Becoming Home
by darkcyan
Prompt: Daring Castle
The creature creeping around my foundation has five legs, two eyes, and glows the same pink as the pictures Princess Twilight keeps of her old friend.
It is the third of its kind I have seen since the sun last rose and fell on this world, and I carefully record the image before attaching it to my latest report.
The sun will rise and fall at least three more times before Princess Twilight’s answer reaches me, but I do not mind the wait as the warmth of this foreign sun soaks into my roof tiles and crystal star, and my foundation slowly absorbs the ambient magic of this world.
I open a few upstairs windows and let the gentle breeze waft through my corridors, bringing motion to halls that have felt too still for too many years to count.
It is not home, but it is close enough, for now.
The day my destiny changed felt much like any other, before it was made suddenly newer and brighter by the return of familiar hoofsteps to my halls.
Guards, first, a contingent of ten who swept through my corridors and basements and attics to ensure all was well.
“There have been no intrusions since the last visit,” I observe to the guard waiting in the front hall. His appearance has changed – his mane and tail are greyer, and he has grown a beard – but even the slight limp in his right hindleg has not changed his stride enough to forget.
“I know that, and you know that, but,” the guard waves a hoof dismissively. “You know the princess. Nothing worth checking that isn’t worth double-checking, and besides, I think she’s still not used to you being… you.”
“Why not?”
I do not remember the exact circumstances of my awakening, simply that I had yearned to feel hooves walking my halls, to hear laughter and sense motion, and at some point, and at some point, my doors began to open when foalish laughter rang outside.
Then windows, invitingly available to the more adventurous, the pegasi or any foal with a rope and some determination, when a spell was laid on my doors to ensure they remained locked.
Then, later, I found meaning, found words, found the ability to speak my desires to my Princess. We had many conversations, her pacing rapidly back and forth, and it was–good, to have my Princess back, as she had not been in many rises and falls of the sun.
This guard–who as a foal had once pulled his wingless friend up a rope every three sunsets like clockwork–shrugged. “You’ve been like this all my life, but the Princess, she works on a different timescale. Just give her time, she’ll understand eventually.”
He tilts his head suddenly. The echo of another guard’s voice in his ear resonates with my crystals too faintly to parse in this room, but there is only one other guard in my halls currently speaking more than pleasantries: the one in the northwest attic, reporting all-clear.
The guard in my front hall acknowledges the report and dismisses his fellows, then turns his face back up towards my ceiling.
(He did that as a foal, also. I attempted to explain to him twice that I am everywhere, that there is no “me” to look at. As a foal, he said “nuh uh”, and as a young stallion, he said “it helps me to look somewhere anyway”.)
“The Princess will arrive soon,” he says.
Then, unexpectedly, he lays a hoof on my nearest column. “I’ll see you–well. I don’t know when. But next time. Good luck.”
My Princess’ hooves sound different from every other pony’s; even moreso than every pony in my halls sounds different from each other. Even through the muffling effects of the carpets, my floors resonate in reply as they touch down in the library.
“My Castle,” Princess Twilight begins. She stares first up at the ceiling, then towards a bookcase, then, frowning slightly, at her desk, and finally her eyes stop at my nearest column, neatly dividing Equestrian Literature A-E and G-K.
“My Princess?”
She twitches slightly, and says “My Castle,” again.
“I have…a proposition for you.”
The pink being’s fifth leg sometimes appears to act more like a tail, hanging limply, and sometimes is used to support it standing on hind legs. It prods at my closed doors with interest, and at the crystal spires that run up my external walls.
I feel impact on my northwest roof, and find its blue friend dashing across my tiles, most likely after having fallen from a tree branch overhead.
Ponies never ran across my roof like this.
But then, before I started to let foals into my halls, ponies had not run through my corridors since before my memory; I have heard stories of Old Ponyville and seen the pictures Princess Twilight left on her library desk and in her rooms, but the activity that filled my hall back then is so distant that it feels less like a memory and more like an echo of how ponies describe their dreams.
I think, perhaps, I like the sensation of hooves–though these creature’s hooves are less like hooves and more like the claws of Princess Twilight’s young protege Spike–on my roof.
The pink one prods at a window, feeling around the edges of its pane.
