Eventide had been waiting in the small alcove on the wall for over forty minutes, nested in the shadows near the ceiling and keeping her eyes narrowed lest her presence be betrayed by her yellow irises. Her attention was primarily focused on the corridor and any possible sound other than the constant hammering coming from the room at the other end. Through that, she always kept an eye on the window across, waiting for the signal.

After a minute or two Drum Beat flew in the distance, his dark shape and Thestral wings unmistakeable among the pegasi Royal guards crossing the sky. He performed a double loop, and Eventide knew everything she needed to know: Cast Iron had finally fallen asleep, and he was the only one who would have real reason to come here. As for any others, Drum Beat would be in position shortly to keep them at bay.

Cradle Song and Broken Gust were already in position. Young as they might be, they had learned silence and stillness. Everything was in place.

Time to have that talk.

She walked into the newly built smithery; another of the castle’s largest rooms located near Princess Luna’s tower, this one had been reconstructed with a forge to serve this purpose, part of the large changes done to accommodate the Lunar Guard. Quarters, training halls, armories, Princess Celestia would not raise an objection against whatever her sister needed or desired, and it hadn’t been all that much all considered.

Time and grief had given them all lessons to learn. Still, more time was needed to know if any of them had been the right one.

The air inside was a scorched creature of humidity and smoke. The strange forge burned, leeching every spark of heat it could strangle out of the fuel available for its use. The smell of molten metal was pounding her lungs, her breath stolen and stifled by its heavy, strange weight, making her feel dizzy for a few seconds.

Metal in all its forms ruled here―metal and heat. Cast Iron worked relentlessly, even the most basic of creations filling him with joy and pride. His obsession made sure that the fires would be lit almost all day. Then you had the other one...

Well, the other one was the reason she was here.

The Thestral working in front of the anvil was rippled with muscle, proof of his strenuous regimen. His coat was gray, and his mane black, making him look as if he was covered in ash and soot. The fact that he often was perplexed matters even worse.

Steel Edge would spend all of his waking hours in here, trying to regain his confidence as a blacksmith, with the rest of his few hours spent sleeping. Even his meals would most often be delivered by Cast Iron, as he returned from his own rest, or from another pony, be they of the Guard or the castle staff. He had lost one thousand years, and his craft and skill had been surpassed. New tools, new ways, new alloys. Steel Edge was forced to learn his trade anew.

The reason Eventide knew all this was that, besides keeping eyes on him, she had been sent letters from her fellow Thestrals: Silverwing had written to her detailing everything that Steel Edge had asked, said, and learned during his short time back with what remained of their race, the last clan of Thestrals that was basically no more than a breeding mix of what was left down the centuries.

In Eventide’s opinion, Steel Edge should have stayed there. But no, the dunderhead had insisted on keeping his oath of service to Princess Luna, even though the Princess had no desire to see his sorry self again. Silverwing had been a fool—one who, in Eventide’s opinion, should have stepped down long ago—to allow him to come here where Princess Luna had no other reprieve in the eyes of her sister than to accept him, even if still refusing to meet him in person.

Maybe it would have been preferable that her fellow Thestrals had let him go and then arranged an “accident”. It would have been so much easier for everypony involved. Him included.

But easy had not been a Thestral option for a thousand years now. They had to take the hard path, always. That was their choice.

She hoped Steel Edge would take the easy path. She did not want to kill him. She had known his name since she was a filly. In a sense, it would be like killing family. An uncle you kept hearing about but never met. She would do it if he forced her, but she would not enjoy it.

… Maybe a little. After all, if one of the old Thestrals had been more aware then perhaps she wouldn’t have needed to suffer that fate.

Eventide waited until there was a long enough break between the hammer blows. “We need to talk,” she said, her cold voice a sharp contrast to the hot, sparking embers.

“A moment,” the stallion said, making no sign that he had been unaware of her presence.

He struck the white-hot metal two more times, and then used a pair of tongs to sink it into a bucket of water, accompanied by an almost inaudible sigh of revulsion, steam almost hiding him from sight. He picked it out in a second, and set it aside to cool the rest of the way off. It was just a misshapen piece of metal as far as Eventide could see.

