Princess Celestia would never forget the last time she ever used the Elements of Harmony. Her own sister, the only family she had, tried to kill her. Luna – or Nightmare Moon, now – had caught Celestia off guard. In that horrible moment, all Celestia wanted was to stop Nightmare Moon and make sure she never threatened her life again. Sending her to the moon was instinctive. But after Celestia used the Elements to banish her sister, they turned gray and inert. Most bewilderingly, the Element of Magic vanished altogether, leaving behind the other five rocks.
After months of studying the Elements, Celestia saw evidence that they had gone dormant like plants during periods of stress. It was not difficult to guess what had strained them. They were used close together when they were meant to be dispersed to prevent thaumic overload. They were used by one Bearer against another, causing turmoil in both Bearers' hearts. But the reason for the sixth Element's disappearance and its ultimate fate remained a frustrating enigma.
Celestia wished that her mentor, Star Swirl the Bearded, were still alive to help her. Yet part of her was glad that he had not witnessed the rift between herself and her sister. In retrospect, Celestia wished she had seen the warning signs that Luna was growing discontented and jealous. She would have tried to make Luna see that the ponies did appreciate her night and everything she did to guard their dreams. That was one of the worst things about having to banish Nightmare Moon. Celestia could raise and lower the moon, but dream magic was unique to her sister. Without her, the ponies and other species were disturbed by wild nightmares. Celestia herself had terrible dreams that she could do nothing to stop.
It was partly for this reason that many mages and scholars attempted to recover the missing Element. Clover the Clever herself, in her advanced age, theorized that concentrated forms of Honesty, Loyalty, Laughter, Kindness, and Generosity would reactivate the surviving Elements, creating a spark that would summon the Element of Magic. These concentrated forms would require five different ponies who each exemplified one Element. Celestia had always been most closely aligned with Magic, Kindness, and Generosity, so she alone could not test Clover's theory.
Heartsick, Celestia decided to leave the castle she had shared with Luna and build a new palace on the Matterhorn Mountain. She sealed the books in the royal library and let the Everfree reclaim the building. The five dull Elements sat on a pedestal within the edifice, useless without the Element of Magic.
Even after everything that happened, though, Celestia did not regret imprisoning Luna inside the moon. After all, Luna had declared herself to be Nightmare Moon, a different pony from the sister she'd grown up with. More importantly, Celestia was convinced that if she hadn't used the Elements to defend herself, Nightmare would have killed her. Yet Celestia didn't want her sister's punishment to be permanent. She missed her dearly and hoped to get the old Luna back, the Luna who was happy, honest, and loyal. If she still had all six Elements, Celestia would have used them to free her sister after a few years, or at least speak to her and find out if she had come to her senses.
There was one discovery that made Celestia optimistic about her sister's future. A few decades after Nightmare's attempted coup, an astronomer named Sky Gazer studied the movements of the stars and accurately charted their paths. According to his calculations, in the thousandth year of Nightmare's banishment, on the Summer Solstice, four stars would move so close to the moon that they would almost touch. The power radiating from these stars would free Nightmare Moon from her prison. Sky Gazer was renowned for his advancements in astronomy, so Celestia had no reason to doubt him.
She had conflicted feelings about her sister's eventual escape. It was a relief to know that Luna's banishment wouldn't last forever. If Celestia could never speak to her sister again – if no one could ever contact Luna again – she might as well be dead. But a thousand years was still a long time, even for an alicorn. Celestia didn't want to wait that long to be reunited with her sister. Still, that should give Nightmare plenty of time to change her ways. But what if she didn't? What if, after all that time, Nightmare Moon came down Tartarus-bent on finishing what she started? Nightmare's magic would be bolstered by the stars. Without the Elements, Celestia doubted she could overpower her. Celestia feared not just for her own life, but the lives of her ponies and every other being in Equestria. If Nightmare Moon succeeded in making the night last forever, the world would grow colder and colder. Without sunlight and warmth, the plants would perish first, and then the very young and very old creatures. The sapient beings who didn't freeze to death might hold on for awhile, but eventually their food stores would run out. Only the dragons would have any hope of surviving long term.
