Eternity, Princess Celestia reflected, taking a sip of jasmine tea, was largely a matter of perspective. It was, after all, one thing to say that she was 1756 years, 3 months and some days old, and quite another to say that she could refer to yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before the day before that going back 641,461 days. Neither view made her feel any younger, but she supposed there wasn't much to be done about that.
The thing about living forever—or at least, indefinitely—was that it tended to strip some of the surprise out of life. On the grand scale, the majority of those 641,461 days had played out within reasonable deviations of each other. No, there was not much that shocked or surprised Celestia lately, and so she had learned to accept the little surprises that showed up throughout the day like unexpected visitors.
This did not stop her from nearly dropping her tea when the herald told her the name of her actual unexpected visitor. The cup plunged half a foot before she caught it, magic faltering, coming in bursts and sparks instead of an even glow around the cup. “I beg your pardon...” she said. “What did you just say?”
He told her again. The same name.
“This is a very poor joke,” said Celestia.
“Y-your highness?” The herald's eyes went wide with fear for his job and genuine surprise.
Of course, thought Celestia. It would have been before his time. There was not a soul alive who would see that as a joke... except for the pony who was coming through the big double doors to the throne room, hooves clacking on marble.
Celestia scowled. So much for meditation, then. With a flash of magic she seized a stack of papers and splashed them across the table, trying to appear busy. She'd managed to get them settled, and had bent intently over a request for expanded farming rights when the hoofsteps came to a sharp stop on the stone floor.
“Trying to look busy?” asked a voice. When she didn't respond, it went on, “It would help if you didn't take the papers from the outgoing pile.” The voice was not accusatory, not angry. It was nothing. Maybe slightly amused.
Celestia glanced up at the purple mare, who waited until she was watching to continue her approach, horn held high. Even after all these years, Celestia couldn't help but think that the wings suited her.
“Twilight Sparkle.” There was a time when the name would have been followed by any of a half-dozen epithets: my faithful student, my dear friend. My love.
Nothing lasts forever.
“Princess,” came the reply, equally cool.
“To what do I owe the...” Words that would round off the traditional phrase, like “honor” or “pleasure” suggested themselves. “Surprise?” she finished.
“I was just on my way back from the Empire. For Shining and Cadence's wedding anniversary.”
Not an answer. That worried her. Her most recent conversations with Twilight had been extremely to the point. They had also been over a century ago. A long silence to break for no reason. “Ah, yes. Thee hundred and fifty years, isn't it?” she said, stalling, watching her former pupil’s face for any clue as to the real purpose of her visit.
She presented none, but said, “Three hundred and fifty-three.”
“So it is,” Celestia conceded. “That's pewter figurines of swans, I believe. I shall have to send them a pair.”
“I often wonder who made that rule,” said Twilight. “It seems like the audience for it is rather limited.” Celestia feigned an extreme interest in her papers. After a moment Twilight continued, “You, for instance, can’t have had much use for it.”
Celestia’s face became a porcelain mask, as even and expressionless as the teacup she set on the desk in front of her. If her former... everything was trying to barb her comments she would have to do better than that to get a reaction. She was a politician. She whiled away her days swallowing insults of a far more obvious nature. “How fares the weather in Gallopsandria?”
The tiniest flicker of doubt crossed Twilight’s face. So fast that Celestia could almost believe that she had imagined it. She hoped she hadn’t.
“Humid, but pleasant,” Twilight replied. “I see you’re keeping well up here in the mountains. And I heard that the Summer Sun Celebration was a success. The sun came up on cue and everything.”
“I have been doing it for over a thousand years.”
“Yes. And the same pose, too.”
Celestia frowned. “I recall a certain little pony who used to be very enamored of that pose.”
“Things change, Princess.” There was something gamey in Twilight’s voice now. A challenge.
“And isn't it nice to know that the Summer Sun Celebration hasn't?”
“There are those who'd say that tradition for tradition's sake is no more a virtue than meaningless change.” As Twilight spoke, Celestia noticed her gaze drifting about the room—ornate, columned, much larger than it needed to be and consequently always much colder than was comfortable. Nothing about it had changed in the past century, except the cobwebs, which were renewed every few weeks. Even the stained glass windows were just as they were. Even the ones featuring her.
Celestia cleared her throat sharply—for a moment, a teacher trying to recapture her student's wandering eye. “You must introduce me to some of these vague individuals. I see they parrot your opinions quite conveniently.”
“Yes, well I—”
Raised voices in the hallway cut off whatever Twilight had been about to say.
“Excuse me—miss—you can’t go in there!” came one, deep, male, imposing. “The Princess has expressly—”
“Oh, she’ll want to see me about this,” said a second voice, much higher, brimming with the self-confidence of youth.
