No sooner had the train pulled into the station and blown its whistle than Cadance had hopped down, dancing about the paltform on happy hooves. Some of the surrounding pedestrians stopped briefly to look, but the press of the crowd at their backs set them back about their business soon enough.
“It’s so good to be back,” Cadance said, tossing her mane side to side as it caught the playful Canterlot breeze. Finding room to do so, she stretched her legs and wings. “Even if it’s only for a visit.”
Shining Armour managed a tired smile as he clambered down the steps. “I know what you mean. It’s like coming home.” He yawned, then chuckled. “I’m just glad I don’t have any bags to carry up to the castle. I thought I would catch more sleep than I did on the trip down. Instead, somepony kept nuzzling me and nibbling my ear.”
He gave Cadance the most pointed look he could manage, one tempered with the smile of an in-joke between those who shared a secret delight. She grinned and flushed with colour as Shining took to her side. “I was in a mood,” she said innocently, and draped a lax wing over his back.
“I noticed.” He laughed aloud, enough to draw the curious stares of a few more passersby.
The busy train station platforms opened up to a wider plaza. This too was crowded, and the colours of manes and coats and tails all blurred together in a kaleidoscopic array of ponies going about their business, one which Cadance and Shining navigated with experienced ease.
The plan – in so much that there had been one – had been to mosey straight on up to the castle and find out just what the letters had been about, but the daylight’s warmth and the infamous appeal of Canterlot cafes soon gave Cadance other ideas. Shining was easy enough to win over, half-hearted as his protests were, and soon enough the two of them were seated in the sunshine, catered to by a waiter who was both elated and anxious to have the patronage of an alicorn, however briefly.
Cadance sipped at her latte, glanced about surreptitiously and satisfied with this surveillance took the opportunity to itch her nose. Nopony saw. Of course, Shining Armour saw it all. He was smiling and saying nothing, but he was her husband and so obviously didn't count..
“Any new ideas?” she asked when the clandestine moment had passed. “I really do wonder what it could be.”
Shining shook his head, filled with the fuzziness of sleepiness and the aroma of the coffee that he hoped soon enough to oust it with. “No,” he sighed. “With Twilight it’s hard to say. She can get herself worked up over almost anything. But then again, sometimes not.” He did a kind of facial shrug, sipped his drink with a considerate expression, and afterwards a quick exchange of glances between the two resulted in them swapping mugs.
The letter from Twilight Sparkle had come three days ago. That in itself was nothing strange; ever since the near ruinous wedding, they’d all made greater efforts to keep in touch with one another. But this latest one had been different. Whatever had gotten itself lodged in his sister’s rather expansive brain this time, Shining didn’t know. Twilight wouldn’t say. She only alluded to it, something important, something that she needed them to be here for.
The second letter had come quickly on the heels of the first. So quickly, in fact, that Cadance and Shining had still been in bed, sleepily mulling over the first. It’d been only natural to assume it was something else from Twilight. She was, after all, just the sort of pony to need more than one scroll to fit a single protracted thought to.
That the second bore the signature of Celestia instead, not Twilight, was quite a surprise. That it then went on to directly refer to the contents of Twilight’s letter was even more of one. They were not to panic. It was a personal matter they were being requested to help with, not the usual fare of monsters and explosions that such panic usually referred to.
And so...here they were. Three days hence and still no answers.
“Feel a bit better?” Cadance asked as the waiter scurried away with the dishes.
Shining nodded weakly as he stood. “Yeah. I’m starting to realize why ponies love coffee so much. We should head up there now.”
Their chairs glowed with the gentle casting of Cadance’s magic and were slid back under the table. “I just hope everyone’s alright. I know Celestia wouldn’t let Twilight worry herself sick over something, but even so...”
“Yeah,” Shining mused as they once more hit the lovely streets, Cadance in the lead. “I know what you mean.”
Cadance slowed, so that Shining nearly walked headlong into her tail. Not that he would have minded doing so all that much. Nor would Cadance, for that matter. But still, they had other things to consider just then. And this was a little too public anyway.
“She has been spending a lot more time in Canterlot lately…” Cadance murmured.
Shining came along side her, while the flow of pedestrians parted neatly around the couple. “Who?”
“Twilight, of course.”
The stallion shook his head as if to chase away a fly. “Of course. Sorry, I’m still not all here. I thought you meant Celestia. But that doesn’t make sense. She’s always in Canterlot. She’s basically what Twilight would come back for, you know?”
“Yeah...”
“Sorry?”
“I’m not sure. But you’ve reminded me of something I used to think.”
Cadance picked up her pace, forcing poor, yawning Shining to trot along after her. She had a widening grin and a certain familiar glint to her eyes that he had long since learned to recognize as mischief. “What are you thinking?” He called after her.
“I might be wrong!” She called back with unabashed delight, wings up and head held high, her display scattering a few of the meeker citizens from the immediate proximity. She turned hoof just as quickly and Shining, now a little livelier for the excitement, caught her up. “Let’s find out!”
They’d been near enough to the castle when their race had begun, and though that quickly became one of teasing and kissing, of pushing-aparts and pulling-togethers, they still reached the grand front gates in what seemed like no time at all. Both ponies, having been in and out of the very same gates for years were entirely unaffected by their otherwise majestic presence.
The guards on gate duty were actually getting a little uncertain, even embarrassed, at the couple who sauntered past them with personable nods. Those who recognized them for former Captain of the Guard and Princess Mi Amore were hasty to present themselves at their absolute best, though it was plain to see that Cadance, Captain of his Heart, already had Shining’s full attention.
They each had the standing to do almost anything they pleased in this place, wherever they pleased. Together, they nearly had the audacity to and, once or twice, Shining and Cadance had had to rein themselves in.
The couple hesitated at an entirely unassuming janitorial closet in one of the back-ways of the west wing. “Is this...?” Cadance asked, her voice rich with the honey of nostalgia.
“Mhmm,” Shining hummed in agreement, gazing at the door, trying the handle, and peeking inside as if each motion were an act of reverence in its own right. “This is that closet. Our makeout closet.”
Cadance laughed, a vibrant, crystalline sound. “I remember!” she cried through the laughs. “You were a private then and you said you’d spent so much time posted in the west wing that you knew the schedules of the cleaners. That we’d never get caught! But not five minutes in there and the door handle was rattling, and we’re trying to get our tongues untangled in the dark!” Cadance wheezed, falling against her husband with ribald laughter, causing them to shake and bounce off one another.
Neither could stand; they propped themselves up with each other. “And not just any servant, oh no,” Shining managed to wheeze through his own hooting. “It had to be little old Tea Cosy, grandmother of eight-”
“-and you knew it was eight, because she always took out the photos every chance she got!”
“Yep! And you remember the look on her face?”
Cadance struggled to regain some measure of her composure. “I have never seen a grin so suggestive. It was worse than anything she could have said. And then, out came the family photos.”
Shining just about managed to breath again. “I don’t think she ever did say anything. The rest of that month I was terrified my sergeant was going to come storming in at me at any moment, but he never did.”
Cadance giggled, shook, and likewise managed to breath. “Then you had it easy. She used to bring the tea trays around to my suite. And she would wink at me. Wink!” Cadance held her husband’s head and stared into his eyes. “No, you don’t understand, she winked at me! Sweet innocent little old mares should not be able to wink like that.”
“I don’t think you get eight grandchildren just by being sweet and innocent and doing nothing else.”
The quiet crept back, like a meek servant ready to clean up after a ruckus. Certainly not a little old, sweet-seeming quiet, though. A few exhausted giggles still punctuated the air. “What a crazy time that was,” Shining Armour mused, the two of them still leaning on one another.
“Would you change it?”
Shining met Cadance’s eye, and smiled. “Absolutely not.”
Then, just like the movies, they plunged into an impassioned kiss.
They were interrupted by a polite cough. This made both ponies choke and sputter. Oh sure, they’d grown and matured since those wild days of fluttering hearts and daring encounters, they had every right to kiss however much they pleased, coughing ponies be damned. Only it was sometimes hard to remember you weren’t a hormonal teenager anymore. Every stone of Canterlot was sufficed with memories. It didn’t help matters at all when they realized who that ‘damned coughing pony’ was.
“Celestia!” they gasped in unison.
“This closet is cursed,” Cadance hissed to her husband. “Cursed!” She fumbled with her mane, hastily brushed her wings down and managed a shaky bow. “Hello.”
The white alicorn smiled her usual benevolence. It wasn’t as bad as old Tea Cosy’s grin, but one could imagine. “I would usually ask if I were interrupting, but in this instance I think it’s safe enough to presume that I was.”
Then, to the couple’s mutual horror, Celestia blushed. Actually blushed, and averted her gaze. “Sorry,” the eldest alicorn murmured.
Shining and Cadance had another one of those very quick, non-verbal spousal conversations that are managed entirely by expressions alone. They still came up with nothing.
“We got the letters,” Shining blurted out.
