Really Swinging Human
Canterlotian steel has such a very fine edge.
True blades of Canterlot only knew flame when they were repaired for the first time. When they’re born, it was in the Solar Forges of the castle where smiths beat metal heated by the unrelenting sun as commanded by the will of Princess Aurora Celestia.
It was a universal agreement among cultures that flame has a purifying quality to it, yet no flame can exist without its own crude fuel. Fuel carries flecks of impurities that weaken, even fractionally, the integrity of steel..
The steel of Canterlot has no such impurities.
The shield fell in two halves amidst a shriek of pain and outrage as Sunset carved her opponent’s buckler from his arm.
She cursed under her breath. Had she been a touch faster she’d have cut through not only the shield but the arm beneath and drawn first blood, ending this farce of a duel.
Now she was going to have to cut the young fool deeper.
Guiding Star, the fourth child and second youngest son of the House of Star, snarled out an oath and advanced, needlessly flourishing his gaudily ornamented tulwar—a weapon of the Far East that his mother had bought him on a trade mission.
Sunset’s face was twisted into an angry snarl as she cut a withering cross in front of her, her behemoth weapon wickering through the air like a butcher's blade. There was no toying with this one, she didn’t have the patience to teach this hot-blooded peacock proper humility, not this time. This time Sunset was mad.
This was not how she’d wanted to spend her day.
Guiding Star yelped as he stumbled back, tripping over his own feet as he clumsily cracked his blade against Sunset’s which only served to throw him further off balance as she turned her strokes horizontal and began advancing in merciless, mechanical arcs that were more agricultural than martial.
The idiot child was a better mage than he was a swordsman, but no one save an archmage or a true fool dared challenge the Firewitch of Canterlot to a duel of the Arts unless they wanted a scar that they would wear to their grave.
Back and forth, Sunset cut and slashed, giving Guiding no quarter to breathe in, until finally she turned and spun the blade around her, redirecting its weight and force into a killing forward thrust.
Even Star wasn’t that much of a novice.
He turned, jerking to the side to let her strike cut past him, and barked out a triumphant laugh as he spun on his heel and made his own thrust.
With a tulwar.
The idiot was using the exotic weapon like it was a rapier and the generous curve of the blade that was so ideal for slashing came up short, just as Sunset knew it would. She sidestepped the clumsy prod and carried her blade with her in a vicious backstroke as she slipped past Guiding Star, and struck him full in the chest with the broadest length of her blade.
He howled as the edge of Sunset’s claymore dug a furrow through his brigandine, crushing the internal plates and biting the flesh beneath as he was snatched from his feet and thrown onto his back. She’d shown him a small mercy and struck slow, carrying his weight with the stroke rather than cutting through him.
Had she wanted to, Sunset could have left him in two halves, although the apocalyptic display that would have followed would likely not have been worth the satisfaction.
Likely.
Regardless, he still bawled as if he’d been murdered as Sunset stood and flicked her blade down, clearing the blood from the edge and the fuller.
“Stop weeping, it’s just a flesh wound,” Sunset snapped as she turned to tower over him. “First blood is mine, son of Star, and I’ll expect your apology to the Lady Sparkle in written form at your soonest convenience.”
She didn’t wait to see if he acknowledged her, instead marching off of the dueling square as the onlookers parted like cobwebs before a flame in her path.
That had been a colossal waste of her time.
While not untalented, Guiding Star’s bravado neatly outpaced his actual blade-skill, and he’d never stood a chance. The fact that he hadn’t known that from the start was more a testament to his arrogance than anything else. Sunset had a streak of wins that would have been legendary had anyone in a position to record them actually liked her, as it was, her copybook bore over a hundred victorious duels.
And zero losses.
Sunset often found herself reflecting that she really couldn’t afford to lose if she were being fully honest. Or rather, Princess Celestia couldn’t afford for her to lose.
