The first few seconds of the morning are always the most painful.

The body, stiff and cold after a full night without my spirit to animate it, the awakening flesh crying in protest with pain when I made the blood flow and muscles contract. But the pain of the flesh was good, if somewhat unpleasant -- a sign that the herbs and drugs worked as intended, keeping my body safe while I was occupied elsewhere.

It was a productive night -- a few things have been learned, few others exchanged, another dram of strength and knowledge added to the piggybank of my power--

There was a knock on the door.

"Sunset, are you up?"

My eyes shot open. It was my Princess, choosing to grant me a visitation outside of our lesson time, even going as far as my personal room. It has been some time since she had done that, and my pulse grew faster as I tried to figure out if it was a good or a bad sign.

The door creaked, opening slowly…

I slammed it back into her face.

“One minute, my Princess,” I called back, looking frantically around the room. “I’m, err, not decent!”

She should not have been here. She should not have to see the things I had, in my carelessness and exhaustion, left lying in full view. Frantic, I galloped around my room, picking up the notes and materials off the floor and bed. A blast of my magic evaporated the glasses, erasing the trace of elixirs I took last evening; a quick buck shoved the pipe of the hookah under the bed; and pushing the haphazard mess of scrolls and notes into the wardrobe, I ran to greet her before she could grow impatient and enter my room.

She was still there, the aura of her power still tangible about her after raising the Sun, and if she were dismayed by my behaviour, it didn't show. Her expression was just the mild, almost motherly concern and a soft smile that used to make me feel safe and welcome.

I bowed, every sore muscle and sinew crying out in agony, like a symphony of razors under my skin.

“Would you like to have breakfast with me?” she asked, gesturing for me to rise.

I nodded nervously, unsure if my tongue and wits had recovered enough to talk, unsure what to say even if they had. It had been too long since we had a chance to just be together, outside of lesson time.

The table already waited for us on the terrace, stacks of golden pancakes towering over the bowls of berries and, of course, a giant chocolate cake as a piece de resistance. Celestia and my mom had rather different ideas on what constitutes a healthy breakfast for a pony, but I certainly used to prefer it the way of my Princess.

I remember the first time I saw the balcony: all of the city below, shining with warm rays of morning light reflected off amber and gold, white marble and white stone of the buildings interleaved with the green of the carefully tended gardens. Back then, the view used to take my breath away with awe.

We sat.

We ate.

We looked at the city below.

"How are your studies, my little student?" she asked. She was always the first to talk. To try to reach out to me.

"Good, good." I set aside a forkful of pancake. "The transmutation classes are very interesting and I found this text that--"

I cut myself off. Those were not the lessons learned from my Princess or the tutors she had granted me. The lessons I took in the dark of the night, from teachers found far from home, were unfit to be presented to her.

"--erm... I’m still reading it, but it's very interesting. Yes." I finished lamely, retreating back into the safety of food. "They say--" I switched the topic, trying to ask the question I’ve been trying to raise for a while now, hoping that she'd not ask who "they" were. "The winter may be declared earlier this year. The northern winds are coming strong from the East, and the pegasi can’t hold them much longer."

"Taking after your mother, then." She nodded. "She too distrusts the natural weathers. But even in Equestria not everything can -- or should -- be controlled. The northern winds are proud and powerful, and sometimes even the pegasi must yield to their temper--”

"But that's just the thing!" I flared up. "All the anemoi are wilful and it takes time to tame even the smallest of the winds. And here it's all of them, almost lockstepping, and from the East no less. The--" I caught myself before I'd say something I shouldn't have, "I've scoured the library--" and pushed all those who'd talk to me in my nightly travels, "--every scroll and every weather report, and nothing like this has ever happened by itself -- not in all of recorded history. According to every weather science book I’ve researched it should not even be possible at all!"

“You study too much, these days.” Her smile barely touched her eyes, but still, it was there, lighting up the terrace brighter than the morning sun. ”Ever the curious little filly trying to get into Upper Baltimare all by herself.”

