Whether crying tears of joy or pain, whether beset with confusion or relief, everyone was on the deck to witness Princess Celestia roaring across the sky on a spear of flame that shook the air long before and after she had passed from sight. At the time, they did not know it was her; a letter from Princess Luna, an hour later, clarified the matter. The entanglement of spells that had kept Celestia trapped had to be maintained every couple hours, and with Discord gone, it had taken her hardly any time to break through. Luna spared the details, to Twilight’s chagrin.

“I’ll add this one to the pile,” Twilight said, taking the letter and stowing it in one of her bags. Everything she had been carrying in her magical space, she had released to the cabin shortly after they took off. A sigh of unburdening had escaped her unconsciously, and she took a minute to stand among all the stuff, hers and theirs, relishing the newly empty space in her mind. “And then…” She looked at her friends. “I don’t know. I guess we’re going home.” She laughed to herself. “We’re going home.”

“We’re going to Canterlot,” Rarity said. “Surely we are, right?”

“We can decide when we get closer,” Applejack said. “Fer now, Ah know we’re all excited, but it’s ‘round five days before we get anywhere.”

“Is that with me giving us wind, or without?” Rainbow asked.

“With.”

Grumbling, Rainbow got up from where she sat next to Big Mac and headed for the poop, but Twilight stopped her.

“Stay, Dash. Take a break for today.”

Rainbow vacillated, but, smiling, returned to the group. “Yeah. Okay.”

And they talked. They talked into the night, repeating every moment of the fight, every crucial choice, every small mistake, unpacking each individual surprise, tension, and triumph over the course of their struggle. From the castle, they talked then of Snowdrift, and, moving backward, reminisced over everything else. They described their time in Roan to Colgate, and Applejack recounted to her what death was like. They spoke of Hoofington, of Octavia’s mansion, of the Astras and their crow, of Thunderhead and the way in which Octavia had bested him.

As night fell, and joy overtook exhaustion, they got out the cards and chips and sat on the deck to play. Pinkie sang a song and produced a bag of coffee for Applejack to brew, and Vinyl joked to uneasy laughter that she should have produced a bottle or two of wine.

“I feel like celebrating,” Rarity said expansively, and they chuckled. “Let’s start with anaconda, threes are wild.”

“What is an anaconda, anyway?” Octavia asked. Her inner thigh was red and ugly and wrinkled with scar tissue, its hair burned away, and her movement was stiff; she gave no indication that it pained her.

“We don’t have them in Equestria,” Fluttershy said. “They’re a type of big snake that lives up close to the equator.”

“I hate snakes,” Vinyl said. “Close to the equator. That’s where the changelings are, right?”

“That’s right,” Twilight said, passing her cards. “I’ve never met one that I know of. I’d like to.”

“There was a girl in med school who we thought might have been one,” Colgate said. “Never confirmed.”

They were quiet for a moment, concentrating on their cards, before Octavia broke the silence. “Colgate, why do you have an Element of Harmony?”

“Okay,” Rainbow broke in. “I didn’t wanna say anything ‘cause no one else was, so I was like ‘maybe this is something Twilight and Cole worked out earlier and forgot to tell me.’ Colgate.” She faced Colgate, who, her hourglass Element catching the faintly growing starlight, made herself not shrink into the deck. “Why in Tartarus do you have your own Element of Harmony?”

“It wasn’t something she cleared with me,” Twilight said. “I just… I didn’t say anything because… I don’t know.”

“No one wants to start something like this so soon after victory,” Vinyl said.

“Well, now it’s started,” Applejack said, passing her cards to Pinkie.

“It was when you went south, wasn’t it?” Rarity asked, an edge in her voice that Applejack caught immediately.

“All right, before we get riled up, Ah wanna say somethin’.” She stamped her hoof once on the deck to get their attention, fragmenting already as questions sprung to everyone’s minds. “We beat Discord, ya hear? Whatever it was that happened out there, the result is the same. So obviously Cole havin’ her new Element either helped us, or at least didn’t hurt. So let’s try to keep things nice, all right?”

“I wasn’t going to be mean,” Twilight said, and, after a moment of thought, added, “but I can understand thinking I might be. I’m actually just, I don’t know, kind of shocked.”

“I think we owe Big Mac an apology,” Fluttershy said. She passed her final card and threw a chip into the middle.

“Please, don’t,” Big Mac mumbled.

“The glamour!” Pinkie cried. “Oh my gosh! That’s right!”

“You don’t gotta say anythin’.”

Pinkie clapped Colgate on the back, and Colgate flinched. “You’re with us for a reason after all, little buddy! Fancy that!”

“And no one believed him,” Vinyl said, horn aglow turquoise.

“Yeah, including you,” Rainbow said.

Vinyl’s horn dimmed. “Point made.”

“We don’t have to talk ‘bout this,” Big Mac said louder. “Ah was right in the long run. Good fer me. Ah’d like to just ferget the whole thing ever happened.”

“I think that’s fair,” Twilight said, looking over her cards. She frowned at Rarity, from whom she had received the discards. “Whether Big Mac was right or not is irrelevant now. That being said, and for what it’s worth, Big Mac, I’m sorry for doubting you.”

He raised a hoof, eyes rolled back, his sign of discomfort.

“And that’s all I have to say about it. I’d rather talk about Colgate.”

“How long had you been planning this?” Octavia asked.

Colgate looked from Octavia to Twilight, trembling. No one had made any threats yet, but that meant nothing. Everyone was happy that Discord was defeated; revenge was probably not on their minds. There was always later.

“We’re not mad at you,” Rarity repeated.

“It came to me first in Tartarus,” Colgate said, not trusting in the power of dishonesty to protect her. “We had your stuff, right? Like your papers and things, and the Element designs were in there. I looked at ‘em, remembered what Big Mac thought about me being with you all in the mines, and I thought—I don’t know, I didn’t think I guess. But I decided that was my purpose. Splitting up in Snowdrift, that was the time.”

“Are you absolutely sure you don’t have some kind of intuitive power?” Twilight asked.

“I’m just lucky.”

“Gutsy, more like,” Rarity said. “Dear, what did you call your Element?”

Colgate looked down at her Element again, glassy crystal shot with gold and blue, much more distinctive than the cutie mark it imitated. “Element of Adventure,” she mumbled.

“You know what?” Twilight asked, nodding. “That’s not half bad. To be honest, I was afraid you were going to say something like ‘the Element of Medicine’. No, good choice, Colgate. That’s… quite workable.”

“I like it too.”

“I’m confused,” Rarity broke in. “I know nothing bad happened, but isn’t this a big deal? Bigger than we’re treating it? If I’m understanding this right, did she not stand to ruin our entire setup by suddenly including a fourth Element?”

“I didn’t,” Colgate blurted, though it was the possibility of exactly what Rarity suggested that had terrified her—rather, the retribution for doing so.

“No, the worst she could have done is nothing,” Twilight said. “Hang on.” She considered her cards for a minute, threw a defiant look at Vinyl across form her, and raised. “An individual Element is no better than a pulse crystal; their power is in how they combine, not what they can do on their own.”

“So no harm, no foul,” Applejack said.

“I wouldn’t exactly say that. There’s still a lot of implications for this down the line.”

“Having four is no worse than having three,” Octavia said.

“That’s true.” She looked again at Vinyl, staring assiduously down at her cards, her face failing to hide the dread she felt. “I actually think the more interesting thing is what happened to Vinyl. We found her Element on the grounds, detached.”

“Discord grabbed it off me,” Vinyl whispered.

“And threw it out the window. So…” She rubbed her eyes and folded. “Applejack, I think I’d like some coffee after all. Thank you.” She sipped gratefully at the cup passed to her. Her mind was exhausted, her magic drained, and analyzing the implications and mechanics of the Elements of Harmony felt beyond her capabilities. She was tempted to throw her cards down and go to bed, but knew that it would not be fair to leave her friends in suspense.

“Everything worked even though Vinyl wasn’t wearing her Element at the time,” Fluttershy said. “Can they fire if you’re not wearing them? Maybe it was close enough anyway.”

“No, you have to be in contact with the jewel for it to work.”

“An’ Vinyl wasn’t,” Big Mac said. “Does that mean hers was broke?” She frowned at him, but he didn’t look at her.

“Let me think for a minute.” She took a long sip of coffee and again pushed back the temptation to call it a night.“Vinyl’s Element doesn’t fire because she wasn’t wearing it. That means that the Elements don’t work at all. But they did, so something replaced hers. Did Colgate replace Vinyl? Or maybe only the six of us fired and the other three didn’t. They’re separate from us, they might not have been necessary in the first place. That would be good, we could just find a way to destroy theirs and go back to six Elements. That’s one big headache we’d save.”

Pinkie stuck her tongue out at Rainbow, who had raised yet again, and who grinned behind her cards.

“Octavia, Big Mac, did your Elements actually go off?”

“I cannot imagine what else could have happened,” Octavia said.

“You’d know it if they did.”

“Then I would say so. It was quite an unmistakable feeling.”

“So yours worked anyway. So that means…” She took up the cards to shuffle them. “If Vinyl’s Element was gone, you three wouldn’t have been able to use yours, even if Colgate was there with an extra.”

“Why not?” Big Mac asked.

“Colgate added one, but Vinyl’s was still missing. All that would have changed was you had three out of four, instead of two out of three. See? It would have been the same problem. But, your three worked without Vinyl’s.”

“I replaced Vinyl,” Colgate said.

“You can’t just replace one Element with another, unless the one Element wouldn’t have worked anyway.” She averted her eyes tactfully, waiting for the others to understand her conclusion. She beat back the cruel temptation to state the obvious to Vinyl’s face: “See? You weren’t one of us after all. You were never good enough friends to be an Element of Harmony.”

“Does it mean what Ah think it does?” Applejack asked. “Ah don’t wanna say it.”

“It means I wasn’t in harmony with you,” Vinyl said. “That’s right, Twilight? I can tell by your face that you want to announce it.”

Twilight took a deep breath, but said nothing, eyes still on the night sky.

“Darling, how can that be?” Rarity asked. “I always thought you were a part of us. Twilight, is it possible the jeweler made a mistake with Vinyl’s Element?”

“That’s always possible,” Twilight said, not believing it.

“Yeah, she just so happened to do three perfectly, and mess up mine,” Vinyl said.

“Think of it this way, Vinyl. Now you can go chase your music career without worrying if it’ll break apart the Elements!” Pinkie cried. “See? Everypony’s happy after all!”

“You’re the only one that’s happy, Pinkie.”

“Oh, okay!” Her tone had darkened. “Sorry! My bad! I didn’t know we were supposed to be miserable again!”

“We’re not doin’ this!” Applejack snapped. “Again, it’s done, it’s over. Discord’s a statue, it worked. How it worked, an’ why, it’s complicated, but the fact is it’s done. Vinyl’s Element didn’t work fer some reason, an’ Colgate’s did. None of that changes the fact that Vinyl’s been a good friend of ours fer a fair piece of this journey.”

“Not as good as we all thought, obviously,” Vinyl murmured.

“An’ while Ah do think yer entitled to feel sorry fer yerself a little bit, Ah’d respectfully ask that you reign it in some.”

“Why?” She tossed a look at Octavia. “Is there room for only one moping mare on this ship?”

“I would appreciate it if you did not drag me into this,” Octavia said.

“Well you’re an Element of Harmony now, aren’t you? Seems to me we’re all in this already. No? Do you want to get out now? Trade ya!”

“Do you hear yourself, Vinyl?” Twilight asked. Something in her tone brought the deck’s attention straight to her. “When you talk, I mean. Do you hear what you say sometimes?”

“Rainbow was right, Twilight, you are a bitch.”

Twilight smiled thinly. “That has been well established, thank you. Do you want to know what you are?”

“Go right ahead, I can tell you’d love to.”

“Why are you so defensive?” Fluttershy asked.

“Ah said we’re not doin’ this!” Applejack yelled. “Twilight, you know she’s eggin’ you on, an’ Vinyl, yer better than that!”

“Apparently not!” Vinyl barked; in her voice, it was a fragile objection, difficult to take seriously despite the rich brown light that bathed the circle from her horn.

“Can you shut the hell up?” Rainbow moaned. “It’s no wonder your Element didn’t go off, you lash out the second something goes wrong.”

“Well!” Vinyl stood up and threw her cards down. “I…” She sniffed, and they realized then that she was crying behind her goggles. “Yes. Fine.” With that, she retreated below the deck.

It was several minutes before anyone spoke, some of them waiting for her to reappear and resume the conversation. Twilight cleared her throat. “I couldn’t have said why her Element didn’t work back there, but I think Vinyl just provided us with a pretty convincing demonstration.”

“She’s insecure,” Fluttershy said. “She’s too worried about whether she fits in to actually try to do it.”

“I’ll say.”

“Reminds me some of you fer a while there, Twilight,” Applejack said. “No offense, you understand.”

“None taken; you’re absolutely right. Right before the mines, and shortly after, that was all I could think of. But for me, I overcame those fears. She, obviously, did not.”

“I do not like talking about her like this,” Octavia said.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” She dealt the cards. “I’ve never really… No, you’re right, I’ll stop talking about her behind her back. It’s nothing we don’t already know anyway.”

“I still like her,” Pinkie said.

“She’s hurting,” Rarity said. “That’s clear.”

“Ah’ll talk with her when she’s cooled off some,” Applejack said, straightening her mane. “We’ve been over this, she an’ me. What’s the game, Twilight?”

“Seven card, deuces, low heart splits,” Twilight sighed. “There is more that we need to discuss before we get home. Or get to Canterlot, I mean.”

“How do we break it to Equestria that there are three or four new Elements of Harmony?” Rarity asked. “I feel that we should devote some thought to that.”

“That is one thing. I also wouldn’t be surprised if we’re involved in the rest of the reparations that need to be made.”

Rainbow smacked her forehead with a hoof, and Applejack laughed. “You fergot, didn’t you?”

“Hey, we haven’t had to do one of those ground-moving spells in ages,” Rainbow returned.

“They have everythin’ lookin’ mighty fine down south, Ah’ll give ya that.”

“For all we know, the north might be looking the same by now,” Twilight said. “At least around Canterlot, it probably is. If it’s the job of Colgate’s secret agent friends to repair the country, then I’m sure there are plenty at work in and around the capital.”

“Still, we should prepare to be involved,” Rarity said. “I agree.”

“What can we do?” Pinkie asked. “I mean, besides what we already did.”

Twilight scratched her chin. “I don’t know exactly. We’ll have to bring Equestria back down and reattach it somehow, and that’s not going to be easy. Remember, we have an ocean to the north of us, and that all spilled in when we lifted up. It’s underneath us now.”

“I’ll bet the changelings didn’t like that,” Fluttershy said.

“Why should they care?” Octavia asked.

“Their hives are on an archipelago up there.”

“We’ll probably be hearing about the princesses working with the changeling government to coordinate moving the oceans back to where they were,” Twilight said.

“That’s their problem, though, not ours,” Applejack said. “Not to sound flippant, but ain’t that true?”

“It is… I just want us to be prepared for it.”

“Speaking of preparations, I think we should all be practicing answering interview questions,” Rarity said. “The press is going to be all over us.”

“That is no problem for me,” Octavia said. “I am surprised that it would be for you all. You have done this before, have you not?”

“Those incidents were smaller,” Rainbow said. “Right, Twilight?”

“Nightmare Moon was pretty big, but most of the publicity was directed at the princesses, not us.” Twilight folded once more, her chips dwindling. “It happened a lot faster than this, too, and we did our work away from prying eyes.”

“Let’s try,” Pinkie chirped, and held her hoof to Big Mac’s face like it was a microphone. “So, Big Mac, big buddy, big ol’ little buddy, how do you feel about saving the world?”

Rainbow and Pinkie laughed. “That question sucks, Pinkie.”

“That’s the kind we’re gonna get! They call it ‘soft-balling’, Dashie!”

“Ah feel, uh…” He struggled. “They’re not really gonna want my take on this, are they?”

“All of ours,” Rarity said. “It’s interesting.”

He groaned.

“I’m sure we won’t be in Canterlot for long, dear. The princesses will understand that we want to get back home first and foremost.”

“What’s gonna happen to you, Octy?” Pinkie asked.

“To be honest, it is something that I have put off thinking about for a very long time,” Octavia said.

“You can always live with me if you need.”

“At the bakery?”

“I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Cake would be happy to have you!”

“In Ponyville.” She was not sure why, but the thought of it held no appeal. With her sister smiling at her, though, she said, “I will keep that in mind as a possibility.”

