//------------------------------// // II - Joy and Purpose // Story: Sunrise // by Winston //------------------------------// Sunrise ​    Chapter II - Joy and Purpose ​    “What’s the matter?” Luna held her crying sister. “What do you mean we’re not good ponies?” “I mean the Unicorn Kingdom,” Celestia said. “There’s… a plan to do something. It’s bad.” “Bad how?” “I can’t tell you.” Celestia shook her head. “The new project they put me on is need-to-know only. I’m not supposed to talk about it.” “Well, the way you’re taking it is already telling me something,” Luna pointed out. “It’s obviously pretty upsetting.” “It’s terrible!” Celestia said. “And it’s a big deal. Very big, I think. Somepony really wants it done, and they’re willing to use a lot of pressure to get it. They—the mage I work under, Star Fire—she threatened me. She threatened you. I don’t even know how she knew about you, but she said my career would be over and yours with me if I didn't help make this happen.” Luna’s eyes widened in surprise. “If you don’t make what happen?” “I already told you, it’s—” “‘Need-to-know’, yes,” Luna repeated. “But when it starts involving threats against me, don’t I have some need to know?” She gave Celestia a small, clever smile. Celestia cracked just a hint of a smile herself. “Nice try, but somehow I don’t think that’s the intention.” “Maybe not.” Luna shrugged. “But neither the spirit nor the letter of the law is strong enough to stop me from trying to help my sister when I know she hurts. Would you do any less for me?” “No, of course not.” Celestia shook her head. “I suppose I would be doing exactly the same thing.” She held Luna with her forelegs and leaned her head against her sister, while Luna rubbed Celestia’s back and withers. “Why couldn’t she just send me back to the sun control team?” Celestia lamented. “I don’t know. Maybe something good will come from you being on this project instead,” Luna ventured. “Good? This project shouldn’t even be happening!” Celestia complained. “It’s horrible. Monstrous.” “Well, that all sounds very serious,” Luna said with concern. “I don’t want my sister to have to become a monster.” “I don’t want to have to be one, either.” “So how bad is it?” Luna asked. Celestia just shook her head and said nothing. “Please?” Luna entreated. Celestia opened her mouth, then closed it and looked away. Luna waited patiently on the couch. Celestia struggled with feelings and thoughts that seemed like they were trying to tear her in half, clenching her jaw until it started to ache. “It would mean the end of an entire race,” she finally said, relenting. “Oh.” Luna sat up straight. “That, umm… that does sound bad.” “I don’t know what to do, Luna.” “I don’t either,” Luna said. “Maybe you could start by telling me the rest. I’m sorry, because I know I shouldn’t be pushing, and honestly I’m starting to feel a little bit afraid myself, but if this is what it sounds like… I mean, we can’t… genocide is beyond the pale, Celestia, state secret or not.” “I know, I know!” Celestia wailed, burying her face in her hooves. “And I’ve already said too much… this is more than I should have told you.” “I don’t think you would have if part of you didn’t want to say it all,” Luna said softly. “Of course I wouldn’t!” Celestia snapped angrily. Instantly regretting it, she softened her voice. “And of course I want to.” She looked up and stared at Luna with pleading in her eyes. “We’ve never kept secrets from each other, have we? And we’ve never told each other’s secrets to anypony else.” “No.” Luna shook her head, then grinned. “Not even the time you raided the cookie jar but I wouldn’t tattle on you, so we both got punished.” “Ha. I gave you half the cookies.” Celestia smiled faintly at the memory. “We were both in it together then.” “It seems like we’re in it together now, whether we want to be or not,” Luna said. “The only difference is that this time I don’t even know what I’m in or what I stand to be punished for.” “Well, it’s a lot worse than a cookie,” Celestia said. Luna nodded. “So I’m gathering.” “It’s… the earth ponies,” Celestia said hesitantly. “The Unicorn Kingdom’s going to get rid of earth ponies. All of them.” “What?!” Luna’s jaw dropped. “That… they can’t! How could anypony even consider something so horrible?” “You and I may see that. But I don’t think the kinds of ponies who want this to happen really care.” “Well, if they won’t have a heart, do they at least care about the practical problems? What about those? What about the farmers? Who’s supposed to grow food?” “Unicorns.” “Unicorns