Celestia was watching the sunrise from her bedroom window. Fifty-three years ago today would have been her first time doing so after few splendorous millennia reigning over Equestria alone.
Well, as splendorous as a certain amount of time could be when dealing with bigoted or militant politicians, counting the ivory pillars she passed in the halls every day, and raising the sun every morning and lowering it every night. There was the odd villain that she had to deal with, sure, but they had been thrilling only on paper.
In play, they had been indescribably malevolent, predictable, lacking of foresight, or similar; each were more or less so than others, but most became even bigger nuisances as time went on. Where had been the much more harrowing and difficult threats, such as the long-forgotten windigos and sirens?
Celestia swirled her half-pint glass of water, and lifted it to her muzzle with her magic and took a long, but shallow, drink.
Yes, while those threats, which she knew firsthand to be tricky and ruthless, were not something she yearned to see plaguing Equestria or anywhere beyond, hindsight had grown to be one’s most powerful weapon. Granted, there had been the likes of Tirek, Nightmare Moon, Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, and so on, but with that came the subgenre of indulgent fun-havers such as Discord, powerful rogue unicorns, awry spells or artefacts, and even snooty aristocrats that had once wished to bore her and inject her time with a plate of bragging, pretentiousness and elitist opinions.
Thankfully, the true definition of a global threat had been quickly lost on newer generations, hopefully forgotten forever, and replaced with mid-life crises, late homework, overdue library books, and a particularly hard boiled vegetable.
Memory was like a glass of water. It could be filled over time, but eventually it would have to empty. If not, the contents could turn cloudy, lack in certain areas where evaporation had taken place, or even taste different.
As an alicorn - she twitched her wings - Celestia’s glass had never seemed to properly empty. Immortality had something to do with it, certainly, but now that she and Luna had transferred the excess magic they had been gifted upon earning their wings to Twilight so that she could be immortalised in their stead, what had been so clear now consisted of air-bubbles.
Celestia had consulted Luna about the matter before their morning hiking trip up Mount Everhoof only thirteen years ago - no, fourteen- no, seventeen - and while she hadn’t really admitted relation, her sister reassured Celestia that, if she was truly upset over the matter, she could always turn to the Canterlot Library.
Then - later that day in the late grey afternoon - even though she wasn’t necessarily upset, but more along the lines of slightly perturbed, she had gone to do just that and decided to stay and chat with Twilight over tea and cake while she was there. It had been wonderful talking to her former student, especially without the need to crane her neck anymore.
Twilight had been so delighted by the visit that she had sent a letter all the way to the Dragonlands for Spike to join them if he had the time, and he did roughly an hour after. Fluttershy - well into her sixties or seventies - too had joined, on account of being in Canterlot for the Royal Swanifying Ceremony. It had been heartbreaking to see her so frail, albeit well enough in herself, but Celestia knew that the cycle of life was a cruel thing, but always needed to carry on unless the old wished to eternalise their pain and sickness, and the young to never be born.
The book called The Diary of the Two Sisters, which was credited most believable by its readers, was an enjoyable piece that Celestia had considered fiction since the day it was made, but now it seemed she couldn’t entirely recall why. The basis of it laid within the fact that she and Luna were depicted as being born alicorns, like Flurry Heart had been almost fifty-five years ago.
They weren’t. Celestia knew that much. After all, she - and by extension Luna - wouldn’t have lied directly to Cadance, Shining Armor, Twilight, and her friends’ faces just like that, for something that would have made no impact on the present or future.
The book stating that the two sisters were also born into royalty made Celestia crease her brow, which deepened most of her frown and worry lines. The unicorn tribe’s royalty had consisted primarily of King Silver Alloy, the late Queen Cobalt, and their daughters Princess Platinum, Princess Amethyst, and a third which Celestia couldn’t recall the name of.
Her talent had been one of finance, scheming. and calculation, and Celestia pictured several hazy, mind-numbing announcements from the royals that featured her holding an abacus in her creamy yellow magic. It was rumoured to have been a complete replica of the cutie mark under her cloak, but none could have been quite certain.
Philomena tittered in her sleep on Celestia’s pillow. She had nested the second the horizon no longer carried a warm amber hue, which then left Celestia in silence, save for the occasional chitter or click of her beak, or - from the alicorn’s behalf - a sigh.
There were a few details that Celestia had to admit she couldn’t really tell from the truth anymore. One of them was when she and Luna had met Starswirl. Knowing of him was definite, for in pre-Equestria ages he was rather famous amongst his fellow unicorns for being the most powerful of the Great Magicians.
When she had met him was what was foggy. Had she met him upon studying under him, as the book stated? Had it been after one of the strained sunrises one particular morning? Or, had it been when he turned her down as a student on account of her blank flank?
The latter seemed the most reachable in Celestia’s mind, but she was still unsure, and so she sighed again. She had forgotten the ageing process, and the mere fear of it, several millennia ago around her eightieth or ninetieth birthday. While the process was now slow for both her and Luna, it didn’t stop the changes that had followed suit.
