Twilight Sparkle wasn’t really a connoisseur. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the concept of being one, because she very much did. Being selective with food wasn’t so difficult to grasp. No, it simply never occurred to her to be anything but simple about what she ate. If Spike made it, she ate it. If it looked vaguely like a hayburger, she didn’t eat it so much as revoke its existence. Healthy? A bit unhealthy? Fattening? Pricy? It didn’t matter to her stomach. Stomachs couldn’t tell. Stomachs, in fact, cared very little about whether or not the wine one drank was from Prance or Bitaly, and that was Twilight Sparkle’s official stance.
It wasn’t that she had never been on a date before. She totally, completely had. Like, several even. A few. There were dates crammed into her student days. They hadn’t been particularly fantastic, no, and most of them had been sort of boring for one reason or another, but the protocol was familiar. Somepony drops by and picks up somepony else, they go eat something, and then maybe they do some other activity. If they want to. Which, again with perfect honesty, Twilight was willing to admit to herself that half of the time her dates had not particularly wanted to do anything after.
This did not pain her so much as it annoyed her. All those opportunities for valuable experience before this point wasted! But no matter. She was smart. She was even social now. Dates were tiny skirmishes in the long romantic campaign before her, and she feared no picket.
She did, however, have some minor concerns about dresses. Namely, it had only just occurred to her that Rarity’s beautiful new dress might not pair well with whatever Celestia wore, which of course would probably be some sort of ancient faux pas and lower her in the esteem of the highborn of Canterlot and also probably make her look like a fool and also not be romantic and—
Okay. Okay, so really, really-really, her problem was less about what she wore or ate and much more about who she would wear things next to and eat with. Celestia. Princess Celestia. Songbourne, Sol Invictus, etc and so on. The Celestia.
Her Celestia.
It was… it was nervewracking, and somehow that seemed sad to Twilight. Shouldn’t it not be? Shouldn’t she be able to move beyond seeing Celestia in terms of status?
But that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t as if she were overly concerned with status itself. She was just… Nervous. Jittery. And that, she told herself, was normal.
Her Inner Court stirred. Rarity wholeheartedly agreed that it was very normal to be a little nervous for a first real date. A first semi-official outing as a quasi-official couple. Enough ponies knew now that it was at least quasi-official, right? Rarity and Twilight began to squabble over terminology. Applejack yanked them both back into the present.
She stood before a great mirror, sitting on a stool whilst a mare she didn’t know worked with her mane. It was one of Luna’s hoofmaids, she knew that much. If she were honest—Court Applejack asked that she try to be, especially with herself—she’d been too nervous to really register much.
Everything was fine. It was all accounted for and prepared for and all those other words she liked that made her feel confident. Her dress was lovely, her mane was about to look far better than she would have arranged for herself, and on top of that, all of the arrangements had been taken care of. She hadn’t had to reserve a table or anything. She just had to show up. Well, okay, first she had to “collect” Celestia and walk her to the carriage waiting below, but that was theoretically like just showing up.
“Please, my lady, if you move I cannot work,” said the unicorn doing her mane.
Twilight flushed and sat up straight as she could. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” said the hoofmaid after a moment. She’d already returned to work.
Twilight wished that Luna had stayed. She also was glad that Luna had left.
It wasn’t as if things were strange between them. Twilight had taken one of Celestia’s jokes a bit too seriously and expected her younger sister to be something of a terror… but Luna had been rather pleased, if apparently unsurprised. Apparently, because apparently everypony else could just see what she and Celestia had avoided seeing. Or something. Honestly, she chalked up Cadance and Luna’s reactions less to what may or may have not been obvious and more to the fact that there was something about the mentor relationship which made others want to think they had seen it all coming.
Maybe. Twilight tried not to huff or shrug or move at all.There was something uniquely intimidating about a manestylist at work with a heavy frown on her face.
“I believe I am almost done,” said manestylist informed her. “Lady Luna should return soon. Are you to wait for her, or…?”
“I’ll be making my own way, though I’ll stay to talk a moment if she comes back soon enough,” Twilight said. The mare nodded, and after a moment she bowed swiftly and let Twilight examine her work.
