“Seven years,” said Twilight simply. She caught herself, scrunching her lips for a moment while she reconsidered her statement. “I think it was eight years, actually.”
Celestia snuck a hoof under the table, teasing Twilight’s thigh. “Eight years... really? That long?” She watched, delighted as Twilight’s face squirmed and twitched from the intimate contact. “I seem to remember you coming around much sooner than that, Twilight. At least, you were very disappointed to leave Canterlot.”
Twilight lifted a wine-filled glass to her lips, face still twitching. A pleasant tingle crawled up her spine, starting from where Celestia’s warm hoof stroked her thigh. She made a little hiccup and said, “Oh? You seem to think it was fewer? Beyond five, it starts getting hazy. How old was I when I left for Ponyville? Sixteen? Seventeen maybe?”
“You were definitely seventeen, nearly eighteen as I recall.”
Twilight chortled before sipping her wine. “Funny you remember that!”
“Funny you don’t!”
Twilight snorted into her wine glass, sending a purple spray around the inside. “Oh, believe me, I remember things. Like how you wanted me to start spending late nights in study here at the castle, then innocently offer to let me sleep in your bed because it was too late to walk home. Then you began insisting that I have my birthday parties here, too.” She bent over the table to glare at Celestia, crumpling a napkin beneath her chest as she did. “Every. Single. Birthday. I didn’t care—parties were parties—but looking back on it, how could my parents not be concerned?”
“And they had every right to be concerned,” chuckled Celestia, “which is why I permitted them to come and supervise you during our lessons.”
Twilight grinned slyly. “Supervise me?”
“Erm….well, both of us,” replied Celestia sheepishly. “Mostly me, but on paper it was for you.” Her horn glowed for a moment, and the tiny bell on the table hoisted itself in the air and shook briefly. A castle butler promptly responded to the summons. He seemed a bit hot under the collar before the two princesses, and seemed sweatier than most other butlers.
“Are you through with your dinners, Your...M-Majesties?” he stammered.
Twilight hesitated. What gave Twilight pause was not seeing Celestia’s half-finished lasagna, nor was it the sweaty castle butler raising the local humidity. She looked down at her three plates—licked clean—with a touch of self-loathing.
“Celestia? Have you had enough?” she said.
“Mmm, yes, the lasagna was rich and filling,” replied Celestia.
“I mean, have you had enough?”
“Perhaps, but have you had enough, my dear?” said Celestia, grinning. Her stroking hoof slowly slid from Twilight’s thigh. The butler coughed wetly as though glue was stuck in his throat. It took Twilight a moment to grab Celestia’s attention with a quick jerk from her head. The butler attempted looking around the room at anything but the two princesses, a rather difficult exercise. Celestia held a steady smirk.
“Yes, I believe we are through with our meals,” she said.
In the blink of an eye, the butler swept the dishes from the table, keeping his gaze fixed on the shining china plates. He reached for the bottle of wine and the two glasses before the princesses.
“Leave those here,” halted Twilight with a sudden wave of her hoof.
The butler nodded curtly and carried the plates away without saying a word, the beads of sweat on his brow nearly the size of marbles. As soon as he had left the room, Twilight and Celestia heard the butler loudly exhale with relief. The two sat in silence while they waited for the awkwardness of their recent exchange to dissolve; apparently it had missed the hint to leave with the butler.
Celestia coughed, then spoke. “On a more topical note, I need you to remind me that I have a surprise for you later.”
“You didn’t need to get me anything. I’ve already got Starswirl’s Complete Astronomical Compendium. My life is complete,” joked Twilight.
“Nevertheless,” continued Celestia, “a surprise awaits you on the coming of your one-hundredth year. I need you to remind me at midnight in the event that I doze off into a wine-coma before then.” To punctuate this, she reached for the bottle and proceeded to top off her glass.
“Suppose I’ll have to oblige, at the rate you’re going,” chuckled Twilight. She gazed out the window to the tranquil scene of Canterlot on a midsummer’s eve. The sun hung low and weary on the horizon, splashing the landscape with stretched shadows and threadbare strands of golden sunlight. Canterlot Castle’s towers, with their various colorful domes and spires, all looked black against the shining backdrop of the setting sun. Below them, Canterlot lay dotted with rectangular buildings that seemed to merge into a single entity beneath a faint yellow haze as the remaining sunlight made its retreat. Above, a few stars began peeking out from within a deepening purple ocean of sky.
