Daimon was waked up by Twilight at a mostly frenetic shaking. Opening his eyes, he saw the lavender mare looking him up. “Come on, sleepy head!” she said. “You must get ready for the Princess arrival! Go take your bath, put your best clothes, have breakfast and--”

Daimon used three fingers to close Twilight’s mouth shut. “Hey… relax. I know what I have to do and I know the Princess is coming talk to me. However, I noticed that both you and Princess Luna prefer to be treated more personally, unless duty calls for it, so I will only get formal when Celestia also get formal. Until then, we will talk as with anypony else.”

Daimon’s strength wasn’t enough to hold Twilight’s mouth now. “You will WHAT?” she yelled at him.

Using his whole hand to hold her mouth shut this time, Daimon looked Twilight in the eye. “Calm down and relax, bookworm. Everything is certainly fine,” he then teasingly kissed her face. It had the wanted effect: Twilight half opened her mouth, eyes wide, wings quickly stiffened open, and one of her fore hooves was hold in the air as she tried to understand what just happened. Daimon used that time to get up and go take a bath.

Noticing that Twilight was probably in the very same place, he fetched for Spike with a smile.

“Hey, Spike, you could go and wake Twilight up? I finish up the table for breakfast,” Daimon called.

“Don’t be silly,” Spike answered. “Twilight has already waked up!”

“I’m not quite sure of that,” Daimon chuckled. “Last time I saw, she was frozen in place at my bed’s size.”

The small dragon gave in and went look for Twilight. Daimon kept preparing the table for lunch then when someone knocked on the door. By the hour it was quite strange to have costumers. Even so, Daimon got up to answer the call.

Opening the door, he was surprised again and almost froze in place as Twilight did; only that he hadn’t wings. But he wasn’t the toughest inhabitant of Ponyville by freezing like that.

“Celestia, this is a pleasant surprise,” he called.

The Princess in question let out a small chuckle. “It’s strange to have anyone not calling me Princess after so long,” Celestia confessed. “But for Luna, nopony does that actually.”

“Well… I was created much with the ‘do unto others’ teaching,” noticing Celestia’s puzzlement, he elaborated. “Do unto others only what you would like them do to you. For example, I hate being addressed formally, so I avoid doing so with others as often as I can.”

Celestia nodded, “I sympathize with that.”

“Please, Celestia, come in. We were about to have breakfast,” Daimon invited stepping aside.

“Thank you, Daimon,” Celestia said with a smile and followed him inside.

“PRINCESS!” Twilight quickly reached and gave a hug on Celestia. Daimon chuckled, though.

“Do unto others…” was all that he said and Celestia actually laughed at that.

“I guess I overdid a bit of that…” Celestia answered him.

“Err… am I missing something?” Twilight asked.

“Nothing important dear,” Celestia answered. “I was informed you were going to have your breakfast?”

Twilight fervently nodded. “Would you like some as well? I could have Spike to--”

“Everything’s fine, Twilight,” Celestia said with a gently smile. “You have tour breakfast and we can talk after you’re done.”

Daimon, though, placed a hand on her shoulder, “I guess we’ll have to insist, Celestia.”

The Princess just nodded and joined them at the breakfast table. Twilight tried to bring up many things that happened in the town recently with rare, but really interested, interventions of Princess Celestia to ask about one fact or another. When they were by the end of it, though, Celestia turned to her once apprentice.

“Twilight, I would like you and Spike to go and prepare and--”

Whatever Celestia would say was interrupted when they heard a mare yelling outside. Daimon was up in an instant and went to the door. Opening it revealed a light yellow coated pony with solid white mane and tail being held by the royal guards.

“You stop that! I need to enter! Daimon is waiting for me!” Lily tried again.

“The Princess wanted privacy to talk with the human. You shall get back or wait to talk to her,” one of the two guards answered.

“I’m not trying to talk with Celestia! I must talk with… Daimon!” looking above the guards, Lily noticed that the human was looking at her surprised. “Daimon! Come here! These guards won’t let approach me more than this!”

“You should let her go,” the gently voice of Celestia inside the library and her face suddenly appearing at the door made the royal guards bow and nod. Lily also joined them in a bow.

“Princess Celestia…”

“Raise, my little pony,” Celestia said gently. “You wanted to talk with Daimon? We were going to have a private chat now, so if you could wait…”

“Sorry, your highness, but it’s just about it,” Lily said, her head still down in a bow as she talked. “When I needed Daimon’s support through a personal chat he stood at my side. I won’t be able to sleep if I can’t repay him in kind…”

Celestia then nodded with a sympathetic smile, “Then I am pressed to allow you in.”

