unedited, but published at my boyfriend's insistence

In the great city of Skyguard, snow whirled through the air as it did its best to coat the stone structures in a blanket of frozen white. In response, the city mustered its many defenses. Bonfires burned brightly in recessed pits, giving ponies places to warm up and take cover from the wind. Many shops sold warm teas and hearty soups to spread warmth to the stomachs of the citizens. Clothes makers advertised insulated clothing, and some even dared to display their work outside where it could be examined by passersby.

Love Letter’s favorite way to warm up was to snuggle with someone she loved. However, she had a critical shortage of loved ones since she moved to the city from her small town. The pegasus couldn’t sustain her business there, and so she sought opportunity among the stone city.

Updrafts from the bonfires made perfect places to catch some height to glide over the streets. This kind of commute wasn’t available to her back on the farm, for sure. Though the ropes hanging across the street with flags and pendants of all colors could be a hazard. Crosswinds impacted her as she passed out from inside the rows of buildings and along the road circling the city’s central plaza.

For a moment of rest, she landed on the statue standing proud in the center of their city. The roosting pegasus admired it for a moment. The huge bipedal, draconic warrior always felt like she should have some connection to it. A dozen smaller gryphon statues were posed around it, wrought over years of work to immortalize the warrior that saved the kingdom from destruction. She wondered if the city’s lack of gryphons was due solely to it or if there were other factors keeping any from moving here.

Even Love Letter’s thick, bushy wings couldn’t keep the chill out forever at this altitude, above the nearby buildings. With the wind chill forcing her down, she glided straight to her stall. Positioned inside a bonfire pit, she got plenty of traffic from ponies trying to warm up. She shared the space with a stallion named Prime Cut who sold kebabs roasted at the publicly available fire. Due to their shared space and the tantalizing scent of the meats and veggies cooking openly, she was a frequent customer of his.

“Morning Letter, have a nice flight?” The unicorn asked his fellow vendor.

“Can’t complain,” She responded as she pushed her stall out into action mode, “How’s the wife Prime?”

“Same as usual, complaining about the cold while calling our city the best in the kingdom.”

Love Letter chuckled a bit, exchanging small talk as she waited for the inevitable morning rush. As traffic picked up and curious gazes passed over her stand, she made sure to keep the replica of her diploma in clear view. The psychology degree hadn’t been easy to get, but it meant she could easily serve as a relationship counselor in addition to being a matchmaker. Some days one came more highly demanded than the other, but she managed to keep up a tidy profit regardless.

The pegasus didn’t usually go out and tell people what her secret was, but many ponies could guess based on the faint glow from her eyes. Being sighted was rare, and hers visualized the connections between ponies. It especially focused on romance, leaving her vision often full of little red ribbons trailing after everyone. Love Letter could easily make out every one of their connections, past, present, and potential. Such a power could easily be used for ill, but she prided herself on handling it with the utmost responsibility.

A teenage filly walked away from her stall after getting some advice, when Love Letter spotted a stallion sprinting towards her, the terran even skipping the steps down into the pit and simply leaping towards her!

“You have to help me Letter!” He pleaded.

“What’s going on? Is…” she recognized him, she’d helped him once years ago. But now the strong, vital connection to his wife looked fairly battered and tangled. It seemed less like a fading and fraying connection that naturally happens when people drift apart, and more like someone took a pair of safety scissors to it.

“It’s like my wife has been replaced with a whole different pony. I don’t know what I can do but speak to you!” His tone was near hysterical, and Letter hoped that her special talents were all that was needed. If this was something deeper, she wasn’t sure she could pull it off alone.

“Take a deep breath Mr Smoke. Show me where she is, and then we’ll make a plan,” Love Letter grabbed her saddlebags and threw on a scarf before closing her stand, “Prime! Let my customers know I’m on an emergency case!”

“You got it!”

“Thanks, you’re the best!”