Celestia grinned as she sipped her water, and her crows’ feet folded naturally. The deep creasing of skin was painless, so she didn’t quite understand why every other mare - or even stallion - feared the affects. But yet again, she nor Luna weren’t quite like other stallions or mares. They had been once, but another ‘once’ also had them even further away than what they were now.
The rough estimate agreed by the two of them, and a few of their friends in Silver Shoals, was that they seemed roughly middle-aged, and so they went by that.
Now, it was Cadance and Twilight’s burden.
Losing the tight grasp on dear memories one might have had was a sign of ageing. Celestia had seen it happen to everyone in her family. Guards that had protected her right up until retirement had sometimes been rather forgetful the further life went on, and the same went for the rest of the castle staff.
Now, Celestia and Luna were no exception.
The furthest back Celestia could remember was waking up at the age of thirteen or fourteen, deaf to the howling winds outside, and putting on her tattered and old brown scarf that had once been her fathers, before rushing down the once-countable stairs of her small foalhood home for one of her mother’s usually scarce breakfasts, which typically consisted of dry hay, some seeds and - if Celestia had been exceptionally good or a deal had been renewed or changed in the unicorn tribe’s favour - the innards of some fruit.
“Thy brother has been betrothed, young Celestia,” Celestia’s mother, Skydancer, had said, stirring the broth that had been put on to boil. Celestia wasn’t too sure if it had been the same morning, or if it had been the evening of the same day, but she hoped to put together the puzzle of her memories with whatever remotely-correlating pieces she could find.
Perhaps not at that moment, but Celestia then turned her head to watch her brother Cosmos trot down the stairs. No, he wasn’t betrothed then. He couldn’t have been. He had been a strange bloomer, with his growth spurt coming long before his girth.
An after effect of this had been that, as a teenager just two or three years older than Celestia, he had been rather streamline for a colt. With his body lithe and almost qualifying as typically ‘feminine’, mares with the tastes of ancient civilisation turned their noses up at him. It didn’t help that mares the likes of the three unicorn princesses and their mother had a similar build, and only proved to push Cosmos into a shy shell.
Cosmos hadn’t gotten betrothed until after he joined the Royal Guard only a day or two after Celestia and Luna’s reign began. He, as the typical big brother-type, had insisted on protecting the two of them personally, and soon worked his way up to captain.
In a way, the relationship that had once been between Twilight and Shining Armor had been a beautifully bitter-sweet reminder of the relationship that had been between her and Cosmos. From the lack of physical similarities without both parents seen, to the princess-guard dynamic, the comparison was rather haunting if one let it be.
Celestia shared her pink mane with her mother. No. Her mother’s mane had been white, hadn’t it? Celestia remained anxiously undecided. Her purple eyes were a blend of her father’s sky blues and her mother’s wine-reds. Cosmos, on the other hand, was the spit of their father, with the exception being his raspberry eyes - which he shared with their mother - and his milky way-themed cutie mark.
Seeing Rainbow Dash had always been refreshing for the reminder, her spritely attitude aside. Every second she had once spent with her when she had planned her first Grand Galloping Gala was lovely - they were friends, after all - but Celestia had spent most of her time looking into the pink pony’s-
No. Celestia shook her head. That wasn’t right.
Celestia remembered one of Twilight’s friends’ brothers in search of a job. He had been highly regarded by his sister - and especially Rainbow Dash, who had allegedly been the object of the pegasus stallion’s affections for quite some time - as a slacker, and extremely disliked by Luna, but Celestia had seen his raspberry eyes, and was taken back to her much younger years, when her brother was alive and well. So, she had offered him the job he certainly wasn’t qualified for with no training whatsoever.
In her foalhood, Celestia had been plagued with a pale pink coat like that of a rosy pearl. It had been a trait that had been said to be recessive in her mother’s family, but that didn’t make it seem any more acceptable when paired with her pink mane and tail. It wasn’t until her hundred-and-sixtieth-something birthday that her coat had begun to whiten slowly by the century and her mane and tail began to colour like an equinox, and then Luna’s colouration changed at a similar age, too.
Celestia recalled herself being a little envious of her brother and parents for having white coats, in spite of the misfortune that came her father and brother’s way for having such. Celestia remembered the occasional beratings her mother had given her father for not being dark like the other stallions in the unicorn guard, and that he had been lucky for being allowed in - which he had been - but the words were unintelligible white noise to her ears by now.
In fact, one of the first decisions that Celestia had made once put in power was to give every white-coated stallion eligible enough a job in the united-nations’ royal guard. Societal norms on the matter soon changed, then.
It had later been Luna who pointed out that the number wasn’t enough for all-hour shifts, and so the two decided that the night-shifts would be taken by the darker stallions as a means of keeping uniform. Their next motion to up the numbers was to offer positions to mares, but because of several political ideologies and mentions of disdain or disinterest from the public, that hadn’t exactly been put into motion until a few centuries before the end of their reign.
