Princess Twilight Sparkle took a sip of her tea and immediately winced.
"Spike! This tea is terrible," she complained, and set down the cup with her magic. "You know I don't like bitter teas. What is it this time? Assam? Kuding?"
Spike looked confused. "No, I'm not kidding. It's oolong, Twilight, like you asked. I even added two drops of honey, just the way you like. Do you want to try the white again?"
Twilight pushed her cup aside with a hoof, gently enough so it wouldn't spill out onto the Crystal Map. Six cutie marks hovered over three locations on the Map. None of them were hers. She sighed and buried her face in her legs.
"Maybe you're coming down with a cold?" suggested Spike.
Twilight propped her chin up onto her ankles. The cutie marks of Pinkie Pie and Starlight Glimmer spun and twinkled a few inches from her eyes, decorating the edges of her vision with a scintillating haze.
"I don't know if I'd be able to tell anymore," she mumbled under her breath.
Twilight Sparkle barely waited for Celestia's smiling face to come into view before speaking.
"This was Spike's idea, wasn't it?" she accused as she crested the hill of the Canterlot Castle private gardens.
Princess Celestia lightly nodded her head and smiled that characteristic soft, well-practiced half-smile as her former student approached the flat serving stone. On the surface of the stone lay a tea set. There were no cookies or pastries, which Twilight found odd. There was only tea.
"It's nice to see you too, Princess Twilight Sparkle," said Celestia, her gentle grin not changing one iota. There was a certain sameness to everything the elder princess did, thought Twilight. It was comforting, but it often felt hollow, somehow. It reminded her of the Sunday funnies in the Foal Free Press. Ironically, the so-called "funnies" were never funny, but Twilight couldn't stop reading them. Why were they popular at all, then? Ponies didn't read them because they were amusing, obviously, because they never made anypony laugh. Not once! Pinkie Pie had explained it to Twilight before...
"You see Twilight, most ponies like things that are familiar," she'd told her. "All sorts of bad stuff happens in Equestria, and we never know when the next bad thing will happen! Comic strips are sort of like, well, a super-boring kind of party to help distract you from all the monster attacks and bad mane days and the funerals for brave ponies who tried to fight monsters just a little bit too big for them to handle. The characters in the Sunday comics are always the same, so even if everything else in life is totally uncertain, no matter how bad things get, the funnies will never ch—"
"Princess Twilight?" said Celestia, her voice a bit more insistent. "Please, sit down."
Twilight Sparkle snapped back to the present. "Oh. I... I'm sorry, Princess Celestia," she said, and sat down beside the stone. Celestia had already taken her seat and poured them each a steaming cup of tea.
"It's quite alright," said Celestia, and she took a sip of her tea. "I hear you've had some... difficulty adjusting to your new responsibilities?"
First Twilight pursed her lips in thought, then she lifted her teacup with her magic. A sip would give her time to think. She closed her eyes tight, and winced reflexively before it even met her lips.
"Is the tea not to your liking?" asked Princess Celestia.
Twilight wormed the tea around her tongue and swallowed. "No, it's actually not bad," she said in surprise, then followed it with a deep, cleansing sigh. "I haven't been able to make tea properly in ages."
"I know you like it sweet," noted Celestia. Her magical mantle billowed gently through her mane behind her, despite the lack of a breeze. It always did that, of course.
"Yes, thank you," said Twilight. "It's... still a little bitter. Maybe a little over-sweetened, too? But much better than what I've been drinking. What is it?"
"Oolong," said Celestia, between sips. "With two drops of honey."
Twilight's face scrunched up in frustration. "Brewed traditionally?"
Celestia gently nodded her head again. It was the clearest indication of 'yes' she ever gave short of actually saying the word, even though she seemed to do it every few minutes regardless as to whether or not a question had been posed. Still, it was comforting to watch.
Everything about Princess Celestia screamed comfort, thought Twilight.
Twilight Sparkle sighed again. "It doesn't matter, it's just tea. I think I just drink it out of habit, nowadays," she admitted.
Twilight tried to imagine herself skipping her morning tea, but she'd become so used to the ritual from her time in Canterlot with Celestia that skipping it would mess up her entire schedule... and then she felt a tug at her chin. Celestia's magic momentarily pulled her face upwards so the two could look eye to eye. The magic nudge lasted less than a second, but it felt intrusive and unsettling. It was strikingly unfamiliar; was that what made it feel repulsive? Twilight couldn't remember the last time Princess Celestia had even touched her—
"Twilight, let me be direct with you: Spike was telling me about how difficult things have been for you lately," said Celestia. Her regal voice had swelled the tiniest bit louder, obviously to help Twilight maintain her attention. "He's concerned, and he wanted to know how I could help."
