I was born into a far brighter universe than this: one where the stars had only just kindled themselves to light. When the first lines between the Light and the Dark were drawn, the beams of the stars casting the newness of Light into what had once been the Primordial Nonexistence, the endless dark that came before all began and will come again when all falls away. I was born when Time began to flicker between the stars and nebulae, the planets and asteroids, and when the thing that was Cosmos drew itself from the Void and was filled with wonders beyond imagining. I knew no name. I had no name. There was only a purpose, the sole construct of my unstructured, new-forged mind: I am the soul of a star, and I must find it. I was to find the star Sun, for I was its nameless soul.
For eons I wandered, drifting among the endless space between the stars, bathing in the stellar wind. I searched. I was the soul of Sun, and no others. I was empty, seeking my meaning. Somewhere in this infinite expanse, though I knew not where, Sun awaited, waiting to grasp my mind and fill us both with light, driving away our emptiness. Somewhere in the stars, I would find Sun. I would find meaning, I would find unity, I would find peace.
In that search, I saw endless wonders. I saw three gleaming planets, dark and dense as iron, but encrusted with endless colored jewels, orbiting each other in a three-part dance as they skimmed the surface of a star. I saw rends in Cosmos, where through cracks of blue and gold, strange energies ebbed and flowed and danced, the energy of other spaces brighter than our own where luminous worlds drifted about neon stars. I saw stars, born and then old in what seemed the same breath of stellar wind, erupt in glorious conflagrations, their pieces screaming out into Cosmos as the soul flickered and faded. I saw much that will never be seen again, much that no longer exists in this place, in this time. And, as much as a nameless, disembodied soul can ever be, I was...pleased.
But slowly, I began to grow dim. My newness had faded, uncounted years gone without my star Sun dulling my luster and dimming my mind. One by one, the tiny pinpricks of light upon me began to fade, and to burn away, trailing away behind me as they erupted into tiny supernovae, passing from existence. The things around me ceased to amuse me, ceased to hold any interest at all; they were unimportant. All that was important was the same thought imparted to me in the first glow of my birth: I am the soul of a star, and I must find it.
---
Time passed. Ever on, ever on. Time still passes. I am alone again now, old and ragged looking down at the world that I loved as it burns. Equus, the world of my ponies, the world upon which the civilization that I fostered since its early days grew. It is heated to incandescence by Sun, blazing away into molten stones that disperses once again into the nothingness from which it was birthed, long eras ago. I breathe deeply, my failing lungs still swelling, though my need of oxygen has long been obviated.
The ponies have fled to the stars, leaving me behind. Their eyes were full of tears as they waved goodbye, soaring up in their silver manaships and leaving their beloved princess. I could not join them.
My name is Celestia, I remind myself.
---
I was alone in that Void. Once, not so; once, the space between the stars burned bright with others such as I, others searching for their stars to become one with, to shine bright across Cosmos until Cosmos drew to an end. But no longer. Only I remained searching. The ancient stars around me had been filled, completed, united with their souls long ago in their elegant dance of stellar flame. I alone had lost my star, had lost Sun. My other half, the incandescence that was to burn within me, was out there somewhere. I had only to find it. Yet how to find something out here, in the infinite space of the Cosmos? It seemed an impossibility, and for the first time, I considered that I would never find Sun. What would I become? What had I become? An empty shell, a soul of a star without her other half, drifting among the nothingness between the stars. I gave myself up, abandoning myself to the mindlessness and apathy of a being lost to Void, filtering down into an endless night, a candle burning unto nothing. I faded; there is no better word. The light of the stars around me dimmed, and everything became numb, where once, brilliance had flourished. I was nothing.
Then, far off in the endless depths of space, there was a sound. A bell, rousing me from the velvet night consuming me.
Of course, there was no sound, truly. There couldn't be. In the vacuum of Cosmos, sound was impossible, unknown. I had never heard, and would not hear for many more years to come. No, this wasn't a sound in the traditional sense. This was a call, a beacon, a chiming tone in my mind that seemed to resonate through my very being, and I knew instantly from whence it came: Sun. Or perhaps it was the last of my mind, rebelling against my loss, against my deterioration, against the nothing that had begun to eat away at me. Perhaps it simply woke me up to something I should have known all along. I cannot say.
Come to me, little one, lost soul, for I am weakening, it seemed to say, though whether that was my own state of shadowy half-life speaking I shall never know. But regardless, I suddenly knew, beyond any doubt, where Sun was. I shook the cosmic dust of my long inactivity away, sloughing off layer upon layer of acedia, and began moving, flowing to Sun, the hollow ache of my own emptiness crushing down on me. I realized then how lost I had become. I could barely move, barely think; I had been so close to being Void, to becoming one not with Sun as I should and must, but instead with the endless dark surrounding it. And it was a cold, lonely dark; it was alone, and always has been, and is, and will be. There was nothing within.
There is no measurement of time for my travel to Sun. It was eons, seconds, days, an instant, uncounted millennia, scant few minutes. Scattered, fragmented, overlapping with the darkness around as I was, bleeding in and out between Void and Cosmos, I could barely hold my own being together, let alone understand what was surrounding me, the countless stars that had burned themselves away in my long slumber. The count of time was less...concrete then. It flowed and eddied, doubling and tripling back upon itself like a great underwater river as it ran and leaped through the endless field of stars that lies beyond Sun.
