Apoptosis

Chapters

Dreams and Revelations
Mouth Full of Ashes
Replacements
Names
Disappointment

Dreams and Revelations

Apoptosis

Twilight Sparkle Must Die

Celestia awoke from sleep into dreaming. The wisps of half-formed oneiroi swirled and crept around her hocks. Instinctively, she expected their touch to be cold and damp, like the fog they so resembled, but she was surprised by the sheer neutrality of their caresses. The goddess quickly remembered that, in this realm, the body she occupied had condensed out of the same material only seconds ago. She stretched her newly formed muscles, flaring her wings while arching her back, to get a feel for this temporary vessel for her consciousness. Before she had entirely finished, a voice called out one of her many names.

“Sol Invicta,” boomed the resonant voice from all directions.

“Somnus,” she named him in reply. She let the draconequus’ name hang in the imaginary air.

“I have summoned you forth through the gates of horn and blood,” the god of sleep declared in a tone full of majesty.

“Yes, I can see that,” Celestia answered in a deliberately unhelpful manner.

Sharing the Draconequuic love of banter, Somnus was thrown off balance by the alicorn’s laconic response. After a few moments of awkward silence the primal force replied in a now-irritated tone, “Are you not curious as to why I have summoned thee before me?”

“Not particularly,” she said, sounding flippant and disinterested. Her statement was, of course, a blatant lie. The simple fact that it was she and not her sister called into the Dreamlands was enough to warn Celestia that something most unusual was happening. She did not want to give the wily god any leverage so the goddess affected her most disinterested façade. The silence stretched between them for several moments.

“Regardless of your seeming apathy, my duty requires me to do so,” the voice blustered.

She prompted him to continue with a quirked eyebrow.

“I have agreed to guide you to another of my kind,” explained Somnus. “I am providing a neutral space for the meeting.”

“And?” she said.

“And what?” the voice sounded rather confused.

“And why are we still here, talking?” at this she allowed the smallest of smiles.

“Oh… um…yes,” was his off-balance reply.

A moment later the mists swirled past, giving the impression of movement. Several subjective minutes passed while Celestia was pulled through countless half-formed dreams. The images streaking past were peaceful and beautiful when they started but as the metaphorical distance they traveled increased the visions darkened into fear-choked nightmares. The goddess began to develop unpleasant suspicions about who they were supposed to meet.

The sensation of motion ended and Celestia found herself surrounded by darkness. Adding to the deep murk were the dark, jagged wisps of nightmare oneiroi. As the alicorn’s imaginary eyes adjusted to her surroundings she noted lightning-blue pinpricks of light approaching from the sector that appeared darkest. The lights grew brighter and more distinct as they approached the gleaming white mare.

Somnus’ voice boomed forth, “As requested, I present Celestia, Dea Solis, styled Princess of Equestria to answer for her crimes against nature.”

Celestia’s composure cracked. “What?” she blurted, while looking around. Her previously careful control having deserted her, she refocused upon the approaching lights. As they grew near, the motes resolved into three paired sets of eyes gleaming in the darkness. Celestia’s previous hypothesis as to her summoner’s identity died unspoken as she asked the approaching form, “Who are you?”

A trio of voices spoke, ignoring the goddess’ question. Each mouth took a portion of the sentence. “Twilight Sparkle; She is yours; Is she not?”

Celestia could just barely make out eight long, sharp limbs in constant motion; spinning, weaving, and cutting countless threads simultaneously. The alicorn’s expression changed from one of puzzlement to one of dread as she identified her accuser. “Kind Moirai, I ask for clarification. Twilight Sparkle is my what?” she answered cautiously.

A cacophony of answers answered her. “Faithful Student. Beloved Daughter. Apprentice and Heir. Tool and Weapon. Prized Possession. Hero under your aegis.”

“She is my student,” Celestia acknowledged, fearful of inadvertently damning the young mare.

“Do you take responsibility for her actions? Are they her own? Is she yours?” The three-faced god asked.

“That depends,” the alicorn equivocated, “Some things she does on her own, others she does for me. Of what is she accused?”

“A god lies shattered and broken in the frozen north,” said one of the voices.

“Erebus’s failure is his own. He chose to join himself to Sombra and his near destruction is the result of that choice.” Celestia countered.

“A god, dead and forgotten, walks the earth,” another voice accused.

“I have deemed Grogar’s crimes to have been paid for by the punishment he endured. I take responsibility for his freedom.” While Twilight had indeed freed Grogar, Celestia had subsequently issued a formal statement to the effect that the Goat’s debt to society had been paid. In Celestia’s eyes, this made Grogar her responsibility.

“She has died and yet lives,” the third accused.

“She is an ingenious mare. She used the properties of Tartarus to save her life,” was Celestia’s third rebuttal.

“You are wrong. Incorrect. Mistaken. She perished, crushed between the horns of Grogar and the teeth of Tartarus. Her soul left her body. She died.”

“She found a very creative way to heal her body,” the alicorn tried again.

“Wrong. Incorrect. Mistaken. One cannot heal the dead. She is dead yet walks. She is mortal yet unkilled.”

“She managed to dodge your fell shears this one time, Atropos,” the goddess attempted to defend Twilight for the third time. “As with all mortals, you will have her in the end.”

“Her thread was marked and cut and yet she exists. She has no thread to cut, no destiny, and yet keeps acting upon the world.” The triple being raised four arms wide and the myriads of threads pulled taut, exposing the tangled web of interconnected lives. “She is abomination, an unnatural thing, she cannot exist,” they accused. To illustrate their point, the Moirai carefully plucked a single thread with the fine tip one of a free leg.

Celestia’s blood ran cold as the implications were made clear to her. Not only did the plucked thread vibrate but all of the other threads that touched that one began to oscillate. Almost instantly, yet more threads, those in contact with the now larger vibrating set, took up the frequency. Freed from the constraints of her own destiny, all of Twilight’s actions were now unaccounted for in the destinies of everyone else. She existed outside of fate, the divine counterpoint to causality, and could theoretically cause the collapse of the entire metaphysical system which ordered their world. As it was, any action she took that affected anyone else in any way derailed that pony from their destiny and then anypony who interacted with that pony became derailed.

The goddess of daylight shivered in the dark and asked, “What was Grogar’s fate?”

“The god is/was/should be dead. Slain by you,” they answered.

“Erebus?” she asked, the expression on her normally serine face looking nauseated.

“He and Sombra are/were/should have become the Crystal Emperor,” they replied.

In a voice thick with dread the alicorn asked the Moirai, “What happens to destiny itself?”

The terrible creature before her sounded scared, “Everyday we are less; we fall apart a little more; become undone.” The Fates took a moment to collect themselves and then continued, “So we ask again, ‘is she yours?’ Are you causing the world to end or is she an aberration? Will you correct this?”

“How can I fix this?” Celestia asked, fearing the answer.

“Twilight Sparkle must die,” they said in perfect unison.

The Moirai’s message sent, Somnus released Celestia. She awoke in darkness, gasping in horror.

There were very few individuals in the world with which Celestia could have a rational discussion about the destruction of by the unsanctioned resurrection of her protégé. Discord was disqualified by the stipulation of the conversation being rational. Cadance was physically too far away while at the same time being emotionally too close to the subject at hoof. The gods of Griffonheim and she were not currently on speaking terms. Chrysalis still wanted to kill her. And Grogar, to put it simply, was a jerk who delighted in being unhelpful.

“That,” she thought, “leaves Luna as the only remaining choice.” Celestia was slightly concerned about the emotional entanglement her sister was developing with Twilight but, given Luna’s relative proximity, the convenience of being able to walk over to talk to her about this outweighed any trepidation she was feeling about their deepening friendship.

Having decided on a course of action, Celestia doffed her nightcap (her favorite one: pink with a white puff at the tip.) for the sake of dignity and set out to find her sister. The first location she searched was Luna’s throne room. The large chamber was dark and nearly empty. The only occupant being the extremely awkward zebra Luna employed as her chief accountant. At the sight of him, Celestia sighed internally.

“Excuse me, Mister Ponzi, I am looking for my sister. Have you seen her?” the alicorn asked in the vain hopes of a yes or no answer.

“It’s Mister Pyramid, your highness. Ponzi is my given name.” A second later, the odd creature’s eyes widened in panic and in a rush he added. “-to which I...claim.”

Celestia’s centuries of experience with zebra nobles and diplomats had led her to the belief that the race possessed a natural talent for poetry. Over the last few months, Mister Ponzi Pyramid had proven that assumption quite thoroughly wrong.

“Yes…Mister Pyramid, if it is easier, you have my permission to speak in prose.

“I could not be so rude to she who…pays for…my food.”

“That would be my sister who pays your salary; and not to belabor the point, the pony I’m here looking for.”

“Ah, yes. Tonight she had canceled court so that she could go make s-.“ The zebra seemed then to cut himself off and struggle to find a suitable replacement word. After far too long, he blurted, “book forts!”

Celestia felt pity for the poor mad creature. “Perhaps, I should just go,” she said as she edged towards the nearest door.

“You will not find her amongst the midnight’s heathers for she is currently betwixt…” Ponzi cut himself off by forcibly shoving a hoof into his own mouth.

“Right…” Celestia replied while affecting the carefully non-threatening smile of somepony dealing with the mentally ill. “I’ll be going now.” Celestia backed out the doorway, not wanting to break eye-contact with Mr. Ponzi. “I do hope you find a form of treatment that helps you with your affliction,” she said before slamming the door shut behind her.

She blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Well, at least I now know that she’s not in the garden either,” she said out-loud to herself. “That was more helpful than average for her staff.”

Celestia then proceeded onwards into the ghastly, subterranean warren of cubicles filled with even more ghastly ponies that her sister humorously referred to as her “offices.” So far, she had tolerated Luna’s practical joke of filling the refurbished dungeons of Canterlot Castle with criminals as one of her sister’s exercises in creative irony. Celestia had identified the prank from the outset and had deliberately chosen to not acknowledge the farce. She was confident that her willpower and patience were better developed than the younger alicorn’s and that it was simply a matter of time until Luna exploded from unfulfilled expectations. While it had been over a year since Luna had begun building her uncivil-service (a pun for which Celestia was inordinately proud), she was certain that her sister would crack any day now and call the whole thing off as a ruse.

The typing pool was normally awash in a dissonant mix of writing machine clatters and gossip of the basest sort. Presenting a vision of the solar diarch in full glory, Celestia was pleased that silence spread among these ponies even faster than what she presumed was the transmission rate of chlamydia. Despite having left her golden regalia behind in her bedchambers, Celestia projected majesty with every step she took amongst the commoners and could feel their reverence (with a dash of fear) caressing her. Approaching her goal, she passed through the ebony double-doors separating her sister’s private offices from the riff-raff.