“Ah,” sighed Celestia, “I swear that gets me every time I see it.”
“See what?” asked Twilight.
“Your mane. It’s grown so I can barely tell the difference between it and the twilight sky.”
Twilight smiled, running her hoof through her sparkling purple mane. “You know, your mane caught me off guard the same way when I first saw it.
“What, this old thing?” teased Celestia, lightly whipping her flowing mane about her shoulders.
“When I first saw it I thought I was just seeing things. Even at that age...huh,” Twilight mused. “I couldn’t believe what I couldn’t explain. You were kind of a fairy tale to me, out there among the stars, moving suns and moons—you didn’t seem real to me.”
“You did have a certain ‘knack’ for disbelief,” murmured Celestia. “I’m glad we broke you of that. There are wonderful things in the world you would never have known because you couldn’t believe or understand, mane notwithstanding. You definitely needed to get out more, hence your Ponyville experience.”
Twilight shrugged. “Well, I needed something to get the stick out of my rump.”
“....I wasn’t going to say it, but….”
“But even before that,” Twilight continued, “I wasn’t a complete closet-case. Being your pupil may have been my dream come true, but it was also way outside my box. The night after I was accepted into you School for Gifted Unicorns, I didn’t sleep a wink. I kept thinking that I might screw up somehow, make you regret your decision to admit me. I mean, I’d made quite a show at the entry test, but there was no way I could repeat that performance on command.”
“Ah, you see? That was one of your problems!” inserted Celestia. She reached for the wine bottle—nearly empty—and spun it under her hoof, letting its contents swirl lazily. “You always thought you needed to do things to impress me, always thought that you had to hatch a baby dragon from a polka-dot egg to get a gold star.”
“I was young,” said Twilight. “You know I couldn’t have survived without anything less than a fifty-page research paper at the end of the week.”
“Exactly why I wouldn’t have eased up on you anyway.” Celestia stretched her forehooves behind her head and gazed longingly at the nearly empty bottle of wine. She looked up pleadingly at Twilight. “Mind if I polish that off?”
“Go for it.”
The bottle rose into the air and floated towards Celestia, and was upended above her open mouth. A little red drop slid from Celestia’s lips, and she licked it up, struggling as though her tongue didn’t quite know which side of her mouth the drop was on.
“As I was saying,” she continued, “I wasn’t going to ease up on you just because I had feelings for you; more the opposite, actually. Too many times had I watched you toil over a color transformation spell because your product was just barely off-hue. Too many times had I received your assignments written in triplicate or quadruplicate, only to find out that you had five more written copies just in case I didn’t get the others. If I’d given you any less work, you’d probably end up taking over Equestria just for something to do, or—” she put an extra snicker with her last statement “—charming all of Ponyville with ‘Want-It, Need-It’ spells. It would be against your grain.”
“I thought I needed some of that, some out-of-box experiences,” said Twilight. “That’s why you sent me to Ponyville, among other reasons.”
“Ha! Other reasons! You want to hear some other reasons?” laughed Celestia. Suddenly she stood up with an air of vague irritation, and a frown on her face that wasn’t sure if it wanted to be a grin. “How about another out-of-box experience?” she said. “Or, an out-of-castle experience, might be the appropriate term. I’m getting a terrible headache in this bright dining hall. I need to step outside for some air. Come with me, Twi?”
“Is that a request, or a demand, Your Highness?”
There was a moment where neither pony said a word, only staring at each other as though the other had said something completely inappropriate. Then Celestia stepped over to Twilight and bent her head to kiss her on the neck.
“Call it an assignment. I know how much you like those.”
A warmth grew in the pit of Twilight’s stomach. She shuddered as though a gust of wind had gone beneath her. “Should I expect any gold stars from it?” she said airily.
Celestia nuzzled Twilight’s mane gently, then whispered in her ear. “Let’s see if you pass first.”
*****
Evening had left only left the moon, the stars, and a few fireflies to light the way as Twilight and Celestia ventured silently together into the castle garden. They kept their bodies close, pressing their necks together frequently. The night air was fresh and cool, and carried a rich scent from the grass upon which they trod. For Twilight, the night felt like jumping into a cold pool of water, then warming herself against Celestia’s soft side. Her head swam as she stepped in and out of night and warmth, relishing the delightful contrast. She felt she could be walking through a dream, with the lights of the sky and the garden sparkling around them in unison, almost seamlessly merging sky and earth. The two ponies wandered together through the garden aimlessly, letting their emotion and the night breeze carry them where it would.
