Chapter 3: Fun
I still had my small transmutation ring Tempora gave me. I don’t know if Celestia would recognise me in this, but by heck we would try. Every now and again Discord would send me a knowing look and I’d giggle with him as Fluttershy looked on with a mixture of demure tolerance and trepidation, after all we were basically going after one of the highest authorities in the land. But still, this was for the justice of my sandwich!
After what seemed like a very long while, this line was pretty long, the assorted group was announced in.
“Presenting Discord, Fluttershy and Runner!” the chamberlain called out. I smiled privately as Celestia gave me no more than a curious look. To her I was just a foal that looked a little nervous and skittish. I leaned against Fluttershy and she gave me a shy pat on the head. I felt an electric tingle, but it died away when the pegasus withdrew her hoof. I looked up at her in confusion but it seemed like Fluttershy hadn’t noticed it. Weird.
“I don’t know how you did that,” she confided in me quietly, quickly peeking at the throne and back. “Twilight had told me age-regression spells were very difficult.”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m not really doing much, this spell was given to me by an alicorn of Time,” I whispered back. Fluttershy froze for a moment before continuing. I chuckled. “Basically,” I said. “Celestia and Luna’s parents are pretty bad-flank.”
Discord bowed mockingly and I saw a twitch of annoyance pass through Celestia’s features before she dismissed it.
“Discord,” she said evenly. “I didn’t expect you to be back so… early.”
I twitched at her tone. Wow Celestia sure had changed after all these years. The fierce, feisty little foal she was had matured into a motherly figure. I sighed, compared to the past, Celestia looked so straight laced, where was the fun foal I played with?
Fluttershy spoke up.
“Uhm, Your Highness,” she called out her voice no more than a quiet muffle, she gave a slow but well-executed bow. “I’ve found Runner here, he wants to ask you something.”
Celestia looked confused for a moment. “Runner,” I heard her mutter. “I’m sure I’ve heard that name before…” She shook her head. “Nevermind, what is troubling you, my little pony?”
I gave a timid smile and stepped forward a couple of paces. I didn’t try trotting too fast, it had been a while since I had used this form so I didn’t want to try anything too acrobatic. I just needed to get into strike range. Hopefully, my awkward steps would be seen as more down to my nervousness rather than my incompetence.
“Actually,” I said with a heart-wrenching pout and round, glistening eyes. “I’m lost… can you find my family?”
Celestia was immediately off her throne, wrapping me in her wings.
“Oh you poor thing!” she gushed hugging me tightly. “Who are your family members? Can you describe them to me?”
“Uhm,” I replied with a sniff. “My Dad’s tall really tall, he’s just a head shorter than a minotaur. My Mum’s white-coated with a red mane and she has a swirly thing as her cutie mark… My little brother’s tall too, but not as tall as me, but he’s kind and nice, but ponies don’t really like him all that much…” Celestia frowned, trying to piece together the information. I continued on, my grin growing wider and wider. “My sisters are kinda like opposites. One of them is pretty and white, just like Mum. She has a flowing mane all multi-colour and sparkly. My other sister is different. She’s shy and her coat is dark and blue but her mane is all blowy, like her sister. They have very special cutie marks. The white-one has a cutie mark of the sun, the little one has the cutie mark of a moon.”
At this Celestia was already staring at me open-mouth and gaping. Discord was howling in laughter on the floor and Fluttershy couldn’t help but smile.
“Actually,” I said, casually. “My name isn’t Runner, that’s from one of my friends. My name is Harmony.”
I laughed and morphed in front of her. I threw my arms out wide.
“Ta-daa!” I exclaimed but I had to rush forward as the white alicorn collapsed.
“Oops,” I grunted guiltily. “I think we took it a little too far.”
–––––
Celestia mumbled briefly as she came back to consciousness. I stroked her mane tenderly as she came to. Seeing me, she smiled.
“Oh Harmony,” she whispered to me. “I’ve had the strangest dream. The ponies were spiralling out of control, Mother had disappeared, your father had left, Discord had gone mad and you–” she choked on that “–you died…”
I smiled somewhat sadly. I died… Discord had mentioned it but I really brushed it off. I sighed, there wasn’t much I could do about it if that was fate. Pfft, I didn’t believe in fate, what was free will if fate existed? Nothing, I’d wager, but then all those things had come true… I shook my head.
“Celestia… Celly…” she smiled at that. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t a dream.”
She sighed, her eyes closing briefly before fluttering open.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I knew… I just didn’t want it to be true.” She frowned at me. “But why are you here now?”
