Post by Bardigan on Oct 2, 2012 2:25:01 GMT -5
Bardigan's posture is slumped, tonight. He doesn't look attentive to the papers piled next to him on a booth table he's set up for himself in a corner of the cafe. He's become something of a night owl recently (for reasons one might be able to guess at); it's well past a reasonable hour. He's surrounded by a little buffer zone of empty tables, ensconced away from the world. But he's still studying something that looks unimportant: a book, open to the halfway mark. His eyes rove over the pages, but on closer inspection it's apparent he's not actually going anywhere. More just skimming at random, flipping through pages. A once-warm cup of cider rests on the table, barely drunk from, and through the mostly silent building, the soft, fragile sound of singing can be heard from his table. "Ho-ome... you're so far away, come on home... ho-ome... a candle you can hold, you're not alone..."
Twilight_Sparkle enters, with a little yawn. Long day for Twilight, too. She orders herself a glass of hot cider and a pastry, carrying them both via midair levitation. She moves toward an open table, then spies Bardigan and approaches him, instead. "Working pretty hard on whatever it is you're doing. I know the look."
Skyheart walks into the cafe with his usual effect, a content yet nervous look, his saddlebags full of his writing supplies, and his pet dove, Orpheus. The feathered pair go about their normal routine: A few bits are placed on the counter as they head immediately to the the corner table that Bardigan just so happens to be working on. He lifts his saddlebag up and immediately spills the entirety of its contents onto the table all over his friend's papers. As he's about to sit down he feels a large warm body where his normal seat his. He turns to see he's literally inches away from Bardigan. "Bardigan," The poet begins, "What are you doing in my spot? This is my spot. What are you doing in it?"
"Hardly working, actually," Bardigan mutters without looking up. He flips back and forth between a single page, aimlessly. "I couldn't sleep. Great many thoughts... keeping me awake. Please don't worry, Twilight," he says in a tone that says that there is probably something to worry about. He looks up as Skyheart claims the table for planet Shy Poet, raising an eyebrow as they come almost flank to flank. "*Your* spot?" he retorts, blankly. "Skyheart. I was under the impression this was *our* spot. Surely you can suffer a fellow poet's presence when he is caught by a muse and deep in introspection." He flips the page again, between 47 and 48. 47. 48. 47. 48. So much introspection.
Twilight_Sparkle blinks a bit, looking back and forth between the two ponies. "I'll let you two work out the territorial issues...and do let me know if I'm in anybody's way." To Bardigan, she says, "Well...I'm up too, and if you'd like to talk about what you're working on, I might have some insight. A second pair of eyes can be just what you need."
Skyheart blinks a bit. "Uh..." He tilts his head. "OUR spot? You say that almost as if-" He stops himself and shakes his head. "Whatever. Here, let me clear this up." He gets out of the chair and starts putting all this things on one half of the table, taking the seat across from Bardigan, allowing room on the other side. He glances to Twilight, motioning to the seat next to his compatriot. "I assume you were going to sit there before my instrusion?"
Bardigan's worryingly neurotic page flipping stops. He looks up at Skyheart, but not quite *at* him. "Insight?" he wonders. "I think I need a little of that, yes." He closes the book, and the title is clear: "Collected Stories of the Wyrd Reaches and Diamond Coast." He sighs. "I don't mean to be a terrible companion lately, my friends."
Twilight_Sparkle smiles at Skyheart, gives a nod, and parks herself in the offered sitting space. she takes a long drink of her cider, and leans in to examine Bardigan's book. "That's a rare volume. It's been a while since I've thought much about it." She tilts her head. "This...is about Princess Luna, still, isn't it?"
Skyheart peers at the book but, obviously can't make heads or tails of it. He simply relaxes at his own half of the table, idly sipping his coffee as he starts messing through his pile of writings. He perks his head up to the other two again when word of the princess kicks up. "Hmm? The Princess again? Let me guess... Still trying?" He asks politely.