A side-door, leading off into the guest wing of the palace opened, and in rushed a young mare with a pale yellow coat and orange hair that deepened in places until it was almost red. “Princess!” the newcomer was saying, her features animated, “I've got it all figured out! All I need to do is—Oh.” Amber eyes lost their excitement, went wide at the sight of Twilight. “I didn't mean to, uh... I'm so sorry, your... your...“ she struggled for a title. Twilight gave her a wry smile that Celestia hated down to the roots of her mane.
“Twilight Sparkle will do.”
The mare—really just barely more than a filly—nodded carefully. She, for one, recognized the name, enough to shoot Celestia a discreet look that ended in a question mark. Celestia, who wasn't sure she could have answered in words, let alone glances, kept her face neutral.
“I'm so sorry,” she repeated again, flushing now. “Princess, I didn't realize you had a guest. I'll just—I'll wait outside...” The air around her rippled, and she disappeared. The sound of disembodied hooves clicking on the floor tracked back towards the door.
Celestia sighed, anger and humiliation a swirling mess in her head. Not a meeting she would have wished for, but it was too late to do anything now. May as well see what she was so excited about. “Star Shift, what seems to be the problem? We’re not so busy that we can’t spare a moment.”
“Oh, of course,” said Twilight, her voice all consideration. The look in her eye, on the other hand, promised Celestia that stalling wasn’t going to do her any good.
“Oh, well um...” the air rippled again, and Star Shift reappeared, halfway back to where she had come in. “It was about that essay. I think I figured out how to fix my argument. It’s um... not very important. I was just excited...”
“As well you should be,” said Celestia. “But perhaps we could discuss it later.”
Star Shift glanced up, eyes brimming over. “I’ll see you at dinner?” Celestia gave a gentle nod, eyes still watching Twilight’s smirk of victory. “Great! Sorry again,” added Star Shift, giving a quick bow to Twilight before rushing back the way she had come.
Silence settled over the throne room. Somewhere a clock ticked away, the sound bouncing off of tiles and walls until the tics and toks were indistinguishable, time trying to rush forward out of the stillness.
Celestia waited for the other hoof to drop.
“She seems nice,” Twilight said finally. “Diligent.”
“Very.” Celestia examined her tea, warmed it with a flash of her horn.
“A bit pushy though, don’t you think?” remarked Twilight, as if she were offering her opinion on a painting and not a pony. “Barging in here like that.”
Celestia bristled. It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected some tacit criticism from Twilight, but openly finding fault with Star Shift was pushing things. She would have to push back. “Perhaps—but better a pony who is a little too forceful in pursuing what she wants than one who is too timid. Or, worse still, one who doesn’t know what she wants at all.” She gave Twilight a pointed look.
Twilight seemed to shrug it off. “Speaking of what she wants, you're sleeping with her, I presume?”
Celestia bit down on nothing to keep herself from snapping a reply. A teaspoon levitated on its own and began to stir at the contents of her cup, slowly, with the deliberate absence of agitation. Twilight could cast aspersions all she liked, but she wasn’t going to get an answer.
“Really now!” Twilight said. “How old is she?”
Celestia glanced up, caught off guard. How had she—? The tea cup, of course. Trying too hard to seem casual. She cursed herself. Twilight had always been... a little too perceptive. And she was out of practice at hiding things from her.
“Don’t get me wrong, Princess,” Twilight continued. “I think it’s wonderful you can still open up your... heart, at your age.”
Celestia felt her face harden into a glare. “That was beneath you, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Really? Because I thought we were discussing what was beneath y—”
“Enough!” Celestia roared, in a voice loud enough to shake the heavy stone doors in their frame. Heat and light blazed from around her eyes, racing down the spiral of her horn as she rose to her full height. “I will not tolerate such crude remarks, not about myself, and especially not about Star Shift.”
Twilight was unmoved. Even in the gale-force wind of Celestia’s magic she stood her ground, unflinching. She had never been one to intimidate easily. The things that scared her were subtler, and usually came self-inflicted. “Why?” she asked. “Are you going to tell me that what the two of you have is special?”
The magical energy dispersed. Celestia found herself staring blankly into her former student’s sharp, purple eyes, trying to draw breath into a chest that felt tight, like it was trying to crush her ribcage into her lungs. “Of course it is.” Her breath trickled out, no force behind it, not even conviction. “The love I feel for any pony I care about is as unique as they are.”
“That you can still say that with a straight face amazes me,” said Twilight. The calm look in her face was giving way to pure malice. “And I suppose your getting bored is a unique experience each time as well?”
A reply flew up into Celestia’s mouth, twisted around her tongue in search of an exit. She kept her lips pressed tight together. If this was how things were to be, then very well. She would play this game her own way. And she would win.
