Age 6:
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.
Pumpkin reflexively shoved his spectacles up the bridge of his snout as he peered over the scroll of the day.
“I will never understand why you favour pince-nez,” I remarked.
“Those framed glasses hurt my ears, so they do,” he replied affably, not taking his eyes from the neat line of hoofwriting. “And you say this was never finished?”
“Starswirl … had no time.” There was a lot of explanation behind my vagueness that I had no desire to go into. I still woke sometimes hearing his voice and seeing the ghostly afterimage of him bloody and stumbling around inside my war tent.
“Hmm.” Pumpkin tugged at his chin. He had no beard but the effect was the same. “Interesting. It’s almost … impossible, what he was trying to do.”
“Oh, I know.”
I laid my head on my crossed forelegs and regarded my former student. He had grown into a fine stallion, though never as bulky as his farmworking family. Decades of poring over books in the dancing light of a candles had not made for an especially physical lifestyle. He squinted myopically at the copy of Starswirl’s hornwriting, humming to himself in that way he always did when digging through his own thoughts to piece together a pattern that made sense of them all.
“Why bring it to me? Surely there have been ponies in the past who are far more talented with, ah, this kind of magic.”
I winced. “Just because you aren’t a unicorn doesn’t mean you aren’t one of the greatest magical minds I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”
“You flatter me,” he monotoned. “Hey!” He tumbled backwards under the cushion I had thrown at him. “That’s unfair, so it is! You caught me off guard!”
I laughed. It felt good. “You were becoming maudlin.”
Pumpkin harrumphed, readjusted his askew spectacles and returned to the scroll. He was clearly enthralled by the challenge I had set before him. Not even our setting or situation could distract him from the task.
I patted the mattress idly, as if testing its springiness. Long past were the days of straw filled beds and scratchy cloth. These days my bed smelled of wildflowers and was so stuffed with feathers I could have fashioned a new pair of alicorn wings from them and still had enough leftover for a battalion of pegasi.
A new pair of alicorn wings …
I stopped my patting and stared at my own hooves like they were the most interesting thing in the world.
“There’s … a way to finish this,” Pumpkin murmured. “If I could just … figure it out. Starswirl the Bearded wouldn’t half-write a spell that couldn’t be finished.” He lifted his gaze to me. “Would he?”
“Starswirl was not always understandable, even to me,” I shrugged. “I once heard him described as ‘possessing thoughts that circled in ever-decreasing loops within each other.’ That always struck me as very accurate for him.”
“Hmm. I prefer more straightforward folks, so I do.” Pumpkin pulled at his chin again. “Life’s complicated enough as ‘tis without adding obfuscation for the sake of it.”
“Indeed.” I ignored the voice in my head that cried out at me own deceitfulness.
Pumpkin’s jaw cracked a little at his expansive yawn. “Whoops, excuse me!”
“You’re excused. You know that you don’t have to solve the unsolvable spell in one night, right?”
“Oh I know.” He pushed his spectacles up again. “But this is fascinating, so it is. A spell like this could … well it could literally change a pony’s special talent! Change their whole destiny!”
“Mmm.” My hooftips were scuffed from rubbing against my golden shoes. I picked at a rough edge. “It could.”
“I mean … it’s not like I’m going to cast it blindly, as t’were,” Pumpkin said hastily. “But the possibilities are fascinating, so they are.”
“Mmm.”
“Imagine … a world where one’s cutie mark need not be a noose around one’s neck ... “
My head jerked up. “Excuse me?”
“A pony with a break cutie mark need not be a baker all his life,” Pumpkin continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “A gem cutie mark need not consign a soul to working in dark mines the rest of their days. A pegasus with a ground-bound cutie mark may exchange it for one with wings, so they might! Or -”
“Or an earth pony with a magical cutie mark need not live the life of a hornless unicorn,” I whispered, more to myself than to him.
His ears flicked back at me. “Well … yes, as t’were.”
“You still have regrets. Even after all these years, all you have learned, all you have achieved because of your cutie mark … you still regret it.”
He bowed his head. “I cannot lie to you, my princess.”
“Please. Don’t call me that when it’s just the two of us.” Mercifully I kept the crack from my voice. “If you had not gained your cutie mark … you would never have come to my school. We would never have met.”
He paused before replying, “I know.”
“And yet you still regret it?”
