It had rained for three straight days.
Water drizzled into the throne room of the Everfree Castle from the immense holes in the crumbling ceiling. Puddles slowly grew in patches on the floor like spilled blood from bleeding wounds. The carpet was so soaked in rainwater that it was bloated like a long, red sponge, the fine Saddle Arabian silks it was made from forever ruined. Several of the stained glass windows were broken, letting even more of the torrential downpour splash into castle. Magnificent tapestries were still warm from the magic burns that had slashed across now-ironic images of two alicorns, together bringing the world warm, happy days and cool, comfortable nights.
Princess Celestia sat in the middle of the room, motionless. She was alone. She had been alone for three straight days. She had ordered all of her servants to return to their homes and families in Canterlot, and asked them not to worry about her, even though that had more than enough reason to do so. Losing a family member was hard enough when you weren’t personally responsible for their loss. She had sat in the throne room, tears long dried, completely still, for three straight days. All of her servants were long gone now. The pegasi who controlled the weather and shooed away the untamed storm clouds of the Everfree, gone. The unicorns who had cleaned and dusted the castle and kept it in such a state that even museums would be envious of their attention to detail, gone. The earth ponies who had made the food, tended to the gardens, and patrolled the forests, gone, all gone. And with nopony to tend to the untamed forest outside, Everfree Castle was now another ruin in the forest, and it had only taken three painfully long days for it to happen.
Celestia’s mane, despite being weighted down by rain, still blew in the impossibly powerful gusts of wind that would tear through the holes in the windows, and whine across the holes in the roof. The winds were so strong, the windows rattled, and they caused the ever-stoic alicorn to shiver slightly from the stinging strength. Nature, it seemed, saw her pain. The winds howled for her, the rains sobbed for her, the air was cold and lifeless for her. It had done this for three straight days. It had done this long after Celestia had physically finished mourning, now only weighed down in body by the powerful chains that held her spirit.
Suddenly, for the first time in three straight days, Celestia heard the doors to the throne room open and close. Celestia raised her head, and immediately felt a stiff, aching pain in her neck. She hadn’t moved for three straight days, after all. She hadn’t slept, she hadn’t eaten, she hadn’t spoken a word for three long, awful days. Celestia squinted out in the dim light to see who dared disobey her orders to leave. It was a pony, that much was certain, but there wasn’t enough light in the room for her to see the rest. Slowly, with agonizing stiffness, Celestia rose to her hooves, her eyes bleary from being closed for three straight days. Her horn glowed, and yellow magic lit the torches on the walls, the light hurting her eyes, and causing the pony to freeze in place.
She tried to speak, but a single syllable felt like she was coughing up a knife. Celestia hacked and coughed, and stumbled backwards, teetering on her hooves. She hadn’t said a word in three days, and now her voice was failing her when she was trying to say one. With bleary, sleepless eyes, Celestia glanced at the pony as he approached closer. He was an earth pony, and older one, with grey coat and silvery mane, his long, impressive beard drooping and dripping with water, the wide-brimmed hat he wore long since flattened against his head. Celestia cleared her throat several times, and when she spoke again, her voice was weak and gravely.
“Starswirl,” she said. “Your orders were not to return until further notice.”
Starswirl the Bearded smiled behind his sodden facial hair. “I was afraid of not getting such notice.”
“Your returning here might be seen as a grave offense,” Celestia said.
“Well, my liege,” Domo said. “Sometimes doing the right thing is more important than doing the legal thing.”
He smiled at first, but his smile fell as he saw Celestia’s humorless expression.
“I’m afraid I don’t want your company right now,” Celestia said.
“With all due respect, I think you need it,” he replied.
“I was under the impression that sages were supposed to remain impersonal.”
“Sages, yes,” Domo said, stepping forward. “Friends, hardly. And since you’ve dismissed me from my duties until further notice, I’d like to let you know that I am coming her as a friend, and not as a worker. I have very, very few friends, Celestia. My studies leave little time for those things. I like to make sure that what few friends I have are at the very least doing better than… This.”
He gestured vaguely to the mess that was the throne room. Celestia glanced up at the absent-minded magician with sad eyes and a small frown.
“You think of me as a friend, Starswirl?”
He nodded. Celestia sighed.
“You’re very foolish about your choice in friends, then.”
“I’ve been told that’s common for stallions of science.”
Celestia sighed. “I’m hardly in the mood for banter, Starswirl.”
“I understand,” he said, lowering his head slightly. “I was hoping that a little bit of normality would help you.”
“Nothing can be normal anymore,” Celestia said, taking a shaky breath and sitting on her haunches. “Not without her here.”
Starswirl closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He removed the hat from his head, and discarded it on the sopping wet floor, sitting next to Celestia, snapping his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he tried to come up with a proper response.
“Were things ever normal?” he asked after a while of silence, the rain the only noise besides his voice.
Celestia hummed. “In a manner of speaking, yes. It had been a few hundred years since Equestria was unified. Luna and I had fallen into a routine. We were… Grown up, I suppose. Perhaps when you have a lifespan of millenia, it tends to take longer to start acting like an adult.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed it from the way you and your sister are described in history,” Starswirl said.
