//------------------------------// // 1: "The Sun Also Rises" // Story: Celestia XVII: The Broken Princess // by brokenimage321 //------------------------------// “It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.” I screamed, and shot bolt upright.  Philomena shrieked in alarm and jumped backward on her perch. I shoved my blanket in my mouth and bit down, hard. I rocked back and forth for several moments before a low whimper escaped my throat.  Slowly, the world came back to me. It was night. I was in my room. The queen had been a dream. The queen, and the fire, and the blood—just a dream. Once, it had been real, but that was a month ago... I squeezed my eyes shut, then started rocking back and forth again. They’re all dead, Cece, I thought to myself. Every last one of them. Died a month ago. It’s okay, they can’t hurt you anymore… I rocked faster.  Just think—another week, and you’ll see Twilight again. She’s having her birthday here, at the Spring Garden Party. Another week, and you can see your best friend— I grimaced. I don’t know if I could say that anymore. Not after... (The thought occurred to me—not for the first time—that Twilight was only in Ponyville because she was supposed to be working on her Friendship Studies. And yet, I couldn’t help wondering, with the way she’d been behaving, if she’d finally let her record of straight-A’s slip…) Slowly, I pulled my blanket from my mouth. Though the memory of the nightmare was fading, and fading fast, it left me with a deep, smoldering pit in my gut. It was—I glanced at my clock—2:47. Three hours until sunrise. I laid on my bed, curled into a little ball, and whimpered. Though I was exhausted, I didn’t want to sleep. Not if I was going to see the bugs again.   As I lay there in the dark, my eyes slowly drifted upwards, to the glass case over my mantelpiece. There, glinting in the starlight on a velvet cushion, lay my Peytral—the wide, low-slung collar of gold that was my entire reason for existing. On its back side, set so it pressed against my chest, lay the Sun Stone, a gem of deep purple cut into the shape of an eight-pointed star. The Stone that gave me the power to control the sun. The Stone that had made me grow my wings when I’d first put it on, eight years ago. The Stone that told everyone that, somehow, I was the pony in charge, that I was supposed to be able to fix everything, that I was— You’re a bad Princess, said a voice inside my head. You can’t handle it, but you’re too much of a coward to ask anyone for help. You’re a sad, miserable excuse— Philomena squawked moodily at me out of the darkness, snapping me out of my misery. I sat up and looked at her. I wanted to click my tongue, to make her fly over and cuddle with me… but, when I tried, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and made no sound.  I looked around the room again, and my eyes fell longingly on my trumpet case where it lay in the moonlight. After I’d graduated from Canterlot High, Aunt Velvet and Uncle Nightie bought me a tumpet of my own as a graduation present. Sometimes, when I was feeling down, I’d pull it out and play it. I considered playing it now, in fact... but I knew that, even with the mute in, the sound would be enough to wake the entire palace... I took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling, and waited for the dawn. * * * I yawned. “Mornin’, Chef,” I called.  Chef Julienne nodded. “Princess,” she said in greeting. As she passed me, she paused, then frowned. “Your Highness…” she said, with a reproachful sigh.  “I know, I know,” I said, scooping up my coffee mug from where it sat on the counter and draining it. “No open drinks in the kitchen…” The day was just getting started in the Canterlot Kitchens. Soon, it would get hot, and humid, and noisy, with a hundred sounds and a thousand smells all competing for attention—but right now, before all the ovens turned on, it was actually kinda nice. There were less than a dozen cooks, now. One was frying hash browns, one was scrambling eggs, and the rest were doing the day’s prep work, washing vegetables, chopping lettuce, and the like. And there was Chef, of course, coming in early to get ready for the day.  “Can you take this, then?” I added, tossing my mug at her. She caught it, but set it back down on the counter with an irritated clunk. I stuck my tongue out at her, then turned back to my work.  After a moment, Chef looked down at the griddle in front of me, then back up.  “You’re eating a lot for this time of morning,” she said.  “Har har,” I replied. “Hand me some plates, will you?” Chef rolled her eyes, but reached over and grabbed four white porcelain plates off a nearby dish cart, piled high with gleaming china. As soon as she set them down, I filled them with three steaming pancakes apiece. Immediately, I reached for the ladle in the bowl of batter and poured out four more pancakes, then refilled the ladle, and went back and started giving them little batter ears.  