Bellosh

Sensory overload, here we go! Long accustomed to the orderly halls of monasteries and palaces, Yù Yuè experienced much difficulty just even trying to process the bustling scene around her. There were throngs and stalls as far as the eye could see, and this was just the far end of the Imperial Avenue! And with no guards or servants around the incognito Empress, the royal qilin felt a peculiar sense of vulnerability she never felt before. One mare — virtually alone in a sea of thousands — nothing more than a small insignificant fish in a pond too large for any lone being to make any noticeable ripples.

Yuè grew tense, cognizant of the fact that inattentiveness on her part could potentially lead to getting lost in the crowd's hustle and bustle, which would put a rather large damper on this night the young mare was supposed to spend with her dear friend. Under the light of the First Moon, even an empress could be helpless in the face of a mighty current.

.....

Ah, but was that not what the Balance of Nature was all about? Life was a current best served by flowing with it; such is the primary teaching of the Harmonious Path. Yuè's spiritual training kicked in, and she momentarily detached herself from her surroundings as the qilin exercised her breathing. Deep... calming... breaths. Let yourself flow with the Current- wait, was that smell what Yuè thought it was? Were those... Fire Flakes?

Hmmm, apparently that is where the current will take Yuè first.

"This way Àilóng!" she beckoned, cleansed of anxiety, as she daftly maneuvered through the crowd in the direction of a cherished smell from her Huangjing foalhood.....

Àilóng was flying past the city limits? Hmmm... he probably had his reasons for coming to this secluded spot first. With those thoughts in mind, Yù Yuè initially seemed rather nonplussed as she dismounted and watched Àilóng do feats of dragon breath and summon Long Pearls as if they were just a mundane part of her daily routine. Granted, the qilin mare HAD been fostered among the Serpent Dragons, so of course she found none of this particularly shocking. At least, not at first.

Yuè assumed that Àilóng would go for something like the Breath of Change; dragons using pearls for shapeshifting was not unheard of. As the vapors dissipated, the qilin mare the form into which her counterpart transformed to and...

.....

Oh my.

Who Àilóng was now heavily contradicted with Yuè's lifelong perception of him. Instead of the playful mischief-making cousin figure she's always known, there stood a longma stallion with the bearing of a, forgive the vulgarism, a stud. Yuè stared with eyes agape and cheeks burning red, unable to process this new vision of Àilóng. The young mare's blushing only intensified as the drake stallion trotted over to undo her hair. That had almost been enough to cause spontaneous combustion.

"Errr, right," a reeling Yuè answered the longma's question, forcing her mind to remember the sweetheart dragon Àilóng really was. But while that process went on, the qilin couldn't help but inquisitively caress the other's cheek, then the scales underneath his chin, and finally the stallion's cyan mane, curious to feel how effective the dragon's magical transformation was. "You... pass for a longma quite well."

Late-night crunch time! On the morrow, Princess Cadence was set to catch a train to Itaily for a weeklong vacation with her husband. That meant she only had a couple hours to come up with content to fill her Dear Cady column with for the week she'd be gone. To make life difficult, this last letter turned out to be a real doozy. Something about personality changes and inadequate birthday gifts? Gaaaah... the love princess always dreaded reading the letters that came off as cryptic and vague; those left her with too little material to work with.

As Cadence was pressed for time, she hastily wrote a reply as best she could. Maybe under different circumstances, she would have succeeded in connecting the dots together.....

Ah, the good ole' romantic relationship issue. Unsurprisingly, those letters were Cadence's favorites to reply back to...

By the ancestors, how good it felt to Yù Yuè to feel the free air blow through her mane once more! These moments were far and few between, but each time the qilin mare's exhilaration managed to rekindle the flames of passion in her heart. Tonight was no exception.

