The portal is warm, but the air past it is cool. It is my first time visiting her. I sway on unfamiliar legs, though I do not fall. In truth, it is fun to stand upright as she does. When one comes to be as old as I, bizarre inconveniences give delight, not annoyance.
Stranger than the body’s mere shape is the feeling within. There is the posture, the pull of different muscles across alien bones. Yet there is more, both tingling just beneath the skin and buried deep in the heart. All the little aches and pains humans and ponies live with every day of their lives, or rather, all ponies except those such as I. They, too, are novel for me. A body alive like its own small world: growing, living, dying. Whereas I am marble stone, she is a flame: consuming itself to grow, one day to perish.
“I can feel this body dying.”
I think the words, and smile. They came from a movie humans made about their own legends of unicorns. Twilight showed it to me as a novelty, and the words the immortal-turned-human screamed with such anguish stuck into my memory. I now know what she felt, yet I am amused. What a drama queen. She really thought it was so terrible to grow, live, die.
Perhaps my perception is simply different. She never knew what it is to be mortal, whereas I must never forget.
It is my turn to visit. I was ready for four legs, not hard hooves. I skid and would have fallen if she was not there.
I am too large. I see it by how far the floor is below me, and how I tower over the ponies. It is disorienting. I feel I am merely a driver in this body and not the body itself, having to take each step with deliberate consciousness. Yet there is no pain – not when I stumble, or bang my head on a door frame, or blast myself with my first foolish try at magic.
In fact, I don’t feel much at all. Of course I don’t – she is a mountain. Perhaps there is a cancer in here somewhere, but what does the mountain care for the trees growing upon it? An avalanche, a monsoon, a village, a disaster and abandonment, all mere changes of clothes. The ground is so distant I am scarcely aware of it. The ponies, too – I have to lower my head a bit else I don’t see them.
We sit for tea. I am half an hour late and try to apologize, but she is confused and laughs it off. Perhaps being made to wait is less offensive for the immortal. We talk about Twilight and Sunset and favorite teas. It is not long before I have to leave. Tea at noon, board meeting at three, make dinner at five, then take Sunset to band practice. She asks what instrument Sunset plays. We talk about it for a few more minutes, then I have to leave for real.
She is getting better with both magic and being a pony. She no longer slurps the tea with unfamiliar lips, nor shatters its cup attempting to grasp the handle.
She is too tall (I am too tall). It is somehow surprising. I see myself in the mirror, yes, but every day I am surrounded by ponies. Thousands and thousands of them, and every few decades they are replaced by thousands and thousands more. I am the outlier, the ugly duckling. Yet I am viewed as the standard of perfect beauty despite not being ‘standard’ in any way save for the average weight of a taxi.
Oh, the silly poems they have written of my alleged comeliness! I always wondered if I lost something in the mirror, yet here looking at her-as-me I am still not impressed. Too tall. The legs are too long, the neck is too long. Her eyes, though – those are beautiful, yet they distinguish us. Mine always seem dull in the glass. Hers are bright and interested, ever glancing around or flickering away as she thinks of Sunset or her duties or Sunset.
There is a chance. I asked out of the blue, “May I kiss you?”
She makes a noise. I explain. “Not for vanity. I just wish to know if I can learn what others see in me.”
She understands. She is so much wiser than she thinks. Mothers are like that, very easily finding empathy with others.
We kiss. There is no magic, no sparks, no singing of cherubs. We look at each other and fall apart laughing.
Even when the great princess is in my body, Luna can tell us apart. It is not hard. The mere human shell cannot hide the brilliant light in her eyes, the regal bearing. I slouch, while she sits erect and attentive. She meets Sunset for the first time since they parted and there is no doubt or hesitation. Only calm, certain forgiveness. They hug and smile and talk a little as I watch on, an outsider in my own house.
Sunset leaves. We chat. She wants to hear about me, but I demur. Our meetings thus far have exhausted my supply of amusing stories and portal speculation. I have no more to offer a grand and mystic goddess.
She looks uncomfortable. Her lips press flat and she scrunches her nose, just as I do when stressed.
“I don’t think I’m all that special.”
From any another, it would be false humility. She is completely sincere. A bad joke, but it is played upon her. Celestia in Excelsis. World without end. Not all that special. Amen.
“You all think too highly of me.”
I stir at my tea, feeling my own nose scrunch a little. “I suppose that makes sense.”
She doesn’t understand, so I explain. “If you thought any way else you wouldn’t be you. You have to be humble, because if you weren’t you’d doom your whole world.”