After minutes that could easily have been hours, Twilight and Celestia reached the center of the garden. A fountain stood in the center of a small lawn, bordered by hedges and rose bushes. Fireflies danced around the marble statue of an alicorn rearing its hooves boldly above the splashing water.
Celestia shuddered as a sudden gust ruffled her feathers. “Brr! Unusually chilly for this late in the summer. Not a cloud in the sky. Perhaps Cloudsdale didn’t have anywhere else to send a perfectly clear night.” She paused to peer up at the starlit sky. “And my compliments to them if they didn’t.”
The pair approached the fountain and sat down beside it. They rested their necks against each other, each feeling the warm heartbeat the other provided. Celestia inclined her head to the pristine night sky, a sort of wistful longing in her gaze, like she was lost in a fading memory.
“My sister seems to get better at her craft each night she plies it,” she said, speaking upwards as though addressing the stars themselves. She turned to Twilight, still with that distant haze in her eyes. “I don’t think I ever told Luna, but I was always a tad bit jealous of her. I didn’t realize just how….still the night is. She gets to preside over millions of stars, each tiny, glittering diamond, and they don’t exactly have to govern the seasons, either. Get a Betelgeuse or an Andromeda out of place, and the world won’t melt; worst case, Ursa Major may have an extra leg. I suppose some seafarers might end up discovering the wrong continent.”
Twilight laid her head against Celestia’s side, giving no hint that she’d heard anything Celestia had said. “Those stars have been up there since the dawn of time. It seems terrible to live forever,” she said.
Celestia gave a half-nod, but remained silent.
Twilight continued. “How have you put up with it for so long? With so many years to live, doesn’t life get...I don’t know...pointless? Not that you run out of things to do, but that the business of living itself just gets stale?”
“Twilight, my dear,” Celestia replied, “You make life anything but stale.”
“Right,” chuckled Twilight. “That reply felt so well-rehearsed, the understudy just lost his job security. Come on now, level with me. I’ve lived ninety-nine years now—a hundred come midnight—and it’s already starting to feel like I’ve lived too long, like I’m a ghost from another time. I feel like I’m vanishing into thin air.”
“I… hmm… ” hummed Celestia.
Those were the last words spoken for a while afterwards, with the two of them sitting side by side against the rim of the fountain admiring the nighttime sights. Twilight laid her hooves behind her head and continued looking dead upwards as if she expected an answer to come falling out of the sky. Celestia hung on Twilight’s words, but made no attempt at a further reply, and could not herself understand what made them so hard. Her head began to droop slightly.
Twilight at length found some words to pluck out of her mind. “Harmony has been maintained in Equestria for a while now.”
Celestia hummed and nodded with a heavy, sagging head. Her thoughts began to flow sluggishly into a murky stream of consciousness. The wine was hitting her, right on schedule.
“Mmmm-hmmmm, harmony.”
“And that’s a good thing, right?”
“Keeping balance between the three equine races, preserving peace, harmony, all that jazz… absolutely,” said Celestia. Her head lolled like it was about to fall off.
“I just don’t really see the point of it in the grand scheme of things.”
Celestia remained mute for the time it took her to realize she had not spoken the words herself. Her experience in the garden was very suddenly and uncomfortably turning into an unwanted existential rabbit hole—intoxicated no less. This was not at all how she wanted the evening to go. She attempted to dissuade Twilight from getting lost on this wild goose chase of thoughts before things got out of hoof.
“Don’t worry about the point in things, Twi. Points are for pencils and hoofball games, neither of which interest me very much anyway. Take it from somepony who has lived far too many years to care anymore: you can’t waste your life worrying about wasting your life, because it’s not going to stop. It’s easier to row downstream and enjoy the plunge over the waterfall than it is to fight the current for the rest of your life.”
“Sounds like giving up to me,” said Twilight.
What little wits remained in Celestia’s head swam in anguish around Twilight’s persistence. She let a little burp escape under her hoof, and went on. “Giving up, maybe, but not giving up on you. Not giving up on this life—this sick, lusterless existence that some mortals may call a life. What have I given up on?” she said with a sly wink. “Why, I’ve given up on giving up!”
Twilight was afraid to ask what she meant by that, but Celestia didn’t seem at all shy about clarifying.
