Once upon a time, I shattered mountains.

Once upon a time, I slew gods and goddesses.

But now, my days are now often much quieter affairs, filled with reading and punctuated with a cycling assortment of pots of different blends of tea. In many ways, it is a welcome change of rhythm.

On this particular evening, Little Twilight sits beside me on my bedroom floor. She’s got her head pressed into an old Daring Do novel, while I tend to scrolls and letters. With a scrunched muzzle and pursed lips, Twilight blows on her cup full of chamomile tea to cool it, and I suspect she will continue blowing until it finds itself at room temperature. She is not a particularly adventurous filly, at least at this age.

I smile a private smile as a pour myself a second cup. Tea is my addiction, as my sister would say, but it is one that I’m happy to spread around. In fact, if Little Twilight is anything like her mother, it’d be only another year or two before she—

“Princess Celestia?” says Little Twilight, bringing my thoughts to an abrupt stop.

The way she carefully intonates her words rivals even the most stately and decorous of court criers in my long memory. I squash a giggle rising out of my throat before it can reach my lips.

“Yes, Twilight?” I ask.

“Are you…” She pauses, one eye squinting, as though she were trying to reword the question in her mind. “Are you the sun’s mom?”

“I am not,” I say, smiling. It’s a surprisingly common question among foals.

“Then, is the sun your mom?” she asks.

I mull over the thought for a moment.

“In a way,” I finallys say. “But it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Can you tell me?” says Little Twilight, her book entirely forgotten. Then, she remembers to add a, “Please, Princess?”

Her eyes were wide, and her lips were a little ‘o’ of wonder.

How could I say no?

“Of course I can,” I say.

She slides herself closer to me, the better to hear me, and I drape one of my wings over her.

“A very, very long time ago,” say I, “there was a star. She did not know how she came into being, only that when she did, she was not alone. She looked and saw millions of her sisters all around her, so far away that her light crossed the distance towards them like mercury sliding across cold glass. She shone at them, declaring her existence, and it would take centuries to receive a response. But what was a century for a being that measured its time in millenia?”

“Was that star the sun? Was it you?” asks Little Twilight.

“Aye, she was. And she was much more than me, too,” I say. “She sang to all her sisters, and her sisters sang back. They took many physical forms: spheres of stone and ice, clouds of gas, and burning plasma—like herself. They shared existence with her, and she was content.

“Then one eon, not too long ago, she noticed something in her grasp that was not there a billion or two years before. A little sphere of rock and water, not even a millionth of her own size or grandeur. But it did something that nothing else in the entire universe had done. It changed, even while she was studying it for the very first time.

“Nothing like it had ever been found before, at least, not among to the sisters who were close enough to talk to her. Her closest sibling, a passionate body of glass and dust, flung herself from her well in a mad dash to see this unique thing and arrived just millenia—an eye’s blink—after the star’s first tentative calls.

“Together they watched for a handful of moments as the tiny, molecular things on the planet moved and changed and stopped and changed again. And they both knew that the change might stop at any moment.”

At that moment Little Twilight smiles widely and nearly jumps out of her spot in the crook of my wing.

“That was Luna, right? The little sister was Luna!” she declares with confidence.

“It was, indeed. And it also wasn’t,” I say.

Twilight’s nose crinkles—she doesn’t like being wrong, even partially—and she settles back down, clear eager to hear more. I oblige her.

“The two sisters quickly formulated an endeavor, for they knew that their perception of time worked against them. The tiny grain of water and air and dirt sitting in vacuum between them was so small compared to their own mass, and so fragile. So they portioned the smallest sliver of themselves that they could alloquoit. Two tiny sparks of their own will, destined to burn themselves out in just moments. But moments were all they needed to go, see, and report back. No sooner had they spoken their plan than it was done. And these two sisters sparks found themselves on a world that suddenly seemed so much larger. And they found themselves wrapped in forms that they had never before imagined.”

“Those sparks,” says Twilight, who’s got it figured it out by now. “They were you and Luna.”

I nod. “My soul is the tiniest flicker of the sun’s fire. Luna’s is the smallest grain of the moon’s glass.”

I take a sip of tea, which reminds Little Twilight of her own cup. She takes it up between her hooves and sees that it has finally reached an acceptably tepid temperature. She drinks, cautiously.

