Sol sighed to herself as she looked back upon her previous attempts. She had grown tired of floating in the infinite nothingness and had attempted to create something solid that she could touch. Yet she had failed so far in making something she found suitable. With a spark from her horn she obliterated her latest attempt. No point in leaving it around, serving as a reminder of her mistakes.
“One more attempt,” she said to herself “if this one fails, I might just destroy myself. I can barely stand this darkness as it is.” She sparked her horn yet again. She had done the same thing thousands of times before, and the magic now flowed through her as if only it were too willing to leave. In a blast that should have destroyed her, she created what looked to be a sphere made of some hard material. It had a brownish tint to it, and looked to be firm.
“Well, this is different. It might even be acceptable.” She landed upon the tiny sphere of material. “I think this material deserves a name of its own. I shall call it rock. A simple name, for a simple object.” But the material was small. Too small. If she was going to make a life out of this "rock" then it would have to be much bigger. It would have to be colossal in size, just to keep her occupied. So, focusing the magic in her horn once more, she proceeded to enlarge the "rock" beneath her until it was big enough to keep her busy for many lifetimes. Looking around, she noticed just how empty the space was without something to fill it. "What could I possibly make to fill it, though?"
“Maybe it needs something other than yourself” Said a voice from behind her.
“Discord,” she said without turning around “where have you been? I was worried you had left me. I haven’t seen you in years.”
“Where else could I have been? There is only an infinite amount of nothing around us, except for this, whatever it is, and us.” He gestured at the rock Sol had created. “What do you call this material anyway?”
“I’m calling it rock.”
“And what shall be its purpose?”
“It shall be the foundation upon which we’ll build our own world.”
“There is still something missing.”
“Yes, you are right. I have given some thought as to what I would do once I created our world. I believe it could do with some animals.”
“Animals? What are animals? And what would be their purpose?”
“They would provide us with something to care for, other than ourselves. We could make them so that they are not immortal, like us, and so that they have specific needs in order to survive.”
“And why would we want something to care for?” He scoffed. “That means work, and work is boring.”
Sol sighed. “You’re so lazy. Don’t you think it would be fun to at least come up with ideas? Think of all the things you could make.”
Discord sighed too “If you say so. I’m only doing this because you asked me. As long as I get to make a few creatures that are entirely of my own design.”
“…Fine.”
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“…After many hundreds of years of hard work and thought, my mother and Discord eventually made all of the fauna that you see in Equestria, and around the world, today. They eventually created flora when they realized that not being immortal meant the animals had to eat, which explains all of the plant life.”
“Celestia, may I ask a question?” Her teacher nodded “Why was your mother working with Discord, if he is evil?”
“A good question my student. You see, as a result of my mother and Discord being the only two immortals in the universe at the time, they actually fell in love with one another.” Twilight’s jaw literally dropped after hearing this latest bit of news, and she stuttered out her next question.
“B-but h-how could… h-how come… But Discord is evil! Why would your mom love him”
“He wasn’t always so evil. Or at least, there was no way for him to show his evil tendencies at the time. There is actually a reason for why he is so evil, though I loath to repeat it. It does, however, tie in with my story, so you shall get your explanation soon enough.” The explanation was enough to visibly calm Twilight down.
“Okay. One more question.” Celestia nodded once more “Why did Sol create animals instead of sentient beings?”
“Another good question. You see there are many good reasons why, but the most obvious one is that she hadn’t thought of them yet. My mother may have been a god, but we gods don’t know everything. Most of our wisdom comes with age. Sadly, that also means that we must experience many more tragedies and misfortunes in our life than most do.” Celestia’s eyes took on that sad look again, though that was the only sign of her sorrow.
“I see what you mean.”
“I should hope so, as you did have me for a teacher.” Celestia smiled. “Besides, those few good parts of life are all that is needed to more than make up for the bad parts. Now, as I was saying before, Sol and Discord created all of animal kind and all the plants, though they soon grew unsettled again…”
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Sol was thinking. She seemed to be doing that an awful lot of lately, as though something was bothering her. But what could be missing? They had all the animals to take care of. She also had all of the plants she could ever want to eat or admire. The only problem she could see was that all the plants had to be sustained by her magic, and Equis, as she had decided to name the sphere she had created, had to constantly be warmed. It was becoming very taxing on her mind to constantly sustain all of this life.
“You know, you could create something to do the job for you.” said Discord suddenly, interrupting her thoughts.
“Come again?”
“I mean take care of this… planet, as I would like to call it. You could create something that would both warm Equis and sustain the plants. Besides, all this darkness must be getting on your nerves by now.”
“And how do you propose I create something like that?”
“Well, I have been studying the magic you have been using and the flora itself. It seems that they create their food with the help of light. All you would need is something that produces constant light, and with light comes heat. In essence, you would be solving two problems in one go.”
“Wow. I never thought of that. Wait… why were you studying the flora?”
“I get extremely bored. Besides, I was hoping to make a plant that can eat animals, and I wanted to see how a plant feeds. How righteous it would be if a plant could eat an animal instead of the other way around.” Discord’s eyes took on a malicious gleam.