“I don’t wanna go to Ponyville,” Colgate said. “Not that or Canterlot either, none of ‘em.”

“This just occurred to me,” Rarity said. “No one else knows you have an Element, Colgate. If you want, we can pretend that Vinyl’s worked, and you can go about your business. What?”

Twilight was shaking her head. “The Elements need to stay together. If we’re needed again, we can’t waste time searching for the one of us who went off on her own.”

“Yer stuck with us,” Applejack said.

Colgate rose and trotted to the rail. So obvious, she thought, yet it had missed her on her trip to the mines. She had never stopped to think that she would be expected to keep in touch with the others—not that they would cast her out, she had trust in that civility at least.

“And you’re going to Canterlot and Ponyville,” she said.

“We have to,” Twilight said.

“And you’re gonna live there, ‘cause that’s your home.”

“…Yes.”

“I see.” To her, the solution shone bright and clear. By her own oversight, she had sealed herself into a future in the place she wanted most to avoid. There would be much to escape there, but she was a mare of means. Two months, three, of work, and she could get her medical licenses back; on a surgeon’s salary, there would be no want of alcohol and painkillers.

She stared at the passing clouds, recalling the layout of Ponyville Hospital, the drug cabinets and those who had access to them; which wings were more active at which times, which pharmaceuticals were purchased when, and from whom, and for what price. She had never tried it, but she imagined stealing from the hospital would not be too difficult for her.

“Come back to us, Cole,” Rainbow said. “Hey!”

“My sincerest apologies,” Colgate said, blinking rapidly, smothering her fear with a fantasy of success. The cold hospital tile on her back as she drifted to sleep under an unaware patient’s bed, hazy eyes, thirst turning her tongue to glue, an endless headache endlessly deferred with water and alcohol, and money rolling in all the while. The comfort of familiarity soothed her quivering nerves as she returned to them. “Yes, Ponyville. I can make do there after all.”

“That was fast,” Fluttershy said.

“You know me. Fastest mare in the world.”

“Where will you live?” Octavia asked.

“You two can be roommates,” Rarity offered, and on her face was the merest suggestion of a smile. “That makes the most sense to me.”

“Or if yer not afraid of farm work, you’ve always got a place to stay with my lot,” Applejack said.

“You will understand if I do not want to go back to work on a farm,” Octavia said, and it took them a moment to realize that she was making a joke.

Rainbow craned her neck and shot off the deck for a second, and they watched her circle around them, first over and then disappearing under before almost overshooting the gunwale in a graceless landing. “There’s a little spit of farmland down there. They’re out there, the farmers, they waved at me.”

Pinkie was at the rail in a flash, shrieking enthusiastically that they had done it, that life was on the mend—not Equestria, she hollered, but life. Their response went unheard, but Pinkie let off a burst of confetti a second later, laughing.

“Yes, get used to that,” Octavia said.

“I already love it!”

Vinyl eventually brought a moody vigil back to the game, and by three in the morning, all but Octavia and Colgate had gone below to sleep. The two avoided looking at each other for a minute before Octavia took her place at the port side, from where she could see the ridges of lush hills and rolling rivers that guarded Trottingham from a westerly view. Colgate sidled up next to her and put both hooves on the rail, and without needing told, switched to the other side for Octavia’s good ear.

“Was it serious, or were you just excited?” Octavia asked.

“I don’t know.” Octavia knew it was one of Colgate’s generic answers, something she would say to buy herself time while she tried to figure out what she actually wanted to communicate. She waited for the follow-up. “I get excited easily, you know that about me.”

“I do. Were you excited then?”

“Yeah.”

Octavia nodded, silently disagreeing. Discord languishing in stone, everyone else losing their minds, the jumps for joy and the cheers and all, it was the perfect time for a kiss. Colgate’s, however, had felt to Octavia like more than a flight of fancy. She was not sure whether she should say so, whether Colgate would spook at having her kiss interpreted.

“I will tell you,” Octavia said, “while I was not prepared for it, I did not find it objectionable.”

“I like you, Octavia.”

“There it is.” She had suspected it in Snowdrift, but it was never a great concern.

“Sorry.”

“Do not apologize. You have done no wrong.” Realizing then that she had not yet looked at Colgate, she met the unicorn’s shifty eyes, trying to put kindness and gentleness into her own and succeeding in making herself appear as tired as she was—not that any of it landed with Colgate anyway, who interpreted Octavia’s expression as one of curiosity and appraisal, as an antiquarian would evaluate a piece of history. It was her knowledge of Octavia’s personality, rather than her recognition of the body language, that kept the fear-response from jumping up.

“You might say that I’ve got a thing for you,” Colgate said, and Octavia stifled a grin at the odd phrasing.

“I…” She rubbed her face and looked into the sky, excitement and self-loathing circling each other in her mind. Shame and desire, revulsion and pride, the chorus of advice she knew she would hear if she voiced her problems before her friends—and, she stopped herself, thinking then with a shot of clarity through her exhausted brain, “Colgate is a friend too. I can tell her how I feel.”

“Go ahead, you’re fine,” Colgate urged.

“I am afraid of this. This conversation, right now, I am afraid.”

“No fear.” She smiled. “I mean you no harm.”

“Thank you.” The echo of what Octavia had told her in Tartarus, the phrase that had affected Colgate more profoundly than she had expected; there was no way to know how much Colgate meant when she spoke, but Octavia had faith that she would be honest. “What I mean to say is that I do not think I am fit for anything more than friendship with someone. Perhaps not even that, I have my doubts.” She jingled the Element around her neck. “I suppose I should not at this point. Even so.”

“What makes you unfit?”

“I am too focused on myself, and concerning my past, the difficulties it has caused me and that I have allowed it to cause me, I am too far gone.” How much easier to simply say that she did not share Colgate’s feelings and let her down that way. The thought of it was only just entering her mind, so devoted was she to reflection, to finding the imperfections, to torturing herself in an attempt to exorcise them. She sighed, and in it, her voice caught, but a breath of the perfumed night air gave her temporary strength. “I hate myself. That is the truth. I hate that I cannot look past myself, I hate that even my small mistakes seem to be greater than my biggest achievements. I know that I am too critical of myself, and I cannot change that, and I hate that I am that way. I hate…” She paused, for a rare moment wishing that Colgate would reach out to her, offer a soothing touch, interrupt her. “I hate that every good thing I do seems worthless to me, and I hate that I cannot accept the fact that I have friends. I ask myself what I have done to earn anyone’s friendship, and here I stand wearing an Element of Harmony. I hate that I am numb to the good that I know exists in me.” Recalling the point of her outpouring, she added, “and that is why I feel unfit for a romantic relationship. I would be a burden to you, or to anyone.”

Colgate nodded patiently, her face changed to the kindly quizzical look she would wear for patients. “Octavia, over the past two weeks, how often would you say you’ve felt little interest or pleasure in doing things?”

“You have asked me this before.”

“I remember it. So?”

“I am not going to kill myself, Colgate.”

“I know you won’t, that ain’t the point. I’d like to see you well again.”

“I will be fine.”

“You always say that. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Once we hit Canterlot, I’ll bet the princess can get you a good psychiatrist.”

“I have already tried that.”

Colgate’s tone was sharp. “You said you tried it once and gave up.”

Octavia blushed. Scolded by a doctor; it felt worse than being scolded by a friend.

“Here’s the deal,” Colgate continued. “Psychology wasn’t my specialty, but I remember a little from college. You’re a clear depression case, and I’d wager it’s a sort of post-traumatic stress kinda thing.”

“I have been told this already.”

“Not by a medical professional, you ain’t been. I’ll give you a referral, if you want. Comes free with another kiss.”

Octavia smiled ruefully. “You do not want to be involved with me like that.”

“Maybe I do.”

“I am no good for you.”

Colgate frowned and her tail switched. “What is good for me, then?”

“I do not know.”

“Right, so don’t shut me out like that. It’s hurtful.”

Octavia tapped her chin with a hoof. “I do not want to hurt anyone.”

“Well, you hurt me.”

To hear it from Colgate, Octavia had to pause and look at her. She did not appear nervous, and she did not have the glazed look in her eyes that indicated wandering thoughts. She looked the unicorn up and down. Colgate was not unattractive; her build was pleasing to Octavia’s eye, the colors agreeable, the fur too coarse but the mane and tail long and wavy, as she preferred. The crazy eyes occasionally troubled Octavia, but she had not noticed them in a while.

“How about this?” Colgate asked. “Canterlot, you and me, we’ll do dinner. Huh?”

“Did I truly hurt you just now?”

“What? Yes, yeah, whatever. I’m not gonna hold it against you, I know how you get.”

Octavia bowed her head.

“Octy, please get some help, or some sleep at least.”

“I do not think I can.”

“Then look at me. Hey, look into the eyes of forgiveness, dammit.”

Octavia looked at her obediently.

“I’m not mad at you. Mistakes happen, right? I’ve made mistakes too. You forgave me for those, so I can return the favor. Isn’t that right?”

“You are too good to me.”

“Gimme a break. Remember what you told me in Tartarus? Remember that magic we walked through, what gave us the clarity?”

“I remember being happy then.”

“That’s in your grasp, you know.”

“It does not feel that way.”

“Trust me that it is. I had my clarity then, and sometimes I get it back, so you can do it too.” She shook her head violently, and Octavia knew then that the conversation was over. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do, I really don’t. I wanna—okay, look. I… No harm. Okay, great. Canterlot, dinner?”

Left defenseless from the quick change, Octavia could only take Colgate’s question at face value. She thought about it, finding no immediate problem and no instinctual resistance to the notion. Still, she was in no mood to accept something pleasant; and still, she was in no mood to make an obstacle of her feelings. “That sounds lovely, Colgate. I know a few places that are very nice; we will see whether they are still there when we get back.”

“It’s a date.” Colgate edged closer, and Octavia did not move to stop her, but Colgate hesitated before turning away with a yawn. “The psychiatry, Octavia. It helps.”

“I will consider it.”

“All right. Thanks.” She paced away, and, not sure what to do with her hooves, waved. “Good night.”

“Good night, Colgate.” She waited before crossing the deck, head thrumming, wound hot and painful. She stepped on her injured side without thinking about it, ingrained penitence.

For a time, she was alone with her muddy thoughts, but then she imagined one of the others coming up to find her, as had happened so many times before. “Aren’t you gonna sleep tonight?” they would ask, and Octavia would reply, “I do not think I can.” But no one did come up to find her. She paced from bow to stern and watched the clouds, the steady drift of lights on the ground as they passed over a plateau of isolated farms. These she watched, wondering whether anyone below took note of their passing, whether anyone recognized their airship.

Too unclear from all that had come before, she could not decide whether she reciprocated Colgate’s feelings. She had lived without romance for so long that the idea of it seemed artificial, as though having a partner somehow detracted from her identity. “Regardless, I have until Canterlot to worry about that,” she thought, and the trouble was shelved.

She imagined herself as she would appear to the hypothetical friend who caught her on deck. “Is this not a familiar scene?” she would ask. “All I am missing is my cello, so I can serenade the ship with sad, generic melodies.” And they would say all manner of comforting things, or perhaps rebuke her for being yet stuck in the circle of depression; and this much worse than usual, for she was freshly victorious over the master foe, and should therefore be happy. She might disclose to them Colgate’s recommendation, and they would congratulate her and tell her it was a grand idea, and she would feel pandered to; and not admitting it, she would instead turn colder to them.

“I do not need anyone to talk to tonight,” she concluded, not without a note of pride. “What could I say? This is a surprise to no one, least of all to myself. So why can I not overcome it, if that is so?” Here, her thoughts stifled, and she moved with a gusty sigh to the topic of her future. She knew that nothing she wanted was within reach, but always before, the immediacy of work overtook her before she could imagine a solution or lose too much hope for finding one.

“Now my purpose is fulfilled, and I have no more use,” she imagined saying to the friend who had not taken a clear identity in her mind. “As a musician, I have lost whatever edge I once had, and with it my desire to play. There is nothing there for me. My only other skills are in adventuring, yet I will not be able to stray from my friends.” She yawned, her mind clouded, and she forced herself to keep pacing. For two more hours, Octavia walked the deck and thought about her plight, not one thing occurring to her that had not occurred several times over. The cycle that had started before she was grown repeated still, rote and numbing, her darkest thoughts feeling as shallow as her occasional sparks of optimism. “Tomorrow is another day,” she would think, and just after, “Perhaps I can die in my sleep tonight.” Nothing stuck, neither to alarm nor comfort, no attractive topics for indulgent fantasy; and when she saw the truth of her apathy, as she had many times before, that too did not reach her. Her nights alone had become routine, and Octavia, worn down to nothing, simply walked through the motions over and over and over.

In the gleaming of following morning, when she started awake to her friends laughing and hopping about the deck, her first thought was a silent invective so strong and sudden that she was momentarily afraid she had uttered it aloud. Four days left, and what waited on the other side? A date with Colgate. She rolled onto her back and stared into the smooth morning sky, eyes and head dry, lips chapped, body vibrating with the ship as it took her ever nigh to the rest of her life.

The second, and more serious, dam broke on day three. They were over the swampland that marked the Everfree Forest’s southeastern foot, flying once more at the pace which Rainbow’s and Twilight’s magic afforded, carefree but quiet, too tired for celebration. Luna sent them a letter on day two asking them to return to Canterlot to share their stories and receive all the accolades that were coming their way. Of Celestia’s state, she said little, but Twilight did not press her, not in a letter. She worked out her worries, instead, on marking the remaining continental lacunae on a map. While the cities and the countrysides immediately surrounding them had all been repaired, either by the Elements or industrious secret agents, most of the intervening lands were still fractured.

While she moved about the deck, maps and books floating by her head and a pair of sigils making passage difficult for everyone else, Fluttershy was simply enjoying her own company in one of the cabins. She could hear Pinkie and Applejack playing a word game through the walls, and every time one of them burst out laughing, she snapped her ears down. She reacted the same when someone knocked on the door.

“Enter,” she said. “Oh, sorry, Big Mac. I didn’t mean to be curt with you.”

He nodded and lay an envelope on the corner of the bed. After looking at it for several seconds, he said, “it’s fer you.”

“I can see that.” What puzzled her more, as she reached, was her own writing on the front.

“You asked me to give this to you after we beat Discord.”

She stared down at it, then at him. “Um, I’m really sorry Big Mac, I know it’s not your fault, but I’m not really in the mood for jokes right now.”

“No joke.” He tugged at a wrinkle in the blanket. “You approached me in Snowdrift an’ said to give this to you, after we beat Discord. You said not to look inside, an’ you said not to ask you what it was after you’d given it to me. You made me promise.”

She held her tired smile, but her heart had slowed, her stomach suddenly nauseous. “Did I say anything else?”

“You said it was important.”

“I’ll bet I did.” She slowly slid the envelope over and dug out the tightly folded note. She looked up at him. “It might be private.”

He nodded and took his leave, feeling little better than she. Fluttershy had told him, in general, the letter’s contents, and he retreated to the other cabin for what he knew would be their last few minutes of peace.

With trembling hooves, she opened the missive and read what she had written to herself.

Dear Fluttershy,

First, let me share a secret that only I know so I can prove this is my own writing and no trick. I enjoy the taste of Angel Bunny’s alfalfa pellets, but I dislike how dry they are.

Second, if I am reading this in the presence of others, I should find somewhere private (and I may want to sit down).

I am writing this letter one day before consenting to a memory wipe spell. Vinyl has agreed to administer the spell to me, but I had to pester her a lot for it. I trust she will have done a good job. I hope so. The incident she’s going to wipe is not pleasant.

The incident is this. In Applewood, on the last day, we had to fight Discord’s animated dam. I may remember this, I may not, if not ask the others, they all remember it. The dam proved to be too much for us, so much that we barely escaped with our lives, and even then due to Vanilla Cream’s intercession and no skill of ours. The airship was down over the river, in front of the dam. Applejack was on the banks, Rarity and Rainbow Dash above holding the river back as the dam came unstuck. Everyone else was on the ship. Because of our division, and some of us passing out from exhaustion, there were few to see what Pinkie did. Vinyl was one, and Big Mac too, and me.

We were spent, all of us but Pinkie, but when we asked her to use her magic and help out, she said she had none. The magical power we KNOW exists, which we have SEEN, which Celestia has VERIFIED, she refused to use. Vinyl believes it was out of fear, that she froze up, and Big Mac too.

As a result, the dam broke free, Applewood was flooded, and we were caught in the river as well. Again, only Vanilla Cream’s assistance (which Pinkie did not foresee) saved us.