Celestia visibly shifted the weight on her hooves. From the famously serene and stoic princess, it was like seeing the sun wobble in the sky. “Oh. Yes. Good. The letters.” Then Celestia composed herself, but not entirely; the pink hints of her blush, though faded, refused to disappear entirely. “That’s good. Thank you for coming. Both of you. Shall we?” she asked, and set a stately pace through the winding halls, with Cadance and Shining Armour falling in behind her.
Celestia sighed when it was only them who could hear it. “The truth of the matter is, I wanted to discuss certain...details with you before Twilight finds out you’ve arrived.”
“I’m not sure I understand, princess.” This was Shining, who was having a hard time suppressing his formerly instilled instinct to obey and serve the regality before him. Cadance gave him a pouty look. His reply was apologetic. “About the only thing we do understand so far is that this is something to do with Twilight’s personal life. She is alright, isn’t she?”
“She is. As much as Twilight Sparkle can when she feels something is not as it should be.” Celestia stopped the little procession upon reaching two gilded doors that assured them utter privacy in Celestia’s own sanctum. She seemed to murmur something under her breath, then took a deep breath. “We’re seeing each other” she said.
Shining didn’t get it. “Sorry?”
Cadance squealed in glee. “I knew it!”
He spun round towards his wife. “Knew what?”
“Oh come on, ‘Princess of Love,’ kind of an expert here, why does nobody remember that? Shiny, you know, seeing each other. Seeing. Each Other. Like dating?”
Shining Armour slumped in the midst of this, sinking slowly onto his bum. His gaze went vacant and distant. “Celestia is dating my sister.”
The mares shared a brief exchange of looks.
“Celestia is dating my sister.”
“Um, Shiny?”
“Celestia is dating my sister.”
“Is he alright?” the sun princess asked in a hush.
“Celestia is dating my sister.”
“Give him a moment,” Cadance whispered back. “I think he’s in shock.” She rolled her eyes in a conspiratorial manner. “Stallions, eh?”
“I...wouldn’t know.”
Cadance smiled tightly. “Oh, of course...you, Twilight, yeah...” She was starting to think Shining had the right idea here. Unreasonable circumstances made unreasonable behaviour seem rather fitting.
“Shiny, are you alright?” Cadance poked his shoulder. He wobbled limply in place.
He faced his wife with a blank expression. “Celestia is dating my sister.”
Cadance huffed. “Dear, we’ve established that. Stop being melodramatic.” She pulled him upright. He was shaking like a leaf, but at least it was better than the eerie stillness.
“How do I even...”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been so direct with it. I thought it would be the best way...”
Cadance drew a sharp breath. “Probably got it wrong this time, no offense. Right,” she said. It was rare she had the chance to steal the moment out from under Celestia, and absurd as the reasons here were, she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. But first, her husband. “You okay now?”
“Yeah,” he muttered weakly, nodding. “It’s just so...so...” his eyes pleaded for some way, any way, to finish that sentence.
Cadance took charge. “Right, we’re all understandably shaken and confused, but this is good news, isn’t it? Not one, but two ponies we both know and deeply care about have found a special somepony. That’s a good thing!”
“How...how did you know?” Celestia, usually so majestic, seemed almost...well, not small – by any rational measure she was a veritable giant – but right now just not quite so much of one. She was pacing. Celestia. Pacing! “We’ve been taking precautions,” she explained.
“Precautions!” Shining whimpered, and Cadance didn’t blame him. As faux pas went, that one had been vivid. That too was something she had never seen the seemingly faultless alicorn capable of, who usually spoke with such perfect measure and polite delivery.
Cadance was rubbing Shining’s back when she finally answered. “You two have been obviously in love for as long as I’ve known you. Can it really be that much of a surprise that with Twilight as grown up as she is now that the manner of love you share might change to reflect that?”
“I never planned for this,” Celestia said as she made another pass across the floor.
“Okay,” Shining said, breathing as if he’d just come through a crazed sprint. “Okay. Is Twilight happy?”
Celestia ceased her incessant pacing. “She’s very stressed.”
“Stressing is Twilight being Twilight. Is she happy?”
Celestia frowned. “Yes. I hope she is. I want her to be.”
Cadance said, “You’ve been together for a while?”
“Five months, three weeks and a day. Again, how did you know?”
Despite herself, Cadance felt pretty darn smug. “I was watching you pace. You never used to. That’s Twilight's habit, and you’ve picked it up from her. And ‘five months, three weeks and a day’ is exactly the sort of thing she’d say.”
“I...I suppose it is. Yes. We have grown closer.” Opening an ornate window, Celestia let the sun fall bright on her. And yet she sighed. “I never planned for this.”
Her pastel mane flowed serenely as it ever had. Her frown and down-cast eyes, however, told another story. “We’ve been very careful.”
Cadance, a rather leggy mare in her own right, easily managed to nuzzle her way up to Celestia’s shoulder. “Does anyone else know?”
“Just Luna. She has ways of finding out these things, much like you did, Cadance. But she grins at me.” Celestia frowned. “Grins. And gives unsolicited advice unbefitting the...discretion one should expect of a princess. Or a sister, for that matter.” Celestia sighed and turned away, letting the window shut, pinching off the sunlight from the room.
Cadance and Shining shared a look. They understood all too well. “I think we should go talk to Twiley now,” he said.
She rushed to his side as he made for the door. “Are you sure you don’t want a minute to...to...you know, deal with this?”
“No, no,” he said, brushing her concerned hooves away. “Best to get it all out in the open quick as possible. Like you said, it is good news. It was just unexpected, is all. I’m fine, really.”
“You dated a princess,” Cadance said. She dragged a feather-tip along his side. “I think she married you as well?”
“It’s my little sister,” Shining pointed out. “My little sister and my former boss.”
Cadance did notice that he kept making sidelong glances at Celestia. Always a stallion with his heart on his sleeve and his thoughts on his face, Shining Armour wasn’t hard to read. And right now, the only word to be read from him was ‘baffled’.
Celestia spread her wings, taking a sterner stance. “She was in her tower – I’ve always thought of it as hers, ever since she took residence, even after she left – that was when I last saw her. Please ready yourselves.”
Shining gawked. “Are you going to-” he began, but was cut off just as quickly by a brilliant display of magic.
The tingling sensation fell away, as had Celestia’s chambers. They were in Twilight’s Tower. A few dusty shafts of sunlight reached haphazardly through the tower from small windows embedded deeply in the masonry at seeming random. Thousands of books covered dozens of shelves, with a great deal more resting in monumental and tenuous heaps where the unwary hoof might trip over the foothills of literature. Tables filled much of the floor space, on this floor and every other. Again, books dominated, and what weren’t books were scrolls, and what weren’t scrolls were drifts of loose-leaf, wild and free, that rustled fitfully with the slightest provocation upon the still, dry air.
The eponymous pony of the tower could be seen above them, several stories above them at the very least, a flitting purple shape moving through the shadows of the uppermost rafters.
“Twiley!” Shining called out, all stress forgotten, if only for a moment. “Hey!”
The youngest alicorn glided down in tight circles, the shelves making any descent more gradual impossible. She landed next to them, stumbling and shaking her head to clear it. “Sorry,” she managed to say. “I still get dizzy if I come back down too quick. So, you’re here.” She cast a quick, quizzical glance to Celestia. “Then they...?”
“They know.”
Shining’s smile was worried and meek as the new couple turned to face him. “Hi,” he managed to squeak, before coughing to clear his throat and starting again. “Hey Twiley.”
Twilight regarded him oddly, as if he were less a brother and instead a much-studied, still not fully understood specimen. Her voice was tight and highly pitched as she turned back to Celestia. “You told them? Without me? Celestia, why would you do that?” The youngest princess’ lips trembled.
For a moment, the great alicorn stood as she had always been known to, elegant, graceful, and aloof. It fell away though, as too did her gaze from Twilight’s questioning eyes.
Cadance and Shining, meanwhile, were surreptitiously stepping to the sidelines, watching as closely as they could.
“I’m sorry,” said Celestia, regardless of the audience. “It was a mistake. I meant to spare you further stress.”
Twilight’s wings lowered, and she felt suddenly meek. She hadn’t realized how readily wings reacted to agitation, how expressive they were of thoughts and feelings, or how difficult it could be to maintain decorum with them. With care, they folded snugly into place, and despite herself, Twilight found reason to smile. “No, it’s alright. We talked about this, and you were right. I have been putting it off. It’s better that they know.”
A brotherly hoof was flung over Twilight’s shoulder, shaking her slight frame and pulling her into a firm embrace. “You have to know that we support you.”
Twilight, smiling, swatted away Shining’s hug. He simply sidestepped her efforts and chuckled with self-assured superiority of elder siblings everywhere.
“Yeah,” said Twilight, finally getting her head out and under from the hug, though not without losses: her mane was in dire straits. “It’s a relief, actually. You finally know. It’s a weight off my mind.”
“And your hair,” chuckled Cadance.
“That? That’s not important right now,” said Twilight, giving it a cursory brushing with the back of her hoof.
Cadance and Shining shared a quick querulous look. “You really have grown, you know that, Twiley?”
