//------------------------------//
// 306. Forest by Knight of Cerebus 
// Story: The Sun and the Stars: A Twilestia Prompt Collab 
// by Fuzzyfurvert 
//------------------------------//


by Knight of Cerebus


***



"Twilight, we are staring at trees." Celestia sighed, setting up the poles and metal frames yet again in order to better survey soil content.

"Well...sort of. Give me a chance to explain." Twilight ticked off her checklist with casual speed, looking down at the shrubs in the metal grid without a second thought. After two minutes of looking at plants and dirt in silence, Celestia had had enough.

"I have given you many chances to explain. You have, in return, mumbled about how you will explain later. Our date night comes once per two weeks. Why are we staring at trees, Twilight?" Celestia's voice was not quite a snap or a vicious bite. It was also, however, harder than she meant it to be, and resulted in Twilight snapping out of her funk and blinking at her.

"I'm sorry, Tia." Her eyes softened. "If you want to leave, you can, I just--" Twilight looked down at the trees and took more notes. "You know. I have trouble leaving something unfinished." She blushed, then sighed. "I'm done with this sample anyway. Twenty-three isn't enough to be scientific, but it should be enough to give us a decent idea." She gave a hopeful, supportive smile. "We can finish our date night elsewhere, if you'd like."

"Twilight," Celestia said slowly, "you know I would help you with whatever you needed. You only have to ask. But I do need to be told what I am doing firs--"

"That isn't true." Twilight said quietly.

Celestia blinked. It wasn't often that she was cut off. She merely frowned in thought at this. "What do you mean?"

"I checked your schedule. You were booked all the way through the week with meetings with foreign dignitaries, appeals on taxation, petitions by villagers in local areas, and specifically a large theme about controversy of the value of the Everfree forest. If I interrupted any of those, ponies would have been snubbed for me and you would have had to play catch up with your work, once again for me. Even if you were able to support me during the work week, it would have been to your own detriment, and everyone else's. So I used our mutual free time for this."

Celestia sighed, giving a knowing smile. Only Twilight would carefully analyze the validity of an the entire kingdom's considerations and place them before her own and then request that a loved one cancel on a date night to help her with a lengthy, boring scientific analysis without a second thought. "You are right, of course." Celestia moved forward and nuzzled Twilight, and the two of them smiled a private smile to one another. "That does not explain to me what we are doing."

"Well...that's the thing. I knew you'd help me so long as you knew it was important to me. But ponies--even you--sometimes get exasperated or frustrated with me when I see something as important that you don't. My plan to avoid that," Twilight flipped through her notes, switching from soil survey to masterplan in the blink of an eye, "was to avoid this by explaining the purpose of the survey only after we were done. Which will be in another hour. That way, when you did find out what we were doing, if you deemed it wasn't important enough to you," Twilight's smile grew more than a little sad at this, memories of experiments half-finished weighing it down, "we'd have already completed the results and I could make it up to you in the time we had left."

"Twilight," Celestia sighed, "while oftentimes I do not share your enthusiasm for learning and science to the same degree, never do I neglect it. I do, however, greatly dislike being kept in the dark. Your honesty is one of your greatest traits. Please, don't manipulate me in the future."

Twilight looked at her hooves, wilting. "You're right, of course. It's just that, well...You're so different from the girls, Tia, and I'm not entirely sure in what ways yet. I'm still trying to figure that out. You respect schedules. You love to learn and to teach. You listen to me when I babble. The girls love me, and love to play with me, but they don't always listen to me. It's hard getting used to someone who does."

"All I ask is you keep it in mind when devising these plans. Now, what is it that we are doing?"

"Remember how most of the issues last week revolved around the Everfree?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Celestia smirked, but the joke only made Twilight look less bold. "I'm sorry." Celestia gave a gentle smile. "Go on."

"Well, I looked into the root of the problem. A lot of ponies don't seem to understand what the Everfree does for Equestria by having this rich ecosystem that it does. The soil from the Everfree's high leaf content washes downstream, where it is fixed by the crops found in places like Appleloosa, Ponyville and the MacIntosh Hills, as found by Poin Dexter et al in 1733. So I'm taking a survey to see if we should or shouldn't log the portion of the Everfree that Clean Cut wants to bring down. While ecosystem preservation is of the utmost importance to maintaining a healthy biosphere for Equestria, what I need to check is whether or not this ecosystem is healthy to begin with, and if it's actually helping the other ecosystems surrounding in any way. If I do this five to seven more times I can find out if any portion of the Everfree is safe for lumber farming. The answer will give us a chance to resolve this debate about two weeks earlier than we would have otherwise."

Celestia registered most of what Twilight had said, but of it, the portion that stood out to her by far the most was the part about two weeks of extra free time. "And you thought I would not find this important?" Celestia gave a smile, but there was hurt there, too.

Twilight gave an equally hurt little smile, though the hurt in this case was not directed at her, but at the world. "No. I guess it's just that nopony else really does."

"I suppose that simply means one thing." Celestia lifted up the poles and the frame, and Twilight swallowed on her nervousness.

"Yeah?"

"We need to learn to trust each other to be the pony we know each other to be." Celestia set down the poles and the frame on the next patch of vegetation with a loving smile. Twilight's eyes shined. Celestia knew she had earned the kiss that followed.

Once they had pulled apart, Celestia looked at Twilight with amusement. "I have only one question left in that case, my dear."

"What's that?" Twilight's smile faltered, but did not dissipate.

"What was it you were hoping would quash what you assumed would be my disappointment, given how grave you perceived it would be?"

"Well," Twilight gave Celestia a flirtatious smile, "I didn't lead you out into the middle of the woods for nothing."