//------------------------------// // Part II // Story: Limerence // by Bicyclette //------------------------------// The Princess of the Night dreamed the same dream again. A dream of a dream in the Dreamlands. It seemed absurd, on the face of it, but there was no reason for such experiences to not form the raw material of a dream themselves. Sometimes she wondered if her waking life was a dream as well, and that some day she would finally stir from it. Sometimes she wondered if that would be for the best. Like always, her mind tried to give her the most pleasant of visions. A fantasy where that dream she had walked in moons ago had gone right. If she had not finally turned away, told that enticing young earthpony mare that their time together was at an end, and fled from her mindscape like a frightened foal. Her mind gave her the sensations she would have felt if she had accepted that kiss, the taste of those lips. But her mind did not know what those lips would taste like. So it substituted the closest thing she could imagine. A familiar taste. A familiar feel.  Suddenly, the form of Coco’s was that mare, and the Princess of the Night recoiled. With such strength that the dream around her, the dream of that dream, the dream of that dreamer, all began to dissolve back into the roiling depths of her subconscious from whence it came. As she felt herself being yanked into the waking world once more, the Princess of the Night could not help but come to a realization about something she had just seen. The dream did not need to change Coco’s eyes. The Keeper of the Archive frowned as Luna approached her. In a dramatic flourish, the Princess laid the book in her aura down and open on her desk, then jabbed at a section with a wing. “Surely, this cannot be it? Only a single paragraph? And what is the meaning of this?” She pointed her wingtip to the numerals that were printed underneath the name. “‘Seventy-eight A.C. to question marks’? These numbers are meant to be their lifespans, are they not? What kind of a number is three question marks?” The Keeper of the Archive looked at the spot where Luna was pointing, then looked up at the Princess and spoke apologetically. “I’m afraid that this reference is actually compiled from a secondary source, itself compiled in the mid-5th century from the few Palace documents that had survived the, ah, Occultation.”  The Keeper of the Archive winced at her own words, and Luna understood why. She had learned, quickly enough, the capitalized academic term that was used to describe the gap in the historical record left by the emergence of Nightmare Moon.  “They simply must have not had records of the Royal Couturière’s death, and thus could not fix a date for it,” the Keeper of the Archive explained. “Yes. Of course.” Luna blinked. A part of her wondered if there was hope. Hope that she had indeed lived a life past that point in time. Lived a wonderful life and died, anonymous and happy. Should the idea make her glad? She considered that as she read the words she was pointing to again. Rose Bardot 78 AC - ??? Born in the town of Chevallerault in 78. Represented the Barony of Patteau in the Grand Galloping Gala of 98. Joined the Lunar Convent as Royal Couturière in 99. Three sentences. The only mark that she had left behind in history. Nothing about how soft her muzzle felt in Luna’s wing. Nothing about how her coat smelled of lavender and chamomile in the mornings. Nothing about that adorable way she would misinterpret common sayings, then awkwardly try to use them in conversation. Nothing about how her lips tasted of honey when she kissed her each time. Nothing at all. Something came to her. “You said secondary sources. Does this mean that there were primary ones?” “Yes, I do happen to know that, actually.” The Keeper of the Archive looked at her nervously. “As a Royal Couturière, her sketched designs would have been preserved by the Keeper of the Archive at the time. Unfortunately, the originals were lost in a fire in the 7th century, but prints of them were collected and published before then, though extant copies of such an obscure book are, ah, fairly rare now.” The Keeper of the Archive frowned. “I, uh, don’t suppose, you would like to request that as well?” Luna considered for a moment, then frowned. The thought of seeing her work again, knowing what would await her in those pages... “No, I would not,” she declared, to the Keeper of the Archive’s odd relief. She considered something else. “On second thought, I have also changed my mind about requisitioning this tome. It would do well to undo your earlier ritual.” “Ah, of course!” The Keeper of the Archive opened the book to the inside of its front cover, and with the ritual seal, affixed the proper sigil next to the one she had just placed minutes earlier, though this one in a different color. “And I can return it to the shelves, no worries, Princess Luna. It is my job as the librarian, after all.” “Very well. I thank you for your most gracious assistance.” She turned away, already plunging herself into rumination and regret. There was a reason she had never tried to look her up in the historical records before. For the same reason she had never looked up Bright Oats, or Arca Pluvia, or Illuminance, or any of the others.  