Twilight lay on the floor of her mentor’s study, rapt by the musty tome at her hooves as Celestia sat staring at an empty scroll, wet-tipped quill held in golden magic. Gentle page-turning softened the silence between them until the alicorn broke her reverie and cleared her throat, quietly if firmly.
“Twilight, what do you think of Sunlight?” she asked, setting aside the scroll and quill.
Purple ears perked at the question, and Twilight smiled as she closed her eyes and began to recite. “Sunlight is defined as radiated energy from the sun,” she said before pausing to let a little blush rise to her cheeks. “Er, from your sun, that is. It takes the form of heat and light, filtered through Equestria’s atmosphere.” Cocking her head, she added, “Were you needing radiological properties, charts of intensity over time, or…?”
Celestia chuckled and swept a wing forward, brushing the longest of her ivory primaries through Twilight’s mane. “Oh, never change, my dear Twilight. You are of course correct,” she said, sparking a beaming grin and a deepening blush from the little unicorn, “but I was hoping to hear your thoughts on the word itself. What images does it evoke? What does hearing ‘Sunlight’ make you feel?”
Twilight lay a bookmark in the tome and eased back onto her haunches, brow furrowed and nose twitching. “Well,” she half-muttered, a hoof to her chin, “when I hear ‘Sunlight’ I think of warmth, like I can almost feel the mid-day summer sun on my mane. I think of illumination, in the sense of bringing clarity. Is that what you needed?”
“Yes, my faithful student, that’s it exactly!” smiled Celestia as she lifted the quill and scratched a few words on the scroll. “Now, how about ‘Dawn’?”
Humming for a few seconds, Twilight closed her eyes and grinned. “New beginnings. ‘Dawn’ makes me think of the sunrise, a chance to start fresh, and the promise of a new day.” She opened her sparkling eyes and looked to her teacher, expectant and radiant.
Celestia put quill to scroll again as she lent her pupil an approving smile. “New beginnings, hmm? I like that, Twilight. ‘Dawn’ it is, then, for the first, and ‘Sunlight’ for the second. Now, what if we need a third one? ”
“I’m sorry, Princess – a third? A third what? What exactly are Dawn and Sunlight?”
“Why, they’re names, Twilight,” Celestia said as she rolled and set aside the scroll.
“Names? For what, or for who?”
The alicorn giggled softly. “For our foals, of course.”
The gears in Twilight’s mind promptly stripped and seized and sheared off a cog or three while she sat frozen, Celestia smiling beatifically. “Princess,” Twilight began slowly, “we don’t have any foals.”
“Not yet, but magic is a wonderful thing, is it not, my dear Twilight?”
Twilight’s jaw worked silently for a moment before she stammered, “You… you mean metaphorical foals, right? Like the products of our joint research, or…?”
Celestia smiled and sighed, looking past Twilight into a wistful distance as she lay her head on her hooves. “No, Twilight my dear, our foals – yours and mine. Can’t you picture it? The pitter-patter of little hooves around the castle, matching Mother’s Day cards for us from our little ones…” She drifted off, momentarily misty-eyed, before snapping back suddenly. “You’re a rational pony, Twilight – follow the logic. Having foals would be a reasonable next step in our relationship, wouldn’t you agree?”
One of Twilight’s brows inched up her forehead, driving pitons in as it blazed a trail toward her hairline. “Princess, we’re not even married.”
Celestia winked. “Not yet.”
Twilight shook her head and rubbed her now-aching temple with a hoof. “Not again,” she winced as she sighed to the floor. “Princess Celestia, we’ve been over this, twice this month already. We’re not married.”
“We can be!”
“We’re not getting married.”
“Foals out of wedlock? Twilight, I had no idea you could be so daring! The nobles will be scandalized.”
Twilight growled through clenched teeth. “We don’t have any foals, we’re not having any foals, we’re not married, and we’re not getting married! We’re not even dating!”
