In the hours after school was out, Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns quieted down dramatically. Not long ago, bells were ringing in the hallways, students spilling out of their classrooms, laughing and gossiping and practicing illicit yet-to-be-perfected magic (despite spellcasting in the halls being strictly prohibited, unless you’d passed the exam for it. An odd rule to find in a high-level magic school, but too many past incidents made it a necessity). Princess Celestia used these meditative early-evening hours to meet with parents who had concerns for their foal’s performance, academic or otherwise.
“How’s the tea?” asked Celestia, carefully blowing over the rim of her teacup. “Not too hot, I hope?”
Across the desk from her sat a parent whom she wished to make as comfortable as possible. Part of that treatment involved tea, which Night Light gently sipped from his own teacup.
“I pride myself in brewing exquisite tea,” Celestia encouraged further. The stallion hadn’t said a word except for a brief “Hello, your Majesty,” when he’d entered her office, then a hesitant “Thank you” when Celestia had offered him a cup of tea. Celestia took him to be a sharp stallion. Very precise. Also withdrawn, much like his daughter in many respects.
Eventually, Night Light nodded, lowering his cup. “It’s quite good. Is it Jasmine?”
“Lavender,” replied Celestia, smiling.
“Rats,” thought Celestia. It was plain in Night’s forced pleasantness. “He’s not a tea-drinker.”
“Can I get you anything else? Sugar? Biscuit? Any—”
“My daughter…” injected Night, breaking the princess’s flow. “Has she been exhibiting odd behavior for a long time now? I know she’s only been at your school for a few months, but…”
Celestia took advantage of his pause to shift her mental gears back to the business at hoof, as apparently Night was anxious to do. When he’d arrived a short time ago, she’d immediately noticed the creases in his brow, the marginally-unkempt friz in his mane, the way his shoulders hunched—some classic symptoms of stress. She was prepared for this, knowing that he must have had plenty on his mind lately. She had experienced her share of stressed parents, and had the perfect therapeutic tea brew for nearly every variety of stress. Tea didn’t seem like the correct solution in this case.
“I...forgive me for interrupting you, your Majesty,” stuttered Night. He nodded his head in a polite bow, not raising his eyes.
“Within these walls, I’m the school’s principal.” She made a little smirk. “But I accept your apology.”
Night slowly lifted his eyes, rubbing his neck a bit sheepishly. “And...ah, I’m afraid I don’t drink tea...” He pushed his half-emptied teacup across the desk.
Celestia grinned, shrugging. Most other parents would attempt to keep up the facade all evening. She exhaled a sigh suffused with sarcasm.
“Don’t drink tea? Well, I suppose I can forgive you for that.” “More for me,” she thought smugly.
Her little tease earned her exactly the reaction she’d been hoping for: a chuckle. The taut ridges in Night’s brow seemed to dissolve. His smile, a little awkward, but no longer forced just to please the princess. His shoulders relaxed to a more loose, natural position.
Celestia poured herself another cup.
“Regarding your daughter,” she began, watching her cup so that she didn’t overfill. “I don’t entirely know what you mean by ‘strange behavior.’ Twilight has acted very much the same throughout her short time at CSGU: quiet, withdrawn, astoundingly brilliant…”
“Lonely?”
At this, Celestia blinked. She lifted her eyebrows slightly and nodded.
“...Perhaps less social than the other fillies, so loneliness is a safe assumption to make.”
“Do other fillies tease her?”
Numbly, Celestia replaced the teapot on the tray, creating a delicate porcelain clatter.
“Not to my knowledge...” She trailed off, and lifted the steaming teacup to her lips. The tea brought some warmth back into her. She set the cup down for stern emphasis. “I take bullying at my school very seriously, Mr. Light.”
Night nodded gravely. “Of course.”
“Has Twilight told you she’s been bullied?”
“Not since she’s been here, no.”
“But she has been bullied before.”
A deep sigh.
“Yes, she has.”
Celestia tapped the edges of her teacup with her hooves, her knees propped on the desk before her. She chewed her lower lip, eyes scanning the room for the clock, ticking away somewhere. She wasn’t in a rush to get Night out the door, but did have a sunset to oversee and a full moon to lift into the sky in a few hours. She had a feeling that time would easily slip away throughout this meeting.
