Always Cold / Always Frightened / Always Smiling / Always for Her
The campfire was a problem, namely because it didn't exist. A certain filly wished that she could blink and murmur a wish-I-may, wish-I-might chant before opening them again, and then finding the softest and warmest glow. But for Celestia, that was not the case. She was sitting alone, her centuries-old being packed into the form of a ten-year-old's with a long mane dyed by the light of an aurora that spilled down her back. Those pale colors had been in her mane for many years now, and not all the light in her daydreams could change the pile of twigs her younger sister had obtained. The evening sun began to set, spilling out an array of wobbly, unnatural hues on its slow descent.
Meanwhile, Celestia remained on her log. She pursed her lips and stared up at the sickly orange sky. The sun was much farther off in its ever-straying and crooked course than it was last night. The filly cupped her angelic white wings around the unlit fuel, as if she were trying to shelter it from the impressionist disaster playing out in the heavenly bodies above her.
Her sister was still out searching for the bags she had lost in the snow. Celestia tsked softly. She knew full well that 'dropping' the bags that were supposedly lost was just an excuse for Luna to play in the snow. Good, well-packed blankets of icy flakes had hit the two wanderers now that they had strayed from the coast.
All the world was still, save for their wispy breath and the way that their voices carried on the wind. Hundreds of years into their travels and the two little fillies had still not found another equine soul. Even the slightest sign that the most common type of equine — ponies — still lived anywhere was non-existent. This greatly bothered Celestia, who missed the feeling that there was life in the world, real life, but she had held her tongue in regards to the subject. Unlike Luna, she didn't like this long time of solitude and adventure, and was tired of her sister insisting that the verdant world and many non-sapients that thrived could count as the life she wanted to see. The word that Celestia so desperately needed was not one she knew, so Celestia couldn't quite describe her feelings on the subject. Overall, it was something that she didn't like to acknowledge. There was no resent for true hatred nor was there enough aching to allow sadness to take hold of the filly who always smiled for Luna.
Always.
She shivered as a few flakes of snow fell onto her back. Even though they were hardly noticeable, each flake served as a reminder that she wasn't likely to know the comforts of a castle for a long time. Instead, they lived a life of quits and gathered gear.
Celestia closed her eyes briefly, exhaling a little harder than she intended, fog forming from her lips as she did so. Behind her eyelids, she saw the halls as they had left them. She was ready to spend time counting all the candles they had put out. The beds she had insisted Luna make before they go — for when they came back — were so perfectly, exactly there in Celestia's mind. That was their life then, in that castle that belonged to them. Two great shadows of gods had loomed over them both until one day they had just vanished, leaving the sisters with questions that bubbled past all the promises that they had made to be good little fillies and wait for them to come home.
Celestia bit her lip, preferring the brief sharpness to her own thoughts. This was something she rarely thought about, and everything that she tried not to acknowledge. All that she never spoke of with Luna any longer was suddenly cantering into the forefront of her mind. This was their life now. No beds, no toys to play with unless they made them, and no food that they couldn't cook first. Worst of all, there was no order or routine in whatever mockery of lives that Luna and Celestia were now living — and somehow, Luna was able to stand it!
And oh, how cold it could be. If this ever ended, this aimless wandering that Luna loved and the lies Celestia had uttered as she tried to recall every tear in a map that had crumbled away long ago, Celestia knew that she would remember the hated cold she felt. There aching loneliness that only ever affected her that festered with each passing winter. Why was that? Winter was the season when Celestia dared not stray with Luna, where she insisted on building camps and cleaning caves — and that was when the thoughts knew how to find her. They would snap at her young mind like the monstrous dragons that the little fillies would have to hide from each time they caught sight of a grown, vicious dragon flying high above them.
She'd remember how Luna disregarded their royal heritage each time she jumped in mud puddles instead of reciting mannerly conduct with Celestia. Her sister's head had gone without a crown for too long, and t was clearly starting to get to her! Celestia wished she had brought hers with her, if only so she still had one personal trinket all to herself. She wished Luna wouldn't be the scout, the adventurer, the anything-but-royal filly that she had become. It was Luna who insisted that Celestia no longer had to brush her short, coltish mane anymore because Luna of all creatures had gotten it into her head that she could brush her own mane.
Luna had even begun to fly! It was just so unfair, especially when Celestia could not do the same! Instead, she had to watch how the happy little bluebird gave no thought to how the nest felt seeing her leave.
Celestia looked back down to the non-existent fire she was sheltering. Somepony would have to cook, and there was no way it would be Luna. She was the one who had to go retrieve the bag that held all the food. Plus, Luna couldn't do much more than boil water properly on her best days. Celestia shuddered slightly upon recalling Luna's last attempt at cooking something, and all of the perfectly gathered food that had been wasted in the process.
She tilted her head up to the sky, her long mane obscuring one magenta-colored eye. The thick, multi-colored mass was slightly tangled from when she rose this morning. It was getting colder as well, and the night only ever brought the kind of cold that no mane — no matter how long — could protect her against.
Celestia remembered sitting around the large hearth of a castle with Luna literal ages ago, when the world wasn't so empty. Luna would need a fire to come home to, and she would have to be the one to make that fire. Otherwise, all the shining snow might confuse Luna's night-touched eyes, and she could get lost in the dark.