Steel Edge finally deigned to look at her, standing still like a statue. He creeped her out if she was honest. He seemed almost like a mechanical clock come to life with the way he moved and went through his daily routine, and a sense that he could stand still and waiting for yea—

Right, Eventide reminded herself. He has been.

“Am I going to be allowed an audience with Princess Luna?” he asked; it was his usual opening whenever he talked with anypony.

Her response was the same he was always told. “No. But I’m here to talk to you about something relating to that.”

No affirmation that he had listened to her, and only after a few moments did Eventide realize he was simply waiting for her to elucidate further. “Go back home. Return to the others, do your craft there, and don’t ask anything about Princess Luna again. Do you understand me?”

There was a beat of silence between them. “Yes,” Steel Edge answered.

“Will you?” Eventide asked, riddled with doubt.

“No.” He took a half step closer, and Eventide wondered if he meant that as a threat. He was making a big mistake if it was. Just because she had to crane her head to look him in the eye did not mean she feared him.

“I will not leave. I took an oath to my clan and the Princess, to serve as her personal guard until I am no longer able to. I’m still able, so my oath dictates that I stay and serve, one way or another.”

“She doesn’t want you here anymore,” Eventide insisted.

“Furthermore,” Steel Edge continued undeterred, “I wish to know more of the fate of my fellow companions. I have asked of them multiple times. The only answer I have gotten is that they died, no matter whom I ask. I will know what befell them, no matter how many times I have to repeat the question. If nopony truly knows, then I shall ask Princess Luna herself. May I have an audience with her?”

Eventide huffed in annoyance. “You’ve gotten really good with modern Equestrian really fast, haven’t you?”

“I had nothing else to do,” Steel Edge answered, and for once there was a hint of emotion in his voice. “My… Our people spurned me. I had no recourse but to learn the modern language in hopes of finding out why. I did not. This is another one of my questions.”

“You’re not going to do us the favor of going away, are you?”

“No. Not until my questions are answered.”

Eventide made a slow circuit around the workshop, playing at looking around while in truth wasting time in order to think. Steel Edge didn’t complain or ask her to return her attention back to him. He stood as he was, watching and waiting.

Silverwing had left the choice up to her, dirty coward that he was. Better that she make it, he wrote, since she was right next to Princess Luna and would have a better viewpoint. That was why she had been given such a detailed—and boring—report on everything Steel Edge related. To have as complete a picture as possible.

It served her none. Her choices had always been the same few. Either she told him nothing and worried about a possible ticking bomb—she did not trust that stony facade, she arranged a small accident or just killed him outright and took the fall herself, or she told him everything, which would most likely end with her needing to kill him either way.

Letting him talk to Princess Luna had never been an option.

Fine. So be it. She made her choice. She would give him a chance to have his answers and live, as miniscule as it was. If he chose wrong, and she bet her freedom he wouldn’t, she would kill him right there and then. He had been good. That was why he had been chosen to accompany Princess Luna. But that was one thousand years ago, and Eventide lived her life the way he had spent less than a week.

She had been pushing quite the old age for a Thestral anyway. She didn’t want to die in a cell, but it beat the alternatives she had avoided so far. Lying on a cot in a dungeon and waiting for age to finish her would be easy.

“These are your questions then? How the others died and why we don’t want you around?” Eventide specified.

Steel Edge nodded, silent as ever.

“Then I’ll answer both of your questions right now.”

That actually got to him. He took two steps back to the anvil, placing his hoof on it as if seeking comfort from its solid mass. Steel Edge was definitely not expecting her to know the answer to the first part after all. It was what every Thestral always said when asked. The guards that Princess Luna recruited from the Thestral Clans one thousand years ago all died. She never told us how. We don’t ask.

It was completely true. Princess Luna never told the Thestrals what her brief Guard’s end was, and everypony who heard of this assumed that it meant they were as much in the dark as well as everypony else.

But the Thestrals had always known.

“Six days after you left on your journey as her elite guards, Princess Luna returned to tell us that all of you were dead. She had a few keepsakes of your friends with her. Small things, all of them metal, all of them burnt and charred. We took them, and her task done she left again.

