//------------------------------//
// A Fateful Meeting 
// Story: Humans 
// by unclefester84 
//------------------------------//

A fateful meeting.

Aurion was an oddity among alicorns, oftentime the attitude and character of one could be discerned by their look and magical aura, and those with light colorations are known to possess a more joyous temper than those with a darker one.
Nobody knows why this is, some scholars have speculated that the personality of an alicorn is so great that it influences the very physical form of their body, while others have suggested the opposite. Yet despite Aurion having the whitest coat and a great golden mane, he was a somber, almost sorrowful character.(1)
His name also was a matter of curiosity, as he had been given one since birth, while instead it was custom to wait until one had gained their mark before receiving a name appropriate to their character and talent, and even more odd was that he had received a single name, something that only the early children of the Royal House would have the honor to obtain. When questioned about it, the stallion himself would say that his parents never explained to him their decision, only that it “felt right”. (2)

He was born in one of the encampments of the western continent in the waning days of the Great Crusade from two loving parents, and despite the potential dangers of living close to the front lines, the beginning of his youth was a peaceful one, until when tragically both his parents were killed in a surprise assault by an Abomination.
Great hatred for those enemies arose then in Aurion, and his somber attitude turned into a grim determination for vengeance, which motivated him to train himself in the art of combat even before his adolescent years.
Many years of hard work passed, and he became so highly skilled in the ways of war that his name became known to many in the legions even before he reached the age of enrollment, and there was no doubt that he would have risen to great positions in the military.
But then came the day when the Battle of the Falling Sky shook the world, and with that final victory the long war against the Abominations was over.

Suddenly, Aurion felt at a loss.
His entire youth was spent in gruesome training so that he could be ready to inflict retribution upon the creatures that killed his parents, and just when he was about to have his chance to prove himself against them, that opportunity was removed from him.
Some might have thought then that he came to resent the war’s end, but that was not the case and he was instead glad that the great enemies had been seemingly wiped out, at least for the time being, but the feeling of having missed and opportunity of proving himself, along with having potentially wasted his youth in pointless training, left a bitter emptiness in his hearth.

In an attempt to give new purpose to his life, he became one of the firsts to join the ranks of the Errant Knights, and in many years of exploration and discoveries he became renowned even among that renown group for both his wisdom and his might.
His somber temper however remained, and he did not have much love for great gatherings of alicorns, and preferred instead solitary wanderings in the marvels of nature, where he also hoped to find some way to heal the sorrow that he felt in himself.
Unfortunately, no matter how far he traveled, or how deep in unknown territories he went, nothing seemed to give him respite for long, and so after many years of searching, he began to lose hope.

Princess Hope, firstborn of Queen Faust and King Laurent, was an exceptional case among alicorns.
She had been the third of her kind to appear in the world, and the first one to come from the love of two parents, rather than being delivered by the Tree of Life. This made her older than any other alicorn, save for Queen Faust and King Laurent themselves.

She was considered by many a paragon of beauty, tall and slender, with her coat of the color of early evening and a long flowing mane dark like the night sky, but even in her case the dark palette of her colors did not reflect her character and temper.
She was instead very amicable, with a great love for large gatherings of alicorns, and she reveled in making new friends at every occasion.
Indeed her love for companionship was such that seldom she was seen without a group of close friends, with the sole exception of whenever she indulged in another great passion of hers, the study of high accademia.
Indeed Princess Hope was universally considered one of the best scholars of the realm, and she was regarded as the supreme authority in many fields of study. Subjects like magical theories, abstract sciences and universal philosophy came exceedingly easy for her to understand and unravel, and she could claim that her efforts had been directly involved in many advancements for the entire realm.

During her years she also became a beacon of majesty that was closer to the common alicorn, rather than the unreachable heights that her parents sometimes seemed to belong to, and was loved by everyone in the kingdom.
It was perhaps because of this great love, along with the constant presence of many numerous friends and family, that for so many millennia she never felt the need to seek a soulmate, and while her siblings founded large families early during the Age of Everfree, from which then came the Six Great Houses, she spent her life between her friends and her studies, and she was content. (3)
For the most part.
Indeed some have said that it might have been because of a yet unrecognized need, that in the years after the end of the Great Crusade, when it was finally safer to roam the world alone, she began to take solitary journeys in the unknown regions, often following the trails of the Errant Knights.
And it was during one of these travels that her life changed forever.

The night was peaceful in the woods near the Mountains of Wind, tall trees casted cool shadows by the light of the moon and stars, the gentle sounds of running streams and distant waterfalls were accompanied by the singing of many nightbirds, and the air itself was sweet from the fragrance of moonflowers.
It seemed as if a stage was being prepared for a play for the ages. And in later days many would come to suspect that not only mortal eyes were setting upon that meadow, lost in the middle of the forest, where Aurion and Princess Hope met for the first time.