Lily first looked at the Princess in surprise, but then nodded and walked inside the library. Following Daimon and Celestia, she was guided to the lobby, where Twilight and Spike where still waiting.

Continuing from where she stopped, Celestia looked at Twilight and Spike, “Sorry for the interruption. As I was saying, I want you both to prepare the town’s hall if there’s nothing important scheduled there. If has, this can be scheduled for later. And make sure that as many ponies as possible grant their presence there, please.”

Twilight nodded, “Consider it as good as done, Princess!”

The following second, the duo was out the door. The Princess, though, peek her head out, “Unless I call otherwise, no more interruptions please. That includes Twilight herself.” As the two royal guard nodded, she grinned. “Thank you.”

“May I ask what it’s all about, Celestia?” Daimon asked.

“Daimon!” Lily said surprised at his intimacy.

“That’s fine, Romantic Lily I assume?” Celestia said with a smile. “I’ve came today exactly trying to be a bit more personal with Daimon. To do so, I’m more than willing to drop formalities. I would like if you could as well, besides I can understand how a life of habit can be hard to forget.”

“Lily’s smart. She knows when to and when not to be formal,” Daimon smiled. Then his face hardened a bit. “Before we start though… About my family…”

“I knew you would ask about that,” Celestia said not surprised in the least. “I can’t show you your mother and sister, or even who I had asked to look after them. But I assure you it is someone you know. If I recall correctly, you had punched him unconscious after he had… cursed you?”

Daimon raised an eyebrow at that. “You had asked help of one that had all the reasons to seek revenge after me?” Daimon asked. “Are you serious or trying to pull my leg?”

“I’m pretty serious about it, Daimon,” Celestia answered. “His name is Karl Fox and he is actually taking care of your family and is particularly friendly with your sister for some reason I don’t understand.”

Rubbing his forehead, Daimon stood there, thinking in the implications of that. “At least he’s really taking care of them?”

“Luna is doing a great job at keeping contact with him most of the nights,” Celestia assured him.

“Where… did Daimon live?” Lily asked.

“Daimon does live in a different world, Romantic Lily,” Celestia answered. “A world ruled entirely by humans.”

“That’s why nopony has ever seen a human before,” Daimon chuckled. “Also the reason we’re somewhat tougher than some ponies. We don’t have magic in our world, so we have to compensate with strength and technology.”

“That… you haven’t told me…” Lily looked at him somewhat surprised.

“Sorry for that,” he said. “It just didn’t felt right at the moment and I didn’t want to scare you.”

Lily though nodded. Looking to Celestia, she asked, “And if Daimon’s family needed to be looked upon, why had you brought Daimon there in the first place?”

“I could easily say that it was because we had looked things through and we wanted Daimon to be a better person to better help his own family. But that would be lie,” Celestia said. “The truth is far worse than that. We all know that Luna once was transformed into Nightmare Moon. What nopony knows is that Nightmare Moon is still an influence on Luna.

“More often than she would like, Luna needs to relieve some of the stress and sadly, she learned about Daimon during one of those phases. She hadn’t thought clearly, acted more as an impulsive little filly than actually an Equestria Princess.”

“I could see this influence thing you said…” Daimon said, getting the attention of both Celestia and Lily. “In the dream where she brought me there, Luna was followed by Nightmare Moon. And that little chat we had as I woke up, I saw Luna’s eyes turn into that of Nightmare Moon, slit pupils and all…”

“She was worse than I thought, then,” Celestia admitted. “My sister doesn’t like talking about Nightmare Moon and it is getting hard to notice when she’s giving in. If it’s a natural process or she’s instinctively faking it from me is still unknown.”

“You said that Princess Luna needed to… alleviate the stress…” Lily said not sure she wanted to know the answer. “How you do that, may I know?”

“There are places in Canterlot Castle that nopony but we have access to,” Celestia answered. “Remember, Romantic Lily and Daimon: whatever I say here shall never leave this room. Whenever Luna feels the need to relieve the stress, we get there where she mostly destroy anything in front of her. Twilight knows the place, some underground caverns bellow Canterlot.”

“And why you get there with her?” Lily asked more than a bit afraid.

Then they heard the door opening and looked to see Luna entering. “In case I lose control over myself,” she said. “I thought I said you I would be coming with you, my sister.”

“You already stay up for the whole night, Luna,” Celestia said with a gently smile. “I couldn’t wake you up so early in the morning.”

“Most ponies keep awake a bit into the night, ‘Tia. I like to think that I can act like that and stay awake a bit into the morning.”

