Pilgrimage

Before her was a great edifice of white stone, white as snow in the hot black and yellow desert sands that tried again and again to climb up the walls.  The pristine structure bore upon its face two alicorns rampant, their wings flared, front hooves reared, their horns crossing over each other to complement the arched doorway that led into a dark chamber.  The princess peered into the depths of the archway and saw in there a small flame, flickering rebelliously against the constant desert wind howling about the temple.

It seemed as if she zoomed in to the flame, diving into its dancing form.  A powerful magic was there.  Powerful energy, as ancient as the world itself.  The alicorn felt the energy radiating from the cistern of flame as her mind's eye entered it, as if she had entered a completely different temple, and she saw again the alicorns rampant, but they were alive.  A stallion and mare in their eternal glory.  Around them circled the twenty sacred constellations of Equestria, and from the bosom of each shone a great and mighty star.  The alicorns sang.  Their voices rung out of the flame and back into the alicorn mare who still stood without, her mind's eye returned to her body.

The song reverberated through her body and stretched across the desert and through the hazy blue sky.  It echoed to the sun, whose deep, familiar tune reached back to the Mighty Ones in the temple.  The alicorn listened to the sun and to the Mighty Ones, closing her eyes and standing calmly in the howling, scratching wind of the desert.

I can hear you sing, she thought out to Them. You make the sun and sky to sing because of the great deeds thou hast done.  I am a great part of that legacy...your legacy, Mighty Ones.  May the Old Ones bless you.

Still they sung, a wordless, wonderful tune that carried her spirit softly to soothing warmth and stillness.  Though they spoke nothing, they told her one thing: the time of Pilgrimage was at hand.  She knew it was time to bear their legacy onward to the new generation.  The hundred years had passed.  It was the next generation's turn to rise.

The alicorn mare's vision darkened, and when she opened her eyes, gone was the wind and searing desert heat.  Came then her round chamber, with her soft bed about her, her many shelves of books and scrolls, her writing desk and quills.  Night still enveloped Equestria, with Luna's full moon risen to guard the sleeping ponies.  Celestia gazed at the silvery orb out her bedroom window, stretching her wings meanwhile, before she folded her pinions and laid her head back down for more rest.  Even as she closed her eyes, she kept her ears up and alert, and could almost hear the sun singing on the other side of the world, beckoning her to the temple, beckoning her to the eternal flame that bore the knowledge of the Mighty Ones