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The Memory
There is a place way deep in the forest where the trees give way to a clearing. A flimsy shack leans on an old stone wall, both overgrown with weeds. The paint on the wood panels has all but disappeared, exposing the cracked wood underneath. The tin roof, sagging down at one edge, is frail with rust. The golden-orange veins move out from the joints of the roof and meet up with vines snaking up the corners. How it’s still standing is anyone’s guess.
Beside the shack is a row of trees. They shoot from the earth at wild angles, loosely grip and tangle all the way to the sky. Directly above is a veil of green and gold, leaves and filtered sunlight. The blue sky is only visible closer to the ground, where the tree trunks grow no foliage.
It’s warm in the clearing. It’s summer. It’s always been summer. Here the sun shines forever, locked somewhere in the late afternoon. The mild drone of insects floats endlessly on a cool constant breeze.
This place is real. This is a memory. The first memory. This is—
Luna—
This is a dream.
The eyes in Celestia’s head were not Celestia’s, but somepony else’s. They captured the morning light with the same childlike twinkle as Celestia’s eyes. They gazed with the same intensity as Celestia’s eyes. They softened at the sight of her sister just like Celestia’s.
But they were not Celestia’s eyes.
“Good morning,” Celestia said to Luna. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Luna took a step back from Celestia’s bedside. Shoulders squared. Hooves apart. Defensive.
“Is everything okay?” Celestia asked, stretching.
“Is it?” Luna replied. “Do you remember where you are?”
Celestia looked around. The single-room log cabin looked almost the same as the way she left it before going to sleep. Luna had placed the solar regalia neatly on the mantle and fixed a cup of coffee on the small wood-burning stove in the corner. Everything else looked fine.
“I’m in my retreat. Is this not my retreat?”
Luna ignored her answer. “What was the last thing you remember?”
“The coronation. The afterparty. I was with Twilight’s friends most of the night.”
“Then what?”
“Then it was morning. Twilight certainly didn’t need my help learning to raise the sun.”
“After that?”
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on?”
“It’s very important. After that?”
“After that, I traveled here. I vacation here for a month. Then we start our leisure travels. I was hoping not to be disturbed. for the month.” Her tone was frank, but not insulting. “Has something happened?”
“Indeed it has. I’ve been here ever since you missed our departure date at the airship station.”
“Departure date? We don’t leave for a month.”
Luna shook her head somberly. “Nopony could wake you. I couldn’t wake you. We thought you had been poisoned. Possessed. We didn’t know—” Luna shivered. “We didn’t know what was going on.”
Celestia pushed back the covers. Sleep called to her from deep inside. She hadn’t heeded that voice in so long. Not since before she was charged to raise the sun. Now—
“How long?” Celestia asked.
“Two years,” Luna said. “Nothing to me, but to them—"
Luna left the rest unspoken. Celestia knew well enough the frantic impulses of mortal ponies. Two years was a devastating blow.
Celestia rose from bed, feeling no worse for wear. Two years slumber or a fifteen minute cat nap? They felt the same. “Luna,” she said, and took a step towards her sister, “this isn’t a joke?”
“I would never joke about such things. I—" Luna gasped. Her wings flared, sensing danger. She stumbled back in horror. “Godsflame!” she cursed. “Your eyes!”
Fear, long-forgotten but always present, twisted Celestia’s gut. “What?” She looked around for a mirror, but the rustic cabin had none. “What about my eyes?”
Luna was back on her hooves again. Her head was cocked in shock and curiosity. “Look at me. Don’t blink.”
“What?” Celestia did as she was told. Irritation crept into her voice. Or was it fear? “What is it?”
Luna said, “They’re blue.”
In the two years Celestia had been asleep, Twilight Sparkle had proven herself to be an effective ruler. She thwarted three apocalypses in the last six months alone, and beat a minor agricultural recession brought on by a heavy surplus of corn.
Celestia was proud of her student, but darker thoughts overshadowed her former student’s success.
The trip to Canterlot was made via airship. Twilight met them on the landing platform. She looked every part the revered princess, a full length taller than her guard attachment and surrounded by an ethereally flowing mane. Her regalia, the symbols of power and authority emblazoned with her cutie mark, shone in the light.
When she saw Celestia, she burst into tears and ran to her side.
“I thought—I thought—I was certain,” Twilight blubbered. “I thought you died. I thought someone killed you and this was just how alicorns—how they—pass on.” Her voice cracked.
Celestia put her hoof under Twilight’s chin. “Imagination is a good trait in a ruler.”
Twilight gasped. “Your eyes!”
“I know. There is much to discuss. May we discuss it over dinner, perhaps?”
Twilight nodded. Two guards broke formation and trotted off to deliver the message.
The old princesses had returned.
The dinner was nearly three hours long. Celestia barely spoke three sentences. She stared with her stranger’s eyes as Twilight recounted every little detail of the past two years. Together with Luna to corroborate the stories and expose Twilight’s modesty, they brought Celestia up to speed on the glowing state of the nation.
All that good news made Celestia’s brow furrow. “So, there have been no successful incursions from Tartarus?”
“No,” Twilight said.
“No mass-spell incidents, good or evil?”
“Nope.”
“No political strife?”
“Define strife.”
Celestia tapped her chin. “This is strange indeed. What could have caused my sleep, I wonder?”
“Maybe—and this is just a thought—maybe you were really tired.”
Celestia chuckled.
“Really. You’ve been raising the sun for how many thousands of years? I’m tired, and it’s only been two! Maybe it was just your body recovering.”
“That still doesn’t explain the eyes.”
Twilight hummed in agreement. “It could also have something to do with your age, or your relinquishing the sun. I’ve got staff looking into it, but I just don’t think history goes far enough back to tell us what happened to the last ponies who let go of the sun. Oh,” she added, “and even if it did, who’s to say this happened to them? You’re so much more connected to the sun than they would have been.”
“True.”
“At any rate, I believe the best course of action is a thorough investigation. We’ll throw all our tests at you and see what sticks and what stones.” Twilight giggled. “Get it?”
“As long as they don’t break my bones.”
They shared a smile, then returned their attention to dinner. As they ate, Celestia noticed how whenever Twilight went to take a bite, she smiled around the silverware.
That smile put her heart at ease. It was a little tiny glimmer of the good old times.
The tests indeed did not break any of Celestia’s bones. They did, however, take three days and yield nothing but one major discrepancy in Celestia’s old health records.
“I had to change your eye color on your file,” Twilight said proudly, “but now everything is exactly the way it should be!”
Celestia nodded slowly.
Twilight set the file down, deflating somewhat. The castle clinic had a way of sucking the energy from a pony’s body the longer they stayed. Maybe it was a new machine of some kind—a docilator of sorts. Maybe this place had simply soaked up all the years’ worth of bad news delivered inside it.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t find anything,” Twilight said. “This is all so strange. Are you sure you didn’t drink any potions before you went to bed that night? Even recreationally?”