“What do you mean?”
Shining Armour rolled his eyes. “There was a time that you might have found that enough of a reason to panic over. Blow up the living room. Again.”
Out came the wings in a whoosh of air. “That was one time. One time! And I’ve never been bothered by how my mane does or doesn’t look.”
Cadance, coming from nowhere, nudged Twilight’s head towards the perplexed, faintly frowning visage of Celestia. “Not even for your special somepony, hmm?”
Twilight and Celestia caught one another’s eyes, all shyness and warm cheeks. “No,” said Twilight happily. “My mane isn’t going to change how she feels about me. I know that.”
Celestia blushed and smiled. Shining Armour gawked. “You really have grown,” he said again, all teasing and humour gone from his tone now.
“I’ll still make it nice for her,” Twilight mumbled shyly, “just...not right now. After this.”
“It’s true,” said Celestia with a distant look about her, as her eyes wandered aimlessly over the books lining row upon row and shelf upon shelf, finally lifting up towards the highest reaches. “Grown so much. But...”
Twilight was a sudden blur of purple motion. “Don’t,” she urged quietly to Celestia. “Don’t overthink this. Overthink us. We can only know if we try.” A purple hoof scuffed nervously at the floor. “And I do want to try.”
Shining had to poke his wife. “They mean the relationship,” he hissed to the wickedly grinning Cadance. “The relationship!”
She pouted. “Well of course I know that. You don’t need to go spoiling the fun with the truth,” she said with a huff, batting at him with a wing. Then she changed her tune entirely, grabbing and shaking Shining with alarming girlishness. “Look at them, look at them!” she whispered, her hoof pointing with accusation. “The way they both have to bend to kiss, it’s adorable!”
“I think they can hear you...” mused the stallion.
“Of course they can,” Cadance said, still smiling.
Celestia and Twilight Sparkle were no less blissful in their expressions as they slowly parted lips. Celestia blinked as if only now remembering the presence of anyone else in the room. Or anyone else in the world, for that matter. Still blinking, her gaze flickered over the room, briefly smiled embarrassment at the couple, then drifted back down to Twilight Sparkle, all embarrassment fading, only love remaining.
“You’re the first ponies to ever see that,” Twilight confessed.
Cadance drew a quiet breath. “I’ve never seen Celestia be so...”
“Vulnerable?”
“Alive.”
“Ah.”
Twilight and Celestia stood shoulder to shoulder. Or at least, as much as their sizes allowed for. “So now you know,” said the smaller. “We’re dating. You know, it really does feel good just being able to say that. We’re dating. We are.”
Bowing her head, Celestia breathed in the scent of Twilight’s still somewhat tousled mane. “It does.” The little mare sighed with unambiguous delight at the gesture. Shining had to keep glancing to his wife for reassurance.
“Don’t be such a ninny,” she chided. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of affection.”
Shining nodded in general agreement, rubbing quickly at his eyes. “I know, I know. It’s just...that’s my sister. My little sister. And my former Commander in Chief. Together. Right there. Necking. Don’t get me wrong!” he quickly piped up when said ponies turned a worried look on him, “I don’t, you know, have a problem with it or anything. It’s just...a lot to get used to.”
“I know,” said Celestia, her voice soft, almost weak. “Oh, how much I know that to be true.” Something of the graceful and distant ruler came back into her expression, and she pulled away from Twilight, once again standing tall and alone. “That’s why we hide what we share. Because it’s...a lot to get used to, as you say. Too much, I fear, for many of those who depend on us to be constants in their world.”
Cadance huffed. “That’s not fair. Not fair at all. Not to either of you.”
Twilight stepped forwards, wings spread. Shining recognized what could almost be a protective stance, he wondered if he was the only one to see it. Surely Celestia, in all her experience, must? “Don’t think I don’t know that,” said Twilight. “But it is how it has to be. For now,” she added in subdued murmur. Then, “This isn’t something I didn’t think about. I thought about it. A lot.” That garnered a few knowing smiles. Twilight pressed on. “And this is what I decided. That this, this relationship...it’s worth it. It’s worth the risk, and it’s worth the worry, and it’s worth the likely chance that I’ll change and she’ll change, because the way I see it, the only way possible way I could change from all this is for the better. I like the mare who I’m becoming.”
Twilight turned her head up, bright eyed and smiling wide. “She’s brave enough to show Celestia how she really feels, for starters.”
“That she is,” said Celestia, meeting her with a kiss.
Shining Armour blew out a deep breath. His present seat, a mound of books, was pushed about under him in his distracted quest for comfort. “Well. Would it be so bad, I mean, really, if ponies knew?”
“Don’t sit on the books,” grumbled Twilight mid-kiss. Celestia gently pulled her attention back with with an outstretched wing, draped tactically around the back of Twilight’s neck to obstruct the view.
They kissed and Shining Armour determinedly kept sitting on the books. He waited an awkward moment for the two to finish.
They parted reluctantly and Celestia sighed. “Truth be told, Shining Armour, I expect most would accept it as it is, good people that they are. They would be happy for us. But even well meaning attention is...unwelcome. Is it selfish of me to wish to keep this secret? To keep our romance a private affair? To keep it for myself?”
Cadance, who had been shoving her surly husband to get off the books already, stalled. “Yes,” she said after some consideration. “I suppose it is.” She hurried on before the twinned looks of hurt could be vocalized.
“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It’s not. It’s natural to feel that way. I understand and respect why you feel that way and if anything, I’d be more worried about your chances as a couple if you didn’t feel that way at the beginning. Really, it’s high time you did something selfish and say whatever you like, Celestia, but you know I’m right.”
Cadance chewed her lip and shared a quick look with Shining. “Why tell us though?” asked the stallion. He was quick to finally get off the beleaguered books when he caught Twilight’s fuming stare.
“Not because a certain brother completely failed to tell a certain sister that he was marrying her babysitter literally until the invitations were sent out and I want to do better.”
Shining winced, both Cadance and Celestia stifled a chuckle, while Twilight’s look was one of darkly satisfied triumph as she sauntered past him, resettling the books upset by her brother’s bottom.
“Okay, yes, I’m never living that down it seems, but you said ‘not.’ So...?”
Twilight’s expression was hawkish now, curious, almost amused. It made Shining Armour wonder if he had something on his face. “Because you’re my brother,” Twilight said with an air of sagely humour. “And Cadance is my sister-in-law. Not two random strangers that neither of us have ever met before that’ll talk about Princess Celestia and Princess Twilight Sparkle,” she said, spitting the titles with particular disdain, “even though that us having never met them by extension means that they’ve never met us! Which is a tautology! But you do know us! You know us even without the titles. And I want those few ponies that know us to know about us.”
Cadance smiled. She rolled her eyes over to Shining. “Love makes us crazy. In the best possible ways of course,” she quickly amended when she caught a curious glance from Celestia, “but still.” Then she sighed with deep contentment. “I’m glad you told us. Honoured, even.”
Now it was Twilight Sparkle’s and Celestia’s turn to share a silent moment of communication. Biting her lip and nudging her mane, Twilight shuffled about on the spot. “There’s another reason. Well, it’s the same reason, but another part of it.”
Shining grinned. It was a chance to put the ‘big’ in big brother and he wasn’t about to pass it up. “Oh? And what’s that? You want help in breaking the news to Mom and Dad?”
“Yes.”
Shining Armour’s mouth had been open. He closed it slowly. A second attempt similarly failed to merit results. “Ah.” he managed. “I had not actually expected that answer.”
“It’s important to me that your parents know,” Celestia said. “Having their blessings would mean so much.”
Twilight pouted. “And they deserve to know. We hoped you’d tell us how you and Cadance broke the news of you two to them, and follow your example. I think that would be best for everyone.”
Cadance blanched visibly, and Shining audibly gulped. “What, really? I mean, no. No no no. That’s a bad example, you don’t want that example...”
“What he means to say is...is that our plan...didn’t go according to plan,” Cadance said through nervous giggles. “You might, in fact, say that we didn’t have a plan at all and that, uh, things happened.”
Shining Armour went even whiter. “And then other things happened.”
Cadance nodded in ready agreement. “And then other things happened. And very quickly Twilight Velvet and Night Light knew everything they needed to know about their son and their babysitter with pretty much no room whatsoever for any ambiguity.”
“Everything that they actually didn’t need to know, really,” groaned Shining.
Revelation came slowly to Twilight. Her brow-pinching frown widened very gradually at the eyes, while likewise her lips pursed and pulled back. In a very small voice she said, “Oh.” Her mouth was dry, and she struggled to work up the moisture to speak. “Well, then. No. Following your example would not be best for everyone.”
“I don’t think their hearts could take it.”
The silence that followed was a thick chocolate cake. Nobody could ignore it, and awkwardness permeated the air. Perhaps, then, it should not have been so surprising as it was when Celestia of all ponies was the one to take the first slice. With a thoughtful expression much akin to Twilight’s own, she turned to the Empire’s finest model couple and asked, “You managed to finish things regardless?”
