Celestia couldn’t notice that her breathing was almost matching in tune with the fireplace's big crackles. Crack, breathe in. Pop, breathe out. She couldn’t help but breathe out a little harder at the sheer absurdity of the thought.

The next absurd thought almost made her laugh out loud. There was a fireplace. In a log cabin. Sure, the place was designed so that the fire wouldn’t set anything aflame and hit the walls, but she couldn’t help but think that in a house made out of wood, there’s a fire within it.

The final thought that sealed the coffin and made Celestia giggle was the fact that she kept on having all these silly thoughts. The figure shifting next to her was the reason why.

“What’s so funny?” a baritone voice half muttered, half giggled himself. He shifted his arm to reach the far side of Celestia and pulled her closer to him.

“Oh, nothing. Just, some silly things,” Celestia half-heartedly waved it off, in a tone that almost suggested she wanted him to ask why.

“Silly things? I hope I’m not one of them,” he joked.

Celestia giggled again. “Well, no, but I guess you caused it. I was just thinking about everything here, and I thought about the fireplace.”

“The fireplace? What’s wrong with it?” he asked, glancing at the aforementioned item in question. The fire wasn’t bad or causing any problems, was it?

“Well, think about where we are now. We’re in a log cabin. There is wood everywhere. And then suddenly, you know, fire. Just, right there, flaming, flammable, possibly destructive and will kill us all if we’re not careful, fire.”

He took a couple seconds to blink at the fireplace, before arching a brow at the woman leaning next to him. “Did you have more than one glass at the restaurant?”

At that remark, Celestia couldn’t help but laugh loudly. “Oh, I’m certain whatever I had is long gone and done with. I’m just being, you know, silly.”

“Silly, huh?” he muttered, patting Celestia’s other side, on her left, “And why are you being silly?”

“I don’t know,” Celestia truthfully told. “I guess because I love you?” she half-asked with a puppy eyed smile at him.

“Hmph. Well, even if you’re silly, I love you too,” he answered back, the calming smile ever present on his face since the day he and Celestia met.

That smile, the cabin, the dinner, the fireplace… Celestia felt that it was all she needed. Some good food and a quiet evening away from the hustle and bustle of Canterlot High’s administration.

For a definition of “quiet” being relative. Though the fireplace snapped and popped, she could still hear the blizzard roaring outside, the window near them not being built well enough to soundproof out its instability against the wind. Other than the window, however, the inside was a different world altogether. Animal pelts and deer antlers lined the walls, though they seem fake rather than genuine. One door had windows and would lead to the freezing outside if they weren’t locked shut by a rusty deadbolt. Other doors presumably lead to a kitchen or maybe even a bedroom, yet Celestia and her lover haven’t moved from the common room ever since they paid the landlord one night’s rent.

In that common room, the fireplace was the main attraction, and indeed the two people inside the cabin were using it to their advantage now. Celestia, wearing only a shirt twice as big than her, spread her lower body out on the couch facing the fire, but curled her upper body up to her lover, who sat upwards in an unbuttoned shirt, a gray suit jacket laying on the side of the couch next to him. Her unique prismatic hair flowed down freely, though slightly crunched up now since she was laying down.

She leaned in closer to snuggle up to her lover, trying to find the perfect spot to rest her head on his body. She closed her eyes for a moment before looking back up at his brilliant blue eyes, overshadowed by the still gelled up two-tone blue hair.

“At least the district already called for closing schools. We can stay all we want for tomorrow,” Shining Armor said.

“And what do you want to do? Stay here and keep the fire going for 24 hours?” Celestia asked, closing her eyes again.

“That, or we could go outside once the storm blows over and the snow is left. I think there’s some snow gear stowed away here.”

Celestia slightly shifted her head once more, now certain she found the perfect spot on Shining’s side. “I will not be going outside in the cold unless you bribe me with hot chocolate. Or coffee. Or both.”

Shining Armor shrugged as best he could without disturbing Celestia’s perfect spot. “Eh, I’ll find something in the kitchen tomorrow,” he said.

A few minutes passed in silence until Shining Armor shifted from his seat, preparing to get up. “Fire’s dying down. Do you want to keep it awake or just let it burn out as we go to sleep?”

“Just let it burn out. Here,” Celestia said, shifting her body to let Shining move his legs up onto the couch and fit into a comfortable position. He took off the stuffy button-up shirt and grabbed both a pillow from the seat near the couch and a thin blanket from the top of the couch, left there as decoration but now being used for its intended function.

Celestia found an even better spot on Shining’s now bare chest, and used it as a pillow while she drifted off, with a happy bliss she hadn’t felt in years.

Fighting past the small flakes that crusted on her eyes, Celestia slowly woke up. Her hair was a mess because of her shifting around on the bed, and she could taste the bad breath in her mouth. Her first few cognizant breaths brought the rank smell of her principal clothes still on her to the forefront of her mind, and she rose up in defiance of what her brain wanted her to come back to.

“Blasted… what in the…” Celestia took a slight moment to remind herself what was a dream and what was reality. She jolted to her side to see if anybody was there, and to both her relief and repressed disappointment, there was only a pillow she tried to cuddle with in her sleep.

Twisting her body around to the edges of the bed, she felt her feet hit the floor and her legs still trying to wake up, still slightly aching from yesterday’s usual everyday activities of working and rushing to place bills, papers, and other sorts of items all over the school and then beyond. She was athletic even at her age, yet her age was also slowly but surely catching up to her as well, the slight pain in the knees reminding Celestia of the familial arthritis problem she was eventually going to inherit.

Family… Celestia took some time to look around the walls of her room, skimming over the random strewn out administration papers and messy shelves of unorganized books to find the framed photos she was looking for. Standing up from the bed, she tiptoed and carefully stepped her way through the messy bedroom, until she reached out and grabbed a specific photo. It was the one taken on the day of her “niece’s” marriage, with her family and the husband’s family sitting together at the reception and smiling at the camera.

Her eyes lingered on Shining Armor. She knew him before Cadence did, but her mind was only on her career at the time. Like one fellow principal from another state had said, they would find love only if it was in their path, and Shining Armor at the time wasn’t on her career path. Cadence deviated from her career to be with him, and it ended with a marriage and a baby.

What ifs. That’s what happened. That’s what sparked Celestia’s interest in Shining. If only she wasn’t so focused on her career, what if she was willing at the time to take the challenge and handle a relationship as well? Would she be compatible with Shining? Would they have married?

Would they have had a daughter too?

Reluctantly, Celestia set down the photo, trying hard not to look at it again. Sadness consumed her, but it wasn’t the kind of sadness that would make her cry. It was more of a regretful sadness. She knew her path in life, and if it led to her not having any sort of romantic relationship, then that was her fate. She still had Luna and Cadence, and so many students counted on her just as much as she wanted them to succeed.

Still didn’t make her feel less lonely in that bedroom.

Author's Note

4 hours and self-edited in the hours of 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM.

I'm back, fools.