Celestia sat alone in the darkness, staring out of the silent forest. The air was still and the quietness seemed to subtly press in on her. The world was empty, and for the first time in a long time, she experienced perfect solitude.
Was this what it was like to be Princess of the Night?
A letter lay folded before her, half out of its envelope. Celestia had carried it with her from Canterlot that day and it had waited all evening, ripe and heavy with the information it carried, until she had torn it open at last. Once she was done reading, she snuffed out her lone candle, and sat, silently, in the night. Turning the words it contained over and over in her mind.
Zap Apple was leaving her services. He felt he had to follow his heart. He appreciated everything she had done, but something about this experience just wasn’t right for him.
Each tentatively-worded sentence smote Celestia like a dagger to the chest.
She had mishandled everything.
Gazing once more out of the window, Celestia watched the stars beyond the castle walls. A lone tear slid slowly down her cheek. Since her abdication, she had searched for meaning, for purpose beyond ruling Equestria. She had thought she had found it.
But this letter, coupled with the one in Leaftail’s file back in her office, threw everything into doubt. Two clients lost, solely because they could not reconcile the reprimands she had given them with the supportive, personalised service they had been promised. Two of her little ponies, who had rejected the help she had offered, and forced their way out of the motherly embrace of her wings.
Celestia was not a vain pony. But she truly believed that she had done her best, given her utmost, to her kingdom. She had thrown her whole self into it. But she was no longer required. It was just as she herself had planned, had worked towards for years. A retirement for her and Luna. A rest, a break. Time to grow as ponies, outside of the role of rulers.
And the matchmaking service as a microcosm of her throne, a way to serve her kingdom in miniature. To give ponies the guidance and help she so loved to give, but in a way that would not consume her as the throne had done.
Yes, it was all as she had planned. Why then did it feel so hollow?
Two ponies — well, a pony and a kirin — had left her tonight. To join the ranks of all the other ponies who no longer needed the mother who had watched over them for aeons. It should not hurt her, not when she had already lost so many of her little ponies and become redundant in their lives, but somehow, it still did.
It was made all the worse that she had only herself to blame. Matchmaking was very like diplomacy. Both required a gentle, subtle touch. To guide ponies towards the optimal outcome that would ensure their happiness and health, she had always guided them with hints and lessons so subtle they would come to the right conclusions on their own.
This was not an approach Celestia took maliciously. She had tried allowing her ponies to rule themselves, to act without undue influence.
War had been the result. War and windigos, dozens of ponies proclaiming themselves Princess. Celestia had stepped back in just in time, and tried to do what she could to keep things on track.
When she didn’t intervene, time and again she saw the chaos that unfolded. Luna had entered a rebellious phase in her teenage years, when she was only a few hundred millennia old. Celestia had taken a hooves-off approach, to let her sister discover herself in her own time.
And Nightmare Moon had arisen.
In the aftermath of Luna’s banishment, Celestia had dragged herself out of her grief and forced herself to focus on the ponies who remained. No longer would she allow those she loved to descend into darkness. No longer would she sit by and watch.
And so she had carefully managed, nudged and pointed, everypony with whom she came into contact. For centuries, it had seemed to work near-perfectly. Celestia’s methods had helped Twilight to grow into the regal princess she now was. Celestia had taught her all the magic she would need, and then sent her out to secure the friendships only Twilight could create. That had secured the return of Luna, just as Celestia had hoped. And in the years that followed, Celestia had created more problems for Twilight to solve, more lessons for her to learn — a stray dragon here, a pretence at helplessness there — and Twilight had risen peerlessly to meet every challenge.
But now it seemed that Celestia’s tried and tested methods, her very worldview, were no longer relevant. Outmoded. Outdated. As out of touch as the teenaged Cadence had so often accused her of being.
Celestia hung her head, and a tear, silvery in the starlight, dragged its slow trail over her cheek.
“Sister?”
The quiet voice made Celestia flinch. Hastily, she wiped her eyes and turned to greet Luna with a smile. “Hello, Lu. How is your night going?”
Gravely, Luna made her way across the shadowed room, her hooves looking almost bare for a moment without their old silver shoes. “I have passed a most pleasant evening among the fireflies. But I don’t think that is what we should talk about, Celestia.” Her voice was infinitely gentle, but Celestia shied away.
“I’m not sure that I can.”
Luna placed a kindly hoof atop her sister’s, and Celestia felt the tears rise anew.
“Tell me what ails you.”
Celestia sighed again, long and mournful. Perhaps it would do her good to talk her fears through with somepony. “I fear that I have made a grave mistake.”
“Would you like to talk about it?” Luna asked. Her expression gave nothing away.
Celestia shook her head. “I am afraid you would judge me to have behaved poorly, little sister. I am coming to that view myself.”
Shaking her own starlit locks from side to side, Luna gave a little laugh. “Nopony has made more mistakes than I, Tia.”
“What?” That got Celestia’s attention. Ever defensive of her younger sibling, nothing riled her more quickly than ponies blaming Luna for her past actions; even if the pony placing the blame was Luna herself.
“Peace,” Luna waved away Celestia’s objection with a hoof. “What I mean is, you have always forgiven and loved me. You taught me that I am not my darkest self, and I would be a poor pony indeed if I could not help you see the same." She settled herself in the window beside Celestia. “Besides, it is only in the darkest shadows that the subtlest, most beautiful lights can be seen.” She gestured upwards with her horn, toward the twinkling light of the stars.