Cadance shrugged. “Well, yeah sure, we were a bit shaken and the mood was in tatters but- oh my goodness Celestia how could you even ask that?!” Cadance apologized quickly to her husband; her wings had gone up so suddenly that she’d caught him a fair knock on the chin.
The white alicorn struggled to keep her composure as three sets of eyes turned in various states of bewilderment on her. “I was curious,” she said, perhaps a hint of prickly defensiveness about the way she said it.
Twilight stepped between the lot of them and rubbed at her eyes. “Okay, this is getting off track. Very, very off track.”
Shining Armour sighed, taking a deep breath and letting it huff away down to the floor. “You’re right. But all in all, Twiley...Mom and Dad were cool with it.” He shook his hoof and head as if the words were chalk to be wiped away. “Okay, no, a better way to put it...um...Oh!” He pulled Cadance close to his side. “Highness, er, Celestia, they reacted to us a lot like we reacted to finding out about you. Does that make sense?”
“It does. And I find it encouraging.”
Twilight was fidgeting, a sure sign of disturbed thought. “So where was I when my babysitter...was not babysitting?”
Cadance took the opportunity to study the scenery in great detail. “There was sitting,” she murmured, crossing her hooves.
Twilight looked to Shining with inqnuiry in her eyes, but nothing short of actual torture would have cracked him at that moment. Thankfully, his sister didn’t dwell. “I don’t remember you ever skipping out while I was around,” Twilight said. “I always said you were the best babysitter ever.”
Cadance blushed. She gestured to the room around them, its millions of pages and billions of words. “Books?” she suggested.
“Ah,” Twilight muttered in grim understanding. “Books.”
“Hey, I really am a great babysitter. You just happened to be even better at being babysat. And we weren’t that bad until later on anyway.” Cadance and Shining shared a knowing look with one another. “Usually it was just-”
“Okay, okay, I get it!” cried Twilight in a huff, stomping about the place, her powerful magic dismantling the former seat of Shining’s, sending clumps of books to various shelves or, failing that, at least stacking them more neatly than they had been.
Celestia stared up to the rafters, where crisscrossing beams of sunlight caught on the gently floating haze of dust above. “This is all so new to me. It’s terrifying. And exciting. I apologize if I’m somewhat tactless about all this.”
“Hey, hey don’t you worry,” Cadance was quick to coo, her hoof on Celestia’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you out of your comfort zone for once. It’s good for you, too.” For a moment the two alicorns watched the third huff and puff as she worked through her little fit of book ordering. “You’re really putting yourself into this, aren’t you?” Cadance asked as they watched the little purple mare shoo her brother away from a particularly fragile heap of scrolls.
Celestia nodded, her tone subdued. “For most of my life I never believed that a relationship was available to me. Sharing in trepidation and excitement. Intimacy. I accepted that I was meant to be outside of that. Now it seems hardly any time at all has passed, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to go back to what it was before.”
“It’s alright to be afraid,” said Cadance. “Love is scary,” she added coyly, baring her teeth and clicking them audibly. Then she winked, and they both laughed under their breath as Twilight bossed her big brother about, all for the books’ wellbeing. “That’s part of the fun.”
“Thank you. It’s rare that a princess needs reassurance.”
Cadance felt so in her element right now. “No, it’s rare that a princess gets reassurance. She needs it just as much as anypony else.”
Celestia hesitated, and turned to face. “Yes, I think you may be right. Thank you, Cadance, deeply.”
Then Cadance sprung her deadly trap. Which was actually an affectionate hug, a no holds-barred full contact-sport hug, but by the look on Celestia’s face she couldn’t tell the difference. “Aww,” Cadance cooed, “I like this softer, more relatable you, you know that? I feel like I can actually get away with doing this kind of thing, now.”
After a hesitant moment and the quizzical looks from the others, Celestia even returned the gesture, somewhat.
Cadance was in no rush at all to end the warm embrace. “Just don’t get caught having sex in a too-small bed, okay?” she purred happily under Celestia’s ear.
They continued hugging.
“That won’t be a problem,” said the first of all Princesses. “My bed is very large.”
Cadance was reminded of this simple truth, that amidst all the grace and high poise, an impish sense of humour hid in the heart of Celestia.
The only fitting response was to laugh. Loudly.
It was at Princess Cadance and Shining Armour’s own suggestion that they stayed in Canterlot. In theory this was to share their wisdom on relationships and guide Twilight Sparkle and Celestia through this momentous time of change. In actuality, it was mostly about reigning in the young couple’s recurring panic attacks.
Luna was unforgivingly gleeful about the whole affair, and her advice was at times sage, and at times suggestive beyond all decorum. Cadance found herself grudgingly impressed with Luna’s detailed descriptions. She’d made a note of it to get to know Luna better: the dark alicorn had gotten her experience somewhere, surely. If Luna was gleaning information from Celestia’s and Twilight’s troubled and heated dreams, she wasn’t telling.
Cadance made a note to invite her north sometime.
Celestia, meanwhile, was a distracted, flighty mess of her usual image. Even as she suspected Luna of filial subterfuge she was thankful that her sister upheld court and that it continued without too much disruption, though ‘shouting inventive obscenities at the gentry’ was fast becoming a favourite hobby of the dark alicorn. If Luna would only bring down the volume and make her insults more ambiguously subtle she would more or less have mastered the essential skills of wrangling the upper crust.
Three days had passed in this manner, and with each moment that the relationship of Celestia and Twilight continued in its secrecy, the more it seemed to loom over them until neither mare could focus on anything else except the pending visit to their parents.
Shining had offered to do it himself: this Twilight Sparkle had vehemently refused to allow. It was her task, hers. Well, theirs. Celestia and hers. Absolutely not Shining’s, in any case. “Then just do it,” he had said, gesturing over a balcony ledge in the general direction of their family home. “It’s only going to get worse if you leave it.”
Cadance was talking strategy with Celestia the next room over. No, not strategy... prudence; it wasn’t a conflict to be staged after all, though at times it felt like it.
“No, no, no,” Cadance stressed, stomping about with frustrated enthusiasm as she coached Celestia. “Trust me, don’t do it in the castle, do it at their home. There’s maybe ten ponies in this world that treat you anything like a normal person, most of those are already here, and there’s two more living in a perfectly nice little house at the edge of the city. Don’t summon them-” she growled that particular word- “and do the princess thing on them.
“Don’t ‘Princess’ Them,” she chanted. Cadance glared, there was a gleeful, possibly evil edge to that domineering smile. “Go to them and just be Celestia. Leave the tiara at home. Trust me.”
“When you say it like that...”
Cadance groaned, expressing her vexatious mood with theatrical delight. “Twilight Velvet and Night Light are both super chill about alicorns.” The pink mare rubbed at her forehead. “Okay, that sounded terrible, and I’m not even sure you understood it but the point is still: they had one alicorn babysitting their daughter and marrying their son, if you remember? Also that daughter turned into an alicorn. You’re not going to find a more alicorn-experienced couple on the planet. To them we’re pretty much just...” Cadance waggled her eyebrows and flicked out her tongue. “...horny pegasi.”
Cadance repeated and exaggerated the gesture. “Horny pegasi? You get it?”
Celestia nodded with slow, thoughtful motions. “Night Light is a very reliable gentlecolt,” she conceded.
Cadance sighed. She’d been saving that one all morning. Still, there were more important matters to hoof. “And while Twilight Velvet is weird, it is the good kind of weird.” Cadance nudged Celestia, grinning with an almost raunchy abandon. Her glee turned quickly to shock when Celestia failed to reciprocate. “Wait, you’re telling me you’ve never read a qoute-unqoute Rosy Quill-Feather novel?” she asked, doing the necessary gestures. “Stables and Stability?”
Celestia was literally meek. A rare look for her. Not without its charms, Cadance noted.
“The Harem of New Brunswhinny? At Night She Holds The Reins?”
If ‘meek’ had described Celestia before, now she was positively abashed. Cadance spun away. “I did say weird!” she trilled gleefully.
“The next thing you’re going to tell me is that you're a thousand year old virgin.”
Cadance stopped with a sharp whinny.
“Oh myyy...” The pink princess, eyes wide, brushed back her mane as she stared in awe at Celestia. “Wow.” Then she slumped back, in a pose of utter shock much resembling her husband’s. “Twilight and you are probably going to inspire mommy Twilight’s next novel, just so you know.”
Then, suddenly, Cadance smiled. “But don’t let that put you off though. You should totally still meet them. Really. Have fun!” Her look turned sly and teasing. “I’m pretty sure At Night was based on Shiny and me anyway. I don’t really know why. We’re normal!”
Celestia nodded with dazed agreement; anything to end this quicker. Cadance had not helped her towards finding a calm, centred, confident demeanor. She had, in fact, taken whatever trace of those exact qualities Celestia had had and thrown them out the window, so that just now she felt a pressing need to retreat into a nice cup of tea.
Before she could do this though, Twilight and Shining entered the room. “I’ve decided,” Twilight said with an air of proud determination, “Tommorow. Tomorrow we really do this, and tell my parents.”