“Only wine, and not enough to put me to sleep for that long.”
Twilight perused the file again. “I wish we knew more about your early life. It always blew me away I know a pony who predates history.”
“Not by much.”
“I didn’t mean it like that!”
Celestia laughed. “I know, my dear. I’m almost glad they don’t. If history went all the way back, there’d be no time for bookworms like you to make the future.”
Instead of the laughter Celestia hoped for, a strange look crossed Twilight’s face.
“Is everything alright?” Celestia asked.
“What if I looked at your aura?” Twilight blurted out.
A long moment of silence eked by. The eggshell walls and polished-chrome instruments squeezed ever closer. A light somewhere above her whined like a bug flying next to her ear.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Twilight said. She steered her gaze to the ground. Despite being almost as tall as Celestia, she seemed very small now. “I’m being too intrusive.”
“That’s quite a radical proposal,” she said.
“But nothing else worked!” Conflict raged in Twilight’s words. “Oh, I’m sorry Celestia, I don’t want to put you in this situation. But I don’t know what else to do. It would violate all my research ethics to do something so personal, but nothing else worked.”
“You know my aura is connected to the sun. If you look at it, even with protection, you risk serious harm.”
“I know. But what if it works?” Twilight’s voice wavered. Celestia was shocked to see tears brimming her eyes. “You were gone for two years,” Twilight said softly. “Two years.”
All the strange melancholic powers of the clinic combined to drain what life was left from Celestia. It crushed her to realize that Twilight still thought of time the same way mortal ponies did.
She had so much still to learn.
They decided to convene that same evening to perform the test.
The spell needed to reveal a pony’s aura was actually very simple. As with so many things in life, complications came with the context of the act.
As Celestia paced the floor of the research lab, she recalled with some embarrassment the tradition of some newlywed unicorns to reveal their auras to each other in the privacy of their honeymoon suite.
This lab was no honeymoon suite. Perhaps to mole-ponies it was. It was after all nearly a mile underground, built into an ancient Canterlot catacomb that made up the castle’s vast underground superstructure.
Celestia felt further from the light than ever down here. Luna, sitting in the corner sipping from a canteen, seemed quite content.
“I wish she would hurry up,” Celestia muttered.
“Don’t rush your number one student,” Luna said, her voice singing with amusement. “Do you remember when she was just a little filly? Now she’s about to look at your aura.”
Celestia’s frown deepened. “Shush.”
“I tease.”
“I know.” Footsteps echoed in the hallway. “Shush.”
Twilight Sparkle all but careened through the lab’s blast door. She beamed an adventurous smile, and at a flick of her hoof an army of data mining instruments marched in behind her, kept in lock-step by her magic. Soon the room was full and brimming with energy.
Though the machines had no eyes, Celestia still felt watched.
“Okay,” Twilight announced, “this is probably going to hurt, so let’s get started before one of us chickens out. Luna, if you plan on staying, please get behind the blast shield.”
Luna cast a languid look her sister’s way before making for the door. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
“You can stay if you’d like,” Celestia chimed in, feeling suddenly alone amongst all the medical machinery.
“No, no.” Luna disappeared behind the blast door. “I’m saving my aura for marriage.”
“Luna!”
The blast door swung shut. Vacuumous silence rushed in to fill the space. Then one by one, Twilight began activating her machines.
“You know,” Twilight said, “A princess’s aura hasn’t been measured in nearly 800 years. Do you remember the last time it happened?”
“I remember,” Celestia said. She eyed the machinery as it blinked to life all around her.
“Of course. You were there.” Twilight giggled. “The books say the observation team never recovered their sight. Is that true?”
“No, only one of them went blind. The rest were fine after a few weeks.”
Twilight nodded thoughtfully. “Mmm, but they tried looking directly at it, didn’t they? We’re going to use machines to do the looking for us. Machines can’t go blind. Does that make you feel any better?”
A monitor of some kind crept into place behind Celestia and beeped. “Monumentally,” she muttered.
Twilight’s gaze softened. The beeping dimmed to a background drone. “I know you’re concerned, but please try to relax. I promise I’ll be safe.”
“I have no doubt about that.”
“You trust me, don’t you?”
There it was. That quaver in her voice. The look in her eye. She ruled the world, yet her heart remained that of a student. The two years Celestia clept changed so much, yet so much remained the same.
“Of course I trust you,” Celestia replied. “Let’s begin.”
The eagerness flooded back into Twilight’s eyes. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
A pale purple glow washed over the room, triggering a chorus of noise from the machines. The buzz of electronics drowned out Celestia’s thoughts. Next went her sight, lost in a blinding flash of white. Burnt ozone choked her nostrils.
Something flashed all around her. Massive cables, sinew stretched to tensile strength, blood in veins, memories. The first memory. Trees and a shack and—
The light gave way in an instant. A machine to her right burst into flames, and the spell fell apart around her.
Twilight ran over to check on her broken machine. “This one’s not important!” she cried victoriously. “I was sure we were gonna lose one of the expensive ones, but this one’s not!”
Celestia felt cold. Was there a draft? Or was it her imagination? “Did you see it?” she asked.
“I did!” Twilight replied, still tinkering with the broken machine. “I got a ton of good readings, too.”
“Did you look at it directly?”
“Well, the machine sensors were able to--”
“Did you look at it?”
Twilight paused. “No. Alicorn eyes are stronger than regular pony eyes, but I didn’t want to chance it.”
Celestia walked over to Twilight and put her hoof under her chin. Their eyes met. Two purple. Two blue.
“What did you see, Twilight?”
“Light. Light and fire. What did you see?”
Fragments of a memory flashed through her mind. “Colors,” she said. “And blue was one of them.”
That night, Celestia dreamed of the clearing in the forest.
Breakfast the next morning was a turgid affair. Whisps of steam rose off a bland mound of oatmeal topped with clumps of cinnamon and, absurdly, pears.
“We hired a few of Applejack’s relatives to cater,” Twilight explained, puzzling over how to attack her own pile of pear-infused pancakes. “It’s only for a few years.”
“Nothing to us,” Celestia said.
Luna pushed her plate away. “Guards--if you would be so kind.”
The honor guard about-faced and strode out of the room. Celestia had barely noticed them when she came in. Luna had evidently grown to enjoy her independence from the royal guard in the two years since she retired. She wondered how she was handling being back after such an absence.
Twilight took one more half-hearted bite and surrendered to the remains of her meal. She blinked the plate away, replacing it with several large binders. “I crunched some numbers last night, and though your aura is obviously off the charts powerful, it’s still pony-shaped. So that’s good.”
“That’s it?” Luna asked.
“Not quite.” Twilight flipped through to one section of binder stuffed with loose papers and pie charts. “These equations seem to indicate an imbalance. More like diminution.”
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Diminution?”
“Yes. Sort of. It would be nice to do a follow-up next month to corroborate this evidence.”
“What exactly does diminution mean in this context?”