“Not entirely, Not anymore. I’m proud of what good I’ve done in the world and I’m aware I was only able to do that because of what’s on my rump, so I do.. But … I would have liked an option when I was a colt, so I would. It was hard … being the only one in my family not … ‘normal’.” He paused and I knew he was thinking about the empty reserved seats at his graduation ceremony. For some ponies it was just too hard to come to terms with a life that did not follow the patterns it had followed for generations. When Pumpkin spoke again, his voice was soft and wistful. “Sometimes I dream of tilling fields. I wake up and I could swear my fur is still flattened and sweat-drenched from wearing a yoke. But when I touch it …”
Silence rested between us, heavy and full of meaning either of us wanted to voice.
“I am sorry,” I said at last.
“No,” Pumpkin responded quickly. “Do not be sorry, my - ah, my Celestia. I may have regrets but you are surely not one of them, so you’re not.”
But I was never more aware than in that moment how much I couldn’t not replace the life he had lost. My wings flexed on their own accord. My gaze fell upon his bare shoulders, so often covered in a cape, now decorated only by a wisp of bedsheet. The expanse of his back that I could see looked … far too empty. Or maybe it was I who was far too empty.
Pumpkin let out a small noise of surprise when I closed the distance between us and pressed my lips to his. He tasted vaguely of mead from a long past dinner but as I explore his mouth I tasted something more: dreams and plans and crushing disappointment. When we broke apart we were both quite breathless.
He smiled up at me. I realised I had forced him onto his back, hiding the bare expanse. Starswirl’s scroll had rolled off the bed and onto the floor. Pumpkin’s face, framed by my own white hooves either side of him, creased into a familiar expression.
“If you wanted me to stop, ah, studying all you had to do was ask, as t’were.”
I laughed and bent to kiss him again.
“I do not regret you at all, my Celestia,” Pumpkin murmured into my ear as we moved together, becoming one in the pale moonlight coming through my chamber window. I revelled in the sensations he awoke within my body and my heart, even as the latter broke at his words.
“Stay with me,” I whispered desperately. A ragged gasp caught in my throat, swallowed moments later by his kiss. The rest of what I wanted to say disappeared into his mouth. Stay with me forever. Be more than just a mortal. Be by my side forever. You’ve come such a long, long way. Let me give you wings so you can stay with me.
“Yes,” he replied to the wrong thing. “I’ll stay. My sweet Celestia, I’ll stay with you.”
The cry I let out mingled with his, but as we collapsed together in a tangle of limbs and sweat-drenched hair, the echo of mine sounded more like crying than passion.
Court was boring most days. I am aware that it is not proper for a ruler to say such things about her own subjects but the fact of the matter is that perusing legislation in exhaustive detail, mediating endless land and other ownership disputes amongst the populace, perusing the same legislation as last time with minor alterations, arbitrating grain levies and playing nice with foreign dignitaries who would snap the spine of Equestria in a heartbeat if I showed so much as a hitn of weakness …. Well, it could get very, very wearing on a pony after a while, even an alicorn.
One might think that the interruptions provided by galas, banquets and formal balls might alleviate this tedium but the even harsher truth was that ‘social’ occasions were often anything but. I sometimes wondered when I had allowed affairs that were meant to be enjoyable become just another version of courtly duties. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. At least the ponies around me who got to dress up and pretend to like cucumber sandwiches seemed to be having a good time.
“You know, you don’t have to stand next to me all evening,” I murmured softly, my words nearly lost beneath the swell of music from the bandstand.
“I know.” Purple Pumpkin shot me a look that spoke a thousand words. “I just want to, so I do.”
“You should go out and enjoy yourself at the Gala.”
“Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Of course I am.”
His smile said ‘liar’ so loudly he did not need to give it voice.
“I have to stay here and greet the patrons,” I argued. “You have no such responsibility. I’m sure you’d much rather be dancing or something.”
“Dancing? Me?” he snorted.
“Given you are not permitted to retreat to your chambers to look over those dusty scrolls of yours, yes.”
He puffed out his lips in an adorable little moue. “I could be doing so much more good there than here, so I could.”
“That I do not doubt, yet we have appearances to keep up, Pumpkin. Your presence as my personal protege is required at the Grand Galloping Gala.” I nodded at the swirling crowd. “Your presence glued to my side, however, is not. Go. Mix a little. Enjoy yourself.”
“I’m perfectly fine here, thank you.”
“Pumpkin …”
He glared at the crowd. Tiny creases bracketed his eyes and the corners of his mouth. They became more pronounced in side profile. I wondered with a start when those has appeared. A small ball of tension screwed tight in my stomach. Pumpkin was getting older.
My wings twitched acccustorially. I forced myself to look away.
