Normalcy... I had hoped it would return as soon as we defeated Discord, thinking that with him gone, everything would go back to how it was before his chaotic reign. Sadly, it did not. Far from it, even.
A lot of our ponies were frightened, afraid that this was only a trick of the mind. The fear was more than understandable. Heck, I also felt more than a bit paranoid that this was only a false sense of security and that he would return at any moment if I wasn't watchful enough. Even with the proof of his defeat in the form of the petrified draconequus, our ponies felt like a monster was about to jump them out of nowhere.
That might as well have been the case, for a lot of the chimeras Discord created were still roaming around, hungry for fresh meat. A hunger that primarily targeted the flesh of our poor little ponies. Tartarus gained a lot more inmates following our clean-up of the mess left behind. Alas, we couldn’t catch every creature on the loose, for we needed to deal with far more annoyances coming from the nobility, itself.
One might think they would give us a moment of reprieve, but sadly, that wasn’t the case. They wanted to declare us unfit to rule, having taken so long to bring Discord down from his throne. Thankfully, there was also a faction within the nobility that argued against those power-hungry, conservative morons, saying we earned our right to rule even more so now with the Elements of Harmony on our side. We were the ones that liberated the ponies of Equestria (and the rest of the world, for that matter).
Then, there was the painful truth that a lot of our ponies had died as a result of Discord’s shenanigans. That also meant some of our friends weren’t here to support us anymore. Although, that was more the fault of the twenty or so years that had passed. Old age had taken away Smart Cookie and Pansy from us, something that seemed almost... surreal to me.
I never thought I would just wake up and they would be gone. All this time, I denied the possibility of... not being there for them. Sure, I knew the day would eventually come, hard not to since everypony around us grew older while the signs of age kept eluding us, but... I always thought I would spend every moment of their life next to them and ease their passing with a familiar, friendly face. Instead, I missed a big chunk of it and failed to protect them when they needed me most. At least Clover was still alive...
The old stallion (this feels really weird to say, seeing that we were barely older than him) wouldn’t make it much longer, though. A few years at most, maybe. Even he wasn't exempt from the passage of time. His time was nearing its end and he refused to make use of Starswirl's old, faulty time-travel spell. Not that I could fault him, he was growing weary of life...
Haah... this was honestly one of the only things I couldn't quite empathize with. Despite a few moments of fatigue here and there, I still felt barely older than the day we met him and Starswirl. Now that I thought about it, it didn’t feel like we had gotten any older since our coronation, really. Wiser, perhaps. But older? Certainly not in body. We were almost eighty and it didn’t show one bit.
Not to mention, we still behaved like immature twenty-year-olds that procrastinated learning for exams until the very last day because there were other things taking up our attention on a day-to-day basis. That, and goofing off whenever one of us managed to convince the others to take a day off or two (or three). Which, let's be honest here, was mainly because Luna got bored out of her mind, doing paperwork.
Always the dreaded paperwork...
Anyway, aside from most of our friends being... gone... we also heard no words whatsoever about Platinum’s whereabouts, though I suspected she was gone as well by now. If not, she would be in the next few years for sure.
Besides Pansy and Smart Cookie (as well as Hurricane and Puddinghead, bless his scatter-brained head), Starswirl was also gone. Well, we didn’t actually know for certain and he shouldn’t have been dead due to his time-travel spell, but we received no words from him at all. Nothing from him that could tell us what had happened to our mentor. I didn’t want to go search his personal belongings in Canterlot for the off-chance he had written something down that might give us a clue. If he was still alive (which was the most likely possibility), he would skin me alive for snooping. And then give me even more research assignments to do because why not?
Not to mention, I still haven't started on his last assignment and I was kinda twenty years tardy on that. Understandably so, but... still. The old coot really takes these assignments seriously and they are no joke. Merely being disappointed wouldn't do his reaction enough justice, I fear...
Ah, well... it's not like he was breathing down my neck and Celestia (very conveniently) convinced me not to send a search party for him. We needed all the resources we could spare to fix our nation. Besides, it would have been a wasted effort, anyway. If Starswirl wanted to come home, he would come home.
It was a hard year for us, immediately following the end of Discord’s mad reign. Houses were destroyed or misplaced, cities and villages were in ruin, and morale was incredibly low. Everywhere I went, ponies were mourning the loss of their loved ones or desperately hoped a missing child, sibling, or parent would come back home to them.
More often than not, our subjects were crestfallen to receive only a coffin instead. Missing cases piled up in the thousands and despite the fact that the world had returned to normal, chaos remained. Not Discord’s chaos, but the chaos that came from a broken nation.
Starvation was just one of the more common problems we had to deal with. There was little food left and Celestia, Luna, and I tried our best to provide as much as possible to our ponies without running out of what little reserves there were. More often than not, even we went to bed on an empty stomach. It was an eye-opening experience, only ever having heard stories of how bad something like a post-war world could get. That was the best analogy I could come up with.
Diseases were not far behind as some of our ponies tried their luck with spoiled or rotten food and things they found out in the wilderness. Diseases, starvation, and bad hygiene were a bad mix, and at times, I feared we wouldn’t have a nation left for much longer.
The medicine of a fabled healer (I think her name was Meadowbrook or something) was the only hope we had to give our ponies a chance at survival, much less recovery. The stories told about the healer certainly spoke of promising results... if only a pony like that wasn’t a story and was actually here to help us. A legendary healer would have been nice to have the support of, in times like these.
As it was, the remedies and cures passed on from pony to pony by word of mouth, attributing their effectiveness to the pony that allegedly discovered them (one that probably never existed in the first place, let's be real here), were the only things we could work with in an effort to save as many as we could. Celestia tried finding healing spells within the libraries of both Canterlot and our own castle, only to come up empty-hooved for anything that wasn’t an injury.
The thought of continuing to search for Earth or any other dimension that had a bit more advanced healing methods available was a thought I entertained many nights, but we simply didn’t have the time to spare on something that would take us years to accomplish without Starswirl’s help. For better or for worse, we were on our own and we had to come to terms with that.
