It was a mess.
A complete and utter mess that had unfolded before Atlas that day. Looking back on it, he felt like maybe the gods had tuned in just to fuck with him one last time or something, because that whole sequence of events was just plain dumb.
Truly, he felt like the Greek God M. Night Shamalamadingdong was currently directing his life.
He’d finally found the two sisters, only to discover they were the daughters of his long lost friend, along with the whiplash of finding out she was dead, but not really. And just as he thought he could fix everything, a random magical surge from Luna destroyed the statues of her parents.
The resulting reversion into a flesh and bone pony, was unhealthy, to say the least. Which is to say… it was a mess. In quite the literal way, actually.
He just stood there dumbfounded at the sight of his old friend making a mess of her beautiful garden. Celestia meanwhile had finished calming down Luna, and after realizing that half of her house was missing, moved towards Atlas having assumed at this point that he could be trusted.
From there, the problems just kept piling up. Ranging from having to explain to Celestia the true meaning of death, to breaking his promise to save her parents all the way to trying to calm down a hysterical filly while doing his hardest to not lose it himself. What Celestia needed then, was some sort of stability, a calm adult to cry on.
It didn’t help that she more or less hated him for going back on his promise.
Eventually he managed to move Celestia and Luna into what remained of their kitchen and away from the dismembered bodies, which he didn’t have the time yet to do anything about. Celestia cried a lot that day and continued directing childish insults at Atlas. They were relatively tame but it still stung. All the while, Luna was oblivious to what was going on, happily trying to play with her sister and Atlas, but eventually fatigue caught up with them and they all fell asleep on the uncomfortable chairs.
The next morning, Atlas made to complete the task that had fallen into his lap. Even before Celestia and Luna had woken up he carefully searched and gathered all of the strewn about body parts, all the while the morbidity of the task weighed him down as he went about his solemn duty. It took him longer than he imagined it would to find the head of the yet unnamed father of Celestia and Luna, but eventually he had gathered everything.
While he felt like puking, his demeanor also had a certain kind of numbness to it, as if his spirit had detached from his body to allow him to work without breaking down. Like a mindless robot, he dug out two graves with his magic and deposited the corpses in them gingerly before tucking them in with a blanket of soil.
Atlas went into the forest and returned with the biggest rock he could find, which was almost twice his size and put it down above the graves. Using the spell he’d usually used for carving his arrays, he inscribed the rock with Vibrant Colors name. He’d have to ask Celestia what her father’s name was once she woke up.
While waiting for this to occur, Atlas made sure that the grave would remain undisturbed by carving various arrays into the improvised gravestone. Since he still had time to spare, he re-arranged the flowers of Vibrant’s garden around the graves and cleaned up as much as he could afterwards.
After he had done everything he needed to and ran out of work, Atlas sat down a respectable distance away from the newly created graves and solemnly looked upon them.
While Luna was a bit too young to appreciate the gravity of their situation, Celestia had a pretty good grasp on it. Saying she was unhappy about it would be a gross understatement, and Atlas did his best to deal with the upset filly.
It took a lot of talking and convincing, but eventually Celestia came around and agreed to let Atlas take care of herself and Luna. He’d have probably just taken them under his wing anyway, but everything would be a lot easier if he could coax the filly into willfully accepting his care.
With Vibrant’s home essentially in ruins, Atlas invited Celestia to come live with him at his “secret cave”, which she reluctantly agreed to. Incidentally, they weren’t even that far from Vanhoover, at most it would take them a week to go there, if they traveled at a sedate pace.
And thanks to Atlas knowing some basic healing magic, he wouldn’t even have to worry about somepony dying of dysentery.
“Are we there yet?” Celestia asked in a slightly miffed tone.
“Not yet, we should arrive sometime tomorrow I’d wager,” Atlas replied, walking next to her.
They had been walking for five days now, and had made pretty good time at that. Considering that he was traveling with curious children, he was expecting to get side-tracked a lot. As it turned out, Celestia seemed to have unending stamina similar to a happy dog, so walking a great distance didn’t seem to be a problem. She hadn’t really talked a lot during the whole journey, aside from asking a few things here and there, predominantly whether or not they had arrived yet. Atlas assumed that this was due to the fact that she had just recently lost both of her parents, and he didn’t blame her.
Wounds like that took a long time to heal. It was actually pretty impressive that she was even willing to accompany him so soon after the fact, without much complaint.
Luna, on the other hand, was quite the happy-go-lucky little foal. Oblivious to the hardships of life, she spent the journey either travelling in Atlas’ backpack and sticking her head out like a dog out of a car-window, or climbing around on Atlas himself.
While Atlas had never been overly fond of babies in the past, he didn’t mind Luna at all. In fact, he thought she was downright adorable. The one thing that worried him, though, was the fact that Celestia seemed slightly jealous of her little sister. She was suffering while the actual culprit, however accidental, was happily enjoying life.
He could see the conflict in Celestia’s eyes whenever she looked Luna’s way, between wanting to blame her for her parents death, and not being able to blame the sole remaining member of her family.
“Is… is your home… nice?” Celestia asked suddenly.
Celestia hadn’t really spoken much up to this point, to the point where she hadn’t even asked where they were going or where Atlas lived. So having her suddenly express interest in something took Atlas by surprise. Not in a bad way of course, since it might hint at her starting to recover from the shock.
“It’s a bit out of the way, but I’d say so, yeah,” Atlas replied while smiling. “I made it myself, with the help of a few… friends.”
“Will they be living with us?” Celestia asked, genuine curiosity in her voice.
“Sadly, they won’t,” Atlas said. “They’ve… moved on, I guess. I… I’m sure I’ll see them again in the future, but who knows when that’ll be.”