“The Princess continued her duty, traveling Equestria, hunting in the forests and the deep places. She was savage. Unrelentless. She didn’t rest a single day from what we can tell, like a mare obsessed, and with that obsession came madness. There were tales, and none of them spoke of gentleness. Not to her and not from her. As if she no longer was a pony.”

Steel Edge interrupted her. “I know all this already. This is all what I’ve been told, but nothing more.”

Eventide had started pacing as she began the story. She stopped now, watching the massive Thestral with the corner of her eye. “Did they tell you what happened next?”

He nodded, and there was still disbelief as he recounted what he had been told. “Nightmare Moon. About forty years after I was gone in that… space. She… It lasted for two years. Then it was gone. And now Princess Luna is back.”

“What they didn’t tell you, what nopony else knows, is what happened twelve years after Nightmare Moon was banished.”

“Which was?”

“An old earth pony came and found our ancestors. She was there, you see. The only pony that survived, due to sheer luck and the last vestiges of guilt.”

“Alright, kiddo. Take all these to the batponies over there. Make sure you don’t spill anything,” her mother said as she lowered the tray, filled to the brim with beer mugs, for Strawberry Sunrise to carry. “And don’t talk to them much, alright?”

“Why not?” Strawberry asked, with a little bit of whine. She was at that rebellious age where her parents’ knowledge and instructions no longer seemed wise to her. She’d rather do what she wanted instead.

Her mother ducked behind the inn’s counter where she could talk at Strawberry Sunrise’s height and not be seen doing so. “Because they are batponies. I don’t know if you should be spending time with them. You don’t know what they are up to out there. And if they are like their… preferred princess, then keep away,” she warned.

“They said they were her guards, like the ones the white princess has,” Strawberry said. She had asked what they were when they first came into their inn sitting all alone on the crossroad. She had never seen their ilk before.

“Guards,” her mother scoffed. “Nothing like the Royal Guard. So listen to your mother. It’s perfectly clear what she’s got them around for,” she added with a roll of her eyes directed towards the ceiling.

Strawberry felt her face heat up, and without meaning to she stared up as well. The lantern hanging from the chain on the ceiling was swaying more than usual, and if she focused her ears and listened carefully enough she could just make out a rhythmic thumping sound. Her budding imagination, spurred by her recent grown spurts, added more sounds. Grunts that in her inexperience were not clear if they would be painful or pleasurable, perhaps accompanied by the sound of kisses. She had never been kissed, but she had seen a few ponies do so. Not from up close though, and it seemed like sloppy stuff to her, noisy probably—

Her mother’s hoof on her bottom broke her out of her fantasy. “You get going and serve, and then do some cleaning before you go to bed,” she repeated, with an anger in her eye that told Strawberry that her mom had figured out what she had been thinking of. There was probably a talking to going to be delivered to her tonight after all her chores were done.

With the heavy, wooden tray on her back and walking slowly as to not drop it, she made her way to the large group of Thestrals, dodging tables and chairs moved out of place and the few patrons that had no choice but to stay at this late an hour. There were over a dozen of the not-pegasi flyers, almost filling the small inn’s hall by their own. They all looked so exotic to her. Their membranous wings and slitted eyes should have been scary―she had imagined them being scary―but they were not.

They were mostly lean, all of them filled with supple muscle that she could see pulled taut and shining under the fire-lit lanterns. She bit her lips, fighting more of the thoughts that her mother would forbid. How would their wings feel, she wondered. She had felt a pegasus mare’s wings once, the lady kind enough to let her touch, and they had been amazingly soft. Their leathery wings would be unlike them, she guessed. She believed they would feel warm.

She thought of the princess up in one of their rented rooms, and the large stallion she had dragged behind her. Curiosity burned in Strawberry as she served the last mugs to the Thestrals, keeping her head low as to not stare. She glanced towards the stairs leading to the few rooms they rented, with half-formed plans of crawling up there and quenching the curiosity that was firing her up.

Plans she couldn’t go ahead with thankfully, yet she felt disappointed all the same. The Thestrals seemed absorbed in their small talk, but the the dark stairwell attracted their eyes as often as it did Strawberry Sunrise’s, if not more.

