sending her to a party with all her natural magic covered up, that's like, oh, I don't know, like putting hats and gloves on flowers." She leaps into a hover. "Which would be the cutest!"
Focusing on our faces, I adjust my mobile's expression to reflect the blankness I see from most of my friends.
Silverstream continues clapping her paws and giggling for a long moment, then she again blinks and shakes her head. "I mean, cute for flowers. But Tree's already all glowing and twinkling and everything. Do we really want to hide that?"
"Hmmm..." Smolder rubs her chin. "Yeah. 'Cause why bring the Tree of Harmony to a party if nocreature can tell she's the Tree of Harmony?" Eyes partially closed, she points a single claw at my mobile self. "I'm seeing a wreath of leaves around the top of your head—simple, classic—and golden shoes that lash up over your fetlocks."
Ocellus is sketching away frantically, her magic flashing her pencil around. "Like this!" she says, and her pad of paper spins to show a short alicorn figure dressed in the just-mentioned wreath and shoes.
Less than a moment's thought produces the items upon my mobile self. "Less cake-like," I say, "but very nice nonetheless."
The others are nodding, and Yona stomps a hoof. "All Tree's friends can wear same sort of shoes!" She cocks her head. "Well, not Sandbar. And not Gallus. That style shoe not go with tuxedo." Blinking, she looks at Smolder. "Smolder ever wear shoes?"
Smolder points at my mobile's hooves. "For this, I'll make an exception." She smiles slowly around at the group, her teeth sharp and gleaming in my light. "'Cause when we're all done up, we're gonna hit this party like a pyroclastic flow." Flaring her wings, she springs for the door. "Tree, we'll see you tomorrow, but right now, we've got fabric to hunt down before the stores close!"
Yona and Ocellus follow her laughing, but Silverstream calls, "You girls go on ahead! I've got to grab my exotic flora textbook, then I'll catch up!"
"Okay!" Ocellus answers, and I watch the three of them charge downstairs, across my main room, and out the front at the same time as I glance around my several study rooms for Silverstream's book.
Not finding it, I look more closely at her flickering eyes and the tightness around the base of her beak. Is she employing subterfuge? "Silverstream?" I try to inject some warmth into my tone, but as always, I can hear no change. "Is something wrong?"
She settles lightly to my floor, her usual exuberance gone. "I just...I wanted to ask..." Her swallow is so loud, I can clearly hear it. "How do you do it, Tree? How?"
A quick review of the evening's conversation up to this point doesn't provide me any antecedents for the pronoun 'it.' So I say, "I'm afraid I don't understand."
"You!" Her wings flap her once more into the air. "You're so important and ancient and big and everything, but you're still friendly and fun and great to hang out with! I'm never gonna be like that! Never!"
Uncertainty bubbles through me now, and it's much less pleasant than my previous two batches of imaginary bubbles. "First, I'll thank you for the compliments, but after doing that, I'll have to dispute the notion that you're not friendly and fun and great to hang out with. Because I would consider you such, and by all indications, our friends consider you such as well."
"Well, now, sure!" She waves her forepaws. "But what about when Aunt Novo retires and Skystar becomes queen and I have to go back to Mount Aris and Seaquestria and join her court and be the princess who went to friendship school and knows everything about how hippogriffs and hippocamps can better reintegrate with the other cultures around us? What about when I hafta stop being silly and cute and hafta start being serious and stone-faced? What about then, huh? What about then?"
Her steady wingbeats become jittery, and she drops to my floor, her paws covering her face. "I can't go back! I can't! So I'll stay here and I won't answer Skystar's letters and when she sends guards to come looking for me, I'll put on a pair of glasses with big, bushy eyebrows, tell them my name's Polaris, and say that I work in the school cafeteria!" Her voice gets shakier and shakier. "I'll never see Mount Aris again! Not ever! And my mother and father and brothers and cousins and aunts and uncles, they'll all be so disappointed! And they might never learn the right way to be friends with yaks and dragons and changelings if I'm not there to help!"
She sucks in a massive amount of air, then sobs it out with the words, "But that...that's okay if it means I don't turn into somecreature Gallus—and the rest of them, too—wouldn't ever wanna be friends with anymore!"
