The New Gods

Chapters

1. Nova
2.Scream
3. And So The World Turns
4. The Mission
5. The Draconequus
6. SHE attends
7. Hope
8. Special
9. Different
10. Fine Day

1. Nova

She felt the first sharp pain early, and knew instantly what would arise from that great, terrible darkness swirling without and within. In the name of Queen Aeon, this was no ordinary birth pain! The first sharp horn of her tiny burden cut the old draconequus deeply, and with this single, biting stab came the affirmation that this; this, finally, would be the last. The last for her, and the last for the world. Here, from her very own belly, would come the end.

As the stab widened, the searing pain spread, in a line, across her engorged belly, she swallowed in the filthy spirits of the black, heavy, oppressive air around her and gave a mighty gasp. She would not betray her race or her lifetime. This would be a mighty creature, one of power unheard of. If her species is to end here, it would not go down without a fight.

Grinning savagely at the irony of her cruel and darkened world, she began to push, desperately, at this final and most painful gift to the world. The hours stretched on, and no star rose, and still she lay there panting and the darkness would not break. The light and hope of this world would not shine upon her most glorious and special creation. If her life had been lived in darkness, so would her final act. She gasped. She pushed. She grinned. She tore apart.

Faster and harder the cuts came from within, this strange new child writhing, as if aware with the sudden knowledge that it only had a short time to bring itself into the world. It kicked, and it pushed, and it bucked its horned head.Like a terrible snake, it contorted itself against the red-black world of its first and most loving of prisons. Terrible little talons, as of a young eagle, tore at the living walls around it.

Then came the blood, as the bulge in her belly reddened and loosened. In a fit of savage desperation for life came this child into the world, in time only for its mother to lay down by the bones of her mate, and bleed out her final breath in a single word, screamed out to the darkened world:

DISCORD.

So fell the name heavily upon the tiny bloodied infant struggling its way from beneath the burden of its mother’s flesh. For it would be its destiny to someday bring oblivion to the harmony of this strange land, still shrouded in such darkness so late.

In this darkness lay the draconequus, and knew not light, nor love, nor joy, nor warmth at its birth.

Instead, laying in the wet and tender darkness of a world still new, touched only by the last falling drops of its mother’s blood, the miniscule creature instinctively knew only of one thing:

I. Am. Chaos.

So the darkness stretched out across this brave new land, and so the creatures slept in their dens and huts, oblivious to the hour. Only some of the creatures awoke, their horns tingling, vaguely aware that something of great significance was occurring. With instinctive trepidation they rolled over in their beds and forced themselves to close their eyes, whispering words of comfort to their disturbed loved ones. This darkness would last far longer than any before it in the history of those wide-eyed, horned little creatures.

Aeon lay, panting and hurting, the magic of her body pulsing greater than any force she had ever created before. Her coat shone and sparked, radiating a mighty and terrible heat.

Lumos paced by her side, always by her side, his heart wrenching and twisting between his great loves and duties: for the safety of his wife; for the wonder at the glorious darkness and light in her pain-stricken eyes; for her need to be well and ready, for her people, her world, and for him; for his duty to the people of this world, to bring them the light that would arouse them from their slumber, make them alive once more after this great time of darkness; more so, for the duty to his wife, to remain at her side at this critical moment; and finally, for that long-burdening lump upon her, slowly descending between her quivering thighs, and all of that strange wonder of the new and unknown being which would arise from it.

The force of magic pulsed in and out from her enormous, darkened figure, and her husband breathed a gasp of sudden shock, and horror, awe, and wonder, pain, and of love, as her magic radiated from her one final time, and a single, tiny horn of purest white gently and slowly emerged, in a smooth movement from the darkened space within her.

The mages recorded a great and drastic change in the composition of the world’s brightstar during that time of great darkness, as its dim light was finally ignited into a sudden fiery orb after eons of compression and transformation in the darkness of their clouded universe.

That morning; the first real morning, as it was called; the creatures of the world awoke to the experience of the most gloriously beautiful sunrise ever to be witnessed: Pink and gold, warm and soft with hints of blue, green and deep purple against a sky more brightly lit than ever known before.

Thus the sun goddess was born; as yet oblivious to her greatness in this wondrous new-born realm of light, and life.

And far out beyond the golden-lit forest orchards of the palace gardens, a tiny, bloodied beast, misshapen as if pieced together from many different animals, crawled slowly out from a dark and bitter cave, and looked out at this light, and wondered. Wondered at its suddenness, its strangeness, and its beauty.

Slowly, a smile crept out upon its tiny face, and for a moment, this wondering child felt something it would not feel again for a long, long time: It felt joy. Joy, at nothing less or more than this incredible new sensation of being alive.

2.Scream

Little Clouddancer had never been much for the games.

These stupid, stupid games.

Stupid fillies. Stupid colts. All going just to show off how brave they were. She cursed their humiliating games, she cursed their taunts and laughter, and she cursed their hateful mischievous glances.

She cursed her weak heart.

She cursed her delicate hooves for hurting so much from all of this walking over uneven ground.

Why couldn’t she be brave and strong like the other little ponies? How she envied the graceful flitting of the pegasi children over Cumulos overhead, fearless in their daring stunts of highflying daily wing exercise. She envied the mysterious sureness of the unicorn foals as they studied their terrifying magicks. She envied the stronger earth foals, who could run, and jump, and kick fruit from trees.

Her little hooves trembled against the woody roots beneath her, producing a faint rattling noise, as another terrible, filthy little thing scuttled off out of sight. She gulped down another scream. She would not scream. Not while they watched her. They saw her shaking and snickered softly from a few paces behind. She would not turn back, though her little heart ached of fear and trepidation.

She would not scream.

She would show them, those awful foals from village-end!

Such a weak thing! They would cry. And past her seventh Summer, and with not a mark upon her flank to show for it... That quiet one… Does she even know how to talk?

On and on came the voices in her head, welling her enormous green eyes up with tears, and hardening her resolve to continue moving forward, step by aching step. She hung her head low with shame, so that they would not see her crying, and quickly, surreptitiously, wiped the tear away with her cottony-white mane.

The dark leaves of the forest grew darker still, and the vines seemed to creep and crawl around her further with every step she took. Dark, horrid little spiders swung slowly down upon long gossamer threads, looking, surely, to catch hold of her silky mane and creep down her neck; but still, she ploughed on, further into the forest and still further, the colts following, laughing behind her, waiting for her to scream, and run. She kept walking forward.

She would not scream.

With a sudden flurry of movement, a larger creature, possibly a wild stag, bounded across the path in front of her. She stumbled, shocked, and fell back painfully in a heap upon her backside over the root which lay behind her. Biting her tongue, her scream was swallowed, except for a tiny, excruciatingly delicate “Eep!” The bite in her tongue hurt, though not as much as the bite taken from her pride. The salty taste of blood in her mouth, and the salty dewing of tears upon her lashes, she tried hard to block the malicious laughter of the colts from her hearing, forcing herself to hold her head high and walk decisively forward.

She would not scream.

An idea came to her, and she called out behind her,

“Why, Downtree, are you sure you saw a monster in this forest? The most dangerous thing I’ve encountered is tree roots. So your either completely dopey and foolish, and imagined this thing, or you're having me on about it and made it up. Or maybe you just had a few too many your father’s oh-so-grand old cherry brandy he always bangs on about! So what’s with this monster story anyway?” That shut them up. Momentarily. Then came the response.

“Oh, yeah, I saw a monster, all right.” This softly spoken, a dark edge to the young colt’s voice.

“…Tall as a buffalo! With hideous glowing eyes, like a demon, red and yellow, its horns glowed in the dark, sharp as knives, just like its huge talons. Terrified me.” Clouddancer shivered.

“…For a second of course! –Then I-I gave it a bit of this… -ugghh! - And a bit of that… YAAH… and that big, ugly monster won’t have the guts to show its face around here again!”

Bushbreaker, at his side, began to laugh. Clouddancer began to laugh, too, to avoid crying. She jumped in shock at the rustle of a bird flying out from a bush behind her, but still, she would not scream.

“What? What’s so funny? I wasn’t telling you a joke! I was telling you exactly what happened! If you’re not going to take this test seriously, you’re not allowed to be an adjudicator in it!” At this, Bushbreaker broke down on the ground laughing, and holding his aching sides with his hooves.

“…Well,” he squeezed out of his chest finally, “wat’cha do, Downy? Did’ja… did ya take the paper… [Here he struggled to breath from the laughter at his own apparent brilliance]… Did you- take the paper bag off of your head?! Ha! BWAHAHAHAHAH!”

Bushbreaker broke down completely here, rolling upon roots and leaves and dirt, and crying with laughter.

”…Take the… paper bag off your head! Aha! Oh, I crack myself up sometimes!... Take the… Ahahahah!”

Clouddancer began laughing too. The look on Downtree’s face was so funny and sour, trying not to snap. But she trotted over and put a hoof on his shoulder: She knew how it hurt to be teased. He pushed the comforting hoof away, but was clearly cheered by the support, for his expression softened, and he too began to chuckle a little, if only at the ridiculousness of his friend.

“Alright, it was kinda funny, that, but don’t’cha think ya might be a little too overjoyed? You could really work on your joking skills, ya know, bushy.”

“Wait a minute!” cried Bush quite suddenly, silencing his laughter. A very serious, concerned look crossed his face.

Downtree laughed. “What’s up,Bushy? You look scared! Don’t tell me my little monster story…”

“Shhh!”

“Hey, don’t shush me!”

“…You mean…”

“Don’t tell me my little monster story got to you, bushy?”

Downtree began to laugh harder now.

“Hah! You can’t be…”

“Shhh!”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Wait! You mean you were…”

“SSSHHHHHH!”

“YOU MEAN TO TELL ME, THAT YOU WERE LYING ABOUT ALL OF THIS!”

This furiously arose from the mouth of none other than Clouddancer. Tiny, innocent, soft-hearted little Clouddancer. The colts looked over at her in wonder. Every inch of her fuzzy little grey-and-white body, from nose to hoof, was shaking violently with terrible fury. Downtree had been telling the other foals all about his encounters with the beast all month!

“YOU MEAN, YOU LED ME INTO THIS BIG, UGLY, STINKING FOREST, JUST SO YOU COULD LAUGH AT ME, AND ALL FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! I’LL BET YOU’VE NEVER EVEN SEEN THE INSIDE OF THIS FOREST BEFORE IN YOUR LIFE, YOU BIG LIAR!”

“Well… I …” The look on her furry little grey face was surprisingly intimidating.

“Well, look, Cloudy, I-uh- … You were actually doing pretty well on the test. I mean, you thought there was a monster, didn’t you? …. So … I was gonna mark you higher than I thought on this…”

“-And I have been in this forest before! Plenty of times... you think I was afraid to break a few rules? Afraid of a few stupid tales? –BUT THERE IS A MONSTER IN HERE! Old Brownhocks told me all about it!”

This last exclamation drew sudden silence from them all.