“But when we first arrived,” I continued, “we were still too… much. Too clumsy. My arrival tore a mountain range into being. Luna’s coming stole time itself from a continent for decades. We nearly broke the world on accident, and we treaded on tentative hooves for a very long time, careful not to upset what we had come to see.”

Little Twilight’s eyes widen, and she sets down her teacup carefully.

“Can you still, um, accidentally break things?” she asks, cautious and frightened.

“I cannot,” I assure her. “It has been a very long time, and my spark has cooled. Luna’s spark, too, has grown small. They were never meant to last us very long, and we have spent much of them by now.”

“Oh,” says Twilight. She blinks as she thinks, a habit she shares with her mother. “So you’re not as strong as you used to be, now.”

“The last time I thought myself powerful,” I say, with a wry smile, “I found myself bested by the old Queen of Changelings. It a humbling moment.”

“If the sparks are so much weaker now,” asks Little Twilight, “what happens when they’re all the way gone? When will that happen?”

“It’s close,” I admit. “We’ve been here far longer than we anticipated. A few decades of hard work, or a few centuries of relaxation is likely all that’s left.”

Twilight’s eyes widened with worry.

“Then… then you should go back!” she said. “Why haven’t you gone back to the sun yet?”

I smile, sweetly.

“Because if I go back, then I’ll miss all of this.”

“All of what?” asks Little Twilight.

“All of this,” I repeat, motioning with a hoof to encompass the whole room. I pull Little Twilight in more tightly.

“When I go back, I’ll have a lot to think about with myself. And it will take a long time. Even with our returns delayed, my Sun and Luna’s Moon have only just barely begun counting the moments for their experiment to pay off.

“I’m sure they would send us back. Everything here is too beautiful for them not to send us back. But it will take eons for them to even begin discussing what they’ve seen, and by then it’ll be too late.”

“Too late for what?” says Twilight.

“Too late for everything,” I say. “After a hundred thousand years, books might be gone. Tea might be gone. But worst of all…”

I hold her tightly, and I feel her tiny little wings against my own.

“Everypony and everycreature will be gone.”

Little Twilight’s face takes on an odd expression.

“Oh,” is all she says.

“It’s worth it,” I say, and I make sure that she can hear my sincerity. “Every minute, every second I tarry is worth it. I would trade eons of existence as a star for minutes with you.”

I’ve tried my best to keep my voice gentle, but Little Twilight is still clearly overwhelmed. She pushes herself tightly against my side and looks into my eyes intently.

“I wish you could stay forever,” she says. “Thank you for staying.”

“It’s my greatest pleasure,” I say.

Just as Little Twilight opens her mouth to say something in return, a knock comes at my front door. The knocker is a creature of habit: two quick raps, and then a third. A familiar sound for the last thirty-odd years.

“Come in!” I call out, loud enough for my voice to carry from my bedroom out to the living room.

We hear the sound of the door being worked, and then hoofsteps making their way to us. Finally, my bedroom door opens and Twilight Sparkle trots inside.

“Hi, Junior,” she says to little Twilight Stardust. “Hi, Celestia,” she says to me.

I smile just a little. Not too long ago, she would have never dreamed of addressing me second to anypony.

Offhandedly, I notice that she’s still wearing her crown and regalia.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “I hope Junior was good today.”

“She was an absolute angel,” I say, nuzzling Little Twilight’s forehead even as she squirms a little. “And it’s no trouble at all.”

“Thank you,” said Twilight, smiling tiredly. “Come on, Stary, let’s go. It’s getting late.”

The little pegasus filly looks between me and her mother for a moment, seemingly torn. Then she looks at me, her little face the very picture of firm resolution.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” Little Twilight finally promises. “I’ll come back every day!”

Twilight Sparkle laughs just a little.

“Did you have that much fun?” she asks her daughter.

Little Twilight sits up straight, ruffles her wings, and with an air of absolute seriousness says “Yes. I like spending time with Auntie Celestia.”

“Me too,” I say, but I gently nudge her to her feet.

Her mother takes a hold of her hoof and leads her away.

But just as the two of them step past my bedroom door, Little Twilight turns back to me and says one more time, “I’ll be back soon!”

“I’ll be waiting!” I say.

And then, I do.