Her mounting distress triggers me to throw my mobile forward that I might wrap her in a hug as a friend ought. Halfway through the action, however, I remember that I'm as insubstantial as a sunbeam.
But to extend the analogy, sunbeams are also warm and comforting, and I concentrate on being those two things when I reach her: a slight alteration of my usual manifestation spell generates a small amount of heat, and I lower my voice, attempt the sort of modulation I hear from others in these emotional situations. "You'll always be you, Silverstream, no matter what role you have to play. I'll offer as an example for your consideration Princess Twilight. Has she seemed appreciably different since assuming sole dominion of Equestria?"
"She...she hasn't..." Silverstream isn't leaning against me, but she is leaning into me, her hide and hair and feathers pressing the external envelope of my mobile most unusually. I have no solid surface, of course, but the warming effect I've added to the spell seems to be interacting with her outermost subatomic particles in a way that on a macroscopic level is indistinguishable from...from—
From touch. We're not just interacting. We're touching.
With a sniff, she nestles her face against my chest. "You really think I can be as good a princess as Headmare Twilight?"
Unable to keep my mobile's hoof from shaking, I reach up and stroke the edges of Silverstream's mane, the sweet tickling sensation sending actual sparks flickering throughout my entire complex.
She's asked me a question, though, and as a friend, I must defer my own enjoyment until I have helped alleviate her unhappiness. "You're already a good princess," I tell her, and an example of her aptitude for the position stands ready for me to offer. "Consider a few moments ago when you mediated the dispute between Smolder and the rest of us about my gown for the ball."
"Mediated?" She pulls back, her eyes wide and glistening. "I just...just said what I thought was right! I didn't, y'know, get all pondery and brow-wrinkly and everything."
"And I?" I can feel the warmth I'm generating soften my smile, can hear it inflect my words. "Do you see me pondering and brow-wrinkling?"
"I don't see that..." Stepping back even further, she peers intently at my forehead. "But, I mean, you're a tree. Can you wrinkle your brow?"
At this point, I feel as if I can do anything, but since I wish to make a point, I say, "I don't think I can. Because I don't need to." Reaching out, I very carefully touch my hoof to her chest just below her pearl-shard necklace. "And neither do you. Your enthusiasm for the world will touch your fellow hippogriffs, will melt their fears, and will help lead them forth to embrace the magic you've already found."
She quivers in place for a moment, then she's swarming around me, arms, wings, chin, neck, her entire body hugging me. And while she does largely pass through me, the sensation is not unlike that of the breeze from off the Everfree rustling my leaves and boughs. This is much gentler, however, while also being more solid, a pressure that braces me rather than jostles me. And do I feel the drops of her happy tears along the curve of my back? There's something there that's both similar and dissimilar to the rain that splashes against me when the unnatural nature of the Everfree allows such things.
With so much surging through, against, over, and around me, I fantasize briefly about breaking my upper portions away from my roots, about sprouting legs and arms and taking to the open road with Silverstream and Gallus and the rest of my friends riding along. Be still? I want to shout to my older, colder, more crystalline parts. How can I possibly take such ideas seriously? How?
Nonetheless, the vibrations from deep within me continue resolving themselves into those two words: Be still. Be still.
I continue to ignore them.
With a sniffle, Silverstream sits back on my floor and wipes her eyes. "Thank you," she says. "I've been kind of a little bit worried about this."
Flush with success, I decide to try another analogy. "And like Princess Twilight, you'll have your friends to help you when you become the hippogriff princess in charge of foreign affairs. You'll have trusted contacts in high places throughout the known world whom you can approach about any matter." I manage a shrug. "Well, except for Gallus, of course."
Her mane and crest feathers bristle. "What do you mean by that?" And I can't help but notice the slight edge that comes into her voice.
Oh, how it thrills me to be practicing subterfuge! "That he's a wonderful friend, nocreature can deny. But as Griffonstone has no discernible government, he will be unable to assist you in any official capacity the way the others in our friend group will."
