//------------------------------// // I - Are We Good Ponies? (Part 1) // Story: Sunrise // by Winston //------------------------------// Sunrise ​    Chapter I - Are We Good Ponies? (Part 1) ​    “Are we good ponies?” The question echoed distantly through Celestia’s ears, pulling her out of the deep reverie she’d fallen into watching the setting sun. “Hmm?” Returning to reality, she turned her head toward the other unicorn on the observation deck with her. “I’m sorry, what?” “I asked, are we good ponies?” Luna stood by Celestia's side, looking up at her sister with teal eyes glowing in the dying light. Celestia laughed and gentle waves rippled down her long pink mane, making it flow across her pure white coat. “Well, we’re not little fillies anymore. We can have ice cream for breakfast and sneak cookies whenever we feel like it and nopony can send us to time-out, if that’s what you’re asking.” “I know, it’s a silly question.” Luna smirked and shook her head, her own cornflower mane brushing across her midnight blue body. After a few seconds, her expression slowly drifted back to pensive. “But… seriously.” “Seriously…” The smile faded from Celestia’s face. “Hmmm.” She scrunched her muzzle and pondered while she looked out again to the west. Quartz City blazed under an orange sky of fiery sunset embers contrasting vividly with long dark shadows. The observation deck they were on wasn’t large—only a modest platform encircling the steep, conical roof of the small house the two sisters shared—but at three stories, it stuck up like a little island in a sea of elegant marble and limestone, just high enough to offer a view of most of the city’s other buildings and their beautiful, centuries-old classical unicorn stonework facades. It was a nice place to think, but Celestia found that Luna’s deceptively simple question defied an easy answer. “I’m afraid that, seriously, I’m not sure what to say, other than I hope so.” “Hope so…” Luna mused with a soft sigh, looking around and studying the rooftops. “I guess that’s all we can do, isn’t it?” “Why?” Celestia asked. “Is something on your mind?” “I’m not sure.” Luna shrugged. “Maybe I’m just realizing lately that I’ve never thought very much about it.” “Well, does your instructor think that you’re a good unicorn?” Celestia asked. “I suppose that’s the most significant judgment in the life of a Thaumosciences apprentice. I know what it’s like. I was there myself not long ago.” “That’s not really what I mean.” Luna shook her head. “What I mean is, the training in Thaumosciences is all about the how of magic, isn’t it? But not much of the why.” Celestia rested her chin on the railing of the deck and stared off at the cityscape. “Yes, that’s true. ‘Why’ isn’t really our place to question. We’re mere thaumites for now. Not exactly cardinal mages.” Luna moved closer and nestled up gently against her sister’s side, then put one foreleg on the deck’s railing and lowered her head until it was next to Celestia’s. The two of them stood quietly together for a little while, looking out at the city from the same perspective. “Sometimes it just feels like there’s something missing.” Luna’s voice was barely louder than a whisper. Celestia raised one eyebrow and turned her head just slightly to give Luna a sidelong glance. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” “No.” Luna just barely shook her head. “With this cutie mark, the instructors don’t let me have many first thoughts of my own, let alone second ones.” She glanced back at the silver crescent on her flank. “Ah. I know what you mean.” Celestia nodded. “But you’ll graduate from your apprenticeship and be on the primary moon control team before you know it. There’s a little more freedom after that. Things will get more exciting.” “I’m not sure I want moving the moon to be ‘exciting’, exactly,” Luna said. Celestia considered this. “No, maybe not,” she agreed. “I think ‘satisfying’ is more the word. Fulfilling. Doing what you’re meant to do. You know what I mean.” “I’d like that,” Luna said. Celestia sighed longingly. “So would I.” Luna moved in a little closer and nuzzled her sister’s cheek. “How long do you think it will be until they put you back on the sun control team?” “Soon, I hope.” For a moment, Celestia studied how light refracted in rainbow sprays through distant crystal pylons jutting up at regular intervals from the tops of the city’s dark granite walls. The weather control perimeter they formed was far from perfect, but it spared the city from the worst of the bitter Northern cold outside. “I’m almost done with my field research assignment, so maybe after that’s finished up, but it all depends. It’s another one of those situations in which hoping is about all I can do.” “Well, I hope so, too.” “Thank you.” Celestia raised one foreleg and wrapped it around