Seated behind the reception desk was a dark-coated stallion. He was fussing with one of the new, unicorn made, self-heating coffee makers. Apparently, the strange pony was of the opinion that the contraption was possessed of too few tubes, as he was diligently soldering yet more onto the device. Several heartbeats passed and the unicorn continued his project without acknowledging, or perhaps even noticing, the radiant goddess not five feet from him.

Celestia cleared her throat.

The unicorn stuck out his tongue and bit it in concentration as he continued to manipulate brass and tin.

“Um, excuse me?”

Without raising his eyes, he spewed forth a series of noises that may have been some form of Equuish. Replaying them in her mind she approximated his dialogue as: “I know yer there. I’ll be wit’cha in a minute. Take a cuushion o’er there.”

Celestia blinked, the most surprised she’d been in decades. Perhaps he only knew that somepony was here and had not noticed her identity. “I’m Celestia.”

There was no reply.

“The Princess.”

Silence continued.

“Diarch of the Day, Sol Invictus, the Morningstar, Immortal and Loving Goddess of Ponydom.”

Nothing.

“Luna’s...sister,” she growled.

“Ay, I’ve ‘erdof ya. A bonnie great white ‘orse, whasshat makes tha da’light,” he said, evidently finished with whatever mechanical manipulations were distracting him from the eternal source of light and life confronting him. Celestia’s eyes narrowed as she wondered just how upset her sister would be with her for banishing the unkempt and impertinent pony for the furthest corners of the world.

“Sign da list,” the beastly pony ordered the princess, gesturing to a clipboard perched on the edge of his desk.

“Really?” her brows rose in incredulity.

“’E’erwan signs,’ I was told. Yer parta e’erwan.”

“I’m going through those doors to speak with my sister,” Celestia pronounced with the weight of a royal decree.

“Surest thing, juist sign-in foremaist.”

“I do not want to sign the bloody list. I want to talk to my sister.” Celestia’s temper was beginning to obviously fray.

“Am I gonna haf’ta call security?” the stallion persisted in his quixotic quest.

“Fine!” Celestia finally broke in the face of what she cataloged as impenetrable stupidity and grasped the clipboard in her aura. Looking about she noticed the absence of a quill. Turning her fiery gaze back onto what she was beginning to think of as’ the suicidal stallion’ she queried, “Where is the quill?”

“Don’ gots one, somebloke walked off with’en last one.”

Celestia closed her eyes and counted to ten. Re-opening her eyes she fired a beam of tightly focused sunlight from her horn at the paper, burning her signature through the list, clipboard, desk, and carpeting. She swallowed, regaining her composure, and levitated the clipboard over to her least-favorite secretary in the world.

“That’ll do,” he said upon examining her mark. “Wha’ should I put duun as da rayson fur da gabber wit da Princess?” the stallion asked as he pulled a quill from his desk drawer.

“You have a quill,” she said in the tone of voice she only used for issuing death sentences.

“Yer wainten a meetin regaierden stationary?” he asked.

“No, you just told me that there wasn’t a quill for me to use.”

“Och, nay. Dere ain’t a quill fur visters. ‘Ow am I gouain ta doo mai work widout one? So, whatchoodai put deuun fer da reaison fer gabbins?”

That was the final straw. “Preventing all of creation from collapsing,” she confessed, broken on the rack of bureaucracy.

“I’ll mak’a note o’ tha an put yer request in tha ‘important’ queue.” The stallion placed the clipboard back onto his desk and promptly began ignoring Celestia once again.

“Queue?” She asked, now near tears.

“Luna isnae here. She teuk da nacht off.”

Celestia reminded herself that it had been centuries since she last immolated anypony and that this horrible little stallion was not worth ruining her “years since immolation” record. Trembling from the titanic struggle to contain her wrath, she asked in a light tone, “Couldn’t you have told me that she wasn’t here at the start?”

“Dis isa bonnie job, I ain’t gonna break protocol an risk loosin’ it onnae lark,” he answered as if that explained everything.

Celestia instead broke protocol in response, teleporting away from the stallion before she lost control. She appeared several floors above, startling the pair of night-guards that were standing outside of the entrance to Luna’s private apartments. As per terrestrial and divine law, Luna’s rooms were her own domain and even Celestia was unable to teleport directly into them.

“I am here to see my sister and if you present me with any paperwork I will destroy you,” Celestia intoned, daring all sign-in lists, queues, or forms to face her wrath.

A heated debate about who should do the talking was carried out between the two guards by means of worried, sidelong glances. The loser of the debate having been decided (the one on the left), he answered. “I’m sorry your highness but Princess Luna has requested privacy this evening.”

“Yes, but I am quite confident that does not include me,” Celestia claimed without any actual justification.

Another silent conference was held between the two guards to decide which unfortunate had the duty of telling the Princess “no.” Left again was forced into speaking, “Your majesty, given the circumstances under which I was issued my orders, I can confidently say that you were included in the category of ‘everyone’.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed as she contemplated the obdurate guard. “I will take full responsibility for any consequences for disturbing her privacy,” she offered by way of negotiation.

Right chose to speak this time, “I’m sorry Ma’am, I don’t think that’s possible given the particular circumstances.”

Celestia noted but dismissed the odd emphasis the guard used. Instead she said, in a kind but firm voice, “Gentlecolts, please step away from the door. I am going through, you cannot stop me, and I do not want to accidently hurt either of you in the process.”

Right replied with a dyspeptic grimace, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, our duty prevents us from doing so.”

Left closed his amber eyes and clenched in an expectation of extreme unpleasantness.

Celestia summoned forth her golden magical aura and gently wrapped each stallion up in a cocoon of her energy. It was harmless and would only feel slightly over-warm for the duration.

“My apologies loyal knights but I cannot allow you to delay me any further,” the diarch said apologetically. Levitating the immobilized ponies out of her way, Celestia passed through the double doors into her sister’s private realm.

The apartment was a worse mess than she had expected. Cushions were displaced from their respective couches. Numerous paper delivery containers from an elaborate, Neighponese meal cluttered all flat surfaces not covered with what appeared to be her sister’s laundry. The clothing, both formal and casual, was tossed about as if in abandon. Celestia vowed to include in her talk with her sister an anecdote about straining the goodwill of the cleaning staff.

Hearing a noise coming from the bedroom, Celestia crossed her sister’s chambers to the appropriate door and was about to pull it open when she heard Twilight Sparkle’s voice and froze. The white mare stilled the nervous flicking of an ear and placed it against the cool, smooth wood. Though the voices were still muffled by the door’s thickness, Celestia could make out urgent, throaty whispers and embarrassed giggles from both Luna and Twilight.

Celestia’s eyes widened in her suddenly flushed face. In her embarrassment, she pulled her face away from the door as if burned and stumbled, landing roughly on her rump. The voices within the bedchamber suddenly stopped and the goddess held her breath, praying that she hadn’t betrayed herself by making too much noise. The silence held for a few moments and then she heard the familiar clop of Luna’s hooves touching the floor. Celestia’s mind raced, desperately searching for any plausible excuse for such a severe violation of her sister’s privacy. Twilight’s voice called Luna’s name, the following words were unintelligible but the imploring tone was unmistakable. Celestia could feel her sister staring suspiciously at the sealed door but after a moment Luna acquiesced to Twilight’s request and returned to bed.

Not daring to use magic within Luna’s personal realm, Celestia gathered her hooves underneath herself with painstaking care. “Silence,” the goddess repeated within her own mind again and again, until the mantra filled every nook and cranny of her mind. Willing herself to become silence itself, she tiptoed while gently fluttering her wings to reduce her weight and soften her hoof-falls. As she passed through her sister’s living room she re-interpreted the pattern of detritus around her; this was the remnant of a special night spent in together. Accelerating as she gained more distance from the bedroom, she passed through the outer doors at a near gallop and skid to a stop in front of the wide-eyed but still immobilized guards.

Panting now that she dared to breathe, Celestia gently closed the ebony doors. She then turned her attention to the guards, releasing them from their magical constraints. All three equines stared at each other awkwardly. At the same moment, all three spoke.

“Well, I should be going.”
“I tried to warn you.”
“Could you not tell our boss about this?”

Celestia raised a hoof to indicate that she should be the one to speak next. “Thank you for your efforts to save me and your mistress from embarrassment. Your loyalty is to be commended. I am going to go now and drink as much wine as I physically can in a vain attempt to forget that this ever happened. And yes, I do not intend to ever speak of this again and I would ask the same of you. Does that cover everything?”

The two night guards nodded.

“Good,” and with that Celestia turned around and headed directly towards her own chambers. She was so agitated and embarrassed she didn’t actually think about what happened until after she was back within her own bedroom sprawled across her bed. It was then that the thought hit: Twilight Sparkle was visiting Canterlot, was actually within the Palace itself, but hadn’t informed Celestia nor requested any time to visit with her supposedly beloved mentor.

“Oh,” she said into the darkness as a bit of her heart broke.

Author's Note

Welcome back to the Titanoverse for our third major story. This story actually starts a few weeks prior to the events in Ghosts of Whitetail Wood and is a story about and following Celestia through those events and beyond. Thanks to my awesome pre-readers PhycoKrusk (who came up with the name for this story) and TheAspiringWriter93.

In case you are wondering what oneiroi are/look like, here you go:http://derpicdn.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTMvMDMvMjcvMThfMTJfMTNfNDQ1XzI4MDk0Nl9fVU5PUFRfX3NhZmVfaWR3XzUxNGRmMmI3YTRjNzJkNGM1ZDAwMDExNi5qcGciXV0/280946__safe_idw_moon_spoiler-comic_514d72d0a4c72d75af0010de_514df2b7a4c72d4c5d000116.jpg

Mouth Full of Ashes

Celestia sat across the breakfast table from Luna, watching her hum a long-forgotten ballad between sips of coal-black coffee. Her sister’s lips wore a languid and satisfied smile as she brushed her spoon across the top of a bowl of applesauce. Celestia’s own lips were crushed together in a pale, rigid line due to her all-too carnal knowledge of the source of Luna’s good mood.

The indigo mare continued humming, oblivious to her sister’s eyes boring into her, as she carved abstract patterns into the powdered cinnamon topping. Celestia’s half-forgotten scone fell to the table with a clatter of abused porcelain as she snapped, “Would you please stop doing that.”

Surprised by her sister’s outburst, Luna’s spoon twitched and splattered the amber substance across the gleaming white tablecloth. Her mouth moved silently for a moment as she swam back from whatever pleasant memory she had floating through, “Um...What?”

“That unendurable racket, Luna. Stop making it,” Celestia replied in a cold tone.

Silence hung over the table for a few more moments until Luna broke it again, “What?”

