The Slumber of Gaia

by Khenlos


Wonders of Nature

Ah, it feels amazing to let some power out! It was just some gardening, but I think it will be enough to show them a little bit of my abilities. So I trotted happily towards the group, bouncing a little with each step. I just hope they were satisfied, even if it wasn't one of my best works.

Oh, I managed to impress them alright! They were open mouthed and looking around amazed. Cadance was applauding with a sincere smile. She is such a sweet girl!

"I hope you find this convincing enough, dears" I told them, chuckling a bit at their dumbfounded faces.

"It was truly beautiful Gaia. I've never seen anything like that before" Cadance said to me, looking around, "It's just too incredible, I almost can't believe it myself"

"You are too kind, dear. This is just some little landscaping, hardly a thing to be proud of" I told her with sincerity.

"Some landscaping? Some... landscaping!?" Twilight yelled as she approached me, her mane sticking out in some places and a crazed look in her eyes. Oh my, already made one have a mental breakdown?

"Why yes dear, this is just menial work. Pretty, but nothing marvelous" I said to her.

"You just toppled mountains with a tap of your hoof! That is not possible!" Twilight replied, screaming.

"Obviously it is" I calmly replied.

"Well... I admit that we didn't expect that, Gaia. It was an impressive show of power" Celestia said to me in a respectful tone.

"You... were not lying..." Luna said, still almost speechless.

"Why would I lie about that, dears? As I said, I'm from another planet and I'm here taking a vacation. As a warden of my planet, this is just my typical work, but I usually let things work out for themselves" I explained while nodding.

"Just... what? How can you be so... so careless!" Twilight yelled at me. She is just like young Luna, isn't she?

"What do you mean?" I asked her with a curious smile, which made her more upset.

"You just can't control a world by doing nothing! You need a plan for everything!" Twilight said, pacing in place and frowning in anger "I can't believe your world survived that long with its supposed 'warden' doing nothing!"

"Ouch, you hurt my feelings. I think I did a pretty good job, given that I had to learn myself how to do things" I told her with a sad smile.

"Twilight! That was way out of the line!" Celestia said, scolding the young alicorn.

"I'm sorry Celestia, but it's just hard to believe. I don't doubt about her power, but I doubt she is able to watch over a playground, much less over a world" She said, not giving up on her words. Oh! She is just like my son when he was her age! I know what to do!

"Well, do you really think you can do a better job than little old me?" I told her with a sweet voice.

"I am not one to brag, but I'm kinda good with organization..." Twilight replied with a small smile. Aha! Gotcha!

"Well, I think we can make a small experiment about that... You like experiments, right?" I asked her in the same sweet voice.

"What are you planning, Gaia?" Cadance asked me with curiosity.

"Something truly enlightening for young Twilight. Can we go back to the castle? I need a couple of things that I can probably find there" I asked Celestia.

"Of course. I just hope that you are not planning something dangerous" Celestia said, before teleporting all of us back to Canterlot. Magic was truly an amazing thing!

"Don't worry about that, dear. I assure you that it will be a safe teaching experience" I told her with a motherly smile.

"So, when do we start! What are the objectives of the experiment? Please, tell me!" Twilight said while jumping in place. I laughed at her eagerness.

"Calm down young Twilight. First, I need some water; iron, nickel, a crystal box and a light bulb, a potent one" I told her. Almost instantly, she disappeared in a flash and came back with all the materials. I smiled gently and sat on the ground, picking up portions of iron and nickel and squashing them between my hooves like clay. Every alicorn watched every move with curiosity.

"So... what are you going to do with this? I hardly see anything related to your work here" Luna said with her skeptic tone. By the stars, are all these ponies so impatient?

"First I need the proper quantity of each and make a sphere. Then we put some water... there we go!" I showed them the drenched ball made of metal.

"It's... nice" Cadance said. Aw, she was just polite to say that it looked pretty much like trash.

"Don't worry, I'll create the smallest materials needed for this. They are few, but important!" I told them happily.

"But... what are you doing?" Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Twilight, dear. Can you light up the bulb, please? And put it in front of the box" I told her. She did as I asked without question. Aha... It will be enough I suppose.

"Now a bit closer to the box... yes, there!" I said, guiding her.

"This looks like one of those biology experiments when you put an egg and hatch it thanks to the heat of the bulb!" Twilight said, excited "The test is to take care of an animal?" she asked me. I chuckled a bit.

"Something like that. I've done this a couple of times before, and I'm sure everyone is going to learn from this experiment" I told them with sincerity.