Fluttershy paused, trembling all the harder. It had to be a trick, she thought. The secret at the top, that was something that could be lifted from her mind by sufficient magic. It had to be a disgusting trick from Discord, an attempt to break them apart even after he was petrified. If she had lost her memory, then the incident would be a blank, and she clearly recalled Pinkie passing out with the others after expending her magic.

“What spells did she use? Do I remember?” She did not, but it had been a frantic night; anyone could forget a detail like that. She read on.

After speaking about it in private, I learned that Vinyl and Big Mac were able to forgive Pinkie naturally, how I don’t know. I, however, did not. I was furious, I was bitter, and even hateful. Her cowardice condemned us to death. And yet, we were Elements of Harmony. We had to be friends, or the Elements would not work and we would not defeat Discord.

After months of soul searching, I was running out of time and no closer to forgiving Pinkie. That is why I begged Vinyl to wipe my memory and replace it with a false version of the Applewood fight. I may remember Pinkie tiring herself out alongside us, but that is just to make it so there isn’t a big black hole in my mind.

I chose to write this letter to myself so that Pinkie would be brought to justice, but after we no longer needed to be in Harmony. Again, Vinyl and Big Mac have forgiven her on their own, and no one else knows what she did. If we didn’t have the threat of disharmony stopping us from beating Discord, I would have confronted her long ago.

Regretfully, Fluttershy (December 8, 3315).

She read it a second time, not fully believing, but no longer convinced by the end that it was a trick. Out on the deck, Pinkie laughed shrilly and broke into a fragment of song.

The letter had described anger and hatred, but neither of these did she feel, sitting up on the bed and listening to her friends above and around. For forty minutes, she sat that way, silent with the page by her side, mind stuck on what to do. Partially, she waited for the feelings the letter indicated to come to her, but more, she waited for fear of the question—and that fear, after a while, she acknowledged to herself, and without a sound got up and went for the deck. Pinkie was napping beside the torch, and Fluttershy woke her and brought her down to the cabin.

Not showing the letter, she flatly asked, “What happened in Applewood?”

Pinkie froze, and in that moment, Fluttershy knew it was true. “It could be anything, lots happened there,” she told herself, but it was for naught. In her heart, she had needed only the slightest sign to jump to the suggested conclusion.

Again, more sternly, she asked. “What happened in Applewood?”

“What do you mean?” Pinkie finally rejoined. “Lots happened, silly! Are you okay? You look a little green around the gills, Flutterbutter!”

“Stop that.” She composed herself. “I’m sorry. I think.” She glanced at the letter with a stab of impatience for herself, not strong enough to look Pinkie in the eyes the whole time.

“It’s okay, Fluttershy.” She patted Fluttershy’s leg, and Fluttershy let her, breathing in, breathing out, the accusation at her lips.

“When…” She swallowed, her mouth and throat dry. “When we were fighting the dam, did anything happen?”

“Yeah, it got us.” Her voice had shrunk, and she sat, eyes wide and worried. “Why?”

“Just say it,” she thought weakly, but stuttered on her words once more. The letter had incited nothing but disbelief; none of the cruel feelings it had attested were there to spur Fluttershy to laying the truth—if truth it was—at Pinkie’s hooves.

“You’re acting weird, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Did you help us?” It came out a mumble, and she repeated herself to Pinkie’s lifted ear.

Pinkie stared at her before getting up and latching the door, and when she turned back, her face was unreadable. “Okay, look, it was a looooong night, Fluttershy. We were all tired and cranky, and no one was at a hundred percent that night. Okay?”

At last, a spark of anger. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I hate your question.”

“Yeah, me too.” She almost left it at that. Fluttershy had not the strength to follow if Pinkie chose to leave the cabin in that moment, and with her eyes, she tried to implore it.

Instead, Pinkie just sat, staring at her, face still blank, eyes wide, as if to say “well what now?”

“You have magic.”

“I know that! I know it, okay?” She whirled away with a shout. “You know how I know? ‘Cause ponies like you keep telling me!”

“So you did use it in Applewood.”

“Yes! Obviously!”

“At the dam, Pinkie. The night we fought. The night…” She lowered her voice. “The night Applejack died.”

“Yes! Well, maybe just a little. Look—”

“You either helped us or you didn’t.”

Pinkie frowned at her from the door, which she kicked once in response to Rarity asking whether they were okay.

“Here.” Giving up, angry but not in a way that helped her, she floated the letter to Pinkie. “Apparently I wrote this to myself six days ago.”

Pinkie scanned it before flipping it to the floor. For a second, she appeared defiant, but then deflated.

“Tell me it’s a trick. Tell me and I’ll believe it. I want to—you know I don’t want to think you actually did that. Tell me it’s a trick.”

Pinkie nodded, eyes shining. She swiped a hoof across her muzzle. “It’s no trick.”

“Right then.” She took the letter off the floor and placed it on the bed. “Why?”

Pinkie’s lips were twitching, her nose wrinkling, her eyes fixedly on the floor. “I just did.”

“You have to know why.”

“I. Just. Did!” Again, Rarity knocked, and Pinkie screamed. A moment of pregnant silence followed before Rarity’s hoofsteps disappeared.

“I want—”

“Shut up! Just stop talking! Oh, what are you gonna say, I had no right, I was a bad pony?”

“Yes! Exactly that!”

“Thanks for telling me what I already know!”

“What’s that mean?”

“Obviously I’m sorry, Fluttershy.” She whipped to the door and then faced Fluttershy again. She was panting, her ears and tail were tight and alert, and Fluttershy’s too. Eyes met as the room fell away, but only for a second before falling back together, and the connection was broken.

Fluttershy took an agitated breath. “You cowardly—”

Pinkie slammed the door open. “I’m done. Goodbye, Fluttershy! Thanks for letting me know what happened! I’ll be sure to make a note of it for the future, for next time we’re in a situation like that!” Out of sight, she shouted at someone to get out of her way, and Twilight appeared in the doorway.

“What is going on?” Twilight asked impatiently. “What happened?”

Grabbing up her letter, Fluttershy made for the deck. “Get everyone together, and I’ll tell you.” Above, Pinkie was shouting for a ship meeting, and Fluttershy hastened.

“Yeah, bring ol’ Dashie back in from the wind, don’t let her sit it out,” Pinkie yelled. “Here she is, everyone! Look, it’s Fluttershy! Say hi to Fluttershy, everypony!” A ring had gathered around her, all mares looking nervously at one another, and Fluttershy stepped forward. She stared at Pinkie, who, with eyes still shining with tears, turned away and cast herself to the deck with a howl.

“What the blue hell is goin’ on here?” Applejack finally asked. “Come on, Pinkie, out with it, girl.”

“She let us die in Applewood,” Fluttershy said. Somewhere in the cabin, the anger she felt had transformed and turned itself out at Pinkie. Her reaction to Fluttershy’s questions had been ridiculous and immature, and that, more than the truth of what she had and had not done, stoked a small but hot fire in Fluttershy’s breast. Knowledge of the crime was lesser to actual memory of it, but Pinkie’s character had shone out clearly in those few minutes in the cabin, and when the stirrings of remorse appeared again, Fluttershy had only to look at Pinkie’s sobbing tantrum to give herself strength.

“What?” “How do you mean?” “Pinkie?” “What’s that mean?” After the questions, Fluttershy took a breath, waited for Pinkie to quiet a little, and proceeded.

“When we were fighting the dam, and everyone else was finished, Pinkie was left, with all her magic. I don’t know if it was fear or what, or freezing up under pressure, but she didn’t use it. She was asked, and she refused.” Pausing for effect, she added again, “she let us die there.”

“Fluttershy’s been enchanted,” Rainbow blurted. “Discord hit her with some sleeper spell, Twilight.”

Twilight took her eyes off Pinkie for a second. “I could check, but I don’t think… Fluttershy, how do you know this?”

She explained the letter, but there was no use; before she was done, the cross-talk was too loud, the questions too many, the momentum too great. Rainbow yelled about enchantments for a while longer, Twilight attacked Fluttershy with questions she could not answer, Rarity did the same to Pinkie even as she bawled and pounded her hooves on the deck. Applejack chewed her lip, face red and green eyes narrowed, holding her peace; Big Mac and Vinyl backed out of the group and watched; Colgate sat in the middle and looked at everyone, her face clearly showing how unprepared she was for such a scene; and Octavia did not once take her eyes off her sister.

“I had assumed you were down there with the others, throwing magic at that dread thing,” Rarity said. When Pinkie had composed herself enough to sit up, she faced Rarity only, as if the two were holding private council amid the argument.

“She was right with us,” Twilight said, and, turning on Pinkie, “But I don’t actually remember seeing much magic from you. I hadn’t thought about it.”

“She killed Applejack!” Rainbow yelled at Big Mac, whose comment was buried. Next to him, Vinyl was popping lights off her horn and calling, unheard, for order. Fluttershy watched her swivel her head around, reflective goggles on over the mouth that opened and closed insistently, impotently, stupid and repetitive. At last, she stopped and put her magic forth in a brilliant flash, and they all looked to her.

“Let’s all just keep calm,” Vinyl said.

“Craven idiot,” Octavia growled, and Pinkie wiped her nose.

“Why didn’t you help?” Applejack asked. Echoes of the same filled the deck while Big Mac repeated that it didn’t matter, that it was over, that Discord was finished, that it wasn’t the end of the world.

Then Rarity took to questioning Pinkie directly again, and Octavia ground out more curses between her teeth, and Pinkie’s only reply, which she shouted over and over until everyone stopped and watched her, was, “I’m pure evil! I’m pure evil! Look at me, worst pony in Equestria!” More weeping, more screaming, more pounding on the deck, and Pinkie curled into a reduced ball of tears and snot and fur by the rail.

“We’re not going to get anything out of her this way,” Rarity said, turning, eyes dry.

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Twilight asked.

“Why do you think? ‘Cause she knew this would happen,” Rainbow snapped.

“We talked it over and decided this was better,” Fluttershy said. Beside her, Big Mac was shaking his head.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Applejack asked.

“I’m evil!” Pinkie shrieked. “Worse than Discord!”

“Can you put that silence spell on her, Twilight?” Rainbow asked. Pinkie reeled and, for a moment, showed her broken face to the others, her cries cut abruptly as Twilight touched her with the spell. At that, Pinkie flailed on the deck, and the sounds of her hooves and body hitting the floorboards were extinguished as well.

“While we’re at it, can we lock her in a cabin for now?”

“Let’s not be cruel, Rainbow,” Rarity said.

Rainbow spat over the rail.

“Again, who is ‘we’?” Applejack repeated. “Fluttershy? Some explanation, if you may.”

“Big Mac, Vinyl, and me,” Fluttershy said. “We talked it over and decided this was better. We—”

“Wow, so you two knew too, huh? Big bro?”

“For what it’s worth, I thought it would be better to air this out back then,” Vinyl said.

“Back when?” Twilight asked.

“It was in Roan. You had the whole, er, Applejack thing to worry about,” Fluttershy said. “We didn’t want to add this.”

“Ah think Ah’m gonna be sick,” Applejack said, looking down at Pinkie, who still rolled and flopped on the deck, eerily silent.

“Throw up on her,” Rainbow offered.

“Not helpful, Dash.”

“I’m serious! She betrayed us!”

“It was you!” Rarity cried. “We misfired the first time because of you, not me! You never forgave her, so we weren’t in harmony!”

“I—” Fluttershy balked. No thought had entered her mind that they would correlate her news to the Elements’ miss.

Rainbow slowly lifted her gaze away from Pinkie. “She’s right. Yeah, you were pissed at Pinkie, so we had an extra four months of travel. Nice one, Fluttershy!”

“Keeping silent really served us well, didn’t it?” Rarity asked.

Pinkie rolled over and gestured at Fluttershy, and Twilight released her silence spell.

“You realize you can just break that spell on your own, you know,” Fluttershy said. “You have magic.”

“I was right! You were mad at me! You, you just put a bandage on it for the final fight!”

“Anything useful to say, dear?” Rarity asked.

Twilight smothered Pinkie’s scream of rage and shame before facing Fluttershy, the silence of the crew behind her.

“It was necessary,” Fluttershy murmured, the wind gone from her argument.

“We could’ve overcome,” Applejack said. “That’s what Ah think. Well, not you, Ah s’pose. Element of Kindness, huh?”

“Look at her. You think she could’ve handled it back then?” Rainbow demanded.

“Ah think we’d have had more time to fix the damage it would do to our friendship.”

“She would not have handled it,” Octavia said. “She would have made things worse in an attempt to apologize.”

At this, Pinkie gestured frantically at Octavia, but Twilight did not let her be heard.

“I wanted to wait just in case we were unable to recover,” Fluttershy repeated.

“Oh, we waited all right,” Applejack said.

“What do you want her to say?” Vinyl snapped. “She tried to forgive Pinkie naturally.”

“You’re the one who wiped her memory, right?” Twilight asked.

“Yes, and it’s done. Over.”

“Vinyl, shut up,” Rainbow groaned. “We get it, we’re done, yeah, everyone’s happy. That doesn’t make this less shitty.”

“Could you have forgiven her?” Octavia asked.

“For Applewood?” She stared down at Pinkie.

“She’s the Element of Loyalty, of course she would have,” Vinyl said.

“Get out.” Rainbow rose up and threw out her wings. “Get away from me right now, Vinyl.”

Vinyl’s horn glowed bright red, but she did not back down when Rainbow neared; not when their faces were an inch apart, angry breath puffing out of flared nostrils. Rainbow smacked her with her tail as she turned.

“I’m going flying. All of you can—you all, I… As far as I’m concerned, all three of you suck.” With a flash of wings and rainbow mane, she was off the edge and out of sight.

“How much farther to Canterlot?” Rarity asked.

“Two days,” Applejack grumbled.

“Two days too long.”

The group slowly came apart, ponies going below to the cabins or the bathrooms, separating to take in the events on their own. Twilight released Pinkie’s silence, and Pinkie cried loudly for some time after the fight was concluded, her mingled apologies and lashes at Fluttershy falling on deaf ears. Applejack went back to the wheel and dissociated into the ship, Twilight applied herself to another sigil, Octavia retreated to storage. Fluttershy remained on the deck, occasionally seeing Rainbow keeping pace in the far distance, but paying more attention to Pinkie, who eventually gave up and lay on her back to stare into the sky.

After swallowing her anger and loathing for months, Fluttershy had finally let the truth be known. She had never felt more alone.

Twilight called a meeting on the final day, when Canterlot’s outline was visible in the distance, imposed on the lone mountain. Everyone gathered quietly, icily respectful, ready for a conversation of business and nothing more. The hottest and harshest feelings had been given vent, and though some of them felt that more were due, no one was willing to bring it to the airship’s deck a second time. Pinkie’s mane had lost its bounce, and she had cried off and on the entire day prior, but no one had gone to her. She sat beside Big Mac, who pretended to be comfortable with her proximity, while Twilight took the circle’s center and began her lecture.

“Like it or not, we’re due in Canterlot later today, and the princesses are going to expect us all to be friends still. Everyone in Equestria is going to expect that, and—I think we can all agree—it would be more harm than good to bring our recent difficulties to the public light.”

“Fine,” Rainbow said. “Agreed.”

“Especially so soon after Discord has been stopped, there’s going to be a lot of fear that he’s not truly gone, and a long period where ponies idolize us. More than they do already, I mean. We have to present a united front.”

“I said I agree.”

“I’m just explaining fully,” Twilight said sweetly. “I’ve been in touch with Princess Celestia, and she confirmed that they will be holding a parade in our honor, as well as several press conferences, some dinners at the palace, and I don’t know what else. We’re going to be in Canterlot for a little while, not doing anything particularly interesting, but just being places. Equestria needs to see us, they need to see that we’re alive and well.”

“We’re not well,” Colgate said. Twilight paused and glanced at her. So far, Colgate had said next to nothing about Pinkie or the fight.

“But we’re going to pretend to be,” Rarity said. “Am I the only one who sees a painfully obvious solution? Why not let Vinyl wipe all of our memories?”

“We’re not doin’ that,” Applejack said flatly, and the suggestion died there.

“I think it would be in the country’s best interest if we pretended, yes,” Twilight continued. “We won’t have to do it for long, and when everyone’s eye is off us, we can work this out in private.”

“We’re hiding this from the princesses too?” Vinyl asked.

“As much as we can. I think that would be wise.”

“Twi, you know Ah can’t abide this,” Applejack said.

“All I would ask, in your case, is to not volunteer any information.”

