Six times Celestia had had to dissuade ponies from venerating her like a goddess. She remembered two invasions from beings from beyond time and space, three ends of the world and—but she couldn't really be sure about it—one reboot of reality. She had navigated the political labyrinth for longer than any sane being should, and she had maintained an enviable figure through it all.
Her life had been long and varied. A few thousand years meant she had seen everything at least twice. And yet, she felt a bit at a loss regarding the obnoxious monkey sitting before her.
Celestia scolded herself. It wasn't a monkey. It was—she was a sapient being. Demonstrably smart and capable of reasoning. Someone she could talk to and compromise with. She had done so in the past, she could do it again.
The Princess was certain of that, despite everything the human was doing to be an irritating nuisance. She had only to find a key to read her. She gazed across the small table filled with pastries and tea cups at the girl juggling macarons and willfully ignoring her.
Nadia had changed since their last meeting. Her clothes—baggy red pants, an open green vest, and a brown duster—showed signs of her travels. Stains, stitched tears and large pockets told many stories. They hung loose on her small frame and wiry muscles. Tattoos showing dragons, snakes, flowers, and poems in many languages covered her tanned skin, interwoven in what at first sight seemed a chaotic mess. They had multiplied to cover her torso and had crawled up her throat to her half-shaved head. Brown hair spilled from the right side of her head like a mane, giving at least a small semblance of normalcy.
Celestia sighed internally—a thing she seemed to do more and more in recent centuries—while maintaining a reassuring smile and serene expression.
She cleared her throat. Nadia showed no sign of having heard.
The Princess said, "Can I offer you some Dawn Blossom? I think this tea goes very well with your chosen sweets."
The girl added a fourth macaroon to the ones she was juggling. "Nah, I'll pass. I don't drink with jailers."
Celestia ignited her horn and warmed a small boiler. "I'm not your jailer. Why would you think that?"
"Eh, I was sitting in a cell half an hour ago, before your guards brought me here. Kinda fits the definition."
Celestia scoped a few spoons of dried leaves into a teapot. "Nadia, you threw stones at the guards, bit one and, if I read the report correctly, molested another, promising him 'the ride of a lifetime' and claiming 'Once you go ape, you never go back.'"
Nadia shrugged. "I know it missed the rhyme, but I threw it together on the spur of the moment. Give me more time and I'll improve it."
Celestia levitated the boiler and poured water into the teapot, a very old exemplar in white ceramic with blue time-bleached patterns. "That is not what I was trying to say."
"I know, but what you have said hasn’t changed you being my jailer."
"You spent a night in the cell, which was your punishment. Law and justice are not things I like to interfere with. You are my guest now, and free to leave whenever you want."
Nadia grabbed the pastries from the air and looked at Celestia. "Really?"
The princess nodded.
The girl dropped the sweets in her pockets and rose. "Cool, see ya then." She turned and walked to where a heavy backpack and a guitar leaned against the wall beside the door.
Celestia counted to ten. This was not how she had hoped it would go. "I wanted to talk to you. Can we do that?"
The girl grabbed the backpack.
"Please?"
Nadia stopped, turned, and smiled, a missing tooth giving her expression a crooked tinge. "Well, if you ask so nicely I guess I can't refuse." She walked back and sat down on a pillow. "Give me a cup of that stuff you were talking about."
"A moment of patience. Give it time to brew." Celestia turned a small hourglass filled with golden sand.
"So, what do you wanna chat about?"
A millennium of managing hostile politicians and calculating emissaries screamed for her to carefully weigh her next words. Two millennia of looking for ponies’ true natures shoved those ideas aside. It was time for a little provocation of her own. "Why do you hate my little ponies?"
"I don't hate them. I actually like them a lot. Nice bunch of people."
"Then do you think they are unhappy?"
"Nah, they're probably the happiest heap of cuteness I've ever met."
"So you hate me?"
Nadia scratched her chin. "Nah, as a mare I think you're pretty cool. Your home’s a bit kitschy, but I don't count that against you."
Celestia looked the girl in the eyes. "’As a mare?’"
Nadia nodded. "Yup, you're even quite pretty for a lady of your age. It's the whole princess thing I can't really digest."
Celestia tilted her head."You think I am bad at governing?"
"Not really. As far as I know you’re the best politician I ever heard of. Gotta admit, you have a nice track record."
The Princess glanced at the hourglass. "Then I fear I don't understand the issue. What happened? I remember you as less confrontational."
"You’re a princess. Royalty and everything. I really can't work with that."
Celestia poured two cups of tea and pushed one to the girl. "I'm sorry, but there is not much I can do about that."
Nadia picked up the cup with both hands and sighed. "I know."
