“I would like… a beer.” said Princess Cadance, still wearing a confused, uneasy smile. She closes her eyes nods at her own words. “Yes, a [i]beer[/i], please!”

Chaser shot another glance around the hole-in-the-wall where she served as bartender. It was the height of the mid-afternoon dead-hour, and there was nopony else there but the princess sitting on her stool at the counter.

“Um, Princess,” she said, in her customer service voice because she didn’t know how else to speak to an actual, literal, alicorn. “We’ve got, uh, many kinds of beer.”

Princess Cadance’s expression crumpled just the smallest bit.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes darting through the stacks of bottles behind Chaser. “I’m, um, kind of new to the whole alcohol thing, honestly. I mean, I’ve had a salt lick or two, but I guess I haven’t really…”

She trailed off.

Instincts from almost eleven years of bartending made the following fifteen seconds of absolute silence indescribably uncomfortable for Chaser.

“Can I suggest an imperial lager? We just got a crate of ambers from the Empire just the other day.” said Chaser.

“Sure!” said Cadance, perhaps too cheerfully. “Perfect!”

Chaser fetched a bottle and filled one of the establishment’s fancier beer glasses with half of the contents before placing both on the countertop in front of the Princess.

Cadance picked up the glass, eyed it, tried to discreetly smell the drink, and then swallowed it all in a gulp. She emptied the rest of the bottle into the glass, and tossed it down the hatch again.

“That was…” said the princess, blinking. “I’m not sure how that was.”

“Do you want another?” said Chaser keeping up her customer-serving voice.

“Yes,” said Cadance, even though she didn’t seem to mean it.

Another lager disappeared, equally unceremoniously, and when the princess asked for a third, Chaser couldn’t keep her sense of unease bottled up any longer.

She fetched the beer, but as she opened the bottle, she spoke.

“Princess, beg your pardon, but folks don’t normally take their drinks like this,” she said, diplomatically. “Plus, we’re quite a ways from the Empire, so I have to wonder…”

“Star-damnit!” blurted Cadance, suddenly. She folded her wings over her face, and slumped in her seat. “Star-damnit, I’m so [i]obvious[/i], aren’t I?”

The outburst caught Chaser off-guard for a second, but this wasn’t her first upset customer. She caught a hold of herself again quickly.

“Nothing’s obvious,” said Chaser, truthfully. “Except maybe that you have something you want to say.”

Cadance was quiet for a moment longer, staring at her untouched third drink.

“Sometimes, I really think I’m a mess. I don’t even know how to get drunk right.”

“You’d be a bigger mess if you did know,” said Chaser, the words leaving her mouth almost before she realized it.

Princess Cadance laughed, dryly.

The following silence was both better and worse than the last ones had been. She would talk now that she got started—Chaser knew from experience.

“Me and Shiny got into a fight,” she said. “And, well, I’m the Princess of Love.” She put a depreciating stress on the title. “So I thought I was right. I [i]knew[/i] I was right. But we were both mad, so I took a quick flight to cool my head.”

Chaser momentarily balked at the idea of a six hundred mile trip being called a quick flight.

Cadance continued, unaware.

“Now, I’m not sure [i]who[/i] was right,” she said. She took a sip from her glass, and crinkled her nose at the taste. “And if [i]I[/i] don’t know, then, I don’t think I’ve been a very good Princess of Love.”

“Part of love is fighting,” said Chaser.

“Excuse me?” said Cadance.

“My Pa used to say that you need to fight to be in love.”

“That’s an… interesting expression,” said Cadance, with all the carefulness of a subject matter expert being polite.

“What he meant was…” Chaser bit her lip as she tried to put the idea into new words. “If you don’t care enough about somebody or something to fight about it, then you don’t care enough to really be in love.”

“Oh,” said Cadance. “That’s a… that’s a good way to put it.”

The compliment made Chaser suddenly self-conscious, and she waved her hoof dismissively.

“Just running my mouth a little. I really don’t know anything.”

“Well apparently,” said Cadance, resigned eyes returning to her half-empty glass, “neither do I.”

It was almost funny, the way she said it, but Chaser didn't laugh.