It had been Twilight and her friends who had inadvertently put a spike in interest, and eventually it was carried through.
The image of Cosmos walking down the stairs filled Celestia’s mind once more. His mane and tail - which were practically the same colour as his eyes - were unkempt, as he had just trotted down the stairs step by step. Celestia was certain there was a period in her brother’s life where he took to an organised messiness, in hope of compensating for something that was yet to come.
“Thy father wishes to take thee out to practice fighting, Cosmos,” Celestia’s mother said as she laid an identical breakfast down for him to Celestia’s right on the four-pony dining table, so that he would be opposite his father.
Cosmos’ tiredness was traded for enthusiasm, and he replaced their father in the seating plan with just a blink of Celestia’s envisioning eye. “Is it true, father?”
Their father, Sunbeam - whether or not ‘Star’ was to be conjoined to the end of that escaped Celestia - looked up with his blue eyes. Something Celestia remembered more than anything else about her father was that no matter how shaggy his mane was, no matter how much it hung in his eyes as the time clambered further towards his trimonthly cut, he never seemed to be blinded. Celestia - and most likely Cosmos - found it rather admirable. It had been strangely comforting.
Odd, but comforting.
“Mhmm,” their father nodded, and then decided to shake his suddenly shortened mane out of his eyes. He had been a stallion of few words, a trait of which was highly respected in stallions during that time period - and many centuries before when ponies first evolved into what they were today - both amidst themselves and in mares when they searched for a husband.
In fact, Celestia could recall an old wives’ tale on the matter; she was relatively sure her mother had told her it, too. It had been about talkative traits making stallions infertile, or plainly undesirable. Even as a filly, Celestia had never quite understood, but back then her mother’s word was fact, and nothing but.
The manner of choosing silence was a trait now found in just a select few of stallions in Equestria to date, whether they had been encouraged to by those around them or by choice. Some mares had even taken to the discipline, too. Choice in the matter could vary from boring character to shyness with unforeseeable odds.
Celestia remembered being informed of Pinkie Pie’s sister being a shy pony of ‘mmhm’s and ‘mph’s. She had also met one of the Apples that had delivered applesauce as opposed to apple cider as the beverage of toasting choice at Twilight’s coronation. Even Fluttershy, once, had been a meek shell of herself before conquering her anxieties time and time again.
“Oh, father, thank you!” Celestia’s mind placed her brother back on her right, and her father on her left.
Celestia had been told that she and her mother - like Cosmos and their father were - seemed alike in many ways. Once having the time to reflect on the matter, Celestia took that compliment as an obscene remark. Her mother was sweet, yes, but had a great tendency to feed into Cosmos’ insecurities and belittle their father whenever he seemed to step out of the stallion-shaped guidelines.
Celestia and Cosmos usually raced to finish their food before the other. Cosmos would usually win, but a couple of years or so after Celestia became an alicorn, she found that the winning had increased to about fifty-fifty, and then only continued to rise in her favour as Cosmos aged. She had always yearned for victory as a filly, but never like that.
“Sunup is nigh,” their mother noted as she stared out of the dim kitchen window and sighed. “It becomes more and more of a hassle with every morn they bring. No wonder, too,” their mother put her wooden fork through some dry hay with her magenta magic, “with that stallion as their leader.”
“He’s a genius,” Celestia defended Starswirl - then Starswirl the Great - like she had many times over, “he’s already created over twenty spells!”
“And naught for protection or strength,” came the snippy response, and so Celestia grumbled. “Now eat thy breakfast, Celestia, and go out to play.”
The unicorn tribe’s village was protected with charms to ease the snowfall. With the responsibility of keeping the charms charged, as well as raising the sun, it was no wonder the Great Magicians were always exhausted.
Celestia trotted through the village as she regularly did with her scarf still around her neck and matching brown leather saddlebags in tow. In the left bag was a thick book written by Starswirl the Bearded about magic theory and thesis on the biology that linked the unicorn horn to telekinesis. In the right, there was a thinner book by Gusty the Great - an old unicorn sorceress - that discussed emotion and magic.
The two had cost quite a sum to rent from the royal library, so Celestia had to work through her debt by working there most days.
She hadn’t minded. Not really. Once her shifts were over, she would usually curl up in the corner of the library book, and it would be like she had never even been working at all. Oh, and it served good shelter from the blizzard when the Great Magicians put the protective shield down to recuperate.
The library was a large, stony place that had reeked of cold, and sounded like echoing hoofsteps and a flickering fire in the lone hearth. If you were quiet enough, you might have heard the turning of a page. Not many dared to venture into a library so large and cold in those days unless it was an urgent matter, in genuine fear of freezing. Starswirl’s force fields eased those troubles, but not entirely.
Celestia remembered the copious amount of faith she had in those force fields. And her trusty brown scarf, of course. Oh, how she missed that scarf terribly. Her father had given it to her, after all, as it had once been his. He had trusted her to keep it useful and well, and she had failed him. It was once her most cherished belonging, just surpassing her books. Now, all she had was the memory, and the long-gone ghostly feeling of it around her neck.