Chef raised an eyebrow.  “Couldn’t sleep,” I said, my eyes still on the batter I was pouring. “Thought I’d make breakfast.” Chef shrugged, then turned and walked away—but, before she’d gone even two steps, she stopped, sighed, picked up my empty coffee mug, then walked off towards the dishwashing pit. I grinned, concentrating on the last of the ears.  Finally, I flipped the pancakes over, then dragged the tray of sliced fruit towards me. My pancake was simple: a little grin of raspberries, and a pair of blueberry eyes. Blueblood got a sliced-banana grin and a pair of pecans. Luna said she preferred her pancakes plain, but I knew she was secretly fond of peaches and strawberries, with a little chocolate drizzle making a pair of pince-nez spectacles. And then— I frowned down at the fourth pancake. I hadn’t actually made breakfast for her yet. I bit my lip. What sort of fruit did she like, again? She’d been around enough, I felt like I should have figured it out by now…  You’re a terrible friend, said a voice in the back of my mind. She’s been coming over for months, and you don’t know what she likes for breakfast? What are you, a—? I bit my lip, then turned to the fruit and lit my horn.  The fourth pancake got an elegant, sweeping mane of blueberries, and a pair of sliced-banana eyes. I sighed unhappily; the berries didn’t exactly want to stay put, so the mane was coming out all uneven. It was going to come out sloppy. And, recently, I’d had enough sloppy for a lifetime.  But you couldn’t exactly undo a pancake. Not with blueberries, anyway; they stained everything they touched. So instead, I scooped the pancakes up one by one—doing my best to not actually look at the fourth one—then reached for the can of whipped cream. You’re not just a bad cook, you’re a bad friend. She’s going to hate it, and hate you— “Shut up,” I muttered to myself.  * * * I sat in my chair, dozing for—well, I don’t know how long—before the door opened. I looked up, and, after a moment, smiled weakly.  “Good morning, Auntie,” I said.  Princess Luna glanced at me in surprise. “Good morning, Cece,” she said, as she walked to her chair. The old mare stood tall, very tall, and wore a blue silk dress trimmed with frilly lace, but under the silk she had the slender strength of steel wire. As she walked, her joints made uncomfortable little pops and crackles, and she grunted in vague pain. She wasn’t my aunt, not really, but it was easier to call her “aunt” than “sixty-first-Great-Aunt.” She had been the sister of Princess Solis, back in the day, the founder of my own Royal Line, so we were related, however distantly. Incidentally, Luna was also the sixty-somethingth-Great-Grandmother of Twilight, which made the two of us cousins, after a fashion. Yeah, royal lines were always kinda messy, but at the same time, it was kinda nice having something like a family, for once.   Luna finally made it around the table to her regular seat. She pulled out her chair and sat, then adjusted her spectacles, and eyed the silver dish covering her plate.  “You made breakfast again, I presume?” she asked, looking up at me. I nodded. “Yep. For everyone.”  Luna lifted up the cover and peered underneath.  “Pancakes,” I added, unnecessarily. Luna made an appreciative little noise and set the cover back down. “I am impressed, Celestia,” she said with a smile. “I can barely recall the last time you made your celebrated pancakes for any of us, much less all of us together. In fact, I...” As she spoke, she looked up at me, a slight smile creasing her face. But as soon as she saw me, she frowned. She examined my expression carefully, her eyes cold and sharp, her brow furrowed in faint worry.  I turned away.  “I wanted to do something special for their first day back,” I said to the empty chair beside me. “So I made sure to get up extra early today.”  If Luna heard my lie, she said nothing. Instead, she just continued to stare at me. After a moment, I swallowed uncomfortably. Luna said nothing; she just continued to watch me, scrutinizing every curve of my face.  I was just about to say something when she looked away with a little sigh.  “I suppose we may as well begin,” she said, looking down at the dish covering her plate. “I do not expect we shall see the Happy Couple for some time, yet…” At that instant, the door handle jiggled, and both of us looked up. After a moment, the door swung open, revealing Blueblood, already grinning like an idiot. Despite how tired I felt, I smiled. “Hey, loverboy,” I crooned. “Surprised to see you up this early…” “Oh, lay off of him,” said a voice behind him. “He’s my husband, after all.” Blue glanced behind him, then stepped into the room. Behind him, prancing in like she owned the place, came Blueblood’s wife, wearing a purple bathrobe.  “Good morning, Rarity,” I said.