But Celestia didn't want to. Something within herself halted, blocking out the yearning for heat with something else: all the icky feelings that came about when she thought of magic, big magic in particular, like the kind Luna was always talking about. It was something that left a dry, sour taste in her mouth. She wanted magic to be simple — more than that, she would rather soar!
Why, that taste was almost like fear.
Celestia smiles brightly, keeping herself like a portrait: perfect and gentle. No smile of hers can ever look forced — that was what she had been told whenever her cousin Neptune came for a visit. It can't look truthful, that was even worse — and it was one of the special rules that she gave herself. Such was how manners ought to be. Princesses always had manners and she was always a princess.
Based on everything that grown-ups had said, Celestia knew that Luna and her were at the age when they should be using their magic as easily as they blink. But they weren't — or, at least not quite. Luna couldn't control her magic, there was no order or spells to the way she cast her magic out and that was absolutely maddening. Celestia saw no method that she could discern, only that Luna was a natural while she barely even bothered to light her own horn if she did not have to.
It was Luna who had begun to ask more of her almost absurd questions that came with the imaginative nature of her sister. She had no apprehension, nothing within Luna's mind whispered no with the incessant drum of rain; Luna only had wonder that came from looking at the world in her own way.
Celestia swallowed the lump in her throat. There would be nothing else to create fire with around their camp that they had passed for hours — it had to be her magic, or have no light at all.
A golden aura, that barely glitters at all in the white world, makes its way onto her horn. It is calm and much clearer than she remembered — but also thinner and finer than the pale hairs of her coat. When was the last time she used magic?
Celestia felt something stir within her, embers of a fire that she would rather smother totally so that the funny, fuzzy itching would leave her alone for good. Her magic burned within her shivering form, searching for something that was more than just a little filly trying to coax color into the glittering gold light. That same pale aura now threatened to die with another blow of the wind, such was how weak it had become.
Her wings rose to shield herself from the cold she so detested. Celestia began to feel a creeping headache somewhere below the base of her horn, and a wave of dizziness just like she usually felt when her mane was sticky with sweat and the buzz of summer's heat was tearing through her mind. She set her teeth firmly in line to prevent her grimace from faltering too much. Princesses don't grit their teeth no matter how alone they feel in a white-washed world... with a coat as bleached as her surroundings... and only a mane to remind her of how everything used to be... and all the little lies that piled up around her...
Piles of fuel.
Celestia nearly yelped and fainted as a burning sensation tore through her, igniting every emotion she never even wanted herself to know.
Resentment. Misery. Sadness. Hunger. The one that was deeper than boredom and hollower still. Something dark beneath that fire that felt like it was burning every feeling away made it feel like the opposite was happening too, and that each was becoming worse. Within her was something so dark she could not see through it.
Hollow.
Young Celestia had discovered power, a brief burning glory, a fool's gold like the aura on her horn. Now that magic had lashed out to the log in a tendril of flame. Each of the logs Luna and herself had rolled over to their makeshift camp was now lit up brighter than any of their past campfires ever had been. She had tasted that glory, and Celestia knew that her eyes were wide and hungry with all that she never wanted to feed. Celestia licked her lips slightly; they felt dry but she didn't care. She didn't feel anything but a yawning hollowness for an eternal moment.
There was a second swallow, one so heavy, scared, and guilty it made her sway on her legs like her knees were ready to buckle. Celestia tried to smile once again at the sloppy fire before her. Somepony had to look on the bright side of things and think positively. That was always her yoke to bear.
She plucked a few burned clumps away from her mane with ease as she composed herself. The wafting scene of small singed tips of her mane was what she needed to break out of her trance. Little white hooves worked quickly to toss any pastel hair singed gray into the fire, before combing through to make her long, partially wavy mane look as if nothing had happened. Those hooves were quite careful with the lower half of her mane which sparkled and flowed of its own accord and was still just as thick as the rest of her lush hair.
When that was over with, Celestia sat around the fire, its golden glow reflecting on the white fur of her chest.
She resumed her wait, nodding off at her self-appointed sentry's position only to awake to a familiar voice calling her name. Magenta eyes fluttered open to look at a blue filly standing in the white. Her eyes are curious little things with a color somewhere between green and blue. The fuzzy, lighter blue fur on her legs is caked with mud and slush that drips in the firelight. A set of dirty saddlebags are slung across her back quite hastily so her wings are hidden from view under her shaggy coat. Luna's bobbed mane was stirred by the winds of the moor. It was no longer neat and spilled into her eyes.
Celestia gives her sister one of her constant gentle smiles. All the while, her dying coal eyes watch as Luna shoots her a large, fleeting mischievous grin and sits down across from her.
Soon, a turquoise fire is lit anew and Celestia watches as Luna levitates frozen frogs that she had safely stowed away from the cold toward the elder, who recoils slightly. Luna laughs and begins to speak, the first exchange between the two in weeks. Celestia nods and smiles at the rare voice of her very introverted little sister. The whole time, all Celestia wishes is that her sister would stop wasting her time trying to befriend frogs and all the other kinds of creature that couldn't talk back to them and be real friends, not when pets were such lesser things than all that friends could be. She felt how her eyes lingered upon the dancing flame and the guttural, hollow hunger that Celestia wished would disappear behind veils of smoke.
Celestia had never felt colder in her life.
Author's Note
[Revised and brought back for print on 2/24/2021]
From 2017:
Takes place after The Dark Side Of The Sun but before Ashes.
Now with a review by the Equus Library!