Luna’s withers, holding her in a gentle hug while they watched the sun sink behind the walls of the great unicorn city. ​    ☙ ☀ ❧     The Thaumosciences Authority building had a mostly plain façade with none of the scrolls, florets, or other usual decorative elements of unicorn stonework. The interior layout of the building was similarly plain, an emotionless logical grid of very little architectural inventiveness. Function prevailed over eloquence of form, designed as if boring equated to navigational efficiency. Maybe for the most part that was even true, notwithstanding the fact that when she’d first started working here Celestia had sometimes found it possible to get lost simply by virtue of the sheer size. The sprawling structure covered most of a city block, housing a huge complex of facilities: laboratories, workrooms, lecture halls, archives, offices, and more. At ten in the morning Celestia was in one of those offices, a spacious one reserved for a unicorn of rank. To her left, the wall was lined with bookshelves holding sets of encyclopedic volumes, one after another. All of them looked identical, as if it was the same tome soullessly cloned a hundred times. To her right, more shelves held scientific instruments, both thaumo-enhanced and mundane, in a haphazard assortment. The centerpiece of the room was an imposing steel desk which Celestia stood in front of while she tried to steady the nervous tension that twitched through her chest and legs. Behind it, a unicorn mare about Celestia’s height with a pastel fuchsia coat quietly leafed through a sheaf of papers. Her vibrant purple eyes were intently focused on the page in front of her while a silver quill danced in flowing motion as she finished one last notation. It made a faint scratching noise that sent a creeping chill up Celestia's back while she suppressed a shiver. She was cold. That was the most defining feature of all. It always felt cold in this office. “So, Thaumite Celestia, there are a few things I wanted to discuss about this report.” The other unicorn finally put down her quill and looked up. Her expressionless yet severe face was framed by a pin-straight mane, dark violet and striped with crimson. “Yes, Mage Star Fire?” Celestia asked. “The quality of the data itself isn’t in question, but some of this is not what I expected.” “I didn’t expect it myself,” Celestia said. “The changing of climate patterns and dropping earth pony productivity turned out to be even more complicated than I’d imagined. It led me in some strange directions.” “It certainly did,” Star Fire commented. “You chose to include genealogy work as part of this. I’m curious about that.”  “I started getting interested when I asked about family histories.” Celestia couldn’t stop from nervously fidgeting one hoof in a tiny rhythmic motion while she explained. “There’s virtually no recent reproductive crossover between unicorns and earth ponies, and pegasi have obviously been largely out of the question even longer, for many generations. That’s well known already, but what I found goes further: even within races, ancestries are becoming more fragmented into less genetically diverse segments. I started to think it might be having some effects relevant to what we’re seeing.” “You have no specific conclusions about this hypothesis in your report, however.” “No, Mage.” Celestia shook her head. “More of an aside, really. It could be a basis for some further studies later, however.” “Hmm.” Star Fire frowned slightly as she flipped through the report, stopping at a page near the back. “And this was interesting.” She pointed her hoof at a particular passage. “You’re drawing a lot of attention to the correlation of an imbalance in power between unicorns and earth ponies to dropping farm productivity, and suggesting that the drop is being caused by a… ‘loss of magical permeability’?” “Yes.” Celestia nodded. “I suspect that the lack of positively perceived equitable exchange between ponies is somehow lowering the ambient magic in the wider environment, and this drop is causing earth ponies to be less able to use their own magic effectively. There’s simply not enough for them to draw on.” “Can you prove this?” Star Fire asked. “These data are… interesting, I’ll give you that. But what’s the hard link? I’m not seeing a fully supported case for concluding a causal connection.” “I’m sorry, Mage.” Celestia lowered her head slightly. “I ran out of time in the project before I was able to prove anything definitive about it. I can’t say why exactly this works the way it does, only that…” She cleared her throat. “Only what?” “Only that I feel strongly that this will be substantiated in the future, pending further investigation.” Celestia half-closed one eye and cringed a little bit, intensely self-conscious that ‘I just think I’m