Help wouldn’t come from outside our own reality, that much was certain. Without Starswirl to make new mirrors, the only mirror we could use to visit multiple realities would be the prototype mirror. Celestia might be able to work something out in regards to that should we really get desperate enough, but she would be of more use to us and our ponies if she continued to keep the nation in one piece together with us.
Trying to keep morale high enough when your subjects were obviously suffering and dying was a fool’s errand. The other nations surrounding us weren’t better off, so we at least didn’t have to fear one of them getting bold enough to invade us for land and resources. That would have been something we were ill-equipped to deal with at the moment (while we were on good terms with the deer, for example, I'd rather not get into a fight with King Aspen about who rightfully 'owned' the Everfree Forest again...). We couldn’t spare enough of our soldiers to also fend off an enemy from the outside (or inside, as the case might be) while most of them were currently helping rebuild the homes of our ponies.
There was a lot of damage that needed to be repaired and night-time had become far more dangerous with all sorts of monsters roaming around freely. Heck, even during the daylight hours it was risky to leave the village without being in a group and carrying weapons for defense.
It wasn’t only the monsters prowling around our land that posed a danger to our subjects, though. No, I wish I could say otherwise, but sadly, I had to admit the truth to myself as much as it pained me to do so. Ponies, as I found out, were still very much capable of banditry. The last time such a thing had been a problem had been the time when the wendigos had caused an eternal winter. Now, with our nation pretty much in shambles, some thought they could take advantage of their fellow ponies while our guards were stretched out thin enough as it is.
Luna had been doing her best to deal with them whenever news reached us of banditry in the nearby settlements. Oftentimes she would take a detail of our best-trained agents with her to... ahem, take care... of the bandits, Night Fang proving to us that she was still as deadly as ever (and just as sadistic, for that matter).
Sometimes I saw her come home with arrows still sticking out of her, the projectiles only causing her a ‘minor’ discomfort (those were her words, not mine). Despite my misgivings about her going out again, I patched her up after sternly berating her to be more careful next time. It hurt my heart more to see the arrows embedded in her flesh like that than it caused discomfort to her, but still... I couldn't help but worry. I know that alicorns could withstand a lot before succumbing to their wounds, but that still didn’t give her a free pass to start becoming reckless. I’d rather have her safe and sound, locked away in our bedroom so she wouldn’t go out risking her life, but that wouldn’t make our nation safer.
Not to mention, she would be hella mad at me for coddling her to the point of wrapping her up in multiple layers of bubble wrap (figuratively speaking, of course). She was a thrill-seeker through and through with a strong sense of justice. There was no telling her not to risk her well-being when there were innocent ponies depending on her.
Then, one sad night, it was time to say goodbye to Clover, our last friend that was still with us since we started on the path as princesses (I only wish he could stay longer with us...). Celestia couldn’t stand the sight of him slowly losing his strength and buried herself in work instead while Luna and I offered him some company.
“Who would have thought how far you would have come after all these years?” Clover chuckled, wheezing slightly. “From the three awkward young mares barely knowing what they were doing most of the time to these strong dependable rulers keeping a nation on the brink of ruin from falling apart. Fate really has a strange kind of humor...”
“Clover,” I whispered gently, stroking his mane softly as he struggled to take in more air. “Don’t talk too much, you should conserve your energy.”
“Princess,” he began, coughing for a moment. “My... ahh... my time is already upon me, a few seconds won’t change much. There is something you need to know...” Luna and I waited for him to get his breath back in order and once he did, Clover brought over a scroll with a shaky telekinetic grip. “A few years ago, before Discord came, I tried my hoof at a spell meant to write out a prophecy for the future... you should read it... and I’m sorry I kept it from you for so long.”
I looked him in the eye, hesitantly taking the scroll from him and unfurling it in front of Luna and me.
“Where did you even get a spell like that?” Luna asked him and I hummed with interest myself. Such spells were hard to come by, even for us.
“I don’t know,” Clover admitted quietly. “A strange stallion said I dropped something and there the spell was. He had the weirdest type of clothing that seemed strangely out of place.”
Luna hummed. “Interesting,” she muttered. I nodded in agreement and returned my eyes to the unfurled prophecy in front of us, fearful of what it would say. Clover had almost seemed reluctant to give it to us, something that was surely a bad sign.
“On the longest day of the thousandth year, a lost sister shall be reunited with her family. For a thousand years, the moon shall be a prison without escape. An unexpected betrayal will force the others to send the one responsible away so they may keep the world safe from her terrible wrath. Her escape shall be aided by the convergence of the three brightest stars and only the touch of true harmony can bring about the end of a nightmare,” I read out loud, my voice getting quieter and quieter. Luna gave me a look and I could tell that the last word had unsettled her very much.
Was this... was this prophecy talking about her? There was no way this would come to pass, definitely not after how much Nightmare Moon had changed from the jealous, bitter mare that we had first encountered within the dream realm. No, I refused to believe such nonsense. Luna wasn’t like that while in her alternate form, not anymore, that much I was sure of.
And Celestia would never betray one of us... so the only possibility that I felt was remotely possible... was myself. I... I wouldn’t ever do such a thing, though. None of us would, for that matter.
I was about to tell Clover that this couldn’t possibly be true, only to meet the sunken, lifeless gaze of our friend. Clover had passed away and I hadn’t even paid attention to him as he breathed his last breath. What kind of friend was I? Tears fell from my eyes in mourning rivers and I sighed in heartbroken agony as Lulu closed his eyes slowly in her own grief.
This prophecy that he gave us... it didn’t have to be about us, right? I would hate for the last thing he did to be a foretelling of our family falling apart. The thought of betraying one of my sisters... I didn’t even want to entertain the thought that Luna or Celestia would do something like that.
Clover, I wish... no... I dearly hope you were wrong about this. Fate be damned, prophecies can't foretell the future for such a long time span. I refuse to believe that!
Luna and I returned to our castle, promising Clover’s daughter we would be there for his funeral. Celestia knew, as soon as we came back in somber moods, that our dear friend was gone for good. I... I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the supposed prophecy, keeping it hidden from her and telling Luna that it would be for the best if she didn’t know. I couldn’t break Tia’s heart even further, should the prophecy indeed be about one of us.
