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Early one morning, Twilight Sparkle gets up to make some tea.
Sometimes, a cup of tea is just a cup of tea. This is not one of those times.
So. Here it is. My first stab at a sad story. I didn't mean to write it when I did, but it just sort of forced its way out one day. I've shown this to quite a few of my friends and so, as short as it is, this story has been pre-read by a number of fine pony folk:
I'd like to thank all of them for being so helpful and for putting up with me when I was being difficult. I'm a bit stubborn, me.
Ahhh... very nice. That language was like a breath of fresh air. The ending was particularly nice, the way it was open-ended, leaving you to wonder what exactly she's sad about, but the realization comes quick -- that it doesn't really matter.
Plus, I'm quite fond of the idea of the princess telling stories over tea.
Well done!
Hmm, I'm thinking they've grown apart somehow, or that Twilight, now living in ponyville, rarely sees much of her mentor, and being twilight, wonders if the princess has forgotten her. It could also be a 'Celestia is dead' deal, but given that one line about 'Celestia not noticing if Twilight is there' seems to me to suggest it's not that situation.
Anyway, I like it! Always enjoy a good Twilight and Celestia centered fic. You used an interesting mix of tense/perspective too. Keep it up. 
The sadness of growing up and growing apart. Your parents felt it, and your grandparents, and all the way back to some skin-clad biped looking forlornly out the mouth of the cave, wondering just what valley their children have gone to, and missing their presence around the smoky fire.
The Immortal Princess of the Sun has always struck me as the kind of being to appreciate what is, remember what was, and anticipate what is to come more than any mortal being. May she rule Equestria forever.
If the last story read like a Pratchett tale, the melancholic mood of this story give it a kind of Device Heretic feel to it. I can almost see this leading into Eternal actually. (Sorry I keep comparing you to other authors, it's kind of a thing I do. Can't seem to help it. 
) You continue to show a grasp of language that makes your stories in particular so enjoyable to read though.
Kinda makes me feel bad to point this out. 
Twilight keeps her tea in a copper tins lined with glass.
That a has gotta go.
Loved it, the story was as delicate as the tea.
Not to presume but:
and talk instead about a peculiar game she saw foals play in a field that’s now a desert two thousand years ago
I think its clearer this way:
and talk instead about a peculiar game she saw foals play two thousand years ago in a field that’s now a desert
Again, love your work
In the time it took me to read through this story and go give it an up-vote, it got 6 others.
Good job. Pacing is always the thing that kills anything I try to write, and the main reason I haven't posted anything yet. But you've got a decent pace to this, going just slow enough to capture the feel of the ritual, without dragging the story on too far.
Also, loved the last bit. Twilight puts so much effort into learning how to make it just right, even though she hates Jasmine tea.
She even schedules her moments of sentimentality. Oh, Twilight. 
(Closest emoticon I could find to "amusement mixed with sorrow at the degree of control the protagonist demands of herself.")
A fantastically written character piece for Twilight and Celestia alike. Well done, and thank you.
I think I know the exact moment when I broke my mother's heart with this sadness. I was playing a video game downstairs, and had forgotten she was upstairs. A monster jumped out at me, and I blurted an expletive. The silence, both hers and mine, was deafening.
You have no idea how much I tried to cut it down, but I'm terrible at brevity. This is in many ways me deliberately going so far out my comfort zone you can't see it with a telescope. If I wrote it in my natural style there would be a two-thousand-word digression on every single type of tea Celestia fancies, how they are made, where, what of and what unique cultural, social and economic factors lead up to them.
Hey! Steel Resolve! 
I'm glad you will. I really like your stuff.
No, it's okay. It is in many ways experimental. Quite natural for it not to be your, ahem, cup of tea. (Dammit, Martian, beaten to the punch!)
You keep comparing me to other, better, authors. Clearly I must be doing something right.
That is an interesting take on it. It's not why the princess does it (in my head-canon, obviously) but it is very interesting.
Hmm...
That was...
It...
I guess....
...
You know what? I'm not quite sure what to say. There's no story, no conflict, no anything. Just purely writ emotion. And I love it. Never before has 2000 words of nothing given me such feels. Bravo author, bravo.
~Signed, InfiniteBrony
Still, all joking about you secretly being Terry Pratchett aside, you DO have your own style of writing. Other influences show, but I am not going to actually mistake your stories for someone else's, and I don't want to cheapen your stories by implying otherwise. Does that make sense, I am godawful at this.
Relax. It's fine. How else are you going to describe someone's style that by comparing it to others. What else do you say? "The writing style is, yes, quite blue with a hint of purple 'round the edges. I especially appreciate the rotundness of it and the hint of lemon."
Actually...I think that's how I'm going to pre-read stories from now on.
GOH: "The story was, yes, quite yellow."
UnfortunatePreReadee: "Good yellow? Bad yellow?"
GOH: "Pale yellow."
