"Celestia!"
Her gentle voice rang out over the verdant fields of the newborn world, carrying softly over the zephyr to her daughter's ears. Those alabaster ears swiveled to meet the voice, and laughter rang over the hills as she turned clumsily in a whirlwind of giggles and candy pink hair. "Coming, Mother!"
Cresting the last hill, Celestia stood and looked down at her mother, panting and grinning proudly. The other pale alicorn looked up at her daughter and smiled a soft, but ultimately happy smile, and motioned to her with a forehoof. "Come, 'Tia, and sit. We have important matters to discuss about your new mark." Harmony's fiery eyes twinkled as her daughter gasped happily and pounced down the hill, landing squarely on her mother's back. Pink mingled with ethereal hues of red and orange and blue as the two laughed, Harmony gently bucking her daughter off. Rolling off her back, the two spent a moment merely being, letting the language of mother to child and back, the language too beautiful to ever be spoken, pass between them.
After a moment, Harmony nuzzled her daughter, gaze headed skyward to the ball of fire that mirrored her own eyes. Celestia caught her gaze, and followed it, blinking and turning away as she tried to look. A chuckle rumbled from the larger alicorn, who affectionately placed a wing around her child. "I know you are excited, Celestia, but that is what I need to speak to you about."
Pink eyes locked with molten orbs as Harmony began the lesson that would stick with Celestia through all the eons of her rule.
"Your Highness? Princess?"
The voice swam through her consciousness slowly, pulling her from her memories with a harsh finality as her eyes shot open and locked on the brown unicorn below her. The practiced smile of centuries of rule automatically masked her face, and she bowed her head slightly with a chuckle. "My apologies, Chancellor, I was merely giving your proposal my utmost consideration."
"Of course, Princess. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have that may make the decision easier." Chin high, face much haughtier than anypony standing before the Princess should be, a smirk began to wind across his muzzle.
Raising a brow, Celestia affected a detached demeanor, hiding the roiling anger building inside of her. "I do have a question, Chancellor. What prompted this sudden proposal? If my knowledge of current customs is correct, things of this nature are taken care of in a much more intimate way." Her eyes flashed, knowing already what his answer would be. What their answers, all of them over the centuries, have been.
Harmony gestured to the eight-pointed sun adorning her foal's flank. Celestia's grin shone nearly as bright as she looked up to her mother happily. Taking on a more formal, teaching tone, mother nodded to daughter. "Now, Celestia. What can you tell me about the sun?"
Screwing up her face in thought in that way that is only adorable on children, Celestia tapped her chin with a forehoof. "Weellll... it's bright. And it shines for most of the day, and then it gets dark. It helps the plants grow and it tells the animals when to be awake and do things."
The larger alicorn nodded encouragingly. "What else can you tell me about the sun itself, not just about what it does?"
"Um." Celestia floundered for a moment, looking back at her newly-minted cutie mark desperately for help. "It... doesn't look at all like my mark?" She smiled apologetically at her mother, eyes hopeful.
Laughter echoed through the glade as Harmony nuzzled her daughter. "That is true, little one. You might know more than you think.
The Sun is rarely as it appears."
Puffing his chest up in the way that nobles did when confronted, his smirk grew. "Well, if you'll pardon my saying so, Princess, you are hardly... a normal pony. I felt it would be too informal to make this request by letter, or to request a private audience."
The Sun's power flared inside her in tune with her anger, and she forced it back down. Wings snapping open in her only true outward sign of agitation, she nodded. "I see. Tell me, Chancellor, if a pony is unable to be informal with the pony they desire to marry, how will that marriage go, do you suppose?"