“You mean… you believed... and told us… all this time… because… CRAZY… OLD… BROWNHOCKS… told you another of his crazy… stupid… stories!?”

Bushbreaker sputtered this out brokenly, wide-eyed and taken aback. The silence crept through the small, vine-bordered space between them, as the truth sank in. all fear melted away. A look passed between the three little wanderers, long, and mischievous.

“You… believed…” Cloud’s confidence was growing. “That… crazy, old, nutball, gardener from the palace rose gardens? …You know, they only hired him to be nice, right? Why, I… I, heard, that he sneaks out at night to the tool shed and lays all the hammers so that they point to the left, just because he thinks it will turn the fruits different colours! …He’s wacky!” She giggled this out.

As Downtree’s admission sunk in, the silent, wild, pulsating laughter in their stomachs crept up through their chests, then throats, then squeezed into their faces in a rush of jubilant warmth, pushing their fuzzy cheeks into broad, unrelenting grins. Their chests shook, their legs lost strength, and in no time at all, they were all rolling wildly in the muddy leaves of the forest floor, kicking their legs in the air, their small bodies writhing in mirth with the biggest, most belly-aching laughs they’d ever had!

The ridiculousness of their situation lost none of its chaotic ironies on these three foals.

But suddenly, after the biggest gasp for air, Bushbreaker stopped again.

“Wait, stop! Listen.”

The others just kept laughing.

“Oh, come on, Bushy, not this again! What in Equestria do you want us to listen to so much?”

“Shhhhh!”

The two laughing foals gasped for air at once, holding their aching, mirth-trembling sides. And in that moment they heard it and they froze.

They were not the only ones laughing.

Fear came flooding back to Cloud, from the pit of her stomach, but she would not scream. She bit her tongue. She had more confidence than before, and quickly realised what was really going on. The colts were over-acting their role of petrified fear to the point of comical, but she was not laughing anymore. As the hollow, loud, and chillingly child-like laughter faded away again, the colts trembled, their eyes so wide as looking set to jump their spherical skulls and make a run for it on their own. Cloud trembled too, but with fury, once more.

“You two are so stupid, you really think that dumb monster thing is going to work? You just said it was false! You want me to scream, to run home to mother, like a baby, so you can tell all of your friends? Well, it’s not going to work. Whatever fake monster you and your cronies have come up with to scare me with, I am not going to scream. I WILL NOT SCREAM!”

The wind, billowing and moaning between the branches of the forest, picked up. The clouds began to speed across the sky, and grow dark, almost brown. The trees groaned and shifted, and a shadow fell across Cloud’s back.

Bushbreaker and Downtree, their brown velvet coats turned near white with sheer terror, backed slowly, shivering, wide-eyed, away from her, as if from a ghost. Her spine would have tingled with fear at that moment, but she was far too young and furious to be frightened. The colts turned swiftly, wordlessly, and ran, gasping, away, their hooves beating hard against the ground, stumbling on roots, sticks and branches; they ran like rabbits from foxes, or deer from a lion. They ran faster than Cloud knew earth-ponies were capable of running. Still, she held her ground.

“Fine! That’s how you want to play?” she yelled at their rapidly disappearing flanks. “You’ll get back alone, making big stories about me, but when I get back, I’ll tell them you ran away, and the truth about your tall tales! I’m not afraid!” For once she was telling the absolute truth on this count, too angry was she to know fear in her furious rant, though the clattering of branches behind her continued to echo hollowly that same, terrible sound of laughter, like whispered giggles from behind closed doors. The air against her mane heated and trembled.

“I WILL. NOT. SCREAM!”

She yelled this at the now empty forest; at its mosses, at its leaves, its streams, it animals, and at the empty breezes now blowing past her down that gap between the trees where the colts had stood only moments before.

And to make her point, she turned on the spot, eyed closed, nose in the air with a loud “Hhmph!” to continue on to the centre of the woods, just to show how brave she really was next to those lying, cheating colts.

She opened her eyes.

She screamed.

3. And So The World Turns

Their little world would turn...

Peace settled gently on the wide, wild land as their world slowly turned about its axle. Birds gave their last, quiet little calls as the light gently dimmed. Parents called their small foals in to rest after a long Summer day of fun and games in the warm and beautiful sun. The high winds of the late day slowed and a stillness fell over the land, disturbed only by the birds and the small squeals of the last, most brave little school-foals finally rushing headlong out of the darkened forest home.

These foals would have far more than usual to babble excitedly to their parents about tonight. One little filly would be especially late, and especially desperate, to rush wildly into the open arms of her searching and concerned parents.

Deep in the forest, beyond the aged orchard-woods and nearer to those wild and rugged ancient trees where the queen and king had first met and had determined at once, so taken by its wild beauty as they were, to build their great capital here, a strange little creature, as of many parts of different animals, crawled out of the hauntingly twisted undergrowth, and sighed. It pricked up its long ears to the final birdcalls of the evening, and it chuckled. It fluttered and hopped up the nearest tree, silencing the birds it passed with the shocking misbalance of its appearance. It sat in the topmost bough, and watched in awe at the splendorous show of the sky. The changing colours of the fiery orb delighted the odd little child, as they grew more vividly orange and pink. The sky took on a wild, chaotic appearance as white clouds were turned pink, then orange, and then rich, deep violet. The glorious pink of the sky warmed its tiny, bitter and wild heart, and he sat there, more quiet and more patient than would normally seem possible for his changeable nature and short attention span, just to watch this.

Only one thing was as wondrous to him as the chaotic explosion of the setting sun. Atop the highest stone towers beyond the dimming forest shone a single, tiny light, as of a falling star. He would continue his ever rambling journey across the harsh terrains of his birthlands and forest toward that strange star come morning.

On her balcony, the little princess glowed and sparked, her parents standing by. They glowed almost as much as their beautiful daughter did, only with pride, and with bemusement, as the tiny goddess finished her final creative little flare of the day, balancing and misbalancing the colours of her enormous abstract painting with a light flare here, a beam of pinkish glow there, until her star was but a glowering sliver of flame upon the horizon. The sun finally gone, its last pink rays lying like a paint upon the distant landscape, the silent and very stately child nodded her head to herself and to her parents, as of confirmation that her final work was done for the day. She yawned a deep and luxurious yawn not so befitting a princess as the rest of her behaviour, her tiny, soft white body aching with exhaustion without her sun’s energy to keep her standing tall.

Queen Aeon and King Lumos kissed their precious young filly good night after she collapsed upon her silken sheets in a deep and heavy sleep, smiling at this much-needed slumber. –She would have far more responsibilities to deal with than another evening’s sunset soon enough.

Though they didn’t understand why this final light show of each day required quite so many colours, or why it could never fall quite symmetrically upon the landscape like everything else the sunlight did, they relished their daughter’s childish creativity, and would laugh softly to themselves in bed later on as they fell asleep.

The world turned, and the darkness crept on alone, a few small stars twinkling lightly through the glowing darkness of the night sky.

As the first light-rays of the new sun stretched out to greet the horizons of their beloved princess’s land, something warm and deep stirred within the heart of the tiny, sleeping filly. Her horn tingled, her soft wings rose and stretched, and she arose without a sound, violet eyes closed in peaceful meditation, and stepped out to greet her beautiful sun.

A pale green, then blue, crept upon the sky, giving rise to pink and orange rays of light which fell upon their leader’s face and warmed her atop her tower, before bathing the landscape with a delicate glow which quickly warmed, spread and brightened. In the towns and villages, in the huts and in the palace below her, little ponies began to emerge from their dwellings to greet her glorious Summer day. After observing the bustling people below, busying to prepare for the day, she slowly closed her eyes and gave focus to the task of giving them a good show.

As the morning of the 10th Summer Sun Celebration drew near every day, the working ponies of the capital quickened their pace, ready to give thanks for a decade of light and warmth to the tiny white princess from the palace balcony. With a country for her parents to run, life was so busy at the palace that she never really left it outside of official functions. If it were not for her appearance to raise the sun publicly on each morning of her birthday, the ordinary ponies would have thought her to be nothing but a fallen star, resting upon the battlements of the palace to signal each dawn and each dusk.

That would change quite soon.

She would soon be old enough and educated enough to start managing the smaller tasks of running a country on her own, and royal responsibilities would fall upon her more frequently, and of greater importance, as she grew and matured. The Queen in her wisdom deemed it high time for her young princess to experience the lives of her people first hand.

4. The Mission

“Your Majesty, it may not sound very important, but it has many ponies in town quite worried for the safety of their foals. I understand that the preparations for the big festival are under way, and there are more important troubles which need to be worked on, but if Your Highness could spare just one official to give an investigation into the matter, it would greatly reassure them, that the palace is looking into their children’s safety for them. Even just to confirm that their little “monster” is a fake for them."

Aeon paused before beginning her prepared response, that the palace was rather busy, what-with-the-delegation-of-griffons-and-the-Summer-Sun-Festival-and-the-trouble-with-that-changeling-diplomat-who-turned-out-to-be-a-spy-and-that-, and a thought occurred to her. She glanced over at the mighty carved stone archway that marked the entrance to the palace library. A good, sensible girl is made for a task like this!

“Actually, Lord Feather-shield, I do happen to have someone in mind for the task!”

The Royal advisor, who had been expecting the flat refusal, pricked his ears with interest.

“Oh? Really? Who would be willing to spare time for such a trifling trouble?”

Aeon smiled “Why, my daughter, of course! It’s about time that she met some other foals.”

Feather-shield’s jaw dropped open, a move unwise to perform so rudely at his Queen.

“Oh… Ah-ah…” He replied stupidly. He shook his head. “Oh! Of course, Your Majesty! But…” He paused. It would be wrong to question his Queen. He continued anyway. “But…”

Aeon raised her eyebrows slowly.

“Well… is it truly wise, your majesty, for the princess to be mingling with ordinary foals, so soon before her great public appearance?” His mouth went dry at the look from the Queen.

“A princess must learn to lead her people. And if that begins with a hoof-full of frightened school-fillies, then so be it. Besides, she cannot be left to prepare her own birthday celebrations, CAN she? ‘Twould be good to send her out of the palace from under our hooves for a day, would it not?”

That silenced the matter.

Feather-shield went off to prepare his advice for the Queen concerning the next item on his list, and the queen moved in slow and stately fashion toward the library.

Though the princess was nowhere visible to the casual observer, the Queen knew exactly where her daughter was. She walked softly, toward the largest pile of books unshelved.

Though playful and affectionate with her parents in what spare time the family had, Celestia was set to be a good leader in terms of knowing the exact time and place for her behaviour as if by instinct. Though as yet a tiny foal with her mark of talent in sunlight only just fully settled upon her flank (after fading in slowly over her lifetime rather than appearing suddenly, as with most other foals), Celestia was at most times a silent and bookish filly, setting herself long hours of time studying the history, culture and ways of her people and world. She would pause only to throw a treat up into the air occasionally, for her restless young pet Philomena, a gift to the princess from HER at the first celebration of her arrival into this world. There was nothing the princess did not want to understand about the functions and ways of the world she would someday be required to rule.