I couldn't help but smile in response, remembering that little adventure. A unicorn filly with a failing cloudwalking spell, the horrified flailing in the weather factory, and the rainbow reservoirs surprisingly easy to topple... needless to say both my Princess and I were very grateful there weren't any cameras there that day.

"I... " I tried to find the right expressions, the right words. The desire to just tell her would have ripped at my heart if I still had one beating in my chest. "Just trying to do better. Be better."

There was no explaining this, words becoming lies as soon as I said them. I wanted to tell her of my failure, of how it was my weakness that made me let down both of my Princesses, to explain that I would never let that happen ever again...

The conversation died again, lost between the things I couldn’t say and the things she would not ask.

“Cake?” She held out a plate towards me.

I eyed it for a second, finding solace in weighing a simple decision instead of resuming the pointless argument. In the end, I decided against it: ‘The soldier eats whenever he can, for he knows not when he will have another meal. A warrior eats sparsely, for he knows not when he will have to starve again.’ -- I was reading back then, tomes ancient and deemed uncouth and outdated by modern Equestria. Some -- full of empty platitudes and flowery nonsense, some paradoxical and insightful.

Not sure which one of these was this little gem, but it helped me more than once to hold my appetites in check and not to get used to the luxuries in my life.

I made a vague noncommittal motion of rejection, pushing my half-eaten plate away and restoring my guard and my silence. I’ve already said too much. How could she ever know my mind, how would she discern what quickened me these days? She did not want to know, nor did I wish to mar her with that knowledge.

She sighed. "Your teachers tell me that you are..." there was a caution in her tone, not mine for once, "very fervent in your studies. 'Unorthodox', they say, 'brilliant' and 'insightful'. And I'm very proud to hear that, but they also say that you look tired. That you don't get enough sleep, and you even stopped seeing Doctor Spotless Mind.

"I know that being my student puts a lot of pressure on you, but it seems you're running yourself ragged these days. If you need a break...”

I poured me some tea, half-listening to my Princess say something, some rote, meaningless words of encouragement and support that barely even registered as speech anymore.

“...you need friends, my little student,” she continued. “Have you gone out with your friends recently?"

I haven't, not for a while. Canterlot of gold, bronze and light, the shining city atop Mount Coltvir, the centre of the known world -- it could not sate the appetites that I've finally acknowledged. The boring games with no risk and no stakes, too easy to win, too pointless to even try. The drinks, bland and stale, cider and wine too sweet by half and too weak to bother drinking. The mares with flabby muscles and dead eyes of cattle, the overindulgent, emasculated stallions - the thought of sex with any of them brought nothing but revulsion. No sex, no drinks and most of all - no fights and no excitement to be had in the perfect Equestria. Happy Equestria. Utterly, utterly boring Equestria.

I drank my tea, held a fake, plastic smile, and said no word.

"You look cabin-sick," she started again, trying to chase away the silence. "You used to love `hanging out` with those Lulamoon twins. Maybe you could take a break?"

I did need a break. Ever since I came back, I felt the castle crowding me and driving me insane with all the smiles and bows, my room becoming like a prison and sometimes I just wanted to scream. I was already planning a little outing of my own -- into the Everfree Forest, or the Ghastly Gorge or the Forbidden Jungle, to Tartarus itself if I could’ve arranged it. If only to feel again the strain of my muscles, the song of the adrenaline-filled pulse in my ears, to taste blood, mine or someone else's…

"I’ll think of something," I offered, half-sincere.

Celestia smiled again, a tentative, fragile thing she held out like an olive branch. "Count Fancy Pants is assembling a diplomatic mission to Griffonstone," she said, almost conspiratorially. "Perhaps you'd like to join?”

Had the suggestion come from anypony else, I would have laughed in their face. Mingling with some stuffy, self-important nobles and trying to survive someone droning on and on about some boring business about zones of responsibility and the merits of obligation... there were better things I could do with that time.

“I couldn’t possibly.” I tried to find a reason to refuse. “Maybe I could do something instead? Go to Baltimare, study those wind patterns--.”