Bardigan tenses when Twilight plops down next to him, then winces when both of them strike the nail on the head in rapid succession. He takes shelter in a long sip of cider, looking at a corner of the ceiling just over Skyheart's shoulder. "Still trying... Perhaps. In a sense?" he mutters, ruffling his wings. "I probably should have told you earlier, Twilight. I apologize." He turns to look her in the eye. "I recently declared my love to Princess Luna in the middle of her chambers and attempted to court her." Hopefully this wasn't his first cider to be so terribly blunt.
Twilight_Sparkle blinks a few times. But recovers, and nods, slowly. "And...when you did that, what'd she say?" Twilight asks. She does, however, avert her eyes, her cheeks pinkening.
Skyheart gives Bardigan a look that seems conflicted. On the one side, he's following his heart. On the other, he knew it was a losing proposition from the outset. "I take it things didn't go as planned."
"She said..." Bardigan goes quiet, mouth hanging open. He closes his eyes and his head tilts back, as if he's reveling in something the other two cannot see or feel. "She said... Luna hoped I never stopped loving her... even as the Princess must spurn me, because she is not ready to love again." He leans back into his chair, looking like his muscles are no longer holding any part of him up, eyes half-lidded "It was really... something," he decides in a dull, quiet murmur. "Really something."
Twilight_Sparkle looks away, the violet unicorn falling quiet for a little while, lost in thoughts she doesn't express aloud. "That sounds about right," she says, quietly.
Skyheart blinks a bit. It's not entirely what he expects to hear but the stunned silence lasts for a far longer than one should expect out of such news. Mumbling to himself, he seems lost in his own little world at the moment. Then out of the blue, he drops to the table flourishes the finished works away, and digs his head into his bags. He tosses out a few clean sheets of paper, an inkwell and one quill in his mouth and about a dozen more stuck into his mane. He readies himself and begins scribbling away furiously.
Bardigan is quiet himself for a minute, the only sound that of Skyheart's scribbling. He quirks a brow, but that reaction is probably to be expected from his poetic friend. He glances at Twilight instead. "... About right?" he whispers. "You mean... from the way she's been speaking to *you.* The letters, and papers, and... everything?"
Twilight_Sparkle's eyes get a faraway look. "The last two or three months I've spent a lot of time with Luna, and studied her love letters to the point where I'm something of an expert on her loves. One of them was Starswirl the Bearded; he and Luna are my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents." She sighs a little. A lot of love, and a lot of loss, and then a thousand years of loneliness and regret. I know that's not what she's trying to communicate to me, but...it's hard not to be aware of it."
Bardigan stares for a long while at Twilight, and his eyes shimmer with emotion. He quickly looks away again. "Ah," he breathes delicately. "Ah... that's what it meant," he says, mostly to himself, and breathes in and out. "I think I always knew that was what was going to happen. But I had to do it anyway."
Twilight_Sparkle regards Bardigan. After a long pause, she tells him, "for some reason, I can't help wanting to show you something. Luna's helped me to accomplish something that's...going to have some implications. I don't think anyone but Luna and Spike knows about this, and I guess it won't be a secret forever, but I'm still...well, you know what it's like to wonder what ponies are going to think."
Bardigan's ear twitches at the sound of Skyheart still scrib-scribbling away. But his eyes are on Twilight again, matching her gaze. On impulse, he reaches out and touches her hoof in an encouraging manner. "Show me," he says decisively. "Should we go elsewhere?"
Twilight_Sparkle smiles at the hooftouch, looking into Bardigan's eyes. "It might help if we stepped outside, for just a minute."
Bardigan nods once. "Very well. Skyheart, mind the table," he says to the other poet. It is 'his' after all.
Twilight_Sparkle leads Bardigan out the back, away from the bustle (yes, even at night) of the market proper.
Bardigan follows Twilight as far as she feels necessary, to the secluded areas away from the main streets. One look left, one look right, nope, no prying eyes here. Even the pegasi are absent from this corner of the sky, right now. "Alone at last," he says with a tired smirk, which quickly fades. "You know you needn't do this if you aren't comfortable."
