//------------------------------// // Cadance: Wake Up, Go To Crib, Save The Empire // Story: Sick Little Ponies II: The Multiseries Virus Vector // by Estee //------------------------------// Even a relatively-new spouse would quickly learn to judge every way her partner possessed of simply looking at her, and Cadance considered herself to be a fast learner. Especially when it came to Shining, who had multiple ways of being Extremely Military and sometimes seemed to regard even emotional subterfuge as something which was best left to the reconnaissance units. But when it came to the act of evaluation... there were multiple styles available. She'd probably missed some portion for the original appearance of the first one, which would have included the lowered head and scraping forehooves associated with 'It's a great daydream, but there's no actual chance'. But she'd gotten to witness some of its frequent return performances, and it had taken a lot of careful effort to get Shining into Stage Two. The second stage had mostly been represented by a still-disbelieving '...maybe this could work?' Time, dedication, and striving to move forward even when so much of her Extremely Military husband was still wondering whether he needed to find the best moment for a strategic retreat, and -- she'd had her own worries regarding Ultimate Consequences: one of those was currently on the other side of the nearby, heavily-reinforced crystal door. It had taken so much for both ponies to reach the proposal phase, and that had left Shining staggering around in a stage of 'I can't believe that actually happened' for the better part of a moon. Concerns to overcome. Differences which had to be reconciled. Points of view, and those would never fully overlap because they were very different ponies: a great deal of what they had in common was their mutual affection, and the rest was also on the other side of the door. But there had been so many times when he'd looked at her after the wedding, and... even the world's newest bride had been able to figure out the message within that evaluation. It silently said 'This is my heart, my core, and my life. I will dedicate my existence to making sure none of that ever changes.' And the Princess of love knew the emotions were true. The current evaluation style, which was being directed at her through a weary blue gaze as they both stood so close to the vital door -- within what the palace employees had taken to calling Last Chance Hall, where just about no crystal pony would venture without a trio of Equestrian companions -- was very easy to read. It was the face of a commanding officer in the presence of a wounded soldier, and the only question remaining was exactly how loud the summoning shout for a medic was going to be. She was fully aware of how she looked: a consequence of living in a building where the majority of natural surfaces could provide a reflection and you couldn't always pretend that any given facet had been modeled on a funhouse mirror. Absorbed sweat had discolored her fur. Her skin tone was off: something which was very easy to spot because every last one of those fur strands was currently out of grain. The colors within her mane were twisted around each other to the point where there was some question as to whether they were about to start flowing on their own. The tail was trying to blend into itself or, given how limply it was hanging, the floor. Light purple eyes were demonstrating a perfect three hundred body length stare, but that was mostly because she was about to enter an environment where the act of blinking posed a very real risk. And the bags under them could have served for luggage. (There were also two swollen protuberances on her belly, dangling roughly a hoof-height down from their position just in front of her hind legs. But in biological terms, those were both natural and, for a mare, strictly temporary.) For even a fully-neutral observer to regard Cadance in her current state was to demand that the battlefield triage tent be pitched around her, because she clearly shouldn't be moved. "You're not going in there," Shining ordered. There was a moment in which she pitied him, because it had emerged as an order and she knew he hadn't really meant that way. It was a plea which was trying to back itself with imaginary authority and a rather sad dose of physical presence, because he'd positioned himself to block the door. There was a soft, somewhat miserable sound from the other side of that door. It passed easily through the walls, because the crystal ponies knew how to create materials which conducted sound, light, and so much else. Everything around that room had been rebuilt to give the majority of sonics free passage, because the palace staff needed that extra crucial split-second of warning. The sound hadn't been a happy one. They didn't have very long, and even a relatively new parent could hear the clock ticking down. "I'm the only one," Cadance