A light breeze ruffled the pages of the report lying on the windowsill, and Celestia pressed them down on the stone with her magic, before the playful gale could carry them off into the sunset. Her gaze wandered out over the lush meadows surrounding Canterlot to the fluffy arrangement of Cloudsdale in the sky. It had been a long time since she last visited that place.
Celestia rarely ever flew. She was no mathematician herself, but she understood that it became drastically more difficult to fly as size and weight increased, which was why bees could get by with wings so small relative to their size, but pegasi needed their innate flight magic to stay aloft. For an alicorn of her size staying airborne meant a significant drain on her magical powers – she could do it, but usually there was little reason to.
Leaning her muzzle out into the breeze, Celestia wondered if that was what it was like. Wind brushing through her hair, the sight of the earth rapidly coming closer …
Occasionally Celestia wondered if she secretly had some sort of masochistic compulsion to hurt herself.
But that was merely idle self-doubt. The real reason she read every report like this personally was to make sure she would not forget her responsibility. She was the supreme ruler of Equestria. It was her obligation. It was far too easy for a ruler – especially one as revered and liked as her – to forget that unpleasant fact, mentally push it aside amidst the flattery and reverence of the court. Once Celestia no longer was intimately hurt by the grief that plagued her people, she would become what Sombra had called her all those centuries ago: a tyrant.
And that was why she forced herself to read each of these reports personally, even though it made her heart feel like it was breaking apart. Steel Greyfeather, age 56, teacher for mathematics and applied aerodynamics at Cloudsdale Swiftwing Highschool for thirty-two years. No close living relatives.
That was a common streak. The thought of their spouse or children was usually enough for most to stop. Parents during puberty had much less of an influence. Adolescence was a difficult and trying time … it was so long ago for Celestia, well over a millennium had come and gone, so it was sometimes difficult to remember exactly. Being an alicorn she knew the events that had transpired well enough, but after a while the memory became sort of … selective, tinting whole time periods with a certain emotional hue. Before Luna's rebellion, her days were rose coloured, even though in honest truth there had been severe problems already. Luna would not have rebelled had all been fine. After, everything was a depressed dark gray. Some of the problems had actually been addressed during that time, and things became better, but for Celestia all of it was overshadowed by the loss of her dear sister.
Celestia was revered for her wisdom, but what people did not seem to contemplate was that wisdom was born from pain, not pleasant experiences, and it was something one usually got right after it was too late.
Celestia knew the story of one of the old gods, who had gouged out one of his eyes and impaled himself on a tree for nine days to obtain the wisdom to help his people. He had learned what he sought to know, but also that he could not prevent their doom, and the knowledge of their unavoidable demise dragged him to depression.
The sun goddess didn't show it, but there were some days when she felt rather discouraged herself. A big problem was that she had no one she could talk to about it. Luna was out of the question. She wouldn't understand. As much as Celestia loved her dear sister, the goddess of the moon wasn't exactly blessed with empathy. There had been a time when Celestia had hoped that Twilight would one day become an advisor who she could discuss such topics with … but that had turned out to be impossible. Twilight didn't just love Celestia, she truly revered her as a goddess. To Twilight, Celestia was perfect, was always right and couldn't ever make a mistake. The purple sorceress couldn't handle that there were many things that Equestria's supreme ruler agonized over, choices she questioned might have been mistakes, opportunities that slipped by that Celestia grieved for the rest of her life. And decisions which, no matter how deeply she regretted them, regardless of how often she came back to contemplate them, were the best ones she could make, no matter the cost.
She had to do it.
But of course, Celestia was wise enough to recognize the danger that comes with these words. So many atrocities in history have been justified by that the culprits 'had to do it'. Which is why she continued forcing herself to read each of these reports personally, exactly so that it would hurt, exactly so that she wouldn't get complacent.
Celestia had been the supreme ruler of Equestria for over a millenium. Loved and revered, her word was not just law but eagerly followed by almost all her subjects. Equestrian society was no accident, no product of mere chance, but had been carefully crafted by the white alicorn over centuries, to provide a happy and safe place for her dear ponies, as perfect a society as she could come up with.
But there was a price.
These days, no one remembered the time of the fractured tribes. When unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies were divided by bitter strife. Sure, there was a celebration each year to remember their unification, but no one really understood. A few scant historians were aware of how bad the hunger must have been, but their knowledge was a purely rational one. Celestia had tried to communicate the truth, but for ponies who had grown up in her safe and protected Equestria it was unfathomable, so eventually she had given up. They could not truly imagine what it was like, mothers having to bury children each winter, the constant, gnawing hunger that was always there, driving ponies to fight viciously over the sparse food that could be found. The ponies in her Equestria knew no true hunger, knew not what starvation was like, what it was like to be willing to do anything, just so that the gut-rending pain would finally lessen. Her own control over the sun and moon and the well organized weather troops centred around Cloudsdale made sure of that. But for the weather control to work flawlessly, she needed the pegasi to be at their best, to focus on becoming the strongest flyers over everything else.
The pegasi had always been a proud and competitive race. It took so very little. Merely to show up at their competitions, award prizes to the best flyers … and ignore those who couldn't keep up with the constant pressure in pegasus society.
And that was the reason for this report about Steel Greyfeather. Born to low-class parents, he had never been a good flyer. Eventually he settled on being a math teacher at Cloudsdale High, a profession that would have been held in high esteem amongst unicorns, still earned him some respect amongst earth ponies, but was considered an embarrassing failure in pegasus society. Despite the low percentage of stallions he had found no mate, many female pegasi preferring to bond for life with a strong and capable mare over a bookish, unsportive academic. Scorned by mares, pupils and society at large his life could not have been a happy one. So eventually, after thirty-two years of teaching, he had glued his wings together and jumped off a cloud.
Suicide was practically unheard of anywhere else in Equestria. Even the most tortured and anguished unicorn artist typically loved life far too much to ever seriously consider it. But in Cloudsdale, each year a few pegasi could no longer deal with the pressure and decided that anything, if it offered an end, was better.
And it was Celestia's fault.
She could have worked against it, could have tried to influence the pegasi to be less competitive, less judgemental … but she didn't. She needed the pegasi to be at their best. So instead she publicly praised the Wonderbolts, invited the fastest flyers to that horrible Grand Galloping Gala (Why in Equestria did everyone want to go there?), and lost not a word about pegasi ostracised by society because they couldn't bear the pressure.
The suffering of a few was the price she … no, all of Equestrian society paid for continuous, stable weather and enough food for all. Celestia hated this choice with all of her heart, but knowing what gnawing hunger feels like, how it would erode her society and cause horrible suffering, she knew that in this she had to weigh the good of the many against the misery of the few. The lives her choice had saved outnumbered the losses a thousandfold.
And every single suicide report, the tale of every single pony that she herself had killed, through inaction, through looking away, Celestia read, and grieved the loss of another pony too gentle for this world.
So on evenings like this, Celestia would sit on the windowsill of her bedroom in the highest tower of Canterlot, watch the sun go down, feel the wind on her face and secretly wonder what falling from such height would feel like, and if, when she hit the ground, her grief and regret would finally end.
Of course she'd never do it. She was the Goddess of the Sun. She must forever be there for her ponies. Even when it hurts.
Author's Note
I apologize that this piece is of slightly lower literary standard than most of my other writing. I wanted to get this posted today for personal reasons (and i've had quite a terrible night).
I hope anyone enjoys my attempt to make sense of why Celestia would not only tolerate but encourage the pegasus society we see in the show, regardless.
