Ch. 1 :: Her Reputation Precedes
Cadance forced her heavy hooves up the stairs to the Tower of Love. Sweet auntie Celestia don't let anyone see me right now, she begged. I'm a mess. Her hair was disheveled, her tail was scuffed, and she felt terrible. Like her shins were going to split open and her butt was turning to stone. And on my thirteenth birthday, too.
As the newest Princess, and the first trilequus - or "alicorn" - to be born in nearly a thousand years, discovered off in the woods defeating cackling wicked witches like some kind of fae, Cadance was still a huge news headline some years later. She was much more approachable than Celestia and free to chat openly with ponies. Parents were honored and thrilled to have her sit for their kids. And apparently, her dear aunt Celestia thought she was in constant danger of assassins hiding in her bookshelves, because auntie had not only drowned her in personal guards, but was making her learn the sword.
It wasn't the standard training the Royal Guard unicorns got, either. Oh no. Princesses got the real stuff - how Tia herself trained a thousand years ago, a unique style only someone with wings and a horn could pull off, but boy was it something when they got going. Cadance frowned to herself. With her long legs, her goosy neck, and her giant boobs, today's auntie must have felt tired watching Cadance do the gauntlet. Cadance couldn't imagine her trying to run the stupid thing. She didn't even know Tia could use a sword before her auntie whooped her butt in their first spar.
Ya know, auntie, Cadance grumbled in her head as she paused in exhaustion, I didn't need a sword to whoop that evil witch. And I didn't feel like I fell down a cliff and then you landed on me after I did it.
She paused up the stairs, feeling miserable. It isn't like me to be so bitter, she apologized to no one. Then she winced anew, her eyes watering in pain. But then it isn't like Auntie to be so darn cruel, making a filly do all this stuff on her birthday.
Groaning pathetically, trying not to think about the state of her hair or the bruises on her body, finally shambling up to her room, Cadance fell on the door, pushing it open by hoof. She couldn't even force out a trickle of magic right now.
She shuffled in, turned and closed the door behind her, then jumped up at the sound of a cough, her ears perked. She slowly swiveled her head around.
Laying on her bed, her double-wide heart-shaped bed with the red covers, was...
"Your Grace! Suuuuuh," cooed fourteen-year-old Shining Armor, whom she was sure she hadn't met yet, lounging in black lingerie stockings and panties with garterbelts. He blew her a kiss. "You look like you could use a more gentle touch... ♥"
"Your Grace!" someone called. Cadance snorted awake and blinked her eyes open, looking around in a wild panic. Omigosh, who's--
She blinked at the mostly-empty train car, blushing bright red. Oh dear! she fretted in alarm. Why would I ever have a dream like that!! Her face itched with embarrassment despite the fact no one around her could possibly know what "scandalous" thoughts had just been in her sleepy head.
"A-are you alright, Your Grace..?" The little crystal pegasus to her left stepped back and frowned. She was sometimes mistaken as an older filly despite her collected, focused personality. Cadance was a bit out of her wits and had momentarily forgotten her name.
Cadance always seemed to get along best with pegasians, who seemed to warm to her the most readily of the three tribes, but she wasn't sure why. As a trilequus, she'd always been all three more or less, and she hoped she wasn't acting biased towards or against any of them. Perhaps it was because, before Tia found her in the Faerwae Forest, she'd been a natural flier but could barely do a lick of magic beyond her True-Heart Spell. Tia had been quite frustrated getting Cadance to embrace the magical part of the royal style rather than only the physical aspect - for a time. A trilequus's cutie mark had a way of turning her magic into the express checkout lane. There were only three other mages with better shields than hers now.
"Y-yes, I'm alright. Sorry," Cadance cleared her throat, drawing a blank on where the train was headed. "Are we arriving..?"
"Presently, Your Grace," she bowed. "We shall reach Canterlot in five minutes."
"Thank you, I'll ready myself at once. As you were," Cadance replied. her memory returning to her. The little pegasus rose, nodded, and exited the train car, leaving Cadance alone again. Rubescence! That was her name. Probably because she was that lovely red-velvet color.
Cadance stood, magically seized her mirror and a comb, and got busy tidying up her hair and tail, making sure the latter was held at the proper angle and sweep so that it didn't touch the ground, but retained her modesty. The dream was rapidly running out of her mind like black water into the street gutters, but she still remembered the basics.