Celestia blinked. “Oh. Yes. Good.” She tried for more words, but found her mouth dry. “Shall we celebrate with a cup of tea, in that case?”
Twilight’s smile was more soothing than any ten cups could have been, and Celestia felt much better, as if Twilight had turned dusk to dawn by that alone. Smiling, the white alicorn found herself genuinely warming to the prospects of what lay ahead.
The tea helped, too.
The morning found Cadance and Shining Armour in their guest suite, picking over the needlessly large breakfast that had been sent in to them. Their windows offered a fine view of the mountainside city, with its recurring spires and vistas. Sunshine glinted off creamy marble, and even the city’s pigeons were of a prettier, more noble sort.
Shining Armour paused in chewing his toast to glance about the wide silvered tray and its assorted chinaware. He attempted, and failed, to mumble politely through his mouthful. Cadance rolled her eyes and a teasing smile crept up. With a glow of magic a napkin peeked out from its hiding place behind the glossy teapot.
“Tnnk oo,” the stallion murmured, swallowing and dabbing at his mouth. “Sorry. So, you think they’ll really do it?”
“You know what? I believe they will.”
“I hope so. What about if it goes bad though?”
“Your parents are good ponies. They’re not going to become hypocrites now. And considering our case, there isn’t really anything Celestia and Twilight can do to top that. Not unless they get really inventive. I bet your parents won’t even bat an eye.”
“I’m more worried about Twilight. I don’t want half of Canterlot to explode into potted plants, or something.”
“Shiny, she’s a grown mare. Have a little faith.”
“You’re right.”
A moment passed in quiet, breakfast eating consideration.
Cadance giggled around her cup of juice. “I just know that in a year’s time, your mom and dad are going to be getting the last laugh out of all this.”
“Knowing them it’s pretty much a certainty. Sooner or later someone’s going to tell them all this side of the story and then one of them – dad, most likely – is going to go straight to Celestia and tell her to calm down. And she will, because he’s dad. He’ll put that feather in his cap and never, ever mention it, and we’ll all hear how loudly he’s not mentioning it. Then he’ll ask about grandkids. Mom will probably say that they’re all being fools. Adorable fools, including dad. Then she’ll probably make a glib remark about their size differences and the, uh, logistics involved, and Twiley will melt with embarrassment. It’ll be something like that.”
“Yep.”
“Yeah.
“It’ll be fine.”
“It will be fine.”
Both ponies stood suddenly, dropping cutlery to clatter plates and making their chairs skitter backwards.
“We should probably be ready for the potted plants thing, just in case,” Cadance suggested hurriedly.
“Just in case,” Shining Armour agreed wholeheartedly.
Twilight and Celestia shared the final moments of preparation in the peaceful solitude of Celestia’s own chambers. Together, they poured over a checklist. Was Luna domineering court for the day, being able to both aid her sister and appease the latent megalomaniacal bent Luna was still working out of her system? The alicorns listened for several seconds. The glassware trembled, as of a distant thunder. There was no dust on these immaculate ceilings to fall, but had there been it would have done. Somepony’s sanity had been called into question, followed by a distantly echoed “Send forth the next supplicant!”
“Check.”
They gazed out of the nearest window. Cadance and Shining Armour tucked away into a back pocket, expressly asked not to interfere and understand their wishes in this.
“Check.”
Twilight Sparkle regarded the page. She turned it over, baffled by its blankness. A short checklist was a strange, even scary new thing. “I guess...I guess that means we’re ready?”
“So it does.”
“Alright then. So we just have to get off the bed now and go there.”
“Yes.”
“Just...put our hooves on the floor. Off the bed. I’m really scared,” Twilight added.
Celestia was ever graceful, even in unfolding herself from the expansive bed. “I’m scared, too,” she said softly. “Come with me?”
Twilight hesitated, then nodded. “Alright. Let’s go.
Twilight Sparkle stood up and faced the day.
Twilight Sparkle and Celestia had mutually decided to teleport to the street just outside Twilight’s family home. Actually stepping onto the property and up the little garden walkway and to the front door had felt like something that had to do themselves, not with magic. A spell of discretion would keep unwanted attention from them. They would appear as inconsequential as fog. Only two ponies would see them unobstructed; they two they intended to be seen by.
“It hasn’t changed at all,” Twilight mused. She needed time and Celestia didn’t rush her. The smaller alicorn buoyed a budding rose in her hoof. “Mom’s flower beds,” she explained quietly. “The ferns. The little willow tree. It’s not so little anymore, I guess. Were you here before?” she asked.
Celestia had a voice like grace itself. It had enamoured Twilight Sparkle long ago. “Yes. Several times. I never meant to steal you away from them,” she said, and Twilight wondered if Celestia referred to the past or the present or the future.
The imminent future.
“I think I wanted to be stolen. Is it stealing, if it’s willing?” Twilight paused. An interesting diversion, but for another time. “Will you knock, or will I?”
“Together?”
“Together.”
They walked up the garden path, passing a procession of roses.
“What are they saying?” Cadance whispered.
The spell wrapped around the two paramours was exquisite, but if a pony already knew to look and really squinted they could just make out a heat-haze shimmer in the air: one larger and white, the other smaller and faintly purple. They were coming this way. “Hide!” hissed Shining Armour, and he grappled his wife’s head lovingly back down into the midst of the willow tree.
“What’d they say?”
“I couldn’t hear! Quick, let’s go around the back.” The sovereigns of the Crystal Empire untangled themselves from one another and the tight abode of their hiding place. Plopping out onto the lawn and keeping their heads down, they rushed around the edge of the garden and around the back of the house. It would have been comically tactless – it really was, no two ways about it – but they passed unseen nonetheless, Cadance having prepared her own discretion spell for the two of them prior to their little excursion.
Twilight Sparkle took her hoof away from the door, and waited, feeling a little awkward for it. This was her family home, she had never knocked here. She’d come and gone at all hours as she pleased, within reason.
She waited side by side with Celestia and wondered if she’d slipped into some kind of shock. Hi mom, hi dad. This is Celestia, you’ve met, you know she’s the one thousand year ruler of all Equestria, alicorn of the sun, yes, and she’s the most considerate, beautiful, elusive, selfless, alone creature I have ever met and loved, and I love her, I’ve always loved her and we’re seeing each other please don’t be mad.
Not a perfect line, Twilight knew, but she could work on it. She had a few seconds, maybe as much as a full sixty before the door opened. No reason to panic, none at all...
Twilight Velvet was a writer and Night Light was an astronomer. Both careers tend to keep a pony up late at night. So it was that the quiet time that most couples reserved for their evenings before sleep these two had simply bumped to the mornings after. It worked for them.
The shutters on their bedroom window they kept very nearly shut, it kept the room dark enough to let them sleep in, but still leaving through little slices of bright daylight that – as the sun rose higher through the morning – would eventually fall over their faces and wake them well before the crack of noon.
Twilight Velvet rolled to her back and pushed the covers from her body. “There’s somepony at the door,” she mumbled.
“...the mail pony,” said her husband, his eyes still closed and giving away nothing to suggest he was awake, though she knew he – like she – reluctantly was. Night Light opened his eyes. “No, I don’t think it is.”
Twilight yawned, then pulled the blankets to herself. She’d been up later than her usual, working late into the night with her writing and was now reluctant to get up at all. “You get it.”
Yawning and in no rush himself, Night Light pulled free from the coverings and went to the window. The curtains rustled and crackled as peeked through them. “Ah.”
“Ah?” Twilight Velvet recognized a theatrical understatement when she heard one.
“It’s not the mail pony.”
“Then who is it?”
“Our daughter.”
“It’s a bit early in the morning for her, isn’t it?” Mother was a night owl, and so was Father. Daughter had inherited the double whammy dose of that. Their son was the only early riser in the family, sporty, outdoorsy and sociable, making him the white sheep in the family.
“And Celestia.”
This gave Twilight Velvet pause for thought. Celestia was the definitive early riser. By her very nature she rose so that other ponies had mornings at all. “It’s still rather early for a house call,” she said, not that she was complaining. The mare grunted and with some effort of willpower flung the blankets from her body. The air wasn’t cold, but compared to the snuggly heat she’d shared with her husband and just thrown away it might as well have been. She rolled to her hooves and, taking Night Light’s spot by the window looked down to see what was indeed their daughter and their princess. “I’ll put the coffee on,” she yawned.
“We better go see what they want.”
“Mhmm. And what they want is me to be reasonable. I want a hot drop. We’ll all be better off with a fresh pot,” she suggested. The curtains snapped back into place, etching the bedroom with neat rows of sunlight and then the two ponies were gone from it to face the day.
Night Light nodded. “Milk and one sugar. Small.” He was reciting Celestia’s preference.
“Milk and two sugars. And big ones.”
Her husband looked ever so slightly affronted. “She’s always said one small sugar.”
“Celestia always says one small sugar. What she actually wants is two heaping big ones, but she’s afraid to be seen as the sort of pony that wants two big sugars, so she denies herself. Trust me on this. I’m a writer. I know things.”