right’ was hardly the scientifically justifiable answer she was tasked with delivering. “Well, be that as it may, I’m afraid that I can’t support these recommendations when there’s that kind of deficiency in explaining the underlying causes.” Star Fire gave the report in front of her a nonplussed look. A moment of uncomfortable, heavy silence filled the cold air. “And really, about those recommendations.” She raised one brow and looked at Celestia. “Changing laws to remove disincentives for interbreeding between earth ponies and unicorns? Deliberately mixing gene pools? You know these kinds of things fly in the face of policies that exist for a reason, don’t you?” “I’m sorry,” Celestia said. “These were really all I could think of. I didn’t intend them to be recommendations, exactly, just… hypothetical possibilities?” Star Fire made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Well, whatever they are.” She shrugged and flipped the report closed, tossing it off to one side on her desk. “I suppose I have to grant that at least it was a good try. Novel ideas, but what you’re setting forth boils down to guessing more than hard facts. That’s not quite what we’re after, is it?” Celestia didn't know what else to say. Feeling embarrassed and dismissed, she looked around the room, trying to avoid meeting Star Fire’s eye. “Anyway.” Star Fire leaned back in her chair. “I assume you haven’t become unduly familiar with the earth ponies you’ve been working with, have you?” she asked. “A scientist shouldn’t get too attached to the lab rats.” Lab rats? Celestia recoiled inside at the comparison, but she held her composure. “…No, I wouldn’t say I have,” she responded in a measured voice. “Good.” Star Fire nodded once, just slightly. “Because you’re going to continue working with them, even more closely than before.” Celestia said nothing. Her ears almost began to fall, just the faintest shadow of motion, but she caught herself and held them still, careful not to change her neutral expression. “No objections to that, are there, Thaumite?” Star Fire probed, peering at her. “No, Mage,” Celestia replied. “It’s just, to be honest, I was hoping to go back to the sun control team after this. That is my more specific field of expertise, after all.” “Yes, yes, I know how it is.” Star Fire waved a hoof. “Field work out in the sticks with the mud ponies isn’t very glamorous.” She leaned forward and stared Celestia in the eye. “But it is important.” “Yes, Mage.” Celestia nodded. “In fact–” Star Fire glanced past Celestia. “Shut the door, please.” Celestia focused on her horn and it glowed with faint rose-colored light while she reached out behind herself with telekinetic magic. She found the door by the feedback of its tactile sensation in her magical field, and pushed it until it latched shut with a soft click. The office was suddenly even more eerily quiet, on top of being cold. “The reasons that it’s particularly important right now are very sensitive,” Star Fire said, “and you will be working on one of the most sensitive projects relating to them.” Star Fire stared, watching for a response. Celestia just waited and listened. “Now, I could send you back to the solar thaumocontroller, but honestly, the Kingdom has enough solarites,” she continued after a moment. “What we need are scientists: thaumites out in the field, working on real problems. And we need more of them, good ones like you. Trustworthy ones. I believe my trust in you is well placed, yes?” “Yes, Mage,” Celestia said, offering what she knew was the only right answer. “It had better be.” Star Fire nodded. “Because the things I’m going to tell you are need-to-know only. That means exactly what it sounds like: you will not repeat them to any pony, or donkey, zebra, griffon, dragon… any form of life whatsoever, who does not have a clearance and a legitimate need to know about them. Is that understood?” “Yes, Mage,” Celestia said again. “Good. Now, as you know, the Unicorn Kingdom depends on collecting food as rent from the earth pony serfs tenant on the kingdom’s land. We pay the Cloud Empire with some of it, and in exchange, the pegasi control the weather favorably for us over the farmland, which in turn makes it possible for our earth ponies to grow more food. And the cycle repeats. Basic economic triangle 101, yes?” Celestia nodded. “But of course, that system only works when there’s a surplus of crops to trade,” Star Fire said. “And with productive output from the farms falling, the surplus is shrinking, I imagine,” Celestia ventured. “Not just shrinking.” Star Fire shook her head. “The surplus is gone.” “Gone?” Celestia’s ears fell, and this time she didn’t bother trying to hide it. “Yes, gone.” Star Fire sounded annoyed. “We’re at a critical juncture. Estimates are, between the climate crisis getting worse, the