Yes, three sentences was far less than she had expected, and this had surprised and dismayed her. But what if it had been three paragraphs? An entire book? An entire shelf of books? If there had been an entire building’s worth of books dedicated to her, if a thousand scribes spent a thousand lives describing every facet of her wonderful existence in every immaculate detail, would she have been satisfied with what she found then? It would not be enough to bring her back. The Princess of the Night dreamed of something wonderful. It pained her to see it, as it always did. The image of Rose, looking exactly as she had in life. Every last, wonderful detail, a betrayal of her own mind against herself. And worse still. She spoke to her, and the Princess of the Night could not turn her ears away as she could her sight. “She has my eyes. The colors of my coat and mane. My voice. Do you ever wonder?” The Princess of the Night frowned, at last giving in to the illusion. “Perhaps.” She sighed. “But I have never seen her in the flesh. I have yet to peer into her coil.” “Well, I hope that you do.” Rose smiled at her beatifically. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find a part of me again?”    “To repeat history? That is hardly something I would want to do,” Luna said sadly. “It has been a thousand years, Rose. Even if a part of you is in her coil, what meaning could it possibly have after so much time, so much mixture?”  “Oh, but that’s exactly it! Don’t you see? This means something more than a mere family resemblance could. How couldn’t it?” She smiled sweetly. “Besides, in any case, she would not be our descendant. You never did see fit to give me foals.” Luna’s voice was filled with regret. “You were still young. You had yet to finish your great work. I wanted to wait. Had I known what would happen—”  “No. Do not regret that. Never regret that!” Rose insisted with a smile. “Haven’t you tortured yourself enough for it?” Luna could not bring herself to agree. She could hardly bring herself to look at her. Rose frowned with concern. “I worry about you, Luna. You are hiding yourself away, even when the world is offering you something wonderful. You hide yourself away from Coco, and even in here, you hide yourself away from me. You do not let me touch you the way I had in life.” Rose softly reached out with a hoof, and was gently rebuffed by Luna’s wing. “Because I cannot,” she spoke. Rose pouted. “But why not?” “Because you are not really here.” Luna swallowed a sob. “You are the impression that the real Rose left behind in my mind. I am not doing anything more right now than talking with another part of myself.“ Rose gave her a serious look. “Luna. That impression I left behind is all I ever hoped to be. Look at me! My voice is still alive in your head, centuries after the last pony who ever remembered me as more than three lines in the Royal Archives drew their last breath! Isn’t that wonderful?“  Luna felt the touch of Rose’s hoof on her wing. So familiar. So welcoming. She fought back the tears in her eyes. “My touch is still alive in you. My taste. You can feel it all again. If you just—” “I cannot,” Luna sobbed, pushing her away. “I cannot allow myself to!” “Why not?” “Because!” Luna roared. “You are more than my memory of your touch! You are more than my experience of you. To accept the touch of your image would be to betray the pony you actually were. To admit that you are less meaningful and real to me than the impression of you in my mind, because it is still here and you are not.” She looked beyond Rose, to the row of mares standing, patiently, absurdly, behind her in the dreamscape. Lovely horns and soft wings and beautiful coats of all the colors of the rainbow.  “And it is the same for all those who came before you as well.” The Secretary of the Night approached her Princess hesitantly. Having worked her way up the ranks of the Palace staff for decades, she had seen so much in her career that Luna had very rarely seen the look on her face that she was wearing now. Befuddlement. “My office has received a request for a special audience from you, Princess Luna. A personal one. ” Luna blinked. It was rare enough for a pony to request such a thing from her and not Celestia. Rarer still for the Secretary to deem it appropriate for her attention. “A personal audience?“  “Yes, Princess. An apprentice fashion designer from Manehattan. Named Coco Pommel.” Luna could not keep the shock and dread from her face. “I was surprised too, your Highness,” the Secretary spoke, not registering the dread. “Few craftsmares would have the audacity to simply request a personal audience to convince you of their wares, especially one so early in her career.” The Secretary frowned nervously. “But you will have to trust me, my Princess. You will want to see what she has done.” Luna considered refusing. She could have done so easily, of course. A single word to banish this apparition of flesh and blood before it ever had the chance to appear in front of her. Yet, she could not bring herself to. Some part of her was sickened by the very idea. So she did not refuse, and spent the rest of her morning pacing her office alone, trying to distract herself from the coming hour. But there was not much to distract herself with. In old Equestria, she would hold court in her chambers, surrounded by her personal artifacts, the very space itself imbued with a sense of her life and past. Her office, despite her having used it for years, still had no such adornments. The only way to tell it was hers at all was the dark-blue-and-black color scheme of its interior design, and the lunar sigil adorning the top of its standing mirror.  