YaneUra

"Tell Me."

"How did you find this place?" Celestia asks, words slipping before she could properly catch them.

Twilight looked at her then, truly looked at her, her head titled just slightly, as if Celestia herself wreathe puzzle to be solved. She leaned back, her hooves crossed, the faintest curve of a small brushed her lips, though it wasn't a smile at all, not really. "I suppose you could say I dreamed it," she said finally, her words were slow and deliberate.

"A dream?" Celestia asked, glancing up.

"Yes. Or an epiphany. A prophecy, maybe." Twilights hooves opened in a shrug. "Does it matter what I call it? I just woke up one morning, and I knew I had to leave. No explanation, no reason I just experienced a pull, like gravity or hunger. Like something had called me by a name I'd long forgotten I had"

Celestia passed, her quill hovering above the desk with the faint glow of her magic aura around it. Something cold stirred in her chest, not quite a fear but its quieter cousin. "A pull", she repeated.

Twilight nodded, her gaze fixed on something past Celestia's shoulder, as though the library's shadows held answers she couldn't see. "I left my town, my school, everything. Told them I was taking a sabbatical, thought I didn't know where I was going, I... I still don't, really" She let out a soft laugh, bitter and faint. "But I found this place, didn't I?"

A pause.

"A sabbatical," Celestia said her voice was sharp and sudden, and the quill fell from the air, its tip snapping against the wood as the magic ceased. "I'm on a sabbatical too."

Twilight blinked, surprised. "You?"

"Yes?" Celestia's hooves moved to gather the book before her, as thought grounding herself. Her voice softened, but the words came much faster now. "Or at least, thats what I've told myself. A sabbatical from my family, my title, the weight of it all. They think I'm-" She stopped, pressed her lips together, her gaze dropping towards the table. "It doesn't matter what they think. I just couldn't stay. I couldn't breathe there."

Twilight leaned forward, her curiosity sharpening. "Your family? Your title?"

Celestia met her gaze then, something defiant and raw flashing across her features. "I am Princess Celestia. The second daughter of the royal house of Canterlot. The one they whisper about in court. The disappointment. The exile. The one who abandoned her throne to sit here, among the dust and ink, chasing ghosts and shadows." Her voice wavered, though not with shame, more akin to anger, or relief.

Twilight didn't flinch. "Royalty." She said the word plainly, as thought it had no weight at all, no kind of reverence. And her smile returned, small and pointed. "And what does a royal daughter do in a place such as this?"

"The same thing that you do" Celestia replied. She gestured toward the book, the room, the world of paper dipped in silence around them. "Looking for something I cannot name, something older than crowns and sounds, older than any childish kingdom. Something real."

Twilight sat back, her smile softening but her eyes not leaving Celestia's. "Then maybe we found the same dream," she said.

Stop.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The air between them thickened, the silence was not heavy but now charged, like the space between lighting and thunder. Above them, the rafters creaked, the sound was like breathing, like the weight of their words had woken something long in suspended animation.

"We didn't find this place" Her voice low. "It brought us here."

In the dream I am crawling around on my hooves and knees, smoothing out the prairie. All the dents and the gouges and the winds dying down. I lower my head, press my ear to the prairie.