Celestia and Luna are Well-Adjusted Adults

by garatheauthor


Celestia is a well adjusted adult who is pretty much raffling away Princesshoods at this point

Trumpets blared, announcing the arrival of a very important pony to these most hallowed of halls.

In response, Celestia slouched a little less, trying her best to look anything but bored – and possibly a little inebriated. Though you could blame her morning tea for that.

“We now welcome, Sunset Shimmer!” the court herald chimed, his voice bellowing for the assembly to hear.

Ah yes, the return of Twilight’s prototype, the beta version, the flawed experiment, a joyous day indeed. Wasn’t like Celestia had replaced her, like what, nine years ago at this point?

The door opened and the unicorn stepped in, her gaze falling instinctively to the stonework on the floor.

Now here was the million-bit question, had she finally taken the time and done some self-reflection. Maybe took a chance to learn how to act right? Or was this going to be the same little…

“Princess Celestia…” Sunset began, bowing her head.

Celestia took a sip of her tea, adding just the right amount of slurp to show her indifference. “Sup?”

Sunset tensed, bowing even lower and nearly touching her snout to the ground.

Celestia pursed her lips. “Get up… you’re making this weird. Like really weird.” She cracked a tight smile. “I’m not going to make the pony, who I had my maids read bedtime stories to, kneel before me like some common earth pony.”

Sunset chuckled. “You’re right, it is pretty unbecoming of a unicorn to do that.”

“Right?” Celestia exclaimed, snickering back and ignoring the heated looks she got from the earth ponies in attendance.

“So…”

“How have you been?” Celestia asked.

“Pretty good, I’m still in school.”

“Getting good grades?”

“Of course! Acing all my classes.”

“That’s good to hear,” Celestia smirked. “I even heard you made some friends?”

Sunset grinned nervously, running a hoof through her mane. “Yeah uh…so funny story…”

“I’ve heard it before, you became friends with alternative versions of all of Twilight’s friends.” Celestia snorted. “Honestly, the whole situation reeks of impostor syndrome. Can’t imagine that’s very easy.”

Sunset winced. “Yeahhh… it’s a little…”

“Must be weird now that you’re dating Twilight, or well… a lesser Twilight.”

“She isn’t a lesser Twilight,” Sunset grumbled.

“Does she have wings?”

“N-no.”

“Then she’s a lesser Twilight,” Celestia declared, motioning with her hoof. “We got a pretty clear hierarchy around here. You got earth ponies at the bottom, then ponies with wings, then those with horns, and finally at the very tippy top, you got the few who have wings and horns.” 

Yet again more dirty looks from her earth pony courtiers, what was up with that?

“Sunshine has been pretty great to me,” Sunset muttered, looking strangely defensive.

“Gonna be awfully unfortunate if you ever get wings though,” Celestia said, studying her hoof. “Because, well, can’t have both Twilights having wings and that means… let me tell you this Sunset, immortality sucks for the first two hundred years.”

Sunset cocked a brow. “Uh, pardon?”

“After that, you kind of just get numb to the concept of loss.” She sipped her tea. “Maybe find a friend at the bottom of a glass of rye.” She blinked and snapped back to attention, looking at Sunset. “Sorry, got off on a little tangent there.”

“It’s perfectly fine, Your Majesty.”

“So,” Celestia gestured, “why are you here?”

She noticed her court scribe visibly cringe, motioning frantically towards the briefing notes left beside her throne. The ones which she had failed to even glance at, let alone read.

Sunset’s gaze fell back to the floor. “Well… my mom died.”

“Oh…” Celestia’s expression fell as she sucked in air through her teeth. “That’s uh… that’s pretty rough kid.”

“It is,” Sunset agreed, nodding her head solemnly. “I never even got a chance to say goodbye. Just a letter showed up one day.”

“Believe it or not…” Celestia sighed, “I know the feeling.”

“You do?” Sunset asked, tears brimming.