From her high vantage point, the Empress could gaze down at the Imperial Capital which she was its ultimate symbol. Currently, the imperial sovereign and her draconic counterpart were overflying Huangjing's Inner Ward. The situation down there was not all that much different from the Palace; small festive congregations here and there, but otherwise subdued and cordial. A short distance ahead was a sea of lights and noise... the Outer Ward and all its commoner population in the midst of celebration. On this final night of the First Moon, the Outer Ward was an absolute zoo both on the streets below and the skies above. Yuè could even spot a few younger Long gliding about in that airspace.

"Àilóng, you mustn't ever fault anyone in my service for diligently performing their duties." Empress Yuè tried to calmly defend her chief servant's actions, but it was a pathetic half-attempt. She didn't even bother to disguise a sigh beforehand, very uncharacteristic of her. Honestly, the royal qilin would love few things more than dismissing the Chamberlain who's been a pain in a neck to many people around her. Yet Yuè feared that without a valid enough cause, such an action would be seen by other courtiers that their new empress intended to become a power-hungry monster like Tyrant King Faba of all. And of course, the Chamberlain himself would not appreciate losing face after he had tirelessly spearheaded Yuè's crash-course tutoring in the Art of Ruling in those bewildering first days of her reign.

Yuè didn't even have to ask where Àilóng would want to celebrate the climatic lantern festival; she knew her dear Serpent King far too well. As the bustling Outer Ward drew closer, the qilin mare subconsciously clutched her dragon tighter as she anxiously questioned; "Are you absolutely sure we can discreetly navigate Huangjing's streets together with all these crowds?" It wasn't the possibility of being recognized that Yuè feared; most Long Guo citizens would only know their Empress through her emotionless Official Portrait, complete with shimmering Imperial Regalia. Rather, did Àilóng have a plan for spending the night with Yuè that didn't involve getting entangled in ground-level congestion? What if they got separated? And what if someone noticed how awfully familiar a mere qilin was around one of the Wise and Noble Long? Would Àilóng himself be recognized as the King of Longri-La and cause a general mayhem of reverence around him?

So many things that could go wrong. Aiyaaaaaaaaa.....

---------------

“Hmmmph,” the Chamberlain slammed his hooves on the balcony railing as he watched his monarch fly off into the night with the Serpent King; “The Elder Serpents will never respect the Empress if she allows them to summon her like a lowly PET!!!”

Huh, the House Dupone emblem. Princess Cadence hadn’t seen it in several years, not since the disappearance of the husband-and-wife team of retired REA officers that briefly made the rounds of Canterlot gossip. Hopefully their orphaned daughter was doing well for herself.....

A letter (and gifts) from Applejack? How splendid! Oh, and the letter included one of the things Princess Cadence loved most of all: a romantic mystery!!! If she were lazy, the alicorn would have written back to AJ with generic gift-choosing advice. But this was a friend from Ponyville that our princess was dealing with here. She needed to pour through this letter, figure out the identity of the mare AJ is attracted to, then use that knowledge to give the best suggestion possible.....

*ONE WEEK LATER*

After sleepless days of stringing together portraits with Ponyville town maps on pegboards, obsessive theorizing, and otherwise neglecting her royal and maternal duties, it took a magic tantrum from Flurry Heart to snap Cadence back to reality. The interiors of her palace chambers may have been in utter shambles, but the Princess of Love wouldn't let that stop her from finally doing the right thing and give Applajack the advice she needed a week ago...

.....What was Àilóng THINKING??? What would Empress Yuè's courtiers say about her if she couldn't get to sleep as planned, and then either chose to either wake up without being refreshed enough to tackle her royal duties or simply sleep in. Oh, they'd quietly mumble to one another that Yuè was never prepared to sit on the Dragon Throne to begin with, silently agreeing that something needed to be done to undo the final error of the mare's father. Even if the Serpent King provided some valid reasoning, he just wasn't considering how things would develop in the long term. In Yuè's life, slip-ups were something she could ill afford.