That was, until she had received a gift from Luna, from Cadance, from King Thorax, and at last she was reunited with the nostalgic old thing. How Thorax had found it, let alone how it was still intact and wearable, she wasn’t certain, but she had a suspicion or two eating away at the back of her ageing mind as to how he of all creatures had come across it.
Celestia had spent most of her time in the library because she didn’t really have anywhere to go. Her mother preferred for her not to stay in the house, Cosmos was usually doing stallion things with their father, and the village foals her age wished not to hang around with an exceptionally old blank flank.
It had been painful knowing that, if a ‘blank flank’ was an actual species, with the lifespan of what a pony usually went without a cutie mark, she’d be long dead. After all, being fourteen and still without a cutie mark had been positively monstrous.
For Celestia, ever doing mare things with her mother seemed almost otherworldly. Only once in a blue moon did her mother take her out to teach her things like why ‘mares will be mares, and stallions will be stallions’, and why ‘stallions should stay in the fields’, and how ‘worried she was for Cosmos because he never held his tongue’, and whatnot, while all Celestia could properly think about was curling under the tree they had just passed to read a book, or how particularly juicy the mango that her mother had just paid for and put in her basket was.
Any plays in the village - communal and elementary alike - Celestia was never allowed to play in. At first, it had been because she was without a cutie mark, but later it had been because she was too caught up under Starswirl’s metaphorical-wing to really have had the time. She had snuck out from time to time, though, and said not a word to Starswirl the following morning. If he’d ever noticed the bags under her eyes, he had never uttered a single comment.
Starswirl had been strict to both Celestia and Luna and Clover the Clever, but from time to time he’d relent, and Celestia could remember thinking that she loved him, or that she so longed for her mother to be more like him.
Celestia’s ear stung even millennia later as she recalled the clips and bites over the head and ear from her mother whenever she asked or begged or disobeyed. She recalled the select few nights where she’d nurse her ear for it bled where her mother had broken the skin, or where she’d rub the bruise on the side of her head. Cosmos, too, had spent some nights with a thin ring of white fur stained with grume, but never to the extreme that Celestia had.
What had been the old law? Celestia wracked her mind for a good moment as she stared aimlessly into the plain shadowy ceiling of her bedroom from her bed, her wings tucked with practised ease under her.
Ah yes. In the name of righteousness and law, a stallion hath no right to strike a mare like doth another stallion, and in dignity alone, a mare is not to turn her hoof on a stallion liketh another of her kind.
Celestia had been the one to take most of Luna’s kickings later on, but such an instance was rare as her mother seemed to treat the young blue filly like the daughter she’d never bore. Both a truth in technicality and count of labour, the occasional sightings of Luna’s pale periwinkle mane being tied up in Celestia’s mother’s red silk or golden satin ribbons stung passed her young self’s ribs and into her heart.
With the gift of hindsight, the fact that Luna had never been treated in such strictness pleased Celestia greatly.
Celestia had much preferred her father, in all honesty. He never said much, but that had been the norm for every stallion in the village, no matter whether they were a unicorn, pegasus, or even earth pony.
Sneaking out to see village plays wasn’t all Celestia did in secret. Often would she sneak out of her bedroom window at midnight or just after, and either hop down on the log appendages her old house had until she reached the ground or use her magic to slowly lower herself so as not to make a sound, so she could watch the Unicorn King and his guards return from the torrential snowy tundra.
It soothed her, knowing that her father had returned with them, and in knowing that she could sleep soundly in her bed. The display had always been rather miraculous: a long, formidable line of stallions striding forth, dragging the occasional blanketed sled behind them with either flickering lanterns or their horns alight. It was like a fine display of hot-air lanterns that would be let off at events that placed a great shift in politics, like coronations and the like.
Sometimes, the stallions would remain perfectly silent and keep their gaits equal and uniform with their heads bowed, but other times they would be smiling and singing and butting armoured shoulders with one another. Never had Celestia seen a stallion so happy - perhaps emotive was the right term - let alone speaking more than one word.
Decidedly, there was nothing more majestic than a shire stallion, especially when pulling a heavy load.
Celestia hazily remembered hiding behind the queendom walls as the unicorn guard were led through the gate, as silent and orderly as what they had been when they had first left, and she could see their damp, frosted fetlocks and wind-swept hair from where she crouched. Her purple eyes would follow them, one by one, and frequently watched her father with a diligent eye only owned by a loving daughter for her father.
Cosmos had gone with them, once, when he had been Celestia’s age. The following morning, he had rolled around on their bunk - or had it been Celestia’s bed, as they had separate rooms, then? - and called it the most amazing experience he’d ever been a part of. She was sure it had been what encouraged her to sneak out for the very first time. In Celestia’s mind, he spoke the same incoherent noise as her mother did, now, but she could pick out a few words like “pegasi”, “nice”, “colt”, and “flash”. Not necessarily in that order.