All eyes in the room, previously shocked at the hubris of this pony's request and set to Celestia to see her reaction, now swiveled back to the quite suddenly nervous noble. The two guards beside the throne shifted uneasily, unsure if they should follow their Princess as she rose from her dais and moved down the stairs. Her hoofsteps echoed through the Day Court as she descended, clanging in her metal shoes with a terrifying finality. Wings still extended, standing to her full height, she stood closer to the noble than she had to any pony save her sister or her personal student. Eyes blazing, she kept her voice soft as she looked down at the stallion, who was nervously shuffling and looked for all the world like a colt caught stealing. "I await your answer, Chancellor."
He could do nothing but fall to his knees, averting his eyes as all ponies did when confronted with Sol Invictus, The Immortal Sun. "I... Your Highness... I beg your forgiveness. I merely thought..."
She interrupted with a shake of her head, a sad smile adorning her face as she folded her wings. The fire disappeared from her eyes, and her regal stance slackened as she sat heavily on the throne room floor before the prostrate stallion. "No, my little pony. You did not."
"You see how the sun shines so brightly?" The tiny white alicorn nodded, hanging on her mother's words. "That is because it is made of gasses and those gasses are what cause the heat and light. To be completely fair, the sun is a star, not a separate entity." The larger pony looked down, urging her daughter to respond.
Little Celestia nodded her head vigorously. "Yep! And it's super, super hot, right?"
Chuckling, the larger alicorn nodded. "It is, my daughter. Extremely so. And it is so bright that even just looking into it can cause harm to lesser creatures. It is a beautiful, but ultimately dangerous thing."
The tiny alicorn looked up, catching a flash of sadness in her mother's eyes. "Mother? If the sun is my special talent, does that mean I'm dangerous, too?" Worry creased her youthful features, and confusion danced in her eyes as she sat up, eye to eye with her reclining parent.
Pulling her close with a wing, Harmony smiled sadly. "My beautiful daughter... that is the other thing I needed to discuss with you."
Dark blue ears perked and swiveled, followed a split second by a head of the same hue as the door to her chambers slid open. A smile broke out on the face of the dark alicorn, but her playful greeting died on her tongue as the elder sister entered fully. Celestia's usually ethereal mane hung loose and limp around her shoulders, and her regalia had been discarded entirely. Sad, pink eyes rose to meet turquoise ones, and Luna could not fly to her side faster.
"'Tia! Are you well, sister?" Dark feathers brushed against her alabaster coat, warming her body but missing that deeply wounded coldness in her breast.
A harsh bark of laughter, devoid of any true humor, escaped the white muzzle as she crossed necks with her sister. "No, Luna. A certain petitioner at Day Court has brought certain feelings to light that should have stayed in the dark."
Escorting the larger alicorn to the pile of luxurious violet cushions by the hearth, Luna nodded. "I had heard as much. Another suitor come to ask for your hoof in marriage, I take it?"
Celestia merely rolled her eyes, settling on the cushions gratefully. "Yes." Her gaze roamed to the flames in the hearth, struck again as she always was of how much they reminded her of Harmony's eyes.
A moment of silence passed between the royal sisters, Luna settling down across from her sister. "And... I take it you do not return his affections?"
Eyes sliding closed, Celestia shook her head. "That's just it, sister. He did not hold affection for me. Only fear. It was another power play by a noble house, and nothing more."
Luna sighed, wrapping her magic around two steaming cups of tea and bringing one to each of them. Sipping, Luna looked thoughtfully out the window behind her older sister, eyes glazing slightly. "How can you be sure of that, my sister? It takes a brave pony indeed to stand up to a Princess and ask such a thing, surely he felt some kind of-"
"No." The word, while quiet, rang with such finality that the darker alicorn stopped speaking, simply looking to her sister for elaboration.
Seeing none was forthcoming, Luna merely shook her head, leaving her sister to her reverie as she drank her tea in silence.
Harmony stood to her full height, her daughter mirroring her actions expectantly. "Now, little Celestia, I need you to bring me some sticks from the forest." She gestured with her horn, still smiling. "Hurry now, this lesson is important."
