Familia

by Mandroid


Learn Me a Book.

“Wait, wait, hold on.”
Princess Celestia looks through her bangs at you. “Yes Twilight.”
“Something here doesn’t add up.”
Annymous folds his hands in his lap and smiles. “You’re one of the most brilliant minds here, what do you mean exactly?”
“Where does all this fit in with the myths of our world? This was obviously before the Changelings or Sombra, but is it pre-Equestria? Had the wendigos even arrived yet?”
Anonymous chuckles dryly. “Yes…before all those things. Far before.”
“And where does this mysterious alicorn, this…”
”Partner.”
“Partner of yours, fit into it?”
He smiles at you, beard moving as he does. “She prefers an air of privacy to her work and prefers to let the plants grow without her constant care, however that was not the last I saw of her. As for your other question…” He turns to his side. “I believe Celestia was quite knowledgeable about that topic in the past?”
The princess laughs. “Daddy I was a little girl, I didn’t have all the information yet.”
”Ah I remember you were not too far off, would you care to teach a new student?” he says, gesturing to you.
Princess Celestia strokes her chin with her hoof and looks off into the middle distance. “Hmm…how exactly did it go…?”

Cewestia PoV

“Luna!” you call. “Luuuuuna!”
”Watch out, Tia!”
You freeze in place and duck down as Anonymous steps over you, whisking a bowl of dough as he does.
“Daddy are you busy? Do you need help?”
He goes to the back porch and beats a hanging quilt with a spoon. “I’m fine, sweety! Do what you were doing!”
He was always so busy on days like today…
You trot back over to the living room and look around. “Luuuna!”
”Down here…” you hear.
You quizzically look underneath the sofa and spy Luna down underneath it, wrapped in a blanket.
“Luna? What are you doing down there?”
”Staying out of daddy’s way…” she says.
“Nonsense.” You say. “We’d never be in daddy’s way like that.”
Luna squirms down there. “I don’t want to make him drop food…”
“We’ll sit on the couch, silly. Now come out, it’s time for your lessons.”
”Okay…” she says, and then begins scooting her way out from underneath the sofa.
You hop up on the couch as daddy continues to maneuver around it and help Luna up as well, she wasn’t quite tall enough to get on her own yet. The big book of historical notes, ones you’d either remembered and written down or Anonymous had told you, was on the end table next to you. You grab it with your magic and float it over.
“Do you remember where we left off last time?”
”Maths?” Luna answers.
You nod. Since daddy had been so busy taking care of you both, he’d given you the grown up chore of teaching Luna her lessons.
“Today will be history! Do you want to know how all this came to be?” you ask, gesturing at the house.
”Uhm…daddy built it.” She said.
You giggle.
“No silly. Well, yes, kind of, but he had help! From mommy.”
Luna tilted her head to the side, she had no memory of your mother. You open the book to remind her.
“Our mommy was powerful and majestic, she had magic inside her that could do anything or make anything, and she flew around the cosmos doing what she please.”
Luna looked confused.
“Cosmos is the sky where the stars are.” you say.
”Ooooohhhh.”
“Anyway, mother flew through space creating things. She created big things and small things and one day, she created us! And the world.”
Luna looks out the window as the sun begins its descent in the sky. Even if you couldn’t see it all the time, you could feel it. You never knew why…
”The WHOLE world?” Luna exclaims. You nod.
“The whole thing. Anyway. Mother made us, but she ran into a problem. She was best at creating things, but didn’t believe that she should stay around and fill our heads with EVERYTHING she was, she didn’t see herself as a teacher.”
You turn to a more appropriate page in your book, one of star drawings. “What mother needed was someone she had never created, someone who didn’t have a trace of her in her, and as luck would have it, she found one here on the planet!”
”That’s daddy, right?”
Behind and in front and all around you, Anonymous picks up things, sorts the room out, cleans this or dusts that, and is always back in the kitchen to stir dinner exactly when it’s needed.
“Mhm! By some twist of fate, daddy arrived here completely by chance right after the world finished forming. Mother found him and they became friends.”
”Are you talking about me, sweety?” you hear.
“I’m telling Luna the story, daddy!”
”Only the good parts!”
You chuckle, you thought the entire story was quite good.
”Cewestia?”
You look down at your little sister. “Mm?”
”Why doesn’t mommy come back…?”
Ah…
“Well…Woona…we don’t know.” You say.
You remembered your mother a bit, mostly how busy she was with everything and the day she said she was going to be delivering you here. You remember feeling sad, the saddest you’d even been then, because you felt like such a burden on your mother.
After you met Anonymous though and he took such good care of you, he explained it.
“Well Luna…everypony has something that they’re supposed to do, a reason they get born. Mommy’s reason was to make new and exciting things, and daddy’s…” You look over as Anonymous prepares dinner, you smile. “Daddy’s is to take care of those things so they grow into something new. So that he takes care of us, so that there are even MORE new things in the world. Do you understand?”
Luna shakes her head no. You giggle and pat her head.
“You’re silly.”
”Nuuuuu!”
“You’re a silly filly!” You poke Luna in her tummy with your hoof, to which she grips her tummy and giggles.
“Now, Luna, one last thing for today’s lesson.”
Your sister stops giggling and looks up at you with her big blue eyes. “One day, maybe soon and maybe not, we’ll learn what WE have to do on this world. And when that comes, we have to promise that we help each other fulfill our destinies and make mommy AND daddy proud! Okay?”
”Yay!” Luna says.
You bend down to nuzzle her and she grabs onto your snout. “That’s my LSBFF.”
”Girls! Dinner!” you hear daddy say.
“Come on, Woona!” You float her up and carry her to the table so the entire family could eat together.

You listen intently as Princess Celestia finishes her tale. Anonymous pets her mane. ”A colorful tale, though not inaccurate. You were always such a smart little filly.” He says chuckling.
You ponder the tale in your mind.
“So…this mother of yours, she made the world and then left you here to be raised by Anonymous.”
Celestia nods. “She felt that his unique traits and characteristics would give us the best foundation for our destinies as princesses.”
Anonymous looks into the middle distance for a moment and seems to become lost in the space, but quickly returns. ”She was my first real friend here. I don’t like to toot my own horn, but I’m very proud of who my girls have become.”
Celestia grins like a schoolfilly and nuzzles Anonymous again.
”But…” he begins. “The sun should be setting soon and not as young as I used to be. I’ll see you next time, Celly.” He says embracing her back. ”And you, Twilight Sparkle, I hope to see you again very soon for another lesson.”
“Well these have certainly been…illuminating, Anonymous.”
You’d learned more in a few hours than you thought you knew about the world, you HAD to come back.
Anonymous sees you and Celestia to the door and waves at you both the entire time it takes you to get over the hill. As you leave sight of the small cabin Celestia and Luna used to call home, you feel slightly less warm inside, as if something was missing.
That absence let you think of something.
“Princess?”
”Yes Twilight?”
“In that story…when you and Luna promised to help each other, what happened when sh-“ Celestia interrupts you by flapping her wings and taking to the sky. “Let’s not keep the carriage pullers waiting, Twilight!” she says.
Wha-!
“Princess, wait up!”
You take off after her, or try to if your dumb wings would listen, and your question dies on the early night air.