//------------------------------//
// White And Red 
// Story: Millennial Heartstrings 
// by The Apologetic Pony 
//------------------------------//

I accompanied Celestia back down the white staircase; not a word passed until we reached the bottom.

‘How did you find her,’ she asked.

‘I think disclosing my opinion would do nothing but deteriorate this -- at best brittle relationship you have..’

‘But disclose it anyway beautiful Philomena, for she is naught but a filly,’ Celestia said as we passed through another, smaller set of doors.

‘Your cajoling is not appreciated.’ 

‘Then how else shall I convince you? Will I throw you to the ground, will I blackmail you?’

‘You’ll not convince me at all, is what you’ll do,’ I said, snarling.

We entered the grand hall in which I’d talked to her before, twice.

‘I’m sure she told you I was going to show you something, hmm?’

I said nothing. Unsatisfied, the goddess childishly flicked her mane at me.

‘That’s alright, Luna hasn’t been the only one peering into minds. We used play a game, trying to get into each others’ heads. Funnily enough we made an oath not to, long ago. But not all magic makes the horn glow.’

‘So what is it?’

‘Patience Philomena,’ she teased.

We passed through many winding passages, long out of the range of the eyes and ears of guards or anyone else.

‘She believes her sins will be forgotten in a heartbeat.’

Then surely Equestria was to face a savage age, if it were not so. But what did I care? More than I’d care to admit.

‘This must be special to be concealed like this.’

‘You could say that.’

We arrived at a seemingly ordinary room and stopped, though it lacked sentinels. Then she pointed her wingtip at the wall; I swayed, unbelieving. There was, there was... something I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember this.

I don’t want to remember this! Do you hear me?

Plastered on the wall were sets of feathers. They were in threes. In each three, there was one tail, one plume and one wing. There were many and many of them, possibly hundreds. And they were lined up neatly and they were all together and they grinned macabrely. In them I saw acquaintances, friends, mates, forgotten companions and my parents.

So I crumbled. I was suddenly staring into the void that had once been separate from me. I’d kept it at bay, at a distance, but now it was everything. The world was being drained of color before my eyes, these eyes and this mind which had seen so much. A faint sound of innumerable glass beads tinkling upon the floor gradually morphed into blind, chaotic static. I could feel myself suffocating, at a mercy of that crooked force known as depression, but with it came a resolve. A resolve stronger than anyone else could hope to have. Stronger than that pony's, stronger than the dead and stronger than the sisters would ever have. 

She didn’t even notice! She gazed at a suicidal massacre and remained ignorant enough to pass it off as, what — her own menagerie? Did she think that each and every time she’d found them like this, that it was by mere chance? She would have praised the guards that found them, I’m sure! Given them little promotions, praise and a place in her bed for the best.

She said something about amassing them; about them representing something, not that I listened. I didn’t hear most of it. She gave me an odd look, but I could hold myself together, until I asked her at the very least. I just had to look away, above or below it, at her, or the ceiling if I must. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. The noise was too loud and grip too strong about my heart, laced with emotionless upset. So I asked her the first question.

‘Celestia, do you know what they mean?’

I’d flown onto her back and was whispering into her ear.

‘Philomena, what are you-’

I explained it to her, crystal clear. Then I asked her another question, the question concerning resolve. She threw me to the ground, I was coughing up blood, fittingly and ironically. I took to taunting her, to convince her, to manipulate her.

‘You didn’t fucking like that did you,’ I said with fervor.

To my delight she stared down at me with unrestrained horror.

‘Why would you think I’d do such a thing,’ she barely managed to stammer.

I reminded her she’d done it before. I reminded her of her sister, her fate worse than death. It worked, convincing her to talk to Luna alone. The sisters and I saw each other a few days later. My resolve had not wavered, it couldn’t anymore; there was only one end to it.

We were in that grand room again. Some of the windows were collaged in coloured glass, depicting scenes of heroism. Luna appeared as awful as ever, but she still spoke first.

‘For now, I will be our spokesperson, Philomena. We hope you understand the implications of your request, for this will surely your last chance to withdraw it.’

She stared into me, trying to find a shimmer of doubt, but I stared back.

‘We assume there is no other recourse. I’m... sorry,’ she said out of monotone.

‘We have discussed the matter and we feel that, though we are no Grim Reapers, if you are sure, then we will do what you ask. I speak out of turn for a moment, but I must confess that I saw some of your anguish in a momentary dream, before I was sucked to the moon again...’ 

‘However, my sister and I insist on three conditions. They are non-negotiable. It will be done seven dawns from today in woodland of your choosing. Before the spell is cast, I will perform another spell that will force you to remember what you can of the past thousand years. From this, I will peer into your mind and find your “inner monologue” so to speak and then combine it with your normal recollection. This will mean that some of the detail you could not otherwise remember will be fabricated. It will be written on parchment.’

‘And the third condition is that you will travel to ponyville with Celestia in three dawns.’

It was quite shrewd that the celestial beings would be using dawns as the measurement. I asked why as to the condition, but all I got as a reply was:

‘One thing at a time. We will explain it to you when it is necessary.’

I was going to turn to ashes soon and Celestia knew it. These molting feathers were quite telling. The purpose of the trip became clear when my cage was deliberately left open; then I got kidnapped by a pegasus, stuffed into a little basket. I played with the elements, for their sake, not for mine. To my dread, I realised the plans Celestia could have for them, immortality for who knows how many? I would hate to see such innocent creatures face unimaginable suffering.

The dawns passed with agonising slowness, at point I thought they’d halted altogether. But they did pass.

Before we went to the woods, I asked them to take me back to the room of feathers and they did so reluctantly. I inquired as to where Celestia had found two particular sets of feathers, curious of parent’s point of determination, so to say. She didn’t know their relation to me, of course. I was told that my mother’s were found somewhere south of Baltimare and my father’s in some building in Canterlot where the royal guard had uncovered a bird trafficking gang several centuries ago. So that was him, huh? That bird in a cage...

We went to Yanhoover’s woodland for the final time. It wasn’t snowing. The wind didn’t chime. And the three of us stood in a morbid triangle.

‘What are you going to use it for?’ I pointed at the parchment the quill was scribbling on from the branch I was perched on.

‘I suppose we owe it to tell you now, Philomena,’ the white alicorn said.

‘It’s only a last request.’

‘I am, we are going to give it to Twilight when she’s ready.’

‘What, the purple one who was paranoid that you’d throw Fluttershy in a dungeon in the place you’d banish her to?’

‘That does sound like her,’ she chuckled.

‘And what do you mean by when she’s ready, when you’ve turned her into an alicorn?’

‘Only if she makes it that far,’ Luna interjected.

‘It’ll be shameless cruelty if she does, Celestia.’

‘Haven’t you ever heard of being cruel to be kind, Philomena?’

‘In nothing except for corrupt, misleading fairytales.’

Grim silence filled a pause.

‘Will I see you again?'

The sisters said nothing; they gave knowing smiles.

Now I’m waiting, waiting. Luna is weeping by a tree. Celestia’s horn is at my breast. I’m just waiting, waiting for that quill to stop moving, moving.





In deepest of archives, Twilight Sparkle felt a tear roll down her cheek.