He had been wandering for days in the wild regions of the continent, as he often did, when suddenly he spotted, in the middle of an opening in the woods, a tall tree, one the likes of which he had never seen before.
It was tall, much more than any other known species, its bark was of a shining silver, its leaves were white like snow, and it flowered with stunning azure blossoms. And from it came a cool light, white and blue, that colored the entire meadow.

Suddenly all movements and sounds that were natural of the forest seemed to vanish without a trace, and the alicorn remained for some time as if struck by the majesty of that tree.
Then, as if guided by instinct alone, he quietly approached it, and it seemed as if his entire being was enveloped by that mysterious light, and at that touch every weariness that he felt weighing on his body and mind was lifted, and his very soul felt at peace.
Then, as he almost reached the gigantic trunk, a movement at the corner of his vision caught his attention, and as he lowered his head he found himself staring into the blue sapphire of Princess Hope’s eyes. 

She had been flying high in that region, taking a rest from her studies to enjoy the cool breeze of the night, when suddenly she spotted on the ground below her, standing in that meadow, the tall tree, and she almost lost control of her flight at that sight, for as soon as she saw it, she knew what it was.
A Tree of Harmony. (4)

Very little was known of such trees, they were never encountered on the Everfree, and in all the millennia that alicorns had traveled beyond the Grey Wall, less than a hundred could claim to have ever seen one.
In the early days many even dismissed the notion of these trees being real, for they appeared like a distant vision to lone alicorns only, and if someone ever tried to reach one, they would find themselves as if trying to catch a mirage, and if they ever lost sight of it, which all inevitably did, they would never find it again.
Yet in time the possibility of these thing being nothing but hallucinations was discounted by the consistent reports of these sighting, validated once and for all when one of these alicorns found, in the place where the tree was supposed to be, a lone wandering spirit who, when given description of the mysterious tree, spoke only one word: “Harmony”.

Not much else was known for sure of these trees, only that their look of changed depending on the time of day.
Indeed while during the night it appeared just as Aurion and Princess Hope had seen it, during the day its colors changed, with its trunk becoming as white as the most polished ivory, its leaves turned into a rich green, and in place of the azure flowers there were fruits, large and ripe and of the color of the purest of gold.
Even its aura changed color, turning into a warm yellow like the light of the Sun.
In the absence of certainties, scholars abandoned themselves to innumerable hypotheses. Some claimed that these were just a species of magical tree, some others said that they were some sort of Spirit, others even claimed that the tree was only one, and it was nothing less than a vision of the Tree of Life, or even Gaia herself, in the form of a tree.
Unfortunately, like many other mysteries, this would also lose any hope of being unraveled after the fall of the alicorns.

It took a while for Princess Hope to regain her composure after the shock of seeing such a vision, and when she did the scholar within her took over.
This was an opportunity without equals to be the first to study up close a phenomenon so ephemeral and mysterious, and she launched herself in a dive directly towards that tree, paying careful attention to never lose sight of it, but when she finally landed just in front of the trunk, she realized that she was not alone under that majestic canopy, and as she turned to look around her, her gaze met the golden eyes of Aurion, staring right back at her.

And in that moment it was as if a great spell came onto the two alicorns, suddenly nothing else mattered but the vision of the soul that they could see within each other’s eyes, and the world around them seemed to fade away, its visions and sounds, its magic and even time itself became meaningless, and days passed like grains of sands through an hourglass without them moving, speaking or even drawing breath. (5)

For uncountable times the Sun and the Moon made their journey across the sky, entire seasons came and went before the two alicorns finally shook off the enchantment that seemed to have taken hold of them.
On that day, under the glorious white and gold light of the tree in its daylight colors, Aurion and Hope declared their mutual love, and promised to share their life together for as long as the Clockwork of Time kept ticking.
Then, with one last grateful look at the majestic tree that made them meet, the two left.






Annotations



Curiously this tends to be true for ponies as well, however it is not explained what happens should an alicorn change his character over time, maybe they changed color as well?

One of the first things that the Foundation discovered was that alicorn foals did not receive their name at birth, but when exactly that happened had remained a mystery until now. What they were called before that is still uncertain, but it is believed that close family simply called them son, daughter, brother or sister as more appropriate, while others called them in reference to the parent of the same gender. For example somepony unrelated may call a little filly “Daughter of (mother’s name)” while someone who is related, like an uncle, might have called a little colt “Son of my brother”. However this is still highly debated and there are as many arguments in favor as there are against. 

The more I read about her, the more I imagine our princess Twilight. The similarities are actually impressive.

At first I thought it was related somehow to our own three of Harmony, of which I will tell more in the second part of this book, but this description is far too different for me to make any connections aside from the name.

While he speaks of spells and enchantments, by the way the author wrote in its original form I think that he did not believe that there was any specific magic at work here. Still it seems hard to believe.