Twilight Velvet woke up surrounded by several concerned faces. The closest one of them belonged to an earth pony wearing a supermarket worker vest.
"Are you okay ma'am?" The store employee asked Twilight as she looked around in a daze.
"What's going on?" She asked as she was slowly helped up to a sitting position.
"You screamed and fainted. I thought for a second you caught sight of a really good deal." He told her with a sly grin. Seeing that the joke didn't take, he coughed quietly before he cleared his throat.
"Ahem. Are you going to be alright, or do you want me to call for help?" Behind the stallion, 'Sunny' was looking at her with pleading eyes and clenched jaw, shaking her head nearly imperceptibly to signal 'no'.
"I'm fine, thank you. I just had a short dizzy spell and tripped." Twilight replied.
"Are you sure? You look a little pale." The stallion eyed her with with skepticism.
"Yes. I'm sure." She responded just as she stood up little too quickly. "It runs in the family. Completely normal. Happens every day. Even twice somedays. Yup. Normal. Yes." She told the store clerk, a bead of sweat had formed on the side of her face.
"Well, okay... If you need anything just holler." The stallion said before corralling the spectators away.
Once the crowd had dispersed the two mares were left in an extended silence while each one gathered the courage to speak to the other. That silence was broken by Celestia.
"I'm sorry for making you faint." The princess said, while pawing halfheartedly at the ground with her left hoof.
She is sorry? Twilight had been the one who assaulted her, interrogated her, then assaulted her again! She wanted to faint again just from thinking about it.
"Your High—Sunny" She corrected herself after seeing her wince. "There's no need to apologize. I'm sorry for tripping you, then upsetting you, then—"
"It's fine." She quickly interrupted.
Another awkward silence settled between the two of them as they avoided eye contact with each other.
"Well, if that is all..." Twilight said softly before she turned to leave. She was stopped by the touch of a hoof to her withers. The look in her eyes betrayed her desperation.
"Please, I... I need help. She's only a day old and I don't know what I'm doing." Celestia confessed.
"I don't understand. Aren't there servants who could help you more than I could?" Twilight asked.
"They... they're afraid of me." Celestia responded, eyes looking at the floor.
Twilight took a long look at the disguised princess. Before she fainted, she had thought the mare in front of her was a single mother, the victim of an unplanned pregnancy or—heaven forbid—something worse. Equestria, especially Canterlot, wasn't kind to mares in any of those life situations. Apparently, the Princess of the realm wasn't exempt.
"Okay."
The two mares were talking while they walked down the streets of Canterlot in the direction of the palace. Their saddlebags were filled to the brim with diapers, clothes, toys, and other essential foal care items.
"You're saying that foals can be held with telekinesis without harming them?"
"Goodness Sunny! That's just an old mares' tale. The only problems that arise from telekinesis is when it's constant use prevents coat-to-coat contact. Foals need to feel their parents' warmth to develop a healthy emotional connection with them."
"Oh. I think I understand." Celestia replied sheepishly.
Twilight was about to ask Celestia a question when she noticed that she had stopped a few paces behind her. She followed her gaze across the street and noticed an ordinary sight, a middle-aged mare in a sun dress shoving flyers on the faces of passersby. Sensing an opportunity, the proselytizer made her way across the street to the two of them.
"What a fine day our Princess has gifted us, wouldn't you say?" The mare said as she levitated a flyer in front of each of them.
"I guess it is." Celestia replied while looking at the mare warily. "What is all this?" She asked while taking hold of the flyer.
"We are the Children of the Eternal Dawn. Why don't you visit us tomorrow at—"
"This seems like alicorn worship." 'Sunny' said in a stern tone, before slipping the flyer into her saddlebag.
"Oh, no no no no no. We are simply a group of like-minded individuals who support one another and relish the gifts that the daylight brings. It's just a coincidence that our Princess is the one who brings out the sun..."
As the mare continued to make her case, Twilight noticed that Celestia's mien turned stoic. In her limited interactions with her, Celestia seemed to wear her heart on her sleeve, despite putting up a strong front. At the moment, the mare's eyes were listless. The look in those eyes combined with the knowledge of the pony behind them gave her a strong sense of unease. The other mare seemed oblivious to the tension in the air while she continued to babble on.
