As a Mother

by The Descendant

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad
Length: 6617

Very well, my newest student, if you wish to hear about the War of the Witches once more, you shall. I, however, shall choose the setting. I believe there is something that I need to say...

The War of the Witches? Ever since you began visiting me here in my garden, my newest student, your inquiries have all revolved around that ancient conflict. I will admit, I wish you would ask me about something else. No? Very well. You have selected the subject, but this evening I shall choose the setting, as I believe there is something I need to say.

Yes, something I need to say indeed…

Published 2014-04-15 19:10:04 UTC
Last updated 2014-04-15 19:10:04 UTC

As a Mother

“As a Mother”
Written by The Descendant
Edited by Icy Shake
Cover Art by Predhead

The War of the Witches, my newest student? Why on Equus do you wish to hear of that old unpleasantness, again?

I see that the guards have become accustomed to you visiting me here in my garden. They barely even seem to nod at your approach; the small animals and birds are no longer troubled by your presence, either. Perhaps you have been my ‘newest student’ longer than it seems? Ah, how the days seem to fly by once a mare has a few millennia tucked under her wings.

When you first enrolled here at my school for gifted unicorns, you mentioned that you were not sleeping well. You also said that you were having trouble finding your appetite again. Is that still the case?

You are making friends—perhaps even growing relationships? Your mind turns to a certain stunning young earth pony mare. Do not blush! I know it to be true, my little pony! I hope that you are not embarrassed by such attention. I simply am concerned about your well being. You are… I mean, it is important to me, after all, that you are well.

Hmmm. Yes, child, I was indeed attempting to change the subject. I hope that you will forgive my attempt at a distraction. The subject you have selected for our last few chats has caused me some… discomfort.

I suppose you are not to be dissuaded? Does that ancient conflict hold so much interest for you that you cannot ask me about some other bit of Equestria’s history? Can I not entice you with tales of some foreign land, of some gentle race beyond our borders, of silent shores and forgotten realms? Perhaps you would like to hear of some sweet pastured place now lost to time and memory?

No? Ah, your dogged curiosity suits you. Princess Twilight was very much like that when she studied at my side. It certainly complements your mark. I hope that you will forgive your princess if I choose not to tell you stories of mighty heroes or tall battlements this night. No, tonight is not for flags flying above armies of brave ponies, or for mystical blades wielded by those of races enthralled by Hydia and her daughters.

No, child, that is not what I would tell you this evening. Tonight—if you will suffer it—let your princess lay to rest something that has long sat behind her tired eyes.

In that desperate second summer of the war it was Draggle who found the weakness of our lines. Soon word reached me that she and her vanguard were making their way south, disappearing into the ageless forests only to reemerge like a great beast sniffing the wind for carrion before slipping out of sight once more.

What a fool I was. I should have taken Luna’s army to my side, sat with it and helped it heal after the murderous Seven Days Battles that had thrashed it so. I should have given Luna my army and let her take it on this newest campaign. My army was fresh, and had weathered the worst hours of the Siege of Baltimare. Reeka's forces lay broken before the walls of Fortress Longshanks, and realizing himself defeated, Hydia's admiral had wrapped himself in chains and thrown himself into the sea rather than face the wrath of the Mother of All Witches, and the Sun and Moon Pendant of Equestria still flew over the fortress that guarded that harbor and city.

No, I should have given my sister my army. I was the healer, the strategist, and the schemer. Luna was the warrior, the tactician, and the blood-luster. But I, if in stupidity or arrogance, simply marched my army to its fate in the fog that floated amid the timeless trees.

Ancient and tall were the woods and forests that stretched across the land in those days—back when Equestria was not so old.

The Everfree was not yet darkened. It sat around the castle that my father had raised for my sister and me in a halo of light that sparkled green and gold. The Whitetail Woods themselves are but a whisper of what they once were—just a shadow of the lofty canopy that once stretched from horizon to horizon as my sun danced across its leaves.

There were other woods, too—ones made of tall, regal pines that climbed higher and higher into the sky as though they were the very pillars that supported the heavens. It was in the very heart of one such forest, amid a circle of five such pines—each as old as Equestria if not older—where the witch beset me.