Applejack frowned at her. “That ain’t much better.”

“Don’t do what I did,” Fluttershy mumbled. “Just keep it quiet, please, and we’ll work it out later, like Twilight said.”

“It will make things much… smoother,” Rarity said.

“I will not say anything about it,” Octavia said. “This is not for others to know.”

“Ah can’t,” Applejack said. “Ah can’t an’ Ah won’t. There’s a few things Ah’ve swept under the rug to make passage to Discord easier, but like we’ve been sayin’, that’s done.”

“Applejack, you can’t ruin our image to the country,” Twilight said.

“Ruin, hell. Friends fight, even us. We’d be stupid to try to live up to some ideal image.”

“They need something to believe in,” Octavia said.

“So ain’t it better if they believe in somethin’ real?”

“Do it for Pinkie’s sake, then,” Big Mac said.

Applejack laughed. “What Pinkie gets as a result of all this is none of my concern. Ah’m washin’ my hooves of that entirely.”

“You’re kidding,” Pinkie breathed.

“Sugar, the second we’re free to go our separate ways, Ah don’t wanna see you ever again.”

Pinkie lowered her chin to the deck and closed her eyes, pain seeping across her face.

“AJ, if you tell everyone what happened, she’s gonna get lynched,” Rainbow said.

“Celestia will protect her,” Octavia said bitterly.

“It’ll be a giant mess,” Twilight said, “not just for us, but for the princesses. What will they say? They’re going to have enough trouble dealing with four new Elements, let’s not add this.”

Applejack just chuckled. “Again, Ah hate to sound nasty ‘bout it, but none of that is my problem, an’ it shouldn’t be yers either.”

Rarity made an uncomfortable sound in the back of her throat. “You’re still a part of us, Applejack. I know you no longer care about our petty, mortal concerns, but you still live in the real world with us. You should care about real-world things too.”

“Like getting a new hat,” Pinkie offered. Everyone stared at her, the attempt at levity garnering only sour looks.

Applejack regarded Rarity for some moments before wiping her brow. “You’ve got a point.” She sighed. “Ah’m not the clearest right now, you understand. Ah need to chew on that some.”

“We’re landing in a couple hours,” Rainbow said. “I think we’d all like to be sure you aren’t going to go running to the nearest news reporter and spill Pinkie’s pathetic—” Here she glared at Pinkie. “Failure.”

“How ‘bout this? Ah won’t say anythin’ ‘til Ah’ve better figured out how Ah feel ‘bout the situation. It ain’t as simple as Ah thought, turns out.”

“Thank you, Applejack.” Twilight touched her shoulder. “I won’t ask you to do any more than that.”

“What do I do?” Pinkie asked.

“You do nothing, what you are best at,” Octavia said.

“Pinkie, you’ve kept up a happy face since Applewood,” Twilight said, “so you can just keep doing that in Canterlot. We’ll pretend nothing’s wrong, and you do the same.”

“What about after that?”

“That’s for her to decide.”

“I’m sorry,” Pinkie said.

“We know.”

“We don’t care,” Rainbow said.

“Some of us do,” Big Mac grumbled.

“Later,” Twilight said. “Please, later. If we open this up for discussion again, we’re going to be in tears when we land, and that isn’t an option.”

“Don’t front, Twilight, you haven’t cried once,” Rainbow said.

“Let’s keep it on topic, ladies,” Applejack said.

“What do we do about Vinyl?” Rarity asked.

“Ah yes, me,” Vinyl said. “I was wondering when we’d get to that again.”

“I think it’s a simple matter. Darling, would you rather stay with us for the time, or do you want to get back to work making music? If the latter, then we might as well drop you off somewhere on the way to the palace.”

Rainbow cleared her throat. “I get that it’s ultimately Vinyl’s decision, but I’m not gonna pretend I’m impartial here. I want her to stay with us.”

“Yes, I agree,” Octavia said. “We have our differences, but I enjoy having you around, Vinyl.” Colgate was nodding in agreement where she sat next to Octavia, their tails intertwined.

“For what it’s worth, I like her too,” Pinkie said.

“That’s worth nothing,” Rainbow said.

“How about we practice our pretending, Dash?” Rarity asked. “Pinkie, dear, I value your input still, and trust you implicitly. See? It’s not that hard.”

“Can we cool it with the cheap shots?” Big Mac asked.

Vinyl’s horn lit up purple. “I’ll stay on with you. Even if it didn’t work out that way, I like being an Element of Harmony. I like you all, too.”

Twilight nodded. “Good. So, as far as the public knowledge is concerned, though, you never got your own Element. Ponies know we’re supposed to stick together, so when you do want to pursue your career in the future, we’ll avoid a lot of confusion if we don’t have to explain why it’s okay for you to be separated from us.”

“Fair enough.” She held out her Element, detached from its necklace. “What do I do with this?”

“I’m not really sure, to be honest. We’ll have to see if Princess Celestia can destroy it.”

“So we are going to tell the princesses about her Element not working,” Rarity said.

“I think so. They know we only made three initially, so the truth is better than inventing some weird reason for Colgate’s fourth.”

“Yeah, so, what about Colgate’s extra?” Big Mac asked.

“Just say you gave it to me at the same time you did the others,” Colgate said.

“Basically,” Twilight said. “Not difficult.”

They dispersed, Pinkie and Big Mac together to the back of the ship and Applejack and Rarity to the front.

“Ah ‘ppreciate you callin’ me out like that,” Applejack said. “Ah had my head in the clouds, an’ we don’t need that right now.”

“Oh, um… You’re welcome?”

Applejack smiled. “We’re all upset right now. It don’t help no one fer me to threaten to go public with what Ah know.”

“It’s just for right now. Once things smooth out, I don’t see any problem with you revealing this.” She lowered her voice. “She deserves everything she gets, that’s what I think.”

“Ah agree, but Ah don’t. It was a mistake still, an’ it bein’ a massive one don’t make it any less innocent.”

“Innocent?”

“Meanin’, she had no malicious intent.” Applejack thought for a moment. “She was cowardly, that’s all.”

“I think that’s enough, don’t you?”

“Not sure. What Ah do know, the thing itself ain’t even what bothers me the most, it’s how easy she made it that she didn’t do anythin’ wrong. Everyone who knew, too. That bothers me a lot.”

“In a way, you have to wonder what would happen if Fluttershy had never told us. If she had let the memory spell stick, and everyone was allowed to go on without ever knowing the truth.”

“Obviously, as the Element of Honesty, Ah hate that idea, but you’ve got a point. A lot of misery could have been saved if Fluttershy had just kept a lid on it. That ain’t to say Pinkie wouldn’t confess on her own eventually, but that’s beside the point here.”

“How so?”

“No reason to speculate what she would or wouldn’t have done, both options are closed now.” She stood to look at Canterlot; they were close enough to see the faint curve of the sky dome over the mountain and surrounding city. “From what Ah understand, Fluttershy read her letter an’ ran up to tell us straight away.”

“Let me guess. You wouldn’t have?” Rarity asked.

“Ah’d have sat on it fer a day at least. An’ she bein’ the Element of Kindness, fer her to turn an’ deliver that news to us so fast, it makes you wonder. We’ve all turned in our ways, but Ah never knew hers was so drastic.”

“It had been festering in her for a while.”

“Reason again fer her to bring it up earlier, so we could deal with it in time. Instead we have to all pretend, fer our image. You can tell she didn’t think ‘bout that, ‘cause if she had, she’d have burned that letter an’ let sleepin’ dogs lie. Just my opinion.”

“I think she should have saved it for after Canterlot. Pinkie does deserve justice, just maybe with better timing.”

“What is justice in this case?”

As soon as Applejack said it, Rarity knew she was in for a round of largely one-sided pontification, and she braced herself as Applejack got started.

“Pinkie can’t do anythin’ to fix her mistake. She can’t turn back time, she can’t give everyone their lives back, she can’t realistically rebuild the city. She’s clearly contrite, though. So really, what more can be done here?”

“Punishment, I guess,” Rarity said with a shrug.

“Punishment is empty without a restorative action, an’ there ain’t no action to be done here. Yellin’ at her don’t fix none, turnin’ our backs on her won’t undo what she did.”

“You said you don’t ever want to see her again.”

“Ah still have personal feelin’s. Don’t misunderstand, Rarity, Ah don’t fault any one of us fer feelin’ the way we do. Ah just wanna make the point that there’s nothin’ we can do about it, nothin’ positive, anyway. What’s done is done, it’s in the past, we have to move on—but knowin’ what we gotta do don’t make the doin’ any easier. Ah s’pose the very best we can do is make sure she never has an opportunity to do somethin’ like this again. Which, by the looks of it, she won’t.”

“Once we’re done with Canterlot, do you think Twilight will run her off?”

“If Octavia an’ Rainbow don’t do it first.” She sighed. “The way Ah’m startin’ to see it, more harm than good has come of Fluttershy tellin’ us this, which puts me in the uncomfortable position of askin’ myself to what degree Ah value honesty.”

“But this is all in the immediate. We don’t know what good will come down the line.”

“True enough. That’s gonna lead me to speculatin’ on what Pinkie might have done again, though; we can skip all that.”

“So let me ask you this, dear. You obviously have the clearest head of all of us right now. Do you think she deserves forgiveness?”

“Ah think everypony deserves forgiveness, if they truly want it. An’ Ah think Pinkie does want it.”

“She needs to earn it.”

“Earnin’ forgiveness is just the same as demonstratin’ that you truly want it. In my view, she’s done that well enough. You don’t fake crocodile tears like that.”

“See, and here I’m confused. You’re talking like you’ve already forgiven her, and I can quite tell you haven’t.”

“Ahh, that would be the equinity in me, wouldn’t it? We’re all beholden to our base passions, Rare.” She grinned when Rarity rolled her eyes. “Not my phrase, Ah got it from a book. Anyway, Ah can talk all day ‘bout forgiveness, an’ how this pony an’ that deserves it, but at the end of the day, if Ah don’t feel it in my heart to do said forgivin’, there’s nothin’ to be done. Ah reckon that makes me a hypocrite, but name one pony who ain’t at one point or another. We don’t live within our ideals a hundred percent of the time, an’ it’s a fool who thinks they can.”

“So why bother?”

“You know why. If we stop tryin’, we’ll never get anywhere. Failin’ to be perfect means you’ll still be good more often than not. Heck, maybe in time Ah will forgive Pinkie. Ah reckon it’ll take a few years of not seein’ her, but all things are possible. Ah’m surely gonna try.”

“You’re probably right.” She sat down with a huff. “I don’t think that I can.”

“Ah wouldn’t expect you to, an’ Ah won’t badger you ‘bout it. Hang on.” She disappeared into the ship to guide them into a wind current, and they were soon curving languidly toward the mountaintop. Talk ceased and anticipation mounted as they passed through the sky dome’s reticulum, and the palace grew, hanging over the suburbs on its white shell. The news reporters and TV cameras were arrayed below in the web of closed streets, and as the ship loomed, all lenses pointed upward. Cameras flashed and microphones and magically amplified voices vied for control, while outside, on the roads’ shoulders and in the woods just nearby, citizens raised a cheer, threw off celebratory fireworks, raced and gamboled all in a flurry. Colorful clothes flashed as those below the airship danced and jumped, and pegasi flitted around them, some coming close enough to scream words of congratulations or thanks at the Elements. As they got closer, the pegasi grew thick, but were cut suddenly as the great white form of Princess Celestia glided through them. She alighted on the deck and waited patiently for them to bow or shake hooves, and to their questions on her condition, replied with the oft-heard and seldom-sufficient “Just fine.”

She directed them to the back of the palace, where a space had been made for them to land on one of the royal lawns. Princess Luna waited inside a colonnade, mane and tail shimmering with excess magic, semitransparent and billowing over top a heavy, royal blue gown that draped to the stone. She leaned on a column, eyes ringed with fatigue but her smile no less genuine for it. She greeted them each with a hug, and the twelve of them entered the palace, leaving behind the noisy attentions of the outside world for the time.

“Long has your road been,” Celestia declared loudly, leading them up a short staircase to one of the palace’s many sitting rooms. “Forgive me for any inadequacies you might find in your reception at this place. My time here has been rather… foreshortened.”

“Yer highness, this is plenty sufficient fer my needs,” Applejack said, sitting heavily on a sunshine-yellow cushion and leaning back until she was staring at the ceiling. She let out a long breath and cracked her neck and knees. “Ah don’t gotta fly that ship anymore.”

“Your time as the saviors of Equestria is over,” Luna said. “All that is expected of you is to rest, relax, and—if you can—recuperate.”

“To that end, if there is anything at all that you need, please do not hesitate to bring it to either of our attention,” Celestia added. She looked at them all with a fixed smile, which broke when she saw Octavia. “My dear! You are injured!”

Octavia turned to conceal her leg. “It is of no consequence, your highness. Discord got me, that is all.”

“I’ll send for the royal physician,” Luna said.

“No, do not.” She blushed. “I mean to say, please, your highness, do not trouble yourself. It will heal in its own time. If it is all the same, I would prefer that.”

Luna nodded in feigned understanding.

“Have you eaten? Are you tired? What do you require?” Celestia asked, and cracked a real smile. “Don’t be bashful; you’ve earned it, my little ponies.”

“I don’t know about you all, but I’d love to eat something besides dried greens and hotel food,” Rainbow said, and everyone laughed politely. She needed not say more; Celestia’s horn tip lit for a second as she relayed a command to somewhere in the palace.

“While our kitchen is preparing your victory feast, you may avail yourselves of the facilities however you see fit,” Luna said. “The washroom is just down that hall, second door on the left. Anything at all that you wish to use, you may.” She chuckled at Rarity, craning her neck to see where she remained rooted to the floor, waiting for the conversation to end.

“What about all them?” Twilight asked, looking toward the wall.

“There will be certain obligations for the coming weeks, but you needn’t trouble yourselves about them right now. Today is yours. Rest, eat, relax, play, anything; the palace is yours. There will be no one to hassle you for anything, we will see to that.”

They made polite conversation and were shown how to contact the servants if they required anything, and then the princesses left them to their own company. Rarity was the first to use the washroom, and she was gone for an hour while everyone else sat, took in the palace sounds, and waited to be summoned for lunch. The sitting room’s ornamentation and luxuries allowed pretense enough for them to eschew talk for preoccupation, which fit the room’s mood; no one, in the bosom of royalty, had much to say.

On the flight back, it had not truly felt like it was over, not when there were still things to do. Food still had to be rationed, Applejack still had to pay attention to where she steered them, Rainbow still had to keep the wind at their backs, Twilight still fussed with sigils and spells, and the rest of the crew still had to keep themselves busy. Sinking into velvet cushions in the warm palace air, drowsed by a stick of thyme incense that Fluttershy had lit, they could breathe easy, close their eyes, and rest.

But not really. They were near to home, but not home; they were nearly done, but not done. There were still reporters to answer, stories to give, pictures to be taken, citizens to speak to, medals to accept, applause to graciously bow to, smiles and assurances to give, explanations to be simplified, families to call. Then, there would be homes to return to, jobs to reacquire, livings to be made. Perfect peace did not exist save in the short, contented sighs that filled the room, hard-won and nothing like what they imagined, for those who had tried to imagine. For some, there was no intervening time between journey’s conclusion and the return to life, just a period of lessened activity, and for them, the perfumed air was restless, thick, too warm, too quiet. Some who had been wound up were just beginning to find that they were not yet ready to unwind.

“I’ll be outside,” Pinkie said as she got up, and Applejack gave a grunt of acknowledgement.

When Rarity returned, Colgate took her place, and a servant came fifteen minutes later to lead them to the royal banquet hall, where Celestia and Luna were already waiting, still and regal amid a retinue of wait staff and chefs who were just beginning to bring out the first course. Celestia had changed into a gown similar to Luna’s, glossy white instead of deep blue and shot with slivers of gold that caught the soft lights, as though she radiated magic with each movement. Her mane flowed infinitely off her head and down under the table, where it brushed the maroon carpet and, as Vinyl saw when she stooped to pick something up, spread and interwove with the shag like liquid.