Sol took no notice of the look. She was too busy concentrating all the magic she had into her horn. Finally, in a giant pulse of energy, she unleashed the magic, which sped towards the nothingness surrounding the planet. There was a great flash and suddenly, the sun was born and the nothingness took on a blue color. It was spectacular to say the least.
Already, Sol could feel the heat from the sun warming the planet, and she could see clearly from the light it provided. Actually, the heat was starting to become too much. Sol could feel a burning sensation brought on by the heat. She quickly attempted to move the sun away from the planet, but instead it just started revolving around it, though the temperature did drop. She sighed in relief from the averted near-disaster.
“…why didn’t you just destroy it?” Discord calmly asked.
“Because I didn’t have the energy. Creating that thing took a lot more magic than I thought.”
Discord was quiet for a moment, before voicing his thoughts. “You do realize that once in reaches the other side of the planet, this side will no longer have light, right?”
“I am. And I have a solution for this.”
“Do you now? I thought it nearly drained you of magic just to create the sun.”
“It did, but I don’t need to create another. I just need an object that can reflect the light of the sun., while rotating around the planet at nearly the same speed.”
“Impressive, though I must ask, why only nearly the same speed? Why not the exact same?”
“Don’t you think it would be spectacular if they crossed paths every now and then?” She said with a slight grin.
“Maybe so, but what practical purpose does it serve?”
Her smile faded upon hearing these words “It doesn’t have to be practical, just beautiful.”
“And what good does beauty do?” Discord suddenly spat
Sol recoiled at this sudden aggressive behavior “It gives us something to strive for and admire and gives a physical aspect to a job well done!”
“And that’s exactly what all our creating is, isn’t it? A job! And do you see anything that thanks us for the work? I don’t! In, fact, I think it would be so much more fun to destroy it all!”
At this, his entire body began to glow, signally a great use of magic. Sol, sensing what was about to happened, intervened, and directed her own magic at Discord.
________________________________________
“That was the first major fight between my mother and Discord, and all because of an argument over beauty. Even then, Discord had a violent and unpredictable behavior. They fought over the course of three days, trying to destroy each other. Mother eventually won, though it was at a cost. She was already weakened by the creation of the sun, and didn’t have the power to turn him to stone like you did.” Twilight blushed sheepishly at the unexpected praise “Instead, she only managed to weaken him to an almost powerless state. She herself was almost completely drained, though she had the ability to recover much faster than Discord, thankfully.”
The library was quiet for a time as Celestia allowed her student time to digest the information she had been given. After a few minutes of thinking, Twilight decided the time was ripe to ask her mentor some more questions.
“What about the moon? If they fought before she created it, and was nearly powerless afterwards, how did it come to be?”
“Like I said, Mother was much quicker to recover than Discord, though she still had to wait awhile. During this time, many of the plants became starved of light. Mother didn’t have enough power to feed them all till much later, meaning that many of the less hardy plants went extinct. She managed to save most of them, though, and in due time she was able to create the moon she desired.”
“Well, what about weather? Why did… Sol,” She was hesitant to say Celestia’s mother’s name, but a nod from the Princess assured her it was alright “create the weather?”
“Once again you ask an interesting question. You see, when she stopped applying her magic to the plants, she noticed that they soon began to die, so she began to make her own observations. That’s when she realized the need for water in the plant’s life cycle. But she couldn’t provide them with it constantly, or they would drown. So she created the clouds, and made it so that they would rain at regular intervals. A very simple solution, in hindsight.” Celestia chuckled to herself.
“What about snow and, for that matter, the seasons in general?”
“Also good questions. Snow itself and the seasons were more of an accident than anything else, though she saw fit to keep them that way. What my mother didn’t realize when she moved the sun, was the fact that it wasn’t going around Equis in a perfect circle, but instead had two separate points in which it was either really close to the planet, or farthest away from it, with everything in between making up the seasons. Soon, all of the trees in the area had their leaves changing colors. Mother didn’t make the correlation at the time, though. She just thought that the change looked beautiful. After a while, the temperature on the planet began to rapidly decrease, the plants began to die, the clouds soon began to stop raining, and snow began to fall instead. This led to all the leaves eventually falling off the trees on their own due to the weight of the snow, unlike now when we have the Running of the Leaves.”
“It was an extremely confusing time for Mother, because nothing she did seemed to undo the damage done by the temperature drop. After a few months, the trees leaves began to grow back, as did the plants. It was around then that mother finally realized what was happening, though she didn’t try to change it. In fact, she found the changing of the seasons added a certain harmony to the world.” Celestia paused, waiting for the next question to come.
“If the cold was all it took to create snow, why do the ponies in Cloudsdale’s weather factory create those individual snowflakes?”
“For the simple reason that it is more beautiful that way. Besides, snow created by the cold is nowhere near as reliable, and tends to melt too fast for ponies to enjoy.” A flicker of a smile appeared once more on Celestia’s face before being replaced by the sadness again.
“Well in that case, my only question now is what happened after Sol created the weather and the moon?”
Celestia braced herself for the next part. It was going to get painful from here on in. “My mother began to feel lonely. She may have fought with Discord over the matter of beauty, but he had struck a nerve. What was the point of making beautiful things if you’re the only one who can enjoy them? So she began to experiment…”