Twilight took only a moment. She’d been watching all along. “It’s good,” she said softly. “Don’t you think so?”
“You should grow your mane out longer, Lady Twilight. I could do more with it, if it were longer.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, actually…” Twilight lost herself for a moment in looking, turning her head this way and that, gingerly buoying one side’s curls and then the other’s. When she came to her senses, the mare had quietly left her alone.
Twilight took a deep breath. Another.
“Time to go,” she told the mirror, and it responded in perfect unison.
One of the problems of having an Inner Court was that every moment had multiple narratives.
Simultaneously, she saw herself in a variety of ways, doing a variety of things. Each vision had inner voices attached, Aspects fawning over how Twilight might be or worrying over how they knew she would be… and it was dizzying. One—Rarity—saw her as dashing and elusive, smiling in a devil-may-care way like something out of one of Fluttershy’s novels. Another image, of her natural and calm, another of her stoic and formal, and…
And the reality, which was Twilight Sparkle nervously dancing in place in front of Celestia’s door.
Had she knocked? She was mostly sure she hadn’t. Mostly. It was kind of all a jumble of panic and nervousness and clamoring Court voices, all trying to give her advice. Except for Court Fluttershy, who mostly just seemed content to join Twilight in mild panic over perfect dates. Twilight liked Court Fluttershy. Court Fluttershy was a very sensible… pony. Pony worked. Language was hard.
She knocked.
There was a short silence, followed by the sounds of somepony moving behind the door.
Twilight, who all of her life had a sharp and powerful imagination that was more than prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty, saw Celestia many times before she actually saw her. The aspects which had not so much lodged themselves in her mind as grown out from it helped in this endeavor, either fretting that she would be woefully underdressed or scandalously overdressed… or in awe over the image that did not walk so much as gracefully processed through her mind, a Celestia of shining lights and perfect coat of the lightest color of dawn.
When she finally did see Celestia, her mentor-turned-friend and lover was… well, not like any of those images or petty worries.
The Celestia in her mind had absurdly worn her crown, that was the thing that Twilight noticed first that was different. The real Celestia, the mere Celestia, did not. She had seen Celestia without a crown before, obviously. But it just… it felt different this time.
No stately formal gown, no regalia or insignia nor any badge or trapping of office or status. Just a nice dress that reminded her of the sky at dusk with a little Sun-brooch, her mane pulled back so that her radiantly smiling face was always clear.
Twilight swallowed. “You look good.”
“I do try,” Celestia said, and her eyes ran over Twilight. But only for a moment, a brief pass. Celestia’s smile did not falter. If anything, it grew stronger. “As do you, Twilight. I’m ready to go if you are.”
“Ready!” Twilight stood up ramrod straight. “Very ready. Super ready. Absolutely prepared.”
Celestia raised an eyebrow.
Twilight wilted a little. “Okay, I’m a little nervous,” she admitted. If she’d learned anything over the last few years, denying the obvious was not a viable strategy.
And, because the world is a strange and sometimes fortunate place, Celestia smiled extended a wing in invitation. “Walk beside me. I’m a bit nervous myself.”
*
Celestia had worried about different things. About not impressing Twilight, for one. About being “authentic” whatever that looked like and meant. About… well, everypony else in the world. Literally.
And yet, walking Twilight down to the carriage had been relaxing. Those fears had fallen away, and when they had entered the restaurant, it had been mid-joke.
Celestia leaned on her hoof—unencumbered by golden finery, for once—and smiled lazily at Twilight as she ambled her way through an explanation of her day. She’d been busy after lunch, meeting with some of her old professors and the College Board.
“I was less prepared than I thought,” Twilight finished, her energy draining a bit as she moved from reunions to the substance of the discussions. “I mean… I suppose I understood that I was going to have to adjust my curriculum for students who weren’t, you know, Starlight Glimmer. I knew that teaching younger unicorns would mean starting slower and starting more basic. I thought I understood what that would mean. But I was clueless. Just… absolutely clueless. They tore the whole thing apart. Almost none of it was worth anything.”
