Princess Celestia, Alicorn of the Sun, smoothly rotated her croquet mallet in the golden glow of her mageía as she pondered her next move. This particular croquet field had been frozen in time a thousand years ago, its unfinished game awaiting the return of the other player. Now that she was back and able to continue, and the field in question had been gently airlifted from the Old Castle and brought to the gardens of the New, Celestia was determined to play only moves that were worthy of this potentially immortal game. Her mind was filled with angle calculations usually only performed by billiards players. Luna had left her with a difficult position last evening, but if she could bank her ball precisely against the edge of the wicket as it passed through, she stood a reasonable chance of scoring two extra shots…
“Celestia?” Twilight had appeared over the nearest hedge wall. “Your seneschal said you were in the gardens… Oh—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
Celestia smiled and lowered her mallet. “It’s quite all right, Twilight. What occasions your visit?”
Twilight landed, folded her wings, and brought forth a sheath of papers. “Well, I’ve been studying the history of Hearth’s Warming Eve, and I couldn’t help but notice something very odd. It’s about the six most prominent ponies of the era; the ones represented in the play. The historical records contain plenty of information about their lives… up to a point. But at about -1 AE, Alicorn Era, all mentions of Private Pansy, Princess Platinum, and Smart Cookie… just disappear. There’s no indication of them going on any sort of journey, or dying. They just stop being talked about, and no ancient writer mentions why. It’s as if they simply dropped out of existence!”
Celestia carefully refrained from meeting her pupil’s eyes. “How very interesting, Twilight. That is indeed rather odd.”
“And just a year and a half later, Commander Hurricane, Clover the Clever, and Chancellor Puddinghead… they drop from the records too!” Twilight frowned. “Now, one could argue that with you and Luna making your appearance at around that time, those six ponies simply became less worthy of mention, but that can’t be the whole truth; they were too prominent. It’s just too much of a coincidence. Do you—do you know what really happened to them? May I ask?”
Celestia gently tapped her mallet on the ground, her gaze playing over the towers of Canterlot gleaming in golden sunshine as she recalled those ancient years, and how many scribes of that era had been bribed or otherwise enjoined to silence. She wondered how much she could safely tell, even now…
One fine summer’s morning, in the silver pre-dawn light, Commander Hurricane stood upon the cloudy parade grounds, her soldiers surrounding her in fierce rows. All attention was focused upon her, and upon Private Pansy, who stood at her side, curiously bloated and shivering.
Commander Hurricane was halfway through a rousing, stirring speech, and the assembled troops hung upon every word.
“…and so I said to Chancellor Puddinghead, ‘No bucking way! You can really light a fart? That’s bucking amazing!’ But then Clover the Clever, she started talking about methane, and somepony named Captain Ethel Mer or something—don’t know what sea ponies have to do with it, but long story short, she didn’t think it could be done.
“But I said it could, ’cause if it was true, it would be so totally radical! And I made a bet with her that you can so totally light a fart. And I was floating kinda high on all the Salzbier and honeymead we’d been knocking back, and I kinda bet her a whole lotta bits… So, what it comes down to, is we gotta make this happen.
“So, Private Pansy, you know why I made you eat only beans for the past week and a half?”
Private Pansy started. “Uhm, because I like beans?”
“No! You know why I made you stick a cork in your plot, too?”
“Because I lik—er, uhm, because you like to make me look silly?”
“No! Yes! Uh, no, because we’re doing this for… sciencey stuff. We’re gonna out-clever Clover the Clever. We’re gonna prove once and for all that you can LIGHT A FART! Okay, Pansy, present your posterior!”
Trembling, Pansy bent forward and lifted her tail.
“Private Spearholder, bring that torch close to her butt!”
He extended the torch, which was tied to a long pole, and held it under her tail, illuminating it in a dancing orange glow.
Commander Hurricane smiled. This was going to be good. She could feel it. She spoke the final order.
“Private Rhoda Rooter… REMOVE THAT CORK‼”
Moments later, the parade grounds were clear. A large crater in the cloud surface roiled with smoke.
And Private Pansy, with a jet of flame streaming from her rear, and a noise like a thousand lawnmowers with bad sparkplugs splitting the air, was screaming as she was propelled, jet-assisted, towards the distant hills.
Commander Hurricane, upside down and half-embedded in the wall of a nearby building, having been flung there by the blast, looked up and smiled.
“That. Was. Mega. AWESOME!”
***
Several miles away, atop a broad turret on the majestic castle of the unicorns, a daily ceremony of great importance was taking place. The assembled unicorns, led by Princess Platinum and Clover the Clever, combined their powers into a shimmering cloud that swirled around their heads. Sweating and chanting incantations, they poured their full efforts into their important task.
