Celestia studied the stars with tired eyes, and suppressed the urge to heave a sigh for the umpteenth time that night.
“Once more. This time,” she muttered, magic gathering around her horn. Overhead, against the velvety blackness and amidst the twinkling crowd of drifting, unattached stars, the constellations were misbehaving themselves. Again.
Orion’s belt had slipped. The stars making up the twin constellations of the Great Hydra and the Little Hydra had drifted apart, the coils of their necks stretching outwards and unravelling. Draco’s two red eyes had shifted in such a way as to leave him slightly cross-eyed. The Tortoise and the Archer had wandered closer together, and now each seemed to be mauling the other. Celestia unconsciously stuck her tongue out one side of her mouth as she tried to fix the first of these. But as the belt of stars slowly shifted up into position, some flicker of excess force sent Orion’s withers drifting off on adventures of their own, and that in turn sent ripples cascading outwards.
She drew breath, rushed to correct that and pull them back in, and a mass of unattached stars bumbled in to fill the void. Raggedy patches of blackness, shorn of light, marked where they’d formerly been. Off to one side, the Hydras continued to fall apart. Draco was making a spirited effort to stare up his own snout. Whatever the Tortoise and the Archer were now doing beggared description.
“This time,” Celestia hissed, her magic groping back out into the vastness. Tether the bits that looked right — Draco’s spine, the linked tails of the Hydras, Orion’s belt at last — make them stay put, and spread her focus far. Hook every straying star, and pull them back into place en-masse. But as her attention expanded, her original tethers strayed out of place, out of mind, and the strays were tugged in towards parent patterns that had drifted apart.
Celestia stopped, took stock, and finally let herself heave a sigh. From where she stood, on the newly-built balcony atop Canterlot Palace, she had an unenviable view of it all. Rivers of stars, bright and multicoloured against the black. The constellations themselves, or what a generous and squinting onlooker might call constellations. And in the middle of them all, the moon itself. Stark and white and brilliant.
And across its surface, a new addition which she was still reluctant to look directly at, the dark and cratered outline of a mare’s head.
There was the sound of a door opening behind her, and she turned. A lean, gaunt unicorn mare in servant’s livery trotted towards her, the very image of prim propriety if not for the snarled scar spreading across one half of her face. She bore a tray in her silvery magic grasp, sporting Celestia’s usual. A pot of tea, steeped to paint-stripping strength. A china cup. And a glass of brandy, full to the rim.
“Thank you, Sterling Silver,” Celestia said, motioning to a small table by her side. “Just there, if you would.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she replied in rasping tones from a throat once seared by spellfire, setting it down smoothly, and then settled back into the stiff, poised stance of an ex-guardspony. Celestia looked back up towards the starscape, and she was aware of Sterling doing the same.
After a while, Sterling spoke. “The Tortoise looks in much better form tonight, Your Majesty. More… ah, collected.”
“Thank you, Sterling. I’d feel much better about that if it wasn’t trying to do … whatever it’s doing with the Archer. Whose bow seems to be coming apart.” Celestia reached up and tweaked the arch of stars that made up the Archer’s bow, trying for incremental motions. Shift this one just so, dim that one a fraction, little changes at a time, so, so little...
Sterling deigned not to comment, and Celestia spoke first in the gulf of silence, letting out a brief and bitter laugh. “Would you believe that my sister always felt this set had all the easy ones within it?”
“From where I stand, Your Majesty, it all seems very complex.”
“Complex.” A weary smile found its way onto Celestia's face. “She had those as well, ones even she had to concentrate on. Constellation patterns she’d made herself or borrowed from the designs of the old unicorn monarchs. Shooting stars, coming down in waves and stages. Auroras, tapestries of stardust, clusters and whorls in slow and constant motion. She’d look up the pegasi's schedules for cloud cover, so parts of it all could be revealed at just the right moment, and she’d … she’d ...”
Celestia broke off, circled her forehoof, and lifted up her brandy to take a generous sip. She raised her head and studied the sky once more.
Sterling spoke again. “Nothing ever came without practise, Your Majesty.”
