Part 2: The Meeting

“Hello, Chrysalis.”

They were standing in the office Princess Celestia had loaned to Princess Cadance for her stay. Twilight shut the door behind her.

“Hello, Twilight,” Princess Cadance said mildly. She didn’t react at all to the name. “Where’s Princess Celestia?”

“She’s out.”

“So we’re all alone.”

Twilight locked the door. “That’s right.”

“Just the brave Unicorn girl, locked in a room with a super powerful self-made Alicorn princess. No witnesses. No pony to protect her.”

Twilight didn’t miss a beat. “If you wanted to mind control me, you already would have.”

“I was talking about myself, of course,” Princess Cadance said sweetly. “But, and this is entirely hypothetical, suppose for some reason I can’t mind control you, and have been waiting for an opportunity to kill you instead? Doesn’t this meeting suddenly seem like a terrible mistake?”

“So you admit you have mind control powers?”

Princess Cadance hesitated. “Ah, a recording device.” She levitated the small black instrument out of Twilight’s saddlebag and crushed it.

Twilight did her best to look disappointed.

Princess Cadance smiled at her. “So what do you want to discuss, sister? I can call you sister, I hope?”

“If I can call you Chrysalis.”

Princess Cadance’s face didn’t so much as twitch. “What’s that, dear sister?”

“Her name is Chrysalis. I read about it in one of my books. She’s a shapeshifting monster who feeds on ponies’ love.”

“Uh huh….”

Twilight began to pace. “It’s interesting. There are books about you going back to the start of the Crystal Empire. The older the are, the more they talk about your…curse.”

Princess Cadance tilted her head, her smiling showing real amusement now. Like a tiger watching a mouse strut.

“They don’t call it a curse,” Twilight said. “Most of the books are annoyingly fawning, to be honest. It’s almost weird how little criticism your 700-year life has brought. But the older books talk about a strange power you possess…or possessed. Supposedly, whenever a pony looked upon your face, they would fall in love with you. Instantly. Mare, stallion, didn’t matter.”

Princess Cadance looked near to laughter. “And from this you deduce…that I’m no longer Princess Cadance, but this monster Chrysalis wearing her body. And that is why my face has lost its power.”

“And that’s why you’re marrying my brother. To steal his love so you can feast on it like the demonic shapeshifter you really are.”

Now Princess Cadance’s yellow teeth showed in her smile. “And if all that were true, what would your plan be now?”

“Every economist’s first plan…I am going to do nothing.”

Now she finally saw the look of baffled surprise on Princess Cadance’s face that she had wanted. “Nothing?

Twilight shrugged. “What I know, Princess Celestia knows. Ever heard of the efficient villains hypothesis? By the time information about the latest threat to Equestria is public, Princess Celestia has already set into motion the optimal response.”

“Then why say anything?”

Twilight’s horn glowed; she vanished in a flash of lavender light and reappeared behind Princess Cadance, her horn pressed against the shapeshifting monster’s neck.

“Because I want you to know that I know,” Twilight growled, her voice low. “I want you to know that if you hurt Shining Armor, I will know. You can take away my friends…you can steal my brother…but that’s as far as you’ll go. If you want a war with the best economist Canterlot has seen in half a millennium, you’ll get what you wish for. I’ll make sure of it.”

Princess Cadance, or Chrysalis, or whatever she was, only smiled. “Are you hoping to get a picture of us with my magic wrapped around you? Very cute leaving your saddlebag pointed at us. Whom does that work on?”

The camera flashed, its timer having gone off. Twilight vanished and reappeared beside her saddlebag, mentally nonchalant. It had been a long shot.

“Can you see her?”

Twilight stopped on her way out the door, wary of a trap. “See who?”

Princess Cadance regarded her. “The mare. Tall, a bit thin, carries a blade everywhere. Quite fond of those little spinning globes.”