They surprised us in the closeness of the wilderness; they were upon my little ponies before we could even form ranks, and the very first arrow brought down a loyal pony that fell at my hooves. I remember her name. It was Evening Shade, and her eyes were fixed upon me as she breathed her last.

She had been an orphan of the nursery. She had peeked at me from around corners, and I had brought her candies to try to get her to speak. I had brushed her mane. I had taught her to read. She had fallen asleep in my forelegs as we did math problems. She was… dead.

She had grown into a strong captain, firm but fair—but I could only see the foal...

But I could not dwell on her loss, for all around me the cries of battle were rising, and the road through those woods became a single line of soldiers that writhed back and forth like a wounded serpent as the army of the witch crashed into it—as they sought to overwhelm and destroy it.

In the counting of an immortal, days are as seconds. The long hours of that war had already painted me horrible images, ones that still trouble me at times when I lay myself in my bed. But this battle above most others I fought—this battle showed me the fates of brave young mares and stallions who had been tiny foals playing in my garden. It showed me pain and suffering being heaped upon soldiers who were not so long ago children that had been pressed into my hooves to be blessed. It showed me fine knights and dames, wounded and bleeding, who I had once chased through my throne room in games of tag and hide-and-seek.

More than any other calamity which I have witnessed before or since, this day showed me my children—my little ponies—dying before my eyes.

This made me angry. This made me very, very angry. There were flashes of magic, and I answered them. My armor hummed and rattled as I threw spells out into the ranks of the witch’s army—as I ground down her powerful casters into the loam of the forest floor.

Nearby orange arcs of a powerful magic—the magic of Draggle—and the screams of my ponies and our allies ripped through the woods, stealing out my heart and sending me searching through the din of battle for any kind of salvation. My eyes lifted to the hillside above. The five ancient pines stood over the carnage, aloof in their agelessness, looking down upon the mortal squabbling with silent contempt.

“Make for the five pines!” I called aloud. “Reform on the open ground at the ring of pines!”

At once my army began to move, but they were pursued. “Press them! Don’t let them escape!” arose a darkened tone, one that was a shadow of a voice that had once been nearly as dear to me as Luna’s. The great thin line fell in beside and around me, and the maddening ascent of the hill began.

Any line, formation, or semblance of rank and file evaporated as the two armies merged upon that wooded hillside. There, between the trees, it became a fight between the first two combatants to meet. As such the warriors became alone and intimate in their deathly combat.

Pegasi and thestrals fought harpies, earth ponies and crystal ponies fought scrofa, and unicorns fought sphinxes. Our allies, too—those who had joined themselves to our cause—fell and fought, were slain and slew as they clawed their way up that hill. Peryton and wapiti clashed with our enemies, and minotaurs battled fell and dark things. And, perhaps saddest of all, griffon fought griffon.

There, on that hill, the two armies merged into one undulating mass. They became consumed by death and gore, rolling and tumbling to the blood-soaked earth locked in combat in small groups, pairs, and crawling away alone to die in the hollows of trees and in the lees of stones. There my vanguard and I strayed straight into the midst of Jed’Oc, the High King of the Mah'Qua, and his guard. In our foolishness we mumbled apologies for so rudely crashing into each other. I recovered my senses first and slew him while his eyes were still wide. His paw had only just grasped his sword; he had barely even realized who I was.

The screech of harpies met my ears, and I looked across the carnage to find them gathered like vultures feasting upon carrion. My magic flew among them, and my sun burned away their inequities, leaving only the smell of burnt flesh and charred feathers that danced across the fallen leaves. I galloped forward. I knew the standard that lay limp upon the earth nearby.

“Light?” I called. “Light!?”

I threw aside great generals, mighty captains, and fierce soldiers of Draggle’s army as I ran, shock and surprise in their faces as my magic flung them across the field or made them erupt into ash. My guards struggled to keep up with me, but my hooves pounded towards where familiar armor sat peeled away and crimson sat stark amid the trees.

“Light?” I whispered, but the words went unheard.

I ran my hoof across the face and mane of Lantern Light, Prince of Earth Ponies. His hawk flew overhead, wheeling and dipping through the air in confusion and loss, and his hound lay at his hooves whimpering in sadness.