stated. A moment of concentration stilled her tail after the third twitch. "You're sick," he tried to insist. "Anypony can see that you're sick. And it's night. You need sleep. You shouldn't be doing this --" "-- and who else can?" she cut him off, because this argument was only going to end one way and she just wanted to reach it quickly. Trade one durance for another. "We've got enough Equestrians in the Empire to substitute --" "-- none of them are strong enough," Cadance simply told him. "Not by themselves." "So we'll pack the room --" "-- and she's not good with strangers. She's going to see and scent at least three completely unfamiliar ponies, and then it's going to be that much worse, Shining. All of it will get worse, especially with so many more potential targets in the area. It has to be me." "It doesn't," he tried to insist. "We can think of something else, together. We just need a little more time. Katydid, I know you could manage this by yourself when you're healthy, but right now --" The crystal-conducted sound repeated. It was becoming steadily more upset. Running out of time... And to have him use the personal nickname felt like cheating. "There are," Cadance wearily established, "four ponies in the world who could try to do this. Which means there's three who might take over for a while. We can't reach any of them. I'm the one who's here. So it has to be me." "It shouldn't be. You need rest, recovery... I know it's not supposed to be anything major, but you're sick, Cadance. A sick alicorn, and when an alicorn gets sick..." She could hear the concern, and it hadn't been layered thickly enough to fully conceal the panic. "What about when two alicorns get sick?" The question brought something new to his expression: a flicker of fear and reluctant acknowledgment of personal helplessness, both quickly buried under a desperate need to protect those he loved. And she knew that love was true. "Give me a few minutes, just a few. We'll think of something else. It still shouldn't be you." Her lips quirked, which mostly made the sides of her mouth ache. "Then somepony else should have gotten pregnant. Move out of the way, Shining." Cadance's Extremely Military Spouse had his own way of responding to that. To (lack of) wit, his horn ignited. There was a flash of pinkish light, an almost-exact match for his sister's hue. And then there was a shield blocking the door. It was a dome shape, because it almost had to be. He just hadn't anchored it to the floor. The base had been planted against the walls around the door, and that meant the fast-solidifying energies curved forward into the hallway. Part of Shining's last-ditch attempt at blockade was currently jamming into his dock. "Make me," her desperate husband Mistaked. "And you still can't teleport, so --" Weary, half-bloodshot eyes simply looked at him. Cadance hadn't been a parent for very long. Nowhere near as much time as she'd been a spouse, and it had taken some very careful use of birth control herbs to prevent those periods from having significantly more overlap. But there were some kinds of knowledge which appeared in the soul at the moment labor ended, and one of those was resonating within her. A mother had to answer the call. Every time. No matter what. So she simply looked at him, as a pale, slightly-flickering blue area moved up her horn. The shield dome popped. A secondary projection of her energies surrounded her protesting spouse, then hoisted him up and pressed his body against the ceiling. The third opened the door. Cadance trotted under Shining, ducking her head to clear four hard-flailing legs, and locked the door behind her. Of course, that last action cut the corona connection between her horn and the ceiling press, but she wasn't particularly worried about the resulting noise from the half-musical !THUD!. Her husband was military. He knew how to drop. To foalproof an area... The normal goal was to protect the foal from the world, and that was a problem for a trio of species whose infants could be walking less than a minute after birth. And it became that much worse for the pegasi, because the Surges produced by wild infant magic were more than enough to get a foal into the air. With unicorns and earth ponies, Surges meant up to two years of parents trying to deal with uncontrolled, usually unintentional effects -- but a pegasus infant added mobility. They flew on instinct alone, guided by a power which couldn't be fully stopped by anything except time. And even then, it was just waiting on puberty to unleash it again. So there were foal sacks: swaddles of soft cloth which covered the back legs, making it a little harder for newborns to freely explore. The parents of a pegasus would add wing sleeves, fully covering every last feather while ruining airflow. And once that was done... The typical means of foalproofing a room were to make sure that nothing within it could hurt the child. This meant softening corners. Removing