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The three ponies crowded behind the door to the audience hall. “Must we do this?” Luna asked.
“Of course not, Your Highness,” the shaggy grey pony answered. At this close range, he had to strain his neck to look up at the Lunar Princess. “You could tell them your sister is dead. Or you could tell them it’s none of their business. Or you could tell them nothing at all.”
“Dotted!” Twilight protested. “You know we can’t do any of those things.”
Luna nodded her agreement. “Thoughts which, when girded round by a counsellor’s chain we may call circumspection, the weight of a crown turns to cowardice.” She blinked. “I mean no slight on thy honour. ‘Tis honorable to fit thy station.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Dotted Line muttered.
“Well,” Twilight said, “it’s show time.” She pushed the door open and walked through. Luna wrinkled her nose irritably, then followed.
“Break a leg,” Dotted said, and closed the door behind her.
The hall was full of ponies. The first three rows of seats were lined with the nobility. They wore faces of polite boredom in between their covert glances at each other, each trying to look like they were in the know while identifying the ponies who really were in the know. Behind them crowded the press, leaning up against the red rope and the guards separating them from the nobility, bristling with an intimidating array of microphones, tripods, cameras, and notepads.
Luna and Twilight stepped in front of the three thrones and faced the crowd until the hubbub died down. Then, slowly and deliberately, Luna sat in the center throne, setting off another round of murmuring and a barrage of flashbulbs, while Twilight settled into the one to her right.
“We know well your love for our absent sister,” Luna began when the hall was quiet. “We would not add to your burden with leaden uncertainty, were we ourselves not doubly so weighed down.”
One by one, the heads in the audience turned to Twilight.
“She means, we don’t know where Celestia is,” Twilight said. Gasps echoed about the hall. Several of the less-disciplined of the nobility gave away their ignorance by sudden eyebrow movements.
Luna frowned. “Our sister departed,” she continued, “on her own hooves, on her own purposes. We tarried long, abiding our ignorance out of respect for her years and wisdom. But while duty first opposed our affections’ prompting, the passage of time has swung it ‘round from east to west, and love and duty now call to us from a single point of the compass. So have we resolved that our youngest sister, Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, Element of Magic, shall venture forth, even on the morrow, to match wit, magic, and fate against whatsoever would separate us from our beloved sister.”
Two dozen pens froze above two dozen notebooks.
“We’re starting to get worried, so I’m going to look for her tomorrow,” Twilight said. The pens descended and scribbled vigorously.
Luna coughed. She scanned the room slowly, looking press and noblepony alike in the eye. Then she sighed.
“Are there any questions?” she asked.
The reporters squeezed up against each other’s shoulders, shoving their microphones out in front of them, though they were still thirty feet away. “Princess Twilight! Princess Twilight!”
“Yes, um… Horse Voice, is it?” Twilight said.
Luna snorted, and ignored the reporters as thoroughly as they ignored her. They hardly noticed when, two minutes later, she got up and left the room.
Fifteen minutes later, Twilight shut the door behind her once more.
“Where’s Luna?” she asked Dotted Line.
“Probably in the last place you would look for her, Your Highness.”
“Oh? And where’s that?”
“I don’t know. But I expect, begging your pardon, that she does.”
Twilight sighed. “You know, this is all difficult enough, without her always…” She looked away.
“Making it more difficult?”
“Yes. I mean, I thought she just needed time. Six months. A year. Two years. It’s been five years since Celestia vanished, and things between us are worse than ever. And her Equinish keeps reverting further back in time. Soon I’m going to have to study Cranmare just to understand her.”
Dotted shook his head. “Five years isn’t much to Princess Luna, I’m afraid. I’m amazed she’s handling it this well, Princess. Think about it. She’s Celestia’s sister. Been a princess for two thousand years. But when Celestia wanted to take a vacation, she waited until you got your wings.”
“That’s ridiculous. That was just coincidence. She trusts Luna absolutely.”
“I can only say, Your Highness, that an unusual number of coincidences take place around Celestia.”