The nobility feared her more than they hated her because her personal skill and power elevated her above them in a way that rankled with their entitled sensibilities. It was a difficult pill to swallow that Sunset Shimmer, an orphan from the Embers Precinct of Canterlot, or more accurately the slums, could probably reduce a house of nobles to a wreckage, both politically and physically, if the Princess so ordered.
A loss would undermine that to an unacceptable degree.
Sunset pulled an oiled cloth from a pocket of her own brigandine and swept it neatly along her blade as she approached the east wing of the castle from the dueling yards where a particular young woman with a waterfall of purple and rose hair and a hangdog look on her face waited.
“Sunset, I—”
“Can it.” Sunset snapped the cloth across her blade before balling it up and tucking it away.
Twilight flinched back like she’d been struck but fell in behind Sunset all the same. This marked the fourth such duel Sunset had fought in Twilight’s dubious honor since the gala a month ago.
Four duels.
Normally she averaged one or two a month, so this was getting ridiculous. Even the nobility normally have some semblance of a survival instinct, but with Twilight having had her social debut to the higher echelons of society, it had opened up a can of worms that the poor young student simply wasn’t prepared for.
Celestia could at least have had the good grace to lock her in a tower if she was going to be this helpless.
“I’m sorry!” Twilight called. “I really am! I didn’t realize—!”
“Oh I am aware,” Sunset snarled, her gaze nailed forward as she raised her blade over her head, around her back, and slid it into her half-sheathe. “Believe me, Twilight, your lack of realization is a secret to nobody.”
The Princess was going to reprimand her for this, no doubt, but Sunset was tired of playing nursemaid to a helpless maga-in-training. Someone needed to tell Twilight where things stood between her and the kingdom, and it clearly wasn’t going to be the wise and powerful Princess Celestia.
Whirling on her, Sunset fixed Twilight with a glare that had the younger girl shaking in an instant.
“I don’t know what you think I am, but I’m not your personal attack dog,” Sunset said flatly as she jerked a finger under Twilight’s nose. “I have a life outside of cleaning up after your inability to navigate the Solar Court, alright? Contrary to what you might think, this—” Sunset gestured broadly around them, ending with her outstretched hand pointing back at the dueling yards “—is not the only thing going on in my day!”
Twilight sniffled quietly as she balled up a wad of her mage’s robes in her hands nervously. She was trying—and failing—not to cry in front of Sunset, not that Sunset particularly cared at this point.
“I…I know, and I’m sorry,” Twilight croaked.
Dragging a hand down her face, Sunset groaned.
“I’m not asking for your apologies, Sparkle, I’m asking that you be able to look after yourself!” Sunset snapped. “By this point in my tenure, I’d already fought over a dozen duels—”
“—twenty-one, actually—”
“—twenty-one duels!” Sunset amended without missing a beat, then paused and looked down. “Wait, really?”
Twilight’s equerry, Spike, nodded judiciously from where he stood at his mistress’ elbow, his shock of spiky green hair flickering as he moved his head excitedly.
“Well, that’s depressing,” Sunset grumbled before shaking her head and carding her fingers through her now sweat-and-dust-matted hair to pull the cord from her ponytail. “But that just emphasizes my point! You can’t have me fight all your battles, Sparkle, because I frankly do not have time for that!”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing wrong!” Twilight cried.
Sunset had to bite down on her cheek to keep a scream of frustrated rage penned up inside her throat, and she took a moment to step back, breathe, and think of the west gardens where she should have been an hour ago.
“Yes. Believe me. I know,” Sunset growled, barely restraining herself from grabbing Twilight by her reedy little throat and shaking her until Celestia’s new student was no longer her problem.
Forcing herself to calm down, Sunset took another brace of deep breaths and held up one hand to forestall another wave of self-recriminatory apologies while she pinched the bridge of her nose with her other.
“In truth, Sparkle, I know you’re no layabout, so what in Tartarus’ name is wrong with your physical training regime that you can’t fight one duel?” Sunset asked.