Do I miss him that bad already? she fretted. She'd just left some hours ago, and they were hardly fiery lovers, even in their late teens. He had certainly never worn that - not in her presence at least. She was pretty sure neither of them would be caught dead buying... that stuff. And again, she hadn't even met him until they were sixteen. They'd dated for a year or two before he transferred to military school, but they kept writing each other and met up now and again. Of course, once he got into the Guard he did everything he could to get appointed as her personal escort...
She began to run the comb over her behind. Auntie Luna had forgotten to brush up her "train-butt" once and had been mortified by the next day's paper. After spending about a month locked up in her room refusing to talk to anyone, she never forgot now, and neither did Cadance. She carefully smoothed around her hips to prevent her cutie mark from looking too ragged.
Did Shiny get dreams like that about her? She blushed again. They were very affectionate, but they rarely said anything suggestive to each other, though Cadance thought about it time to time, and when one of them brought it up they both laughed it off, blushing. They'd never seriously talked about... Um, that. Not even when they discussed maybe having a child sometime soon. They talked about that like they were expecting a stork.
She froze and blinked in sudden realization. ... Do we get a stork? she pondered.
Could she even have children the normal way? Tia and Luna hadn't exactly, uh, tried, so she wasn't sure how it worked. If so, how would they even summon one? Could they summon one, through some ritual or application? Or were there peeping toms to report back when a couple had... um... handled the paperwork?
Handled the paperwork?! she chided herself. Good one, Candy..! You're like a little filly.
But who "summoned the storks" or whatnot for Tia, Luna, and herself?
Dear Aunt Celestia, she thought desperately. Please don't tell me I'm going to have to come ask you and Auntie Luna how to have kids. She shivered, remembering what happened the last time she talked to Luna about... that. Or more accurately, the first time she met Luna and her antiquated aunt got several wrong ideas about her.
Cadance understood and respected that... uh, that stuff was a big part of romantic love for most couples, and somewhere in the back of her mind she recognized that she and her husband would, uh, imbibe, sooner or later. It wasn't gross or anything. They were married, it was totally normal. Healthy, even. Just... embarrassing. Until she met Shining she'd never even kissed a boy. They'd gotten to awkwardly watching the TB together on their honeymoon and hadn't really gotten into the mood. There'd been a tense silence between them like neither of them wanted to bring up "So, that thing couples usually do on honeymoons..."
Finally, she adjusted her regalia. She definitely thought Shining was handsome - well, actually she thought he was adorable, but she chose to tell him handsome. And, her face itched again, he had an amazing butt. And other stuff. He always told her she was beautiful and precious and had not yet said anything in particular about her butt.
And he would not be seeing photos of her scruffed-up butt-fur in the morning paper. He'll have to scruff it up himself, she thought to herself with a firm scowl and a soft blush.
With a red-and-gold carpet billowing before her, and two scantily-clad, crystallized guardstallions on either side upon the platform, Princess Cadance stepped lightly off of the train, elegantly tossing her mane.
"Princess Mi Amore Cadenza has arrived!" someone called. An impromptu cacophony of off-key bugles sounded.
Cadance fought to keep her face from cringing. Why do they always have to do that, she wondered. Sure, for each town she visited, this was an infrequent occurrence - but for Cadance, it was literally every single time she stepped off the train, even once she came back home. Maybe she could invent some kind of magical bugle that only non-Princesses could hear. Wait, no, the headlines would call it a dog whistle. That would be a PR disaster, they would be equating the common people to dogs, it'd sound like they were doing some weird mind control or other conspiratorial thing --
Oh, I'm doing it again, she realized.
If there was one thing Cadance cared about besides the power of love, it was PR. Her image was her life. Celestia was too tall, Luna was too scary, and Twilight was too crazy. Cadance was the only Princess the public felt comfortable approaching and talking to. She was the People's Princess, and she would die if she lost that special connection.
... or if the special connection included them checking out her butt every time she showed up.
Even that little wince she gave as the bugles sounded could have been a huge blow to her public image - so Cadance swiftly returned to her well-practiced cheerful smile. She had no mother to warn her, so her face had frozen that way, just as Celestia's had frozen in that slight pout with the MILF eyes. She waved to the crowd gathered at the station and, with her strangely hunky companions, walked into the familiar city of Canterlot.
Half the ponies she passed gave her a raised eyebrow and a smirk, and the rest gave her deep, judging scowls, but Cadance smiled and waved as she passed, suspecting nothing.