Crashing inelegantly through the woodland and sending up clouds of plovers as she stumbled through, Celestia set to her task. A few moments later, she returned, carrying a small bundle of sticks damp with the recent rain in her fledgling magic. "I found some!" She called excitedly. "Will this be enough?" Depositing the bundle at her mother's feet, she smiled proudly.
"Yes, this should do. Now, attend, Celestia." Harmony lifted ten of the wet sticks in her magic, spreading them out evenly in front of her in the air. "Now, let us pretend for a moment that these sticks are the ponies you and your sister shall rule over one day."
Celestia merely nodded, pink eyes fixed with rapt attention on the sticks before her. Her mother concentrated for a moment, and her magic coalesced into a second spell at the tip of her horn. A small white orb appeared, expanding further and further. The younger alicorn watched, enraptured, as her mother created a second, smaller sun. Raising it into the air, she settled it a fair distance from the sticks.
"Now, we shall pretend this sun is that one," she gestured into the air with a hoof at the larger orb, "and that the sticks are the ponies, yes?"
"Yes, Mother."
"The sun is at a safe distance from the ponies, and they can bask and play to their heart's content." The sticks began to jump and dash around each other, eliciting a giggle from her little daughter. "Yes, the sun shall bring them life and food and all the things ponies will need to live."
She brought the flaming orb closer.
"But if you move the Sun too close to the ponies, my child..."
Celestia's eyes widened.
"Sister, you cannot live life as though one shall not love... can not love you. It is unhealthy." Luna's words jerked the older alicorn from her thoughts, and doleful pink eyes met her sister's.
"It is not that. It is that they cannot, they will not, because it is not safe for them to do so. That noble... do you know, I had not seen him before save at a few social functions? That pony had said not even two words to me in passing, and now came to ask for marriage from me? I asked him, Luna. I asked him how a marriage would work if he couldn't be informal with me, and you know what he did?"
Luna simply shook her head, knowing her sister needed this.
"He... he just bowed and scraped and apologized in fear. As though I would banish him without a second thought for even asking... and that isn't even the worst part." She laid her head on her forehooves, tea forgotten and growing colder by the moment. "The worst part is that at first... at first I had hoped that maybe this stallion was different from the others, that he had taken the time to know me through my books and my plays and my works..." She buried her face into her legs, unwilling to continue.
"You had hoped that he loved you, sister."
"I had hoped he loved Celestia. Not The God-Princess of Ponykind."
Luna nodded.
Ash fell to the ground between the two alicorns, the miniature sun shrinking and dissipating until it, too, was nothing. Harmony simply stood quietly, looking down at her daughter, hoping that this lesson had not been too much, too fast. For her part, Celestia merely stood, looking down at the ashes with her little brow furrowed.
"I think I understand, Mother."
But she hadn't, not really.
"It is not as though Alicorns cannot love and be loved, Celestia. Cadence has found love with a mortal pony, after all-"
"Cadence is a fool!" The words rang out harshly, and surprised, the Night Princess looked to her sister and found instead that twisted pony that heartbreak creates. Before her laid not Princess Celestia, Regent of the Sun and Immortal Ruler of Ponykind.
Before her lay a pony. A pony who lived and loved and suffered for it, same as any other. That was no excuse to Luna, however.
Wings flaring and eyes narrowing, she looked down at her sister. "You take that back, Celestia."
"I will not. She is foolish and young and she will learn her folly someday." She spat these last words, body shaking, red rimmed eyes glaring balefully up at the other pony. Teeth bared, she dared her sister to continue.
"You. Will." Matching her stare for stare, Luna began to pace around the other pony. "This has been a trying day for you, my sister, and I understand that. But I shall not see you attack our niece and her happiness. This is nothing more than sour grapes, Celestia, and you know that."
"HA." Celestia stood as well, head lowered as she eyed Luna. "Of all the ponies to accuse me of jealousy, I wouldn't have thought it would be you, sister." The elder lifted her head triumphantly, yet her shivering legs and tearful visage betrayed her.
