Princess Celestia; diarch of the sun, goddess of Equestria, and universally hottest princess, took a long, delicate sip from the edge of her cup. A tittering from the trees revealed the presence of a blue robin, hipping and hopping across the branches as it watched over their scene.
Celestia regarded the bird for a moment, their eyes meeting, black beady spots to Celestia’s deep gaze. The silence dragged on, Celestia breathed softly, and as the bird went back to its nest-building, she, too, went back to her tea.
“Princess?”
A small voice piped up next to her, a frail squeak over the soft babbling of the brook. Princess Celestia glanced up, turning her attention across the small table, over the crumpets, and down to her once protégé, now turned fellow princess. Twilight Sparkle shifted nervously in her seat, brow creased, a second cup floating delicately in her aura.
She kneaded a hoof into the tablecloth, her teacup bobbing momentarily before she took her sip, and set it aside. “If I may...” asked she, and leaned forwards, before reverting back as if unsure.
Celestia smiled. Nodding her approval, she set down her cup. “You may.”
“Um, well...” Twilight pursed her lips. She swallowed. “How does it work? The sun, I mean.”
Celestia paused at this. Her eyebrow raised, and she leaned in closer, nearly elbowing the sandwiches. “Whatever do you mean, Twilight?” she said.
Twilight’s fur bristled; some kind of flight response, Celestia guessed. Ponies always seemed to do that around her, Twilight especially. She could never quite pin it down, but no matter what she tried she could never get ponies around her to just relax. She could tell by how they shifted their wings, and fur stood up on their necks, that they were uncomfortable.
“Well...” said Twilight, hesitant at first. She bit her lip. “It—How you move the sun; i-it doesn’t make any sense.”
Twilight glanced under the table for a moment and Celestia heard her whisper something beneath her breath, but couldn’t make out just what it was. She was about to ask on it, when Twilight glanced back up, her cheeks pink.
“I did all the calculations,” she said, glancing away for a moment to breath, and then continuing, confidence forced. “The sun is massive. I mean, massive—a burning ball of plasma consisting of hydrogen, helium...” She turned in her seat, ticking off each item with a tap of her hooves. “...aragon, lithium, iron, heavy metals, and a heck of a lot of magicotanium... Then you get a total mass over...”
She paused, the mental cogs whirling inside Twilight’s head. Celestia saw her eyes cross, and the tiny pink tip of a tongue stick out before Twilight snapped back. “Five-hundred celestiatonnes! That’s more than any pony could even lift in a lifetime, and you do it every day—twice a day—and you don’t even break a sweat! How!” she screamed, “How do you do it?”
Twilight heaved, then blinked. She glanced down at the table and then, giggling and snorting, extracted her hoof from the pastries and returned to her seat. “I—I mean,” she said, running hooves through her mane to hide the riding embarrassment. “Can you... explain it to me, please?”
One grin, and pleading eyes, and Celestia felt herself falter.
“Um...” She looked down to her cup then set it down on her saucer. “Um... Twilight...” She frowned. Suddenly the floor became very interesting as Celestia avoided her student’s—ex-student’s gaze. “It’s...” There was a chirp from the robin above, which caused Celestia’s ears to twitch. “...Celestiaton?”
“Oh.”
The reddening on her cheeks only grew further. The fur on her neck, Celestia observed—and indeed she couldn’t help but to stare as it did—followed suit, puffing Twilight up like a giant purple peacock, or possibly a really soft teddy bear. She made a mental note to get Twilight some conditioner for her birthday; something nice, strong.
“So, um...” Twilight shifted uncomfortably. “C-Celestiaton is this—” She sucked in a breath, and then continued, “It’s this new measurement I came up with: an exponential scale defined as the total mass of cake one would have to consume in order for Princess Celestia’s thighs to reach double their initial circumference.” She attempted to illustrate with a stack of floating sandwiches, each the next run of a growing ladder. “One celestiaton is approximately eight-hundred kilograms; two celestiatonnes would be that to the factor of two, and three, and so forth.”
Celestia considered this for a moment, then whispered, “Okay,” after which, Twilight’s chest fluff fluffed further. “...anyway,” said she. Celestia slurped her tea then set the pot to pouring her a new cup, one with a little extra kick to it, this time. It was starting to look to be one of those days. “I don’t actually move the sun.”
“You...” Her embarrassment all but gone; Twilight cocked her head to the side. “...don’t?”
“No.” Celestia took a sip. The buzz hit like a mule, forcing a calm, not at all flinching and very much regal smile across her face. She gave a stern nod, catching herself mid sway. “I move the earth instead.”
Twilight cocked her head the other way, her wings fluffing as she began to squirm. “... If by ‘Earth’ you mean”—she glanced to Celestia for a moment—“Equestria, then... Like what Cadance does?”
