Behold, a black-cloaked figure gallops through the Everfree Forest at top speed. Only the flutter of air is left behind, so that nopony might see the height, build, and other defining features of the one who’d dare run through a forest in the night hours. Who, but those few mad ponies who gaze upon the stars, and monsters banished by the sun’s light, would dare linger after dusk? More than half the population of this young and terrible nation lives by the sun, shutting themselves up as soon as dusk falls. It is in their nature to shun that which is irregular to any existence that’d deviate from being akin to a spoke in a wheel — no matter how harmless those differences may be.
Yet, if anypony were up, roaming the enchanted woods where only two gods lived, and did glimpse this particular runaway — yes, a runaway — they would likely miss all of the details. Only the telltale whoosh of air and flutter of black fabric in the night, and they would cry out that they had seen a monster! While there would be no burning of tomorrow’s accursed witch of the day, when Princess Celestia’s day comes, there would be accusations all the same. These are but ponies, after all, and ponies are brutes. They only polish themselves up for their history-writing, the way a peasant may force themselves more ignorantly into dirt at all hours but dinner time. Only then might they wash — or at the very least, pretend that clean hooves were involved.
Princess Platinum’s rule and the First Equestrian Triarchy’s antics are just the most recent example of this ill spirit. No matter how unified the tribes have become, they are racially united in prejudice against all other species. This was not so when Tirek stomped across their old home, a northern basin now lost to the snow.
But, if a pony were to somehow spy this figure? Well, then they would see no wings, no horn, and barely any legs — and would be unable to make out the trace of a dark coat. Their eyes would be too weak to note much else, as their lack of night-eyes has always weakened their sight as soon as the shadows lap at the horizon A pony would discern the speed I moved at, but no more. All that is obvious about me is the swiftness so unnatural to them. This would confirm for them that I be no pony, and have done well at concealing myself.
I have abandoned the regal boots of my station and was careful to flare my wings as little as possible, except to alight myself from whatever gnarled branch of a gnarled Everfree tree is able to support my weight. While good scouts — or even competent ones — number next to none, I wish to leave nothing that could be tracked by all but the most adept unicorn mages in distant Canterlote. Magical scouting before the other gods vanished was said to be a grand art, one of the finest sorceries a unicorn could master. Now, it has been reduced to a herd of earth ponies shaking a whole forest and stamping about the plains in the name of ‘stealth’ they do not have.
And they think that they can catch me, whom they barely know to be a god!
Even if something was found — like a lock of my distinct mane that I have so carefully tucked away — it would be some time before Princess Celestia would be able to summon them. By the time such simpering hounds of pony-scouts are summoned, Equestria would be long behind me. My magic is unmatched by any mortal who has ever walked this world and my strength is unrivaled now that I have the skill to temper it, so that none, none but a creature out of the legends of another world that disappeared with my family, could hope to drag me back to that horrid sprawl of a palace.
I settle into the crook of a large branch and draw a few deep breaths As soon as I am certain that I am bathed in shadow once more, my body begins to shake with sobs.
Even starlight and untamed winds of cold night air cannot budge the Everfree. It is a primal sanctum of a fortress from ponies, who think themselves all that the world will ever be — or that they could tame what has stood before the gods walked. Her Royal Highness loathes it — our own home, keeping her from her ‘precious’ social contact with such vile creatures — as ponies once loathed the two of us. They still loathe my domain with as much hate as they show the natural world in all its feral truth. Except, their hate towards all that I am and have is one of the few things they are honest about. Even their malice towards buffalo, griffons, dragons, and other creatures is poor rhetoric to disguise their malicious hippocentrism.
I feel safest in a forest where travelers are commonly eaten alive more than I do in my own bed. None of this changes how my own thoughts sink their teeth into me. To have no sanctuary in my own mind hurts more than the condemnation of mortals ever could — I used to be safe here, now I find myself just as eager to keep myself from wellness as others wish I would.
