The Education of Tumbling Leaf

by Slipshod Extension

Golden rays on aching eyes

There was a warm hoof on Leaf’s shoulder, and the sun shone red through his eyelids. He did not want to wake up, was sure he had drowned in the statue’s laughter, knew that his eyes were as glassy and empty as Galatea’s and his flesh as rigid as Discord’s. But the hoof was insistent. Light and heat played across his face. At last he opened his eyes to spit curses at the horse who rolled the sun across the sky.

She was tall, taller than the aurochs, as tall as Galatea’s princess must be should she even now stand among her new children in the dark beneath the mountains. Her coat was the palest pink of the edge of sunrise, and her mane flowed like the aurora above the Crystal Mountains. Her eyes were tender and sorrowful. Their depth spoke of age that made Galatea’s tired frame seem the husk of an insect--a husk that had blown away on the morning wind, for she no longer lay beside Leaf. His eyes darted from their place on the ground, searching, seeking, grieving.

“I see she was dear to you,” said the Princess. “I had not known that a Crystal Pony yet lived; my guards have taken her for honored burial. I wish I had had the chance to speak with her, but I am glad she passed in the company of one who cared for her.” Her sad, small smile was a benediction.

Leaf shook his head, choked the grease from his throat. “I did not—I was distracted—the statue spoke—”

The great, ancient eyes flared and narrowed, and the lips pressed together as though they begrudged any breath to pass between them. “Then I have failed you,” she said. “I had not known that any could hear him save I. Who would believe that he could speak, who would truly listen?” The aurora hair, the glittering crown, descended to the grass where Leaf lay. “I am sorry. He is cruel, and against my hope, the garden has not improved him. I have grown intimate with failure of late, I who folk call the Sun Unconquered. If I can make recompense, you must tell me.”

Leaf rubbed grease from his eyes to stare in awe at the spectacle before him: the sun with her nose in the dirt, supplicating to the wounded green farmer. He wept as he said what he must say. “Great Princess, I would ask of you three things, though I fear that one would be too many. First: in the Smoky Mountains lives a dragon, the great dragon Felsite, and of him all the deer and dogs live in fear and servitude. They sacrifice to him, of their own flesh and others’, that he will not hunt them in their woods. Can you deliver them?”

The head rose back to its imperious height and gazed westward beneath the sunlight. “So I have heard, from a little purple pegasus with a burn on her cheek. I suspect you know her, for I had of her her story. In it, a driven colt travels to the forgotten north. She grieves for him, for she fears he must die, but she chooses duty.” Hot tears broke beneath Leaf’s eyelids. The Princess’s voice was pleased. “All fall and winter she winged her way north, until there was frost in her feathers and her scar was blue with cold, in the hopes she might find him and bring him back to his plants and his oven and her smile.

And that is your second request, I guess, for I will tell you she is in Cloudsdale. As for the first, I have been long in recovery, but I shall soon fly to the Smoky Mountains. There I shall make an end, I hope, of old Felsite’s tyranny. By your Gloaming's telling, he has fallen so low--grown so great--that it will be a terrible meeting even for me. I fear for the folk of mountain and wood caught amid battle, and I no longer have my most precise and potent weapon.” She stared over Leaf’s head at the chimeric statue upon the plinth.

“And I fear I know your third request as well, and I cannot give you what you seek. But if you ask, I will answer honestly, with none of the platitudes which ponies make real in believing.”

Leaf spoke in a whisper. “Great Princess,” he asked, resigned, reluctant, “please, will you tell me--what is harmony? For I have wandered your lands and others, and suffered wounds and losses, and yet found no answer to satisfy me.”

The great eyes closed as though in grief, and the pristine head nodded slow. “Ask me anything, Leaf. Ask me to lift you to see the heavens, higher than bird or pegasus can fly. Ask me to fight a dragon who was great a thousand years before my birth. Ask me for platters of gems and bullion, for the sweetest songs of pony, griffon, or hound, for the secret names of the sun and the moon and the magic that binds my soul to theirs. Ask me for two hundred years of life, and though I know you will tire after only ninety, I will grant it. But if you hope for satisfaction, ask me not of harmony. I have no answer, not anymore, perhaps not ever. I wish only to have seen my sister’s need and pain, and the blades I twisted in her heart. I wish only to have loved her better, and to stand beside her as she smiles once more. I have only wishes and regrets now, wishes and regrets and my duty to my ponies, and I hope they may have harmony even if it is lost to me forever. That is my answer, brave child. I know you will not thank me, yet I thank you for asking.”

The small, green colt hobbled to his feet, hampered by the grinding in his leg. He was too short to reach the Princess’s shoulder, but he pressed his own against her foreleg. The grease of the statue’s laughter had burned off in the morning sun. Her coat was clean and dry, his damp with dirt and mud, and the pale hairs mingled messily with the green.

Comments

[PresentPerfect]

Heartbreaking.

[Bicyclette]

and it was all building up to this, Celestia's presence felt but not seen in the actions and mindsets and souls of every character in the story so far. and i must say, this really lived up to it. she truly feels like the Celestia that she should be