We held the ceremony for Clover in a similar way that we had held the one for Amore. He deserved at least that much from us and his daughter thanked us for everything we did for her family. For having stayed with him in his last moments, even as she lacked the courage to do so herself. Seeing family die was never easy and Clover felt like the brother we never had.
May he rest in peace or live a grand new life, wherever he was now.
Eventually, our food situation started to resolve itself over the years more and more. The earthponies of our nation worked tirelessly to provide as much as they could grow and the pegasi ponies did wonders with the weather to assist the cultivation of crops as best as they could.
Our own worries were lessened, knowing we would make it through this crisis without starving most of the population to death. Without constantly having to worry about the food lasting us through the winters, we could concentrate more on bringing a stop to the banditry and funding the development of medicines, as well as rebuilding the cities.
We made it a priority to have plumbing be more widespread even in the lesser advanced regions of Equestria. It was a very costly endeavor, though, bits we could only spend sparingly. The advancements in sanitization were still primitive in comparison to what we had on Earth, but it was a start.
In a few decades, maybe a century, this would hopefully be a thing of the past. The first five years after Discord had been defeated were the most difficult, demanding a lot of us and our ponies. We fought through these difficult times with determination, though. At last, the standard of living was improving (if at a slow pace). A few more years and we might come out of this stronger than ever. Our dream of creating a utopia was finally within grasping distance.
Many of the missing cases were also resolving themselves with time, as well. More and more ponies were returning to Equestria from all over the world. A world that gained a name, paying tribute to the species that saved it from the overwhelming chaos. Equis was the name that became the accepted name by most nations in this world.
The griffons raised a fuss for a while and my sisters and I had to work hard to keep them from starting a war with us, explaining to them that it wasn’t our idea and that we could hardly change the opinion of everycreature living on this planet (not that I was inclined to deny them their opinion, it is a nice name).
It was exhausting to deal with the Griffon Empire for any length of time, to be honest. They just never know when to stop complaining about the smallest of things, be it technicalities in treaties or the name of the friggin’ planet. At least they didn’t have the guts to attack our nation again (for now, I have no idea whether or not it will stay that way), remembering quite well how we basically made their old ruler next to useless by making him become dependent on enchanted éclairs.
It served them well as a reminder that ponies aren’t so easily conquered.
Besides, after Queen Novo had quite literally told them to stop being petty chickens, they were less vocal about their displeasure. The hippogriffs, while they were not that big of a nation, had a way of reasoning with the griffons that made them somehow listen to their words over our own pleading words. I wasn't entirely sure how in the world they managed to do that while we failed pretty much entirely in that regard. Perhaps it had something to do with their shared ancestry, I couldn't be entirely certain of that.
All in all, the first 'summit' of the nations of Equis was (somewhat) a success. Not one nation was mad enough to declare war on us outright (something that might have happened with the griffons were it not for their 'cousins', I suspect), so everything went more or less back to normal afterward. The yaks went back to breaking all their stuff for reasons unknown, the minotaurs secluded themselves once more in their 'city' (if one can call that labyrinth of theirs a city), the abyssinians went back to being abyssinians, the deer went back to being haughty night elf rip-offs, the griffons were left to stew in their pettiness, and we got to catch up with Queen Novo (who it turns out was as immortal as we were, go figure).
To be honest, things could have gone a lot worse. I was thankful that we didn't have to worry about opportunity-seekers. Things might have been much more difficult for us while rebuilding our nation, otherwise.
And so the months passed on and our nation started to recover back to its full strength. Luna, Celestia, and I could finally breathe easily and allow ourselves to relax more. Between paperwork and talking with foreign nations in order to keep the peace, we didn’t have to hear so much flak from the nobility, anymore. A massive relief, honestly.
If we couldn’t keep the nobility appeased, then we couldn’t keep the nation from falling apart again. Without their help, reluctant as it was most of the time, I’m sure we could have never recovered the way we did. The peasantry would have rioted with discontentment long ago were it not for the nobles keeping them as happy as they could.
I’m glad that the nobility in Equestria wasn’t following the example of Earth’s nobility, actually working actively to better this nation when it was needed of them. That was as far as the usefulness of the nobility went, though. I could do without their constant whining in court, complaining constantly that they had to help the peasants and keep them happy (they apparently liked their heads too much to ignore my warnings about what would happen if they didn't act like decent ponies).
“Sister?” Luna’s voice interrupted my workflow as I was reading through a document with a critical eye. I let out an inquisitive hum, trying to commit the position I stopped reading at to my memory for later reference. “What do you say to a vacation? The beach, perhaps?”
“Lulu, you know that we still have a lot of things left that we need to work on,” I told her, sighing even as I wanted to say that it sounded like a wonderful idea. While it wasn’t much, the work does need to be done at some point. A vacation, while nice, would only pile up more work on us that we had to work through once we returned home. Our duty would have to come first before we could even think of our own enjoyment. “Despite things calming down considerably, this isn’t going to go away. The sooner we get it done, the better.”
“I know,” she said, pushing the quill in front of her around with a hoof as she pouted a little bit grumpily. “But after all that has happened, don’t we deserve some free time? Time to ourselves~?”
I blushed, as she waggled her eyebrows from where she sat at the other side of the desk. Stupid naughty sister. “You would have to go beg Tia, then. I can’t make that decision behind her back.”
“Good thing I asked her, already,” Luna grinned, puffing out her chest a little bit. “She said I had to get you to agree, so... please, please, please, Sunny!”
I giggled as she gave me her best puppy-eyed look, her eyes twinkling beautifully in the light of the candles. “Very well, Lulu. It might take things off of our minds for a short time, so why not?”
“Yes!” she cheered and I shook my head good-naturedly. “Oh, we’re gonna have so much fun!”
“Now, I think we have been at this for way too long, let us get ready for bed, okay?” I said, stretching out my stiff limbs with a yawn as I moved away from behind the desk and towards the door. Luna nodded, her mood significantly lifted as she followed after me with a spring in her step.
The trip from my office to our bedroom within the tallest tower of our castle (not regretting that decision... nope, nuh-uh, definitely not) was spent in companionable silence, with me amusedly watching as my sister practically pranced around in her happiness. It seems we were long overdue for a vacation if this was how she was acting.