can’t—” “The project is to discover how to replicate earth pony magic,” Celestia said. “Unicorns can once that’s figured that out. That’s the key. That’s why somepony wants it badly enough to threaten us both.” “But still, even with the magic replicated, without earth ponies there wouldn’t be a labor force to use it. There’s not enough unicorns to just have that many out there continually using magic for farming.” “I don’t think there would need to be.” Celestia shook her head. “They would just set up thaumoarrays to automate applying earth pony magic. It would probably only take a couple of decent-sized crystal pylons to keep a big farm going, and not that many unicorn field workers to tend and harvest crops. I don’t think those workers would even need any special magical training, just basic telekinesis. It might not be as good as earth ponies, at first, but it could be enough. Then after a while, once all the problems are worked out, nopony would really care about the difference… if there even is any difference anymore.” “No difference other than what an unthinkable line it would be crossing,” Luna said. “Again, I don’t think they care,” Celestia said. “They want control. Cut out the earth ponies, and the Unicorn Kingdom has direct control over food production. It would mean even more power to set exchange terms with the Cloud Empire.” “Would… would the Kingdom really kill them? All the earth ponies?” Luna’s voice quivered. “Do you think they’d really do something like that?” “No, from what I was told it wouldn’t be necessary to kill them.” Celestia shook her head. “Only to sterilize them. They’d just die off naturally with no new earth pony foals to replace them. Planned extinction.” “That’s… not really any different. It’s still monstrous.” “Yes, and I don’t think I can be a part of it,” Celestia said. “But I also don’t know what else to do.” “Resign from the Thaumosciences Authority?” Luna suggested. “Blow the whistle? Somepony who can do something has to be willing to listen.” “That’s just it. I don’t know if anypony would, and I don’t think that would be the end of it, for me or you. I mean, how would it look if I quit right after I learned about this? My supervising mage would come after me, I know it. I could end up in prison and de-horned. She’d find some reason to sabotage you to get back at me and you’d end up without a career, or worse, in prison alongside me. I don’t know what might happen to other ponies who try to stop this, and even if I do manage to slow things down, whoever’s trying to make this happen would just get other mages and other thaumites to keep working on it. And worst of all, none of that would solve the problem that farm production is still collapsing, which is what made this such an urgent project in the first place.” “Wait, what? Collapsing how badly?” Luna asked. “I was told that time is a problem because after this year, we won’t have a trade surplus of crops anymore. We’ll be at a deficit. The Unicorn Kingdom won’t be able to pay off the pegasi.” “Ugh.” Luna facehoofed. “You’re just full of good news tonight, aren’t you?” “Good news I shouldn’t even be telling you,” Celestia pointed out. “There must be some way out of this,” Luna said. Celestia let out a miserable sigh. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do, other than go to work tomorrow and pretend everything’s okay. If I do anything else, I’m scared it’ll just get us both destroyed.” ​    ☙ ☀ ❧     Dawn was just a faint promise borne on a sliver of dim rosy light when Celestia left her house for the transit station. At this early hour she was bleary-eyed and not quite moving at full speed in mind or body. Still, she had no complaints; it had been a long, miserable week of reading in the library to get up to speed on where to start with her assigned task. Having to wear a careful mask of indifference and pretend not to be bothered even though the cruelty of the project made her want to scream out against it wore on her. At this point, getting out into the field, even in winter, felt like a vacation by comparison. The weather control perimeter operated on reduced power at night, making less effort to keep in warmth. Tendrils of hoarfrost bloomed on everything in the frigid pre-dawn air, the white ice turning a jarring sickly yellow under the familiar sodium lights towering over the dark city streets. Celestia wore a heavy snow-white cloak long enough to mostly cover her legs. The inside of it was lined with expensive phoenix feathers that continually radiated gentle heat, but even that