Contemplating Forever
As written by Joseph Raszagal
Because forever is a long, long time...
~ ~ ~
This story is a direct sequel to A Mad Dash Through Time and Space and while I sometimes say that it isn't really necessary to read it in order to understand this story in context, this time it kinda is. Sorry!
~ ~ ~
Twilight Sparkle, the most powerful unicorn in the whole of Equestria, sat drinking tea with one of the few alive that dwarfed her considerable magical might. Princess Celestia sipped demurely from her cup, relishing in the drink's taste. It was a new blend that she hadn't yet tried, introduced to her by her student, who had herself been introduced to it by Rarity.
“Who knew that something so tart could be used to make such a wonderfully sweet thing?” the monarch chuckled.
Smiling, Twilight sat her cup down and concurred, “I have to agree, Princess. You should have seen my face when Rarity told me that the main ingredient was grapefruit! Still, over the years I came to know that her tastes have always been somewhat... delicate. Or would refined be a better way to put it? Regardless, I trusted her palette and I took her word for it.”
“I must say, I'm glad that you did,” Celestia stated before taking another sip. “It's too bad that my dear sister would disagree.”
“Oh?” came the unicorn's reply.
Nodding, Celestia rolled her eyes and said, “Her tongue has always favored things more bitter. She doesn't even sweeten her coffee.”
“Eww,” Twilight giggled, sticking out her tongue. “Applejack's the same way, more or less. She says she's actually not that fond of the taste, but it works better at waking her up than it does when she tries to soften the blow. 'Like a buck to my tastebuds', I think she said.”
They shared a brief laugh before a stifling silence settled over the room. Tapping a hoof against the table, Twilight turned to her mentor and said, “Princess... as much as I'd love to chat the day away about things as simple as tea and coffee, something tells me that the summons you sent me concerns things more, I don't know, dire?”
Placing her cup back down, Celestia closed her eyes and assured, “Nothing dangerous, at the very least.”
“Well, that's good,” the unicorn chuckled. “While the girls and I will always be ready to stand and fight for Equestria's sake, as well as the team I've nearly finished recruiting, having an extended vacation from saving the world from imminent doom every other Tuesday is pretty nice.”
Again, the two shared a laugh, albeit this one more than a little strained.
“Twilight, you know that these eyes of mine can see all manner of things, yes?” the monarch eventually questioned.
“Well, you're a princess and a goddess, so excuse the rudeness, but I should expect so.”
“The thing is...” Celestia hesitated as she carefully chose her words, “when I look at you, I don't see the same Twilight Sparkle that I taught and nurtured.”
Cocking an eyebrow, the purple mare shrugged, “That's to be expected, isn't it? I'm a grown mare now, Princess, not the little filly you found suspended in the air with a potted plant for a mother and a cactus for a father.”
The Princess opened her mouth to reply, but quickly fell silent as a single tear slid down her face.
After a moment passed and she found that she had collected herself enough to continue, she quietly said, “Oh, how I wish that were only the case. No, it isn't your maturity. It isn't your accumulated magical strength. Nor is it the power of chaos churning within you that you've defied all odds and come to tame.”
The unicorn winced at the mention of her acquired mental state. A year and a half had passed since the complete failure of her greatest scientific experiment to date, a device that would allow her to peer into another pony's mind.
Her chosen test subject: Pinkie Pie
The end results were an everlasting party encompassing the purple mare's entire world that only she could see, all born from a sad filly's need to escape her loneliness. Through a series of lessons with none other than Discord himself, Twilight had come to suppress her hallucinations, to the point that the party itself would vanish completely sometimes, though everything still tended to come off a tad... pink.
With the chanting of a quick mental mantra, the memories faded.
“Twilight, please, do not take what I am about to tell you the wrong way,” Celestia pleaded, placing a hoof over her own.
Back from her reverie, the unicorn held that hoof tight and stated, “Princess, you practically raised me yourself. You taught me everything that I know, and one of those many irrefutable facts is the knowledge that you would never say or do anything for the sole purpose of hurting me.”
“Not ever,” the monarch whispered sadly. For a brief pause, she wondered if she could go through with what she had planned to say.
It resounded in her head and the words felt so awful.
Huffing to herself, Celestia faced her student with a somber expression and said, “Twilight, when I gaze upon you now, I see something... wrong. Something just... wrong. I have seen a great many things in my time, watched the mountains move over the course of a millennium and witnessed the birth of whole continents as volcanoes erupted in explosions of both death and creation. But you... When I look at you, I see something that I have never seen before. Something that simply shouldn't exist.”
Bracing herself for whatever response might come, the Princess felt a pang of gilt as she gave no shame in closing her eyes.
Her student.
Her Faithful Student.
Celestia couldn't bare to see the look of pain in those eyes as they looked back upon her.
“Princess.”
“Princess?”
“Princess, are you alright?”