The wisp of a smirk curled itself around Celestia’s muzzle. “I’ll pick you up at seven thirty. Neighponese or Istallion?”
The great gold-embossed doors to Celestia’s study flung open as Twilight bolted from the room, grumbling a stream of Neighponese and Istallion profanities as she sped past a gaggle of ambassadors and officials lining the hallway.
From the doorway behind her a royal voice called, “Twilight, come back! What about Dawn and Sunlight? Twilight, honey, please don’t leave! Think of our foals!”
...
...
"Truly ravishing, darling!" Rarity stalked around her boutique, eyes focused on the vision in snow-white silk and lace before her. "I must say, Twilight, I may have caught the bouquet at your brother's wedding, but seeing you in a wedding dress, I'm tempted to give you the bouquet right now. The chance to see you prance down the aisle wearing my masterpiece, some lucky stallion at your side..." She circled behind Twilight, cooing as she sat down at her desk, her quill busy scribbling notes on a sprawling design sketch.
Twilight rolled her eyes and smiled, holding dutifully still in the swath of alabaster fabric. "Don't get your hopes up, Rarity." She let her eyes wander the Boutique, body frozen in fear of wayward stickpins. "I'm just here because you needed a pony my size for some measurements, remember? And well, you know, if I..."
Rarity paused as a wolfish grin found her muzzle. "If you what, dear?"
"If I did walk down the aisle, it - Rarity, do I really have to say it?" Twilight could feel the predatory smile beaming from the desk behind her, and her ears drooped. "Fine. It - it wouldn't be a stallion."
"There, darling, now was that so hard?" Rarity sat back and hummed a little. "We're your friends, Twilight. It's not like we didn't already know, or at least suspect it. As they say in Prance, love is love, no?"
Twilight sighed and shifted her weight a little. A few long moments later the scratching of quill on paper stopped and she heard a thunk and a flapping. Her head snapped up as she heard a voice speak up, angelic and warm and most definitely not Rarity Belle.
“She’s right, you know. You really are ravishing in a wedding dress.”
“Oh, no,” Twilight groaned, furrowing her brow.
“Oh yes, my faithful student,” Celestia purred as she circled around to face the diminutive unicorn. “Or more properly, ‘I do’.”
“I don’t.”
“But you’re already dressed for it, my darling Twilight! I even have flowers and a cake!” With a flourish of golden magic a bouquet of flowers appeared hovering between them, and a towering tiered cake floated gently to rest on a nearby chair.
“The dress is Carrot Top’s, the bouquet is Cadance’s, which you must’ve taken from Rarity’s freezer, and the cake,” Twilight growled, “appears to have been licked.”
“Miss Top won’t mind if we borrow it, Rarity already offered you the bouquet, and I can confirm that the cake is definitely not poisoned.” Celestia licked a smear of frosting off her lips and shivered as her wings fluttered a bit.
Twilight tapped an impatient hoof. “Speaking of Rarity, where is she?”
Celestia shrugged and glanced around absently. “Rarity who?”
“White. Immaculately groomed. Runs this place.”
“You mean the cat?”
Twilight snorted as she glared at her mentor. “Hilarious. Now answer me, what happened to Rarity?”
Celestia scrunched her muzzle a bit. “Napping?”
“Why is she napping?”
Eyes darting side to side, Celestia squeaked, “Previously un-diagnosed narcolepsy?”
Twilight’s horn flared and the dress flew off in a tornado of taffeta and a cyclone of chiffon. “For the eighty-seventh time this year, we’re not getting married! And despite whatever Luna may have told you about that one dream I had - "
"She didn't, but if it involves you and me and a honeymoon in Barhaydos, I'll have to thank her for it anyway."
"We’re not married and we’re not getting married!” Twilight threw her hooves up and yelled, “You don’t even have a preacher!”