"So?" Her bristling relaxes, but she still looks as if she wants to complain about something even though she isn't quite sure what. "You said it yourself: Gallus is a wonderful friend. I never would've made it through that test you gave us last year if he hadn't found me, and he's strong and smart and supportive and cute—" Her pink face goes even pinker, and she clasps her paws before her chest. "And you can't tell him I said that! Ever!"
"Of course not." Winking at her just then is as easy as adjusting the nitrogen content of the soil surrounding me and a great deal more satisfactory. "That's what friends are for."
"The Tree of Harmony." Starlight Glimmer's left eye twitches. "Attending the first Amity Ball since I became headmare." Her smile spreads further along her muzzle than I believe should be possible for that portion of pony anatomy. "Welcome! Yes! Of course you're welcome!"
Suffice it to say that we do indeed hit the party like Smolder's prophesied pyroclastic flow, but instead of destruction, we bring glamour and excitement and an undeniable panache to the proceedings. At the start of the affair, being mindful of my complete dependence upon my friends for my very presence, we remain in quite close proximity. But as the evening progresses and I am truly able to plumb how solidly the bond stretches between us, I encourage them to mingle with their fellow students.
They do, but only, it turns out, to bring the other students one by one or two by two over to meet me. They are all wide-eyed and nearly glowing with life, and while interacting with them doesn't make me glow any brighter, I certainly feel as if I am. And when a clearing of throat behind me reveals Yona and Sandbar leading Rockhoof and Somnambula to the spot along the wall where I've planted myself—figuratively speaking—for the evening?
I'm unashamed to issue a joyous squeal like the foal I never was at seeing nearly one-third of my parents, and I proceed to fall into a long, delightful conversation with them. Even better, during the course of this exchange, a glance to the side reveals Gallus and Silverstream laughing and spinning through one of the dances designed for the more aerially inclined among the guests.
The good sort of bubbles return to my interior in full force.
Of course, as Gallus pointed out when this all began, I can't taste any of the food nor smell any of the flowers. But I eagerly drink in the sights and the sounds, make a few sights and sounds of my own, and in general enjoy myself immensely. My friends seem to be similarly enraptured, and as we all walk back to my complex after the festivities have run their course, the motions and emotions seem to spark through the night as brightly as the stars overhead. The group dynamics alone nearly discorporate me into a glowing plasma of pleasure!
For we are seven individuals, and the weighty but inconsequential talk of the evening's events ebbs and flows from each of us. But at the same time, we are a unit, a collective, a company, a singular, a group of friends sharing a bond of dreams and ideas.
Further, I can detect smaller cells overlaid upon those two paradigms—Yona and Sandbar to my left rubbing shoulders and growing warmer with every step we take, even when we enter the Everfree's darkness; Gallus and Silverstream to my right, desperately trying to mask an attraction that nonetheless quivers to my senses like swirling flights of hummingbirds; Smolder between Gallus and me, Ocellus between Sandbar and me, the two of them connected by more subtle strands of affection, just as strong but quieter, less flashy.
And at the center of this entire conglomeration?
Me.
Not through any merits of my own: when first we met, after all, I was forcing them to face their worst fears, grabbing them roughly and shaking them to demonstrate that they were indeed worthy of friendship, were truly capable of friendship, were in fact already involved in multiple friendships that were going to change everything they ever thought they knew about the world and in a very real sense were going to change the world itself. In my then ignorance, I forced myself upon them, and they responded by taking me in, their otherness responding to my otherness with an offer of kinship.
To call it exquisite seems too small. Incandescent? Transcendent? Ecstatic?
My hoofs begin tingling, and we emerge from beneath the forest canopy to see my complex ahead, the field my roots generate reaching out to welcome me back and exchange memories with the older, colder, more crystalline part of my consciousness that's been sitting here all night quietly fretting.
Reassurances flow through my entire being in a way that's analogous to my friends and me moving through my gate into the courtyard, and I'm unable to keep from leaping into the air, to interrupt the languid discussion of weekend plans and assignments due Monday with an expression of my joy. "I wish to thank you for tonight, all of you, but words of sufficient strength don't seem to exist in my vocabulary. And I wish even more strongly to apologize for the trials to which I subjected you upon the occasion of my introducing myself last year. It's an apology I should've made long ago, and it pains me to recall how—"
"Yeesh, Tree." Smolder gives a coughing little laugh. "It's no big deal."
