II
Princess Celestia, guiding spirit, protector, and Grand Diarch of Equestria, Ex Solis Invictus, bit her the inside of her cheek. Hard.
She walked through what must have been the nursery, looking carefully at each of the five little cribs, all five carefully stocked with soft blankets and pillows and stuffed toys. She pulled one out, a light grey pony with a string mane, donning a pair of tiny blue trousers. It floated and danced like a thing almost alive in the golden glow of her magic. A soft sound escaped from her mouth, a quick exhale, a cross between a sigh and a sob, punctuating the stillness of the castle,
Not the original of course. The design was rather ubiquitous, something that could be seen anywhere, and he original Smarty Pants would have been over three hundred years old...but for a second, she had almost thought in was.
The corner of her mouth twitched upwards slightly. Still she bit down on her cheek.
It had been so long ago, when Twilight had come under her care, cheerfully dragging that doll behind her wherever she went. Over three hundred years.
A wonderful, terrible, time.
Still gently toting the toy in her magic, Celestia found herself walking through a long hallway to a pair of double doors. Magically sealed. They swung open gently as she snapped the enchanted bonds, bringing with them a gust of stale air, in stark contrast to the warm scents of life that filled the rest of the castle. Lavender potpourri, filling little pots scattered around the house, the fragrance of Twilight's favorite Earl Grey, a half-pot of which sat cooling on a table upstairs, faintly, the smell of baby powder, and, just underneath that, a familiar black currant shampoo.
None of it permeated this room, sealed up like a crypt.
Inside were Seven thrones, six large, one tiny, all covered in several centuries worth of dust.
Even for somepony as old as Celestia, sometimes the time seemed like an eternity.
The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.
"Sister?"
With a barely choked back yelp, Celestia turned to the door, the faux-Smarty Pants dropping to the floor, wings twitching half open as if preparing to carry her into the air.
"Luna," she exhaled, shoulders relaxing
"I located the book, Twilight hid it well." The darker alicorn spoke softly, her tone reserved and measured, as always. Even though her sister had long since picked up modern speech, she had always preferred to remain formal in tone and in language. Sometimes Celestia wondered if the slightly anachronistic dialect was Luna's way of preserving her past, a small piece of her that would not succumb to the ever changing culture of pony kind.
She enjoyed listening to her sister talk.
Golden glow enveloping her horn, Celestia gently took the tome, her magic shaking off the last remnants of the concealing spell that had been applied to it and flipping it open to the spell Twilight had used, staring at it darkly.
"Are you alright, Sister?"
Celestia did not respond.
"Tia." Luna spoke, more insistently this time. The words accompanied by a soft nicker as she leaned her head her sister's "It's okay."
"We should have destroyed this."
"It might be needed again to protect Equestria."
"At what cost?" Celestia shouted, rounding on Luna, wings unfurling, air kicking up plumes of dust from the thrones surrounding them "How many times do they have to die?"
"Nopony blames you for those sacrifices."
"You did," Celestia said softly.
"That was a long time ago. You know I understand now."
"I do."
"You shouldn't."
"She does"
"Twilight Sparkle will come around as well"
"After a thousand years on the moon?" Celestia's face contorted into a mask of disgust, voice cracking.
Luna flinched slightly at the sharpness of the retort "You did to me what you had to. I was a danger to myself, and to you and-"
"And it was my fault! You had every right to despise me. She has every right to despise me!"
"For saving her life?"
Celestia deflated, shoulder's slumping, wings slowly curling back to her sides, gaze traveling about the throne room "For taking everything else."
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Thank you. Tias perspective was needed right now.
As always, eagerly looking forward to more
kay it needs a lot of editing. a lot of editing. still i really like that something seems to have occured here. die again........ hmmmm.
either way i am curiuos to see what occurs now. i have a feeling that celestia would never harm them, but twilight is definitely not in the bset state of mind here.
A nice change of perspective, shame Twi doesn't see it for what it was.
Grief is a powerful force.
But yay for this still being alive! Can't wait for more
Finally, another beautifully written chapter. Lovely!
also i am quite gleeful that this is continuing
4819068
Well, we really don't see it for what it is, considering we don't know exactly what "it" is.
Phew, i was getting worried what with the lack of updates. Now gimme some Elements Of Foalhood!
Sounds amazing :O
And that's the story how I've got 185'th fic on my read later list. =_="
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I've got at least 830... XD
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That's... oh.. wow.
I was hoping for a longer update.
Cute story what's going to happen next?
4819077 And the mystery makes it so mysterious!
... okay I'll shut up now
Favorited so I can read it when more chapters have been released.
4819135 im not on for a 2 days and i get 894
I was glad to see this get updated! I'm also happy to see we'll get to view Celestia's perspective as well. Very cool.
This really needed editting though. For one, it doesn't follow the same format the story had before, where the first paragraph has no indent and all of the proceeding ones do and there were parts filled with really simple errors like this:
I'm glad to see something come out, but this seems like it's "Hot off the Presses" and could've done with being held back for a day.
So. Where are Twilight, Spike and the foals? I know we will eventually find out what exactly happened to Twilight's friends.
Oh look, another story demonstrating why Twilight is utterly unfit for immortality (and, by association, the author as well).
I, on the other hand, am perfectly suited for immortality!
I mean, everyone on Earth could just drop dead tomorrow and all I'd do is giggle about it!
(The best immortals are sociopaths!)
4819068 When the grief doesn't end, however, it become nothing but self-destructive.
Emotionally unstable, intellectually irrational, excessively sentimental people should never have power of any kind.
4819175 same after such a gap.
But still if Celestia realizes what SHE has done. Then why not let Twilight have her reborn friends.
