In the sun's absence, Canterlot Castle slept deeply. Darkness cut the castle in hard, impenetrable shadows and cast out the friendly warmth of the day. Her halls, normally bustling with ponies scurrying about in the carefully orchestrated chaos that was government, were quiet and empty. Only the occasional cough by one of the night maids or the rhythmic hoofbeats of guards on patrol served to mark the slow passage of time under the stars.
It was through this eerie, unwelcoming silence that Celestia trudged along on sore, unwilling hooves. The halls stretched themselves before her, adding to her tortuous experience and making the enticing memory of her bed seem like an ever more dim and unlikely fantasy. Her ankles felt blistered despite lacking even the smallest of blemishes, and her pristine, finely groomed fur might well have been a beggar’s tunic for all its itches and irritations.
It had been a difficult day for Princess Celestia— and, in fact, a difficult week. It had started when a train operated by the Royal Equestrian Railway had suffered a derailment outside of Manehatten. Though no lives had been lost, dozens of ponies had been injured and the material loss was monumental. Not a full day after, the Cloudsdale Weather Factory had begun a long-threatened strike over weather contracts that, if not resolved quickly, threatened the ruin of Equestria’s apple crop for the year. Close on the heels of the preceding crises, the Royal Guard garrison of Baltimare had sighted an unidentified and potentially armed airship, which had the entirety of Equestria’s eastern coast on alert for the possibility of pirates.
Such rough times were not quite infrequent: emergencies –and problems that were perhaps only a hair’s breadth away from being deemed emergencies themselves– tended to pop up fairly regularly, and bad luck occasionally dictated their coming in clusters. Regardless, their normalcy made them no less unpleasant when they did arise, and in no way served to lighten her burden.
Celestia knew –at least in theory– that the stresses and worries that her crown carried as part and pence of leadership in truth weighed nothing, and that, as mental constructs, they could only affect her as much as she allowed them to. That knowledge, however, did not remove a single pound from the tremendous mountain pressing down on her. Nor did it clear a path through stubborn muck below her that grabbed at her hooves that, to the untrained eye, looked to be mere carpet. The audacity of the deception was galling.
It was with a sigh of relief known only to the noblest of rulers and the parents of newborns that Celestia reached a long, familiar hallway and a towering set of double doors emblazoned with her cutie mark. So distracted was she with the oasis of rest so close at hoof that she nearly missed the narrow strip of light stretching across the hall from a door left cracked open. Had the palace been awake and the lights not so thoroughly extinguished, she surely would have passed the door without a second’s thought.
As it was, the light gave her a moment’s pause, and she rallied the faculties she had previously relieved from their duties to remember that the door belonged to her young student, Twilight Sparkle. The filly had, not even a year before, so impressed her with a wild surge of arcane might that Celestia had taken her as an apprentice on the spot. As her personal student, Twilight had been given a room only a stone’s throw away from her own so that Celestia might better watch over her. After all, though it had been far more centuries than she would ever admit to, Celestia had been a rambunctious filly once, and still remembered the inexhaustible potential for mischief that was youth.
With a wistful glance at the sun emblem begging her to retire, Celestia decided to poke her head in for just a moment to check on Twilight. Slowly –and taking special care to avoid making a noise– Celestia nosed the door open enough for her to peer inside. Unsurprisingly, she saw Twilight curled up on top of the covers, her Smarty Pants doll hugged tightly to her chest and a book far thicker than any would expect of a filly her age open before her.
A smile tugged at Celestia's lips, and she stood in the doorway for a moment to appreciate the sight before her. If she had only had a camera on hoof, she would have captured the image for posterity. Lacking any such tool, she settled for lighting her horn to pull the covers of the bed back and clear away the pile of decorative throw pillows. With her finest touch, Celestia levitated the sleeping Twilight –the little filly's forelegs still clutching the ragged doll– and deposited her safely among the nest of blankets. She closed the book, not forgetting to mark the page, of course.
Her ears twitched to the sound of rustling sheets.
“Princess?” Twilight’s small, violet eyes peeked open. Celestia paused, hoping that the young filly would quickly fall back asleep. When Twilight began to stir, Celestia instead sat herself at Twilight’s bedside.
“Twilight, did you fall asleep reading again?” Celestia asked, a light scold in her voice. As well-meaning as she was, Twilight’s exuberance could sometimes get out of hoof, and thus she occasionally required Celestia to guide her back onto a reasonable path.
“I wanted you to come read me a bedtime story,” Twilight said with a shake of her head. She fought to raise herself up from the pillows, but Celestia placed a hoof on her chest to stop her.
“Twilight, don’t you remember that I told you that I was going to be late tonight?” It hadn’t taken her long that morning to realize that court was, once again, going to drag on far longer than its usual time, and she had told Twilight such when the two had shared lunch. When she and Twilight had met for lunch, she had delivered the news that their nightly ritual would have to be postponed yet again.
Instead of a sheepish blush at forgetting Celestia’s words, Twilight smiled brightly and snuggled against the white hoof that was nearly as large as she was.
“That’s okay, Princess. I waited for you.” Twilight’s expectant gaze and innocent grin showed that she thought her actions obvious and reasonable. In the light of how truly touched she felt by the genuine affection clear in her young student’s eyes, Celestia decided to ignore the impulse to correct her.
It was with her own smile that Celestia settled herself beside the bed, her overwhelming exhaustion momentarily forgotten in favor of much more pressing matters. Celestia tucked Twilight in snugly once more and cleared her throat.
