//------------------------------// // Where We Once Were // Story: The Olden World // by Czar_Yoshi //------------------------------// "There." Shinespark sat in the cargo bay of the Immortal Dream, looking just a dull yet slightly more frustrated than when she began. "That's where it came from. It let me fly using my horn." Celestia had sat patiently throughout the whole tale. "An unusual ability. The last time I heard of a pony who could do that was many hundreds of years ago." Shinespark turned again to face the wall. "Apparently it wasn't unusual enough." "I could hear the fire in your voice, recounting your past experiences and feelings," Celestia said. "You still feel them keenly. Your dream hasn't changed." "Has it?" Shinespark growled. "The city I was fighting for is gone." "Nothing is ever truly gone as long as it lives in memory, my little pony," Celestia answered, shaking her head. "You cannot care about something that doesn't exist. Merely caring is enough to make it live, even if as nothing more than potential for the future. Because that is the nature of all dreams, is it not? Every cutie mark is like this, both north of the mountains and south." Shinespark looked up. "What are you offering? My city's economy is destroyed, its travel options cut off, and all it can produce is enough food to sustain the population. Even if you offered me a trade contract and free passage to ship things across your mountains, it wouldn't matter. There's nothing I'd be able to do the next time something threatens that dream. It's dead, just like Valey. So stop pretending otherwise." "I am not the one pretending," Celestia gently murmured. Shinespark's hackles rose. "What are you implying?" "How different are you now from how you were then?" Celestia held out a hoof. "I see a young mare who is frustrated by her powerlessness in the face of things she knows deserve to be changed. You call it hopeless because there's nothing you can do, not because there's nothing that needs to be done." "Could you be any more obvious!?" Shinespark raised her voice. "I know that! There's nothing I can do now, and there was nothing I could do then! All my cutie mark was was a false hope that let me hang on and stall out the end for a few years! There's no magical answer and there's nothing I can do, because if I could, I would!" Celestia raised an eyebrow. "Your reticence to spend time with your friends and insistence on shutting yourself away here speaks otherwise." Shinespark growled. "It wouldn't matter. Even if it looks like there's something I can do, it would just be steps along a dead end I haven't reached the end of. I lost years of my life to that already." "Really." Celestia watched her, blatantly unconvinced. "Knowing what you know now, would you live your life more selfishly if given a second chance?" Shinespark stared back. "In Ironridge? No. If I knew what I know today, I would have known what I needed to do to stop it." Celestia's smile returned. "Oh, I was talking about today. You are still alive, after all, and have many friends who are wandering around without a captain." Shinespark's angry mask cracked. "What's your point!?" she snapped, breath hitching momentarily. "I'm not... I can't..." "Shinespark." Celestia leaned forward. "You may have lost faith in your dream, but it has not lost faith in you. You are here, as is your cutie mark, and I believe this injury to your horn will heal given sufficient time. Your power will never be omnipotent, and there will always be forces in the world you cannot hope to contest. But just because it is a wide world and these powers exist does not mean your own existence is pointless." Shinespark gritted her teeth, too busy trying to control her breathing to respond. "You care for the ponies who are weaker than you," Celestia continued. "It is the most important trait to have in a leader, beyond any measure of power or wisdom or courage. Tell me truly: the stallion in your story who lost his job and was powerless to change it. Was his existence pointless? Should he never have worked it in the first place?" "No!" Shinespark hissed. "It wasn't! Ponies like that are the ones I wanted to protect Ironridge for! They never asked for economic tides they couldn't change to wash away their histories..." "He is just like you," Celestia insisted, face to face. "His mission was to be a craftspony, and it was trampled by powers beyond his understanding, was it not? Your mission was to seize the skies for your city, and it met a fate much the same. If he is worth fighting for, so are you." Shinespark lost the battle against her tears. "Be fought for by whom!? I tried to fight for them, and I wasn't good enough! And Valey is gone!" Celestia touched her chest with a feather. "By you, my little pony. You can be the hero that you deserve." "Sure I can!" Shinespark violently flinched away. "A failed hero for a failed mare. It's a perfect fit." Celestia stepped after her. "Isn't it?" she said softly. "Nopony understands how you're feeling better than yourself. No one but you knows what it's like to have let down Ironridge in the way you so keenly are feeling. Who else but you can see yourself in a mirror and say, 'I've been there too'?" Shinespark clung to the ground and sobbed. "Get up, Shinespark," Princess Celestia whispered. "You need yourself. No one else will do." "What's that supposed to mean!?" Shinespark wailed. "I'm already stuck here!" "You know exactly what I mean," Celestia answered, settling down beside her. "The Sosans deserved a champion just as much as you do. And while they may have gotten an imperfect one, imperfection is the way of the world. You don't believe you can reach your dreams on your own. But look into your heart, Shinespark, and ask yourself who you'd rather have fighting for you: someone powerful enough to do most anything, or someone who would try again when they inevitably fail?" Shinespark covered her head with her hooves. "Why can't I have the former?" "Because there is no unchallengeable authority in the world," Celestia replied. "Ponies are free creatures with the power to shape the world around them as they see fit. Even goddesses like myself have limits upon our powers, no matter how vast they may be. No matter how much power someone accrued, it would be