I grinned at the alicorn princess and shot off a few sparks from my fingers. “A temporal spell went wrong. I’m trying to fix it. I can stay a while if you’d like, but I have to get back.” Celestia’s eyes turned wide and pleading. My heart rendered like wet newspaper.
“Please,” I croaked. “I can’t stay here, you know that.”
Tears matted the fur under her eyes and they dripped onto my lap, staining my trousers. I stroked her behind her ears and kissed her on the forehead.
“Harmony,” she croaked in hushed tones. “Stay with me for a while.”
“Of course,” I replied reaching up to wipe a few tears away. “I’ll stay as long as you want.”
–––––
After meeting with Celestia we had some tea and cake, catching up with old times. Fluttershy sat politely at the table but I could tell she was having trouble keeping up with the conversation.
“So, I can’t really know what’s been happening around here, at least not big world events, but I hope you’ve all been getting along nicely?”
Celestia and Discord glanced sidelong at each other quickly, I caught the motion and frowned.
“Look, I may have been gone for over a thousand years in your time, and you may be all grown up now, but I think I can still tell if you’re lying to me.”
Celestia kind of put her hooves together and looked at the ground and Discord was so uncomfortable he actually chewed at his talons. They both started fidgeting in their seats. Fluttershy looked on with a mixture of disbelief and trepidation. Probably because it looked like I was talking down to the Princess. Hmm, scratch that, I was. Oh well. Not sure about Discord but if he was the Lord of Chaos, I was probably looking more frightening by the moment than either one combined.
“Eh, don’t look so nervous, Fluttershy,” I reassured her. “We’re family!”
“We’re all getting along now,” Celestia said quickly and I saw Discord send Celestia a grateful smile.
“Yep!” he affirmed all too fast for my liking. “Nothing bad happened, we all get along swimmingly well!”
They both gave me a grin that was way too wide to be considered within the realm of natural expressions. I gave them both an unimpressed stare back.
“Uhuh,” I said neutrally, crossing my arms.
“Yep,” Discord repeated. “Absolutely fine.”
I felt like the parent coming back from a long trip to find the kids in the house had thrown a party in my absence, only they’d just managed to clean up just before I got back and everything looked spick and span on the surface, but underneath the tablecloth I’d find a stack of empty cups and party supplies. I raised an eyebrow letting them sweat it out for a while before carefully settling back into my seat.
“Okay then,” I finally said, waving the issue away with a hand. I leaned forward. “Tell me about modern Equestria–”
Before either of them could reply, a blinding flash lit up the clearing and an incensed midnight-blue alicorn stomped towards Celestia.
“Tia! I finally got the bubblegum out of my hair! Where is that draconequus? Grr he’s probably gone by now but when I get my hooves on him, I’ll make him rue the night he decided to play that little ‘prank’ on my personage!” I glanced back at Discord’s seat to find that he’d shrunken himself to about the size of a small wren and he cringed when I gave him the look.
Celestia had a wobbly smile on her muzzle as she tried to calm down her sister.
“Luna, we have a guest, why don’t you sit down and we can chat about this in a calm, collected manner?”
Luna gave a withering stare to Celestia like she’d snatched her favourite stuffed toy. I knew that look, I was there.
“Tiiiiiaaaaa, I know you want to stick to the principles of Harmony, yadda love yadda tolerance, but can’t I just this once, banish Discord to the moon? It won’t even be that long, maybe a year? I’m sure I can convince the Elements to give it a shot.”
She suddenly registered Fluttershy sitting to my left.
“Even Kindness is here we can ask her now!” She looked at me, with my arms crossed and my left eyebrow raised as far as it could go. “Look, Harmony is here too, we can ask him!”
Luna turned back to Celestia, her mouth open to say something else but then paused and slowly turned her back back to me, jerking it mechanically. She whipped her head back to Celestia, then to me and then back again.
Finally after a few moments of silence she grumbled, “I must have strained myself too hard, staying awake. I am seeing things. The visions will pass, I simply need to calm down.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and then opened them again. She stared at me again.
“Funny,” she mumbled her face scrunched up in puzzlement. “He’s not going away.”
I made to say something, but she held a hoof out.
“Stop! Do not speak.” She turned to Celestia. “You can see him?” A nod. She turned to Fluttershy. “You can see him?” A timid nod. She turned back to Tia. “Tia, I think we need help, we’re all seeing things.”
–––––
After a brief explanation, Luna took it surprisingly well.
“And so, Harmony has been asking us if we’d been getting along,” Celestia stressed meaningfully, looking at Luna. Luna’s eyes widened to the size of the moon as she realised what she’d said about Discord.
