"Oh Maker," Cadence giggled, gasping for air, "tell me the part about the soap suds again."

It was late in the evening. All had returned to the nest, and having all had a long and wearisome day, made for bed. The castle staff had cleaned up the mess admirably; it had been left to Shining Armor to debrief Twilight, Spike, and Cadence what had happened in their absence. He had kept it to "a minor laundry/kitchen accident" in front of Twilight; misgivings about Nyx or not, he couldn't bring himself to rat out a little filly to her Mom. The explanation had been enough for Twilight.

Cadence, however, hadn't been satisfied with that one-sentence summary. Once they were back in their own bedroom and ready for bed, she had demanded the full story. Shining had relented and related the events of the day to her, in detail. Shining was very glad the walls of their bedchamber were soundproofed(1), because her shrieks of laughter would surely have alarmed the staff. "No, I am not telling you about the soap suds again," he said, half annoyed, half amused. "I already recited that bit three times."

"And it's funnier every single time!" Cadence laughed, flopping back on her pillow, head tossed back. Shining Armor blushed. She always was so beautiful when she laughed.... She rolled over on one side, raising up on her elbow to look at him. "Now do you feel a little less suspicious of her?" she teased.

Shining Armor dodged the question. "I'm wondering why you're not more upset about your dress," he said.

Cadence sighed. "Well, I'm not happy it was destroyed, but it's only a dress," she said. She smiled. "Besides, I have another one exactly like it in the closet."

"You do?" Shining Armor felt an unhappy chill run down his spine.

Cadence nodded. "I always get two of anything, in case of, well, something like this." She shrugged. "It's a policy that's proven itself wise, all things considered."

"Aaand the dress uniform?" Shining Armor asked, awful thoughts crossing his mind.

Cadence smiled and nodded. "It's in your wardrobe."

Dreading what his eyes were about to see, Shining Armor lit up his horn and opened his wardrobe from where he lay with his magic. The door swung open silently to reveal....

... His original dress uniform, from Canterlot. The cut was slightly different and the colors had been changed to match those of the Crystal Empire's flag, but it was otherwise the same sensible design he'd worn at royal gatherings and ceremonial events, including his own wedding. He blinked. "But--" then he saw the look of utter glee on his wife's face.

"The butler and I had a running bet on how many times you'd wear that awful thing before you set it on fire," she said.

"You---" He said no more; he just sat there in bed and sulked while Cadence rolled on her back, kicking her pretty little hooves in the air. "You are terrible," he finally said when she ran out of air.

"And you love it," she said, giving him a smooch on the nose.

"I will neither confirm nor deny anything," he said in a monotone.

"So what did you do while they were cleaning up the mess?" Cadence asked.

Shining shrugged and sighed. "I finished reviewing the other candidates for promotion, rescheduled the candidates for my replacement for tomorrow after the review of the new cadets, and ordered daisyburgers and hay fries up from the castle kitchens for lunch." He shrugged again. "No sense in trying to fix anything with the kitchen covered in soot and soap."

"What was she trying to fix?" Cadence said.

"To judge from the mess, toasted daffodil sandwiches and celery soup," he said. "I could tell it was hers by the hoofprints in the bread." Cadence snickered. "Bread jammed in the toaster, two empty jars of soup on the floor, daffodil petals all around the kitchen..."

"Wait, daffodil sandwiches and celery soup?" Cadence asked. At Shining's answer to the affirmative she said "Awww. She was fixing you her favorite meal."

"How do you know that?" Shining Armor asked.

"Aunt Celestia and Luna told me," Cadence said. "It was the last meal she requested when she--" Cadence hesitated. "When she thought she was going to be banished to the moon." Why was it so awkward to mention now? "It was the very first meal your sister fixed her after rescuing her from the Everfree Forest. It's a special thing to her, I suppose."

Shining Armor had to ruminate on that one for a bit.

"And I note you didn't answer my question," Cadence said firmly. "You've spent the day with her. What do you really think of her now?" She was suddenly sober.

Shining Armor lay there, staring up at the canopy. His jaw worked while he struggled for words. "I want to, Cadence," he said. "I want to like her. She's a cute kid... okay, a little odd looking, with the eyes.... and she's got a bad temper---"

"So I hear." Cadence snickered. " 'Plothead.' "

Shining gave her an aggrieved look. "Yeah. Okay, so maybe I went a little overboard with the constant surveillance." Then again, after what happened to the kitchen and the laundry... "But she's clever, and funny as heck... I really want to like her." He looked back up at the canopy. "But I can't. I can't lower my guard."

