“Why don’t you tell them?” Twilight asked quietly, looking through the steam coming off her tea at the older princess.
“Tell them what?”
Twilight sighed, setting down her cup with a quiet clink on the tray. “This morning, while I was out walking around Canterlot, a filly walked up to me and asked what she had to do to have you make her into a princess.”
“And what did you tell her?” Celestia asked, smiling a little smile.
“I told her that it was really tough. I said that you needed to spend a lot of time studying, making friends, showing leadership, and trying new things.”
“That sounds like a very reasonable answer,” Celestia said, lifting her tea in her magic and taking a quiet sip.
“That’s not it. She thinks you made me into a princess!” Twilight pointed her hoof across the table accusingly.
“Well, I did. Technically speaking.” Another sip.
Twilight sighed again. “You know what she meant.”
Celestia’s cup floated back down to the tray. “I do.”
“So, why don’t you tell them?”
“Who says I haven’t?” Celestia smiled enigmatically.
“Please.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “I’ve read every book there is on alicorns since I became one. Not a single one of them mentions how to become an alicorn. Only a few of them even mention that you can become an alicorn, let alone how.”
“And what do they say?”
“The same thing as the papers.” Twilight’s horn glowed as she retrieved Celestia’s daily stack of newspapers from their shelf, letting them fall onto the table with a quiet thump before she began to read out loud.
“Twilight Sparkle Earns Her Wings.” Twilight cleared her throat. “Yesterday evening, Princess Celestia elevated a fourth pony to the status of princess, bestowing her student and protégée, Twilight Sparkle, savior of Equestria, with wings.”
Twilight flipped to a second paper. “This is the second time in ten years that Princess Celestia has raised one of her subjects to alicorn status, after Princess Cadance earned her horn after defeating Lady Prisma.”
Twilight slid that one to the side, revealing a third. “Several nobles in Canterlot have quietly questioned Celestia’s choice, having twice passed them over. ‘Why hasn’t she made any of us into alicorns?’ wondered one anonymous high-ranking noble.”
“Oh, Blueblood,” Celestia said, shaking her head and chuckling quietly.
Twilight let the newspaper fall out of her magic before setting her hoof on top of it. “Everypony thinks you made me into an alicorn!”
Celestia arched an eyebrow. “And?”
Twilight looked levelly across the table at her mentor. “You know that’s not how it happened.”
It was Celestia’s turn to sigh as she rose from her cushion and walked towards the balcony. “I know.”
“So why don’t you tell them?” Twilight asked, tilting her head as she rose from her own cushion to join the larger alicorn, hooking her hooves over the edge of the railing.
“We did, once,” Celestia said quietly, gazing down on the city streets, ponies casting long shadows over the cobblestones as the sun sank towards the horizon.
“Really? When?”
Celestia closed her eyes and shook her head. “It was a long time ago. Luna and I had just ascended to alicornhood – the first ponies ever to do so, to the best of my knowledge.” She chuckled. “Of course, the idea of the alicorn was ancient, so perhaps there was another, long ago. But if so, they left no record of their presence.”
“So why did you stop?”
“Because that knowledge can cause terrible harm.”
Twilight laughed. “How can knowing something like that hurt somepony?”
Celestia’s eyes followed a family – two foals, a mare, and a weak-kneed grandfather as they slowly walked down the street far below. “Tell me, Twilight: do you think that Mister Greenhooves could become an alicorn?”
“Who?”
Celestia nodded her head towards the aged earth pony walking down the street below. “Bareroot Greenhooves, the royal gardener. He has spent his whole life tending to my gardens and the creatures which reside there, never showing a dollop of original magic, nor the inclination to learn it. He has seen many summers. Do you think he could become an alicorn?”
Twilight rubbed her leg with her hoof. “Well, probably not. It would be pretty hard.”
“And what of his daughter, Lemon Seed? While she may have a touch of the exotic with the seeds she sells, she has shown no extreme magical talent above and beyond any other earth pony. She has never studied magic formally, to the best of my knowledge. Do you think that she might someday become an alicorn?”
“Well, no.” Twilight’s ears fell back. “I don’t get why you’re even bringing that up.”
“Because their failure to ascend means that, one day, they are going to die.”
Twilight shivered. “That’s a kind of dark way of looking at it, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps.” Celestia leaned against the railing. “But that doesn’t make it any less true. In the end, either you become an alicorn, or you eventually grow old and frail until you are no longer able to weather the ravages of time.”
“Isn’t that a good reason to tell them?”
Celestia glanced over at her former student. “You just said that Mister Greenhooves and his daughter will never become alicorns.”
Twilight shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”
“How many ponies can become alicorns, Twilight?”
Twilight blinked. “Well, you need to discover a new source of magic, right? So, I suppose as many as there are sources of magic.”
Celestia nodded slightly. “Yes. Or at least, we believe it to be so.”
“So, what’s the big deal? Are you worried that we’ll run out of magic?”
Celestia shook her head. “No, Twilight. I am not.”
“So what is it, then? I mean, I know that not every single pony is going to discover a new source of magic. But how does it hurt to let them know that anypony could become an alicorn if they tried hard enough?”
Celestia sighed and shook her head again. “Luna and I spent the better part of a century after we ascended telling ponies that they, too, could become like us. How many alicorns did my knowledge – and that of my sister – ever create, in all the decades we shared it?”