Twilight blanked for a moment. “You mean—her?” She pointed at the mare, who was indeed standing by the wall, leaning idly on her shovel. “Yes, I can see her. I can also see my hoof if you’re wondering.” She waved it in front of her face to demonstrate.

Now Princess Cadance smiled sadly. “Yes, of course. She’s right there. Any fool can see that.”

“O-kay. I’m going now.”

“Good night, Twilight. Good work. Sleep well.”

Twilight glanced back, then left, the inevitable following behind her.

A week later Princess Cadance and Shining Armor married in the Crystal Empire. Twilight vaporized the pictures that came in the mail without a glance and told Spike not to give her any more of “Shining Armor’s” letters.

Years passed. Twilight, sworn off friends and brothers, accepted only a single companion, her baby dragon, whom Princess Celestia herself had entrusted to Twilight. A coldness settled on her like snow that wouldn’t melt. Her social skills melted like a rock popsicle in a baby dragon’s mouth. And she became very, very good at economics.

The mare was happy. She was with Twilight Sparkle all the time, who could still see her even into adulthood. Nothing could change that.

Not even four tickets that didn’t even exist.

Several years later

It was odd being Princess, Twilight reflected in her throne of ice overlooking Ponyville. It was even odder for how utterly miserable she was.

Pinkie Pie bowed, the pink-and-white-striped boots on her legs sinking into the snow, then turned it into a series of somersaults across the snow to Twilight’s frozen throne. “Hi, Princess!”

She reached into her poofy pink hair and pulled out a basket of cupcakes. “I baked these for you!”

“Thank you, Pinkie Pie.” Twilight took the basket. She wished her nose wasn’t so stuffed up. They looked like they smelled incredible.

“How’s life being Princess?” Pinkie Pie said conversationally, head still bowed, although her eyes were so big it didn’t hinder her effort to look at Twilight, or really at the tickets sealed behind her.

Twilight shivered violently. “Cold. I can’t remember why I decided to sit on this chair made of ice all day,”

Pinkie Pie’s head popped up. “It’s because Princess Celestia sent you an invitation to the Grand Galloping Gala with a ticket for you and one extra to bring a friend but you have five friends not counting Spike so we all wanted it and after about 22 minutes of shenanigans and a really interesting diversion where we listened to somepony tell us to buy the Princess Castle Pony Playset™, you sealed the tickets in a block of ice but since you knew we’d fight over it when you left you decided to turn it into a chair and sit there till we went away and now it’s become sort of a throne and we’re all fawning over you so much hoping you’ll pick us that you called yourself Princess ironically but also sort of hopefully and kind of sadly like maybe there’s somepony you haven’t seen in longer than you’re used to and you miss her a lot and also I think you’re catching a cold.”

She bowed again. “I think that about covers it.”

“Oh, yeah.” Twilight looked through the cupcakes tiredly. Chocolate, peanut butter, raspberry…and…no…it couldn’t be…but there wasn’t supposed to be any more! Pinkie Pie had run out! Was it possible…?

Was that a pumpkin spice cupcake?

“I know you like them,” Pinkie Pie said brightly. “Turns out there was still a little bit of pumpkin spice left in the Everfree Forest. Don’t let anypony see it, though. That stuff’s addictive.”

Twilight’s saliva froze on her chin. She was torn between a desire to gulp it down in a single bite and the knowledge that she wouldn’t actually be able to taste it.

“I know my cupcakes make ponies happy,” Pinkie Pie said while Twilight went on forming stalactites from her bottom lip. “I wish I could bring them to all of Equestria. Showing them off at the Grand Galloping Gala would be the perfect opportunity! I just know I could make every little filly and colt smile if I….”

“Uhh huhhh uhuhhuhhhh….”

“If I just…you know what, I’ll come back when you’re functional. Bye!”

Rarity visited her only an hour later carrying a heavy winter coat. She swept a perfect bow and presented the offering to Twilight, who grunted her assent.