“Yeah, Mom kind of had to sacrifice herself so that the universe could be created. It was pretty rough because we didn’t even know about it until we rushed home to tell her about all the magical stuff we were seeing.” A twinkle formed in her eyes. “Stars, suns, planets, life… all so beautiful and new. Then bam…” And just like that the magic died, “we realized that all those wonderful things we were seeing were, well, mom’s life essence exploding outwards. Kind of like seeing your mom gutted by a bull with gore spraying everywhere. Her guts being the cosmos, the stars her blood, and all the planets little bits of grey matter fired outwards like grapeshot. It’s all pretty graphic in hindsight.” She looked at her tea, taking a very deep sip. “Downright traumatic, in fact.”

Sunset’s jaw stood agape.

“Sunset?” Celestia asked, tilting her head to the side.

“Sorry, I just…” Sunset shook her head slowly, “I didn’t realize you had parents?”

Celestia nodded. “The two most wonderful titans that a filly could ask for.”

“Is your dad still around?”

“Oh no, he passed away a few centuries later. It too was quite tragic.”

“A noble sacrifice?” Sunset asked, bowing her head respectfully.

Celestia snorted. “Actually, it was auto-erotic asphyxiation.”

“OH!”

“Yeahhhhh” Celestia rubbed the bridge of her snout. “Not the greatest thing to come home to after a camping trip. I think it honestly fucked up Luna.”

Celestia took another long sip of tea, finally emptying her cup. Thankfully she had a bottle of bourbon – with a piece of masking tape taped over top, reading tea – nearby for her to top her glass off with.

A silence settled, not only between them, but seemingly over the entire room, with everypony doing their best to look at something that wasn’t Princess Celestia.

Finally, Celestia spoke up. “Would some wings make you feel better?”

Sunset’s eyes widened. “Pardon?”

“Like, do you want me to make you an alicorn?”

“Why… why would you do that?”

“Look, kid, I know what you’re going through and it’s pretty rough. But do you know what’s really fucking rad?”

“What’s that?”

“Being a literal freaking demi-goddesses. No one cares if you fuck up, or fuck off, or fuck, or come to court drunk.”

This last one was punctuated by a noisy slurp of tea.

“That does sound pretty rad,” Sunset admitted, cracking a nervous smile.

Celestia winked at her. “It’s really fucking rad.”

“Are you willing to even do that for me though? I remember this being a pretty serious point of contention between us.”

Celestia waved her hoof. “Look I’ll admit that I was a stingy bitch back then. But I’m literally just throwing Princesshoods away at this point. So, I might as well give you one.”

“That’s uh…” Sunset’s smile faded instantly, “that’s honestly kind of trivializing to the struggle I went through back then.”

“Oh please,” Celestia snorted. “You were a moody teenager and I was at the tail end of a two-year-long binge of not getting laid. We were both being pretty immature and irritable by that point.”

Sunset sighed. “That’s fair.” She looked up at Celestia. “What would I be the princess of anyways?”

Celestia shrugged. “Does your little alternative dimension have a princess?”

“Not really?”

“Then perfect, you’ll be the ruler of your own personal fiefdom. We’ll call it the Shimmer Free State.” Celestia blinked. “Do they grow rubber?”

Sunset bit her lip. “I don’t think they’d accept me that easily.”

“I don’t care,” Celestia snorted. “I’m Princess Fucking Celestia. I literally make the sun and moon move. I’m sure I can deal with a few riffraff rebels.”

Sunset was silent for a moment before finally she looked up with a triumphant smile.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

Celestia nodded and her horn began to glow. “Then I, Princess Celestia, bestow you with the honour of being Princess Sunset Shimmer, ruler of the…” She paused. “What are the citizens over there called again?”

“Humans,” Sunset said, flinching away from the rapidly growing and brightening ball of mana above Celestia’s head.

Celestia nodded. “Yes, you’ll be the ruler of the humans.”

And with that, the spell was cast.