Celestia looked up at the hole in the ceiling and watched the rain waterfall into the throne room. “We were very naive, all things considered. We thought that once Equestria was a unified nation, there would be no more troubles. We thought the split between sun and moon was fair. I suppose Luna found it otherwise, but didn’t want to tell me.”
She closed her eyes. “Starswirl, tell me. Why would you lie to somepony that you love?”
Starswirl shook his head. “I am a stallion of science. I wouldn’t know such things.”
“You have a wife, don’t you?”
Starswirl chuckled. “Don’t remind me.”
“Starswirl…”
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. You said no banter. Yes, Celestia, I have a wife.”
“You love her, I presume.”
“Of course I do,” Starswirl said.
“Have you ever lied to her?”
Starswirl didn’t speak for a moment. Celestia waited patiently. She hadn’t spoken in three days. She could wait a little longer to do it again.
“Yes,” he said, clearing his throat, shame apparent in his tone. “I have. More than once, really.”
“Why did you do it?”
Celestia’s tone was void of accusation or reprimand. She sounded genuinely curious. It seemed odd to Starswirl that a Princess with millenias worth of knowledge over his own could be asking him such questions, and somehow not blaming him at all for what he had just admitted to, but then again, she had locked herself in her castle for three days, and her voice seemed tired, disused, and dusty. he swallowed, and took a deep breath.
“Sometimes, to tell the truth is more painful,” he said. “Lies are the results of knowing the consequences of complete and total honesty, and deciding that misleading somepony is better for them than telling them the truth.”
“But it’s not,” Celestia said. “It eventually festers, and soon boils over, and the bond between you two is fractured in several places. And soon, one of you does something that you immediately regret, and the other is pushed away for such a long time, it permanently scars the relationship you have.”
“Not…”
Starswirl swallowed. “Not necessarily.”
“How do you mean? You know what happened. You and the entire castle saw what happened.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Starswirl said. “Princess Luna forced your hoof.”
“But it never would have happened if she had been willing to tell me that I overshadowed her!” Celestia cried. “She would have never felt that I didn’t care for her, that I had to be deposed for her to be loved! She would have never, ever turned into that, that, that whatever it was! Why couldn’t I see she was lying, Starswirl? Why didn’t I do anything about it?! Now she’s gone! She’s gone, and it’s because of me!”
Celestia collapsed to the ground, heaving with dry, tearless sobs, her wings covering her face as rain fell upon her. Starswirl was at her side in an instant, taking her hoof in his, stroking her lower foreleg.
“Celestia,” Starswirl said.
She heaved again. “N-No…”
“Celestia, calm yourself.”
“I can’t!” Celestia screamed, snapping up at Starswirl like a python, her wings flaring out and making the other pony feel very small. “I can’t! I did this! I didn’t have to do this! I loved her, Starswirl, and then I did this to her! She’ll come back, yes, but she’ll never be the same! She’ll resent me for the rest of eternity for this!”
She collapsed onto her barrel, covering her face, shuddering, sobbing, and it occurred to Starswirl in that moment that Celestia’s crown was nowhere to be seen.
“Celestia…”
She sniffed. Her voice was dry, strained, bereft of life.
“Yes.”
He lowered his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Celestia said. “I… I apologize. I shouldn’t…”
She stood, slowly, shakily, to her hooves. “I can’t stay here.”
She started to wander away. Starswirl followed her, with a small amount of caution, his brow deeply furrowed with concern.
“Celestia?”
“I can’t stay here,” she mumbled.
Starswirl swallowed. “Celestia.”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “You’re right. We shouldn’t stay here. I’d very much like for you to accompany me back to Canterlot. You know, that small town on the mountain? You need to spend time with ponies, Celestia. We care deeply for you as your ruler. Many of us who know you as more than that care deeply for you as a friend. And yes, maybe it is treason to disobey your orders, but it’s far more treacherous and treasonous to abandon a friend in her hour of need.”
He stepped forward. “Luna is gone, Celestia. I know what it’s like to lose somepony. Please, let us help you. Let me help you.”
“You can’t help me,” Celestia said.
“It doesn’t hurt to try.”
Celestia said nothing. The rain had stopped. The winds were gone, replaced only with gentle breezes. She was dripping wet, shivering with cold, her wings dragging against the ground. There was a hole deep inside Celestia’s heart that had been digging itself inside her for three straight days. It had only stopped now, along with the storm, and now all that was left was an empty feeling that permeated her very being.
“You’re right,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt to try. Let’s get out of here before the rain starts again.”
And as they left, Celestia looked up at the sky for the first time in forever. It was still grey with clouds. The air was rife with the smell of rain, with the mournful sounds of crows who were now coming out in the face of the wetness. Celestia looked back at the castle, her eyes filled with mourning, and as she saw Starswirl follow her out, she made a decision, right then and there, that she would never return. There were too many memories she had made there. A childhood had. A hundred friends made. A unified nation. A sister’s lies of happiness and slowly-brooding jealousy. She had lost Luna. She knew she would lose friends in the future. She had to keep them for as long as she could, to be the best pony that she could be.
They returned to Canterlot in silence. There wasn’t a truly sunny day for a very long time.
Author's Note