“Once upon a time…”
Hearts and Hooves Day was an unusual day for Princess Celestia. As a holiday dedicated to love and the bonds between ponies, it fell under the domain of her niece, Princess Cadence. Though Cadence was still a young mare hardly out of her tutelage, it was her duty as the Princess of Love to oversee the holiday’s celebrations. It was Cadence who had headed the carnival planning councils, and it was Cadence who was the centerpiece to Canterlot’s largest celebrations. It left Celestia, who for almost a full millennium had been the star atop the tree for every holiday, event, and tradition, feeling unusually left out.
And she loved it.
For the first time in fifty generations, she could simply step aside and enjoy the festivities instead of being carted from one event to the next. Normally, she would have been left without a single moment to take a breath, much less take part in the traditions themselves.
While the two of them passed through the thickly crowded streets of downtown Canterlot, Celestia made sure to keep Twilight at her side. After being separated shortly after they had arrived, and the subsequent hour it had taken them to find one another again, neither was particularly eager to repeal the ordeal. When she glanced backwards to ensure that Twilight was still at her side, she saw the young mare still wearing a wide, carefree smile and bubbled with joy.
Before leaving the palace that morning for the celebration, Celestia had stopped by the Observatory to check on its recently moved-in resident, Twilight. When she’d found Twilight neck deep in a tome about the agricultural innovations of the old Roanan Empire, she’d carefully and politely inquired if the young mare had found herself a special somepony to spend the day with.
The sudden bark of laughter she had received had been unexpected, though the following blush and apology was not. When she’d learned that Twilight did not have a special somepony –not unreasonable given her personal distaste for social interaction outside of her family and Celestia herself, regrettable though it was– Celestia had put forward that they might spend the day together. After all, Celestia lacked a special somepony –something that was common knowledge, much to her embarrassment– and it was as equally common for friends to enjoy Hearts and Hooves Day as partners.
After much prodding, and encouragement that Twilight would not be intruding and would in fact only serve to make the day more enjoyable for Celestia, Twilight had agreed. Though she’d been a bit nervous at first, Twilight had quickly warmed up to the idea of spending the day not as teacher and student, but as two friends about enjoying the holiday. She had yet to stop smiling since.
The two rounded a corner, caught up in giggling and riding high upon their victory over a particularly challenging carnival game. It had begun with bobbing for apples, and had somehow led to popping balloons while blindfolded. Hearts and Hooves Day could be a strange time.
Amidst their giggles, Celestia’s attention was caught by a flash of distinctive light blue.
It seemed that their chaotic tour through the carnival had led them to one of the streets that snaked its way along the side of the city’s cliff face. Surprisingly, the press of bodies was perhaps even tighter than in the midst of Canterlot’s carnival square. Given how far the cliffs were from the rest of the fair –not to mention the understandable sense of unease two-thirds of her subjects felt near the sheer drop– Celestia expected the crowds to be much thinner.
Even more curiously, instead of the unicorns who made up the majority of Canterlot's demographic, the crowd before them was composed almost entirely of pegasi. With her advantage of height, Celestia was able to see over the throngs and catch sight of the booth that had garnered so much attention.
Below a banner emblazoned with a winged lightning bolt stood two pegasus ponies in distinctive blue flight suits. The Wonderbolts –Whirlwind and Turbine, if she wasn’t mistaken– were engaging the crowd with great, sweeping gestures. Behind them, the normally clear sky surrounding the Canterhorn was filled with a myriad of floating rings and obstacles in all shapes and sizes. Among the floating amusement park, pegasi were dashing and bouncing to and fro with loud cries of glee. Near the center of the cloud formation, (if the chaotic jumble of tuff could be called as much) ponies were bouncing and ricocheting between two huge parallel disks, each impact returning them to the opposite side with even more energy. She had never seen clouds arrayed so cleverly or crafted so well.
There were easily a hundred or more pegasi embroiled in the chaos, and Celestia's wings twitched with envy. Near the edge of the cloud park, a dozen ponies were locked in a race that was carrying them around the perimeter at a dizzying, breakneck pace. Between the racetrack and the twin cloud trampolines were pillars, pylons, pyramids, sheer cloud banks, and whirlwinds. The sky was alive with uncountable ponies shooting back and forth in a blur, engaged in private games of their own devising.
So entrapped was she by the sight that she hadn’t noticed that the line, for it was a line that they had found themselves in, had moved forward. Only when Turbine cleared his throat was she brought out of her reverie. She looked at the two flightsuited ponies in excitement, and her hoof twitched towards the saddlebags on her flanks, only for her to pause immediately. She glanced at Twilight, an excuse for them to leave ready on her lips, only to find her companion already floating a pair of bits into the ticket jar.
“Go ahead. I’ll entertain myself,” Twilight said in encouragement, levitating the saddlebags from Celestia’s back to her own.
“Are you sure, Twilight? I would feel terrible leaving you here by yourself.”
Twilight rolled her eyes and gestured to the roped off area where the city’s retaining wall had been pushed aside for easy takeoff. “It's okay. We can meet again after you’re done. I wanted to visit Cadence for a little while, too, if I can find her.”
Still a little unsure, but with her so often neglected pegasus magic begging for the chance to take flight, Celestia turned and leapt from the cliff with a very unprincessly squeal of joy. Her wings snapped open after a moment of free fall, and she rocketed away towards the racetrack.
Two ponies were locked in a hard-fought tie for first, an orange mare with a raging inferno for a mane against a light blue stallion with a much darker blue mane. They shared the track with a dozen other pegasi, but their contest was of a caliber of which that most feathered ponies could only dream. Hearts pounding, muscles straining, they pressed themselves forward against the wind. Ponies gathered to watch them, separating into opposing cheer squads as they did so. The lead for first was traded back and forth, for each small defeat was a challenge that fueled their wings.
