Celestia carried herself with elegance and grace. So much so, in fact, that her golden shoes touched the stone flooring with utter gentleness, soft and delicate as a trail of kisses. The rough and beaten workway would have been flattered, for it was everything the smooth, shining marble of Canterlot was not. There, in equal quiet and majesty, the princess of the sun might appear over some noble or other’s shoulder. She always enjoyed that light teasing and embarrassment in the court, more than anypony within the Capitol realized, though many had been subject to the alicorn’s coy humour at some time or another. Here, there would only ever be sweat and iron, and what ponies worked here held more than enough of Celestia’s respect to safeguard them from her private jokes.
“Hi, Princess,” came a wan little voice, muffled by the furnace door of the nearest smelter. Celestia paused mid-step, then smiled to herself. Twilight Sparkle wasn’t just any pony, that was certain. In the years since first being instated as a pupil of the throne she had gone onwards and upwards in proving her virtue and worth, making for herself a dear place in the princess’ heart.
“Yes, it’s me. Hello, Twilight.”
“It’s really nice...that you’re here.” It was not the usual voice the unicorn addressed her with. Not the unselfconscious, innocent delight and adoration of Twilight’s voracious curiosity, nor the sheer panic when that very same curiosity, or her own imaginings, conjured something particularly upsetting.
Rather, this was the voice that croaked and groaned, miserable enough to get the week off from school and not even enjoy it, though being Twilight Sparkle, fell a little short. She had never enjoyed missing out on learning for anything, as Celestia well knew.
It hadn’t been the first time the princess of Equestria had nursed her student through an illness, though it had been years since the last time, when a brief but eventful pox had rolled through Her School For Gifted Unicorns. Whereas other fillies and colts had gone home to recover or had been stationed with nurses, the filly Twilight had bemoaned her unfair and cruel fate, quite poetically, from the most sumptuous bed in all Equestria.
Growing up had made Twilight no less endearing to the princess, though this time she had found herself an even more unlikely bed to curl up and shiver in. The blackened glass of the furnace door cast flickering red lights, bowing down at Celestia’s gold-clad hooves. With her magic, she opened the hatch wide, bathing herself in the radiance of yellows and reds, and heat that made the air shimmer and dance. Flames leapt up where fresh oxygen rushed in, turning Twilight to a dark, obscure lump at the core of the oven.
Sparks crackled and spat out into the foundry, now empty of all other ponies. Some bounced harmlessly against the alicorn before fading to flecks of ash. Celestia paid them no mind, and poked her head into the growling inferno.
“You’re letting the cold in,” Twilight complained. She shivered. Fever sweat trickled down her brow and sides. Whenever a drip fell from the unicorn, the water remembered itself and exploded with tiny, vigorous spats into ultraheated steam.
At Celestia’s beckoning the bed of coals brightened all the more, until they were less like coal and more like shovefuls dug straight out of the sun itself. “Feel better?” the princess asked.
“A bit, thanks.” The unicorn nestled down deeper into the blazing coals. “I still feel really woozy. I think breakfast caught fire in my mouth,” she said apologetically. She mumbled something that might have been words. “I’m really glad you’re here. Thank you.”
The innocent sincerity touched Celestia, as it always did. “Of course, Twilight. Spike sent word to me as soon he knew to. You were quick to figure it out.”
The sick pony made an aimless, sweeping gesture with her hoof. “The first hundred degrees I went above normal were a bit of a clue. Salamanderitus!” she suddenly exclaimed, knocking glowing coals about the place.
One lump bounced off Celestia’s forehead for comedic effect. Other than making her blink, it did nothing, and she magicked it back into the furnace, lest she make more a mess of the foundry than necessary. The working ponies had been very understanding of the situation, even if they didn’t actually understand the situation.
“Salamanderitus!” the unicorn cried out again. “Salamannnnnderrrrriiiiiiitus!” Celestia feared her student slipping into a moment of delirium, but Twilight had other notions. “I’m sorry,” Twilight said sullenly. “Is Spike ok? I hope I got away from him quick enough.” She groaned and turned over.
Celestia poked her head further into the furnace, until her muzzle was inches from Twilight’s frayed and wiry mane. She’d only stopped because the size of the door didn’t permit her any further.
“He is. He’d have symptoms by now if he’d caught it too. Best to keep him out of the library until you’re feeling better and it can be disinfected.”
Twilight nodded. “I hope he’s not worried...” she worried aloud.
“Only as much as you are,” Celestia said warmly.
“How do I even catch a dragon disease anyway? I’ve never heard of it happening, or read of it, or even read a story about it! Even for you, Princess, this has to be a first.”
Celestia used her magic to pile more of the coals up against her little student. “Indeed, it is. I’ve never heard of it, let alone seen it happen.”