Her muzzle sagging in defeat, Celestia let the sordid tale be drawn forth. “I have…done wrong, perhaps. I fear my actions may have kept apart two ponies who truly cared for each other — or who would have come to care for each other — but they chose to express it in a way that I myself would not have done. And I...I reacted wrongly, and it has caused them both to lose trust in me.” Her words came a little faster as she looked into Luna’s deep, forgiving gaze. “I may have separated them forever, Luna — or if I have not, and Zap Apple is following his heart towards Leaftail, then I may have forced together two ponies who I suspect are not right for each other. How can I tell what the best outcome will be? How can I fix what I have done?”
To her shock, Luna’s gentle eyes curved up at the corners as she began to laugh.
“What?” Celestia demanded. Did Luna mock her? Surely not.
The laughter faded from Luna’s throat. “Tia, you give yourself too much credit.”
“What do you mean?”
Luna sighed and tapped a hoof meditatively against the window pane. “Our ponies may have been shaped by us, moulded in the infancy of the species — but they have agency that I do not think you have grasped. These individuals you speak of are not toys to be guided into the outcomes you think best. They need to be allowed to find their own way.”
Turning slowly away from her sister, Celestia gazed into the unfathomable depths of the night sky, a thousand times more shallow than the wisdom of the alicorn beside her. “How came you to that conclusion?”
Luna chuckled once more. “Oh, Tia. I was one of your little ponies. You shaped and moulded me as much as any of them. You did it with the purest of hearts, but you tried to fit me into the shape you had decreed would be best for me. And…” she paused delicately, “Well, we all know the results.”
Celestia's breath rushed from her mouth as she swung back to face her sister. “But Nightmare Moon — I thought it was jealousy — the love of the ponies—” Too late, she caught herself. This was too painful a subject to be treated so carelessly. “Forgive me, Luna. I have spoken out of turn.”
“No, no,” Luna reassured her. “It has been nearly forty years since I returned. I can speak of it without pain.” She paused again, and the only motion was the gentle undulations of their manes. “Those things…they were part of it. But so too were the expectations — of you, and of the ponies that you viewed as yours. They needed me to be like you, a statue graven in your image. But I needed something else. I tried to find it...but I found something else entirely.”
Lowering her head, in shame this time, Celestia felt her tears pooling once more. “I have been a poor sister and a poor ruler, have I not? And now a poor matchmaker, to boot.”
“You have been a kind hearted pony. One who did her best. Come sister, it would be a dull eternity if we were not capable of learning, would it not?”
“I suppose so.”
Luna’s wings ensconced her in a soft embrace. “Celestia, sister. I say this not to wound, but to heal. You are saddened by what happened with the Apple colt. Try to find the lesson in this, just as you would have had Twilight do.”
“I just — I wanted to do my best for him — to help him follow his heart.” Celestia leaned into the hug. “But I have only steered him further off course.”
“No,” Luna whispered. “It sounds to me like you helped him to know his own heart, and that it is now leading him away from your path and down his own. You did him a service, Celestia.”
Pulling back just enough to see Luna’s face, Celestia blinked. “I did? But — will his path lead to Leaftail?” A flash of insight struck her. “Have the stars whispered—?”
“—No.” Luna quelled that hope before it had a chance to take root. “My friends do not pay close attention to the mortal realm unless I ask it of them. But what I am trying to say is that it does not matter where his path will lead him.”
“…It doesn’t?” Celestia didn’t understand. How could Luna simply not care about one of their own?
“No. What matters is that the path he is on is his. He chooses it himself. You always say that the ponies using your services must make the final choice themselves. The colt’s choice has just not been the one you anticipated.”
“But his happiness—” —is not ensured, she had been going to say, but Luna cut her off.
“Is his own to find. Tia, you must focus on the ponies who do want your help. The Apple colt will have learned and taken something from you, and that will help him on his journey towards his destiny — whatever that may be.” Luna placed a firm hoof upon Celestia’s journey. “You must learn to let go, Tia. You must learn to let your ponies go, when it is time.”
Celestia sagged, feeling Luna’s words sink into her flesh and pierce her heart. It was true. She had been keeping them all too close. She had been guiding them towards the choices she thought were best — without giving them all of the information to make the choice themselves. All of the ponies were as foals to her, the timeless one, but she was forgetting that foals they were not.
“Think on what I have said.” Luna stood to leave her. “And sleep, sister dear. I will meet you in the solarium at dawn — I think I’ll make you some pancakes for a change.”
Managing to summon a weak smile, Celestia’s gaze slid back to the window. Luna was right, of course. She always was. Celestia could not save everypony — and there was the question of whether they wanted to be saved, and indeed, whether it was truly saving. She suspected that she would not sleep much this night. There were many things to mull over.
“And, Tia?” Luna called over her shoulder as she neared the door to the chamber. “I have seen Zap Apple’s dreams — and let me tell you one thing to ease your curiosity. It is not the kirin that he dreams of.”
Stunned, Celestia watched her go, and then she let out a long breath of air. It did not matter, of course. Zap Apple was charting his own course now, free to find his own love or heartbreak. And Celestia…she vowed to do as Twilight had done so many times; come what may, she would learn from this most painful lesson.