The Elements sat across from the princesses, each to her own smaller wing-back chair and watching with uncertainty that bordered on discomfort as the first-course dishes were unveiled. By way of example, Celestia assured them that there was no shame to digging in, and for a few of them, no more prompting was needed to abandon decorum. Pinkie, true to her expected nature, forwent silverware and ate directly from the plate, and Octavia did not bother with the pretense when she could easily grab whatever she wanted in the magic Twilight had bestowed so long ago. Still, most of them kept to stiffened dignity and polite parlor-talk, the atmosphere and the quality of the food seeming to demand it. Fruit salads glistened with honey from the palace apiary, which too provided the mead that Rarity accepted; fat cherry tomatoes rolled on plates with wedges of tangelo and slivers of red onion; shaved almonds sprinkled the tablecloth where those without magic tried to take some; mixed olives marinated in herbed oil next to dishes of diced pimentos, pearl onions, pickled mozzarella balls, medallions of zucchini and cucumber; oregano and bay leaves shone like flint as they were stirred into steaming bowls of spicy corn chowder, golden beet soup, and cream of artichoke and celeriac. They were served frothing glasses of milk, sweating jars of iced tea, flutes of white wine, and simple water according to their tastes. Conversation was stifled, but not out of awkwardness, and as the first course was concluding, Luna drew them into more earnest talk.

“So, how was it? I want to hear everything, my friends.”

With reluctance only at first, they recounted their adventure as best they could recall, the narrative rolling around the table as one stepped in to correct another, or as one remembered something interesting or important that had been missed or glossed over. When Pinkie spoke, they paid her the same respect as to one another, and the second course was appearing just as they were reaching Manehattan for the first time. Rarity took the lead, omitting much of her interactions with Lacey Kisses as she spooned thin, brown gravy over her plate of sliced potatoes and parsnips.

“Wonder what happened to her,” Applejack said, breaking a corner off a braid of three-grain bread and reaching for the mint jam. Beside her, Fluttershy took slices of portobello mushroom studded with capers and layered them onto rye crostini with paper-thin slivers of radish.

When they got to Fillydelphia, Celestia explained how Discord had unbound the weather in places, that he could take up the sword of wind and rain against certain cities, Fillydelphia worst-hit among them. They talked of the tornado, and were just finishing in Appleloosa when the final course was ready. Colgate and Vinyl took glasses of deep port wine as dessert assembled before them: candied pecans and wilted spinach in cold peach and cream puree, strawberry and blackcurrant mousse, orange marmalade thick between layers of yellow cake trimmed with edible gold, pale yellow ice cream with threads of saffron still visible in its silken swirls. Talk stalled again as the Elements took to their desserts, and when the dishes were being cleared for coffee and digestifs, Twilight resumed their story, taking the princesses down to the mountains, the angel they had found wedged in a crack there, and their short trip on Thunderhead’s vessel. With a tulip glass of aquavit floating before her lips, Octavia described how Vanilla had allowed her to defeat Thunderhead, how they had crashed in Ponyville, and how Spike had been squeezed out of existence before their eyes. Twilight hastened them on to Hoofington, and some of them took refills on their drinks. Luna excused herself for a moment to set the moon on its way.

They repaired to a parlor and concluded the story there, a few hours later, by a crackling fire and with mugs of hot apple cider, several of them with an additional drop or two of brandy.

When Discord was felled, Celestia bowed her head in thought for a minute. “It is quite the tale. You will want to get used to condensing it.”

“All that, and her first response is that we should condense it,” Rarity thought indignantly, but she swallowed her objection.

“What of the additional Elements? What are we to say of those?” Octavia asked.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, my dear. My, you’ve been back only a day, and already you want to talk business.”

“That’s Octavia for you,” Rainbow said weakly.

Celestia laughed politely. “We will talk about your futures here tomorrow. What do you say to breakfast in the royal hall? It won’t be as fancy as this, just a little thing, but I have some friends I’d like you to meet.”

“Anything, your highness,” Twilight said.

“Good.” She rose and spread her wings for a second, brushing the wall with her feathers. “Please forgive me, but I must retire for the night.” She nodded to Twilight and teleported out of the room, leaving behind a fizzing aura of magic that Luna dispelled with a soft pop of her horn.

“Will she be okay?” Fluttershy asked quietly.

“In time,” Luna said. “She has not told me what happened. I gather that she was stuck in a very long, very unpleasant dream of Discord’s making.”

“We all have bad dreams sometimes,” Pinkie said. “Was hers extra bad?”

“I don’t know how much time she perceived to have passed, that is the thing that worries me the most.”

“I thought she seemed okay,” Rarity said. “A tad stiff, perhaps, but aside from Twilight, she’s not particularly familiar with us.”

“She’s acting like how I feel like we all are,” Twilight said.

“It’s understandable,” Luna said. “The ‘friends’ she mentioned are some of our representatives and assistants. We need to all be on the same page concerning these new Elements, as well as your stories, before anything reaches the public.”

“Is that to say we’re not gonna be able to just tell ponies what happened to us?” Applejack asked.

Luna rested her hot cider on an end table beside a small globe, the silver lines of its continents milky in the firelight. “Certain events, let’s say, will need to be left out. Your temporary death, for instance, Applejack, and the dirty business surrounding it.”

“Ah assume we’ll be avoidin’ everythin’ Twilight did in Snowdrift as well,” Big Mac said, ignoring the look Twilight gave him.

“Most of that, yes. Your run-in with the Mansels, and Peaceful Meadows specifically, we’ll need to change that.”

“Respectfully, yer highness,” Applejack broke in, “Ah’m not comfortable lyin’ to the public ‘bout what happened out there.”

“It’s… We just need to make sure our stories are straight, and that we present a sequence of events that won’t paint you in a bad light.” She grinned slyly. “Respectfully, you lot haven’t kept your noses very clean. We just want to protect your image.”

“There’s that word again,” Big Mac said. “Image.”

“Like it or not, it’s important,” Vinyl said. “Your image is what makes or breaks you. Doesn’t matter what you’ve done, sorry to say.”

“Ah don’t have to like it.”

“No you don’t.” She patted him on the back.

“We’ll also want to talk about your rewards,” Luna said.

“Just the farm is good fer me,” Applejack said, and Luna held up her hooves.

“Not here, not now. Think it over tonight, and you’ll have time after tomorrow to think about it more.”

“What about restoring the country?” Rainbow asked. “Last I checked, we’re still floating, and still, uh, you know, busted apart.”

“My sister and I need to discuss how we want to approach that problem. I’m afraid I have nothing concrete to tell you; as I’m sure you realize, it’s an incredibly complicated task. When we have something, we’ll inform you immediately.” She gave them a second, just in case anyone wanted to volunteer their services—no one did—and talk went to other things. They discussed how Canterlot and Ponyville were getting on and what was happening outside Equestria, and then the dinner, the weather, the palace’s furnishings. Safe and benign, they ended their first night away from adventure and retired to their bedrooms just before midnight, and for all that was on their minds, they fell asleep as soundly as if in their own homes.

Vinyl was the first to wake, and she rolled over to a mild searing in her eyes. She had pulled the shade the night before, but enough dawn still made it through to hurt her. Groping for her goggles, she knocked over a glass of water, and spent several minutes searching the room for something to clean the mess. She eventually gave up and went to the washroom, meaning to experience a shower in the palace. She had wanted to the night before, but dinner and conversation talk had waylaid her.

Having toured the country, Vinyl had stayed in countless luxury hotels, and after her shower, after washing her face in the opaline sink and striking silly poses in the wall-length mirror, she concluded that the very best facilities were somewhere else. The palace had everything she could want, but some of the highest-end hotels in Applewood did too, and many of those were not decorated so conservatively.

She found the others in a reception room upstairs, some cleaned up like she was, some fresh out of bed. Big Mac wore a flowing, pink bathrobe and a furry hat that matched his slippers, and still he shivered in the drafty room, while Rainbow beside him wore only her fur. Neither princess was present, and a butler escorted them to the royal dining room, where Celestia was ready and waiting with a group of five smartly-dressed unicorns. Introductions were given, hooves shaken, thanks rendered, and they were all seated as breakfast was levitated out. Luna met them just after the final cloche came off its mound of cranberry and pumpkin scones, and she grabbed one before taking a seat. Celestia smiled wearily, but the other officials pretended to take no notice.

When they were settled, Celestia said, “Applejack, I hear you have concerns about our intentions with your story.”

Applejack paused before a bite of oatmeal. “That ain’t what Ah said last night, yer highness.”

“You’re worried about honesty, and if it’s okay for us to omit certain unsavory details from your official story.”

“Official story?” Octavia asked.

“You must know, accounts are already being made. This is history, girls; the words we set forth will be taught in schools. It’ll be immortalized in film, in literature, in art—and in the royal archives.”

“All the more reason fer it to be complete, warts an’ all,” Applejack said.

“While you do have a certain amount of leeway with how you choose to conduct yourselves,” Luna said, “the crown can’t protect you from everything.”

“Wait, since when do we need protection?” Rainbow objected. Twilight glanced at her, and Rainbow did not follow up on her question.

“These good ponies have been told what to expect already,” Celestia said. “You can be open around them. Their jobs are to represent you to the public where you cannot represent yourselves.”

“Let’s just get into it,” Twilight said. “What events, specifically, are you looking to leave out? All the Mansel stuff, you said earlier, but what else?”

“Let’s start with the Mansels,” Luna said. “Cherry Sundae, would you cover what needs to be done?”

A pastel red mare with large, square glasses straightened in her seat and clapped a few papers on the table. In the brief introduction, she had gone through an entire stack of steaming pancakes. “The Mansels have lost significant ground in the political arena, but they still have a voice in Canterlot. It is known that they blame you all for what happened to Pure Waterfall, one of their most important shareholders.”

“He was their money launderer,” Applejack said.

Cherry Sundae didn’t bat an eye. “But to the public, he was just a shareholder. Like you, the Mansels have an image to protect, and he was a big part of that.”

“Hold it,” Rarity said. “Are we helping them too? Why should we care if Equestria knows what the Mansels were really up to?”

“Let ‘em burn,” Rainbow grunted. “It has nothing to do with us.”

“Allow me,” Celestia said, raising a hoof to stay Cherry Sundae’s response. “Like she said, they still have a strong voice in Canterlot. It would not be mutually beneficial if they were to come to any more harm.”

“Running the country is a business, Applejack,” said Cherry Sundae, smiling kindly. “And the Mansels are an important part of that business.”

“So you’re working together,” Rainbow said. “They…” She paused, both princesses’ eyes on her, stern and understanding. The purpose of the morning’s meeting was to secure the Elements’ stories, not discuss the throne’s business model. “Makes sense, I guess,” she mumbled.

Applejack was shaking her head.

“Officially, Pure Waterfall died in an industrial accident when his dam… lifted off,” Cherry Sundae continued. “Do we like that phrase?” A series of solemn nods from her coworkers. “Lifted off, then. You were there, but you didn’t see it happen, and only found out after the fact.”

“That’s the truth anyway,” Twilight said. “We didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened to him. The stupid Mansels keep saying otherwise, and that’s why we got caught up with them in the first place, because they refused to believe us.”

Luna whispered something into Cherry Sundae’s ear, and the mare nodded before straightening her papers a second time. “The Mansels’ report details an interaction between you and one of their employees, a mare by the name of Peaceful Meadows.”

“She tried to take our lives in Snowdrift,” Octavia said. “Myself, Big Mac, Colgate, and Vinyl. A mare by the name of Partial Thoughts was also involved, but she was incidental to Peaceful Meadows’ plan.”

“The report states that there was a fear response when Peaceful Meadows was transferred to the Snowdrift branch, and that some of you and Partial Thoughts conspired to harm her.”

“Yeah, in self-defense!” Rainbow said.

“She had us bound and gagged and driving into the woods,” Colgate said. “Go down there and see, the tire tracks might still be there.”

Cherry Sundae hesitated and looked at Celestia, who leaned forward.

“We believe your stories, my friends,” Celestia said gently. “We’re not questioning anything you say.”

“We understand that Peaceful Meadows was more than what they say,” Luna said.

“Yes indeed. And you won’t be punished for defending yourselves against her. We just want you to be aware of what the Mansels are saying about you, how it will look to the public eye. The official report, from them, is that you overreacted to someone you thought was hostile in Snowdrift.”

“And we can’t tell the truth about this because it’ll hurt their name?” Twilight asked. “Meanwhile, it’s going to look like we had her killed for no good reason.”

“She passed away of hypothermia,” Cherry Sundae chirped, a prim smile raising her glasses and scrunching her muzzle. “After you met, there was a scuffle that made its way into the forest, and there she fell and crawled away somewhere. You weren’t able to find her, but you did try.”

“So what did we actually do?” Rarity sighed.

“Misses Octavia, Colgate, Vinyl, and Mr. Big Mac accosted Peaceful Meadows in her residence when she was outside.” She cleared her throat. “Did any of you have a pulse crystal at the time?”

“Partial Thoughts did,” Colgate lied.

“But none of you.”

“That’s right.”

Cherry Sundae nodded to an orange unicorn sitting next to her. “That makes our jobs easier. Me and Mango Syrup are in charge of softening the reports as much as possible.”

“While still keeping the Mansels in the clear,” Twilight added.

“Recent events have made them more vulnerable than in past,” Luna said. “You’ve been abroad, but relations between the Astras and Mansels have gotten much worse.”

“Take a look at these,” a different mare said, floating a pair of newspapers over to the Elements. “You can keep them if you want.”

“There’s been a rash of racially-charged incidents in Canterlot,” Celestia said, “when there was a connection made between the Mansels and the Pegasus Advocate group here.”

“What are the Pegasus Advocates?” Big Mac whispered.

“Pegasus supremacy group,” Rainbow said. “They’re scum.”

“So the Mansels cozy up to the PAs in Canterlot, the Astras clash with both of ‘em, and now the Mansels are in the doghouse,” Colgate said. “Why not the Astras? Or have we not gotten to them yet?”

“They were just the victims, not directly involved,” Twilight mumbled, reading through the top article.

“The PAs got out of control,” Luna said. “Some ponies wound up dead, one a known Mansel operative.”

“Hey! That’s him!” Rarity cried, pointing to a place on the newspaper. “Whippoorwill, he’s the guy we met in Trottingham.”

“Huh. Good riddance,” Twilight said. “I hate the PAs as much as the next mare, but they couldn’t have picked a better pony to get rid of.” She glanced up at the princesses. “He was one of the worst that we ran into.”

“Oh my… er, goodness,” Fluttershy gasped. “Twilight?”

Twilight read, her friends beside her all gasping or murmuring to themselves as they read it too.

“Dr. Whooves,” Octavia said. “How in the world did he get involved?”

“He was allegedly with Whippoorwill at the time of death,” Big Mac read. “Ah agree. How does that happen?”

“No one knows,” Cherry Sundae said. “Was he a friend of yours?”

“He was their traveling companion for a time,” Luna said.

“Ah. My apologies, I’ll make a note of that.”

“Let me get this straight,” Twilight said, sliding the papers over to Rainbow. “The Mansels are taking the blame for what the PAs did here, and that, plus all the crap they did in Roan and Snowdrift, is making it so that their influence here is weakened… but we don’t want them to lose everything, because we still benefit from their support.”

“That’s correct, Miss Sparkle.”

“So we’re expected to say we made a mistake in Snowdrift to cover up the fact that they sent their thug after us?” Rainbow asked.

“Our good names are more robust than theirs at the moment,” Vinyl said, “so I can see the logic to it.”

“If you agree with the Mansels’ report, then there would be no further action on their part,” Cherry Sundae said.

“Do you have that in writing?” Twilight asked.

“We’re working on it.” She pinched a paper out of her stack and floated it across the table. “This is for you. If Mansel and Company sees that you’ve signed this, they should agree to sign their portion, which attests that they will pursue no further legal action.”

“‘Further legal action’?” Applejack snorted. “You just told us, they’re hangin’ by a thread. What are they gonna do, sue? Fer what? We didn’t—”

“Applejack,” Twilight said, gently touching her friend on the back. “We can discuss this in private.”

“We will not sign this now,” Octavia said, reading the contract.

“Take as much time as you need,” Cherry Sundae said quickly, looking again at Celestia, who smiled warmly to no one in particular.

“The next order of business is the affair with you, Applejack,” Luna said. “Your period of incapacity.”

“My death,” Applejack said. She looked the princess in the eyes, noticing how the other politicians recoiled slightly at the word. In the meeting, she did not have much power, it was becoming clear to her, but what strength she did wield was in her ability to state candidly what happened to her, the scary and ugly events that everyone else wanted to address euphemistically.

“We’re referring to it as a period of incapacity.”

“I was actually thinking about this last night,” Twilight said. “Can we just say she was badly injured in Roan, and leave it at that? We didn’t want to put her up in a hospital for publicity reasons, so we tended to her in the hotel. Is that okay?”

“Even better, it’s remotely close to the truth,” Applejack said. “Ah’ll take it if it means we can get this over with faster.”

