Princess Celestia smiled at the pleasant sound of a well-oiled mechanism. Cranks and gears, flywheels and axles, all softly humming with not even the slightest bit of squeakiness. She did so love to tinker with devices, but for well over a thousand years now, when had her duties ever afforded her the time?
All manner of contraptions and inventions used to litter any available storerooms in the Castle of the Two Sisters, but most had rusted, moldered, and collapsed over the ages. A few of her favorites—and necessarily, the smaller ones—had made their way to a room at the top of a particular tower once she’d made the move to Canterlot, where a particular student of hers might take a particular interest in getting a small number of them running again. One or two, yes, but Twilight Sparkle had never developed quite the passion for it.
But now, in retirement, Celestia had the time and the free space to do what she liked. And one last turn of the crank sent two wooden balls rolling from their cages, down the metal tracks, looping all around the room, then finally coming to rest at the bottom with a satisfying thunk. She opened the left compartment and levitated out the ball, still exhausting the last bit of its spin against the felt lining. “Twist,” she read from the flowing script on its shiny surface. “What does fate have in store for you today?”
The right compartment would soon answer that question. Another brief bout of levitation, and: “Sneezing fit. Ha! That will be fun to write!”
She jotted both down at the top of her page, then returned each wooden sphere to the vacuum pipe that would deposit it back in its respective cage. One for events and one for ponies—well, not just ponies. She rather looked out for the whole world these days. The names got updated periodically through what contacts she had at the Census Bureau, and the events through oh-so-innocent inquiries to whoever was around. It must sound to them like taking suggestions for improv theater. And none of them the wiser. Only two ponies knew what she did every afternoon.
Celestia tapped her quill to her lips, then began crafting her narrative.
“…And I couldn’t thtop thneezing!” Twist said as she trotted out of the schoolhouse with Lily Longsocks.
Seldom did Celestia get to see the fruits of her labor in person, but she had a park dedication in Ponyville today anyway. She giggled a little, but it made a funny echo, and—
“Hi!” Pinkie Pie said, pronking up behind her with a giggle of her own in tow. She pointed toward Twist. “Oh, was that you?”
Yes, only two ponies knew how this all worked. Of course Pinkie was one. “Just a bit of fun. I like it when the silly prompts come up.” Back when Pinkie had shouldered this responsibility, she’d invented everything on her own. No doubt it had proven quite taxing and difficult. Pinkie had certainly become an emotional wreck before finally seeking Celestia’s advice. Then a good ruler did what a good ruler had to do. “Did you enjoy the relapse of chocolate milk rain last week?”
“Ooh, did my name get chosen?”
Celestia chuckled. “No, it was Bon Bon, but I had a feeling you’d make a good time of it, too.” Pinkie had visited on several occasions, so she got to see the operation, but she even helped write once or twice. Happy stories only, though. She couldn’t take the tough ones anymore, but the lessons Pinkie’d learned had aided Celestia immensely.
In the next instant, Pinkie’s face lost all trace of smiles and jokes, but her mane didn’t collapse any, and her eyes never gave up the ever-present sensation of warm hugs lingering behind them. “How are you doing?” she asked.
To so many ponies, Pinkie served as the spark that gave their day variety. Always ready with a smile, a gift, a cupcake, whatever might cheer them up. Few saw her in serious mode or even knew she had one. “You know how it is,” Celestia replied.
“Twist was the only one?” Pinkie said, a renewed smile tugging at her cheeks.
“So far, yes.” Celestia glanced at the sundial in the town square, but she still had about fifteen minutes before she needed to make an appearance in the park. “Coming here meant I couldn’t get to any this afternoon, but I’ll try to fit in a couple more before bedtime.”
When all this had started, Celestia had known, somehow. She’d intuited how the binder worked, but knowing and doing added substantially different weight to her shoulders. Whatever she wrote in there happened. It actually happened, became real, became truth, became life. Then became necessity to continue their world, once the creators stopped doing so. Fortunately, it also did fairly well with generic “and everything carried on as normal for the next week” type of obfuscation, but that would never do indefinitely. How boring would the world be if she left it in the care of such bland directives? How long would anyone want to remain in it?
Every living creature deserved some personal attention.
“I’m here to talk, if you ever need it.”