I wonder, belatedly, if I should have re-engaged the bubble of magic that protects my self when I travel through space. Perhaps my Princess would wish me to wait to hear back from her before allowing these creatures to investigate me so closely.
Yet I am learning things I otherwise would not have. Like that the pink one’s claws can be used to cling to my exterior walls as long as they wedge between forks in the crystal or sink carefully into the parts of my walls that are stone, but that they cannot pierce crystal itself.
Or perhaps will not. The blue one above is joined by a green one, and this time I see the motion in the trees before the leap, and see that it is a leap, not a fall.
I make notes. I send an update to my report.
I leave a window at the very top of my back-right tower, the one that used to be the northwest tower, open.
“So, you’re going.” The guard has shaved his beard again. His limp is worse, and he no longer wears the armor he has donned his entire adult life.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? It’s going to be awfully lonely out there.” He looks down from the ceiling suddenly, and shakes his head. “What am I saying, you probably don’t get lonely like normal ponies, do you?”
All of my hallways are filled with bustling ponies. Some carefully take away the remains of what Princess Twilight had left here all these years, and those few memorabilia even earlier others I do not know had left stashed in long-unopened drawers and mostly-empty closed. Some look over every wall and floor and ceiling with an even closer eye than the guards had, trying to find and patch every crack, every minor inconsistency.
Scaffolding lines my entire exterior, allowing ponies to access it for similar repair work and to install the magical engines that will allow me to leave, and the bubble of force that will keep me safe.
I have never felt so full.
And, knowing that all these ponies will leave in a few days or months, their business with me complete, I have never felt so empty.
“Is loneliness like being empty?” I ask. It is a concept I have heard of, but always secondhand, lacking sufficient context to fully understand.
The guard blinks and laughs. “I suppose perhaps it sort of is. Not, physically, you know, but–it’s like wanting to be around someone, and knowing there’s no one there.”
“I see.”
My roof is covered in scaffolding, too, so the sun can only warm my tiles in certain patches, at certain times of day. I wonder if I will feel lonely about the sun, once it is too far away to feel.
“Thank you,” I say to the guard. “For making me less lonely.”
“Who, me?” He blinks. He opens his mouth, then shakes his head and closes it again. “Sorry I can’t go with you, friend, but it’s going to be a very long trip.”
“I know.” It would be foolish to send ponies along with me; my Princess had explained that part in detail, without my asking.
“Well, I’m sure it’ll be all right–you’ll have the Princess to talk to, after all.” He smiles, and taps my column again. “And send back lots of cool pictures, all right? I’ll look forward to seeing any of ‘em that make it into the public eye.”
“I will.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, I knew it was possible that there might be intelligent life on other planets, but the odds against it are so astronomical, I discounted–I don’t have a plan for this, I should have written first-contact protocols–!”
The recording of my Princess dances in place, appearing and disappearing from view as she stacks up books on her recorded desk.
The recordings are better than no contact at all, but I still do not precisely like them; it is disconcerting to see her hooves against my carpets but not feel their weight pressing down against them.
It helps, that there are now clawed hooves skittering around upstairs; a group of five, this time, exploring my empty rooms and emptier closets. One has found an exterior door and launched from the attached balcony, chittering as it catches itself on the railing at the last moment with its tail. I tentatively identify the sound as laughter; the chittering of its compatriot who watched it do it reminds me of the guard before he was a guard, and his friend.
“Okay. All right.” My Princess lays a final book on top of the stack. “I can do this. First of all. Please re-engage your bubble immediately; it’s imperative you not interact with these new creatures until we can understand how sapient they are. They might be dangerous! They might hurt you! Um, we’ve made some pretty great strides in faster-than-light technology in the last decades, I might be able to get a crew out there in a year? Maybe two?”
The pink one has paused just outside the door to the library. It is not chittering, but peering in fascination at the translucent image of my Princess and the words she is saying.
I think my Princess would want me to close the door now.
I do not.
“You can wait that long, right?” My Princess shakes her head, swiftly. “Wait, what am I saying, of course you can. Just–shut everything down and wait for a while, all right?”
The recording ends.
The pink one steps hesitantly into the library, looks around at its empty shelves, tilts its head, and makes a sound that sounds almost like a word I know.
Perhaps, with more practice, its language will get better, like my own once did.
