//------------------------------// // 52. Cloud by Knight of Cerebus // Story: The Sun and the Stars: A Twilestia Prompt Collab // by Fuzzyfurvert //------------------------------// by Knight of Cerebus *** Celestia nuzzled Twilight quietly from atop the cloud. The day had been perfect up until this point. There had been ice cream together out on a boardwalk, a show hosted by one of Pinkie Pie's clown school graduates and a stroll through Central Park. Now, as they lazily floated across Manehattan harbor, Twilight had to swallow her nerves and finally take the plunge. "Princess...I...can I talk to you?" Celestia's smile was as graceful as ever. "Of course, my dear. You know that I'm always willing to listen to any concerns you may have." Celestia extended her wing around Twilight, coils of her mane mingling with the unicorn's coat. Twilight's hear thudded in her chest. "Well...I m-mean...I just..." "Twilight" A voice boomed from above the clouds. "You've meant a lot to me for a long time now, and I...I think I...I've been feeling strange lately, Princess." Celestia giggled at her in faint amusement. "Go on." "Whenever I'm around you I feel light, and I get all soupy-headed and sweaty and...well, I looked up what those things mean and I--" "Twilight! Twilight?! Can you hear me, Twilight?!" "I know, dear. And it's very touching. You don't have to say anything more." The clouds around Twilight shook and distorted, and but she was too lost in the pair of pink pupils currently gazing at her with naked affection to notice. "Twilight! Please, I'm sorry. Twilight!" The clouds rumbled and thundered, and Twilight leaned into Celestia. "You don't have to say anything more, because I feel the same." Celestia sealed Twilight's open mouth with her own, the pair's lips melding together over the troubled sky. ---／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼--- Celestia pulled away from the bed, closing her eyes and cursing. "I'm sorry, your royal highness. She hasn't been responsive for a few weeks now. Nothing we put her on was enough to keep her in the real world." Celestia sighed. "I know, Nurse Redheart. And you've done an admiral job tending to her since her admittance. I merely thought the sound of my voice would--well, obviously I was wrong. It doesn't matter now." Celestia couldn't bring herself to stare at the vacant smile on her ex-student's lips. "Is there anything more I can do for her?" The nurse shook her head. "We've tried everything. She isn't responsive to any treatment." "Could you leave us for a moment, then?" The nurse nodded, casting a glance back at the catatonic unicorn as she trotted out the door. Celestia strode back to the mare in front of her. "Oh, Twilight...My Twilight. I'm so sorry. I didn't know how much these feelings meant to you. I shouldn't have allowed them to build up. I should have accepted them, for your sake, if not for mine." She kissed the pony on the forehead. "Please, come back to me, my faithful student." Twilight only gave a goofy smile in response, eyes staring beyond Celestia's and into a world unknown to any other. Celestia blinked back the sting in her eyes and bowed her head. The monarch rose from her admirer, crossing the distance between the realms of sanity and delusion as she did, and leaving the other pony to drift amongst the clouds.