“Well.” Twilight bit her lip. “It seems like your aura is getting dimmer. Relatively speaking.”
“Oh,” Celestia said.
“It’s still five million times more powerful than a regular pony’s aura. But over the course of the test its power actually dropped by point zero zero zero one percent.”
“But the test only lasted a moment. That must add up.”
Twilight looked up in puzzlement. “We ran that test for nearly an hour.” Lines of worry appeared in Celestia’s forehead. She opened her mouth, but Twilight beat her to the punch. “Now that we have a direction, we’ll need to bury ourselves in data. Celestia, I would like you to stay at the castle for daily tests. We have the best mages on staff to oversee--”
“Twilight--”
“And of course you can have your old quarters. Since the incident, I’ve made sure they were kept in tip-top shape just in case you ever needed to come back--”
“Twilight.”
Twilight fell silent.
“Keeping me here is no doubt a tremendous imposition on your routine. You are no longer a scholar. Focus on the kingdom first and foremost.”
Twilight slumped. “But Celestia--”
“Plus, Twilight, I’m retired.” A note of sweetness snuck into Celestia’s voice. “I want to stay here too. There’s so much to catch up on from my long nap. But I have a new life to live. If you’ll allow it, I’ll return in one month, and every month after that, until we know what’s going on.”
Twilight nodded. Some of the life returned to her eyes. Ever the curious mare. Ever the faithful student. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise.”
A month of errant thoughts and strange dreams came and went in the blink of an eye. When Celestia returned, Twilight embraced her like it had been another two years.
After their next round of tests, Twilight sealed herself away in her study for nearly a week. When she finally returned, bleary-eyed and woozy, she delivered her working hypothesis.
“Ok, so, alicorns can’t really die. No one’s ever seen an alicorn die. The makers of Equestria disappeared, and then there was you and Luna, and now Cadance and me. Three generations. One here, one there, one nowhere.
“So what happened to the first ones? I don’t think they just disappeared. But they didn’t really die, either. Alicorns can’t just keel over like we—like ponies can. Their magic is too strong.”
“So you’re suggesting something else happens?” Celestia asked.
“Exactly! Instead of a traditional death, they become one with the unbound fabric of reality. The makers didn’t disappear. They were freed from the shackles of time and space, becoming matterless and perfect in every way.
“Freed...” Celestia pondered the thoughts for some time. “So—"
“So it’s a gradual diminution of aural essence.”
"I melt,” Celestia said curtly.
“Not really. But yes, essentially. If it helps to think of it like that, you ‘melt’ into oneness with the universe. It’s actually kind of beautiful.”
“Storms are beautiful, when observed from a distance.”
Twilight’s ears drooped. “Sorry. But let me reiterate that this is all speculation. We just don’t know exactly what will happen. Two points of data do not a correlation make, after all!”
Celestia’s blue eyes grew distant. “I will return next month, then. We all deserve to know.”
She shied away from adding the other thought, the reason Twilight deserved to know. That one day if may happen to her, too.
A surprise awaited the alicorns when next they met. Celestia made her way from her temporary quarters in Canterlot castle to the dining area, moving in a practiced pattern down the winding corridors so as to avoid the morning patrols. She liked walking by herself.
When she arrived, Luna spat out her cereal. Twilight nearly fainted.
“Godsflame,” Luna sputtered, her mouth caked with half-chewed pear-io’s, “your mane!”
Celestia grabbed a silver spoon from the table and stared at her warped reflection. Sure enough, her mane had turned a comical shade of green. Light burst through in geometric patterns and scattered every which way.
Pure confoundment sealed her lips shut. The light reminded her of trees, and for a moment she could have sworn she had seen this color somewhere before.
Celestia couldn’t be sure why Twilight chose to wear librarian’s glasses. Perhaps it was some new fashion trend she had missed. Maybe she wore them simply so she could take them off. Alicorn eyes were exceptionally powerful, even when they changed colors. It’s not like she needed them.
Still, there they were. Sitting atop her scrunched up nose, cocked slightly to one side. “I don’t know what else to tell you,” Twilight said, shifting through a stack of papers. “The evidence is trending strongly towards diminution.”
“Melting,” Celestia corrected.
“Think of it as diminution.” Twilight sounded unconvinced. “It’s a gradual process.”
“How gradual?”
Twilight tapped her glasses with a pen. “At this rate? At least eight hundred years. Probably longer.”
“That’s all?” Luna interjected. She rose from her perch in a plush corner armchair. “That’s nothing to us.”
“That’s eight lifetimes.”
“No,” Luna insisted, “not to us. Not to you. Not anymore.”
“The evidence--”
“Damn your evidence! Can’t you see something’s wrong with her?”
A whimper stopped them short. Celestia wondered who had made it. Then she heard it again and realized it was coming from her. “Diminution,” she said. “So it’s constant?”
Twilight flipped through the tables again. “Just about.”
Celestia looked around, her stranger’s eyes suddenly unable to focus. “So in two hundred years...”
Utter turmoil crossed Twilight’s face. “I...” she grasped for the right word. “It’s all moving so fast.”
Celestia sucked in a breath.
“Not that fast. Fast means nothing to you, right? Generations. Lifetimes. Not anytime soon at all.” The words caught in her throat. “Right?”
“Right,” Luna assured. “Nothing to us.”
Their words assuaged none of the worry. Now all that Celestia could think of was her body at fifty percent dissipation. Then sixty. Seventy. Ninety five. Icy pins ran up her spine. Godsflame. Ninety nine.
Celestia said, “At what point do I stop being me?”
The other two alicorns shared a look, then shrugged.
“I see.”
Celestia burst into tears.
That night, Celestia and Twilight shared tea on the balcony, like they used to when Twilight was still a pony and Celestia was still immortal. In addition to the changes in her eyes and mane, her coat had started to morph into a tin-grey. Fine flecks of rusty red dotted her flanks. Her cutie mark, the sun in all its regal glory, had begun to fade right off her flanks.
Celestia sipped her tea casually. Twilight’s cup chattered against its saucer.
“When you see the end,” Celestia said, “you see the beginning too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been having dreams of places I thought I would never see again. Places erased by time.” She looked out over Canterlot. The familiar soft glow of lantern light lent a pleasant warmth to the evening. “What was your first memory, Twilight?”
“I don’t know. Baking cookies with my mom, probably.”
“Think back. Was it the sight of the cookies? Or the smell? Or the taste?”
Twilight swirled her tea in its cup, nearly spilling it. “The smell, I guess? I’m not sure what came first.”
Celestia hummed to herself. “My first memory was of the home Luna and I lived in before we were crowned princesses. Before we became alicorns.”
Excitement flashed in Twilight’s eyes. “Nopony mentions that in the history books.”
“That’s because history hadn’t begun yet,” she said simply.
“What was it like?”
