//------------------------------//
// Let me speak clearly 
// Story: Azure Flame 
// by Silver Page 
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“Twilight? Are you here?” Spike wandered into the basement of the library, where he was certain he’d find his caretaker and adoptive sister. And sure enough, there she was. Twilight had spent days pouring over the copy of a book she’d brought back from the Crystal Empire, trying to decipher it. She spent more and more time down in her improvised mini-archive, surrounded by tomes. The young Dragon stepped nimbly over stacks of paper and piles of books, and came up to Twilight.
“Yes, Spike?”
“Um, Twilight, are you busy?”
“Yes, I am,” the Unicorn said, flipping through a codex on dead languages. “I’ve finally figured out that Starswirl was writing in Old Draconian, the language of the ancient Dragon Empire, but also using an advanced Pegasus-based cipher code to hide the meaning of his words. Plus, I recently found that while he was using Draconian runes, his words were those of the Equi dialect, the spoken language of the Ponies before the Unification!”
“Um, that’s fascinating and all, but there’s a letter here for you…”
“It’s all so amazing what I’ve managed to find out! Here, listen to this passage I managed to translate near the beginning!” Twilight said, cutting off her assistant and clearing her throat.


 “It is my hope that my Children, Clever Clover and Smart Cookie, will be able to succeed where I failed. The tribes must unite, or else Winter will never end. The Strife-Eaters grow fat on us, and yet we do nothing but hate. Furthermore, the Sun and Moon grow weaker with each year, the Unicorns who manipulate the spell growing less careful with the Spell Matrix.” 


“See, or rather, hear that?! Starswirl is talking about Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie being his biological children! I thought at first he was using the term for ‘apprentice’ or ‘god-foal’ but actually, he…”
“Twilight! Princess Celestia sent you a letter!!” Spike shouted, finally getting her attention.
“She did? What’s it say?” Twilight asked, turning to face her little scaled companion. 


 “Ahem! Dear Twilight Sparkle, it has come to my attention that you have been studying non-stop these past few weeks. While I understand your passion, and only wish you success, neglecting yourself and your social life can be detrimental. As your mentor, and your friend, I ask that you take a break every once in a while.” 


“Well, I suppose I have been rather, um, distracted lately…”


 “Also, it has been a long time since we’ve spoken to each other face to face, and so I will be leaving for Ponyville to spend the day with you as soon as I’ve sent this message. Yours truly, Princess Celestia.” 