“The humming,” Celestia enunciated with exaggerated care.

“Oh, was I humming?” Luna replied. “I hadn’t noticed. I suppose I might have been doing so.” Luna’s smile broadened as she mentally reviewed the reason for her relaxed state. “I took last night off from court and am feeling much refreshed.”

“Not a lie,” Celestia appraised her sister’s deception, “just a very careful omission.” “So I can see,” was what she said out loud.

Luna focus turned to her sister and after a moment’s contemplation she asked, “Tia, tis anything the matter?”

Celestia’s mind was instantly flooded with several different possible answers. She schooled herself and organized them into a list prior to speaking; she was Twilight’s mentor after all.

“Yes Luna, the world is going to end unless I kill Twilight Sparkle.”
“Yes Luna, I nearly murdered one of your ponies over a quill.”
“Yes Luna, I figured out what rhymes with ‘midnight’s heathers’.”
“Yes Luna, I accidentally caught you fornicating with the mare I raised as a daughter.”
“Yes, Luna, you’ve evicted me from my place within Twilight’s heart and I am frothing green with envy.”

Celestia’s eyes widened in response to the last entry on the list, she placed it inside the mental lockbox she kept for just these sorts of occasions and instead invented a response that would be more appropriate. “No Luna, everything’s fine. I just had some bad dreams last night.”

She followed the words with the smug thought, “Not a lie, just a very careful omission.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Luna replied without hesitation, “Would you like me to accompany you to the Dreamlands tonight?”

Celestia called upon her centuries of experience in politics to keep her carefully controlled face composed in the face of Luna’s offer. Her secrets, her envy, and her shame would all be laid bare before her sister if she were to allow the dreamwalker within her subconscious. Celestia smoothly lied again to her sister’s face, “I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

“It wouldn’t be any bother at all, Tia. I’d be happy to help,” Luna said with an easy and genuine smile.

“No, Lulu, I want to first try resolving the matter myself,” Celestia demurred. “At least that is the truth,” she told herself. “I’ll let you know if things become...stuck.”

Luna’s look turned appraising again, “Very well, my sister. I just want you to know that I’m here for you, anytime you need me.”

The words, “Even at, oh for the sake of example, last night around three A.M.?” strained against the inside of her teeth. She swallowed them alongside the bile that was creeping up the back of her throat and instead said, “Of course I do and I am grateful for that.” Sickened by her own talent for lying, she decided to give up on the meal that it felt like her stomach was turning to ashes. “I’m going to get to work, Luna,” she said, standing up from her place-setting.

“But, you have barely broken your fast,” her sister remarked. Concern for her sister was clearly stamped across her open and untrained face. The sight of it made Celestia’s guts twist.

She gathered a miniscule fraction of her power and unleashed it upon the scone. For a moment the doomed pastry glowed brighter than her sun. The sudden flash of light contrasted with the more gentle candlelight, making the latter now appear as a dim glow besieged by shadows. The scone collapsed into a puff of light-gray ash. “I am no longer hungry.”

“Tia!” Luna gasped, shocked by her sister’s behavior.

“You and I both know that this,” she gestured to the surviving components of the meal, “is a farce.”

“Tia!” Was all that Luna could think to say in that moment of outrage.

“Don’t you think we lie enough as it is?” Celestia’s fey look developed a hard-edged smile. “Do we need to lie about needing food too?”

That caused Luna to pause before answering, Celestia noted with a darker shade of satisfaction. “While it is technically true that these meals are more of a luxury than a necessity, I do think they are important,” her sister carefully argued.

“Then I leave it up to you to coddle and complement the chefs on their efforts. Good Day, Luna.”

Luna’s worried eyes silently followed Celestia’s form as she left the dining room.

Celestia released a shuddering breath after the doors were closed behind her. The guards on-station broke regulation for a moment to glance at the goddess they served. Celestia’s eyes met theirs and with the slightest of head-shakes, she ensured their silence on the matter.

Placing one hoof in front of the other, Celestia pretended to be purposefully heading somewhere while her mind raced. “I can’t stand going back to my rooms,” she thought as she envisioned the hock-deep layer of crumpled paper that coated her private office’s floor. Each ball of wadded-up, torn, tear-stained, or, in one case, chocolate-smeared paper contained an aborted attempt to contact Twilight Sparkle.

Dearest and most faithful Twilight,
I had a dream about you last night. Not like that. Really, I don’t think about you that way. And to clarify, what I mean by that way is-

Dear Twilight,
The universe will implode unless you to cease doing anything and everything. Please stand perfectly still until I contact you again.

Twilight, do you know that I love you? I mean in a platonic way. Actually, maternally might more accurate way to describe it. Not that I wish to take the place of your actual mother, that would be rude and presumptu-

Delight’s Feathers
Ignite’s Weathers
Lignite’s Gethers
Insight’s Tethers
Twilight’s Neth-

Twilight,
I cannot express my sorrow adequately in this form but-

Dear Twilight Sparkle,
Blah Bla Blah, Bla Blah Blah Bla Blah.

Ms. Sparkle,
It is unfortunate that you felt that you had to conceal your presence from me while within my home. I thought you trusted me enough to- You horrible child, you made me cry.

(A sheet entirely covered with doodles of flowers and butterflies.)

My beloved Twilight,
I have never directly told you how I feel about our relationship. I love you as a daughter and it breaks my heart to tell you that we do not have much time left to us. I have been given a choice by the powers that guide the universe. Because I cannot abide the one option that will save us, I will allow the world to end. Make peace with your friends and family but tell no one. Let them go with a smile on their lips and love in their hearts.

(A sheet of paper stabbed repeatedly with a quill, over and over.)

Twilight,
I can’t allow the world to end simply because I need you in my life. It would be the most selfish act imaginable. Please come back to the palace as soon as possible. I promise to make it painless. I wish we could have spent more time together.

Dozens more attempts, most worse than these, were abandoned after the first sentence or two. Some sounded cruel, some petty, others would have sent Twilight into a terminal state of shock, and some even read like the beginning of a letter confessing her love for the mare. Despite her frustration, Celestia kept composing draft after draft. She only stopped when her chambermaid reminded her of the time and need to raise the sun. Her mind buzzed with the slurry of emotions and words that sloshed about in her head.

Celestia spotted movement at the end of a hallway to her right. The detected motion pulled her out of her semi-somnambulant state and her mind began registering her surroundings once again. A glass door capped the end of the passageway and through its panes she saw the movement of brightly colored birds against a background of dark green leaves which swayed in the breeze. It was one of the private, semi-secret entrances to the royal gardens she occasionally used. Celestia’s face finally creased in a genuine smile as she remembered sneaking up behind a school group touring the grounds. She had silently hushed the fillies as she joined their group and it had taken several minutes for the overworked guide to notice the princess. “I might have gotten to enjoy the entire tour, had it not been for the giggles,” she said to no one in particular.

Guiltily glancing left and right, like one of those school-fillies cutting class, she took her moment and darted through the doors to her garden. She instantly began to feel better once the sunlight caressed her skin. Her step lightened into a bouncing trot and she deeply inhaled the pollen-flecked air as she lost herself among the meticulously groomed topiaries. For the first time in far too long her mind went silent.

In this moment she allowed herself to forget the impending disaster hanging over her and her student. She let go of the lie shared by Luna and Twilight. She stopped worrying about what she felt for the little purple mare. Adrift in this sea of green she wasn't a princess or a goddess. She wasn’t even Celestia anymore. For a glorious green and gold minute she was a simple horse and kicked off her shoes, shook her crown from her mane, and let herself scratch an itch on her rump against a hedge shaped like a dolphin.

Her equilibrium restored, she lay down on the warm grass and brought her mind back under conscious control. Celestia pushed aside thoughts of guilt, glad that the only casualties from her tantrum was an over-dry breakfast pastry and a ridiculous looking shrub. “This, this is the state of mind that I need to be in to confront the problem with Twilight and the Moirai,” she thought to herself.

An all too familiar voice replied to her thoughts. “Oh poor widdle Celly, do you want to tell dear uncle Discord your troubles?”

Celestia’s good mood died a sudden and horrible death.

“Aww, and here I thought you came all this way out here to see me,” the draconequus replied to her sudden shift in mood.

“Why in Tartarus would you think that?” she answered the imp.

“Its not like you put me in a high-traffic area, almost no one other than gardeners come all the way back here.”

Celestia examined her surroundings and eventually located a stone antler poking up above a hedgewall only a few feet away. She had specified that Discord should be placed somewhere so that ponies wouldn’t just stumble upon the old god by accident. It appeared that she had done just that herself.

“Oh, come on. I’m bored, you’re upset by something, and there isn’t anything I can do to harm anyone while I’m like this,” Discord wheedled.

“I seem to remember a sequence of events leading to Twilight going into Tartarus and freeing...” Celestia stopped mid-sentence.

Discord could sense her mental footing shift rapidly. “What?” he asked in an innocent tone.

“This is your fault.”

“What is?”

“Twilight ended up in Tartarus because of you.”

“That sounds like something I’d do.”

“She died there.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. I actually kind of liked her.”

“She brought herself back to life while there.”

“Well, isn’t she the little overachiever.”

“The Fates came to me last night.”

“Oh, that has to be a big deal. They never leave their home, not even for bridge night and my seven-bean salad; Total homebodies.”

“They say that Twilight’s thread had been cut when she died.”

“So?”

“She’s still here, alive, without a destiny.”

“Good for her. I can really respect a self-made mare.”

“They said that her actions are derailing all of destiny, throwing ponies off their path anytime she interacts with them.”

“You don’t expect me to cry about the world becoming less predictable, do you?

“I do expect you to be worried about the world ending. Without destiny, the divine order falls apart.”

“Boo hoo.”

“Without order, the world falls apart.”

“Eh,” she could feel Discord’s mental shrug.

“An eternity of nothing, stretching on forever. Nothing living, nothing dying, nothing growing, or ever changing.”

“All right, I do admit that does sound fairly monotonous.”

“What do I do to stop it?”

“Easy, kill Twilight Sparkle.”

“What if I can’t?”

“She can’t be that powerful.”

“...Ok, won’t”

“Then you have the honor of being the most influential deity ever?”

Celestia laid her head on the grass, depression starting to reassert itself.

“Oh come on. Seriously? You’re going to just quit, just like that?” he chided. Switching to a falsetto voice he mocked her, “Oh well, I guess the world has to end because I’m a sentimental weenie of a big white horse.”

“I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t even know I want to. Could I keep going on after murdering her? Should I?” She asked herself and Discord simultaneously.

“You’ve done worse and gotten over it,” he replied.

“No I haven’t-”

“Liar!” he interrupted her with a mental shout.

“No, I haven’t gotten over it.”