In Celestia’s mind, she was already back at the beginning. Back at the clearing. The drone of the insects rolled softly in the distance, and the light played out in shifting geometries on the earth, scattered by the canopy of green. The shack stood stubbornly in place, collecting leaves and light. In the distance, harmless clouds loped across the sky, their long shadows never to burden this patch of earth.
It was afternoon. Summer. Warm, like only a memory could be.
Beside the shack is a row of trees. They shoot from the earth at wild angles, loosely grip and tangle all the way to the sky. Directly above is a veil of green and gold, leaves and filtered sunlight. The blue sky is only visible closer to the ground, where the tree trunks grow no foliage.
It’s warm in the clearing. It’s summer. It’s always been summer. Here the sun shines forever, locked somewhere in the late afternoon. The mild drone of insects floats endlessly on a cool constant breeze.
This place is real. This is a memory. The first memory. This is—
Luna—
This is a dream.
The eyes in Celestia’s head were not Celestia’s, but somepony else’s. They captured the morning light with the same childlike twinkle as Celestia’s eyes. They gazed with the same intensity as Celestia’s eyes. They softened at the sight of her sister just like Celestia’s.
But they were not Celestia’s eyes.
“Good morning,” Celestia said to Luna. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Luna took a step back from Celestia’s bedside. Shoulders squared. Hooves apart. Defensive.
“Is everything okay?” Celestia asked, stretching.
“Is it?” Luna replied. “Do you remember where you are?”
Celestia looked around. The single-room log cabin looked almost the same as the way she left it before going to sleep. Luna had placed the solar regalia neatly on the mantle and fixed a cup of coffee on the small wood-burning stove in the corner. Everything else looked fine.
“I’m in my retreat. Is this not my retreat?”
Luna ignored her answer. “What was the last thing you remember?”
“The coronation. The afterparty. I was with Twilight’s friends most of the night.”
“Then what?”
“Then it was morning. Twilight certainly didn’t need my help learning to raise the sun.”
“After that?”
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on?”
“It’s very important. After that?”
“After that, I traveled here. I vacation here for a month. Then we start our leisure travels. I was hoping not to be disturbed. for the month.” Her tone was frank, but not insulting. “Has something happened?”
“Indeed it has. I’ve been here ever since you missed our departure date at the airship station.”
“Departure date? We don’t leave for a month.”
Luna shook her head somberly. “Nopony could wake you. I couldn’t wake you. We thought you had been poisoned. Possessed. We didn’t know—” Luna shivered. “We didn’t know what was going on.”
Celestia pushed back the covers. Sleep called to her from deep inside. She hadn’t heeded that voice in so long. Not since before she was charged to raise the sun. Now—
“How long?” Celestia asked.
“Two years,” Luna said. “Nothing to me, but to them—"
Luna left the rest unspoken. Celestia knew well enough the frantic impulses of mortal ponies. Two years was a devastating blow.
Celestia rose from bed, feeling no worse for wear. Two years slumber or a fifteen minute cat nap? They felt the same. “Luna,” she said, and took a step towards her sister, “this isn’t a joke?”
“I would never joke about such things. I—" Luna gasped. Her wings flared, sensing danger. She stumbled back in horror. “Godsflame!” she cursed. “Your eyes!”
Fear, long-forgotten but always present, twisted Celestia’s gut. “What?” She looked around for a mirror, but the rustic cabin had none. “What about my eyes?”
Luna was back on her hooves again. Her head was cocked in shock and curiosity. “Look at me. Don’t blink.”
“What?” Celestia did as she was told. Irritation crept into her voice. Or was it fear? “What is it?”
Luna said, “They’re blue.”
In the two years Celestia had been asleep, Twilight Sparkle had proven herself to be an effective ruler. She thwarted three apocalypses in the last six months alone, and beat a minor agricultural recession brought on by a heavy surplus of corn.
Celestia was proud of her student, but darker thoughts overshadowed her former student’s success.
The trip to Canterlot was made via airship. Twilight met them on the landing platform. She looked every part the revered princess, a full length taller than her guard attachment and surrounded by an ethereally flowing mane. Her regalia, the symbols of power and authority emblazoned with her cutie mark, shone in the light.
When she saw Celestia, she burst into tears and ran to her side.
“I thought—I thought—I was certain,” Twilight blubbered. “I thought you died. I thought someone killed you and this was just how alicorns—how they—pass on.” Her voice cracked.
Celestia put her hoof under Twilight’s chin. “Imagination is a good trait in a ruler.”
Twilight gasped. “Your eyes!”
“I know. There is much to discuss. May we discuss it over dinner, perhaps?”
Twilight nodded. Two guards broke formation and trotted off to deliver the message.
The old princesses had returned.
The dinner was nearly three hours long. Celestia barely spoke three sentences. She stared with her stranger’s eyes as Twilight recounted every little detail of the past two years. Together with Luna to corroborate the stories and expose Twilight’s modesty, they brought Celestia up to speed on the glowing state of the nation.
All that good news made Celestia’s brow furrow. “So, there have been no successful incursions from Tartarus?”
“No,” Twilight said.
“No mass-spell incidents, good or evil?”
“Nope.”
“No political strife?”
“Define strife.”
Celestia tapped her chin. “This is strange indeed. What could have caused my sleep, I wonder?”
“Maybe—and this is just a thought—maybe you were really tired.”
Celestia chuckled.
“Really. You’ve been raising the sun for how many thousands of years? I’m tired, and it’s only been two! Maybe it was just your body recovering.”
“That still doesn’t explain the eyes.”
Twilight hummed in agreement. “It could also have something to do with your age, or your relinquishing the sun. I’ve got staff looking into it, but I just don’t think history goes far enough back to tell us what happened to the last ponies who let go of the sun. Oh,” she added, “and even if it did, who’s to say this happened to them? You’re so much more connected to the sun than they would have been.”
“True.”
“At any rate, I believe the best course of action is a thorough investigation. We’ll throw all our tests at you and see what sticks and what stones.” Twilight giggled. “Get it?”
“As long as they don’t break my bones.”
They shared a smile, then returned their attention to dinner. As they ate, Celestia noticed how whenever Twilight went to take a bite, she smiled around the silverware.
That smile put her heart at ease. It was a little tiny glimmer of the good old times.
The tests indeed did not break any of Celestia’s bones. They did, however, take three days and yield nothing but one major discrepancy in Celestia’s old health records.
“I had to change your eye color on your file,” Twilight said proudly, “but now everything is exactly the way it should be!”
Celestia nodded slowly.
Twilight set the file down, deflating somewhat. The castle clinic had a way of sucking the energy from a pony’s body the longer they stayed. Maybe it was a new machine of some kind—a docilator of sorts. Maybe this place had simply soaked up all the years’ worth of bad news delivered inside it.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t find anything,” Twilight said. “This is all so strange. Are you sure you didn’t drink any potions before you went to bed that night? Even recreationally?”
“Only wine, and not enough to put me to sleep for that long.”