Celestia levitated her wine over and sipped at it, letting Twilight hear her own words for a moment. I can’t step in and fix every little thing, can I? I can’t be her teacher forever.
But it wasn’t as if she were planning to ignore Twilight, obviously. But she did not answer with a platitude or a probing, leading question as a teacher might. “I’m sorry, Twilight. Surely you got something useful out of it, though. You know what not to do now.”
Twilight sighed. “You’re right. I mean, you’re totally right, but it doesn’t really feel that. Mostly it just feels like I’m a dunce.”
Celestia snorted. “Well, I can attest to that being untrue.”
“More than that, it set me to thinking about something that I’ve had on my mind since I first moved to Ponyville.”
This sounded promising. Celestia leaned in. “Pray tell.”
Twilight pulled a bit of bread off of the half-loaf that sat between them, and talked slowly as she buttered it. “I just… Well, I guess this will sound silly to you, but it was a rude awakening to how strange and unusual my childhood was.”
Celestia just raised an eyebrow. It was a well practiced and truly time honored gesture. Ponies had been watching that eyebrow slowly rise with growing dismay for literally centuries now, and it rarely failed.
But Twilight seemed unperturbed. She ate, pausing only to speak, and then spoke evenly, almost as if to a wall, or to herself.
“I think every filly grows up just assuming that the world works like her own home does. That every kitchen is like her family’s kitchen, and all the forks are like her family’s forks, and so on until one day that illusion is shattered. And it’s not a bad thing, when it shatters. I think it’s a good thing! But that never happened for me as a filly, because I was so insulated from ever experiencing that.”
“City life and country life?” Celestia smiled. “I can see that. There’s quite a gap between Canterlot and Ponyville.”
But Twilight shook her head. “Not just that. I mean, the whole urban-rural divide is part of it, sure. More than just differences in streets and atmosphere, I found differences in how ponies lived… and more then that, even! It’s hard to explain.”
Celestia had an idea, but she simply hummed approvingly. There was an old expression, in Old Adunaic that had no twin in the modern common tongue, which could best be summarized as the experience of one’s own experience—the individual awakening to just how vast the world around it was. The experience of other ponies.
It was hard to put into words. At least, in words that ponies could bear to hear. She could say what she wanted to say easily.
But that would require another language entirely, Dusk sang softly in her ear.
Dawn added, Twilight will have to hear our Singing eventually.
“What would I have been like, had I been born somewhere else? Say, in Ponyville. I can guess, surely. I might have never discovered my love of magic, with no nearby school or exposure to the mages or the College. But some things would have been the same no matter where, I guess. My parents would still be the same. I’m not doing a good job of this, am I?”
“You’re trying, and I appreciate that. I love hearing you think, honestly,” Celestia said. “I’ve always loved how you applied yourself to things.”
Twilight ducked her head, but she couldn’t hide her smile. “Thanks. One of the reasons I wanted to open the school in Ponyville has to do with all of that. Thinking about how I wouldn’t have had some of the same opportunities made me think about how the foals in Ponyville don’t and I just…” She shrugged. “What’s the use of princesses if they can’t help?”
“I often say the same,” Celestia murmured.
“Just wish I didn’t, you know, suck at it.”
And that’s my cue. Celestia reached across and touched Twilight’s foreleg. The beginnings of an anecdote danced on the edge of her tongue—remember when?—but she swerved towards something different and not connected to Twilight the Faithful Student. “It takes teaching to make a teacher, and it takes time. No one expected you to know everything. Honestly, I would have been startled if you hadn’t been set straight! Did the ponies you met with today tell you that you should give up?”
Twilight shrugged. “No.”
“Don’t you think Bright Shine would have been frank on that point, had she thought that you were a lost cause?”
And Twilight shrugged again. “I remember the classes I took with her were rigorous. She made a stallion cry once. I mean, she didn’t mean to, but…” Her shoulders slumped and then she looked up at Celestia again. “I know what you’re getting at. Dr. Shine actually gave me a ton of notes.”
Celestia wanted to see what Twilight had put together. Was it because Twilight was her old student? Was it professional curiosity? Probably both, but she preferred to think that it was because the mare in front of her so obviously cared and that moved her.