A dark, sparkling shape entered the corner of Celestia’s vision, and she nearly jumped out of her skin to see her regal mother standing over her.

“Oh! Mother!” She cried out. “I was just…”

“Reading up on the Everfree forest again? Did Starswirl assign you these to read? One would think you’d know every inch of that forest back to front by now!”

Celestia flushed, her soft white coat turning a shade of pink not unlike that of her mane.

“Oh… no, Mother… I was actually… reading more than the assigned. I finished the study he asked me to complete on the composition of the astral clouds surrounding our world. So I began to read of the forest again. It is very fascinating.”

Aeon beamed. “Already? He assigned you that work just yesterday! But then… you do have a talent for our celestial bodies, do you not, my dear daughter?” She nuzzled the little filly, then drew back so as not to baby the princess.

“Actually, I have… something of a task to assign you myself, dear daughter.”

“Oh?” This alone was not new, but the way her mother said it suggested something more than extra study or helping to organise the cooks for the royal supper. “Whatever I may do to be of service, Mother.” The proper answer from a proper princess.

“Well, I am glad you are so intent on knowing that ancient forest inside and out, because this task will have to do with Everfree.” This was very new.

“Is my sun shining too brightly over it? I know those old trees aren’t used to growing in such bright light…”

Aeon chuckled. “As you know, the wellbeing of all of her people is of utmost importance to a leader…” Celestia nodded, as always, and fought not to roll her eyes, for she didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings, or get in trouble, but she had heard all this before.

“… including, -and especially, some might say- the children of the land.” Celestia pricked up one of her ears at the change in the usual speech. Aeon saw, and laughed.

“The children in the village just down just down there” –she gestured with her large black muzzle at a large cluster of huts in the shadow of the palace, between the fields of roses and the orchard’s edge- “have been very frightened of late. They keep claiming to have seen some sort of hideous monster in the woods… something comprised of many different animals pieced together. Most likely, they are just letting their imaginations run wild at seeing various creatures in the shifting shadows of those woods. But it is the right thing to pay attention to all such concerns, whether they seem well- founded or not, for even we cannot always be right. So it would be a good idea to reassure the little foals and their parents by investigating any possible beasts in that forest and either dealing with a real problem or dispelling their fears that their little school-fillies are at risk.”

Celestia listened dutifully to her mother’s small mission. “So… you want me to organise the response to this matter?”

Her mother smiled broadly. “I want you to be the response.”

Celestia cocked her head to one side.

“It’s about time you met some other foals like yourself” Aeon elaborated.

Celestia’s mouth went dry. Other foals? But she could not let her mother down. She straightened, she held her head high, and nodded, as ever dutifully. “What must I do, dear mother?”

Aeon knew her daughter well, and chuckled mirthfully at the brave little act. “You must lead them”, she said.

“-Organise, show your authority, use your mind and all the knowledge and skills we have taught you. Now is your time to apply them. You must reassure the children that they will not be harmed, ask what they saw and find the explanation for these sightings. By all means, take them into the forest to show them that what they saw was truly harmless and illusory! Make them follow you. Make them trust you as a leader. You were born for this!” she paused. “Oh, and don’t overdo your authority. Make sure to soften the Royal Voice. The volume is only for official functions, remember, and these are frightened children-“ She stopped again.” But do hold yourself with dignity! You need to make a good impression!” Oh dear. She was beginning to get as nervous about allowing her daughter outside of the palace as Celestia was! The princess could tell, and giggled softly, until silenced by a look from her mother.

She was frightened by the prospect of leaving the palace walls without her parents and officials, but she was exhilarated, as well. This would be no ordinary day of study. She was determined to prove her worth as a leader, as was her destiny.

Out in the forest crept Discord, determined only to find the source of a strange warmth he had experienced only on a handful of moments in his lifetime. He searched endlessly. Each strange little bird call was paid heed to, and each ripple in a stray pool of water inspected. He would sniff each object he passed, wonder at its difference from the next. Occasionally he would hunger, and prowl after rabbits or nibble at various seeds and fruits until something edible was tasted.

An inexplicable emptiness, that which had defined his short and miserable life, weighed heavily down within him, providing the sensation of a cold, dark cave tunnelled away within his chest. How could he understand this? This, for him, was life, and had always been life. Such was the sensation of living. Instinctively, unconsciously, he looked to distract himself from this feeling, idly picking up twigs between his great talons and flicking at them; trying to count the number of different bird calls he heard; and then simply swinging by his long tail from a branch, and focusing on the sensation of the wind pushing him back and forth.

He flapped his wings and tried to land gracefully on the ground below, as he had seen those soft, wide-eyed creatures from the towers do, but was of course unbalanced, and landed on his face, as always. The sudden pain was a shock, but his sense of irony was enormous for a child so young, and so he sat, and laughed, and continued laughing until he was ready to walk again.

With what little language the small draconequus had, he began to ponder, after a while, those velvety little creatures that would wander through these woods at times.

He made them fear. He knew that, now. When younger, he would give chase to them when they ran, thinking it was just some sort of game, as of those he had seen young manticores playing when learning to hunt. After a time, he came to recognise the looks upon their faces when he saw them as the same as that which would stare back at him from a pool of clear water after a lion had chased him. These days, he would hide from them, and watch them interact, and wonder at their ways.

He was quick to learn of one vital thing: Laughter. He did not understand it, but this odd, rollicking sound would tickle at his chest and make him feel something almost as grand as watching the sun at dawn and at dusk. Not as much as a sensation of joy or of contentness, but, rather, a lack of one specific feeling- that of being alone. It was through laughter that he could understand this sensation within him, when he tried to, and it was through laughter that he would escape it.

But he always messed it up. There he would be, laughing at the joy of the soft beings, when suddenly they would hear him, or see him, and that special species of silence so adapted to the environment of fear would fall upon the clearing. High-pitched screams, as of a rabbit in its final moments, would ring out, followed by clattering as the creatures left. Discord would be alone once more.

Slowly, surely, Discord began learn how to feel a new emotion: Regret. Surely these velveteen animals were no different to any other in the forest? But the undulating sound of their voices and of their laughter would pull at his heart, and at times, the wish occurred to him that it would somehow be possible to be one of them.

But life went on, and Discord was a survivor. The last draconequus would shed his mysterious drops of salty liquid when the warm tingling in his eyes and the tightness in his chest became too great, and when he was done, he would scratch at an itch in his tough coat with his talons, shake himself out, and go looking for food or a cool stream of water.

Such was life.

“….Well…” she said, her head held high and level as she had been taught; meeting each of the foals in the eyes with what she hoped desperately was not too harsh –or too casual- a look; and trying to keep her voice even. These wide-eyed-trembling fillies and colts were all much bigger than she was, and they were supposed to be younger, too! Yet they were terrified. She could see that they looked upon their miniscule royal guest with awe, and shook for fear of doing anything that might get them into terrible trouble

They were embarrassed, too: Despite the dreadful dirt upon the ground out here, and the difficulty she would have scrubbing it from the white, white fur of her hooves, Celestia regretted wearing her gold horseshoes, neck-band and tiara. She was royalty, and so expected to wear these wherever she went in public, but how they set her apart from the other little ponies! Faced with such high authority as the princess who raised the sun, these children suddenly realised how ridiculous and immature they must seem: here they were, complaining to the most powerful figure in Equestria bar the Queen Herself, about a silly little pony-tale concerning monsters in the woods! They knew she would be far too well- classed and properly educated to believe them! One of the fillies tugged nervously at her pink ribbons, her face red and faced down at the dust between her hooves. Darn! She thought. Should ‘ave worn the butterfly clips! But the princess saw something else in their fear: The truth was far more terrible than the fiction.

She started again.

“Well, our loyal subjects, our Mother in her great wisdom has deemed it time for us to join in the taking of responsibility for managing our citizens, beginning now, as I near the age for such things!” She began, trying to ‘smile upon them regally’ as her mother would say. “…WE! As we near the age…” she corrected. She smiled. Tensions relaxed very slightly among her ‘loyal subjects’. But the presence of heavily armoured guards at either of her flanks, in their grim silence, heavy stares and the daggers shining at their belts, did not help.

The foals seemed more anxious to end the whole business and get away than to tell their princess what it was their fear had demanded a response to. But she wasn’t about to let this chance to show the great pride she took in her royal duty slip by in failure, just because some shy fillies were afraid to speak up!

“Could you please describe to us this monster which you so feared? We should like to investigate the matter at once, for the safety of our citizens is of enormous importance to us.” The little ponies remained dead silent, scraping their dusty little hooves into the dirt awkwardly. Celestia began to feel extremely frustrated that such a simple task was to prove so difficult, but one of the foals, the smallest, a grey and white filly, looked about to speak when one of Celestia’s guards suddenly burst.

“THIS INSOLENCE IS SHAMEFUL! SPEAK TO YOUR PRINCESS WHEN SHE-“

“WAIT!” Celestia cried. The foals had shrunk, quivering, to the ground, and looked set to cry. Celestia swallowed a lump in her throat as she forced herself to look the guard, a commander, no less, in the eye, expecting reprimand.

Instead, the guard looked sheepish. “Of… of course, your Majesty, -my apologies!”

Surprised and slightly pleased, Celestia turned back to the cloudy-maned filly. “Were you to speak, little one?” she asked gently, though even this smallest of the school-foals was taller than her by a good inch.

Cloud-dancer trembled again at being addressed directly by the princess. “Well, -uh! Your Majesty! It was… it was furry…”

“It was scaly!” piped up another

“Well, it was furry and scaly, and… and it had a-a horn, l-like a deer, a-and a h-horn like a dragon, and it had… uh…”

“Lizard claws!”

“Viper tails!”

“Bat wings!”

“Feathers!”

“It was the size of a house!”

“It was hiding under a leaf!”

“It swallowed a horse WHOLE!”

GASP.

“No it didn't!”

Celestia put a hoof to her head.

“Subjects…” she announced.

“Citizens...?” she asked.

“Children…” she pleaded.

There was no stopping them once started. Celestia had enough, and she let them know it.

“ENOUGH!” she stated, in fullest Royal Volume.

Silence.

“We will write down these attributes, you speak of, and make a coherent description.”

It wasn't exactly coherent, but they got a description.

5. The Draconequus

The next day there would be whispers.

“Did you hear the news? The princess found a draconequus in the woods yesterday!”

“A draqonequus, my plot! By sweet Aeon’s left teat, those things were meant to be extinct!”

But the princess, for once, had nothing to speak of at dinner that night. She barely ate, in fact, and the King and Queen passed concerned glances to one another with the salt. They put it down to exhaustion, and the princess was exhausted: Her first day interacting with her subjects was straining, not least because their constant looks and sounds of terror got to her quickly, or because her guards were so edgy with the vast honour of their tiny charge of responsibility that they were ready to overreact to every slight sound as a hint of possible danger to their princess.