“Thank you, Pinkie. It does help. You and Luna both.” At this point, Pinkie would often suggest allowing someone else to take some of the burden. No, who even could? Such terrible knowledge for any of her regular citizens. Cadence? How could a princess of love do this? And certainly not Twilight Sparkle. Operating in the shadows, deliberately hurting ponies? No Princess of Friendship could stomach that, even the knowledge of it.
So only Pinkie and Luna knew, and even then, Pinkie merely because she’d discovered it first. “Into each life a little rain must fall,” as the sign on the Cloudsdale Weather Factory said. Yes, Pinkie had learned the hard way. Having nothing but happy things in life ended up being no better than “and everything carried on as normal for the next week.”
But Pinkie said nothing. She nodded, finally sat on her haunches, and leaned into Celestia’s side, here in this shadowed alley next to a bustling marketplace, where nopony seemed to notice the tall alicorn watching them. After all these centuries, she still had a natural feel for stealth.
“Hi, Princess!” Minuette called with a wave—Celestia returned a halfhearted one of her own, but nopony else afforded her any more than a momentary glance.
Pinkie put on her customary smile long enough for Minuette to move along, but it soon faded again. “I try not to read the newspapers anymore,” she said. “Looking for bad things to happen, wondering if you’d done them, wondering—” She took in a deep breath and let it out sharply: “Hunhhh.”
“Wondering if I felt even worse than whoever it was?”
Pinkie nodded. “Make sure you write yourself some really fun times. Soon.” Then she gave Celestia a hug before trotting off, chirping something about needing to make enough cake for the ceremony and another surprise pie for Rainbow Dash.
Today, Celestia had left the door open to the outbuilding that housed her apparatus. Such a lovely spring day, and the quality of the air and light would do her some good. Plus a handy little spell of obscuration would keep any prying eyes from seeing in.
She set her teacup on the soft quilted coaster next to her notepad, prodded the complex set of locks into opening the safe where she kept the binder of stories, and turned the crank, letting loose the first wooden ball.
It would take a good minute for it to come to rest, so she had a bite of bagel. Nothing too pressing this morning; normally, she’d deliberately start the second ball after seeing the first, just to eat up a little more time, but she went ahead and turned the crank a little further, letting a ball go from the cage of events.
She’d just raised the teacup to her lips when the first ball arrived with a name for the morning’s writing, so she traded it for the tea in her levitation, and—
If not for that bit of good fortune, she might have spluttered some of her tea across the desk. “Twilight Sparkle,” the gold lettering spelled out.
Her name had only come up twice before. Of course Celestia worked her into many of the tales, but requiring her… it always proved unnerving. One time had her judging a dance competition, the other utterly failing at an attempt to make souffles. She finally did sample her tea.
Then the clunk of the second ball in its box sent a shiver down her ribs. With a steeling breath and a gulp, she floated the ball out. A short one, just a single word, and she drew it near enough to read it clearly.
Death.
She dropped it as if it were a poker fresh from the fire, recoiled from it, coughed up bile. Chance had sent her that one a total of twenty-four times in the intervening years, each one stinging worse than a nest full of hornets. Every name, burned into her mind, and naturally removed from the pool of candidates. Then she literally and symbolically burned their named spheres. After a week or so, she’d feel almost equine again.
Not Twilight, please, please not Twilight. She couldn’t stop shaking as she cradled her most faithful student’s sphere in her hooves, and the last bit of her resolve deserted her. She gave in to the wave of tears.
Around her, the room rocked. It had to be a dream, yet no moon hung in the sky with an echoing proclamation of help. But as soon as her mind had stumbled over countless memories of a whispered comforting message—
“Luna!” she wailed.
Peacefully, in her sleep. That was the only acceptable option. No pain, no fright, and those who discovered her would only gradually realize it. That would do, it made sense, and nopony appreciated logic more than Twilight Sparkle.
Celestia swung her legs out of bed and walked over to the window. She still had to raise the sun, after all. As she parted the drapes to begin her meditation—
No, that was right, Twilight raised the sun now. The device they’d supplied her… it had worked well for training purposes, and then Twilight had gotten used to going without it. Such a good student, such a good student. But maybe Celestia would need to get back into practice.
She drew the drapes closed again, and the curtain rings rattled against their rod.
“Sister?” a sleepy voice called from outside the door. Celestia had asked her not to intrude upon her dreams last night. “Are you awake? Are you ready to talk now?”
The deep purple skies barely began to lighten, then pink light streamed over the hills. Somewhere in Canterlot, her former student was—
She choked back a sniffle. “No. Not yet.”