It took only two words: “How’s Spike?”
Twilight’s grin vanished. For the first time genuine hurt, dark and deep, came into her eyes, and she lowered her gaze to the marble floor. Feathers rustled at her sides, anxious, miserable.
“I... I don’t know,” she said, her face an open sore. “He still won’t talk to me... I don’t even know where he is.”
There was a rush to controlling the conversation again—to finally beating Twilight, to seeing her crack. A savage smile cracked Celestia's lips as she went on. “Perhaps I can be of some assistance there. I spoke with him rather recently. Although, I seem to recall his saying something about taking a nap for a century or two...”
Twilight’s head shot up. For a second, hope had danced across her face, and Celestia's grin only grew wider as she watched it crumble. But by the time there were tears in Twilight’s eyes, by the time she was hiding her face behind a wing, pretending to cough, the smile was gone.
Even when things had been at their worst, she'd never gotten any pleasure out of seeing Twilight cry.
Tears were not enough to arouse genuine compassion—this was still war, for all she knew. But neither could she stay angry at a pony who was trying so hard to hold herself together. She fell back on a gentle neutrality. “Twilight Sparkle... why are you here? It can’t have been to indulge our mutual bitterness. We’ve both had enough of that for a lifetime, even one so long as ours.”
“I’m sure you can figure it out, Princess,” said Twilight. The words sounded as though they had been scraped, raw and bloody, from the back of her throat. “You taught me everything I know, after all. And kept on teaching...”
Celestia blinked. Jealousy? No, not possible. After such a long time, what was there to even be jealous about? It didn’t sound like the Twilight she knew. But... so many things today didn’t. “I didn’t send you away, Twilight. You did that yourself.”
“No, you didn’t,” she agreed, voice cracking, but steady. “You only said—what was it? ‘Our continued intimacy would be a mistake.’ Who wouldn’t want to stay around after that?”
Old wounds stung fresh—an old argument found its way out from Celestia’s lips. “It didn’t mean I stopped caring—”
“You as good as told me you were sick of me!” Twilight barked. A pattern. A conversation they’d had before but had to see through. “You were the only stable thing in my life—”
“And you wanted me to be your whole life,” Celestia snapped, with real anger, as real as a century ago. “That would have been horrible for both of us, and you knew it then, and you know it now! You were barely leaving the castle anymore, Twilight, what was I supposed to do?” The bitterness of laughter crept into her voice. “At least your leaving was a change of pace.”
Twilight had taken the speech to compose herself, and was sitting now, wings folded at her sides, head bowed slightly, eyes closed, unreadable. She wouldn’t move, as much as Celestia willed her to—ordered her to in her mind.
“We’ve had this argument before,” said Celestia coolly, when Twilight hadn’t replied for some moments. “That’s not why you came back either.”
“Yes it is.” She sounded almost ashamed.
Celestia said nothing.
“I... lost one group of friends. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, Princess. Standing by their graves, one by one, and not collapsing into a sobbing ball. Not until we were alone, anyway. Do you remember what you told me? It was the same old advice actually, now that I think of it, but I took it—I trusted you, and I made new friends, and I lost them too—and it was worse. I... couldn't... stand going through that again. So I didn't want to see anyone. Didn't want to... to care about anyone else. Can you blame me? How can you—you of all ponies—meet somepony new and not think that you know how the story ends—how every story ends, always and forever?”
Twilight was pacing now, with nervous energy, by turns pleading and almost shouting. “So I decided to focus on my studies for a while, for a few decades. But, you know something Princess? If you stick around long enough, you see all the arguments, all the ideas, all the thoughts that anyone ever thinks and puts to paper. You read the same things you read fifty years, a hundred years ago. I know it all. I know it and I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of being sick of it, and I—”
All of a sudden there was nothing left to her but sadness. “So I thought... I thought maybe if I made you mad enough then you might...” She shook herself, suddenly. “No, I guess I never believed that. I just couldn't stand to ask you...” Twilight turned towards Celestia, head lowered, words coming out in gasps and whispers. “I’m sorry, Princess. Immortality is a wonderful gift, but I... I don’t think I... want it anymore.”
Celestia stepped from behind her desk and walked towards her protege, stopping just outside the range where she could reach out a hoof and touch her. She looked so small, as young and confused as the filly who had lost control of her magic all those years ago, scared of herself and everything around her. The ruler of Equestria opened her mouth, expecting to know what to say, but found no words.
“Besides,” Twilight said softly. “I’m sure there’s someone else you’d rather bestow it on.”