“Oh, well...that might be true. You do have a talent for being depressing and there’s no better suicide note than a smoking crater the size of the whole world.”

“That’s what it would be, wouldn’t it?”

“A giant, pointless, melodramatic gesture that no one would even get to see? Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes, focusing on his antler. “Why are you being so helpful?”

“Do you know what’s better than a lie that wounds your enemies?”

“What?”

“A truth that does the same.”

She shivered as she felt his fanged smile in her mind. Without saying goodbye to the Lord of Chaos, she tucked her regalia underneath a wing and left the garden. She ran into her sister on the way back to the palace.

“Tia? Your staff came and got me when you didn’t show up to court.” Luna closed the distance between them and forced a hug onto her. “What is wrong?” her sister whispered forcefully into Celestia's flattened ear.

“I...I...” Celestia blew out a breath while gathering her resolve. “I’m sorry for this morning, it was out of line.”

“I don’t care about a scone Tia, I’m worried about you.”

She sighed, “I’m tired Lulu, I’m very, very tired. I think I need a day off too.”

Luna pulled her sister closer. “If that’s what you need, I’ll let them know for you. Go. Take a day for yourself. I’ll handle things until tomorrow morning.”

Celestia finally relaxed and hugged her sister back. “Thank you.”

After the embrace reached its natural end, Luna stepped back and spoke firmly to Celestia. “If you have any trouble sleeping, send for me. Let me help.”

“I’ll try,” she answered, regretting yet another lie to her sister.

Freed of her sister’s well-meaning meddling Celestia headed straight up to her private chambers. The drifts of drafts were still littering the floor as she had expressly forbidden the cleaning staff from entering her apartments today. These pieces of paper were too dangerous to end up in the trash, only the fireplace would do for them.

Shoveling a path through the detritus with her magic she made her way to the writing desk. She took up one of the last few sheets of clean paper and a fresh quill and began to write.

My most faithful and dear student,

It has come to my attention that we have not spent any time together since your last visit after your adventures in the Crystal Empire. While your letters and reports are quite thorough, I would like to have the opportunity to meet face-to-face. This isn’t an urgent matter but my schedule is very tight these days. I have some free time on this coming Sunday night where we can get dinner and spend a few hours together. Unfortunately, the rooms I keep reserved for your visits are uninhabitable due to a minor infestation. I am sorry to impose upon your parents this way but I think it best if you were to spend the nights of your visit here with them.

One additional matter, there is a diplomatic function that requires either myself or Luna to attend. As I mentioned, my schedule is very tight and it would be most helpful to me if you and Luna could attend this dinner at the Canid embassy together. Your command of recent history will be of great assistance to my sister.

Your mentor,

Princess Celestia.

Looking over the drying ink, she nodded to herself and sealed up the scroll of lies with a dollop of wax. With a flash of green it was sent to Spike and she was committed to this course of action. She made her way to her bed, brushing against the wadded balls of discarded paper in her path. Wherever she touched them, they burst into flames. By the time she had stopped crying the fires had gone out, leaving nothing but ashes.

Replacements

The universe was screwing with Celestia and it wasn’t Discord this time; she had checked. The rational progression of time had become unmoored during what she thought of as “The Week From Tartarus.” The days following her oft lamented letter to Twilight seemed no longer progress from one moment to the next, as they had tended to do for the last several millennia. Instead, time seemed to lurch between periods of temporal dilation and compression. Paradoxically, the combination of effects led to the perception of some hours being longer than a day should be while each day seemed to flash by in a blur.

The nights were, by far, the worst. Each moment spent in the cloying darkness seemed to stretch into eternity. During those elongated seconds, Celestia had time to review her entire relationship with Twilight, the curriculum she had crafted for the mare, and what choices she had made that led them to this point. And yet, while her self-imposed torment seemed to continue over eons, the nights themselves seemed to fly past in a scant few minutes. Each morning when she raised the sun was one less day for Twilight to live and no prayer or invocation would delay the coming of that fateful day she had chosen for her beloved student’s execution.

She had, at least, been successful at pretending to be more composed than she was. She had endured the meals with Luna with some semblance of grace Dutifully, she nibbled at pastries and sipped at tea. Luna had been pleased at her re-appearance at the dining table and had, in return, suggested that Celestia begin taking the noon hour off for herself. Celestia had admitted on the spot that this was one of her sister's better ideas and the solar princess immediately implemented the change in her schedule. She would have liked to have spent those hours in her garden, but Discord’s presence among the verge stripped the green-space of any potential peace. Instead, she had migrated to the rooftops of the palace, following some instinctual pull from her astronomical counterpart.

The day was Friday and the hour was noontime so Celestia was perched like an anhinga on the roof of the ivory tower that had once housed her protege. Her wings were held out, splayed so as to collect every last droplet of sunlight while she sat back on her haunches. Her head was held high, exposing her throat so that her first, oldest, and most steadfast friend could caress the tender flesh there with golden kisses. The white goddess lost herself in these moments, the only peace she knew during these days of horrid anticipation. She’d always loved her sun but now she loved it all the more because it would never judge her, never leave her, and never ask her to lie.

Her reverie was interrupted by a pegasine guard wearing the livery of her own Solar Guard. The stallion fluttered to a loud and clattering landing upon the slate tiles and addressed his diarch.

“Your majesty?”

Regretfully, she opened her eyes and lowered her head so her eyes would meet the guard’s. “Yes?”

“Princess, you requested to be informed when C-, Shining Armor arrived.”

She allowed herself a sliver of entertainment, “Yes?”

“Um,” the suddenly off-balance guard stammered, “He’s here.”

Wearing the ghost of a smile, Celestia replied. “Have him meet me in...” she glanced back up at her fiery orb, “ the Solarium. I will be along in a few moments.”

“As you wish,” was the guard’s boilerplate reply as he leapt away from the tower and took wing.

Alone once again but no longer lost in her sunlight, the despair that was her steadfast companion returned to its perch in her heart. She hadn’t felt this alone since the first few nights after her sister’s banishment. Celestia knew that there was no way she could share the details of this approaching tragedy with Luna. Not only would her sister react poorly to the revelation that Twilight Sparkle must die for the universe to continue but Celestia wanted Twilight to have the best possible weekend before her execution. She did not think that her sister’s acting abilities were up to that particular challenge and therefore had to be kept in the figurative dark until after the deed was done.

Celestia allowed herself a few more minutes of suntime as it would likely take Shining Armor that long to walk to the Solarium from wherever the stewards stashed him. The great white mare groaned as she rose to her hooves, not out of pain or stiffness but out of an utter lack of enthusiasm for the deceit-filled conversation she was about to partake in. She paused at the edge of the roof and contemplated the volume of air between her and the cobblestone paved ground. Her mind went blank as she stepped off the ledge.

There was a peace in surrendering to Gaia’s pull. With gravity’s aid, she built up speed rapidly and soon the various windows, crenulations, and other architectural motifs were passing alongside her in as an unresolved blur of motion. Her wings knew the best moment to unfurl and catch the air; she could feel them twitch under their own volition, starting the movement without a conscious thought. In that moment, time once more unmoored itself from its rational progression and the space between one heartbeat and the next was stretched like taffy.

The alicorn took conscious control of her wings, choosing to hold them in their dive position longer than was needed...or prudent. As the elongated second continued, Celestia’s eyes began to trace the outlines of the individual paving stones as they grew closer, at a languid rate within this moment and at a blistering pace outside of it. A small, sad smile bent her lips as she considered the ultimate form of abdication. “Were I mortal, I could just hold still, close my eyes, and conclude my life prior to desecrating everything I believe in,” she thought. As things were, she mused, she was far more likely to cause terminal damage to the cobbles than to herself. She would be bruised and battered, perhaps even a few bones broken, but she could survive almost any fall. All that would die, she concluded, would be her people’s faith in her. For the next moment (and dozen feet of altitude) she wondered if that was necessarily a bad thing.

As she approached the point of no-return, she remembered Discord’s words: “A grand, pointless gesture.” This would not kill her. Even if she were able to kill herself, it would not prevent the terrible consequences of Twilight’s resurrection. Crashing into the ground would only cause widespread panic among her ponies as they lost faith in her and the nation she built for their guidance and protection. Celestia confronted herself and her motives with the simple question, “How selfish am I?”

“Damn!” she growled while unfurling her wings to grip the air. Bones creaked, muscles burned, and ligaments stretched taught as piano wire as the feathered limbs were placed under a load measured in tons. Despite the application of forces only a divine body could withstand, she had held the dive too long and the cobblestones raced towards her as the strange moment shattered. Gritting her teeth with the effort, she pushed the wings’ angle of attack even further and the limbs obeyed, but only under the most strenuous protest.

Her white bulk was ripping through the air, barely two feet above the stones. No sooner had her mind returned from the pinhole-focused realm of pain the abuse of her wings had brought her to, she was forced to become very, very, aware of the fact that she was now hurtling towards one of the thick, stone walls surrounding her palace. Heading towards it at an entirely unreasonable rate of speed. She extended her hooves below her, making the motions of a prance so as to convey downwards force with a minimum of friction pulling against the hooves. Even with this odd gait, she had to flap with all the force her strained wings could muster just to not over-top and plow snout-first into the ground.

Trading her momentum for lift, she continued to bend her arc upwards. As she reached the wall, she extended her legs and pushed against the curtain of stone. The force managed to push the angle of her ascent even higher. She passed by the crenulations and guard-towers as a flash of white and a gale of wind. Finally soaring above the obstacle course of architecture, Celestia remembered to breathe. She maintained her vertical flight, now slowing rapidly due to gravity’s pull and just as she reached stall speed she used her long body as a rudder and turned her flight into a slow, graceful glide that ended at the rooftop access of the Solarium.

With her hooves back on solid stone, Celestia took a cleansing breath to begin gathering her composure but that attempt was shattered by the eruption of applause from every quarter. Scores of hooves beat a staccato ovation as guards broke discipline and joined the civilians in celebrating her aerobatics, completely unaware of the morbid and selfish source of their necessity. Celestia’s face became stricken as she witnessed her kingdom unknowingly cheering her flirtation with oblivion. She was only saved from breaking down into a weeping wreck by the sound of seldom-used hinges moaning as they were forced into service. Reminded of her nearby subjects she clamped the iron mask of composure back onto her skull.

“Your majestic flight inspires us all,” the servant said to her, intending the statement as a complement.

“You are too kind,” Celestia replied, suffocating underneath the mask of serenity. She used her long legs to set a quick pace, not give her subject any time to notice the cracks in her rapidly applied mask.