Her answer came in the form of an unintelligible mumble as Twilight turned her gaze anywhere but at the knight in front of her, and Sunset leaned in and glowered at Twilight until she swallowed thickly, blew out a breath, and said:
“I don’t like conflict.”
Sunset stared at her replacement in dead silence for several long, awkward moments before raising a hand to her face and covering her eyes.
“I just…I can’t look at you right now,” Sunset said.
“Sorry.”
She was starting to understand why Princess Celestia sighed so deeply so often. Sunset knew that Celestia had regrets about treating her like a blunt instrument for so many years, and for encouraging her belligerent nature to the point of all but throwing her to the wolves at the start of her tutelage.
Maybe she was trying to avoid that with Twilight, and that was fair enough. Sunset didn’t regret her time under Celestia’s patronage but she certainly wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
With that said, Sunset had the feeling that the Princess might be reining things in a bit too much with her newest protege.
“I’m going to go,” Sunset said, turning on her heel. “Spike, can you ensure sure she doesn’t offend any more nobles while I’m gone, please?”
Spike snapped a sharp salute.
Ever since the gala, Twilight’s equerry had dogged Sunset’s heels relentlessly. It was charming in a kid-brother sort of way, not that Sunset had ever had a kid brother—or any other family—but it was what she imagined having a kid brother might be like.
He was a little irritating at times and far too chipper, and he was constantly asking her questions about her previous duels or things she’d done for the Princess during her time as a student and later as Lady Knight to the Crown and had apparently even memorized her dueling record better than Sunset herself.
It was flattering.
Annoying, but flattering.
He was a good kid, and if anything Twilight needed him as much as she needed Sunset. Spike might have been young but he did an admirable job of keeping his scatter-brained mistress on task. Twilight was brilliant, and Sunset had seen her move magic like it was as easy as breathing enough times to know that the girl had more raw magical might in her button nose than Sunset had in most of her body.
It wasn’t even that Sunset thought she was a bad choice to be Celestia’s newest student. If anything, Sunset didn’t think she’d trust Twilight anywhere but under the watchful eye of the Solar Princess. That much raw power unmanaged was a terrifying concept.
What she hated was that Twilight was so. Damn. Oblivious.
Nothing existed except for whatever was in her extremely narrow field of vision until it walloped her across the head, and then Sunset was called in to keep little-miss-head-in-the-stars from getting humiliated by a novice with more brass than brains because Twilight couldn’t stand up for herself.
And even all of that would be tolerable if the whole mess hadn’t made Sunset over an hour late for her lunch with Wallflower!
One afternoon.
One afternoon!
Was that too much to ask for?
Sunset moved through the castle in a foul temper, storming through the halls until she eventually cut out of the castle itself and into the northern promenade so she could dip into the west gardens where Wallflower was working today, per usual.
The south training yards and the west gardens were her domain, inasmuch as it could be called that. Wallflower wasn’t a senior groundskeeper or anything, but the actual western groundskeeper, a curmudgeonly old mule of a man who was, appropriately, named Cranky, let her have the run of the place.
Sunset liked Cranky in spite of the fact that the man was frankly a bit of an ass, which was made even more amusing because Cranky hated Sunset, a fact that tickled the knight tremendously. With that said, Sunset never did learn why the ornery old groundskeeper hated her, but in the end, it hardly mattered. The old man adored Wallflower, even if he didn’t show it well or often, and Wallflower adored Sunset, which meant she was welcome, on sufferance, in the gardens whenever Wallflower was working.
It wasn’t even that Wallflower would be upset that Sunset had been so late; she would understand completely and that almost made it worse. This thing that she had with Wallflower was so new and so…fragile, and the truth was that Sunset had never been very good with fragile things.
She had an alarming tendency to break them.
“Sunset?”
“Written’s Qu—!” Sunset went rigid as her instincts sent a bolt of tension down her muscles and she had to resist snapping her blade out.
Wallflower Blush giggled quietly from beside her. “Uhm, that one wasn’t my fault, I called out to you a few times but you just kept walking.”