At last, the appointed hour came, and Luna put on a cordial smile as the earthpony entered the room, pulling a dress horse on wheels behind her, itself covered with a white shroud. “Princess Luna. It is so wonderful to meet you in the waking world!” she greeted, a happy smile on her face. One that was no less radiant to Luna for having seen it so many times in the Dreamlands. Luna smiled, and returned the greeting. “As it is for me to meet you, Miss Coco. My Secretary says that you have created something for me?”  Coco nodded, gesturing to the dress horse. “It’s something I have been working on for many moons now. You’ve helped me so much, Princess Luna. I could not stop myself from creating something to express how I feel about what our time together meant to me.” She spoke with a familiarity that betrayed nothing of what had happened in the last minutes of that dream they had shared together last. Luna played along. “I am glad that my counsel has been of such help to you. But there was never any need to burden yourself with such a task. Knowing that I have aided one of my subjects in my duty is reward enough for me.“ “Oh, Princess Luna!” Coco laughed. “This was hardly a burden! I was inspired. And I would like you to come closer for this. You will want to see the details.” Trying not to show the hesitance in her steps, Luna approached her and the dress horse, getting close enough to Coco to make out the individual hairs in the coat of her muzzle. It was all Luna could do to keep her face cool and steady. She had steeled herself, for Coco looking and sounding exactly as she had in the Dreamlands. For the timber of her voice and the sky-blue of her eyes to recall the ones that Luna had lost so long ago. But her scent. She did not expect it. That lightest of musks. Lavender and chamomile. Just like hers had been. And if she peeked with the delicate magic of her horn, she could see her coil. See if she— No. She shook her head. “Are you all right, Princess Luna?” asked Coco.  “I am, Miss Coco. No need to worry,” Luna assured with a forced smile. “I have simply been working my duties quite hard as of late, and have found myself less than at my full capacity in these morning sessions.” “Oh, well, that’s okay,” Coco said sympathetically. “I just hope you are there enough to appreciate this!”  With a theatrical flourish, Coco pulled off the white shroud to reveal the dress underneath. Luna gasped. A heavy fabric of rich, dark blue, almost black, studded with diamonds, instantly making her think of her beloved stars scattered across her night sky. Because they were those stars, arranged in their familiar constellations that she saw every night, the luster and size of each gemstone corresponding with their counterparts in the sky. And peering closer, she could even see the minor stars between the bright, named ones, represented by the tiniest of gemstones or, for the smallest, diamond-impregnated thread, stitched and spliced into the fabric. The kind of stars you could not even see in the night sky above old Canterlot, for even the faint light of their torches were enough to drown them out.  It took her a few moments of stunned marveling to realize the most impressive detail.  Coco spoke, as if reading her mind. “Getting the position of the stars right was the hardest part. When I first tried to complete your Royal Couturière’s sketches, the stars all seemed off from each other in all these little subtle ways. But then I realized it! They must have drifted from the positions they had when the sketches were made! So I took the time to figure out where they had been a thousand years ago, and was able to finish her work.” And indeed it was her work finished. As if that unfinished dress Luna had seen in the position of most importance in her studio so many times over the years was suddenly in front of her again. That same black fabric. The placement of those first, major constellations.  “Would you like to try it on, Princess?” Luna nodded silently, and with an expert mouth and hooves, Coco draped the dress over Luna’s back and got it closed around her. She rolled out a mirror, and Luna looked herself over in it. How she disappeared into its shape, becoming the night sky itself. How the dress vented over her flank, perfectly exposing the moon of her cutie mark, as any proper piece of formal wear should. “It fits perfectly,” Luna marveled. “Yes, it does,” Coco agreed. “I based it off of the measurements in the Royal Couturière’s sketches.” To Luna’s surprise, Coco then ran a hoof along its perfectly-fitting neckline. “She must have known your body well.” Luna’s eyes widened, and she realized she must have been blushing slightly. Coco’s eyes were fixed on hers.  “And through her work, I saw what she must have seen in you, Princess Luna. I felt like I understood her. She wasn’t just trying to recreate your familiar night sky. She was trying to express what it represents.“ Coco gestured at the windows up above, the light of the freshly-raised morning sun pouring through them. “During the day, a single sun dominates the sky. The stars are still there, as they always were. They are just rendered invisible. Buried deep underneath the sunlight, as if they never existed in the first place. As if a single object is so great and powerful it can dictate what is seen and what is not.