Her work done, she discreetly sat down at a table near the stairs. She could have a good view of these strange, new ponies, and with her face half-hidden by her hooves as she rested her head on the table nopony would be able to tell if she stared too much. Even if she was seen in the dark, they might think her asleep.

Transfixed in her thoughts, she couldn’t tell how long she sat there. Long enough, and with probably everypony aware of what she had been doing if they had paid attention to her. She didn’t hear the hoofsteps of the pony coming down the stairs, and the movement of the large, dark coat at the edge of her vision almost made her heart stop.

The other Thestrals quieted down as their comrade joined them silently. They still talked, but it was fake. They’d speak with nopony paying attention to them, and even the speakers focused on the newly returned pony.

“We saved you a beer,” the Thestral closest to the newcomer said, pushing the heavy mug with his folded wing.

“Thanks,” the very large Thestral said, and downed half its contents in a single go. “I needed that.”

“You’re welcome, Fervor,” the other one responded quietly.

He was far larger than the rest, heavy and broad, and lines of fur missing from his coat. Scars, Strawberry guessed. She had seen ponies that had been in accidents or survived a timberwolf mauling, and they were like that as well, especially when the wound didn’t heal as well as it should. It took unicorn magic, she had heard, to heal well enough that the coat would grow back.

The Thestral straight across from Fervor, a lanky tall one with his head covered in bandages, glared at him as if he was a disgusting bug. Fervor spotted him and raised an eyebrow at his direction. “Something the matter, Reed?”

“You should have told her no,” Reed said. His voice was almost impossible to hear, his lips and teeth barely moving.

“Why?” Fervor asked. Strawberry couldn’t tell if he was honestly curious or making fun of the other one.

“You know why!” Reed spat.

Strawberry whipped her head to look behind her. She heard something or so she thought. Like a pony taking a deep breath before diving in the river. The stairs were empty. The stair’s landing in front was cloaked in shadows, despite the nearest lantern. It had to have been running low on oil. Nopony was on the steps either, despite the young mare swearing she could hear a creak. All she could see where the lines of shadow from the banister against the barely lit wall and steps.

A shiver ran down Strawberry’s spine. Her mouth was dry, and she couldn’t shake that feeling that somepony was breathing down her neck. She scooted to the side a little, further against the wall, and felt a little better with her back facing the corner of the room. She turned her attention back to the Thestrals.

“—then you could have told her if you wanted. How about you take a look at yourself first, huh?” Fervor was saying, waving his mug around. “It’s not your concern whether I cheat or not, so stop playing at being my moral guardian!”

Fervor sighed after his rant. He stayed silent, enduring the disappointed looks of most of the Thestrals around him. “I know what it looks like,” he said, taking his second wind. “But you have to face reality. Any of us might be next, gone in a flash just like Steel. The way I see it, he was lucky he was buried in the process. If I get a chance to have a good time until my turn comes—and with the rate she is pushing us already that won’t be long—I’ll take it. My advice to you all is to do the same while you have the chance.”

The Thestral next to Fervor shook his head in surprise and shock. “What, you mean she decided to work her way through all of us?” He looked up the steps with an expression of longing that made Strawberry feel uncomfortable. She slunk lower.

“Not what I meant,” Fervor growled, stealing the beer from the smaller, perverted Thestral. “You know what annoys me? She just... sat there completely still, you know?”

“Well, you are the peasant,” a joking Thestral smirked. “You didn’t expect her to do all the work, right?”

The one called Reed banged his hoof on the table, hard enough to draw attention but not loud enough to summon the eyes of everypony in the inn. “That is quite enough on the subject! We are dropping this, and that’s that!” There were nods at this.

Fervor drank from his new mug, nursing it thoughtfully and staring back at Reed. He was working his way through something, everypony could tell. They all waited, the trepidation rising. When Fervor spoke he whispered, but the large Thestral group was so quiet at this point that Strawberry heard him clearly all the same.

“I think that was her first time.”

Strawberry Sunrise felt her cheeks burning red.