any object small enough to be swallowed, because the default pony manipulator was 'mouth' and in the name of learning how to use it, infants bit down on just about everything. Medication needed to be secured. You had to consider every last place a foal could reach: for pegasi, this meant going all the way up and with earth ponies, there was a perpetual concern about objects being vibrated into jaw range. And no crib had ever been found which could fully block a newborn unicorn corona, because you really needed air holes -- but it was best to put toys away at night. Typically in a safe. That was the normal way of doing things. Protect the foal from the world. The current bedroom represented a desperate, mostly-improvised attempt at inversion. In the Empire, the default nature of just about every surface was 'crystal'. It was what the natives had, and what their magic allowed them to easily work with. There was wood and metal about, but it had never been in true fashion for construction and if you ever saw either material in truly large quantities, then the supplies had probably been imported. It just so happened that there were certain consequences which came from crystal and in order to try warding off a few, every square hoofwidth of the room's walls, floor, and ceiling had been covered in thick, impact-absorbing white cloth padding. This made every exposed surface somewhat bouncy. To truly jump on the floor was to feel as if you might come a little too close to the ceiling, and Cadance thought it also made the hanging protuberances sway a little too much. Shelves were also covered in padding, as was a very small emergency cooler which, under Cadance's direction, had been installed earlier in the day. All toys were soft, and fully out in the open. There was very little point to using a safe when the room's occupant was capable of sundering steel. Strategic places within the room used pegasus magic to keep small sections of the padding permanently damp, and those were located directly above carefully-planted plates of heat-resistant metal. The crib itself, as was traditional for winged foals, had a roof. (This was largely considered to be a token gesture at best, because rendering that out of steel wasn't going to make a difference either. But the good intentions might have counted for something.) There was also a platform attached to one side, next to a little door. The soft level surface offered enough room for a mare to lie down on her side, although the back legs were going to wind up in a fairly awkward position. The carefully-aligned door was just large enough to let a baby's head poke out. There were no heavy barriers. In theory, bringing them in would have given visitors something to hide behind during emergencies: the reality was that the resident had no more trouble wrenching those up and getting them accelerated than she did with the unwelcome visitors. Instead, each corner of the room held what was essentially an igloo made from the thick padding, with just enough of a hollow for a pony to cower within. The resident couldn't move what she couldn't see, so a pony who managed to completely work their body into the center would have a degree of protection. Nopony tried to think about what might happen if the igloos themselves were simply wrenched out of the floor. Which was to say that they all tried not to think about it, and everypony failed. To enter the room was like going into the ward for the world's smallest asylum patient, only it was Cadance's sanity which was under question. The room's occupant, who was still making the sort of noises associated with steadily-increasing unhappiness, raised her head. Spotted who was in the room, because some of the padding had been enchanted to produce a soft glow. Disgruntled half-whinnies were replaced by a curious, somewhat raspy coo. The resident was wearing a foal sack and wing sleeves. The head was bare, because the hollow bejeweled metal cones of horn restraints were seldom made in infant sizes, Cadance hadn't been able to get any imports, and she believed that nothing which could be found would be strong enough -- but with the other two measures, every tenth-bit theoretically helped. A typical nursery tried to protect the foal from the world. "Hello, Princess Of Explosions," Cadance managed to smile. This one was attempting to protect the world from the foal. Flurry, who still responded to a loving tone instead of actual words, responded with an innocent smile. Then she coughed. Her mother repressed most of the sigh. Both of them sick. (Cadance had fallen ill first.) For the infant, it was fairly mild: elevated temperature, some respiratory issues, and both parents were keeping a weary eye out for the first signs of colic. But Flurry, as an infant, wasn't capable of understanding why this horrible thing was happening to her. Admittedly, the majority of adults weren't much better at that. She was just a little sick. But she was also