“Oh, no, no, no..” Celestia flicked a hoof at Twilight. She stifled a giggle at the silly prospect. To think Cadance, of all ponies, could make the earth move. “Nothing like that, Twilight,” she said, “I mean literally; move the planet and it just looks like the sun is moving. That’s far easier than moving the sun itself.”
“But—”Twilight’s eyes flicked away and she frowned. “But... how’s that any better?” she said finally. “If you moved Equestria, then what keeps everypony from flying off due to the inertia? What about when Discord was flipping the sun upside down?”
“I can’t say anything about how Discord works,” said Celestia. She took a long draw from her cup, and then set it back on the table. “Me help me, I’d be rich-er and famous-er if I did. All I know is how I work, and how I work is by moving Equestria.”
“Okay...” Twilight leaned back, her brow creasing in thought. She quickly reached for her tea, cupping it between her hooves as she regarded the contents. She smiled and looked Celestia in the eyes. “Tell me, then”—She took a sip—“How does it work, Princess to Princess?”
Celestia’s brow furrowed. She lapsed into a long silence, one only broken by the constant babbling of the brook and the rattling of a chipmunk battling the robin over some nuts. “Well...” she said then turned over in her seat. “It’s...”
She felt her crack smile—smile crack—and Celestia quickly went in for another long slurp of her tea. She watched Twilight’s eyes over the edge of her cup, a thin smile spreading across the mare’s face with every second that passed.
“I—” Celestia squawked and deepened her gulp, gargling on her tea as she drew on the silence. She could feel the moment passing, and still Celestia held her pause, mentally galloping through her metaphorical archives for any sort of—“Luna!”
Her hoof snapped to the corner, Twilight’s gaze following as they both settled on Princess Luna. The diarch of the moon stood tall and foreboding, deer in the headlights at the entrance to their small garden corner. “Uh...” Luna faltered, retreating hind-ways out of the scene.
“Sister, Luna, dear,” Celestia called, “How do I raise the sun?”
She stopped, turning back around to Princess Celestia and adding her ‘are you serious glare’. “Pff—” Luna snorted. “Didst thou forget, again?”
“N-no.” It was Celestia’s turn to blush. She stuttered, the heat rising and her chest puffing as she gestured to Twilight—currently staring at her with a guffawed grin—Sparkle. “I-I just don’t want to. Explain it to Twilight, please.”
Luna sighed, slow and heavy, and rolling her eyes as she sidled back into the tiny clearing. “Fine,” said she. “The spell for moving the sun is a multi-part levitation matrix directed at the caster, their planet, and its residents. Part ‘A’ is a standard levitation field interlaced by a temporal-spatial distortion array directed at negating the planet’s latent inertial potential by way of gravitation warp manipulation.” She paused to breathe then shifted to a more comfortable lecturing posture. “Part ‘B’ complements Part ‘A’ by introducing an opposing counter-force to any acceleration generated via the unexpected movement.” She gasped. “However, due to the limitations of the caster and the implicit magical conduit induction point, these can only be used to limited effect. Small discrepancies above eight celestiatonnes—”
Celestia felt her eye twitch and, keeping her royal visage, she gave Luna a very unroyal glare. “Excuse me?”
Luna tipped her head, unfaltering. “Yes,” she agreed. “You have to admit, Miss Sparkle’s form of measure is extremely accurate,” she said with a smirk. “I dare say better than the ‘ass-ton’ of my own devising.”
Celestia’s eyes twitched, both of them.
Luna resumed her previous stance, tapping at her chin. “Now,” she said, “Where was I—ah yes!” She turned back to her previous, lecturing, tone. “Any small alteration would, of course, result in the local populace experiencing a slight distortion in their perceived local gravitational constant—not unlike that of the Cloudsdale Coliseum in the up-season. Larger differentials, though, would prove harmful to both the caster and the planet’s occupants.
It was here that Princess Luna paused to gasp for breath. “Aaaaand,” she breathed, “Th-thus Part ‘C’ was introduced to generate a gravitational well fluctuation offering compensation for any remaining inertial effect.” She gave a stern nod.
“Uh...” Twilight said, turned from Celestia to Luna. “That was—
Princess Luna took a sip from her mug, then shoved it back into her hammerspace, resuming. “The last component serves in part of the caster encapsulating the geometric transformations and high-level algebra required in selecting and balancing each of the previous two methods such that the desired result can be easily achieved, leaving room only for minor adjustments from Celestia or myself.”
Then silence.
And more silence.
“You are welcome,” Luna said. She took a quick bow, taking her leave, then spun about face and trotted away, hoisting her coffee mug in her magic as she went.
