Zen and the Art of Horizontal Refreshment

Celestia drifted through her duties on auto-pilot, her mind buzzing and distracted. None could tell, however. She had been keeping mask upon mask perfectly in place for thousands of years. Every little pony that came before her got the same radiant, wise, calming counsel they were expecting, but inside, she knew she needed to gather her resolve in the next moment she could get to herself.

At the end of the long day, that time came, and she retired to her chambers. As the door latched behind her, she scanned the vicinity with both eyes and magic, and found herself the only pony for a fair distance. Even so, she stepped into her large oak walk-in wardrobe, leaving the door open only a crack, so that a narrow beam of light illuminated her and the large mirror at the back of it. She let down her outermost facade, and watched her own face go slack, her eyes grow tired, and her flowing mane settle and fall. She wore many faces, stacked one upon another, to form the maternal persona that kept Equestria intact. To her subjects in the light of day, she was the wise and peaceful ruler. Tipping that mask, she was the sexually repressed prude. Tipping that next mask, she was the reluctant sire to all living ponykind, save for her sister. And as far as anyone would ever know, that would appear to be the bottom, her deepest secret. She wished it was.

Yet Celestia knew that within herself, something was broken and sick. Something wrong, in opposition to nature, and a cruel mockery of how life was meant to be. Something twisted, writhing, burrowed deep into her psyche, secreting an endless drip of vile fantasies, a poison she had to constantly identify and purge. Fantasies so repugnant as to be beyond taboo, and beyond forgiveness. She hated this part of herself. She loathed it with a blinding intensity, as if she could burn away the urges by the force of her will. But that was impossible, so in her mind's eye, she instead imprisoned this execrable presence in a vault within her mind. Imaginary guards patrolled the figurative high brick walls and barbed wire perimeter. Massive iron vault doors sealed this evil, and dulled its words and its influence, though never enough.

Sometimes, in moments of quiet weakness like these, it would speak to her. Urge her to let go, to drop this final mask and indulge in horrifying depravities, like a torrential wave obliterating millennia of perfect mental discipline, the ultimate destruction of self. They were all around her, the temptations. So delectable, and arrayed around her like a buffet of delicious poison. In the infinitesimal moments between a seed of a fantasy being planted in her mind and her will uprooting and crushing it, she would experience the briefest thrills. Vulgar thoughts of physical acts of intimacy in direct opposition to righteousness. Touches and sounds that must never come to pass.

It was humiliating, a ruler of such power and control, to be beset by this sickness. She had never spoken of these urges to anyone, ever. They represented something about herself that must not be, and could never be admitted.

In her worst moments, this darkness would congeal into a persona, and even speak to her. Tempt her. Argue with her. Even try to reason with her, as though its criminal desires could somehow be made acceptable with words. And now, with the return of her sister, the revelation of her secret cavern of vulgarity—made only to preserve her kind!—this was one of her worst moments.

The persona of her sickness never had a visible form. It was amorphous, simultaneously alluring and revolting at the same time. It spoke to her in her own voice, but sing-song and sultry, sexualized to the point of pornography. It spoke.

"Celestiaaaaa~, you cannot keep me locked away. You want to touch them. To be with them. To be truly seen by them, don't you?"

She knew it was in her mind, and that she owned her mind, and that she did not have to follow where her mind wanted to bring her. She gritted her teeth in the dark closet and remained silent. It continued.

"Honeeeey~, you know you can't ignore me. We've been here before. So many times. I'm always me, and I'm always you. The only difference is that I stay the same, and you get worn down. I've been wearing you down for thousands of years. You will let me out one day, and with my sister loosed again, that day may be quite soon."

Her sister. Things were so much harder with Luna around. Celestia never looked at Luna's acts of lust, or those of her ponies, for fear that it would feed her sickness. She knew that they did sex, those stallions and mares. And at some level, that must be okay, because it's how you got new ponies. She knew that. At least, that's supposed to be how it works.

She had been terrified that her own matings at the center of the mountain would awaken her darkness, but no. Growing a stallion's penis and using it for procreation was not at all what it wanted. That natural act of procreation was as abhorrent to her tormentor as her tormentor was to her. Her matings were "safe" precisely because they were sex as it was supposed to be, only with her as the stallion paired with a mare. Her own detestable urges could never create life like that.

She knew that if she indulged in her actual instincts for even a second, even a moment, without squelching and annihilating them at the very next conscious thought, that it would feel right. It would feel drunkenly, deliriously right. She would commit crime after crime against nature in mind and soon in body, and her darkness would be truly released, and once released, she did not believe it could again be contained. Perfect concentration and discipline her entire existence had gotten her this far. Only the fact it had never been fed had kept it weak enough to contain.

Perhaps this was similar to how her sister felt? Was this presence her personal "Nightmare Moon"? But she wasn't weak like her sister. She kept herself aloof. Mythic. Apart. Alone. None of her ponies would dare tempt her sexually, and surely none would share her depraved predilection. It would take a grand conspiracy of her most trusted subjects working in tandem to construct a scenario that could ever even scratch her ancient armor. She would never undergo such a transformation.

Her odious passenger had watched these thoughts, as it watched all her thoughts, and left her one last echoing taunt.

"Celestiaaa~, I am you. You want these things. You will let me out, and you will love it."

She replied with the only words she ever consciously directed at this force. Narrowing her eyes, she gazed into the mirror, and with cold, dispassionate resolve, she spoke.

"I will never let you out."