[b]1.[/b] Celestia always has wings in her dreams. It's not always a flying thing. (There was the time she gave a report to the school board in the nude, and she spent the whole dream trying to cover herself with them.) And she's not always the only one. (That one vivid dream with her little sister.) But it's the sole constant of her inner life. She always has wings in her dreams—radiant, unblemished white—and when she spreads them she feels a wind nobody else seems to sense, and when she folds them warm feathers tickle her hips like a kiss of light. Then the alarm clock bleats, and her fingers fumble for the snooze button, and she stares out toward the rising sun, and she showers dresses cooks eats, drives parks opens greets, loves chides warns guides [i]keeps it bottled up inside[/i]— They need a principal, after all. They don't need a dreamer. And then one day, one of her top students causes tens of thousands of dollars of property damage to the school. That's not how anyone else on the scene would describe it. It's not even how [i]she[/i] sees it. (Less abstract finance and more "six horse-eared girls blasting a bat-winged demon out of the air with beams of rainbow light.") It's magical. A dream come to life. But even as the impossible unfolds in front of her eyes—even as a lifetime of self-denial warps and buckles, and her phantom wings quiver at the edge of physicality, screaming to be unfolded—even as her perception brushes the contours of that ethereal wind and plucks at its flow, as her hair begin to involuntarily billow out in the hot humid stillness—even as she [i]knows[/i], like she knows her name, that she could spread her arms and rise from the ground and have the world behold her in her benevolent glory—the instincts that kick in are the ones that brought her to that moment to begin with. She sees her students. She sees hundreds of innocent children whose first exposure to magic isn't playing the hero and defeating the villain, but rather waking up amid a scene of chaos and devastation. Children staring at a new life defined by forces out of their control—a life where they [i]don't matter[/i]. Children whose normal has just been brutally ripped away, with no guarantee they'll ever find it again. So she clenches her back muscles, forcing the feeling down. She strolls out into the courtyard and hands Twilight Sparkle the crown for the Fall Formal. Behind her, Luna—[i]who plays along, bless her heart[/i]—assigns Sunset Shimmer detention. [i]That,[/i] the children understand. The ups and downs of a school year. And it's [i]that[/i] that they cheer. She instantly knows she did the right thing. She's afraid to sleep that night. She lies sprawled on her back on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling, willing herself to burst into tears. The tears don't come. If she goes to sleep, she'll dream. If she dreams… Now that she's seen winged girls with her own eyes, she's not sure if she's more afraid that her dream-self won't have wings any more, or that her dream-self [i]will[/i]. The sun rises, after an approximate eternity. She sits up stiffly and stumbles to the mirror. She's a mess. She showers and dresses and cooks and eats and somehow manages to avoid two separate car accidents on the way to school and mechanically staggers into her office and puts her head in her hands and finally, [i]finally[/i], breaks down sobbing. She realizes it's Saturday. She goes home. [hr] [b]2.[/b] As a child, Celestia believed she was an angel. That was her only context for the wings, back then. Memories of Sunday school and church iconography (so vague, so distant; it all feels lifetimes away), and dreams that didn't match her body. At first, her parents thought she wanted to be an angel when she grew up, which they found adorable. Then they realized what she [i]actually[/i] meant, and thus began the increasingly stern talks with their pastor. She went through a phase, sort of, where she thought she was a bird magically transformed into a human. She never [i]really[/i] believed it—it was spirituality by compromise, not obvious inner truth—but being an angel was upsetting her parents, and she was still struggling to find a way to understand the wings. She tried to tell them about it. She thought they'd be proud she was putting "the angel thing" behind her. [i]That[/i] led to several sessions with an expensive upstate psychiatrist. She never talked about her wings after that. When the crash happened, Celestia had just turned 18. There was a huge mess with the living trust (she remembers: vaguely, distantly, lifetimes away). He'd kept an old copy of their parents' will, and sold some things that weren't supposed to be sold, and arranged big donations he wasn't supposed