"Sunset." She stared at me, her tone growing serious. "You spend too much time on your own and don't get enough rest. This is not healthy. A change of scenery and some company will do you good."

"But,-- the wind patterns!" I almost whined like a little filly, even knowing that the battle was already lost. "That's much more important than some stuffy diplomatic... thing!"

“Your studies can wait, my little pony.” She almost touched me with her wing, only faltering at the last second. “There are things more important than research and spells for a filly your age. I hope you will learn some of that on your trip.”

You can’t learn much from the books, but I always found them to be a good start. So, after my academics were done for the day, I retreated into the library seeking the books on Griffonstone. And the more I read the more it caught my attention, making me almost enamoured with the thought of going there.

There, they still fought each other with sharpened claws and ate red meat. From there the strong drinks and exotic spices came, there they still pushed the boundaries of the known world with bravery and persistence nearly forgotten in Canterlot.

Perhaps it would be a decent adventure, going to Griffonstone… but I had more important things to do. Things I could not learn by idle travel and just reading books -- it was time for my nightly lessons. I moved from the library to my personal study, and from there to the lab I made for myself, and the work I kept secret from the Princess.

Here, covered by secrecy and darkness, night after night I did things unfit to be presented to my teachers or published in the esteemed journals of Canterlot.

I remember still those nights; reading tomes forbidden and forgotten, outsider knowledge of the age long gone. Half-intuition, half-science, I was making another type of magic -- old magic, gleamed in other worlds and off the broken kings, the power of words and promises, rights and entitlements. Magic that screamed and bled; magic that wanted to do things. It could crawl into your head like a spider, poison your soul like a snake, twist your flesh and rip out your heart.

I would not gain my power as Cadance did, in one fell swoop, just by being in the right place at the right time. I was fine with that. I would forge my own luck from my skill and determination, build it up one drop of blood and sweat and tears at a time, and I knew without a doubt that once I did my power would be like no other in the world. And if the pain and fatigue were the price for it -- and for Celestia's blissful ignorance of my less choice activities -- then it was a price that I would pay gladly.

Still, when I lay exhausted beyond the aid of stimulants arcane or chemical, wracked by pain from elixirs I’ve imbibed and the spells that rolled through my body, shifting my organs and twisting my bones, I would look through the magic mirror.

I’d look at that pink little alicorn having dinner with her ‘Auntie’, and see them talk without awkward pauses and prolonged silence, a feeling, dark and heavy would lurch in my soul.

A feeling I could now give a name: Envy.

Tonight, however, I had a different plan. The winds and the strangers I met in my nightly journeys did not lie when they whispered to me of the changes in the East. The temperature drops, the eastern winds bringing unexpected northern cold, and the winds of the North displacing them entirely -- those things were not just a matter of changing seasons, whether my Princess wanted to discuss it or not.

Tonight, before being shipped to Griffonstone to waste my time, I had to at least go and look at the cause of it myself.

I ran the last checks and placed the final touches on the things growing and simmering in the confines of my secret lab. Some I drank, bitter taste of rot and poison, feeling their numbing magic spread through my flesh and set a dark flame in my gut. Some I let simmer for a while yet. And then, feeling the potions take their effect, I locked my lab and retreated to my bed.

A spark lit the fire in the brass hookah, boiling the herbs I bought from Saddle Arabia through secret trades and clandestine deals. Hash tickled my throat, reminding me of the pipe I shared in the underwater city, and as the subtle poisons of nightshade, propylhexedrine and khalif-root filled my lungs and entered my blood, I felt my consciousness begin to slip.

And just before the haze of the drug swallowed me, I reached out with my magic, writing shimmering calligraphy of green light on the air as I whispered the secret Name.

It was not any name, not a simple invocation. At night, in the security of my bed, I did not take the poisoned smoke to dream prophetic dreams or to sleep a sleepless slumber. It was not the Name of Al-Basir the All-Seeing or Al-Mani the Protector that I would invoke before bedtime like a scared Saddle Arabian filly. I called instead upon a Name secret and hidden, a Name entwined with my horn and carved in script into my soul.