“She was a natural. Better, even, she was a natural who pushed herself. And too few saw that.” Celestia chased the sip down with a more generous gulp, shivering as fire chased down her throat. Fire, and soothing coolness. A moment later, she absently lifted the teapot and poured a measure into the cup. She could work long hours, but something to keep her awake would never go amiss. Sleep wasn’t as enticing as it had once been.
The brandy remained in her grasp, though, and she swished the liquid in the glass to and fro. “The sun, and even the moon as well, they’re not demanding. Not too much. A little push in their orbits every now and again, a little nudge to keep them on the right path. But all these, all the little paths and forces, all the details, and all them turned over to me...”
Celestia fell silent, and studied the bottom of her brandy glass for a while. Finally she turned towards Sterling. “You were there. The last night there was a proper starscape. That night, and for all the strife that followed.”
She nodded, the spellfire scars on her face twisting. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Truth to power, Sterling. If I’d paid her more heed, paid that little more attention to her troubles and worries, if I’d just told her more often just how appreciated her work was, how invaluable she was … could it have all been averted? If she was on the brink, teetering on it, how, how little would I have had to pull her back by? If I’d just made the margin between her and the thing that took her a little wider...”
“With respect, Your Majesty,” said Sterling tersely, carefully, in one of the pauses Celestia took, as if every word of hers was picked with care, “I believe you already have an answer in mind. And I truly don’t think any good can come from looking at what could have been. Every decision was made with good reason at the time.” She hesitated before the next sentence. “It’s what comes next that deserves our care. Your care, Your Majesty.”
Celestia regarded her flatly, before snorting and turning to one side. “I asked for truth to power, Sterling. Not sense.”
“Apologies, Your Majesty,” she said dryly, bowing. “I can’t claim to be the most competent of valets.”
“Hmm. You’ve grasped some of the fundamentals, at least.” A wry smile passed across Celestia’s features and she shook her head. “Retire for the night, Sterling. There’s not much more I need done here tonight.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” She hesitated. “I may linger in the grounds a while yet. Watch your workings.”
“Really? I never took you for a glutton for punishment, Sterling.”
The unicorn’s grey eyes creased at the edges. “As you say, Your Majesty.” She turned and left, and Celestia listened to her receding hoofsteps. The alicorn looked back out over the balcony, to where Equestria rolled on under shadow.
“I’d be somewhat more piqued about that,” she muttered, “if I hadn’t explicitly ordered those close in my confidence to head off all unhelpful self-recrimination at the pass. Equestria doesn’t need my self-flagellation getting in the way. If I falter...”
She took another drink, a deep and prolonged one, and when she set the glass to one side, there the mare in the moon still sat, unblinking and dark in the middle of her field of vision.
“I hope you’re able to listen,” she said softly. “From where you are, and past the Nightmare that’s taken you. Otherwise, this does amount to me talking to thin air, which is never a healthy habit. But if you can, then I hope that helps you. I’m not down and out, despite everything, and there’s sensible ponies around me. With any luck, everything shouldn’t have gone to pot by the time you’re back. By the time we can force that monster out. And that night...”
“...that night,” she managed, rallying, “I should have scraped together some base skill for star-weaving. A thousand years should hopefully suffice. And this—” She gestured with a forehoof, encompassing the whole of the night sky, the clouds of glittering stars, the moon, the misshapen constellations, and every little twinkling point of white and red, blue and orange. “This won’t have been forgotten, nor neglected. Ponies’ll be able to stop toiling through my day and sleeping through your night. And they’ll see every pattern you wrought, however I can hash them up, and when you’re back...”
She closed her eyes, and listened.
“...you’ll remind ponykind all how beautiful they once were.”
And as she listened, there came back an echoing silence. The silence of the night sky, alive with distant stars.
“One of these nights,” Celestia said softly. She opened her eyes, looking straight at the mare in the moon. And then she lifted her head and looked up, towards the thousand points of starlight, glittering from horizon to horizon.
Golden magic flared up around her horn to fix Draco’s squint, and was reflected in Celestia’s eyes. She picked up her teacup and sipped, her iron-hard gaze skywards all the while.
Once more. This time. And if not, the next.