“WHAT?! Princess Celestia is coming here?!” Twilight screeched, leaping from her bench and prancing around it in panic.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no! I haven’t cleaned! I haven’t gone shopping! I’m not ready for social interaction!” The scholarly unicorn whimpered, pacing about.
“Wait! She said my studying came to her attention! Does that mean she knows what I’ve been looking into?! What if she’s here to stop me?! What if she’s here to wipe my brain of any knowledge I’ve gleaned?! What if she’s here because she’s disappointed in me for prying into her secret past?! What if…!”
“Ding dong!” Twilight froze in mid-canter, eyes wide and ears splayed, which gave her the appearance of looking like a piece of modern art.
“She’s here, Twilight!” Spike’s voice called down the steps. At some point in her panicked rant, her assistant had gone up the stairs and cleared up the front of the library and had begun making tea, if the scent that hit her was any clue. Swallowing her nervousness, Twilight ascended the stairs, not at all prepared to face her teacher. 
“Thank you for the tea, Spike,” the alabaster Alicorn said softly, accepting a cup from the claws of the Dragon.
“No problem Princess. I’m going to head over to Rarity’s while you and Twilight talk,” Spike said with a smile, setting the tea kettle down on the coffee table. Celestia returned the smile, and settled down on the couch for her pupil. She wasn’t kept waiting long, as Twilight moved timidly into the sitting room of the library, which doubled as a reading area for patrons. 
“Um, hello, Princess,” she said meekly. Her behavior caught Celestia by surprise. Twilight was moving and acting like she had as a filly whenever the solar Alicorn had found her in the midst of a messy experiment, and she was afraid of punishment.
“Hello yourself, Twilight.” Celestia smiled down at her student, her mind flashing back to all the times in the past she’d helped clean up Twilight’s experiments and spells. “Are you doing alright? You look nervous.”
“Me? Nervous? About you shutting down my research and being disappointed in me? Never!”
It took a lot of willpower on Celestia’s part not to face hoof at her student’s reaction. She was almost as bad at lying and hiding things as Applejack!
“Twilight, please don’t be so worried. As long as you aren’t delving into Dark Magic I highly doubt I will be disappointed in you, or try to stop your research,” the Princess assured her pupil, with Twilight calming herself with deep breathes. 
“Please, know that you can talk to be about anything,” Celestia said, almost pleadingly, as she looked at the Unicorn she’d helped raise. “I feel like we’ve become distant recently, and I, I just want to help.”
There was a long pause, which quickly became uncomfortable. Twilight fidgeted from hoof to hoof while trying to avoid Princess Celestia’s pleading, puppy-dog eyes.
“Gah! Fine! I show you everything! Just stop guilting me!” Twilight moaned, dashing off into the basement. Celestia settled back into the couch with a sigh of satisfaction. 
‘Works every time,’ the Alicorn thought, grinning to herself. After a few moments, Twilight returned, sheaf’s of notes and a large book held in her telekinesis. 
“I found this book in the Crystal Empire,” Twilight said without preamble. “Or rather, this is a copy of the original book, since it was too old and fragile to move. It was written by Starswirl the Bearded, and is called…”
“The Book of Slumbering Dragon,” Celestia said, interrupting her student. Twilight blinked in surprise.
“Um, yes?” Twilight said, confused. “You know of it?”
“I do. It was Starswirl’s diary, written during the final years of the Great Winter, and well into the reign of the newly formed Equestrian Sovereignty. It was written in code, however, because he kept a lot of notes on magical experiments in there, as well as sensitive intelligence and data. I only read it once, myself. It was given to the library in the Crystal Empire as part of Prince Loyal Flag’s dowry when he married the Queen of the Crystal Empire many centuries ago.” 
“Oh…” Twilight said, scuffing her hoof on the floor. “So, I guess you already know what was inside it, huh?”
“I do. But I am curious: how much have you found out?” There was a hint of steel in the Princess’ voice, and she looked at the purple pony before her with a piercing, critical gaze.
“Um, that Smart Cookie and Clover the Clever were his kids, and that Starswirl knew about the Windigos beforehand, and he seemed to think that the Unicorns were doing something wrong with raising the moon and sun…” Twilight said, listing off the major discovers of hers. She stopped, as she caught sight of her mentor’s steely gaze.
“And that’s it?”
“So far,” Twilight squeaked. Celestia sighed, before promptly levitating the copy out of her student’s grasp, the purple Unicorn wincing at the rough treatment of her own magical field by Celestia’s. 
“Twilight Sparkle, I…” the princess never managed to finish whatever she was about to say, as the door to the library was slammed open, causing the tense student to jump in fright and the tense teacher to drop the book and ignite her horn.
“WAIT!” In the door was a very familiar white Unicorn, panting heavily as she beheld the pair in the library.
“Rarity?!” Twilight gasped, shocked and confused at the appearance of her alabaster friend.
“Yes, it’s me! And Princess Celestia, please don’t punish Twilight!” Rarity said, stalking into the rooming and slamming the front door behind her.
“I understand you’re angry! After all, she betrayed your trust, going behind your back and trying to dig up dirt on your potentially sordid past…”
“Not helping, Rarity!” Twilight hissed, cringing.
“But it’s not all her fault! Blueblood was the one who tempted her onto this path of secrets and lies!”
“Rarity…” Twilight whimpered, wanting to desperately facehoof, but was afraid to look away from the scene in case she needed to step in between her friend and her teacher, whose horn was still glowing.
“It’s alright, Rarity, I’m not going to punish Twilight,” Celestia said, undoing whatever spell had been on her horn with a sigh. “I am not exactly proud of how I reacted, either.”
“…Oh.” There wasn’t much else for Rarity to say. She blinked, befuddled at the sudden turn around. 
“Where’s Spike?” Twilight inquired.
“Oh, I told him to watch the store while I rushed over here,” Rarity explained. “When he told me Princess Celestia was coming to see you, I felt worried at why that might be. So I hurried over to try and dissuade the princess from punishing you.”
“You also know about this?” Celestia asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Err, yes, some. Twilight asked for my help with some of the translation early on, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, so I just settled for getting her tea from time to time,” Rarity said, feeling embarrassed for her outburst.
“And I showed her some of the notes I deciphered,” Twilight added, still looking nervous.
The solar Alicorn sighed heavily.
“It seems that you two are bit more entangled in this than I thought,” Celestia lamented. “And that Blueblood has got you mixed up in his own insecurities. So, there is only one thing I can do.” 
Her horn flashed gold, and a spell rippled outwards, washing through the area. Twilight and Rarity flinched, but relaxed when nothing happened.
“I’ve set up an anti-Spy barrier around the library,” the princess explained, getting comfortable on the couch. “And now, I’m going to ask that you try not to spread what I am about to tell you to anyone, except those I say you can.”
“Wha… why?”
“Because what I am about to tell you is not just the truth about my sister and I, but also tells of the origins of Black Phoenix. It is sensitive information, and very personal.”
“It all began many thousands of years ago, when my family came to this land…” Celestia started, while the two friends settled down with wide eyes to learn, and listen.