A Fresh Breath on the Highest Mountain Top
Princess Celestia and Luna are Alive and Well
B_25
The mountain perplexed ever since she'd been young and, even since the day she'd earned her wings, the pony turned alicorn Princess Celestia did not dare to fly to its peak. Something sacred, at least in her mind, didn't deserve to be cheated.
Frigid winds blew. Snow rose against her sinking hooves. The fur of her coat froze, twice over, strands slick due to the ice encrusted within them. And yet Celestia, the mare and not the princess, continued to climb—despite lacking an answer as to why.
And she had been disappointed once she reached the top. Not because something holy loomed at the top. Nor because her life had changed in any significant way. But rather, as her forehooves threw over onto the surface of its top, holding tightly to it as she pulled herself over, Celestia rolled onto its ground.
“It would appear you've finally made it.”
The second thing Celestia did, upon rolling onto the top of the mountain, was to roll her eyes. Her muzzle laid into the thick layer of snow. It cooled her in a warming way. The aching, burning muscles of her body—pressed against ice. “I don't see your wings tied.”
“Unlike you, dear sister of mine, I am not a fan of inefficiencies.” Luna sat leaning back against the block of white, a tight moon-blue jacket clinging to her slender frame. Her small muzzle barely peeked out from the hood. An obnoxious amount of white fluff surrounded it. “You may make life harder for yourself however much you wish.”
Even though she had climbed the impossible, pushed her body to its limits, and now was more, far more deserving of a break... Celestia rose onto her hooves, weakly, feeling them buckle as they fought to raise her full weight. What little weight she still had, at least.
“But I plan to enjoy my time as much as I can,” Luna added.
“Oh?” Celestia squinted back at her. “A-And you've come to the top of the tallest mountain—“
“Because I love my sister who likes to make my life harder for me,” Luna said while placing a hoof against her chest, “than I love my life of comfort. Rest assured, dear sister, that you will be joining me in that comfort rather soon.”
Celestia stumbled over to the reclined mare, the snow crunching beneath her hoof, the winds blowing her hair—almost like how it'd been before. It wasn't mere power doing it now, but rather the power of the world from its highest peak, having been earned even for a moment upon climbing all the way here.
“Isn't that the truth.”
Celestia proceeded to turn and lean her back against the same block as her sister, delighting in letting her legs slide against the ground as she lowered herself against it. Within seconds, the sisters sat back, together, inches apart.
Wordlessly, Luna held her hoof in the air and, after a couple of seconds, Celestia rose her foreleg—meeting that hoof with her own, a subtle and dull clop touching both of their ears. Then their hooves fell, still touching, filling the gap in-between.
“I get to choose the location,” Celestia began between bouts of her little panting, “and then you get to choose next. That is the deal.” She looked over at her sister, finding her staring out toward the horizon... where the sun slowly rose. “You've allowed me to cross out a dream. What place do you desire next?”
But Luna blinked. “How come you are not more proud?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“There is nothing in this world you can hide from me.” Luna continued to watch the sunrise, her every breath blowing a cloud of fog. “For I am your sister, and I know everything. We've agreed to always share and never leave any feeling a mystery to the other.”
Celestia turned her head back, also staring at the sun, hollow, but not empty.
“So answer,” Luna said. “And please, do not make me repeat.”
Celestia blew a breath of fog of her own. She thought of what to say but then closed her eyes. No breaking their agreement. Rather, when her eyes opened, she spoke the truth. “A scroll appeared when I had started to climb.”
“From...”
“Yes.” Celestia sighed, though the howl of winds cried louder. “There were only a few seconds for me to act. I could have done something, used my horn or freed my wings after. But I didn't.” Her muzzle dipped as the breeze washed across her cheeks. “I didn't even watch it fall.”
“And yet you climbed.”
“And yet, I did.”
Luna turned from the sun. She turned to her sister with a smile. Not a kind forced to make another feel better, or something summoned consciously at all. In all their years of acting, of pretending and using polished words, here was a moment--one of the first--where reactions happened on their own, and they were genuine in feeling.
“Are you worried about her, dear sister?”
Celestia also tried to smile but felt the weight drop from the corners of her lips. Her eyes drifted shut once more, trying to deny the world and take comfort within her own soul. But she shook her head. The days of receding had long since ceased. “I-I... do.”
“Even now?” Luna rubbed their hooves together, urging Celestia's eyes to open once more. “When the rays of the sun warm our legs? When its light spreads across the land? Look thy's eyes forward, sister, to that which we passed on.”
And so she did. She opened her eyes to the sun rising without her aid, without her wisdom, without her presence and her power. Like the wings she'd tied around her waist, so too had slowly become true of her horn.
“This world may mourn for us, dear sister,” Luna continued with her eyes now closed and lips in a big smile, “so is it not time for us to enjoy ourselves? Like this mountain you have just climbed, you have earned this.”
Celestia did something she hadn't done in a long, all so very long time. She didn't laugh and she didn't giggle. But rather she chuckled. Slowly. Each one heavy with a weight she drew from her chest and left upon the world. Her days of self-inflicted punishment, it seemed, were now over.
“So... about that spa of legends located in the Badlands...”
Luna laughed. “Let us enjoy the sunset a little longer, dear sister.”
Celestia smiled.
Author's Note
I wrote this story upon viewing the slew of comments on SS&E latest fic and, for whatever reason, one of them spoke out to me. Of the dread of reading hopeless fics about these two's deaths again and again.
Don't we already hold enough despair in our lives? Isn't depression nearly a natural state of living? Sure, we read stories for truth—the truth inside a lie—but we also read them for hope as well. Comfort, maybe, for something more.
Here is a story I wrote for myself, upon this trend, that doesn't mock those stories, that isn't a satire of them—or even self-ware. Here is a story within a moment, an honest beating of writing, about something I felt about all this while sitting with only a towel on.
In some ways, I fulfilled an ideal way of going about things, meant, of course, only to myself and none else.
I hope you enjoyed this story.
~ Yr. Pal, B
