“I want a funeral.”

Princess Celestia paused for several moments, her entire body going still as though frozen in its own little bubble of time. She elected then to finish her biscuit and then nodded to Twilight, as though what she’d just heard was the most normal thing in the world.

“Are you dying?” she asked, careful to keep her tone one of mild curiosity.

“You know I’m not,” Twilight said, a bit of an indignant grumble in her words.

“Then you must suspect that somepony intends to kill you.” Celestia’s words were smooth, the fragments of uncertainty she’d shown earlier hidden away. Canterlot palace was her home, afternoon tea her private domain, and masterful calm her natural gift, even if Twilight had momentarily caught her off guard.

“No. I made friends with Equestria’s last villain a month ago.” Twilight sighed, swirling her hoof as thought to hurry the conversation along. “And she wasn’t even really a villain! She was just a very stern bicycle enthusiast who also happened to practice necromancy, but that wasn’t like, her thing.”

“Suicide?”

“No. Yes. Well, kind of.” Twilight made an elaborate gesture with her hooves, visibly struggling to find the words. “Like, yes, because there’s going to be a funeral and everypony should go ‘oh it’s so sad she died.’ But without the part where my heart stops and my soul leaves my body and I start to stink. So you know. Metaphorical suicide.”

Celestia considered this for a moment, sipping her tea to stall for time. “So essentially,” she said, pausing for emphasis as she returned her cup to the table. “You’d like to have a rather somber party where everypony comes and says nice things about you. While you listen from the casket, presumably?”

“No!” Twilight’s ears shot up, and her shoulders lifted with the very thought. “Well, I mean, okay, yes to the first part, but you can’t attend your own funeral. How narcissistic would that be? No, I mean…” She took a deep breath, her eyes slipping from Celestia’s face and down to the table. “I’d just like it if you declared me dead of natural causes and then we had a funeral to everypony could move on, and then I was going to change my name and move to Baltimare.”

Again, Celestia nodded: “Why Baltimare?”

“I’ve heard it’s nice and the rent is cheap.” Twilight scrunched her wings and tail up against herself, seeming to wilt under Celestia’s gaze. The sun princess offered her no respite, staring down at her student. “I was going to dye my coat,” Twilight mumbled. “And I made a spell to hide my horn so everypony will think I’m a pegasus.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know. What do you want me to say?” Twilight scrunched up her muzzle, her words coming faster. “That all my friends have had funerals and I feel left out? Because I do. I’m not suicidal, but it is kind of a mortals-only party. But that’s not the only party Princesses get left out of.”

She shook her hoof sharply, and managed to lift her head to Celestia, her voice tight as she went on. “There’s just so much going on in Equestria right now. So much change and innovation and social issues that are getting worked out, and I can’t be a part of that from the top of the pile. I can’t even see most of it. A teenager is not going to crack jokes about her student loan problems with royalty, and buisnessponies won’t be honest with the mare who sets their taxes. I want to be a part of the world again.”

Twilight took a deep breath, and abruptly let it out: “And I’m bored, okay? I’ve been a princess for nearly a hundred years. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it. I’m ready to buy a smartphone and take an unpaid internship and learn what social media is.”

“You could do all that as a Princess,” Celestia observed. “Nopony is stopping you.”

“I’m stopping me.” Twilight snorted, and turned her head away.

Celestia considered that for some time.

“I think,” she finally said, “I will tell them I poisoned your tea with a vile draught that pulled you into an eternal sleep. Cureable only by a hero who is pure of heart.”

Twilight looked back.

“Well,” Celestia said, her tone practical. “We need some way to bring you back to life after you get bored of mortality again.”