the world's first naturally-born alicorn. Ponies tended to freak out when any of the other three mares was publicly ill: Cadance had only escaped setting off an Empire-wide panic because the natives didn't know enough to worry. In Flurry's case... there was a host of foalhood diseases in the world, and nopony knew how an alicorn body would respond to any of them. Not the illness, or the treatments. It meant that for anything which both started and appeared to remain minor, it was arguably best to just let her recover naturally -- and that still had both parents terrified. It was a mother's duty to stay with her sick foal. Trying to defend her, when the first layer of defenses had already been breached. And that was why she was going to be not-sleeping in her daughter's room for the whole of the night. Doing whatever was necessary to protect. But with Flurry, any attempt to protect was going to be double-sided. The foal made a soft, uneven nickering sound. Pale blue eyes looked past Cadance, tried to search the shelves. "You want something," the mother immediately guessed. "A little more company than just me. A favorite toy..." Her infant burbled. Cadance nodded, then redirected her half-bouncing path towards the shelves. Temporary anatomy swayed in a disconcerting manner. She reached the storage area, then started to look for exactly the right plushie: this currently meant the snail. But she didn't spot it immediately. Her corona lifted other objects, went for a soft rendition of a rather large male deer in the hopes that the snail was hidden behind it. That wasn't the case. "Big buck," Cadance's light fever muttered. "No Whammy -- oh, there he is!" The first spotting had been of blue spots, and she didn't laugh because she wasn't sure a non-ill mare would have found that funny. A fully-well one probably would have had an easier time finding the snail. "Here you go, baby..." Her corona carefully lifted the plushie, quaveringly floated it towards the crib and eventually got the whole thing past the roof. Flurry cooed. A sore body did its best to snuggle against the squishy shell. "I'm going to stay with you tonight," the parent promised. "All night." There was an adult bathroom attached to the nursery -- or rather, there was one now. They'd had to do a hasty installation after discovering just how much could happen during the short gallop required to reach the formerly-nearest toilet trench. It got her a faint giggle. But the infant still didn't look fully content. Cadance examined her daughter's features. Noticed the pursing of tiny lips, and took an extremely accurate guess. "You're hungry," she sighed. "Because of course you are..." Foals: sleep, eat, then release the contents of every meal. That last took place according to schedule: it was just that Flurry wasn't telling anypony what the schedule was. "Okay, baby. I'll take care of it..." Which, under normal circumstances, would have meant getting the temporary anatomy involved. And the mere thought had her nipples starting to ache. She didn't know how minotaurs did it. When it came to the females, ageládas developed breasts at puberty and kept them for the rest of their lives. With ponies, the display of visible mammary glands began shortly before giving birth, lasted through the nursing period -- and then everything simply involuted. Going back to normal over a few days, until the tiny nubs of shrunken nipples were once again hidden under fur. Cadance had only possessed (temporary) breasts for a few moons, and they would probably be gone well before Flurry's final Surge. It had been more than enough time for her to discover just how many positions had them disconcertingly squashed against the floor, or a bench, or simply have her legs knocking into the things. There had been two occasions when that last had somehow wound up involving her forelegs. It was uncomfortable at best, offered all sorts of opportunities for actual pain, she'd found odd ways of hitting them against objects and the sheer pressure of having the glands fill up... Ageládas only nursed after a birth. But their breasts were full-time. Forever present and therefore, always in the way. Cadance was still trying to figure out how the female half of an entire species was managing to put up with it. Of course, there were positive aspects. The doctors had told her that there was nothing better than mother's milk for nourishing a foal, and she felt that the experience helped her grow closer to Flurry. They'd even arranged for a nursing crib, and that was the reason for the crib's side platform. Saddle Arabians, who had different body proportions starting from birth, could stand upright and have a foal nurse. Pony infants were a little too short for that. A mother typically had to lie down. Normally, she would have been happy to nurse Flurry. There was a certain warmth in it, and the joy which came from the fulfillment of duty. Bonding. But tonight... Cadance sighed. "Give me a