Well, this is thought provoking.
So this isn't the first time Twilight has pulled something like this?
Those curtains on her castle must be damn majestic.
The last two sentences need terminal punctuation (periods).
Also, this is very bare-bones dialogue. It kinda works, accelerating the pace of the story at that point by physically making the reader get through it faster, but I still think you might have been better served by actually describing, even briefly, the rising tension as the two sisters spoke. As it is, the next piece of description we get comes off as sudden considering how strong "disgust" is.
IT LIVES
So this wasn't the first time Twilight tried to ressurect the others?
4819747 i think it is implying something else than her ressurrecting her friends over and voer again. especially since if it had happened already celestia would have caught on much quicker.
No idear what's goin' on.
So much dialogue at the end there...
May want to break it there. We get it, there's urgency. But why? Are they disgusted? Worried? Show us please, or else readers like me will imagine them like boring guards or sexual bliss.
So... now Twillight is a mother of her friends. Hmm... Anyway. If her friends will be adult, I think, that their friendship won't the same as earlier.
4819938 I think it's more along the lines of Celestia resurrecting them to wield the elements several times over the centuries, and then watching them die.
Can't wait to read more of this!
Jeez, now i'm anxious all over again
please bring out the next chapter soon
4819152
After rereading the other chapters, I think Twilight's attitude is justified. Celestia is swimming in guilt in this chapter. She even hates herself enough to want to be blamed and despised. Yeah, Celestia done goofed something up maybe not intentionally, but that's kind of the price you pay when you manipulate people.
Not much can break Twilight from Celestia, but if there is anything, any reason, it's usually a good one.
Finnaly!
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I respectfully disagree wholeheartedly.
4819850
I also disagree here (on the point that the dialogue is too terse). That is how they're speaking to each other.
I very much liked the style of this chapter.
4823376 You misread what I wrote. My complaint isn't about the words inside quotation marks. It's that the story has no other words in that section. The remark about "disgust" makes that clear.
Such a long wait for such a short chapter.
It's fine though. A few minor errors:
The, there should be a space between the ellipse (...) and but (old... but), and it.
Need a period here. Also, in the paragraph directly following, use Luna instead of the darker alicorn. We certainly don't want you accidentally catching Lavender Unicorn Syndrome.
Another period here.
This line needs a period inside the quotation marks. So does the next. Then in the second paragraph after it, with sharpness of the retort, we need a period.
Instead of a comma, we need a semi-colon.
That's just about it. But the story is going well. The dialogue seems a bit beige at points, but other than that I'm liking where this is going.
-Spirit
setting shields to max in case of feels!
Very good. Please update quickly!
4823731
No, I didn't misread: I must just not have made my point properly. The two sisters are being terse, snapping at each other, and the lack of descriptive text in the dialogue is a stylistic choice that reflects that mood, resulting in the reader reading the dialogue in a terse manner. I guess what I'm saying is that the lack of descriptive text serves as a kind of implicit, artistic description of the dialogue.
I can't wait until the next chapter! I'm so excited
~Minty
I agree with her ^
~Mercy
4825739 I guess we simply disagree on what the term "dialogue" includes. [edit: Please read postscript.] To me, it means simply the words the characters are speaking to each other. (This could arguably include things we are told they tell each other, but that's irrelevant here either way.) Those words, in this case, in my opinion, are "bare-bones" both in and of themselves (which is fine and fitting with the tension of the scene), but also in combination with the fact that they are left to stand on their own with no supportive description (which I do not call "dialogue"). To me, it doesn't come off simply as terse; it feels stark, skeletal, borderline incomplete. This feeling is only exacerbated by the sudden return of full narrative description immediately afterword, and in the middle of the same conversation. To you, did that mean that their conversation became less terse? Did the return of narration give you a sense that the mood had changed between them? If so, how did you feel it changed?
If the author was actually playing with the rules of writing to achieve the effect you describe through what would otherwise be called bad writing, I can only submit that their experiment has yielded considerable (though not universal) negative results. And also that perhaps they should concentrate on making sure all the punctuation is correct.
[edit: P.S. No, I was being a bit dishonest above. I'll let what I wrote stand and put my remarks here instead of rewriting. Instead of using the term "bare-bones" with a double meaning as I claimed above, I was using the term "dialogue" imprecisely. (I do, however, agree with what I claimed I was saying.) I do normally consider "dialogue" to be the words between two characters, but I also used the term in my earlier post to include the narrative description framing and describing the dialogue, the latter of which (or lack thereof) being what I objected to. I apologize for the dishonesty I engaged in in the first edition of this post. I stand by the narrow definition of "dialogue", and apologize for using the term incorrectly, and for any confusion it may have caused you about the meaning of the term.]
The perspective helps point out that more is going on than is known. And I enjoy the way its going already. I hope to see much more in time.
4826093
I do agree that in the strictest sense of the "dialogue" between the two sisters is solely what they say (between the quotation marks). While I do agree that the lack of descriptive text doesn't truly mean that the sisters are being more terse, I feel that it gives the reader this sense in a more artistic way (show - don't tell!) than adding "she snapped..." as description.
Meh, both ways have their benefits. I'm just arguing that I don't feel that this stretch of the story is lacking or incomplete because of its lack of description of the dialogue. I understand that it does feel this way to you - we're just of differing opinions.
Now we see things from the sisters' POV, and we see that, yeah, a lot of what we saw was indeed Twilight's own twisted and PARANOID POV.
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That's all? I have 1,502!
never stop writing you are incredibly talented in writing.
I'm going to edit the shit out of this, and you're. Going. To. Love it!?!