“Hello,” I say.
The creature creeping around my foundation has five legs, two eyes, and glows the same pink as the pictures Princess Twilight keeps of her old friend.
It is the third of its kind I have seen since the sun last rose and fell on this world, and I carefully record the image before attaching it to my latest report.
The sun will rise and fall at least three more times before Princess Twilight’s answer reaches me, but I do not mind the wait as the warmth of this foreign sun soaks into my roof tiles and crystal star, and my foundation slowly absorbs the ambient magic of this world.
I open a few upstairs windows and let the gentle breeze waft through my corridors, bringing motion to halls that have felt too still for too many years to count.
It is not home, but it is close enough, for now.
The day my destiny changed felt much like any other, before it was made suddenly newer and brighter by the return of familiar hoofsteps to my halls.
Guards, first, a contingent of ten who swept through my corridors and basements and attics to ensure all was well.
“There have been no intrusions since the last visit,” I observe to the guard waiting in the front hall. His appearance has changed – his mane and tail are greyer, and he has grown a beard – but even the slight limp in his right hindleg has not changed his stride enough to forget.
“I know that, and you know that, but,” the guard waves a hoof dismissively. “You know the princess. Nothing worth checking that isn’t worth double-checking, and besides, I think she’s still not used to you being… you.”
“Why not?”
I do not remember the exact circumstances of my awakening, simply that I had yearned to feel hooves walking my halls, to hear laughter and sense motion, and at some point, and at some point, my doors began to open when foalish laughter rang outside.
Then windows, invitingly available to the more adventurous, the pegasi or any foal with a rope and some determination, when a spell was laid on my doors to ensure they remained locked.
Then, later, I found meaning, found words, found the ability to speak my desires to my Princess. We had many conversations, her pacing rapidly back and forth, and it was–good, to have my Princess back, as she had not been in many rises and falls of the sun.
This guard–who as a foal had once pulled his wingless friend up a rope every three sunsets like clockwork–shrugged. “You’ve been like this all my life, but the Princess, she works on a different timescale. Just give her time, she’ll understand eventually.”
He tilts his head suddenly. The echo of another guard’s voice in his ear resonates with my crystals too faintly to parse in this room, but there is only one other guard in my halls currently speaking more than pleasantries: the one in the northwest attic, reporting all-clear.
The guard in my front hall acknowledges the report and dismisses his fellows, then turns his face back up towards my ceiling.
(He did that as a foal, also. I attempted to explain to him twice that I am everywhere, that there is no “me” to look at. As a foal, he said “nuh uh”, and as a young stallion, he said “it helps me to look somewhere anyway”.)
“The Princess will arrive soon,” he says.
Then, unexpectedly, he lays a hoof on my nearest column. “I’ll see you–well. I don’t know when. But next time. Good luck.”
My Princess’ hooves sound different from every other pony’s; even moreso than every pony in my halls sounds different from each other. Even through the muffling effects of the carpets, my floors resonate in reply as they touch down in the library.
“My Castle,” Princess Twilight begins. She stares first up at the ceiling, then towards a bookcase, then, frowning slightly, at her desk, and finally her eyes stop at my nearest column, neatly dividing Equestrian Literature A-E and G-K.
“My Princess?”
She twitches slightly, and says “My Castle,” again.
“I have…a proposition for you.”
The pink being’s fifth leg sometimes appears to act more like a tail, hanging limply, and sometimes is used to support it standing on hind legs. It prods at my closed doors with interest, and at the crystal spires that run up my external walls.
I feel impact on my northwest roof, and find its blue friend dashing across my tiles, most likely after having fallen from a tree branch overhead.
Ponies never ran across my roof like this.
But then, before I started to let foals into my halls, ponies had not run through my corridors since before my memory; I have heard stories of Old Ponyville and seen the pictures Princess Twilight left on her library desk and in her rooms, but the activity that filled my hall back then is so distant that it feels less like a memory and more like an echo of how ponies describe their dreams.
I think, perhaps, I like the sensation of hooves–though these creature’s hooves are less like hooves and more like the claws of Princess Twilight’s young protege Spike–on my roof.
The pink one prods at a window, feeling around the edges of its pane.