Her presence felt so inescapable. For centuries I could not bring myself to leave her, no matter how bad each worsening falling-out… Part of me still wanted to believe that I was the younger sister of Princess Celestia, that we still cared, and that all these wounds would heal with time and effort — or anything…
At long last, she is out of my head for the first time in centuries — and I can only feel how fear chills my blood? All this time, I have wished that I loved her not, and when it has waned enough, I am left feeling torn to tatters by my own sick stomach!
But all my wishes and pleas — centuries of them — have been in vain. The sun is not in the sky, nay, she looms over me and burns. Unfortunately, I am too close to her, lying in her scorching grip and forever staring beyond her plaster smile and screaming to have my sister back. And why is this so? All to pull me away from the one whom I could remember no time without an unthinkable act for far too long.
Decades ago, it would have felt so treasonous… and yet when I finally began to ask myself why it would…
… or if I should really feel so guilty when...
Every ‘reason’ I ever had to stay began to crumble away. With each painfully real cause for me to desert her, it became clear that there was no true reason for me to stay — and that felt far scarier than remaining in her shadow, doomed to voice nothing and suffer the horrible thoughts that only the solitude eased.
I look upward, pondering where I should go. Would it be north, where only wasteland and the closed Yakyakistani stronghold cities await, though they accept no visitors? Shall I head south, where mortals spill blood over attempts to claim stability, forever unaware of the irony behind the act? Perhaps I might even fly to the island-rich eastern sea in hopes of finding the lost Western Continents. I hear that the Roaman Empire founded in mortal folly fell because of it, and now they are no more than squabbling maritime republics. As backward as the idea of a republic is, I imagine that there might truly be something worth seeing in the land. Now that I am truly running away — to freedom, peace, and everything that could never be found with her — I need to head somewhere where I would have everywhere to go.
I flip the hood of my cloak back and flex so the night air might stir my feathers. My night’s breeze is a cool reassurance blowing against my face. Next, I fly over to the tallest tree to grow on the rocky outcroppings and wooded hills that are abundant in this part of the Everfree. Each emerges right before the foothills grow into the smaller peaks beside the great Canterhorn.
Once I have found myself a suitable perch, I now survey the sprawling enchanted wood spread out beneath my clear, cloudless night sky and surrounded by plains and lesser woods for many miles. It is a painter’s dream and a particularly adventurous surveyor’s paradise — the artists and the explorers; they were the sorts that I sponsored. Meanwhile, Her Highness tried to funnel all the funds I scraped together towards her political brown-nuzzlers and petty laborers. I was left with only meager funds for the artists, adventurers, acting troops, artisans, and independent magical prodigies to whom I chose to be the patron of. These were the ones who ‘helped’ none, according to Her Highness and her supporters, but I always insisted they enriched us all.
If only my words could fall upon something more than deaf ears. Does nopony care?
Pushing thoughts of my subjects away is always something I wish were easier. Eventually, I manage to do so — ‘twas like how these brutish quacks Princess Celestia deemed doctors cut away a peasant’s warts.
Over the course of my two-millennia-long life, I have seen much of the surprisingly consistent but vast Northern Continent, to the point where only my intuition and divine memory is needed to guide me around places I have not seen in centuries. I have little need or want for maps when my own mental visions will suffice and outshine what are little more than scribbles in comparison.
The north is both a strange and realistic option, as much as it terrifies me. I am limited in my knowledge of the highlands ruled by the Trottish clans and their budding moor kingdom. That is, save for two experiences.
The first is of the much, much farther basin vale that the three tribes called their own. Now a completely inhospitable and unnatural waste. All that it is home to are the frozen corpses of those who stayed behind during the exodus, and the windigos that now reside there. Those frozen spirits frolick around the icy bones of those who had not been entombed within splintered tombs while huddling or galloping away.
There is another valley nearby… one where one wizard had a tower and his four apprentices. I was never going back; Tia died there.
… But is the second really the worse option?
Saving the Crystal Empire had been the biggest failure of Princess Celestia and I, as well as the first great foe we faced together as Equestrians… only for King Sombra to separate us. He was more terrifying than the Old World sanctum city that was hidden only by the wintery elements themselves. It was not because of all I had seen there, but because I had seen something of him.
