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In Which the Moon Fails to Set2,603 words
In Which Celestia Continues To Sleep2,510 words
In Which the Sun is Finally Raised2,476 words
In Which Celestia Wakes2,355 words

In Which Celestia Wakes

Celestia Sleeps In
In Which Celestia Wakes
Admiral Biscuit

Celestia dreamed.

She dreamed she was but a foal, close to her mother's side. The meadowlands stretched in every direction as far as she could see, a sea of waving green grasses under a cloudless blue sky. There was so much of it that she knew even if she lived a thousand years, she'd never reach the end of the plains, but it didn't matter. She was perfectly content to graze along with the herd, slowly making their way across the endless prairie. Perhaps one day she might have a foal of her own, and perhaps that foal might one day reach the end of the grasslands, but she doubted it. There was nothing more to the world than the grass and the sky; one was unreachable, and the other filled her belly and made her happy.

Celestia twitched on her bed and gave off a very unprincesslike—but adorable—snort, smacked her lips, and yawned.

The movement of her head was just enough to bring a ray of sunlight directly into her eye, where it seared through her optic nerve and directly into her brain.

Celestia did what any half-asleep sun-Goddess would do when faced with that situation: she squinted her eyes shut, and—by magical feel alone—pushed the sun back down to the horizon. If anypony had been in the room with her, they would have heard her mutter “five more minutes, Mom,” before drifting back off to sleep.

Twilight peeled the pan-holder off her horn and tossed it unceremoniously to the floor. Off in the distance, she could hear the sound of countless cocks rising to celebrate the sun's arrival.

“I did it,” she declared, proudly staring at the glowing orb in the sky until her eyes teared up. “I raised the sun!” Twilight, now mostly blinded, began a victory dance which could have been mistaken for a gran mal seizure.

“We hath done it—by which we mean we and thee.” Luna held up a hoof to cover a yawn. “Forgive us, Twilight Sparkle. ‘Tis well past our bedtime, and we must needs retire.”

“You go do that, Princess.” Twilight crossed her forearms and leaned back. She had suddenly come to the unfortunate realization that her dancing ability not only left something to be desired, but was also—in the words of the two-bit ticket a sunglasses-wearing batpony had just hoofed her—’a crime against Equanity.’

As Luna walked away, Twilight pondered the ticket she held in her aura. While it was admirable that the castle guard took their jobs so seriously—especially since he was technically off-duty after sunrise—the fact that she’d be paying it with her government salary rankled her just a bit. Perhaps when she got back home, she’d come up with a better method of redistribution of tax bits and send a letter to Celestia: a little bit of light reading for when the eldest Princess finally awoke.

Just then, the sun twitched briefly in the sky, and unceremoniously plummeted back below the horizon.

Twilight blinked, not sure what she wasn’t seeing. She still had spots in her eyes from staring at the sun.

Luna, however, had no illusions about what she did see: the temperamental, slippery sun had defied their commands. The younger diarch stomped her hoof against the balcony hard enough to crack the marble and slipped the pan-holder back over her horn.

“It is on.” she hissed through clenched teeth.

What happened next would be recorded in the history books as the Great Temporal Confusion. All throughout Equestria, mares and stallions with timepiece-themed cutie marks were scrambling around, dutifully setting clocks to 6:51 am, plus an appropriate allowance for the sun's current azimuth. This particular adjustment was hotly contested; the Acolytes of Mareona had one opinion and the Sacred Order of Timekeepers had a different one. Even the pegasi had once been drawn into an argument between the two sects, and after taking heavy casualties had retreated and thereafter claimed that they were only responsible for weather. Subsequent weather timetables had only listed generalities, such as “morning,” “afternoon,” and “today (or tomorrow if today turns out to be a good day for napping).” Thus, it was not laziness that led pegasi to be so lackadaisical when it came to matters of time, but simple self-preservation. Sadly, that important lesson was not taught in pegasus school, since napping had also been more important to the pegasi than egghead stuff like writing down history. Over the years, their artists had attempted to recreate the great pegasus deeds, although as it was generally done using clouds, there was a certain lack of permanence to the historical record.

