Celestia was having a good night's sleep before she fell head first into the ground.
“Ugh…”
Celestia grunted, hindlegs on bed and head on the floor. That hit was hard enough to wake her up, but not enough to take the morning grogginess effect off her. She winked slowly, trying to open a gap in her eyes wide enough for her to at least see her surroundings.
But once it was big enough and she could scan around, a scowl formed on her face as she noticed the room she found herself in.
A weird, unsymmetrical cloud pattern on the wall, an out of place star tapestry hanging by the wall, a lonely (and quite lame to be frank) plant, and two doors, one made of glass, and the other with even weirder patterns than the wall combined into an atrocity to interior design.
What was she doing in this place? She tried remembering, but her head would just not help. Although she could not reach any memories about it, she did manage to reach something; a feeling.
This place felt very familiar, like somewhere she spent a lot of time in, somewhere like her room. But this couldn’t be her room, could it?
…
Could it?
Oh dear, it was her room. She still could not remember, but it felt like it. This place felt like her room so much, and she was sure it was.
As the realization finally allowed her to fully open her eyes, she brought the rest of her body down to the ground and stood up on her hooves. This was awful! Well, not the room. Actually, yes, the room was pretty awful too, but there was something worse: The fact that she could not recognize her very own room!
And she could not remember yesterday neither! nor the day before, or the day before it. That hit on the head really did a number on her somehow! It wasn't even that hard! At least she could still remember things before… a certain day, probably a week ago or… something? Hopefully?
…
She needed some fresh air. She looked around and spotted the glass door; on the other side, there was a balcony, and further, she saw the night sky shining weakly.
She paced towards the balcony. At least it was not as messed up as the rest of her room! And she bet the views from there would be amazing. How high was she anyway? Was she like, on a third floor or something? She could tell she was not on ground level, but she could not tell how high she was. Well she would found out eventually, as she-
Her spine shook as the other door banged open “PRINCESS CELESTIA!”
Celestia yelped, flared her wings, dropped to the floor, and put her forehooves on her head, not exactly in that order.
“WAKE UUUUUUP!!!!!!!!” The voice kept the same note for a good few moments, before coming to a halt with a crack to hack a few times “So--” he hacked “--rry Princess, that was on Luna’s orders,” the voice was now calm, although holding some hints of what could be described as throat damage. “‘A good scare shall wake her up’ she said” he chuckled before hacking once more.
Celestia peaked from her position, before realizing what was going on. She hastily looked around, searching for a way to get a hold of the situation, and decided to start by changing her dumb shock expression to a ‘smile’. “W-well,” She tried to stand up, her shaky hooves making it difficult “As you can see, I’m already u-up so a ‘scare’ is n-not needed.” she tittered, as she turned to the voice. It belonged to a yellow pegasus in similar yellow armor.
The pegasus raised an eyebrow, before bringing it back down as fast as he could, hoping Celestia didn’t notice it, “Well then, Your Highness.” He stood there for a second. “I’ll go check on your mail then. Not a single letter was there last time I checked, and knowing your student…” He shuddered at the thought. “It's a little concerning.” He glanced at Celestia, who looked dumbfounded.
Oh well, she would catch on later once she fully wakes up. “Goodbye then!” He said as he turned the way he came.
“Wait!” Celestia raised a hoof towards the pegasus “Wait.” The pegasus stopped and turned to face her yet again, a stern look on his face. “Who is Luna?”
The pegasus sputtered, and stumbled on his place for a moment, before trying to return to his firm position, “Who is Luna!?”
That name sounded familiar to her. Was she supposed to know her? “Yes, who is Luna?”
He managed to not break down again. At least on the outside, as on the inside his mind desperately rushed for a way to act in this situation.
After a few seconds, he closed his eyes for a second and gathered his thoughts, finally deciding where to start from. “Um, okay, well, Princess, LunAAAH!-”
Then the entire room flashed in a blue light, a dark blue alicorn appearing in the aftermath. For some reason, this did not startle Celestia. The contrary could be said about the pegasus, who yelped, flared his wings, yadda yadda.
The alicorn glanced about. “Is Celestia up yet?” The alicorn said, stopping her gaze at Celestia. “Good. Up with the sun for once then, Sister.” She recognized that voice! At a second glance, she did recognize her!
How did she forget? “Oh, Luna!” She said with a genuine smile on her face “Yes, I am up, Sister. No need for your games.” Wait, did she just say something about the sun?
“Mine games!?” Luna returned, clearly offended, “We are not playing, Sister!”
“Oh, and then why are you trying to scare me so badly, huh, Luna?”
Luna frowned. “Sister, the sun is not up yet.”
The sun was not up yet? Oh yeah, she already mentioned that before. Well, that was concerning. “And?”
“AND!?”