The way we had talked, how he spoke, fought, and simply existed gave me chills. Even now, I still shiver at the thought of such a dark enigma.
His magic was able to match mine, as was the rest of him. Even to this day, I have pondered why it is so hard to forget the two crimson eyes that glared at me from the depths of some shared madness. He was a mortal, yet felt like anything but that. As soon as I had laid eyes on him, it felt as though I had located the center of the world.
I had more than enough chances to kill him, as I was ordered to. I could not bring myself to end a life that only defied — and felt as if it had continued to do so in order to live.
Sometimes, when I tarry alone like this, musing on all, I feel haunted.
If the chance I gave him — one I am not sure either of us will remember as time unleashes hidden machinations come to light upon us both, wherever he may be beneath the ice — does indeed amount to something, perhaps I might see him again in the world. Stars know in how long such an improbable meeting will be.
Or hopefully, hopefully, all this unwanted and eerie fascination will end and I shall feel no need to look upon him and ask him what secrets he has kept… if he remembers.
‘Tis unlikely the one creature I wish to speak to now, one as miserable as I am, would ever remember me. The raw divine magics Princess Celestia and I used to seal him are still subject to the same fundamentals as all other magic in this world. To be made immaterial, anchored, and displaced in time does not preserve the memory or mental stability of a mortal being. He shall likely be insane, and even with that aside… to be displaced in time is a lethal matter. Any mortal being to come out of it shall perish shortly, as all my magic books in the castle library have made clear. Exactly what the dread king did to that empire of his, I know not. His magic is beyond my ken and whether those peculiar crystalline ponies shall live or die, if they could ever be fetched from the depths of the unseen, is something I cannot answer.
Why is it that the one creature I have felt any connection to aside from my sister is none other than King Sombra? We exchanged so few words, and yet I would give up all the conversations I have had with hundreds of ponies in order to share a few minutes with him, just so that I may see somepony who feels as I do.
What must that say about me?
But I am flecking faster than paint along a rowboat in a hurricane, the longer I spend around ponies. The company of those Princess Celestia prefers has grown painful, and desperately overstimulating.
All at once, I am thrust into unbearable loneliness and desperately seeking escape each time I stand around them.
“Oh, this all sounds so dreadful!” I sob into my forehooves. “Is this loyalty, however strange it feels, or a curse?”
I only want to know of his magic and his story, nothing more. Yet such an opportunity is a lost one and fifty years later I still mourn thoughts that I cannot banish because I must know — why?
It was what I had asked him, but I only ended up more lost with each exchange we made. I feel that there is an answer in his magic — how strange and enviable it seemed! Since then, anything like it has become illegal. Yet, there has still never been anything quite like it since the Crystal Empire fell — and his attributes are not those that can be found on any other. None have curved horns or eyes that stream unearthly smoke as he did. As unnatural as that power was, talking about it would be a welcome distraction. I have not had a reason or desire to welcome anything in a long time.
I sigh — a dreary sound — and try to lift my spirits and heavy heart by focusing on the darkened horizon, glad to have privacy from even the stars on this night.
The southern continent was intact from whatever catastrophe shook the world when I was young. That was the news we heard from many travelers over the centuries, for neither Princess Celestia nor I have traveled so far south on our royal duties. Yet some small nations of ponies and other creatures live in that vast, unvisited part of the world, unaffected by the horrid degree of societal degeneration of the former tribal ponies. They are civilized enough to still speak of gods like myself, and make mention of even the ghost of the Alicorns in their tales.
Some of these ponies — be they Princess Celestia’s subjects or the southern nations — even knew my name, my face, or both. The farther away from the heartlands of this young nation one goes, the more that it is apparent I do not exist — few of these Equestrians know there is any other princess at all. Instead, they envision a heroic sun-queen and tell tales of her enchanted shadow that she lets loose from the castle to help slay her enemies, which is hardly consistent with their insistence on the evil of any darker concept. I am no longer any kind of creature worth knowing, though I was the one who fought on the frontlines of the war to liberate this land from Discord and scouted the Crystal Empire all by myself before Celestia and I battled its king. I have done just as much for this nation, if not more work than she ever has! Instead of treating me equally as I have wished for her to do for so very long, I am erased and all my efforts are mocked with the kindest of smiles!