“We’re working with Roan to bury your involvement with their mortuary services, Miss Sparkle,” a different unicorn said. His chair creaked as he adjusted in it.

“That,” Twilight groaned, rolling her eyes. “Is that seriously going to come back to me?”

“You were seen visiting a morgue. As an Element of Harmony, it raised questions, questions which were left un-answered.”

“Tell them I was friends with a worker there, I was going to socialize. I’ll sign something that says that.”

The stallion looked at Luna, who nodded. “I’ll draw up a contract this afternoon. Fortunately, no one saw Miss Applejack’s…”

“Dead, rottin’ flesh?” Applejack offered.

“Temporary remains.” He looked away from her, and she bent in her chair to stare more directly at him. “No one can attest that you had actually passed on, only that you were absent for the period of time that you all occupied Roan. Saying you were recovering in the hotel, yes, I think that can work.”

“As Ah said, Ah’ll sign it if it gets me outta here faster. Throw that contract in with Twilight’s morgue friend, an’ you’ve got me.”

“There’s still the matter of covering up the rumors in Roan.”

“They don’t need to concern themselves with that,” Celestia said. “What some citizens of Roan say about the Elements of Harmony is of little importance here.”

“Yeah, they’re not on the bankroll,” Rainbow whispered to Big Mac.

The unicorn bowed, his horn almost tapping his coffee mug. “Yes, your highness. My apologies. The, uh, the final point would be…” He looked awkwardly at Octavia. “New Elements of Harmony.”

“The palace already knows about it,” Colgate said. “Certain ponies all around the country too.”

“We’ll talk about that aspect in private,” Luna said, and Colgate nodded, hiding the fear the princess’ easy manner had put into her.

“A technical explanation is out of the question, yes?” Vinyl asked.

“The mechanics of the Elements of Harmony are not widely known, you are correct,” Celestia sighed, resting her chin on her hooves. “I think the explanation I want to present is that the extra four appeared out of thin air, at the last second, with Discord. Your friendship was so strong that new Elements spontaneously manifested.”

“How romantic of us,” Rarity said with a sidelong look at Vinyl.

“It’s the easiest explanation to swallow.”

“What about the Elements misfiring the first time?” Twilight asked. “We assumed that since we’d made new friends along the way, the six was no longer a complete set.”

Celestia shook her head. “The six was always a complete set. They didn’t work because you weren’t in true harmony.” Some of them glanced at Fluttershy, and Celestia pretended not to notice.

“But for the sake of the public knowledge, we can say six was no longer complete, or that we simply don’t know why they didn’t work,” Luna said. “The Elements work in mysterious ways.”

“So we have to pretend that we are surprised and delighted that we got three new Elements,” Octavia said, “and that none of this was premeditated.”

“Four new Elements,” Celestia corrected.

“Ah. Well…” She looked at Vinyl, whose horn glowed a sustained orange, embarrassed.

“I’ll explain,” Twilight said.

“Please,” Vinyl mumbled, looking down.

“Something wasn’t quite right with Vinyl’s Element, the Element of Empathy. It didn’t go off in Discord’s face like all the others. We did only intend to have three, but Colgate…” She tried to think of a way to say it that would not make Colgate sound untrustworthy.

“You know ‘bout Big Mac’s glamour?” Applejack asked. “Vanilla put it on him some time ago, it made him join up with us in the first place.”

“We are aware of this,” Celestia said.

“The glamour had us come up to Canterlot, Ah ferget which time, like the third or fourth, an’ that’s when we got Colgate. The big teleport inside the throne room.”

“I remember it well, Applejack.”

“Yeah. Big Mac assumed Colgate had a good reason fer bein’ with us, otherwise the glamour wouldn’t have had us come up fer her, but we didn’t believe it. But that’s why she went an’ got her own Element, ‘cause she did believe in the glamour. An’ wouldn’t you know it, she was right all along. Vinyl’s failed, but Colgate was there with an extra to step in an’ take her place.”

“The wonders of friendship never cease,” Luna said. She gestured at Colgate’s Element. “May I?”

Colgate passed it to her without a word. No one noticed that she had grown pale; to hear someone else recount her story for her, and to the goddesses themselves, she felt like she was being evaluated for whether she may continue living.

“What Element is this?”

She flinched, licked her lips, and looked at Octavia, who answered for her. “The Element of Adventure. I think it is a good fit, myself.”

“You did this of your own volition, without consulting the others first.”

“She had the glamour on her side,” Big Mac said. “It had been right ‘bout everythin’ else.”

Luna floated the Element to Celestia, who inspected it with a close eye.

“And Miss Scratch’s failed at the last second,” a third politician said. “Does anyone know that she had attempted to carry one?”

“Some of my ponies,” Luna said, “but no one in the public sphere.”

“Oh, um, actually, I think someone does know,” Fluttershy interjected. “In Hoofington, the final time we were there, she was seen carrying her Element.”

“That’s right,” Vinyl groaned, leaning back as she remembered. “We saw it on the TV in the hospital. Shit, I’d forgotten about that.”

“I bet we can contain it,” Luna said, and turned to a burgundy mare at the table’s end. “The Hoofington press, any mention of Vinyl Scratch with her own Element of Harmony, I want it scrubbed.” The mare saluted without a word.

“Your highness, if I may,” Vinyl said, at last finding courage to speak. “Even though my Element didn’t work, my friendship with these ponies is real. I would like to stay on with them a little longer.”

“Can she participate in the celebrations?” Cherry Sundae asked.

“She’s a friend of the Elements,” Celestia said. “Friendship is more than this jewel, and I’m sure Miss Vinyl has helped in her own ways.”

“She’s helped us plenty,” Rainbow said.

“And she has endured much hardship. Miss Vinyl here is entitled to the same benefits and treatment as the actual Elements of Harmony—but we will identify her as a friend, nothing more. She will not be acknowledged as an Element of Harmony, or an aspirant thereto.”

“You have my thanks, your highness,” Vinyl said, her magic color going from orange to scarlet.

“What about the Element itself?” Twilight asked. “Can we dispose of it somehow?”

Celestia looked at Vinyl, who dug the Element out of her bag and passed it over.

“We’ll look at it,” Luna said. “We’ve never had to destroy an Element of Harmony before.”

“Do I need to sign anything?” Vinyl asked.

“For this? No dear, nothing.” She gave Vinyl a smile that Vinyl could scarcely return for her embarrassment. The failed Element of Harmony; it did not have such a nice ring to it.

“What sorts of publicity events will we be expected to attend?” Octavia asked.

“Caramel will be handling all your public relations locally,” Celestia said, rubbing the politician’s back and matching his toothy grin.

“Thanks, your highness.” He was a tall, wide unicorn in a deep black vest that swelled to contain him, with a close-cropped mane and heavy jowls that bounced when he talked. “You ladies are gonna have a press conference tomorrow at six. We were trying to keep ‘em off you for a little longer, but you can’t say no to the press forever, you know how it is. It’s just a little thing anyway. You know, it’s gonna be soft questions.”

“Like how we feel now that Discord is defeated?” Rainbow offered.

“You got it, girl. There’s not gonna be any hard stuff so soon after you get back. Uhh, press conference tomorrow, six, and then of course the parade, that’s gonna be at seven.”

“You already have a parade set up?” Colgate asked.

Luna shrugged. “We knew we’d have one when you won, it was just a matter of telling the palace to go ahead and start working on it. They wanted to start having them earlier, but I put my hoof down. I couldn’t have us celebrating before our time.”

“What about this parade?” Rainbow asked.

Caramel laughed a little and smiled at her. “You just sit there and wave at ponies. There’s gonna be—well, we’ll look at the floats tomorrow, I don’t have ‘em in front of me.”

“Will there be any speeches?” Octavia asked.

“I am making a speech after the parade,” Celestia said, “and you can say some words if you’d like.”

“Ah’ll pass, thanks,” Applejack said.

“You’ll probably be asked to make speeches from time to time,” Caramel said, “but we don’t have anything scheduled yet. If I was you, I’d have a speech or two in my back pocket, just in case anyone catches you by surprise. They’ll do that, you know how it is. Other than that, uh, you’ve been invited to a fancy dinner tonight, but I left you the option to decline, since it’s so sudden.”

“What kind of dinner?” Pinkie asked.

“You heard him, a fancy one,” Rarity said.

“Some of the movers and shakers of Greater Canterlot wanna shake your hooves,” Caramel said. “It’ll be nothing to you, you just have to eat and look good, tell ‘em you’re happy to be in the country’s service. Between you and me,” he chuckled, “they’ve got more money than brains, they won’t get on your case about anything. Now, there’s a breakfast on the schedule for a couple days later, that one’s gonna be a little tricky, it’s with like the scientists and writers of the city.”

“The intelligentsia,” Luna said.

“What she said. You know those smart ponies, they’re gonna have all sorts of questions for you. We’ll go over that when it gets closer.”

“If all we have to do is look good, I say we do dinner tonight,” Vinyl said.

“Ah can eat,” Big Mac said.

“Go ahead,” Applejack said. “Ah still have to think ‘bout it.”

“I’ll pencil you in for tonight at seven,” Caramel said.

“What about TV appearances and book deals and all that kind of thing?” Twilight asked.

“That all goes through me. If anyone approaches you directly, tell ‘em to give me a ring. Oh, here.” He dug around in a saddlebag and produced a brick of business cards. “Got all my information on it. You can just give ‘em this, and if they keep bothering you, you can tell ‘em to go away.”

“I remember these days,” Vinyl said. “Good to be back.”

“Photo shoots, graduation speeches, there’s gonna be that too. You might be asked to cut ribbons for grand openings and stuff.”

“What about paparazzi?”

“They’re a fact of life.”

“Ignore them as best you can,” Vinyl said to the others. “Don’t engage with them. It makes things worse.”

“Thank you, Caramel.” Celestia rose, and her retinue of politicians did the same. “He lives in the palace, so he’ll be in touch whenever you need him. For now, I know we’ve given you a lot to think about, and the morning’s almost over. I’d like to speak with you all in private before you start your afternoons.”

“And I need to speak with Colgate,” Luna said.

“Excellent. Thank you all for coming. Cherry, give me those contracts as soon as they’re ready, and I’ll have the Elements sign them this afternoon.”

Cherry Sundae bowed to the floor before exiting with the rest of them.

When the princesses were seated again, Twilight spoke first. “Princess Luna, we know about Colgate and the secret agents.”

“Our title is the Datura,” Luna said. “Don’t worry, no one is going to try to take that knowledge from you.”

“Caramel’s one of us,” Colgate said.

Luna looked at her, a smile slowly spreading across her face. “Why do you say that?”

Colgate squirmed in her seat, but was clearly—to some of them—energized by the question. “He was dressed wrong. Everyone was wearing the same stuff: tie, slacks, collared shirt. His wasn’t ironed, he had dressed hastily, and he kept looking out the window. Look, see? The window looks down onto a main courtyard, I think he was watching for someone.”

“And?”

“Each time he looked, he straightened in his seat a little, like he was watching something farther away, probably the exit. I also noticed that while his shoes were tied kind of loose, the strings on the front of his vest were tied precisely, and also differently than the shoes.”

Luna’s smile grew. “Keep going, keep going.”

“Uhh…” She glanced at Octavia, who listened, intrigued. “Well, the shoe laces were done in the bunny ear style, but the same ear was bigger on each one, like he prefers his right side. The vest strings were more symmetrical. I, uh, I know we Daturas sometimes communicate to each other by the way we tie our shoes or our vests. Nonverbal signals, you know? He was probably watching someone in the palace before he had to come talk to us.”

Luna grinned at Celestia, who looked on placidly, as if barely paying attention. “I’m impressed, but you’re not quite right. He’s no Datura, but he is watching someone. I’ll let him know to be more careful, that you spotted him. How long did it take you to figure all that out?”

“Most of the meeting,” Colgate said. “I couldn’t see the window very good, and I didn’t want to look every time he did, ‘cause then he’d catch on to what I was doing.”

Luna was nodding. “You’ve got raw talent, I’ll give you that. We’ll talk after this.”

“What I wanted to talk about,” Celestia broke in, “was your rewards.”

“Ah just wanna go home,” Applejack said, and Celestia laughed.

“I know, dear, I know. We’ll get you home as soon as possible.”

“Honestly, I think that’s what we all want,” Twilight said. “Nothing fancy, just to go back to Ponyville.”

“If I can request something?” Rarity said. “My boutique fell over the edge when we were there. I would appreciate help acquiring a new home and place of business.”

“I’ll see to it that you get a boutique wherever you want,” Celestia said, “no strings attached.” She smiled. “Anyone else? Octavia, if you would like, I can help you find a place in an orchestra. Any you choose.”

Octavia blushed. “I… will think about it, your highness. For now, please do not trouble yourself.”

“Colgate? How about free schooling for you to get your medical licenses back?”

Colgate shuffled in her seat.

“She and I will discuss that in private,” Luna said.

Celestia nodded. “Rainbow Dash? A spot on the Wonderbolts, perhaps?”

Rainbow laughed good-naturedly. “I’d rather earn my place with them, thanks.”

“Really, your highness, I think just peace and quiet is what we need right now,” Twilight said.

“We have to give you at least something,” Luna said. “It’ll reflect poorly on us if we don’t. We’ll look ungrateful.”

“Money is fine, then,” Applejack said. “Ah’ll take a few thousand bits fer the farm. Couldn’t hurt.”

“You can just give my money to charity,” Fluttershy said.

“How about a national park in your name?” Celestia asked.

“I don’t—well…” She smiled in spite of herself. “Maybe.”

“You can give my money to charity too,” Pinkie said. “Maybe it can help the ponies in Applewood.”

“What about them, anyway?” Twilight asked.

“We’re doing everything we can right now,” Celestia said, and left it at that. After a bit more discussion on the exact sum of money they would receive, they made their goodbyes, and Colgate stayed behind with Princess Luna.

“Shall we take a walk?” Luna asked.

Colgate looked down, heart pounding, but for what she did not know. She trusted Luna, or so she thought, and she was so wrapped up in the question of it that she didn’t notice the route they took to the gallery. When they were there, among paintings and vases and occasional suits of dusty armor, Colgate scanned the area, trying to find something smart to say about it.

“You have an interesting decision to make, Minuette.”

“I reckon I do.”

“Your service with the Datura has been checkered, but you also have some strong recommendations.”

“Mm?”

“Fleur dis Lee spoke highly of you. She said you worked very well under pressure, and she complimented your mind. I can see why.”

“I’m a clever girl.”

“You might be surprised, but the other recommendation came to me from Lotus.”

“Cloud of thoughts!” Her head snapped up. With distance had come a lessening of the paranoia that Colgate felt for Lotus, as well as the affection, but by the mere mention of her name, a flame of emotion lit inside her: first fear, and then the same tingling warmth that had pushed her to kiss Octavia. “She liked me?”

“She said you had a lot of talent that could be refined.” She giggled. “From Lotus, that’s high praise. She said you impressed her in Snowdrift, for the same reasons you impressed Fleur, and me just now.”

“Clever girl,” Colgate repeated. What neither Fleur nor Lotus seemed to realize, and which Colgate was afraid to admit, was that her moments of insight were unpredictable. In her mind, she was not smart or particularly observant, but simply prone to lucky shots in the dark. When something made sense, it did so quickly, but when it did not, she was just as likely to panic, lash out, or find the nearest bottle of toxic liquid.

“I know also that there are trust issues, between you and the Datura. They are reasonable.”

“My team was earmarked for big, fiery death.”

Luna averted her gaze. “It was a complicated time for us.”

“Lotus explained it to me.”

“And you figured out the rest for yourself, I assume?”

“She’s flattering me, I think.” Colgate smiled.

“If you still want a position in the Datura, I can give you one. I don’t think fieldwork is right for you, but I can see you in reconnaissance or counterintelligence.”

“Those involve me traveling. Twilight said I have to stay with the Elements in case we need to blow someone up.”

“We can keep your work local to where the other Elements live, it’s no problem. Or, if you prefer, you can opt out of Datura work and have a more down-to-earth life. I’ll put a note in your file that you are not to be approached for future recruitment, and that would be that.”

Colgate did not answer immediately, but studied the painting they had stopped at, still searching for something insightful to say and coming up blank. The painting, in rich and thick oils, depicted a ship somewhere on the southern ocean coming abreast to an iceberg. No ponies worked on the ship, but minotaurs, their bipedal forms strange to her eye, awkward and hunched where they had quit the ship and boarded rowboats among the smaller ice floes.