“You must be freezing in that awful chair,” the fashionista with the diamond rump said as she wrapped the coat around Twilight. “I thought this might help.”

“T-T-Thank you,” Twilight chattered. Her stomach was full of cake and pumpkin spice, which, regrettably, had gone unnoticed by her taste buds.

“Clothing ponies is what I do,” Rarity said, brushing, well, pushing back Twilight’s stiff mane. She herself had a green-and-white coat that was fluffy and fabulous, and a scarf wound expertly around her neck. “Clothes warm the body and warm the heart. You know, they say the first thing ponies did with their brains is notice their nakedness and rush for some fig leaves.”

“Fig leaves?”

“Yes, I can’t imagine why either. Silk, surely, something lacy or flowing, not some tough old leaf with a bit of fruit dripping off.”

Twilight sneezed. Every exhalation dripped snot from her nose that dribbled down and froze unpleasantly. The coat was so warm she couldn’t bring herself to lift a leg to wipe it away.

“You have such a regal bearing,” Rarity said, standing back and beaming at her hoofiwork. “Princesshood suits you, and I know a thing or two about suits! And hoods. Imagine you and me at the gala together! We’d be unstoppable! My latest line of dresses at the fashion show—for charity, of course—on the greatest Princess-economist in Equestria—”

“Second greatest.”

“—second greatest Princess economist in Equestria, we’d be sure to take first prize!”

Twilight reverted to breathing in through her mouth and winced as the cold winter chill swirled up into her head painfully. Strangely, it just seemed to make her head hotter. “How does that benefit me?”

“It, ah…well…it would be good for the local economy!”

“No, Rarity.”

“Um…ah, I’ve forgotten the tiara I made you! Wait for meeeeeee!”

She dashed away through the snow. Twilight sighed and closed her eyes, leaning against the cold hard ice of her throne—

“Twiliiiight!”

Twilight’s eyes shot open. A rainbow blur was streaking toward her, with something blue-and-yellow waiving in the sky. Rainbow Dash stopped short just in front of Twilight and snapped a salute. “Give me the ticket because I’m your best friend and the fastest pony and my hair is rainbows!”

Twilight took one look at the Wonderbolts bed sheet that Rainbow Dash apparently used as winter wear in the form of a cape and closed her eyes. “No.”

Rainbow Dash scratched her head. Why hadn’t that worked?

Later that day Twilight was stretched out on her icy throne, grunting in beat to Fluttershy’s surprisingly strong hooves. Snot sprayed from her nose with ever firm yet gentle, well-aimed blow, which Fluttershy declined to mention.

“Sometimes I give Mr. Bear a massage like this when he’s sleepy,” Fluttershy said. Her ear muffs were as fluffy and white as a rabbit’s rump. “And Little Widdy Biddy Sky Snake likes it too, I’m pretty sure.”

Twilight had almost forgotten that Fluttershy had a giant baby sky snake with budding wings. The still-growing serpent had spent most of the winter sleeping buried in the snow, or as much as the snow could bury something bigger than a house. “How-w-w ah-ah-are th-th-th-i-i-ings at thththe sanctu-u-u-uhhhhh yeah right there.”

“They’re doing all right,” Fluttershy said as her hoofs continued to beat out the knots in Twilight’s back she hadn’t even known she had. Twilight almost wanted to do something to hurt herself just for some more of Fluttershy’s magic touch. “Sometimes it’s hard, though.”

“H-h-haaaard?”

Fluttershy kneaded her back in circles. “I have so many critters to take care of, and during winter it’s always harder. I need more money, and ponies are less willing to give. All the richest charitable ponies attend functions in places like Canterlot. They’d never come here, and they don’t answer my letters, even the ones I sent with the picture of the crocodile kissing the baby lamb.”

Twilight was finding it difficult to listen as Fluttershy slowly rocked her world. She bit her lip. “Ohhh, Fluttershy, right there!”