Recoiling as if stung, the darker alicorn composed herself with a deep breath. "Does it not occur to you that I am more able to see that trait in others because of my own past mistakes? This isn't about me, Celestia. This is about you."
Luna sat down heavily, dropping her wings to her sides once more, naked eyes searching her sister's flaming ones. "You lash out at Cadence because you begrudge her happiness. You lash out at me because I am the last pony left to call you out. You don't consider, even for a moment, that all of this is only making your problem worse?"
Trembling, the white alicorn held her aggressive stance for a bare second before she fell to her haunches, dropping her head and letting loose the torrent of tears that had been building since that morning. "Lu Lu... I'm so sorry, I didn't mean..."
"I know, my sister," Luna replied softly. "But it is still what you said."
The little white filly approached the colt carefully. This was one of those ponies that had been springing up over the last few centuries, and while Harmony did try to keep Celestia separated from most of them to teach her to rule, sometimes, she could slip away for awhile. Celestia, for her part, reasoned that any good ruler needed to know her subjects to rule effectively.
"Why are you crying?"
The colt whirled, wiping his face with a forehoof and pulling himself together as much as he could. "M'not crying. 'Sides, what business is it of yours?"
The little white alicorn drew herself up, looking down her nose at the other pony. "I'm a princess, and I wanna know what's wrong, so you have to tell me."
Rolling his eyes, the colt snickered. "Does a princess really try to upset ponies by forcing them to say stuff they don't want to?"
Celestia paused, looking into the colt's dark green eyes for a moment, before deflating. "No, I guess not. Anyway, I'm Celestia." She offered a hoof in greeting.
A smile finally cracked across the earth pony's dark green muzzle, and he took her hoof shyly. "I'm Crimson Bristle."
The two smiled at each other awkwardly for a few moments across the bright grass, unable to exactly meet each others gazes. "C-come on, we can go up to the palace and I can show you around maybe? We have lots of cool stuff there..." Celestia finally suggested.
He met her gaze, and a blush bloomed across both sets of cheeks. "I think I'd like that."
"Shining Armor will die."
Luna looked up at the other alicorn, before dropping her head once more, turquoise eyes roaming the floor dully. "That is true, sister. But don't you think that their happiness, however fleeting-"
"H-he will die. And he will leave her alone in this world, Luna, forever." White hooves clacked on tile as Celestia made her way, trembling, to her sister. Bowing her head, she caught Luna's eyes with her own. "Eternity is a long and lonely time, little sister. We know that better than anypony."
Looking up mournfully, Luna nodded. "I understand that. Do you think she is unaware of this fact? She knows Shining Armor is a mortal. Cadence is not a stupid pony."
Celestia sat, reaching to pull her sister closer to her with one alabaster wing. Luna stiffened for a split second before relaxing, allowing her midnight fur to mingle with white. Head resting atop her sister's, the only pony to never truly leave her forever, the pale alicorn allowed her exhausted and tearful eyes to slide shut. "I know she is far from a stupid pony, Luna. But that does not mean that she is not ignorant."
Harmony strode purposefully through the castle, flaming hooves clacking sharply against the stone floors as she sought her eldest daughter. Vague worries and fears circled her mind like Windigos on the prowl, nipping at the edges of her consciousness and cloaking her in a cold feeling of dread. Muffled laughter wafted to her, and she paused by a window.
And out there, in the castle courtyard, sat her little Celestia. Not so little anymore, though, she noted somewhat bitterly. Sitting beside her in the grass, perhaps a little too close, was that colt. Crimson and Celestia curled up beside each other, muzzles nearly touching before one or the other would blush and turn away. The sunlight filtered down through the ancient oaks, setting both their manes ablaze in a riot of candy pinks and deep reds, tempered by shadow.