“Purple Pumpkin,” I said evenly. “As your mentor and princess I order you to go and mingle with the other partygoers.”
“What? I -”
“I order it, Pumpkin. Go.”
For a moment he stared at me in shock. Then, noticeably dragging his hooves, he descended the main staircase and merged into the crowd.
I released the breath I had been holding. Was I hoping he would defy me? Pumpkin? No.
And yet …
“Your majestyyyyy!” As if by magic the dignitary from Minos appeared before me. The enormous minotaur proffered one of two drinks in my direction and I politely accepted it into my telekinetic field.
“Lord Glaive.”
“Quite a shindig you’ve thrown here.” He settled into Pumpkin’s place. I tamped down my irritation and smiled benignly at him.
“Would that I could take all the credit but the Royal Master of Ceremonies is the true genius whose work you see laid before you.”
“Mmm, a chap named Puddinghorse, yes?”
“Puddinghead, actually.”
Lord Glaive threw back his head in a laugh. Minotaur emotions were always so big and loud. Everything about minotaurs was big and loud. I remembered with consternation our meeting the previous afternoon about trade agreements that had ended with him shouting about ponies thinking they were worth more than any other race because I would not undervalue our grain exports.
“Puddinghead? That’s even better!”
“The Puddingheads are a renowned family in Equestrian high society.” I eyed my glass but decided against sipping it. “Their line dates right back to the Unification.”
Lord Glaive nodded. “Good to keep track of family lines. Keeps from letting bad apples into the barrel.”
Given what I had heard of minotaur society’s attitude to ‘bad apples’ I chose to say nothing.
“Well, give Puddinghead my praise.” Lord Glaive swallowed his entire glass in one gulp. “Pretty good. Champagne’s not really my thing. Give me a good mead any day.” He shrugged. “One of these days you’ll have to come to Minos and try our Ouzo, princess. The king would be delighted to receive you.”
“Perhaps, Lord Glaive. There are many matters in Equestria that demand my attention before I may depart its borders. Until then, my diplomats and ambassadors do a fine job.”
Lord Glaive shrugged like he could not care less that I had rebuffed the offer. “There will always be matters demanding the attention of the ruler when she rules alone, princess.”
I did not reply.
“King Midas looks forward to the day he can send a royal wedding gift to Equestria.” He looked into his glass as if more champagne might have appeared. “Or perhaps a birthing gift.”
His sidelong look did not escape my notice.
“Perhaps, Lord Glaive,” I gritted, wanting nothing more in that moment than to pick him up with my magic and hurl him back onto the boat that had brought him here.
The rest of the conversation passed in a haze of niceties and hollow words that culminated in Lady Glaive fetching her husband for a dance. Seeing the tiny minotaur cow drag her husband away with an iron grip when he clearly wished to stay with me was heartening.
I scanned the party. Everypony - no, everyone, I corrected myself, spying several other dignitaries in the crowd - was having what appeared to be a good time. Lord Puddinghead himself was in the bandstand, a trumpet pressed to his lips. His feathered hat bounced jauntily. He was a darn sight more handsome than his ancestor - and had more brains too. That he had chosen to turn them to party-planning did not diminish his intellect one iota. As I watched, he tossed the trumpet into the air, spun in a pirouette, caught it and continued playing, purple mane bobbing in perfect rhythm.
Purple...
My eyes sought Purple Pumpkin out without permission. I almost cursed them when they found him. He was not in the middle of the dancefloor but somewhat to the edge, a circle of irritated partygoers giving him and his dancing partner a wide berth. I recognised the pretty white mare as Writing Desk, a usually demure daughter of the Minister of Finance. Her face was a mask of delight it never usually wore as she stood on her hind hooves and moved jerkily to the music. She danced like a pony who had never done so before but the sheer enjoyment in her every movement was almost palpable. And beside her, dancing only marginally better, Pumpkin was … smiling at her.
I looked away, a lump in my throat, and when the ambassador from Griffinstone hailed me I greeted her with far too much enthusiasm.
Wedding bells tolled throughout Canterlot. It was not every day that the Royal Vizier got married, after all. Master of Ceremonies Puddinghead had outdone himself on the celebrations. Canterlot would likely never see such a joyous event again.
At least, not in his lifetime.
He stood at the back of the Royal Hall, the only room big enough to hold all the invited guests. A crowd of earth ponies in muted colours stood closest to the front, a stark contrast to the clutch of white unicorn’s on the bride’s side of the aisle. Both families looked equally proud, however. Puddinghead and his daughters corralled everypony into their places with aplomb. The girls were as born to parties as their father. Well, aside from the eldest, who stared at the walls like the stonework was the most interesting thing she had ever seen. Nonetheless, she did her part and soon everypony was ready.