I have never known ponies to be anything more — they merely wrap their thorns and other barbs up in lovely silk and try to call that deceitful dressing both true skin and a solution to what they do not see as a problem. Unfortunately, Princess Celestia has always trusted such softness and sweetness more than she has ever been able to read the hearts of others, which is something that lies in the thorns when it comes to ponies. It is why she is so beloved and accepted, and why she could never have been the Bearer of Honesty.
Those that do know of me fear me, and I am to be kept at home by order of the professionals summoned. Oh, have none heard why — apparently I am ill!
… I do not entirely disagree, though I hate every terrible thing that has been commanded of me as an attempt at treatment.
These ponies, they could try to launch a hunt to get me delivered back to Princess Celestia if I tried to establish any — extremely unneeded — communication or alliance with any of these mortals. If their sun-princess promises a reward and spins a sob story, they shall eat of it like a weanling gobbles their first mashed meal and thinks it a feast.
I would need and desire the company of none. No crown would rest upon my head, and Her Highness would get to be the sole ruler she has always wished to be — something she has evoked often enough. Perhaps my mind would grow less troubled under the wonderful spell of a completely solitary lifestyle, where I can wander once more and rediscover life’s beauties at last. I feel that since the exodus from the Frozen Wastes — and even before that, when I first found ponies with my sister — that I have only ever ebbed away. I only remember what it is like to feel safe. Everything in this world is glass that accuses me of being a hammer. I have thrown more work than ever into crafting the sky, and yet I have not truly enjoyed it in decades. When I can bring myself to eat proper meals, everything is bland, and my dreams have dulled.
Now, I only ever get to miss things, and I do not think I even have the energy for that anymore.
Flying south does seem to be the best option. The journey would be less tedious than if I went across the seas. The world’s news would also be less clouded by the particular prejudice of Princess Celestia’s northerners that blots out all attempts at knowledge. I doubt I would find the culture of the western world to be like the quibbling mortal-ruled places in the south.
I was sure I could do this, no matter how much I felt my stomach churn with worry. Some of that worry is still for her, though it should not be so… not after all this.
Sighing again, I bury my head right in my forehooves again, wiping my eyes with my cloak and thinking of just what I should do. All the chatter of ponies and tut-tutting of Princess Celestia that surrounds me is about how one must work for others, and that we always get what we deserve. She still preaches to this post-war nation of a rosy-glass illusion, but I think it has poisoned me as much as chaos poisoned the land because I cannot get her out of my head. Over and over I hear that it is good that always prevails, and this is said to my face as though I was not on the frontlines of a war we barely won, or bearing the World Tree’s Elements alongside her.
If goodness only ever comes to those that deserve it, then I really must be as rotten as I feel. Perhaps I am no more than what ponies say I am.
Long ago, my parents told me it was important to set free what I loved. This had always been in regard to the kittens we used to keep in our gorgeous castle, where I first learned to control my magic by toting them around or pretending to fly with them on my back. All the lovelier creatures of the forest flocked to me — and really, all creatures of the Everfree Forest are lovely, no matter what these settler ponies may say of my ancestral home. I was always upset when it came time to send them back to their homes, for I was not sure if my friends would be able to play with me again.
Those words were meant to comfort me, and indeed they did. All my lovely pets would eventually come back to play. It was my pets and my parents who taught me it was as important to love myself as I loved others. Would they still say the same, if they saw me now, a goddess made helpless by her own mind? They were great Alicorn gods that always strove for justice, harmony, and to bring balance to the world. How could they bear to know what has become of their daughters and their world? Could they even still love me, knowing what has happened to me?
My last sniffle dies away, and I stare at my forehooves in silence. They tremble in the night like the songs of crickets and star spiders, but even that is lessening.
If I am to set free what I love… I know now what I must do.