to make, and Celestia had to hire a lawyer to try to straighten it all out. Then Luna sided with the trustee, and the big fight started. [i]She[/i] turned 18, and hired a lawyer of her own, and suddenly the whole matter was court dates and depositions and accusations, and the knives came out on every little thing. It broke Celestia's heart to fight family, but she had to honor what her parents wanted, and if Luna was stupid enough to fall for the trustee's lies about his last conversation with them… Ultimately, Luna's resolve broke and they met for an out-of-court settlement. Luna got the fixer-upper second home in Dream Valley and her old college fund. Celestia got the rest—close to three million dollars cash, even after the lawyers' cuts. That day, they exchanged a grand total of six words which weren't about the money. It was their last conversation for a decade. She still thinks about that dream every day. Luna stands on tiptoe on the edge of a cliff on the world's tallest mountain. Fierce grey stormclouds smother everything, and icy wind whips at their bare skin. Celestia's never been here before, and yet her heart aches at the beauty the storm obscures: beneath them, she knows, the land rolls away, pristine emerald green out to the shimmering sapphires of distant seas. "I got my wings!" Luna announces (somehow audible over the howls of the storm). She spreads them, and they are immense and magnificent, like a midnight-blue shadow looming over her thin and pale arms. A gust of wind buffets Celestia. She staggers sideways, but recovers. Thunder rolls ominously below. Fear grips her heart. She has to protect her younger sister. "Luna, [i]no!"[/i] Celestia sprints forward toward her serene, unmoving sibling in the tar-pit manner of nightmares, flailing and straining and making little progress. "Close them!" Luna's face curls, indignant. "You should be proud of me," she accuses. "I thought you wanted me to fly!" "Not [i]now!"[/i] The wind is tearing at her words, stealing breath from her lungs. "Then when?" "When it's [i]safe[/i]!" Luna frowns. The wind howls and bites, numbing Celestia's fingers. She's running out of time. So she does the only thing she can to save Luna: reaches out to rip the wings from her shoulders. Luna flinches back, shocked and wounded. Celestia's fingers miss by inches. The wind screams like a wounded dragon, blasting Celestia back. There's a frozen moment where they lock eyes. The storm goes silent, and Celestia is pinned only by the withering weight of her sister's outrage. Then Luna whirls and dives into the maelstrom. She vanishes almost instantly. Celestia screams, and flings herself over the edge. The clouds grow fangs, and— After the settlement, Celestia flew overseas to Europa (a vaguely distant place: a few thousand miles and a few lifetimes away). Her goal: To spend her way out of a broken heart. The continental crowd's parties were spectacular, and for years, she was on top of the world. Then the money ran out, and the parties weren't quite as spectacular any more, until some fifth son in the Bittish royal family fell head over heels for her and they had a whirlwind royal wedding. Then the marriage chilled once the shine of Blueblood's conquest wore off, and there was that ill-thought fling of hers in Costa del Sol, and a quiet and ignominious divorce. So it was that she found herself wandering the streets of Roam one day, broke and broken and friendless and aimless. As she rounded the corner to the Piazza di Grazia, It occurred to her to ask what she was doing with her life. She looked up. And her answer was a statue of an angel reaching up to the sky, its wings outstretched as if in flight. She stared, dumbfounded. And a long-smoldering ember stirred and lit. [i]"Bullshit!"[/i] she shouted, in a roar that shook the heavens. As punctuation, she flung her half-full bottle of campari to the cobblestones, where it shattered anticlimactically within its paper bag. She stomped off with an incoherent scream, punched some stupid ancient Roamin building that had the gall to get in her way, and sank down sobbing in a nearby alleyway. Angels weren't [i]real[/i]. (Not [i]here[/i], where they could be touched, the pastor explained—but that was a fine distinction for a girl that young, and when Santa Claus turned out to also not be real, she did some mental addition.) For all that people talked about angels, people [i]didn't believe they existed[/i]. That lack of reality freed humans to do the most terrible possible thing they could do to angels: put them on a pedestal. Angels weren't messy, flesh-and-blood things. Angels didn't have problems and fights and drinking habits and estranged family and failed marriages. [i]That[/i], a small whisper