“It’s a hill.”
The colt blinked, as though that would reveal this castle that everypony had been talking about for like forever. But no, it was just a hill by a pond in the middle of an otherwise complete barren field. There was simply water and dirt. It didn’t even smell like dirt, it smelled more like dust than anything else.
“We’ve been flying for days to see this?” he continued after he was sure that he hadn’t missed anything. “Couldn’t I have just stayed home if all I’ll be doing is dust duty?”
Long distance flying had never been his strong suit. His wings were sore, his back was sore. His… well, he wasn’t entirely certain what that was, but it was sore too. Now that he was here, he could tell that this would be lame. Completely, totally, mind-numbingly lame. The cool trips were the ones where the buildings were still sorta intact. When everypony had to dig everything out, the most anypony would find would be a couple of bits, a sharpened rock, or maybe a horseshoe or something. Then everyone would get together and gush about how exciting it was to find a sharpened rock. Seriously, who goes around sharpening rocks?
“Don’t worry,” a much larger pegasus stallion said as he gracefully landed a few steps behind. “There’s a lot more to this than meets the eye. And you’re not getting anywhere near a dust brush after last time.”
“They were just rocks, rocks are supposed to be dusty,” the colt muttered to himself as he fell in behind his father. On a good day he looked like a male Daring Do, (he even had almost the same job) but little Fuchsia Flash couldn’t help but think that the books glossed over all the lameness that seemed to make up like the whole job. Well, he was here now, like a bajillion miles from anywhere, not much he could do about it. Maybe begging to come along for weeks and weeks wasn’t a great idea after all.
The two of them rounded the side of the hill towards the lake, revealing an already set up camp: six tents in a semicircle with all the comforts of one would expect in a dirt field in the farthest corner of Equestria so far out that weather management hadn’t been handled in several centuries. The younger pegasus was less than enthralled by the scene.
“Do we really have to stay in this dump?” Fuchsia Flash groused.
“If you really don’t like it, then set up your own camp,” an elder feminine voice retorted. The speaker, a tawny earth pony old enough for her deep brown mane to begin to turn grey, came out of one of the tents. “It’s good to see you, Professor Grayscale. I’m surprised that you decided to bring your son along. No matter, we can use all the hooves we can get.”
“Thumper! It’s great to see you,” the elder Pegasus exclaimed. “I’d say it’s time to get started, but I’m afraid that what we’re after out here wasn’t included in the invitation. I don’t even know who is paying for all this.”
“Who is paying for all of this, I wonder?” a new female voice came from from behind.
Grayscale tensed up at the first syllable, he didn’t have to look to see who was addressing him. His colt felt the immediate souring of his father’s move and turned to see. There was a very tall and proud looking tan unicorn mare not too far behind with a silver unicorn filly in tow. Fuchsia was confused as to why his dad seemed so upset. They were pretty prissy ponies, but Dad dealt with pretty prissy ponies all the time when it came to those boring parties at the university and museum.
“Marchesa Mezzotint, it’s a delight to see you again,” Professor Grayscale said through gritted teeth. Fuchsia Flash could feel how forced that was. He turned and noticed the little one behind. “And you’ve brought Bluebood’s get with you, I see.”
The tall unicorn froze mid-stride, and after half a heartbeat her eyes perceptibly narrowed. Thumper just put her face in her hoof. But the silver filly bound ahead of her mother before more unpleasantries could be exchanged.
“You’re just jealous because Mama beat you to the Golden Claw of Treva the Renewer,” she just about yelled at the stallion. Fuchsia couldn’t let that one just slide. She was a pretty prissy pony and he couldn’t just let her away with that. Ignoring his soreness, he lept forward letting his wings flair in a way that all his friends said was very impressive.
“That’s an arch-e-o-logical treasure and belongs in a museum,” he retorted. “Not in some prissy pony’s collection.”
“Mama’s conservatory gets more visitors than your Dad’s museum!”
“Nuh-uh! Not last year.”
“That’s only because he cheated to get the crystal exhibit, featherbrain!”
“Writing letters to the Princess isn’t cheating! It’s strategy, you rye-no-cer-ouse.”
“ENOUGH!” Thumper shouted, stomping hard enough to cause the ground to shake a little. Everypony looked to see her give that special stare that only very annoyed professors can pull off. Fuchsia suddenly became aware that there was no comfortable place in his mouth for his tongue, each and every feather on his still flared wing was moving independently in an otherwise imperceptible breeze, his jaw had weight, and that there was an itch on his lower back. He desperately wanted to look away but he just couldn’t break the eye contact. For her part, the little unicorn filly felt the same physical discomforts only she could suddenly taste a faint metallic tang. If he had a more adventurous taste in foreign food, she would have recognized it as silver. It took her a few seconds to realize that it was the flavor of her own magic.
“Look,” the tawny earth pony said over the tension. “With that recent dust up in Canterlot, I didn’t even get confirmation that I could come out here until last week, and the royal grant was only written to go until next week. The two of you are the best at what you do, but I don’t have time to dance around the fact that y’all haven’t gotten over that mess yet. So let’s all put on our adult pants and see if we can find any sign at all of Rainbow Keep or the origins of the Early Migration Period. But first the two young-uns need to actually be introduced to one another and the rest of us need to get the equipment set up.”
“Go on, Mimi, introduce yourself the way we’ve been practicing and I’ll see you in our tent in a bit” the Marchesa said to her daughter. With that she shot a pointed look at the Professor and charged her horn. In another breath she had teleported out of sight, presumably to wherever Thumper needed her.
