Celerity (noun): The quality of being rapid, swift, brisk. From the Hipponian, keles, a fast horse or ship.
During the spring, they’d been awoken each morning by proud, boasting birdsong on the balcony outside their room. Rarity supposed the latticework of its thick stone balustrade was the most-desirable avian real estate in Equestria, by virtue of being closest to the princess; and if they wanted to boast of being close to her, well, Rarity of all ponies couldn’t blame them.
The birds had served as a less-reliable alarm clock throughout the summer, and failed them entirely now, in the leafless tail end of autumn. An alarm clock, unfortunately, was one of the two things Celly wouldn’t tolerate in her bedroom. “The most barbarous invention Equestria has ever suffered,” she called it; alternately, “my slave-driver,” or, “that which must be obeyed.” Before its invention, morning had come when Celestia jolly well wanted it to, and nopony could say she was wrong. Now even the sun had been trained to rise on a regular schedule, and it peeked over the horizon at their bedroom with just the deepest purple of its rays, eager for its master to take it for a walk across the sky.
The other thing Celestia wouldn’t tolerate in the bedroom was any calendar with the year on it. Rarity quite agreed; decor was in fact a thing of the moment, but should always appear to be timeless.
Celestia’s decor, though, really was timeless. When she’d first moved in, Rarity had set about adding her own personal touches—a tall Zebrican jar beside the door, a bamboo footstool, all sorts of trendy little foolishnesses. Everything she added looked cliché and dated after ten years, and eventually she took it all out. She thought in seasons, which was, after all, what her clients wanted. Celestia’s artistic sensibility spanned centuries.
“Rise and shine,” Rarity said, prodding Celestia’s big white flank. She carefully gauged her pressure to be not quite enough to get Celly out of bed. It would be a shame, after all, to prod that flank only once.
Without opening her eyes, Celestia reached out with one hoof, snatched Rarity’s pillow away, and dragged it over her head.
There were elements of the Equestrian press, such as that Daily—shameless rag—which had little sense of lèse-majesté. Every piece of cake Celly had would somehow find its way onto the front page, usually accompanied by a photograph of Her Majesty’s hindquarters, taken through a fish-eye lens. Their continual snarks about her tea “habit” were not, Rarity thought, in good taste. “Taste” had not even been in their vocabulary, unless it were in a lewd context, back when she and Celly had begun seeing each other. But there was one palace secret that not even the Daily would dare to publish: The Sun Princess was not a morning pony.
“Now, Celly,” Rarity chided. “What would our dear old friend Mister Robin think if he knew you were taking advantage of his absence to laze about? After all the years he’s spent teaching you the proper Equestrian enthusiasm for the new day.”
“‘’s a different robin,” Celestia muttered from under Rarity’s pillow.
“What? What do you mean, a different robin?” Celestia did not elaborate, so Rarity prodded her again, a little more sharply.
Celestia pulled herself into a ball and pressed the pillow more tightly against her ears.
Rarity smiled. She was going to get to do a lot of prodding this morning.
She draped herself over Celestia’s exposed back and drew one hoof slowly along her flank. “What would the nobleponies say,” she said, “if they knew that the start of the new day, all their business, their plans—the fate of the Empire, really—depended on me rousting you from your bed?”
A white foreleg reached back and arrested Rarity’s. “You’re not trying to get me out bed,” Celestia said from beneath her pillow. “You’re trying to keep me in bed.”
Rarity ran her horn up and down Celestia’s neck, combing her mane. She hummed and began to cast her “morning-breath-be-gone” spell, one of the few spells she’d developed herself.
Her Majesty Celestia, Eldest Princess of Equestria, groaned, raised her head to look back at Rarity, wiped the drool from her mouth, and blinked stupidly as the stolen pillow fell beside her.
Rarity pulled one royal ear into her mouth and sucked on it gently.
“Well,” Celestia said, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt the sun to wait a few more minutes.”
“What did you mean, a different robin?” Rarity asked more than a few minutes later as she stood behind Celestia, who was seated in front of her vanity. Rarity was redoing her mane with a proper brush, working mostly by feel in the near-darkness. The hairs throbbed under her strokes, and often curled back around the brush and towards Rarity, but she was firm about mane care and would not be distracted.
“It’s a different pair,” Celestia said. “Wyrm Biter and Twig Sculptor didn’t come back this year. Wouldn’t you like some more light, my dear?”
“No, no; why, I know your mane well enough, I could comb it in my sleep. So you named them?”
“No. Those were their names.”
Rarity paused, holding the brush out to the side.
“Rare?” Celestia asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Rarity said, resuming her even strokes through the long flowing rainbow. “It’s just—when they were just birds, it seemed natural that they should come and go. But it’s a bit sad, now that they have names.”
Celestia pushed the brush aside, turned, and raised her head to nuzzle the underside of Rarity’s neck. “You’re precious. But the best way to honor the beautiful things is to enjoy them while we can, Rarity. You of all ponies should understand that.”
Rarity was stroking Celestia’s chin with one hoof. Her hoof froze in place halfway up.
“Dear?” Celestia asked.
“Nothing,” Rarity said. She pulled the brush back in and began tugging it urgently through Celestia’s mane.