She took a breath, pushed herself from the desk. Night began to do the same. She gestured for him to stay put, that she’d only be away from her desk for a moment. She stepped over to the tall, narrow bookshelf looming against the wall, and plucked a book from it. For somepony who’d never had a foal of her own, she had quite an extensive library of parenting books. Sometimes she’d loan them out to troubled mothers and fathers who really needed the help. Replacing them was routine.
“You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a majority of my students have experienced bullying in the past.” Celestia returned slowly to her desk, scouring the book as she spoke. The pages slipped over each other with smooth scraping sounds in the princess’s magical aura. “Social ostracism is often an unfortunate side-effect of exceptional magical talent. For most young unicorns, this school is the only place they’ve ever met other ponies who’ve shared their experiences.”
“Luna knew what it felt like to be misunderstood. Ignored. Lonely.”
The thought entered Celestia’s brain unwelcomely, and she froze where she stood.
Night cocked his head to the side. “Is something wrong?”
“No, no…” Celestia shook her head, quickly returning to her pleasant demeanor, but felt her attitude had been tainted. Was she suddenly smiling too much? She couldn’t tell.
She set the open book on the desk, spinning it around for Night to examine the selected page for himself. Night read silently for a few moments, brow furrowing deeper the further he read. Eventually he lifted his face, expression sketched with heavy lines of confusion and concern.
“Trauma-induced?”
Celestia nodded. “It’s not as unpleasant as it sounds. Psychologists are still refining their theories, but magical savantism has been strongly linked to a traumatic event, or multiple traumatic events throughout a pony’s life.” She shook her head. “It makes sense. Overwhelming problems require inventive solutions, and a foal’s mind is a near-boundless source of imagination.”
“Sure, sure…” Night expressed a weighty sigh through pursed lips. “Makes sense.”
Celestia made a slight cough into her hoof. “I’m...not insinuating...that you—”
“I know you’re not.”
“You think it’s school-related?”
“Maybe. Partly.”
Celestia remained silent. She waited for Night to vocalize the hidden thoughts laced within his words. Night merely nodded, spilling a blank stare over the pages of the book.
“Trauma might explain Twilight’s most recent incident,” he said at last.
“Probably explains Luna’s, too.”
Celestia covered her mouth, thinking she’d expressed the thought out loud. Fortunately, Night hadn’t noticed her action. She fanned herself, feeling suddenly hot and agitated. The atmosphere in her office felt congested, too full of warm silence. She extended her magical grasp to open a window, letting in the cool of the evening.
“Ehm...do you know where she got the hamster?” she asked.
Night looked up. He nodded. “The hamster was her pet. She named him Snowball.”
“Ah,” hummed Celestia, eyes widening. “Very cute.”
“We’d taken Twilight to the pet shop a few months ago. She took one look at Snowball, and...well, that was that.”
Celestia smiled. “I used to have a pet mouse when I was very young. They’re such fragile little creatures.”
“Yep, they sure are.” Night nodded, repeating in a more somber tone, “They sure are.”
“Pets are a big responsibility,” said Celestia, then shrugged. “Well, big for such a young filly.”
Night spread his forehooves out on the desk. A wistful smile hung on his face. “Oh, she was more than ready for the responsibility. She made sure Snowball had enough food, though not too much. She refilled his water bottle each day. She kept a close eye on the cleanliness of his cage; I think she cleaned it at least three times a week. By the weekend, she’d have run out of wood shavings again, so she’d shove us out to the pet store to pick up a new bag. We must have gone through them faster than oats!”
“So…” Celestia paused, choosing her words delicately. “Do you know what caused Snowball’s death?”
Night sighed. His eyes slowly moved from Celestia’s face to his splayed forehooves, where they remained fixed beneath his furrowed brow.
“He got sick. Came down with pneumonia, according to the vet. A disease like that doesn’t take long to do in a tiny hamster. Nothing we could really do. Certainly nothing Twilight could have done. It was just one of those freak things that nopony can control. I had to give Twilight the ‘Everypony Dies’ speech a little sooner than I was prepared for.”
“I see. Quite...unfortunate.”
They passed a few wordless moments, thinking, sharing the faint ticks of the clock. Celestia slid the book to the side of the desk. She extended her forehoof, setting it gently upon Night’s.
“Twilight thought it was her fault, didn’t she.”