“T’was a jest!” she exclaimed, taking a step back. “Merely a jest!”
Discord and Celestia gave Luna a look that kind of said, ‘Nice going there, Luna. Real smooth’.
I just laughed as they looked at me in surprise.
“Oh come off it,”I laughed. “I don’t expect you all to get along all the time! Discord played a prank and Luna got mad, it’s not like you ever wanted to kill each other.” I grinned and drew them all into a hug. “One happy family.”
“Yep,” Discord said. “That’s exactly right. Right Celestia, Luna?”
“Yes.”
“Indeed.”
I looked at them suspiciously for a moment, but then broke out into another smile. It was hard to stay mad at them.
“Ooh, I can’t get over how much you all have grown! Just a moment ago to me, you two would be pining to get on my back and Discord would be stealing cookies from the cookie jar.”
Celestia, Luna and Fluttershy giggled at that, while Discord blushed and crossed his arms.
“That was a long time ago,” he sulked, but he couldn’t prevent the edges of his mouth from tugging upwards in a smile. Fluttershy padded over to him to pat him on the back.
I looked around registering the ley lines in the ground.
“Huh,” I said snapping my fingers a few times. “I don’t sense the Tree nearby. Is it still here or did someone chop it down?”
At that the three siblings looked at each other sheepishly before turning back to me.
“The old castle was destroyed,” Celestia explained. “Your Tree, the Tree of Harmony, is within a forest that is home to many wild and dangerous magic. Harmony’s Haven has been renamed back to the Everfree Forest.”
“Huh,” I repeated snapping my fingers experimentally. “I’m not sure but I can still feel the Tree’s magic nearby. I know I tapped it into the natural wellspring near Tempora’s castle but I don’t really know what happened to it. Did it do anything weird?”
Again the three shared looks, this time Fluttershy nervously joining in.
“What?” I said.
–––––
“Woah,” I whispered taking in the massive crystalline structure. “This thing has grown pretty dang big. Who would have thought an open-ended spell matrix would grow into something so beautiful?” I peered closer at the tree, oh look there was Celestia’s and Luna’s cutie marks, how odd.
“You used an open-ended spell matrix?! Were you asking for a magic fallout?” I heard a familiar voice cried.
I turned around. “Oh,” I stated flatly. “You’re here.” The purple unicorn I had met earlier was here with an assortment of four other ponies. Her name was… Twilight, I think?
Twilight snorted. “I am here because I am Princess Celestia’s personal student,” she laid stress on the word ‘personal’ while emphasising with a hoof. “I’ve been studying magic my whole life,” she added for good measure. I rolled my eyes at that.
“While I don’t dispute that, I don’t find that relevant to what we were talking about,” I sniffed, then turned to Celestia. “Really? She’s your student?” Celestia just gave me a pleading look.
“Sorry Harmony,” she muttered. “You wanted to know what became of your Tree, so I called the Element Bearers to come along.” She shuffled her hooves. “I didn’t know you had already met Twilight.” She paused. “She’s a very good pony, you know.”
At that Twilight beamed, but the flying blue pegasus next to her just glared at me.
“You can’t talk to the Princess like that,” she shouted, swooping towards me and bringing her face right up to mine. Luna took a step forward but I held a hand out and she took a step back. I couldn’t help it, I put my Prince on.
“And who are you,” I began quietly. “To question what I can and can’t say to my little sister?”
The pegasus looked somewhat mollified at first, but then rallied when her expression cleared.
“I’m Rainbow Dash,” she declared proudly, puffing out her chest. “I’m the fastest pegasus in Equestria and I’m smart enough to know you’re lying.”
The orange pony on the left opened her mouth to say something, but then shut it, the white-coated one stared at the orange one in surprise.
“I’m not,” I stated flatly. “Ask your Princess.”
At that the rainbow-maned pegasus shot Celestia a questioning glance, to which Celestia gave a slow nod to.
“But–” she cast a gaze to Luna, who nodded. “That–” Discord nodded. “Can’t–” Fluttershy nodded slowly. “What…” she sunk to the ground. “My head hurts,” she muttered morosely, cradling her head with her hooves.
Twilight looked at me curiously. “Why didn’t you tell me you were related to the Princesses?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Would you have believed me?” The ensuing silence was all I needed. “Thought so.” When she started to say something I held up my hands. “Okay, okay, sorry I was being kind of a jerk. I’m just sick of ponies treating Discord like he’s done something wrong. It’s not right.”
I held out a conciliatory hand.
“Let’s start over,” I said. “I’m Harmony.” I pointed behind me. "That’s my Tree.”