Sunset groaned as she slumped down on a nearby stone bench and buried her face in her hands.
“Sorry,” Sunset grumbled. “It’s been a…a difficult day.
“It’s okay.” She took Sunset’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Her palms had a patina of dirt on them from weeding, and her face was, as it usually was, smudged with black sod. “I had a lot of work to do, too. It’s going to be a rough year for the garden.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow and looked around at the usual explosion of color and beauty that constituted the western gardens.
“I suppose I’ll take your word for it,” she replied with a dry chuckle.
Wallflower sat down beside her, and Sunset instinctively found the spaces between her fingers with her own. Green skin peppered with stains of sod laced with a hand was hard and calloused, and held tight as Wallflower leaned her head against Sunset’s shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Sunset huffed quietly.
“I’m fine,” she replied.
Wallflower sighed and nestled a little closer.
“I just wanted to have lunch with you,” Sunset said after a moment. “I wanted to have a…a normal afternoon, and I was looking forward to it, and then Twilight put her foot in her mouth again, and I had to wrench it free with my sword, again.”
And she was angry. Not that was anything new. Sunset Shimmer was practically renowned for her anger, but this was different. Her anger was never really personal before, with the lone exception being when she got into a tiff with Princess Celestia. That was different though. Celestia was like a mother to her, so naturally their fights would get under Sunset’s skin.
This wasn’t the same. This was Sunset wanting something for herself, something that she had never really reached for before, and then being denied.
She hated it.
Even more, Sunset hated that she was angry while Wallflower was right next to her. She could be enjoying Wally’s presence right now but instead, she was stewing.
“Sorry,” Sunset said softly as she leaned against Wallflower.
“It’s uhm, it’s okay.” Wallflower sat up a little and reached out to brush some gold-and-red hair from Sunset’s face. “You just look tired.”
She was tired. She was so tired. Sunset was tired of fighting, tired of hurting, tired of running from one end of the palace to the other just to keep the smartest idiot to ever live from making another mistake.
“I’m fine,” Sunset replied.
“You still look tired,” Wallflower said.
Sunset let out another quiet huff and nodded.
“Here.” Wallflower scooted away a little and leaned back then patted her lap. “Lay down.”
Not much could put a blush on Sunset’s cheeks. She prided herself on being either stoic or rakish, and neither was well-suited to embarrassment and yet, there she was.
“Wally, you don’t have to…” Sunset trailed off and swallowed thickly.
Wallflower cheeks were red too, but she stood—or sat—her ground.
“You’re tired,” she said again. “Just lay down, it’s okay, I promise.”
“I…” Sunset started, then sighed, nodded, and began loosening the straps on her armor and underleathers before scooting back and laying down to rest her head in Wallflower’s lap.
The stone bench was hard but it was also cool against her body which was overheated from the duel she’d just fought, and Wallflower’s lap was surprisingly soft. A moment later, another surprise broke through Sunset’s stoicism as Wallflower began humming softly as she brushed her fingers through Sunset’s hair, teasing out knots and snarls that had formed during her violent movements back in the dueling circle.
Without warning, Sunset started to feel her entire body lock up, like it was trying to fight something. She was drowning, then she was choking, and then, in a moment of stark, aching realization, she understood.
Her body wasn’t locking up.
It was relaxing.
~sniffle~
“S-Sunset?”
“I’m fine.” The words came out wet and strained. “D-Don’t…Don’t look please, I just…I’m fine I—”
Sunset swallowed hard and turned her head to press her face against the dirty leathers of Wallflower’s lap as tears started to leak from her eyes. She wasn’t even sure where they were coming from, all she knew was that she suddenly felt so, so tired. She was angry and tired, and her whole body hurt because Sunset, as a person, had a tendency to never ever stop.
She never stopped and never let up: show no quarter for no quarter shall be shown to you. That was the truth that she had lived for her entire life, and only now was she starting to realize how much she resented it.