"Why not?" Cadence said.

Shining Armor smacked the mattress with a hoof. "Because she's Nightmare Moon!" He threw the covers aside and got out of bed and began to pace. "She was so dangerous Celestia banished her to the Moon! She turned the tables on both Celestia and Luna and conquered Equestria-- in less than a week after regaining her powers! She, she brainwashed thousands, including the entire Guard... including me... " He stopped and looked at Cadence. "And don't fuss about the details. Whether it was her or her cult, she was the one who made it happen."

Cadence said nothing.

Shining Armor looked off into the middle distance. "Cadence, do you remember me telling you about that mad doctor the Guard and I had to track down? The one who was performing experiments with parasprites?" Cadence nodded. "Do you remember what he was doing to them? He was magically altering them to be carnivorous." Shining Armor shuddered. "One of them nearly took my face off. We had to burn his laboratory down to make sure we destroyed them all."

Cadence shivered. "I remember you telling me."

"Well I feel that way every time I look at her. I see this cute, innocent looking little thing in front of me, and in the back of my mind all I can do is wonder when it's going to sprout an enormous mouth full of razor-sharp fangs and leap off the table at me."

He looked at Cadence, half demanding, half pleading. "What happens if she regains her powers? What happens if she regains her memory? I know Princess Luna is supposed to have erased her memory, turned her back into a filly, again, but--"

"Shining, she never lost her memory," Cadence said.

"Wait, what?"

"She never lost her memory," Cadence repeated. "Luna never took her memories away. She couldn't anyway. Luna only took the thousand-year-old memories that were from when Luna herself was Nightmare Moon. And she could only do that because those memories were really hers. Nyx, she remembers everything. From the time she was 'reborn' to the time she was a full grown Nightmare, to conquering Equestria. Everything." Cadence shifted under the covers. "She even recalls the time when Luna became Nightmare Moon, and the thousand years' exile in the Moon.  Only secondhand, vaguely, like a dream, but she does remember it." Cadence shook her head.

"And what of her abandoning the throne? Defending Ponyville with her life? Freeing the Princesses and surrendering to them? She had her full powers then, and the full bitter memories of Luna's imprisonment on the Moon. And yet she repented of it all and put herself in Celestia and Luna's hooves."

"Nyx isn't the way she is--- a sweet, loving little filly--- because she forgot everything, it's because she remembers."

Shining Armor stared at his wife, thunderstruck. He hung his head, smirking at himself. "I am so glad I married you," he said. "Because a stallion like me with no brains wouldn't stand a chance on his own." He looked at her. "How did you see all this?"

"I'm a wife, it's part of our mysterious cosmic powers," she teased. "Come back to bed."

With a wave of his horn he extinguished the lights. As he climbed back under the covers, he asked, "You. How is it you can forgive so easily?"

She huddled up close and nuzzled him on the neck. "Forgiveness is a part of love, sweetie," she said. "And forgiveness should come when repentance is offered."

He sighed and kissed her on the forehead, just below her horn. "That's a thought for me to sleep on, I guess."

She gave a chuckle and nipped him on the ear. "Not yet you don't," she said.

"Ohoho..."

Over in the guest suite, Twilight, Spike and Nyx were going through their own little confessional. A sober-faced Nyx was reciting, for the fourth time, all of the events of the preceding day.

Not because Twilight was demanding it.

Because Spike was.

The dragonling was lying on the floor, laughing helplessly as Nyx described all that befell her. "....and I got so mad I called him a plothead," she said.

"Don't use that word," Twilight said automatically from where she lay on the bed. She had already scolded Nyx for being disrespectful to Shining Armor, but had otherwise let everything slide(2), much to Nyx's relief.

"Sorry, Mom," Nyx said sheepishly. She gave Twilight a second look. "Did everything go okay at the library?" she asked carefully.

Twilight looked at her. "Why do you ask?"

"'Cause your mane's going all sproing-y like it does when things don't go right," Nyx said soberly. She reached up and poked at a couple of flyaway strands on Twilight's mane.

Twilight groaned and faceplanted in the mattress. "It's not going well," she confessed. "Not at ALL."

"What went wrong?" Nyx asked sympathetically.

Spike answered for her. "To start off with, they wouldn't let her number one assistant in to help," he said. "I ended up sitting in a meeting room all day with nothing but Peewee and the coffee maker to keep me company."

"Why?" Nyx said, baffled.

Spike glowered. He jabbed himself in the chest with his thumb. "Fire breathing dragon." He pointed at Peewee, who was perched on his dorsal spikes. "Fire bird." He picked up a book from the coffee table. "Not fireproof."