Celestia flinched at her sister’s voice. Maybe she did not say it the right way! “Do not get me wrong! That is certainly weird, but what does that have to do with me?” Celestia clarified, wondering when Luna learned to be so loud.
Luna, offended by such a question, retorted. “Celestia, do not tell me you forgot you are supposed to raise the sun?”
Was she serious? “What? Wait, am I? No, why would I be?”
“...Because you are the Princess of Equestria?”
It was turn for Celestia to frown now. “No, no, what are you saying? I’m not a ‘Princess’! You’ve got the wrong pony,” She couldn’t be!
“Sister, thou…” Luna brought a hoof to her face, and sighed. “We are not in the mood for this. You do this.” Luna pointed at the guard, who had already recuperated from the startle Luna gave her a while ago, and was hearing silently to this whole ordeal.
It took him a second to process the order. “Princess, wai–!” He tried, but it was too late, as Luna disappeared the same way she bursted in. The guard stood there and stared at Celestia, who was still looking at the spot Luna was a second before.
To be fair, she looked just as confused as him. Either she was better at acting that she let on, or she really did somehow forget. “Um…”
“Well…” How was he supposed to handle this? He was just trained to stand still and follow Celestia around!
Maybe because of that. He spent a lot of time with Celestia, hearing her talk, and seeing how she was as a pony. If someone knew her well, it was Luna, but then there was him… maybe. Anyways, He could do this! Probably. He just needed to push the right buttons, play with her mind! Yes! “Um… Could you please raise the sun?”
Celestia sighed. It would not matter how many times she would tell them, they would not stop until she raised the sun, wouldn’t they? But how was she supposed to do that? She knew a group of wizards raised it with their magic, at least before, but was she strong enough to match them?
Well, she was an alicorn after all and there was also no harm in trying, as failing to do so will only prove to them that she is not, in fact, the one supposed to raise the sun. “Very well then… I will raise the sun, but just this once!”
Wait, that worked!? He really knew Celestia! Ha, take that, self doubt! “Thanks, Princess!”
Celestia shot him a frown. “C-Celestia! I meant Celestia! Hehe…” He looked around, and spotted the open door that led to the hallway. “I’ll leave you to it! Bye!” He shouted as he ran through the door, closing it shut behind him.
Celestia dropped the frown and turned to her balcony, as she continued her long interrupted journey.
The view from up here was amazing! She assumed. With no celestial bodies in sight, the scarce light struggled to illuminate the landscape. All she could see were a few blips of light directly under the balcony. That was a town! Wait, now that she saw it from here, she noticed she was on the top floor of a castle! But that would mean…
No, No way she was a ‘princess’ or whatever they assumed she was. She never agreed to it, and even if she was an alicorn, that did not mean she was forced to be that! Just this one thing and then she would not do anything more.
She looked up to the sky and closed her eyes, focusing on ‘raising the sun’. And the rest, surprisingly, came naturally; she felt her horn activating, barely tiring her, and after a few seconds, she felt the warm sun rays reaching her.
She opened her eyes to confirm, and indeed, the sun was there, shining and radiating its comforting light all above the land. The landscape was no longer hidden by darkness; she could see the forests, lakes, mountains and towns both underneath and far ahead.
Well, who would have guessed it was that easy. Anyways, back to bed!
It's been only fifteen minutes since she got to her bed, and they were already bothering her again!
A knocking on the door that would just not go away attacked her eardrums. A while ago, it started as three simple door knocks. Celestia, having already done their requests, simply locked the door and waited for them to go away in response.
But they would just not! The knocks continued, and they only got faster and louder. Eventually, she put one of her pillows on her head and pressed hard against her ears, yet in vain as the noise was already too loud to be muffled by the foam.
Celestia was certainly annoyed, but she had to admire the knocking prowess of the pony on the other side of the door. You needed a really conditioned hoof to hold this volume and consistency for this long.
While she thought about the technique the knocking pony might be using, the knocks stopped. She waited for a few seconds, and the knocks indeed did not come back. They stopped! They finally gave up!
Celestia let out a noisy sigh in relief. At last, she could get some sleep!
“Your Highness!” Oh for the love of… “May I come in!?”
Celestia grunted, making sure it was discernible enough for the pony on the other side to hear. “What do you want!?”
“Your Highness, you are running late to the press conference!” What!? They wanted her to attend conferences now!? “Ponies want to know what was stolen from the spell library yesterday, we need to go now!”
Celestia got out of bed, and threw open the door with her magic, revealing a white unicorn with glasses, and the guard from before standing next to her. “Why do you keep insisting!? I have already told you, I am not the Princess!”
“Um?” The unicorn glanced at her companion.
The pegasus flared. “Don’t look at me, Raven! She’s been like that since she woke up,” he lamented. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
Raven turned to Celestia, not missing a beat. “Your Highness, are bananas blue?” she deadpanned..