Twilight opened her mouth, then closed it, licking her lips. “I’ve never met one,” she said cautiously.
“That is because not a single one ascended. For decades, hundreds, maybe thousands tried – and failed. As far as most ponies were concerned, it was a false choice. And so, they chose not to believe they were capable of it.”
“So, what? You don’t tell anypony that they could become an alicorn because it is really hard? That seems kind of silly. I mean, there are lots of things that I can’t do.”
“Are there?” Celestia looked down into her student’s eyes. “Do you think that – given centuries of life – there are things that you could never master, if you truly put your mind to it?”
Twilight laughed a little. “Well, given enough time, anypony could, couldn’t they?”
Celestia’s gaze returned to the family ambling down the street below. “And yet, time is precisely what they lack.”
“Then let them get started early! Don’t wait until they’re as old as Mister Greenhooves or whatever. Let his grandchildren try.”
“But they did. Hundreds of ponies. Maybe thousands.” Celestia’s eyes followed the slow walk of the family down the street. “Nopony wants to lie on their deathbed and know the only reason their last breath escapes is that they weren’t good enough. Or worse, that their loved one only died because they failed in their pursuit of immortality.”
“I don’t think most ponies would think of it that way,” Twilight said, her voice more subdued than it had been moments before.
“Most, no. But some would. Some would struggle their whole lives in the pursuit of eternity, only to be found wanting. To fail to accomplish in fifty summers what Luna did before she was sixteen – it makes a pony bitter. Many blamed us for not teaching them well enough, or for hiding something from them. Or accused us of lying, of keeping the true secret to ourselves, and to make excuses for why others failed to follow in our hoofsteps.” Celestia sighed. “Luna took it especially hard. She spent many nights training her students, trying to guide them towards success, but not a single one of them ever earned their wings.”
“So what,” Twilight said, swiping her hoof through the air, “you lie to them because you’re afraid they’d be bitter? How is telling them any worse than letting them think that you make ponies into alicorns? Prince Blueblood sounded awfully bitter in the newspaper.”
“Have you ever stood by as a dying pony was told by his children that the only reason they’re going to die is because they were too stupid to keep on living?”
Twilight recoiled as if struck. “That’s horrible!”
“And yet, ponies did it.”
“Why would a pony do something like that?” Twilight stamped her hoof on the balcony.
“Because they were afraid. Because they were upset.” Celestia sighed. “Because it seemed so easy to them in retrospect. Why couldn’t anypony else do it when they had managed it so quickly?”
Twilight swallowed. “Oh.” She hesitated for a moment, then stepped up beside her mentor, leaning into Celestia’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s alright.” Celestia smiled weakly. “But you can see, it can cause real harm.”
Twilight stared down at the edge of the balcony, biting her lip as she watched Mister Greenhooves's family amble down the street around the elderly pony. “Is that why you stopped?”
“No, Twilight, it is not. Though we were not the only ponies to share such sentiments with our parents.” Celestia lifted her head, her eyes falling on the alabaster walls of the school just beyond the castle walls. “No, it was only much later that we realized what we had done.”
Twilight followed the other pony’s gaze. “Founded a school?”
Celestia laughed. “Yes, that was one of the bright spots.” She shook her head. “No. We realized that we had stolen away the lives of many promising young ponies, who spent their whole lives – or far too much of them – chasing after something that wasn’t theirs to achieve.”
“Is that really so bad? I mean, I’m sure they must have done some useful things.”
“Oh, it wasn’t all a waste. I was being overdramatic.” Celestia shook her head. “Still, they spent many of their best years on something that was ultimately futile. Many saw themselves as failures, in spite of all their achievements.” Celestia set her hooves on the railing. “Not one of them became an alicorn, and many of them spent far too many years on esoteric experiments instead of simply trying to practice what they were good at and do good things in the world with their talents.”
Twilight leaned over the railing shoulder-to-shoulder with the larger alicorn. “There is more to a young pony’s life than studying,” Twilight quoted.
Celestia laughed. “Indeed. A lesson which was extremely difficult to teach them when they thought that they could live their life after they achieved alicornhood, not realizing that they were sacrificing what little life they had to often achieve nothing at all.”
“I see.” Twilight looked up at Celestia. “So that’s why you lie to them?”
“I simply let them believe what they wish, and let those who would aspire to eternity achieve it on their own. Though every once in a while, I give them a little nudge here and there to guide them.” Celestia winked at Twilight.
Twilight chuckled quietly. “More than a nudge, I think.”
“You give yourself too little credit. That journal had been gathering dust on a shelf for quite some time. It was you who found the key.” Celestia reached over to rest a gold-shod hoof on the younger alicorn’s shoulder.
“Still…” Twilight sighed and rested her chin on her hooves, looking down at the city. “It doesn’t feel good enough.”
Celestia smiled gently. “You are a princess now, too. What would you do differently?”
Twilight stared down at the city in silence for several long minutes, watching the gardener’s family walk past the closed gate in front of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. The distant laughter of foals echoed across the courtyard, interrupting the sound of birds calling to one another in the garden below as they hunted for bugs. Her eyes flicked across the city, past the ancient towers and newly-constructed buildings, then away, to the shape of Ponyville clinging to the horizon.
“I don’t know.”