Professor Grayscale muttered something to his kid before leaping into the air and gliding after Thumper’s lead. Fuchsia Flash didn’t really understand, but assumed it was something to the effect of get over there and say hello. He really didn’t want to, there were already too many prissy ponies at school, but at least she wasn’t pink. The last thing he needed was a prissy pink pony princess. He relaxed out of his “fierce” stance and tucked his aching wings away. At least she was walking over to him.
“I am Mimi O’Graph of the Intaglio line out of Marchesa Mezzotint, and Heiress of the Easternmost Marches. Pleased to meet your acquaintance,” the unicorn filly said with practiced grace. The little hair flip she tried to add at the end didn’t go according to plan, but that didn’t throw her off her stride. She then offered her hoof, which did leave her a little off balance.
“Ah,” the pegasus colt said, eyeing the proffered hoof suspiciously. He hadn’t the slightest idea what he was supposed to do. So, he decided that shaking her hoof while introducing himself was the right move. “I’m Fuchsia Flash. Professor Grayscale is my Dad. Spear Flash is my Mom, she’s guarding Canterlot.”
Whatever Mimi was expecting, shaking hooves was the wrong answer. She huffed and turned towards the tents. Fuchsia didn’t understand her reaction, but after a moment of being perplexed he followed after. The adults were not in the tents when they arrived, but neither of the foals went looking. While they couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, they had been in school long enough to recognize the patterns of something getting a lecture after getting in trouble and understandably decided to not get involved.
Nopony noticed that there was now a single blade of grass where Thumper thumped to restore order.
***
The sun was set before the tools were fully set up and ponies could go to bed. But the day’s work wasn’t done, not quite yet. For something was still troubling Mimi from the fight much earlier. She was still a little pony, but yet she already was exposed enough to “high society” to realize that not all questions were questions that should be asked in front of other ponies. When they were alone, she felt as though she could finally ask.
“Mama, what’s a ‘blueblood git’?” she asked, with eyes full of curiosity. Clearly the pegasus had meant her, and meant it to wound, but she hadn’t the slightest idea what it could possibly mean.
Mezzotint flinched at the words, and didn’t quite look at the filly in the room. She was quiet for such a long time that Mimi was increasingly sure that she had done something wrong.
“I can’t tell you that quite yet,” her mother said, finally. “But I can tell you a different story before bed. A fancy story at that.”
All the worry and stress just melted away; she loved stories. and fancy stories were the best yet. Those stories weren’t fancy because of the words; they were fancy because of the magic. As the long legged unicorn lay down, there was just enough room for a certain little filly to curl up in the middle.
“Once upon a time, there was a unicorn mare who was smart, beautiful, and oh so very magical,” Mezzotint began. As she did so, her horn glowed ever so slightly, and a pink image appeared on the wall of the tent. It suggested and implied a pony, but never actually resolved any of the details. “She knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be a princess, so she spent years learning and practicing how to be just that. One day, she got a chance to go to the Palace at Canterlot where she knew a real prince was going to be.”
A blue image joined the pink under a silvery roof, but whenever the pink image approached the blue it fled away. Mimi thought the shape of the blue image was familiar, like it was somepony she had seen somewhere, but there just wasn’t enough detail to be sure.
“She put on her prettiest dress, and wore her prettiest smile. But no matter how hard she tried, she could never convince him to treat her like a princess. Still, that very special mare knew exactly what she wanted, and thought she knew a way to get it.”
Suddenly there was a darkness on the wall. Well, there was a lot of darkness, as it was night time, but this was a much deeper darkness, a thing that actively consumed all the light that entered. Mimi couldn’t see any shape to it other than being a simple writhing mass. She immediately decided she disliked that thing, but that concern didn’t seem to be shared by the pink figure.
“One day she did something foalish; being unable to win his heart the normal way, she resorted to magic. Ancient and scary magic, but magic that seemed to be exactly what she wanted.”
A bit of the darkness sparkled (or maybe it was the exact opposite of sparkling) and shot out towards the pink figure. The pink figure didn’t try to flee or avoid that darkness like Mimi expected. Instead, a bit of that sparking darkness intermingled with the pink figure.
“But, no amount of magic can truly change who a pony is on the inside. Even though she had achieved everything she set out to do, he still didn’t make her feel like a princess.”
Suddenly a bright, golden image phased into existence on the tent wall like the sun coming out from behind clouds. It was obvious that the Princess just involved herself. There was a flash the darkness, both in the roiling mass and inside the pink figure,and both vanished.
“Soon, the Princess came to explain, sometimes what you think you want isn’t what you really want or need. And just because a stallion is a prince doesn’t mean that he’s your prince. They were things that the mare should have known all along, but lost sight of some time before. Fortunately, the Princess had a plan to give the mare exactly what she wanted and needed. The princess gave the mare a daughter and sent her far away from her mistake, where she discovered true princes and princesses who themselves went through something similar.”
Next to the pink image appeared a smaller but much brighter pink image, and the silvery roof and golden princess were soon replaced by soft yellow ruins.
“And whenever the mare spent time her daughter or shared the stories of those ancient princes and princesses, she truly felt like a princess.”
The story finished the images on the tent wall faded out. Mimi, being a smart little filly, figured that this story was more than just a story, but it was also past her bedtime and she was very sleepy. Rather than do something as mentally strenuous as tease out the deeper implication of a story, she just drifted off to sleep.
***
Note: Marchesa is a feminization of the title Marquis. As a Countess rules over a County, a Marchesa rules over a March, the difference being that a March is always on a national border whereas a County may or may not be. A Marchesa is usually expected to have to fight the first few weeks of a war by herself while the rest of the nobility gather their forces and organize into a coherent army, and as such a Marchesa is expected to build far more castles (and therefore have more vassals, troops, and power) than her Countess peers.