Twilight looked awkward. Celestia didn’t have to wonder, she knew: watch a mare like Twilight Sparkle grow up, and you learn to read her like a book. But she didn’t mind. Why should she? Part of the point of dates was to grow comfortable, after all. It was new.
And she had had her share of butterflies. It was only fair.
“I’m not really used to fancy restaurants,” Twilight said at last. She eyed her wineglass skeptically.
“Oh? With your pedigree?”
“Pedigree?” Twilight snorted. “Just because my parent’s house is in High Canterlot doesn’t mean that we wandered around in high circles! Dad worked at the observatory and mom wrote. I mean, I guess some of Dad’s friends from the Guard were high up. Does that count as having a ‘pedigree’?”
“Twilight Sparkle, surely you jest. Lady Twilight of House Sparkle?”
Twilight stared and blinked. Celestia, bewildered, waved a hoof in front of her face, and then Twilight startled. “Oh! Oh, right. The, uh, the House. I completely forgot about that. We never talked about it.”
“Did you not?” Celestia blinked. It wasn’t every day she found out something radically new about Twilight Sparkle. “I’d always assumed you were brought up knowing about it. Do you know anything of your family’s history? Surely you do. I know you loved history.”
Twilight let out a sheepish little giggle. “No, I really don’t. Gosh, this is embarrassing, but I did try to do some research? But House Sparkle is such a minor family in the scheme of things, and that was around the time I first got really excited about magic. Family history got lost in the shuffle.”
Celestia sat back. “I’m astonished. Here I was, thinking you had grown up with some image of your house and its place in mind. I’m… Well. That is a bit sad. The Sparkles are a fine house. You simply must learn of them. They have been my friends for a long time.”
“Wait. What?”
Celestia nodded, lost in thought. The aspects within her followed, bringing individuals back from the dead to parade before her mind’s eyes. “Of course. Your House Charter, you have it, hm?”
“Um, yes. Dad has it in his office at home. I always liked it. It was old looking and interesting.”
“It’s quite old. Yours is an old house. I wrote that charter, you know. I remember writing it.” Celestia sighed, and brought her wine glass back to her. “Teach me something new,” she said. “That is what I told them. And I grinned when I said it!”
And then a curious thing happened. Not an uncommon thing, but a curious one. Celestia became unstuck in time.
“Your only burden, young master Azurite, is one of education. I require knowledge. Lore! And you are a scholar of the highest order. I will grant you this title and the land to sustain you, and you shall in turn swear your family to be my teachers and loremasters ‘till such a time as your line grows weary of me.”
Celestia blinked, and realized she was not in a small library, holding parchment before the befuddled, awe-struck face of Azurite Sparkle. She was in L’Engles, and Twilight was looking at her strangely.
It occurred to her just how isolated their table was, in a spacious private room that the proprietor had saved for her many a time. She was glad for it now.
“Did you… what did that mean?”
Celestia flushed and looked away. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I, ah, it’s nothing.”
“It sounded… I swear I recognized a few of those words. What was it?”
There was a chasm between agelessness and mortality. In some places, the two cliff faces were but a pony’s length apart. But in some? In some the distance was staggering. This was not one of the worst places, but it was substantial. What seemed like madness from below was natural from above.
“We go away sometimes. Back into memories. Usually, I’ll find myself drifting only when I’m comfortable. Which I suppose I am at the moment, here with you. I have a lot of history to wander through.”
Twilight nodded slowly. “Like daydreaming? But you seemed… I mean, you weren’t just preoccupied. You seemed totally not here. I said your name a few times.”
“I’m sorry.” Celestia looked away. “It’s nothing to be concerned over. Simply an old habit of mine.”
Twilight hummed. “What were you thinking of?”
Celestia looked back at her, and smiled. “Your ancestor. Azurite. I think he would have loved you, honestly. I wish I could go back, take you with me, and show him what his family would accomplish.”
Twilight sat back, her face unreadable. At last, she said:
“Will you tell me about him?”
“Of course,” Celestia said. “And more besides.”