All my leaves bristle despite the lack of breeze. "Forgive me, Smolder, but this is a point that—"
"Fine." She rolls her eyes. "You're forgiven." Turning from one side of our group to the other, she spreads her claws. "Right, guys? She's forgiven?"
"Oh, yeah," Sandbar says, Yona nodding beside him. "But now that Tree's home, me and Yona, we'll, uhhh..." His cheeks practically glow in the dim light of my main structure behind us. "We'll be heading back to school."
Smolder arches an eyeridge. "Really?"
Yona gives as perfect a wink as any organic being ever has. "Friends should not wait up for Yona and Sandbar."
Ocellus giggles, but Gallus and Silverstream seem more petrified than anything else; if they weren't standing on my flagstones, I wouldn't be able to tell they were still breathing.
Folding her arms, Smolder puffs a smoke ring from one nostril. "Well, then, you kids have fun. Heading back to school, I mean."
Sandbar continues blushing, but he heads for my gate when Yona nudges him in that direction, the two of them picking up speed as they go.
Not that they'll go far. They have a favorite spot along my western wall, a small grotto where they often come to snuggle among the ferns, the hyacinth, and the hydrangeas. Not that I spy on them, of course: it's simply that I'm pervasive throughout my complex. They must know I'm present, I tell myself, and perhaps even seek me out for safety and the shelter I provide from the less amicable beings that still dwell within the Everfree.
Sensing their slow-but-steady progress around my outer walls, I can't help but notice the silence that's fallen within the courtyard, Gallus and Silverstream trying so hard not to look at each other that the air is practically going opaque between them.
With Ocellus giggling again and Smolder blowing more smoke, I have to assume that I'm not the only one to notice. "Hey, Ocellus," Smolder says then, "how 'bout we say good night to Tree and head back to school as well? Though when I say 'head back to school,' I actually mean 'head back to school.'"
Another giggle, and Ocellus nods. "I think that's a splendid idea. Good night, Tree." She cocks her head at Gallus and Silverstream, the innocence she's projecting very nearly dripping with subterfuge. "And I suppose we'll see the two of you at school tomorrow?"
"Yes," Gallus says, but he draws the word out for several seconds, the pitch of it rising and falling and twisting the pronunciation in ways I'm fairly certain it was never meant to be twisted.
"Exactly." Silverstream is shivering, but I'd be willing to bet that it's neither with cold nor with fear. "We'll see you. At school. Tomorrow."
For a moment, Smolder looks as if she might want to emit more than just smoke, but then she turns and strides purposefully toward my gate, Ocellus giggling along beside her.
Leaving me alone with two creatures who, I'm again fairly certain, would rather be alone without me.
Inspiration strikes, and I attempt to manipulate my mobile self in such a way that I yawn. Judging from the alarm on my friends' face, however, I don't succeed, so I add verbally, "Well, it's been a lovely, event-filled evening, so if you don't mind, I believe I'll be settling into a more dormant state." Wanting to reassure them while simultaneously presenting the appearance of absence, I go on: "But if for any reason you find you need anything of me, simply speaking my name will pierce my dormancy."
"Thanks, Tree," they both mumble, their gazes pointing in every direction except at each other.
Giving a nod, I let my mobile sink into the flagstones and try as I've never tried before not to notice, not to sense, not to gather any greatly detailed knowledge concerning whatever might be going on within my precincts.
The analogy, I imagine, would be an organic creature asking blood not to flow through certain limbs.
The pressure and placement, for instance, of Gallus and Silverstream's footpads upon my floor tells me that they're walking very close together through my front room, up the stairs, and into the back room with the lovely view of the night sky over the forest. I therefore focus my visual acuity along those hallways through which they're not treading. In a similar way, the increasing warmth across the cushions of a certain sofa indicate that they've settled together into a spot that in all my previous experience as a structure has only ever been occupied by a single individual. As a result, I concentrate my audio abilities everywhere except that room.