Horrible rumors had spread about the relationship I shared with the fair-faced prince, but as I have with such for millennia, be it about stallion or mare, I had ignored them. The banality and insipidness of the wagging tongues had blinded them to my true feelings for the gallant soul that lay there in ruins—just as they would over generations before and since. Even the depredations of the harpies could not steal out the handsomeness that lay in his face, and I laid him beneath his shield and turned back towards the battle.

“Protect your master, and may the spirits send all stallions and mares a love as pure as yours,” I whispered to his hound and hawk, and then I made my way back into the fray.

Not far away I found the twisted, broken body of Delving Pond, my oldest living friend. I had watched him grow from a young foal into a strapping young stallion, from a judicious knight to a greying lord. Near him lay a colt. At first I thought the young stallion was mourning, but as I moved to comfort him I saw that he too was slain. I had no time to mourn them, but I left some part of my heart on the damnable hillside with the father and son. There I left two of my little ponies, further proof of the frail mortality of the generations that had come and gone before my eyes.

Thus went the high carnival of death, and in those woods, amid the confusion that could scarcely be called a battle continued the awful litany of fallen friends and foes. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the swelling, swirling mass of swords, spears, gore, and blood heaved itself up amid the ancient pines. I lifted a great arc of my magic, hoping to preserve the space for my army alone. Here, I hoped, they could maneuver, support one another. Perhaps here we could reform… perhaps here we could save ourselves from the crushing numbers of Draggle’s host that continued to pour in through the woods on all sides.

Barely had I cast my magic when another that drove against mine and looked to destroy it answered. There I met the green illumination that sat in the eyes of the witch.

New arcs of my magic wrapped around me, filling the ring of the pines. In a mere moment they were contested, and a magic as old and as powerful as my own filled the space inside the circle of trees.

I gritted my teeth as she whipped her staff around. Red, orange, green—the currents of Draggle’s enchantments filled the ring like the smoke of a wildfire. Gold, white, pale blue—my magic fell through hers like shafts of light falling from my sun. Thus began our duel.

Fire leapt at me, but I cast it aside. I opened the earth beneath her, attempting to anchor her to the sacred roots of the world. She was too strong, and her staff erupted again. An arcane curse went shrieking through the air, one that would have turned my blood to quicksilver. I answered, and her screams were almost as loud as mine as we caught each other in curses as painful as ten thousand deaths.

Back and forth it went, she whipping her magic at me. I dodged, cast illusions, and replied in kind. So we danced our dance of pain. Our cries filled the ring: cries of pain, cries of resolve, and cries of suffering. Our magic mixed and mingled, scorched the earth and lashed among the soldiers that gathered nearby. We foamed and hissed, venom dripping through our actions and thoughts as we each sought the ruin of the other.

The battlefield fell silent, and soldiers of both armies slowed their fighting. They stood together, gazing in horrified wonder at the spectacle of a witch and an alicorn locked in a duel. Soon the races mixed, standing side by side with those they had been fighting moments before—transfixed by the manifestation of the powers of their mistresses.

“Celestia!” the witch called, her voice loud above the din of battle. “Here we meet again! I thought perhaps I would have Luna this day, but you come to me instead! Come! Embrace my magic! Topple me if you can!”

“What fate would you have of me, you whom I once trusted?” I brayed. “You who once held me and assuaged my fears! Cousin! Friend! Sister!” I called aloud even as the ground shook with the might of our magic, as soldiers from both armies looked on aghast or fell to the ground in fear. They threw down their weapons and looked upon us in horror as magic deep and powerful flew among them—crashing off of rocks and splintering trees.

Another tempest of spells flew from us, and we stood there, buffeted by the cascades of magic that dashed around us until neither could stand it any longer. The currents of spells and enchantments raced away into the ether, leaving us standing there amid the pines, panting like we had run marathons. My mane had become caked with sweat, and it hung around me in damp cords. Draggle’s dress had been torn, and I had drawn first blood. A thin trail of crimson snaked its way from the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away and spat in disdain as our eyes sat locked upon one another. Neither of us wavered.

“What has Hydia said to you, Draggle, that has turned you against me? What has your mother whispered? What has my godmother told you that has risen such hate for me in your heart!?” I cried. I fought for breath as my body strained to be the first to recover, lest she strike first.