She ducked through the pony-sized door and could feel the muscles in her back relax as the diffracted sunlight blazed around her. It was crafted as a gift to her many years ago and was designed around the central premise of worshiping the sun in all its glory. The frame of the chamber was crafted of painstakingly polished brass. Set within each armature was a pane of the largest, clearest glass available in the era in which it was build. The edge of each window was beveled so as to bend and split the light into a cascade of miniature rainbows that chased each other around the bone-white, sun-bleached wooden floor. Standing beside window bearing a rather obvious nose-print was Shining Armor, former Captain of the Equestrian Guard, currently the Prince-consort to the Crystal Empress. His posture was tall and proud as he saluted her, his smile lighting up his face almost as much as the raw sunlight that danced across him. Celestia felt a pang of envy.

“That’s no longer necessary, Prince Shining Armor,” Celestia answered his salute.

The stallion sheepishly moved his foreleg from his temple to the back of his skull, mussing his blue mane in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Princess. I’m still not used to all this.”

“How can Cadance bear to open her heart up and love someone who dies a little more each day? she wondered. “Is she an oblivious fool or a far stronger mare than I? She has to know what's coming.”

“Um, Princess?” Shining prompted as the silence grew awkward.

Celestia breathed out a single chuckle and shook her head. “My apologies, Captain. I am a touch distracted.”

“No problem, Your Majesty,” he answered.

His entire demeanor communicated the presence of an alert but calm mind within his white frame. Celestia could see the physical appeal of such a stallion but the aging process would not recede from her mind’s eye. “Will Cadance seek to follow this one into death or will she somehow persist beyond his end? What would become of the world without its goddess of love? Could she fall into darkness?” she wondered. Out loud, she said, “Captain Shining Armor, I’m glad you could come. The process of training your replacement is continuing apace but I’m beginning to think that it might be helpful to us for you to sit down with Acting-Captain Bulwark and verbally fill in some of the gaps in your reports.”

Shining Armor was unable to completely mask the sudden nervousness that gripped him.

Celestia tried to reassure him, “Not that there’s anything wrong with your reports as they were filed but reading about the many security operations you oversaw is qualitatively different than discussing them at length, over a few days, with the ability to ask an unlimited number of questions.”

“Oh! No problem Princess,” he replied as his easy calm quickly restored itself.

Celestia nearly smiled as she contrasted him with his sister’s more high-strung character.

“I packed light and should be ready to meet with Lieutenant, I mean Acting-Captain, Bulwark as soon as I can stash my bag into the barracks,” he continued.

“Ah, well, there is an issue with that,” Celestia almost-lied adroitly. “I’ve already had Bulwark move into your old quarters and with the separation and re-establishment of the Guard into Solar and Lunar companies there just isn’t enough room to put you up at the palace.” While it was technically true the Bulwark had changed quarters to take over Shining’s old space, that move had been instigated by Celestia only four days ago.

“Oh,” Shining said as the implications of the word “replacement” began to sink in. “Um, yes, of course.”

Celestia continued, “Is there any way that your parents could put you up for the duration of your stay? Because you are here on my behest, the crown is most willing to compensate them for any additional expenses related to your visit.”

“Oh, no, no, Princess. They’ll probably feel like paying you for getting me to visit them.”

Celestia managed a short but honest laugh. “That is most delightful to hear.” Switching back to the primary subject of the conversation, Celestia continued.” “Bulwark is in the Solar Captain’s office, I’m sure you know where it is.”

“Er, yeah,” was his slightly-stilted reply.

Celestia allowed her amusement at the gentle teasing to show on her face. “Excellent! I’ll leave the scheduling up to the two of you. Oh, and please give my regards to your parents,” she said as she headed for the stairs leading back down into her home.

Twilight and Luna’s outing to the Canidian embassy had been a disaster and Celestia had been hearing about it all night. First came one of the ponies who worked at the embassy as a janitor (a spy) reporting in about the diplomatic “kerfuffle.” Later a missive arrived from the embassy, strongly protesting the attempted assassination of the ambassador’s daughter by Twilight Sparkle, notorious catspaw for Princess Celestia. After that came the newspaper reporters speculating about the impending war between Equestria and Canidia. As dates go, this one did not turn out well.

Eventually, she received word that the mares in question had returned to the palace. While on one hoof she was relieved that the embassy hadn’t taken the pair into custody, she felt that a couple of days in a Canid prison as punishment for the international disaster those two had created wasn’t entirely out of proportion. With a final glance over the quickly growing pile of diplomatic cables she got up to head over to Luna’s apartments. While Celestia wasn’t going to throw them in irons either, she was planning on giving the notorious duo a firm talking to.

As she drew near her sister’s private sector, she heard a loud bang - as if someone had slammed open the heavy double doors to Luna’s apartments. Her intention to scold Luna and Twilight evaporated as she began to hear their argument.

“Halt! Where goest thou!” Luna boomed.

“I’m going home, to my parents’,” Twilight replied with sharply clipped words.

“Why dost thou conclude our date so early?”

“Date,” Twilight deadpanned. “You call that travesty a date?”

“Of course, I took thee to a fancy location for a dinner outing. This comports with the modern standards of courtship.”

“You took me to an embassy. You were working. We were working!”

“It was a very nice embassy celebrating a happy occasion,” Luna replied in an insulted tone.

“We were thrown out!”

“Thou wouldn’t stop thy retching!”

“Because they served us meat!” was Twilight’s shouted reply.

“Thou narry poisoned the ambassador’s daughter!” Luna shouted back.

“It was just chocolate!”

“Chocolates I commissioned for thee!”

“I wasn’t hungry anymore because of the meat!”

“Thou canst not just dispose my symbols of affection onto another woman!”

“You’re jealous?!?”

“Nay, hurt by thine unthinking action”

“Unthinking?!? You took me out for a serving of Claribelle with a side of potatoes! How is that even legal!””

“‘Twas but gravy, it wouldn’t have been fatal to you. And the embassy is under their law, thou doth wot that!” Celestia winced as she heard her sister’s modern Equish disintegrate under the strain of arguing.

“‘Not fatal’ is now the minimum standard for our dates?” was Twilight's sarcastic rejoinder.

“‘Twas diplomacy!”

“If that’s so then it wasn’t a date!”

“‘Tis called ‘multitasking!”

“It’s called a disaster!”

There was a pause in the back and forth, one long enough for Luna to take a calming breath. “Then come back to mine chambers, let us open a bottle of wine and make some good memories to set the balance even.”

“No Luna, I just want to go to bed and forget all about tonight.”

“There is no memory from this eventide thou wouldest keep?” Luna asked in a small, obviously hurt voice.

“I... I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just done for tonight. I’m too upset to want to have fun and too grossed out to want to eat anything.”

“I’m sorry, Twilight. I had no way of knowing that they’d try to play politics by serving us flesh.”

Celestia heard a gagging sound followed by “... I know, and I know that this wasn’t entirely your fault. It’s just frustrating.”

“Let me make it up to you.”

“Ok, ok. I’ll be back over here tomorrow to meet with the Princess.”

A very pregnant pause filled the halls, one in which Celestia could just about hear her sister’s withering glare.

“The other princess, for Celestia’s sake, I know you’re one too.”

“Then why do you give Tia her honorific and not I? Why do you swear by her name and not mine?”

Another silent moment passed in the palace halls, one long enough for a small, purple mare to take a few steps closer to Luna.

“Because I’m not as close to her as I am with you. I can’t very well keep calling you princess after what we’ve done together.”

The wound in Celestia’s heart ripped back open from hearing her beloved student’s words. She then heard her sister give a throaty laugh, “Perhaps I may enjoy our ‘nights’ together more if you were to address me by my proper titles.”

“Never. Going. To. Happen.”

In a goofy imitation of Twilight’s voice, Luna teased “Oh, Queen of Tides! You have called forth oceans of my-”

“Ewww! Stop stop stop!” the unicorn shouted, cutting off Luna’s lewd soliloquy.

Celestia heard her sister laugh. “Come, come. Why must you leave now? Are you not smiling again?”

“Luna, I’m smiling because you’re acting cute, not because I’ve stopped being mad about tonight. Besides, it turns out that my brother’s back home too. I want to spend some time with him as well.”

“In the middle of the night?” Luna asked, incredulous.

“In the morning, after a good night’s sleep,” Twilight explained.

“... Fine. Twilight Sparkle you vex me.”

The halls fell silent as the mares kissed goodnight.

“Sweet dreams to you too,” Twilight replied with a smile in her voice.

“You know...”

“Don’t you dare. Not tonight.”

A sigh from the lunar goddess. “Fine.”

Celestia ducked down a random hallway as she heard the approach of light hoofsteps. She felt that meeting her student under these circumstances would be extremely awkward. From her hidden vantage point, the alicorn watched as Twilight walked by on her way to the main gate. Her crestfallen features and hanging head clearly communicated her disappointment with how the night had gone. After the mare passed out of view, Celestia turned around and headed back to her offices. She had a nation of carnivores to convince that her protege almost assassinating the daughter of their ambassador at her birthday party had been an accident and not an act of revenge for serving her and Luna the meat of a cow.

Author's Note

In case anyone was left wondering what an anhinga sunning itself looks like, here's an image: http://www.roysephotos.com/zzAnhinga1.jpg

Thanks again to PhycoKrusk for pre-reading and a moment of silence for my other usual pre-reader AspiringWriter93 who is still without real internet.

As for the infamous beef: my headcanon is that the cow was killed in Canidia and her meat was shipped on ice via airship. If the cow was locally sourced this story would immediately become a murder mystery and an entirely different type of fic.

Names

Tap-tap-tap went the spoon as it opened the top of the soft-boiled egg. The silver implement was surrounded with by Celestia’s golden aura as it was wielded with surgical precision against the porcelain shell. As the breakfast task continued, Celestia began humming in time with the miniature blows. Luna’s left eye twitched as she recognized the beat of the ancient earth-pony tune; her head automatically supplying the lyrics.

The old gray mare she
ain’t what she used to be
ain’t what she used to be
ain’t what she used to be

A shadow-gripped butter knife, butter included, parried the topping spoon; ending the song. Forcing her eyes and mind to shift away from the white ovoid that had momentarily become her entire universe, Celestia was confronted by her sister’s dark face. “Mostly dark,” Celestia corrected herself. The gray ash that coated the solar alicorn from nose to dock was light and fine, spreading and sticking by even the lightest of touches. While the ash darkened Celestia’s coat and muted the pastel colors of her mane, the same powder stood out on Luna like chalk on slate. The elder sister imagined playing connect-the-dots with the stars in Luna’s mane and chuckled.

As the echos of Celestia’s seemingly random giggle died as they were absorbed by the smoke damaged tapestries covering the walls of her private office. The creases marring the corners of Luna’s eyes grew even deeper.