“ Then, with a hoof, she swept the expanse of the dress on Luna’s body. “But at night, it’s different. At night, the moon rules the sky, but she does not bury her subjects in her light. She lets us see them as they truly are. She lets us see that some stars shine far more brightly and strongly than others, but all stars, no matter how small and insignificant, still have their fixed position in the tableau. Each a stitch in the tapestry, each contributing its light to its natural beauty and patterns. Each knowing their place in a part of something greater. “ She placed a hoof gently on Luna’s cheek. The Princess did not shy away. “And that is beautiful. And far too few ponies see that beauty. Far too few ponies appreciate it like it deserves to be. But she did, didn’t she? That is why you were her muse. ”  Coco was right in front of her now, her face so close their noses were almost touching, her voice lowered to a whisper. “I see it too, Princess. I see the world-defining beauty inside of you. Something that takes this chaotic universe and just makes sense of it all. Cleaves it at the joints, between the fabulous and the unfabulous. Something that makes my mind feel at ease. And I want to lose myself in it. If you will let me.” The Princess of the Night stared into those sky-blue eyes. She saw an echo of a refuge that had once been open to her. A glimmer of that calm and peace she once felt so many years ago. They called out to her, beckoning, welcoming her into them again.  She turned herself away. The Princess of the Night dreamed of her again. Her voice, now that she was allowed to speak again, took on the familiar contours it had followed in life. Disapproval, tinged with exasperation. “A second time. First, you push her away. Yet she crawls on her belly across a thousand years, toils countless hours over many moons, just to prove to you her devotion. Then you push her away a second time?“ “I did not push her away. She is in a guest chamber for the day, to await my reply. But I should not have even granted her that.” Luna closed her eyes. “Even that is giving in to temptation.” “‘Giving in’?” Her frown was audible in her voice. “What more does she have to do to prove to you that she truly sees you? Loves you? Wants you? Truly and freely?” “She thinks that she does. But she does not.” Luna looked at her. “She is still but a filly.” “She is the same age as we were when we met!” “And you were but a filly then, as well.” Rose frowned, her voice dripping with offense. “I was certainly not! Don’t you remember how I first caught your eye? Representing the Barony of Patteau at the Grand Galloping Gala? Do you think that the Baroness would have chosen a mere apprentice, or even a journeymare, to represent her demesne? I had been a master designer for three years by then!“ Luna blinked. “No. No, that is not right.” “What do you mean?” Rose shouted. “You even saw that in that history book! I really did--”  “No. This is what you at first thought was the way you caught my eye. But I remember the conversation where I told you the truth.“ She gave her a sorrowful look. “It was not your work that caught my attention. It truly was stunning, the best of the entire Gala, which was especially impressive for somepony from such a backwater province. But I had seen dozens of equally impressive designers over the many decades of presiding over the event.” She looked into Rose’s eyes. A perfect, clear sky-blue that reminded her of another’s. “Your work was not what drew me to you. It was how you had your grandmother’s eyes.” Rose blinked at this realization. A silence fell between them for a moment, until she spoke. “Yes, that’s right. That is how I caught your eye, isn’t it?” Rose chuckled softly. “But do you remember what I said in that conversation?” Luna did. “That you were so very glad, then, that I had your grandmother before you, for that is what had brought us together.“    “Yes. And I meant every word. Truly.” Rose smiled at her sweetly. “So why were you afraid?” Luna frowned. “What do you mean?” “Why were you afraid to look at her coil? Didn’t you want to know? If a part of me survived in her?”  Luna grimaced, her only reply. “Does it bother you? The idea of me having foals with another?” “Of course not,” Luna said flatly. “That is what I was hoping to find. That you lived without me and moved on. Found love again. Lived the rest of your life happy somewhere. I would give anything to know that was the case.” “Luna.” Rose sighed disappointedly. “You and I both know that’s not true.“  “But it is!” Luna insisted. “I want to know.” “Luna. If finding that out was really so important to you, there is one thing you would have done right away.” Luna’s face fell as she realized what she meant. She began to protest. “No. I couldn’t possibly bring this up without talking about everything else. And I couldn’t possibly--“ “Luna.” Rose’s voice was stern. “You have been back for half a decade now. It’s time you talked to her about it.” The Princess of the Night closed her eyes, and sighed in defeat. The Princess of the Sun gave Luna a pitying look, and said the words she had expected, in a tone she imagined her sister had used many times before in her long life. “I am sorry, Luna. I cannot help you with this.”  