Luna’s steps turned into a trot, then a gallop, and then just plain running as Twilight and Celestia sat in silence.
“So...” Celestia looked, grinning like a school filly, to her former student, Twilight Sparkle, who very much had gone wall-eyed.
Twilight blinked and ruffled her feathers. She glanced to the table, smacking her lips. Her forehead creased in to a scowl and, at last, she looked up to Celestia. “What.”
“Does that answer your question?” Celestia asked.
Twilight, shivering, Sparkle, jerked her head up, snapped out of her dumbfounded stupor. “I—N—” her eyes crossed as the mental cogs began whirling in her head, hungry to consume this new knowledge. She cocked her head and a slither of pink poked out from Twilight’s mouth, a tiny bit of tongue as her eyebrows drew together.
Celestia watched with a composed smile. Patient, at first, then raising her eyebrows in concern as the silence drew on. For a moment she could’ve sworn she saw wisps of smoke trailing from behind Twilight’s ears, and she raised a hoof. “... Are you—“
Twilight added a scrunch, causing a sudden lance of pain through Celestia’s chest. “I guess?” said Twilight, looking up to a very much in pain Princess Celestia.
Celestia nodded wearily, rubbing circles on the spot over her heart. She swallowed and, forcing back any motherly urges to fawn all over the mare, she painted a cracking smile across her regal visage. “A-and?”
“Well...” The pain suddenly receded, allowing Celestia a moment to relax and catch her breath, as Twilight resumed all normal levels of adorkable. “It certainly explains why you would need an entire team of unicorns to cast—” The moment was short lived. Celestia felt herself doubled over as Twilight looked back up to her, meeting eyes with big, shimmering, lights. “But how do you cast it?” she asked. Then, Twilight’s face contorted in all manner of ways Celestia could only describe as heart wrenchingly—Me, mother of Tartarus, that is cute—Celestia clenched her teeth. “How did I cast it!?” she whispered, half screamed.
“G-Good observation,” said Celestia, screaming internally. She took a sip from her cup, waiting a moment to compose herself. How long this cup of tea had been lasting her pricked at the back of her mind. That, and how it felt a lot cooler than earlier, but both thoughts were banished within moments as she came down under the strong buzz of her strongest brew. “Ah...” she sighed happily, smacked her lips, and then set the cup back where it belonged. “I don’t.”
Twilight frowned. “You...don’t?”
“I don’t,” Celestia nodded, “yes. One of the first things I developed as a princess was a method of persisting spells by imbuing its effects into an inanimate object. In fact—” Puffing her chest out with pride, Celestia thumped a hoof against herself and said, “That’s how I became a princess.” It was true, mostly. It may just be the tea talking, but she distinctly remembers a ‘a holy Faust I have wings’ event shortly after finishing Luna’s unfinished assignment. Mother told her it was something nopony have ever done before.
“You mean there’s a glass orb that lets you control the sun?”
“Oh no, not at all,” said Celestia, “That would be horrible for security.” She sipped her tea. There was a loud, airy, sucking noise and she glanced down at the cup in contempt. Then, setting the offensive empty cup down, Celestia crossed her hooves and sat back, exclaiming, “It’s the sun.”
Twilight seemed unconvinced. She cast a glare to Celestia, eyebrow raised, and Celestia gestured upwards. Twilight followed the gesture then her eyes widened, her mouth dropping open in realisation. “... Oh.”
They both nodded together. “All I have to do is establish a connection to the sun. There’s a three-way handshake, I exchange a sample of my alicorn magic, and the spell automatically recognises me as the original caster. Then I can do whatever I want.” She paused, with a glance to the side. “Well, almost anything I want. Luna tried removing the spell once. It didn’t end well.”
“Hm...” Twilight hummed. Her horn flickered and the pot took flight between them, flitting past the crumpets and tipping into Celestia’s cup. She filled both their cups and set the pot back down, laying the warmer back over its top.
Princess Celestia, with practiced ease and poise, reached elegantly across the table, grabbed Twilight’s cup, and promptly dumped the contents out into the lilacs. She then replaced the cup on its saucer and summoned a second pot from the kitchen to top it up fresh.
Twilight took the cup in her aura, swirling its contents. “That sounds a lot like cloud-based engineering to me,” she said.
“Oh now,” said Celestia. Taking a gulp from her own cup, she quickly shook her head. “This is much older than that.”
Twilight sipped her tea, humming slightly, and leaning back in her chair as she finally—and much to Celestia’s relief—relaxed in the cool morning air. “How so?”
Celestia smirked. “It’s Sun-based.”
“One last thing.”
“Hm?”
“What did you put in the tea?”
“Clove leaves, why?”