“Oh,” Celestia said, averting her eyes.
Atlas winced mentally at seeing this, realising that he might just have reminded her that she’d never see her parents again, while simultaneously rubbing in her face that he’d be able to see his lost friends again.
“It’s actually like a cave, since we just dug into the site of a mountain,” Atlas tried to bring the conversation back again. “The view from the second floor is pretty amazing.”
Celestia nodded in acknowledgement but otherwise remained silent, causing Atlas to sigh mentally. Well, even if he smothered the attempt at conversation as soon as it appeared, it was a start. Given some more time, Celestia would surely come to accept and overcome the loss of her parents. Atlas just had to make sure that he’d be there for her and Luna.
The latter had taken to standing on Atlas’ shoulder using his head as some sort of vantage point to curiously watch the world slowly passing by. He made sure to stabilize her with magic so she wouldn’t fall off.
And like that, they continued towards a new home for the two fillies that would one day change the world.
“Well, this is it,” Atlas announced. “We’re here.”
With one eyebrow raised, Celestia looked at Atlas skeptically. Just to make sure, she once again, looked all around them, but still came up empty.
“What do you mean? There’s nothing here!” Celestia exclaimed. “Just rocks and trees.”
“I see you’ve noticed,” Atlas smirked. “But, actually it’s a well crafted spell to make you think that there’s nothing here. A powerful illusion, if I’m to be exact. Follow me, the path to the entrance is over here.”
Atlas lead Celestia over to the small path leading upwards, Luna sleepily checking what was going on from the comfort of Atlas’ saddlebags. Slowly they ascended, Atlas being the first to pass over the illusions threshold, a smile appearing on his face when he heard the small gasp behind him shortly after.
“Welcome, to your new home,” Atlas said grandly, gesturing to what little of the secret lab that could actually be seen from the side. Namely, the balcony on the first floor and the safety railing.
“Wow, I didn’t know you could do something like that with magic!” Celestia said excitedly.
Apparently, she had still been sceptical even after Atlas had told her, but seeing it with her own eyes finally convinced her. Coincidentally, while she was still in a gloomy mood, seeing something like this seemed to distract her childish mind from her sadness for a bit.
“My good friend Starswirl helped me set this up, he was truly a master in his field,” Atlas said. “But come, let me show you what’s inside.”
Celestia followed Atlas into the main research cave that made up the entrance and her mouth opened up wide at seeing all the materials, research scrolls and doo-dads strewn about. It was actually pretty messy, but that’s just how researchers rolled, and apparently it looked like a wonderland of interesting things for a young filly.
“This here is what we call the main cavern, it’s where I do most of my experiments,” Atlas explained.
“Experiments? Are you an inventor?” Celestia asked excitedly.
“Something like that, I guess,” Atlas said.
“Cool,” Celestia responded, making Atlas feel like he just gained a few brownie points with her.
“Well, the cave is split up into two floors, but this one might not be that interesting to you two,” Atlas explained. “Pretty much everything on the ground floor is dedicated space for research, after all. So let’s just go upstairs, where the living arrangements are.”
“I’d still like to see everything down here eventually,” Celestia said meekly. “Would that be okay?”
“Of course!” Atlas beamed. “I’ll gladly show you around. But after such a long journey, we should really get some rest, in a proper bed.”
Celestia’s face lit up when she heard that she’d get to sleep in a bed again. After having spent the last week sleeping outside on mostly uncomfortable makeshift bedding, she was really looking forward to it, and eagerly followed Atlas upstairs.
They entered into the living room, a spacious cave that was sparsely decorated. Most of the furnishing, like the table and cupboards were bought from Vanhoover and brought over. Only a few things were made out of wood, while almost all of the remaining furniture and necessities were conveniently carved out of the stone that made up the walls.
Several doorways led out of the living room and Atlas made to show Celestia where each of them led.
“In here is the kitchen,” Atlas explained. “Since I’ve been absent for quite some time, there’s not much food around, so we’ll have to go look for some tomorrow.”
Next up he showed her where his bedroom was located, a rather small cave, which only housed a bed. The walls had been carved into the shape of bookshelves, which were filled to the brim with tomes that he had nicked from the Crystal Kingdom.
“This room once belonged to my son, I guess you’ll be living in here from now on,” Atlas explained as he showed her Discord’s room. “I’ll have to put another bed in here for Luna.”
“You have a son, Mr. Atlas?” Celestia asked tentatively.
“Still do, and drop the mister,” Atlas said with a chuckle.
“Where is he now?”
“He… went on a journey to see more of the world,” Atlas said. “I don’t know where he is right now, but I’m sure he’s doing good somewhere… Moving on!”
Atlas lead Celestia towards the last important thing that he wanted to show her, the balcony. They stepped outside into the cool afternoon air. It was actually in the middle of the night, technically, but things like time held little meaning since Discord had set out on his, “journey”.
“This is my favorite place: the balcony!” Atlas announced grandly while Celestia was blown away by the view before her.
Before the world went to shit, the view was quite beautiful. You could see Vanhoover clearly from here, as well as the sea. Of course, the absolute chaos that was Vanhoover was quite a sight to see, what with all it’s floating buildings, rioting furniture and the occasional color change of the sky.
“It’s beautiful…” Celestia said in awe, trying to take in everything spreading out before her.
Atlas could understand her fascination quite well, since he couldn’t get enough of this view. He stopped watching the excited little filly and turned his eyes towards Vanhoover, thinking about what was to come in the future. They had finally arrived at Atlas’ old and the sisters new home; from here on out, he’d have to give it his best shot at raising the future rulers of Equestria.
Starting tomorrow, this lifeless cave would finally be back to it’s former glory.