Twilight gave a throaty chuckle, which quickly descended into a cough. “It shouldn’t even be possible. It’s too terrible to be allowed. I’m all achey and dizzy and shakey...and that’s not even a real adjective! Or is it an adverb?” Twilight grumbled and kicked some of her improvised bed at the furnace’s interior, where it clanged with a dull, heavy echo. “...I’m cold now,” she intoned quietly. “I’m sorry, princess.”
“Don’t think anything of it, Twilight. You’re not well.”
“I know. I’m trying to think straight, but I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
“If you’d rather sleep, I could—”
“No! Please, stay?” Twilight scrambled and scooped her way through the burning until she was more or less under Celestia’s chin. Her wide, wobbling eyes pleaded wantonly. She shivered, then buried her head in the burning coals as if they were pillows. The heap of coals mumbled something incoherent, but nonetheless explicit.
“Twilight. My dear Twilight. It’s alright.”
“I think it’s my high magic quotient,” the coals said irritably. “Anypony else would be immune, because dragons are really magical too, so any flu that targeted them would have to be adapted specifically for that. The Salamanderitus thinks I’m a dragon, so now my body thinks it is one too, and is fighting it that way. My magic is tricking itself.” A horn sprouted from the inferno, sizzled with a few dud purple fizzles, then uprooted itself to reveal a most self-piteous and mopey Twilight Sparkle.
Celestia paused, then looked to her student. “That was surprisingly succinct.”
“Well, I am sick, but that doesn’t mean—” Twilight sneezed. The thick, viscous kind of sneeze perpetrated by only the true mucous exporter. Right in Celestia’s face. Or would have, except that not even ash made it across the intervening space, and for this the alicorn was infinitely grateful. Twilight looked more sheepish than an actual sheep.
“I was considering much along those lines as well.”
It might have just been the fever, but Twilight’s eyes took on a particular shine. “You mean it?”
“I do.”
“I think like you do? I always,—I mean, I wondered and maybe, maybe I hoped that...I’m glad.” Her head and eyelids sank respectively. “Princess?”
For all the truth of having her head more or less literally face-first in an inferno, Celestia felt a sudden chill all the same. “Yes?”
“I know...I know I’m not really thinking straight, and I’m kind of scared and everything’s still a bit dreamy, but...but...
“I love you.”
Celestia drew a gasp, like she hadn’t done in a long, long time. Suddenly her poise and calm were fleeting things before her.
“I love you. You’re like a mother to me, and I already have a mom. And...and...and usually I’m so worried about one thing or another, or thinking things through so much, but...but, I can barely hear myself think right now. I’m just babbling, but it’s nice for once not thinking and just saying.”
“Twilight.”
Twilight found the strength to dredge her head up from the blaze. “I love you, and I don’t say that enough and maybe nopony says it enough even though we mean to, and especially not enough to you because you’re so much, so wonderful and amazing, and for everything I’ve done and been and learned...Everything I’ve learned, and I find out there’s two more things I didn’t know and-”
“Twilight.”
“...and how much you’ve done for me, because maybe a tower full of books is what I used to think was the biggest gift to me you ever gave, but I’m just a silly, sick pony and when I’m better I’m going to be so embarrassed but I want to say it anyway, because it wasn’t the tower or the books or Canterlot that means so much; it’s everytime you make me smile, or inspire me, or challenge me to grow, and I realize now that you’ve been treating me my whole life as Twilight Sparkle, not just a unicorn to put in a tower of books and I love you for everything and why am I crying and smiling at the same time?”
Exhausted, Twilight dropped softly to her bed of coals. The occasional tear went up with an explosive sizzle. “And now I’m scared,” she whispered. “Because right now I feel like I’m in a warm, lumpy bed, and I keep forgetting that I’m inside a furnace just to stay warm. By all rights I shouldn’t be in here, ever, and I don’t know what’ll happen once I’m through the fever and—”
“Twilight Sparkle” Celestia said, being firm yet gentle with her tone. “It’ll be ok. I’m here, and I won’t leave you. I won’t let anything happen.”
“But how—”
“Don’t concern yourself with that. You just get some rest. I’ll be right here.” Twilight sniffled and shivered. With her magic, Celestia piled up the embers against her faithful student, doing what she could to make it comfortable for her. “Just sleep now.”
“I think...” she mumbled as her eyes drooped. “I think I can, now. I’m not so afraid with you here. I’m glad I said what I said.”
“Sleep, Twilight. I’ll watch over you.”
“I love you...” Twilight murmured as she sank softly into sleep.
For a time, Celestia ran everything Twilight had said through her thoughts and feelings, trying to make absolute sense of it all—a challenge for anypony, even one old and wise as her.
After a little while, and in the privacy of the utterly vacated foundry, Celestia smiled. Occasionally a droplet of water flashed into steam.
“I love you too,” Celestia whispered to the sleeping filly before her. Celestia listened to Twilight’s breathing and, in the empty iron works and the glow of the furnace, felt herself richer than all the marble towers.