There was a mighty gust, and the two were abruptly swept aside by a white blur. They glanced at each other, wingbeats slackening, each silently asking the other if they had seen the same. The blur had been nearly indistinguishable, its white blending in with the purity of the cloudbank. Only when the pounding of wings on air announced the same pony passing them again did they share a competitive grin and bounded off in pursuit.
Celestia lost count of how many laps she made and how many ponies made their way to the track to test themselves against her. Some even succeeded, much to her delight. Oh, to be bested in honest competition. To feel her feathers pass through fresh air as she fought for every bit of speed she had –it was incredible!
After the burn in her wings had become too much, Celestia turned her attention to the trampoline clouds. Once she was sure her course would carry her to the cloud, she tucked her wings and legs to her body tightly. The first bounce launched her up and into the opposite cloud, which then spiked her back to its companion. She was the ball in an intense game of inanimate tennis, and her wild, boisterous laughter stretched across the sky to join the chorus of other ponies.
When she was eventually launched free of the trampoline clouds, she joined in the endless game of tag-and-seek. Again and again she passed between games with the other ponies, and for a time she was simply another pony enjoying the festivities of Hearts and Hooves Day.
Only when the sun began to press on the horizon, its calls for rest becoming ever more urgent by the moment, did Celestia stop. Her chest heaved from her exertions, and her wings threatened to break free with each flap. Her feathers were a windswept mess, and her mane’s gentle current had been replaced with an untamed torrent of astral power that danced with disdain for all things but its own whims. How long had it been, she wondered to herself, since her cheeks had hurt from smiling, and not from simply bearing the weight of a porcelain mask?
With the sun to bed and the moon awoken on the far horizon, she could only think of how lovely it had been to spend the day—
And that was when she remembered Twilight.
Her previous contentment was displaced by burdensome guilt and urgency that dropped her to the earth. She swung her head about in every direction in search of the familiar pink-striped mane. The crowd was lighter than it had been, for parents and their foals had long since left the festivities. Only those young enough to have special someponies, yet old enough to lack bedtimes, remained.
With the crushing press gone, it should have been an easy matter to find Twilight, but that notion was quickly dispelled. Celestia rushed through the city streets as quickly as she could without the risk of raising any undue attention. Beyond that inescapable spectre that followed her by virtue of her crown, she did not wish to be slowed down by the fawning of her subjects. The longer Celestia’s fruitless search dragged on, the more she began to worry that Twilight had grown tired of waiting on her and simply left.
After a second search of the fairgrounds turned up no better result than the first, Celestia sank to her belly on the grass of Canterlot Park. Under the neon lights of the carnival rides, she sagged and began to compose the apology she would give to her student. She could not have been more disappointed in herself, and she was sure Twilight would feel even worse. After having essentially been dragged along, only to be abandoned in favor of a bit of flying, her faithful student would have every right to be angry.
A prodding at her side drew Celestia from her self-recrimination. She glanced up expecting to see a young couple asking for her blessing of their courtship or union, or perhaps a foal eager to meet a ‘real life princess.’
“Thought you might want something cold after all that flying,” she said easily. Twilight once again offered the cone in her magic, and Celestia caught it by reflex as much as anything else. She looked between the frozen treat and her student in no small amount of confusion.
“You're still here?” she asked, unsure of how to gracefully broach the subject and, in her haste, stampeding over it with the grace of a wronged Ursa. Twilight tilted her head and sent her an odd look.
“Yes?” It was an answer and a question both, and it served to clarify nothing for either of them. “Was I not supposed to be?”
“I thought… I thought you would have been angry with me, after I spent what was supposed to be our day together flying. I am sorry for that, Twilight. I truly did not mean to abandon you.” Celestia, while no longer expecting the rebuke or the forlorn sadness she had feared only moments before, expected at least some small gesture of disapproval. What she did not expect was for Twilight to simply shrug and smile.
“That’s okay, Princess. I waited for you.” Twilight took a bite of her ice cream, and her eyes rolled up as she relished its rich chocolate coating. In the midst of her frozen euphoria she glanced around at the ring of illuminated attractions that loomed over them in every direction. From a nearby rollercoaster, squeals of fear and delight rang out from across the grounds. “Besides, there’s still plenty of things we could do before we go back to the palace.”
Twilight paused, and her face morphed into the same expression of deep introspection that Celestia would often see her wear when she was pondering the great mysteries of the arcane. A spark flashed across her eyes, and she turned back to her teacher excitedly.
“Want to go ride the Ferris Wheel?”
It took Celestia a brief moment to process her student’s behavior, and it was only when Twilight continued to look at her with intense curiosity that Celestia’s mind finally caught up to her. When it did, she grinned more widely than should have been possible and jumped to her hooves with the eagerness of a schoolfilly.
“Race ya,” she said, immediately scampering off in the direction of the slowly rotating ride. Twilight looked after her for a split second before running after her. Their giggles chased them through the night, and it was a good night indeed.
It was a Friday when the most important, most impossible question of Celestia's life had been put before her.
To say that Celestia’s decision had been difficult would have been not only a grave understatement, but also shown a complete misunderstanding of the situation entirely.
Her decision was difficult in the way that sealing the Spirit of Chaos in stone was a bit of an inconvenience. It was hard in the same way that learning that your niece had been kidnapped and replaced with a hideous love-sucking bug monster was somewhat unexpected. It was challenging in the same way that suddenly being gifted the magical power of four alicorns and brawling with the combined magical power of the rest of Equestria was a noteworthy afternoon.
To put it frankly, saying her decision had been difficult did not even begin to describe it.