still couldn’t completely keep out the bone-chilling northern cold. Underneath the frost, the city was, as always, full of messages vying for attention. Thin slabs of transparent crystal fixed at intervals to building walls displayed a barrage of slowly shifting text, paid advertising for nearby businesses mixed with public service reminders from the state about the civic responsibilities expected of all unicorns in the Kingdom: Homosexual urges are a sickness, proclaimed one of them that caught her eye for a brief moment. Report any unnatural attractions to a healthcare provider. You can be cured! Others reminded citizens to report suspicious pegasi sightings to the city guard, or declared the importance of mares remembering their duty to choose mates that would produce highly magical foals. Long ago, even as a filly, she had realized that none of these PSAs were ever so nuanced or complex that they couldn’t be condensed into a four-word summary. Sometimes while she walked the streets she made an idle game out of coming up with how they could have been optimized for brevity: Beware the barbarian pegasus. Only have approved sex. Weed out bad genes. She didn’t play this morning, though. She’d seen this propaganda her entire life, and right now her tired mind filtered it out as just so much dull blasé background clutter. All she could think about was how nice it would be to get away from this and have a change of scenery. The transit station, just an open-air concrete platform under a flat roof supported by stone pillars, was lit with harsh white lamps trying to make it an island of permanent faux-day in the surrounding sea of night. They mostly succeeded, at the price of the artificial light being irritating in a subtle way that made Celestia’s eyes ache and her skin crawl. She wondered if the pair of city guards posted there also felt it. It would explain the scowls they wore. As Celestia passed, one of them, a mare with a pale blue coat and sharp sapphire eyes, glared from under her armor with a hard look that made Celestia uncomfortable. When she shrank back timidly and veered away, the guard snorted with contempt and resumed staring off at nothing. Celestia walked up to one of the teleportation machines and stepped onto its circular pad. She dropped three one-bit coins into a slot, the price of a long-distance teleport out of the city. There was a panel with numeric buttons, big enough to be easily pressed with hooves, but she never used that. It was mostly there for ponies of lesser (or no) magical ability, and that certainly wasn’t her. Instead, her horn glowed with dim rose colored light while she reached out with her magic and interacted directly with the machine’s thaumointerface. In her mind, it mechanically presented an input field, a thought-impression that came across as a mix of visual and tactile sensoria, all passing through her horn. She entered the numbers for the transit destination via mental commands, feeling the machine lock them in and accept them as valid after a brief check. All it waited for was the last confirmation. As she pushed the final confirmation, she closed her eyes, following the instructions that everypony who used these machines knew by heart. There was a sudden flash of light, coming through her eyelids in bright orange-red. Her eyes needed to be closed because, unfortunately, the microburst of light produced by the artificial teleport had a lot of ultraviolet in it. Once, when she was a filly, she’d kept her eyes open, just to see what would happen during the quantum superpositional shift. Her reward was a painful dazzling flash that left her stunned and dizzy, and over the next few hours, her eyes became itchy and stinging from what was, essentially, a mild artificial sunburn on her corneas. Fortunately, it soon went away with no permanent damage, but once was enough to keep her from trying that again. When it was over and she opened her eyes a second later, she was in a different transit building, a small one with only a single teleporter. Unlike the one in the city, it was enclosed in a small building. She exited through the single door to find herself in an earth pony village. It was even colder out here than it had been in the city, but also more beautiful. There were no high stone walls, no artificial lights—just nature and a scattering of almost rustic wooden structures. The moon was still hanging in the pre-dawn sky, its delicate silvery-white light glittering off of frost unspoiled by sodium-yellow lamps. Not surprisingly for this hour, nopony else