…
Feathers cut through the sky once again as I resume my late flight, wishing my head could be as clear as it was when I set out on this journey to disappear. I have left all but one of my crowns behind, and stashed its accompanying set of regalia into the small bag I brought with me. The one that remains atop my head is a reminder — I do not hate the crown itself, for it is better than anything mortal-made. What troubles me is that which it stands for.
These are among the few things I have not left in my personal chambers, at least of the things that I had not hidden. I want to call them my favorites, as they had been my favorites for the longest time since acquiring them, but I am not certain I am allowed to have favorites of anything any longer.
I land on top of the tallest hill where I still have a view of the Everfree. Seeing the palace so far away and knowing I had escaped it has left me more breathless than the view and my tears have.
How long has it been since I have felt like this? Being away from her is like being pulled from drowning, because I did not have to feel that every day and conversation would hurt me anymore. Without her, there is nopony building smothering glass walls around me and scolding me when I tried to crawl from them at last, if only so I did not suffocate. To be free of her is a lotus flower meal I wish to eat of until my stomach is taut with it and I am ready to throw it up again.
But I still have never felt more stuck in all my life. The choice weighing upon my withers is to drink deeply of spring water after centuries in the desert and letting the heat stroke my mind. Yet, I am still so torn between the two because of the knots of memory. Not to see Equestria’s lovely little ruler does not mean I have none of her words haunting my head — no matter how much I wanted her out.
Biting my lip, I hold back a whimper. What am I supposed to do? Walls no longer surround me, and still, I am trapped.
Here I could be Luna, flying through the night air with few constraints from knowing that I am still in this land, the one where I had heard I was nopony’s daughter. These same words came from the mare who told me, ages later, that she did not even want me as her younger—
I dive below — a bit noisily — into the treeline. I have settled in the branch of the last tree of the border between the Everfree foothills and the Unicorn Range that Mount Canterhorn is a part of.
From here, it is hard to miss anything. Even the uninhabited grasslands that surround the forest’s southern border lie in clear detail to me. All of them are equally beautiful and dangerous — the wood, the grassland, and the slanting tree I have sat myself in.
None would ever see these things. In the rare event when I speak at all among ponies who tolerate no word that does not fit in with the normalcy they craved — that was barely not Tribal Era dogma refreshed for the Triarchy — I get nothing but talk of how only monsters that must be slain lurk in the dark, and that I should respect my elder princess instead of slander her precious day for suggesting anything else in the world is worthy of fair treatment. That is ponies at their kindest — a mob set against the idea of looking at the stars for a few moments and putting aside talk of mooncalves or other imagined monsters that could only be given life within such horrible minds. It is ponykind who wished to drive out all from the land — be it the buffalo, timberwolves, or many other creatures — and deem them improper sapients or monsters to be tamed. Will it be in one hundred years from now or more that the buffalo no longer dominate the prairies which divide us from Arabian borders? Will it be less time for there to be settlements — or even cities — in the southern lands that Equestria's greedy ponies are so hungry for?
Never do Equestrians think it might be they who are the beasts in need of firm guidance.
Sadness wells up within me again. Can I really do this? Relinquish the damn-near ‘honorary’ title and ‘meaningless’ duties that come with being the ‘spare’ princess to Her Highness? She has never once tried to do away with the limbo we are at, where after the war upon Discord she was crowned the ruling princess.
I was the one who planned and fought; she spent most of the war shut up in the mountain strongholds and only took to the battlefield shortly before we discovered the Elements of Harmony. She has all but told me to my face that I am the second, the ’in case’ if something were to happen to her, and ponies are in full support of this. ‘Twas in the very founding papers of this monarchy — yes, the Second Unified Nation of Equestria very much, not a diarchy as I wished it could be.
Of course I could give it all up — she never gave me anything, yet still tells me I am ungrateful. How is it that I can be ungrateful for nothing at all? Her Highness the All-Wise, Kindest, and Most Generous has never been able to answer this fundamental question. Only by reminding me that there is a roof over my head, a title to my name, does she seek to explain what a foul brat I am. I have a squadron of physicians to tend to my needs, she will remind me, I have grand parties that I get to attend. I am the namer of all the known stars — yes, the very ones that only sailors and artists bother with! She does not even believe that theatre is art or anything that shall last! Who is this Oh-So-Bright Princess Celestia to decide she suddenly possesses any expertise in such a matter?
