Celestial's Half-hours

by Celestial

A Mind Left Wandering [Slice of Life]

That afternoon, Princess Celestia thought of spending her free hour with just herself, claiming a balcony of the palace and resting on the sun-touched marble, contemplating the city's hustle and bustle down below.

She took a deep breath of the fresh air, and observed her little ant subjects for a while. Her thoughts drifted to the current taxes, if she should visit Manehattan again soon, perhaps deigning the griffins another diplomatic gift before Hearth's Warming Eve, how Twilight Sparkle was growing up to be a studious, responsible mare, how well would she take on her destiny that Celestia herself had chosen for her, if all this would have gone differently had Discord given her and her sister different powers...

She sighed. She remembered now why she kept herself busy with duties all the time: having an empty hour of schedule never failed to resurface her first years, and all the murky thoughts and emotions that followed.

Of how Discord had 'crafted them', as his words were, 'whole cloth', with the intent of watching over the ponies under his domain, tired as he was to keep them alive one by one.

Of how they learned from the ponies that there had been a time without the Avatar of Chaos subverting everything to its will, and all the beauty that it had been found there.

Of how impossibly attached to the past those ponies had seemed to the two newborn alicorns --eager to fulfill their purpose, but also eager to learn-- and how in a world of change, they had found the most solid knowledge to spring from the ponies' unanimous, unending nostalgia.

Of how the little ponies had devoted their now-useless talents to painting, describing, chanting, recounting all that was good and beautiful in their past homeland and transmitting them to two eager, overgrown fillies.

Of how Discord had created, in his callous haste, two rulers that would relate more to their subjects than their uncaring and self-centered father.

Of how fast they had grown longing for a place that had never been there for them, and how they resolved to get it back, no matter the cost.

Of the time they finally got their cutiemarks, claiming the celestial bodies for themselves, and decided to call themselves Celestia and Luna.

Of how one day, not far from the castle Discord had set up just for them, they discovered something that would change everything.

Of how, wielding together the Elements of Harmony, they confined their father into eternal stone.

The guilt always threatened to resurface at this point, but she remembered it hadn't been only her choice. The Tree of Harmony itself had been a last resort from Mother Gaia to bulwark the Love and Order left in Equestria, coalescing them into something not vegetable, not mineral, not magical, but all three, or perhaps neither. Living Stones. Crystallized Virtues. Abstracted Beings. Condensed Vibrations of Love. Natural Artifacts. Possibly the most paradoxical anythings Equestria would ever contain.

It felt strange at times for her to contemplate that more than a thousand years had passed, during which she basically managed to make stuff up as she went along, giving a unified rule to a race that had known nothing of the sort as far as history remembered.

She couldn't suppress a small chuckle when considering the irony in having offered willingly the rule of the land to two literal spawns of Chaos.

Well, at least it's been two until one of them had spiraled out of control and in her madness, threatened to kill her and shroud the land in eternal night.

She couldn't shake that terrible feeling, that fear that sat in her belly, wedged in like a black nail, preventing her from completely relaxing, that maybe, maybe she wasn't completely sane either, sane as a sane little pony was.

That maybe Discord itself had gifted them with his twisted perspective, unknowing of a pony's viewpoint about life and pleasure and fear, and that she would never really see the world like a common pony does.

Both she and her sister had struggled for long years to finally appreciate and revere the world as the ponies saw it, and even then, they would never feel they were peers to the little ones, no matter how much they tried.

Which perhaps, all things considered, might have been for the best afterall; an immortal ruler would have different visions about existence by necessity.She was coping well besides, so her best bet was to just carry on.

She wondered just what awaited in the future for her little ponies, and if she would really want to expedite the process. The rediscovery of great and potentially terrible powers. Advancement both technological and magical. Possibly a timid probing, followed by a torrential expansion, onto the Outer Planes, and later even new dimensions. She giggled, thinking that some thousands years in the future, her ponies could become beings of mere soul, energy and magic, jumping between realms of existence with the ease they could breathe presently, and crafting experiences simply unimaginable from here.

But, she thought, that moment would have to wait. She knew that her ponies weren't ready yet, and wouldn't for a long time still; she knew that hardships and battles would have to be fought to get there, and she couldn't bear herself to expedite the process. Her current role was to watch over their precious lives and make sure that they possessed the conditions to be happy: pushing them forcefully into a revolution would only bring more disparity and misery, even if only in the short term. "Don't fix what isn't broken', she always repeated herself, no matter ho much all this kept nagging her.

Fancy that, how an eternal being would care a lot more for the short-term than many of her subjects, be they artists or budding scientists or philosophers or historians. What she concerned herself with was the present state of her realm, and so such far-sighted activities would have to be left to the mortals.

She knew it was foolish, because she was denying the present ponies all kinds of future improvements in quality and duration of life.

She knew it was cowardly, because she was just postponing the problem instead of facing it head-on.

She knew it was silly, because she would eventually push it herself out of sheer boredom with the world, if the world didn't.

Yet, every time she looked at her guards living long lives in time of peace, or fillies frolicking in the Royal Gardens, she was reminded that she wouldn't bear putting any more strain than necessary on any one of them. She really loved them too much, she mused. They would have to settle for what she would offer her, a peaceful nation with no real worries of famine or social disasters for any point in the future, and let them come up with means to subvert that on their own.

She smiled, as she rose from her spot on the balcony, walking the halls in the direction of the royal carriage that was most certainly awaiting her, for her next appointment.

Author's Note:

FFAF #5