was around. Celestia walked down the main street of the village—the only real street, actually, and just a hoof-worn dirt road at that—and followed it for about a mile. While she travelled, the moon was sinking at an almost visible pace. Seeing it made her think about the lunarites in the city. Knowing that her sister would soon be one of them made her smile softly with pride for a moment. Her smile soon faded, though, submerging under troubled thoughts. She only hoped Luna’s fortunes in Thaumosciences would be better than her own. She kept walking, on and on through the pre-morning frigid cold, with the frost making the earth feel hard as solid stone beneath her hooves. Her destination was a small farmhouse set amid sprawling wheat fields, and her arrival was well timed: the moon was finished setting and the sun was peeking into the sky to light the dawn just as she got there. Her hooves trod swiftly down a narrow dirt path forking off the road toward the house. When she got close, the front door opened and an earth pony with a honey-colored mane and a pale tan coat almost exactly the same shade as the surrounding crops came out to meet her. She waved a forehoof. “Hello! Nice to see you again, Miss Celestia.” She had a young-looking, pretty face, dotted with a spray of freckles, although the semblance of youth was belied by the scars and scabs pock-marking her legs with their knotty muscles, the story of long seasons of hard farmwork written on her body. The familiar sight made Celestia smile. “I’m glad to be back, Winter Wheat,” she replied, walking closer. “So they gave you more time to keep working on your climate research, then?” Winter Wheat asked curiously. Climate research. Ha. Right. “…Something like that,” Celestia muttered. Suddenly she couldn’t bring herself to meet Winter Wheat’s hazel eyes as she answered, feeling a biting sense of shame. “I forgot to ask when you told me you were coming out here. Do you need anything special from me?” Winter Wheat asked. “No, I don’t think so.” Celestia shook her head. “Just the usual readings while you’re doing whatever farm work you have for the day, just like before. I’ll be taking some tissue samples from the wheat this time, too. Is that alright?” “No problem.” Winter Wheat nodded. “I’m about to get started, if you’re ready.” “Yes, let’s.” Winter Wheat headed for her fields, walking through the thin dusting of snow on the hard-frozen ground. Celestia followed her. Although the rising sun was steadily brightening the morning, winter was still coming on in force; the temperature kept dropping and the day was shaping up to be viciously chilly. The air stung her nose and throat with every breath she took in, and fogged in long-lingering clouds of hanging mist when she exhaled. Everything was starkly quiet under a gray veil of clouds that drifted in and covered the sky. Not even the birds wanted to be out in this cold. The work wasn’t very exciting, either, mostly just the grinding routine of Winter Wheat pacing up and down the rows of her fields. She was taking some measurements here and there with an old worn wooden ruler, while checking the crops for damage and weeding out any signs of disease. “Wouldn’t do to let even a single stalk be harvested with ergot in the grains,” she said. Celestia walked alongside her, using her horn to levitate a carefully tuned thaumosensor and a sheet of paper with a grid printed on it, frequently writing down numbers from the sensor’s readout to fill in the grid. She also had a pair of scissors that she used occasionally to take small leaf clippings, storing them in a specimen box divided into individually numbered slots. This kind of data aggregation was the fairly mindless busywork an apprentice might do. She would have gladly delegated some of it out to one, too, but she was still a very junior thaumite herself and didn’t have the luxury of an understudy to hoof things off to yet. In her boredom, her thoughts quickly began wandering. She spent a lot of time just watching Winter Wheat. The earth pony seemed to genuinely love what she was doing. Despite wearing nothing but an old thin cloak of coarse cloth, she didn’t seem bothered by the harsh cold under the dim overcast winter sky, humming a cheerful tune while she examined her plants. It made Celestia wonder. Most unicorns she knew would have looked down with contempt on the simplicity of farming, but after being around it first-hoof for a while during her research, there was a feeling growing within her that, truthfully, this didn’t seem like such a bad