With a practiced back-kick and a resounding thud, Celestia’s hoof struck a supply cabinet against the wall. Its doors sprung open and a wizened little grey pony tumbled out, mummified in a tangle of cloth and ribbons and beads. “So glad you could join us, Reverend Waddle.”
“AIR, GLORIOUS AIR!” he croaked, stumbling to his hooves as he straightened his clerical collar. “Dearly beloved,” he began, brushing a pile of sequins off his wrinkled forehead, “we are gathered here today to join in holy… OOOFF!”
His sagging eyes blinked from under half a layer of cake as Twilight stormed out of the Boutique. “No! No! No!” she barked. “Not now, not today, not at all!”
“Drat,” Celestia sighed as she began munching on the bouquet.
The little stallion coughed and swallowed a hoofful of cake as he wheezed, “Do I still get paid for this?”
...
...
The little unicorn tore through hospital's hallways as her hoofsteps echoed off the corridors. She wore panic and desperation and determination like a shield, pushing aside seas of doctors and staff. As she approached two massive doors the flanking guards stepped aside and swung them wide, the hospital's pale sterile light flooding a dim and expansive room.
The doors shut behind Twilight as she skidded to a stop. There before her on a simple bed lay the shivering silhouette of her mentor, illuminated and grey in the fading glow of the hallway lights.
"Princess?" she panted as she rushed to the bedside. "Can you hear me? I came as soon as I could! Are you…?"
The alicorn groaned and lifted a great downy wing which fluttered a moment before falling feebly back across her ribcage. "Twilight Sparkle?" she whispered. "Twilight, is that you?"
"Yes, Princess, I - " She gulped and ran a hoof across the trembling white wing. "What can I do? Is there a spell, a potion, anything that will help?"
"Just a little while longer, my faithful student. Not long now." Her legs twitched and she shifted a little, almost imperceptibly, the effort written in her sigh. "Perhaps just… No, I can't."
"Anything!" Twilight pleaded. "Ask me anything, tell me anything! Please, Princess, let me help."
Celestia swallowed and for a few long seconds lay shivering. "Will you lay here with me, Twilight? Not long, I promise. I'm… I'm almost done."
Twilight climbed into the bed, careful hoofsteps barely creasing the snow-white sheets. She dropped her head to the pillow and they lay together, still and quiet as minutes ticked by.
After a time Celestia murmured, "Twilight, you said I could ask you anything." Against her pillow she felt the unicorn nodding and she dared a faint smile. "You are so very special to me, Twilight, and I hope you'll grant an old mare's request. It's a silly thing, and sentimental, but it will mean so much to me at the end.” She swallowed and ran a feather-gentle hoof down Twilight’s neck. “When my time comes, Twilight, will you let me breathe my last breath into your mouth?"
Twilight inhaled sharply and stilled her trembling jaw. She leaned in, carefully, slowly, gently, and lay her lips across Celestia's, closing her eyes as warmth washed over her and sent tingles from horn to tail.
Celestia's last breath, she realized, was oddly wet and squishy, likely very pink, and quite possibly prehensile.
"BLEAGHHH!" she spat. "That wasn't breath, that was… that was tongue!"
Celestia withdrew the offending appendage and smiled. "Well, you did kiss me, Twilight. It would have been rude not to return the favor."
Twilight leapt off the bed onto her hooves, lip curled, cheeks red, and brows knit. "But I heard you were in the hospital!"
She chuckled. "Twilight, I am in a hospital."
"But you're not hurt, or injured, or… or dying!"
"No, I was napping. Really, these annual Royal Inspection tours can be so mindlessly tedious, I had to have a break. Besides,” she said as she gestured toward a half-finished tray of what may once have been lunch, “hospital food always makes me sleepy. Now, the real question is, did you ask anypony if I was hurt?" Celestia's grin widened as she watched Twilight's legendary nervous tic sputter to life. "Or are you so used to dashing to my rescue that you assumed something terrible must've happened, from which only you could save me?"
Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and growled as her blush deepened. "But you said you wanted to breathe your last breath into… into…"
"I do! But Twilight," Celestia said as she sat up in the bed, "did you actually wait for my last breath? Or were you so desperate to kiss me that you took the first chance that came along?"
There was a tremendous metallic clang from the room, followed by the rapid stomping exit of a snarling purple unicorn. A nearby nurse looked at the little mare thundering down the hallway then peeked into the room. "Doctor?" she called. "Have you ever had to extract a food tray from an alicorn’s nasal cavity? No? Well, here's your chance."
...
...
The words on the page swam and twirled and crawled away like sans-serif ants. Twilight shook her head and lay a little silken magenta sash in her book before glancing away, blowing an errant mane-hair out of her face as she stared out her library window at the setting sun.
“Why can’t this be simple?” she pleaded to her book. “Why me?”
She glanced out her window again then back to her book. “Right. Concentrate! Think about anything besides the sun peeking through my window.” The hoof-worn covers creaked with the pleasant sound of waiting knowledge as she lifted the diaphanous teal and pink bookmark, which seemed to glitter and wave in an ethereal breeze. She scanned the elusive paragraph again and groaned as her eyes met the title page: Wisdom of Clopernicus: Why Everything in Equestria Revolves Around the Sun, and You Do Too.
Twilight threw her head back and rubbed her eyes. “Really, universe? This is how you repay me for laying bare the mysteries of science and magic?” The book grew heavy in her lap as she sat there, eyes locked on the ceiling, breathing in the calming and comforting scent of ink and parchment and card catalogs. “I never asked for this kind of attention, did I? Not that I don't appreciate it, but... I do have my books, I have my library, and my friends. that should be enough. Why isn’t this enough?”
“Do you need more books?” asked her bookmark. “I have plenty. I can bring you some.”
Twilight blinked the blink of the recently doomed. She looked down at the newly sentient bookmark, which appeared to have taken the not-unpleasant form of a snow-white muzzle backed by great pleading magenta eyes, attached to what she could only guess was the incarnate Sun.
Twilight’s eye twitched a little. “I already have books.”
“So I see,” said her demigoddess bookmark. “This one smells particularly lovely.”
Twilight’s eye twitched a little more. “I already have books. Many. Plenty. Sufficient.”
“Would you like more? I could give you unfettered access to the Royal Canterlot Library. Even the restricted section!”
“You gave me that for my twelfth birthday.” Twilight snapped the book closed, her goddess-nee-bookmark retreating in a timely fashion. “And if I never told you, there are things there a young pony could go a lifetime without knowing, even if the Crown pays for her therapists.”
“All of whom say you’ve made great improvements in the last decade, my faithful Twilight. I understand you’re down to just three nightlights now.” Celestia looked around and gestured with an alabaster hoof. “Do you need a library? I can give you one. Or several.”
“I have a library, Celestia. We’re in it.”
“This?” giggled the monarch. “My dearest Twilight, this isn’t a library. It’s a book nook, at best. It’s also the home you share with a dragon. Surely you could find a use for a bigger library? This place is packed! If I lent you some volumes from my personal collection, where would you keep them?”
“Stacked in front of the door and blocking all the alicorn-sized openings?”
“That won’t do, Twilight. At least let me build an addition to this old place. A new wing or two. Come,” the alicorn said, sidling up to the little unicorn and settling a wing across her back, “I’ll call the construction crew. They can break ground and get started while we step out for a bit. Would you prefer dinner and a show, or cloudtop lunch?”
With a pop and a flash Twilight teleported across the room, jaw clenched. “Neither! None of the above! I’d prefer…” The tension built for a long moment then dissipated as she slumped back to her haunches. “I’d prefer not to deal with this,” she sighed. “Any of this. It’s all just – just too much.”