A heavy sigh sounded, like the breaths of Canterlot Mountain through the crystal caverns beneath. “I assume you’ve gotten another distasteful situation to write.” Luna always took that stern tone. She refused to participate in any of this, and she looked at it with disdain. But what choice did Celestia have?
However, Luna’s tune softened, and Celestia had to strain to hear her. “Who is it this time?”
Celestia opened her mouth to reply, but the words caught deep in her gut. Either way, she still wasn’t ready to talk about it. She twirled some of her mane around a hoof and yanked at it.
“I see,” Luna said. “You do this every time—”
Just as quickly, Luna would have realized the futility of raising the same arguments again. Yes, Celestia knew she could simply refuse to use those writing prompts. And yes, Luna knew that doing so invalidated the whole reason for having them in the first place.
“Whenever you are ready—” the sound of a hoof on stone carried through the door as Luna stood “—I will have some breakfast waiting.” A few steps through the garden later: “Please. You know starving yourself never helps.”
But leaving the room meant starting her day, which meant setting into motion a chain of events that would have her finally sitting down to write or torturing herself with more procrastination.
She peered through the small gap between the drapes at the sun Twilight had raised. Celestia was one of the few who could do so without blinding herself, though she might have anyway.
Celestia sat at her wretched desk with her wretched quill and wretched inkwell in front of the wretched apparatus that had wrought all this. She liked her paper angled just so, and if she didn’t have it perfectly right, then she didn’t have to begin composing a story yet, and if it took her more than another twenty minutes to settle everything, then the sun would go down and she wouldn’t have the proper light anymore.
Three days now. Three days, and she hadn’t so much as penned a single word, aside from that stupid “and everything carried on as normal for a week” that would tide her over until she could shed this horrible weakness and do what needed to be done. Everyone happy, everyone cheerful, and everyone stagnant. She bristled at the birdsong outside and laid her chin on the desk.
“You never ate your breakfast,” a gentle voice said from the doorway. “Or yesterday’s, or the day before…”
“I don’t think I could keep it down,” Celestia groaned.
“At least try. It might alleviate that headache.”
Lucky guess. Celestia hadn’t even noticed the pulsing in her temples much until Luna had mentioned it.
The room’s shadows continued to lengthen, one more so as light hoofsteps approached. Celestia flinched to cover her pages, but it would do no good. Luna would wheedle until she got a look, or worst case, sneak in here on her own.
She couldn’t hide the short gasp.
“I thought it likely somepony who… but not her.”
With a shrug, Celestia glanced up, and only for a moment, Luna wore what Celestia internally called her lecturing face: angled a bit too far down so that she had to roll her eyes up, and the corners of her mouth bent down the smallest fraction.
“Then just don’t do it—”
“Don’t come in here and think you have some greater wisdom to impart,” Celestia spluttered.
Luna had no reply, and she lost her taste for holding Celestia captive in her stern gaze. Instead, her eyes roved around, and she finally turned back to the door. “Just… do nothing tonight, okay? And if you feel like eating, please come get me. I would like to share a meal with you.”
The next morning, afternoon, and evening found Celestia still tapping her quill at a page that only had a day-old “Twilight Sparkle went to bed that night feeling quite normal” inscribed on it. Years ago, the moon’s absence would have also meant her sister’s absence, and while Luna had yet to completely divert her sleep pattern away from the night shift, she made do.
Today, that meant lingering in the doorway again.
“Just stop it. Put down the quill and let your machine select again.”
“And if it gives me the same result?”
Luna always got that slightly distant look when running numbers in her head.
“I don’t need to know the odds against it. That’s irrelevant.” With a clench of her jaw, Celestia dipped her quill in the inkwell. Maybe Luna would give her the push she needed to begin.
“Stop it. Please.”
Celestia whirled on her. “If I don’t, who will?”
With a shake of her head, Luna glanced away. “Have your machine pick another. Or let me go use it. You can’t allow this to happen.”
“We’ve been over this!” Celestia roared. “I’d be the worst kind of hypocrite, reserving all the most severe punishments for ponies who never had the good fortune of me getting to know them. As a ruler, I’m supposed to love all my subjects equally. Nopony gets special treatment!”
Amid her panting, she watched as Luna peered at her like she might a foal who’d lost her favorite stuffed animal. “Including you?”