“Only of your wrath! Of your desire for power, for dominion over all these races!” hissed the fiery-haired witch between gasps of her own. Her spite wrapped around us in tangible tendrils of magic. She had won the fight to recover, and as we stared into each other’s eyes again it seemed that the moment of decision had arrived. "She told me of the great desire that burns within you, as bright as the sun you have enthralled!" she cried. "She told me of your greatest desire—desire for control over this world, for our magic and realms!"

I should have recovered first. I should have poured the power of my sun into my body, have done all in my power to gain the advantage. But I could not. I could not—not with how Draggle’s words stung me. “My greatest desire?” I whispered aloud. The eyes of Evening Shade flashed through me. The wreckage of dear Lantern Light drifted through my mind. The prostrate bodies of Delving Pond and his son sat lodged in my thoughts. The images of all of my little ponies—of the countless soldiers and lords strewn across this battlefield—sat in my mind. My wrath and anger gave way to a feeling of loss deep inside as I reconciled what I had lost that day, and what the witch needed to know. My little ponies... they are all my…

I am as a…

I dropped my magic.

Perhaps stunned by the act, she let hers fade as well.

“Is that what my godmother has told you?” I asked in a whisper. “You believed it? You, Draggle, who when I was but a foal bandaged my knees when I tripped and fell? You, Draggle, who held me on starless nights and who watched over my sister when she was ill?”

My head swung away. When I lifted it again I found the oaken staff leveled at my head, ready to cast me down. It mattered to me little. Instead, I searched for her eyes again. I poured myself into the gaze, begging her to answer my question.

“Do you believe her?” I plead in a whimper. “Do you truly believe that my greatest desire is domination? Subjugation?”

“Yes,” she answered.

We stood there, together, in the circle of pines as her staff thrummed with malice. The witch looked on as my body shriveled around me. My hooves became weak and I stumbled to my knees. Lies. This war, this sundering, was based on nothing but lies.

I lifted my head to her so quickly that she leapt back in alarm, magic coursing through her staff.

“Cast your magic over me!” I begged. I drove my gaze into hers; I made her listen to my plea. “Enchant me! Curse me! If you will not believe my words then believe your own eyes!” Draggle stayed rooted in place, her staff at the ready. But even as she stood there, ready to take my life, her hands trembled.

“Make me show my true heart’s desire!” I demanded. “Draggle, it is in your power! I know that it is! I throw myself before you; I surrender myself! Prove to yourself who has lied to you… your mother, or I.”

The witch’s face twisted in disbelief and shock as I sank deeper into the dust and dirt. I lay across the pine needles with my defenses lowered. At that perfect moment my magic was at its greatest ebb since before Discord had arisen. All that Draggle need do was utter a single word, cast even the tiniest killing curse, and I would have been dead. Procer Celestia Invictus would have been laid out there in those deep woods, free to rot and feed the worms. Draggle had simply to make the barest of motions and Luna alone would have been all that remained to stand between the witches and the end of Equestria.

Yet, she did not. Instead, her hands trembled, and she lifted her staff higher to steady it. Words not arcane or dark fell from her lips, and there was some small comfort in them for me, despite the pain that I knew they would bring. I knew those words, and they were in a tongue we had shared in happier days.

The curse fell around me, and in the crowd of silent, unmoving soldiers that surrounded the pines I felt the surge of emotions that filled my little ponies, our friends… and, yes, even many of our foes.

The curse fell through me, enchanting me deeply. I felt it find its way through the fabric of my body, and I felt it tug on my heart, opening my very soul. The curse bloomed within me…

…and my truest, most intimate, and most longed for desire awoke amid the pinecones that littered the forest floor. My greatest hope sat bare before her, the two armies, and whatever Providence saw fit to look upon it.

I felt it beneath my wing, and even before it began to move the tears began to flow down my face. There was a pool of warmth huddled against my side, and I felt it shift and awaken, a sweet sense of closeness spreading through me from where the magic stretched and yawned.

“Momma?”

The tiny voice rang out in clarion clarity, singing amid the pines.

“Momma?” asked the little voice once more. “Momma, why are you crying? Please don’t cry.”

I lowered my head as he emerged from beneath my wing. I lowered it as far as possible so that I could nuzzle my face against the perfect creature lying there beside me. I brushed my head up and down past his wings, kissed the space beneath his tiny horn.

