Celestia's True Form

Chapters

Twin Revilations
Thricelight Confessions
Ultra-Light Conclusions

Twin Revilations

In stark contrast to the enormous crowds and great hubbub of the Coronation Ceremony a few hours earlier, Canterlot Castle at night was the most serene place in Equestria. The streamers, banners, and spilt drinks had been dutifully swept or mopped up, leaving the grand halls spotless under the scrutiny of the pale moonlight streaming through the elegant stained glass windows.

“I always forget how beautiful this castle is.” Twilight said. She spoke at little more than a whisper, for even with her newly gained height she felt meek within the monumental architecture. “Princess, am I going to live here now?”

“Only if you want to, dearest Twilight.” Princess Celestia smiled warmly. She had shed the use of the endearing ‘faithful student’ for a moniker only a little different, but much more intimate. It made Twilight’s cheeks burn every time she heard it. “Of course, that has been the case forever. My door has always been open for you.”

“Y- Yes Princess.” Twilight’s blush deepened. Princess Celestia always seemed to trip into the rudest innuendos without realizing it. “I- I’m sure I’ll be here every day for the next few months, learning about what it means to be an alicorn and a princess.”

Celestia nodded. “I will be happy to teach you. Could I also teach you what it means to be a Twilight?”

“Uh…” Twilight wasn’t sure how to interpret that. “Could you repeat that princess?”

“Oh, my dear Twilight, why must you be so formal with me? Should I address you as princess too?” Celestia tittered.

“Oh? Oh! Sorry I didn’t even notice I was doing that.” Twilight laughed with her, her question forgotten. “It’s going to take a while to get used to everything.” She flapped her wings a few times. “Etiquette being the least of it.”

“You will have a long time to adapt.” Celestia led them out off the main hall to the more cozy residences wing. They climbed up the staircase to Celestia’s chambers.

“Yeah…” Twilight sombered. She didn’t want to bring up that morbid topics so soon. “A thousand years at least.”

Celestia held the heavy door to her study open for the smaller alicorn. “A measly thousand years? My my Twilight, were you planning to live fast and die young?”

“Huh? Thousand years… is... young?” Twilight bit her bottom lip. “Two thousand years?”

“You give yourself too little credit.”

“Five thousand?”

“Dearest Twilight, you are being very conservative with your estimates.”

Twilight felt very cold all of a sudden. “Princess I don’t want to play this game anymore.”

Celestia hesitated, then smiled. “Yes of course. I should not have been so callous.” They trotted over to the fireplace, which Celestia lit with a spark from her horn. “Would you like to sit by the fire with me?”

“Princess- Celestia, I would like nothing more but…” Twilight sighed. “I can’t right now. I should go. My friends-”

“Your friends can wait, dear Twilight.” Celestia said, stern caution creeping into her voice. “Tell me why you shun my company.”

“Shun your company? Princess I could never! I- I just-” Twilight took a moment to sort out her words. “I’m conflicted. I have so much on my mind! It’s not that I don’t want to. Actually I’d love to sit by the fire with you! But with everything going on, I’d be distracted.”

“You’d love to sit with me.” Celestia echoed. “Twilight, are you afraid that you being distracted will ruin this moment?”

“Princess!” Twilight’s cheeks burned. “Princess… This moment… I’ve waited for it since forever! If only I could give it everything.”

“Dearest Twilight.” Celestia cooed. “You are always thinking. Thinking and Overthinking. You remind me of myself a bit. That is what I love about you.”

“Oh Celestia!” Twilight burst into tears. She pulled Celestia into a tight hug and buried herself in the larger alicorn’s neck. “I’m so happy! I’m so happy you love me too!”

“Um…” Celestia stiffened. “Twilight…”

Twilight relaxed her hug, and felt slow pulled away. “C- Celestia?”

“This is monumentally awkward, for a variety of reasons.” Celestia pursed her lips. “I kinda meant love in a platonic sense.

“Oh.” Twilight’s poor heart, beating to the tune of pure love second earlier, was grinding to a stop.

“Please please don’t get me wrong! Twilight, I adore you as much as it is cosmically possible for one entity to adore another.” Celestia was talking faster than Twilight had ever heard her talk. “But this… I can’t get romantically involved with you. That’s a no go. Red line.” She quickly added. “Or sexually. Yes, definitely none of that.”

‘Okay that’s fine. I’ll just break then. Bu-bye.’ Twilight's heart announced.
“Oh.” Twilight said.

Celestia watched Twilight’s stony expression for several minutes.
“This… This is going to sour everything isn’t it.”

Twilight blinked, coming out of her stupor. “Princess, can an alicorn kill herself?” She asked emotionlessly.

“God damn it. I really mucked this up.” Celestia cursed, running a hoof down her face. “Listen, Twilight, I’m going to have to tell you the truth. I’m not who you think I am.”