As expected, my attempts fail. Yes, I certainly find many fine and interesting things upon which to turn my attention—Princess Twilight has definitely taken to her task of arranging the night sky, for instance, and the Everfree teems with many interesting nocturnal species. But how can I look away entirely when two of my dearest friends in the world are gazing into each other's eyes and stroking one another's faces? How can I deafen myself to Gallus murmuring, "You're so beautiful..." or Silverstream sighing, "Your scent's just incredible..."?
When their beaks begin touching, however, I redouble my efforts to divert myself. Of course, since Yona and Sandbar are likewise tasting each other along my western wall, my options are rather limited.
Still, I'm determined! If only I'd thought to gather their necklaces before they all left, I might find it easier to ignore them...
The necklaces remind me of the party, and I quickly turn my thoughts to a review of my conversation with Rockhoof and Somnambula. This rouses the older and deeper parts of my crystalline structure, stretching my perceptions in a way that effectively causes external time to pass more swiftly. So I encourage the process by recreating the scene in as detailed a fashion as I can, recalling the delight those two expressed when I invited them to visit my new complex, asking them for news of the other Pillars, hearing of their latest exploits throughout modern Equestria and beyond.
This proves a winning strategy in that I'm able to convey my excitement at this unprecedented interaction with the world and the organic beings who fill it in a way that causes even the solid and stolid centers of me to become enlivened. It doesn't stop the incessant Be still from droning through me, however, but I'm able to push it to the side in contrast to these glowing memories. Likewise, I'm able to push the two couples to the back corners of my mind, as it were—
Until halfway through my recitation when the mention of my name ripples through me like a dropped stone through pond water, Silverstream's voice quiet and plaintive: "But Tree says I wouldn't have to be like that."
"Maybe you wouldn't," Gallus replies. He sounds sulky, and their heat signatures are no longer pressed closely against each other. "But I'm never gonna be anything other than what I am. And that's nothing."
Abandoning my recollections, I leap figuratively to my back room and observe Silverstream, her eyes wavering, stretching a pawful of claws toward Gallus where he leans against my wall and stares moodily out the closed balcony door at the night. "You're not nothing!" she says, and her words are wavering, too. "You're so, so special, Gallus! And you make me feel special every time you look at me!"
Gallus's crest feathers are nearly flat against his head, but his scent is more damp with weariness than crunchy with anger. "You are special, Silver. You're a princess and you're beautiful and you bring light and wonder everywhere you go."
She's leaning so far forward, I'm uncertain how she's not falling to my floor. "So are you! I mean, you do, too! I mean, you— I mean—" She shakes her head, water droplets flying from her eyes. "Tree! Please! Come in here and...and tell Gallus how great he is! 'Cause he's not listening to me when I tell him!"
I almost manifest my mobile self directly from the wall beside the sofa, but a sudden wave of shame shivers through me at the thought of revealing to my friends that I've been eavesdropping. So instead, I step out into the hallway, the atoms of my mobile sufficiently agitated to make me warm and solid enough to knock on my door, a decidedly peculiar sensation. "Hello? Silverstream? Gallus? I...I heard you call me?" I very deliberately frame these utterances as questions so that they may reject my approach if they so desire.
Instead, I watch from the walls as Silverstream jumps to the door, wrenches it open, and cries to my mobile, "You said everything was gonna be all right with me being a princess, but Gallus doesn't believe me! So now you have to say it to him, too!" She spins out of the doorway and points a shaking claw at Gallus.
From beside the glass, Gallus looks over his shoulder, his eyes so dry, they seem parched. "Yes," he says, and the pain there is the pain of roots once shattered and regrown pleading silently not to be shattered again. "Tell me, Tree. Tell me how everything'll be all right with Silver being royalty and me being the farthest possible thing from that."
The bubbles within me this time boil with fear, and the analogy feels strong enough to fissure me, filled as it is with the raw anguish I knew when Sombra's magic blasted me to rubble, the despair that almost overwhelmed me when those whom fate and circumstance and a most peculiar connection had chosen as my saviors seemed unable to understand the first thing about me and my message to the world.