The joker and a few around them burst out in laughs. “Oh, my sweet sunrise. You not only bagged a princess, but a virgin princess? Good job, Fervor. Here’s to deflowering the white one next ti—”

The hoof of one of the other Thestrals who hadn’t laughed struck him across the cheek. He lost his grip on the mug he had brazenly raised and it emptied all over him and the table. “Shut up, you idiot! Think for once before you speak. She is still a princess,and she is still your leader! I have no idea what your clan was thinking of to choose you lot unless it was to get rid of you. Is this what you think you should be doing?”

“Right. We should arrange turns and a curriculum,” the one who Strawberry had labeled as the Pervert announced loudly. “Dibs on teaching her how to use her lips to—”

This time the hoof that punched the speaker belonged to Fervor himself. The Thestral’s eyes burned with anger as he stood over the half-dazed Pervert, his hoof trembling and pulling it back with great effort.

“Let’s get this straight,” Fervor growled, enraged. “She didn’t—”

The double slam of the inn’s door as it opened and closed again startled everypony.

“Strawberry!” her mother called out from behind the counter. “I told you to lock the door before the wind picks up! Where did you go?”

“Sorry! I’m right here, Mom!” Strawberry shouted back, getting up from her seat and feeling as if she glowed as much as one of the lights she had seen a unicorn make once with the amount of embarrassment she felt suffusing her at being caught eavesdropping.

“Crap! How long has that kid been there?” One of the Thestrals asked the others. She didn’t know who, not with her back turned around as she rushed to the door.

Her mother was right, she had left it unlocked.

Strawberry spent the next few minutes pestering her mother—as she would call it. In Strawberry’s point of view she was making up for her small blunder and being an excellent, helpful daughter. The fact that it kept her away from the Thestrals and any awkward questions barely passed her mind of course.

Mister Rhubarb, she noticed, had his head turned sideways, his ears flicking with every burst of the harsh wind they could hear outside. Strawberry knew him well. He didn’t have any fields of his own, nor any other skills, so he spent most of his time here, getting work as a farmhoof from the surrounding farm owners who would gather up at the inn every now and then as a convenient meeting point.

“That doesn’t sound much like wind, does it?” Mister Rhubarb said to nopony.

Strawberry’s mother was busy gathering what blankets and sheets she had available. Even disliking somepony did not mean she would cast them out or let them sleep on the cold floor. “It’s just a few branches from the nearby trees breaking up, nothing to wor—”

Strawberry could scarcely remember what happened next.

A massive tree trunk had gone through the front door, she remembered that. She remembered that more of them had piled on the roof because that’s how Mister Rhubarb broke his back when one of them pierced through and fell on him.

She was unsure, but she thought that she had ran to one of the windows. She couldn’t remember who pulled her away when thick branches smashed on them, blocking them off. She did see somepony get pierced by them when he or she tried to break through a window or the wall—she couldn’t remember which—but she could never forget the sound of what seemed like a forest slamming itself on what had been her home, piece by piece.

She didn’t know how long that had lasted. How much time the Thestrals spent trying to find a way out or to lift the tree off Mister Rhubarb without success. She knew the noise of the storm stopped only when the fires started.

They were everywhere, or so it seemed to her. Everything burned, fire flowing like water. Tendrils of flame licked at the walls and the ceiling, burning debris falling from all sides only to be replaced by more wood throwing itself to the fire, feeding it. There were screams, and hers were the loudest.

She screamed even more when the fires reached the barrels of oil in the back. She almost tore her throat out when she saw her mom trying to protect her by the fire and the shattering bottles by covering her with her own body while blood seeped from the glass shards on her face.

There were no screams left in her after Fervor himself—she remembered his face clearly, how his tears did their best to clear the smoke out of his green eyes—pulled Strawberry away from her mother and pushed her towards the fireplace and the tight confines of the chimney. Her mother was crying too, but she was urging her to go, to climb, to run.

She remembered being scared. Not wanting to go. She remembered the Thestrals doing their best to keep the smoke and fire away from them while her mother told Strawberry her goodbyes, last words that Strawberry would never remember. She remembered many of them falling to the flames. She didn’t remember if Fervor was one of them.

But she remembered the sensation of her mom’s last kiss on her brow with perfect clarity. She remembered that much at least.