Then, when Cosmos had been sixteen - and Celestia fourteen - he had been allowed to go with them again. Celestia had watched: the stallions returned very silent with their steps even and their heads turned down, as they sometimes did, and Cosmos - gangly and feminine at the back of them - seemed almost like a puppy following its mother.
The morning after at breakfast, Celestia - upon realising that Cosmos hadn’t told her anything when he returned, or even when they both awoke at the faltering sunrise - had asked of their trip. As per usual, her father said nary a word, but neither did Cosmos. So, Celestia felt it right to ask again, but Cosmos had then replied under his breath: “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
In not much vividness, Celestia recollected a time where she had a fleeting moment of staring into her father’s darling blue eyes, scaring both him and herself, and fleeing so fast that she had probably skinned her knee or fetlock on the way.
Her father had found her the morning after, though, as she tried scrubbing the blood stain out of her blanket and mattress and fur before breakfast. But instead of chastising her he scooped her up, placed her on her desk chair, and opened the first-aid kit - just a battered tin with some shreds of old cloth inside for what was the time’s standard of rolls of bandages - that he wasn’t envisioned to have when he had came in, and silently wrapped her foreleg up and kissed the spot that had hurt.
For a fourteen year old, it had forever been kept as a childish little secret, but the memory now filled Celestia with a great warmth, as did the tear-jerking memory of him saying “I’m proud of you” at her coronation.
‘Are you mad at me?’ had often been a question Celestia asked her father rather meekly in every situation where she knew he should have been. Very often she’d gotten a simple shake of the head or a “mm-mm” as her reply, and very seldom did the response “mmhm” or the clarification of “I’m disappointed” come back to her.
In fact, while she couldn’t fully remember any “mmhm”s in reply to the question, she knew that she could count on her hoof the amount of times that her father had said that he was disappointed in her. Twice: once he had looked to have been very close, and once he had actually said it.
The former had been after she had gone to see Starswirl and the Great Wizards - Clover the Clever, Goldshine the Glorious, Starburst the Serene, Moon Blossom the Mighty, and the fifth whose name escaped her, but she recalled that she had a rose cutie mark - raise the sun. They had, and Starswirl had been the only one left standing, so Celestia approached him as the crowd dispersed to ask him of his teachings.
Celestia couldn’t remember what he said to her, and what she said back, but she knew that he had turned her down, and asked for her to return with a cutie mark to show of her magical prowess. Her mother had soon found her and dragged her off, and then slandered of the occurrence to her father, on how ‘Celestia had lost her manners’ and how ‘Starswirl was anything but a stallion’, and so on, when he had come home in the evening for tea.
Her father looked at her upon hearing of Starswirl’s answer and, after her mother began cleaning away the plates and cutlery, he ushered her out of the house with his head. Then, he asked for her to stay at a distance as he knocked on Starswirl’s tower door.
From that distance, Celestia had seen her father talk more words than what she’d ever heard from him, but she couldn’t hear a thing. While she had longed to, a part of her knew that it wasn’t really her place to have listened. But, before Celestia truly knew it, Starswirl was scowling, and begrudgingly beckoning them into his home and placing a yellow and orange egg on the table in front of Celestia as her father watched silently from the corner.
“If you can hatch this egg,” Starswirl had said, stroking his non-existent beard, “I might consider letting you study under me.”
Celestia had always been told by her mother and brother - never really by her father, but his usual proud smiles implied it strongly enough - that she was good with magic. Even the librarian, Ms Sterling, had said so, and how surprising it was that Celestia hadn’t gotten her cutie mark yet. But then, as she looked at the egg sideways, she found that she had no idea what to do, let alone what spell to use.
Celestia couldn’t remember how long she had spent attempting to hatch that egg, or the spell that she had used. She could, however, faintly imagine the wriggling in her saddlebags as she and her father returned home. Starswirl had said that he would think about taking Celestia as his student, but any encounter after that until after she had earned her wings were either non-existent or simply escaped her, forever lost to the ruthless scythe of age and time.
Celestia recollected her brother’s whining when they shared a room once upon a time, over Philomena’s tittering and playful cage-rattling, but with one stare from their father through his shaggy raspberry-red mane and he was silenced. When they had moved to Equestria after the three tribes united, it had been Luna’s turn to complain whilst Cosmos snored soundly in his room to such an extent that on occasion they could hear him through the walls.
Celestia had often studied her family’s cutie marks in hopes of successfully predicting what her own might have been. Her mothers - a triad of stars: two purple and one blue - never really called to her that much. She’d asked for ‘the story’ many times as a filly, but now she remembered not a single word.
Celestia had been quite present for Cosmos’ tale: instantly, she knew that he had casted a protective twister-like spell one day and somehow that had translated into a milky way emblazoned on his flank, but not a single image came to mind.