“I think that’s enough,” Fluttershy said hastily, taking her hoofs off Twilight’s back. “Can I do anything else for you, Princess of the Gala?”

Twilight struggled to sit up. Her body felt like it was melting against the throne, although it was in fact sticking to it. “Fluttershy…were you talking about the Grand Galloping Gala?”

“I wouldn’t ever ask for anything,” Fluttershy said honestly, “but a lot of critters wouldn’t have to shiver through the next winter.”

“Everypony wants it.”

Twilight straightened as best she could against the backrest where the tickets were sealed. She looked at Fluttershy with tired eyes. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “Everypony wants it, and I don’t know who to give it to!”

“I never know what to do,” Fluttershy whispered back. “Everypony wants everything, and I can’t help any of them, not really, not the way they’d use me to help themselves.”

“Wow, that’s, um, that’s also a problem.”

“It would be a real shame if I lost any critters because I couldn’t do my fundraising at the gala.” Fluttershy turned to leave, remembered to bow, then slowly shambled away. “All those poor, orphan critters…and I’m just one sad, lonely Pegasus, no pony invites me anywhere anyway….”

Twilight groaned. All the stress that Fluttershy’s hoofs had rubbed out of her returned like the winter breeze through a crack in the walls.

Applejack was last in her supplications that evening, possibly because she had apparently dragged a heavy wooden keg all the way through the snow from Sweet Apple Acres.

“Howdy, Princess!” she said cheerfully, naked as the day she was born except for the weather-beaten cowpony hat atop her head. Well, Twilight assumed Applejack hadn’t been born with it. She had never actually seen her without it.

Twilight did her best to look regal, or at least conscious. “That’s not the formal…never mind. What gift is that, subject?”

Applejack lifted the top of the jug. Twilight’s sinuses instantly cleared, flooding snot down her face. She lifted an aching leg to wipe it off.

“What’s in that?” Now her nostrils were burning.

“Apples,” Applejack grinned. “Well. Mostly apples.”

Twilight sighed. It came out as a bubbly snort. “I suppose you’re going to explain why you want…say, aren’t you cold? Even Rainbow Dash had a cloak, sort of.”

“Apple ponies always go naked the way we were created,” Applejack said.

“You’ve got your hat though,” Twilight sniffled. She wiped her nose again on the back of her leg, which by now had a frozen crust of snot lining it.

“I’ve got what now?”

Twilight gestured to the brown, weathered thing that was always on Applejack’s head. “That.” Talking exhausted her.

“This? I ain’t wearing it. It’s wearing me.”

“Uh…pardon?”

“This hat has been passed down in my family for generations. It contains the memory of every single Apple who e’er wore it. Every time a Hat Bearer dies the hat chooses a new one, and it chose me. I can talk to my ancestors if I need advice, although they mostly speak just Applenese, and most Applenese words just mean apple.”

Twilight blinked her eyes until the spots went away and Applejack’s face was clear. “Uh…wow…I didn’t know that.”

Applejack held her slipping gaze for a moment, then chuckled. “I’m just fooling, Twilight.”

Twilight coughed out a sort of laugh. “Oh, of course, how silly—”

“You can say pretty much anything in Applenese.”

“Oh. Uh…uh….” Twilight struck out for familiar waters. “Ticket?”

“Funny you mention it. I was just about to ask. I don’t know if you’ve been thinking about who you’re going to give that ticket to….”

“Not really.”

“I don’t really have a reason for wanting it,” Applejack admitted. “Ponyville’s a market big enough for this mare. I just know that everypony else wants it, so I want it to. I want to be considered as an equal friend. I may not look good in a dress or know how to talk all fancy, but I reckon I have just as much right to be considered as anypony else.”

“That’s it?”

“Well…I heard through the apple branch—”

“The grape vine?”