Besides, unwinding and relaxing at the beach does sound absolutely divine. Having time to ourselves... I could barely remember the last time we had that, being so occupied with the current state of our nation that it gave us little time to enjoy each other’s company.
I suppose it would be well worth it to let our work pile up a little bit, as much as it would be a pain in the flank to work through it afterward. A fresh mind was important for us to not get majorly burned out and if some relaxation would grant us just a little reprieve from the daily stress, it could give us the much-needed energy that would allow us to work with more efficiency after we return home.
Luna and I entered our chambers, finding that Celestia was already fast asleep on the bed. Quietly, we slipped under the covers of our bed, careful not to wake her. Tia had been working herself ragged, she deserved all the rest she could get. Not that we were that much different in that regard.
Luna gave me a goodnight kiss and snuggled herself tightly to my chest, nuzzling my neck affectionately. I hummed peacefully, smiling as I threw my forehooves around her in an embrace.
Ten minutes or so later, Luna let out a tiny grunt. “Summer? Are you still awake?”
“Yes, Luna,” I mumbled, opening one of my eyes slightly. “What is it? Can’t sleep?”
Luna snorted at that. “Me and being unable to sleep?” she said with humor and I giggled silently myself. “I just... Summer, when are we going to tell Tia? Keeping secrets from her isn’t... I feel bad for it.”
“I know... I don’t feel any better about it, believe me, but...” I whispered, grimacing at the thought of that damn prophecy. Whenever the subject came up, I tried telling myself that it wasn’t about us, hoping with all of my heart, but the more I lied to myself, the more I started to feel like running away from the truth was a futile effort. “Tia has been stressed out the most among us three, I don’t want to give her more reasons to go into hysterics.”
“Still...” Luna mumbled, sighing sadly. “It feels wrong to keep her in the dark about this. What if... what if she will hate us for it? This could very well lead to the thing we want to prevent...”
“We just... we just have to believe it isn’t about us...” I argued weakly, though I could tell she wasn’t convinced by that in the slightest. I don’t blame her, I didn’t feel any differently about it. “Besides, even if it is about us, Tia would be the last pony to do something like that. That... that could never happen. She is too loyal for that, you know that. If one of us would ever, you know, it... it would probably be me...”
“No...” Luna said and moved her head so that we could stare into each other’s eyes. Our slit eyes. “You wouldn’t... it would be me, right? You know what it said... a nightmare will end.”
“Lulu...” I said glumly, my gaze hardening as I felt a bit of rage flare up within me. I shoved the negative emotions back down, swallowing thickly. “You aren’t like that. Neither as Luna Nocturnis or Nightmare Moon. I, on the other hoof? I have my problems with lashing out when I don’t want to. If it is about us, it's going to be me...”
“That’s... Sunny, I know you wouldn’t go so far as to purposefully hurt us,” Luna shot back. “Please, don’t think like that. You can’t bring yourself to such cruelty...”
“Luna..?” the sleepy voice of Celestia interrupted our argument and I felt my heart hammer loudly within my chest in fear of what she could have overheard. “...it’s the middle of the night, go to sleep...”
“Yes, Tia...” Luna mumbled, cautiously watching our sister as she went back to lightly breathing. It seems we were lucky this time, it was a good thing we kept the conversation vague enough so that, if she had actively listened in, she would have mistaken it as something else. Probably. I think. At least, she wouldn’t have jumped to the conclusion that it was about a prophecy.
This is driving me crazy and I wish Clover had never made this damn prophecy in the first place. I have been wishing for that a lot lately, haven’t I?
“Everything will work out fine, Lulu,” I whispered, though my words rang hollow to my ears. “We just have to believe it.”
Luna stayed silent as we stared at each other for a few more moments, then she gave me a tiny (if reluctant) nod. I placed a soft kiss on her muzzle, hoping to give her all the reassurances I could give her, and closed my eyes trying to go back to sleep.
Try as I might, all these thoughts about the prophecy kept me from a fulfilling sleep that night. It was hard to clear my mind of all worries, always falling back to the same questions of an uncertain future. Most prophecies, like the one from Clover, were vague about the ones they talked about, only giving the barest of hints about their intended subject, so they could be about anypony, but this one resonated painfully with us in particular. No ordinary pony would live as long as the ones prophesied by Clover to go through what he had foreseen, so it could only be us (even though I clung to the thought that it might not be so with a fierce vengeance).
Over the next few days, we planned out everything we needed to take care of before we could actually go on a vacation. It took a lot of time setting this up so that our nation could go without us for a week or so (while I desperately wanted to have an extended vacation, it simply wasn’t a good idea to leave the nobles in charge for too long).
In the end, we found enough trustworthy ponies that wouldn’t go power crazy as soon as we left them to their own devices. That didn’t mean we trusted them to do our job for longer than a week, though. Even the more noble ponies among the nobility had their own ambitions and ideas of how to run Equestria. Celestia was perhaps the only pony that could rein them in and keep them from becoming too selfish, nowadays.
So, with one last glance back at our castle, I felt a little bit of giddiness rise up inside my chest as we took to the skies with nothing but our saddlebags on us to hold a few things for us. Luna had picked our destination, an island just a bit off the coast of our kingdom, so we didn’t have to fly over half the planet (not that we couldn’t have, our stamina would barely notice that, but Tia and Lulu might get a bit impatient with my flight speed).
The island, as Tia and I found out, was a (somewhat pretty) wasteland. Next time we plan a vacation, Lulu won’t be having a say in the matter. That, I swear to myself.
There was, as far as the eye could see, black volcanic rock scattered over the landscape with a few cactuses and palm trees here and there. So, that made the mountain in the distance a volcano, most likely. I gave Luna a look and she merely grinned back at me, silently telling us to follow her as we flew along the coastline.
It took us well into the evening until Lulu finally found the spot that she wanted us to make camp at and I had to admit, she had a point about wanting to spend our vacation here. As we neared the small lake, I couldn’t keep the wonder away from showing on my muzzle as I stared slack-jawed at the mesmerizing sight.