As for her father - whose cutie mark was a caricature of the sun: a yellow circle with a ring of small identical triangles on the outside - Celestia had never really asked for his story in fear of pressuring him for an answer. Cosmos had once said that their father was a decade - give or take a couple of years - younger than their mother, so Celestia could have asked her, but had never really felt much need to.
Celestia had been taught from a very young age by her mother not to ask stallions, especially her father, many questions, and that if she was ever to tell a stallion something, she was to keep it plain and short or, if it was an inquiry, close-ended.
No, Celestia and her father never really talked. Their bond was strong and silent instead, much like her father himself.
Celestia turned over in her bed restlessly as she recalled the day her father had died. It was a blurry but emotional memory, as was the day her brother passed a decade or two afterwards. With a long, mind-numbing moment of contemplation, the lone memory of when her father had said that he was disappointed in her came to mind.
Shortly after Princess Platinum had set out to find new land with Clover the Clever at her side - as King Silver Alloy, a stallion, wasn’t allowed to go to political summits, even with Queen Cobalt passed - the queendom guard had returned with many frostbitten unicorns from a distant village one night, claiming that the storm had completely taken hold of their homes, with over half of the village dead, missing, or violently ill.
Of course, the Unicorn King - as broadly shouldered and darkly coloured as he was generous; Celestia could hear one of her mother’s many swoons, horribly lewd comments, and derogatory terms over him, even now - had granted them asylum in the queendom for as long as they needed.
To see ponies - and adults, no less - whimpering and crying and shivering like that played Tartarus on Celestia’s mind. The very sight haunted her. Perhaps it was karma for sneaking out every night, or perhaps it was her destiny at last being aligned.
An indescribable magical force seemed to determine Celestia’s mind that night. Had the constant teasing from the other village foals for her blank flank finally cut deep? Celestia, even now, wasn’t really sure.
But, after forcing as many of her mother’s hard poundcakes into her saddle bags as she possibly could alongside her copy of Unicorn Magical Arts and How to Master Them from the library, and then kissing Philomena goodbye, Celestia snuck out of the safety of the queendom walls and blindly ventured into the great anguish that laid beyond in hopes of finding the ponies from the village that had disappeared.
She had only ever found one.
Time freezing her horn off wasn’t really something that Celestia had kept track of, nor remembered, but she had found a particular little filly amidst the horrendous snowstorm. The winds howled like angry wolves; the snow caught on her eyelashes; breath and warmth was knocked out of her with every step forward, but yet Celestia kept a firm hoof on her flailing brown scarf.
The lost filly in question had been surprisingly defined against the white hostility of the storm. Her small, shivering form was a shade of phthalo, and her short mane was a pale periwinkle blue. Celestia hadn’t the breath to speak by the time she reached the poor filly, but chose to take silent pity on her as she took off her scarf and used both her hooves and magic to fight against the violent winds so she could wrap it around the filly’s tiny neck.
Celestia must have carried the filly in a random direction, having not quite known where she had come from, and one way or another she was envisioning the Everfree Forest in her mind’s cataract-riddled eye.
Admittedly, Celestia had found herself silently resenting the filly the further the night went on, as she would whine and cry and cling onto her for dear life. It was understandable, of course, but Celestia had never been one for foals, even as a foal herself.
The filly - whom Celestia had later been introduced to as Luna, after Luna had stopped crying for a while - had taken an instant, probably instinctive, liking to Celestia after the two had taken refuge in a clearing in the Everfree Forest. The Everfree - then unknown and probably new - was a patch of land Celestia had never seen before, as it was completely untouched by the windigos. The temperature, on the other hand, was a different story.
Once Celestia had realised the direness of the situation - having let it ferment in her brain for a short while of silence as eight year old Luna cried into Celestia’s trusted scarf next to her - she had ordered Luna to stay put while she went to gather firewood.
Celestia recollected two instances of going to gather firewood, and so whether it had been the first or second time that she had come face to face with a changeling for the very first time in her whole life was beyond her. She remembered the feeling of her jaw almost unhinge as a creature almost the size of a fully-grown mare but with the sharp edges of a stallion emerged from the brush.
Celestia would have then screamed and ran, if it wasn’t for the black holed hoof shutting her muzzle. She stared into the large compound eyes of the creature, and by the time it let her go she was analysing every detail. The pony-like creature had wings, so perhaps it was a pegasus, Celestia’s young mind had conjured - the angrogynous creature had looked like it would eat its own young, after all - until she saw the horn atop its head.
“Don’t scream,” it had said, whispering, “you might alert the others!”
“What art thee?” Celestia had been shaking, and she recalled the sick feeling settled in her throat as her heart hammered into her ribs. “Art thou a pegasus? But, thy head is horned! How is that? I never knew a pony to have both a horn and a winged back before now!”
Celestia twisted onto her side under the covers and retraced her mind’s eye’s steps: had Chrysalis been disguised when they first met, only to reveal herself later on? Or had she been just as she was, looking like a simple drone that wasn’t quite fully grown yet, just a couple of years younger than Celestia?