life. If this was what a pony wanted, what was really so wrong with it? And more than that, when she was honest with herself, she discovered an undercurrent of jealousy rising up inside her. It was a surprise at first, but after she thought about it, she couldn’t deny that it made sense: She could see that Winter Wheat was truly happy. In a clear moment of reflection, like looking in a mirror for the first time, it dawned on Celestia that she didn’t remember that feeling. Sometimes it was hard to be sure if it was something she had ever really felt. So many days seemed like they were filled with nothing but an empty restless longing, a sense that something was missing… Realization slapped her in the face, more sobering than the icy wind: the truth was that most of the time, especially lately, all she felt was hollow. Suddenly, she was overcome with a despairing desire for purpose to fill that void. She wanted so badly to know: what was it like? How did it feel for a pony to plow the dirt with her own hooves, to plant the seeds, to watch the new sprouts push their way up out of the ground and to nurture them while they gathered the sunlight and grew day by day? How amazing would it be to watch something blossom and bear fruit and know that it was her own love and dedication and hard work that made it happen? What was it like to feel the magic—the miracle—of that kind of fulfillment, that kind of real meaning? And what would happen if somepony tried to fake it? Could it ever be the same if it was just some cold piece of crystal emanating synthetic magic into the soil? Maybe unicorns could farm, but would they ever care about it as much as earth ponies? Probably not. And could the crops ever be as good? As plentiful or as nutritious or as perfect as earth ponies loved them enough to make them? Definitely not. She knew, all the way from somewhere deep down inside, that it could never be the same because it would never be an expression of true fulfillment in the same kind of way. Not that unicorns couldn’t feel that kind of passion, of course. Quite the contrary; in their hearts, all ponies longed to live for their purpose. That was the whole reason cutie marks existed, Celestia mused, looking back briefly at the sun symbol on herself. Unicorns were just as bound by this desire as anypony – maybe even more, for the fire of magic blazed in their horns. There was proof of it right here, in fact. The great northeastern aqueduct was visible from the farm, looming a mile or two off in the distance, an endless row of huge stone arches supporting a canal that had brought clear, clean mountain stream water to Quartz City for three hundred years. The unicorns who built a thing so great must have felt a burning drive inside filling them with pride in their work. How else could something so enormous be accomplished? And wasn’t she a descendant of those same unicorns? Those great engineers, architects, and mages, who had a vision and made it come true? So where had that gone? Why couldn’t she— The dim echo of a bell ringing out the noon hour from somewhere in the nearby earth pony village interrupted her thoughts. Winter Wheat stopped in her tracks when the sound broke the day’s frosty silence. “Whew! Break time! Do you want to come in for some lunch, Miss Celestia?” she asked, looking toward her little farmhouse. “Yes, that’d be nice.” Celestia looked forward to the chance to get out of the cold for a while. “Thank you.” The house was a sturdy wooden frame structure, all thick square beams and rough boards. It had a different smell than one of the city’s stone buildings; faintly musty, partly from straw used as insulation, but mostly clean and pleasant with a subtle undertone of pine resin and the perfume of herbs tied up in bunches with string and hanging from the kitchen ceiling. It was a little chilly inside, with the brick fireplace in the middle of the house having burned down to a few smoldering coals. Winter Wheat threw on some sticks of dry firewood and stoked them up by blowing on the hot embers until the wood caught flames. While the rekindled fire grew, a pleasant warmth spread through the house, and Celestia took off her cloak. Lunch was thick slices of fresh bread with butter and honey, along with some carrots. The carrots were a little dry and leathery on the outside from being old and out of season, but still tasty and crunchy in the middle. Winter Wheat also brewed hot coffee, which Celestia appreciated for the warmth it spread through her from the inside out. She also felt a little bit embarrassed