Twilight peered down the hallway at the other end of the antechamber, as if the Lunar Princess might be hiding behind one of the statues. “So what should I do?”
“Find her and talk to her. Or don’t. It doesn’t really matter. She’ll still be angry, and she’ll still see you off tomorrow.”
“I won’t find Celestia, you know,” Twilight said. “If she really doesn’t want to be found.”
“I expect not, Your Highness.”
“I don’t even know if I should try. She said not to. It was literally the only instructions she left for us. ‘Don’t look for me.’”
“Yes, well, she knew you’d look sooner or later,” Dotted said. “She probably just wanted to slow you down. But as things are now, you’ve got to go and give Luna a chance to rule by herself.”
“Oh.” Twilight nodded. “So she’ll learn that she’s just as good at it without me.”
“No, begging your pardon again, Your Highness,” Dotted said. “So she’ll learn that she isn’t.”
Twilight finally found Luna in the wine cellar, which was lit only by a single lantern near the entrance. It was, in fact, the last place she looked.
“So,” Luna said from a dark corner, her mane shimmering faintly in the shadows. “You found me.”
“It’s my last night here,” Twilight said.
“I expect I shall miss you,” Luna said without turning around. She bent forward, blew the dust off a bottle, and began to inspect the label.
Twilight stepped toward her. “I’m sorry about the press conference. I didn’t mean to upstage you. I really didn’t know what else to do! They were all shouting at me, and—”
“Cease your braying, youngling,” Luna snapped. “Think you my mood hinges on the opinions of petty scribblers?”
Twilight fell back.
Luna stepped out of the shadows. “You are the author of my unhappiness, and of our present danger,” she said. “Go, seek my sister. You will not find her. You could not find her in this castle, nay, in this room, if she did not wish it.”
“Please, Luna,” Twilight said, taking another step back. “I don’t understand. Why have you been you so cold to me since Celestia left? What did I do to you?”
Luna lowered her head and thrust it forward, bring the tip of her horn dangerously close. “Not to me, but to my sister!”
“What… what did I do? Tell me!”
Luna narrowed her eyes at Twilight. “Mayhap I will. It is only out of mercy to you that I have not.” She began to pace in a circle. “Truly, I do you wrong. I am more to blame. I knew, and saw it not. She fooled us both, but only I could have foreseen—” She stopped. “Though you should have realized it by now! So clever with magic, yet blind when you yourself are the proof. Where did your alicorn magic come from?”
Twilight took a deep breath. “From the spell. Starswirl’s spell, it—”
Luna neighed derisively. “Cease your prattling. Go, look for my sister. Let us both pretend, while we yet can, that she is separated from us only by such distance as yardsticks can measure.”
But Twilight stood there, gazing at Luna in amazement. Luna pushed up against her, then dropped her head and pushed her muzzle up against Twilight’s neck. It was wet with tears.
“Go,” she whispered. “Tell her I love her. No matter what.”
Twilight reared back, finally spooked by tears and whispers, and skittered back up the stairs.
“I don’t care if you aren’t an alicorn anymore,” Luna told the darkness. “I just want to see you again.”
Twilight and Spike got off the train in a small town in the eastern provinces. They checked their bags at the station, then exited onto the street and stood there, getting their legs back after the long trip. The town looked just enough like Ponyville to make Twilight smile.
“Where now?” Spike asked.
“Chasing down another tip,” Twilight said. “There’s supposed to be a very tall, very beautiful white unicorn mare in town. A schoolteacher.”
“Huh. Can you imagine Celestia teaching school?”
“Absolutely, Spike. But I know what you mean. It’s both perfect for her, and inconceivable.” She started walking. “I haven’t got an address, just ‘at the end of the road’.”
“We could ask around,” Spike suggested.
“I’d rather not,” Twilight said. She’d left her crown behind at the castle, but the alicorn and the dragon still got a lot of double-takes from passers-by. “I mean, everypony knows I’m looking for Celestia. I don’t want them to think I’m doing it by walking down the street asking for directions.”
“So you’ll do it by walking down the street not asking directions.”