Twilight_Sparkle shakes her head. "I trust you, and...you seem like the pony to show. If I took this to my girl friends right now I'd feel like I was showing off. You seem like you're more likely to really...get what this means." She takes a step back away from you, and closes her eyes, the end of her horn beginning to glow with violet light.
Bardigan maintains a respectful distance back once the magic starts. His eyes never leave Twilight however bright it gets, determined to watch through to the end. "I trust you," he echoes in a nearly inaudible whisper as he is illuminated by the violet glow.
Twilight_Sparkle's horn glows brighter, as do her eyes, and then a wave of bright magical light sweeps over her body; she is, temporarily, almost blinding. Next thing you know, the unicorn gives a flap of her magnificent purple wings--wings! She flaps them a few more times, and rises into the air. For a moment, it's unmistakably obvious that the royal family is somewhere in her bloodline.
Bardigan at first believes he's been dazzled by the bright lights; he did look directly into the glow, after all. But then, even after he blinks rapidly and rubs his hooves over his eyes, he sees the wings--beautiful wings!--are still there. And his jaw drops, as do his flanks, straight to the ground. "Those," he says, and can manage no more. He *knows* what it could mean, but his mind refuses to process it for a moment. He stands up again, watching, feeling something like veneration and adoration for such a *royal* sight swell in his heart, almost instinctively so. He closes his eyes and shakes his head, and the feeling fades. "Twilight," he gasps. "Those are *real!?*"
Twilight_Sparkle flaps a few more times, seeming to hover, to float, in midair, her wings catching the moonlight...she swoops downward again, landing with all four hooves on the ground and skidding to a less-than-elegant, but perfectly safe, halt as her wings dissolve again into the darkness of the night. Twilight smiles at her friend, nervously. "Real while they last. Before too long, I'll be able to make them last as long as I want." She looks over her shoulder, at the place where her royal wings were moments before. "Luna's been helping me understand the spell...I'd be the first unicorn to pull that off in a very long time." She looks down at her hooves, and says, "I'm worried about how my friends are going to react. I don't want to be treated differently, but I have a feeling nopony'll ever look at me the same."
She may not soar through the sky, but it's enough to lift Bardigan's heart along with her. He watches with unabashed wonder until she comes down again, and his own wings spring open with excitement. "It's... it's amazing," he whispers, and walks forward. He looks at the space where the wings were, and then lifts a hoof, hesitantly. "... May I?" he asks, and very cautiously reaches out to touch her side with a feather-light touch. "If they're any kind of companions," he whispers, "they'll react with friendship and happiness as they always have." He turns to look her in the eye. "Twilight with wings is still Twilight. Still the mare the Element of Magic chose. But..." He withdraws his hoof, as if expecting her wings to sprout again suddenly. "I can see why you'd be cautious. This is... amazing."
Twilight_Sparkle smiles gratefully at Bardigan, his reaction warming her heart. "It means a lot to me to finally show that off," she admits. She looks over her shoulder again. "I already feel kind of limited without them. I'm sure it'll be a long time before I can hold my own against the likes of you, or the princesses, or...well, Rainbow Dash is in her own category. But I'm discovering thise whole other part of who I am and it's..." Her eyes are misty with tears. "It's hard to even find the words, sometimes."
The feeling of gentle feathers on Twilight's back accompanies Bardigan spreading his wing over her. "Take it from a pony whose destiny involves words," he says quietly, shaking his head. "Sometimes... there *are* no words. And we can just hope that our feelings are enough, and that other ponies can understand the silence. You needn't struggle to find words around me." He manages a little smile, in spite of how lost and confused he was feeling before. He's standing next to a wonderful story, and that always helps cheer him up.