“Land’s sake, no!” Applejack made a gagging noise. “Yecckhh! ‘Sides, can’t trust grapes. Shifty little devils. No, I heard through the apple branch that Lemonduke, Pearspade, Orangeace, and those creepy octuplets who grow grapes in the western valley are all going to be there. Cherry Jubilee herself’s doing the organizing. Seems like there ought to be an Apple representative. But that ain’t no business of yours, and I won’t ask you to do nothing for me. I’m as self-reliant as a rattlesnake on its backside.”

“Okay, Applejack.” Twilight closed her eyes.

“You want me to leave you alone to contemplate stately matters on your forbidding ice throne?”

“Yes, please,” Twilight murmured.

“All right. ‘Scuse me, Princess.” She tipped her hat, which Twilight didn’t see, and must have gone away, because when Twilight woke up, it was very dark, and she was all alone.

After a moment of blurry disjunction, Twilight slowly turned her head, shined a light from her horn, and saw the two tickets still sealed in the ice.

Then she turned back around.

Who was Princess, and who was serf? Her throne was a jail cell, and her princess was in another castle.

Ponyville was much quieter than Canterlot. Ponyville at night held only the sounds of crickets, bats, and Spike snoring, which one of these days Twilight was going to record and play back for him just to prove he did it.

Ponyville at night in winter when the snow blanketed everything was as quiet and still as the afterlife. That is, it was as loud and busy as nothing at all. Just endless slopes of white rolling on forever.

Twilight seized the sides of her captor throne. For a moment vertigo had taken her. She felt like she really was rolling down an endless slope.

What was at the bottom…?

A pony named Hobbes had described the natural state of ponies as one of violence and perpetual conflict. When ponies didn’t have ways to come to mutual agreement about how to use the scarce resources available, they tore each other apart.

An extra ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala was about as scarce as resources got.

Twilight felt like a piece of meat tied to a tree. And the howling of the wind might have had a bit of wolf in it, baying at the moon.

What was the saying? A pony is a wolf to other ponies? That…didn’t make much sense….

Besides, it was the sort of thing that upset Fluttershy. Twilight shivered. Now that was something to be scared of.

Twilight turned her neck and smiled weakly at the mare, who stood just behind her and to the side as usual. “You don’t want the ticket, do you? No…but I’m sure you’d like to see Canterlot again.”

The mare managed to indicate with a shuffle of legs and a wave of her stick that she visited Canterlot all the time.

“Oh, really? That’s nice, you should take me with you sometime….”

“Twilight? Twilight!”

Twilight woke up to a blurry bunch of dots that slowly congealed into Spike’s worried face. Or at least she could recognize his voice. She couldn’t quite tell if she was shining a light to see him, or if her brain was just filling in the details it knew had to be there.

“Hnn?” she said.

“You should stop sitting in a chair made of ice. I thought you were taking the Princess thing too far, but this is ridiculous! Come inside, Twilight!”

“I’m a princess.”

“Sure, yes, the prettiest pony princess in all of Equestria, but your castle is a building and you should be inside it.”

“‘Cept Princess Cel’sia,” Twilight mumbled as Spike peeled her off the ice and started to lead her home.

The warmth of the Golden Oak Library enveloped her like no coat ever could. Every nerve in her body instinctively understood a library was home. A cup of hot cocoa also helped.

The Golden Oak Tree was the oldest structure in Ponyville. Princess Celestia had bought it for Twilight, or lent it to her, or maybe just given it to her. There was no record of previous inhabitants or ownership, yet it seemed like it must have been lived in. Twilight had turned it into a library, naturally, and had spent many an evening reading by the fire. But right now Twilight only cared that upstairs was a bed and a soft pillow and a warm blanket and a scaly dragon with hot breath and who didn’t snore all that much….

For a groggy moment Twilight didn’t know if she had even gone to sleep. She had closed her eyes only a moment ago, and the window showed nothing but darkness. She rolled over and didn’t see Spike. Now worried, she lurched to her feet and started downstairs.