They sat in silence sipping the aromatic brew. Sun poured through wide, open windows, creating a calming play of shadows and light in the small room. Birds sang in the gardens outside while the sound of the city was a muted whispering in the background. The white walls made the room feel more luminous and wider than it was. A subtle, flowery aroma hung in the air.
Nadia lowered her empty cup and rummaged in a pocket. She pulled out a long, straight-stemmed pipe decorated with silver thread and a tobacco pouch. She filled the pipe-bowl with quick movements, tamping it with a thumb before placing the stem in her mouth. . "Maybe I can explain with a story. I warn you, I might get a bit ranty."
Celestia nodded. "I think I can take it. Go on."
Nadia pulled out a copper device with two small rubies on one end. She clicked it over the tobacco, and a thin thread of smoke rose. She leaned back, propping herself up on one arm. "I come from a species of smart, competitive, curious, sex-crazed monkeys who are very bad at evaluating the risk of anything more complex than a bear with a bad temper and are often too smart for their own good. We come from a world that tries to kill us at every turn.
"We cling to our beliefs, even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence and have little empathy for anyone outside our tribe.
"And yet, we suddenly went from being lice infested peasants in a society where the lives of the rich were pretty bad and everyone else’s was straight-up-shit, to something where, generally speaking, children could expect to live a better life than their parents. We went from centuries of nearly static conditions for the poor to improving each generation.
"Do you know why?"
Celestia shook her head.
"We started doubting ourselves. We began questioning things we thought were true and examined them again in a dispassionate way. We began to question old traditions. Everybody knows stopped being reason enough. We looked up to our rulers and asked 'Why the fuck should we obey you?'"
Nadia puffed on her pipe. "We stopped taking our knowledge for granted and bloomed. We split the atom, we landed on the moon, as far as I know we created intelligent beings at this point. I'm kinda out of the loop." She looked out of the window and sighed. "And when we forget about doubt we have a war. And sixty million die."
Celestia re-filled the boiler. "You told me about that, I think. It happened before your time, right?"
Nadia turned to the Princess. "It's complicated. Let me just say that one of the few duties I ever took on myself was to remember the shit my ancestors did." She lowered her pipe and began tapping her fingers on the table.
Celestia poured hot water in the teapot, then turned the hourglass.
"Do you second guess yourself?"
Celestia nodded. "Every day. It comes with power."
"No, it doesn't." Nadia pulled out a small metallic box and flipped it open, before upending her pipe over it and tapping the ash out. "Power corrupts. And that's my problem with princesses."
Celestia raised an eyebrow. "Well, it is not unheard of. And while I can understand your apprehension, it is not as if you must deal with it personally."
Nadia shook her head. "No, my problem is that I”—she raised her hand and let it fall again—“Oh for the sake of”—she drummed with her fingers on the table and muttered a curse—“If Thamir heard me..." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "The problem is I like you."
Celestia smiled and and levitated a biscuit. "Well, I like you too."
"And that's the problem! You have been, according to all sources, sitting on the throne for longer than most civilizations survive. There should be nothing to like about you. And you certainly shouldn't like me. I bite."
"I always try to keep my ponies at the center of my thoughts. If you focus on important things, you can avoid the pitfalls of power. And while I do not approve of you biting, or molesting, my guards, I still like you as a”—Celestia paused for a moment—“mare?"
"Yeah, don't expect me to change on that front. They may be cute and fuzzy and all, but they’re still guards."
Celestia shrugged. "Then you must live with the consequences."
Nadia grinned. "I expect nothing less."
"If you are sure." The teapot rose, embraced in a golden glow. Celestia filled the cups again. "A second infusion often helps me to understand a tea better. I hope you'll appreciate it."
Nadia picked up her cup. "Don't hold your breath. I think I burned out my sense of taste a while ago. At least a bit."
The sun continued across the sky. Shadows moved a bit. Nadia drank her tea and re-lit her pipe.
Celestia finished with her cup and put it down. A faint breeze blew off her, wafting the smoke out the window. She looked Nadia in the eyes. "Why do you do what you do?"
The girl lowered her pipe and blew a smoke ring. "I think I told you."
"Oh, you explained some and I can infer more, but you never reached the core of the issue. You never told me why you do what you do. I would like to hear it explicitly."
"Because nobody else does."
"Nopony kicks guards? I apologize for my limited imagination, but I have trouble seeing that as a problem."
"And here we disagree. But no, that's not what I meant." Nadia scratched her ear. "No, it’s that nobody seems angry or unsatisfied at how things are. Where are the dirty songs about the nobles? Where are the young ponies rebelling?"