Skyheart appears to have already packed up and left. on the table looks to be in a sort of long form poem with a lot of syllables in each of the lines. The meter is quick to facilitate the fast-paced flow to emotions. It seems to detail something similar to Luna's side of this whole arrangement. Everything the two just talked about was extrapolated on with the most precision being put in the rendering of her emotions. A lot focused on the play Bardigan put on about Horizon, but there are reflections between the two as the pseudo-princess recounts the last time she truly lost a love, followed by the thousand year torment of Nightmare Moon, and then the present, where the poem comes full circle. A new Horizon has dawned, but it is just as unreachable and the fear of the same consequences linger. There may be some familiar chords Twilight could see in her current situation when compared with some of her less than stellar magic mishaps should she decide to read it as well.
Twilight_Sparkle enters, with a little yawn. Long day for Twilight, too. She orders herself a glass of hot cider and a pastry, carrying them both via midair levitation. She moves toward an open table, then spies Bardigan and approaches him, instead. "Working pretty hard on whatever it is you're doing. I know the look."
Skyheart walks into the cafe with his usual effect, a content yet nervous look, his saddlebags full of his writing supplies, and his pet dove, Orpheus. The feathered pair go about their normal routine: A few bits are placed on the counter as they head immediately to the the corner table that Bardigan just so happens to be working on. He lifts his saddlebag up and immediately spills the entirety of its contents onto the table all over his friend's papers. As he's about to sit down he feels a large warm body where his normal seat his. He turns to see he's literally inches away from Bardigan. "Bardigan," The poet begins, "What are you doing in my spot? This is my spot. What are you doing in it?"
"Hardly working, actually," Bardigan mutters without looking up. He flips back and forth between a single page, aimlessly. "I couldn't sleep. Great many thoughts... keeping me awake. Please don't worry, Twilight," he says in a tone that says that there is probably something to worry about. He looks up as Skyheart claims the table for planet Shy Poet, raising an eyebrow as they come almost flank to flank. "*Your* spot?" he retorts, blankly. "Skyheart. I was under the impression this was *our* spot. Surely you can suffer a fellow poet's presence when he is caught by a muse and deep in introspection." He flips the page again, between 47 and 48. 47. 48. 47. 48. So much introspection.
Twilight_Sparkle blinks a bit, looking back and forth between the two ponies. "I'll let you two work out the territorial issues...and do let me know if I'm in anybody's way." To Bardigan, she says, "Well...I'm up too, and if you'd like to talk about what you're working on, I might have some insight. A second pair of eyes can be just what you need."
Skyheart blinks a bit. "Uh..." He tilts his head. "OUR spot? You say that almost as if-" He stops himself and shakes his head. "Whatever. Here, let me clear this up." He gets out of the chair and starts putting all this things on one half of the table, taking the seat across from Bardigan, allowing room on the other side. He glances to Twilight, motioning to the seat next to his compatriot. "I assume you were going to sit there before my instrusion?"
Bardigan's worryingly neurotic page flipping stops. He looks up at Skyheart, but not quite *at* him. "Insight?" he wonders. "I think I need a little of that, yes." He closes the book, and the title is clear: "Collected Stories of the Wyrd Reaches and Diamond Coast." He sighs. "I don't mean to be a terrible companion lately, my friends."
Twilight_Sparkle smiles at Skyheart, gives a nod, and parks herself in the offered sitting space. she takes a long drink of her cider, and leans in to examine Bardigan's book. "That's a rare volume. It's been a while since I've thought much about it." She tilts her head. "This...is about Princess Luna, still, isn't it?"
Skyheart peers at the book but, obviously can't make heads or tails of it. He simply relaxes at his own half of the table, idly sipping his coffee as he starts messing through his pile of writings. He perks his head up to the other two again when word of the princess kicks up. "Hmm? The Princess again? Let me guess... Still trying?" He asks politely.
Bardigan tenses when Twilight plops down next to him, then winces when both of them strike the nail on the head in rapid succession. He takes shelter in a long sip of cider, looking at a corner of the ceiling just over Skyheart's shoulder. "Still trying... Perhaps. In a sense?" he mutters, ruffling his wings. "I probably should have told you earlier, Twilight. I apologize." He turns to look her in the eye. "I recently declared my love to Princess Luna in the middle of her chambers and attempted to court her." Hopefully this wasn't his first cider to be so terribly blunt.