UnfortunatePreReadee: *sounds of rage*
Ahhh. Nostalgia. You make us remember the better days. You make us remember all the smiles, the joy and the happiness we once shared with loved ones. You make our heart ache when you tell us it's all a thing of the past. You hurt us when you make us realise that indulging you is unhealthy.
And that is called humanity.
PS: Your noticeable love for tea puts you high up in my mental list of people I respect.
I don't always trust the feature box to give me stories I like, but I did trust Bad Horse's recommendation. I'm glad I did. This is quietly poignant, dense in a way that's a joy to unfold.
My only regret is that, after reading the last paragraph, my brain will not stop insisting that this is a prequel of some sort to Princess Celestia Hates Tea.
Ah. Introspective Twilight is best Twilight. This makes me feel that tiny hint of melancholy That I generally reserve for quiet, reflective times when I remember special times passed and special people moved on. Not sad, per se, but properly still in the face of a universe that all to often insists on turning the page whether we are ready or not.
In any case, as you may have deduced, I liked this. Your command of the English language and seeming talent for mood and pacing have made both of your stories quite enjoyable for me and so long as you are willing to continue writing them, I shall be more than happy to read them.
Ah, that was a nice change of pace from all the action and clop crap in the featured window. I have to say, you seem to put your own voice into the story quite nicely, and I will give you a very high rating for this. 9.2/10. Keep your writing fresh, and I might just have to learn something from you.
>>1498460 *chuckles* That is what it means to be an immortal. For any that have lasted a very long time, things such as loss and partings simply become a part of existence. The sorrow becomes muted and the memories tenderly cherished like heirlooms in a case, to be taken out and smiled over from time to time.
Immortals do not think as we do. Too many do not grasp this simple fact when writing about them. They attempt to over-humanize creatures which are not human, not mere animals who weaken, wither, and decay.
They stride across the cosmos as we walk through a field, only curiously and with ambivalence, in most cases, observing curiously the little things scurrying about in the grass and herbs below them as they pass through unchanged by the seasons.
A story about tea?
My Englishman senses are tingling!
All jokes aside, this was nice.
It wasn't "bawl your eyes out" sad, but it wasn't "That was supposed to be sad?" either.
Expertly written, you really got across how... Old Princess Celestia is.
And good choice Twilight, jasmine tea is rubbish.
Have a 9 out of a maximum 10.
Your Benevolent Dictator.
--TwilitLightning
Yes. Yes you are. Loose leaf tea. You've not lived until you've had proper loose leaf tea. This story is, actually, a halfway decent instruction text on how to make a good cup, but do up the time on the steeping. 74 seconds makes for a very delicate tea. I happen to like it like that when I wake up.
By the by. Note that both of my stories involve tea to a significant extent. This is not an accident.
It's the most interesting kind of sad, actually: the sad we enjoy feeling. Ironic, but true. Sometimes... it just feels good to feel sad, because there is a beauty in it.
You have no idea how much I tried to cut it down, but I'm terrible at brevity. This is in many ways me deliberately going so far out my comfort zone you can't see it with a telescope. If I wrote it in my natural style there would be a two-thousand-word digression on every single type of tea Celestia fancies, how they are made, where, what of and what unique cultural, social and economic factors lead up to them.
I feel you, brother. 
Definitely one of those people, especially if I'm on a role, but I've trained my hand (I think).
Ultimately... this was a perfect length to me. I almost didn't want to end--the only reason I had for it to end was to see where it led.
You've crafted something very, very special, here. I'm of the opinion and the passion that fiction is about, among many other things, exploring the unexplored. The best writers on this site, the ones I respect and admire, are those who open doors of insight into characters, their relationships, and this world's reality that no one else has tried or succeeded at. There are fics that make you truly believe they are canon... even into the point of being that maybe, just maybe, this world could actually exist.
You cast a spell, and I loved every minute of it. Thank you for this piece, and please, recognize that you are a writer. 
Inky Award for Excellence.
A most excellent story, one that captured my soul.
>>1498814 that is often the case, but at times, it is so much more. Normally, I drink my coffee black and strong... brewed in a basic coffee pot using basic Maxwell House stuff in a can. But at times, I need to make something special, so I grind up some Sumatra beans, and I do a french press, along with a shot of freshly ground and brewed espresso. The simplest things can have so much meaning, and those things are to be cherished.
That is the feeling I got from this story.
Don't worry, here we go.
I already did banish the 'pony does X'-fics out of my pool of interest, but as I saw this one added to the sad-group I couldn't resist.
This was very unsuspected, yet really good. 
Whoa, whoa, whoa, a sub-2k word fic in the feature box...that ISN'T a stupid joke fic?
I know it's a kind of weird question, but...
Why cup of tea?
Nah, but why not cup of coffee? It's so much better than tea...