In front of us was a beach entirely comprised of black glistening sand and the lake itself, nestled against a wide cliff overlooking the beach, was a vibrant green that could have been liquified jade for all I knew. Yu’la was looking at the lake curiously from underneath the flap of my saddlebag and I can’t say I wasn’t curious myself as to how the lake came to be like that.
“Luna, this is...” I said, completely stunned and at a loss for words. It was beautiful despite the lack of vegetation.
Luna snickered and bumped my side with a hoof in mirth. “I knew you would like it,” she said, gliding over to the top of the cliff. “Took me some time to find a place like this.”
“How did you find it?” Celestia asked, landing beside her while Philomena continued to fly a few circles over us. Yu’la jumped out of her snuggly confines and joined her, both of them chasing each other playfully. Tia and I smiled at their antics with fondness. Sometimes, they really could be mistaken as sisters.
“There were a few stories the pegasi in our guard had about this place,” Luna explained, starting to set up the tent at the same time. “It was apparently one of the few places that the wendigos couldn’t affect with their ice during the great winter.”
“Well, starving to death in the cold or starving to death in a wasteland next to a volcano... I’d choose this place, honestly,” I said, struggling to help Luna with the big tent. She couldn’t have chosen a simpler tent, could she?
“Don’t be so negative, sister,” Luna snickered, watching me with barely suppressed laughter while I was trying to get the little hook thingy (I wasn’t actually certain what it was called) into the ground without it becoming loose again. I think it was called an anchor, but that wasn’t important right now. If I could only get it to stay where I wanted it to, damnit!
Celestia came over to me, smiling slightly at my struggle, and nuzzled my cheek, telling me to let her do this for me. I grumbled defeatedly, perking up slightly at the nuzzle she gave me, and watched her as she took the stupid thing from my telekinetic grasp. She put the anchor on one of the rocky outcroppings of the cliff and, with a swift stomp of her hoof, had it firmly embedded in the ground. She smirked proudly and I pouted at her.
“You know that thing is probably ruined now, right?” Luna said snarkily and Celestia stuck her tongue out at her cheekily. At least the tent was standing now and it wasn’t like we could get more of those anchor thingies back home.
“I’m going to go catch some fish, I trust you will have a fire ready when I return?” Celestia said and I gave her a deadpan look. Where were we supposed to get firewood here? “Right, wood. Let’s see... how far was the last palm tree?”
“Good luck with getting that to burn, Tia,” I snorted. “Palms don’t make for good firewood. They aren’t even technically trees, in the strict sense.”
“And here I thought I was the nerd,” she giggled, giving me a kiss. I hummed happily, not willing to argue with her over how ‘nerdy’ it was to discuss the intricacies of whether or not palms were considered trees. “So, how are we going to cook our food then?”
“We shouldn’t have let Luna decide where to go on vacation,” I whispered, getting an indignant shout from said sister as she poked her head out of the tent with a glare directed my way. “Even though this place is beautiful beyond measure.”
Luna smiled, appeased by my words as she went back to filling our tent with enough pillows one could probably drown in them. I think she went out of her way to fill her hammerspace with as much of those as she could fit into her dimensional pocket spell. Then again, Tia or I should have had enough foresight to pack more than our camping gear for this, too. I'm sure I wrote 'food and firewood' on the list of things to pack just in case, though...
“If we really need to, I guess we could use our magic to cook?” I asked, grimacing at the idea. It always made solids taste funny, and not in a good way. Celestia, too, gave a pained grimace at the idea.
“Are you sure we can’t use palm trees?” she whined, begging me to reconsider.
“I... Tia, we would have to dry them of all of their oils, and even then, they burn much too fast and I don’t know if they will burn hot enough, either,” I told her. “We could try, but it would be easier to just cook our food over a pit of lava.”
Celestia grinned, hugging me tightly with a laugh. “Summer, you’re a genius!”
“I am?” I asked, blushing brightly as she peppered me with kisses.
“You make that pit while I go and find us some fish!” she shouted back at me as she glided away from the cliff towards the ocean. I watched her for a few moments longer (I did not stare at her flanks for longer than what was appropriate... nope) until her words registered in my head and I groaned. Of course, she would actually consider cooking her food over a friggin’ pit of lava. I sighed disgruntledly, knowing how much of a pain I would put my coat and mane through while making her that lava pool.
I walked a good distance away from our tent, grumbling all the while, and let loose over the careful control of my fiery aura, even fanning the flames to make it go hot enough to melt the ground beneath me. I frowned at the goopy feeling of slowly getting submerged in molten rock, not enjoying it for one second.
“This is going to be a pain in the flank to get out of my coat,” I muttered to myself. Celestia returned ten minutes or so later, a happy little expression on her muzzle as she floated a dozen or so medium-sized fishes of all kinds after her soaked body. I blushed from within the pool of lava as the saltwater started to evaporate from her body, the sight of her fur leaving me nothing to the imagination of her powerful muscles.
“Is everything alright?” Tia asked me and I sank further into my little pool, shaking my head as I bit down on my tongue to keep myself from answering. My marehood practically begged me to drag my twin into the pool and have her ravish me as long as we could stay awake. My sister gave me a skeptical look, narrowing her eyes at me in suspicion and I squirmed, trying not to ogle her too much before we had even eaten anything. “Summer, are you masturbating?”
I shook my head and she snorted. I looked over to Luna as she came over to us and I noticed she was biting her lip, staring at the rump of Celestia with poorly disguised desire. Here I had thought we could at least go one day without going sex crazy.
Not that I had any intention to stop satisfying my begging nethers, either.
“Why is Summer in a pool of lava?” Luna asked, sitting down beside Celestia. Tia wiggled one fish within her levitation meaningfully at Lulu, half done already. “And... is she masturbating?”
“She thinks we won’t notice, but it is plain to see she is doing it. Her eyes have that twinkle,” Celestia giggled, flipping around the fish in her telekinesis. A few bubbles of air escaped my lips as I heard that for the first time. Did I really have that twinkle in my eyes? “And she thinks I will go into the pool with her, despite knowing that the molten rock will cling to our coats in the most annoying way possible.”