"We're not interested, thank you." Twilight choked quickly as she grabbed Sunny's forehoof and pulled her away from the other mare as quickly as she could manage.
Twilight now understood why the palace servants could be afraid of their princess. Celestia might consider herself a mere royal, but she had the bearing of a goddess. Anypony would flee at the sight of those lifeless eyes.
Despite the rest of her time with the princess being peaceful, Twilight would repress the memories of that day for years to come.
Celestia stood in the entrance to her balcony ready to bring the day to a close. Sunset was fed, clothed, cleaned, and asleep. She felt as if the last twenty four hours had actually been a month. She was thoroughly exhausted.
I'm not the only one. She thought while looking back into the bedchamber. Philomena had started a new cycle five years ago and now looked to be less than a year away from the next one. Her lustrous feathers lost their sheen that should've lasted two more decades. Granted, she almost never lived through a complete cycle because she always gave part of herself to help those in need.
She came very close to giving up her existence for the filly. She thought as she watched the phoenix sleep peacefully on her perch.
She set her thoughts aside and crossed the threshold into her balcony. Her horn lit up as the sun was steadily guided below the horizon.
As soon as the sun was set and the spell started bringing out the night, Celestia froze still from strong sense of aberration. The feeling of wrongness only increased as the twilight turned into proper night.
It felt as if the whole of the sky had lost its tangibility.
Fearing the worst, she started to hyperventilate while panic started to set in. The elements were gone. She could not activate them. Equestria wasn't safe. The baby—
Focus! She thought while taking deep breaths.
Once her heartbeat slowed to an appropriate tempo, she brought her magical senses into sharp relief and cast her gaze toward the heavens. The sky looked no different from any other night. She couldn't identify the source of the divergence.
Celestia next concentrated on the moon, the source of terrible pain and exhibit of her greatest shame. It looked and felt the same as it had for nearly a millennium. She centered her attention to its sole occupant.
In the past, Celestia used her connection to the heavens to establish emotional links with the moon, all for the purpose of purging the Nightmare and redeeming her sister. Unfortunately, her efforts did not bear fruit. What used to be daily attempts became weekly, then monthly, then annual before she stopped trying altogether. She would have to face her tonight.
She was still there, same as all other times, drowning in an ocean of self-pity, hatred, and a myriad other negative emotions.
Doesn't seem like she is the cause of this. Celestia thought bitterly. Her eyes watered as she tried to distance herself from the torture her sister had been enduring.
By process of elimination, the stars had to be the source of the divergence. She focused on the distant pinpricks of light and felt their collective mass in her magical grasp as if it was sand, where before it had been a monolith. She focused on an individual star and applied light pressure on it.
The star moved. Terrified, Celestia quickly put it back as close to its original position as she could manage.
She had brought out the night sky every night for almost a thousand years. In all of that time she had never had the ability to move stars in the sky. Celestia thought only Luna could do that, being the rightful guardian of the night. But then, if Celestia could now move the stars, when she couldn't before, what changed?
The ele—
Celestia was overwhelmed by a seismic shift in the emotions that radiated from the moon. What moments ago was a veritable soup of negative emotions instantly turned into a colossus of pure, indignant rage.
Rage directed at her.
The last twenty four hours had brought Celestia a lot of emotions she hadn't experienced in a long time, but none of them cut into her soul like this. The air around her felt like it turned into a viscous mass that pressed against every cell in her body. She felt a tightness in her barrel that straddled the line between uncomfortable and painful. She couldn't move.
She couldn't breathe.
The panic attack she had earlier came back in full force. In struggling, Celestia inadvertently hastened her fast-approaching demise. The edges of her vision darkened as she lost her footing and dropped to the ground. The foreign rage wearing her down was the only thing she could feel as she was about to lose consciousness.
Then Sunset started crying.
The oppressive atmosphere left as quickly as it had come. Within seconds, Celestia was upright and heading toward the newborn filly. She cradled the foal into her chest while swaying lightly and humming a soft melody.
Celestia spent the following day wondering why the demon released her.