A number of reasons, chief of which is that I love jasmine tea. But if you want additional ones consider that it is fanon that Celestia likes tea (so much so that Skywriter could write a hilarious story where this is subverted) and that a properly brewed cup of tea takes a lot more fiddling than a cup of coffee allowing for a pace I liked.
Wow. It's at times like this that I wish I drank tea.
I'm an Englishman who doesn't drink tea. Aggghhh what is wrong with me?
But back to the story, absolutely beautiful. The ritualistic way of the making of tea allows for introspection and heavy philosophical thoughts. An excelent framework to display how badly Twilight misses Celestia.
Excellently crafted, delicate in its sadness rather than heavy-handed (much like tea, actually.)
Also, I just did my feels a great disservice by listening to "Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum as I read this. Ow, my poor heart.
My only gripe is one line, "Celestia would skip over a war that ravaged a continent and talk instead about a peculiar game she saw foals play in a field that’s now a desert two thousand years ago.", which should have been written as, "Celestia would skip over a war that ravaged a continent and talk instead about a peculiar game she saw foals play two thousand years ago, in a field that is now a desert."
Sorry, but the mechanics really bothered me there.
Aside from that, I loved the little window into the life of Twilight Sparkle.
That makes two of us...
Well executed and cleverly done, and something that would work better with "poignant" tag rather than "sad" (FiMfic really needs a better tag system...); which is good from my perspective because I'm unmercifully tired of "sad" equating to "half of the characters get maimed/killed/otherwise discombulated." (In fact, had it not been for it being written by you, I might have thought twice about reading, as I'm past my "sads" tolerance levels...!)
Keep up the excellent work.
Could be worse, might even be interesting, this 2000 word digression potential you mention.
Twilight is a horrible pony to have never let on that she doesn't like Jasmine tea. My guess is that Celestia either ponders about Twilight every morning or avoids drinking tea then so she doesn't have to think about that. In my head canon Celestia wouldn't be so cruel as to have actually used Twilight as a Luna substitute, here's hoping yours is not so vicious either
Nothing at all. I like tea, but I'm too lazy to take 5 min. out of my day and make a cup of tea (granted that using a hot water machine is sort of cheating). I concur with you on tea-making being an idea time for introspective. Especially so since watching the teapot never makes the tea boil any faster even if doesn't slow down.
Really, I've not had much tea with leaves, maybe a few times. The green tea at Japanese restaurants is a mystery really, I can't decide if it's tea leaves or some kind of fine tea powder they make it with. Teabags are such an improvement on bits of stuff in your tea.
Huh. Nice work with this one. Short and relatively poignant. However, I will say watch for repetitive sentence structure. Numerous single clauses are fine (especially as a style thing), but using two clause sentences over and over seems more like a systemic sentence construction problem rather than any kind of stylistic choice. (See third paragraph for what I mean.)
Regardless, a little green thumb from me!
You know, I've been getting all super depressed reading stories with Celestia in them. Reason? They all make me want to be there. With her. In each of these stories (granted they're also all mostly clop to an extent), Celestia acts in way that I have trouble accepting. In my head, Celestia is a type of kind/benevolent matriarch. I'll have to give this story a re-read when I'm not so bummed, I took the ending as Celestia being dead but someone pointed out that it's more likely that Twilight and Celestia just aren't together. Again, I can't see Celestia so readily tossing away Twilight like that. In some ways, Celestia is more Twilight's mother than her biological mother.
All in all, your story pushed me to this personal introspection, so thank you for that. I enjoyed it, and will most certainly re-read it.
Wonderful. I do get a feeling of brevity in this- though you tell a complete tale, there's a definite feeling of things being left unsaid, but I really like that- it gives the story a tension that makes it hard to stop reading.
I like the technique of mixing present actions with memories, very nice way of expanding the characters and giving them flavor. I especially like the sense of reverence I get from Twilight's memories of Celestia... How does one relate to a living God? I take some comfort in seeing such a close and warm relationship between these two, both in canon and in stories like this one.
That ending is perfect- it could have been a happy ending but the melancholy end really emphasizes the emotions in the story.
I love your style here, and I think the effort to slim the story down really helps sharpen it. I know I tend to compensate with extra words, so it's all the more impressive when an author achieves more with fewer words. 
It's not sad. It's nostalgic, something that speaks of a special bond between a mentor and student, something that will exist long after one of them has passed and the other is following the same ritual, telling another eager young foal a thousand years later about the little purple filly who used to drink her perfect jasmine tea every morning even though she didn't like jasmine tea, and fall asleep in the library with her tiny purple mouth dripping saliva onto yet another textbook, and hoard old books some of the city libraries threw out because they were falling apart. It's a story of love, of how even though Twilight doesn't like the tea, she still makes it every morning as a way to remind herself of the times she shared with the pony she respects above all others, just as the Princess probably remembers those times when she makes her tea in the morning now.
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I liked the ending quite a bit.
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