Her sunset that evening was half-hearted. A dark, hollow feeling, unlike any she had felt before, had crept upon her heart.

Her handmaiden, a lovely young filly named Softhorn, had chattered away happily while she soaked and scrubbed the princess, about how she had felt just the same way when first meeting other foals when she was but a yearling, and how it was perfectly natural to feel a little put out after such a big new experience, and oh-my-goodness-wasn’t-it-exciting-you-discovered-a-species-in-those-old-woods-that-noone-knew-still-lived-there-weren’t-you-always-such-a-clever-one. Philomena flew over to nuzzle her sadly when she came to her room.

She ached all over as she stepped out onto that balcony, and didn’t feel up to her usual artwork. The sun slowly turned a dull and dirty orange as it slunk down against the horizon with an almost audible sigh. The sky turned a pale, sickly greenish, then yellowish, then sandy orange.

Across the city, the newest arrival to the orphanage sat at the window of his new attic space, licking the dregs from his bowl of thin, grey oats with his long pink tongue. He watched. The clouds slowly faded from dark pink to bruise purple. He wept.

For all the excitement the next day, the ponies of the capital would quickly forget their little monster.

The workers at the orphanage, so caring of their small foals, found the ugly new arrival to be feral.

He squirmed and kicked when they tried to bathe him, leaving a deep cut across the matron’s face with his sharp talons.

He chased the other foals and tackled them roughly when they ran away from him.

He bit the caretaker that tried to clean out the space in the eves where he had hoarded a pile of half-eaten fruit that was beginning to smell.

He violently crashed into the other Pegasus children when they enrolled him in a junior flying class to learn to fly properly.

He excelled only in language, learning the speech of his fuzzy carers quickly, but didn’t seem to understand how to fit his new words into a kind sentence to the other ponies, only communicating commands; such as yelling at the other foals to come here at once! when he wanted to join their games; and making up words and sentences to refer to groups of concepts that made no sense to the ponies.

Worst of all, the creature, which seemed instinctively to refer to itself as “Discord”, would laugh. When a filly fell over upon her face, he would rush over to her, but instead of helping her up or comforting her, he would stand awkwardly for a moment as if unsure what to do, and then laugh. He would stand over crying children and laugh, of all things!

Finally, when the matron went to aid a weeping colt in finding his lost rabbit, Discord was caught, looking fatter than usual, licking a sticky red liquid from his lion’s paw. After shielding the eyes of the traumatised child, the matron kicked her difficult charge onto the street, and was to hear no more of him, gladly forgetting the odd creature.

Of course, he hadn’t had a very hopeful start with making his way among the ponies.

“Now, please, subjects, do not cry out! We must not disturb the forest creatures, or we will not find anything that fits the description of this monster you speak of!” Celestia was getting desperate. She had thought it would be easy to find an animal sitting on some oddly-shaped branch and shine her light upon it to show the children that it was easy to mistake such a thing for a monster when one’s imagination was hyperactive with fear. She had read all about these wild woods and seen the illustrations, so where were the vines like mighty serpents, and trees like twisted towers? She could understand the children being afraid of even the small vines, but was thoroughly disappointed by the complete lack of monstrous ones. They had been searching for hours, now!

How strange, she thought, that the creature they described added up to something resembling a draqonequus! But then she laughed at herself. She was not dismissing anything as impossible, of course, but it was clear that these children had all seen completely different animals, and simply put them together when collating observations. This was most clear when they compared the size of the beast. Some children could have seen a dragon. One account sounded like an antelope stuck in a bush. Two accounts sounded like a disturbed wildcat had hissed at them, with its eyes glowing in the darkness. One child had clearly seen a smallish spider. The princess had read up well on this forest. But she had not as yet been able to convince the foals of any of these things.

Discord sat on a branch, watching as that shiny, shiny yellow orb crossed over the sky once more. The little white clouds scurried over the blue expanse in haste as the winds picked up to rock the draconequus into a light slumber. He dozed, and in his sleep he dreamt the strangest of dreams. The clouds were pink, the sky was green, and the rivers tasted like the dripping juice of wild fruits, sweet as anything. He was standing atop one of these clouds, and looking out over a wide, flat plain, which was covered in straight-lined shapes of vivid colours, rather than grass. A small, purple specimen of one of those velvet creatures wept on the ground before him, and something of her tears seemed so ironic to him that he simply laughed. Something was very off about this world, very wrong, but in this dream, he laughed. In this sleep, one ear twitched, and a small, light voice was carried to his ear with a word he had known before: “…monster…” He awoke, shaking, from his dream, as if it had shown him being eaten or pounced at by manticores. And there, below him, stood something wondrously, gloriously new.

Celestia sighed. She felt her sunrays begin to reach so that they touched a space of the world that lay just beyond the horizon. It was well past its zenith, and she was ready to call off the search and give the results of their monstrous description and no official sighting to the mages to help her collate a report to give to the villages tomorrow. She lifted her head and breathed in to announce this, when something, or two things, suddenly caught her eye: two enormous eyes, fiery red and yellow, glowed down at her from the darkness. Here was what had frightened the foals. “Ah!” she exclaimed. “Look here, my subjects!”

The fillies and colts, upon seeing the enormous eyes, shivered, and squeaked, trying not to squeal again after the princess had exasperatedly warned them not to do so one more time. The smallest, grey filly even grabbed Celestia’s Royal Tail, and attempted to hide behind this much smaller and more regal foal, a motion than won her a solid glare for the right-hand guard, and an embarrassed golden hoof of support on her shoulder from the princess herself. “Let us uncover this cause of your fear for and for all.”

She calmly cast her spell of light, showing the face of the eye’s owner up in vivid violet glow. Her eyes shot open. “OH.” She said. The foals screamed and bolted. The princess stood stock still, shocked, as her guards rushed past her, horns glowing, and dragged the offending creature down form the branch with their magic, pinning it to the ground. “Wh….” Stuttered the princess.

“What should we do with it?” cried the guard, rather dramatically, over his shoulder to the princess, about the petrified creature between his great hooves, a dagger hovering just above its shaking face.

“Wh… w…” stuttered the princess helplessly.

Seeing that the creature’s eyes were locked firmly upon their precious and beloved little leader, and not the dagger at all, the commander growled viciously. “You do not dare to look upon your princess with such disrespect, beast!” he cried. Same commander as earlier. He looked set to kill the monster, though it was barely any bigger than the princess herself.

“WAAAIIIT!!!”

This scream, extremely unroyal, came from the princess herself. She was but a child, after all. And she saw the same of her prisoner. The guard shook, fearing punishment from the little master.

Discord shook, but more than the fear surging through his body, he felt something new and enormous stirring deep inside his chest... a warmth… and a light.

“It is… just a child!” stated the princess.

6. SHE attends

SHE was an ancient being, older than almost any other.

SHE was powerful, extraordinarily so.

SHE checked her timetable.

SHE would be expected by great mages to run the diplomatic delegations between the warring worlds of Qota and Tarsus in the following 39 hours, thus ending their 1000 years of ridiculous war. They required her presence there: There would be no possibility of the Qotian delegation getting out of the negotiations alive without her own special brand of divine intervention.

But SHE would also be expected at the 10th birthday party of a very special little princess. Such a difficult choice she was faced with! But SHE smiled. Delegations can be rescheduled by hours or by days, if need be. her favorite princess of the last millenia would only turn 10 once. With a flourishing spell of teleportation, SHE arrived at the very highly placed doorstep of an enormous rambling shack built atop an ancient and sacred tree. Letting herself in without a thought, SHE turned to her room of keepsakes, and selected 6 fairly ordinary-looking stones. With training, Celestia may someday find use for such a rare gift as these particular minerals. SHE sent a notification to the delegation, and closed her eyes.

Softhorn came early, as expected, to the princess, and nudged the little deity awake with a gentle hoof. "Come, your Majesty, it is time!" She giggled with excitement and with nerves. Celestia sleepily opened her wide eyes, heavy with sleep. "Big day, my princess!" beamed the handmaiden cheerfully. The King and Queen stood regally behind her.

With carefully groomed mane and brilliantly polished hooves, Celestia stepped out upon the first step. She had been here before, every single year on the day of her birth when the sun was at its largest and hottest in the sky, and stayed there for those many extra hours. The whole city never failed to turn up for this event, so the crowd was no bigger than before, but she knew that the celebrations and carnivals of the day would be especially grand. With a tinging at her back as her sun rays called out to her, cried to be free of the horizon, she calmly, serenely stepped up atop the platform, head held level as she had been taught. As she appeared, the crowds gasped; they always did. This was the only time most of them were able to see the princess first hand. What was more, she was glowing. The sun's rays, unable to reach her lands before the world had fully turned, were within the princess, and emanated from her instead as she moved up towards the crowd.

Finally, she was standing at the position, her body aching with the need for the sun to be arisen already but her face trained impassively. She lifted her little horn higher, glowing with the sun's power, arose her soft little wings, and took to the air, flying upward exhaustively slowly so as not to spoil her regal appearance. She rose up, and the sun rose with her, until her tiny, billowing silhouette was all the crowd had to admire against a brilliant sunrise of glowing orange, pink, purple, blue, green, yellow. The orb rose, and the intensity of her great colours condensed to an awe-inspiring beauty, and then the crowd had to look away as it grew too bright to see directly.

Celestia, exhausted by the performance but refreshed by the final arrival of her sun, stepped calmly down upon the platform again, refusing her legs the right to tremble even a little. The crowd cheered wildly.

Back in the palace, a grand feast would be laid out, and official guests from many distant nations. The changeling King, Lord Lorvaes of the Darklands, would be causing his usual mischief with the somberly polite delegation from the Crystal Empire. Gifts would be given. Most importantly, SHE would be there. You! Celestia would cry informally, like an ordinary filly meeting a favorite aunt. Tia! SHE would return, swooping down upon the darling creature and swinging her into a tight, nuzzling hug as if she were just an ordinary filly, as her parents looked on awkwardly at their once mentor and daughter behaving so inappropriately. Celestia was still a child, and they would let the moment slip by in laughter. SHE would kneel down by the little pony, and give her mysterious gift, and the promise to teach the princess to one day use them. The princess would be puzzled but pleased by the odd greyish objects, assured that anything so plain looking from HER must be hiding a truly grand secret, just like the egg given to her parents at her birth, only hatching when she was several months old. Philomena would never be too far away during the banquet, cheekily accepting scraps from the less uptight guests in the corner and causing disapproving glances with her playfulness at the shoulder of the princess.

But SHE would be absent at the feast, her mind on a new and more interesting matter.

There, in the newly raised sunlight, basked a small and quite unusual creature, strange enough in shape to have caught and held the attention of the old being. SHE had already shed her tear for this species, was certain that there were no more; so it was with exhilaration for the spirit that SHE placed a gentle paw upon the little creature's oddly bent shoulder, causing him to jump and look up cautiously. For the first time in his life, it was to see a strange and unusual face smiling down upon him. He smiled back. Instinctively, unconsciously, his face lifted up and he felt that warmth in his heart, light and flickering as candle flame. SHE knew what it was to outlive your people. This little creature knew instantly and without quite understanding that he knew, that he was no longer alone. Her smile held a promise: SHE would return. SHE would see that this rather special species would not die out so soon as this child was capable of. SHE would raise this child herself.