The older alicorn allowed a bittersweet smile to cross her muzzle. She knew young love when she saw it. As the two ponies in the courtyard locked eyes and hesitantly moved closer to one another, a tear threatened to fall from Harmony's eyes. Shaking her head, she looked down, watching the two share their first kiss in their fledgeling lives and thinking for the first time that maybe, there was something she would not be able to fix.
I wish you did not need to learn this while so young still, my daughter.
Papers rustled, held in the faint golden glow of magic, as a candle burned its way down to a stub. Exhausted pink eyes roamed over tax documents, barely seeing and understanding what laid before them. Sighing, she raised a hoof to her head, rubbing at the start of a headache as she resisted the siren call of her bed.
Sleep would not come this night, she knew.
The knock that came to her door was gentle, but enough to make her jump and whirl in surprise. Putting that damnable gentle mask back on herself, and realizing it was probably simply a chamber maid, she called out, "Enter, please."
A pink head poked around the corner. "Your Highness. I apologize for bothering you at such a late hour." The chamber maid approached carefully, stopping before Celestia and dropping into a low bow.
Looking down at the pony's thick white mane, the alicorn smiled. "It is not a bother, Spring Meadows. What can I do for you, my little pony?"
"A letter, Your Highness." The earth pony stood, rooting through her bag before coming up with a tightly wound scroll, which Celestia took in her magic with no small amount of confusion.
"A letter? At this hour? The post stopped running hours ago." She turned the scroll this way and that in her magic, dark pink eyes rising up and fixing to the smaller mare.
Pawing the floor nervously, the maid nodded. "It was delivered by hoof by a courier from one of the noble houses."
A stone settled into Celestia's gut, and she pushed her creeping worry back for the sake of her subject. Smiling, she inclined her head. "Thank you, Spring Meadows. Was there anything else?"
"No, Princess." The pony bowed before turning to leave. Celestia waited until she could no longer hear the mare's hoofsteps in the hall to turn her attention to the scroll before her. Turning it over in her faint golden magic, her eyes fell on the red wax stamp. A shield adorned with a manticore, the symbol of the Chancellor's house.
Celestia sighed as she broke the seal and unfurled the scroll.
"Come, Celestia. It is time for the ceremony."
The younger alicorn turned her head mechanically from the window she was staring at, looking back at her mother for a moment before turning her head back to the window. "Why, mother?"
It wasn't a question, not really.
Approaching hesitantly, Harmony could do nothing but look at the back of her daughter's head in silence. Stopping several feet away, she took a deep breath. "Celestia. It is your official coronation. It's all well and good that you two find happiness with each other, but he is not a royal-"
"I don't care about that."
"You need to, daughter. You hold a very important place in the hearts and minds of our little ponies, every one. I will not be here forever, Celestia, and it is you they shall look to for their help and guidance." Harmony sat beside her daughter, following her gaze out the window and over the growing crowd of spectators waiting to see their new Princess.
"I do not begrudge you your love and happiness, but this is too important a day to-"
"I. Want. Him. Here. With me. On the balcony." The smaller alicorn locked eyes with her mother, stubborn determination shining through.
Silence passed between the two, thick and soundless but full of so many words best left unspoken.
"Do you know why I called you here?"
Golden eyes darted around nervously, refusing to settle on the goddess beside him. "N-no, Your Highness. But, if this is about my petition at court the other day, I do sincerely apologize-"
"Please, Chancellor." The gentleness of the celestial voice beside him gave him pause, and he looked up finally from the meticulously gardened paths at his hooves.
The day had dawned clear and bright, and the brown stallion had found himself rather rudely roused from his bed by a sudden royal summons from Celestia herself. Naturally, terror had overtaken him, and he had spent the earliest hours of the morning with his groomers and tailors. Nothing, absolutely nothing was good enough; as a result, he had spent the rest of his morning snapping at all and sundry before taking his leave.