Going through the chimney was an ordeal she re-lived in her nightmares. Only in her dreams the chimney was without end. A huge tunnel of burning stone and flowing smoke that she had to climb towards a starry sky she could never reach. The hope of the pain’s end so clear yet so far, while behind her everything she knew and loved choked and burnt.

She made it out somehow. She must have made it down from the roof in some way. She managed it without getting burnt too much. She thought she tried to shout to her mom that she made it, but she wasn’t sure, even if she did do it, if she could be heard. The deafening roar of the fire was the only sound of the universe.

Strawberry ran away from it. She ran away from the hungry roars, from the screams of timber and ponies, from her life crumbling behind her. She ran.

She ran and almost fell upon the princess.

They looked at each other forever, both still as statues.

“I didn’t mean to,” the princess whispered.

“My mom… My mom is in there…” Strawberry answered. She should be hating this mare with the stars in her mane, she should be screaming, crying up a storm, but all she felt was numbness and a massive weight on her. It whispered to her to stop, close her eyes, and let it all be gone.

The princess shook her head, as if denying the reality even while illuminated by the red glow of the fire. “I didn’t… He shouldn’t have kept his wife a secret! They shouldn’t have laughed at me! I just wanted… I just wanted… I am not at fault here!” she wailed.

All Strawberry could feel for her was sadness. No pity, no hate, no dislike. Just sorry in a vague way. Anger was too much for her to call now, and no other feeling arose. She could do nothing but look at the princess who ranted insanely. Too young and shocked to say it in words, the truth was known to her at that moment:

The princess was mad.

Silver horseshoes tore up the ground as their wearer spoke of unfairness to Strawberry. The thick chestpiece heaved up and down as the mare bellowed of having nothing to Strawberry. The ebony crown on her head was a dark silhouette among the stars as she cried for her constant sacrifices to protect ponies who never knew harshness to Strawberry.

When she finished, her teeth bared in hostility, Strawberry couldn’t do much. What was left? Her heart and head hurt so much she was surprised anypony could still live, let alone stand when there is this much pain. What else could she do to or tell the mare in front of her? What other option was left?

Each step closer to the princess was more painful than the last. Her legs were starting to ache in agony, and she didn’t dare look down where her coat was no more. She approached the mare nevertheless, raising her hoof and placing it over a silver shoe.

“I’m—”

The marble floor cracked under the force of Steel Edge’s hoof. His features fractured like glaciers under a spring sun, threatening to reveal the contempt he felt through the deep scowl he was hiding beneath. “You will stop. You will leave. That is enough,” he declared, each syllable as clear as polished ice.

“If that is what you want,” Eventide said. Even as she said that her eyes momentarily searched the tall rafters above, and she could almost hear the leathery creak of Thestral wings stretching. She was not leaving this room without a resolution, though Steel Edge did not know that. “I thought you wanted to know.”

“What I wanted was answers. True ones, not mockery and lies. I would appreciate you leaving me to work now that you had your laugh,” the large Thestral said as he turned his back on her and filled a bucket with coal.

“You believe I am lying,” Eventide stated.

The barely filled bucket crashed down, emptying what few contents it had. “Of course I believe you are lying,” he shouted, incensed. “If this had happened you would not be here. From what I have been told the Nightmare was atrocious, but it was not really the Princess. Not so with the tale you weaved. Our people would want to have nothing to do with her,” he asserted, the right edge of his lips twisting. “Not if she had killed our—my…”

Eventide watched as he picked each piece of coal with the end of his wing, one by one, and deposited them back. Slowly, methodically, and using them as an excuse to keep busy while not doing much of anything. She could empathize with the feeling.

You didn’t learn the whole story at once. You were told little, just enough to appreciate the harshness that Princess Luna endured while you underwent similar hardship. They dribbled down the stories, the lessons, the words she had said, until…

… Until life happened and death came into play. Until you lost something important, like your husband and love of your life. Until you broke down and all illusions shattered. When you had nothing, nothing but tears and the roar in your heart demanding to leave this heartbreak behind, to abandon everypony. That’s when they told you everything. That’s when they tore down everything you thought you knew and built you anew.