7. Hope

Softhorn had been right about a good night's sleep. After the draconequus incident, the restless dark feelings that had weighed so heavily upon the young princess were surprisingly quick to dissipate.

Come that next morning, she had all but forgotten the frightened creature that she had feared for so intensely in that harsh moment with the commander.

Gone were the sullen clouds that hung low over her landscape, speaking of her apparent and pathetic failure to muster the school-foals to trust, follow and revel in her leadership.

Gone were the sudden doubts about how content she was in her royal fate: the insidious loneliness that had crept upon her when she was found to be incapable by duty, position and skill, of the normal conversation most young ponies could hold with one another, and the games that they could play.

Gone was the exhaustion, gone the disorientation at having emerged from so new an experience unscathed.

Gone too were the feelings that she had truly failed in her duty: Failed to expect the draconequus; failed to make safer choices for her subjects with the possibility of their harm in very real sight; failure in her studies of the woods, to have been so surprised by the true nature of them; failure to her parents and to her teachers, to her advisors and to her guards, for all of these things; and finally, failure to the draconequus itself. It had looked so hurt, and so frightened, and she feared that night, that as it was but another being beneath her sun, she had even failed this, her newest and most unusual of citizens.

Cast aside.

All of these feelings were cast aside.

Awaking at the tingle from her sun the next day, the princess had felt relaxed, relieved, reassured, refreshed, and... happy.

She felt ready.

Her first small challenge aside, Celestia hungered. She wanted knowledge. She wanted experience. Friends. The wind on her face. She wanted life. And she was ready to take it.

That sunrise countered the disappointing set of the night before. This one was full of excitement: cool, pale green, crisp lemon yellow, and the peppy heat of tangerine. She was very ready.

No formal "good morning" to her parents at breakfast, but rather her parents were taken aback by the princess's abrupt greeting.

"Dear Mother, dear Father, what tasks might I do as assistance in running the kingdom today? I feel that I have only to gain from further experience."

So it came that in the days leading up to her birthday and long after it, the princess would leave the palace every single day.

She attended the midsummer folk festival as royal guest, listening avidly to the common music of her people, watching delightedly as they danced and ate happily before her.

She coordinated the settlement of a local piece of land that was disputed between the manager of a school house and a local shopkeeper, hearing of the needs of both parties and inspecting the land herself, before reasoning that the space could be divided in a new way that had occurred to neither and benefited both.

She had an expert on plant life walk her through a part of Everfree herself in order to know the woods first hand rather than from books.

She visited doctors, apothecaries, teachers, merchants and tradesmen to learn of their trades and importance, needs and sentiments, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

She tasted the delicious fresh-baked goods of friendly peasant folk hoping to shower their esteemed visitor with only the greatest of hospitality.

She visited one of the many orphanages of the capital, and spoke kind words to the unfortunate children, listening to their innocent dreams of the future.

One evening, she simply walked along the banks of the mighty Everfree river that flowed around the palace and gardens, admiring the delicate beauty of the orchards and gardens from a brand new perspective as the fiery rays of her setting sun shone through their emerald leaves.

Everywhere she went the princess was accompanied by the commander, Brightline, who she soon became familiar with, and more assertive; giving him polite orders, and quickly inspiring a vast and intense loyalty in the unicorn for his little charge, and a great respect: She had a good instinct for the time and place for different behaviours in her armed and burly shadow. There would be no more crying school-fillies while he followed her lead; and yet no citizens left under-awed by the strictly disciplined behaviour of her bodyguard.

Weeks would pass, and then months. Celestia grew very gradually in physical stature, so that she still looked the size of only a small filly when others of her age were considered young adults. The same could not be said for the charisma of her presence, or her intellect, as she devoured knowledge and experience like a fat foal on a diet, and grew steadily more suited to polite orders and regal demeanor, wise leadership and well-planned decision-making. Long after the sheer novelty of it had worn off, ponies remained thoroughly awestruck to see their princess in the street, or at small functions.

What did grow only at the rate of her size was her friendships. Parents, handmaids, guards: all were good and well for her; kind and supportive. Even a playful pet phoenix, who had more than more than once encouraged her master to awake in deepest darkness for reckless games in blind flight.

But no ponies, not a filly nor a colt, were to allow the princess anything less than polite conversation, or anything more playful than a smile. For all her servants and soldiers, she was very much alone.

Every few months, SHE would arrive, with as little fanfare as SHE always did. SHE would take the little filly out, and they would walk together through the orchards side by side. SHE explained the nature of things to the little filly; how worlds spun around stars and stars around galaxies in a restless and endless dance; how new species cold be formed through survival and loss; how she would need to be ready to face the challenges of losing those she loved as she lived on past them with her star; what occurred to the dissipating energies of a soul as its body became defunct and it were left to ripple out into the universe.

The exact nature of these meetings remained a mystery to the King and Queen, as SHE had always done. But they knew that without guards, servants or subjects in sight, their precious daughter was in none but the safest of hands as she trotted contentedly by the ancient mentor's side through the leafy orchards during these days. At times, the pair could be observed to simply sit, in sun, on rocks, in shade and by the river, in total silences, eyes closed, for hours on end, or practice some simple little levitation spell over and over again with no apparent purpose all day long.

As for the evenings when SHE was in Equestria, no one seemed to have a clue: After stuffing her face with delicious palace food and shocking manners, SHE would speedily shovel an extra portion of her dinner into a bag when they would have thought her to be full already, and take off, silently, into the darkness outside the palace. Though SHE had neglected to inform anyone, SHE had another, more needy apprentice to deal with.

He was a good student, too. After gifting him with the vast patience it took to teach him the basic social understandings he would soon need, SHE set down to the task of teaching her precious student one of the rarest and strangest of crafts there were: The crafting of the universe.

There the two would sit, mysterious being by misshapen one, in total silence, sometimes for nights on end, in the same gardens as she had walked with the princess. No highborn ponies, no glorious celestial deities, nor the King and Queen, would dare to ask where SHE had gone on these nights, but this, of all great mistakes, was a big one, as was her neglect to tell them as SHE left. This single missed stepping stone in the darkness was that which would haunt HER deeply for a long, long time, for it was the very one that stood invisibly between two different futures for Equestria. It was not the lesson, nor her student, nor the subject, which would cause her the deep, aching future regret which SHE failed to sense coming in these hours. Rather, it was knowledge. Yes, that tiny, oh-so-reversible mistake to not inform her students of each other's teachings would haunt none more greatly than SHE in the ages to come.

At the time, she had sat there, in the gardens of blackest night, filled with soaring and laughing hope.

Once carefully explained to him, over and over, SHE had taught the young Discord not to hide his emotions in laughter but to face them fully, appreciating the significance of their varying energies and managing their causes. He began to only laugh when he was genuinely pleased, and it seemed with the rasping, hollow yet innocent sounds of the child's delight that this first step of progress in his teachings would never need making again. From there, her great faith in her student led to a dramatic response from his learning.

SHE was no longer teaching him that biting people would make them run from him and hurt him back; but rather that negative emotional undercurrents in universal energies being channeled for manipulation had an unpredictable instability that made them dangerous tools for the energy worker.

Far from teaching him that hunting fillies like a mad manticore would leave him friendless and alone; SHE began to explain to him the nature of powerful attachment energies in opening a crafter to corrupting influences.

While SHE had once needed to teach him that hoarding his perishable foods away until they were rotten would actually decrease a draconequus's chances of survival, SHE rapidly found herself explaining how the changelings' less fixed physical forms allowed them to more readily communicate to each other without words, and why they needed the energies from attachment to stay alive.

More dramatic even than his philosophical and intellectual growth under a strong guiding hand were his powers. SHE had sensed this in him from the start, and it had given HER that first smile for him, for his potential had been enormous. After sitting for only four hours in front of his pebble one darkness, he performed a levitation spell. (in one sense) Hornless, unmoving, the little Discord sat with the pebble simple hovering, perfectly still, before him. SHE gasped. They had only been at this for six months! SHE had never seen such great progress! Without so much as an aura around his work, Discord had taken the first great step toward the enormous powers which he was born to someday possess: He had manipulated the physical world with his will. Surely life was looking to only go up for him from there.

8. Special

She would have hated to admit it, but Celestia had felt slightly dissapointed when she learned that Philomena was not the only phoenix in existence.

She should have been delighted when, at age five, she was presented with a beautiful polished egg as an exotic gift from the Sheikh of Saddle Arabia. She loved the bird that had been her constant companion since her early months, and should have loved all phoenixes as a result. Instead, the sudden diminishing of her pet and gift from HER to less-than-unique had burned at her hooves, and in a later moment of spoiled abandon, it had passed to the hooves of her younger cousin, then princess heir of the Crystal Empire, who knew not what to do with it and had broken the precious thing.

Celestia near cried when she thought of the incident, and how alone like herself Philomena was; and she cringed when she recalled having finally mustered up the courage to ask HER:

"You know," she began, cheekily informal, "most subjects only gift the princess with objects considered to be one-of-a-kind upon her birth." SHE looked down, a single eyebrow pulled sardonically up upon her forehead. "So why did *you** only give me a mildly exotic egg?"*

SHE had smiled. "Because *you** are not the only star in the sky, Celestia. Remember that."*

This wasn't enough. "Is there something really special about Philomena?" the child had mewed up at the great enigma beside her.

SHE had cocked the eyebrow higher. "Don't you *know*? I'm dissapointed in you, Celestia." The little princess had shrunken back from her beloved mentor in childish heartbreak. "What do you know about phoenixes?"

The quiet filly had blinked her violet eyes and gulped. "Well... the Sheikh said they live for a thousand years...

"Go on."

"and... Mother says, that for every star in the sky, there is a phoenix, which guards and nourishes the heart of its flame, until the end of time. But that's just-"

"Well? Just what? Philomena looks perfect for the role, wouldn't you say director?" She had smirked at her curious little jibe at her dear apprentice, who had finally cast her eyes to the perch where the subject of discussion had sat, ruffling its ruby plumes for attention.

"crrrrrooohhh..." Philomena added happily to have finally made eye contact with her wondrous master. Maybe she could convince her fairy-floss-maned friend to go flying with her!

Celestia was suddenly racked with pangs of guilt for what she had just been suggesting. "Sooo... is that why Philomena is so special? Because it's her destiny to care for me?"