“Surprise!” her friends shouted. They were all gathered around the dining table with Spike.

Twilight jumped; her vision swam. “Oh, hello,” she said, leaning on the railing for dear life. “Fancy meeting you all here.”

“You were sound asleep all day, so I didn’t want to bother you,” Spike explained as Twilight finished making her way to them. “But enough is enough. I invited everypony here so we can settle this extra ticket business once and for all.” Her friends nodded.

“Okay,” Twilight said. “Just excuse me one moment while I get a drink of water.”

Spike watched her go, then turned to Rarity and the others. “She never takes care of her health. Cooking, cleaning, anything practical she doesn’t ever think to do. If I wasn’t around she’d eat books.”

They waited.

“I don’t hear water running,” Applejack said.

A icy winter draft blew into the room, blowing napkins into the air and ruffling the pages of errant books. Spike dashed into the kitchen with the others behind him and saw the open window.

Twilight ran. She fell down from the window into the snow, skidded on the ice, flailed to regain balance, stumbled and dove into a snow bank, quite by accident.

“Get her!” she heard Rainbow Dash’s distant voice. Struggling free, she pulled herself up and made it all of two steps before Rainbow Dash tackled her from behind. They tumbled and slid on the ice. Twilight squirmed out of her grip and bucked wildly.

“Ow! Twilight, you almost hit me!”

Twilight ran. She wasn’t fast in the snow, but she could teleport: She vanished and reappeared in bursts of lavender light, skidding, almost tripping, vanishing again; she was almost to the frozen throne where the two tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala were sealed when something hit her from behind. The combined force of Rainbow Dash’s speeding body and Twilight’s own forward momentum propelled them forward through the air like a cannonball and hit something very cold, and very hard, which broke.

Twilight lay groaning in the wreckage of her former throne. Something in her head felt like it was going to burst. She heard Rainbow Dash cursing nearby. A pair of golden papery things fluttered in the snow, blurring in and out of her vision..

Rainbow Dash got to her wings, fluttering angrily over Twilight. “Are you crazy?It’s below zero and dark! You get lost in the woods walking back from Fluttershy’s!”

Twilight was too stunned to answer as their friends caught up.

“Twilight!” Pinkie Pie said. “What’d you go running off for? Hey, what happened to your chair?”

Twilight wondered what she was talking about.

“Rainbow Dash!” Applejack scolded as they gathered around her. “You hurt her!”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Move aside,” Fluttershy said firmly. She crouched beside Twilight. “Twilight, how many hoofs am I holding up?”

Twilight mostly managed to look at her.

“So that’s a yes to concussion,” Fluttershy muttered. “I’ll bring you some medicine from my cottage, okay? No economics for a week, even if your head feels better.”

Twilight groaned.

“You should have taken my coat,” Rarity admonished as Applejack carried Twilight back to the treehouse as easily as a bushel of apples. Twilight clutched the tickets to her breast.

“And my axe,” Pinkie Pie said. She tugged it out of her hair. “Never go anywhere without an axe, I always say.”

“You do that to your hair?” Rarity said in horror.

“It grows around it.”

The mare walked behind them, unbothered by the cold. A small world spun by her head. She did not slip on the ice. Nor did she leave hoofprints in the snow. No matter how deep it was, her gliding pace remained steady. She was very near to Twilight. Her friends had hurt her. But soon they wouldn’t ever again.

The mare’s blade cut through the ice without leaving a mark. Her eyes burned with twin blue sparks.

“Twilight, I’m sorry,” Spike said morosely. “I didn’t realize—”

“Didn’t realize what?” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “She’s just got to pick who to give the ticket to. We all know it’s true,” she added defensively. “You can stop looking at me like that.”

Twilight clutched the tickets close. Rainbow Dash was right. Twisting her head, ignoring Fluttershy’s sharp command, Twilight looked wildly for something, for any anchor she could throw away—the tickets—her friends—the moon—the mare—