“Question,” Celestia posed quietly, putting down the tabloid paper for a moment to lock eyes with Cadance and Luna. “What is the deal with cake?”
“You mean… the weird, bizarre, unclearly founded, and ultimately forced-seeming running joke that you are some cake obsessed glutton even though such has never been explicitly shown by any means?” Luna posed, donning her 'exposition smirk.'
“Indeed! I mean, why has such a thing not plagued you two?”
“I'm sure it has,” Cadance replied.
“Oh, has it? What is it, Cadance? Cupcakes? Chocolate brownies? What?”
“I… look, I can't think of anything, but I'm sure theres—”
“And you, Luna? What? Surely there's some food that everypony can recognize relative to you?”
“I… um, 'tragic backstory?'” Luna attempted meekly.
“No, no,” Celestia shook her head. “That's a trait. We all have those.”
“Well, I don't know,” Cadance sighed. “It's weird. End of story.”
“No, because it isn't the end,” Celestia replied. “It is evidence of something greater. Trust me when I say that the cake question is one that has long since been pricking away at the edges of my subconscious.”
“Damn, Auntie,” Caddy whistled. “You're going all in with this. Are you sure you didn't help yourself to some of the… uh, tiktaks in my purse?”
“Shh, Caddy, shh” Luna shushed. “She should be saying something semi—”
“—For the love of… Luna, shut up!”
“...I mean, the belief is irrelevant,” Celestia was saying, seemingly unhearing the others. She had started on a thought, and it was clear she wasn't being shaken from it. “The belief could be anything, truly. I could… I don't know, like to eat fig newtons instead of cake. I could… have a fetish for shaving cream. It doesn't matter. The point is that it exists. It formed from someplace.”
“From word of mouth,” Cadance sighed. “That's all, Auntie. It snowballed. It came from one place and it grew and in a little while it will fade again. Ponies are weird, the world is weird, end of story.”
“No, not end of story,” Celestia replied shortly. “See, these ponies… this 'word of mouth' group you speak of… these are the ponies who are at an eternal state of not knowing me personally. It as though I myself am a black hole, and they are entities at the exact orbit to have no perception of the true nature of my form due to all known data being made fundamentally impossible to reach them.”
“And what difference does that make?” Luna cocked her head.
“These ponies don't know me personally, but also need to know of me. Therefore an easily described 'image' of me is borne out of their societal collective minds. An easily accesible spark that would ignite the necessary componetns in a pony's mind to allow them to remember me. This spark has become rooted as numerous things; 'The Princess', 'the sun', and yes, 'the cake addict.'”
“So, what? That's become one of society's buzzwords for you?”
“Indeed! A life with millenniums of experience before her, and yet she can be reduced in history's eye by something as mundane as cake! What impact have I made, if this is all I am? What impact can any of us have, if even a princess of Equestria cannot exist in the spectrum of the universal?”
By now, Celestia's voice was changed. No longer was this a mere thought experiment to her. This was some manner of nirvana.
“Yes, yes. A life is a word, and a word is a merely abstract construction of our minds. Therefore, the very concept of life itself is no more than a perception of one's own. An eternally inaccurate lens we can never remove.”
“Auntie… hold the phone,” Cadance blinked. “Did you just… did you just logically progress to proving that life is meaningless using 'cake addiction' as a prompt?”
“I suppose,” Celestia shrugged, retaking her knitting, as though Cadance had just asked about the weather and she had just finished explaining. “...that somepony could assert that there is some manner of transcendental outlier to this. One thing that indeed holds meaning, even if nothing else does.
“But what signifies this outlier; be it physics, be it a god, be it cake? How can this outlier be described by anything but our own words, which we have already proven cannot be trusted?”
“Alright, Luna,” Cadance groaned. “When you get back to the castle, burn every single Intro To Philosophy textbook Celestia has access to.”
“Noted,” Luna agreed. “Celestia that was… something.”
Celestia shrugged. “Eh. Mere food for thought. Anyways, want me to read you all your horoscopes?”