Now, looking up into the eyes of the leader of his country, of the Goddess he'd worshiped from foalhood but somehow managed to utterly disrespect by that worship, he felt overburdened by his excess. Those brilliant pink eyes seemed to weave somehow, however gently, through his own, seeing into his being. His perfectly pressed azure cravat--"The one with the diamond inset, you fools! Get me somepony competent!"--seemed suddenly, and just as perfectly, ridiculous.
He scuffed a hoof across the path nervously, looking away again. "Of course, Your Highness. Please, continue."
"Perhaps we should walk and talk, Chancellor. That may be easier for us both." The alicorn stood, stretching out her back legs slightly before turning to her companion for the morning, a trace of a bittersweet smile across her face. Without further preamble, the two took off at a leisurely trot through the beautiful Private Gardens, owned by the Princesses and tended by only the finest gardeners.
Silence settled between the two, broken only by their own hoofsteps on the paved walk. He could feel the heat of her body beside him, barely a leg's length away, and could see her powerful muscles ripple beneath her alabaster coat. The coat itself shone with an otherworldly light, seeming to be the source of the light in the gardens instead of her solar counterpart in the skies. His legs trembled beneath him, threatening to betray him with every step, until he could take it no longer.
"Princess, truly, if you wish to bring down some punishment, be merciful and please, don't draw it out." As she swung her head his way, an eyebrow raised, he dropped to the ground, bowing. "Ah, if it pleases Your Grace, of course..."
A bittersweet chuckle later, and she turned to a flower bush by the path. "Do you know of these flowers?"
Raising his face from the path, he blinked twice at the Princess before him, before rising to his hooves awkwardly to eye the plant. Dark green stems, flanked by lush green leaves, led up to what appeared to be white flowers of some nature that had wilted away. Tilting his head, he replied slowly. "No, Your Highness. It appears your gardeners haven't been doing their jobs, though." One brown hoof delicately nudged the fallen petals, thin and white and almost sharp.
"Nay, Chancellor. The groundsponies have all done well. This is called the Kadupul flower. It's very rare, and blooms but once a year, after midnight. With the coming of the dawn, though, the flower perishes, and the cycle begins anew." Her smile grew, though tinged with bitterness, as she looked down at the fallen petals.
Nodding once, the other pony allowed himself to look directly at Celestia. "It's... one of your sister's flowers, perchance?"
A flowing, multicolored mane shook in the breeze as she laughed, shaking her head. "It was given to me by one very dear to me, back before even your family began keeping track of their genealogy. It is extinct in all places but for this garden. 'Tis a selfish thing of me, I suppose, to keep it around..."
The two stood again, that damnable blanket of silence enshrouding them, as the Chancellor slowly began to process her words. Celestia gauged that he was content to listen, now, and sat down beside him on the path. "My little pony, do you know why it is that I have not married?"
Any number of courtly answers darted through the stallion's brain, centuries of protocol hammered into him from his bloodline struggling to break the surface and flood from his mouth.
For once, he ignored it.
"No, I don't, actually. I had thought that the Princesses were not... the marrying type, because of how long-lived you are, but after the Royal Wedding, well..." He trailed off, thought left unspoken yet completely understood.
"My niece is the Princess of Love. It is her dominion, and thus in her nature to take a lover or a spouse. It is not so for one such as I, Chancellor." Though her voice remained strong and even, the stallion could see her eyes glisten slightly and dart to the side for the barest of moments, before refocusing on him.
"May I tell you a story, Chancellor?" She moved once more, cutting through the gardens carefully, avoiding even touching a leaf of the Kadupul plant. He followed without question, but with trepidation twisting at his stomach, the two finally settling in a grassy glade together. The Princess settled herself on the grass, stretching her hooves out lazily in front of her as she laid down comfortably. Smiling, she motioned with a forehoof to him as her mother had done to her so many years ago. Taking her direction, he laid in the grass somewhat awkwardly, shifting several times to get comfortable before nodding to his regent. No other words, it seemed, were needed.