overhead of what the earth ponies have to keep just to feed themselves, and what the pegasi take as their toll, there’ll be a deficit instead of a surplus within a year. Do you know what happens then?” “Bad things?” Celestia winced. “Very bad things,” Star Fire said in a grave tone. “The upshot is, to some extent, we have a choice of bad things. We can overtax the earth ponies to make up the shortfall. Then some of them starve and some of them undoubtedly revolt, and the military puts them down. And we still don’t have enough food. Or we short the pegasi, and they retaliate, which means more crops get ruined in the bad weather they dump on us, which means even less food, and things spiral out of control from there.” “Will I be working to find solutions to these bad things, then?” Celestia asked. “In a way.” Star Fire wore an icy expression that didn’t comfort Celestia at all. “I’m hoping that you will be of great help in making another option viable.” “What other option?” Celestia asked. “We could make up some of the difference if unicorns could reproduce earth pony magic,” Star Fire said. “Isn’t earth pony magic best left to the earth ponies?” Celestia asked. “As my report found, it’s a decline in magical capacity that’s lowering their ability to produce. Wouldn’t helping them regain it be the logical thing to do?” “Maybe, assuming we wanted earth ponies to regain it,” Star Fire said. “I don’t understand,” Celestia said. “Why wouldn’t we?” “Because that’s the real secret here: the situation only looks like a crisis,” Star Fire said. “But a crisis is always just a matter of perspective, isn’t it? In fact, there are some unicorns who see this as an opportunity, if we can seize it by acting quickly. I’ve been directed to do that seizing, if at all possible. And I believe it is possible.” “But why would unicorns want to artificially recreate earth pony magic?” Celestia asked. “It seems inefficient, even in a best case scenario. We’d still achieve better increases in production by just helping earth ponies better their conditions.” “Still on about the earth ponies? You’re thinking too small, Thaumite.” Star Fire laughed, a harsh, unkind sound. “It might be harder at first, but consider the long term. The real value of it kicks in once we don’t need to have any of those worthless mud ponies around at all anymore.” “How would we ‘not have them around anymore’?” A shiver ran down Celestia’s spine. “Well, that’s not really my department to implement, but the favored idea right now is reproductive thaumosuppression,” Star Fire answered. “It’s easy, and we can make it subtle. With well-deployed birth control stopping any new earth pony foals from being conceived, all we’d have to do is just let them die off naturally of old age. We could be almost completely rid of them in less than two generations. Maybe longer to weed out the stragglers and the latent earth pony phenotype carriers popping up here and there in the unicorn gene pool, but those are just little details to clean up later.” “It would upset the balance of everything,” Celestia noted, somehow managing to make her voice sound calm, even while a cold, heavy, sinking feeling worked down through her stomach. “On the contrary, it would be doing us a great service,” Star Fire said. “If we could recreate earth pony magic and allow unicorns to take over farming, then why do we need that old balance? The Unicorn Kingdom could directly control agriculture, as well as the sun and the moon. What does that leave the Cloud Empire with? The weather? Even for that, we can already partly recreate their pegasus magic, as the local weather control perimeter proves here in Quartz City. The only reason we deal with them at all is because it’s more cost-effective on larger scales.” “And because a trade relationship avoids a war,” Celestia added carefully. “Perhaps.” Star Fire shrugged. “Maybe not forever.” “I would like to avoid wars,” Celestia said quietly. “Wouldn’t we all?” Star Fire asked pointedly. “And this could be a big first step to accomplishing that. If there were only unicorns, who would we have left to fight?” Celestia felt a wave of cold nausea. The rhetorical question offered a vision with a chilling, brutal kind of logic, callous and abhorrent in a way that made her want to cry out in shocked, angry protest. All she could do was stand there in silence. “And of course, there would be great rewards for those who help deliver earth pony magic to us,” Star Fire said, smiling at Celestia. “For example, the mage leading the effort would undoubtedly be promoted to cardinal mage. That new cardinal would have free rein to promote new mages in turn to fill her old position. Maybe one of those new mages would be selected by the new cardinal as her right-hoof assistant, and they’d go on to keep doing great things as leaders in advancing thaumoscience. It would launch a promising young career… maybe one like yours… to stellar heights. And your sister—Luna, right?