"No." The reply was simple, the great being's expression taking on an edge. "and if you do not know what is, I could always take her away for you to make room for a far more *special** replacement."*

SHE had now looked hard at the princess. This was a test. A test Celestia had passed before the sentence was up. The rustling of her beloved companion's feathers suddenly took on the appearance of a great fire in Celestia's tear-blurred vision, burning her insides in agony as the slivers of the minute ruler's broken heart began to pour from her eyes at the end of "away". The word had come to her: "No!" Then had come the learnings which SHE had not needed to teach: In that second it was known. "No! Please! Philomena *IS** special! The most special thing in the whole, wide, world, to me. She's my friend. She takes care of me when I'm sick, and tickles me when I'm down, and comforts me when I cry, and takes me for games when I feel-"*

SHE motioned for the outpouring of sentiment to go silent, and took the weeping filly into her arms, smiling broadly and kissing the tiny princess on her fuzzy white forehead. "You know all that you will need to know about special already, then" SHE nuzzled and hugged her soft-hearted student till the sobs began to slow and relax slightly, dying down to sad little hiccups and a runny nose. "I gave you Philomena," SHE had finally explained, "because you need her. For all your food, guards, maids and subjects, and for all the energies of your sun, you could not live without her. And you never will. When all others fail you," SHE sighed, standing up, "Philomena will be always by your side. Is that not special?" SHE brushed the discolourment from her tear-stained front, and the last drops from her apprentice's face.

"Is this magic?" stutteringly queried a wide-eyed princess.

SHE beamed down happily. "This is friendship.":

Celestia would cringe at such memories of spoilt frivolity in her childhood as her moral and physical worlds conflicted.

She was not one to be ungrateful.

But she was dissapointed now.

"WHAT?" She cried, tossing her long pink mane and flicking her tail.

Mere days before her 20th Summer Sun Celebration, the young goddess still bore the appearance of a waifish filly of 12, if that, and was beginning to bear the air of a precocious teen. Still, she was quick to remember her royal manners, politely clear her throat and still herself before speaking again to the aged stallion.

It also happened to be the twentieth year of the rule of Queen Amo Pertina of the Crystal Empire, and when the delegates had arrived at the Everfree palace for the grand joint celebration of the partnership between their nations, Celestia had been quick to seek out in the grand mage a novel new teacher for herself. After all, she knew nothing of the Crystal Empire, and now was a better time than any to start learning. but first thing was first: She had held the mysterious gems of her tenth birthday in her possession for a decade now, and could wait no longer for an explanation, one which her mentor seemed too mysterious to bother giving. The elderly mage Cutglass was a famed expert on crystals. If the horseshoe fit...

The mage now stood before her, his tufted beard quivering ever so slightly at having been spoken too in such a manner by one so young and so powerful.

"I-I-I would hate to b-be misinforming you, princess, bu-but, the facts seem all straight out and clear..." He stammered, before calming himself once more. "I would be the most surprised of anypony to find such a crystal in Equestria. I would never, in all my life, expect even one so far from our empire. But there is no mistaking it: This is the exact material that makes up the ground and city of our empire. Th-th-this, my dear..." he began to stammer once more, reaching forward with his magic to take one of the stones from the princess and inspect it in the light. "is... wh-why, it's amplification crystal!"

Celestia, barely able to hear the mage over the sound of rushing in her ears, perked one ear higher than the other, which was flat against her skull, at the sound of the unknown term. The mage seemed excited by the find, but from what she knew of the Crystal Empire, the ponies built their houses out of this stuff! She had never felt more put out in her life. This had to be a joke!

The mage, looking past his delighted muttered ramblings about his excitement at the little greyish gem in his grasp, finally noticed the look on his royal client's face. "I-is there s-s-something th-the matter, dear princess?... I have no idea what such stones are doing in Equetsria!"

The alabaster scowl before him took on an even more bitter, grey note. "So you're saying," she slowly, quietly moaned, "that for all these years, I've been so excited about a bunch of dumb, grey, crystal rocks!" Her inpolite and poorly-expressed choice of words bit deeply into the air around her before she had time to draw them back. From behind the darkish gem he hovered just before himself, the mage stared blankly at his company for a moment. His face went dark as his large white eyebrows slowly lowered into place above his eyes in a silent scowl of even greater disappointment and bitter irritation than the princess. As if he were only speaking to a disobedient child, and not the princess of the sun, the old teacher snapped.

"Well, if you're going to be so unappreciative, I believe this is where my schooling ends for you: I cannot fill the mind of one already so full of their own ideas of what specialties life has truly given them!" With that, he set down the little gem with a surprisingly loud thud at the princess's hooves, and marched away. She had more than offended him. She had deeply, deeply offended him. More than she thought it were possible to offend someone with only a few roughly spoken words. She felt put out, like a candle under a bucket of ice water.

"Hrmph. What was his problem?" Commander Brightline stepped forth from where he had been guarding the door to the quiet meeting. "talking to the princess like that! I should have whacked some good sense into that old man. Must be totally senile. Who do these crystal ponies think they are anyway?" Celestia sighed at her friend's unhelpful comments. Brightline meant well, but more anger was hardly going to help the fact that her entire education of the mysterious Crystal Empire had seemingly just stomped out of that door in a hurry.

Try as she might, the young princess could not catch the eye of the mage over the salt at the royal banquet that evening. From only a few seats down, he managed to make himself as accessible to his adversary as a key locked securely inside its own safe. She sighed deeply as her dessert came: The royal bakers had outdone themselves, glazing their cakes to look like multicolored gems, in tribute to their esteemed guests. The mage would be returning to the empire after tonight to deal with some urgent business about young magic users misusing their spells around some vital object in the city square. Celestia had heard something about a heart, and an upcoming festival. It seemed she had lost all chance at sating her questions on the Crystal Empire, or at least what was meant by the gift of her six little stones.

Or so she thought. After dinner, the crystal Queen Amo Pertina and her daughter Princess Aimoria Serenity requested a private meeting with Celestia, without even her mother the queen invited. Puzzled, the regal young mare cordially invited them to her private balcony to witness the display of her sunset first hand.

Queen Pertina was delighted. "Aimy", as Celestia knew her rarely-seen cousin, pricked her ears up happily at the idea, and couldn't seem to contain her excitement as they trotted briskly up the many spiraling flights of stairs that led to Celestia's quarters. The two sat on the edge of the sun mare's bed, no less, and jostled excitedly, mother and daughter, like small fillies waiting for a puppet show to begin. Laughing at their excitement, Celestia felt obliged to give an especially grand show. At each glittering ray of golden light, the two "ooh"ed as if watching a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower. The fuschia clouds garnered big grins from the queen and gasps from the slightly misnamed Serenity. The green glow of her horizon was duly complimented, and the soft pink had both matriarchs sighing with gentle delight. When the last sliver of the fiery orb had gone, they applauded.

Blushing, and slightly weary, Celestia indulged them with a bow and joined them on the edge of the soft makeshift seat, trying to remain awake as her weight sank easily into the feathery mattress.

"Oh, Tia, that was just marvelous!" Aimy wouldn't wait to speak informally with her cousin, and her pale, blueish-grey fur glittered slightly as she ruffled her purple-tipped wings in pleasure. "I've never seen so beautiful a sunset in all my life!" She was squeaking slightly with each word.

Her mother was not so easily broken from royal composure. The soft orange fur of her forehead creased very slightly into a frown at her daughter, reminding her that it was not yet the place for complete childishness. "Actually, I have something of a more official nature to share with you, my dear niece, but it cannot leave this room. That is why I could not accept guards to this meeting. You must promise me this."

"Of course." Celestia stated without question. She trusted her aunt, for all the mysteries of her rule, and wanted to get to the bottom of whatever surprise was coming for her.

So what was her surprise when the queen reached into a delicately embroidered saddlebag and pulled an enormous crystal from within! Celstia knew, instantly, that it was the same material as her own six stones, but this was much larger, and a pretty shade of pale purple. Her violet eyes widened at the stone before her. Serenity giggled happily. "Well? Don't you want to know what it is?"

"Amplification crystal..." Celestia sighed.

The two beside her looked suddenly very taken aback. "What? Who told you that?" cried the queen as if her most private secrets had been leaked to her niece by a criminal informant. For once, Serenity was speechless.

Then Pertina calmed down. "Ah, of course! Your mother must have told you!"

Not wanting to offend any more crystal ponies or bring up her earlier encounter with the mage, Celestia just nodded. "So you know all about what this is already then?" Her niece shook her head.

"It's your official gift from the Crystal Empire Delegation." she stated.

Oh no! thought the little princess. I wanted answers to all my questions! Now I have more than ever!

The queen saw her puzzled look and chuckled."You must understand, Celestia, that we keep the nature of our empire's magic an extremely closely guarded secret. We could never afford to let such knowledge fall into the wrong hands!" She paused while this idea was mulled over beneath the wispy pink mane next to her.

It finally occurred to her. "So... the nature of this... amplification crystal.. is the secret to your people's strength and unity? How is that possible?"

The queen glanced behind her before answering to check that the room was empty, as though readying to relieve the name of her foalhood crush. "Celestia... Dear... Amplification crystal..."

"Amplifies the emotive energies of whatever magic you shoot through it!" interjected an always impatient (and very poorly named) Princess Serenity. Her mother glared at her fully this time. Sighing, obviously looking for more words to put to this grand and secretive occasion, she finally admitted defeat.

"Exactly."

A long, drawn out pause followed.

"My dear one, I cannot explain everything to you, but the nature of the very ground of our empire is to amplify the emotional energies of our people. That is why it is our tradition to focus the work of the Empire's ruler on spreading love and happiness through our people. So long as positive energies are radiated through our homeland, feelings of love and peace are distributed all across our world, from Pinto Rico to the frozen wastes of the Wendigonia. But if ever anypony were to misuse the great power of the Crystal Throne, the darker unrefined materials from beneath our world would be activated, and their corruption would be all-consuming!". Serenity seemed to role her eyes a bit at her mother's dramatism. She had heard this before.

Celestia gasped at this, and several other revelations. She wished she had time to apologize to a certain mage!

Pertina beamed happily. "...Which is why we are giving you this most rare of gifts: It is a crime to cut our crystal wrongly, as it corrupts the flow of energy through the gems... We wished to thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. Ever since your sun came exploding into being 20 years ago, our people have been more happy and full of love than ever before. You, Celestia, have brought peace to all of our lands!"

She felt humbled. Enormously so. She had been given something extremely special, twice, and her gratitude and unworthiness swelled up within her, threatening tears. She felt guilt at having not seen that SHE would have her own purposes in giving her the enigmatic objects, and suddenly burned to continue in her teachings harder than ever till she was ready to hear what purpose those particular, ordinary-looking six were to have.

She was humbled by something else, as well: It occurred to her that even when the brightstar was only just that, ponies still had to have lived, and loved, some way or another. Her power, with all the sun's energy pushed into it, could never be enough to change the emotions and connections of an entire world. This ancient chunk of gemstone to Equestria's north did just that and more, and it was an ancient civilization of rich culture and time-honored traditions that had somehow remained so sturdy in its balance for so long that no one beyond their borders could have any idea why their streets were so clean and crimeless, or their people so content and peaceable.

Celestia was not the only star in the sky. She would not forget that.