And that was the key. Celestia rose and walked to the window. She would have pumped a hoof in the air if she didn’t have to maintain a certain dignity. "Maybe they have no reason to be unsatisfied."
"No, that's not it. I've traveled for a while now and I can see there are sometimes problems. On average it's still better than most places, but it's not perfect." Nadia stood and straightened her back. A few cracks resounded. "No, nobody doubts you, that's the problem."
Celestia looked to the girl. "It is?"
"Yep! When nobody doubts you, nobody will point out your mistakes. They assume it’s on purpose, part of your plan all along." Nadia walked to the window, the pipe hanging from the corner of her mouth. "I mean, I know that may be the case, with you being ancient and all that, but why risk it?"
The Princess smiled and gazed out the window to the gardens that lay below. "A noble intent. Do you plan to change that with... what did you call that song? Twisted Sisters?"
Nadia stepped up beside her and shrugged. "The title is more fun when you understand my world’s music, which means nobody really gets it. But yeah, that‘s a start. I'm not smart enough to change the world with science and I'm too moral for politics, so I do what I can. I drink and sing dirty songs and laugh. Ponies sing along and drink along, and then talk about the weird monkey. But they remember the song about imperfect alicorns. And maybe one in every thousand will think about it when you do something wrong, and maybe they'll find the courage to speak up and avoid something awful."
"You are aware that each princess has advisors and specialized councils of all sorts to assist in our decision-making?"
"Eh, I think having somebody from outside realize you are fallible still makes sense. You know, another perspective beside that bunch of inbred power-hungry parasites."
Celestia turned to look at her. "I sense a certain hostility toward nobles."
Nadia scoffed. "Can't say I'm a fan of having power and money only because Daddy miraculously managed to have fun with Mommy."
Celestia chuckled. "I have not been blind to that specific problem. Which is why the nobles have derived no political power from their positions since seven hundred forty-six years, three months and twenty-one days ago. That was the culmination of a four hundred year plan Luna and I set up." She looked over to Nadia. "You can doubt me as much as you want. I applaud it, even. But never consider my sister or I foals."
The girl stepped back and raised her hands. "Whoa, touchy much?"
The Princess smiled and shook her head. She turned back to the window. "No, I simply want you to know I am not blind to the problems we still have. And this particular achievement is something I am very proud of. We changed Equestria without spilling a single drop of blood."
Nadia leaned on the wall and shifted the pipe to the other side of her mouth. "And the nobles are fine with how you gimped them? Wouldn't they be fucking pissed with your gloating over their defeat?"
"Where did you pick up that kind of language?"
"Dock workers in Baltimare, couple of fun months, learned a lot of really useful things. And you avoided my question."
"I was simply curious about your rich vocabulary. I rarely hear that kind of language.”
Nadia shrugged. “I can cuss all day long. Give me something to drink and I’ll even carry on into the night. Now back to what you avoided.”
“The nobles are quite aware of the situation. And as far as I know, made peace with it half a millennium ago." Celestia smiled mischievously. "Still. Even if they didn't know, I doubt they would be thrilled to hear from the composer of Fumigate the Vermin. "
"That song still needs some work, but if it keeps them from talking to me, it hit the mark."
A cloud passed over the castle, casting a fresh shadow over the warm afternoon. Celestia turned to the window. "Care for a walk in the gardens?"
Nadia looked outside, then shrugged. "Why not, gotta stretch my legs a bit. Your cells are nice but kinda cramped."
"Stop breaking our laws and you will never see one again."
The girl went to the table and began stuffing sweets and pastries into her pockets. "Eh, sometimes I can't resist the temptation. What can I say? I'm weak and fallible."
Celestia offered her a couple of scones. "If you say so."
Nadia turned to the wall and lifted the guitar. She hung it from the backpack and swung everything over her shoulders. Then she bent to lift a long, wooden staff from the floor. "Lead the way, princess."
Celestia's magic swung the door open. She waited for the girl, then walked slowly down the corridor. As they turned a corner the Princess said, "You know that there are easier ways to be a hero, right?"
Nadia stumbled and caught herself with the staff. She turned to Celestia and said, "What?"
Celestia continued to walk. "Well, I understand your motivation. I can see you try to do the right thing, and I respect that intention. It is your path and your life, but if you allow me... I think the road you have chosen is unnecessarily hard."
Nadia stopped. "I'm no damn hero and I don't want to be one. I'm a drunken, lazy bastard that stumbles through life."
Celestia turned around. "You told me you do what you do because nopony else does."
"So what? I sing dirty songs and hope people think. That's it."
