The New Gods

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.