Bundled up against the cold, the matchmaker followed her old client through the city’s sensible layout of ascending streets and stairways, or descending, since they started in the middle. While she tried to get useful information out of him as they ran, he wasn’t thinking clearly enough for her to understand him.

Smoke’s wife trailed behind another stallion, occasionally moving up to give him small nuzzles. This kind of scene had played out a few times in Love Letter’s career, but this time something caught her interest. The ribbon binding the new couple together looked flat. From the stallion’s end it looked just like an unrequited love kindled to a roaring flame. The mare’s end proved much more noteworthy, the threads of the string were being woven around a chain, pulled away from the connection to her husband. Each moment the effect became more pronounced. It looked like a new love was slowly being forced upon the mare.

“Salt Lick! Please!” Smoke House pleaded, “Did I do something wrong? We can fix this!”

Love Letter watched from just above, observing the exchange. The other stallion turned to face Smoke House as the matchmaker narrowed her gaze. Threads of the ribbon broke away from the chain and returned to Smoke as he spoke to his wife.

“She doesn’t need you hurting her anymore!” Cried the stallion Love Letter hadn’t met before, “I’m helping her see your true colors! I heard all about what you do! So I’m going to save her from you!”

The mare, Salt Lick, seemed oddly passive in this. Love Letter’s frown deepened as she tried to figure out what happened here. The accusation the second stallion leveled at Smoke House did also make things more complicated. Love Letter could only see relationship potential, not if the relationship would be a perfectly healthy one.

Since both stallions seemed to have gotten into a shouting match, Love Letter took this chance to glide down and join the group in the bonfire pit that they’d stopped in. She approached Salt Lick, and tapped her on the side with a wing, “excuse me, missus?”

Salt Lick jumped a bit, and turned to face Letter, “Oh, sorry, I was a little distracted. I’ve got a bit of a headache, you know?” Her smile came through despite the thick scarf around her neck and muzzle. Love Letter always liked those kinds of smiles.

“Yeah, that can be rough. Can I ask what’s going on with those two?” Love Letter gestured with a pink wing towards the shouting stallions. She considered maybe trying to defuse the situation, but since they were just shouting she decided to take a second to gather intelligence.

“Oh that’s… my husband and uh, Carol Bells. I’m feeling a little out of it today, I guess. They’re fighting over me, I suppose”

“You sound kind of ambivalent about this”

“I shouldn’t, but I can’t seem to make up my mind. I’ve been happy in my marriage for ages now, but I just feel numb to Smoke now. And Carol is just… nice. We’ve been friends for ages and we care deeply for each other.” she smiles faintly, a bit of tension leaving her.

“How long have you been married to Smoke House?” Love Letter hated feeling as though she were flying blind in a gale, but this situation didn’t fit her usual cases. The light gray salt vendor didn’t show any signs of having something bad in her system. Her light red eyes seemed perfectly normal, her stocky legs didn’t shake, and her tail seemed to be moving just fine.

“Oh it’s been a good few years now, our foals are growing up so fast! Hang on a second, I recognize you now! You’re that matchmaker that helped us get together!”

“Ah, I’m glad you remember” Love Letter did like to be appreciated, and it seemed like something was making the threads trailing from Salt to Carol to move to Smoke instead. That appeared to be a clue to her, but what could she do with that?

“Thank you for that so much, I know he paid you but I still feel indebted to you. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have had my foals.” Salt clearly wore her heart on her sleeve. The mare’s demeanor had shifted from that near blank slate to a much more expressive one after just a moment of talking. More threads spread out from her, leaving that anomalous chain behind.

“Speaking of them, why don’t you go check on them while I speak to the boys.” Letter gestured to the shouting stallions.

“Oh my, I guess you better, I’ll see you around miss” Salt Lick tightened her scarf and threw up a hood before climbing out of the bonfire pit. In the meantime, Love Letter had a case to solve.

The pegasus imposed herself between the terran and the unicorn, flaring her wings out in a display of dominance, “Alright you two, quiet down!”

Upon having someone snap them out of their argument of logic-choking passion, they both turned to face her. This much hostility didn’t sit right with her, so she resolved to first deescalate the situation.