Celestia worried about all of this, but as the years passed, she spoke of the threat less and less. There was no point in troubling her ponies when they had already done all they could to help. Eventually most of the ponies forgot that their princess had ever ruled alongside her sister, and Nightmare Moon was known only as a strange pattern of craters in the moon, and an old pony's tale to scare foals. She was said to gobble up foals, which was as silly as the story about Chancellor Puddinghead bringing presents to all the children in the world in a single night. Yet Celestia let her ponies believe their lies. She remembered the truth so they didn't have to.
Once in a while over the centuries, Celestia met a pony who seemed to embody one of Elements of Harmony. Unfortunately, she never found more than four such ponies living at the same time. Sometimes Celestia worried that the perfect Bearers had passed away without her ever knowing it.
Centuries passed, and society settled into a new normal. Celestia took up an interest in education, encouraging innovations in magic and practical technology. She was a judge every year at both the Best Young Fliers' Competition and the Royal Growers' Fair. And she went as far as teaching a weekly class at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.
As an alicorn and the ruler of Equestria, Celestia represented all ponies, whether they had horns, wings, or greater muscle mass. But the School for Gifted Unicorns happened to be located closest to the royal castle, so it was an easy commute. And it hadn't been Celestia's idea to name the school after herself. The founder of the school had been one of Celestia's proteges, and he had decided to name it in her honor. Happily, tribal tensions had eased since the tribes united, so Celestia heard few complaints about tribal bias.
There was one student at the School for Gifted Unicorns who showed a great deal of promise as an Element Bearer. Sunset Shimmer was intelligent, one might even say cunning. She had more drive and ambition than anypony Celestia had known in decades. And so Celestia took her under her wing as her latest protege. Eventually, Celestia shared the story about her sister becoming Nightmare Moon and having to use the Elements of Harmony against Luna, and how they had deactivated. Celestia had not disclosed this information to anypony since the time of Sky Gazer.
Sunset asked why she couldn't reactivate all of the Elements herself and use them. Celestia explained Clover the Clever's theory about each Element needing a pure, distinct Bearer of its virtue to awaken it.
“Couldn't you at least let me try?” asked Sunset, a bit stubbornly. “If anypony could do it, I could!”
Celestia raised her eyebrows. She had not expected her student to immediately want to awaken all the Elements.
“I suppose I could let you try to activate them, when you're ready and I can arrange transportation,” said Celestia.
“What do you mean, arrange transportation? Couldn't you just teleport us there?”
“It is too far to teleport easily. I would need to spend time recharging my thauma after I arrived.”
Sunset swished her tail. “Well, fine, then arrange the trip as soon as you can. I want to wield these Elements.”
“Do not get your hopes up too high,” cautioned Celestia. “I'm not trying to discourage you, but I believe it's unlikely that you will be able to wield them without the help of other ponies. Even I could not–”
“Just because you couldn't doesn't mean I couldn't!”
Celestia shook her head. “I do not think you are ready yet. To tell you the truth, your words have shown me that you are less ready than I thought you were.”
Sunset left in a huff. She returned for her next lesson, but became more bitter and manipulative, trying over and over to convince Celestia to tell her where the Elements were. A few months later, Celestia showed Sunset the magic mirror portal. She intended to use it as a way to teach her humility and patience. Instead, Sunset declared that she was through with her lessons and that she wished Celestia had never taken her on as her special student. Then she jumped through the portal. Celestia did not follow her. She did not want to risk either upsetting the balance of the alternate world or getting trapped there. Hopefully, Sunset would return and decide that she was ready to learn from Celestia again.
In the mean time, Celestia went back to teaching regular weekly classes at the School for Gifted Unicorns.
On her way to teach class one day, there was a giant explosion in the sky over Canterlot, with every color of the rainbow bursting out. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the school roof was damaged when a dragon's head broke through it.