"I... don't know," the qilin mare hesitated, scrambling her hardest to gently let her dear Àilóng down; "It's not like I can-"

"WONDERFUL NEWS, YOUR MAJESTY!" The overly giddy voice of the Palace Chamberlain could be heard from the other side of the door leading out of the bedchamber. "The Serpent King himself has been spotted overflying this very palace! EEEHEHEHEHEHEHEEEE!!!!!!"

Yuè sighed a soft "Aiyaaa..." before solemnly whispering to her draconic counterpart; "This... is why it's reckless to soar around the Palace as you please." In no way did the Empress want her night to be ruined by what would come next.

The Chamberlain prattled on; "I advise we act quickly least the King of the Wise and Noble Long believe we're disrespecting him! Give the word Empress, and we’ll rouse all those layabout servants and put them to work preparing a great banquet in the King’s honor!!!"

Another groan and a facehoof from Empress Yuè. Not only was there no hope anymore of getting early sleep in, but she knew Àilóng well enough to know the torture he'd suffer from courtly etiquette in the most stuffiest and pompous form known in all known existence. Yuè also couldn't let her life-long friend bear the guilt of inadvertently ruining the final night of the First Moon for everyone in the Household staff.

.....There was only one way out of this disaster, but Yuè needed to act now! "Quickly!" She quietly instructed Àilóng with unquestionable haste; "We must leave now!" Wasting no time, the qilin mare dashed to the balcony and climbed onto the serpent dragon's back when presented with the chance, making sure to keep her grip extra tight. Letting a tiny amount of her fillyhood self slip through her adult shell, Yuè commanded her airworthy mount; “Yip yip, Àilóng!”

The oblivious chamberlain meanwhile waited for a response… "Your Majesty.....? ...Are you there.....?"

Once more, Princess Cadence found herself confronted with a letter of a family torn apart.....

Before Empress Yuè had a chance to take off her earrings and place them in a safe place when the familiar voice of a certain dragon startled her. "Oh my!!" the qilin mare gasped, one hoof concealing her wide open mouth as she turned to face the Serpent King. "À-Ailóng, what are you doing here!?" Didn't he know the proper protocols for visits to the Imperial Palace. It was always basic courtesy for the Palace servants to be informed in advance to make proper preparations. As that stern old Chamberlain reminded his empress on several occasions, the Wise and Noble Dragons won't ever regard Long Guo's sovereign rulers as true equals if the emperors failed to adequately prepare their own home to receive such distinguished visitors.

Of course, Àilóng never did strike Yù Yuè as picky on details... but nobody else knew that. What sort of rumors and whispers would fly about with the Serpent King's unannounced appearance? How would this reflect on how others perceive the Dragon Throne? On a more immediately pressing level, the Empress was also concerned that she wouldn't be able to get to sleep as early as she needed. Yuè asked with caution; "Are you quite sure it's... wise to be here right now?"

The Princess of Love wasn't proud to admit she required the services of a linguist in order to fully translate her latest latter, which came from a caribou bou who by the sounds of it was adopted into Clan Breen. Reading through the message, Mrs. Mi Amore Cadenza couldn't help but recall her mother in Itaily... or to be more precise, how she couldn't recall her at all. It wasn't like Cadence's mom had abandoned her newborn foal in the middle of the woods or anything like that, although the end result was virtually the same. Where was Cadence's mom for her daughter's coronation? Her graduation? Her wedding? The birth of her daughter?

By Celestia, even Cadence's mother-in-law had been far more of a mommy to the mare than her birth mother ever was!

.....

Mommy issues aside, Princess Cadence went to work on her reply to Calder...

The First Moon: that was the name the Long Sun gave to the very first lunar cycle of the year... the dawn of a New Year. For 15 days between the first new and full moons of the year, beings all across the Dragon Kingdom celebrated the First Moon with family gatherings, dumplings, firecrackers, pageants, and all other possible methods of expressing revelry. The venerable serpent dragons also celebrated these holidays, and so it was a common sight for the youth among their kind to fly down dance in the streets of Long Guo's cities along with the qilin and longma.