said in her old pastor's voice, is why you're not an angel. And now the world was saying: Look. [i]This[/i] is an angel, flawless and unyielding and cold and unapproachable. It was an outrage. They were wrong in [i]every possible way[/i]. When the recorded voice says "La tua chiamata è stata accettata," Celestia almost loses her nerve and hangs up. (This happens shortly after the statue moment—long before the property damage, but no longer lifetimes away. The memory of it is clear and tangible. It is [i]her[/i], not Celestia-who-was.) When Luna's sleep-muffled voice says "Hello?", she almost drops the phone. She manages: "It's me." There's a long silence. "I'm sorry," she says. "For everything." There's a choked sob from the other end of the call. "They told me I couldn't be an angel when I was young," Celestia says, desperate to blurt it all out before the line goes dead. "Maybe they're right. But I'm not going to let that stop me from trying, and that means [i]making things right[/i], Lu. You were more important than the money, and I wish I'd figured that out at the time, and I was the world's biggest idiot, and I'm so sorry. If that means I have to find a job and earn three million dollars so I can trade it back for you, then damn it, that's what I'm going to do." Luna's openly crying now. "I don't want the money," Luna says between sobs. "Come home." She does. Celestia spends half a decade stretching her metaphorical wings. She's learning how to be an angel, now. "Flawless and rigid and cold and unapproachable" are her anti-checklist, and she takes a sledgehammer to them one by one. Flawless—well, that one's already shattered. She destroys Rigid by pounding her life into an entirely different shape: going to college, earning a degree, moving in with Luna, doing the shopping and cooking and chores that servants used to do for her in the Buckingham Palace days. Cracking the ice of Cold is no problem at all; the blazing personality that attracted Blueblood to her rekindles in an instant, once she isn't spending her nights staring at the ceiling and wondering how her life ever got so screwed up. Unapproachable…well, that stumps her for a while. She was always in charge of everything. It all had to be [i]her[/i] way. (Like the sundial they gave to Camp Everfree.) She doesn't know how to break that. Fortunately, she works up the humility to ask Luna. Luna doesn't know either. Her sister's been a recluse since she got her degree—working a quiet back-office job at a local high school, and heading home the instant the school day ends. But, she says, maybe they can try to figure it out together. Celestia shadows Luna for a few days, and falls in love with the campus immediately. She bluffs her way into a job as a guidance counselor and starts taking night classes in psychology. And she quickly realizes what she knew all along: that most important part of angel-hood is [i]caring[/i], no more and no less. She made things right with Luna when she [i]cared[/i] about her—and now she's got an entire campus of children, young and malleable and fragile, who can learn from her mistakes if she just [i]cares[/i] enough. If she just makes some friends. Principal Sombra isn't a fan of the hands-on approach. Canterlot High's reputation for academic rigor doesn't allow time for [i]friends[/i]—it requires a certain low-grade perpetual terror to keep the children chained to the books. So she solves that by making the [i]right[/i] friends—a razor-thin majority of the school board. A year later, she's running the place. She starts dreaming again. She doesn't find out what happened to shadow-winged Luna, but that's okay. She [i]knows.[/i] The storm never touched Luna in the first place—she dove unharmed through the clouds and out into brilliant clear sky. Celestia took a while to catch up—battered, humbled, and shedding a few feathers. She doesn't learn quite how many until Twilight Sparkle stops for a few minutes to say goodbye. "I've got to get back to my friends," Twilight says after all her thank-yous and apologies and stammered half-explanations limp to a halt. "The real ones. Um, I mean. [i]My world's[/i] versions. Not that this world's Applejack and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash and Rarity aren't amazing pon—, [i]people[/i], but the ones that made me who I am miss me." "I see. Is there another me back home?" Celestia asks. She forces a casual, jocular tone into her voice, but her heart is hammering. She's remembering rainbows and seeing angels, and it would be [i]so nice[/i] to think that there's a world in which she doesn't have to dream about wings. "Oh! Um. Yeah." Twilight gives a self-deprecating laugh. "I guess you figured out that was how I knew your name, huh? She's