“When did my sister become so grim and serious?” Celestia thought as she assessed her sister’s expression. “She looks so sad, so worried.” Celestia continued thinking to herself. “There’s anger there too as well as desperation.” She paused as the expression stirred the murky depths of her ancient memories. “I feel like I’ve seen that exact expression somewhere before...”

Recognition clicked and Celestia felt the bitter bite of irony. The expression didn’t have a succinct name like “Concern” or “Happiness.” There wasn’t enough use for this particular facial configuration to warrant a common name. If Celestia were forced to have to put a name to the expression it would be: “I love you, I’m worried about you, please don’t go crazy and try to destroy the world and force me to banish you to the moon for a thousand years.” Confronting her sister’s visage over the desk (and breakfast tray) was like looking into a mirror that reflected history instead of light.

Celestia found herself unable to meet Luna’s eyes now that she had identified the expression on her face. She turned away, her long neck arching over her shoulder, but the view behind her was no better. Beyond half-slagged doors lay a virtual moonscape of ash. That gray powder, the fully oxidized remains of her bedroom furnishings, had floated delicately upon the slightest stirrings of air and had spread to thickly coat every surface within her former redoubt. She exhaled a puff of air from her nostrils, sending some of the ash that coated her, inside and out, once again aloft.

The alicorn wondered briefly at the resemblance between that chamber and her sister’s former prison. “Was that somehow deliberate?” she asked herself, wishing that she could directly interrogate her subconscious on the matter. She knew she hadn’t been in her right mind last night during her episode, but she had doubts that any part of her mind was thatsubtle and devious. Turning back to her sister, she wondered what Luna had felt upon entering that room. Had she felt panic at the familiar vista? Had she thought Celestia was punishing herself with some sort of quasi-banishment? She glanced around her private office and found that the gray ash was slowly claiming this room as well. “Perhaps,” she conceded to herself, “my sister’s concerns aren’t entirely out of line.”

Unable to withstand the silence a moment longer Luna spoke, “I presume that things with Twilight did not go as well as you had hoped.”

Celestia freed her spoon from the butter knife with a twist, tap and riposte. Once again she had access to the breakfast Luna had so thoughtfully brought up to her chambers. After swallowing her first, delicious bite of egg, she answered with unaccustomed honesty. “Actually, things went far, far better than I had planned.” The ash-covered mare found herself smiling unbidden in response to her own words. It was her first natural expression in weeks and it had no purpose behind it other than simply expressing her mood. It felt odd but wonderful to allow her lips and cheeks to cavort without adult supervision.

The creases around her sister’s eyes developed creases as the look from Luna intensified.

Celestia snorted in laughter. She knew that such a response would only goad her sister into further, more desperate action but that look of judgement was so very badly, ridiculously, gloriously mistaken. “Would she try to kill me if she knew what I had actually planned for Twilight?” she wondered within the relative privacy of her own head. “Or would she secretly gather the Elements of Harmony so as to have an ironic and overly dramatic confrontation, complete with lengthy monologues.” As visions of the epic, pointless, and embarrassing showdown danced within her mind, Celestia was reduced to a tear-streaked mess of guffaws and snorts.

Luna’s wide eyes darted back and forth as she hid her lips behind a prolonged sip of coffee.

Celestia could just about read Luna’s developing plan from her sister’s terrible poker face. And while she was amused by the thought of such a farce occurring in theory, Celestia knew that she should intervene before her sister actually went haring off to save the world from her.

“So, Luna.” she innocently asked while her sister was swallowing another sip of coffee. “How did you come up with the name ‘Nightmare Moon’?” She then made sure to close her eyes before the cloud of suddenly aerosolized coffee reached her face.

“What?!?” Luna exclaimed after she had finished coughing the last of the scalding-hot beverage out of her lungs.

Still wearing a mask of purity, innocence, and coffee, Celestia continued. “Well dear, you’ve had so many names over the years: Luna, Selene, Mayari, Hina, Metztli, and dozens more. But Nightmare Moon? How did you pick that particular sobriquet as your nom de guerre?”

“I... I am not comfortable with this topic,” Luna stammered as her eyes locked on the black speckles covering her sister’s face like java and charcoal-flavored acne.

“I’ve been tossing around a couple of options myself. Which do you like better: Solar Flare or The Daymare?” Celestia shifted her grin to appear a bit more predatory.

“The oneiroi, they were the ones who joined with me and showed me how to become... that thing. They are the creatures of dreams, and nightmares. I was Luna, goddess of the moon. It was a fairly simple combination of names.” Luna blurted out, completely caving in response to her sister’s interrogation tactics.

“Why not keep your own name or use one of your older, more dramatic ones?”

“I picked it because it sounded ‘cool.’ I was young and angry and please let’s talk about something, anything, else,” Luna pleaded.

“Daymare: Master of Friendship.” Celestia continued, without mercy. She gestured dramatically with her spoon as she added the subtitle to her proposed name.

The younger sister’s face started at pained, flowed into shock, and eventually settled on incredulous. After taking a moment to regain her equilibrium she replied in a voice heavy with suspicion, “It sounds... ridiculous.”

Pleased that her sister was finally beginning to rise to the bait, Celestia goaded her on, “Oh? Why?”

“‘Master of Friendship’ doesn’t exactly inspire fear nor conjure up an image of power,” Luna replied as her eyes narrowed.

“Magic is friendship,” Celestia countered.

“In a benign sort of way, yes. But it isn’t like friendship is going to smash mountains or defeat titans.

Celestia’s raised eyebrow might have well stood up and spoken the names “Nightmare Moon and Discord.”

Luna’s curiosity got the better of her as she forgot to wince at the implication of past sins. “‘Fighter of the Nightmare’ is better. It implies power enough to defeat her foes.”

“I’ve got it!” Celestia beamed as she shouted, “Champion of the Sun!”

The corners of Luna’s lips began to twitch upwards as she archly eviscerated the proposal with a single word. “Redundant.”

“Ooooh, you aren’t any fun,” Celestia teased.

“You need something more... martial. Something that implies dangerous combat abilities.”

“Master of Karate!” The big, white mare made punching motions with her forehooves.

Luna finally found herself fighting against giggles of her own. “You don’t- snerk know karate!”

Celestia affected an obviously fake wounded tone, “Hay, you don’t know if I do. I might have picked it up sometime in the last millenium.”

“And would you have had your copious behind kicked by an overgrown bug with self-esteem issues and a blind, crippled goat if you had?”

Celestia’s mouth hung open as the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few hundred degrees.

Luna’s eyes bugged as she realized she had found the “line” in this conversation and had taken a flying leap over it. “Oh. Oh, Tia. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

The younger mare was cut off by her sister made a cartoonishly bad (and debatably racist) approximation of a ‘Kung-Fu noise.’ Also, by the impact of her sister’s soft-boiled egg against her face.

Near silence hung between them. The only remaining sound was the pitter-patter of egg sliding off of Luna’s shocked expression.

Celestia, looking entirely too pleased with herself, restarted the conversation. “So...”

“Master of karate,” Luna said with a nod,

“And friendship,” her fey sister added.

“And friendship,” Luna conceded without further debate.

“For everyone!” Celestia raised both hooves above her head, as if expecting applause.

“Fine, Tia,” Luna’s playfulness was drying up in time with the yolk clotting on her face. She levitated a napkin and tried to remove some of the substance quickly bonding to her. “Why in Tartarus are we joking about this? It's morbid and it scares me.”

“I’m sorry Luna.”

“It’ll come out... eventually.” Luna’s expression softened slightly in response.

“Uh, not about the egg. Or rather, that too... I suppose.”

The dark mare’s lips thinned into a line. “Tia, what are you apologizing for?”

Celestia softly sighed through her nose, “I didn’t realize what it felt like to have ponies treating you like you were going mad. It can drive a sane pony crazy and it can push a mare in trouble right over the edge. I did that to you, I think; back... then.”

Luna’s face lost all expression as she went still as a snow-filled valley. “And that’s how I’ve been treating you?” she asked after that cold moment.

“Just a little,” Celestia then smiled as if to say, ‘and I’m not upset with you over it.’

“So,” Luna’s eyes darted to the ruined bedroom behind her sister, “that thing with Twilight?”

“It... it was a good thing. Please, trust me on that.”

“She was really scared and upset,” her sister chided.

“I realize that and I owe her an apology too,” Celestia agreed. “When this is all over,” she added to herself. It was then that the realization hit, she had decided to go another way. She wouldn’t kill Twilight, nor would she allow the universe to end. She’d find another way or die trying.

Luna interrupted her sister’s quiet epiphany. “Sooo, Twilight told me a little more about what happened at that lunch. Is there anything you need to tell me about that?”

Celestia’s mirth bled away, “No, Luna, not really.”

Luna’s answering expression eloquently indicated that Celestia’s answer wasn’t even remotely adequate.

“It was an embarrassing fiasco, Luna; I don’t want to dwell upon it.”

Luna’s expression informed Celestia that this breakfast counted as an ‘embarrassing fiasco’. “I have no idea what you were trying to accomplish, telling her that.”

Celestia appraised her sister, trying to deduce how much she knew. She crafted her reply to be completely truthful and yet empty of all useful information. “She deserved to know the truth.”

“Even when all the truth could do is hurt her, and me?” her sister answered.

“The lying, the concealing was an infection, festering below the surface. It hurts to lance a boil but it allows the healing to start,” Celestia waxed metaphorically and vague.

“But what if she did feel the same way about you? What then? Would you force her to choose between us? Did you think we could share her?”

Celestia heart began to sink as her sister’s implications began to take on a terrible kind of sense. “Um.. what?”

Luna continued deeper into the realm of awkward conversations one never wishes to have with their sister. “I know I’ve had some unusual arrangements with special someponies in the past but that was a long time ago and my needs have changed alot since then. Also, you’re my sister. The whole thing feels a bit...incestious.”

Celestia moaned as her worst fears were realized.

“I know Tia, it’s hard to hear things like this.”

Thinking only of the nightmarish act of miscommunication she had perpetrated upon her student, Celestia nodded automatically in response.

Luna stood up and came around the desk to drape a wing over her obviously distressed sister. “I’ve asked around dear sister. I know its been a long, long time since you’ve expressed interest in being with anypony. I know it hurts now but we should focus on the positive.”

Celestia met her sister’s now very close eyes, the horror within evidently being mistaken for heartache.

“This is the first time you’ve opened yourself up to something like this in several centuries, perhaps because you are beginning to forgive yourself now that I’ve been returned to you.” Luna smiled at her sister “This is progress and the pain is something normal that normal ponies go through every day.” Celestia stared dumbfounded as Luna concluded. “This is a good thing,” she said, punctuating every word with squeeze from her wing.