But, in another sense, her decision had not been difficult at all. Rather, it was her unwillingness to face the reality that she had lent a hoof in crafting that made it difficult, and indeed made it a decision at all. Where she could stare down the fiery intensity of the sun without blinking, and indeed did so at least twice daily. But she balked, or some might say cowered, from accepting the truth that stared her in the face. It was a testament to her stubbornness that not only had the truth met her gaze and won, but continued to flaunt itself in front of her in spite of her every rejection.
And yet she refused to see it.
When her sister had come to her that first night, her chest still wet with Twilight's tears, and shouted her down until every window in her tower had been reduced to little more than the sand from which it had been forged, she had turned her nose up at the truth.
When five of the Elements of Harmony had done what amounted to nothing short of storming Canterlot Castle to throw the truth in her face, she had closed her eyes and refused to see.
When the Princess of Love herself, her own niece, had taken the long train ride from her frozen empire with the resolution to literally beat the truth into her –and would have carried out her intention if not physically restrained by her husband and more than a dozen Royal Guards– she had flattened her ears as a bulwark against the sound.
It was only when Wednesday came and went without a letter that she could no longer deny the obvious. When she spent the entire day, and the night that followed, eagerly awaiting a puff of dragonfire that would not come, only then did she understand. When Thursday came and went, each moment from dawn to dusk leaving her on edge and every whisper masquerading as the familiar sound of magical correspondence, she struck her colors and surrendered.
Truth is truth is truth, and not even the sun herself could deny it forever. The moment dawn broke the horizon on the morning of the seventh day, Celestia opened her eyes and finally saw what Twilight had tried to show her.
Twilight’s confession had caught her off guard, that much was certain. In return, having Princess Celestia throw her castle doors open with such force that they cracked the crystal was, at least somewhat, a surprise to the younger Princess.
With wide eyes and wild windswept mane, Princess Celestia galloped through the halls of the Castle of Harmony. When Spike silently pointed her up a flight of stairs, she made her one and only turn towards Twilight’s chambers. Much later, when things had calmed, she would realize how odd it was that he had been waiting for her in just the right place at just the right time.
After more than one missed step and subsequent embarrassing falls, her frantic steps finally pulled her to the top of the staircase. Celestia pushed open the doors to Twilight’s bedroom with only slightly less force than that which had ruined their cousins downstairs.
Heart thundering with fear and love and guilt and fear, it was Celestia the mare –not Princess Celestia ex Astria of Equestria– that stood in the doorway Twilight's bedroom and found her… reading.
Twilight was stretched across her bed casually, the book in front of her open somewhere near the middle. She was facing away from Celestia, and did not look up at the sudden intrusion, choosing instead to take a sip of her coffee. Her eyes never left the page. A wisp of magic caressed the book, turning the page with reverent precision.
“Hello, Princess.” Her voice was easy. Polite. It was the tone one might use to greet a friend on the street, and showed no sign that she had noticed the obvious sounds of scurrying hooves on crystal or the vandalism of her home.
It cut Celestia to the bone. For a brief moment, Celestia stopped to look down at herself and brought a hoof to her chest to staunch the bleeding, only for her leg to come away with its pristine white fur unmarred.
“C…Celestia.” The word was broken, and was choked more than said outright. Twilight’s ear twitched, and she closed her book. When she turned her head to finally look at Celestia, her eyes shimmered.
“Hello, Celestia.” They were happy words. They were joyous words. They were words that sang to the heavens and beyond of unbound affections. The two Princesses, the two mares, the two lovers finally embraced. Their wings cocooned them together, their fur meshed, and their legs intertwined. They found themselves finally free to express what both had felt for so long, and had been too afraid to admit. In the case of one, she had been afraid just a bit longer than the other.
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Celestia said, her warm breath tickling Twilight’s ears. Celestia smelled of sunflowers and sunny days, and reveled in the scent of lavender and old parchment. Twilight twisted her head, unwilling to break the hard-won feeling of Celestia’s fur against her own, and stared at her love with eyes of the deepest affections.
“It’s okay, Celestia. I waited for you.”
Celestia was going to have to send Rarity a fruit basket. Though she had never said as much out loud, she had worried for a brief moment that planning the wedding for not one but two sitting Princesses would have been too much for the fashionista. True, her skills with needle and thread were unparalleled, and Celestia had never doubted her ability to craft for them the most incredible dresses anypony alive or otherwise had ever seen, but to plan a Royal Wedding –much less a double– could tax anypony to their limits.
However, in spite of Celestia' reservations, Rarity had pulled it off beautifully. Held in the same grand hall that had seen Twilight’s brother married not so many years before, Rarity had exceeded Celestia’s wildest expectations. The room in which the ceremony was to take place somehow shone with a brilliance that Celestia was quite sure was not coming from her sun. It lent the normally somewhat drab hall the impression of the shining heavens themselves, plucked from the ether and placed on the earth for a single day.
Several fruit baskets, she decided.
Before her, the crowd of ponies filled the room to near bursting. Hundreds of ponies, each looking as eager as the next, were tightly packed together. Only the two long columns of Royal Guards served to keep their excited mass in check and the carpeted walkway clear.
Beside Celestia, Luna stood proudly as Best Mare. She wore a dress of violet-trimmed silver that somehow served to accentuate Celestia’s dress all the more, while still standing out as its own beacon of heavenly allure. Behind Luna, the four Royal Guards who had acted as Celestia's Honor Guard stood arrayed on the steps, each hoofpicked for their many years of faithful service.
On Celestia’s other side, at the head of the altar, Princess Cadence stood shaking in place. At a glance, one would have been easily excused in thinking she and Pinkie Pie sisters, as both mares were practically vibrating with anticipation.