Celestia gaped at the purple dragon head poking out through the shingles, tendrils of fuchsia magic streaking out around him. At her age, it took a lot to surprise her, but that was something else. She galloped into the school and found the exam tower in a state of chaos that would have made Discord laugh with glee. The dragon sat in the middle of the floor, his head breaking through the ceiling. The four teachers floated in a magenta glow, while a lavender filly floated above the tiles, her horn alight and her eyes emitting an ethereal light. Wild pink thauma shot out every which way from her body.
Celestia recognized her as the filly whom her niece foalsat: one Twilight Sparkle. She walked over to her and put her hoof on the child's back. Twilight turned her head toward her, her mouth contorted in a painful grimace. Then she relaxed, her thauma dimming as she sank back onto her hooves. Her aura quickly released the teachers, who fell to the stands. A cactus and a swordleaf plant turned into the filly's father and mother, respectively. Oh, dear, that had to be an unpleasant experience.
Lastly, the dragon shrank, changing into a hatchling who stuck his tail in his mouth. Celestia glanced at him before turning her attention to the little unicorn. She told Twilight that she had incredible raw power for a unicorn her age, and asked her if she would like to learn how to tame and control it as her protege.
Twilight shouted and jumped up in exhilaration.
And that was when Celestia saw something that she'd given up hope of ever seeing again.
Twilight's flank had been bare, but suddenly it held the very image of the Element of Magic. It was a deep pink six-pointed star with five smaller white stars around it. Celestia couldn't have asked for a clearer sign that Twilight Sparkle was destined to call back the missing Element. Grinning wide, Celestia barely contained a joyful squeal. Instead, she merely pointed at the mark.
Twilight beamed. “My cutie mark! Yes yes yes yes yes!” She bounced around in a happy dance all around Celestia.
Using her telekinesis, Celestia lifted the dragon whelp. “You hatched the dragon. What are you going to name him?”
Twilight stopped. “Me?” She stared at him for a moment. “He looks like a Spike.”
It wasn't a terribly original name, but the girl was only six. She could hardly be expected to think of something deep and meaningful on the spot.
“Spike the Dragon it is,” said Celestia.
Glancing from her parents to Celestia, Twilight asked, “Does this mean I get to keep him?”
Her parents shared nervous looks.
“I think it would be best if I take care of him, at least until he's more mature,” Celestia answered graciously. “But you can see him whenever we have our lessons.” She floated Spike toward her body and held him with her foreleg. He curled up against her, resting his head on her barrel.
So it was that Celestia gained a new family member, a new pupil, and a chance to finally recover the Element of Magic. It was almost as if the Element had decided to return at just the right time. According to Sky Gazer's calculations, Luna would escape from the moon in twelve years. Celestia should have enough time to restore the Elements and prepare for her sister's return, should Luna decide to bring about eternal night.
Little Spike slept through that first night. He slept quite a lot, even for a baby. Celestia decided she had better research dragons if she wanted to raise one. She considered Spike family – not her child, but more like her nephew, just as Cadence had become her niece.
Celestia checked her library, but all of the volumes on dragons were depressingly slim. She figured she should do her best with what scant information she had, and she did know that adult dragons could sleep for decades at a time, so it made sense that whelps would spend long periods of time sleeping, too. And Spike seemed content and healthy whenever he was awake. He would eat almost anything, which caused some irritation, such as the time he ate one of her favorite teacups.
There were other concerns besides looking after a baby dragon and planning her new student's lessons, however. If Clover the Clever was correct, the five dormant Elements would require ponies who perfectly resonated with each of the Elements. Celestia had been unable to find such equines after centuries of trying. But finally, she had found a key. Twilight's thaumic surge had happened after the poly-chromatic boom had resounded across the sky. Whomever had made that boom was an ideal candidate for an Element Bearer.
And so two days after the incident, when things had settled down a bit, Celestia asked one of her pegasus advisers if he knew who had created the explosion in the sky.
The adviser told her that some pegasus foals had raced each other, and one of the foals had flown faster than the speed of sound.
“Magi-physicists have theorized about the possibility of a sonic boom for years, but nopony ever broke the sonic barrier until now,” said the adviser, his tail swishing in excitement.
