by Fuzzyfurvert
***
“Sooooo...where are we?” Twilight Sparkle sped up her canter to close distance with Princess Celestia as the shimmering void of the Astral Plane faded out and was replaced with a lush landscape of trees, tall grasses and flowering shrubs with wide leaves.
The plantlife looked strange. They were striking familiar to the ones she had seen in books and the greenhouses around Equestria, but at the same time, something was off about them that Twilight was having a problem putting her hoof on. The ground, and the air too, had that same strange ‘offness’ about them.
Celestia stopped and pushed some of the hanging foliage aside and stood there for Twilight to join her. Ahead of the two alicorns the forest gave way to a huge clearing with an enormous spiraling spire of layered stonework. Twilight craned her head back until she felt she might topple over and still is was hard to see the top of the structure.
“Welcome, Twilight, to the Tower of Babel.”
“Tower?” Twilight shook out her wings and looked at Celestia. “I’ve never heard of anything like that in Equestria.”
“We aren’t in Equestria.” Celestia took a step forward into the clearing and looked around. ‘This is an inbetween place. A small sliver of reality that has come unmoored from its plane of existence. Time has no meaning here nor do many of the laws of nature.”
That’s what was wrong, Twilight thought. Now that she knew, it was easier to notice that there was no sound, no insects, no animals, no wind. The clouds in the sky hung there motionless and there was no sun she could pinpoint. “Wow. How does a piece of reality come...loose, I guess?”
“Divine intervention.”
Twilight stepped into the clearing, following Celestia. “Wait, you mean you did this?”
“No. Another god from another world did this, and no, before you ask, I do not know why.” Celestia nodded toward the tower and started walking forward. “I suspect you will find a great deal of things to interest you here, Twilight. There are inscriptions and cuneiform writing all over the inside of the structure. I have tried my hoof at translating them over the years, but I’ve not much success. Since it is abandoned, however, and inaccessible by all, save we alicorns, I have come to use it as a sort of storage space.”
“All this for storage?” Twilight giggled nervously. “What could be so important or dangerous that you would store it in some otherworldly place like this?”
Celestia shrugged. “Holiday decorations, thousands of years worth of old sweaters, the seapony race. Stuff like that. And perhaps a little spot for myself when I wish to get away from it all.”
“Wow, really?”
The Princess nodded again as they reached the base of the great tower where an equally enormous archway stood, its columns carved into alien shapes and faces. Beyond the arches branched doorways and halls and stairways that lead to treasures untold.
“I brought you here, Twilight, because I wanted to share this place with you. To give that mind of yours countless puzzles to tease over and new questions to discover that you’ve never thought to ask.” Celestia turned and smiled at the young alicorn. “I know you have a tendency to get lost in your studies, that your’s is a curiosity that is not easily sated. But this is a controlled environment, and I trust you to not get into anything too dangerous.”
“Uh...I-I don’t know what to...thank you.” Twilight blinked as she felt tears well up. “That means a lot. Like, really.”
Celestia smiled and stepped toward the stairs. “When you’re ready, you can find me on the third floor. Just look for the door with my cutie mark.”
She wasn’t sure how long she wandered the Tower of Babel. It never seemed to stop, floor after floor seeming to materialize the further up or down she went and each one held some sort of wonder. On the eighth floor she found a golden model of a solar system that was not her own, it spun with glacial slowness, powered in a way she hadn’t yet figured out. On the twenty seventh floor she found a pool set into the stone work that seemed deep enough it should have taken up the floor below it and was filled with a single huge goldfish that sung a sad song. On the three hundred and fourteenth floor she found a snowflake that set fire to whatever it touched as it drifted through the halls on an unfelt breeze.
Eventually, Twilight found herself outside a door that was emblazoned with a sun.
She stared at it in silence. She hesitated there at the threshold, her hoof raised to knock. Celestia had brought her here to explore and challenge her mind. Had she done so sufficiently? Had she made use of the gift as she should? Was she ready to rejoin with the Princess? What if she had taken too long? Or not long enough?
As she stood there, the door opened inward and Celestia filled the space before her.
“Hello, Twilight.”
“Um...hi?” Twilight blushed and looked down at her hooves. “I uh...I think I…”
Celestia leaned down and took Twilight’s chin in her hoof softly and drew her eyes up to met hers. “Are you ready to join me?”
Twilight opened her mouth but she couldn’t find her voice. Am I ready? How can I ever thank her for this?
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“How,” Twilight licked her lips, “can you be so accommodating? What do you want?”
“For you to be ready to join me. For you, Twilight, I can wait forever.” Celestia smiled in the way she always does when she imparts wisdom. “I’ve waited this long.”
“What would we do? Together, I mean?”
“Whatever we want.”