Instinct took over where conscious thought had failed, and Celestia found her voice enough to snap, with the harshness of a teacher, “Twilight Sparkle!” Even now, purple eyes went wide with apprehension at that tone. “Do not insult me. Your current state was bestowed on you out of love, and of my own free will. The fact that our feelings towards each other have changed is irrelevant. I am not so disrespectful of our past that I would take back a gift for such a paltry reason.” She softened, guilt stinging afresh, “But... if you’ve really decided that you no longer wish for this life, then... I’ve no right to force it upon you either.”
“Thank you, Princess.”
The look of... relief on her former pupil's face stayed with Celestia for a very long time. Twilight had been scared, Celestia realized. Scared she would say no. That she would be forced to... go on.
That wasn't right. She hadn't made Twilight immortal to make her miserable. She had wanted... she'd known so deeply that the world would be a brighter, better place with this mare in it, for as long as possible. Even never wanting to see her again it had somehow seemed that way, knowing that she was still out there.
“You're wrong,” she said, almost a whisper.
“Excuse me?”
“About the world.” Celestia no longer knew where she was going—some part of her was offering up words without prompting, and she let it free. “I know, because... because I watched the world alone for a thousand years. Knowing that I'd banished my sister. Knowing that the day would come when even that uneasy peace would come crumbling down. And after a thousand years of that, do you know, I never once imagined I would find a seven-year-old filly so anxious to be my student that she found the strength not only to hatch a magic-resistant dragon egg which she was only meant to levitate, but also to turn her parents into plants, grow the hatchling to adult size, and still be shooting lightning bolts by the time I got there. A pony who had so much enthusiasm for knowledge that, by the time she was ten, she'd fallen asleep on more ancient texts than most adult scholars. Who—”
Twilight shifted. “Don’t patronize me, Princess.”
“I’m not,” said Celestia. “It’s true, Twilight. If I loved you... and I did... it was because you let me see the world again.” And myself, added a part of her. The version of me reflected in your eyes was so much brighter than I've ever been... She cleared her throat and went on. “And... you know after another three-hundred years I never would have imagined I’d find another mare who would barge in on me and an ex-lover having a passive-aggressive argument, just because she was so excited to have solved a problem with her essay that she couldn't wait to tell me.”
Twilight sniffled, though it could have been a snort.
“Do you still watch the sunrise, Twilight?”
“When I’m awake for it.” A little wit left after all. A good sign, perhaps.
Celestia allowed herself a smirk of acknowledgement. “Then you know it’s never the same twice. And you know that’s not my doing. I’m not creative enough to come up with a new sunrise every day for seventeen-hundred-odd years.”
Something that could have been a smile twitched at the corners of Twilight’s mouth. “You’re just trying to cheer me up.”
“I am,” said Celestia. “You need it.”
Twilight was silent, pensive.
“Very well then,” she said at last. “How about this? I wasn't lying about knowing where Spike is. And Luna isn't the only one who knows a thing or two about how to enter dreams.”
Twilight’s eyes shot wide open. “You—you'd teach me? You think if I talk to him he might—” She broke off. “Forgive me?”
Celestia couldn’t help laughing. “Not at all. I think if you tell him what you just told me, you're in for a tongue-lashing that makes Starswirl's tracts on the function of magic in society look like a two-line memo. You should, though. Being chewed out in a dream is always a unique experience... and sometimes an uncomfortably literal one.”
Twilight blinked. She seemed, for a moment, to be trying to picture it—then like a river in spring laughter bubbled out of her. “If Spike... oh, he'll never let me live it down, will he?”
Live. It was a good word to hear from her. “I hope not.” Stepping forward, gingerly, Celestia extended a wing around Twilight’s shoulder, a loose embrace.
Twilight stiffened for a moment, and Celestia felt the familiar tickle of feathers brushing her side, as a folded wing fought to open by reflex. “I... guess some ponies are just students by nature, huh Princess?”
“The ones clever enough to see that we all are.”
Celestia smiled, but Twilight still seemed lost in thought. “About Star Shift, though... how old is she, really?” she asked, stepping out from under Celestia's wing.
“Twilight—” Celestia said, faltering.
“Because, that invisibility spell was interesting,” Twilight went on. “I’ve never seen it before.”
Celestia blinked several times in quick succession. “Oh, that. It’s her own creation, actually. Her special talent has to do with manipulating light.”
“Oh, so she bends it around herself...”
“Exactly.”
“Fascinating,” said Twilight, and Celestia felt herself smile again. “You must be proud of her.”
Celestia nodded. “There’s still more to the world than just your books, Twilight.”
Twilight smiled too, sad amusement written on her face. “So that's it, huh? A chance to talk to Spike and a few words of wisdom from my old teacher, and I'm supposed to face eternity?”
“Eternity? No. But how about tomorrow?”
Neither of them said anything more, but as Celestia turned towards the door that led to her private library, Twilight fell into step beside her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.