Celestia was somewhat familiar with the concept: any moving object generated sound waves in circles that traveled faster than the object. The waves bunched closer together in front of a moving object, creating a higher-pitched sound as the object approached an observer, and a lower pitch as it retreated. In theory, if an object moved faster than the speed of sound, the sound waves would combine together so that at first an observer would hear silence, and then a loud noise.
A related hypothesis stated that if a pegasus broke the sound barrier, his or her contrail would burst outward in either a ring or a sphere. Apparently the ring model was correct.
“That makes a great deal of sense,” said Celestia. “It's amazing that a foal flew faster than any adult! How old is this foal?”
“The foal was from the Cloudsdale Flight Camp for ages six to eight,” answered the adviser. “Based on what my ponies have told me, two different foals claim to have caused the sonic poly-chromatic boom, but nopony has been able to confirm which of them did it. The camp counselors have more important things to worry about right now. It seems a foal went missing around the same time the sonic boom occurred.”
“Oh, dear!” Celestia raised her front hoof to her muzzle. “The poor foal! Did this have any connection to the sonic boom?”
“I believe the missing foal was last seen watching the other foals race,” answered the adviser.
“We must do what we can to help find this foal.”
The adviser blinked in surprise. Then his eyes opened wider in apparent understanding.
“You want to find out the identity of the foal who broke the sound barrier, your highness.”
He was so certain that she had an ulterior motive for wanting to find the missing foal. The adviser was technically correct, but Celestia was still somewhat disappointed that he assumed she didn't want to find the foal purely out of the goodness of her heart. Celestia cared about all of her ponies, of course, but she usually let them manage their own problems. If a crisis became great enough to endanger the well-being of Equestria, then she would intervene. But in most cases, she trusted that her ponies had become powerful and resourceful enough to resolve issues on their own.
She kept these thoughts to herself, however. “Yes, I do. Contact the mayor of Cloudsdale and tell him the Wonderbolts are on the way to help with the search.”
Even in the rare instances Celestia took a special interest in a pony's problems, she still often delegated.
And so the Wonderbolts were dispatched to search for the foal and found her four hours later. She was in the woodlands below Cloudsdale (not, thank goodness, the Everfree Forest), which was currently to the southwest of Canterlot. The filly had been on her own in the middle of nowhere for almost 72 hours.
After the child had been reunited with her family, Celestia decided that this would be a good excuse to visit Cloudsdale and see this filly for herself – and she also hoped to see the foal who had broken the sound barrier. So she sent word ahead to the mayor of Cloudsdale, and headed straight for the city in the clouds, taking four of her pegasus guards with her. However, when the mayor and some of the Wonderbolts met her on the landing pad, they had disappointing news.
The mayor dipped in a respectful bow. “I apologize, Princess Celestia. I tried to send a message back to you, only you'd already left. The lost filly's family refuses to meet with us.” He snorted quietly. “Believe me, I would've loved the photo op, but there's nothing I can do about it.”
“Ah, I'm sorry to hear that. But since I am here, perhaps I could meet some of the other foals from flight camp,” Celestia said nonchalantly.
“I'm sure the other foals would love to see you,” said the mayor. “All the foals came home from camp yesterday, so it may take a few hours to round up all of them.”
“That's quite all right, Mr. Mayor,” said Celestia with an easy smile. “I can wait. In the mean time, I would like to speak with the Wonderbolts who found the missing foal.”
The Wonderbolt captain stepped forward. “That would be Cadet Spitfire and Cadet Fleetfoot, your highness.” He nodded curtly to two young mares, each with the permanently windblown manes characteristic of Wonderbolts. They bowed and rose in smart military fashion.
“Good work, soldiers,” said Celestia. “Tell me what happened when you found the filly.”
“Thank you, ma'am – uh, your highness,” stammered the yellow and orange one – Spitfire, if Celestia knew how ponies' names worked, which she did. “Well, your highness, all of us fanned out over the woods below the city to search for the filly. We knew from our briefing that she was eight years old, yellow with a pink mane and tail, and couldn't fly well for her age. So I suggested we walk because the filly would probably be walking too, if she survived the landing.”