“Ponies live, ponies die,” said Celestia, swooning. “Some too soon, some not soon enough. I live, but I don’t die, now tell me where’s the justice in that? I know I’ve lived way too long to get away with it, and yet the universe seems content *hic* to keep my comeuppance out of my hooves forever.”
Against her better judgement—which was severely impaired—Celestia had fallen into what she most desperately wanted to avoid. She was fully rambling at this point. As she swayed and hooted to the night, with hooves waving and speech blustering, her head sank ever lower to rest gently against Twilight’s mane. Her vision began reeling with indistinct points of light that used to be stars. She let out a sigh heavily laden with the weight of the world.
Her face nestled into Twilight’s mane, and her voice came out muffled. “And love? Oh god, love’s just the stuff to make the migraines easier to bear. Love doesn’t get rid of this tumor. Tell me, Twilight, how do you like smiling and waving for all eternity?”
Twilight hadn’t the slightest idea what to make what Celestia was saying, beyond concluding that Celestia should never drink and philosophise. Her logic seemed mashed up in an incoherent brew of Merlot and nihilism. Celestia peeled her face from Twilight’s mane so that she could look directly at her and raise an eyebrow.
“I was you once, Twilight,” she continued, her words slow and deliberate. “I looked up and questioned why the heck any of it mattered. Turns out it doesn’t matter, but ponies like us don’t have the luxury of giving up on it. We’ve just got to smile and wave along for the ride.”
She made an exhausted shrug and let her chin sink into her neck. Twilight had seen Celestia in many predicaments. She’d seen her captured and powerless before foes, but she’d never seen Celestia make a more hopeless gesture than that shrug.
“You know, maybe you’re right,” said Twilight. “I shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. Let’s just forget this conversation ever happened.”
Celestia nodded. “Exactly.” The sudden halt in her monologue caused her to tip precariously for a moment. She scooted herself closer to Twilight and reached a large wing over her shoulder. “Now, cozy up closer to me. It’s getting downright chilly out here, and I need my Special Somepony to warm me up.”
Twilight snuggled up against Celestia’s side, and wondered. Perhaps it was best to just go with the flow, as she had said. Twilight relaxed her tight shoulders and rolled a kink out of her neck. She let Celestia’s warm body close over her like the end of a summer day. A blissful smile crept over her face, devoid of doubt or worry. Slowly, so slowly, the minutes slipped into hours.
*****
The moon hung high in the sky. The air was still and had gotten crisper. Twilight yawned drowsily. Celestia’s soft wing still drooped limply over her shoulder. She heard a soft buzz come from the vicinity of Celestia’s head. Obviously she had been dozing soundly. Twilight nudged the snoring Celestia with her hoof.
“Hey, it’s almost midnight. You wanted me to wake you when it was time.”
Celestia snorted and rose bleary-eyed from her wine-induced slumber. Her mane was slightly crumpled and her face equally so, both having used the unforgiving stone base of the fountain as a pillow. She smeared her hoof down her cheek and worked her jaw in little circles.
Twilight smiled. “I know you didn’t want to miss this.”
“Ugh, that’s right! This is the Big One!” chuckled Celestia, recomposing herself with a stretch and a yawn. “Your first century birthday is a huge milestone, a whole one hundred years! How does it feel to say it?”
“I’ve lived a hundred years… ”
“And?”
“Doesn’t feel so different… ”
“Yeah, get used to that,” said Celestia dryly. From out of the fountain she summoned a bottle of champagne that she’d apparently stowed there much earlier. A lusty pop rang in the night, and the cork shot from the bottle, followed by a flourish of fragrant bubbles. Celestia then conjured a matching pair of enchanted champagne glasses and poured she and Twilight two celebratory drinks.
“Happy birthday, Twi,” she said, raising her glass.
Twilight took her bubbling glass and raised it to meet Celestia’s. “Thanks, Celly.”
Celestia bent and kissed Twilight on the forehead. Twilight replied with a little kiss on her cheek. Celestia blushed and said, “I’m sorry I got a little carried away earlier this evening. Wine has it’s way with me, as you well know. Just a little catnap was all I needed to flush it out.”
“What you said, it was certainly some interesting food for thought, and I have given it some thought,” said Twilight.
“Oh, pay no mind to my drunken blather, Twilight!” laughed Celestia. “I don’t want to trouble you with depressing things on your birthday! I hardly remember a thing I said myself….”
“But it’s okay now,” replied Twilight. “I understand what you meant, and I know how I can be content with immortality.” She paused to look deeply into her old mentor’s eyes. “But, you know, I am still afraid.”