That was when they would take you to look at the moon. At the shadow on it, distant and away from everypony. They would remind you of all the harshness you had lived through, all the pain, and then your loss. They would bleed you alive. And then, when you were nothing but an empty shell…

… They would remind you that you still had so much more than the Princess had. That you barely scratched the surface of the centuries she lived this way. That you had ponies to turn to and share your loss with, to understand you and be with you. That you, despite everything, were not abandoned or left alone by them. Not like she was.

Had Steel Edge lost enough to understand? Eventide’s guts said no. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t understand. Not the way she had with the scorching iron of grief. She needed a similar path, but different if she wanted to give him a chance of living through tonight.

She asked him the question that she had been asked as well.

“What if it was our fault?”

The bucket was thrown to a wall. Steel Edge’s chest heaved with heavy breaths. “Thou wouldst besmirch thy trials and tribulations for the sake of—”

Eventide smiled faintly where a part of her wanted to smirk vindictively. “Blame. Where to lay it?” she asked rhetorically. “You could lay it entirely on Princess Luna for breaking, for every single death. You could choose to blame Princess Celestia for focusing on her kingdom and not her sister. You could lay it on the ponies of Equestria for their failings. You could lay it on us for knowing and doing nothing.”

Steel Edge’s eyes were filled with the heat that missed from his demeanor. “We knew nothing of the sort.”

“We knew that she was alone. That was enough,” Eventide said, and raised her wing in a gesture of silence. “Come here, I want to ask about something,” she beckoned, guiding towards where she had first found him standing.

There was no hint of heat on the dull piece of metal. If anything, it was cool to the touch. Eventide swiveled it around at the end of her wings as she brought it to a convenient workbench, trying to work out what it was meant to be with no success. It resembled more a piece of clay a foal had played around with than any work meant to come out of a blacksmith’s hooves.

A wince of disappointment danced across Steel Edge’s face when it landed on the wooden surface. “I’m going to make a wild guess and say that this didn't turn the way you meant to.”

“... Correct.”

“What was it supposed to be?” she asked. That was the one thing she certainly did not know.

There was a beat of embarrassed silence. “A spear head.”

Eventide checked it from the left. She examined it from the right. She got an aerial view from the top, and lifted it up to see it from below. Eyes wide shut or wide open, it made little difference. “Most spears I have seen… don’t really curve like that, you know. It’s like it’s trying to stab its owner,” she commented.

“I have noticed,” Steele Edge answered dryly.

“Of course, that wouldn’t be a problem seeing it has the pointy end of a brick…”

Steel Edge coughed.

“Now, I’m no blacksmith or doctor, but these knobs here look like cancer growth—oh, they flake off. That’s… unhygienic.”

“Is there a point to this?” Steel Edge asked while eyeballing his avant garde spear with the obvious desire to chuck it off to oblivion.

“Sure,” Eventide said. “You used to be good. What is the reason for this regurgitation?”

“I am… I cannot help it,” Steel Edge responded after a few moments of sullen silence. “I am trying, but I am overwhelmed. I used to work with an open furnace, my anvil, and my hammer. Now we have… this, and alloys instead of honest iron. Alloys that need special treatment that I know not off, temperatures and oils, new tools, new tempers… I do not know where to begin!” he exclaimed through grit teeth.

He told her nothing that she didn’t know already. Neither did she ask something she didn’t know the answer to. “What about Cast Iron? Have you asked for his help?”

The way he turned his head away from her was answer enough.

“So you won’t ask for help. Too proud or too afraid to let others know you are not good enough. I can’t help but notice that you never get rid of your failures in a way nopony would never see. You leave them around. I wonder if you are hoping perhaps that somepony will see and offer a bit of advice. After all, if they decide to give you that help…

“And while you wait, where is Cast Iron? He knows you can’t possibly learn by your lonesome, even though you do your best. Why hasn’t our Commander Solid Charge checked on you, why haven’t others spoken up about how nothing is made any faster, why hasn’t Raegdan asked what is going on with you, why haven’t I told the others you are just wasting space in here as you are?”

She approached him, caring not for personal space. She whispered into his ear. “Do you understand what I am trying to point out, Steel Edge? Do you see the resemblance? Do you see where the blame must be obviously placed?”