Okay, at this point they were straight up messing with her. “I am not in the mood for pranks!”
“Understandable, Your Highness, but you didn’t answer my question.”
“N-no, of course they are not!” she stated the obvious, not knowing how else to react to this taunt.
“Got it. I’ll see you later then, Your Highness.” And just like that, Raven Inkwell disappeared with a poof.
The guard stood there. “Wait.” Did she just leave? “Dang it!”
And here he was once more, facing Celestia again. He could probably leave too if he wanted to, Celestia surely did not want him here, and he still had to ask about Twilight Sparkle, as she did not send any letters yet and that was really strange for her. But, something did not let him leave. This wasn’t like Celestia. He sighed. “Your -I mean- Celestia, why…” How could he put this? “-are you acting like this?” -Oookay, that came out way too harsh!
Celestia, who did not pay him much attention until now, turned at him with a plain expression. It was actually over, he was done for. “I do not understand what you are talking about. I am just being myself, since this very morning.”
He could scrap this! “Yeah! Yes, of course, Princess! I just meant… that you used to worry more about… rising the sun and like… that royalty stuff?”
“Did I?” Celestia questioned herself. “Well, why should I?” Celestia asked with a tired sigh. “It’s demanding. And boring. I do not feel like I should be forced to do that stuff just because I am an alicorn.”
The guard considered this. She was right, all those things that were expected from her were really heavy, so why should she do them?
And then he remembered why he was her personal guard. Their situations weren’t exactly the same, but maybe he could… “You know, Princess…” This was going to come out way too casual and nothing guard-like, but to Tartarus with it! “I used to think the same about being a guard. Like standing in the same spot all day seems useless and boring, and sometimes it kinda is. And I chose to be one anyway. “
His voice accelerated. A lot. “Because I want to protect you, Princess. You do all these things for us and I wanted to give something back. Like… protection or something. And you don’t even need protection! But, I thought to myself, maybe if I stand outside her door, she’ll feel safer or something? And like, I still don’t know if you do, but… I’ll still be your guard anyways! It’s like, the role I wanted to play or… something...” he lowered his tone to practically non existing.
Celestia remained silent. “Oh, sorry!” he apologized for something nervously. “I-I’ll leave. Sorry to bother you.” He said as he turned to the door.
He froze in place the second he looked through the door frame.
“Hi!” A dark blue alicorn said from the other side of the door, a smirk on her face.
“Um, Uh, he-hello Pri-princess!” He stuttered.
“Do you mind leaving us alone for a minute?” Luna calmly proposed as she stepped to the side, leaving a gap for the pegasus to leave.
“O-of Course, Your Highness!” He said as he dashed for the door. “Bye!” he screamed as he vanished down the hallway.
“I just wanted him to leave the room…” Luna said as she entered, closing the door behind her. “Anyhow, Raven told me you needed help with something, and taking what I've just heard, I suppose you need help to remember who you are, Sister.”
A while ago, she would have said no. But… she was starting to consider it. She needed to see what past Celestia saw that led her to want to play this role. She sighed. “You are correct, Luna. I do.”
Luna smiled. “Good thing you had that ‘prank verifier’ thing going on with Raven,” Luna praised as she considered doing the same with one of her assistants. “Very well then,” she said her horn came to life. “Perhaps we can bring out your memories like this…”
Celestia felt heavy as her vision faded out to black, and soon the black turned into a new scenery.
“Woah,” she said as she stumbled around a few steps, the transition leaving her a little woozy.
Luna, instead, looked exhausted. “That was harder than I expected…” she pondered, panting. “There was a barrier of some sorts in your memories…”
Celestia looked around, not paying much attention to her sister. She found herself in the peak of a high mountain, so high in fact, the sun looked like it was at her eye level. In front of her, five unicorns formed in a circle, and among them, there was one with a beard and a pointy (and quite funny) hat that she recognized. “Is that…”
“That would be Starswirl the Bearded, our mentor,” Luna said as she dismissed her previous statements. “Before we came around, he and a group of unicorns raised the sun and moon.”
As if to demonstrate, the five unicorns lit up their horns in unison, and the sun came down from the sky, giving way to a rising moon. “S-see? They can raise the sun themselves! I do not see why should I–”
Before she could finish her sentence, the unicorns all collapsed to the floor, Starswirl being the only one to manage to stay on his hooves, although barely. Celestia recoiled at the abruptness of the situation “Yes, Sister. They can, indeed, raise the sun. Although at the cost of their magic. At the rate they had to go, they would have ended up completely draining their magic in a couple of decades.”
“I… see,” Celestia observed the panting group. It didn’t really take her that kind of effort to do it. Maybe she could…
Yes, she definitely could help them. Well, she already was, she meant she could go back to helping them. But that only solved one piece of her puzzle, “That does explain why I raised the sun, but what about all that royalty stuff?”
