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// 20 - Day Break 
// Story: The GATE 
// by scifipony 
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It wasn't as if I hadn't heard my mentor laugh gleefully before, and I'd never forget Luna, possessed by her mania, do the same.  It was just that Celestia usually evinced a calm motherly demeanor.  Except when it had to do with a  very special dessert, usually the one with Chantilly cream and brandy strawberries, or if I hit on one of her most arcane areas of interest.  Butterflies, homeless ponies, and ponies with learning disabilities being the most memorable.  It was at these times that she could act like Rainbow Dash with a Daring Do book—and suddenly I wouldn't feel like the only über-nerd in the room.  

A kindred spirit.  

Celestia levitated the ponies and bipeds aside to give herself a wing-length of room.  She positively glowed.  

No, I mean she glowed.

Actually glowed.  

I'd seen her raise the sun a dozen times, and Luna the moon.  In this, Luna was the more exuberant.  She often reared and pedaled her hooves, like nothing else in life gave her more joy than to see her old friend.  Neither alicorn needed more than a lit horn to cast her spell. 

I'd raised the sun, once.  It had levitated me over my bed and caused my mane and tail to course in the swirling magic.  It had felt...  I hadn't really been able to think about it at the time because of my fears.  In retrospect, it hadn't exhausted me at all.  It was as if my spell—which had not been Levitate but had fallen into a groove that required Motivate, like in the turning of a wheel—was more like opening a valve on a pipe than my magic filling the pipe with water.  

It was like... being struck by lightning but the lighting flowed around me from the Earth to the heavens.  Not exhausting at all.  Being the conduit...  it felt more like I had been thanked. 

I'd probably intuited the spell thanks to the delightful mountain of arcana Celestia had given me to study prior to and following my becoming an alicorn, as well as having watched her cast so many times.  

She explained, "The first time I cast it, I'd cast it to save my father from terminal melancholy.   He fully expected to die before the sun rose, and in those days the sun rose and set every two or three days, so without a clock who knew when it would rise and we were poor so didn't have one.  I told him to hold on, that it would rise in moments.  It had to.  And it did.  I was so focused I don't remember much else and Father never said what he saw that day."

The air around the princess shimmered and her mane and tail began to flutter toward her muzzle as if a steadily increasing wind blew upward from the earth.  Sparkles scintillated upward around her in a fountain of glimmers as the magical flow lifted her from her hooves, even as she spread her wings to balance herself.  The heat radiating from her became like from a fireplace, causing everypony to step further away.  

And a good thing.  The golden glow around her, her aura, became brighter.  In an instant her mane and tail ignited.  Though the hair wasn't consumed, it became as if flames, dancing and crackling.

Celestia's laughter grew louder over the roar of her magic.  She continued, "I did not know why I'd gotten a solar cutie mark saving my father.  Years later, in a place and time where being a mare didn't count for much, I tried hard to help my autistic brother get into a wizard school.  The final test was going to be for the finalists to help the other wizards raise the sun.  As I watched the fumbling convocation from a distance, their spell chanting triggered my magic.  I did not understand that I did not have to be the conduit for the spell, which resulted in much burnt clothing.  

"This is my original spell."

At that, she reached the apex of her demonstration.  The fiery winged pony, levitated a pony-length above the ground, rearing, faced the eastern horizon, opposite Sweet Apple Acres.  With a flick of her neck, the sun slid from the edge of the world into the sky, dispelling the night and instantly turning the sky blue.  I'd seen the Stormking use a staff to effortlessly spin the sun repeatedly through the sky, but Princess Celestia had always been measured and gentle in how she moved the orb.

This was no ordinary sunrise, though.

This was theater.

In a matter of seconds, it went from dawn to noon, with the sun hidden behind the gathered clouds.  It drew gasps from the bipeds and the gathered ponies.

And a shot rang out.