“The captain liked the idea, tho he ordered uth to pair up with one pony flying and the other walking,” added Fleetfoot. Her speech impediment made her a bit hard to take seriously, but Celestia did her best. “I walked through the woodth, and pretty soon I found yellow featherth. Then I thaw a whole lot of animals, even for the woodth. And then I thaw a big, thick tree that was half hollow at the bottom. There wath a pink tail thticking out of it.”
“Fleetfoot called me down to come look,” said Spitfire, taking up the tale again with more confidence. “So I landed next to the tree, and all the animals scattered. And then I saw the filly curled up inside the tree. She was so skinny and her mane and tail were tangled and her wing feathers were fluffed, which is not a good sign, but I'm sure you know that. But amazingly, the doctor who saw her said that she was just a little dehydrated and had a few scratches. I guess she landed all right, but she couldn't gain enough height to fly back up to Cloudsdale.” She shrugged. “But that's just a guess. She wouldn't talk to me. She wouldn't talk to anypony until she saw her parents.”
“Oh thank you thank you thank you for bringing back Fluttershy!”
Spitfire turned her head to stare in surprise at the little rainbow streak that zoomed up to her.
Celestia gazed at the cyan filly with the rainbow mane and tail, and the cutie mark of a tri-colored lightning bolt shooting out of a white cloud. And a feeling of certainty settled in Celestia's gut. She knew that not only did this child break the sound barrier, but she was also a future Element Bearer. Celestia did not yet know which Element she would bear – she didn't assume that every Bearer would have a gem-shaped cutie mark since Celestia herself didn't have one that matched an Element. The filly had colors that could fit either Loyalty or Generosity – or, if they were lightened a shade, Laughter or Honesty. However, it hardly mattered. Once Celestia found the other Bearers, she would figure it out by process of elimination if nothing else.
“I got here as fast as I could! I heard the whole story! I didn't think the Wonderbolts could get any more awesome,” the girl gushed, buzzing around Spitfire and Fleetfoot, “but you did! You saved my best friend!”
Spitfire smiled. “Just doing our duty. What's your name, kid?”
“Rainbow Dash. You know the rainboom everypony's talking about? That was me.” She held her hoof to her chest.
Celestia couldn't resist grinning and raising her eyebrows ever so slightly. “The rainboom?”
Rainbow swiveled her head to gaze at Celestia, her eyes widening. “Oh, Princess Celestia!” She attempted a clumsy bow while still flying, which entirely missed the point of bowing, but Celestia let it slide. “I'm sorry, I was so excited seeing the Wonderbolts, I didn't notice you.”
“Think nothing of it, Rainbow Dash. I draw so much attention wherever I go, so sometimes it's nice not to be noticed,” said Celestia.
Rainbow looked dubious. “If you say so, Princess.”
The Wonderbolt captain flew over to Rainbow. “So you're the foal who broke the sound barrier. Can you prove it?” he asked.
“Oh, um . . .” Rainbow lost some of her bravado. “Now?”
The captain shrugged. “We can give you a chance to warm up first.”
Rainbow's ears flicked. “Sure. Right here and now. With all the Wonderbolts and the princess and the mayor watching. No sweat.”
Celestia knew that pegasus magic worked a bit differently than that of the other tribes. Confidence was key. Without her confidence, Rainbow would not be able to recreate her rainboom.
“Perhaps it would be better if you wait until the Best Young Fliers' Competition in a couple of months,” suggested Celestia. “I'm sure you'll be more than ready to wow everypony then.”
“The Best Young Fliers' Competition?” Rainbow tilted her head. “Don't you have to be, like, sixteen to compete?”
Celestia smiled. “I'm sure I can pull a few strings.”
“Really?” her eyes widened. “Um, well, you really don't have to do that. I'll just wait like everypony else. I wouldn't want to make the other ponies look too bad, losing to a much younger pony, you know?” She let out a nervous laugh.
“That is very considerate of you,” Celestia said evenly. “If you should change your mind in the future, just let me know and I'll see if I can get the age lowered.”
Rainbow gulped. “Sure. You got it, Princess.”