Instead of answering verbally, Luna just activated her horn again and used the same spell she used before. Celestia’s vision once again turned to black, then to a cyan sky. Wait, how high up was she?
Before she could look down, she hit a grassy floor belly first. At least it the landing wasn't that hard, but she still grunted, “You could at least tell me when you are going to--” she came to a halt as she got to her knees and saw that she currently found herself in the only patch of grass in the vicinity. Furthermore, she found herself on a floating island, overviewing a chaotic landscape.
A square tiled floor covered what had to be the land, the colors of the tiling varying. Houses were both upside down and down upside down, trees sparkled, and a brown rain covered some spots. Scattered around in the scenery, ponies. Ponies doing all sort of wacky and random and entertaining things, and yet their faces only portrayed gloom.
Her examination ended as she instinctively cocked her head to the right, just as a laser beam that came out of nowhere passed through where her head was before. “Lu-Luna…” She said as her whole body trembled, making her unable to stand. “Wh-what is this?”
“This is Equestria before our reign, sister,” Luna thought about it. “Well, maybe it was not as severe as this, but something alike was bound to happen eventually.”
Celestia could not unglue her eyes from the scenery that played in front of her, her mouth agape. “So…”
Luna sighed, “Sister, this is not the first time I saw you change. The Celestia I used to know before our reign was more like you, actually.” She chuckled as she watched the environment too. “I guess you can see why she changed.”
Celestia stood there, not out of shock, but out of consideration. It took her a few minutes to reach a conclusion, but the one she reached she was certain was the right one for her. “That’s enough, Sister.” She said as she stood up firmly. “I see it now.”
Luna nodded, her horn liting up and undoing the spell.
The whole scenario faded out into a room. Her room. Her ugly room. She could sympathize with herself about everything else, but her room design was still just as awful.
Luna gave her a few more seconds to her thoughts. “Then you are ready to realize your daily routines, I presume?” she asked.
“Yes, yes.” She answered, before turning to face her sister. “Thank you… for helping me.”
Luna smiled. “How could I not help my dear sister?” she said as she approached Celestia and tightly hugged her with a wing, Celestia answering back with a tighter hug.
“Ohohoho, Excellent!” A deep voice came out of nowhere. “What a magnificent ending!”
Luna instantly frowned as she recognized the voice. She let go of her sister and her horn lit up once again, and suddenly a weird amalgamation of various creatures, wearing a pair of 3D glasses, along a popcorn bag popped out of thin air. “Discord, do not tell me thou art behind this!”
“Who else could do it then, my dear?” Discord said as he snapped his fingers, his 3D glasses and popcorn disappearing the same way they appeared. “Although I must admit, I could not wipe the memories of the Great Princess Celestia all on my own.”
Luna gritted her teeth and flared her horn, grabbing and shaking Discord telekinetically. “Who helped thou!?”
Discord rolled his eyes, more annoyed at the question than at the aggression. “I was thinking you would have figured it out as soon you were informed the mailbox was empty,” he said as he snapped his fingers once again, revealing a lavender alicorn.
The alicorn looked lost in thought until she noticed she was being stared down by Luna. She looked to both sides before realizing she was no longer invisible. “Oh, um, Hello, um, Princess?” she said with a forced smile.
“Twilight Sparkle, what is the meaning of this!” she said as she dropped Discord and aimed her horn at Twilight instead..
“Wait, wait, wait! I can explain!” She blurted out. Luna glared at her for a few seconds, before turning off her horn and nodding.
Twilight sighed, relieved Luna was willing to hear her out. “Well, you see, I just thought about these wings I just got and all that, and I was like ‘Oh wow I’m gonna be like a princess!’ and then I was like ‘Oh wow I am going to be like a princess’, and kinda freaked a little bit out so-"
“She wanted to see what Celestia would do if something similar happened to her,” Discord swiftly interrupted. “So in her infinite genius, she decided to give me total access to memory wiping spells!” He smiled as a book materialized to his side. “Isn’t that just wonderful?” He said in a bliss.
“Yeah, basically...” Twilight agreed. “Wait, was that sarcasm!?”
“Hold on a second!” Celestia said, who was still there by the way. “What is going on? What is this creature!?” She pointed at Twilight. “Who are you!?”
“Oh, yes, I forgot,” Discord said as he snapped his fingers. “Here.”
Celestia stumbled a few steps, before her face turned to confusion, to realization, to consideration, to finally stop at a frown; a frown of anger. “DISCORD!” She shouted, startling the draconequus who in turn flew away. “COME BACK HERE!” She ordered as she gave chase.
“How did you think it was a good idea to give that kind of power to Discord!” Luna reprimanded.
“Well I-” Twilight suddenly blanked out. “...I forgot.”
Luna facehoofed. “Ugh…”