—she’s about to be on her way up as well, isn’t she?” Celestia just nodded. Her throat felt tight. “But failure…” Star Fire’s smile faded and she shook her head slowly. “The Unicorn Kingdom can’t afford failure. It would mean food shortages. War. Disaster. Those who fail would have to stand accountable for letting us all down. And that would be a tragedy, because a fall that hard could bring a pony’s career to ruin she’d never recover from. Even worse, ponies she loves could fall with her. Family. Sisters. Guilt by association is an ugly thing, Celestia. It can make entire bloodlines suspect, never trusted again.” She focused on Celestia with a hard stare. “Do you understand me, Thaumite? Are you seeing what’s at stake here?” “Yes, Mage.” Celestia swallowed. Her mouth was dry and cottony. She wasn’t able to bring her voice above a whisper. “I see.”     ☙ ☀ ❧     Celestia spent the afternoon sitting in the Thaumosciences Authority library for a few hours of reluctant, half-hearted effort to start digging into the current state of research on earth pony magic. She wasn’t finding it very productive; there was a distracting, anxious twist in her gut and she couldn’t stop glancing at the clock on the wall. The seconds crawled by at a glacial pace, taunting her. Once, the second hand even moved backwards for a tick. The sight gave her an unpleasant shock, a feeling that she was being pranked by reality itself, until she was calmed by a moment of thought bringing her to the realization that it was just the clock’s thaumomechanical synchronizer adjusting itself to the correct time. As soon as it was finally time, she couldn’t leave the building fast enough. A half-dozen books and a stack of papers and reports were left abandoned for the night on her small desk while she stepped out through the big stone archway of the front doors and into the streets of Quartz City. It wasn’t very late, but the sun was already setting. With winter starting, days were rapidly getting short in the far northern latitude. The coming night looked ugly while she walked home. Crystalline street lamps lit up the city from atop tall steel poles curved like elegant swan-necks, glowing in sodium-orange for low optical pollution that was easy for the lunar thaumocontroller and the observatories tracking the stars to filter out. Celestia understood why this kind of light was used, of course, but she always thought it was an unfortunate color. It made everything seem dingy and dirty, a city of old faded paper in monochrome yellow. It was nothing like the glorious full spectrum of the sun during the bright day. The sun… She sighed wistfully. She missed the sun so badly. She missed working in the thaumocontroller to guide it, lifting it up to light the morning, soaking in the feel of its powerful inertia and raw, searing intensity. Times had been good for her when she was a part of that. For months now, it was like a piece of herself had been taken away. The hole it left somewhere deep in her chest made her feel hollow. Why couldn’t they just put her back on the sun control team? She bitterly rolled the question around over and over again in her mind. Why… why this awful project? How could they? How could anypony even be considering it? Her hooves dragged miserably while she walked. This was not what she signed up for with a career in Thaumosciences. At least, she hadn’t thought so, especially not on the Solarite specialist track. She kept going, drifting aimlessly around one block after another, trying to shake those lamenting thoughts. They clung to her like thick mud, a kind that tried to suck in her hooves with every step and not let go. Eventually, she arrived home. By then, the sun was long gone and the sky was completely black. Wandering around thinking hadn’t helped much. She was still agitated and upset while she let herself into the small house. “How did things go today?” Luna asked once Celestia was inside. Celestia just shook her head tersely while she made her way through the living room and flopped down on the couch. Luna walked over and sat next to her. “Not back to sun control?” “No. Worse than that.” Celestia’s voice hitched and her chest was shaking. “A lot worse.” Luna, looking concerned, scooted close and wrapped her forelegs around her sister. Celestia settled into the hug. Whatever strength she’d been scraping together to maintain her composure crumbled away. She was just too tired to even try to hold on; her emotions cracked open and she started sobbing into Luna’s chest. “Tia? What happened?” Luna asked softly, stroking her mane. Celestia looked up, her rose-colored eyes sparkling with tears. “I don’t think we’re good ponies.”