Wallflower hesitated for a moment, then let out a soft breath and began to hum and stroke Sunset’s hair again. She didn’t say anything, and frankly, Sunset was more grateful than she had words for.
A deep well of shame burned in her chest as she cried silently against Wallflower’s lap.
How had she never noticed how tired she was?
And yet, Wallflower had seen it so easily. In fact, she’d probably seen it long before this. Sunset couldn’t help but wonder if Celestia had seen it too. Maybe that was why she seemed so melancholy when she looked at Sunset lately.
Maybe it was guilt.
“It’s okay,” Wallflower said quietly as her humming tune trailed off. “It’s a quiet day today, try and rest.”
Sunset gave a shuddering nod. Her body was so heavy. Everything was heavy. She just wanted to sleep, but the idea of moving seemed so impossible at that moment, and Wallflower didn’t seem to mind so maybe she could just close her eyes…for a moment…and...
When Sunset stirred, it was only grudgingly. Her eyes seemed to be clamped shut, held down by the weight of ages, and her whole body had a bone-deep warmth that she couldn’t properly account for.
She was comfortable, she knew that much, and for a while that was all that really mattered.
At least, that’s all that mattered right up until she registered the fingers still trailing through her hair and along her scalp in gentle, massaging motions. It was enough to wake up the sluggish memories of how Sunset had gotten there.
Swallowing thickly, Sunset licked her lips and tried to work some moisture back into her dry mouth as she opened her eyes, and as she did, the soft ministrations slowed.
“Sunset?” Wallflower’s voice was small and Sunset had to try hard to focus on it through the malaise of slumber.
Sunset turned her head to look up and found Wallflower Blush smiling down at her. “Mm, yeah,” she mumbled. “Sorry, did I fall asleep?”
“For a little while,” Wallflower confirmed with a small laugh. “You seemed like you needed it.”
She knew she ought to get up. She should sit up, apologize for being so unsightly, and do something productive, but for once, Sunset couldn’t find it in herself to move quite yet.
“I don’t know why. I got plenty of sleep last night,” she said, instead.
“Did you?”
Sunset frowned, then turned again to look back up at Wally.
“What do you mean?”
Wallflower looked pensive for a moment before shrugging and leaning back against the stone bench that they shared. She was quiet for a long moment, and the whole time she never stopped stroking Sunset’s hair, and deep down a very childish part of Sunset hoped that was because she didn’t want to stop.
“I just think you don’t, uhm, take very good care of yourself, I suppose,” Wallflower said finally. “Especially since you started looking after Lady Sparkle.”
“I’m fine,” Sunset said, almost reflexively. “I’m doing my duty.”
“Even if it’s hurting you?” Wallflower asked, and Sunset thought she heard a note of bitterness in Wallflower’s normally quiet, tranquil voice.
Sunset sighed and forced herself to sit up, and as she did she lamented the feeling of Wallflower’s fingers falling away. Carding fingers through her hair, Sunset took in a long, deep breath of the cold, Canterlot air.
“Yes,” Sunset said. “Even if it’s hurting me.”
“That’s not fair!” Wallflower said, her voice cracking slightly as she actually raised her voice, and Sunset goggled at her for a moment.
It hadn’t occurred to her before this but…she’d never heard Wallflower get angry before.
“I never said it was,” Sunset replied.
Wallflower’s face fell into something between a scowl and a grief-stricken frown. Her small, sod-stained hands were clenched into tight, shaky fists, and her beautiful brown eyes were wide and fixed on Sunset with an uncommon intensity.
For a moment, Sunset was struck by that intensity.
This was the first time she’d ever seen Wallflower really get worked up. Normally, she was so calm and laid-back. Even when people were taking advantage of her or she had work piled onto her, or even when Sunset missed their dates. Wallflower accepted it all a kind of phlegmatic grace.
Not so, now.
Sunset leaned back, looked away from Wallflower, and let the great marble spires of the palace fill her vision.