“Particularly me. I can’t charge a price for what I do! One that everypony but me has to pay…”
Luna’s eyes met hers again, but only briefly. “You’re not their ruler anymore,” she said quietly.
“Even more reason I should treat them all equally, since there are no political strings attached to my decisions now.”
Luna pursed her lips. “Skip this one.”
“No.”
“Please, just skip it.”
“I can’t.”
“Indulge yourself for once!”
“No!” Celestia’s vision flashed white. “If I don’t do what the machine says, I’m a failure!”
“I don’t care!” Luna screamed. “I just want my sister!”
Celestia tore the tears from her cheek with the back of a hoof. “And I just want my student.” Now her page had gotten smeared. She crumpled it up and took out a fresh sheet. “But we can’t have everything we want.”
She only made it as far as the same sentence fragment she’d written previously when she covered her eyes and threw the quill down on the desk.
Eventually soft hoofsteps receded, then paused in the doorway. “Do nothing tonight, okay? Please.”
And once again, Celestia was alone.
The week of standard saccharine sweetness had almost come to an end, and Celestia had nothing new to put in the binder. Twilight Sparkle stared back at her from one of the letter cubbyholes on her desk, while Death regarded her from the ceiling beam in which she’d embedded it during a fit of rage sometime in the last two nights.
“You mock me,” she said.
“Death,” it replied.
“My point exactly.”
“What else would you have me do?”
Celestia raised her head off the desk’s surface and tried once again to overlap the drapes just perfectly and blot out any traces of sunlight. “Few ponies would suspect the foul language I am capable of.”
“I still calculate eighty-nine percent odds you will eventually go through with this,” Twilight added.
“You’re only saying that because it’s the same figure Luna came up with yesterday, even though I asked her nicely not to.” Maybe Twilight looked a little repentant. “Besides, how could I do that to you?”
“You mean making me experience what should be a natural part of life?”
“See, she gets it,” Death chimed in.
With any luck, the shifting yellows and oranges in her eyes told it that it should remember its place and do so rather quickly. “It’s different for us.”
Even as a filly, Twilight had that streak of sass in her, but she must have lost her stomach for it at the moment. She turned to the side. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said. “Besides, if you keep adding foals, how else would you balance the population? For that matter, I’m concerned that you don’t factor in more deaths here and there on your own instead of relying on the precious few times it gets—”
“Logic has surprisingly little to do with it.” She nearly went on, but arguing the literary concept of hoof-waving with Twilight would not lead anywhere useful right now. “Besides—” now it was Celestia’s time to look away “—you’re avoiding the point,” she finished quietly.
“Which is…?”
Celestia took a slow breath. “I can’t do this to you—” Twilight caught her eye again and leaned forward. “No, I know you wouldn’t blame me. It’s not so much that I’d be the one doing it. I’ve wrestled with that enough over the years, and yes, it still gets me down, but… I don’t want to be without you.”
“But it’s okay for me to be without you?”
And just after Celestia had told her to drop the logic. “I know. I’m selfish.”
“No, that’s not it…” A little breath like butterfly wings sounded. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s just… you lose your parents, then some of your friends. And then it should be the next generation’s turn.”
“Oh, please,” Death interjected in that maddeningly obsequious tone, “do continue telling me how my job works.”
Celestia didn’t even have the energy to shoot it a scalding glare. She was being selfish. And the sooner she got herself out of this rut, the sooner she could move on, learn to live.
Never before had that word elicited a snarl from her, but she swatted the quill away, turned her wrath upon Death and the splintered wood that had it entrapped. Her horn charged more and more, the speck of light at the end glowing hotter than the sun and beginning to ripple the air in front of her eyes, the sweat on her forehead sizzling.
“Having a nice conversation?” a cool voice said from the door. But when Celesta grudgingly gazed at its source, expecting to see a sneer on her sister’s face, Luna had instead gone ashen. “Please. Let me help. This isn’t healthy.”
“Yes,” Twilight immediately cut in, “listen to her. We’re all concerned about you.”
“Why are you taking her side!?” Celestia shouted. “You’re the one who said this was natural!”
Celestia flinched—a hoof on her shoulder. Luna peered closely at her and squinted. “Who are you talking to?” Luna asked, but she’d already begun shaking her head, flinging her tears over the floor. “Stop this!”
“No!”
“You’re dragging down everyone who loves you along with you!”