“Hmm,” Luna hummed and smiled mischievously before shoving my sister into the little pit with a laugh, taking my twin by surprise. My ears splayed back as Celestia surfaced with a glare sent to both Luna and me. “Sorry, my bad. My hoof slipped.”
“Luna!” Celestia growled, the hot glowing rock dripping down the side of her head and I let out a moan as it looked way more lewd than it had any right to be. Tia gave me a glance before turning back to Luna. “Perhaps you would like to test out what would happen if you were to be submerged by lava?”
“No need to get hasty, sister,” Luna giggled nervously. “I’ll just... go back to the tent, bye!”
Celestia smiled devilishly at me as she turned around while Luna abandoned me to my fate. “Now that she is gone, I have you all to myself... Although, I could have done without the, ugh, bath.”
I surfaced enough that my muzzle was free from the lava and slowly drew in a breath as she came close enough to me that she was within range of me kissing her hungrily. “Don’t you dare start teasing, Tia... I want you right now...”
“Very well~,” she whispered back, only briefly breaking the kiss between us. She shoved her tongue back into my mouth, enveloping me in her wings as she pressed herself tighter to me. I hummed happily, gasping in surprise as she took me to the edge of the pool and had me on my back a moment later. “Spell?”
“No...” I whispered back, breathily. “I want you, purely you... no shenanigans, no extra parts, just you against me...”
“As you wish~,” she answered, nipping my lips with her teeth gently. Tia giggled as I moaned, grinding herself slowly against my body. We both gasped against each other, Tia starting to buck me while ignoring the splashing lava around us. It still amazed me that we could just casually bathe in molten rock and be unaffected by it.
My twin stopped kissing me and just as I was about to whine for her to continue, she shoved a piece of fish into my mouth, her grinding against me slowed to a gentle movement. I let out a surprised humming sound and Celestia laughed quietly with that absolutely angelic sound I so adored from her. She continued with the soft grinding, kissing me between every piece she fed me.
Sex while being fed and half-submerged in a slowly cooling pool of lava as the day neared its end was... actually quite nice. I would have thought the physical exertion of making love to each other would have made eating at the same time a bad mix, but with her slowing down and only giving me small pieces it didn’t make this into an unpleasant experience. The lava, on the other hoof, was starting to make this bothersome the longer we stayed in it.
“T-Tia...” I moaned, digging my hooves into her firm muscles as I ignored more of the fish, I rather wanted to have her get me closer to my orgasm instead. Tia, for once, didn’t indulge in her teasing tendencies as I would have expected (even though she gave me her word not to) and started to pick up her pace grinding against me, stroking my cheek with a soft touch from her hoof as she smiled at me lovingly.
I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this much care from her, but I wasn’t going to say anything lest I ruined the moment. The panting breaths leaving me were starting to quicken and I could tell, as my twin pushed herself against me with grinding and bucking movements, that she must have gotten a few pointers from Luna on how to move with her hind legs to achieve maximum effect. I very much approved, hungrily kissing her.
“I love you, S-Summer,” my twin whispered, placing a prolonged kiss on my horn.
I mewled out and gasped and moaned, panting as much as my body allowed me, and I pressed my body against hers so we were touching as much as possible. “I love you, too, T-Tia. So very much. I... I-I’m close...”
Celestia smiled wider, pushing herself to move faster and I felt my pussy scream out in pure bliss as she finally managed to push me over the edge. She was also silently screaming as the cells of her body wreaked havoc on her as well, apparently having held back her orgasm just for this moment.
“Tia...” I murmured, feeling massively elated as I enjoyed the heavenly quivers my body made. “I... You...”
I wanted to tell her. Tell her that there was this prophecy weighing me down, but I got scared. I got scared so much, I clammed up on her and remained silent, keeping the damn thing secret. Luna would have had no trouble telling her, but I didn’t want her to. I... I wanted to be the one to tell her, but at the same time, I wanted to keep it away from her forever to avoid hurting her. I couldn’t hurt her like that, making her worry with the knowledge one of us might betray the others.
The truth, though, was that I was selfish. I didn’t want her to know not because it would hurt her, but because it would hurt me. It would hurt me to know that she knows. That she has to bear the same burden of knowing. Ignorance was bliss, a bliss I had been robbed of. I wanted to be ignorant of this prophecy, but alas, the only thing I could do about my wants was to keep Celestia blissfully ignorant in a poor attempt at feeling that bliss through her own ignorance. Did that make sense? Somewhat, but such feelings rarely made sense, anyway. It was dumb and I was dumb for allowing it to rule my feelings. Like always.
“What is it, Summer?” she asked me, staring into my fearful eyes with concern. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” I whispered, looking away from her with shame while the first tears started to appear in my eyes. I was a bad sister, wasn’t I? All I wanted was to keep her safe from the future that Clover had foreseen... I can’t tell her... “It’s... nothing. Forget I said anything. I'm being... dumb.”
“Summer, hey...” Celestia said gently, turning my head back so that I was forced to look into her beautiful eyes. I couldn’t look away and hide the glistening tears from her. “What’s wrong? You can tell me anything, remember? I don't want you crying over something when I can help...”
“I... I want to tell you so much, believe me... b-but if I do,” I answered as a sob escaped me, my heart tearing itself in two in my sorrow. I can’t tell her. Never. “But if I do, it will destroy you as much as it is destroying me...”
“What could be so bad, Sunshine? You... You still love me, right?” she asked, her voice going deathly silent. I squeezed her tightly against me, giving her a fierce kiss to dispel her fears. Even though I was still sobbing slightly, I started to giggle at the same time. “I... alright, I guess I was stupid for assuming that. But... what is it then?”
“I... I can’t tell you,” I told her, burying my nuzzle in the crook of her neck. “I don’t want to. But I do want to and I don’t. It’s ripping me apart, I just... I can’t, Tia. It’s... I... Tia, please don’t make me...”
“Does Luna know?” Celestia asked quietly. Judging by the way she began to tense, my silence told her enough. “So, I’m the only one among us that doesn’t, huh? I... Don’t you trust me? Is that it?! I expected better from you, Summer...”
Her voice sounded so sad, it tore into my conscience like jagged claws tearing away at my last resolve to keep it away from her. “I’m sorry, Tia. I... You really want to know, don’t you?”