Twilight perused the file again. “I wish we knew more about your early life. It always blew me away I know a pony who predates history.”
“Not by much.”
“I didn’t mean it like that!”
Celestia laughed. “I know, my dear. I’m almost glad they don’t. If history went all the way back, there’d be no time for bookworms like you to make the future.”
Instead of the laughter Celestia hoped for, a strange look crossed Twilight’s face.
“Is everything alright?” Celestia asked.
“What if I looked at your aura?” Twilight blurted out.
A long moment of silence eked by. The eggshell walls and polished-chrome instruments squeezed ever closer. A light somewhere above her whined like a bug flying next to her ear.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Twilight said. She steered her gaze to the ground. Despite being almost as tall as Celestia, she seemed very small now. “I’m being too intrusive.”
“That’s quite a radical proposal,” she said.
“But nothing else worked!” Conflict raged in Twilight’s words. “Oh, I’m sorry Celestia, I don’t want to put you in this situation. But I don’t know what else to do. It would violate all my research ethics to do something so personal, but nothing else worked.”
“You know my aura is connected to the sun. If you look at it, even with protection, you risk serious harm.”
“I know. But what if it works?” Twilight’s voice wavered. Celestia was shocked to see tears brimming her eyes. “You were gone for two years,” Twilight said softly. “Two years.”
All the strange melancholic powers of the clinic combined to drain what life was left from Celestia. It crushed her to realize that Twilight still thought of time the same way mortal ponies did.
She had so much still to learn.
They decided to convene that same evening to perform the test.
The spell needed to reveal a pony’s aura was actually very simple. As with so many things in life, complications came with the context of the act.
As Celestia paced the floor of the research lab, she recalled with some embarrassment the tradition of some newlywed unicorns to reveal their auras to each other in the privacy of their honeymoon suite.
This lab was no honeymoon suite. Perhaps to mole-ponies it was. It was after all nearly a mile underground, built into an ancient Canterlot catacomb that made up the castle’s vast underground superstructure.
Celestia felt further from the light than ever down here. Luna, sitting in the corner sipping from a canteen, seemed quite content.
“I wish she would hurry up,” Celestia muttered.
“Don’t rush your number one student,” Luna said, her voice singing with amusement. “Do you remember when she was just a little filly? Now she’s about to look at your aura.”
Celestia’s frown deepened. “Shush.”
“I tease.”
“I know.” Footsteps echoed in the hallway. “Shush.”
Twilight Sparkle all but careened through the lab’s blast door. She beamed an adventurous smile, and at a flick of her hoof an army of data mining instruments marched in behind her, kept in lock-step by her magic. Soon the room was full and brimming with energy.
Though the machines had no eyes, Celestia still felt watched.
“Okay,” Twilight announced, “this is probably going to hurt, so let’s get started before one of us chickens out. Luna, if you plan on staying, please get behind the blast shield.”
Luna cast a languid look her sister’s way before making for the door. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
“You can stay if you’d like,” Celestia chimed in, feeling suddenly alone amongst all the medical machinery.
“No, no.” Luna disappeared behind the blast door. “I’m saving my aura for marriage.”
“Luna!”
The blast door swung shut. Vacuumous silence rushed in to fill the space. Then one by one, Twilight began activating her machines.
“You know,” Twilight said, “A princess’s aura hasn’t been measured in nearly 800 years. Do you remember the last time it happened?”
“I remember,” Celestia said. She eyed the machinery as it blinked to life all around her.
“Of course. You were there.” Twilight giggled. “The books say the observation team never recovered their sight. Is that true?”
“No, only one of them went blind. The rest were fine after a few weeks.”
Twilight nodded thoughtfully. “Mmm, but they tried looking directly at it, didn’t they? We’re going to use machines to do the looking for us. Machines can’t go blind. Does that make you feel any better?”
A monitor of some kind crept into place behind Celestia and beeped. “Monumentally,” she muttered.
Twilight’s gaze softened. The beeping dimmed to a background drone. “I know you’re concerned, but please try to relax. I promise I’ll be safe.”
“I have no doubt about that.”
“You trust me, don’t you?”
There it was. That quaver in her voice. The look in her eye. She ruled the world, yet her heart remained that of a student. The two years Celestia clept changed so much, yet so much remained the same.
“Of course I trust you,” Celestia replied. “Let’s begin.”
The eagerness flooded back into Twilight’s eyes. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
A pale purple glow washed over the room, triggering a chorus of noise from the machines. The buzz of electronics drowned out Celestia’s thoughts. Next went her sight, lost in a blinding flash of white. Burnt ozone choked her nostrils.
Something flashed all around her. Massive cables, sinew stretched to tensile strength, blood in veins, memories. The first memory. Trees and a shack and—
The light gave way in an instant. A machine to her right burst into flames, and the spell fell apart around her.
Twilight ran over to check on her broken machine. “This one’s not important!” she cried victoriously. “I was sure we were gonna lose one of the expensive ones, but this one’s not!”
Celestia felt cold. Was there a draft? Or was it her imagination? “Did you see it?” she asked.
“I did!” Twilight replied, still tinkering with the broken machine. “I got a ton of good readings, too.”
“Did you look at it directly?”
“Well, the machine sensors were able to--”
“Did you look at it?”
Twilight paused. “No. Alicorn eyes are stronger than regular pony eyes, but I didn’t want to chance it.”
Celestia walked over to Twilight and put her hoof under her chin. Their eyes met. Two purple. Two blue.
“What did you see, Twilight?”
“Light. Light and fire. What did you see?”
Fragments of a memory flashed through her mind. “Colors,” she said. “And blue was one of them.”
That night, Celestia dreamed of the clearing in the forest.
Breakfast the next morning was a turgid affair. Whisps of steam rose off a bland mound of oatmeal topped with clumps of cinnamon and, absurdly, pears.
“We hired a few of Applejack’s relatives to cater,” Twilight explained, puzzling over how to attack her own pile of pear-infused pancakes. “It’s only for a few years.”
“Nothing to us,” Celestia said.
Luna pushed her plate away. “Guards--if you would be so kind.”
The honor guard about-faced and strode out of the room. Celestia had barely noticed them when she came in. Luna had evidently grown to enjoy her independence from the royal guard in the two years since she retired. She wondered how she was handling being back after such an absence.
Twilight took one more half-hearted bite and surrendered to the remains of her meal. She blinked the plate away, replacing it with several large binders. “I crunched some numbers last night, and though your aura is obviously off the charts powerful, it’s still pony-shaped. So that’s good.”
“That’s it?” Luna asked.
“Not quite.” Twilight flipped through to one section of binder stuffed with loose papers and pie charts. “These equations seem to indicate an imbalance. More like diminution.”
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Diminution?”
“Yes. Sort of. It would be nice to do a follow-up next month to corroborate this evidence.”
“What exactly does diminution mean in this context?”
“Well.” Twilight bit her lip. “It seems like your aura is getting dimmer. Relatively speaking.”