“You would have an opportunity to do great things in the Datura,” Luna went on. “And your future would be secure. No more, uh, ‘big, fiery death’.”

“I just thought of something for my reward,” Colgate said. “Can you pay off the rest of my student loans?”

“Consider it done.” She waited, and when Colgate did not speak further, she continued. “I don’t expect you to decide right now. Just know that the option is open to you. If you have any questions, you can ask me directly. Or ask one of the palace Daturas you notice wandering around.”

Colgate, not realizing it was a joke, nodded and took her eyes from the painting. The sight of the water, rendered in lustrous, fat strokes, had softened her fear. She decided to say something that Octavia would say. “You have my gratitude, your highness.”

“And you mine.” She shook Colgate’s hoof. “Your faith in Big Mac’s glamour was remarkable, Minuette. A little cavalier for my liking, but remarkable nonetheless.”

“Applejack taught me a lot about faith.” An utter lie, but the first thing to spring to mind.

“Has she? Interesting.” She flapped her wings lazily. “I’ll leave you alone now, if you wish it. Do you want to stay here?”

“When will I be needed to get ready for dinner?”

“It’ll be some hours yet.”

“Yes.” She nodded, and, after a moment, decided that there was no harm in asking. “Does this palace have a pool?”

Some of the Elements retreated to their rooms, some to various places on the grounds, but Applejack and Rainbow went for the game room. On the ground level, in the northwest corner just beside one of the guard houses, was a group of rooms strictly for entertainment—among them, a bar. They arrived as two, but it wasn’t long before Vinyl found them and made it three, and they moved to the far corner, away from curious eyes.

“No one’s gonna feel weird if I drink with you?” Vinyl asked.

“Weird?” Rainbow repeated.

“Come off it, you know I drink more than I need.”

“Uhhhh…”

“When we needed you fer savin’ the world, it was a little iffy,” Applejack said. “Not anymore. Drink yerself blind fer all Ah care.”

“Huh.” She seated herself and ordered a gin martini, extra olives.

“Sorry.” Applejack pulled her mane back. “Ah wasn’t tryin’ to sound mean. That meetin’ left me in a powerfully bad mood, is all.”

“I’m with you,” Rainbow said. “They seriously expect us to take the blame for all the shit that happened in Snowdrift ‘cause the Mansels can’t take it. I mean, whose side are they on?”

“The side with the money.” She looked down the menu for a minute and settled on a hard cider. “Which makes sense. Heck, Luna’s right, runnin’ a country ain’t free. It’s a business like any other, Ah get that, but… Thank you.” She took several gulps of her cider. “It’s a mighty shock to find out the vaunted princesses rely on filthy money to keep things goin’.”

“Stupid Mansels,” Rainbow groused. “I hope lightning strikes ‘em all.”

“A toast to that.”

Vinyl chewed an olive quietly. The shock that Applejack and Rainbow felt was nothing to her, but, she reminded herself, she had spent her life in and out of record deals. The ugliness of big business was, to her, a part of life, but, recalling an old admonishment of gracelessness, she did not want to point out her greater experience to them.

“So are you gonna sign the contract?” Rainbow asked.

“Ah’m weighin’ my options.”

“You’re trying to imagine how much damage you’ll do if you be totally honest.”

“You got me.” They sat quietly for a minute.

“Everyone would believe you,” Vinyl said after a while.

“Sure, but is that we want?” She brushed her mane back again as billiards balls clacked and the off-duty guards hooted. “Ah don’t know how much the princesses truly rely on ‘em, that’s the thing, an’ it’s not somethin’ Ah can learn easily. Ah know they won’t give me the full truth if Ah ask fer it, an’ Ah’m no businesspony, Ah can’t figure it myself.”

“So you can be safe and assume they need the Mansels as much as they say, or you can take a risk that your honesty won’t hurt things as bad as the princesses tell you,” Rainbow said.

“That does seem to be where Ah’m at,” Applejack grumbled. “In the meantime, just keepin’ mum like this is buggin’ me. Dishonesty don’t lead to good ends.”

“It’s not the kind of lie you can walk away from, either,” Vinyl said. She was already halfway through her martini, where Rainbow had barely touched her aperol spritz. Feeling the buzz, but not enjoying it, she contemplated the selection of bottles and thought more inside her comfort zone of what to order next.

“An’ it’s not the kind of thing Ah’d be willin’ to hold to forever.”

“What if you told the truth, but in a context where no one believed you?”

“That don’t do no good. Ah couldn’t just shrug an’ say ‘Well, Ah tried’.”

“That’s like Fluttershy’s memory-wipe trick,” Rainbow said. “Surface-level bullshit, not actually helpful.”

All three gazes met one another, and Vinyl was the first to speak, tentatively. “When I erased her memory, I didn’t know things would be so explosive later.”

“No way you could’ve. I mean, it’s Fluttershy. No one would have seen that coming in a million years.”

“It does make sense, lookin’ back,” Applejack said. “Witnessin’ Pinkie like that, Ah can understand it poisonin’ ya. Frankly, Ah blame her fer my death now. Not directly, you understand, but…” She drank. “Maybe a little. Aw, there’s nothin’ to be done now, Ah’m just gettin’ myself worked up.”

“What’s done is done,” Vinyl said. She looked at her martini and finished it with a shudder.

“We can’t just write it off, though,” Rainbow said. “She needs to be held accountable.”

“She has been, an’ she knows it,” Applejack said. “Ah reckon she knows her time with us is over. What happens next, Ah couldn’t tell ya, but…” She shook her head. “This is too much fer me. Ah don’t know Equestrian politics or Element mechanics or any of that high-flung stuff Twilight talks about so easy. Ah know Pinkie’s situation is more complicated on account of her bein’ one of us, an’ it affects the whole country, but past that, Ah dunno. Ah can’t wrap my head around it.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Rainbow said, tapping her glass. Vinyl, meanwhile, ordered a shot of melon liquor. Applejack eyed the circular bottle as it floated off the top shelf, its stopper a tight nautilus shell, its liquid a delicate jade that filled Vinyl’s lilac shot glass and turned it to a disappointing brown. “This is what I think. I actually like what you said, Vinyl. What’s done is done. Pinkie’s finished, we just need to see how. Maybe she’ll go back to the rock farm, I don’t know. But anyway…” She trailed off, looking down at her glass.

“You don’t want her to just disappear,” Vinyl suggested.

Rainbow shook her head.

“The crazy thing is, Ah bet none of us actually want that,” Applejack said. “Mistake aside, this mare has been a core friend fer some time, an’ she stuck this last year out with us the whole way. That’s worth somethin’ too.”

“It’s not enough,” Rainbow said.

“It might not be.”

“I think how she acts in these coming days is gonna tell us,” Vinyl said. “I’m trying to keep an open heart for her, at least.”

Rainbow gave her a dirty look, but said nothing.

As dinnertime approached, each Element found themselves, in pairs, invited to the royal salon. Eight months abroad had taken its toll on their appearances, and in fifty-minute segments, they were attended to by the princesses’ personal beauticians. Manes, tails, and coats were washed, trimmed, and brushed; hooves were filed, cleaned, and polished; skin was oiled and massaged; makeup was applied; and for Octavia, her scar wrapped and bandaged tactfully. Then they were off to the fitting rooms, each with his or her own tailor. Some sat through the process, others luxuriated, but by six-thirty, all were shuffled into the royal dining room once more to wait for their guests, looking as regal and stately as the princesses themselves.

While the ten Elements waited for eight of the wealthiest and most influential ponies in Greater Canterlot, Celestia explained who each guest was and what they had done to earn their spot in the dinner. Hardly a word or glimmer of eye contact moved among the friends as they went over them: the business tycoon with a spotless past, the landowner who wanted to develop a chain of hotels on her property, the supermodel and consort to a select few of lesser elite. They all stared at their princess, half-listening, pressed and formal; but to the fawning aristocrats who entered twenty minutes later, their flat smiles and polite enthusiasm showed nothing to suspect.

“Amazing! A story for the ages!”

“Just doin’ our jobs.”

“It was pretty rough out there, sometimes.”

“You simply must attend my gallery opening next weekend. It’s opening in your honor.”

“Is Discord as scary in person as he is in books?”

“How did you do it?”

“You must be exhausted.”

“It’s just good to be back.”

“The food is great.”

And on and on, ninety minutes of banality, small questions and smaller answers, food and drink, civil laughter; no controversial opinion was voiced and no challenging statement uttered under the benedictory smile of their ruler, she at the table’s head and quietest of them all. When the dishes were cleared and everyone had gone back into the city, the Elements looked at Celestia as though she had something to say.

She spread her wings dramatically. “And tomorrow, my little ponies, the true festivities begin!” In a flash, she was gone, leaving them to find their own ways. More questioning looks, a few awkward goodbyes, and they separated. Pinkie left, once more, alone.

Out into the simulated moonlight that covered them from the true moonlight, Rarity walked with Twilight by her side. From the royal dining room, there was a short passage to the north-facing loggia, the length of which they paced back and forth, safe on one side from the coming winter that rose with the yellow lights off of Lower Canterlot. The countryside was all shadow beyond, and the occasional shimmer of starlight-touched water under steel clouds. Rarity rested against a pillar and sighed.

“I really shouldn’t be bothered by this,” Rarity said.

“Mm?”

“These insipid celebrations. You warned us.”

“We just have to hope they’ll end soon. Once we’re back in Ponyville, things’ll slow down. They won’t stop completely, though—you realize that, right?”

“That ponies will travel to see us? Yes, I suppose I do. Perhaps I should have a stack of autographed pictures ready.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” She let Rarity keep to her own thoughts for a minute. “Princess Celestia thinks we’re enjoying ourselves here.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You heard how she said that. ‘The festivities are just beginning!’ Like, ohhh, wow, I can’t wait to spend more time watching rich ponies pretend us being back affects them in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, just what I want.”

“Bee in your bonnet, Twilight?”

“You’ve got one too.”

“I’ll have you know I’m quite calm this evening.”

Twilight watched her silhouette from one pillar back, and it did look as calm as she claimed. She could not place why, but the image annoyed Twilight to a bitter turning away.

“Princess Celestia wants to reward us for our work, and this is the best way she knows. Darling, if I were in her position, I would feel the same way. I wouldn’t feel right sending us all home with my words of thanks and nothing else, it would feel like I had cheated us in some way.”

“So what was breakfast?”

“It was business first.”

Twilight nodded.

“You know that. Come, dear, don’t be upset.” She turned back to Twilight with a smile, and Twilight thought for a second that Rarity was going to hug her. The gesture didn’t feel right, and when Rarity took a step forward, Twilight took one back.

“I’m not upset. I… Actually, yes, I am upset. Same reason as everyone else.”

Rarity nodded. “Of course.”

Twilight resumed her pace up the walkway. “I’ve never felt so betrayed, or so manipulated. I recognize the logic in Fluttershy not telling us what she knew, but to have it work… I don’t know, to have our victory be founded on a lie like that, it makes me feel sick. Do you wonder if there’s anything else that happened, that we lost? Any other issues one of us is waiting to spring?”

“It hadn’t crossed my mind,” Rarity lied.

“It has mine. Many times.” She turned at the way’s end and faced the long, empty corridor, Rarity’s figure watching her patiently. “I could force it out of us. I could detect if there’s any other memory tampering in the group.”

“And you would subject us all to this so as to satisfy your own burning curiosity.”

“I don’t want to.”

“That’s no answer.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Not that, dear. I don’t know.” She sighed. “Can’t we just be at peace?”

“You’re asking the wrong pony, Rarity. I haven’t felt at peace for a while now.”

“I’m aware. I haven’t either, but I’m trying to get back to it.”

“And we can expect not to be for some time after this. When it’s not one thing, it’s another. Celestia, and from Pinkie, too. How are we supposed to move past that?”

Rarity’s voice was strained. “Perhaps we should ask her.”

“I’m sure that would go over just great.”

“No, I mean—ugh, hello, Pinkie.”

Twilight whipped around to see her, her mane flat and lank, the well-known sign that her spirits had been damaged. She stopped a ways from Rarity, and the three of them stood in a row, just looking at one another. A leaf scuttled across the ground with the breeze that moaned down the loggia, and Twilight put up a spell to muffle them to potential outside listeners.

“Is this a bad time?” Pinkie asked.

“You’re here, it doesn’t matter.” Twilight went between them. “We can have it out now if you want.”

“There’s nothing to ‘have out’, I just wanna talk.”

“Perhaps it would be better to wait until after all the festivities,” Rarity said. “You don’t want to accidentally make it worse.”

“Oh, gee, does it get worse? Do tell, Rarity, ‘cause I thought this was bad enough. Now you’re telling me it gets worse? Whoopee.”

“You have no position to complain, darling.”

“I…” She walked a short circle. “This is gonna sound weird from me, ‘cause I know I’m not really the smart or insightful one in your group, but try to follow along anyway, okay? I know everyone’s mad at me for what I did in Applewood, and you all have the right to be, I know it. Sorry again, by the way.”

“Sorry doesn’t—”

“Cut it, I know. You’d be even madder if I didn’t say it, though. This is what I want. I want you two to consider my position for a second.”

Twilight scoffed.

“Hey! I’m still a pony, aren’t I? Don’t I at least have the right to be heard out? Don’t I at least get that?”

“Fine.”

“Put yourselves in my shoes. Huge power, huge responsibility, and all that hullabaloo. I got scared and I froze up, I couldn’t think, I panicked. I know that doesn’t justify it, but that is why I did what I did. Imagine it, screwing something up that bad. Imagine being singly responsible for something that totally screwed your whole group, and you know if you admit to it, they’ll all freak out and it’ll ruin everything. All right, now imagine that no one approaches you about it, and you think ‘whew, that was close, but nobody else knows.’ It puts me in a crappy position, though, doesn’t it? Now I have to pretend everything’s hunkey-dory.”

“Which you did alarmingly well,” Rarity said.

“And then a half a year later, one of your best friends throws it in your face. Not only does she throw it in your face, but she admits that she’s wanted to forever, but couldn’t risk upsetting everyone. Talk about a stab in the back!”

She looked at them, their expressions stony in the dark.

“Okay, guess I’ll continue since you don’t have anything. You were my best friends, and the second Fluttershy said ‘go,’ you all turned against me. Can you imagine how much that hurts?”

“Quite terribly, I’d imagine,” Twilight said.

“Thanks, Twilight, I can always count on you for kind words.”

“I’m sorry, I just don’t see the point of this. We know all this already. Pinkie, we know it sucks for you, frankly, we don’t care. You reap what you sow.”

“So do you, Twilight.” She turned from them. “Well, I tried. I made the same speech to Dashie earlier, and Applejack and Vinyl and everyone, even Colgate. She shrugged and told me she wasn’t there for it. Octy, she shut the door in my face. Heck of a sister, huh? So… yeah, right, okay, whooooo.” She let out a long breath, a trill of laughter on the tail end. “You two were my last today, actually.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I’m not asking for your pity or sympathy, ‘cause I know I’m not gonna get it. I did want to get it off my chest, though.”

“Good. Your message has been received.”

“And I guess it’s also to say that I’m game to pretend we’re all friends to keep the country happy.”

“And when that’s over?” Twilight asked.

“Who cares? Maybe I’ll go jump in a lake. Sorry for interrupting your evening.”

“For what it’s worth, Pinkie, I do wish that things could be different.”

“Twilight, you don’t know what that would be like. You’re rotten on the inside.”

“I…” Twilight looked at Rarity, who looked back, unperturbed. Deep down, Twilight thought that Pinkie might be right, and she carried it with her to bed.

Brother and sister occupied opposite seats on the patio overlooking the royal gardens. From three stories above, the flowerbeds and spiraling topiary formed a dazzling pastiche of color and shadow vaguely resembling the contours of a blooming rose. A quirk of palace life, they had discovered, was that Celestia never asked them what they wanted to eat; they simply announced their hunger, and then would be directed to the nearest dining area and served up whatever in her fancy the princess had dictated to the chef. It was Wednesday, one week before Hearth’s Warming, and as if in total rebellion to the season, they were served iced tea with a corn, mushroom, leek, and carrot aspic. Having never tried it before, Big Mac found that he enjoyed it; Applejack did not.

“So you signed their contract?” he asked.

“After makin’ very clear my stance on the issue, yes, Ah signed,” she said. “Couple reasons.”

“Too much trouble not to.”

“That’s reason one. Ah hate to admit it, but Ah think they’re right—fer the wrong reasons, mind. We all wanna get out of here, an’ Ah don’t wanna be the thing holdin’ us back from that. Let the Mansels have their secret, Ah reckon Ah can tell the truth to every normal citizen who asks, an’ we’ll get there that way. Might take some patience, but there we are.”