pretty amazing." Twilight's face flushes. "I'm, um, kind of her personal student." "Your Celestia's a teacher?" Pure curiosity, there. That's a career path she'd never really considered for herself, but she can see it. "Not really," Twilight says, "she's—" Floored. Numb, maybe? [i]Thinking,[/i] certainly. Mind outracing the Wondercolts track team. But as the days since the property damage drag on, she finds herself no closer to knowing how to feel about the fact that the other her is [i]immortal[/i]. She does come to one firm conclusion. Principal Celestia is the lesser of her two selves, mortal and fragile and imperfect. She makes mistakes that Alicorn Princess Celestia simply cannot be capable of. Alicorn Princess Celestia—so Twilight says, and she believes it—[i]literally raises the sun every day[/i] for an [i]entire world[/i], ponies and other. She's not just an angel—she's a [i]goddess[/i]. She [i]can't[/i] be flawed, not the way Principal Celestia is, or that flaw would be magnified a million-fold. With that sort of power, if Princess Celestia had done anything as horrible as sundering her family for a decade, their world would be a smoldering cinder. Principal Celestia starts to wonder what Princess Celestia's biggest regret is. [hr] [b]3.[/b] That question overtops its dam a few days after the property damage. Sunset Shimmer is fidgeting in Celestia's office. She no longer looks like a winged flame demon, which many would say (and some [i]do[/i] say, in stage whispers in the halls) is an improvement, but both people in the room are feeling the lack of magic like an ache inside their bone-marrow. "Sunset," Principal Celestia says out of nowhere, "did you know Princess Celestia well?" There's a silence that's uncomfortable on both sides, Sunset's apparently more so than hers. Then all the tension goes out of Sunset, who lets out a long breath and bows her head. "Yeah. You could say that." Celestia's thrown by the sudden shift. Her mouth goes dry. "If," she stammers, "ah, you don't want to talk about it…" "It's okay," Sunset says. "You've been giving me a heck of a second chance. You deserve the truth." The teen laughs bitterly. "I guess I'd just expected you to laugh off my story, the way everyone else here has. I [i]hoped[/i] you would, really. I've been coasting on the truth being unbelievable for so long that I never thought I'd have to face what it actually [i]meant[/i]. I mean, I used it as a punchline! 'Yeah, sure,' I'd say when Snips or Snails tried to lie to my face about some plan or another going south, 'and I'm a magical talking unicorn from another dimension.'" Celestia's gotten good at recognizing when a student needs to get something off their chest—and at shutting up when she needs to listen instead of talk. This is clearly one of those times. But that's not why she holds her tongue. "I didn't understand why you kept quiet," Sunset continues. "I thought by now I'd be in a jail cell dealing with swarms of media. Scientists. Government agents. I mean, your world needs to know what you saw, right? And who I am. What I did to your school…if someone [i]else[/i] leaks that, all this comes right down on you. So there has to be a big reason you're covering for me." …Maybe Sunset Shimmer isn't the most unbiased source on Celestia's pony counterpart, anyway. From the tidbits Celestia fished out of Twilight's friends, Sunset and the princess apparently had something of a falling out. Trying to ask her was a mistake, Celestia decides. She should just let the conversation drift away to where it needs to go. "You think I should go back," Sunset says heavily. "Don't you?" Celestia starts. "What?" "You're protecting me because you think I belong back home." Sunset stands and paces over to the window. "Or maybe it really just [i]is[/i] that it'd be easier to explain everything with me gone. But if you're like her, you're thinking about me." "No! No," Celestia says, before realizing she's three sentences behind. "I mean. Sunset…[i]do[/i] you want to stay?" Sunset falls silent. Celestia mentally catches up. "Yes," Sunset says quietly. "And…I wish I could tell you that's not selfish. But I can't promise you that." This, she can handle. "Why?" "Staying [i]would[/i] give me the chance to try making it up to the students I hurt. But I also hurt ponies…hurt the Princess…when I left, and they deserve justice too." Sunset sighs. "The girls here might be my first friends ever. I want to argue they're central to my rehabilitation, but the truth is, I'm terrified to lose them, even though Twilight could help me make more friends back home. It's like that with every argument I come up with. There are so many reasons why staying feels like the right decision, but every single one also feels like a hollow justification to paper over my fears." The instincts that have brought Celestia to this moment kick in. And she understands. There [i]is[/i] a fear at Sunset Shimmer's core, a fear bigger than anything else she's ever faced or going to face. She fears she's gone too far. [i]She fears she can't be forgiven.