Could I evade any ponies that were sent after me? Undoubtedly, they would be but ponies, after all — and whether or not they were motivated by coin, they are still bumbling, inexpert mortals. If they managed to figure out what direction I fled in, I would honestly be surprised. Perhaps I would even laugh, if I did such things any longer.
But could I manage to flee without guilt that should not be and a kind of loyalty that need not remain in a heart which only wants to reject it?
I look out at the hint of a red morning that was starting to break. It is a silent testament to how long I have tarried. More than that, it is an indication that my keeper would rather cause an eclipse and get her sun into the sky.
Of course, she was already raising the sun without me…
I am not worth waiting for this morn, if I ever was. Perhaps on that, we still have something to agree upon.
As I fly back to the castle at the heart of the Everfree, I know that I have not made the right choice. My heart lies heavy enough to hurt for it — but what does it matter? Most would agree this was what I deserved and that any who acts the way I did ought to have the thoughts and urges I did — the urges of melancholy to turn upon oneself, to deny all care that has kept me anchored to gloom and my energy sunk lower than a shipwreck.
I have spent too much time shadowing Her Highness to disagree with the sentiment.
…
Silence is always something I have favored in life, both in the past and present. Rarely is it unbearable or suspicious — and when it is, then the solace of such an inevitable aspect of the solitary lifestyle feels like a mockery of its usual self. To be around ponies with my own monsters in my head — the kind not even the physicians want to talk about — only grows more overstimulating. Why make things more unbearable than they already are? I am well aware it is probably what I deserve, but I don’t hurt myself because I want to. ‘Tis just easier to neglect the source of all my woes. Princess Celestia should be happy that I treat her greatest nuisance so foully — especially now that I cannot bring myself to stop.
One cannot summon a pest-catcher for my subjects anyway. As unbearable as they are, I cannot escape them. I am not sure if I am even allowed to anymore.
Unfortunately, it does seem that the thing about throwing one’s self into a hole is the aftermath. Everypony would rather gawk at me or tell me I bring shame to Her Royal Highness of Equestria. I would just rather be buried. I already speak only slightly more often than a corpse, can my subjects at least not treat me like one? They have already treated all my art as something they might slay. What more is there to loathe, fear, and scapegoat? I stopped asking for my own holiday decades ago, and I have even given up on asking those summoned to the castle to greet me too. I am a phantom figurehead in court. It has been five years since I last cried without warning in the middle of one of Princess Celestia’s grand dancing parties. Surely that means that I am little more than a petulant foal, morose over nothing if I cannot even cry? And why must she still be annoyed with me when I have stopped having any bouts of blubbing that I cannot always give a name to?
Trying at anything is just as grueling as succeeding now. I have drained myself of all such audacities and only my presence remains. Why can the high and mighty Princess Celestia not just order me away? Then she would have nopony who would be detracted from appreciating her. I would not even ask her if she could command all the terrible thoughts that swarm and feed off me to leave too. Let the maggots of the mind have me, I suppose.
This particular dawn is one of those occasions of solitude. Not even the halls of the castle yawn before me. They simply waited, the air in them still. In the throne room, I find the castle’s only other resident. She is perched ostentatiously upon her golden throne as though I were merely the Clover to her Platinum — a servant and little else. Her magenta stare flicks past me immediately, and she becomes fixated on my cloak and my lack of being completely outfitted in regalia.
The latter part makes her neck flush an embarrassed red. I will no doubt have to be cornered with a lecture on propriety between classes or something of the sort later. Those are the only classes she knows how to give or take anything from: the natural, social kind, and the unbearable noble-manner ones where each poor soul smiles like a taxidermied monstrosity, learns the sweetest way to dip their lies and the exact posture of a curtsy.
“Where hast thou been?”