impossible for success to be truly guaranteed. You will fail, Shinespark, much as your friends have failed and Garsheeva has failed and I myself have failed as well. And the stronger we are, the bigger our failures and the broader their consequence. That is the price for power... and the reward is more we can do to bring about our dreams." Shinespark just cried. "Let it out," Celestia whispered, putting a wing over Shinespark, and this time the unicorn had nowhere to run. "And remember these feelings, and how you've felt them before. Hopelessness, injustice and the accompanying wish for hope are the soil your will to flourish is born of. This may be a dead end for you, but you can rekindle yourself and turn all of these feelings into the fire to continue, with or without a chance of success. Fight like you fought for the Sosans, not because you had a way all along but because they needed it and nobody else would. As insurmountable as your despair seems, all you must do is pick yourself up to prevail." Shinespark bawled, pressing her face into Celestia's chest and shuddering hard, and the princess focused on her, pretending not to notice the sizable crowd that had gathered silently at the doors to watch a goddess be used as a tissue. Slowly, however, time passed, and Shinespark's sobs lessened and her grip strengthened. Eventually, Shinespark stepped back and rose to her full height, an old, sharp flame flickering in her sapphire eyes. "It doesn't hurt any less," she said, voice even. "Did it when you were younger?" Celestia asked back. "...No." Shinespark sighed. "Only doing things helped." She took several steps towards the stairs to the deck, then glanced back at Celestia. "I should never have had this dream in the first place. It was only necessary because my city was dying and I could either intervene or sit back and watch. All of that was wrong, and shouldn't have happened. A year ago, I still thought once I succeeded, I'd find peace. But if trying is what matters, and reaching my goals may never happen at all, when will I be able to finally rest easy?" Celestia nodded at the ponies and griffon in the doors. "Whenever you need, so long as you trust your friends to pick up the slack. The greatest things in the world are never accomplished alone, after all. If you have friends who share your dream, then you can rest when you require it, and do so in full knowledge that your work remains in good hooves." Shinespark closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "But for now?" Celestia smiled. "Your first priority must be to yourselves, but I am here and will ensure nothing further bad befalls you. I think that allowing yourself to set your burdens aside would be the most productive choice towards fixing them." Shinespark folded her ears as she walked past, then raised them again, staring at the others. Some were her friends. Others, acquaintances, and several uneasy enemies that she would need to talk to about why they were on her ship. The friend she wanted to see most would never be there again. But for now... "I missed you!" Amber interrupted, running up and throwing her forelegs around her in a big hug. "I... don't know if I'm feeling better enough for that yet." Shinespark held her ground, patting Amber on the back gently. "I don't even know what our goals are. I'll find a way to get us to the water, or back in the air, and then... we'll see." She folded her ears. "But I'll try." "Actually, darling, that may not be fully necessary..." Felicity twiddled her wingtips. "The good princess here potentially sort of wanted a leader who speaks for this whole crew with whom she could discuss the possibility and terms of asylum. Which is in our interests, given that we're now in the Plains of Harmony and you were just getting a motivational speech from the one who makes the border so hard to cross in the first place..." Shinespark stared at her. "Actually," Princess Celestia announced from behind, "I think those are discussions that at the very least should wait until tomorrow. Unless all of you are somehow nocturnal, I can only imagine you would have been in bed by now, and would think better with a good night's rest behind you. My guards and I will see to it that your ship remains safe in the meantime, and I can have them work on transporting the food provisions you told me about. Would this be equitable?" Harshwater's eyes shifted. "I know I'd be in a much better mood if I had eaten more than once today." Celestia closed her eyes and sighed. "Very well. I will inform my guards immediately." She carefully ascended the staircase, ducking and exiting onto the deck. Shinespark followed her, feeling an itch to return to the bridge and feel the ship's controls again. Grenada followed her, looking like she had something she wasn't sure if she wanted to say. Amber trailed further behind, along with a body she still couldn't bring herself to look at. There were guards on the deck, a small group that looked like a liaison- Princess Celestia cried out in surprise and pain, stopping abruptly in her tracks. "Your Majesty! Who goes there!?" The guards immediately drew their weapons and whirled, and Shinespark dropped into an instinctive crouch, backpedaling to the door and blocking her friends inside even though she had no horn or weapons to fight with. Celestia rubbed her nose, looking more confused and startled than injured or imperiled. "How strange," she said, a warning note in her voice. "It felt like I ran into something... Show yourself!" Her horn burst with energy, filling the surrounding air with harmless, hovering motes of light. Then her aura swirled, blowing the air around the ship in a gentle cyclone, carrying the motes with it. They stuck whenever the contacted something solid, and a few landed on Shinespark's coat... but a lot more of them caught on something large, bulky and definitely invisible in the middle of the deck. Shinespark sucked in a breath. Princess Celestia frowned harder, and her horn glowed again. "Be revealed!" For a moment, her aura surged, as if the spell she was casting needed to overcome a powerful resistance... and then it finished, the metal dragon Aegis standing exposed and inert in the middle of the floor. Celestia's pupils slowly shrank in dawning recognition and horror.