“Then that’s their fault for following me!” Celestia screeched, stomping her hoof down on the desk. She snatched up the one page lying there, the sixth or eighteenth or whatever version that still only said, “Twilight Sparkle went to bed that night feeling quite normal.” Then she stuffed it into the binder, bent to retrieve her quill off the floor—
“I WILL NOT LET YOU!” Luna’s Royal Canterlot Voice said. No, not said. Declared, proclaimed, decreed. She wrested Celestia’s hoof away and dashed the inkwell across the desk, splashing ink all over the page. It bled to every corner of the paper and dripped onto the floor, and before Celestia could gather her wits, Luna slammed the binder shut.
“There! Now every possible word is on that sheet in every possible combination. Let the book figure out what to do with them!”
Celestia fought to free her hoof for a moment, but then her strength abandoned her. She wept, her knees trembled, and she let her sister hold her, melted into her embrace. By the time she could stand again, the evening sun shone through the crack between the drapes at a shallow angle, then finally dipped below the horizon. Somewhere over in Canterlot, her most faithful student would be preparing to raise the moon now.
In the ceiling beams above, Death had nothing to say about it.
“Hello, and thank you for visiting!” Luna said as she ushered Twilight in. It was always nice to see her former mentors again. “Celestia is just washing up from her morning gardening. She’ll be out in a minute. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Um… yes, iced tea, please,” Twilight replied, and with a nod, Luna gestured toward the outbuilding across the yard. Curious, she’d never gone in there before.
The gravel made its sound like heavy rain underhoof as she followed the narrow path between close-cropped islands of grass and banks of hydrangeas surrounded by hyacinths. She considered eating one, but this part of the garden might have been intended as decorative only.
The mental picture drawn from her memory had a somewhat formidable door shutting off that building, but here it stood with one wall almost entirely removed and the sunny breeze blowing through the large opening and out the window on the far side, jostling some wind chimes on its journey. Rattan chairs with thick cushions, a ceiling fan overhead, bright colors everywhere, a sweet scent from the hyacinths. Though in the rafters, some sort of rail system hung there. Odd… it didn’t seem to start or end at any point, just some disjoint metal beams winding around. Could be worth asking about, but likely just a remnant of whatever function this place had served before Celestia moved here.
New hoofsteps outside had her looking back down again, but on the way, something else briefly caught her eye: a polished wooden sphere with a rich, dark stain embedded in a rafter. Some manner of gold script adorned it, but after the initial “D,” the rest had been worn and scratched away.
But the hoofsteps paused beside her chair now, and Luna stood there with three glasses of tea hovering in midair. Twilight took charge of one, while the other two floated onto a nearby table. “What a restful place!” Twilight said.
“Yes, it’s become that,” Luna answered. “And none too soon.”
“Good. You two deserve it.” If Twilight had thought of it, she might have asked for some lemon, but a taste of the tea revealed a hint of raspberry. Flavored already, and rather pleasant.
And here came Celestia out of the house, a towel still draped over her withers. With a nod to Twilight, she flopped into the most worn-looking chair and picked up one of the glasses. “I don’t suppose you brought a newspaper with you?”
Twilight shook her head. No, that particular request had left her somewhat stunned and confused. Luna had insisted Twilight not bring one. What were the odds she would have anyway? It wasn’t the kind of thing one toted along on a visit to a friend.
“Mm. Well, maybe you know of current events anyway. Are things going well? Or poorly?”
“Mostly well, yes, but some flooding up around Griffonstone and a fire at a hotel in Manehattan. Other than that, it’s been a good few weeks.” Truthful, but also a bit scripted. Luna had requested that as well: be vaguely positive, but not overtly upbeat, have an example of something bad, but avoid going into detail about any of it, especially if pressed to. For public events, anyway—about her own life, Luna would allow complete honesty, though in complete honesty, things around the castle never changed much. “Luna said you’d been feeling ill? I’m sorry I couldn’t visit until now.”
With a glance between them, both sisters set down their drinks. “Twilight,” Celestia began, “the time has come for us to take you into our confidence about something.”
Twilight’s spine immediately stiffened. But Luna offered a gentle smile, saying, “Worry not: the situation has resolved itself. We just thought you should know.”
Celestia’s chest did look quite bloated with words, and she snuck in a quick swallow of tea to wet her throat. “It all began many years ago with your friend Pinkie Pie,” she said.
Of everything about this, that was probably the least surprising.
“You see,” Celestia continued, “she had made a most unusual discovery…”