minute, baby," she told her foal. (Flurry, who was too young to recognize the concept of 'delayed gratification', was already starting to fuss again.) Then she walked over to the cooler, opened it, and blue glow extracted the first of the contents. "Here we are," Cadance softly told the room as the cooler door closed again. "It'll be ready in less than a minute, Flurry." With a warm smile, "Trust pegasi to enchant a self-heating bottle --" hastily "-- no, don't fuss, do not get upset, this just takes a little longer. Okay, let me check the temperature..." A drop of nearly-white fluid was splashed against sweat-saturated fur. "That feels about right..." There was a very soft, semi-rumbly, completely familiar sound in the room. An empty stomach. Her daughter was very hungry. "Coming," Cadance told her and trotted over as quickly as she could without bouncing (or swaying) too much. The bottle, held within blue glow, stood out readily within the room. Flurry looked at it. Kept looking at it with fast-narrowing eyes, as a secondary projection of her mother's light started working on getting the crib's roof flipped back. The infant's head visibly tilted towards the side platform, and all youthful attention viciously focused upon emptiness. Waiting for the crib's little side door to open, so she could stick her head through and start on a late dinner. Cadance immediately saw where her daughter was looking. "I can't," she sighed. (Words weren't understood: tone was. Shining indulged in foal talk: Cadance was hoping to lay down the foundations for an early vocabulary.) "I asked the doctors. You're usually supposed to nurse, even when you're sick. Because the milk gives foals resistance to a lot of illnesses. But... we're both alicorns, Flurry. And there are a few diseases which can be passed on through nursing. We don't have the same thing, so I know I didn't get you sick before this --" a small comfort "-- but I don't want you to get what I have, on top of what you're dealing with already. And when it's alicorn to alicorn -- the doctors didn't know. Nopony does. We're having a hard enough time in filtering the palace's air enough to fend off silicosis. So I got you the best formula I could find. They all said it's really good..." She tested the temperature again, because it didn't hurt to check twice. Then the crib's roof was flipped back, and she floated the bottle towards her daughter's mouth. Contacting Flurry's lips with the soft tip triggered an automatic suckling reaction. Flurry drank. Pale blue eyes went wide with the freshly-discovered emotion of horror. Then she spit. The foal glared at her mother. Flipped onto her back, kicked at the bottle to make it go away, and then rather pointedly looked at the crib's side platform again. "I can't..." Cadance helplessly said. "Flurry, please try a little more --" A hungry infant began to cry, and the wails didn't produce quite enough sound to cover up the rumbling of the tiny stomach. Then the soft toys began to dance on the shelves. The crib itself jumped a half-hoofwidth to the right, and did so at the same moment when the floor began to rumble. Which meant that somewhere below them, the ground... Cadance dropped down, as quickly as she could. All four knees instantly ached, and hanging anatomy awkwardly, uncomfortably pressed into the padding. But it was instinct. Get low. Minimize the space you were taking up, Make sure nothing nearby was in a position to fall on you. And as long as she was that much closer to the earth, start countering her daughter. Quickly. While hoping the tiny bit of gained range advantage actually meant something. Deep within her soul, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza began to frantically sing. It was all about Surges. Every pony infant had those uncontrolled expresses of inherent magic, and every last parent of a foal had to deal with them. For those whose foals matched at least one parent's birth race, where their strengths were fairly comparable, it was a little easier: there would be an adult on guard at all times, trying to feel the building power -- and when it erupted, the parent countered, unwove, or debated the results into silence. For those occasions when, say, you had two unicorn parents and a pegasus foal, or the child was considerably stronger than the adult -- you asked for help. Neighbors were generally glad to assist, especially when live-in professional help was expensive, the one Equestrian business which had attempted to use untrained adolescents for the job had gone under from the sheer weight of lawsuits (mostly filed by injured adolescents), and offering adult aid was so much easier than dealing with the results of a Surge. Besides, they'd all been through it. Get a pegasus adult to stop a pegasus foal. That was normal. Cadance had been born as a pegasus, and her mother had dealt with all of her Surges. That was the natural way. She presumed crystal pony foals had Surges, but the freed