Celestia took a few steps toward the human. "And yet you could choose the easy way. I know some of what you have done, and I finally understand them. You care for others. You do what you think is right and necessary, even if it means hunger and homelessness. Isn't that what heroes do?"
"No, it's what I do because I like it that way. I don't give a damn about the easy way. I'm footloose and fancy-free. End of story."
Celestia smirked. "Oh, I must be wrong. Clearly age is obfuscating my mind." She turned around and walked away.
Nadia looked after her, sighed and followed. "You know, when you’re condescending it’s worse than when you’re motherly."
"Let an old mare indulge in her idiosyncrasies."
They descended a set of stairs and left the castle for the gardens. The sky was clear. A few decorative clouds cast wandering shadows on the meadow and ornamental trees. Branches swayed in the breeze and neat flower beds suggested paths between high hedges.
They walked in the evening sun for a while.
Celestia looked up at the sky. "Why did you attack my guards?"
"Doesn't matter anymore. Had my reasons."
"And you will not tell me?"
"Maybe in a couple of years. But if it lessens your worries, I won't have to kick'em again for now."
Celestia stopped under a large oak, closed her eyes and breathed deep in. "I am still convinced it was unnecessary the first time. They are good, reasonable ponies. Most things can be talked out."
"They're guards."
"They are also fathers and mothers." Celestia opened her eyes and gestured Nadia over. "What will you do now?"
"Find a tavern, get wasted, play some songs. Tomorrow I’ll start walking back to Manehattan. I've met a minotaur who plays a wicked fiddle, and extorted a promise he’d tour the north with me. After that, who knows?"
A pegasus flew down to the couple and whispered something to the Princess. Celestia sighed and rose, then took a few steps to her guest. "I fear other duties call for my attention. I like to think I mastered the art of delegation, but it seems I have still a long way to go to get a whole day for myself. You are free to stay as my guest or you may leave." She suddenly hugged the girl. "Please, can I convince you to stay? You are smart and care for my ponies. You could do so much more. And I’m worried about you. The kind of life you are living rarely ends well."
Nadia squirmed and freed herself after a couple of moments. "Less affection. You know I have a reputation. And no, I like what I’m doing. There’s no way I’ll stop now."
Celestia bit her lip. “I could keep you here.”
Nadia took a step back. “Then you would be a jailer. And I wouldn’t like you even as a mare. Or is it a sex-slave thing?” She wiggled her eyebrows.”If so, we might find some common ground.”
The Princess gave her a hooded glance. “Oh, goodness,” she said, tone perfectly flat, “how could an old mare resist to such charming advances?”
Nadia whistled. “Not the slightest blush. You are good.”
Celestia chuckled. “Dear filly, things calling themselves gods have propositioned me. Some even had tentacles.” She sighed. “I don’t want to be a jailer, but I care about you. You don’t have to fight through life with tooth and claw.”
Nadia looked Celestia directly in the eyes. "Can you guarantee me that I'm wrong? Can you promise me that you will never make an error? Or that your ponies will always speak up and never think ’She knows what she’s doing, she can't be wrong’? Can you swear me that I'm only a mad girl barking at the moon?"
Celestia held the stare a few seconds, then shook her head. She took another step forward and hugged the girl again with her wings. "Promise me you'll take care of yourself."
Nadia chuckled. "Can't promise anything, but I'll try."
Celestia stepped back and watched her turn and saunter to the gates, singing something in her old, alien language.
Celestia stood before a garden wall, Luna by her side, guards at her back. The once white surface now sported a picture, painted in red and thirty steps wide. It showed her and her sister, orbiting a stylized representation of Equestria, their over-sized backsides glowing to give the land below night and day. Above it read The Movement of Celestial Bodies. A small, stylized monkey grinned from the lower left corner.
A guard coughed. She looked down, seeing the soldier heft a contraption full of levers and pistons with a bucket of dried paint in the middle.
The guard glanced uncomfortably at the picture. "We found this in the bushes, your majesty. It seems Minoan, and it’s probably how this was painted so quickly overnight. The cleaning crew is on its way and we shall remove this shame before lunch."
Celestia nodded. Once the guard retreated, she looked to her sister. "What do you think, Luna?"
Luna observed the picture before answering, her tone flat, "A bit foalish, but I think the artist captured your essence almost perfectly."
Celestia raised an eyebrow. "Oh, and yourself?"
"I have bigger wings than that. Tell me, dear sister, what do you intend to do about this?"
Celestia surveyed the picture again, then swiveled an ear as somepony snickered. She glanced over her shoulder and saw one of the newly arrived cleaners stifling giggles. She turned to the wall and smiled. "I have no choice but to send guards after the culprit. More than a few." She looked in the distance. “And then... then I’ll listen to some songs.”