“Momma is just so happy to see you, my love,” I said as he lifted his head to mine. He began to giggle as I wrapped him tighter to me, and his happy, radiant face looked up to me as the tears continued leave long lines down my face. “Momma is simply so very, very happy to see you.”

I sat there, cradling my child in my forelegs as blessed, beautiful instincts fell through me. I nuzzled him, held him. I licked his silver mane flat and tidy. I tickled him and his giggles filled the woods, draping themselves across the assembled armies that stood there with their mouths hanging open.

There was the woody sound of a staff hitting the forest floor. It was followed soon after by the sound of Draggle sinking to her knees. The witch shook. Her hands went over her mouth. Those hands momentarily extended towards me before retreating in shock. “She… she lied to me,” Draggle gasped. “She lied, Celestia. She lied…”

I said nothing and paid the witch no mind. I knew that I did not have long.

I simply lay there, holding my foal close, feeling the wonderful sensation of wholeness and completeness as it drifted through me in waves of bliss. His eyes sparkled as he lifted his forelegs to me again, begging for another embrace. I nuzzled to him, let my face sit beside his as he made little, happy sounds.

He rolled over onto his back, his eyes sparkling in the soft light of the forest. The joy of a child, unbridled and unrestrained lifted through his soft coat, his tiny body seeming to sink into a single unceasing smile. It was a beautiful day, and his mommy had stopped crying. Mommy was warm and so close by; why should he be upset? What was there for my foal to fear in this world?

I was making him happy. I truly was…

I lowered my hoof to his belly, and tickled him just so. His laughter filled the woods, and there was not a single heart among the gathered armies that did not warm to the happy vision, the tiny illusion that sat squirming and giggling amid my forelegs, being happily tortured by my hoof. “Momma! Momma, heh! I give up!” he said, and then his laughter slowed as he wrapped his forelegs around my neck. With one more spate of giggles he settled against my chest.

“Can you sing me the song, Momma? Please?”

Tears rolled down Draggle’s face in unceasing waves.

Across all of the ages of my life, I had tried to hold onto the images of my mother. Now, as I held him close, one of the most beautiful memories of my mother came back to me. The lullaby that she had sung me flew into my conscious mind, and soon the words began to drift from my lips. How many nights I had sat up, listening to my mother sing it—first to me and then to Luna, too. There was magic in the words, and I felt her as the lullaby came alive once more. I felt the presence of my beautiful mother, and I pressed all of the comfort I could into the words as I sang them to my foal.

He wiped his face against mine as I sang, and the words filled the woods. The notes drifted around the awestruck armies. They swam among the trees, both ancient and sapling. The lullaby draped itself around the wounded as a blanket, giving them strength. The words hovered over the dead, granting them peace.

Draggle felt no comfort in the words. Even as I held my foal and sang, even as I nuzzled to him and shared my warmth, the witch was facing her own harsh realities. I did not envy her that. The strength began to drain from the witch, taking her magic with it. Her curse upon me shivered and released its hold on my soul.

With it went my child.

He shuddered and shook, and a part of me died as fear entered his tiny voice. “Momma? Momma, what’s going on?” spoke the blessed little form. I looked to him, and my heart broke as I witnessed the fear growing in his eyes.

There was nothing I could do but drink from the bitter cup of a mother unable to save her child.

“Shhh, shhh… it is alright, it is alright. Momma loves you, Momma loves you so very much, dearest,” I whimpered. I clung to him as his little body began to fade away. I pressed myself closer to him, held him as close as I could while his tiny form returned to magic that sank deep into the earth.

“Momma loves you so very much…”

With that, he was gone. I lay there on the cold earth, staring at the spot where he had disappeared. I stared at it until the last few shards of magic stopped twinkling amid the pine needles and twigs. I stared at it for a long, long while as tears streamed down my face. My head began to wave back and forth as all that was good and beautiful drifted out of me. The stench of the blood-splattered battlefield wormed its way back into my senses. It washed away all that my child had brought me in those few fleeting minutes of his ephemeral existence, and all that I was left with was the same numbness that any mother who had just laid her foal in the earth would feel.

I lifted my head, half expecting to have it cleaved from my body, or at least to find Draggle grasping her staff and preparing to end my life. To this day I still ask myself if I would have stopped her. My eyes focused on her through my tears, through the waves of coldness and loss that drifted around me. What they found was a woman in pain.