Eyes growing distant, Celestia looked out beyond the stallion, and sighed. "Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, lived two regal sisters and their talented mother. The eldest sister grew quickly, and came to know and love the creations of her mother, known as the Pony race. Though they were split into three tribes, in those days, no bigotry divided them and they lived peacefully together. Against her mother's wishes, as she was a precocious child, the eldest child made a friend of a young earth pony colt in the village by the palace.
"Her mother was displeased by this, and while she loved her child dearly, knew things the fledgeling ruler did not. She tried her best to keep them separated, to stop the burgeoning love from blooming fully, but the eldest was a strong headed filly and stayed her course. She defied her mother, sneaked out constantly, and as the seasons passed and the two grew closer, the inevitable happened."
Sighing, Celestia halted, lips pursed as though in thought. The stallion knew the look on her face, however, having seen it many times on his own mother's. "Please, take your time. If this is too much-"
"No. I am telling you this because you need to understand, because somepony needs to understand."
He merely nodded.
Taking a moment to gather her thoughts, she began again. "The colt, smitten with the newly crowned Princess, asked for her hoof in marriage. The Princess, for her part, was delighted. She had noticed, you see, during her new duties, that ponies didn't treat her like they did everypony else. She was higher, above, elevated from the others by the nature of her birth and Mark--and Chancellor, I can't even begin to tell you how much that grated on her nerves." Chuckling at the wide-eyed look on the other pony's face, she nodded. "It's true! And so the Princess, knowing that the colt had met her in foalhood and truly loved her for who she was, not what she represented, accepted his proposal.
"They kept it a secret from everypony, so that the Princess could find a way to tell her mother gently. In those days, marriage was a much more slapdash affair, requiring nothing more than for two ponies to bind their adjacent forehooves together and leap over a stream together in perfect tandem in the presence of witnesses. But the Princess held fast, saying she wished to get her mother's blessing before taking such a step. The colt understood, and waited.
"But Chancellor, fate waits for nopony."
"What do you mean, Mother?" Pink eyes, full of tears and rage, trained on the older pony as she sighed and shook her mane.
"I can't, Celestia. You know that I can't." Sorrow filled the fiery eyes as she looked upon her heartbroken child. "I wish I could do this for you, I truly do, but you must know that--"
"You can! You just won't because you never liked him!" Tears falling freely, the young mare challenged the older with her teeth gritted and eyes blazing. "Don't throw him away because I sneaked out a few times, Mother."
"This has nothing to do with that! I cannot change what happened to him any more than I can change what I had for lunch yesterday! Celestia, I am sorry, I truly am! I know that you loved him, and he you. I could never dislike a stallion that loved my child so completely and fully." The elder mare's eyes softened, pleading, searching her daughter's. "This is why I warned you, Celestia. They are not like us."
Breaking away with a growl, her daughter paced the bedroom, refusing to look at the black garb awaiting her on the bed. "Then maybe you made them wrong, Mother. Maybe he could be the first. Because this," she stopped, flinging her foreleg towards the window, slick with rain and indicating the dreary day, the crowds of confused ponies wondering who the funeral at the Palace was for, "this is not harmony. This is not peace. This is not a utopia, Mother." She knew that out there in the crowd, there were at least two that were less confused but no less overwhelmed--an earth pony mother and father, green and red, bodies shaking in the cold as the worst hurt a parent can experience permeated their hearts.
Snarling, Harmony was before her in a flash, drawn up to her full height, eyes blazing down at her child. "No, Celestia. 'Harmony' is not about always being happy all the time no matter what. Harmony is balance, child. I might not expect them to understand it, but I expect better of you. Part of learning and growing is learning how to lose gracefully, child, in every respect. Ponies will come and ponies will go, but until your respective celestial bodies burn out, you and your sister are eternal."
Storming out of the room, Celestia offered but one parting shot. "Then maybe you made me wrong, Mother."
The slam of the door echoed throughout the chamber, and Harmony finally allowed herself to weep.