“You’re not?” Twilight asked emptily. She didn’t feel any drive behind the question. She felt empty. She was just asking because that was what was expected.

“No. Twilight, dear Twilight, were i to reveal my true form you would understand why it has to be this way.” Celestia sighed. “I was... hinting and leaning into it, but obviously I have to just air it right now. Only one other pony on this planet knows the truth.”

“That would be Luna I suppose?” Twilight queried.

Celestia pursed her lips in thought. Before she did anything she needed to pull Twilight out of her funk. “Twilight, I don’t hate you. I said that I adored you and I meant it. But you have pent up your romantic desire on the me of your dreams to an unsustainable degree. Even if I reciprocated all I could ever do is disappoint you.”

“That’s not true. Saying yes would have made me the happiest mare alive. Nothing could have brought me down.” Twilight sighed.

“Actually I don’t think you presented a question that warranted a yes or no answer. But that’s besides the point. What I’m saying is that you won’t want me. Not after I reveal my true form.”

Twilight blinked. Was that a challenge? “Celestia, even if you don’t love me back, you will always be the unhealthy infatuation of my dreams. No true form could change that.”

“No, Twilight, I mean it.” Celestia said emphatically. “You really won’t.”

“Prove it.” Twilight smiled thinly.

“Oh dear.” Celestia shook her head. “I’m really doing this…” She took a few deep breaths to prepare herself.

Twilight was self-assured. Nothing Celestia could change into could dissuade her from her love. Celestia could be a shriveled husk or monstrously deformed octoped with a thousand eyes and endlessly muttering mouths, and Twilight would still see past it to the soul inside. If she established how much she blindly loved Celestia, maybe Celestia would love her back.

“Okay. Three… Two…” Celestia opened her mouth, then froze. “Uh, I’m going to need some moral support.

“Princess you’re stalling!” Twilight stomped her hooves impatiently. “Transform so I can show you how right I am!”

“Luna!” Celestia called out in a sing-song voice. “Oh Luuuuna!”

“I’m here.” Luna burst into the room. “Sister, what need’st thou?”

“Moral support.” Celestia said gravely. “I am about to reveal my true form to Newlight.”

“Newlight?” Twilight’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Uhhhhh…..”

“Sister I am here for you.” Luna pranced over to Celestia’s side. “Feel my moral support juju fill you will the courage you need.”

“I feel it.” Celestia nodded aggressively. “Brace yourself Twilight, for my true form.”

Twilight was expecting a rush of fire like a changeling, or for Celestia’s skin to bubble as she mutated. Somewhat anticlimactically, a puff of white smoke covered her and Luna.

It dissipated quickly.

For a split second, Twilight thought that she was looking into a mirror. What an elaborate prank, she thought. Or had Celestia become the mirror?
But there was no mirror. She was staring at herself, but there was no border nor the telltale shimmer of a mirage or spell.

Twilight laughed. She couldn’t figure out the joke. And it HAD to be a joke. Celestia had played with her feelings to the end of a joke. “Luna, is that me?” She stood up and trotted to the doppleganger. “How are you doing this?” She prodded the other Twilight.

“Hooves to yourself missy.” The Twilight said in a voice like her own, but different. It was smoother, more gentle, but hauntingly obviously a mix of her own and Celestia’s.

“Celestia.” Twilight was stumped. She genuinely didn’t know what to say. The confusion overloaded her brain to such a degree that the broken heart reset to factory default. “You’re me.”

“No, I’m another Twilight.” The pony who had been Celestia elucidated. She stood up.
She was not, on closer inspection, identical to Twilight. She was taller, and had flecks of black on her wing feathers and in her eyes. “I’m a Twilight Sparkle from another Universe.”

Author's Note

**Moth Noises**

Thricelight Confessions

“Understandably, I’m a little confused.” Twilight plopped down into a sitting position. “The mare I knew and loved, who I revered and wanted to emulate my whole life, is me.”

“No, I’m not.” The other Twilight said, a hint of annoyance infiltrating her voice. “I’m me. You’re you. We’re both Twilight Sparkles.”

“And that shouldn't be physically possible.” Twilight pointed out. Confusion gave way to the next closest emotion, amusement. The absurdity of it! “Ha! But there you are! Ooh ooh, I know, you’re from the future! I made an improved time spell and came back to be my own mentor!”

“Twilight, you’re just not getting it.” The other Twilight turned to Luna. “She’s just not getting it!”

Luna shook her head. “You haven’t done a good job explaining it.”

“I didn’t explain at all! I’m getting interrupted by asinine remarks like how this shouldn’t be possible!” The other Twilight was, Twilight was beginning to notice, a bit of a dick. “Twilight, you are the Twilight Sparkle of this Universe. I, however, am the Twilight Sparkle of a different universe.”