“Exactly.”
The town was small enough that “the road” was unambiguous. Which end of it was not. Twilight flipped a bit.
“Uphill,” Spike groaned. “Why don’t we just always go downhill?”
“Because this way, Spike, we get to walk back downhill. Anyway, I want to mix a little chance into it. Leave room for a little magic to enter.”
“I thought you said magic was scientific and repeatable.”
Twilight grinned. “I guess I’m hoping for a different kind of magic, Spike.”
They walked along the road until it turned to gravel, then to dirt, and then to a footpath. It petered out just a little ways before a ridgeline, in front of a cottage to their right.
“End of the road,” Spike said. They walked up to it and knocked on the front door.
It creaked open slowly, and a pink-and-white pegasus filly peeked out. She stared at Spike with wide eyes.
“You’re a princess,” the filly said to Twilight. “I can tell because you have wings. And a dragon.”
“That’s right!” Twilight answered. “I’m Princess Twilight. But you can call me Twilight. And this is Spike.”
Spike bowed theatrically. “At your service.”
“Do you bite?”
“Not today,” Spike said. “I just bit yesterday.”
“Spike! Shame on you.” Twilight turned to the filly. “What’s your name?”
“Amaranth,” the filly said.
“Well, Amaranth. I’m looking for a tall, white unicorn mare. Would that be your mother?”
She nodded.
“Could I see her?”
The filly seemed to think this over for a moment. Then she stepped out of the house. “Come on,” she said, and trotted off toward the corner of the house. Twilight looked at Spike, shrugged, and followed her around the corner.
She led them through a broad grassy backyard, ideal for foals to play or graze in, then up a knoll at the back. The top of it looked down a hill, over a wild weedy valley, with a forest beyond. Just past the crest of the knoll was the back of a gravestone.
“Papa says it’s okay to talk to her,” Amaranth said.
“Oh,” Twilight said. She looked at Spike, who was looking down and fumbling with his claws. She raised her head, cleared her throat and spoke loudly toward the stone. “Well. I think you have a very nice daughter, and, um, you lived in a very nice spot. It’s beautiful. I hope you were happy here. I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time to see you.”
She stopped, and realized the filly was giving her a funny look. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re talking to her tail,” the filly said.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Wait, actually, I’m not. The word ‘headstone’ means that…”
“Twilight,” Spike said.
“Right. Um, I’ll just step around to her front, then.”
She circled around the grave until she stood on the slope below it, with the valley behind her. She leaned forward, trying to make out the writing without risking stepping on the grave.
Twilight stiffened. “Wife and mother?” She stared at the headstone for several seconds, then turned to the filly. “Did your father write that?”
Amaranth blinked. “Yes.”
“Just three words.”
“That’s what papa said.” Amaranth looked back at the grave. “But that was what she wanted.”
“So,” Spike said. “Another lead gone cold. Literally.”
Twilight stared out the window of the train, her eyes fixed on the horizon as thickets of red firebush and bright yellow flowering gorse rolled by.
“Bit for your thoughts,” Spike said. “But you’ll have to front me the bit.”
Twilight sighed.
“Yeah,” Spike said, “it’s a shame about the kid.”
“That’s not it,” Twilight said. “I mean, maybe it should be. But it’s those three words. Wife and mother.”
“Yeah?”
Twilight shifted in her seat to look at Spike. “It’s not really remembering her at all. Only what she was to others.”
“Kind of noble, in a way,” Spike said.
“Well, I don’t like it.”
“Yeah,” Spike muttered, “but you’d be fine being remembered as ‘the faithful student.’”
Twilight flushed. “That’s completely different. Being a faithful student to Princess Celestia is a singular and specific enough role that it implies several of the primary dimensions of my personality. Plus, saying you’re Celestia’s student is almost a boast. Whereas saying you’re just somebody’s wife and somebody’s mother is… inappropriately humble.”
Spike snorted and looked down. The train rumbled on across the fields.
Twilight stared out the window again. What kind of friends did that mare have, she wondered, to make her want to think of herself that way?