I played my part perfectly. I had memorised the words many years ago and they had never gotten stuck in my throat before. Writing Desk looked lovely in her mother’s dress and Pumpkin …
He had come to my chambers the night before - just to talk. I had prohibited anything intimate between us since the Gala. he had asked for my blessing.
“A little late, isn’t it?” I had joked. “You are set to marry her on the morrow. I shall not withhold my blessing at this stage.”
“Would you have before?” Pumpkin had asked me.
“Of course not!”
His sad smile had said ‘liar’ so loudly he did not need to give it voice.
When he kissed his bride I joined the rest of the congregation in applause. I followed the procession as we had rehearsed. During the wedding feast I ate and drank and was merry with the ponies around me. I even stamped my feet in applause when the new husband and wife took to the floor in their first dance.
And when it was time to raise the moon, I departed from the ongoing party to stand on the highest balcony Canterlot had to offer. I watched the bright disc bearing my sister’s distorted face raise into the sky and I sobbed as I wished I could tear off my own wings, plunge from the tower and die as a mortal.
I stood at the bedside in uncomfortable golden shoes and sank my attention into every pained molecule in my hooves. If I concentrated on my hooves, I reasoned in that unreasonable way ponies do in an impending crisis, that meant I could not be expected to focus too closely on the situation around me. The sight before me. The pony before me.
Pumpkin’s breathing hitched. “It fair makes me weep to have you look everywhere but at me, so it does.” His raspy voice, weak as a newborn kitten’s, nonetheless echoed in the room. “Am I that revolting a sight, Celestia?”
“Never.” I raised my gaze, taking in his withered body, sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. More clumps of thing fur had fallen out around his ears. It sat on the pillow, accusatory.
“Liar,” he laughed wheezily. “It also amazes me how you can lie so well to political figures and yet so badly to me.”
“I don’t lie badly. You just know me better than they do.”
His head jerked in an approximation of a nod. “That I do, I suppose.”
Eighty two years. It wasn’t enough time. To be honest, several lifetimes would not be enough time together.
“Will you miss me, Celestia?”
The question caught me off guard. “What a thing to ask!”
“And yet here I am, asking it anyway. Will you?”
“Of course I will, Pumpkin.”
“I rather think your memories of me shall fade over time, so I do.” He was smiling as he said it. I did not return the expression.
“Poppycock. I will remember you for the rest of my life.”
I think the shuffle of shoulders under the bedclothes was meant to be a shrug. It was hard to tell. Every so often tremors would run through his body like tiny shocks from that electricity the scientists in Van Hoofer were experimenting with. Pumpkin had been fascinated with ‘alternating currents’ since he first heard about them and made many trips to the laboratories that he said were going to change pony society for the better someday.
“Pumpkin.” I raised one horseshoe, paused for a moment, and then removed it with a flare of my horn. His hoof felt paper-fragile in mine. Gently, scared I would hurt him, I stroked the back of it the way I had done for years. Another tremor ran through him. “I will remember you forever.”
“Forever is a long time, Celestia, so it is.” He fixed me with one rheumy eye. The other was milky white but moved in my direction anyway. “Nopony can be expected to remember a whole lifetime of recollections forever. Not even you.” His mouth quirked. “Sun goddess.”
“Stop that.”
“What?”
“To you I am and will always be just Celestia.”
“You’re never just anything, Celestia.” Pumpkin paused as if thinking. “For a long time … you were my everything. I thought I would pull down the stars from the star and gift them to you if you’d asked me to. Whatever you’d have asked of me, I would have done for you.”
My chest lurched.
“Do you remember when you showed my Starswirl’s unfinished cutie mark magic?”
The lurch deepened into my stomach, where it felt like acid was eating my heart. “Yes?”
Pumpkin chuckled wryly. “Never did figure that stuff out. Always meant to go back to it but … well, there was always something more important to attend to, as t’were.”
I swallowed. “Nopony could fault you for what you chose to focus on. I hear nearly all of Van Hoofver owns at least one light bulb now. The candlemaker guild is quite vexed. Their representative comes to court at least twice a week to vent that I need to squash the threat to his industry.”
“Tell him to make his guild start marketing scented candles. Light bulbs are marvellous for turning night to day but the filaments smell like a burning dungheap.” Pumpkin coughed. His thin chest rose and fell more rapidly beneath the sheets. “Celestia … I don’t have much time left.”
