Her steps were heavy on the worn pine floor, and with her came the winter winds whistling. Every eye—not that there were many—was turned towards her for just a moment. Yet she did not seem to care, or even to notice. She trudged to the center of the floor, and then stood for a moment.

Wrapped in furs from head to toe, she had entered as a great hulking shape. But as she stood, the traveler removed the wrappings from her face and was again human. On her head she wore a furred hat, as sometimes you see in the northern climes, and on it sat a strange, crude metal insignia like a jagged, many-pointed star.

I watched her as she sat at the bar, unblinking, and muttered something. Her accent was foreign. She pronounced each word with an alien care in a voice I found beautiful.

Perhaps her voice, speaking as if she cradled each unfamiliar syllable with care, compelled me to cross from my own table to sit beside her. Or, if I am more honest, it was more likely that foolish sort of audacity that is more accurately understood as a potent mix of arrogance and libido. Maybe I was bored.

I sat beside her, a stool between us, and I did not ask for a drink. I merely waited as she stared a hole through the steaming cup that the tavern’s master had brought her.

It was she who spoke first.

“If you’ve come to bother me, I’d advise against it.”

I smiled as best I could. “I would not want to be a burden. You seem like a lady who has seen much.”

She looked at me then, and for a moment I wished to flee from her side. Those were… you will expect me to tell you that they were hard eyes, yes? Like chiseled stone, or knives, or some other foolish metaphor oft repeated, but they were not. They were soft. That was the first word that came to my mind, and you’ll be forgiven if you scoff. Soft, yes, but more than that they were like the blown glass art that the merchants say comes from far off Valon, red like the cliffs that overlook the eternal ocean. Except these were violet or a blue so deep it threatened to become so. Yes, like the Ayvan witches have, so the tales say. Yet she was as human as me. No wings sprouted from her back.

I felt, for a moment, as if the next word might see her shatter. Irrational, but it was what I felt. I didn’t flee. I swallowed all of my youthful gall.

“I’ve seen many things,” said the traveler. Her cheek spasmed, as if a smile had pulled at her and been shoved back down. “Things you wouldn’t believe, snowlander, I’ve seen them all.”

“I believe it,” I told her, cowed.

She raised an eyebrow. “Do you, then?”

“Yes, I think so. You seem solemn, and one who has seen much… I would expect that.”

“And you seem like a flatterer. Tossle-headed poets even this far from Imperial Center. What a world.” She reached for the cup and drank the steaming mead in two sputtering attempts, to my faint horror. Her face twisted, and then she coughed into a fist before looking at me again, and then she began to tell me what she had seen.

֎֎֎

I first met the Princess in Venaria. I was—and hopefully may yet be again—a student at the School of Magic there, and encountered her in front of the gates. She was distraught. I’ll always remember how she turned to me when I tried to enter for class. She asked all sorts of questions—who lived here? Who raised the sun, and who shepherded the moon in its course? Did I know of any of the names she began to spout, one after another? I tried, feeling nervous, to deny that I knew of what she spoke. This only served to make her more manic. She clung to the front of my plain dress as she slipped in the street, and I could not ignore her. Before the guard could free me from her grip, I helped the Princess to her feet and waved him off.

I’m not sure what possessed me to help her, but I tried. I brought her to a local kaf house that the students frequented and had her fed and given a nice cup of the establishment’s fare. It was here that first I began to truly examine this absolutely confounding woman.

She was shapely, beautiful in all of the ways that Midlander society demands. She was dark of color, which was not so unusual, though one sees it more in the south of the kingdom. Her hair was long and orderly, and her dress strange but obviously of high quality. A bit archaic, yes, but not so far out of the realm of believability for high born nobility on some grand occasion. Perhaps even something that might come into vogue, were the right lady to don it in the right time and place. Her eyes were violet—yes, I too thought for a moment that she must be one of the shamans of the northern wilds. But she was obviously not. Though they are not the savages on wings of war and bluster that men often consider them to be, such peoples usually spurn refinement. Yet she was refined in the extreme, in that easy and natural way that one expects of the highborn of true character, which makes no fuss and whose main purpose is to ensure that all goes smoothly.

It was there, as I quietly fretted over my missed classes, that I learned much that would serve me well. I learned that this odd, possibly mad, but beautiful woman called herself Princess Twilight Sparkle, and that she was possessed of a frankly ludicrous amount of heavy gold coin. She offered to pay, and when I saw one of those… I learned a bit of alchemy as a part of the curriculum at Lady Villier’s school, and part of that training involved metallurgy. I know enough to be dangerous, or so we said with smiles, and it took me but a moment to realize that her coin was solid gold. She could buy more than pastries and kaf with one of those. Yes, I see you understand. With the size, the weight? She could buy a warhorse with just one.

She was clueless about everything, it seemed. Yet when I mentioned that I studied at the School, she became very excited. Her knowledge of the arcane was more than merely advanced. The more she spoke, the more frightened I became. This woman, this strange mad woman, might know as much as the Lady herself. To be in the presence of a mage capable of rivalling the supposed avatar of the sun herself!

Twilight was kind, much as the Lady, my sometime teacher and omnipresent liege, was. When she had calmed down, she was polite, refined, and certainly friendly. Not once did I feel that she was mad in the traditional sense. There was no outburst of nonsense, no dire proclamations of doom. Simply an eager woman who was genuinely interested in my own magical pursuits.

The next week was strange. I helped the Princess find lodging in town, and she offered to hire me as a sort of secretary-cum-translator. I would help her navigate a strange new locale, and in return she might impart a bit of her knowledge as she felt I could understand it. It helped that she offered to pay me with those gold coins, which I found could be exchanged for a handsome little fortune with the proper application of arm-twisting and flattery.

I took her to see much of the city, and I listened to her strange tales of strange places. In Venaria, she said, she had seen her home reflected, and with each passing day her resolve to return grew.

I myself had never left my home for more than a week at most. I was a Venarian through and through, a maid of the city and all that entailed. It ward both hard and all too easy to feel for her in her distress. Yet…

֎֎֎

She pulled the woolen mittens from her hands, then, and went to rubbing them together. I’ve always chuckled at foreigners who really think that helps, but this time I could not laugh. I could only watch as she gave up and went back to staring holes in the bar.

“That name… it does not…”

She smirked. “Doesn’t seem like a proper name, does it? You’re asking yourself right now if you know of any country on earth where one might find a rich woman named ‘Twilight Sparkle’, and just now you’ve come to the conclusion that no such land exists.”

“Perhaps in the West,” I said, but faltered when she shook her head.

“No. Not in the West, true as it may be. Trust me.”

“Then where came she?” asked I, puzzled. I tried to imagine such a lady, but failed.

The traveler kept her smirk up as she raised a hand to ask the bartender for more mead rich with mulling spices and warmed to keep out the chill. I offered to pay, and she thanked me.

She said something then, some word I did not understand and which passed quickly as foreign words do, through my mind. When she looked on my blank expression, she rolled her eyes and tried again.

“It was… in this language of yours, ah, chevalier kingdom? No, that’s… merde.” She shook her head. “Has to do with horses…”

She hummed, and dug through the many pockets of her coat, then. I was fascinated by it--for a girl of the City, she had found herself outfitted like a true outrider of the northern rim. At last, she pulled a worn volume from a pocket near her chest on the inside and paged through the abused pages.

Then she looked up, grinning at me with those blue-maybe-violet eyes, and continued.