I picked up the wet metal sphere and smashed it between my front hooves. I poured power towards the sphere, heating it until it melted and quickly contained the metal in a sphere, making it dense enough to have a noticeable gravity field. They watched in awe as I held between my hooves the small ball of boiling metal as I walked carefully towards the box and opened it with my mouth. I touched with my snout each of the sides of the box, giving just a bit of power to it. After that, I put the ball in the box and watched as the power reacted to the ball, making it levitate in place. I blew some air onto the ball, making it spin in place and then closed it.

Now the box held a miniature planet, covered in a heavy and dense atmosphere.

"There you go! Your own planet! You have ten days until it dies of old age" I told Twilight, much to the surprise of everyone in the room.

Gee, they sure were skittish. They were surprised by everything!


"What did you just say? Is that really a planet?" Twilight asked in a whisper. Gaia nodded happily.

"Indeed, it's all yours. Oh! I almost forgot!" Gaia said while walking towards Twilight, and kissing her softly on her forehead, making the lavender alicorn a bit ill with a rush of information "This is just a bit of basic things on how to control and watch over your new charge"

"Oh my Celestia..." Twilight said in a daze, before shaking her head and looking over the planet with worry "But... What is the purpose of this?" Twilight asked.

"Whatever you want, dear. It's your planet. Burn it, flood it or just forget about it. I just want you to watch over it, and take notes about what you do and what are the consequences of your actions. Take photos of it if you want too, they will be very informative" Gaia explained Twilight, as the lavender alicorn absorbed the words.

"But there must be some kind of objective! I know about experiments made 'just for the sake of it', but even those need to have... well... some kind of explanation behind them!" Twilight asked, both confused and fascinated. Gaia hummed a bit.

"Well, in that case I'll tell you this" Gaia spoke calmly, walking around the box with the new planet "If you manage to show me a planet with at least life on land and water I'll call it a success" Gaia said with a small smile. Twilight clapped her hooves and summoned a stack of papers, quills and ink and put them near the planet.

"This is so interesting! I need to monitor everything! It's going to be the perfect planet!" She exclaimed, just to stop and looking at me with sadness. "But... the creatures on it... are going to die after the ten days?" She asked Gaia with a pout. Gaia nodded slowly.

"Indeed, but that's how life works, dear. They will die in less than a second. Each minute will be thousands of years for them, it must be this way if we want to test your abilities in a realistic amount of time. You can't spend millions of years watching over a world now, right? Gaia said while giggling before walking away from Twilight "And remember... Have fun!"

Twilight looked at the planet floating inside the box, a determined look in her eyes as she picked up paper and started to write something. Celestia and Luna followed Gaia as Cadance stayed behind with Twilight.

"I'm sure Twilight will perform beyond your expectations, Gaia" Luna said with smugness. Gaia went to a window and just watched the landscape.

"She is going to fail" Gaia said with conviction. Celestia and Luna looked at her with confusion.

"Why do you say that?" Celestia asked. Gaia just smiled motherly at her.

"Celestia, do you control every little action of your ponies? Do you control when and how they need to eat, sleep or work? Do you put a rule and manage every single thing that happens under your watch?" Gaia asked Celestia.

"Of course not! That would be... Oh... I see..." Celestia said slowly, making Gaia's smile wider with her words.

"She will try to do her best, of that I'm sure. And that's what will be her doom with this little experiment" Gaia said with a sad smile

"How can you be so sure of that? Surely a very well managed planet will be better developed, right?" Luna asked, making Gaia laugh.

"Life isn't about order, young Luna. Life it's about spontaneity and randomness! You don't get animals on land because you made it so, you have them because one unlucky fish had a bad mutation that made it better adapted to the ground, making a whole new world of food at its disposal and helping its survival. Creatures don't discover fire because they decide to, they just observe the phenomenon and one of them has the lucky spark to think 'Oh hey! Maybe we can do something similar!'" Gaia explained, clearly passionate about the issue. "You can plan on something, but you must be ready to go with the flow. Even the most basic life was a lucky spark between amino acids that gave them the ability of self-replication"

The celestial sisters looked very impressed and, as usual with Gaia, surprised by her words.

"What you talk about is chaos, Gaia. That is just not possible" Luna persisted, much to Gaia's amusement.

"No, I talk about other kind of order. One that is just too big for the normal mind to understand" Gaia simply said.

"How can you talk about order when clearly you speak of random chance?" Celestia asked with curiosity.

"Because it all follows a pattern, a universal pattern... because order and chaos are both needed in the universe. And when you have enough of both you have the true order... you have Harmony" Gaia said with a motherly smile. "Oh, and if we translate my actual age to Twilight's experiment... I managed to host a space-faring race of sapient beings by the morning of the fourth day" Gaia said with a timid smile.

And then both celestial princesses knew that this was going to be a hard test for the lavender princess.