“Don’t say that,” I replied quickly, though I knew it was true.
“Let me speak. Please.” He stared at me so hard that it rendered me silent. “I did not understand why you gave me that spell at the time. It took me a long time to hear the request you kept not saying.”
No no no no -
“And once I understood … I kept waiting for you to ask me. And waiting. And waiting. For years, I waited for you to ask. But you never did.”
I swallowed, my mouth dry as a desert. “I … I did try. Several times.”
“But?”
“But each time … I thought about what your answer might be.”
“And the thought of that stilled your tongue?”
The lack of his usual verbal tics made me stutter. “Y-yes.”
“You were so afeared of rejection you did not ask at all?”
“Partially.”
“Partially?”
“I … did not want to inflict this life on you.” My wings twitched open slightly. “This burden.”
“Oh my Celestia.” Pumpkin’s one good eye softened and his hoof turning upward in my grasp, holding me as tight as he was able.
For a moment my heart lifted back into my chest, still dripping acid but spurred on by hope.
“As I said, whatever you’d have asked of me, I would have done for you.”
“You would have done it.” I paused. “But would you have wanted to do it?”
“And therein lies the rub. I would have done whatever you wanted me to do because you wanted me to do it.” His gaze sharpened, becoming the incisive look I knew of old. “Even become an alicorn.” He nodded at my expression. “So. I was indeed correct. Until this very moment part of me wondered if it was even possible.”
“It … it is possible,” I whispered.
“At what cost though?”
“It is not dark magic. No sacrifices or blood pacts or selling your soul. Alicornhood is earned. Anypony can become one if they prove themselves worthy enough in the presence of a pre-existing alicorn. The magic is ancient - far more ancient than I - but benign.” My chin dipped. “But there is still a cost. Outliving those you love most. Being a stone lodged in place in the river of time. Seeing everypony carry on without you. Having a responsibility thrust upon you that does not care whether you wanted it or not.”
“You have regrets.”
“Don’t we all?”
A little laugh whooped past his lips. “That we do.” He shifted his gaze to the ceiling, his focus somewhere beyond it. “I … am not sure I could have coped with such regrets as well as you.”
“But you would have let me ascend you into alicornhood regardless.”
“I loved you, Celestia. Adored you. Worshipped you. Not as the Sun Goddess, but for being you: the kind, generous, funny, witty, honest, desirable mare you are down to your core.” He sighed. “But … over time … as I kept waiting for you to ask me that question … to give Starswirl’s scrolls back to me … I began to realise that might not be enough. I once heard one of those playwrights in Trottingham say that hate is merely love with its back turned. I realised that my love for you, however strong, would not be enough to sustain me through eternity on its own. I realised I had no other reason for wishing to ascend other than to be with you and because you wanted me to ascend. And … that is not a good enough reason to commit oneself to eternity. There needs to be more reasons for a pony to make that choice.”
I nodded. Tears beaded at the corners of my eyes but everything he said held true.
“I realised that I am better suited to mortality. Your memories of me, for as long as you retain them, will be of me loving you. I will be immortalised that way. Well, that and my literary legacy, as t’were. I appreciate the dedicated section in the royal library, by the way.”
I smiled. A tear slid past the corner of my mouth. I tasted salt but kept up that rigid smile. “You are most welcome. Your work has become the backbone for so many avenues of research that I could do nothing less.”
“Ironic. So much magical and technological advancement because of a little earth pony who should have grown up a farmer working the fields.” Pumpkin closed his eyes and smiled. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“You will be remembered, Pumpkin.” I held his hoof tighter. “I will not ever forget you. Not ever.”
“Thank you.” His breathing lengthened. Each breath seemed to rattle a little more in his chest. “Thank you … for not asking me that question now. Thank you for not making me say no to you on my deathbed. I’ve lived a good life, Celestia. I’m proud of what I’m leaving behind. Everypony has regrets but I like to think I have fewer than most.” He turned his head and looked at me, though clearly the effort was become greater with each passing second. “You will find somepony someday who is better suited to ascension, Celestia. Somepony whose whole focus is not you and pleasing you alone. Somepony who values friendship and love and learning in equal measure. Somepony whose ascension would be beneficial to all Equestria, to you and to him or herself.” His grip slackened. “I … love … you … my … Celesssssssssss …”
I stayed at that bedside for a long time. Eventually I placed Pumpkin’s limp foreleg across his chest, placed my golden horseshoes back on my feet and left to tell the nurses that it was time.
“Goodbye, Purple Pumpkin,” I murmured. “I … hope you’re right.”