“Oh,” Celestia said.
“It’s still five million times more powerful than a regular pony’s aura. But over the course of the test its power actually dropped by point zero zero zero one percent.”
“But the test only lasted a moment. That must add up.”
Twilight looked up in puzzlement. “We ran that test for nearly an hour.” Lines of worry appeared in Celestia’s forehead. She opened her mouth, but Twilight beat her to the punch. “Now that we have a direction, we’ll need to bury ourselves in data. Celestia, I would like you to stay at the castle for daily tests. We have the best mages on staff to oversee--”
“Twilight--”
“And of course you can have your old quarters. Since the incident, I’ve made sure they were kept in tip-top shape just in case you ever needed to come back--”
“Twilight.”
Twilight fell silent.
“Keeping me here is no doubt a tremendous imposition on your routine. You are no longer a scholar. Focus on the kingdom first and foremost.”
Twilight slumped. “But Celestia--”
“Plus, Twilight, I’m retired.” A note of sweetness snuck into Celestia’s voice. “I want to stay here too. There’s so much to catch up on from my long nap. But I have a new life to live. If you’ll allow it, I’ll return in one month, and every month after that, until we know what’s going on.”
Twilight nodded. Some of the life returned to her eyes. Ever the curious mare. Ever the faithful student. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise.”
A month of errant thoughts and strange dreams came and went in the blink of an eye. When Celestia returned, Twilight embraced her like it had been another two years.
After their next round of tests, Twilight sealed herself away in her study for nearly a week. When she finally returned, bleary-eyed and woozy, she delivered her working hypothesis.
“Ok, so, alicorns can’t really die. No one’s ever seen an alicorn die. The makers of Equestria disappeared, and then there was you and Luna, and now Cadance and me. Three generations. One here, one there, one nowhere.
“So what happened to the first ones? I don’t think they just disappeared. But they didn’t really die, either. Alicorns can’t just keel over like we—like ponies can. Their magic is too strong.”
“So you’re suggesting something else happens?” Celestia asked.
“Exactly! Instead of a traditional death, they become one with the unbound fabric of reality. The makers didn’t disappear. They were freed from the shackles of time and space, becoming matterless and perfect in every way.
“Freed...” Celestia pondered the thoughts for some time. “So—"
“So it’s a gradual diminution of aural essence.”
"I melt,” Celestia said curtly.
“Not really. But yes, essentially. If it helps to think of it like that, you ‘melt’ into oneness with the universe. It’s actually kind of beautiful.”
“Storms are beautiful, when observed from a distance.”
Twilight’s ears drooped. “Sorry. But let me reiterate that this is all speculation. We just don’t know exactly what will happen. Two points of data do not a correlation make, after all!”
Celestia’s blue eyes grew distant. “I will return next month, then. We all deserve to know.”
She shied away from adding the other thought, the reason Twilight deserved to know. That one day if may happen to her, too.
A surprise awaited the alicorns when next they met. Celestia made her way from her temporary quarters in Canterlot castle to the dining area, moving in a practiced pattern down the winding corridors so as to avoid the morning patrols. She liked walking by herself.
When she arrived, Luna spat out her cereal. Twilight nearly fainted.
“Godsflame,” Luna sputtered, her mouth caked with half-chewed pear-io’s, “your mane!”
Celestia grabbed a silver spoon from the table and stared at her warped reflection. Sure enough, her mane had turned a comical shade of green. Light burst through in geometric patterns and scattered every which way.
Pure confoundment sealed her lips shut. The light reminded her of trees, and for a moment she could have sworn she had seen this color somewhere before.
Celestia couldn’t be sure why Twilight chose to wear librarian’s glasses. Perhaps it was some new fashion trend she had missed. Maybe she wore them simply so she could take them off. Alicorn eyes were exceptionally powerful, even when they changed colors. It’s not like she needed them.
Still, there they were. Sitting atop her scrunched up nose, cocked slightly to one side. “I don’t know what else to tell you,” Twilight said, shifting through a stack of papers. “The evidence is trending strongly towards diminution.”
“Melting,” Celestia corrected.
“Think of it as diminution.” Twilight sounded unconvinced. “It’s a gradual process.”
“How gradual?”
Twilight tapped her glasses with a pen. “At this rate? At least eight hundred years. Probably longer.”
“That’s all?” Luna interjected. She rose from her perch in a plush corner armchair. “That’s nothing to us.”
“That’s eight lifetimes.”
“No,” Luna insisted, “not to us. Not to you. Not anymore.”
“The evidence--”
“Damn your evidence! Can’t you see something’s wrong with her?”
A whimper stopped them short. Celestia wondered who had made it. Then she heard it again and realized it was coming from her. “Diminution,” she said. “So it’s constant?”
Twilight flipped through the tables again. “Just about.”
Celestia looked around, her stranger’s eyes suddenly unable to focus. “So in two hundred years...”
Utter turmoil crossed Twilight’s face. “I...” she grasped for the right word. “It’s all moving so fast.”
Celestia sucked in a breath.
“Not that fast. Fast means nothing to you, right? Generations. Lifetimes. Not anytime soon at all.” The words caught in her throat. “Right?”
“Right,” Luna assured. “Nothing to us.”
Their words assuaged none of the worry. Now all that Celestia could think of was her body at fifty percent dissipation. Then sixty. Seventy. Ninety five. Icy pins ran up her spine. Godsflame. Ninety nine.
Celestia said, “At what point do I stop being me?”
The other two alicorns shared a look, then shrugged.
“I see.”
Celestia burst into tears.
That night, Celestia and Twilight shared tea on the balcony, like they used to when Twilight was still a pony and Celestia was still immortal. In addition to the changes in her eyes and mane, her coat had started to morph into a tin-grey. Fine flecks of rusty red dotted her flanks. Her cutie mark, the sun in all its regal glory, had begun to fade right off her flanks.
Celestia sipped her tea casually. Twilight’s cup chattered against its saucer.
“When you see the end,” Celestia said, “you see the beginning too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been having dreams of places I thought I would never see again. Places erased by time.” She looked out over Canterlot. The familiar soft glow of lantern light lent a pleasant warmth to the evening. “What was your first memory, Twilight?”
“I don’t know. Baking cookies with my mom, probably.”
“Think back. Was it the sight of the cookies? Or the smell? Or the taste?”
Twilight swirled her tea in its cup, nearly spilling it. “The smell, I guess? I’m not sure what came first.”
Celestia hummed to herself. “My first memory was of the home Luna and I lived in before we were crowned princesses. Before we became alicorns.”
Excitement flashed in Twilight’s eyes. “Nopony mentions that in the history books.”
“That’s because history hadn’t begun yet,” she said simply.
“What was it like?”
In Celestia’s mind, she was already back at the beginning. Back at the clearing. The drone of the insects rolled softly in the distance, and the light played out in shifting geometries on the earth, scattered by the canopy of green. The shack stood stubbornly in place, collecting leaves and light. In the distance, harmless clouds loped across the sky, their long shadows never to burden this patch of earth.