“I need you both to stay calm and rational, so I can try to work this situation out. I’m a professional.” Projecting calm confidence went a long way to keeping ponies even headed. That psychology degree didn’t just help with matchmaking!

“You have to tell this homewrecker to keep his horn away from my wife!” Smoke House demanded. At least he wasn’t screaming anymore.

“You don’t deserve her! She can do so much better than you!” Rebutted Carol.

“Smoke, I need you to quiet down, don’t say anything. Carol… I don’t believe we’ve met.” As much as she wanted to just smack some sense into the both of them, she had to get the full story before making a judgment.

“I heard of you, the matchmaker.” Carol didn’t take his eyes off of Smoke House even as he spoke to Love Letter.

“Yes, I just want to work out what’s happening so I can do what’s best for Salt Lick. You can agree to that, right?”

“Yes,” Carol Bells replied.

“Of course,” Smoke House interrupted.

“Good, now let me figure this out.” Keeping the reins on these two would be difficult. Love Letter paused only for a moment to decide which to interrogate first.

“Wait! Hear me out, please. It’s hard, almost impossible, to prove this stuff but I don’t want to see my friend Salt hurt anymore!”

Love Letter ruffled all her feathers out to maximize how big she looked. Despite being impassioned, the stallions backed up as she kept her wings out. Thankfully being a northern pegasus made this trick less chilly for her, “I’ll hear you out, but you have to stay calm! Neither of you are to interrupt the other! Carol, you go first since you have the side I don’t know” She ordered once more.

“Okay! Right, so Smoke House never lets her go anywhere without him! They had their foals right after they got married and I bet it was to keep her from wanting to leave. And someone I know says he yells at Salt regularly! I tried talking to her about it. She had a lot of excuses for it, but I don’t buy it!” Carol argued as best as he could. The claims were pretty insubstantial, but clearly Smoke House was about to blow his top at the accusations.

“I don’t know about that Carol, but you got Salt to come with you. What did you say to her to convince her?” Letter could tell she was close. Like the Valkyries of old who guarded the walls she closed in on the kill…

“Well I asked her to give me one more chance to convince her and gave her a potion of clarity.” Carol admitted all too happily, “I told her what it was first, don’t worry. I wouldn’t do anything bad to save her.”

That new clue threw a spanner into the works of her old theories. Anyone could do bad things to a romantic partner, but Salt Lick hadn’t been clear minded. If anything she was pretty spacy.

“She wasn’t under the effects of a potion of clarity. I checked her over and she wasn’t showing signs of potion use. Clarity potions make you very alert but impose a few side effects like tail immobilization and bloodshot eyes.” Love Letter recited, brain running overtime.

“What?! But if it wasn’t clarity, what was it?” Carol seemed legitimately surprised by the news. Smoke House even stopped scowling at him as he realized the dangers of giving an unknown potion to someone.

For her part, Love Letter wondered if she shouldn’t get the guard involved. But without a direct threat of harm, she might be better off with the police. That conundrum could wait, she had to get to Salt and try to counteract the potion.

“Follow me, we have to help Salt Lick!” She ordered the stallions. Both of them lept at the chance to aid the afflicted mare. One out of love, the other out of guilt.

Together the trio rushed through the snowy streets, and Love Letter acted as a windbreak for the stallions, using her wings to cut through the snow falling around them. The residential sections of the city tended to be clumped inside of the stores and businesses lining the larger streets, so their path got narrower very quickly. With urgency hastening them, they soon made it to the couple’s home.

“Salt? Are you here?” Smoke House pushed through the door and shook off the dusting of white covering his topside. The climb up the apartment block left Carol winded, and so he fell behind.

Salt Lick sat on the couch in the living room, looking somewhat listless. The mare didn’t manage more than a grunt to answer her husband. He tried to rouse her, but didn’t have much luck. Love Letter wracked her brains for whatever she could remember about potions. What could leave her in this state? Without any discernible physical effects, it had to be something affecting the innate magic inside of her.