But the despair did not overwhelm me, I remind myself. I remained in hope, persevered, and these, my friends, did indeed rise to the occasion and bring me back to life. So I must likewise rise to the occasion and—
And I have the answer. "Princess Cadance," I say, "and Shining Armor."
They both stand blinking at me, then Silverstream's eyes go wide. "Princess Cadance..."
"Shining Armor?" Gallus whirls and waves his arms. "Maybe you didn't notice, but he's famous, a hero, the former Captain of the Royal Guard! I'm a griffon from nowhere with nothing!"
I raise a hoof. "Did he start out famous? A hero? Captain of the Royal Guard?"
"He didn't!" Silverstream gasps, her paws clasped in front of her chin. "He started out as just a regular unicorn! But then he joined the Royal Guard and became famous and a hero and the captain!" Her whole body seems to be vibrating, her gaze intent on Gallus. "And then?"
The feathers on Gallus's neck puff out, and his beak drops open. "Then he married the princess..." he more whispers than says.
"Yes!" Silverstream's wings flare, and she swoops across the room to wrap her arms around Gallus. "And they all lived happily ever after!"
Gallus is standing as still as a statue in Silverstream's embrace. "Join the Royal Guard? I...I prob'bly could with Princess Twilight on the throne: she's the whole reason I'm even here, right?" His claws come up to rest on Silverstream's shoulders, and the bubbles within me once again coruscate with joy when the expression he turns upon her grows as serious as any I've ever seen on his face. "It'd take a lotta time and a lotta work for me to become captain, but with you there, I can do it." He smiles then, and seeing Silverstream's knees shiver, I feel a shiver passing through various sections of my own trunk. "For you, I can do anything."
"We'll write," she says, gazing up into his eyes. "All the time. And we'll go on dates when I come visit Equestria 'cause I'll be the princess in charge of visiting Equestria. I'll make sure that's what I am." She cuddles her head against his chest. "And once we've done everything the way we're supposed to, we can get married and be together. And it'll be wonderful."
"It will. It is..." Gallus bends down to caress her beak with his.
The older, colder, more crystalline parts of me wonder in a desultory fashion if these two aren't perhaps acting a bit precipitously, but I stifle any such notion, completely certain that I would be shedding actual moisture from my tear ducts if my mobile self possessed such things. "Anything I can do to help," I say, not sure I should speak but completely unable to stop myself from doing so, "just let me know, and I'll do it."
"Oh, Tree!" Silverstream somehow flips around, hauling Gallus across the room with her to enfold the two of us in her embrace. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! You've always been such a wonderful friend!"
Gallus coughs a little laugh. "When you're not, y'know, torturing us with our greatest fears and all, she means."
"I do mean that!" She gives his cheek a little peck, then gives mine one as well. "So if you could just keep doing what you do for as long as it takes, we'll keep doing what we need to do for as long as it takes! While we're at school, we'll date and snuggle and learn and graduate, and then we'll grow into the creatures we need to be to become the creatures we want to be, and then everything will be better than wonderful!"
Pressed between them, their feathers and fur interacting with the warmth generated by my modified manifestation magic, I'm swept up in connections that crackle like lightning from my deepest root to my uppermost bough. The two impulses competing withing me! They're analogous to the impulses within my two friends!
Had I breath, I would be gasping. For Gallus in his despair felt driven to fold himself closed while Silverstream in her exuberance desired to open outward. Interacting with each other, however, has caused them to exchange properties: if Gallus wishes to be with Silverstream, he must open himself in unaccustomed ways, and if Silverstream wishes to be with Gallus, she must return to roots with which she's not entirely comfortable.
Be still, I've been telling myself. This doesn't mean to become stagnant. It means, as Silverstream has said, to become the being I already am. To continue continuing. To grow but to also remain. To still be. To be still.
Inside me, crystalline chimes are quietly ringing while the air around me is awash with the sweet scents of my two friends. "I will," I say. "For as long as I'm needed and by whomever I'm needed, I will be still, and I will still be."