With tears in her eyes, she clasped the hoof of the queen to her own over the gift that so well represented the harmony of the union between their lands.

"The friendship that lies between Equestria and the crystal ponies..."

"Is magic." finished the queen happily.

9. Different

Discord ran, his serpentine body a stream of red, brown and green through the marketplace. Some ponies gasped as he blurred past them, until he cast his invisible aura out to silence their minds to his presence. He was invisible. He was unstoppable. He was making a massive dick of himself.

When he reached the edge of the orchards he rushed up a thick apple trunk as nimbly as a squirrel, and into his secret little abode. Looking back, he watched the ponies scurry about wildly in the disorder he’d left behind him in between the stalls, and threw himself to the floor, laughing wildly. This was great fun, after many a dull week of not getting into any trouble. He was cutting loose, a bit!

A wry chuckle came from behind him, along with a light weight upon his shoulder, nestled in his thick yellow fur. He spun his head about. “Oh! You!”

SHE laughed lightly again. “Come now, Discord, you know better than to do that! You know that if they keep seeing you do it, you’ll eventually get in big trouble. I don’t want you to do anything foolish! Such powers as you have are not to be taken lightly! You know that!”

Discord sighed at the being, who he held in the esteem of a master and parental figure. “I know, I know! But I can NOT just sit here endlessly with nothing to do! I forget that I am alive, sometimes.” Unable to find work or connection among the ponies, he had taken to stealing the things he needed (or wanted). He placed his catch upon the floor in front of him: a shiny little trinket that had caught the morning light with a gorgeous shine.

SHE smiled understandingly, and put an arm about him. “Young one, there are many things in this world you have not encountered yet. I so worry that friendship may be top of that list.”

Her apprentice snorted, waving his long tail into a curlicue behind him. SHE sighed to him knowingly. “You know it hurts me deeply yet at once gives me joy to see you alive, Discord. I feared for a long time for your species. I shed a tear for every great loss that occurs, and your kind was a big one. Your people fascinated me and I longed to know more about them, and suddenly, they were gone.”

“Huff.” Discord rolled his large fiery eyes. SHE saw, and smiled.

“We do not live as islands, Discord. You, ironically, know that, possibly better than any pony else on this planet. You sense the connective energy between ponies and know the webs of interaction between others. You know that these energies are vital to life, whether you’re a changeling or a draconequus. You are not an exception to the rule, Discord. You live, you breathe, and you need the support of those around you.” SHE breathed out slowly, and sensed a new truth: “If you get yourself in trouble with this world using the powers you have, no pony, not even me, could save you from your fate. Being powerful won’t keep you alive and well, any more than laughing to disguise hurt will make you happy. What you need… is a… different outlet for your creative energies. You need to find a way to put aside your differences and find harmony in your life. Your energies will be unbalanced otherwise…”

SHE looked out at the gloriously blue sky. “I’m leaving, Discord.”

His eyebrows lowered into a confused frown. Already?

“I have taught you much, in this short time we have known one another. You have made me more than proud. And I fear that other duties call for me…”

His eyes opened wide. “So… a long time this time…”

A tear rolled down her face, unseen by her student “… Yes...”

He twisted up, scratching at a loose scale with his lion claw. It began to dawn on him what was meant by a long time. SHE was ancient. He turned away into the small wooden space of his tree house, and stared blankly at the hoarded little treasures hanging from the wall, glinting in the soft light. He squeezed his eyes shut, and avoided the temptation to cackle. He was trying not to cry.

SHE walked over and scratched the poufy shock of hair between his long ears. SHE would miss him, and she did not make this feeling unclear. Neither did he. Turning about on his hoof, he gathered his wise teacher up in a massive bear (or rather eagle-lion) hug, and nestled his odd face one final time in her kindly neck.

When he finally released her, SHE gathered up her small, plain brown bag and lightly stepped to the hidden doorway between the great branches of the old apple tree, before turning for the last time to the young draconequus, who stood forlornly on all fours looking back at her with the eyes of a lost sheep, fluttering his wings slightly.

“Take care, child.”

Celestia stepped gently through the meadow, taking care not to crush the more delicate flowers under hoof. She breathed in deeply, taking in the fresh, heady scent of the world. Since the birth of her dear little sister, she had grown at a faster pace than before, apparently due to the reflective qualities of Equestria’s beautiful new moon. She thought fondly of the tiny, dark bundle awaiting her at the palace. The infant filly would be asleep in their royal quarters atop the tower now, as she always was during the day; and Celestia would sleep soundly through her little squeals and cries come nightfall, much to the despair of Softhorn and the night guards. She recalled the dramatic birth of her glittering and mysterious little sister.

At around the time that Aeon announced and explained her pregnancy to her bemused little daughter, the mages across the Equestrian landmass announced some terrifying news: Due to a cataclysmic astronomical event, a vast meteor shower would be hurtling past their world, placing an asteroid the size of a small planet in a path of almost certain collision with their own. It was the stuff of nightmares. The ponies readied themselves for the end to arrive in the year-long window of opportunity to do so.

When the round lump of Queen Aeon’s belly had been slowly growing for several months, she began to experience the pains. Royal doctors and nurses were called, and when no explanation could be found, a request was sent out to all the doctors of Equestria, but none could find a single good explanation for the complications that had arisen within her. Some ponies took it as a sign that she was dying, and braced themselves weakly for the coming apocalypse, when not just their world, but their queen, would be destroyed.

But for all the dark, restless terror of that year, when the night finally arrived on which worlds would collide, nothing more than a sweet, innocent little foal arose from within the queen, to a breathtaking backdrop of the enormous asteroid hurtling through the outer thermosphere in a single fiery sweep, tearing the heavens apart above them and leaving a sudden, vast dome of infinite sparkling beauty above the land of Equestria.

When the mighty pale orb had finally settled into rhythm around this world after a grand looping path about it, several weeks later, the sickly little foal finally began taking milk regularly from her mother, bringing colour to her cheeks and to those of the tense and tired queen.

Celestia was upset and exhausted by the whole experience, but remained dutifully by her mother’s side throughout the hectic early weeks of almost constant cries from the new arrival. As for the new arrival… It was love at first sight for the pink-maned filly. This foal was here for her to guide and to love, and she would not let her new little sister down.

The carefree 25 year old was finally looking older than a child. Just. Tossing her long pink veil of a mane in the breeze, her bright white face caught the sunlight that was streaming down from her rich blue heavens and the leaves and flowers of the orchard meadow seemed to bend toward her, stretching to catch some of her warmth and beauty for themselves. Some puffy white clouds blew past overhead. She was glad to have found herself alone in this place, no guards to clank about.

Her horn tingled suddenly, and her ears pricked right up at the soft snap of a small twig. She was not alone. She looked up, and gasped.

There he stood, the draconequus of her first ever mission. Even if he wasn’t the only specimen of his kind, she would never fail to recognize him, though he had grown. She would know that face till her dying breath. He was staring at her, intently, with red-gold eyes, and she felt slightly… abashed. No pony would usually dare to look so hard and so long at their princess. This harsh, solid stream of eye contact began to get to her, and her face glowed a little with some unwarranted warmth as she blushed. The beast grinned a lopsided grin and shook a little with some soft, silent laughter at the delicate-looking guest to his little grove.

After the initial shock of seeing one so… different, she began to realise that he wasn't as hideous as the reports of him had made out. A wild shock of scruffed hair died back into a neatly-cut black mane descending from between his twisted, gleaming, odd-matched horns to the space between his shoulder blades. His surprisingly graceful dove-grey-furred neck in turn gave rise to the brown feathers of his body. His eagle’s talons glimmered against the grass, and his powerful lion’s paw rested softly between the rough fur of his donkey’s leg and the emerald scales of his dragon claws. As he rose his naked bat’s wing and fluffy blue one in response to the silent interrogation being received from the princess, his ruby tail glittered like a discarded necklace of fine jewels upon the grass. He was… beautiful, she realised. This was a most wondrous and special creature before her. She wondered how any pony had thought him no more than a hideous monster before. Then he spoke.

“I suppose you want me to apologise for so daring to grace your perfect pony presence with my own hideous visage?” He hissed through his fangs, ice cold. He menacingly ran his knife-like talons through the grass.

Celestia was hurt “You cannot apologise for existing, draconequus. I am your princess, and as such your presence is as valuable to me as any of my subjects.”

“Discord.” He ignored the stupid sound of her official response.

“I… am sorry?”

“The name. It’s Discord.” He laughed a husky laugh at the slender young beast before him. She was pretty, this unicorn. Prettier than most. He was glad she was going to take her time with formal polite conversation before going to avoid rudeness. He didn't show any sign of it, but her company was warming of his soul.

“Ah. My sincere apologies, Discord. I meant no offence!” Her sincerity was unquestionable. It poured out of her in waves. She was the most sincere damn animal he’d ever met. “… Ahh… Celestia.”

She held out a glittering gold-clad hoof. Taken aback, he hesitated before clasping it in his lion’s paw. How surprising. She genuinely seemed to want to introduce herself to him. He’d never encountered such a pony in all his life!

Suddenly, it hit him, and a couple ice blocks rolled down his spine as a hot lump of dough seemed to rise in his chest with an almost audible shiver. He knew her, he realised. He was embarrassed to find a heavy blush seeping out of his cheeks before he was able to stop it.

She smiled. “Princess Celestia, yes.” Her soft white brow creased a tiny bit, and he realised she was unhappy for him to have found this out. He was so transfixed by the alabaster-carving of a sweet frown that he did not notice that she was pulling her hoof away, until she prodded him gently with hoof unclad, silently motioning for him to return the empty gold shoe now clasped in his mighty paw.

“Oh! Right!”

The princess looked about. “You live here?” She could smell his presence here. Suddenly knew what that strange smell had been that had made her feel so giddy a minute ago.

He ignored the princess’s question.

“You’re the princess of the sun.” She nodded. It wasn’t a question. “Shouldn’t you be guarded at all times?” He seemed to back away a little into the shadows as he said “guards”.

Celestia blushed, again. What was wrong with her? “I… ah, left without my guard today. I wanted to be alone.” Why was she telling him this?

Seriously? “Why?” How strange.

“I wanted to appreciate the scenery in silence”.

“It isn’t silent here.” He seemed ridiculously calm to be speaking so directly and without formality to the princess, aside from the sweet blush gracing his face softly from beneath grey fuzz. “Listen to the birds.”

She listened. Her heart began to sing with beauty as the light sounds washed over her, and her sun shone a little brighter, warming her flowing pink mane. He watched and wondered. “How lovely!” she exclaimed. He had to agree.

10. Fine Day

Her snow-white hooves gently compressing the emerald grass beneath her through golden cladding, the regal creature moved slowly through the exquisite meadow. It was a fine day.

Her sunlight streaming down through the leaves cast glowing veridian shadows across her snowy flank, turned the dark scarlet of the apples to a firey ruby red, and the daisies at her hooves into tiny stars, the contented bees orbiting almost lazily about them. As she walked, the closest birds about her fell silent in awe at their visitor. The trees seemed to bend to offer their gleaming fruits in tribute ti her presence. The very clouds of the sky seemed to scurry across the cerulean plain in haste, as awkward servants desperate not to cast shade on their glorious master.