Opposite Celestia, the five Elements of Harmony stood side by side in matching pink dresses. Pinkie Pie was leaned in towards Cadence, and the two shared a near constant stream of girlish giggles. Rarity was alternating between carefully dabbing away tears and glaring at Rainbow Dash. On the step below her, Applejack adjusted her hat and likewise glared at Rainbow. Fluttershy–poor, sweet Fluttershy– was trying desperately to mollify her childhood friend, lest she be murdered by her fellow bridesmaids.
Rainbow herself was, perhaps unsurprisingly, bored out of her mind. Even with all her preparations, it seemed Rarity had forgotten Rainbow Dash’s incredible propensity towards restlessness. Hardly a moment passed without Rainbow fluttering her wings or demanding when the wedding was actually supposed to start. Only a quick gout of flame passing a hair's breadth away from her muzzle eventually silenced her.
Spike stood at the place of honor as Twilight’s Best Drake, and his well-cut white suit accented his purple scales to give him a fine, noble bearing. Once he was satisfied that Rainbow was sufficiently silenced, he stood as straight as his anatomy would allow.
In the midst of her friends and family, Celestia was struggling to resist the urge to fidget and adjust her dress. Imaginary pins ran up and down her spine like incensed fire ants. Only a quick, sharp glare from Rarity stayed her hoof, leaving her nothing to focus on to distract from the boiling cauldron that had replaced her stomach. It was a feeling she had not experienced in centuries, and only years upon years of practice allowed her to maintain her composure and keep from bolting from the dais. That she, of all ponies, was struck by wedding jitters was a preposterous, terrifying reality.
And then the trumpets sounded.
The wedding march began, and the doors to the room burst open to reveal a formation of Royal Guards headed by Shining Armor in the armor he had once worn as Captain of the Royal Guard. Trailing behind them, and matching their slow, rhythmic pace, Twilight Sparkle walked beside her father.
Twilight was radiant beyond radiance, beautiful beyond beauty. Words fell before her and wept for their failure. The mare walking towards Celestia defied comprehension, and any comparison would have been a cruelty beyond understanding.
Before Celestia was through, Rarity would own her own orchard.
When the Honor Guard reached the stairs, they turned and saluted Twilight as one. They held the gesture for exactly three seconds, no more and no less, and then turned as one and took their place at the bottom of the stairs on Twilight’s side of the aisle. On Twilight’s way past them she and her brother shared a quick glance, and everypony present kindly pretended not to see the proud soldier wipe away a tear.
Twilight and Night Light stopped as the Honor Guard had at the foot of the dais. Twilight turned to her father and he reached up to lift her veil with his hoof. Night Light paused, and again everypony ignored the tears of a stallion of House Twilight.
“You are so beautiful, my little spark,” he said tenderly. With a kiss on the forehead and a few more tears, Night Light took his place beside his wife at the front of the crowd. Careful to remain unobserved and keep his eyes forward, one of the Royal Guards quietly slipped the proud father a hoofkerchief. That the hoofkerchief was monogrammed with a stylized R was a complete coincidence.
The moment Twilight began to ascend the stairs, the world around Celestia ceased to exist. To most, such a sentiment would be gross hyperbole or a fanciful romantification. But to Celestia, the closer Twilight drew to her, the more her awareness beyond the two of them seemed to slip away. Despite her long life, her extensive power, and even her greater physical stature, Celestia was once again a small, scared little filly standing on shaking legs before the all-encompassing wonder of the universe.
For Celestia, there was no wedding and there was no crowd. There was no Luna, no Cadence, and no Equestria. In that moment, that brief, terrifying, wonderful moment, there was only Twilight Sparkle and a little white mare.
Cadence spoke, but Celestia did not hear. Cadence spoke again, a little louder, and again Celestia did not hear. When Cadence spoke a third time, and Luna roughly jabbed Celestia in the ribs, Celestia still did not hear. Only when Twilight Sparkle’s brow furrowed in concern did Celestia hear, and then she spoke.
“I do.”
“Then, as a Princess of both Equestria and the Crystal Empire, I hereby pronounce you mare and wife. You may now kiss the bride.” Who moved faster in that moment would be debated for centuries, but what was known by all, without a single shred of doubt, was that what resulted was easily the most passionate first kiss of any marriage in the history of Creation.
When the two finally broke apart, it was to a long, shocked silence. Celestia noticed the unnerving quiet first and, when she glanced at the crowd, found a sea of blushing faces. There wasn’t a single foal in the crowd without at least two separate limbs covering their eyes, and the number of ponies that were squirming in place is a fact better lost to history.
Rainbow Dash broke the silence with a fine whistle of appreciation, which served to open the floodgates of enthusiastic applause. Celestia and Twilight rushed down the aisle beneath the shower of thrown rice, their faces flushed and their smiles wide. When they burst through the castle doors and into the sunshine, they were met with a rolling wall of thunder. Thousands upon thousands of ponies, gathered from every corner of Equestria and numerous enough to double the population of Canterlot nearly overnight, eagerly greeted the newly married Royals.
Later, after the crowd had finally dispersed and the public festivities had come to an end, Celestia and Twilight were finally able to attend the private reception Rarity had set up in the palace ballroom. With only friends and family invited to the private affair, the atmosphere lacked the pageantry of the day’s events. Princesses or not, it was as casual a reception as any other.
After their first dance together, in which Twilight only stepped on Celestia’s hooves a mere nine times and accidentally kicked her twice, the two rejoined their crowd of friends to mingle. Other couples marched out to take their place, and soon the dance floor was filled with couples swaying to the music.
The newlyweds had hardly left the dance floor before they were met by Luna and Twilight’s other friends.
“Pretty nice moves on the altar for an egghead, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said with a wink. “Just what kind of books have you been reading in that castle of yours?”