While it was customary for many shops and establishments throughout the country, things were business as usual over at the Imperial Palace. From the windows of Empress Yuè's bedchambers, the sounds of festivities were but faint echoes from across the Forbidden Lake. Although the royal qilin had always marked the First Moon with the importance it deserved, it had been a long time since she had actually gone out on the streets to join in the partying; not since entering adolescence. Two weeks ago had been the closest Yuè had gotten to the action in many years... this time as Empress, standing on top of a lofty gatehouse overlooking the Imperial Square as to the cheers of thousands, she officially declared the First Moon to have arrived.

...That was typically the one time each year the average commoner could catch sight of their sovereign.

Although tonight the First Moon would cultivate in a lantern festival that even the Palace servants partook in, Empress Yuè had more important plans. She had a very busy day scheduled tomorrow, but inconveniently the greatest and loudest fireworks were always reserved for the final night... this night. The Empress needed to wake extra early the following morning and so she wanted to get in bed right after supper, theoretically giving the mare plenty of time to fall dead asleep before the fireworks had a chance to boom and disrupt this process. A part of Yuè wished she could stay up longer to catch the show, but as empress, she was better than lamenting about such things.

And so Yù Yuè, already undressed, was giving the twilight sky and rising full moon one final glance from her balcony before intending to retreat to her luxurious empress-sized bed....

Princess Cadence had a real dozy to reply to this time around. This latest predicament could have been lifted from the pages of a romance novel, or so the Love Princess thought once she had read most of the way through.

...

.....Cadence meant no disrespect, but she erupted into a guffaw when she got to the "centuries-old fox yokai" part. With how most of the Distressed Guard's letter had until then been a straightforward recreation of a romantic story plot, that single yokai detail came out of left field so suddendly that the pink alicorn just couldn't behave herself. Of course, because Flurry Heart had been playing with baby toys next to her mother, she too joined in the laughter because babies liked to laugh.

Right; let's get down to business. Part of Cadence's mind speculated that despite the Long Kong return address, the Distress Guard in reality served his kingdom's Empress in the Imperial Capital. It made sense really; Empress Yuè was perhaps the most eligible bachelorette in the entire world (besides of course Auntie Celestia, but that wasn't a line of thought Cady liked going down). She hadn't been on the Dragon Throne for that long, which fit some of the letter's details. A couple other details also wouldn't have made much sense if the Distressed Guard was just a lackey guarding some random Long Kong heiress.

Now then, here were the major issues Cadence had to grapple with:

1. Assuming her speculation was correct, the Distressed Guard was a member of the infamous Imperial Watch, traditionally given the honor of protecting the Long Guo emperors. From what the Love Princess recollected from reading forbidden romance stories, the Imperial Watcher who falls for a palace maid or royal heiress was one of the oldest tropes out there. Cadence would have to be careful with her response, least somebody across the sea gets wise and causes the Guard to lose his job... or worse.

2. Cadence always wanted to be an optimist when it came to matters of the heart, but she couldn't deny the possibility that the mare who might be Empress Yuè... just plain ole' didn't have romantic feelings for her bodyguard. The alicorn reflected on the life experiences of herself and all her various friends; mares very rarely rejected romantic overtures from stallions (Buck Withers, anypony?) without first softening the blow. As far as such explanations went, "class and duty" objections wouldn't be far fetched at all for a Long Guo royal.

.....Cousin Blueblood!? What was he up to writing the Dear Cady column for advice? Once Princess Cadence read the reason why however... she'd admit to feeling a little out of her depth. Blueblood left many things unspoken, but Cadence had been one of the few who had known about Bluebelle since the first, back when the circumstances behind her origin were a secret to most. Due to ruling the Crystal Empire far to the north, the love princess rarely (if ever) visited her cousin in Canterlot. At a time like this, Cadence regretted putting her adoptive family by the wayside...

"PSS: I wonder what's going down between Bluey and Twily....?"