As the sun bounced up and down like a gigantic fusioning yo-yo, earth ponies and unicorns throughout Equestria frantically took sights and measurements with their sextants, antikythera, and theodolites. Then they flipped through their manuals, and reset the clock upon which they were working. Ladders were taken down only to be put back up again, clocksprings were unwound and rewound, hourglasses were flipped and shaken, and water clocks were drained and refilled. By mutual consensus, nopony did anything with the sundials, save one: Merry May kept pushing the gnomon of the Maretania sundial back and forth until it finally broke off. Satisfied with her senseless act of vandalism, she flew off to take a nap.

The kerfuffle raged on for an hour. Or two. Or maybe only five minutes. It was impossible to be sure.

Throughout the great cities, unicorn after unicorn joined the fight, dimly remembering that once upon a time their ancestors had controlled the sun, and some primitive urge caused them to walk out into the streets, cast their aura towards it, and once again fulfill their tribe's destiny.

Tragically, none of them knew what time it actually was, so their efforts were rather counterproductive. Some of them tried to raise it, some of them tried to put it down, and a few myopic monoceroses mistook streetlights for the sun, sending those shooting skyward or smashing streetward.

In the midst of all this chaos, the Nobles' Council decided to hold a referendum to determine whether there was a need to decide if they should cast a vote to have a meeting discussing control of the sun. However, they were unable to muster a quorum, due to the fact that North Canterlot was Acolyte territory and East Canterlot was controlled by the iron hoof of the Sacred Order.

Celestia noticed none of this. She was still sacked out on her bed, totally oblivious to the growing disaster all around her. At one point, a particularly loud cry of frustration had caused her to roll over; from that point on, her back was to the inconsistent sun.

However, all of this finally came to a head at 9:01 Acolyte time, or 3:76 Sacred Order time. The sun was stuck on mid-morning in Canterlot, while Vanhoover was still being mooned. One last off-target unicorn spell clanged into the moon, and then there was a sound like a million Breezies simultaneously sneezing: silence.

Celestia woke.

Celestia woke with the grace becoming of an ancient alicorn. She yawned and stretched out her wings and legs, flicked her tail, and opened her eyes.

Her first realization that something was wrong was the sunlight in the room. For over a thousand years, there had been no sunlight unless she wished there to be, and it was therefore quite disorienting to wake up and see it shining into her room despite her.

One look at her clock provided no clues as to the cause. The clock—firmly embedded in the wall—was petrified, its stone face forever frozen in an expression of horror. Inasmuch as a clock can have an expression of horror, that is.

She frowned, and her frown only deepened as she slipped her hooves into her golden shoes and draped her golden petryal around her neck. By the time she had set her crown in place atop her ethereal mane—a process so complicated that there was an entire library wing devoted to it—her frown had gone from 'mildly concerned' to 'vaguely worried,' due in a large part to the screams and shouts from the streets below.

Celestia crossed her bedroom at a brisk walk and pushed open the great double doors, which were still slightly ajar because Twilight hadn't thought to close them all the way.

When she cast her eyes upon the street, her worst fears were realized. All throughout the city, ponies were aimlessly galloping in the streets or lancing their magic into the heavens, and not a single clock showed the same time.

It was pure bedlam.

Once upon a time, there had been no clocks, save for sundials. Back in those days, if Celestia slept in a bit, nopony would ever know, because sundials don’t work at night.

Indeed, if it had been up to Celestia, other forms of timekeeping would never have been invented. In a way, it was actually her fault—since, by some measure, it had been up to her. One of the castle chefs, knowing of Celestia’s love of soft-boiled eggs, had invented a simple minute-glass, which replaced the rather uncertain method of using a portable sundial. It was not long before another cook had improvised a time-candle, in order to make cakes just the way Celestia liked them, and from there it had been a long, slippery slope to the predicament which she currently found herself in.