“I’m Lady Knight to the Solar Court and the most powerful graduate of Princess Celestia’s tutelage in two centuries, and I am one of the Princess’ best weapons against the machinations of the nobility.”
She was the wrench in the gears; the single, well-placed swing of the sledgehammer at the best-laid plans of mice and margraves.
“No one else can do what I do,” Sunset said as she looked back to Wallflower and smiled wanly. “It has to be me.”
“But you’re not a weapon.” Wallflower’s voice was strained, and it put a sharp ache in Sunset’s heart to hear it.
Shaking her head, Sunset stood on legs that were stiff and numb from sleeping outside and rolled her neck and shoulders to a chorus of pops.
“That’s exactly what I am, Wally,” Sunset said, turning her head to look down at her.
Wallflower didn’t back down. If anything, her expression hardened, and she stood, squaring her shoulders and planting her feet as she stared determinedly up at Sunset.
“No!” Wallflower said sharply. “You’re not!”
Sunset’s eyebrows shot up.
There were maybe two people in the entirety of Equestria that could say that they had stood up to the Firewitch of Canterlot without flinching. Sunset’s reputation was well-earned and her temper made that reputation even more infamous. Where she walked, others cowered, because she was the perfect storm of physical, political, and sorcerous power, and even worse? She treated that power with the same belligerent arrogance as the nobles she slapped around did with their own status and privilege. She took the weapons of the high and mighty and turned them against their wielders. That was her purpose. That was why she existed! Sunset was a hammer of fear and violence. She was someone the nobles believed they understood and so never stood up to, because she was the one person they knew wouldn’t bother to take the moral high ground.
In other words, they were afraid of Sunset because she was just like them.
And yet, here was Wallflower, the timid little gardener, looking up at her with fearless eyes. It was the oddest and most awkwardly charming combination of anger and frustration…and trust, Sunset realized.
Wallflower wasn’t afraid of her because she trusted her.
“You’re human, Sunset!” Wallflower grabbed Sunset’s hand and squeezed. “See? I’m not grabbing a cold sword-hilt! That’s your hand!” She brought Sunset’s hand up and pushed the fingers open so she could lay the calloused palm over her cheek. “See? You’re warm! You’re human! You still need to rest and eat and…and you need people to be kind to you!”
“Wally, I…”
“And you need to be kind to yourself,” Wallflower said wetly. “Or one day I’m…I’m scared I’ll look at you and you won’t be human anymore.”
A chill swept over Sunset at Wallflower’s words, and she swallowed thickly as she reached out with her other hand to tangle her fingers into Wallflower’s thick, bushy hair.
To others, Wallflower had this tendency to blend into the background. There were people she’d worked with for years who couldn’t remember her name. Old Cranky was probably the only one who really knew her other than Sunset herself, and even Sunset wasn’t so sanguine about that. The thing that really baffled Sunset was how people could overlook Wallflower, though.
She was just so beautiful.
How could anyone miss those wide, lovely brown eyes, and that tumble of morning-glory hair? And those freckles! Sunset slid the pad of her thumb over Wallflower’s cheek and smiled down at her.
How anyone could miss Wallflower, Sunset couldn’t understand.
“I was forged into a weapon of purpose, and if I neglect that purpose then the whole city suffers. Princess Celestia needs me…even though I think, now, that she wishes she didn’t.”
Before Twilight’s debut ball, Sunset wasn’t sure she believed that. Now, though, after all the apologies and the pained looks from her surrogate mother, Sunset was passingly certain that Princess Celestia counted Sunset’s role in her immortal rule as one of the many difficult and painful decisions she’d made over her long, long life.
“I made an oath, Wally,” Sunset said with a final sigh. “And I am a Knight of the Solar Court…my oath means more than my life.”
“It’s not fair.” Wallflower closed her eyes as she leaned against Sunset’s touch.