And soon, the magic cloud overhead shone brighter and brighter, until a dazzling beam shot forth and reached to the horizon. And at that instant, a golden glow spread over the hills as the edge of the sun peeped over the distant mountains. The sun had been risen once again!
Princess Platinum sighed. “Another stellar job—aheh!—at raising the sun! I thank you, my fellow unicorns. Let us all now show our deep respect to the powers of the heavens! May we ever receive warm blessings from above!” She knelt with her front legs, facing the sun, with her rear pointed skywards… as a flaming, screaming comet of despair came shrieking over the parapet behind her—Private Pansy, with a long jet of fire streaming from her rear, along with a noise like a chorus of dying bullfrogs.
Before anypony could react, Private Pansy plowed head first into Princess Platinum’s prominently-presented plot! The two of them sailed skyward on a column of flame. Princess Platinum in her shock barely heard Clover exclaiming, “Oh my! So you can light a fart! I thought…” Her words dopplered and faded in the distance.
Princess Platinum’s face turned red and her eyes crossed in pain and shock. “OOOooaaAUUUgggHUH! My word! Ouch! OUCH! HELLLLPP‼” Princess Platinum screamed, with Private Pansy’s head firmly and very deeply lodged in her posterior.
“Mmmfffmmf mrrrmmfmf mmmffmmrrm!” screamed Private Pansy, whose bad day had gotten even worse. It was just as well that she couldn’t see where she was.
Terrified, the two squirming ponies, legs and tails flailing helplessly, buzzed off into the distance like a drunken hornet, leaving a pungent smoky contrail behind them.
***
“Oooh,” said Chancellor Puddinghead, as she trotted with Smart Cookie along a flowery lane under the growing sunrise.
“What’s wrong?” said Smart Cookie.
“I just got a Tickle Tail.”
“A what, now?”
“Well…” The Chancellor paused, thoughts winding through curly mane hairs. “First, I have to explain about time skipping. Like, do you ever feel that you may just be skipping through time, like a flat rock you skimmed on a lake?”
Smart Cookie was sufficiently familiar with the Chancellor’s ways to take the question at face value. “Can’t rightly say that I do. What’s it like for you?”
“Well, it seems to me that I’m here now, but also later in the future I’m going to be there, and the me that’s there will sometimes pretend to be me from now, because she’s pretty understanding that way. But also, that things she does then can pass back to me somehow now, and that’s why I can feel a Tickle Tail!”
“Uh-huh,” said Smart Cookie patiently. “So what does it mean, that you got this Tickle Tail?”
The Chancellor considered. “I think it means that something glorious and terrible is going to happen. And, uhm, also that it involves butts somehow.” She paused expectantly, scanning the horizon with pigeon-like jerks of her head.
Nothing happened for a long moment. But then, suddenly, a thrush burst into song in a tree nearby.
The two ponies shrugged and trotted on.
“Oooh, is that a cookie I see there, on the ground?” said Smart Cookie.
“Where?”
“Right there. That brown lump. Maybe somepony dropped it on the way to market. Can’t rightly tell; it might be something else. Lemme check it out.” Smart Cookie bent her forelegs and sniffed at the object, her rear pointed up at the sky, her tail swaying back and forth…
“Whoof. Nope, that ain’t no cookie.” She straightened up, and the two ponies set off again down the lane. “So, is there anything special we need to do about this Tickle Tail thing?”
“There’s not much we can do. It will just happen when we least expect it.”
“You can’t, say, make it hurry up a bit and get it over with? I gotta busy day ahead of me.”
“That’s not aaaaallways wise,” said the Chancellor thoughtfully, “But we can try. Let’s see… you could start by standing on one back hoof, with your right fore tapping the top of your head and your left fore rubbing your muzzle.” She demonstrated. “And you sing ‘Blabble-fargle-wubble-blat, Ducks are bathing in my hat.’”
Smart Cookie tried it, with some difficulty. ‘Blabble-fargle-fubble-blat—’”
“Wubble-blat, with a double-you. Try it again”
The explosion of dirt knocked the Chancellor off her hooves.
A minute ago, Princess Platinum and Private Pansy had struck the soft dirt a mile away, burrowing into it, and thanks to Platinum’s horn had tunneled through it to emerge right under Smart Cookie at the silliest possible moment in her pose. She now rose into the sky on top of them, her eyes bulging and her ears flattened in shock, for Princess Platinum’s horn and head were deeply lodged in a very intimate area.