“Afraid of what, my dear?”
“You said that love was only a temporary fix to numb the pain, but I refuse to accept that. I’m afraid that if I ever stopped caring, ever stopped…..loving,” she paused to bury her cheek in Celestia’s soft mane, “then that would be the end of me. We exist to bring peace to Equestria. Our lives matter because of the other lives we touch. Perhaps we can only live as long as we love, and as much as I cringe at the thought of another hundred years of living, I cringe more at the thought of not loving.” Twilight grew silent and shed a few tears. Once more, neither ponies spoke for a long while.
When Celestia at last broke the silence, it was like an immense pressure had settled on her voice. “I never meant,” she began shakily, “that my love for you was a temporary fix. It’s not even a permanent fix. What it is….just…..defies anything I can quite explain with words. But I think you said it best just now: I exist for you.”
“And I… for you,” sobbed Twilight.
“Look at us!” chortled Celestia—it sounded more like a cough. “What are we to do; two immortal beings locked together in a never-ending love affair, unable to bear the thought of living, yet utterly destroyed at the thought of losing the other? We couldn’t simply let go together—”
“That would be against my grain,” laughed Twilight, bringing her tear-stained cheeks from Celestia’s mane.
“Both our grains,” added Celestia. Tears had now begun to trickle down her cheeks as well.
“I don’t know whether to call it a blessing or a curse,” said Twilight. She was still choked up—her voice slightly ragged—but smiled as she spoke in a resolved, happy sort of way. “We have each other for all eternity, trapped in life because we’re afraid to lose each other. What would you call it?”
“Eternity is a curse no matter how you slice it,” said Celestia somberly. “But if I’m cursed here with you, then I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, then stroked Twilight’s mane tenderly with her hoof. “What do you say, Twilight; shall we share this curse together for the rest of our unnatural lives?”
Twilight wiped her tears away and looked up to Celestia quizzically. “What are you asking?” she said. “Sounds an awful lot like….you’re proposing to me.”
“No, wait!” cried Celestia, smacking her forehead. She laughed at herself and shook her head. “I’ve done this all wrong, let me start over.” She sat upright, turning to face Twilight, then knelt down on her forelegs. “I believe this is more the customary position.”
“Ummm….” Twilight, dumbstruck, breathed heavily through her nostrils. “Are you serious? The champagne might be messing with your head—or mine. Is this actually happening?” Excitement and confusion whelmed her and turned her insides about like the contents of a washing machine. Celestia couldn’t be serious.
But she was.
Celestia grinned with a fierce blush upon her cheeks. She began fumbling over her words as though she’d lost them in the garden somewhere. “I know this is sudden… I meant it to be flashy and special... but… you don’t have to tell me your answer right now….though I suppose I better officially ask you first….oh dammit, I left the stupid ring in my room—”
“Celly,” interrupted Twilight.
“What?”
“The answer is yes.”
“R-really…? I mean, I’ll get the ring, we could try this again tomorrow when I have more of my wits about me... ”
“No, no, I can’t think of a more perfect time for you to ask.”
Celestia’s heart did a few somersaults. “I-I just think that… huh.” She was at a loss for words, which was perfectly fine for Twilight. At once Twilight leapt upon Celestia and kissed her before she had a chance to say anything else.
“I want to ask you something first,” said Twilight, suddenly pulling away. “I told you my answer earlier, now you need to tell me yours, and be honest: How many years after I became your pupil did you develop feelings for me?”
"Honestly," Celestia replied, looking smug, "I don't remember how old you were at the time. Does it matter?"
Twilight shrugged, then laughed. She could remember Celestia being there for some of her earliest birthday parties, which supported the theories she'd had for a while. It didn't matter, really. Not now, when there were much bigger things to look forward to.
"Not really," she said. "And anyway, you have an eternity to remember it. I'll get the truth out of you one of these days."
The pair tumbled against each other, laughing uproariously and frightening the fireflies away. All about them the air stirred and the stars spun through the night sky, and the universe continued to lurch through its intricate dance into eternity.
Their spirits sang together, and the night went on.
Author's Note
I dug this out of storage with a bunch of my other unpublished works. One day I'll build up the confidence to publish more of them, but it is not this day. Hope it was enjoyed by all—if a little salacious at times. I was inspired when my good friend, Silver Scrolls, told me about a TwiLestia ship competition. I wrote something in light of that, then never had it published.