Celestia had visited Twilight Sparkle’s parents a smattering of times over the years, always on the pretext of discussing their daughter’s progress in her studies, and their son’s progress in the Royal Guard. Celestia took an interest in and could adroitly discuss Night Light’s work regarding celestial bodies. She’d never taken anything more than polite conversational interest as to Twilight Velvet’s novels, but she’d never taken anything less than polite interest either. Celestia would ask after the generalities of her writing and Twilight would take the chance to speak to her princess about stories – in general terms of course, discussing characters and ideas while topically avoiding more of the cushy, tingly-in-the-belly feeling, titillating aspects that sold them.
These visits weren’t often, maybe once or twice a year for a morning or an hour in the afternoon. Sometimes a year went by with no visit at all. Now that their one child was married and the other was a crowned princess such visits were rare indeed. Even so, Night Light and Twilight Velvet felt they were closer to Celestia than most ponies. Even if the gentry that paraded up and down the castle’s regular galas saw the princess much more often and often clamoured for her favour, Night and Twilight believed they knew more about Celestia as a person.
And Twilight Velvet was absolutely positive about the two sugars thing. She’d even affected one of her characters with that same wanting and not asking quality. It’d made for a good foreplay scene, actually, one that had taken her romping young and socially constrained paramours and, after much ado about kissy faces, laid them embraced in one another's hooves atop the embroidered table cloth. They’d spilled the sugar bowl over naturally, scattering sugar everywhere, because that sort of thing was to be expected and, while perhaps cliché was symbolically appropriate and indicative. It made the Twilight Velvet giddy in her soul to know she was the only one knew the secret origin of that little quirk. That it was Celestia herself! And maybe Night Light knew now, of course, whom long had served as a wonderfully uncompromising and very candid sounding board to Twilight Velvet’s ideas, and always gave her at least half or one third an ear, just as she did to his latest postulations on planets and stars, nebulae and things like that.
They came down the stairs, one after the other. Then they were at the door. She’d said she’d get the coffee on, and she would, she also knew she really did not want to miss this moment. Now that Twilight Velvet was upright and nominally awake her romantic senses were tingling in a familiar way. Something was in the air.
It put a smile on her face, and even her dour husband was picking up on the budding excitement. Twilight Velvet cast her spell. The handle turned and the door opened.
Twilight Sparkle waited anxiously. Maybe mom and dad weren’t in. Maybe they should go, but no, they’d planned this. Mom and dad would be here. They had to be. She tried not to jitter on her hooves, she didn’t want to seem anxious. Celestia was quiet and still beside her, a big part of Twilight wanted to lean up against her for reassurance, but she reigned it in. She had to prove this wasn’t some kind of passing fancy or unhealthy infatuation. Of course it wasn’t, she wanted to shout it out that it wasn’t, maybe it had been once upon a time – okay, yes, it had started out as something immature, but that had been years ago, before she was grown enough to really be ready for the gravity of this. She’d endured years of fanciful, wishful thinking, hidden away sighs. Heated lusts and damp despairs. Endured her own denial and obfuscation.
Waiting for the door to open was a trial in its own right. Maybe it was all a mistake. Maybe every time Twilight Sparkle had ever told herself she was being foolish and ridiculous she’d always been right. Maybe there was no such thing as a healthy, genuine relationship in this circumstance – maybe there would always be too much of the teacher and student between them to ever change how they could treat one another, maybe just being ageless would forever exempt Celestia from having a special somepony of her own.
Twilight Sparkle saw the kind, worried smile of Celestia. She banished her doubts. Celestia deserved this chance at personal happiness. Twilight deserved this chance. She smiled to Celestia, hoping to convey her thought: See, we’re doing it, we’re really doing it and we’re waiting and everything is good. Celestia said quietly, “They’re here,” and just like that the door handle turned, the door opened and two ponies became four ponies.
Every iteration of a script Twilight had prepared disappeared without trace from her memory. She stood for one of the most awkward seconds of her life, then sighed. It became a fleeting sensation of clarity and Twilight relaxed. The anxiety went out of her and she even chuckled softly. Pinkie Pie would have loved the silliness of the situation. Rarity would have been enamoured with the romantic notions of it. “Hi mom, hi dad. Can we come inside? There’s something we want to talk about.”
“Night Light. Twilight Velvet.” Celestia nodded a respectful bow to each.
Dad was looking between them, then just at Celestia, and applying to her the same untroubled, inquisitive expression he took with him to the observatory every evening. Twilight’s hopeful smile was tight and achey. “Of course you can come in,” he said. Twilight breathed relief. “Always.” He took a step back and his hoof was out in invitation.
“Princess, you’re always welcome in our home. Please, come inside.”
Celestia’s great size, usually such a hallmark of her commanding presence and general supremacy, had the opposite effect when faced with as simple a thing as a house. She was graceful as ever, following after Twilight like a summer breeze, her wings held privately to herself and her head kept low from the ceiling. Graceful, careful and disturbing nothing. Like supplication, Twilight thought. Or humility. The carpet was soft and pleasant under her hooves.
“One sugar as always, princess?”
“No, it’s quite alright, but thank you for the kind thought, Twilight Velvet.”
“I’ve already got the water boiling for Light and myself so it’s no trouble at all.” The kitchen was generously spacious Dad was already putting the mugs out, and even though Celestia had declined he went on anyway and put out a fourth all the same. “I insist,” Mom said pleasantly.
“Oh, if you insist, then yes. One small sugar.”
Twilight Sparkle had never been party to the meetings between Celestia and her family, in fact, Celestia had only recently alluded to them. Twilight had coaxed more from her fillyfriend. Celestia, her fillyfriend! the terminology was so weird when Twilight tried to apply it to her own life. It sounded so normal when other ponies used the term. Here, though, between them, it felt odd and out of place, yet with a promise of excitement and change, too, like a summer thunderstorm.
Celestia hadn’t given away much, actually. Twilight watched the scene in the kitchen unfold. It was a familiar one to her parents and her princess, her once teacher, her fillyfriend, the terminologies piled up against her reasoning, spinning across one another like a dictionary with vertigo. As she watched, one small spoon of sugar became two large portions. Nopony mentioned it, though Twilight Sparkle was certain that all four present must have seen the discrepancy. She was awed.
She’d thought she was the only to discover that little secret of Celestia’s. Back then, it’d been a fleeting observation followed by some very mild experimentation, conducted with exemplary scientific methodology. It hadn’t been hard. Taking into account time of day and most recent meal, and using coffee (and tea!) she’d prepared herself and, of course, the appropriately controlled measured sugar-measurements.
From there all Twilight Sparkle had to do was run samples on Celestia and gauge reactions. “Do you like it?” She loved asking that, and she loved the answers she got. She’d enjoyed doing these things for Celestia. Making her own little study of it had been a cherry on top. In Twilight’s own way, it helped her feel closer, more attuned to the subtleties of the beautiful princess. In the end, observations had corroborated the hypothesis. Science had spoken its decree. Celestia did indeed prefer more sugary brews, whether she would confess to the sin or not.
Presently they were in the kitchen. “Sorry about the table,” said mommy Twilight, “it’s a bit of a mess.” There were sheets of paper about the place, mostly in kept in organized folders and coloured ring binders, but a few loose pages also. It wasn’t really a mess at all, but that was the sort of thing ponies are always saying to one another. Twilight Sparkle vaguely recalled something about some mixed papers between her parents once upon a time and, one thing leading to another, a newly discovered astral body ended up with the name The Very Saucy Nebulae. Dad had told her it was because it had reminded somepony of the lunch they’d had that day, but Twilight now felt that this had in fact been the ‘official’ version of a much different tale.
She watched and Celestia took the proffered coffee and sipped, her features painted with careful pleasure. Mom was already pouring out the others and clearing a little more room on the table.
“So,” said Twilight Velvet, “what brings you home?”
“I-”
“We-”
Celestia and Twilight Sparkle shared a look. Twilight could have been nervous, terribly, horribly, heart and sweat and restless legs nervous, but just knowing that she wasn’t alone, that she was sharing everything that she could here and now with Celestia made her giddy, even glad, and she floated atop the anxiety. She flashed a hopeful smile and took the lead.
“Well,” she said, deciding to breath and throw away all preamble, “what if I said that Celestia and I are.. that we are... well... special someponies?”
Mom was a pair of big, innocent eyes hiding behind her daintily held mug, while Dad – Night Light – leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee. He wasn’t a noisy drinker but in the pin-drop silence the slurp was very audible. He went, ‘huh’ as both Twilights had always known him to do when he was pondering his way to the correct answer to an interesting question.
“That depends,” he said. “Did you just tell us that the two of you are special someponies, or is this simply hypothetical?” Trust Dad of all ponies – one scientist to another – to force her to distinguish between the hypothetical and practical models. To make her spell it out and declare their relationship like an axiom. Night Light’s mouth turned up in the tiniest of little smiles, and just like that Twilight Sparkle was remembering one of the earliest - and silliest - mnemonic devices she could remember him teaching her:
“How do we know that the sun is a star? Because it’s the start to every day.