They were in Celestia’s office, a space more intimate than the grand hall of a throne room in which they gave court, more fitting for a personal audience. In a way, Luna supposed, this was indeed her own personal audience with her sister. “But I do not understand. You have never shied away before from telling me of what happened to the other ponies we both knew then. What makes this so different?” “It is better to let some parts of the past remain buried. What use is there to bring up those that have long gone to rest? They can only bring pain with them when unearthed. “ “Pain?” Luna frowned. “Don’t talk to me like I am one of our subjects, Tia.”  This caused Celestia to frown as well, and take a step back. Luna continued. “Yes, we feel our connections with the ponies in our lives just as strongly as any of our subjects do. We celebrate with them their triumphs, mourn with them their losses, and share with them the little nothings that make up their day-to-day lives. But as alicorns, we do not remember those that have gone from our lives like they do.” Celestia looked at her in silence for a few moments, before walking up to an ancient painting, its pigments faded despite the many times it had been restored over the centuries. She gently put a wing up to the figures inside, and smiled. “We do remember them well, do we not? But we do not remember our departed like they do. We only feel the joys of their having been with us, and not the pain of their present absence. How else could we function otherwise? When our long lives fate us to have every inch of space we move in come with a reminder of a pony of our past?” It was only then that Luna recognized the architectural detail of the arch overhead, and realized where they were. This had once been the room where they held the Evening Court: more private than the ceremonial throne room where they received dignitaries, more fitting for running the actual mechanisms of the state. As she surveyed the floorplan, her mind filled in the details of the space as it had existed a millennium ago. As well as the details of the ponies that had once filled it. Arca Pluvia’s steely smirk as she gave her reports from the front lines. Hovering in the same place, Tonitrus’s confident, booming voice. Greyhoof’s reluctant chuckle on the few occasions that Celestia managed to get him to laugh at her deliberate antics, as well as Sage Brush’s smile at every one of them. The same joke the Venerable Steed always told about how he was too proud to use a sledge for his atrophied legs. The curious wonder in Bright Oats’s voice as she told of her latest discoveries, unchanged in the mare of three-score-and-ten from the filly of fifteen. The way Timid Quiver covered her own face with a wing, the way Citronnier did not pronounce the “r”s at the ends of her words, Grape Galette’s bright smile, Illuminance’s airy laugh…  And she remembered how they mourned. She had seen the sorrow that flickered across Sage Brush’s face every time she saw that the peonies were in bloom, her late wife’s favorite. How Tonitrus wept after giving his first report, feeling unworthy of being in the place of his mentor. She sympathized with them and gave them her support, but could not empathize. She could not feel as strongly as they did, for all of the countless ponies that had been in her life and were no longer.  Luna realized that neither she nor her sister had spoken for a very long time. Looking at her, she could see the same wistful smile she imagined herself as having sported. She realized that for every such memory Luna had, her sister would have ten times as many. She realized that they were both doing the same thing. Remembering them. The closest an alicorn could come to mourning.  Well, mourning most ponies, that is. A shard stuck in her. A longing for the caress of Arca Pluvia’s wing, to feel the stern battlemare melt in her embrace once more. A throbbing wound that was the sense of unfairness, stitched deep across the fabric of the universe, that she would never truly feel it again. Celestia spoke, giving her reprieve from that wound. “Yes, you are right, Luna. That is how it is supposed to be for us and the ponies of our past. But for you, it is not that way for all of them, is it, dear sister?”  Luna heard the concern in Celestia’s voice, and realized that she must have seen that flicker of pain.  “You are as attached to them in their death as you were in their life. But we were always different in that regard.” She moved on to another painting. All mares this time, a mix of pegasus and unicorn and earthpony. Their coats were in all the colors of Celestia’s flowing mane, but they wore identical plain, white cotton shifts, which were each emblazoned with a golden circlet where their cutie marks would be underneath. A conspicuous caption described them as the Celestian Convent, 93 AC. “I did love them. Of course I did. Just as I loved every one of my subjects. Each a unique soul deserving of a good life, peaceful, and in harmony. I did what I could to make them happy. I shared in their joys.” She looked at Luna. “But that was all I took from them. I never felt the desire to make it anything more. Not like you.