It was the first time Celestia ever cried. She knelt at Prism Shine's side, her foalish limbs quaking with every sob that came out of her petite lungs. She clung desperately to her dear friend's wrinkled neck, trying desperately to make sense with her weeping breath what all her immortal words failed to convey.
An emerald glen circled the dew-laden bed of soft leaves and grass upon which Prism Shine lay. Everywhere around them, the eternal forest hummed with life, brimming with spiraling orbs of iridescent light still settling from the dawn of Creation. The air of the world was crisp and new, and it echoed with every rasping breath Prism Shine had to give. A circle of brightly colored fillies and colts surrounded the scene from a distance, their glossy eyes absorbing a new and somber shade of beauty that was just now drawing black lines across the immaculate face of the earth.
“Prism...” Celestia choked, her voice coming out in childish squeaks. “Prism, I am so sorry. I should have seen this was coming. I should have prepared you. I should have—”
“Shhhh...” Prism's gray eyes squinted through a mucous film. A weak smile graced her alabaster face beneath a mane of rainbow strands. “Your M-Majesty...” She reached a shaking hoof up. Celestia gripped it in earnest as Prism Shine wheezed and fought the shivers to say, “You have... g-given me everything.” A single tear bled from her sockets. Her horn shook, a fragmented thing reduced to calcified dust. “You have made the world. You have carved the oceans. All of my life, I have been surrounded by you... blessed by you. I've breathed in your glory and laughed in your divine c-company...” She coughed as her thin eyes tensed in a wave of fitful pain. “I do not know where I am going, my Princess. But wherever it is... you have prepared me.” She smiled as the scarlet in her cheeks showed for one last time. “You have... you h-have...”
“Don't... Don't sp-speak like you're just one of my subjects!” Celestia whimpered. A silver tiara rattled around her horn, almost too large for her tiny head. The Princess hissed through clenched teeth and fought to say, “You're more than the rest of Creation! You're my friend! You're my everything...”
“I... am happy to have been your fr-friend...” Prism Shine hoarsely said. She gazed past Celestia and smiled faintly at the silent ponies of the First Age. “But your everything w-waits for you and you alone, your Majesty...”
“No... No!” Celestia's bright pink mane shook in the glow of the new world. She collapsed, huddling by Prism Shine's side as her face glistened with tears. “Not without you! The world won't be the same!”
“No...” Prism Shine dizzily shook her head, gulped, and said, “It will be different, Princess. And it will be glorious... so long as your light is there to sh-shine on it...”
Celestia sniffled. She cupped Prism Shine's weak hoof to her face and nuzzled it, christening the elder's dry flesh with her tears. “Prism Shine...” She shuddered. “Please, tell me. Tell me what you want me to do.”
Prism Shine took a deep breath. A sudden jolt ran through her frail body. Her eyes briefly widened, grasping an invisible darkness that loomed above the zenith of all Creation. For once, she trembled like an infant. Her aged lips moved slowly. “Stay with me, my princess,” she dryly exhaled. “Don't leave my side, please.”
Celestia gulped and smiled at her. “Never,” she said.
Celestia's friend grinned, and then she did nothing. The world went silent as her body deflated, and Prism Shine was as still as the shadows of the heavy forest looming all around.
Celestia blinked. Her lips quivered and her eyes clouded over with tears as she shook her head, thrashed, and buried her face into the unicorn's neck. “Nnngh-No! Prism Shine! Prism Shine, don't leave me!” Her sobs were fitful little explosions at first, but then they collected into grand wails that shook the foliage all around. Leaves scattered from overhead branches and flowers bent over on themselves. The ring of young ponies bowed their heads and trotted away from their mourning ruler, especially as a divine shadow settled upon the scene.
A glittering miasma of dull shades coalesced slowly on the far end of the glen. Hoofprints formed in the soil, around which fresh flowers materialized and then burned to ash with each subsequent impression. Billowing upwards like a plume of smoke, a cosmic figure took shape. A glorious alicorn stood above Celestia's weeping form. His sprouting wings were colored with the brilliance of stars, and when he spoke it was as if thunder was rolling backwards into the heavens.
“Why is it that you weep, Celestia?” He orbited the earthen bed upon which the deceased unicorn's body rested. A crater of growing and dying grass formed a shifting circle of life around the center of the glen. “Did I not foretell that this would happen? Were my warnings not enough to reach you through these bright decades of discovery?”
Celestia hiccuped, sobbed, and gazed up at him with pleading eyes. “Father! Father, please! Bring her back!”
A pair of eyes stared down at her, brighter than the birthplace of all stars. “I cannot, dear daughter.” The voice was neither joyous nor mournful. His breath carried the majestic indifference of crumbling mountains. “She was born unto nothing, and must return to nothing.”
“But why?!” Celestia whimpered. She wiped her face with a forelimb and gazed in anguish at Prism Shine's limp body and colorful mane. “She was so precious. So beautiful. Why must this be the fate of our subjects? Why must ponies come into being... only to someday not be?”
“Dearest Celestia...” He trotted over towards her and enfolded a wing of sparkling bands about her petite figure. She closed her eyes and nuzzled his effluent touch as he spoke into her ear. “There is one constant in the universe, and that is magic. This world we've created will never run out of it, but it will always run out of souls who can use it.” He raised her chin with a translucent hoof, forcing their eyes to connect. “We are the exception, daughter. We are eternally bound by magic, as magic has bound us to make order out of chaos. It is in our essence to maintain the balance of things. For that reason, we can only possess half of the reserves that the cosmos grant us. To carry any greater shares, to upset the order of birth and decay, would only make the heavens collapse in on themselves.”
“But...” Celestia's lips quivered as she gazed deeply into the eternal well of his mighty visage. “Why must there be death? I do not understand, Father.”
His eyes burned with immutable wisdom. “We are immortal, Celestia. It is not our place to learn, but to provide.” He turned and gestured towards the line of ponies watching from afar. “We must be a bastion of strength for them, my daughter. For it will be mortals like them who determine the glory of this world, and how it chooses to blossom in the order that we have maintained.”
Celestia breathed slowly, her tears drying. Still, her face hung in a pained expression as she gazed lovingly at Prism Shine once more. “If I had known what I know now...” She shuddered. “I would have given her a sweeter taste of Creation. She was the first to walk this world we made, and the first to die on it. More than anything I have ever shone light on, she deserves permanence.”
“My daughter, look at me.”
Celestia obeyed with a pair of humble eyes.
“I love you, and I wish the best for you in the eons of labor you have yet to endure. So heed my words...” His shadow encompassed her as he gravely added, “When we planted light upon the fields of Creation, Celestia, it was a divine thing. But there will come a time when our brilliance won't be enough. It will take a great, unknowable darkness to test the luminescence that we have bequeathed life. That is an abyss that we can never, ever follow our children down, no matter how much we love them.”