Eventually, I found her. Sun. A little star, still young, still burning hot and bright, nestled in a ring of planets and waiting for a soul to give it meaning. It had refused to burn away; alone, friendless, it raged, lashing out against the dying of its own light. I was unprepared for the feeling of what came next. I had no control over it: instinctively, my soul ranged out, and it found Sun. In a flash of heat and light of such intensity that sometimes I still see them behind my eyes, I felt myself burn away. I knew Sun, and it--she--knew me. I joined with her, and we were complete.
Only an instant of blissful completion, of fulfilling my ages-old task, passed, and then with another flash of light, we were separate again. It had been too long. Too long floating, fluttering through Cosmos. I knew then that I could never become truly one with Sun. However, before I could sink away again, despondent at my failure, something different happened, a different kind of completion: part of me passed into her, part of her passed into me, and I took on corporeal form. Flexing my new-formed wings of solar light , I descended from the core of Sun, passing from the molten heat and back out into Cosmos, now a true being. I could feel Sun behind me in a way that none else have, or ever will, a bond unique to me and me alone; understand, even knowing myself as I or me was unique for a soul that has bonded with her star. I did not feel her rays, but truly felt her. Let none doubt: Sun is alive, just as much as I. She understands what is, what has been, what will be; she knows the space around her, she knows what orbits in her rays. She is the part of me that is a star, I the part of her that is a pony. Sun and I, I and Sun, are one entity, one being, inseparable until both of us burn away into quiet dark.
As I departed the Sun, I looked away, feeling her warming my back. The planet beneath me, first from Sun, caught my eye. It was like almost none I'd seen, and I'd never looked on a planet with true eyes. Though now, the novelty of a true body has long faded, back then, it was a glorious thing, like none I'd ever felt. I felt vibrant, alive.
On that green-blue planet, I saw from a great distance that there were things moving. Creatures, mortals. Curious, I descended towards it, and as I left the pull of Sun, I felt myself change. I changed, my blazing body of solar fusion peeling away into white fur as I took on a form more and more like the mortals beneath me. Ever more curious. I saw them looking up at their sky as I blazed by in a glorious comet, at Sun, magic bent towards moving their planet to spread the light of Sun across it. An unfamiliar sensation took hold of me then, as I looked at them; my new face curled upwards in a strange expression. A smile, then a quiet laugh.
I could help with that.
---
Now I float again above Equus as it is finally consumed, and breathe a great breath. I taste the solar wind again as Sun's ancient redness expands ever more. It tastes stale. I cast my gaze up at the endless field of twinkling stars above me and, squinting through my age-old tiredness, I begin to wonder: are there more like me up there? Are there souls of stars, long isolated and lost--lost for far longer than I was-- waiting for their call, waiting to be reawakened? Will they do as I have done? The ponies have spread across the stars, doubtless. I expect nothing less; they are creative, they are industrious, they will not bow. So when those souls of stars find their other halves...will they do as I did? Will they take on the form of a pony? Will they look upon the ponies beneath them and become Celestias?
Or...are the stars fading? Are the last of the souls burning away, just as I am? Are there more being born at all, or has the universe entered its long decline, returning to Void at last, at the end of all things? Will there be any stars again? I cannot say.
As I consider these questions, I begin to realize how truly, truly tired I am. Sun, ever expanding, has grown dim, and the cosmic gleaming of my eyes has faded with her. My mane has changed as well; no longer the aurora of pinks, blues, greens, but a coruscating halo of reds, oranges, golds; I grow ever closer to returning to stellar flame. My feathers sag, pinpricks of light sparking off of them and floating about me as I continue staring at the uncountable stars beyond me. Luna is long gone; as Sun swelled, it drew in her Moon, and she slid away into the night, giving me a single smile before fading away into a storm of silver light.
There's a sudden feeling of vertigo, of Cosmos twisting around me, and I feel my flesh, feathers, bone, mane, tail, burning away. I slowly drift my way towards Sun, pulled by the inexorable exhaustion that has overtaken my being. As my body dissolves, I return to my core: a being of sunlight, a loosely equine shape formed of light and clad in fire, no longer blindingly white and streaking through space like a meteor, but a dim red, slowly dipping across the surface of her star.
I take a deep breath and, with one more look at the Void out between the stars, I close my eyes, letting myself sink down into Sun as she quakes. I can feel us growing closer to supernova; we have very little time left.
Yet, there is no sadness; the light and heat about me returns me to my elder days, when I first began my cosmic journey, full of brilliant, twinkling starlight. Then it reminds me of my first dive into Sun, that glorious feeling of fullness and completion that I am reclaiming. My eyes, or whatever on this form recalls them, slide shut, my dive ceasing in the very center of Sun. I curl there, nestled in her heat. The rumblings intensify, my form decouples from itself, and I realize: this is the last. Supernova has come. Instead of regret, a calling-back for my time on Equus, I give one more exhausted smile, at least in spirit, and let myself ascend, returning back to the endless light. Perhaps one day, if such a thing is possible, I shall emerge once more, baptized in flames, and seek another star, as a new soul again. But for now...
I am content.
I am at peace.