My sister gave me a look full of resolve as she leaned back. She held me back by my chest as I tried to keep her from moving away, but as always, she was stronger than me. Or I was just not willing to put my own strength into it, I guess. “Summer, whatever it is, I promise I can take it! I’m stronger than you think. I... I promise I won’t get mad. Not like I had been when you were about to tell us about our immortality. So, please... tell me what it is,” she said firmly. Her gaze was one of steely determination. “Tell me. Now.”
“Clover... he... I...” I whimpered, screwing my eyes shut in reluctance.
“Sister...” Tia growled. “Spill it. I won’t ask again.”
“He made a written prophecy. It doesn’t specifically say any names, but it is obvious that it is about us,” Luna’s voice reached us and I squirmed underneath my twin, whining at the cold inevitability of Celestia learning the truth. My Moon's gaze was uncharacteristically cold. I screwed my eyes shut right as she said those cursed words. “One of us will betray the other two.”
“...what?” Tia asked, stunned. I chanced a peek out from underneath my eyelids and saw her look at us with a disbelieving look. “What... what else did the prophecy say? Anything specific?”
“Not in the way that would give us a clue as to who is supposedly betraying the others, Tia,” Luna answered grimly. Then, her frown deepened and I knew she would accuse herself again. We've been at this long enough for me to know when she tried to reason herself into being the villain in the story again. Instead of denying the damn prophecy, she was determined to take the blame for something that hasn't even happened yet. We were both doing it, to be honest. “The prophecy talks about an end to a nightmare and both of you know how I refer to myself in... in that state.”
“Luna, you...” Celestia began and sighed heavily. “You won’t be the one to do that. You have gone through so much and even as Nightmare Moon, you have come a long way. Me and Summer, though...”
“Tia, you wouldn’t ever betray us!” I cried out, drawing her gaze fully to me. “You are the most loyal pony alive, you are literally incapable of betraying us. Me, though? I’ve sometimes lashed out against you and... I fear it will happen again, in a way that will be unforgivable. I... I even wanted to keep this away from you because I was being selfish. Both of you are so strong with your ideals, while I... while I struggle with mine. I’m such a hypocrite most of the time... if it weren’t for you keeping me straight...”
“No, Summer, I won’t ever believe that will happen. And you know why?” Celestia said, giving me an intense look. Slowly and nervously, I shook my head, confused at how she could think that. “Because, whatever you do, however bad it may seem, I won’t ever think you betrayed me. You are the paragon of kindness, a few outbursts of anger here and there won't change that. You are the most virtuous pony I know, don't try to deny that. So, whatever you are thinking right now, stop that. You are my everything, I won't allow you to torture yourself over this."
My lips quivered as tears started to spill by the dozens. My heart leaped in my chest, touched by her words. I have no idea how she could always lift me up so effortlessly. And here she told me I was the most virtuous one among us. She was selling herself way too short. Still, I guess she was right on some level. "...okay."
And I mean, none of us are the type to really do that, so... maybe it is a false prophecy? Or one of the other immortals out there was the actual subject of the prophecy. There were tons of those around, it... it doesn't have to be us, right? Right?
...right?
Celestia sighed as she gave me a loving smile and a peck, wiping away my tears with a brief nuzzle before looking back to Luna. "Was there anything else that was foretold in the prophecy?”
“A thousand years long exile for the one that betrays the others...” Luna answered, a disturbed look entering her eyes. “On... on the moon. You have to admit, all of the signs are pointing towards me. Tia, Summer, you... you have to prepare for that. Lock me up, do whatever you must to prevent this, I don't know. Just do something! I... I can’t stand the thought of betraying either of you.”
“You... Luna, believe me when I say it won’t be you. You aren’t going to do that. Don’t start to think like that or you doom yourself into a mindset I fear you won’t be able to escape from,” Tia shot back, a dark and haunted look in her own eyes. She wasn't going where I thought she was going, was she? “It’s me, it has to be. You both are such pure souls...”
Suns be damned. Is everypony here going to play the blame game, or what?! This was getting ridiculous. “Is... Is this about your parents?” I asked, feeling anger rise within me. “You told me you were over that! That it didn’t bother you anymore! Was that a lie?!”
“...no,” she said, growing silent for a few, heavy seconds as Luna and I gave her a glare for obviously lying about it. Sometimes, I really don't know what she was thinking by doing this. “It wasn’t a lie that I’ve gotten mostly over that. But... if I can betray my own family like that once, I... I can do so again.”
“That wasn’t family,” Luna snorted, stomping her hoof down angrily. “That you would dare call those sorry excuses for parents family only disgraces the memory of our real parents. Besides, they betrayed you and not the other way around.”
Celestia's ears wilted at that and I gave her a pleading look. “Tia, please don’t think like that,” I said, staring up at her with sad eyes. I can’t let her do this to herself. Not when she was so insistent that we wouldn’t betray her, either. “What your human father did... I would have done the same thing as you, Tia. That wasn’t you betraying your own family, it was saving Luna from going through the same thing.”
“Be that as it may, Summer. I... I can’t entertain the idea of either of you betraying the other,” Celestia shot back, scowling darkly. I wanted to wipe that look from her muzzle because it didn’t suit her at all, her serene look was what I had come to associate her with (and the protective glares sent towards our enemies, those were also quite sexy).
“Then... uh..."—I fidgeted, trying to think of a solution for this before getting a sudden flash of genius (I really could pat myself on the back for this one)—" then we simply don’t think about the prophecy! It has been, what? Over twenty years since Clover made it? Maybe it was a fluke,” I told her, though the hope in me accompanying that statement was but a flicker. My heart feared that it still might come to pass.
“You should know better than to dismiss warnings of the future, Red Nose,” Celestia said, smiling thinly. It gave me the impression that what she thought of her own abilities was not so kind. She still blamed herself for not having taken the visions of Discord’s world seriously, didn’t she? “We will have to see what the future holds. You know that preventing it is going to be a fool’s errand. The weave of fate is not easily changed.”
“Aren’t you an expert in preventing bad visions?” Luna asked, poking her lightly on the tip of her muzzle.