[/i] And if [i]Principal[/i] Celestia decides that's true—that Sunset Shimmer, a known problem, is Somebody Else's Problem—then, well, by definition that is the sort of decision that Celestia makes. And when Sunset Shimmer crawls back through the portal to face the [i]other[/i] Celestia… Principal Celestia is the lesser of her two selves, mortal and fragile and imperfect. She knows she makes mistakes that Alicorn Princess Celestia isn't capable of. But right now, she needs to know—more than anything in the world—that Immortal Princess Her is [i]not capable[/i] of destroying her student, full stop. So she [i]can't[/i] send Sunset home. She can't trust a better her to succeed where she failed. [i]Every possible Celestia[/i] has to be better than that. "You're staying," she says firmly, and just like that, they are. In front of the mirror the next morning, she spends a long time staring at her wingless form, and then she sighs and pulls out the hair dye she uses to touch up her graying roots. She thinks about Immortal Her while she's dying. Out front of the school, in the still and silent morning, she reaches out to the base of the horse statue. Hesitates. Turns away. Hustles uncomfortably toward the front doors. Sunset Shimmer is laying bricks there, already working off the day's detention. There's no possible way, Celestia thinks, that Sunset could have missed her moment. Their eyes meet. They pause. Sunset silently returns to her work. What disturbs her most about living in a world of magic is the little things. On twelve hours' notice, the school board "invites" her to a breakfast meeting about The Property Damage. It means getting up well before sunrise. A few hours past midnight, she finishes prepping her presentation, and sets three alarm clocks as she collapses into bed. Five minutes before any of them go off, she slowly becomes aware of a tapping at the window. It's quiet, barely at the edge of her consciousness amid the haze of sleep. Then she realizes there's a [i]pattern[/i] to it—clusters of threes with little pauses between them—and her brain engages. She rolls over and sits up, instantly awake. There's nothing there. The sound immediately stops. Nothing like it has ever happened before. Nothing like it ever happens again. And, sure, maybe it's coincidence that it woke her up clean and alert and caffeine-free right before the most important meeting of her life. But she doesn't believe that, not really. And yet it makes so little sense she's not sure [i]what[/i] to believe. There's a quiet click as her office door closes, which makes her look up from her paperwork. Sunset sits down, hands in lap. "What did the school board say?" Sunset asks without preamble. "Oh, exactly what you'd expect," she says. "They were very interested to hear exactly how my valedictorian procured enough street-legal fireworks to blow an eight-foot crater in the school grounds as part of an ill-advised Fall Formal prank. Whether we had notified parents that their students were briefly exposed to hallucinogenic chemicals generated by the blast. Whether our liability insurance has sufficient coverage if any parents file lawsuits. What that will do to our premiums. And whether I was aware of a student effort on social media to spread potentially libelous rumors of magical flying demons, and the potential for [i]you[/i] to sue us in response." Sunset laughs bitterly. "Wow." "You'd be proud of me. When Dr. Scholtz asked me if I really expected them to believe that street fireworks destroyed a stone building facade, I rolled my eyes and said, 'No, I expect you to believe my valedictorian is a unicorn from another dimension who enslaved the school and was blasted through the wall by six teenaged superheroes' friendship beam.' Then I brought up my slide of citations and started discussing Hynek's research on the Michigan 1966 biogas event." They share a laugh—genuine this time. The tension melts out of Sunset's shoulders, and Celestia tells herself that she can't be doing [i]too[/i] badly if she's managing some sort of reconciliation by proxy with Immortal Her's former protege. Sunset's smile wavers. "So I…um. Thank you." She nods and waits. Sunset swallows and looks away, not meeting her eyes. "I. Um. I've got a magical journal that lets me talk with Twilight Sparkle. I thought you should know." At first, Celestia's confused and flattered to be the recipient of