The large stallion stayed quiet. He blinked, gazing at nothingness for a minute. Shaking his head, the damned serenity rebuilding itself on his face, he searched around him as if anchoring himself. He mumbled. “It is not my… I am trying—”

Eventide shrugged. “I suppose that you do,” she allowed. She waited a moment, expecting him to nod or something, but then remembered who she was talking to. She moved to leave.

She kind of waited for him to speak up before she left. It would have been anticlimactic if he didn’t. “Do you really believe it was our fault?” he asked.

She didn’t bother turning around. She was certain Steel Edge had his back turned to her, so she kept hers to him. “Everypony’s fault, one pony’s fault, nopony’s fault… I think it’s a moot point, personally. It is done. We should look after ourselves and undo our failings, not lay them on others. What do you think?”

It felt stupid, but Eventide looked back. To her surprise, Steel Edge was staring at her.

“I think…” he said, turning back to his failed creation. “I think… I’m just a blacksmith.”

Eventide had been waiting in the small alcove on the wall for hours, nested in the shadows near the ceiling and keeping her eyes half-lidded lest her presence be betrayed by her yellow irises. She waited while Cast Iron came back to work a few more hours and all through the evening. She waited until she saw both minotaur and tall Thestral leave together, exhausted and heading to their beds.

After ten more minutes of patient waiting she went into their workshop. She looked up at the tall rafters, and whistled. Cradle Song and Broken Gust came down slowly, both of them working every muscle in their body, getting rid of the kinks.

“What are we doing with him, then?” Cradle Song asked, pressing his braided red beard between his hooves. Water dribbled down.

“Depends on how he acts on the following few days. We’ll keeping an eye on him. I assume he didn’t say something he shouldn’t to Cast Iron, did he?”

“Nah, we would be all over him if he did,” Broken Gust said as the two young ponies followed their elder on the way out. “He didn’t say a thing. He spent all evening having Cast Iron show him stuff. It was boring.”

“I found it interesting,” Cradle Song said. “I always thought that when they put the hot metal in water they were done. I didn’t know that they reheated it after and let it cool on its own.”

“Go and apprentice with them, then,” Broken Gust said. “Let’s see if you find it as interesting if that stupid beard of yours catches fire.”

“Respect the beard, please.”

Eventide broke off the typical bickering. “What did he say?” she asked, curious that Steel Edge had finally acted.

“Who to who and what?” Cradle Song asked for specifications.

“Steel Edge. When he asked Cast Iron for help. Did he say anything?”

“Meh,” Broken Gust said, flapping her wings impatiently. “Something about taking responsibility for himself and all. Was that important?”

“Maybe,” Eventide allowed. “We will see.” Truthfully, she felt… satisfied, though a little hesitant to let her guard down entirely.

Cradle Song was the smartest of the three young ones who were with her. They all were, but Broken Gust was too enamored with her new amore, and Drum Beat preferred to spend his time hoping he would be somepony important. Cradle Song just let things happen, almost as if he was too bored to shape them, and that meant that he had a knack of noticing things.

“He is going to ask if we will tell Princess Luna that we know,” Cradle Song said, fighting off Broken Gust’s attempts to grab his beard. “He will want to know if she is going to take responsibility herself. What do we tell him then?”

“Way I figure it, we will do the same as today,” Eventide said. “We will tell him the truth. That we will, when we think the Princess is ready.”

“And when will that be?”

Eventide shrugged, giving them the last answer she would before stepping back into the main palace where they would no longer talk freely of this. “When she comes to tell us herself.”

A moment that Eventide thought would be never. Not when confronted with the cold princess she first saw near a coast and knew more of when healing in a hospital. She thought then that that day would never come. But then again, she thought wrong all too often. When the Princess massed her guard, young ones, inexperienced ones, discarded ones… She thought it would all end badly, especially with the young mares from Ponyville around.

“Stop pulling my beard!”

“Is that your beard? Are you sure? It looks like a tail, and that whole thing does look like a butt.”

“That’s my fa—Respect the beard! ...I am very conscious about it.”

But maybe that was exactly what the Princess needed. She wasn’t like she was before. It was a small change, but it was there. Perhaps the day of truth would come after all.