Celestia, for the first time in a very, very long while, could think of nothing to say. No response was adequate in the face of the horror before her. She could not deny her sister’s interpretation. To do so would prompt further questions and eventual discovery of Celestia’s true, fatal, intentions towards Twilight. But the only other option was to admit to harboring quasi-incestious feelings towards her faithful student.

The moment of warm understanding radiating from her sister passed into the skin-crawlingly awkward realm of a too-long hug. Sensing the change in mood, Luna queried, “Tia?”

Celestia wordlessly broke the embrace and stood up.

“Tia?”

She headed towards the exit but paused. Celestia’s mouth opened and shut several times before her pummeled brain supplied the most perfunctory of excuses. “I need a bath.”

“Tia?” Luna prodded.

Celestia paused in her walk across the room, turned her face back towards her sister and nodded. “A bath.” She then continued out the door, leaving a rather perplexed alicorn behind.

Two hours later Celestia was still submerged up to her eyeballs in scalding-hot, rose scented, water mentally chanting the word “clean” as if it were a mantra. Despite the number of times she repeated the word, scrubbed herself, or changed the water, it was a feeling that she just could not achieve. Each time the tub was drained, there was a gray, gritty slurry coating the porcelain floor of the tub. Each time she replayed her lunchtime conversation with Twilight she felt contaminated by her series of inadvertent entendres. Recalling how her conversation with Luna had ended, she shuddered again and sank below the foam-flecked water.

The sensations of scalding pressure and weightlessness stirred one of her oldest memories; the one and only embrace she had shared with her father. She had only been a foal at the time as that night had been about a year before Luna was to be born. She had been terrified when the night sky began pouring into her mother’s cave. Stars, nebula, whole galaxies flowed into the humble space they had called home and in the center of that infinite space and mass was a mind unlike any she had met before or since. She had felt an affinity toward it that changed her panic into curiosity. Then her mother’s thoughts reached her mind, “This is your father. Be a good girl and say ‘hello’.”

They had regarded each other. They had felt a connection. They had hugged. She was then shooed outside to allow the adults the private time that had resulted in Luna.

She and her father had only met that one time but no matter how many centuries passed the memory of that embrace remained fresh. And as each day dawned, she sent the solar part of her reaching, straining upwards, to touch him once again. Every day her orb blindly groped for him, hidden as he was behind the cerulean sky. And each day she set the sun, having failed in her sisyphean quest.

A twinge of envy passed through Celestia. The moon sailed through the nighttime skies, against the backdrop of their father’s belly. Her sister was much more like their father than she was and yet had no idea how much closer she was to their celestial father. “Does Luna even realize that the stars that had freed her were a part of our father?” she wondered, still submerged. “Did she understand that both mother and father had played a role in her redemption?”

She reminded herself that such things didn’t matter. Their youngest daughter need not be grateful for their love, effort, and sacrifice to have meaning. What gave it that was the fact that their Luna was back, reformed, and redeemed. “No matter how strange, gross, or ungrateful that foal could be,” she mentally added with a twinge of guilt.

Floating in the silence, she asked herself if she was truly happy that Luna was back. She had mourned her sister after her banishment. She had been alone among ponykind for centuries, her only companion Philomina. Then Cadance had reincarnated. Soon after that came the prophecy hinting that her sister could be redeemed and then she found Sunset Shimmer to crush underneath the weight of all her hopes and dreams. Then came Twilight, then her sister reformed along with all the other Elements of Harmony. More had happened in her life in the last twenty years than in the last five-hundred. And instead of worrying about losing track of what decade it was, she now had to not only worry about the world ending every other year, but also figure out how to live among family (in all its glory and annoyance) once again.

She swished her head back and forth underwater and then allowed herself to surface. As her mane spread out behind her head like a pastel oil-slick, she took a breath with her barely exposed nostrils. The action reminded her of one of her more distant cousins; she should send him a letter sometime and catch up. “Yet another thing I wouldn’t have ever thought to do just a decade ago,” she added ruefully.

She turned her mind away from her familial discomfort and forced herself to focus, instead, on the largest problem at hoof; Twilight and the Morai. The Fates had claimed that Twilight now existed without a destiny and that, in a chain reaction, she was disrupting the fates of everyone she interacted with, and so on, and so on. Celestia wondered where in the reaction curve they presently lay. If they were still in the early portion, then a delay of a day or two was essentially meaningless to the universe at large. If, however, they were in the exponential portion, then every hour that passed was hurtling them towards disaster. “If I quarantined Twilight, would that help slow down the process?” she thought. However, she immediately dismissed that possibility as she realized that her protege’s interactions among the residents of Ponyville meant that all of those ponies were like carriers of the metaphysical plague. This wasn’t even counting the major deviations from destiny that have already occurred.

Celestia tried to apply one of her many lessons she had given Twilight; when a problem seems insurmountable, approach the problem in a different way. Could Twilight be placed back onto a thread? Could a destiny be taken over by somepony else? It sounded possible but for a path to be vacated that would mean that the pony formerly occupying that destiny had to die. And, most importantly that pony must have died as a violation of destiny. Given Twilight’s condition, it seemed possible to Celestia that her student could kill somepony who was supposed to have lived and then take over their life. Just contemplating that dark method inspired another round of scrubbing.

Perhaps, she bargained between applications of shampoo, somepony who had already died inadvertently? Not a sacrifice or theft but more like an organ transplant in the wake of a terrible accident. But, she noted, that would still leave Twilight living somepony else’s life and not her own. Would Twilight stop being her faithful student if tied to somepony else’s destiny? Who’s path could be given to Twilight that would allow her to not lose everything that made her who she was?

A name and a face was presented by her subconscious and for the first time she was glad that Sunset Shimmer had fled beyond even a goddess's reach. “Mother help me against such temptations,” she prayed.

Mentally flinching away from these imagined dark deeds, Celestia lamented the impossibility of simply forging Twilight a new thread. She wondered if even the Morai themselves could do such a thing. It seemed implausible to the alicorn, since the creation of even one unaccounted for destiny would lead to…Celestia’s eyes flew open as the next word in her chain of thought occurred to her. Such a thing would lead to... Chaos.

Author's Note

Here I go trying to keep on earning the simultaneous dark and comedy tags. What surprised me most about the whole Dayman thing was that I couldn't find any story on this site that had actually referenced it. It needed to be done. Lastly, thanks again to my wonderful pre-readers: PhycoKrusk and TheAspiringWriter93. Enjoy.

Disappointment

“This day was going to be perfect,” Celestia said to herself as she confronted the sad, wilted thing that had once been her salad. Her face must have slipped out of her control, showing the disappointment she felt, since Twilight began panicking and apologizing.

The alicorn cut off her student’s babbling stream, “Twilight, this isn’t your fault. I was the one who was late.”

“But if it weren’t for me and Luna and the chocolate you wouldn’t have had to spend all night and all morning in meetings and you didn’t get any sleep last night and I almost started a war and me and Luna fought and I-”

“Twilight.” Celestia used her implacable voice. It had the desired effect and the unicorn stopped talking long enough to breathe again. “These things happen, mistakes get made in diplomacy all the time. It’s how we recover from these mistakes that defines our skill in this arena.”

“But I ruined your salad.” Twilight claimed sorrowfully.

Celestia took the duration of her sigh to concoct a means to diffuse her student’s overwrought state. She didn’t want to spend Twilight’s last day arguing. “If blame must be thrown around, perhaps we could hold the Canidians responsible. I had immediately explained the fact that the offer of chocolate was a simple misunderstanding, it was some of their diplomats who chose to assume that you were my means to assassinate the pup.”

“Okay,” her student replied before lapsing into silence.

Celestia’s frustration mounted as the uncomfortable gap in their conversation grew into an almost visible miasma of discomfort. When she had planned out this lunch with Twilight a week ago her imagination had filled this luncheon with laughing, reminiscence, and a warm sense of familial love. Instead, they spent several minutes avoiding eye contact. Eventually their efforts failed and Twilight dropped her fork from the shock of locking gazes.

Twilight nearly bolted at the sudden clatter. One chagrined laugh and several steps back to the table later she asked her mentor, “Are you sure you aren’t mad at me?”

“Getting there,” Celestia said within the privacy of her own skull. To her student she instead said, “ Absolutely not. Perhaps we should move on to a different topic: How are you and Luna doing?”

Twilight stared mutely in response to her question. Occasionally the mare’s mouth moved, as if finally figuring out what to say, but then she would stall out and close her mouth once again. After several minutes of repeating this cycle, Twilight looked away from Celestia and lied. “Things are going fine.”

Awkward silence reclaimed the room as Celestia nursed her hurt. Twilight wasn’t the best of liars and the alicorn had centuries of experience in politics and diplomacy. It was as obvious as a severed limb that her protege wasn’t comfortable discussing this topic with her. The mares spent the next several minutes hunting through the limp greenery on their plates for anything edible. After discarding her third soggy crouton, Celestia had had enough and tried engaging the unicorn yet again.

“Are you looking forward to the play?”

Twilight immediately brightened up as the change of topic released the mare from the spiral of guilt that was consuming her. “Oh yes, Princess,” she chirped as she levitated a pair of bulging saddlebags into view. “ I’ve brought seven reams of paper, five quarts of ink (each of a different color), and a corresponding quill for each type of ink, backup quills, backup backup quills, b-”

“Twilight,” Celestia once again found herself using the verbal equivalent of force to quell her student. The mare, still stunned into silence, gently lowered the mass of scribing materials as her smile shifted from genuine to strained.

The alicorn wracked her brain, searching for a gentle way to phrase her coming question. “While I am impressed, as always, with your skills in preparation and organization, taking notes during the performance, from the royal box no less, might make some of the actors a bit nervous.”

“Oh, so you want me to rely entirely on my memory for this one.” Twilight looked inordinately pleased with herself as she spoke but then suddenly relapsed back into a guilty hunch.

Celestia, with mounting dread, broached the question hanging in the air, “What’s wrong now Twilight?”

Twilight’s posture straightened, as if giving a recitation. “You shouldn’t test me on this play. It would be cheating. I mean, I would be cheating on the test... of this play... that you’re giving me.”

Celestia’s soul whimpered. “Dear, I am not going to test you on this play.” She was afraid to ask, but had to know and therefore soldiered on into the awaiting minefield. “Why do you think you’d be cheating?”

“I’ve already seen the play, Princess. And since this would be my second time seeing it, the test wouldn’t be an accurate assessment of my recall abilities.”

“This is the first performance of this work, the premiere.” Celestia pointed out, flatly.

“Um, Luna knows the playwright. She got us in to see the dress-rehearsal.”

“Oh...” The master diplomat had no idea what to say in reply to her student’s simple statement. Celestia the pony, however, was quite sure that screaming unflattering names in her sister’s face was the most appropriate response.