At that moment, or in any of the moments before, Draggle could have slain me. She could have wiped me away with a mere flick of her wrist. Her magic had always been as great as mine, even if bent in other ways. It would have taken nothing for her to end it all.

Yet my eyes did not find the witch preparing to end my life. Instead I found her on her knees, her hands still pressed to her mouth. Draggle sat there, staring at me. In her mind she now realized that she had been lied to. Now she knew that the blessed familiarity of our youths had been sacrificed to her mother’s ambitions.

She fell onto her hands and crawled forward through the litter of the forest floor. She crawled across the pine needles and pinecones, across the twigs and fallen branches, looking more like a wild animal than a living incarnation of natural magic. The forest floor clung to her dress as she approached me, but my eyes did not leave hers. There was no more wrath in her eyes, and I know that she found none in mine. Instead all that sat there between us was a pain that only mares and women know, an understanding shared only by the bearers of wombs.

“She lied to me, Celestia,” she whimpered. “She lied to me…”

We were only inches apart now, and the remnants of her perfumes awoke memories of giggling before a vanity mirror, dabbling ourselves with powders and wearing pearls as we pretended to be ‘all grown up.’ Her hands came up, and one sat so very close to my face… just at the right place to rest myself if it would only come that much closer. I tilted my head, begging for that touch, for the reassurance of the woman before me. I begged for the familiar hands of this witch who had once been nearly as dear to me as my own sister.

“Celestia. Tia…”

Her other arm came up. She lifted it around me—begging to wrap me in an embrace. The pine needles fell from her cloak, drifting across my shoulders and withers in tickling trails. She hovered over me, neither of us moving, each one longing for the embrace that screamed to be fulfilled. The soft sighs and tearful gasps that filled the ring of pines implored us to find comfort in each other.

Our weeping became bitter pleas to recapture a lost world of starlit meadows where two happy little alicorn foals had chased fireflies. Two young maidens went with them, giggling as the insects filled the night with their luminous trails and a wise old earth mother looked on, humming happily in the summer’s night.

But that world had died long ago. That world had been drowned in lies.

Draggle pulled herself back up to her feet. I looked at her one last time. We searched through each other’s eyes, and in that moment I knew that, even if it did not come today, the time was upon us when either alicorn or witch would have to lay claim to all of Equestria. As we stared into each other’s eyes we both knew that all of Equus would shake and tremble as the magic that lay in our races broke the chains of the sky.

She turned away, her cloak and skirts whipping around on the still summer air. “Come,” she said, and soon she and her whole army had disappeared into the wilderness, melting into the tall trees and wisps of fog as though they were ghosts.

My mind fell to another apparition. My eyes settled back over the spot where my child had disappeared. My child. The curse had been the fulfillment of the deepest hope of my heart; the curse had been a momentary glimpse of a reality that could never be mine.

I placed my hoof over the spot, and before I even knew what I was doing I was pulling it across the earth. Soon my other hoof joined it, and as my army looked on as I, their princess began to paw at the dirt as though I were some animal. Soon their sovereign was beating at the earth, casting aside mounds of earth as she began to weep. Soon their Dawnbringer, their Invictus, was screaming, begging the deep magic to return to her the radiant phantom that had given her such happiness. Soon my coat and tangled mane were filled with dirt and pine needles and I pleaded in wild, wounded tones for the magic to restore the child to me.

The soldiers approached me—the alicorn, their immortal alicorn mistress who some had even named as a goddess—and lifted me from the broken earth. As they held me I wailed aloud for the incorporeal child. I screamed for the child that never was, and never could be, real.

Forgive your princess as she wipes away these tears. Does it surprise you to think that I, an aged immortal, should still dwell upon such things?

Or, perhaps, you are somehow upset to think that I am denied my desire? Who denies it to me? Why, I myself, of course.

Time does things to a pony, my newest student. The more that one convinces themselves that they have all of it that they need, the more complacent they become. “There will be time for children later,” I told myself. But, you see, even for an immortal, there is a ‘too late.’