“But I touched you. We didn’t obliterate each other.” Twilight laughed. “Besides, you’re bigger than me, and ostensibly you’ve been here in this dimension for a thousand years. You can’t be from a parallel universe.”

“Did I say parallel?” The other Twilight arched a brow.

Twilight stopped laughing and thought about it. “I guess you didn’t.”

“That right I didn’t. Because I’m not.”
The other Twilight cleared her throat and launched into the explanation.
“You weren’t completely off the mark when you said I’m from the future. I am a Twilight much much older than you. I was born in my universe, lived my life as a unicorn then alicorn, and survived through to the universe’s end. Not wanting to freeze in the slow heat death of all physicality, I started wandering between universes before I settled down into this one, approximately a thousand years ago. I adopted the role of a critical entity this universe was missing: Its Celestia.”
She exchanged looks with Luna. “But please don’t ask what happened to the original Celestia.”

“Okay… See I was about to ask if every universe has a Celestia that is actually a Twilight Sparkle in disguise, but you answered that.” Twilight gnawed her bottom lip. ‘So, other Twilight-”

“Hold it right there. There’s naming conventions. The oldest Twilight in a universe is the Oldlight.” The other Twilight/Oldlight pointed at herself. “The youngest Twilight, usually but not always the one native to the universe, is the Newlight.” She pointed at Twilight. “The rest are Middlelights.”

“Naming conventions implies organization. You being here isn’t a cosmic mistake. This happens often.” Newlight inferred. “Just how many Twilight Sparkles are there?!”

“Infinite. Obviously.” Oldlight snorted. “Cosmic meetings and gatherings happen often enough. There’s an infinite number of universes after all. When and where more than one Twilight meet is all random supra-quantum physics and nth-degree statistics.”

“Oh.” Newlight mewled. Her head ached. She understood well enough but didn’t want to believe. “I was having a difficult place sorting out my feelings in regards to my mortality before, and this isn’t helping. So, um, who else travels between universes?”

“Twilights.” Oldlight said.

“J- Just Twilights?”

“Yup. Some freaky types of energy and particle also pass between universes, but that’s neither here nor there.” Oldlight shrugged. “What can I say. This existence was made for us.”

“So everything I’ve done ever done, all the joy and struggles... It’s just something that infinite other Twilights have done?” Newlight laughed again, but it was one of despair. “It’s not just that my love and my dreams are meaningless, but I’m meaningless too. I’m just another iteration of some kind of…” She stared at her hooves. “Cosmic aberration!”

“Kid, calm down.” Oldlight said.

“I’m meaningless.” Newlight whined, burying her head in her hooves. “I’m meaningless! I’m meaningless! I could do more than has ever been done before and it would be pointless in the face of infinity!”

“Good god Twilight, pull yourself together!” Oldlight grabbed Newlight by the shoulder and shook her. “You think that every other Twilight isn’t confronted by the same question?"

Twilight sniffled. “No.”

“Of course not. We all have to come to terms with it in our own way. We make our own meaning.” Oldlight said. “Do you think your life would have had more or less meaning if you weren’t a Twilight Sparkle, destined to transcend this universe?”

“I- I- I guess... “ Newlight sighed. “I don’t know.

“If you were one of your friends- Rarity for example- The facts and questions remain exactly the same. You’re not much different from every other sapient creature on this planet. You are one of infinite. It’s up to you to make your meaning. “ Oldlight reclined against the marble mantle of the fireplace. “It’s sweet that you crafted your dreams to dreams of love.”

“If ultimately futile.” Newlight nodded slowly. “I get you. I get you. It’s all a bit sad though. You’re old-”

“I survived the heat death of my universe, so yeah, I’m pretty old compared to most things that exist.” Oldlight agreed.

“Most ponies only need to make a lifetime’s worth of meaning for themselves. How can I contrive BILLIONS of years worth of dreams?” Thinking in terms of billions of years was impossible for the young Twilight, at least in terms of personal experience. You could measure many things in billions, from atoms in a certain mass or the number of stars in the sky. Years? Twilight thought about everything she’d done in the past year. She moved to Ponyville, fought and defeated countless villains, and become an alicorn. Multiply that by a billion or two...
“I’m going to pass out.”

“I’ve heard that happens.” Oldlight ribbed. “These little Twilights are honestly cute, trying to comprehend it all.”

“That’s mean, Oldlight.” Luna protested on Newlight’s behalf. “She just became an alicorn five hours ago.”

“Hey, hold on a minute.” Newlight interrupted. “Luna, what do you think of all this? You’re going to die, and the much younger princess is going to live past the end of eternity. How can you be so calm?

“Ah, I have had my time to cope with it as well.” Luna grinned. With a puff of smoke, there were three Twilights in the room. “Greetings. I am Middlelight.”

