Summer solstice had always been a special time for Celestia, just as the winter solstice had always been special to her sister. However special it was, it was so often the same, boring, monotonous. Go to a city, raise the sun, speak pleasantries, and return to Canterlot.
Thus, when Celestia rode in her chariot through the night sky and saw the mountains alive with bonfires, she was surprised, and for a pony so old to be genuinely surprised was a rare thing indeed.
As the chariot drew nearer, the smell of midnight smoke amid the midsummer mountain air, the dancing of ponies below, the brightness of the fires, and even a few ancient symbols traced with flames...the experience brought her back to a time over a millennia ago.
Celestia was hardly an adult back then, brought to see a celebration of fire and dancing in the mountains during the shortest night of the year. She danced with handsome stallions, jumped through the flames with her sister, and sang heart songs in a language she had never heard before. Then, when that joyous time had come, she raised the sun to thunderous cheers as her sister lowered the moon. Those ponies had said that day and night were one during the solstice, a sentiment that Luna had appreciated during a time she had so often felt overlooked.
A question burned in Celestia's mind as she passed by: Why had she never heard of the return to this tradition?
"Put us down wherever you can find near one of those bonfires." Celestia said to her pegasus team, her voice ringing clearly through the air in supernatural spite of the wind.
Only the tiniest moment of hesitation betrayed her team's surprise before they turned and began to descend. As they drew near to the ground, Celestia felt the nostalgia building in her chest multiply threefold. Dancers encircled the fires, mares and stallions wearing clothing that had been outdated when she was young, reworked with a slightly modern flare.
The pegasi quickly found a place to land near a bonfire on one of the mountaintops, and her chariot soon touched down. It was rare for her to show up to events uninvited, but Celestia's excitement outweighed her better judgment as she stepped out of the carriage.
The music of an accordion and loud singing echoed through the air, and the merry sounds of laughing and stomping hooves trickled through the trees, lifting Celestia's spirits in a way she hadn't felt in hundreds of years. So unlike her usual circumstances, Celestia felt like a young mare once again as she ordered her team to stay behind.
Ignoring all pretense of royalty, she walked through the mountain woods towards the ancient calling of fire and blood. As the light of the flames broke through the treeline, Celestia found herself failing to hold back a grin.
Well over a hundred ponies celebrated. Many of the adults paired off, mares with stallions and stallions with mares. The colts danced, chatted, and played amongst themselves while the fillies played around their own small fire, jumping through the tongues of flame as she herself had done so long ago. Celestia felt as if she had gone back in time to simpler days.
By fate or by harmony, Celestia's eye wandered over a stallion who's eye simultaneously wandered over her. Her enchantment with the scene fell apart when she saw the stallion's face morph from contentment and merriment to shock, eyes shrinking as if seeing a ghost. By the innate herding instincts of her little ponies, the mare beside him caught on to the shift and turned to look as well. In a matter of moments, more ponies began turning, looking at her and becoming still. In a few short seconds, the once rambunctious celebration came to a halt.
The foals stopped playing, the once dancing mares shuffled themselves in front of the stallions, and the music went silent as they all stopped to stare. When the crackling of flames and the sound of anxious colts shuffling were the only sounds to be heard, Celestia felt her heart seize in her chest. The adults wore expressions ranging from nervousness to contempt, and most of the fillies tried to look tough but flinched under her gaze. A bitterness permeated the silence as Celestia came to realize that she was extremely unwelcome among these little ponies.
The smile that had been on Celestia's muzzle was long gone, replaced by a stoic mask. Something was very wrong, and she did not know what. Deciding to prevent any confrontation due to ignorance, Celestia turned to leave without saying a word.
As she walked through the woods, back to her chariot in darkness, the cold silence behind her made for a stark contrast to the joyful warmth she had felt only a few minutes prior. Deep in thought, she climbed back into her carriage.
"To Tall Tale." Celestia ordered sharply, thrown off by the experience.
Why had she never heard of this return to tradition? Apparently, she was not welcome to participate in it, to even know about it. The traditions were old, older than she was, older even than Equestria, and she had always been one to look ahead to the future of her little ponies. Some of her little ponies had been looking back at their traditions, their past.
Celestia smiled out at the ponies of Tall Tale as the newly risen sun shined down upon them. Her little ponies, all cheering together at the dawn of a new day. It was a stark contrast to what she had borne witness to only an hour before. Only then, upon seeing the Equestria she was familiar with, did she notice the differences in their fullness.
All three pony races merrily celebrating together drove home the realization that she hadn't seen a single horn around the fires. The rainbow of colors, mixing and churning contrasted sharply to the orange tinted greys, tans, and whites of the ponies who had been so quick to turn so sour.
As Celestia smiled at her little ponies, a coldness gripped her heart. There was division brewing, one she hadn't noticed, one she never could have been expected to notice. When she was young, she had learned of the old pony blood that inhabited parts of the lands of Equestria before the three tribes were unified.
History was never so clean as the stories, and as the Hearth's Warming tale forgot the Thestrals, so too did it forget the old Realm. Subsumed into Equestria after a hundred years as allies, the plains and mountains of the northwest had always felt the cultural impact of that people. So too did the ponies before her reflect their blood heritage.
Celestia noticed how many of the ponies before her had lighter coats and manes than usual, and as the architecture of Manehattan differed from Canterlot and as Ponyville differed from Appleoosa, the architecture of Tall Tale reflected its cultural heritage inherited from the ponies of the old Realm even after all this time.
The icy looks she had received from her little ponies were as concerning as the distinctions they had made amongst themselves, and Celestia found herself worrying and wondering about just how deeply the lines being drawn beneath her snout had become.
As old as Celestia was, she was not unfamiliar with feelings of unrest in Equestria, having lived through it dozens of times. A premonition of unrest weighed on her heart as she smiled and waved to her little ponies. She could not help but notice that there normally would have been more, that there were many more ponies living in Tall Tale than were present that morning.
Were her ponies trying to remake the old country? Had the traditions been passed down without her noticing, or had they somehow died out and resurfaced?
Celestia felt that she should not have lamented on the monotony of the solstice while riding in her chariot. She could feel the oppressive pulse of dark days on the horizon. The culture of the old Realm had been so very different from that which she had fostered in Equestria, but even back when she was young, their descendants had been glad to be in her presence, a merry and joyful people.
Centuries had passed, over a millennia even, but they had been with her, part of Equestria from her first day on the throne. They had always been her little ponies. From Discord's reign to her sister's fall, from her thousand years of loneliness to her sister's joyous reconciliation, they had been there amongst her ponies. They had always been her ponies, yet a sliver of doubt entered her heart. Had that resentment towards her been present unnoticed all this time?
Celestia recalled the emnity in the eyes of the ponies she had expected to be welcomed by, and she wondered what had changed.
Author's Note
My ability to restrain myself from making poor decisions has never been stellar, and I have a feeling that I have made several in the course of writing this. I figured screw it, it's not like the upset people are going to be much less upset if I keep making more.