He’d flashed her the very same smile then.
It was a good sign. In fact, it was a great sign. Wonderful, even. Twilight Sparkle didn’t realize she was trembling until Celestia’s hoof found her side.
Twilight Velvet put her mug down with enough of a clink to grab even Night Light’s attention, and it was to him she spoke. It was prudent that she’d put the drink down; her hooves further expressed her exasperbated words. “Where are they getting it from? Is it your half of the family or mine that’s carrying the alicorn seducing genes?”
“Mom!”
Night Light was chill as winter when he simply replied, “we could always divorce, and each of us pursue Princess Luna. We could have definitive evidence that way.”
“Dad!”
“Oh hush.” She turned to her husband. “And that’s very drastic. We hardly need to divorce for something like that, not in this day and age.” Twilight Velvet drained the top off her cup – being something of a caffeine addict, writer that she was – and spoke with perfect droll reasonableness. “If the historical romance books aren’t exaggerating too much, then I might say it’s especially not necessary, considering her day and age.”
“Mom!”
There was a crash of feathers and tangled limbs kitchen window, blurring to the flagstones in a blurr of white and pink and the ‘oof!’ of impact. The sliding door shot open and the sovereigns of the Crystal Empire rushed to squeeze through.
“Shining!”
“Cadance!”
“Twilight!”
“Mom! Dad!”
“Luna!” shouted Luna.
Everypony stopped.
All eyes were on Luna, and considering how many ponies now populated the kitchen - some of them giants - there was hardly the room to put them all there. The air was cloistered with colourful horns and wings. “I was feeling left out...” she mumbled meekly. She thrust out a hoof at the rulers of the Crystal Empire, nearly toppling poor Night Light in the process and declared, “If these two get to go sneaking off to spy on this auspicious occasion, then surely I do as well!”
“We weren’t spying!” said Shining. “Not really spying. Not like, your actual spying. It was just, you know, concerned spying. Concern-ing.”
“We just wanted to make sure everything went smoothly,” said Cadance through a smile of clenched teeth. “There was shouting.”
Twilight Sparkle knew what they meant. She wasn’t impressed. “Potted plants?” she asked, managing to put in three syllables a potent cocktail mix of snark, grudge and irony. “Really?”
Shining Armour gave a less than instantaneous and total denial. So she provided it for him. “It was one time!” she shouted. “One time!”
“So was the living room!”
“We got watered,” Twilight Velvet mused nostalgically.
“I remember that. It was one of your teachers, I think. It means a lot, to a potted plant.”
“We’ve always been very considerate of our own plants since, you know. Having been a mile in their horseshoes, figuratively speaking.”
“Your mom keeps a lovely garden,” said Night Light. “Luna, be sure to visit the front yard before you go.”
“Certainly,” the alicorn of the night said pleasantly.
Cadance waved desperately to clear the air of its present insanity. “Wait wait wait. Luna. When did you get here?”
The dark alicorn cleared her throat in a haughty fashion. “I left right when the both of you did. I felt it was wise to watch the two of you, considering my sister’s request of me. That decision proved wise indeed,” she said with heavy reproach.
Shining Armour was pouting. “You were spying on us?”
“Better than you were spying on our sister, yes indeed. Celestia, dost thou have anything to say?”
Again all eyes settled on one pony. Celestia took a moment to consider. “Oh no,” she said meekly, managing to pull something of a Fluttershy and hide demurely behind her little coffee mug. “You all just carry on. Don’t worry about me.”
Taking her opportunity from the renewed argument of Crystal Empire versus The Night, Twilight Sparkle leaned over, craning her neck to whisper to Celestia “Are you okay?”
“I am,” came the quiet reply. Celestia was smiling, Twilight saw, and her eyes shone bright. “More than fine, in fact. Is this normal, in a family?” Twilight Sparkle had never seen her former mentor wonderstruck before, but she recognized the expression now.
“For a given value of normal...probably not. But maybe it is. I suppose that, whether it is or isn’t, it’s the life we’re living regardless?”
“That’s a very philosophic answer, Twilight.”
Twilight had been denying herself all morning, not wanting to seem to her parents clingy and needy with Celestia. It wouldn’t have helped the argument she felt she needed to make, that this relationship wasn’t founded on infatuation and obsession. Twilight Sparkle indulged herself now, leaning herself against the bigger alicorn. Celestia was warm, and soft, and steady. A hundred positive adjectives and more ambled in a rolling procession through Twilight’s mind. Celestia was great. Really great. “I learned a lot,” Twilight murmured into her warm coat.
Celestia leaned gently on Twilight and the warmth between their bodies became better. “That you did. I just hope I’m learning as much now.”
“I’m sure we will.” Twilight closed her eyes and they cuddled like that for a quiet moment.
After a moment of perfection, the silence was spoiled by a sniffle. They looked from their cozy corner. Cadance’s eyes were wet and trembling. “Don’t let us interrupt,” she whimpered. Shining was even worse; tears were already coursing down his reddened cheeks. Only great resolve held him back from all-out blubbering.
Luna watched with interest. She nudged a tissue box towards the others.
“Thank you,” Cadance said in a quivering voice, drippy-nosed and full of emotion. Her voice. Not her nose.
Her nose was full of teary-eyed boogers.
Twilight Sparkle turned and asked. “Are...are you all okay?” To all appearances Shining Armour looked like he was actually about to start wailing.
“We’re fine, Twiley, we’re fine,” he managed to choke out around stifled sobs. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry!”
Celestia and Twilight Sparkle both felt rather self-conscious. They didn’t break off their embrace, it was just hard to focus on enjoying it when it was under so much attention. Night Light and Twilight Velvet looked more bemused than anything, but pride and amusement lit up their features, too.
After a while of quiet, Night Light spoke. “Luna,” he said suddenly, turning to address the alicorn by the back door, “if you had to pick between us, that being Twilight Velvet or myself, which would you choose?”
“Choose in what manner?”
“As a romantic or sexual partner.”
“That is an unusual proposition.”
“It’s for science.”
“Well,” Pondered the dark princess. “If it’s for science...”
The warm fuzzy bubble they’d been in, Celestia and her, burst all at once. Dad could not have killed the mood more aptly if he’d bombarded it from high orbit, Twilight Velvet thought.
“Oh, Night Light,” Cadance gently rebuked.
“Not your best timing, dear,” Twilight Velvet said wearily. Shining just kept on crying.
It took on new appropriate-ness.
“It was an important question.” His voice was prickly. “Sorry,” he said at last. “You can tell us the answer later. It might not be the best time just now.”
Luna was frowning, eyeing them both. She nibbled her lip thoughtfully, leaving a considerable number of world leaders hanging on her next words. Then she announced, “I will.”
“Let’s not get involved,” Twilight Sparkle suggested into Celestia’s ear.
“Indeed.” There was a trace worry and uncertainty there, but also fascination. Then it hid and Celestia was as Celestia always had been. “Luna, if you are here, then who’s in the castle?”
Luna turned her nose up. “I called recess.” She held the haughty, offended poise for a moment, but eventually it was cracked from within by smile. She stamped a hoof and insisted, “I could not sit by and miss you and Twilight declare thy amorous intent for one another before her parents!”
Without pause the night princess dropped all semblance of excitement and leaned towards said parents. Her eyes were locked to Celestia’s with impish mirth as she said, “I often raid their dreams, my sister’s and your daughter’s. It is gleeful. Would you like to know more?”
“Y-”
Night Light was just about to raise his hoof when his wife held it down. Her eyes went to Twilight Sparkle’s. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Ah, um, no. That’s quite alright.”
“That’s right.”
Twilight the mother gave Twilight the daughter a knowing smile, as if to remind her that alicorn princess she may be now, and full to bursting with pride they as parents were for that, but mom was still Mom and mother knew best. “Thanks, mom.”
“As for you, princess, that was mean, and you should know better. You shouldn’t go sharing the dreams of ponies that don’t want them shared. It’s not appropriate.”
Luna, who was quite capable of levelling a city, listened to the words of the middled-aged writer. Then she bowed her head in a sulk. “ ‘twas not really going to spoil them.”
Twilight Velvet was merciless. Twilight Sparkle kept smiling, trying to keep camouflaged best as possible while doing nothing at all, but her very soul felt as if it were steadily trying to slink away from her. It was something in that stern voice, a command harmonic, perhaps a mom thing. It brought every reprimand and chastisement from Twilight Sparkle’s childhood out of retirement and sent them pushing against her mind. And she wasn’t even the one being addressed!
“Then you shouldn’t have said that you were going to.”
Luna had her wings hung limp and head somewhere down by her knees, lips pouted. It occurred to Twilight Sparkle that Luna might be doing this for fun. Twilight knew the alicorn to be very expressive, but this struck her as overacting the part. It occurred to her again, with no less shock, that maybe her own mother was having just as much fun with it.