Twilight_Sparkle blinks a few times. But recovers, and nods, slowly. "And...when you did that, what'd she say?" Twilight asks. She does, however, avert her eyes, her cheeks pinkening.
Skyheart gives Bardigan a look that seems conflicted. On the one side, he's following his heart. On the other, he knew it was a losing proposition from the outset. "I take it things didn't go as planned."
"She said..." Bardigan goes quiet, mouth hanging open. He closes his eyes and his head tilts back, as if he's reveling in something the other two cannot see or feel. "She said... Luna hoped I never stopped loving her... even as the Princess must spurn me, because she is not ready to love again." He leans back into his chair, looking like his muscles are no longer holding any part of him up, eyes half-lidded "It was really... something," he decides in a dull, quiet murmur. "Really something."
Twilight_Sparkle looks away, the violet unicorn falling quiet for a little while, lost in thoughts she doesn't express aloud. "That sounds about right," she says, quietly.
Skyheart blinks a bit. It's not entirely what he expects to hear but the stunned silence lasts for a far longer than one should expect out of such news. Mumbling to himself, he seems lost in his own little world at the moment. Then out of the blue, he drops to the table flourishes the finished works away, and digs his head into his bags. He tosses out a few clean sheets of paper, an inkwell and one quill in his mouth and about a dozen more stuck into his mane. He readies himself and begins scribbling away furiously.
Bardigan is quiet himself for a minute, the only sound that of Skyheart's scribbling. He quirks a brow, but that reaction is probably to be expected from his poetic friend. He glances at Twilight instead. "... About right?" he whispers. "You mean... from the way she's been speaking to *you.* The letters, and papers, and... everything?"
Twilight_Sparkle's eyes get a faraway look. "The last two or three months I've spent a lot of time with Luna, and studied her love letters to the point where I'm something of an expert on her loves. One of them was Starswirl the Bearded; he and Luna are my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents." She sighs a little. A lot of love, and a lot of loss, and then a thousand years of loneliness and regret. I know that's not what she's trying to communicate to me, but...it's hard not to be aware of it."
Bardigan stares for a long while at Twilight, and his eyes shimmer with emotion. He quickly looks away again. "Ah," he breathes delicately. "Ah... that's what it meant," he says, mostly to himself, and breathes in and out. "I think I always knew that was what was going to happen. But I had to do it anyway."
Twilight_Sparkle regards Bardigan. After a long pause, she tells him, "for some reason, I can't help wanting to show you something. Luna's helped me to accomplish something that's...going to have some implications. I don't think anyone but Luna and Spike knows about this, and I guess it won't be a secret forever, but I'm still...well, you know what it's like to wonder what ponies are going to think."
Bardigan's ear twitches at the sound of Skyheart still scrib-scribbling away. But his eyes are on Twilight again, matching her gaze. On impulse, he reaches out and touches her hoof in an encouraging manner. "Show me," he says decisively. "Should we go elsewhere?"
Twilight_Sparkle smiles at the hooftouch, looking into Bardigan's eyes. "It might help if we stepped outside, for just a minute."
Bardigan nods once. "Very well. Skyheart, mind the table," he says to the other poet. It is 'his' after all.
Twilight_Sparkle leads Bardigan out the back, away from the bustle (yes, even at night) of the market proper.
Bardigan follows Twilight as far as she feels necessary, to the secluded areas away from the main streets. One look left, one look right, nope, no prying eyes here. Even the pegasi are absent from this corner of the sky, right now. "Alone at last," he says with a tired smirk, which quickly fades. "You know you needn't do this if you aren't comfortable."
Twilight_Sparkle shakes her head. "I trust you, and...you seem like the pony to show. If I took this to my girl friends right now I'd feel like I was showing off. You seem like you're more likely to really...get what this means." She takes a step back away from you, and closes her eyes, the end of her horn beginning to glow with violet light.
Bardigan maintains a respectful distance back once the magic starts. His eyes never leave Twilight however bright it gets, determined to watch through to the end. "I trust you," he echoes in a nearly inaudible whisper as he is illuminated by the violet glow.