by the generosity of it. Coffee, impossible to grow in the north, was an expensive tropical import from sporadic zebra trade caravans and couldn’t have been easy for a small farmer like Winter Wheat to afford. “What do you do with all these… number things, anyway?” Winter Wheat glanced over the pages of data that Celestia had left off to one side of the table while they were eating. “Oh, I mostly just write reports about them.” She sighed. “And they’re mostly ignored, I think.” “I wouldn’t ignore them,” Winter said softly. “I’d read them. I mean, if I knew how to read. I bet they’re interesting. You seem pretty smart, even more than most unicorns.” “Being a unicorn has nothing to do with being smart, necessarily,” Celestia said. After a moment, something about what Winter said hit her. She looked around the house. She’d been in here before, but now that she was thinking about it, she realized something she’d never noticed: there were no books, no letters, no papers—no text visible at all. There was a calendar on one wall, but it didn’t have any writing on it, just tally-mark numbers and a few simple sketched pictograms among the sequentially crossed-off days. “You can’t read?” Celestia was blindsided by the revelation, washed with a suddenly uncomfortable awareness of just how much she took education and literacy for granted in the ponies she usually found herself around. “No.” Winter shook her head, looking embarrassed. “Never got the chance to learn how.” “Oh.” Celestia felt bad about making Winter self-conscious. She shrugged, trying to downplay it. “Well, I suppose a lot of ponies don’t.” “I wish I did,” Winter said. “You could learn, if you want,” Celestia suggested. “I don’t think I have the time for it, now.” Winter shook her head. She stared wistfully out the window. “Always too much work to do. Growing wheat is an all-year nonstop kind of farming. If I took a season off I wouldn’t have enough to pay the land rent. Then I’d be in real trouble, wouldn’t I?” “Well, at least you’re good at wheat.” Celestia offered her a smile, then looked out the window. “At least you like what you do.” “That’s true, I guess.” Winter smiled back. “It could be worse. But believe me, someday when I have foals, they will learn how letters work. I’ll make sure of that.” Celestia just nodded. “Do you have any foals, Miss Celestia?” Winter asked. “Please.” Celestia shook her head. “You don’t have to call me ‘Miss.’ Just Celestia.” Addressing unicorns with a title was the usual respectful courtesy that earth ponies were expected to show, but she didn’t feel particularly deserving right now. It was more the opposite; every ‘Miss’ just felt like a little more salt rubbed into a wound. “Alright, Just-Celestia.” Winter Wheat smirked and giggled. Celestia also laughed. “So, do you?” Winter asked again. “No, I don’t.” “Do you want to have any?” “I—” Celestia paused “—You know, it seems like I’ve always been so busy either studying or working that I’ve never really stopped and thought about it. Can you believe that?” “Somepony like you? I guess I could believe it.” Winter nodded. “Do you like what you do?” “I think I used to like it a lot better,” Celestia mumbled, staring down at her plate. “What was better before?” “I didn’t—” Celestia’s mouth snapped shut. I didn’t work on helping to take away your future and your chance to have those foals, for one. “…I didn’t always just write pointless research reports,” she said. “Not your special talent, huh?” “No.” Celestia shook her head. “I’m good enough at it to get stuck with it, unfortunately. But actually I used to be a Solarite, until I was pulled off of that and put on projects like this instead.” “A sun-mover?” Winter’s eyes went wide with awe. “So that explains the cutie mark…” “Yes, I get that a lot.” Celestia smiled slightly and nodded. “It sounds more impressive than it really is, though, honestly. I was just one small part of it. It takes a whole team, and special machines. Nopony could ever hope to do it all alone.” ​    ☙ ☀ ❧     On yet another of the seemingly endless cold winter’s mornings, dry wheat stalks crunched under Celestia’s hooves, making a constant noise as she trudged onward through frozen fields she didn’t recognize in the direction of a goal she couldn’t see. She wasn’t sure where she was, but to her left, the rising sun had just cracked over the eastern horizon, so she knew she was walking south. The dark walls of Quartz City were behind her, already far away and getting farther with every step. There were clouds gathering over the city and the