Her tone was always that of a mother glacier — concerned, untouchable, and slow to show just how freezing cold she can be. Faint barbs of iciness always creep out quickly when she speaks to me. There is the aloofness of a politician which she can not pull herself out of — that had set in far too early for my liking.
“I was aloft in the Everfree,” I whisper, my words having to be all but pulled from my throat. “My sleep was troubled, Your Highness.”
Too often I find that I cannot speak even when I know just what to say. My anxieties are just too choking. A few decades ago, Her Royal Highness finally got sufficiently frustrated with me that she paid a physician. They insisted I was afflicted with a sort of partial mutism induced by melancholy after they spent the whole time talking with Princess Celestia. I had not been able to summon a single word no matter how much I tried. Instead, I had to sit across from them both as they chattered like I was not there. Apparently my diagnosis is one that only afflicts foals and those deemed ’idiots’ who choose not to speak, even though I chose nothing.
The cure was to punish misbehavior and praise good behavior.
I do not have a lot of good behavior.
I just wish I could at least have my poetry books back. I do not care that I have read them more times than one can possibly live, I bound them myself and I love them. This horrid therapy that is all the rage for silent children involves selecting all that I have not hidden and putting it in Princess Celestia’s chambers — as though they were not overstuffed with gowns and her own trinkets already — and rewarding me with my own belongings when I ask for them back. Nothing essential is supposed to be taken, so I still have my toothbrush, combs, clothes, and by Her Highness’ decree — my regalia. I am supposed to have her magic clutch my forehooves to quiet them when I play with my mane too often. I do not even get to write notes or gestures — I have to talk, and just cannot!
At least if she had put magical wards on my things and stashed them anywhere else, I could have broken any of her spells. Princess Celestia knows that I am stronger and better at magic than she will ever be — otherwise I do not think she would deny fearing me as much as she does.
‘Tis not fair — more than my will is burned out and all my words have left me! Why can nopony understand? I am treated as if I be cursed, though I suffer no magical ailment!
Those score words are the most I have spoken to her in weeks. I always refer to her exactly as she likes to be, instead of by what she is not. To appease her is better than prolonging the pain. I want to thank all my stars for letting me rattle off anything at all.
It was always best to tell the truth — yes, even to Princess Celestia of all creatures. Yet I will not reveal all, and am relieved to find I have automatically assumed the cool, but unintimidating gaze, this naturally aloof demeanor that shall get me out of this unwanted social situation. That array of behaviors is some of the most useful I have at my disposal — especially where Her Highness is involved.
“If thou shouldst find thy sleep troubled, do not go roaming ‘round the forest!” Her expression is aghast with something that is too much pure horror, bled over what could have been worry once. “Any dreams of what is to come are best disclosed to Us, hm?”
She gives me a winning smile I sense no warmth in, and I loathe how she pretends that every day between tragedies is something to be walked away from so easily. Why must she pretend like this? Ever since my foredreams only ever grew stronger and deeper than hers ever would be, something has emerged. She wants to know my every dream, thinks they can be pruned with the same mundanity a granger might use for their harvests. The mare who was once my sister became my keeper. ‘Tis an ordeal that is little different from plucking feathers in terms of tension or true impropriety. All parts of her that cloak quiet domination in a guise of Harmony only she seems to wield have only sunk their roots more deeply after the war. That which can be controlled must be so, at least in her mind. Be they dinner plans, my alleged post-war ’idiocy’, or even the future itself.
Not even a beat, and she manages to find the politician’s blank face a sentence later. I think she pours more effort into being seamless around our subjects, but around me, this is the closest to casual she has become. Things were not at all like this before we found those cursed pony tribes, and I am still sorry for that.
“My subjects deserve to know what the future might bring,” she chimes, her words an attempt to press for what there is nothing of. Such is a common tone with her. One best reserved for the peskiest of foals and our subjects, if it must be used at all.
I wish that she had been an only foal.