Newlight smacked her forehead against her hoof. “You’ve GOT to be kidding me.”

“Yeah, don’t ask what happened to the original Luna either.” Oldlight chuckled.

Author's Note

**Cosmic Moth Noises**

Ultra-Light Conclusions

“Am I going to turn around and see another five of you clowns?” Newlight deadpanned.

“Nay. There is but the three of us.” Middlelight said. She was between Old and Newlight in size.

“Could be worse I guess.” Newlight grumbled. “You, ex-Luna, what’s your story? Why are you in my universe?”

“An accident.” Middlelight said.

“You accidentally teleported into this universe or something?” Newlight asked.

“I accidentally destroyed mine.” Middlelight smiled sheepishly.

“Pipsqueak here the bright idea of merging her entire universe with a younger one to stave off the heat death.” Oldlight explained. “Turns out that matter that isn’t Twilight Sparkle gets canceled out by matter from another universe, like matter and antimatter. Both universes exploded so violently that a couple trillion universes were flattened outright and another trillion became detached from the continuity of time and causality.”

“T- T- T- TRILLIONS?” Newlight screeched. “You’re talking casually about the death of trillions of universes! That’s like a trillion-trillion lives! How many Twilight Sparkles were killed?”

“Uh, zero.” Oldlight grunted. “I mean, besides in universes where a Twilight wasn’t yet born or wasn’t yet an alicorn. Once you gain those pretty wings, nothing short of the Ultra Twilight can kill you.”

“Buck you.” Newlight spat. This was getting ridiculous. “What the hell is an Ultra Twilight?”

“I’ve met many other Twilights from my days hopping around universes. Some were older, some were younger. The oldest Twilight I ever met was the one who told me about the Ultra Twilight. Imagine that all ponies, alicorns, zebras, whathaveyou in your normal universe are ants. You, a Twilight just made alicorn, is like a rat. That’s a few orders of magnitude above, and that’s understating the gulf. In this analogy I’m the size of a dog.”

“I would be a slightly smaller dog.” Middlelight contributed.

“Get the buck out of here. You’re closer to her age than mine.” Oldlight scoffed. “That makes you a slightly larger rat.”

“Fine.” Middlelight pouted.

“Anyway, the oldest Twilight I ever met would be comparable to twenty or thirty whales. And I mean big blue whales, not minke or belugas. She was utterly massive. The Ultra Twilight though…” Oldlight leaned forward. “The sun? Larger still? A thousand suns? Inconceivably old and huge. The Ultra Twilight is basically god.”

“Why does existence require a metaphysical god?” Newlight asked.

“Because why else are Twilights like this? Why do we exist to hop between universes? By all rights we should live like other alicorns or be confined to our own universe. There must be an all powerful entity making this possible for us.’

Newlight saw the logic of it. “Is she worshiped?”

“What would be the point? The Ultra Twilight already favors us clearly. Besides she’s the one and only god above literally infinite Twilights. Do you think individual prayers could reach her?”

“I must be more mature than you in this one way, Oldlight, because I believe in omnipotence.” Newlight laughed. “After everything you’ve shared how can I not? If there is a prime mover out there she must necessarily be capable of absolutely everything.”

Middlelight spoke up. “Unless that first movement she made was in a realm of nothing. It doesn’t take much to disturb nothing.

Oldlight snorted. “Profound.”

Newlight rolled to her hooves. “Not that it hasn’t been exhilarating, but my friends have been waiting on me for the last hour. They’ve really got to be wondering where I am.”

With a puff of smoke, her cosmic counterparts returned to the shape of Celestia and Luna. “Of course dear Twilight. I have kept you long enough.”

Luna took a step forward. “Would’st thou mind if I join you?” She winked.

“It actually kinda a friends and family thing.” Twilight Sparkle smiled apologetically. “I mean if you want to, but relatives I haven't seen in a while and-”

“Oh no no I wouldn’t want to steal the spotlight or anything.” Luna quickly started making excuses, blushing deeply. “It is your special day. Your family…” She shut her mouth.

“Yeah, it a family thing. Family get together. And friends... You’re still welcome! Don’t think your not.” Twilight was trying to salvage it and failing. “My mother would love to meet you. Probably...” She fell quiet as well.
Without another word, Twilight left the room.

Celestia waited for the clip of hooves on marble to fade to remark. “That was cringe-inducing. What were you even trying to do?”

“Verily, never has anything been so awkward.” Luna agreed softly. “Please, kill me.”

“Actually, I can think of ONE more embarrassing thing.” Celestia grinned deviously. “Remember what happened to the original Celestia and Luna?”

“OH GOD.” Luna cried, her whole face becoming as bright red as her cheeks. “I am no longer in need of death. Surely this is hell already.”

Author's Note

**Embarrassed Moth Noises**