Twilight blushed and opened her mouth to retort when a pearlescent white hoof very nearly smacked the rainbow out of Dash. The pegasus rubbed the back of her head and glared at Rarity.
“What the hay was that for?” she demanded,receiving only a much fiercer glare in return.
“Honestly, Rainbow, one simply does not ask such questions.” When Rainbow Dash again opened her mouth, Rarity’s glare redoubled its intensity. “Or need I mention the rather extensive collection you keep tucked beneath your cloud mattress where you think nopony ever looks?”
Rainbow Dash’s mouth slammed shut, putting all of her previous speed records to shame. In light of the incredible bite of the blackmail that had just been leveled at their friend, nopony dared to ask how Rarity knew about what Rainbow Dash kept in her mattress.
All that night, the newlyweds talked, ate, and danced with their friends and family. When the hour at last grew late, and the fillies and colts had all long since succumbed to exhaustion, Celestia and Twilight announced that they were retiring for the evening. After a great many goodbyes and good wishes, the couple finally extracted themselves and headed to what was now formally their tower.
The two paused before the freshly rechristened doors. Gone was the blazing sun that had been in place for centuries, and whose duration had been greater even than some nations. In its place was a brilliant pink starburst held securely in the sun’s embrace and surrounded by an alternating pattern of solar flares and smaller white stars.
Twilight –still in her white dress– hesitated and looked up at her new wife. Before she could react, Twilight had been lifted and deposited on Celestia’s back by a flash of devious golden magic. Twilight glared at her, but her heart wasn’t in it, and even that paltry protest was extinguished when she caught sight of Celestia’s lips twisted in a mischievous smirk.
Celestia carried her new wife –neither would soon tire of referring to the other as such, much to the annoyance of those around them– proudly through the threshold, as a conqueror might brandish the most treasured spoils of war. She ignited her horn and pulled the covers back on their bed, exposing the expensive Saddle Arabian fabrics beneath. Gently, so very gently, she lifted Twilight from her back and deposited her on the silky sheets. Twilight’s blush contrasted greatly with the pale lace of her dress, and Celestia could not help but begin to nip at her neck.
Celestia traveled the length of Twilight’s throat, pausing at each and every sensitive spot she had long since memorized. Her efforts were rewarded with delighted squeals and frantic squirming. Twilight’s hooves wrapped around Celestia’s neck, her giggling protests slowly replaced by sensual moans that set Celestia alight with a primitive, instinctive heat. Celestia’s journey up her lover’s neck led her to Twilight’s jaw, which she traced with a feather-light touch. Twilight shivered, and when Celestia leaned forward to nibble her ear, any teasing resistance Twilight had once thought to muster was forever banished.
Celestia paused in her ministrations to stare into her wife’s eyes. The silence between them spoke of love, desire, and excitement. Like an ocean does the many craft that sail upon its waters, all those feelings and more were encompassed by unbridled happiness. Had they not been eager to enjoy the other traditions associated with a wedding, and especially the wedding night, the two could have passed the night with naught a blink and not regretted a moment.
It was then, so enraptured was she by the shimmering depths of violet that were as a siren’s call, that Celestia nearly missed the brief flick of Twilight’s ear. She tilted her head in puzzlement, and when the nervous tick showed itself again, reviewed herself. Only when the purple tuft of fur flicked a third time did Celestia make the connection between the twitch and her own wing, the same wing that was slowly tracing the outline of Twilight’s cutie mark.
“Twilight, the white dress...” she said, unsure if expressing her curiosity with words would only serve to further embarrass her new wife. “Are you…have you never…?”
Twilight squirmed beneath her and offered a tentative smile. “I waited for you.”
Each beat of Celestia’s wings tore the sky asunder, and across the breadth of Equestria thunder heralded her approach. The miles passed below her in a single, indistinct blur. Not even the mighty ocean that separated Equestria from the Griffon Territories could slow her, and hurricanes trembled in their haste to part and grant her safe passage.
By even the fastest airship, her journey would have taken days. To an outside observer, she had made it in hours. For Celestia, her passage stretched beyond the infinite. Every moment that passed saw the universe explode into existence only to die a long, slow, cold death.
Unicorns from Baltimare to Vanhoover clutched their heads in a futile attempt to alleviate the aching fire pulsated that in their horns at irregular intervals. Magic hastened Celestia’s journey by leaps and bounds, and each bout of wild spellcasting only served to encourage her forward at an ever greater pace.
She was met in the sky above Canterlot by a great purple dragon, and, in a manner not so different from the service he had once performed as a whelp, he wordlessly pointed her in the direction of one of the palace’s gleaming ivory towers. Only when she had gone did the heavy weight return, deadening each stroke of Spike’s great leathery wings. He watched her go with a great remorseful sympathy.
The tower's heavy timber doors were annihilated by a flurry of burning solar magic. The few ponies whose poor luck dictated they be present when their Princess forced her way into the castle shielded their eyes from the shower of light and debris.
Celestia neither stopped to apologize nor to repair the damage in her wake. She lost not a step as her hooves began to crack the ancient marble beneath her in their urgent pursuit of yet more speed. Carpets that had survived great wars of fire and wrath were shredded beneath her, and only the echoing stomps of her quickly-deforming gold shoes gave the ponies in her path time to move out of it. Guards intent on intercepting an unknown attacker narrowly avoided collision, only their finely-honed reflexes saving them from being trampled.
When the hall symbols directing her mad dash began to shift to a motif of hearts and other such medical iconography, Celestia forced herself to slow, if only enough for the lettering to become more than a haze of illegible scribbling. A glance at a whiteboard directed her down a hallway identical to the dozen she had flown through in her haste. The hall's single distinguishing characteristic was a pair of Royal Guards standing on either side of an otherwise unremarkable door.