“Maybe you could test me on something else?” The violet mare offered with cautious hope.

“Going to this play was not a means by which to assess you, Twilight.”

“Then...why were we going?” Her honest confusion stabbed Celestia in her chest again and again, in time with her dying heart.

Practice and skill kept nothing more than a slight quaver in Celestia’s breath from showing as she explained. “I had thought that, perhaps we could attend the play together, socially.” She watched as her prize pupil struggled to make sense of the simple sentence. Her control once again beginning to slip and she forgot to breathe while waiting for Twilight’s reply.

“Oh...” the mare said to fill the silence as she worked up the nerve to ask, “Why?”

“I can’t let her see me cry,” Celestia schooled herself. “Thoughtless little mares barely out of fillyhood aren’t supposed to make ancient goddesses cry.” As the question hung unanswered in the air, the alicorn’s mind continued to race. “This is my fault, isn’t it? At every turn I’ve created distance between us. When she was a foal I brought her into the palace but instead of raising her, I shoved it all off onto Cadance. As she grew into a young mare, I sent her away to find friends instead of becoming one myself. And when she grew into an adult and sought love, I threw my sister at her. Luna: awkward, shy, alicorn Luna. She’s a princess Twilight could approach, a goddess she could touch without it feeling like desecration.”

“Princess?” Twilight quietly prompted after several seconds.

“She deserves the truth, not the sentimental claptrap you had selfishly planned out for her,” Celestia decided. “There’s something I haven’t told you, Twilight. Something I’ve been holding in for a while now because I thought you finding out would be a disaster. I wasn’t giving you enough credit.”

“Um...Princess?” Twilight’s mood immediately shifted towards the uncomfortable end of the spectrum.

Celestia squeezed shut her eyes and forced the words out. “This... realization that I’ve had. It might scare you,” she humorlessly laughed once though her nose, “I know it scares me. I’ve denied this terrible knowledge and as a result its been eating away at my soul. And if I trust you, truly trust you, then perhaps we can face this together, hoof-in-hoof.”

The alicorn took a calming breath and re-opened her eyes, returning them to her student’s face. She hadn’t been expecting the slack-jawed mien of horror that faced her. “The only way now is forward,” she told herself. She began to explain, padding the coming words with a warm smile, she asked, “Twilight, what do you know of Fate?”

Celestia's ears reflexively pinned themselves against her skull as the mare across the table from her began to chant at the top of her lungs, “La la la la la, I can’t hear you, la la la. If I don’t hear you I can pretend it never happened; LA, LA, LA!!!”

“Twilight!” Celestia shouted over her student’s sudden denial. The unicorn fell silent but had the posture of a hunted animal. The two mares locked eyes for several seconds before Celestia took the initiative. “Twilight, I-”

“LALALALALALALALALALALA!!!” Twilight screamed at the top of her lungs and register as she galloped away. The sound of her shouts faded slowly into echos as she left the dumbfounded alicorn behind.

“National Emergency is such a delightfully broad label,” Celestia mused to herself. It could be invoked to instantly evacuate whole towns, authorize troop movements, establish secret courts and, in this case, to requisition a lovely three-tier cake from the palace kitchens. The alicorn sighed in response to the blissfully sweet solace she found as she consumed the entire top tier by herself, ala mode of course.

Condensing out of a cloud of darkness, her sister arrived at her table. Celestia concluded from the nightcap and bunny slippers that her sister, the mare of darkness, had been rousted out of bed by Twilight.

Sounding like a villain from a one-bit paperback novel Luna boomed, “How DAREST thou?!”

“I have made a sizable donation to the Equinitarian Society in exchange for their cake. That is how I ‘darest,’ dear sister.” Celestia’s sardonic tone was far from diplomatic.

“Cake? I carest not for thy-” Luna began to reply but then she noticed the state of the room and of her sister. The frosting and melted cream were the most obvious substances coating Celestia’s muzzle but there were salty tears mixed in with the sugar and fat. Out of the corner of Luna’s eye she saw the leafy green remnants of two high-velocity salads impacting the far wall. Turning her attention back to her sister, the dark alicorn spoke with a tone heavy with caution and care. “Tia, what happened?”

“The salad disappointed me.”

“And this ‘salad’ is why Twilight is galloping in circles around my room saying ‘ew’ over and over?”

“Of course she ran to you. Who else would she turn to here? She has no other friends or family within the palace.”

Luna’s ears turned back as she detected the simmering anger coloring her sister’s words. “Tia, what does that mean?”

“Luna? How do you think Twilight sees me?”

“She respects you, deeply. I’d even go so far as to say she reveres you.”

“Can you revere a friend? Your mother?”

“I don’t understand, Tia. What happened between you and Twilight?”

“She merely made some things clear to me,” Celestia answered in a fey tone.

“Sister, she’s a grown mare now. I’m sorry if you find aspects of our relationship disturbing but she can’t stay your innocent little foa-”

“Oh stars and sky, stop,” Celestia cut her off before Luna could ruin the cake and ice cream for her. “As odd as it may seem, not everything is about you or your sex life.”

“Then what are you talking about? Twilight’s going crazy upstairs and you aren’t much better.

“She’s growing up, Luna, and no longer needs me like she once did. I had planned on spending this afternoon with her but it sounds like she would prefer to spend it with you.”

“Tia, I-”

Again she cut her sister off, “I only ask that you send her to me in time to join me for sunset. Could you do that for me?”

“I suppose, but-”

“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to the baths for a good soak.”

“But Tia, I-”

“Ta-ta!” Celestia said in a sing-song voice that she knew left no opening for reply. As the great, white mare got up and trotted away from the ruins of her brunch, the remaining two tiers of cake glowed within the grip of a golden aura and followed her out the door.

The sun, red and swollen, hung above the western horizon and Celestia was locked eye to eye with her incandescent charge. The burning orb wanted to set but she, as its master, refused to allow it. She would give Twilight one more minute. Ethically, that was the longest she could delay sunset in order to buy her student time to arrive.

As if in response to that thought, she heard the sound of a small hoof knocking timidly upon her bedroom door. Not bothering to speak, Celestia simply opened the door from where she stood on the balcony. She did not turn her head to face her pupil. She told herself that there wasn’t any point to seeing the mare’s contrite but fearful countenance. So she waited, immobile as her garden statuary and stained ruddy in the sun’s carmine glow.

“Princess?” Twilight said from two steps behind her.

“That’s her name for me, isn’t it?” Celestia thought in response. She then wondered if she’d ever heard Twilight speak her name without that title.

“Come forward, Twilight. I want you to set the sun with me,” Celestia answered.

She could feel the mare relax as the memory of the disastrous brunch was eclipsed by her student’s enthusiasm for obscure magics. The dour expression that had become a permanent fixture on the Celestia’s lips rebelliously softened as Twilight burbled on excitedly about the thaumaturgical forces required to change day to night. The alicorn gestured with one of her massive wings where the student should stand: in front of her, eyes towards the west, and with her back to Celestia.

Twilight moved into position and Celestia’s eyes drifted to the back of the mare’s violet-furred skull. “Just a bit lower... there: the Foramen Magnum,” she thought. The spot where the brain-stem exits the skull and enters the spinal column was where she planned to place her lance of fire. She had mentally rehearsed this moment time and time again over the last week and knew that a single, concentrated beam of light would painlessly excise the aberrant unicorn from the world of the living.

Shaking her head to regain focus. Celestia became aware that Twilight had not actually stopped talking the entire time she was gazing at the back of her neck and plotting her murder. Her blood thundered in her ears as each beat of her alicorn heart brought the death of this day, of her pupil, and of everything that made her equine, drew nearer. Celestia couldn’t actually decipher any meaning in the words pouring forth from Twilight but she could hear the joy of them. Her protege, her pupil, her student... she had hoped to be something more but her own cowardice had prevented that option.

She had wanted to be a friend, a confidant, a maternal figure but with the distance she placed between herself and every mortal creature on this world such things were impossible. Cadance loved Twilight and was loved in return. Luna loved Twilight and was loved in return. “Do I love Twilight?” Celestia asked herself as she began the flow of magic that would set the sun. As her student’s magic joined hers and followed its pattern she wondered, “Or do I just want to be loved by Twilight too?”

She could feel the unicorn’s magic reaching out to the sun, she barely had to do any of the “work” herself in this tandem process. All Twilight needed was for Celestia to guide her spell into the most efficient form and the sun lept to follow her commands. Celestia followed her plan, twisting the shape of the casting out of the optimum configuration, using the thaumaturgical weight of the sun to yank Twilight’s power out of control for the required moment of defenselessness. Having preserved her own strength, Celestia then gathered her power into the required needle of fire and placed its tip against the neck belonging to whom she now realized was her surrogate daughter.

Celestia screamed as the category Twilight filled within her heart became clear. She screamed because she could no longer continue. She screamed because of what she had almost done. She screamed because she had killed the world. And she screamed because she should never have let things ever get to this point. The great white mare stumbled away from her intended victim and used her wings to cover her face in shame and sorrow.

As the last sliver of sun slipped over the horizon, Twilight’s magic was freed from the snare the solar alicorn had devised. The shock of the magical feedback knocked the violet unicorn to her knees and she reeled as Celestia’s screams grew beyond mortal limits.

“Celestia!” Twilight shouted, shocked and terrified.

“And now, now of all times she uses my name!” the goddess wordlessly raged as she shifted from screaming to gagging on her own hypocrisy and cowardice.

“Princess! What happened? What’s wrong?” The mare she loved as a daughter shouted at her. Having regained her hooves Twilight approached her would-be murderer with concern for her well-being.

“GET OUT!!! Celestia snarled as she dropped her wings, exposing her true face. The masks had all been burnt away in her rage and grief and Twilight gasped at the powerful emotions laid bare. “As she should,” the broken goddess thought, “for I am a monster.” She shouted, “GO!!!” as loud as she could at the tiny mare, “RUN!!!”

Run she did, but Twilight paused at the doorway to look over her shoulder at her mentor. Fear and worry warred in her eyes.

Unable to contain her rage and self-loathing anymore, Celestia turned her gathered power against her surroundings. She glowed a blinding white and anything made of paper or cloth burst into flame. Twilight dived through the doorway, tail smouldering, and slammed the portal shut behind her. An instant later the diarch’s massive bed slammed against the thick, bleached oak, preventing anyone from entering the building inferno. Celestia then smashed, crushed, blasted, and burnt every object within that room because it was impossible to do the same to herself no matter how badly she wanted to.

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay, this chapter was a bear to write. I am beginning to understand why dark comedy is so hard to do well.

As usual, thanks to my loyal pre-readers: PhycoKrusk and TheAspiringWriter93. This would suck a lot worse without your help.