Celestia was indeed a fine creature. Nearing the tender age of 35, no worry over the production of foals entered the mind of the princess, and no age seemed capable ever of streaking her perfectly rose-tinted mane, which rippled cheerfully in the light breeze behind her. She was as tall and glittering as a crystal princess, as slender as a changeling queen. Her perfect, seamless connection to her star had cemented a shining amber symbol of sunlight upon her soft flank. Her large violet eyes shone like amethysts in this light as it slanted across her face through the leafy glade. To top it all, her lily-like figure was literally gilded by her palatial fineries of status, the heavy neckband, shoes and crown bourne with the lightness and grace of her upbringing.

To all observers, this youthful and well-brought-up solar deity that had just alighted upon the orchard clearing would seem the perfect pony princess. Were it not for a certain lack of guards which must accompany a perfect pony princess at all times. This immortally perfect, regal, celestial pony princess craned her columnar neck down like a cautious water-bird.

"Discord?" She whispered tentatively.

Today had been harder than most to extricate herself from the palace.

"But Tia!" cried the little moon goddess most unregally. It seemed that the longer the time the royal sisters were given to be fond of one another, the shorter their names became in each other's private company.

"Lulu...." Celestia sighed as if to affirm this, before nuzzling her younger sister. It was too easy to baby her baby sister, who was now by age a nearly adult mare. Though she grew much faster than Celestia under her older sister's care, the still surprisingly small filly seemed further diminished in size by the light streaming through the grand windows of their shared bed quarters. Her translucent azure mane which seemed to glow in softer lights and in shadow was rendered a pale sky blue by the bright light streaming through it, and its inner mysterious lights rendered invisible through this greater one. Her midnight blue coat sparkled a gentle lilac beneath her sister's sun. Only her obsidian neckband and inky flank remained more or less the same, icy crescents shining out from her dark velvet fur and from her upper chest to match; though she did not bother to hold her neck as regally as she should. This was in contrast to the juxtaposing presence of her setting-a-good-example-crown-princess sister, hero, and best friend.

"Come on, Lulu, you don't want to be too tired to do your duties tonight, do you?"

This wrenched at the little filly's heart. Their mother had been discussing shortening her powers over her beloved night if she couldn't prove herself as capable of the responsibility as she should be. And she wanted so much to be strong and proud like her sister! But she stood her ground. Babying her hadn't turned out too well for Celestia.

"I don't want to sleep now, Tia! I want to go to the orchards and play with you!" Celestia stiffened. Luna knew about the orchard?! She always took such care to walk beneath the trees where she wasn't visible, and it had never crossed her mind that anypony had seen her! She forcibly relaxed herself to hide the involuntary movement, but it was too late. Luna saw. And though she was immature in the unofficial presence of her sister, she knew what that little twitch had meant.

"Do not even try to say it's official business, Tia. I know you've been slipping from under Commander Brightline's guard for years now. Grandvisier Light Armour is always in a flurry looking for you, and mother is growing impatient waiting for you to take more responsibility for your land and subjects. So don't speak to me of duty!"

Celestia's ears flattened against her skull. Not only was her secret paradise in danger of discovery and her battle to get her baby sister to bed a losing one, but she had been reminded of her cruel and ungrateful neglect of duty and the care of her oldest and best commander.

The now ageing stallion had matured under the command of the princess, and was now a highly respected warrior, his lean grey figure and grizzled mane cutting an awe-inspiring personage among the guards in the barracks. The sight of his light-beam flank marking and the small griffon coat of arms on his chest plate struck vast pride in the hearts of his cadet-ranking sons and daughters. His whole family held great pride in their status and ancestry from various warrior tribes famed for battle prowess, from his deceptively small-featured and pretty pegasus wife to his rebellious youngest son, who hornless and wingless had fought his way into the upper echelons of the cadet ranking on skill with mouth-wielded sword alone. As it had come to be apparent among the inner circles of palace guards years ago, Princess Celestia's regular escape from directly under his watch was a source of constant humiliation to the ever-loyal commander, though he bit back his pride to protect her more fiercely than ever when the two were once more united for official business.

In the lofty royal bed chambers, the small round mare stood triumphantly facing her elder sister. Until Celestia's large violet eyes fell down to rest in her little Luna's green ones. She had one weapon left. She yawned.

The yawn continued with a widely stretched muzzle, a dramatic groaning and a sleepy descent of her eyelids across the shining plain of her vision. She slumped her neck down and nuzzled the filly gently. "I'm so tired, though, Luna, from staying up with you all last night to play! Don't you see how my exhaustion from keeping you company past my own bedtime has dimmed my sunlight today? It's so dark, you'd think it's evening already!" She yawned again, big, wide, loud, and shameless.

Luna looked out on the cheery bright morning sun doubtfully. Her vision was extremely light sensitive, and Tia did know better than she did about this... And then there was the matter of her big sister's huge, ceaseless, utterly shameless yawns. Against her better judgement, and against her will, The filly of the night slowly began to open her little mouth as the familiar groaning grip of oncoming sleep rumbled through her throat and sent waves of warmth through her tiny frame. Once started, the yawns wouldn't stop. Her head began to buzz and her legs trembled and finally sank down onto the bed beneath her as she realised just how tired she was.

Celestia smiled and nuzzled her into the crumpled sheets, offering to sing a lullaby. Luna gave in, and accepted, only managing to get out before she closed her eyes:

"If I was in your position, Tia, I'd never leave you alone. I'd stay by your side all the time, and never let you feel loneliness like I do..."

Celestia grimaced slightly, unseen by her charge. She would have to find Luna some nocturnal subjects to spend time with. Just the other day the filly had expressed concerns that none of her subjects even knew who she was. She watched tenderly as the blue lids slid softly shut over the aquamarine orbs of her sister's purple-rimmed eyes. Luna felt herself become heavy and warm under the blanket as the lilting voice of her sister filled the now darkened chamber, curtained against the sunlight.

"You've come such a long way..." sang the sun princess. The little filly's breath grew slow and deep, faster than would normally seem possible. Celestia sang out the whole song to the end for the sake of her sleeping sister. "...to fulfill your destiny."

Among the shifting leaves came a sudden rustle, startling the princes from her reverie. She began to turn her head, but faster than she could say "Discord" a blur of red-green and brown had shot from nowhere and pinned her to the ground. The wind knocked roughly from her Royal Lungs, the crushed grass leaving green streaks down her Royal Flanks, she gasped for air and allowed a wild laugh to tear from her throat.

They rolled among the daisies, claws digging only gently into velveteen coat, hooves kicking out in jovial struggle leaving incidental bruises beneath ragged brown fur. Each small jolt of frolicking discomfort was accompanied by an airy laugh, husky with breathless reality and musical as ethereal wind chimes. The world span about them as if being tossed into a salad and all the world's cares were long gone as the hazy half-forgotten vestiges of a long woken dream. When they finally landed stationary on the fragrant grass, Discord's unpaired limbs expertly pinned beneath four golden hooves, she leant her face down by way of greeting to nuzzle his, her perfect straight horn brushing between his two twisted mismatched ones.

In this tiny moment a breathless silence fell between them, and a tender little heat played within the depths of Discord's face. She had regularly nuzzled her cheek against his in her hugs of greeting for each of their thousands of clandestine meetings; but this was... different. His flush was met by a tiny touch of pink in the princess's own cheeks, as her winded breath trembled through the grey fur of his muzzle.

But the moment passed without ceremony and was blinked into nonexistence in the same breath as it began, the graceful white neck drawing away from its temporary rest and stretching into a shaft of unfiltered light, dazzling the helpless draconequus in a sudden burst of radiance. He didn't at first register that she had ceased to stand on his limbs, as his extremities regained a sensation he wasn't bothering to notice. A clatter and thunk later, and the sun princess had dropped all of her gold vestments into the grass without ceremony.

She stood unclad, a perfect white sculpture in the glade if not for the grass stains on her flank. She straightened and looked expectantly at the wild thing lying still upon the grass. Red-gold eyes looked back at her expectantly. She placed one bare hoof across the other, slowly, across the warm fragrant space as if completing a complex dance with utmost concentration and precision, all the while maintaining her eye contact with the creature in the ground. One hoof before the other, she stepped slowly up before him till she was nearly on top of him again, this time standing left and right hooves on either side of his outstretched gleaming tail. She leaned forward , and with a single outstretched hoof-tip gently prodded his heaving, uncertain chest till her hoof was half-buried between brown downy chest-feathers. Their breath stopped, eyes locked.

"YOU'RE IT!" Hoof withdrawn, wings spread wide, she spun on one hoof and galloped of between the laden trees, laughing maniacally. Discord sputtered and grinned as he scrabbled to regain his various feet. Once all claws and hoof were connected to the damp and heated ground, they gripped into the earth, tearing the grass behind him as he took off after his quarry.

He laughed.

Joyously.

Exhileratedly.

Wildly.

He laughed at the unclad hooves thundering off away from him, looking so bare and vulnerable without their usual gold plating.

He laughed at the pink mane trailing in the breeze like a cloud that had wandered back through time from the sunset or a lost puff of cotton candy floating in the wind.

He laughed at the sunshine on her flank, the way it dazzled his eyes and made him see stars even when his lids were closed. The golden quality to that which streamed through the leaves and meadow and warmed his own ragged mess of a pelt.

He laughed at the wind that caressed his face so roughly and playfully as he chased her.

He laughed at the strange pulsing and relentless feeling of flaming heat that rose unwarranted through his gut and chest as though it were he who channeled the heart of the sun itself, each and every time that her face would cross his mind.

He laughed, and tears ran down his face, both and cause and result of his continued laughter, and of something else entirely. The wind blew them dry, one more salty streak of dirt upon his unkempt coat. And those wings, white like unbearable, blinding moonlight stretched out across his vision until they filled up his world.

Blinded him.

A humble bee buzzed herself to finally stop upon the most vividly ultraviolet and fragrant daisy she could find, setting down her heavy legs behind her as nature would have her, laden already with more pollen than most were capable of carrying. But she was set off the flower once again as a great breeze blew it over momentarily. In a cataclysmic rush, first one, then two enormous beings thundered through the clearing, their chase sending the multitude of flowers, insects and even several small trees into a chaotic disarray. Their laughter radiated through the warmth of the day, shining down for all to see from an almost unbearably bright noon.Their laughter bounced between the trees and into the dark forest. It sparkled off woodland streams and even disturbed the fish that lazily floated there, bubbling quietly. It lifted from the ground and from the sky. The birds were outdone for the production of such jovial sounds and things below the earth trembled to hear it. In the carefree timeless dance the two beings chased and ran, laughing without stop. The sun shone down in a youthfully relaxed manner, bright and happy lightwaves meeting the physical world with a cheerful shine and glimmer.

It was a very fine day.