The door was ripped from its hinges and tossed aside, and Celestia burst into the room. She was met by three faces of shock and one of disapproval. Twilight Sparkle, her fur long since faded from its once-lush mulberry tone, turned her head on the well-stuffed pillow to deliver a glare.
“That wasn’t very nice of you,” Twilight said, the wheezing in her lungs doing nothing to soften the mild reproach. Celestia muttered what she hoped was an apology, her wide eyes unable to look away from the myriad of tubes and wires that covered her wife’s body. When Twilight dipped her head once –what sufficed as a nod to Twilight’s tired body– Celestia assumed it had been.
Despite having crossed half the world in mere hours, it was the few steps across the hospital room to Twilight’s bedside that would remain the longest journey of Celestia’s life. Twilight’s eyes followed her the whole way, and they sparkled with amusement as brightly as they ever had. It was only when her chest bumped into the bedside rail that Celestia again realized where she was. Celestia raised a trembling hoof forward, only for it to fall short lifelessly on the sheet.
Twilight reached out with her frail, wrinkled hoof to grasp Celestia’s own. Twilight grew blurry, and Celestia closed her eyes in a futile struggle to prevent her tears from escaping. She cried, her head low to hide her weakness. Twilight mustered the strength to reach out once more and pulled Celestia’s head to her chest. Twilight’s fur was matted with tears, but she did not complain, instead only rubbing her hoof through the drifting strands of Celestia’s mane.
“I’m sorry,” Celestia tried to say, but her sobs left her voice hopelessly broken. “I’m so sorry, Twilight. I swear I returned as soon as I was told. I’m sorry I wasn’t faster. I'm sorry.”
Twilight continued to rub slow, gentle circles with her hoof. She shushed her wife, and whispered what words of comfort she could. Still Celestia continued to make her apologies and beg for forgiveness. “I should have stayed. I should have—”
A ragged wing extended from Twilight’s side, and with strength far beyond what could have been expected given the circumstances, she forced Celestia’s head up. A tissue engulfed by a steady raspberry glow cleared away the tears from Celestia’s face and let her see clearly.
Twilight was smiling, and in her smile there was only love. “It’s alright, Celestia. I waited for you.” Twilight kissed her cheek, and it was perhaps the sweetest they had ever shared. Celestia leaned into the contact, desperate to hold on to every moment for as long as she could.
The steady thump of Twilight's heart helped sooth Celestia's agony, and yet each treasured beat reminded Celestia that her wife did not have many left. She closed her eyes and tried to lose herself in the sound of Twilight's breathing, in the feeling of the hoof running through her mane. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not escape the spectre that hung over them.
"I'm sorry I can’t come with you." Never in her life had Celestia said such a thing, but Twilight was nothing if not a source for the unexpected. Namely, for the sudden hard smack on the back of her head. Celestia recoiled and rubbed the sore spot behind her ear, only to pause when she noticed Twilight scowling at her.
"None of that now, understand?" Twilight's face softened after only a moment, and her hoof reached up to cup Celestia's cheek. "You take your time here. Promise me."
Celestia looked away, and for a moment she wondered if she could make such a promise. Her eternity stretched out beyond the furthest horizons, and the prospect threatened to crush her. To allow herself a reprieve would have been the height of selfishness, but how she longed to be selfish, just once.
But eventually her eyes found their way home to Twilight's, and she knew she could never refuse. To do so would have been to sully the love that had bound them together, through triumph and tragedy both.
"I promise." The contract was sealed, appropriately, with a kiss. Celestia reluctantly pulled away to allow Twilight to breath, and only then did Celestia notice the tension leave her wife's body.
"Good. That's a relief." Twilight snuggled herself into her bed as best she could, and even that small movement seemed to exhaust her. "If you didn't, I would have brought us both back from the grave so I could put you back in yours."
Celestia, in spite of the impossibly terrible situation she found herself in, could not help the grin that lifted the corners of her lips. Grateful beyond words for the blessing she had been given that bore the name of Twilight Sparkle, Celestia smiled as she hugged her wife once more, careful to mind the elaborate tangle of wires that monitored her failing body.
Twilight Sparkle lived to see the sunset. When Celestia finished setting the sun to rest and opened her eyes, she was a widow. Twilight Sparkle wore an easy smile in death, and her hoof remained wrapped around Celestia’s.
When the sun rose the next morning, it was almost imperceptibly dimmer. Ponies would never quite realize what it was that had been lost, but the difference was not lost on them. For generations, scholars and mages would search for the answer. Their theories would cross the spectrum from incredibly likely to outright preposterous, and cover every inch of ground between the two. In truth, the answer was much simpler than any theory ever put forward.
The sun would never again shine as brightly as it had for Twilight Sparkle.
Celestia knew she would die soon. She had not decided if she was relieved by or afraid of that knowledge, but she knew it as surely as she knew her own name. There had been countless eons of silence following the planet’s atmosphere being burned away. Not even that had been enough time for her to resolve if she was glad to finally be free of the burden that had seemed timeless, or terrified of at last taking the step into oblivion.
There was sadness, of course. Of that much she was sure at least. Years beyond counting had seen her sun grow from a warm and life-giving light to a deadly, raging inferno held together only by gravity and stubbornness. The sun felt terrible about the way it had changed, and it dearly missed the wonderful creatures that had once delighted under its friendly rays. How she knew the sun’s feelings on its slow demise was yet another mystery to her, but she conceded the possibility that she was merely projecting her own feelings onto the inanimate stellar furnace.