Night nodded slowly. “She tore herself up over it. Locked herself in her room and cried for hours. Velvet and I tried talking to her, tried convincing her that it wasn’t her fault...but we couldn’t get through to her. We couldn’t even do that right.”
He brushed his cheek with his shoulder, saying nothing more.
“He’s withdrawing again,”noted Celestia. She could see the stiffness returning to his body. All that tension she thought had been released began coiling to the surface. She watched Night’s face for a response, hoping that he would reach some kind of emotional equilibrium to stand upon. He looked like a defeated soldier, one who desperately needed a victory to restore his honor. Celestia didn’t think such a potent tea even existed.
"Of course it wasn’t Twilight’s fault. You shouldn't blame yourself, either. You're a good father, Mr. Light, and your wife is a good mother. I see it clearly in the bright young filly you've raised."
Night shook his head. He forced his words to come out, slightly wavering. "But could I have done more? Should I be proud that she somehow managed to reanimate her dead pet through some kind of homebrew necromancy? Should I be terrified? I don't know...I am terrified. She hasn't made any new friends at school. I wonder if her odds would have been better at her old school. Was sending her here a mistake? She studies much harder than she ever did. I've always been proud of her for being so hard-working, and I pushed her to excel. Maybe I pushed too hard. Maybe I should have seen where I was pushing her before it was too late—I’m sorry for going into all this...”
He rested his forehead on his hoof, breathing, shaking.
Celestia replayed his words in her head. She didn’t know what was the right thing to say, or worried that by saying nothing, she was already making the wrong statement. Despite not being a parent, she felt a very real connection to the troubles Night had expressed.
She bowed her head slowly.
“There was a time when my little sister looked up to me.”
Night’s ears twitched. He raised his head from his hooves to look at the princess.
“When she was young, it was difficult for her to adopt her new role as guardian of the night. Nightmares can emotionally exhaust a pony, especially if she’s dealing with hundreds of them each night. On top of that, she couldn’t show any sign of weakness or fear, or else risk damaging the pony’s psyche, not to mention her status as a strong ruler.”
Celestia breathed. She hadn’t told anypony this story in a very long time.
“In those times, she’d return to me each morning, completely drained. She’d cry to me about everything she’d witnessed the night before, and how she didn’t think she could stay strong enough. That she would someday collapse under a particularly traumatic nightmare, and lose all our subjects’ confidence in her.”
Night was no longer tense. His face was soft, understanding. Celestia smiled, feeling warm tears at the corners of her eyes.
“What did you do?” Night asked.
Celestia laughed. “Didn’t have a clue what I was doing at the time. I listened to her. I comforted her. I did everything I thought our mother would do, repeating the words I thought she might say: ‘It’ll be alright. You can do this. I believe in you.’ Everything I said, I meant, but I was always worried Luna would think I was being superficial.”
“Did she?”
Celestia shrugged. Having shed all the tears she’d needed, she wiped her cheeks.
“Sometimes I felt helpless, or that I wasn’t doing enough for her. I couldn’t prescribe a perfect solution to her problems.” She sniffed. “Later, I realized that she didn’t need anything else. Simply being there for her was precisely the solution.”
In her ears, Celestia could hear her brisk pulse gradually returning to its natural pace. She heard the ticking clock, and became vaguely aware of the shadows in her office deepening. She looked at Night, and Night looked back. They shared smiles of understanding.
“Thank you for meeting with me tonight,” he said.
“My pleasure.” Celestia nodded her head with a little bow. “Anytime.”
Night Light departed shortly afterward, giving the princess a final departing bow as Celestia held the door for him. She felt a strange lightness in her heart, like it had suddenly realized it could fly, and was soaring through her body with spectacular acrobatic loops. It had been a very good parent-teacher meeting. Plus, it had ended at the perfect time; right before she needed to raise the moon.
Out on the balcony, she lifted the moon from where it slept, beyond the edge of the world. As the moon slowly rose, she gazed at the dark imprint that stained its pristine face.
“Yes, I’m still here for you,” she told her. “You’ll get through this. I believe in you.” As always, the moon remained silent and mysterious and watchful.
As always, Celestia waited and listened.
Author's Note
I made the cover art for this story when I was getting a foothold in fanart, about the time when I started falling out of touch with writing. This story has sat in my unpublished folder for years, but after rereading it, I thought I should bring it back.