My magic twisted inside out and joined together like a pattern in a kaleidoscope into a familiar spell, and through my horn I slipped away from my sleeping body, rising out of my bed and into the grip of the Southern Wind.

I looked at my body -- a torpid little orange thing -- while I expanded, seeping through the cracks in the mortar, through the vents and up the halls, up and away to the East. Away from the golden domes of Canterlot and Mount Coltvir, over the snowy peaks of the Foal Mountains, brushing the eternal snow, untouched by pony hoof, around the high towers of Fillydelphia and yonder, over the Celestial Sea.

There was a storm gathering -- any filly who grew up in Baltimare would be able to tell you at a glance. The water was dull, leaden, waves rising and clashing with each other, spurred by the winds. The sky hung low and heavy, full of clouds, each pregnant with rain and thunder. Ships flew past me, fleeing to the safety of the harbour, their weather-crews retreating with them under the pressure of the wind.

I flew on toward the heart of the nascent storm fighting against the air and the rain, and where the water met the sky in a black vortex of sleet I saw the Northern Winds. All of them, howling their fury in the sky above, where just behind the imaginary line that separated Equestria from Griffonstone the battle-clouds full of snow and thunder floated in ranks and legions ready to move.

I flew on, higher and further, pushing through the deadly cold and sharp hail that chilled even my magics, seeking to extinguish them.

And over the vortex of the Northern Winds, above the gathering army of ice and thunder, far higher than I ever dared to rise, I could see him herding the clouds and winds together, weaving a perfect storm. A form just barely distinguished in the chaos of the storm - a flash of flurry turned to a feathered wing, a sound of the wind like the cry of a bird rending into its prey, the lightning flashing in the air in the shape of razor-sharp claws.

A careless flutter of my winds, a glare of my magic -- I don’t know what gave me away, but he saw me, and in an instant, he fell on me with a furious screech, quick and vast, huge as the heavens themselves, like a mountain of wind and ice, and I ran.

Thunder rent the night asunder and hail fell in the million blades, as the flurry ripped into my wind-flesh, and ice froze the currents of the Southern Wind.

I twisted about, raking at him back with my claws of magic and fire, and leaving slices of my body in his lighting-claws, and dashed again, down towards the earth.

There were no words in my brain, only the mad, insane colours of panic and pure undiluted giddiness when I banked a hard right, waves exploding into columns of steam where the lighting struck them. I rode the fear like a high, harnessing it into my magic like stubborn horses gone wild, and rising up, riding the adrenaline wave that pushed me to fly faster.

The sky creaked above me - or was it below? Lightning bolts ripped the waves to shreds beneath my wing and air was as thick with snow and rain it might as well have been water, and all I had to guide me through that madness was the presence, right at my back felt with all of my wind-flesh, until with a last lurch I disappeared into the cumulus-walls of Baltimare. He would not dare--

He didn't even hesitate, as he struck... no, he smote the clouds of the city, with the power that defied imagination. Like a hurricane, like a tornado, like an angry Prince of Storms.

The city shook, from cumulus to strata, almost falling out of the sky. The weatherponies raised by the commotion scattered, and alarms and bells blared, summoning more and more pegasi of the weather team. From the safety of my city, I looked at the hurricane, tired, wounded, but alive, giddy, crazed laughter bubbling from within.

He looked at me back, finally realizing that he would start a war, a war he alone could not hope to win. I saw his eyes, slitted, yellow eyes of the predator, and I remembered them.

I shipped out to Griffonstone next morning.

You’re like a castle, tall and white.
You’re pure and bright like virgin snow,
I don’t believe this lengthy night
And hopeless evenings, full of woe.

My soul, itself, is desecrated,
And I won’t trust it anymore.
Perhaps, a traveller belated, —
I’ll knock against your chamber door.

Sunset Shimmer
Equestiran Lit homework (never submitted)