“ “And that is why you found it easy to end the practice once I was gone.” “Yes.” Celestia gave her sister a firm smile. “Of course I did. You saw what it was doing to our subjects. How it was already distorting their incentives. The most ambitious families, offering up their daughters to us as if they were the prize fruits of the harvest. No matter what we did to discourage such things, no matter how many punishments and regulations we put in place, our ponies always seemed to find a way of obeying the letter and not the spirit. That is what parenthood does.” Celestia frowned. “Could you imagine if we valued our progeny like they do? What hope would the common pony have of advancement or redress, if we clogged up the highest ranks of our society with our descendants? What hope would our descendants have of wholeness, raised in such privilege? Could you imagine? An aristocracy based on heredity, and not merit? But even with our hooves on the other end of the scale, that is where we were headed. No. It could not be allowed to continue.” Luna frowned as well, realizing that they were now talking about everything, as she had feared. “But you did not simply stop at establishing the tradition of the Celibate Queen. You distorted our history until it seemed as if it were always thus. Erased what they truly meant to us. Or rather, what we truly meant to them.“ “Yes.” Celestia gave that firm smile again. “Easier to create a new system of morality, when it is not being dragged down by the memory of the old. Easier to bury those roots so deep that our little ponies don’t even know where their wedding traditions came from.” With a single look, Luna instantly understood what she was referring to. The last time they had spoken, if obliquely, about these issues. Or rather, fought. “What greater proof is there, of how deep I managed to bury those roots, but Princess Cadance? She’s truly a mare of her time. The Equestria of now.” Luna grimaced, spitting out her words. “It was all I could do to hold down my bile, when I saw the Alicorn Princess being the one dressed in white, being given a golden ring by a stallion.”  Celestia smiled at her. “You were always the better actress between the two of us, weren’t you? But no, I do not wish to make light of it. I understand that despite how far you’ve come in adapting to the modern age I’ve created, seeing that must have been the most difficult. I truly do appreciate everything you have done for the sake of living in this time. But that is exactly why you must leave the past where it belongs.” “That is easy for you to say, sister. These paintings, these bookshelves. They are filled with your past. The past you have gotten to live for these past thousand years. Why do you have this right, but not I?” Celestia was not taken aback, and had an easy answer. “It is because I do not long for the past.” She took a thick tome from her shelf in her aura and showed it to Luna, the pages inside clearly ranging from the most ancient vellum to relatively pristine.  “This is a collection of the final letters from my faithful students, at the end of each of their long and fruitful lives. You will not find a greater and more profound collection of meditations on the nature of mortality. Each a distillation of the life’s work and philosophy of the queendom’s brightest and most curious minds throughout the ages. I read through it from time to time, and when I do, it is as if my beloved students are alive before me once more, eagerly telling me of their latest discoveries.“  She smiled warmly, idly flipping through the pages before closing the book and replacing it on the shelf. “But when I am not doing this, I do not feel the pain of their absence. Their memories do not intrude on my thoughts. They do not appear in my dreams. I do not try to find them once again among the ponies of the living.” Luna sighed, preparing to concede defeat. But there was something in the look Celestia had on her face as she had gone through those pages. “But what if you had never gotten one of those letters?” Celestia gave her a quizzical look. Luna continued. “What if one of your students had not lived a long and happy life in your peaceable queendom, but rather had disappeared one day, to live out the rest of her existence somewhere beyond your knowledge? And what if you had a chance to get that last letter after all? To be told of all she had learned and seen? Wouldn’t you do anything for that?” Celestia frowned as she considered this, but did not reply. Luna insisted. “Because not all of those letters are happy ones, are they? And when they are not, you feel the sorrow in their words, don’t you?” Celestia conceded. “Yes, many of my students never reached a point of accepting their ultimate fate. They put all of their passion and eloquence into expressing their rejection and horror of it. And I do feel their anguish with them when I read their words.“ “But you read them just the same. And you would do anything for that letter, even if it caused you such pain. You would do anything to know, wouldn’t you?“  Celestia nodded in silence. Luna pressed on. “You do not have to feel the way I do to understand that I need to know. That nothing could be worse than not knowing. Please, dear sister. Tell me what happened to her!” Celestia looked at her in silence for a few moments, a solemn expression on her face. She then walked over to the western wall, and placed a wing on one of the rough-hewn stones. “We still had access to the original quarries that Mistmane had used to build these walls, so the restoration was perfect. By the time depictions of the castle appeared once more past the Discontinuity, it was difficult to tell the extent of the damage that had been caused during it. But it was quite thorough. This entire side of the castle was completely destroyed. Your side.“ She gave her a sorrowful look. “There were no survivors.”