a secret, however pointless. Then the context clicks in, and her eyes widen. Can Sunset talk to [i]the other world[/i]? "So if you wanted to know more about Equestria," Sunset says, removing all doubt, "she can answer any questions I can't. Or if you wanted to pass on messages to anyone on the other side." Sunset fidgets. "I owe you that. And for you, I know Twilight wouldn't mind." Celestia stands up and walks over to Sunset Shimmer, clasping the girl's hands. "Thank you," she says softly, intently. Then she walks over to the window, and lies: "I'll think about it." She [i]does[/i] think about it, though. And hates that she can't stop the thoughts. She's not going to take Sunset Shimmer up on the offer. That much is clear. And yet…and yet. She thinks about it a [i]lot[/i], over and over, and her thoughts keep rolling back to a single, razor-edged question. What do you say… "…to the you who is better than you in every way?" Luna asks. They're sitting together on that cliffside atop Canter Peak. Celestia's legs dangle over the edge, and she stares out at the brilliant clear day past her bare feet. Beneath them, the land rolls away, pristine emerald green out to the shimmering sapphires of distant seas. Celestia twirls a finger nervously through her hair. "I was hoping you'd know," she admits. "I could have handled it if she was the angel I always tried to be. But she's so much [i]more.[/i]" "It is a knife straight to the gut," Luna says absently. "When you discover that there is a you who didn't make your greatest mistake." [i]"Exactly!"[/i] Celestia says, and then the guilt floods in. "But don't talk like that. You never did anything wrong." Luna's response is hesitant and subdued. "I know. You said." "I wasn't paying attention to you. I was chasing what I thought was important, and I was wrong, and you were the one who suffered for it." "No! Sister—" Luna says, then pauses, and sighs. "We agreed not to fight over guilt." Celestia winces. "I'm sorry. You're right." "[i]I[/i] am sorry. I should not have brought it up." They stare out at the horizon together. Celestia unfolds a wing and drapes it over Luna's back. Something tickles faintly at the back of her mind. "It is only that I wanted some advice," Luna says. "Or perhaps reassurance. I have not been able to stop comparing myself unfavorably to the other me—not since learning that on the far side of the portal, our positions in our fight were reversed." Celestia blinks. "The other us fought?" "Yes…and it was I who welcomed you back from your exile." "Wait," Celestia says, [i]"what?"[/i] She turns to look at Luna, [i]really[/i] look, for the first time. Luna's head swivels to meet hers. Cyan eyes stare back at Celestia from a midnight-blue equine muzzle, amid a mane like a halo of stars ripped from the night sky— [hr] 4. She takes a day off from work when Twilight (through Sunset) fills in the tiny missing details of goddess-her's big fight. Luna—[i]her[/i] Luna—calls to ask what's wrong. She lets it go to voicemail. (Luna doesn't call again, which she takes to mean that Luna asked Sunset Shimmer for context.) Celestia spends hours and hours wanting to vomit. Finally, she calls on her old dusty party skills and induces dry-heaving. It doesn't help. How could she? A [i]thousand years[/i]. How [i]could[/i] she? Her emotions boil over in the middle of the night, and she drives to Sunset Shimmer's and knocks on the door. "Take a letter," she says. "To Princess Luna." Then she kills time for half an hour (which involves an awkward apology, a call to a 24-hour pizza place, and a lot of pencil-chewing over a half-filled crossword puzzle) as her missive winds its way between dimensions, through dragonfire, across a palace, and vice versa. Sunset's journal finally vibrates. [i]There was never any question I would forgive her. I was the one who erred,[/i] the letter says (when stripped of its Twilight padding, and a frantic apology for being a middlemare for what sounds like deeply personal business). [i]I would ask you the same, but your answer will be identical.[/i] (It is.) [i]So instead I will address our original question:[/i] [i]What we would say to our better selves is the conversation we have already had with our sisters, for exactly the same reason, and with exactly the same result.[/i] [i]Their heart breaks at our clinging to guilt.[/i] [i]They love us.[/i] [i]I hope you can believe that more readily than I.[/i] Sunset Shimmer hugs her. She numbly accepts—then feels tears dampen her shoulder, and remembers she's not the only one who needs some permission to forgive herself. They hold each other, flawed and bent and hot and caring. Celestia doesn't have wings to wrap around her fellow angel, and it doesn't matter one bit.