It was afternoon. Summer. Warm, like only a memory could be.
The eyes in Celestia’s head were not Celestia’s, but somepony else’s.
Eww.
Two years
Sounds like retirement was overdue.
They’re blue.
I gasped. Then I checked Celestia's pictures on Google.
The old princesses had returned.
sick burn
what sticks and what stones
That was terrible, and you're terrible, Twilight Sparkle.
“As long as they don’t break my bones.”
It's like you're just asking for pain.
The tests indeed did not break any of Celestia’s bones.
You've let me down too soon.
“I had to change your eye color on your file,” Twilight said proudly, “but now everything is exactly the way it should be!”
Oh Twilight, we could never stay mad at you. Never change, you silly pony.
Even recreationally?
I love you, author. Never change.
not enough to put me to sleep for that long
Wait, you know how much it would take to put you to sleep for that long? Tell me more!
It always blew me away I know a pony who predates history.
Again with the old people jokes.
“What if I looked at your aura?” Twilight blurted out.
Ooh, Twilight. A bit forward of you isn't it?
She had so much still to learn.
I don't think you need this line.
I'm glad to see the aura innuendo continues.
“I’m saving my aura for marriage.”
NGL I laughed.
“I remember[ my last time. It was harsh, uncaring, and left me upset. Please, Twilight. Be gentle,],” Celestia said
Reading between the lines here.
“It’ll be over before you know it.”
Geeze, Twilight. Take your time.
Hm. We seem to have hit a mood shift. From here, the story seems to spiral around the point in ever wider paths, until gradually becoming one with the unbound fabric of reality.
Good story. The shift works for me. The attenuation works. Referencing the ultimate end midway helped with that, so it didn't feel so much like the story just drifted apart without a conclusion. Pat yourself on the back for me.
I'm usually:
A stickler about POV shifts in stories, but this one does a nice job of moving from external to internal--all that talk of Celestia's eyes changing can't be in her POV, after all, since she can't see her own eyes. It adds to the dream-like nature of things, too. Very nice.
I've got a nitpick, though: "a gradual diminution of aural essence" is odd since "aural" has to do with hearing. Maybe try "a gradual diminution of your aura's essence"?
Mike
A stickler about POV shifts in stories, but this one does a nice job of moving from external to internal--all that talk of Celestia's eyes changing can't be in her POV, after all, since she can't see her own eyes. It adds to the dream-like nature of things, too. Very nice.
I've got a nitpick, though: "a gradual diminution of aural essence" is odd since "aural" has to do with hearing. Maybe try "a gradual diminution of your aura's essence"?
Mike
It's interesting that a story about aura has such a strong aura about it.
I do think it could use a little further explanation, though--auras are spoken about in this story as if they were something the reader would be aware of, but we obviously aren't; I think there's more room to start your worldbuilding at a beginner level for our sake. I also don't follow the connection with marriage--is that meant to turn this story into a romance between Twilight and Celestia? If so, that doesn't really go anywhere, and it seems to conflict with the teacher-student motif being explored. And, I mean, characters have been married in the show and auras never came up. Is there some other piece of ancient magic history you could draw from?
I dunno. This story is tight. My only real qualms with it are the unanswered questions that could be addressed in a longer piece. You seem to have some dreamy ideas for Celestia and Luna's beginnings, and of previous alicorns, but my biggest wonder after reading this would be, Is Luna going to experience this?
Would love to see this expanded upon. Big ups, Author!
I do think it could use a little further explanation, though--auras are spoken about in this story as if they were something the reader would be aware of, but we obviously aren't; I think there's more room to start your worldbuilding at a beginner level for our sake. I also don't follow the connection with marriage--is that meant to turn this story into a romance between Twilight and Celestia? If so, that doesn't really go anywhere, and it seems to conflict with the teacher-student motif being explored. And, I mean, characters have been married in the show and auras never came up. Is there some other piece of ancient magic history you could draw from?
I dunno. This story is tight. My only real qualms with it are the unanswered questions that could be addressed in a longer piece. You seem to have some dreamy ideas for Celestia and Luna's beginnings, and of previous alicorns, but my biggest wonder after reading this would be, Is Luna going to experience this?
Would love to see this expanded upon. Big ups, Author!
The Memory:
I really liked this. Just to get it out of the way, there are several grammatical issues as well as places you could smooth out the flow and dialogue. A good run through with an editor should fix those, but I would wait until after tweaking some other things first.
The story itself was very nice. At times it felt like the flow of the story was as serene as the clearing Celestia was revisiting. The idea is an interesting concept and I wish it had expanded even more.
The hangups I do have are all around a lack of explanation.
For instance, why did they not move Celestia to a hospital after discovering her? What exactly is “auras” in this world and what effect do they generally have? It’s never really explained why her eyes and hair are changing, are they reverting to their prior colors? Or are they just completely different, as they are described as a stranger's eyes?” Speaking of eyes, the way it is phrased is really odd. I think let others describe the descriptive changes to her rather than as a narrative description as the below part is an interesting hook but doesn’t really play into anything and is an odd way to introduce new information ahead of time.
I also think there is room to add more, as in more interaction and thoughts from both Twilight and Luna, as well as her own personal thoughts. She goes away for months but we never really know what she is thinking or even doing while gone. Seems like a good way to keep the pace slow and allow introspective into what the idea of “retirement” is to an immortal princess. I also thought it odd that no one mentioned the coincidental timing as it occurred immediately after she stepped down.
Still, well done.
I really liked this. Just to get it out of the way, there are several grammatical issues as well as places you could smooth out the flow and dialogue. A good run through with an editor should fix those, but I would wait until after tweaking some other things first.
The story itself was very nice. At times it felt like the flow of the story was as serene as the clearing Celestia was revisiting. The idea is an interesting concept and I wish it had expanded even more.
The hangups I do have are all around a lack of explanation.
For instance, why did they not move Celestia to a hospital after discovering her? What exactly is “auras” in this world and what effect do they generally have? It’s never really explained why her eyes and hair are changing, are they reverting to their prior colors? Or are they just completely different, as they are described as a stranger's eyes?” Speaking of eyes, the way it is phrased is really odd. I think let others describe the descriptive changes to her rather than as a narrative description as the below part is an interesting hook but doesn’t really play into anything and is an odd way to introduce new information ahead of time.
The eyes in Celestia’s head were not Celestia’s, but somepony else’s. They captured the morning light with the same childlike twinkle as Celestia’s eyes. They gazed with the same intensity as Celestia’s eyes. They softened at the sight of her sister just like Celestia’s.
But they were not Celestia’s eyes.
I also think there is room to add more, as in more interaction and thoughts from both Twilight and Luna, as well as her own personal thoughts. She goes away for months but we never really know what she is thinking or even doing while gone. Seems like a good way to keep the pace slow and allow introspective into what the idea of “retirement” is to an immortal princess. I also thought it odd that no one mentioned the coincidental timing as it occurred immediately after she stepped down.