Then, without warning, she opened her eyes and reached up to catch Sunset’s cheeks in her hands, and the sensation struck Sunset like a hammer-blow between the eyes. Her hands were rough from years of work in the royal gardens, and yet there was still a softness to them.
Wallflower cradled Sunset’s face in her hands, and completely free of Sunset’s will or want, tears started to trickle down her cheeks as Wallflower touched gently along the lines of her cheekbones, and across her lips, and over the high, arch of her brow. It was all sensation and touch and it was drowning Sunset in the sensory overload.
When was the last time someone had just touched her?
Had anyone ever just touched her? Maybe when she was still a little girl, and Princess Celestia still treated her like a child, but that was so many years ago that it was a little more than a shadow of memory for Sunset.
Since then, Sunset had remained aloof and apart. She was the threat. The brute. The barbarous, lowborn, prodigal prodigy of the Princess of the Sun.
Who would ever dare to touch her?
Shamefully, Sunset found she couldn’t resist bowing her head down and leaning into Wallflower’s hands as much as she could.
“You’re more than a purpose, Sunset,” Wallflower said. “You’re so much more than that. You’re human, and you’re a good one! You’re so good!”
“I’m a bludgeon,” Sunset replied in a brittle voice.
“Not to me.”
Sunset closed her eyes and nodded. Wallflower was right. Sunset wasn’t a bludgeon with her. With everyone else, yes. But with Wallflower? No. Never. She couldn’t do that to her. Wallflower was too gentle. Too beautiful.
Too good.
“Can… Can you promise me something?” Wallflower asked softly.
Opening her eyes, Sunset met Wallflower’s warm gaze.
“Anything.”
“Promise you’ll come back to me, no matter what?” Wallflower said, and her voice gained strength with every word. “Promise me that even if you can’t be human anywhere else all day, that you’ll come find me after all of that, and you’ll lay your head in my lap, and you’ll…you’ll let yourself be human?”
Whole heartbeats were spent in silence as Sunset took in what Wallflower was asking of her. In a way, it was as far as possible from what Princess Celestia had asked of her.
‘Be my bludgeon. Be my weapon.’ She had said. ‘Be the fire and the steel of the Solar Court. Be what I need you to be.’
And here was Wallflower Blush, the gardener, looking Celestia’s Pet Sledgehammer in the eye and saying: ‘Be human.’
Slowly, Sunset lowered herself down until she was taking a knee before Wallflower Blush, then took the young gardener’s hand in both of hers.
There is a certain magic in the power of a met gaze. Any sorcerer knew the strength of meeting the eyes of another. Some of the darkest hexes and most powerful benedictions needed to be spoken while looking into the eyes of another.
The meaning then, of course, was not the matter of the eyes. It was not really about the gaze at all.
It was about intent.
To meet the gaze of another and strike your intent into the fabric of the world made certain things indelible.
Things like oaths.
“I will,” Sunset said softly. “I promise.”
Wallflower’s eyes widened and Sunset knew, in some back quarter of her mind, that Wallflower grasped what had just happened. Perhaps not in the particulars or the specifics. She couldn’t know the whole of Sunset’s past. She certainly couldn’t know for a fact that Sunset had just given, freely of herself, the second oath of her life.
One oath was made to the immortal mistress of the sun and now this one was made to a young woman of no lineage who tended the flowers which grew beneath it.
‘Be human.’
That, Sunset reflected ruefully, would probably, and by far, be the more difficult of the two oaths to keep.
Wallflower curled her fingers around Sunset’s hand in the light of the dying day and nodded solemnly, and Sunset bowed and pressed her forehead to Wallflower’s knuckles.
“Sunset?”
She didn’t look up at Wallflower, and her words, when they did come, came out gruff and breathy.
“Yes?”
“Are you okay?” Wallflower asked quietly.
Sunset smiled faintly and nodded against Wallflower knuckles before finally drawing back and looking up at her.
“Yes,” Sunset said with a weak chuckle. “I’m fine.”
For the first time in a very long time, those two words were not sour on her tongue.