Altogether, it was quite disappointing to see such a useful invention perverted into . . . this. What good was being a nearly all-powerful goddess if she couldn’t sleep in sometimes? And why did things fall apart so quickly when she wasn’t there to straighten them out? Luna had slept through a changeling invasion, and nothing bad had come from that. Certainly, there had been less chaos.

Nonetheless, there was nothing for it now. She couldn’t ban non-sun-based timekeeping devices—not if she still wanted to eat fluffy, moist cake, anyway. Occasional panics like this were the price of progress, that was all.

She splayed her hooves out on the balcony and tilted her head back. A golden nimbus flashed around her horn as she gathered her power to herself. Energy coursed through her and she tilted her head back and let it go, let it go.

The sun slid sideways across the celestial sphere, pushing the pock-marked moon below the Vanhoover horizon as it went: all the way to the peak of the heavens, shining proudly down on the ponies below.

A moment later, as if by magic, every clock in Equestria showed high noon.

• • •

High atop the Ponyville clock tower, a blue unicorn mare with a toothpaste mane and a dun-colored earth pony stallion had been arguing bitterly about what time it actually was, which had escalated into all four faces of the clock showing different times. When the sun screeched to a halt directly above the tower, the two of them paused. Dr. Hooves looked down at the base of the tower, observing that it cast no shadow in any direction; Minuette consulted her book of tables. Both of them turned back to face the back face of the clock, just in time for it to be blasted by solar magic.

The two ponies narrowed their eyes and turned to face each other, brows furrowed and forehooves scraping at the open-mesh ponywalk that surrounded the clock mechanism.

Minuette shoved her book back in her hammerspace and pulled out her backstaff, twirling it around a hoof. The doctor clenched his teeth tightly around his octant, and stared unblinkingly into the unicorn’s baby blues. A gear in the clock lurched, and from above the duo, there was a loud click as the release lever came off its stop. A quiet whirr as the fan fly came up to speed, and then they could only hear the tolling of the bells—iron bells! Keeping time, time, time in a sort of runic rhyme.

As the last echoes of the bells bells bells faded away into oblivion, Dr. Hooves chuckled and Minuette began to giggle. They tossed aside their instruments and came together.

Then they kissed.

Far across Ponyville, in the Crusader's treehouse, Sweetie Belle scratched 'sun-goddess' off the list of potential cutie marks, and moved on to 'arsonist,' an activity which all three crusaders could participate in equally. Incidentally, that would not be their most destructive cutie mark attempt; on a scale of 1 to 10, it would rate at best a 6.

Throughout town, shutters were unlatched and bunker doors were thrown open. Ponies climbed back out into the open air, most of them breathing sighs of relief that they had lived through whatever had just happened. As the dogs of the Flower Trio's bolt-hole were released, one particular stallion had a grin on his face that would last for an entire week.

Fluttershy was still at her cottage, trying to coordinate bedtimes between her nocturnal, diurnal, and crepuscular animals. She told herself that once she finally got things settled, she was going to write a strongly-worded letter to Canterlot. Discord just watched the events continue to unfold; even by his standards, the day had been marvelously chaotic thus far, and he was a big believer in not trying to improve upon perfection.

Back in the treebrary, Applejack threw caution to the wind and embraced Rarity. Rainbow woke up from her nap, blinking blearily, and then launched herself outside when it became obvious that Applejack might also attempt to hug her. Spike waited for a hug from Rarity long enough for it to get kind of awkward, and then he grumbled and put the Elements of Harmony back into their protective suitcase.

Pinkie, who had long made her peace with things that were out of her control, pronked back to the bakery.

And out in front of Sweet Apple Acres, Big Mac's cock proudly stood, welcoming the coming of a new day.

Author's Note:

As always, click HERE for the blog! You'll learn all sorts of fun stuff!

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