When Her Highness receives no reply from me other than a bob of my head, she sighs. The sound is that of a deeply inconvenienced mother — the kind who demands her children answer for why they eat so much instead of why she lets them go hungry. Clearly, I am only some foal that has troubled Her Royal Highness, the great Dawn-Bringer, who sits here in her castle clad in lace. She is forever free from dirt and dust, never once acknowledging that when we returned here from the north and found our magnificent old home, it was she who razed it to rubble and buried the deed under a mountain of excuses. Now, we only have this lesser tomb of darker corridors to inhabit.
Our ponies never hesitate to call her immaculate, and yet I stand before her differently. I have never been able to do otherwise. I am forced to look up to her, with my black cloak still draped about me and a few leaves snagged in my waving mane. Just last week, she was claiming — not complaining; you see, she never complains — that I do not go out enough.
Last year, it was that I went out to the Everfree Forest too much. She is unpleasable in this regard.
She begins again, her expression one that many would find utterly pleasant. I merely think she looks distracted. “You are still a princess now, and whether we find ourselves as rulers or nobility—”
So, she admits that I am redundant.
“—the manner our subjects look upon and feel about us both is of the utmost importance. We must always give them as they warrant, in accordance with destiny. It is thine duty as well as mine to be their keepers, and act less alike to… a warrior.”
What might our legionnaires think if they heard the ornament of a mare they fight for sneer at such a fine occupation? I helped lay down the laws of this country within all its documents, and the best I got was the role of secondary, non-sovereign princess, despite all my own efforts toward building this nation.
“Duty first. Ponies must always be first. No more of these night-ventures. Not like this, when thou spirit thyself away, alone and admitting to seeing nopony. Although thou hast refused all the betrothals We arranged for thee, We would still have some understanding if thou shouldst wish to see a lover, hidden. Yet, thou hast no desire to meet with anyone, and instead givest thyself over to fruitless queer habits. Said habits scare ponies. Please, no more acts of rebellion. Try to alter thy behavior in accordance with proper decorum. Thou knowst that We care about thee. The commoners expect their gentry to be less frivolous of habit and free from poisons such as imagination. It is always dangerous in the dark. Why wouldst thou walk in the hours when monsters prowl — and in our nation’s most perilous of realms?”
If she expects an answer, I have none to give her. I am too drained from my worries, from this unshakeable weariness that drains my emotions. I tried to do my best, I really did. But this is the mare who reminds me that my best is never enough. I spend what little energy I have left on a shrug, before fatigue fully clouds my mind. Her Highness does not understand how I cannot speak constantly when I speak at all, among everything else about the malaise that digs at me.
Her expression pinches with offense. “For shame, We are worried about thee!”
I dragged my hooves in a weary haze back to my chambers. As I near the shadowed halls behind the throne, the light of dawn shines down from a nearby window. It illuminates the displeasure all too obvious in Princess Celestia’s expression — a momentary, fleeting thing upon her face. Mechanical serenity eventually overtakes it once more.
I almost want to stop, but my head is dizzy. Her masks are always an unsolvable puzzle that somepony is shouting at me to perfect, and I am not even given rules. Even still, my moods alone can throw me into this downward spiral of mania and exhaustion alike. I would have said that I missed her too, and I even pause to consider it before I remember that those words would be a lie — if I could speak them at all.
With that in mind, I resume my walk.
Author's Note
This is the last of the untyped stories I found sitting around in a 2017-era Ice Star notebook. That same notebook contained the earliest incarnations of Love❤Less, Wishing Werelights, Misery is Company, The Storm Dancer, Nopony's Daughter, an unfinished Princess Platinum story, Atelophobia, Deep Blue, and a couple of other things. I've since gotten around to typing and reworking it from its notebook state for y'all.
(Yes, it's the Platinum story in my scraps anthology. Sadly, it wasn't completed. Maybe one day I could revisit it.)
The timeline notes for this story are listed as such:
- Post-Sombra (Spare Him His life)
- Post-Defining Features
- Post-Discord (Last Laugh)
- References the content in Before I Sleep
- I technically marked it as a sequel to Forever Mare because that is the story that it is most closely tied with since the original draft was written since it deals with Luna's selective mutism and prolonged mental breakdown/burnout prior to her Fall
Read the original version here.