Celestia’s smile melted slowly, her wing frozen at unicorn level for a while before sinking against her side. She sat quietly, staring down at the empty space Twilight only recently filled before rising to her hooves and clearing her throat. “I’m sorry, Twilight. I never meant to make you this uncomfortable.” She scraped and circled a hoof across the floor, her gaze down as she continued. “I know I’ve been coming on a little strong. Please realize, it’s been a while since any pony had this effect on me.”
Twilight sank a little and ran a hoof through her mane. "I'm sorry, Pr - I'm sorry, Celestia. It's not that I don't enjoy the attention - I mean, you're wonderful, always - but it's just that you've been so..."
"Dogged? Pressing?"
"Over-eager." Twilight's jaw worked but she snapped it shut in favor of a lingering awkward silence.
Eventually elegant hoofsteps carried Celestia slowly toward the door as she whispered, “Forgive me, Twilight. I’ll… I’d better go.”
She made it as far as the ‘READING IS FUNdamental’ welcome mat before a voice piped up, startling her with sudden volume. “One.”
Celestia turned back to find a little purple librarian on her hooves, trembling and smiling and staring at her. “One? One what, Twilight?”
“You get one date. I owe you that much, at least.” Twilight crossed the floor gingerly and leaned into a tentative nuzzle against her mentor’s graceful craning neck.
"You mean...?"
"One date. You've never been forceful or coercive, just..."
"Hounding? Unrelenting?"
"Tenacious. And maybe a tiny bit hopelessly optimistic. So no library additions. No orchestras, no carpets of flowers, nothing extravagant or excessive, okay?”
Celestia smiled, radiant and warm, and leaned into the nuzzle. “Thank you, my beautiful Twilight. You won’t regret it, I promise!”
They held the embrace for a while, neck on neck, as Twilight lightly sniffed the downy coat caressing her muzzle. “Celestia,” she mumbled, “why do you smell like my shampoo?"
...
...
“And so by the power vested in me by - well, by you, Your Highness, I suppose - I now pronounce you Mare and Wife! You may kiss the bride.” The greasy stallion leaned back out the carriage window in a billow of gold lamé, then quickly stuck his head back in to add, “Oh, and that’ll be twenty bits please, Your Majesty.”
Celestia dove in and stole a reluctant kiss behind a veil of snarls. “I have never been so happy, Twilight! Oh my Twilight,” she giggled, “my beautiful, wonderful Twilight!”
“ONE DATE, CELESTIA! ONE DATE.” Twilight’s gnashing teeth drowned out the insistent throat-clearing from a line of carriages behind them. “I was thinking we’d have a picnic in the Royal Gardens, or kick the Astronomer's Guild out of the observatory for a night of private stargazing. I didn’t mean a drive-through wedding chapel in Las Pegasus.”
“You still said ‘I do’.”
“I thought he was asking if anyone had objections!”
A silken lavender ear flicked and twitched under the approach of Celestia’s hot breath. The ear called to her, begging and beckoning for a nibble or a nip, but she bit her lip as she paused. “What matters most,” she whispered, “is whether you object.” Sighing, she settled for a nuzzle instead, muzzle to cheek. “I honestly thought you wanted this, love. I was sure I’d seen it in your eyes, and behind every smile, and in every letter. That’s why I was so…”
“Relentless? Incorrigible?”
“…Persistent.” Celestia pulled back, her smile and the happy blush of moments earlier draining away slowly. “Twilight, you know I would never force you into anything. Not into making friends, not into facing down the monster of the week, and certainly not this.” She swallowed, eyes closed, and breathed heavily. “There’s a drive-through courthouse a mile up on the left. If you want an annulment, I won’t argue.”