The feeling of displeasure that tended to wash over her when she expressed those thoughts made her think them unlikely, but she admitted the possibility all the same. Yet a third possibility she acknowledged was that she had gone senile in her old age. This last idea was one that Luna enjoyed mentioning as often as possible.
Luna lacked Celestia’s uncertainty regarding their looming demise. She had, in an admirable display of pragmatism, accepted that the question of whether their deaths would find them paradise or oblivion was immaterial. If they found the former on the other side they would rejoice, and if they did not, it would not matter.
Celestia envied her sister when thinking on the subject. With the time when the sun would inevitably snuff them out growing closer, she found herself pondering it more and more often. Without the luxury of company, aside from her sister, she had much more time to sit and think than she would have preferred. While Luna spent most of her time carving beautiful, intricate artwork on the near-molten surface of the planet, Celestia was left to contemplate her long life. She lacked any artistic talent, and though her skills as a writer were great, the lack of stimulation available left her without inspiration.
So she thought, and remembered. She thought of her earliest memories, of playing with Luna in verdant green fields, and overthrowing Discord. Where the Spirit of Chaos had gone, she did not know. Since he lacked the ties to the sun and moon that she and her sister held, she thought it likely that he had followed their ponies out into the cosmos to spread his mostly-benevolent brand of mischief.
She thought of memories both happy and sad, of banishing and reuniting with her sister. She thought of Equestria, of its rise and its fall. She thought of the terrible times when the tribes had fought and squabbled amongst each other and of the great day when they had said their goodbyes to the sisters and stepped out into the stars together.
And, of course, she thought of Twilight. Given how long her lifetime had stretched, it was impossible to think upon how many times she had relived the bare century she had been blessed to share with Twilight. They remained the happiest years of her life, and, in the face of how long her life had been, that was a great legacy indeed.
She wondered if Twilight would have been disappointed that she had never again married, or even taken another lover. While many had tried to win her heart, and a few had even shown themselves worthy, each time her reaction had been the same. First was a sad smile, then a shake of her head. As often as she could, she would attempt to soften the blow by pointing the suitor in the direction of one whose heart was more open than her own. When asked why she refused, a question asked not infrequently across the centuries, her answer had always remained the same.
Though blood still pumped through her veins, her heart would forever rest with Twilight Sparkle.
It was in the midst of her musings that she felt It, and knew that the time had come. She summoned Luna’s attention with a simple spell, and her sister was quick to understand her meaning. Luna took a brief moment to complete what was to be her final masterpiece before teleporting to Celestia’s side.
They sat together and turned their eyes to the sky. The sun and moon hung together in the sky as they only rarely had when the world had still hosted life besides themselves. Luna leaned against Celestia’s side, and the latter spread her wing across her young sister’s back.
Had it lived its life naturally, the sun would have died a quiet death. It would have expanded to envelop their world, only to sputter and collapse into a white dwarf. But magic had changed it, altering it on a fundamental level and leaving it far more unstable than physics alone would have ever allowed.
As it was, the sun’s death was a brilliant spectacle. From opposite sides, two great pulses of heat and radiation burst forth and lanced into the depths of the heavens. Luna could not help but applaud, and a moment later Celestia found herself following suite in appreciation of the astral fireworks that blossomed across the sky.
With its last restraints broken, the sun then surged in every direction. It quenched its consuming hunger with the planets and asteroids that had followed it for eons. Their loyalty was answered with an eager embrace, the dying sun at last uniting its followers and bringing them to its bosom. The moon was consumed a brief instant before the rest of the planet, and Celestia felt Luna slump against her side. For a terrible, heartbreaking moment, she was the only living being in the solar system.
It took less than a heartbeat for the last spark of life within the sun to be extinguished, and Celestia at last joined those that had gone before her.
Celestia’s eyes did not open, because they had not been closed. She had been in the burned out husk of what remained of Equestria, and then she was not. There was no transition between the two, nothing to even be called seamless. It was a strange sensation, and it distracted her from what was before her.
There was cheering, and the stomping of hooves. Loud, thunderous applause that she felt in her hooves as easily as her ears drew her focus. Celestia's eyes widened.
Endless fields of ponies stretched to the horizon, all of whom she knew and remembered with a clarity that she had never before felt. Every friend she had ever known surrounded her in all directions, and all of them were eager to welcome her. The innermost circle around her was made up of her family: her mother and father, Luna, Cadence and Shining Armor, and—
Twilight Sparkle stood at the front and center of the crowd. Gone were the wrinkles and blemishes she had worn when age had finally taken her. She shined beyond even the radiance she had embodied on their wedding day, and Celestia could not help but weep with joy. She rushed forward to sweep her wife off her hooves. Twilight giggled merrily, and Celestia could not help but join her. They spun, entangling with one another in the way only lovers can, and Celestia kissed her deeply.
When Celestia pulled away, Twilight wore the exact same embarrassed blush she had worn in life. When her voice returned to her, cheeks already aching from grinning, there was only one thing Celestia could say. “I have missed you more than you can imagine.”
Twilight’s eyes glistened. “I can imagine a lot.” Twilight kissed her again. They broke apart only when they were ready, and Twilight took the opportunity to trace Celestia's jawline with a hoof. "I'm so proud of you. Thank you for keeping your promise."
Celestia could resist no longer–and indeed did not desire to resist at all–and so buried her muzzle in Twilight's fur. She reacquainted herself with the sensations she had so long been deprived of, and felt her heart become whole once more.
"Of course, my Twilight. I waited for you."
Author's Note
I'd like to include a very big thank you to Knight of Cerebus. Without his efforts, this story wouldn't be half of what it is. He's a very talented guy, and I definitely recommend checking out his stuff.