It must have been a lonely life, she decided.
“Of course not, Your Highness,” the shaggy grey pony answered. At this close range, he had to strain his neck to look up at the Lunar Princess. “You could tell them your sister is dead. Or you could tell them it’s none of their business. Or you could tell them nothing at all.”
“Dotted!” Twilight protested. “You know we can’t do any of those things.”
Luna nodded her agreement. “Thoughts which, when girded round by a counsellor’s chain we may call circumspection, the weight of a crown turns to cowardice.” She blinked. “I mean no slight on thy honour. ‘Tis honorable to fit thy station.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Dotted Line muttered.
“Well,” Twilight said, “it’s show time.” She pushed the door open and walked through. Luna wrinkled her nose irritably, then followed.
“Break a leg,” Dotted said, and closed the door behind her.
The hall was full of ponies. The first three rows of seats were lined with the nobility. They wore faces of polite boredom in between their covert glances at each other, each trying to look like they were in the know while identifying the ponies who really were in the know. Behind them crowded the press, leaning up against the red rope and the guards separating them from the nobility, bristling with an intimidating array of microphones, tripods, cameras, and notepads.
Luna and Twilight stepped in front of the three thrones and faced the crowd until the hubbub died down. Then, slowly and deliberately, Luna sat in the center throne, setting off another round of murmuring and a barrage of flashbulbs, while Twilight settled into the one to her right.
“We know well your love for our absent sister,” Luna began when the hall was quiet. “We would not add to your burden with leaden uncertainty, were we ourselves not doubly so weighed down.”
One by one, the heads in the audience turned to Twilight.
“She means, we don’t know where Celestia is,” Twilight said. Gasps echoed about the hall. Several of the less-disciplined of the nobility gave away their ignorance by sudden eyebrow movements.
Luna frowned. “Our sister departed,” she continued, “on her own hooves, on her own purposes. We tarried long, abiding our ignorance out of respect for her years and wisdom. But while duty first opposed our affections’ prompting, the passage of time has swung it ‘round from east to west, and love and duty now call to us from a single point of the compass. So have we resolved that our youngest sister, Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, Element of Magic, shall venture forth, even on the morrow, to match wit, magic, and fate against whatsoever would separate us from our beloved sister.”
Two dozen pens froze above two dozen notebooks.
“We’re starting to get worried, so I’m going to look for her tomorrow,” Twilight said. The pens descended and scribbled vigorously.
Luna coughed. She scanned the room slowly, looking press and noblepony alike in the eye. Then she sighed.
“Are there any questions?” she asked.
The reporters squeezed up against each other’s shoulders, shoving their microphones out in front of them, though they were still thirty feet away. “Princess Twilight! Princess Twilight!”
“Yes, um… Horse Voice, is it?” Twilight said.
Luna snorted, and ignored the reporters as thoroughly as they ignored her. They hardly noticed when, two minutes later, she got up and left the room.
Fifteen minutes later, Twilight shut the door behind her once more.
“Where’s Luna?” she asked Dotted Line.
“Probably in the last place you would look for her, Your Highness.”
“Oh? And where’s that?”
“I don’t know. But I expect, begging your pardon, that she does.”
Twilight sighed. “You know, this is all difficult enough, without her always…” She looked away.
“Making it more difficult?”
“Yes. I mean, I thought she just needed time. Six months. A year. Two years. It’s been five years since Celestia vanished, and things between us are worse than ever. And her Equinish keeps reverting further back in time. Soon I’m going to have to study Cranmare just to understand her.”
Dotted shook his head. “Five years isn’t much to Princess Luna, I’m afraid. I’m amazed she’s handling it this well, Princess. Think about it. She’s Celestia’s sister. Been a princess for two thousand years. But when Celestia wanted to take a vacation, she waited until you got your wings.”
“That’s ridiculous. That was just coincidence. She trusts Luna absolutely.”
“I can only say, Your Highness, that an unusual number of coincidences take place around Celestia.”
Twilight peered down the hallway at the other end of the antechamber, as if the Lunar Princess might be hiding behind one of the statues. “So what should I do?”