He scooped out another helping of aspic, and Applejack watched, disgusted but fascinated, as he dug in.

“Reason two,” she continued. “It’s a little perverse. We ain’t all one thing all the time, Ah’ve lectured a few of y’all on that exact point. Little did Ah mind, that applies to me too. Ah’ve said so before, but not really thought it out to a satisfyin’ conclusion, an’ that was a mistake. Element of Honesty, sure, but Ah’ll omit things from time to time, sugarcoat somethin’ a little more’n necessary. This, Ah s’pose at the end of the day, it’ll teach me a lot ‘bout myself. How do Ah take it? Can Ah hold out an’ play along with the royal records, or whatever they are? You got a little, uh,” she scratched her muzzle.

“Hm?”

“Other side. There you go. Seems to me, thinkin’ ‘bout dishonesty is one thing, but actually doin’ it, that’s a lot more enlightenin'. Can be, anyway.”

“You never done somethin’ this big before, an’ you wanna try it out.”

She laughed nervously. “That’s the less pretty way of puttin’ it, yeah.”

“Just be careful.”

“Ah know it. You know, some folks say that experiencin’ somethin’ fer its own sake is a folly, that you gotta take a measured approach, act with wisdom.”

He nodded. “You got an opinion on that?”

“Not yet. That’s another thing this’ll be good fer, Ah can explore the other side of that question. Versus an’ Ah talked a little on it. She’s got some interestin’ points.”

“Mm.”

“Usually when somepony says they wanna try everythin’ once, what they mean is they wanna try everythin’ that’s good or fun once. That’s what she told me—but wisdom an’ experience can come from the good an’ the bad both, so… Ah dunno, Ah don’t like this conclusion, Ah don’t think it’s right, but Ah got to thinkin’ maybe the ponies who try to have everythin’ good in their lives are just bein’ selfish an’ disguisin’ it as the pursuit of knowledge.”

“Nothin’ wrong with goin’ after what makes you happy,” he grunted.

“Ah know that. Like this, lyin’ ‘bout the Mansels, it don’t make me happy, but Ah’ve already confessed my interest. An’ that bein’ said, then what am Ah doin’ it fer exactly?”

He looked at her for a minute. “You’ve lost me. What’s the issue here?”

She laughed. “Nothin’. Ah’m just gettin’ lost in my head again.”

“Mmm. Y’ever worry that that stops you from certain things?”

“All the time. You gotta be spontaneous too, Pinkie of all ponies taught me that. Ugh, Pinkie.”

He rolled his eyes.

“If you don’t wanna talk ‘bout it, you can say so. Ah won’t be mad.”

“Ah don’t wanna talk ‘bout it.”

“All right. All right.” She nodded and looked out onto the grounds again, where a team of workers was beginning on the lawn and one of the statues at its perimeter.

After lunch, they met Caramel in one of the royal conference rooms in the back of the palace and went over their press conference and the parade after. The conference, he explained again, would be all easy questions, and he advised them to not volunteer any information. Details were for the one-on-one interviews and biographies, he said, but this was neither. The reporters would be glib and easily satisfied, and all the Elements had to do was tell them what they wanted to hear, or a shade of it.

“So lots of ‘We are honored to serve Equestria in these trying times,’ and that sort of thing?” Rarity asked.

“Look at that, you’re a natural already,” he said, flipping his clipboard with a little spurt of magic. “Make sure you keep smiling, that’s important. Octavia, you look like you ate a lemon.”

“She was hungry,” Vinyl said.

“I apologize. Hold on.” Octavia took a second to set herself straight, and when she smiled, Caramel let out a whoop of delight.

“Octavia, you’ve got a beautiful smile,” Applejack said. “Ah can’t believe you never showed us that.”

“I do not like how my face stretches when I do this.” She cleared her throat and made her voice softer and sweeter. “Sorry, hon. I mean, I love traveling with my friends across the wastelands and fighting horrors and criminals. What a fun time!”

Caramel was laughing loudly, and Twilight spared a smile as well. “All the ice in Cloudsdale was my favorite.”

“Ooh yeah, that was good. Hey! Exorcising that lady in Appleloosa?” Rainbow asked. “Remember that crazy reverend who thought I was possessed at first? Good times.”

“The dust storm outside Applewood was my personal favorite,” Vinyl said.

Caramel banged the table in laughter. “You girls got spirit! I love it! That, right there, ponies eat that. Keep it there, and you’ll do great.”

“What are we gonna say ‘bout Vinyl?” Applejack asked.

“I’ll say you saved me from a tough situation in Applewood,” Vinyl said, “and then I just fell in with you.”

“Like we were gonna drop you off somewhere, but you decided to stay on before that?” Big Mac asked.

“Right here,” Colgate said.

“You girls are something else,” Caramel said. “So, uh, we’ll get you dressed up and everything, do your makeup—how did you like how they dressed you for dinner last night?”

“I thought my makeup was too heavy,” Fluttershy said.

“You hardly had any on,” Rarity said. “She just needs to get used to it, Caramel. Me, I liked how I looked well enough, but if I could get a little more blue in my wardrobe, that would be just great. It’s my best color.”

“More blue for Rarity, got it,” he said, making a scribbled note.

“Can I get one of those big ballroom gowns?” Pinkie asked.

He laughed again. “Those are a little ostentatious, don’t you think?”

“I’ll trade her for what I was wearing,” Colgate said, and Pinkie made a face.

“Ah thought you looked sharp as a tack last night, Cole,” Applejack said.

“I didn’t like the high collar.”

“It suits you, though,” Rarity said. “We can work this out later. What about the parade, darling?”

Caramel looked at her with mock surprise. “Oh? All right, let’s get to it.” He shuffled more papers and brought out pictures of the main parade floats, six in number, one for each Element. The palace did not have enough time for four more, so, he said, they could choose to each stay on their own float and send the four extras to a different one, or all occupy one big float. There was not much deliberation over the pictures, and when it was settled, it was off to the dressing rooms.

Makeup, formal clothing, more combs and brushes and scissors, a little coaching on how to smile or hold themselves, and the Elements of Harmony, and Vinyl, were ready to face the press.

For some, it was no challenge, and these ponies took the lead on answering questions naturally enough that those who preferred silence were able to hold back inconspicuously. Applejack sat to one side and got by with smiles and nods, and only had to speak once when a reporter asked, “From the Element of Honesty, how would you say the quest turned out overall?” To which she replied, “it sure was a magical experience, an’ that’s the truth.” She smiled, cameras flashed, the crowd babbled.

Before they knew it, before it seemed the reporters there had even come close to running out of variations of the same few questions, they were ushered back into the palace for a quick change of clothes and trip to the bathrooms. At a press conference, they wore suits, ties some, and slacks or pencil skirts according to her preference; in a parade, their options were more open. Pinkie asked again for her ball gown, and it was allowed, and so with her boisterous attire taking up half the float’s platform, they were underway fifteen minutes late. The palace courtyard had been cleared of even the trees and hedges—which, later, Celestia would reveal she had tucked away in her magical space, root structures and all—and filled with floats, flag-wavers, and a pair of marching bands. A band went first, a giant brass jubilee heralding the opening palace gates and rising portcullis, receiving a wild crowd jumping and screaming behind the barricades.

Night was falling meanwhile, and Lower Canterlot was turning itself on. Thousands of ponies from below had come up for the parade, and many more were on rooftops to try to catch at least a little of the celebration for themselves without the trek up the mountain. In darkness, the sight of it still a relief to all and to the Elements particularly, the extending ribbon of marching performers rising on the bridge over the river and then diminishing into gaudy Greater Canterlot was at once amazing and disheartening. Formal dinners, stiff clothing, and inane questions from journalists were one sort of reminder, but they were not so severe as the parade and its audience, a vulgar display of happiness and joyful release that was off limits as well—for while representing Equestria abroad had been trying, now they had to represent it locally.

Their stage came to life and readied itself to drive out into the line as a generic sun-and-moon float quit the drawbridge and the first Element float, the Element of Magic, rolled into mass view.

Each had been overdesigned in the motifs of their bearers, Twilight’s a magenta and lilac research table with giant spellbooks sitting open under filaments of sparkling, purple ribbon to symbolize magic rising from the pages; these lay beside a towering pair of flasks atop thick paper fires that actually flapped and fanned as the float moved. Her starburst cutie mark was adorned with whorls and spirals on all sides as a monument in the float’s middle, behind Twilight’s own grinning face at the head and over top twin bouquets of flowers and hearts, some spraying off more purple magic. The little stage where Twilight had been intended to sit and wave at the crowd was occupied, instead, by a volunteer from the palace’s alchemy lab. Pinkie had felt awkward when they decided to take one float, and it was revealed that Caramel had no one to stand in for them. During their press conference, he had raced through the palace for six ponies to fill their spaces last-minute.

“You ready, girls?” Twilight asked, and Pinkie nodded without a word. They had applied an entire tube of hair product to her mane and tail to return them to their characteristic, frizzy poofs, and, like her smile, they felt stiff and unnatural whenever she moved. It was not difficult, though; she would sit and smile and wave, and that was all. No questions, no autographs, no anecdotes, and she didn’t even have to look at her friends if she didn’t want to. There was enough outside for her to focus on.

Themselves, they had chosen to group up on a massive float celebrating the unity of unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi. A great spire of a horn rose up through the arcade of a huge horseshoe, both in the wide embrasure of fluffy pegasus wings, with a scattered mess of various racial symbols all around the stage. An upturned apple cart partially vanished in a bank of swirling clouds, which swept across the float’s back over more magical sparkles and a stack of books, and over top these, a mechanism of spinning wheels, fog machines, and flashing lights built into the base from which rose three sexless, generic pony heads, and the ugly word bubble attached to them declaiming the powerful but obvious “UNITY!” Like all the other floats, flowers and stylized hearts flowed from every crevasse, so that the final product looked like an overburdened and unsorted mound of party themes to Pinkie’s eye.

Rainbow Dash’s float of clouds, columns, statues, rainbows, disembodied pegasus wings, and yellow stripes that were meant to indicate speed rolled out next, with one of the Wonderbolts hopping around and doing little somersaults in place for the adoring, but audibly confused, revelers. Then Applejack’s platform of apple trees, apple carts, a giant farmhouse with horseshoes cascading heavily off either side of the gambrel roof, and a Stetson rakishly a-tilt on Applejack’s beaming orange mug at the front. Caramel had found some spokespony for the Equestrian Food and Labor Association to take Applejack’s place.

Between each was a lesser float dedicated to the various workers in the world: a teachers’ float, a firefighters’ float, a restauranteurs’ float, and so on. Rarity’s was a conical tower of brilliant fabrics draping over one another and looping around, tiny lights wired to the insides to create a diffuse firefly-display of veiled sparkles over a spread of sewing machines, balls of yarn, pincushions, and an open basket with contents deliquescing into a floor of blue diamonds on which waved Rarity’s stand-in, an apprentice to the tailor who had helped them get fitted that evening. Fluttershy’s, which elevated a spokespony for one of the wildlife charities—who didn’t even live at the palace, but had happened to be there at the time—was a rolling meadow of hares, foxes, mice, and groundhogs, with fish jumping out of a blue brook and colorful birds on wires in a vague sphere all around the display, each one with a light buried in its breast, and some even fitted with a microphone to repeatedly chirp.

“Almost our turn,” Octavia said.

Rarity glanced at her. “Yes, it is.”

Pinkie warmed inside, just a little, to Rarity. Her chilly rejoinder felt like it could be Pinkie’s, had she the courage.

“How paltry of me,” she thought. “Well, screw it. I get to be paltry tonight.”

Her own float completed the six, one of the royal chefs bowing and blowing kisses on a gingerbread floor between two titanic cupcakes, candles exclaiming real fire into the night sky. A rolling pin lay against a mountain of dough, which, like a sandcastle, gained color and form and became a monstrous lemon-chiffon cake in the top half, whipped cream fringes glossy and decorated with speckles of her cutie mark, which also crowned the likeness of her head in a strangely inappropriate tiara. Then the second marching band went, bellowing brass instruments with lofty woodwinds and crashing cymbals that hurt Pinkie’s ears, and then they rolled at last over the flattened lawn to the drawbridge.

“Smiles on, girls,” Fluttershy said.

“Oh, go to Tartarus,” Pinkie thought, donning her toothy grin and sitting resolutely back on her chair. The noise was overwhelming when they hove into view, the bridge fairly rattling with the cries and stamping hooves, the sky bright as day with the palace lights up to full and the constant flashing of unicorn celebration above. They waved, they smiled, some screamed thanks back into the crowd, but mostly they sat and waited for the city to come.

Her head still buzzed with the speech she had delivered the night before. She had practiced in her room before finding everyone, down to anticipating various caustic reactions and preparing equally barbed responses. To them all, save Octavia, she felt she had emerged victorious in a sense. There was no true victory, for that would be forgiveness, but she had at least made her point and given herself a shred of bitter dignity.

How much did she truly believe? She had asked herself that in the morning over a lonely breakfast in her room. That Rainbow was the next one to fall out of harmony, which she had boldly asserted earlier, she did not believe one whit; that Twilight was rotten on the inside, she had not believed at the time but was coming around to. She knew how little it mattered, that compared to her own failure as a friend, any other mistake would be overshadowed. All she could rightly call hers was the sting of betrayal, so hot in her heart, and the sickening knowledge that Fluttershy had been plotting it for months. The logic behind her decision was, to Pinkie’s mind, iron, and that made it all the worse.

She targeted each of her friends with her eyes, individually thinking the phrase “I hate you” to them, seeing how it fit—and when she found that it fit for none, not even Octavia, who had slammed the door in her face without a word, she turned her phrase inward. The closest buildings to the palace were sliding out of range as their float turned onto Wave Crest Drive, where they would curve lazily around the city for most of their journey before turning back and circling through a district of boutiques, party stores, and haberdasheries.

“I hate me.” But that thought did not feel right either. She looked at her friends again and appended their names to the phrase, to no avail, and turned it again on herself to the same. Pain was there, glaring and strident, but no malice. Some ponies, she realized then, would see it as weakness, but she thought it was more like strength. Hatred was bad, but contrition was not, so perhaps she was not so far gone as they had led her to believe.

“All righty, Pinkie, let’s try something else.” She stood up and went to the front to better see the crowd, and, standing on her back legs, threw herself wide in a cheering embrace of the night air, squealing and twirling to a hurricane of applause, laughter, cheers, her own name reaching her from a thousand throats. A unicorn with more finesse than most, somewhere deep in the crowds, was conjuring enormous magical images of their cutie marks, and as Octavia’s cycled past, Pinkie tried again. “I hate that! Hmmm. Ha! No I don’t!” She jumped up and cheered again, and almost lost her balance when she noticed that Colgate had joined her. The two linked forelegs and skipped circles, and when Pinkie tired, Rainbow took her place with a strained expression.

So she didn’t hate them, and she didn’t hate herself, but when she asked herself whether she deserved their treatment, she decided that she did. Supposing she had indeed sullied her soul those months prior, she reasoned, any good pony would want to distance themselves from her. A better pony might forgive her, but then, she was not certain she deserved that. She could surely do nothing to earn it, for, as had been repeated several times in closed discussions, what’s done was done. No repentance made a tangible difference, so what point was there?

“If you can’t go back, then you’d better go forward,” she thought to herself. “That’s all well and good, but how do I go forward with no friends?” She giggled to herself, earning a black look from Fluttershy. “Silly me! I just answered my own question. Without friends! These are done, but that won’t stop me from making new ones!”

“Ooooooooh.” Another look from Fluttershy, but Pinkie didn’t care. In the lights, the noise, the screaming multitude, the palace dressed up and aglow like a wedding cake, the attractive conclusion that she did not need her former friends hit her like a pie to the face. The coming weeks might be hard, but then she would move on, and if that involved going a separate way, she would only be losing those who had turned on her.

How delightfully simple! She stood again and joined Colgate, who had not stopped dancing, and with each turn back at the Elements, she flashed a wide smile. Theirs were false, as hers had been for a while, but inside the glare of city lights and whirling unicorn magic, she felt more like herself than in several months. Her steps were as of one flowing out of herself. They were cheering for her, only her, as layer after layer peeled off and the real Pinkie Pie emerged, her first new breaths snagged in song, her first impulses setting her hooves to dancing.

Even denied the friendship she had taken for granted, life went on, and Pinkie went with it.