May I ask, why do you think that all of the royalty of these races that make up my little ponies are my ‘nieces’ and ‘nephews’? Blueblood I have named my nephew, though we share not one drop of blood between us. I love him as though he were my blood. Even though he has grown into a stallion of… difficult tastes, I still fret over him. I stood in for his parents when he was ill. I rejoiced in him when he was a young stallion. We had so many adventures together as he grew, and I still love him and hope that he becomes the stallion that I know he can be.

Did you think that I called Cadance my niece simply because she was an alicorn? I’m surprised, and a little hurt, that you would suggest such a thing. Though I knew that she would someday reach great heights, when I first met her she was a gangly, scared little foal. It was no act of nepotism that brought her here to Canterlot, and it was only after she had blossomed into a young mare under my care that she truly found herself. Do you not think that I smiled when I saw her take Twilight Sparkle under her wing? Do you not think I encouraged her to free Shining Armor of some of his adorable nervousness in approaching her by going to him first? Was I not radiant with joy as I gave my niece away on her wedding day?

Why do you think that, over these ages, I have taken students to my own teaching? Princess Twilight Sparkle began her life here at the school under circumstances not especially different than your own, and she spent more than enough time sitting with me, letting me teach her in quiet moments. She sat with me by my fireplace, listening intently as I shared word of magic and mystery, science and history, sharing in my wisdom much like you and I are doing now.

Why do you think I kept going down to the nursery to spend time with a young dragon whelp? Do you understand how happy it made me to see him weave about the white lengths of my legs—to feel him grasp at me, to hear him call "Up!" and ask to be lifted high or held in a hug?

These four all fell asleep against my side, and all of them felt me lower them into their beds and draw their sheets around them when they were too drowsy to walk. They have all heard the lullaby that my mother sang to me eons ago, and it has eased each into pleasant dreams.

These are just the ones I’ve cared for in your lifetime. I have watched over many in my millennia, and I hold them all dear in my heart and keep their memory down to this day. Their faces, both as the foals I rejoiced in and the grown mares and stallions I celebrated, stay vivid in my mind.

We are as mothers to our little ponies, Luna and I, watching over them as they come again and again and again in the great tides of life that you call generations. You come and go, and if we blink you race from your foalhoods to your adolescence. If we lower our heads to sigh you go from young mares and stallions in the prime of your life to wisened ponies awaiting the call to go down the long stairs into the Well of Souls.

We watch you grow through all of your lives, and we are as mothers, rejoicing in you. Yet, of the two of us, it is I who most linger in the thought of that title. Yet, the purest, most sacred definition of the word is denied me.

A mare as beautiful as Evening Shade, with her soft curves and beckoning eyes, was—and still is—in my sight just a foal wanting to be read a story. She was, and remains, as dear to me as a daughter.

Though he grew old and grey, though he matured into a wise stallion with a son and grandfoals of his own, was Delving Pond any less my child, after a fashion? I sat with his mother and father and watched him learn to walk. I had kissed his forehead and blessed him when he was born. I miss him still, just as I miss thousands.

My body is still that of a mare, and I still have the same hopes and desires as any pony. But, as fair of face as Lantern Light was, and as charming and loving, could any of the rumors that circled around us—or around me and any of the stallions such lies have named—contain even a shard of truth? What is a scant few decades’ difference between that foal and the prince he became? I kissed his ‘boo-boos’ to make them better. I helped him through his nervousness as he hemmed and hawed about asking a young mare to dance. He… he was as a son to me.

I am as a mother to my ponies, in the sense that I watch over them, love them—but in that way alone. If we see you all as our children, well… what mother would bed one of her sons? The thought itself is too disgusti—

I stray from our conversation, and I am sorry. Forgive me.

I wish to thank you for letting me share this tale with you, as it has sat upon me for a great long while.

Yes, a great long while indeed.

Now, I have answered your question. While we still have some time left, I ask you to answer mine. I have not forgotten that I asked about your well-being when we began. You are… I mean, it is important to me to know that you are well.

Please, tell me all about this earth pony mare. What is she like? Do you see it blossoming into something more? You do not need to blush!

Have you had enough to eat? Here, please, do take another cookie and some sweetbread, child. Take more, do not be shy. You look far too thin. Are you at least eating better than when you first came to Canterlot? Are you finally beginning to sleep well?

Yes? Oh, I am so glad to hear it. That is so wonderful…

...that makes me so very happy.

End.