Twilight_Sparkle's horn glows brighter, as do her eyes, and then a wave of bright magical light sweeps over her body; she is, temporarily, almost blinding. Next thing you know, the unicorn gives a flap of her magnificent purple wings--wings! She flaps them a few more times, and rises into the air. For a moment, it's unmistakably obvious that the royal family is somewhere in her bloodline.
Bardigan at first believes he's been dazzled by the bright lights; he did look directly into the glow, after all. But then, even after he blinks rapidly and rubs his hooves over his eyes, he sees the wings--beautiful wings!--are still there. And his jaw drops, as do his flanks, straight to the ground. "Those," he says, and can manage no more. He *knows* what it could mean, but his mind refuses to process it for a moment. He stands up again, watching, feeling something like veneration and adoration for such a *royal* sight swell in his heart, almost instinctively so. He closes his eyes and shakes his head, and the feeling fades. "Twilight," he gasps. "Those are *real!?*"
Twilight_Sparkle flaps a few more times, seeming to hover, to float, in midair, her wings catching the moonlight...she swoops downward again, landing with all four hooves on the ground and skidding to a less-than-elegant, but perfectly safe, halt as her wings dissolve again into the darkness of the night. Twilight smiles at her friend, nervously. "Real while they last. Before too long, I'll be able to make them last as long as I want." She looks over her shoulder, at the place where her royal wings were moments before. "Luna's been helping me understand the spell...I'd be the first unicorn to pull that off in a very long time." She looks down at her hooves, and says, "I'm worried about how my friends are going to react. I don't want to be treated differently, but I have a feeling nopony'll ever look at me the same."
She may not soar through the sky, but it's enough to lift Bardigan's heart along with her. He watches with unabashed wonder until she comes down again, and his own wings spring open with excitement. "It's... it's amazing," he whispers, and walks forward. He looks at the space where the wings were, and then lifts a hoof, hesitantly. "... May I?" he asks, and very cautiously reaches out to touch her side with a feather-light touch. "If they're any kind of companions," he whispers, "they'll react with friendship and happiness as they always have." He turns to look her in the eye. "Twilight with wings is still Twilight. Still the mare the Element of Magic chose. But..." He withdraws his hoof, as if expecting her wings to sprout again suddenly. "I can see why you'd be cautious. This is... amazing."
Twilight_Sparkle smiles gratefully at Bardigan, his reaction warming her heart. "It means a lot to me to finally show that off," she admits. She looks over her shoulder again. "I already feel kind of limited without them. I'm sure it'll be a long time before I can hold my own against the likes of you, or the princesses, or...well, Rainbow Dash is in her own category. But I'm discovering thise whole other part of who I am and it's..." Her eyes are misty with tears. "It's hard to even find the words, sometimes."
The feeling of gentle feathers on Twilight's back accompanies Bardigan spreading his wing over her. "Take it from a pony whose destiny involves words," he says quietly, shaking his head. "Sometimes... there *are* no words. And we can just hope that our feelings are enough, and that other ponies can understand the silence. You needn't struggle to find words around me." He manages a little smile, in spite of how lost and confused he was feeling before. He's standing next to a wonderful story, and that always helps cheer him up.
Skyheart appears to have already packed up and left. on the table looks to be in a sort of long form poem with a lot of syllables in each of the lines. The meter is quick to facilitate the fast-paced flow to emotions. It seems to detail something similar to Luna's side of this whole arrangement. Everything the two just talked about was extrapolated on with the most precision being put in the rendering of her emotions. A lot focused on the play Bardigan put on about Horizon, but there are reflections between the two as the pseudo-princess recounts the last time she truly lost a love, followed by the thousand year torment of Nightmare Moon, and then the present, where the poem comes full circle. A new Horizon has dawned, but it is just as unreachable and the fear of the same consequences linger. There may be some familiar chords Twilight could see in her current situation when compared with some of her less than stellar magic mishaps should she decide to read it as well.