It gave Twilight Sparkle no conclusive answer and something new to ponder, but Luna brightened up quickly. She addressed her directly. “Forgive my mischief. You actually have sweet dreams. Wonderful and kind. May your bond with Celestia prove as gentle in the waking world as it is in the dreaming one. It is time for me to go; I believe I already know what the official response of the family here to be.”
Proud as polished silver, Luna hoisted herself high and marched to the backdoor. She paused, her hoof caught mid step. She turned and put it down with a decided click. “Ah, one final thing. Twilight Velvet. It is a bold mare indeed who would chastise my conduct as unbecoming when her own husband has petitioned Us for amorous relations not two minutes before! Luna’s laughs were as loud as lion roars, each a separate, hearty and distinct Ha! Ha! Ha!
Twilight Velvet’s polite smile was fixed in place and her eyes were bright with the joy of competition. Night Light looked deep in thought. “It’s an open question,” he mused, probably not even realizing he spoke the thought aloud.
Luna had the gumption to pat him on the head. “Sleep on it, both of you,” she suggested with the utmost sweetness.
That did it.
Twilight Velvet’s eyes widened as the suggestion unfurled itself for her. Her cheeks filled with colour and Twilight Sparkle’s mom was rocked with the effort of not cursing or laughing, her composure broken.
Luna winked. She punched the air, coming just shy of destroying the ceiling. “I win!” she declared. She was already vanishing out the door and beating the air with her wings.
Twilight Sparkle was not sure how to feel, far from it. Celestia was smiling with playful humour. She took her cue from that, confident in her belief that seeing Celestia smile was one of the single greatest things. Every hesitation and doubt she had seemed silly and adorable now. There was a whole lot Twilight Sparkle didn’t know, but she had one thing she was certain of.
“I love you.”
She felt the faintest jolt go through Celestia. She saw Celestia’s fear, here and gone in an instant. “It scares me,” she confessed, “to love. To love like this.” Celestia raised her voice and it did not falter. “I love you, Twilight Sparkle. I love you.
“Twilight Velvet. Night Light,” she addressed them each with respectful bows, as if they were the royalty here and not she. “All diversions aside, all silliness aside, that is what I came here to proclaim. That I love your daughter. I have for a long time denied it, rationalized it, bargained with it and found a thousand and one hundred and ten more dispassionate reasons why I should not love her like this.
“And yet... I do. It terrifies me even to admit it, and even more to feel it. Even now I fear that I should not have this, that I do not deserve this.” Now their eyes were locked together, though Celestia addressed them all. “But I look at Twilight Sparkle and I feel I can be braver than ever I thought possible.”
“Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her right now, damnit!” hissed Cadance, bouncing in place. She looked ready to crawl over the table and physically mash their faces together to assure this happening; Shining Armour held her back.
Celestia gave no sign that she’d noticed the exchange, but took the suggestion all the same. Twilight Sparkle saw the signs and met her halfway, one head lowered, one raised. Together, their lips met, tender and gentle.
“Yes, yes!”
“Cadance!” chided Shining. A slender, deceptively powerful foreleg drew the stallion into a tight embrace. “Mmph!” he squawked as she locked lips hungrily with his.
Night Light caught a glimmer at the edge of sight. The floor was beginning to crystallize. Crystals were already crawling up on his chair leg. He shuffled his hooves quietly out of the way. A warm summer breeze seemed to be blowing across the table from his daughter and her lover.
Night Light turned to his wife. They supped their coffees. “Alicorns.”
Twilight Velvet repeated the sigh, maybe emphasizing the pleasure and humour in it just a little. She always had expressed himself better than he did. “Alicorns,” she agreed.
Night Light let the kissy-kissy carry on for a little while. Not long – these were his children after all, and his kitchen, the breeze was getting decidedly warmer and if he left it any longer he was fairly certain his butt was going to begin crystallizing also.
Night Light cleared his throat with due noisiness. The quiet moans went away reluctantly. He spoke with low severity. “Twilight. When your brother and Mi Amore came to us with their intentions-” The former blushed, the latter clamped down on a silly grin and Twilight Velvet cast her husband a crafty sidelong glance, “Came to us with their intentions,” he repeated more firmly, “Your mother and I were shocked.”
“Shocked,” agreed Twilight Velvet, eyeing her daughter meaningfully. “They were quite the intentions, you realize.” She wiggled her eyebrows and Twilight Sparkle grew flustered.
Night Light paused to sip his coffee, then forged ahead. “We were shocked. But we weren’t surprised.
“You have to remember, we’ve known Mi Amore for many years. It was your mother who first pointed out to me the way our son and our babysitter looked at one another.”
“More so when they thought we couldn’t see them,” chimed Twilight Velvet, who not only had a sense for such things but had built a career on it. Dad might have been romantically naive, Twilight knew – she’d inherited that one from him – but mom had enough romantic guile for two or three ponies.
“We lent our heart to their relationship-”
“and still do.”
“And still do, because at the end we know they care deeply for one another.”
“It’s true,” said Shining Armour. Cadance pecked him a quick kiss.
Twilight Velvet said, “your case isn’t entirely different, Twilight. More extreme,” she admitted, “but not entirely different.”
“We’ve known Celestia for years, and while I know I can say your mother and I have some concerns about how soon it seems this has happened between you, I don’t think either of us are entirely surprised. You are younger than Shining was and, forgive me for saying say, Princess, you are older than Cadance was.”
“It helped that they were of an age.”
Cadance buffeted her wings and raised her voice. “But they really love each other! Nopony has to be me to see that.”
“Let us finish,” Twilight Velvet said calmly. “Celestia...in some ways you’ve been closer to my daughter through her childhood than we have. I’m not sure how I feel about that. We both know that if this relationship with Twilight is based on a fault, we would consider it your experience to blame far more than her naivete.”
“Mom!”
“Twilight Sparkle do not interrupt me.”
“But-”
“No buts!” Twilight Velvet shouted. “Sit yours down, sweetie.” She sighed and regarded the two alicorns. Her daughter had always been a pony given to strong passions, though always denying it. “Celestia, I look at you and her and I find myself hoping and believing that you have always been wholesome and good regarding our child when she was in your tutelage. And now our child is an adult – albeit a very young one – and we couldn’t stop her in pursuing this if we wanted to. But I expect our regard means enough to you, Celestia, to end this.”
Mom and dad shared a wordless exchange. Cadance held her breath. Shining Armour couldn’t watch, hid his eyes then peeked from under his hoof. “We don’t want to,” Night Light at last said to the sounds of relieved breaths. “Celestia, you’ve been at the centre of Twilight’s life for many years. Many things have changed in that time but that fact, we know, has not. If this is the way forwards in making her happy, in each of you making one another happy, then so be it. You have our blessing and support in pursuing this relationship.”
Twilight Velvet held her princess’ eyes and did not blink or turn away. “Celestia, what a strange and charmed life you lead. Be good to our daughter, as you were before.” After a moment her smile flickered to life. “I know she’ll prove a loving companion.”
Twilight Sparkle didn’t know what to say. The silence that fell over the kitchen was absolute. This was it. The approval they had come for, and been so afraid of seeking out. She trembled and realized that Celestia was crying. Glittering tears trailed down and fell from her face. She brushed on away. It was hot on her hoof. “Celestia?”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m overwhelmed. This...this has meant so much to me. Twilight, to be loved, to be the object of your love, to be accepted... it is wonderful. Night Light, Twilight Velvet, thank you.”
Twilight Sparkle put her hooves around Celestia and held her as she cried. “Let’s go,” she suggested after a time, “it’s a beautiful day. We have time, Luna will cover for us.”
“Yes,” Celestia said, letting Twilight lead her to her to the door. “Cadance. Shining. Despite going against our wishes...I am glad you were here. Thank you.”
“Any time you need us,” said Shining Armour.
“Go,” urged Cadance, “enjoy yourselves. I’d like to stay and visit. We haven’t visited for a while.”
“Night and I would love that.”
“See you,” Twilight Sparkle said. “And thank you.” There’d be time to talk at length. Just not now. They had made their milestone. Now they were outside, at the back of the house of Twilight’s family home. It was sunny and bright and at once both very different and very familiar to how she recalled it. “What would you like to do now?”
Celestia had stopped crying. Her tears were drying quickly in the sunlight. “I would like very much to walk around the city and simply be for a while.”
Twilight pressed against her as they walked. She flicked her horn and the discretion spell was once more upon them. “Like a couple?”
“Like a couple.” They were on the sidewalk. The city centre was an instant away for them whether by horn or by wing, but they both enjoyed the simplicity of walking there. They parted around ponies that never saw them and came together again as a pair.
“They’ll be talking about us, back at the house.”
“I’m sure they will be.” Celestia paused. An earth pony was up a tree, pruning the branches into a tidy shape. Across the street a group of ponies – grown and foals alike – crowded at an ice cream vendor. “They mean well.”
“Did I ever show you my favourite bookstore?
“I don’t believe you did.”
“That’s it there.”
“It looks very nice.”
“It gets better,” said Twilight. “Come on, I’ll show you!”
Twilight took Celestia’s hoof and lead her inside. She was right. It did get better.