“MMMMHHHhhh!” screamed Princess Platinum, who had most unfortunately come to share Private Pansy’s point of view. “Mhff ff thr Mrrft. Mrrrfffhbll. MHHHNG!” She’d had no idea that Earth ponies were mostly corn-fed, and was deeply regretting finding out.
“mmrrrrggghh!” squeaked Private Pansy.
“WHOA NELLY!” shrieked Smart Cookie as she soared into the clouds. “Too much pitchfork, TOO LITTLE HAY‼ My barn door don’t swing that way‼ WHOOOOAAAAHH—”
Squirming into the sky, highlighted by the soft golden light of the dawn, the equine centipede twisted and writhed in shock and horror, rising to the blue zenith like a flabbery noodle balloon.
And then, with a long drawn-out blaaaaat, a sputter, and a final forlorn tuba-like poot, Private Pansy ran out of gas.
The three ponies reached the apex of their flight, passed it, and sailed gracefully down, towards the side of tall, desolate Mount Canter. Only one of them could see what was about to happen, and she could do nothing but scream. The other two nonetheless picked up upon her gut-wrenching terror in some manner or another that was probably best left unmentioned. In a partly muffled harmony, they sang the song of fear as they slammed into the mountainside. There was a bright white explosion, and an enormous and terrible noise.
PLOTZ!
Rocks rained down the mountainside, then all was hideously quiet.
The impact had left a deep and smoking hole in the mountain that glowed dully red at its edges.
And deep within that hole, something lived. Something moved, pushing aside the fragments of splintered rock.
Something emerged. A tall being who bore the white coat and horn of Princess Platinum, though smudged with filth from the impact. It had the wings of Private Pansy, badly in need of preening, and like her, its ass was still burning. And it had the stolid hooves and stubborn will to live of Smart Cookie. It was as large as all three of them put together.
It looked upon itself for a long time, then turned its head to the sky, facing the glorious sunrise. It spoke.
“Buh. Bribbuh buhbrrr. Splahdort.”
Its thoughts were a mess of conflicting memories, of plates of beans, of Clover’s voice fading in the distance, of ducks taking a bath in one’s hat. It would obviously take a long time to sort everything out and learn how to speak properly again.
And then, the fitful flame on its butt flickered and went out, and at the same time a glowing symbol appeared on its flanks, a symbol of the fire that had given it birth…
“Spaaahdoooh…?” it said. “Flughuuub. FLUGUUUUUUUBB!” It rapidly jumped up and down and flapped its wings like a chicken. “FLUGUBOOOOOOOooooooooo…‼”
Obeying some primal instinct, it spent the next few weeks building a rudimentary nest of rocks around the impact site, chattering and cooing nonsense to itself. By then, its mind had recovered sufficiently for it to venture down the mountain, to command the awe of the multitude of ponies around it, and to take control of the sun, and the land, and the future, and the anniversary of that day became the first Summer Sun Celebration…
Celestia blinked, her mind returning to the present. It had been so long since she had visited the deep foundations of the original Castle Canterlot, and the oldest stones there which still remained of her original nest. She had made no alterations to it in millennia. It was her hole, after all; it was made for her.
She turned to face her expectant protégé, who had come into her own powers in such a more elegant and prepared manner. She told Twilight of how Princess Platinum had developed an experimental spell, working with Clover the Clever, and how the complex spell had gone awry with unpredictable results, merging the destinies of three separate tribes into one shining symbol, a being who exemplified all the virtues of each. She told, mostly truthfully, of how long it had taken to replicate that spell, with multiple attempts being made by Clover and Hurricane and Puddinghead, until the event was recreated on the date of the Winter Solstice to give rise to Princess Luna…
“Nowadays, Twilight,” Celestia summed up, “we have better ways of doing these things. You may trust me that there is little to be learned from those early fumbling attempts.”
Twilight was looking at Celestia in awe. “So you were born from Pansy, and Platinum and Cookie. Are they… still in you somehow?”
Celestia thought about a tired old hat, which would be dust by now had it not been preserved in thaumically-stabilizing crystal in her private sanctum. “They do live on in me. One never entirely loses touch with one’s origins, no matter what one does. Do you not remember that little unicorn filly who once made bold to jump on my bed? She lives on in you as well, does she not?”
Twilight giggled. “I think you’re right. Thank you, Celestia. You’ve given me a new sense of what it’s worth, to be an Alicorn!” She took her leave and flew away, teleporting to Ponyville once she had it in line of sight.
“A hill of beans,” said Celestia quietly, turning back to her game. “It’s worth exactly one hill of beans.”