Celestia just nodded, “However, I’ll have to have a talk with my guards when we get back to Canterlot. I left it clear that they didn’t allow anypony else in.”

“You said ‘not even Twilight’, dear sister,” was Luna’s argument. “You would be a little more assuring if you had said ‘not even Luna’ and you know that.”

Daimon chuckled, “Seems like Celestia almost wanted for you to come, Luna.”

Luna looked at Daimon a bit surprised, but then remembered of their last talk, how he talked to her as a friend instead of as a subject would.

“Returning to our subject, Daimon, your family is under the care of a good person and they are doing nice,” Celestia said. “And now is the time to see how is you doing your part, besides I can already see that you seem to be doing great.” The Princess said with a smile and a quick glance at Lily.

“I seem to be learning a bit more each day,” Daimon answered. “The day I first came to Ponyville, Twilight and her friends gave me a quick glance at what true friendship was: Trust, support, help, sacrifice, strength and fun. I guess I’ve already understood five of these concepts so far…”

“Those being…” Luna half asked curiously.

“I learned that a friend can help you having fun, even when you’re taking it rather serious. I learned that when I was challenged by Applejack to see who was the toughest, pony or human,”

“Applejack is an athletic mare, that’s no doubt. Strong and agile, she’s also very smart and thinks quickly,” Luna nodded.

“But I’m better,” Daimon said with a chuckle. “I just smiled at her when we were facing the last dash to the finish line. It had been too long since I had made such a sprint just for the fun of it and I had relearned that we should be always doing.

“The second lesson was to trust other ponies,” Daimon nodded. “And I had to face some ferocious monsters to learn that.”

Daimon gave Lily a quick glance in time to see her shiver. “Those timber wolves really wanted to dig their claws in us…”

“I had to trust into a zebra… Zecora if I remember right, to reach Lily here before anything happened. I managed to reach her and help her just to face another problem: the wolves were guiding us deeper into the forest to some ruins there. Then I saw Rainbow Dash and Twilight, and I had to trust them blindly to save both me and Lily.

“The next was support,” Daimon said with a small smile. “Lily invited me, to discuss about my reasons of saving her and I told her about my history, after she also told me hers. I noticed she was holding back, though, so I supported her by being truthful and she rewarded me with her true history.

“After was strength, when Lily’s parents has come talk to her. I saw how she was more disposed to defend her dreams when I stood at her side. Her parents, though, didn’t like me that much. I guess they had a nightmare about me or something…”

Luna’s chuckle was only clearly understood by Daimon, which smiled in acknowledgement.

“The last one I’m sure I’ve learned was the help part,” Daimon said looking at Lily. “Friends are supposed to help you even when you don’t expect their help.”

Lily blushed gently but managed to give him a smile.

“That is far more than we really thought you would learn in such a small amount of time, Daimon,” Celestia said. “I knew you had learned a lot based on Twilight’s letters. I just didn’t know you had learned even more than that. It was only a few days, not much more than a week. But I knew that Ponyville would work its proper magic in you too. And now, I’m happy to say that I’m expecting you tomorrow at Canterlot, so we can take you back at your world.”

“What? But it is so… sudden…” Daimon looked at Celestia, confused. “I still haven’t made--”

“It’s not the amount of friends that are important, Daimon,” Luna interrupted him. “It’s the quality of your friendship. You made about eight friends in Ponyville, but you were ready to trust them with your life after barely a day with them.”

“So… that’s it? I’m going back home?” Daimon asked.

“Yes, Daimon, you are going back home,” Celestia confirmed.

“‘Tia… It would be better if we left them alone,” Luna commented.

“You’re right. Besides, I still have business to attend to at Ponyville. Wanna come with me, little sister?”

“Of course!” and then the two Princesses left the library.

Lily looked at Daimon with a smile in her face. “It seems that you’re going back home…”

“Yeah… seems like…”

“Daimon… are you alright?”

He looked at her, “It’s just that you’re my first true friend in a real long time, Lily. I can’t believe that I won’t be seeing you again…”

“Don’t be silly… If you came one time, you can return there. I know it’s possible and we’ll see each other again! And besides, you have your family to return to. I can’t be that selfish to want you there with me…”

“What?”

“I mean… I will miss you as my friend… you’ve been my best friend in quite a while as well… And I sure will miss you…”

Then there was a pregnant silence as none of them said anything.

“Just… don’t forget me…” Daimon asked.

“Don’t worry… Oh… but could you help me pack my things? I’m really going to move. Need to find a new fount of inspiration for my books…”

“Of course…” Daimon said and both of them left to Lily’s house. Next Chapter: Episode 09: The Return Estimated time remaining: 27 Minutes