It was the pressure of a pair of hooves prodding against her shoulders that finally snapped her out of it. Hesitantly, Celestia dared to glance across the table. Oddly, she found nopony sitting there, or rather, she found nopony sitting there anymore. Suddenly, it registered to the goddess' momentarily addled mind that she had been jolted from her stupor. As such, she turned her head and stared into a purple face devoid of tears. Strained and exacerbated perhaps, but not one depicting the hurt of a bond broken.
Breaking the ice rather bluntly, Twilight stated, “Way ahead of you.”
Another silence settled in as the unicorn took a seat beside her Princess and allowed the alabaster mare to heave a sigh of relief. Idly, a brief thought passed through her mind.
“Outside of these past two days, I don't think I've ever seen the Princess lose her composure. There was our meeting after Raszagal's defeat and now this.”
Eventually, deciding that enough time had passed, Twilight took a deep breath and explained, “I'm alive and yet I'm not. I'm sort of stuck in time. I heard as much from the stallion that I told you about, the Doctor, shortly before he left. He told me that while time still always runs out in the end, my expiration date could prove to run on a bit longer. Years more, decades more, centuries more, and so on.” Pressing a hoof to her forehead, the purple mare sighed, “So yes, I'm wrong. Not in my actions or my theology, or at least not that I know of right now, but I'm existentially wrong. And yes, it's a little... unsettling.”
Draping a wing over her student's shoulder, Celestia softly asked, “Would you like to talk about it? I have seen the sun and moon rise more times than can be counted by the stars in the sky. If there is anything that I can do to help, any advice that I can gi~
A lifted hoof stifled the monarch before she could finish.
With a sigh, Twilight asked, “Do you have any wine?”
Going silent for a moment, the Princess eventually lit her horn and floated from a nearby cabinet a bottle full of a glowing golden liquid.
“Times have changed,” Celestia stated cryptically, “but I suppose it's time we shared this bottle.”
Confused, Twilight tilted her head and asked, “What is it?”
Smiling wistfully, the goddess replied, “Sunshine. An alcohol distilled from the light of my star. It is... a story for another time, and a rather long one at that. Let our enjoyment of it suffice for now.”
After pouring two glasses, the two mares each took a drink and relished in the rush of heat that settled in their stomachs.
With a grin, Twilight topped off her glass and smirked, “There's a danger to learning once things get to the experimental stage, when the hypothesis finally gets put to the test, but not for me anymore. I'll admit, I'm afraid of what dying will feel like, especially now that I have to imagine what it's going to be like recovering from it as well. Still, there's no denying that the opportunities don't excite me. Usually, once things reach that aforementioned experimental stage, that's when the research team must come to a decision. They can either continue with the experiment or call the whole thing off in favor of the safety of the team. But now... now there's a perpetually expendable unicorn capable of keeping the experiment going right up to the point where the whole thing goes boing in her face.”
With wide eyes, Celestia tittered and admonished her student for referring to herself as expendable, her current mortality status notwithstanding. She then cracked a coy smile and asked, “The way you worded it in the end. What did you say, 'the whole thing goes boing in your face'?”
Blushing, Twilight replied, “If you remember, Princess, my father worked as a watchmaker while I was growing up. He had this saying and it related to his trade. When you're working on a watch, you're working with incredibly tiny, complex mechanics. Sometimes, if you slip a bit too far with your driving pin, the smallest spring in existence will go 'boing' and bounce somewhere far away, never to be seen or found again. As a result, when anything broke while my father was around, he always said 'it went boing'.”
As the Princess refilled her glass, Twilight shook her head to keep her eyes dry and sighed, “I guess I went boing a bit harder than most things, huh?”
The tightening of the wing draped around her told her otherwise.
“Twilight, you are different now. Different in ways that are themselves very difficult to even so much as imagine. But never, ever think of yourself as broken.”
Leaning into the embrace, the lavender unicorn softly sobbed, “But I am broken. So broken that I can't really even break. I'll have to watch as everypony I love grows old and dies without me. My parents. My brother. My friends. Everypony.”
Celestia nuzzled the purple pony's cheek, all too familiar with the pain of loss.
After a short pause, Twilight steadied herself and asked, “How do you do it? How do you stay strong knowing that everypony you know will one day leave you?”
“Their memories,” the goddess began, a quaver in her voice, “stay with me forever. Though their physical forms fade, their memories always remain. I have lost many, far too many, but every loss has left a lasting impression upon my soul. I have no choice but to endure it, just as I fear you do now, but know this my student, the heartache itself is a blessing. It never allows you to forget. Though the ones we've left behind cannot be there for us once their candles have burned down to the wick, their love will always remain.”
Though the heartfelt words did indeed comfort her, Twilight couldn't help but to give in. Her tears came in torrents and her Princess did the best that she could to comfort her, knowing full and well that the need for this same comfort would come again in due time.
The two sat there for hours on end, Sunshine filling their stomachs and pain filling their hearts as together they contemplated forever.