Still, well done.
Genre: Immortality Blues
Thoughts: And so we come full circle. This was the first fic that I read at the beginning of voting, and it’s probably the last that I’ll review. As such, I’ve spent quite a bit of time debating both how I would rank this, and what I would say about it. At moments, it’s beautiful. At moments, it’s unclear. Its theme leans heavily on headcanon that I don’t feel fully convinced of.
It is a diamond that needs polishing.
Let me focus on on the beginning, which is absolutely breathtaking.
Heck to the yes, Author. And do you know what I really love about this? It breaks some of the usual guidelines that I suggest to people about how to open a story. Here we get nothing but a vivid description of a freaking shack, and there’s not a single character in sight, nor any hints about the world, its situation, what conflicts drive it—but I’m completely hooked. I’m ready to lead wherever the story follows. Yeehaw, let’s croak us some toads.
I regret that a colossal butt soon presents itself, which will serve to begin illustrating what I struggled with as I read the rest of the story. This comes just a few paragraphs later, and carries us into the introduction of our first couple of characters, and through our first scene break.
IMO this was almost equally as rough as the parts leading up to it were beautiful. The narrative voice whip-saws back and forth between detached/omniscient and inside Celestia’s head, which makes it very bumpy from a pure readability perspective. It also plants a seed of horror (IMO), which (IMO) doesn’t resonate with what the rest of the story turns out to be about. This is still early enough that helping ease the reader into your tone and themes is extra helpful, and right now these bits disrupt the somber, dream-like aspects of the very beginning.
The thing about auras was also challenging for me to get into, Author. I’m of two minds about it, though. I feel like all the worldbuilding you did to introduce and develop the concept was actually pretty strong. The detail about newlywed unicorns revealing them to each other continues to make me smile; it’s a great way of establishing what this means in the society by anchoring it to something understandable in ours. This all is good stuff. But like... I kept having trouble with the attempt to bolt this big of a societal & magical concept onto the Equestria we know and are familiar with. I feel like it’s fine to add new concepts like that, but it has to be done in a way that’s less purely an introduction to the concept and also partially a sales pitch for why the concept fits and has always been there. This plays out differently in an AU story, because the AU itself signals that things aren’t as we know. But in a story that by all appearances plays out just a little later in the timeline, having a big new concept like auras (IMO) needs more of that sales pitch.
The final scene is powerful, though. By that point the stage has been set for the heartfelt moment of acceptance that Celestia is able to convey. It’s moving and compelling in a way that a lot of the intervening machinations around auras and experiments and sisterly banter doesn’t quite attain. And again, I don’t want to knock that stuff—it makes sense in the context of the story that I think you’re trying to tell, which is ultimately about Celestia’s “death.”
It ends up working in the end. I just feel that it could use some tweaking to realize its full potential.
Tier: Almost There
Thoughts: And so we come full circle. This was the first fic that I read at the beginning of voting, and it’s probably the last that I’ll review. As such, I’ve spent quite a bit of time debating both how I would rank this, and what I would say about it. At moments, it’s beautiful. At moments, it’s unclear. Its theme leans heavily on headcanon that I don’t feel fully convinced of.
It is a diamond that needs polishing.
Let me focus on on the beginning, which is absolutely breathtaking.
There is a place way deep in the forest where the trees give way to a clearing. A flimsy shack leans on an old stone wall, both overgrown with weeds. The paint on the wood panels has all but disappeared, exposing the cracked wood underneath. The tin roof, sagging down at one edge, is frail with rust. The golden-orange veins move out from the joints of the roof and meet up with vines snaking up the corners. How it’s still standing is anyone’s guess.
Heck to the yes, Author. And do you know what I really love about this? It breaks some of the usual guidelines that I suggest to people about how to open a story. Here we get nothing but a vivid description of a freaking shack, and there’s not a single character in sight, nor any hints about the world, its situation, what conflicts drive it—but I’m completely hooked. I’m ready to lead wherever the story follows. Yeehaw, let’s croak us some toads.
I regret that a colossal but
This place is real. This is a memory. The first memory. This is—
Luna—
This is a dream.
The eyes in Celestia’s head were not Celestia’s, but somepony else’s. They captured the morning light with the same childlike twinkle as Celestia’s eyes. They gazed with the same intensity as Celestia’s eyes. They softened at the sight of her sister just like Celestia’s.
But they were not Celestia’s eyes.
“Good morning,” Celestia said to Luna. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
IMO this was almost equally as rough as the parts leading up to it were beautiful. The narrative voice whip-saws back and forth between detached/omniscient and inside Celestia’s head, which makes it very bumpy from a pure readability perspective. It also plants a seed of horror (IMO), which (IMO) doesn’t resonate with what the rest of the story turns out to be about. This is still early enough that helping ease the reader into your tone and themes is extra helpful, and right now these bits disrupt the somber, dream-like aspects of the very beginning.
The thing about auras was also challenging for me to get into, Author. I’m of two minds about it, though. I feel like all the worldbuilding you did to introduce and develop the concept was actually pretty strong. The detail about newlywed unicorns revealing them to each other continues to make me smile; it’s a great way of establishing what this means in the society by anchoring it to something understandable in ours. This all is good stuff. But like... I kept having trouble with the attempt to bolt this big of a societal & magical concept onto the Equestria we know and are familiar with. I feel like it’s fine to add new concepts like that, but it has to be done in a way that’s less purely an introduction to the concept and also partially a sales pitch for why the concept fits and has always been there. This plays out differently in an AU story, because the AU itself signals that things aren’t as we know. But in a story that by all appearances plays out just a little later in the timeline, having a big new concept like auras (IMO) needs more of that sales pitch.
The final scene is powerful, though. By that point the stage has been set for the heartfelt moment of acceptance that Celestia is able to convey. It’s moving and compelling in a way that a lot of the intervening machinations around auras and experiments and sisterly banter doesn’t quite attain. And again, I don’t want to knock that stuff—it makes sense in the context of the story that I think you’re trying to tell, which is ultimately about Celestia’s “death.”
It ends up working in the end. I just feel that it could use some tweaking to realize its full potential.
Tier: Almost There
I found this haunting and surreal, but somewhat difficult to follow in a few places. There are elements that have no payoff -- what does Celestia's sudden eye-change color have to do with diminishing as an entity? Purple seems to be a normal eye color for ponies. Why does her mane turn green instead of pink, or falling flat? Not really a lot of explanation of auras, either, which are a thing that doesn't appear in the show as far as I know.
But the idea that memory becomes stronger as the end of life approaches hits really close to home for me and makes this a powerful story. Let's just say that's a reality I've begun to start living.
But the idea that memory becomes stronger as the end of life approaches hits really close to home for me and makes this a powerful story. Let's just say that's a reality I've begun to start living.