“That’s because I’m not a pony, pony!” The young changeling almost spat out her fangs, as back then Celestia had believed they looked so cumbersome and goofy that they must have been fake, and then demonstrated her changing-of-forms quite easily by turning into a what young Celestia had recognised as a unicorn, but without a horn and instead with a pair of feathery wings, one on each side of its barrel.
The illusion of a pony - a pegasus stallion, from what she gathered - was young, with large shaven hooves, a dark blue coat, a dirty-white mane, and a set of bright blue eyes. Later on, when Equestria was fully united and all three tribes moved closer to it, Celestia would go on to recognise him as Junior Lieutenant Ironhead.
The changeling returned to her original form in a flash of a sickly shade of green and cleared her throat. “I’m a changeling.”
“Doest thou changelins have names?” Celestia remembered herself asking.
“We do,” the creature had begun, not giving much mind to Celestia’s mispronunciation, and instead bowing her head as if she had been embarrassed, “but I don’t really like mine. I hope to change it some day.”
Celestia only wished she had known what that had meant, back then. Instead, she had wondered, “Then, what may I call thou?”
“For now,” if things had ended much differently with Chrysalis, without the guerdon of her belligerent stony face as a constant reminder in Canterlot Gardens, perhaps those two words wouldn’t have stung as much, looking back, “call me Tarsus.”
“Thy name is quite peculiar,” Celestia had said, and with hindsight she supposed it had been rather rude, but Tarsus had appeared to take very little offence. “I am Celestia.”
“Yours isn’t the best, either, now is it?”
Celestia wondered whether there was more to their brief conversation, but the next thing she remembered was a stallion’s voice thundering through the forest, making the trees shiver, birds the likes of crows and owls flee their roosts and caw. Celestia swore that she had even seen Tarsus grimace just a little - sure of it, even - but, with her memories the way that they were, perhaps she was mistaken.
“That’s the King! S-Sorry-”
“King?” Celestia had repeated, intently wondering if changelings had a monarchy, just like unicorns.
“I’ve got to go. Bye!” That said, Tarsus had hopped back over the brush and returned into the shadows.
Not much happened after that. Celestia had returned to Luna with some firewood, after trying to navigate her way back for just a bit longer than she had expected, placed most of it down in a heap as she shivered and tried countless times to get it lit with just her magic and a stick. Eventually, though, Celestia had started a fire by rubbing two of the smaller sticks together, and then fell back onto her haunches in victory.
“Thou art not from my village, art thee?” Luna sniffled at some point before Celestia had decided she wished to curl up, bury her head into her tail, and hope she wouldn’t freeze.
“No, I am not, for I am from the Unicorn Queendom.”
“Kingdom,” Luna had corrected her almost instantly. “Mother and father said we were to go there and begin our life anew.”
Celestia’s shoulders had hunched at that, and instead of properly changing the subject, she pulled out one of her mother’s tough poundcakes, broke it in two, and then handed Luna the bigger half. She didn’t mind: they were almost jaw-breaking, anyway, but according to Cosmos, a fully grown pony was able to successfully chew on rock without much damage, so what harm could a badly baked poundcake have possibly done to a little filly?
“Did you make these?” Luna had asked curiously, hoofing the top of her piece as Celestia pulled out her book of Unicorn Magical Arts and How to Master Them. From the corner of her eye, Celestia had seen Luna push her head into her own shoulders, which made her trusted brown scarf look much bigger than what it was.
“No,” Celestia had said curtly, not really with much of a desire to mention her mother in fear of making the filly next to her cry.
“Lestia?”
“’Tis Celestia,” Celestia had finally won back the childish rivalry of correcting the other inside her head, but the feeling of victory was lost.
“Oh,” Luna had murmured, and stared at her piece of poundcake as she shivered in the scarce confines of Celestia’s old scarf. In that moment, Celestia looked back and figured that Luna was much like Fluttershy when Twilight Sparkle had befriended her. Back then, all Celestia could think of to say was an awkward ‘there, there’, but bit her tongue in fear of portraying herself as an alien. But, after a second of silence, Luna spoke in her stead: “S-Sorry.”
Celestia looked up from her book and saw that Luna’s runny little nose had been tinted with bright pink from the cold, and so she had no doubt that her own had been as well. “Try to keep thyself awake, foal,” said Celestia as Luna sniffed, “’tis best to try and keep the cold at bay.”
Another memory fitted well with the previous, but showed Luna huddled at Celestia’s flank, as opposed to hugging herself as she sat on her haunches just a few feet away. “Doest thou like to read, Celestia?” Came her innocent, high-pitched voice, and while the question warmed Celestia now, back when Luna had asked it she had pinned her ears back and gritted her teeth.
Celestia’s right foreleg had been put at an awkward angle much thanks to Luna’s compromised position, and thus it was evident to Celestia now - despite the haze of an avid puzzle solver stuck wondering what the finished product may be - that she had most probably tried with all her might to shrug Luna off and move to the other end of the campfire, but had failed a certain number of times that she had just given in and let Luna stay proverbially conjoined to her hip.