surrounding lands, steel-gray and menacing, looking brutally cold and ready to drop relentless driving snow all across the Kingdom. The sight was frightening and ominous, sending pangs of intense anxiety and a sense of helplessness twisting through her. She looked forward and walked on, making her way south, sensing somehow that it was the only thing to do. Icy, piling, terrible snow was coming, but if she kept moving, maybe she could stay ahead of it… ⁂ …It was mid-day and the sun was high up now, bright and warm, covering all the land with life-giving light. It bathed her in a familiar and welcome gentle heat, filling her, soaking through her skin, charging through her horn and coursing in her blood, comforting her all the way down to her bones. She looked around and found herself awed by how beautiful her surroundings were. Wide plains spread out in front of her in an endless emerald sea of grassland, under a clear sky bluer than she’d ever imagined was possible. The grass rolled in shimmering waves driven by warm, gentle breezes that carried a subtle perfume, the smell of summer and sunshine and distant flowers—the scent of life itself. She could feel herself falling into an almost hypnotic rapture at the wonder of it all. But even finding herself in the midst of this Elysium, some part of her still held back, trying to stay wary and detached. Analytical thoughts ran through this reserved part of her mind, telling her that this place had to be much nearer to the equator than the Unicorn Kingdom for the sun to be so far overhead in the sky. It never rose this high so far north. Most of her, though, was preoccupied by the wondrousness of just being here, in the moment. This land was like nothing she’d ever seen before, and somehow she became aware that it was calling, whispering… singing to her. She could hear it in her mind – not words, exactly, but more abstract impressions that gave rise to urges in her thoughts, a gentle tug enticing her into its embrace. Celestia… come find this place. It was a very attractive idea, one that she desperately wanted to hold on to. She lowered her head and ran her muzzle through the lush, thick grass. It caressed her face and the earthy smell of the dark, rich, fertile soil it grew from filled her nostrils. This is where you belong. Yes. Yes, it was. There was nothing she wanted more than to be here… ⁂ …A lone mountain rose out of the plains, a tower of steep-sloped bare rock. She stood among its foothills and looked up. It reached into the sky, so tall it was almost beyond the limits of her sense of scale. It just stretched up, on and on without end until its high peaks disappeared somewhere in misty veils of cloud. Her head was tilted back, eyes wide in an uncomprehending vertical stare. There were mountains near Quartz City, but nothing… nothing like this. Nothing else in all the world was like this, she was sure of it. How could there be? It seemed so completely unreal. And yet… Your path leads here. It was a magnetic thought, drawing her in as if she was a piece of iron and the whole mountain was one giant lodestone. The urge was irresistible, sending an electric tingle through her that set the fur of her coat on end. She had to find this place. She had to! Almost involuntarily, she whinnied and stomped the ground in excitement… ⁂ With a small but sudden twitch of her legs and a sharp gasping inhalation, Celestia’s eyes snapped open to a dark room. She looked around in confusion. Just enough dim moonlight came through the window to be able to tell where she was – her bedroom. After a moment she started piecing together her momentarily disoriented perceptions. A dream? Her racing thoughts were filled with a jumbled recollection of images: grassy meadows, warm breeze, a mountain, the bright sun so far overhead in the incredibly blue sky… …all a dream? She focused on her horn and it lit up, generating a wide cone of white light that illuminated her small room, showing her familiar stone walls and cramped bookshelves with their eclectic assortment of different volumes. A turn of her head aimed the light at her little nightstand clock. It was early morning, close to when sunrise was scheduled but not quite there yet. Yes… just a dream. Her heart sank. It was a dream she wished she was still having. She let out a wistful sigh, then her hornlight went out while her head dropped back down onto her pillow. She tossed and turned unhappily while she pulled her partially cast-off blanket back over herself, trying to find whatever warmth she could in the cold dark winter.