I wonder, belatedly, if I should have re-engaged the bubble of magic that protects my self when I travel through space. Perhaps my Princess would wish me to wait to hear back from her before allowing these creatures to investigate me so closely.
Yet I am learning things I otherwise would not have. Like that the pink one’s claws can be used to cling to my exterior walls as long as they wedge between forks in the crystal or sink carefully into the parts of my walls that are stone, but that they cannot pierce crystal itself.
Or perhaps will not. The blue one above is joined by a green one, and this time I see the motion in the trees before the leap, and see that it is a leap, not a fall.
I make notes. I send an update to my report.
I leave a window at the very top of my back-right tower, the one that used to be the northwest tower, open.
“So, you’re going.” The guard has shaved his beard again. His limp is worse, and he no longer wears the armor he has donned his entire adult life.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? It’s going to be awfully lonely out there.” He looks down from the ceiling suddenly, and shakes his head. “What am I saying, you probably don’t get lonely like normal ponies, do you?”
All of my hallways are filled with bustling ponies. Some carefully take away the remains of what Princess Twilight had left here all these years, and those few memorabilia even earlier others I do not know had left stashed in long-unopened drawers and mostly-empty closed. Some look over every wall and floor and ceiling with an even closer eye than the guards had, trying to find and patch every crack, every minor inconsistency.
Scaffolding lines my entire exterior, allowing ponies to access it for similar repair work and to install the magical engines that will allow me to leave, and the bubble of force that will keep me safe.
I have never felt so full.
And, knowing that all these ponies will leave in a few days or months, their business with me complete, I have never felt so empty.
“Is loneliness like being empty?” I ask. It is a concept I have heard of, but always secondhand, lacking sufficient context to fully understand.
The guard blinks and laughs. “I suppose perhaps it sort of is. Not, physically, you know, but–it’s like wanting to be around someone, and knowing there’s no one there.”
“I see.”
My roof is covered in scaffolding, too, so the sun can only warm my tiles in certain patches, at certain times of day. I wonder if I will feel lonely about the sun, once it is too far away to feel.
“Thank you,” I say to the guard. “For making me less lonely.”
“Who, me?” He blinks. He opens his mouth, then shakes his head and closes it again. “Sorry I can’t go with you, friend, but it’s going to be a very long trip.”
“I know.” It would be foolish to send ponies along with me; my Princess had explained that part in detail, without my asking.
“Well, I’m sure it’ll be all right–you’ll have the Princess to talk to, after all.” He smiles, and taps my column again. “And send back lots of cool pictures, all right? I’ll look forward to seeing any of ‘em that make it into the public eye.”
“I will.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, I knew it was possible that there might be intelligent life on other planets, but the odds against it are so astronomical, I discounted–I don’t have a plan for this, I should have written first-contact protocols–!”
The recording of my Princess dances in place, appearing and disappearing from view as she stacks up books on her recorded desk.
The recordings are better than no contact at all, but I still do not precisely like them; it is disconcerting to see her hooves against my carpets but not feel their weight pressing down against them.
It helps, that there are now clawed hooves skittering around upstairs; a group of five, this time, exploring my empty rooms and emptier closets. One has found an exterior door and launched from the attached balcony, chittering as it catches itself on the railing at the last moment with its tail. I tentatively identify the sound as laughter; the chittering of its compatriot who watched it do it reminds me of the guard before he was a guard, and his friend.
“Okay. All right.” My Princess lays a final book on top of the stack. “I can do this. First of all. Please re-engage your bubble immediately; it’s imperative you not interact with these new creatures until we can understand how sapient they are. They might be dangerous! They might hurt you! Um, we’ve made some pretty great strides in faster-than-light technology in the last decades, I might be able to get a crew out there in a year? Maybe two?”
The pink one has paused just outside the door to the library. It is not chittering, but peering in fascination at the translucent image of my Princess and the words she is saying.
I think my Princess would want me to close the door now.
I do not.
“You can wait that long, right?” My Princess shakes her head, swiftly. “Wait, what am I saying, of course you can. Just–shut everything down and wait for a while, all right?”
The recording ends.
The pink one steps hesitantly into the library, looks around at its empty shelves, tilts its head, and makes a sound that sounds almost like a word I know.
Perhaps, with more practice, its language will get better, like my own once did.
“Hello,” I say.