Love Letter felt very concerned about how strange the strings were acting. The bonds of love between Salt Lick and the ponies around her seemed to be breaking and drifting together around that chain. Clearly it had to do with the potion. As Love Letter turned it over in her head, Carol entered the home. The unicorn shivered from the cold, but the impact on Salt was immediate.

The listless mare perked up and rose to her hooves. Before anyone else could stop her, Salt ran over to her friend and began nuzzling him intensely. Carol himself seemed taken aback, “uh, Salt wait, we have news you need to hear!”

“I don’t need to hear anything…” She mumbled as she tried to kiss him.

Carol dodged as best as he could, looking to Smoke for help. Soon the Terran stallion grabbed his wife, and held her back, “Cut it out Salt!”

“No!”

As they struggled, Love Letter watched the strings. When Smoke House took her into his arms, more of the threads returned to normal, but it seemed like the chain was getting stronger. Inspiration struck her like lightning.

“Smoke House! Get your foals, I’ll hold her!” Love Letter might not be as strong as a terran, but she wasn’t a pushover. As Salt leapt out of her husband’s legs, Love Letter intercepted her midair. They tumbled to the ground, wrestling as Carol hesitated to come closer to the seemingly possessed mare.

“Salt snap out of it! You’re supposed to be looking after your foals!”

To Letter’s surprise, this actually stopped the mother for a moment.

“But Carol?” she asked, dazed again as her threads moved unpredictably. Letter hated it when she had to move through them, but it was inevitable in a dense city like this.

Smoke returned with two foals in tow, along with a young stallion who probably served as a foal sitter. He came to Letter and Salt, seeming confused as to his next action. Letter knew she was officially winging it now.

“Salt, I need you to focus, here’s your babies and your husband.”

The presence of her family impacted her greatly. Salt’s attention turned away from her friend turned fixation to her children. Each thread that returned to its proper place weakened the chain coming from her. The potion’s magic lost strength quickly.

“Miss Lick, are you okay?” the babysitter chimed in.

A string of platonic love returned to him, stripping ever more power from the spell. Letter risked letting go of Salt, and stood back up with her.

“You gotta stay with me Salt, your friends will get worried about you.” Without those ponies physically present, repairing the strings took longer, but Letter eventually coaxed them back together. An hour later, and the chain, which was probably her sight trying to process the potion’s effects, began to crack. Once it shattered, Letter let out a sigh of relief, “I think we’re out of the danger zone. Smoke, look after Salt. Carol, take me to where you got that potion!”

“Y-yes ma’am!”

Together they began the hike to the lower city. Skyguard was famous for the uniform buildings within, all made of a limited number of patterns and built of the same heavy gray stone. Beyond the city’s gates the plateau it had been built on ended. Lower down were more recent constructions of timber and cobblestone, with a train station nestled next to the ramp leading up to the city gates.

“He said he’d be around here, near the rail yard” Carol sounded nervous. Letter pondered how culpable he was for this incident, since he seemed mostly unaware of the situation’s true nature.

“What did he look like?” She kept her ears alert and her eyes peeled. Yard workers went about their business, though a few looked over at the pair with idle curiosity.

“There! I see the place, he had his shop here.” Carol pushed through a snow drift to reach a small shack behind a tavern. The shack appeared abandoned, but inside they found signs of recent disturbance.

“What?! But he was here!” Worries of being punished in the vendor’s stead filled Carol’s mind, but Love Letter put a wing over him.

“Relax, I can see evidence of his stay here. Just search for anything that might have been left behind.”

Their search turned up nothing beyond a note.

‘Love potions made cheap, no refunds!’

Love Letter crumpled the note in her hoof. The fact that this could be valuable evidence didn’t stop her. The idea of someone trying to bottle love to force relationships offended her deeply. While this one had been foiled, she knew this wouldn’t be the last one.

“I’ll find you, and when I do you’ll regret setting hoof in this city!” she declared to the empty space.