She accepts the answer. I smile, yet in that moment I hate her. The mountain indulgently taking a woman’s face, kindly stepping down to the level of mortals so she does not forget us. Pretending with altogether divine naivety that she and I are somehow alike, when in truth we no more the same as a mountain and a child named for it. The child will die, and the mountain will live – in her palace of gold, with all the power to work all the good the world can possess.
The hate passes. A mere seed of jealousy in my heart which I shall not water or let grow.
I love to hear of Sunset. How she has grown tall and made friends, and brought so much good into her new world.
Her eyes light up when I ask about her daughter, the flame normally so cool and adult-like flaring joyfully. Her tongue dances with happy words. When we are human, her hands reach for the phone. Pictures of her and Sunset on vacation, at the beach, around fires, simply lounging together on the couch. Small adventures, chores made fun from the companionship.
I pretend I am her. A body growing, living, dying. My adventures with Sunset, whom I tuck in at night even though she is too old. She allows me, for I am her mother and we love each other very much. Two flames burning together, warming the coldest night.
I thus pretend that she instead is me – she, not I, fell in love with an orphaned filly after centuries without so much as a tender hug. Yet those centuries atrophied the muscle, blurred the perception. Weeks without seeing her, and then sometimes only briefly. Weeks which were nothing to an alicorn, and everything to a child. The alicorn was too new at love, and too slow to learn. Fights and mistakes, and her clumsy attempts to correct them only made everything worse. Until Sunset was lost.
And found.
I should never have tried.
No, that isn’t true. It all worked out for Sunset. A good mother would be happy with that.
It seems unfair. Something dark twists within me, yet I shine a light upon it and see mere jealousy. It shrivels beneath bright truth and returns to its corner. I am jealous, but I have forgiven myself, for it does not stop me from loving her.
She always wants to talk about me. I always want to ask about her. It has become a joke between us.
Today, we are brave. We do not default to discussing amusing nothings or Sunset. We agree to share secrets.
She admits in a low voice that she has forgotten much. Too much. Whole centuries are only recalled vaguely, the ever-changing tide of new faces a multi-hued blur. It is worse and worse the further back she goes. She cannot recall the faces of her parents. Only that they were there, then they were not.
Yet her furthest memory is bright and clear. Sitting in the mud, starving next to Luna as they beg for scraps. Not alicorns, mere children. The bite of winter with no warm place to retreat to, the gnawing of an empty belly turning against itself. She holds the memory close, although it pains her. She must know what it is to be hungry, to be betrayed by authority, to fear death. She must never forget. Even beyond such responsibility, though, she has forgotten too much and so clutches even this like a precious gem.
It is my turn, and I realize my mistake. In the face of such grand immortal pain, I can but whisper my own secret: “I am jealous of you.”
She is surprised. “But I am jealous of you.”
So silly, it must be a joke. I search her face and find seriousness. Surely, then, she is merely being humble. She asks me to explain, then I ask her. It is not long before we are hugging, laughing, weeping.
Her flame is waning. There is more death than growth in her now. A few lines around the face and a graying of the hair. More than the last time, more still to come.
I am not ready. I will not be ready in twenty or fifty years.
She has been good to me. She understands much, and tries hard to grasp what she does not.
She even sat me down with Sunset, and we spoke about the past. Sunset and I are friends now. We shall never be more, true, but that is so much, so good.
She is calm. She fears her own death less than I do. Twenty or fifty years is a long time to her.
Not to me. I am not ready. I do not wish to love and lose – not this time, not so soon.
But I do not have to.
Luna, Sunset, and I spoke long and late on the offer. We accepted, under our own conditions. We lived full lives as humans, and then I said goodbye to my friends. I lied, saying merely I wished to spend my last days in Equestria. It did not seem right to tell them I would live on while they passed.
To live while others die is a gentle cost, all told, but one which must be paid. She has known this. Now, I do as well.
My old body is left behind, traded for marble brilliance. I shall live, we shall live. Was this a mistake, claiming an immortality that is not mine?
No, it was not.
She is retired from her reign, and we live as next-door neighbors in a small village. She is romancing a middle-aged mare with a child. I am a teacher. How lucky we both are to have time left to start again! But I wasn’t needed for this. I asked her why she even thought to invite me and mine. She said, “Of course I couldn’t leave you! You are the one who understands.”
We fly. Luna, Sunset and I are so bad, but it is so fun. Like children with sleds.
She is a mountain.
She is a flame.
She is a goddess.
She is a mother.
We embrace, and in that moment we are the same.
I am – we are. The difference blurs. It is not a bad thing to share an identity, to pass the point where the line between I and we becomes grey. Like a marriage.
The her that is me.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading!