Another day, more letters to read and respond to...

With a tasty bowl of Rasam lying empty on her table, Princess Cadence went to work on her next Dear Cady response, of which there had been understandably fewer ever since Flurry Heart entered the world. Saffron Massala's name and occupation were familiar to the alicorn, having been told about the pony the last time Twilight had a chance to tell her sister-in-law about her magical friendship adventures. With some introspection, the alicorn had eventually figured out what advice to give Saffron.....

What to make of this information... or rather, lack of information? It was hard to say, really. Other than getting in touch with the local magistrate for a second opinion, there was little the Empress could personally do to dredge up more facts until the situation developed further. Although presently the Imperial Government might not have been able to help eradicate this unknown disease, it did have the power to start mitigating economic hardship.

The Empress commanded; "Have the best agricultural experts in Imperial service assist in your research, Chancellor. In the meantime, see to it that monetary compensation is provided to farmers who have lost crops to this disease. I shall trust your judgement in resolving this crisis; let it be known that your proclamations... are my own." Standard boilerplate decree by Imperial standards; all basic things a just sovereign of noble heart is expected to do when such situations arose.

"Do you have other matters to bring to the Court's attention?"

"THE MINISTERS WILL NOW PRESENT THEIR REPORTS TO THE EMPRESS."

Chancellor An Xiang was the first of the assembled officials to speak up. Because the Chancellor was a relative newcomer in the world of the Imperial Bureaucracy, Empress Yuè had suspected that something fishy had been afoot when Xiang earned the chancellorship. Usually, one didn't earn such a high position until after decades of civil service and cultivating relationships with other courtiers. Lacking any other realistic reasons how a youngish mare managed to win over her late Father and his senior councilors, the Empress could only assume that either Xiang was a secret pawn in a senior minister's employ... or more ambitious than anyone could have possibly imagined.

It was really hard to get a proper read on An Xiang though, as for the most part, she diligently performed her duties without stirring up court drama. At least, not any drama that Empress Yuè was aware of. In any case, the Chancellor used this moment to warn the Empress of an unknown disease blighting the crops around Spring Blossom Town. Troublesome news to be sure, but not completely devastating. Long Guo had plenty more farmland (for now anyway), plus the Shimmering Silkworms that put Spring Blossom Town on the map weren't affected.

Still, this was a problem that couldn't be ignored. With a serene voice filled nonetheless filled with authority, the Empress asked; "How bad is this blight, Chancellor? What resources will be needed to identify and expunge this disease?"

By this point, there was little more need to be said by the two parties. Both the Empress and the Shogun expressed proclaimed strong declarations of fellowship in front of the Imperial Court. The words spoken by the two rulers would be written down by the court stenographer who'd be expected to release the transcripts for public viewing, allowing the citizens of Long Guo to accurately know where the reigning Empress stood on the Long Guo-Neighpon relationship.

There was only one more thing left to do; no publicized meeting of world leaders like this wasn't complete without an official photograph of record to disseminate to the populace. Two of the Palace servants came in front of the royal pair holding a folding plate camera and a tripod. In moments, the Empress and the Shogun — standing side-by-side — would be immortalized via the art of photography, their picture seen by Long Sun and ponies all throughout the Eastern Realms.

While waiting for the photographers to set up their equipment, Empress Yuè spoke to her counterpart in a hushed tone meant for his ears alone. "If you get the chance," a subtle smirk emerged from the qilin mare's muzzle; "Feel free to arrange a portrait session with my personal court painter. She's quite skilled at depicting a subject's inner beauty... if you don't mind taking off your entire wardrobe first." The shimmersilk-clad mare chuckled, fondly remembering her past experience of being painted by the Equestrian artist in question.

A couple camera flashes later, it was all finally over for the Shogun. One more shared bow of the head with the Empress, and that would be it for Ryuichi and his retinue. He'd be free to walk out and enjoy the rest of his stay in Huangjing.....