adults among the natives were slowly rediscovering the concept of 'sex life' and most of the consequences hadn't been born yet. Flurry was the first naturally-born alicorn foal. Flurry's Surges were capable of kicking out up to three kinds of magic. (It wasn't always one form at a time. Plurals quickly dropped by, then decided to move in.) She didn't always like strangers. To have a completely unfamiliar crystal come into the nursery could trigger a Surge. So could a loud noise. Say, a scream from the pony who'd been on the receiving end of the last Surge. And Flurry was strong. When operating as a solo effort, there were only four mares in the world who were potentially capable of shutting Flurry down. (Shining tried, especially when his spouse was exhausted -- but he could only deal with unicorn magic, and Flurry's most powerful efforts were well beyond what he could manage.) Cadance wasn't sure Celestia knew how to really deal with infants, for the oldest mare in the world had settled for birthing a nation. The chill of Luna's temper was best avoided. Twilight... was probably willing to learn, and Flurry had some natural fondness for her aunt -- but Twilight was also a very long way off, and had never tried to push her teleportation range beyond 'Now I can get across the whole of Ponyville!' Flurry would experience Surges for up to two years after her birth. (Both parents were hoping for a final tally which was well under the normal maximum.) Full teams of powerful Equestrians couldn't be posted in the nursery on shift-ready standby, because instinct had her lashing out at strangers. It was just Cadance. It was always just Cadance. And her own illness didn't matter. Because a mother had to answer the call. Every time. No matter what. All first-time parents faced challenges. Hers just happened to include keeping most of a refractive nation from being razed to the shard-strewn ground. So, Cadance's slightly-fevered mind kicked out, Flurry not liking formula and being upset over an empty, rumbling stomach? Equals earthquake. Good to know. ...she could have just accelerated the growth of any grass in the area, trying to get something else to eat. But her Surge decided to go for the full production number... Her magic was lancing through the soil, trying to limit the vibrational spread prior to shutting it down entirely. From what she'd been able to determine, the Empire wasn't anywhere close to a major fault line -- but this was Flurry. And the fact that the natives hadn't needed to deal with natural tremors had been a definite influence on the local construction guidelines. Cadance was fully certain that it wasn't a good idea to let an earthquake run wild in the arctic. Crystalline structures possessed a certain susceptibility to vibration, and if the effects went too far... It occurred to Cadance that in her and the crystal pony members of the ruling Cabinet having taken over from Sombra, she was effectively trying to play leader for a nation in which every last native was still trying to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder. Also that Flurry wasn't exactly helping with that. The older alicorn's soul sang to the earth, picked up her volume and used notes which her daughter's instincts hadn't learned. The vibrations stilled. Shelves ceased in their shaking. Whammy stopped dancing around the crib, which had been more rapid movement than the living variety of snail ever managed. Flurry, whose Surge had just been debated into nothing, looked oddly -- disappointed. Also hungry. "It's going to be the formula," Cadance stated as she forced herself to stand up again, just barely managing to keep the crossness down to a half-musical stinger at the end. Her breasts were sore from the drop, and she wanted to get into the bathroom and express the milk just to get rid of the increasingly-uncomfortable pressure. It was possible for her to get the liquid out through careful use of her corona and using it to... squeeze. Of course, it was also extremely awkward for anypony with unicorn magic to use it on something they couldn't clearly see, so she was either about to put her aching body through some very strange positions, or she was going to need a rather strangely-positioned mirror. Mammary glands. Seriously: who thought that was a good idea? "And don't give me that look, Flurry," the new mother said as she levitated the bottle for the second time. "I don't have a choice. If I don't, then neither do you. Because I might be able to find a nursing mother in the Empire, but I feel like a baby alicorn should have alicorn milk. Also, I don't know what's in crystal mare milk." With a soft sigh, "I'm not expecting tiny fragments, but the nutritional balance might be a little different. The formula is safe. And I really don't want to find out what happens when you see a strange mare displaying her belly for you. Okay. Round two. The formula's still at the right temperature." She checked again, just in