“Find her and talk to her. Or don’t. It doesn’t really matter. She’ll still be angry, and she’ll still see you off tomorrow.”
“I won’t find Celestia, you know,” Twilight said. “If she really doesn’t want to be found.”
“I expect not, Your Highness.”
“I don’t even know if I should try. She said not to. It was literally the only instructions she left for us. ‘Don’t look for me.’”
“Yes, well, she knew you’d look sooner or later,” Dotted said. “She probably just wanted to slow you down. But as things are now, you’ve got to go and give Luna a chance to rule by herself.”
“Oh.” Twilight nodded. “So she’ll learn that she’s just as good at it without me.”
“No, begging your pardon again, Your Highness,” Dotted said. “So she’ll learn that she isn’t.”
Twilight finally found Luna in the wine cellar, which was lit only by a single lantern near the entrance. It was, in fact, the last place she looked.
“So,” Luna said from a dark corner, her mane shimmering faintly in the shadows. “You found me.”
“It’s my last night here,” Twilight said.
“I expect I shall miss you,” Luna said without turning around. She bent forward, blew the dust off a bottle, and began to inspect the label.
Twilight stepped toward her. “I’m sorry about the press conference. I didn’t mean to upstage you. I really didn’t know what else to do! They were all shouting at me, and—”
“Cease your braying, youngling,” Luna snapped. “Think you my mood hinges on the opinions of petty scribblers?”
Twilight fell back.
Luna stepped out of the shadows. “You are the author of my unhappiness, and of our present danger,” she said. “Go, seek my sister. You will not find her. You could not find her in this castle, nay, in this room, if she did not wish it.”
“Please, Luna,” Twilight said, taking another step back. “I don’t understand. Why have you been you so cold to me since Celestia left? What did I do to you?”
Luna lowered her head and thrust it forward, bring the tip of her horn dangerously close. “Not to me, but to my sister!”
“What… what did I do? Tell me!”
Luna narrowed her eyes at Twilight. “Mayhap I will. It is only out of mercy to you that I have not.” She began to pace in a circle. “Truly, I do you wrong. I am more to blame. I knew, and saw it not. She fooled us both, but only I could have foreseen—” She stopped. “Though you should have realized it by now! So clever with magic, yet blind when you yourself are the proof. Where did your alicorn magic come from?”
Twilight took a deep breath. “From the spell. Starswirl’s spell, it—”
Luna neighed derisively. “Cease your prattling. Go, look for my sister. Let us both pretend, while we yet can, that she is separated from us only by such distance as yardsticks can measure.”
But Twilight stood there, gazing at Luna in amazement. Luna pushed up against her, then dropped her head and pushed her muzzle up against Twilight’s neck. It was wet with tears.
“Go,” she whispered. “Tell her I love her. No matter what.”
Twilight reared back, finally spooked by tears and whispers, and skittered back up the stairs.
“I don’t care if you aren’t an alicorn anymore,” Luna told the darkness. “I just want to see you again.”
Twilight and Spike got off the train in a small town in the eastern provinces. They checked their bags at the station, then exited onto the street and stood there, getting their legs back after the long trip. The town looked just enough like Ponyville to make Twilight smile.
“Where now?” Spike asked.
“Chasing down another tip,” Twilight said. “There’s supposed to be a very tall, very beautiful white unicorn mare in town. A schoolteacher.”
“Huh. Can you imagine Celestia teaching school?”
“Absolutely, Spike. But I know what you mean. It’s both perfect for her, and inconceivable.” She started walking. “I haven’t got an address, just ‘at the end of the road’.”
“We could ask around,” Spike suggested.
“I’d rather not,” Twilight said. She’d left her crown behind at the castle, but the alicorn and the dragon still got a lot of double-takes from passers-by. “I mean, everypony knows I’m looking for Celestia. I don’t want them to think I’m doing it by walking down the street asking for directions.”
“So you’ll do it by walking down the street not asking directions.”
“Exactly.”