“Yes,” Celestia had replied, “doest thou?”
“No,” Luna had said timidly, “but mother does!” What little excitement she had mustered had soon terminated and she sank her head back onto the dry ground. “I saw father read, sometimes, but he told me not to tell.”
Celestia had hummed in return. “If I may speak of my mother,” she had begun, and awaited Luna’s confirmation before continuing, as she had been raised to know that it was the polite thing to do, “she always spoke of stallions being unallowed to read, lest they wish to have children.”
“Mother said the same thing, once,” Luna had then sniffed as if she had been doused with dirty water by a bunch of cackling foals. “When she saw father reading, once, she struck him over the head with the book and gave him no supper!”
Celestia, both then and now, silently cringed at merely just the thought of witnessing such a thing, but Luna - most probably from her immense youth and innocence - seemed unfazed. It seemed as though both Luna and Celestia’s parents were more or less the same, but throughout the following years, Luna would go on to explain that she had bonded much more easily with her own mother than her father.
Celestia had never truly quite gotten that, even after all these years.
“Why doest thou not like to read?” Celestia had changed the subject in hopes of being tactful, if not to Luna, then to herself.
“’Tis boring, is all.”
“Then what doest thou do?” Once upon a time for Celestia, there wasn’t much of a world outside of her books.
“Play inside the caves next to the village with the rest of the schoolfillies,” Luna had said, almost wistfully, “’tis quite thrilling!”
Celestia had been homeschooled, so she hadn’t really been given much of a chance to bond with the other fillies her age in the village, and she never really had much interest in adventurous activities. All she believed that she needed were her books. In fact, if it had been up to Celestia - even as a princess, it wasn’t, not really - she would have spent countless days sat reading at her father’s side much like Luna had been at hers as they spoke that night.
The more the two spoke to one another, the more Celestia found herself growing fond of the little filly. In fact, she recollected the distant memory of singing Luna the lullaby her mother had once sang her - and by extension Cosmos, as he had always been on the bunk above her - but was sure that if she was to ask her sister now, she would deny everything.
When the two awoke the following morning, huddled together unlike what they had been when they had drifted off, there was a golden mass in the sky, which was painted as blue as young Luna’s mane, and there wasn’t a single gust of militant wind. Celestia had noticed that her scarf was missing, though, but hesitantly bit her tongue, for as far as the eye could see outside of the Everfree Forest, there were lush green hilltops and grassy daisy- and buttercup-riddled plains.
The frosts of the merciless winter had ceased; its snows had melted; its cutting winds ameliorated, and not without the most beautiful result Celestia had ever seen. Celestia and Luna had unwittingly witnessed their first spring.
A small group of stallions in mismatching uniform armour had found Celestia and Luna by the time the golden mass in the sky - which Celestia had later learnt was actually the sun - had reached the midway point. What had shocked Celestia the most was that the group consisted of a pegasus, three unicorns, and an earth pony. The orange pegasus had remained in the air with his spear held firmly at his side for the entire journey back to the Unicorn Kingdom.
The stallions remained silent, but for the weary charcoal-coated unicorn with golden eyes and a white mane and tail. Celestia recognised him as one of the many guards she had seen next to her father when she watched the army return every night. “We shall return thee to House Skydancer, young one.”
“What of Luna?” Celestia had asked, but she couldn’t remember the reply.
When Celestia had met the first of the quintuplet steps up to her old foalhood home, she had been sickeningly startled to find not her mother, but her father awaiting her at the doorstep. She had dared not speak, lest she emptied her insides on the thawing patch of grass next to her.
Having worked up enough courage to muster a small, nervous smile, Celestia took one measly hoof towards the next step. But, her father had only brayed in irritation, or perhaps impatience, and trotted off down the hill and towards the queendom gates, clearly expecting Celestia to follow him, and of course he was right.
Celestia’s father had waited for her atop a grassy hill capped with slowly melting snow outside the queendom walls. By the time she reached him, the lump of regret and sadness was too big to swallow, and so Celestia had to ask with tears in her eyes as her lungs burnt with the cold air from the steep incline: “Are you mad at me?”
“I’m disappointed!” And there it was. The only memory that Celestia knew she had of her father saying he was disappointed in her.
In an effort to hide her horrendous sobbing, Celestia had adopted the tone of confession, “I lost your scarf.”
“Mm,” the lack of a wordy response seemed to make Celestia’s nerves even worse. “I’m glad thou art home, Celestia.”
Upon joining her father’s side on the hilltop, Celestia had taken the liberty of wiping her runny nose in the back of one of her hooves before her father had a chance to nuzzle her in the usual gentle and sweet way he always would. He had then shushed her quietly, settling her upsetedness, and in the moment she felt his breath on one of her ears.
The two spent the next while together in silence, watching their first ever sunset, closing the last proper memory Celestia had before she became a princess.
