"So-..Sombra?" I stuttered. I was stricken with confusion and a little bit of fear in the mix. I had to keep confusion as my main emotion so as to seem that I had no idea who Sombra was, but I knew…
"Yes…King…Sombra…" Prince trembled but I only sensed anger in the words uttered.
"Who is King Sombra?" I asked even though I knew all too well.
"He's an evil king of an empire not too far from here. The Crystal Empire. He rules with an iron hoof…making slave of the whole population. The guards are even scared to say anything!" He continued to rant furiously, his temper growing rapidly. "I always tried to help and be nice to the other ponies but he'd just whip them and hit me…" He ended.
"He…did what?" I asked. (Scotty lesson #1: Scotty doesn't take kindly to child abuse in any form and becomes enraged to a point of almost no return until the parent who dares to abuse their child is hung from a tree…by their innards…)(Yea, it's not pretty, also goes with abusing spouses or anyone who doesn't deserve it. Big No-No.)
Whitheart gritted his teeth and nodded.
"So…how did you get here?" I asked, trying to get away from the other topic.
"I escaped one day…when I was really young and I hid…in a cave. It was so cold, and dark, and lonely, and scary, and…and…" Tears welled up in his eyes. I sat beside him and hugged him tight to see if that would help and he returned the gesture.
I pulled away. "Hey, listen…I'll make this promise to you Princey….one day we'll free that empire and we'll give your father a much needed butt-whoopin." I stated, a faint smile spread across his lips. "Now get some rest, it's getting late and we have much training to accomplish tomorrow."
"Training?" Prince questioned.
"Yep! I'm going to train you to be social." I replied with a wicked grin.
"Uggghhhh!" He moaned as he fell onto his pillow.
"Hey, it'll be fun I promise." I said.
"Yea whatever." Prince said before he fell asleep.
"Goodnight my Prince…" I whispered softly as I slowly got up and went to the bathroom to get ready for bed but I wasn't the least bit tired sooo where did I go? To the balcony, after I told Thorn he could head to the barracks and that we'd come find him in the morning.
The sun sank slowly into the distant horizon and not long after the moon came into view as beautiful as ever. I had to keep my little tradition going so I went on to say..:
"Thank you for a beautiful night Princess Luna…" I whispered to myself, though I wondered if she heard me more clearly now. Odd…are our universes linked together? Can other Lunas hear me in their worlds? (Let's get this straight, there are potentially like a bajillion other universes out there that are probably close to this one but different in one tiny way?) That's what I'm thinking…like Bioshock Infinite. (If you haven't played that game I totally recommend it.) I agree. (So what universe is this?) I have no idea…but whichever one it is it has been invaded but it isn't the only one. (We are never going to be able to sleep are we?) I don't know this is just all so…so… (Blargaflagarama?) Yea! Exaxctly! (That means its f***ed up.) For those who don't know the language of Scotty. (We should go to bed, long day ahead of us.) Yea…I hear yah.
I took one last glance up to the night sky, wished everyone a goodnight and went to my spot on the floor, and went peacefully to sleep. Morning came quicker than expected. I got up before Prince but the Sun shined halfway through the horizon so it was morning for sure. I went into the bathroom to get ready and decided to experiment with something. I took my other clothes and put them on after a shower, washed them, and hung them outside with some makeshift pins. Let's hope that cleans them up huh? Well I continued with my routine, went out to Prince (after getting dressed of course) and started to shake his bed.
"Wake up!" I shouted as I blurted out the tune that privates usually play at base camps with the trumpets. He jolted awake, confused and a little scared.
"Ah! What's going on what huh?!" He shot up shouting, looking every which way.
"Morning sunshine." I said with a smile.
"Oh no…don't tell me…" He uttered.
"Ohhhhh yes sir! Let's go get breakfast." Haha this was kinda flip-flopped, he woke me up yesterday and now I have gotten my revenge!
I hopped off of the bed and stood at the door-way, waiting for him. He stepped out and I held the door open for him.
"After you your majesty." I said in a humble servant accent until I noticed a rather large scar along his back. It didn't strike me to ask until we were walking down the hall.
"If you don't mind me asking, I noticed a scar on your back. Is that fresh? Like what happened? Are you ok?" I asked and he started to slow down, slowly pulling the memory to his conscious mind.
"Oh that, um, I use to have wings." He replied.