"He's right," admitted Twilight, her eyes darting back and forth between the teakettle and Celestia's perfect, neigh-expressionless face. "I guess I might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown or something."
"Well, we can't have that," said Princess Celestia. She paused to take another sip of tea, leaving the statement hanging there in the air. Twilight briefly imagined the words dancing like balloons in front of her. "The most important service a royal leader can provide to her little ponies is consistency."
"Consistency," repeated Twilight. "Right. I can understand that. Of course."
"Good," said Celestia, and she nodded her head as though to reinforce the attribution. Or, perhaps, her head simply nodded of its own accord. Things seemed to happen for a reason even when conscious intent wasn't present. The Cutie Map was living proof of that. But as a trained scientist, the difference between fate and coincidence perplexed the daylights out of the young princess.
Then Twilight coughed, and she took another sip of tea. The tea wasn't perfect, that was certain; but at least it tasted more like she remembered. Not quite so bitter, although the aftertaste still wasn't pleasant. Maybe the memory she associated with tea had something to do with how she'd experienced it at the time. Memory wasn't a literal encoding of events, after all, but something generated against a background of emotion and circ—
"Come back to me, Twilight," said Celestia. Her voice hadn't changed, at least not as far as Twilight could tell, but it felt much firmer.
"I'm sorry. You see how distracted I am," she said. "What am I supposed to do?"
"That all depends," said Celestia. "What do you think the trouble is?"
Twilight held up her hoof and looked down at the grass as she tried to chisel truth directly from the void, using the extensive lexicon in her parietal lobe as a hammer. But this time, the fancy words weren't the ones she needed.
Princess Celestia waited with the patience of a mountain.
"I don't feel like I do anything meaningful anymore," Twilight summed up, looking back up to Celestia. "I used to go on adventures and learn new things, and..."
Celestia's head bobbed gently in the air, as though it had momentarily been caught by the nonexistent breeze which swept through her perpetually-flowing mane. Or, maybe she was just nodding again. Either way, it was a reassuring gesture. Every little nod temporarily reduced the tension in the air, if only for a second or two.
Twilight continued, "...and I do still solve friendship problems, but there's nothing new about them, and now I basically live in a castle all by myself..."
"You used to enjoy your solitude," reminded Princess Celestia.
"...and Starlight Glimmer's outgrown me as a student already, the Map's even sending her on missions now..."
"A testament to your natural leadership abilities," reframed Princess Celestia.
"...and the Map never sends me anywhere anymore, either!" said Twilight, her voice rising slightly. "I mean, it led me to Starlight Glimmer, and once it sent me to the middle of nowhere to resolve a stupid feud, but those were extremely stressful and unfulfilling experiences."
"The life of a monarch is often stressful," said Celestia. Then she took a sip of tea.
"Princess, why am I a monarch? I understand that I'm a princess, but why do I have a castle?" she asked.
"Twilight, you already know this. It's an extension of the Tree of Harmony," said Celestia.
"But then what is my Kingdom?" she asked. "I mean, ponies act like it's basically Ponyville and the Everfree, but the Tree of Harmony didn't actually just decide to, well, carve out part of Equestria and hoof it over to me, did it?"
"Perhaps it did?" said Celestia. Her head nodded gently.
"Ponyville was governed just fine before I showed up," said Twilight. She leaned in for a sip of tea, but stopped short and set down the cup entirely. "I don't want this destiny I've been hoofed. I'm bored, I see my friends less and less, and I feel like I'm losing touch with everypony. I haven't felt engaged with the world around me ever since the battle with Tirek. It's like I'm waiting for something, and I don't know what it is, or if it will ever come. I feel like an airship in an endless holding pattern..."
"You must have patience, Princess Twilight," said Princess Celestia.
"And I'm lonely," said Twilight. "Even Spike doesn't need me anymore... he doesn't seem to have anything to say when we talk..."
"Patience, Twilight," repeated Celestia, and then she took a sip of tea.
Princess Celestia only took tiny sips of tea, as was the custom for royalty. It meant the soft smile on her face would never disappear for more than the briefest moment.
Then she nodded her head.