Trembling silence fell in the carriage. Celestia tried withdrawing her foreleg from around the smaller mare but found it held in place by Twilight’s own. “First,” Twilight said, “I should probably be concerned that you know exactly how far we’d have to drive to get an annulment.” She gave the hoof around her a quick nuzzle before continuing. “And you weren’t wrong. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for years. Maybe not about an Elkvis impersonator performing a ceremony through our carriage window, but still… When you started coming after me romantically, I wasn’t sure what to be more scared of: that it was finally happening, or that I couldn’t make myself say ‘yes’. You were hovering, insistent - ”
“Well, perhaps I was a bit – ”
“ – overbearing, possessive – ”
“I understand, Twilight, I - ”
“ – demanding, co-dependent, needy – ”
“I GET IT.”
“ – and I didn’t care. I wanted it too and I couldn’t make myself say it out loud. Then I kissed you and it all made sense – sorry about the nose, by the way - ” she said as she lay a chaste peck on the snowy muzzle beside hers, “and I knew I couldn’t say no. I just hoped you’d ask me again. So thanks, Celestia, for being…”
“Domineering? Intrusive?”
“Persistent.” They shared a grin and a giggle and a quickly warming embrace as the carriage rolled down the busy Las Pegasus streets, chapel and courthouse passing into the distance. “I do have one question, Celestia.”
“Hmm?” the diarch asked, briefly letting her teeth slide off the tender purple ear-tip she’d been gently gnawing. “Anything, love.”
“Was I really only worth twenty bits to you?”
“Of course not, my Little Spark. You are worth so very much to me, far more than I can put into words. Or bits.” Celestia chuckled brightly and lay her head atop her wife’s. “But I did have a coupon.”
Author's Note
Written (mostly) for the Third Bi-Monthly Twilestia Contest. The theme & prompt: Teasing. Many thanks to the Twilestia regulars for ~~badgering me into this~~ their gentle encouragement.
UPDATE (18 March 2014): Pursuit won the Twilestia contest! Many, many thanks to the judges, authors, and readers who made this contest a blast! I've never entered one of these before, so it was nerve-wracking, but fun. Several great stories came out of this and they made for some wonderful reading.
Some sections of this story originally appeared in shorter and unedited form in Sun and the Stars, the Twilestia Group’s Prompt Collab.
Idea spawned by a question I asked in the Twilestia group forum about stories with Celestia as the aggressor / pursuer, without verging into Molestia territory.
Cover art by me, using vectors from anbolanos91 / abydos91 (Twilight), cptofthefriendship / ocarina0ftimelord (rose), bluedragonhans (Celestia), and martinnus1 (library background) from the MLP Vector Club.
‘AIR, GLORIOUS AIR!’ is a line from Hyzaku’s wonderful Twilestia story Apprentice Ship. Go read it!
Reverend Waddle is the background pony seen in a clerical (priest’s) collar in the episode Hearts and Hooves Day (he’s the one the CMC call “too old”).
"Let me breathe my last breath into your mouth" is one of Valeria's last lines in Conan the Barbarian.
Yes, you can actually buy a stuffed Elvis Elk ("Elkvis" to his friends). I had no idea until I Googled it, I promise. {That link goes to a wildlife conservation / hunting site, be aware.}
This is the first complete story I've ever written which had nothing whatsoever to do with Thirty Minute Pony Stories (TMP). It's a tribute of sorts, as TMP officially shut down on 2/14/2014. That’s where I got my start and I credit TMP for giving me the encouragement to do this writing thing at all.
Please, take a moment to read with your loved ones, because reading really is FUNdamental. I didn't make that up!
UPDATE (5 August 2015): Made a few tiny edits to smooth things out a bit. The most common complaint has been Twilight's mood whiplash, from violently against the idea to suddenly accepting it, then back, and back again. The edits and additions I just made go a fraction of an inch toward addressing that, I think, I hope, showing that all along Twilight wasn't entirely opposed to Celestia's intentions, just overwhelmed by her approach. I thought it already read that way, but that's the author's blindness talking. Doesn't really merit a re-read if you're seeing this note for the second time (and presumably reading the story from the bottom up - weirdo!), but it's there. Enjoy!