"Oh dang! What happened?!" I gasped just imagining how he must've lost them.
"When I was running away I went through this swamp. It was called the Death Swamp I think." He said.
"The Death Swamp? Sounds safe enough." I muttered.
"You'd think so, that is until I ran into a manticore."
"A what?"
"A manticore, body of a lion, scorpion tail, long ears, and wings."
"Wow, props to you for surviving." I replied.
"What?"
"Erm, I mean good job on surviving an encounter with such a beast."
"Oh yea, it was pretty scary but I blasted it away! Not until after it bit my wings off though…Oh but that's how I got this bad boy." He said as he showed off his Cutie mark; a purple crescent moon that kind of looked like Luna's but like flipped the other way.
"Well damn…continue to remind me never, ever to piss you off ok?" I replied as we arrived at the dining room. I almost have this place sort of mapped out but just from here to Prince's room.
A guard was nearby so I asked him to tell Thorn where we were and to let him know we plan to leave soon.
"Planning on going somewhere?" Celestia asked behind me, which in turn about scared me to death.
"You really have to stop sneaking up on me your highness, remember I faced an evil other one of you so I'm still pretty jumpy." I replied.
"My apologies. Now, what is it I hear that you two are doing?"
"Well you see…" I turned her and I away to whisper. "I've noticed that Prince is a tini, tiny bit unsocial. So I am going to take him out and kind of coach him into being a little more interactive with peop- um, ponies around him. I know it's not my place to be the one pushing him to do this but I really think he might be happier if he learns to talk to other ponies, maybe even meet new friends."
"He has been spending a lot of his days in his room reading. Some interaction would be suiting." She said.
"If you want you can come along, I bet Prince would really like that." I offered.
"I wouldn't find more pleasure in anything else." She smiled.
"Beautiful! Now if you don't mind, I hear some fine pieces of toast calling my name." I chuckled and returned to my plate. I told Prince of the plans for today and informed him that his "mom" would be joining us which seemed to have made the day a bit better for him.
After breakfast we headed for the door to the outside where prince knew what waited for him. Well Thorn was waiting for us there but that's not what I meant. I mean socializing. The doors opened to a beautiful, sun shining day. That's when the first "test" came to be. A middle-aged stallion was hauling a cart full of cabbages. One seemed to have fallen off.
"Ok Prince here's a challenge for you. Go pick up that cabbage and take it to the guy pulling the cart and say this; excuse me sir, you seemed to have dropped this." I said.
"Ar…are you sure? I really don-" he began.
"Listen, I believe in you, so does your mom. You got this Princey." I reassured him.
With a look to me, and a glance to Celestia, he turned around and took a deep breath before picking up the veggie and taking off towards the guy.
"Sir…sir?" Prince somewhat whispered. He cleared his throat and spoke loud enough. "Sir?"
The stallion stopped and looked behind him and directly at Prince. I could tell the stallion's gaze froze Prince to the ground.
"Come on Princey…" I whispered to myself.
"Excuse….excuse me sir, you dropped to seem this." Prince uttered, leaving the stallion to become quite confused. "You seemed to have dropped this."
The stallion shook off the first sentence and realized what Prince was talking about.
"Oh my cabbage! Thank you sport, that could've cost me a pretty bit!" He said as he took the cabbage back and set it in his cart and went on his way. Whiteheart sat, dumbfounded.
"Haha! You did it!" I shouted. He flipped around and ran up to Celestia.
"Did you see that mommy! I did it! I did it!" He screeched in enjoyment.
"Yes you did, I'm so proud of you son." Celestia replied. Oh man someone get me some tissues because this right here was a heart-filled moment.
"Alright Prince, ready for more?" I asked.
"More?!" He replied. "I thought that was pretty good don't you think?"
"Yes but not everypony is going to be nice, so you have to see the good and bad side of others." I said.
"He is right." Celestia agreed.
"See even your mom agrees, but listen." I knelt down to come face to face with him. "No matter what I know that neither I nor Celestia will let anyone hurt you, and get away with it."
He gulped and smiled, "ok, lead the way." He replied. So we set off into the shimmering day. Much work is going to be needed to accomplish our goal but you know what? I believe in Princey. I really think he can overcome this little hurdle with a little help from me, Celestia, and the new friends he is bound to make. Sure it's gonna be pretty freakin hard but he can do it.