"But we live in a library. In a tree!" Nyx said. "And you never had a problem."

"We told them that. They didn't care," Twilight said. "They weren't taking any chances." She rolled over onto her back. "And that wasn't the worst of it. The library--- it's a disaster. They've pulled all the books off the shelves and just stacked them everywhere. King Sombra was thorough. Nopony has the vaguest clue what filing system he used. We are literally going to have to re-catalog every single book. I'm pushing for them to triple the number of help they hired, otherwise it will never get done.

"That is, if I can get anypony to listen to me."

"Why won't they listen to you? Didn't Cadence put you in charge?" Nyx asked.

"Yes, and it doesn't seem to help. Everypony there is about three times my age. Most of them are these fussy little old mares that have been working in libraries longer than I've been alive.  As they each made a point of telling me." She rolled her eyes. "At first everypony is all enthusiastic--- 'oooh, somepony from Princess Celestia? A Master's degree in modern library science? Fantastic!' The instant they set eye on me, though, they pucker up like someone stuffed a peeled lemon in their mouth."

Nyx giggled at the mental picture.

"I managed to hammer it into their heads that they HAD to use the Dewhoof Decimal System if they wanted to coordinate with the Equestrian libraries. But anything else I've suggested-- classes in the DDS for the new librarians, hiring extra help, even organizing teams to start cataloging the books-- they fight and they argue and they quibble, or they just flat out ignore me. It's like trying to herd cats! Cats in hairbuns and little pinc-nez glasses!"

"At least the helpers listen to me. But every five minutes one of the others on the board was going behind my back, contradicting my instructions..." Twilight's head clonked against the bedpost.

Spike snorted. "Sounds to me like you need to stop giving instructions and start giving orders," he said.

Nyx nodded in agreement. "If you're the boss, they gotta listen to you. And if they won't listen to you, you gotta make 'em."

Spike gave her a look from under a cocked eyebrow. "You'd know, having been Nightmare Moon, I'm guessing..."

Nyx looked pouty. "I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking how Miss Cheerilee is the boss in school. Boy, if anypony gave Miss Cheerilee that much trouble, she'd be all over them like chalk on a chalkboard!" She remembered the last time Diamond Tiara had sassed back to Miss Cheerilee in class. Nyx rubbed her nose with a hoof and shuddered. Yikes.

Twilight had to chuckle at the sight of the former Nightmare Moon, intimidated by an angry schoolteacher. "I'm not sure I can handle it like that, Nyx," she said. "It's a little more complex than school."

Nyx stuck her lip out thoughtfully. "Spike is sort of right though," she said. "About... learning that from being Nightmare Moon, too." Twilight cocked her head in curiosity. "I mean," Nyx continued in a rush. "When I was turned into Nightmare Moon, pretty much all my problems happened because I let Spell Nexus boss me around, when I was supposed to be bossing him. I let him tell me how Nightmare Moon was supposed to be. I let him tell me to lock up Applebloom and SweetieBelle and Scootaloo. I let him tell me to lock you up. I did everything the way he said it was supposed to be, instead of doing it the way I wanted-- and I was the Queen! And it all stunk." She shrugged and the corner of her mouth quirked. "Not that I probably would've done much better... but, y'know."

Twilight hmmed. Her daughter just might have a point, she realized. Life lessons can come from strange places. "I'll think that over," she said. "For now we should get ready for bed.

"It looks like Spike and Peewee will be staying with you and Uncle Shining Armor tomorrow," she continued as Spike and Nyx climbed into their own beds. "Spike, try and see if you can get my brother to leave the Royal Chambers for something besides a daisyburger, would you? I'd rather he and my daughter didn't spend another day staring at one another." Nyx giggled.

"I'll give it a shot. Are you gonna be okay without me tomorrow?" Spike asked worriedly.

Twilight smiled and got down off of the bed. "I think I'll survive," she said. She stepped over to Nyx's bed and tucked her in. "Good night, baby girl," she said, giving Nyx a kiss on the cheek.

"G'nite mom," Nyx said with a yawn.

Twilight caught Spike watching her out of the corner of her eye. Ages ago he had grumbled at her to "stop smoochin' him goodnight like he was a baby." But there was no mistaking the expression in his eyes. She stepped over to his bed and tucked him in too, and gave him a kiss on top of the head. "Good night-- my special little guy," she said.

Spike smiled and snuggled down in his bed. Twilight put the lights out and climbed into her own bed, and was soon fast asleep.