case. "So if I rub your throat with my corona this time, make you swallow..." There was an ideal humidity level for infants. If at all possible, you wanted to keep it between fifty and sixty percent: with ponies, anything over eighty had to be avoided. But pegasus magic existed, it was the category which Cadance knew best, and she had set the nursery for perfection. Because she loved her daughter, and wanted to be the best mother possible. It just so happened that the ideal humidity level for a foal was also that which was required for a disgust-produced Surge to reach towards the ceiling so it could get a fairly small, extremely dark, and decidedly electrical cloud together. Lightning went off in all directions. Every last strike grounded itself in deliberately-damped padding, then worked out the voltage on the metal hidden underneath. Flurry wailed her discontent. A tiny horn ignited. And then the glowing plushies attacked. By the time Cadance left the room, Sun had been raised. She took a moment to regard the effects of normal radiance coming in through the windows to reflect and refract against crystal, then tried to figure out just how many hours the appearance of Sun in this portion of the arctic represented. Cadance couldn't seem to remember the exact amount of time required at the current point in the year, but was hoping it was something below two moons. Her illness-wracked body was still arguing for three. Shining was on the floor, just barely clear of where an opening door would have impacted the low body. She would have internally described him as having rested there the entire night, but a single glimpse of his features told her that no actual rest had been involved. He's been listening the whole time. Trying to figure out whether he had to break in to help me. Worrying himself sick. ...that may be literal. I'm the head of the Cabinet. I could summon a medical team for him in less than three minutes. The weary white head forced itself up against the triple weight of mane, exhaustion, and concern. Her love looked at her. "She's asleep," Cadance forced out through a sore throat. "She'll stay down for at least three hours." "Then you need to do the same," Shining quickly said. "Three hours of sleep. At least." He started to stand up, and she watched two of his legs cramp. "I'm getting you to bed." "I can sleep in her room," she told him. "In case she needs me." He sighed. Slowly shook his head, while visibly knowing it would do no good. The new parents looked at each other for a while. Love flowed across the gap, carried on a current of deep mutual exasperation. "...how bad?" Shining finally asked. "It calmed down a little after I realized that the plushies were trying to destroy the bottle," Cadance sighed. "Then I made the mistake of trying for another one. That let Flurry figure out what the cooler was for. But once I got the teething chews out of their attack formation, that round was pretty much over." "That round," her spouse carefully emphasized. Cadance, with the expertise which arrived in every new mother's soul at the moment labor ended, maintained her silence for one full minute. "Did she eat?" Shining surrendered. "Eventually." Her spouse sighed again. "Anything I can do?" asked her love. And then Cadance had a thought. It was a thought which was, in part, produced by illness. Exhaustion. Fever and stress working as one. But she didn't realize that. She didn't even examine the idea too closely, because it felt like such a good one... "Do you remember telling me about that letter you got four days ago?" He briefly frowned. "The one from Spearhead, right?" And followed that with a faint shrug. "I'm sort of surprised it got here as quickly as it did. The trains are getting a lot better about bringing the international mail in, but to see anything in under a moon..." She nodded. "You told me that you sort of wished you could be there for his art exhibit. Support an old friend." Her twisted mane tilted in concert with her head, fell to the right as she smiled. "So why don't we do that?" Shining blinked at her. "...you want to travel? Leave the Empire for a while?" "We've got enough lead time," Cadance judged. "I can wrap up my schedule, make sure the Cabinet is ready to fully manage the Empire until we get back. It'll be good practice for them. But once Flurry and I recover... I think we could both use a vacation, Shining. At least a little one. So let's start putting that together." "And what about Flurry?" the stallion immediately asked. "A Surging infant at an art exhibit wouldn't be a good idea when the foal wasn't an alicorn. So unless you're both staying away from the actual show..." There's only three other mares in the world who are potentially capable of shutting Flurry down... (It felt like such a good idea. The light fever had told her so.) Cadance smiled. "We'll go to the exhibit together," she told her love. "But before we do that -- why don't we drop in on Twilight?"