My twin rolled her eyes. “We have all seen how that turned out with Discord, haven’t we?” Tia shot back. “I could have done something, anything.”
“It wasn’t your fault, sister,” Luna told her. “Nopony could have foreseen something like that and taken it seriously. Heck, Summer and I didn’t take it seriously, either. Or have you forgotten that we have seen the same vision, too? We were there and dismissed it as mere fantasy on your part.”
A small piece of my conscience told me that Discord deliberately did what he did... to prove to us that prophecies were inevitable. Maybe he was just preparing us for this moment, but that was something I couldn't... no, wouldn't entertain. There must be a way to prevent this. There has to be.
Perhaps... perhaps ignoring it would delay it long enough for us to... I dunno. Make it not happen?
“Let’s... let’s just hope it doesn’t come to pass. And if it does... that it won’t happen anytime soon. That way we won’t have to worry about it so much,” I whispered, hoping that they would at least agree with me on that. It was a futile hope, I know, but what could I do? Whatever we do, no matter what we try, we won't know how it will happen or when it will happen. Or who is going to betray whom. All we could do is wait, and needlessly worrying over this won't do us any good. As will shifting the blame on each of ourselves because we don't want to believe that the others could be the culprit.
Despite my plea, Celestia and Luna looked skeptical. I couldn’t really blame them for that, for I felt exactly the same. Pretending it won't happen is just as stupid as pretending to be the one to do it. But it's the only option where we stay sane instead of going crazy over a possibility. We can't let it control us, so we have to think of it more as a 'suggestion' than a 'certainty'.
We never get what we want, though, do we? Ugh.
My sister sighed. “Summer... my sweet Sunshine,” Celestia frowned, giving me a look full of pity. “You’re too optimistic about this, thinking like that.”
Instead of agreeing with her, Luna grimaced as she narrowed her eyes. “And we are too pessimistic about this, aren’t we?” Luna argued as she gave a thoughtful hum. “Perhaps we really are overthinking this too much. If the prophecy hasn’t come to pass in over twenty years, who can say when it will? It might take a century before anything even happens.”
My twin snorted in disbelief. “So, what? Your solution to this is to just ignore this?!” Celestia asked and I shrugged awkwardly. I mean, it was pretty much my previous approach to this, wasn’t it? Ignore it in the hopes it was a fluke and go on like it never existed in the first place. Nothing could go wrong like this, right? I mean, even if it does come true, we don't really know what to prepare for.
“Well...” Luna began, rubbing her hooves against each other while fidgeting with her wings. “The best way to prevent this prophecy is to never betray each other, right? What better way is there to do that than to ignore the prophecy?”
Celestia looked ready to argue further but paused thoughtfully. “You... might have a point there, Lulu. This prophecy can’t happen if we never betray each other. That... that might work. It’s ingenious, really.”
I smiled as we finally came to an agreement. Even though I felt like it was anything but ingenious, I desired nothing more than to hide away from this damn prophecy. Even if this was a stupid idea and would bite us in our flanks at a later time... “And besides, it’s silly, isn’t it? Us, betraying each other? That might be the stupidest thing ever in the history of ever.”
“True,” both of them agreed with me, giggling. I joined in with the laughter, a feeling of relief washing over me. Still, a nagging part of my brain, far in the back, protested against me in fear. Was this really the course to take?
The universe was never so kind to us, was it?
“Alright, let’s get out of this, Sunshine,” Celestia said, helping me up and out of the pool of lava that was beginning to cool down enough that it was getting all goopy again. Right, that stuff. This wasn’t going to be nice. Getting rid of it would take a while of really silly motions.
Suffice it to say, it was well past midnight until my twin and I had managed to get all of the liquified rock shaken off of us, using our fiery auras to help speed things along as best as we could. Our wings were mostly at fault for it taking so long and Luna had her fun laughing her flanks off while Tia and I did our best impressions of headless chickens fluttering our wings around.
Damnit, I hated molten rock so much. It's worse than sand, I swear. At least we had some food stored away in our hammerspace now, so we didn’t have to repeat the lava pit incident (hip hip hooray for stasis spells!). Luna was apologizing to us afterward for not having taken care of our food situation ahead of time (she only did so after Tia had gotten fed up with her laughing at us so much that she dunked her tail in the cooling pool of lava in a fit of mischievous revenge).
Now we knew what happens when she comes in contact with lava, though. It cools off rapidly within her icy aura, not really surprising. Luna was pouting afterward, trying to get the stuff out of her tail (serves her right).
That concluded the first night of our vacation and despite the start, it did help make us relax quite a lot. The veritable sea of cushions in our tent was a delight to sleep on, so Luna had at least done one thing right. It didn’t matter that we were really bad at camping, we had each other and that was enough for me.
On the second day, we decided to explore the island a bit. While it was interesting to see so much volcanic rock quite literally all over the place, it didn’t make much for sightseeing. The landscape was beautiful in its own right, but that was all that it had going for itself. Besides the few volcanos (inactive at the moment, thankfully), the only thing that managed to hold my attention was the green lake we had set our camp up at. That, and there was this one cave that circulated hot air from the volcano over a massive pit (which made the whole lava pool completely unnecessary, yay...).
Instead of finding seashells at a beach like one might have expected, we found little green crystals scattered around and Yu’la kept happily collecting as many as she could find with my help.
Without much to see or even do on this island, we defaulted to enjoying each other's company. In the naughty way, that is.
Alas, even our vacation came to an end eventually. I had been thoroughly satisfied by Lulu and Tia and had reciprocated in kind, getting them over the edge of orgasm many times myself. It managed to get the more worrisome things weighing us down off our minds, and for that, I was eternally grateful. Sex just had a way to relieve stress in the best possible ways.
Thankfully, the nobles hadn’t managed to burn Equestria down to the ground by the time we returned. It was back to the same old routine for us and before long, the years started to fly by and the worry we had for the prophecy was all but forgotten.
As it turns out, we should have worried. We should have panicked. Most importantly, we shouldn’t have ignored the warnings like that. For a nightmare was about to walk right into our lives and ruin everything.
A nightmare that shouldn’t have existed, in the first place.
A nightmare that was utterly impossible.
Our lives... were about to be changed.
Forever.