The town was small enough that “the road” was unambiguous. Which end of it was not. Twilight flipped a bit.
“Uphill,” Spike groaned. “Why don’t we just always go downhill?”
“Because this way, Spike, we get to walk back downhill. Anyway, I want to mix a little chance into it. Leave room for a little magic to enter.”
“I thought you said magic was scientific and repeatable.”
Twilight grinned. “I guess I’m hoping for a different kind of magic, Spike.”
They walked along the road until it turned to gravel, then to dirt, and then to a footpath. It petered out just a little ways before a ridgeline, in front of a cottage to their right.
“End of the road,” Spike said. They walked up to it and knocked on the front door.
It creaked open slowly, and a pink-and-white pegasus filly peeked out. She stared at Spike with wide eyes.
“You’re a princess,” the filly said to Twilight. “I can tell because you have wings. And a dragon.”
“That’s right!” Twilight answered. “I’m Princess Twilight. But you can call me Twilight. And this is Spike.”
Spike bowed theatrically. “At your service.”
“Do you bite?”
“Not today,” Spike said. “I just bit yesterday.”
“Spike! Shame on you.” Twilight turned to the filly. “What’s your name?”
“Amaranth,” the filly said.
“Well, Amaranth. I’m looking for a tall, white unicorn mare. Would that be your mother?”
She nodded.
“Could I see her?”
The filly seemed to think this over for a moment. Then she stepped out of the house. “Come on,” she said, and trotted off toward the corner of the house. Twilight looked at Spike, shrugged, and followed her around the corner.
She led them through a broad grassy backyard, ideal for foals to play or graze in, then up a knoll at the back. The top of it looked down a hill, over a wild weedy valley, with a forest beyond. Just past the crest of the knoll was the back of a gravestone.
“Papa says it’s okay to talk to her,” Amaranth said.
“Oh,” Twilight said. She looked at Spike, who was looking down and fumbling with his claws. She raised her head, cleared her throat and spoke loudly toward the stone. “Well. I think you have a very nice daughter, and, um, you lived in a very nice spot. It’s beautiful. I hope you were happy here. I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time to see you.”
She stopped, and realized the filly was giving her a funny look. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re talking to her tail,” the filly said.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Wait, actually, I’m not. The word ‘headstone’ means that…”
“Twilight,” Spike said.
“Right. Um, I’ll just step around to her front, then.”
She circled around the grave until she stood on the slope below it, with the valley behind her. She leaned forward, trying to make out the writing without risking stepping on the grave.
Sunny Skies
Wife and mother
Twilight stiffened. “Wife and mother?” She stared at the headstone for several seconds, then turned to the filly. “Did your father write that?”
Amaranth blinked. “Yes.”
“Just three words.”
“That’s what papa said.” Amaranth looked back at the grave. “But that was what she wanted.”
“So,” Spike said. “Another lead gone cold. Literally.”
Twilight stared out the window of the train, her eyes fixed on the horizon as thickets of red firebush and bright yellow flowering gorse rolled by.
“Bit for your thoughts,” Spike said. “But you’ll have to front me the bit.”
Twilight sighed.
“Yeah,” Spike said, “it’s a shame about the kid.”
“That’s not it,” Twilight said. “I mean, maybe it should be. But it’s those three words. Wife and mother.”
“Yeah?”
Twilight shifted in her seat to look at Spike. “It’s not really remembering her at all. Only what she was to others.”
“Kind of noble, in a way,” Spike said.
“Well, I don’t like it.”
“Yeah,” Spike muttered, “but you’d be fine being remembered as ‘the faithful student.’”
Twilight flushed. “That’s completely different. Being a faithful student to Princess Celestia is a singular and specific enough role that it implies several of the primary dimensions of my personality. Plus, saying you’re Celestia’s student is almost a boast. Whereas saying you’re just somebody’s wife and somebody’s mother is… inappropriately humble.”
Spike snorted and looked down. The train rumbled on across the fields.
Twilight stared out the window again. What kind of friends did that mare have, she wondered, to make her want to think of herself that way?
It must have been a lonely life, she decided.