Celestia clicked her tongue and sighed. “I just remembered. I know I said we could get together at tea-time, but I’ll be tied up with Twilight all afternoon. The Saddle Arabians are trying to get around our trade agreement by devaluing their currency.”
“Oh,” Rarity said. “Well, she’s terribly clever with that sort of thing, I’m sure.” She made one last tug through the mane and stepped back. “Finished!”
Celestia stepped towards the short, arched hallway that led to the balcony. Rarity, meanwhile, was leaning forward, peering at the vanity mirror, one hoof raised hesitantly.
“Won’t you join me for the sunrise?” Celestia asked.
“I’m afraid I’m a bit peaked again, dear. I’ll just pop back into bed for a bit.”
Celestia disappeared into the dark entranceway, but Rarity did not go back to bed. She sat down gingerly before the vanity. While the usual murmuring of the crowd outside grew, like the ocean in a rising wind, she looked into the mirror as the sun’s brightening rays warmed from deep purple to bright gold, slowly clarifying the image there.
The face in the mirror had deep lines below the eyes and to either side of her muzzle. As it had the day before, and the day before that, for quite some time now. Rarity squeezed a few drops of pumice defoliator onto her hoof and rubbed it onto her face, then rubbed that off with a damp cloth. Next was the concealer, a white paste in a small glass jar. The sun had cleared the horizon by the time she’d evened out the tone under her eyes.
There really were no two ways about it—she was simply going to have to get up earlier and begin while Celestia was asleep. By hornlight, if necessary. She reached for the jar of foundation. It took an alarming amount of foundation to really bring out the white from those valleys, and she’d have to hurry if she were going to finish before Celestia came back in and caught her at it.
Instead of hurrying, she looked at the photographs littering the vanity. Rarity had set her favorite picture of Celestia in the center, a shot from down low and slightly behind her as she raised the sun, so that her face and chest shone brightly while the rest of her was in her own shadow. To the left were photographs of Twilight, which had expanded over the years as they were joined by pictures of Twilight and her kids, then Twilight and her grandchildren.
To the right were photographs of herself, all taken twenty years ago or more. Which was her own fault; she hadn’t allowed anypony to photograph her in nearly that long. But Rarity felt, looking at them, like she had snuck into this young mare’s bedroom and was spying on her things. One showed Twilight hanging some medal or other around this young mare’s neck. Another was of the six of them and Spike (so small then!), back in Ponyville, eating ice cream sundaes and smiling at each other like they shared some great secret.
Something struck her as oddly asymmetrical about the arrangement, or the colors, and she saw something she’d never noticed before: Twilight appeared somewhere in each of the photos that she was in.
Rarity looked again at the phalanx of Twilight-related photos on the left. They had increased so gradually in number—a son here, a granddaughter there—that Rarity hadn’t noticed them marching closer to Celestia in the middle. But the eventual collision was inevitable. By then, the young mare in the pictures on the right would be just one more memory the two of them shared.
Rarity admired the picture of Celestia again. It had been taken by that under-nourished pegasus fellow who used to do so many of the fashion magazine photos, all those years ago, though of course Celestia looked just as she did this morning. Celestia, the sunlight, the stone balcony; all the same.
No—not entirely the same. In the bottom right corner, marring the perfect geometry of the balustrade, was a ratty bird’s nest, much like the one that was there now, but different.
The more she stared at it, the more convinced Rarity became that the photographer had deliberately backed up until the nest was in the picture. Without it, Celestia stood alone, as perfect and timeless as the stonework that separated her from her people. The rude nest on this side tied the two halves of the picture together. It added a touch of levity, a dash of bright concealer over the dark profundity.
It wasn’t a flattering context for the nest, though.
Rarity inhaled sharply as she realized that nearly the exact same scene was taking place again, in real life, a few steps away from her. In another minute or two it would be over.
She glanced at the brightening hallway. The shadow on the floor of Celestia’s tail was clear now, floating the way it did in that continuous haze of magic rolling off her.
If she hid under the covers and pretended to be asleep, in just a few minutes Celestia would leave, and Rarity would have the rest of the morning to work her artifice until it could stand up to the diffuse light within the palace. But if she stepped through that hallway and into the light, no amount of foundation would conceal her from the sun.
She looked back to the picture. She had long ago given up trying to understand why one particular camera angle, or a contrast in lighting, would made her heart ache, while another left her cold. But this photograph, she felt certain, owed little to the artifice of the photographer. The spell it cast on her came from its central subject, not from him. He had had the brains to see that the nest belonged in the picture, but probably hadn’t understood why any better than she did.
She was out there now, raising the sun for her people, as she did everything for her people, tirelessly, century after century.
Perhaps birds were simple, silly creatures. That was part of their appeal. One couldn’t, at least, call them stingy. They gave their songs freely, and added a touch of color and gaiety to the world. It wasn’t something just anypony could do.
Head lowered, she walked slowly down the archway and into the sunlight. Celestia turned toward her. Rarity blinked in the light, and raised her head to face Celestia.
Celestia smiled back, and Rarity wondered what, exactly, she’d been so frightened of.
She leaned her head on Celestia’s neck, and spoke softly into her ear: “I just wanted to tell you, dear. You are beautiful. And I am happy.”
Then the sun was up, the guard on the square below sounded his bugle, and it was time for them to go their separate ways.
