Celestia's Story
They call me "alicorn." It's an odd name, but fitting in its way.
If you look in the dictionary, you will find two definitions for the word. The first, and most common, is that it refers to winged Unicorns. Specifically, two of them: my sister and I. Genetics and chance do occasionally result in other Unicorns with vestigial or functional wings, like my dear niece Cadance, but they are a different breed, and the word is rarely applied to them.
The second definition, now rarely used outside of medical fields, refers to the material of a Unicorn's horn. This definition is much older, and it is much more closely related to the first than most ponies think. Allow me to explain.
My sister and I were born different. It was only 150 years after Equestria's founding, and marriage between the the tribes was still quite rare. Our understanding of the genetics of that sort of interbreeding, and of genetics in general, was very limited. So you can imagine the surprise of our Earth Pony parents when our mother gave birth to a winged unicorn, and then only a few years later, a second.
Our parents, may their souls be forever at peace in the Wondrous Elsewhere, raised us with all of the love and caring two foals could possibly wish for. I will not say that we had an easy childhood, for there was always work to be done, but it was a beautiful one, and we learned all of the virtues Earth Ponies hold dear: honesty, tenacity, joy, and humility.
But we were not only Earth Ponies, and we were never limited in exploring our mixed heritage. Shortly after my tenth birthday, and my sister's eighth, I began to take an interest in the work of the Pegasus Ponies who flew overhead and arranged the clouds and the weather. One day I called one down, and we spoke at length about the sky and the air and the clouds. He quickly became a dear friend to both my sister and myself, and we learned from him the character of the Pegasi: courageous and free-spirited, loyal and kind. And from the day we met him, our farm had the most perfect weather in the entire land, for he also taught us how to move the clouds and bring the rain.
But neither were we only Pegasi. By my fourteenth birthday, I had still not found my special talent: the one ability with which I would forever define myself, and which would bring forth what we now call a Cutie Mark. In search of answers, my sister and I bid a fond farewell to our beloved parents, full of promises to return one day with our heads held high and our souls and flanks emblazoned with new purpose, and set off to the Unicorn city of Canterlot. There we learned of the spirit of the Unicorn Ponies: generosity and grace, nobility and magic. And there we finally found our special talents.
It had ever been, since long before the founding of Equestria, the duty and privilege of the Unicorn Ponies to use their unique magic to bring about the Day and Night. Seeking to learn more of our roots, we joined those who had already taken up that sacred mantle: myself in the Ministry of the Sun, and my sister in the Lunar Council. We were greeted with curiosity and some uncertainty at first due to our uniqueness, but we were never shown hostility for it, and we soon proved ourselves as capable as any of our peers, earning our places and cementing our friendships there.
It was at our first Summer Solstice as members of the Ministry and Council that the moment we had been waiting for finally arrived. We had each been chosen to lead our respective groups in the Grand Rising that year, and as we stood facing each other on the great dais, we felt an energy in the air that was much more than the sum of the Unicorn magic we were guiding. The Sun and Moon welcomed our touches, almost cried out for them, and the stage we stood upon was bathed in their light as they traded places in the ancient ritual.
The gasps and murmurs of our audience told us that something unusual was happening, and it was followed by an awed silence as the light faded. We stood before them as more than ponies in that moment, still clothed in the power of our celestial charges, and even the unicorns who had stood with us watched us with a surprised reverence, the magic they had never had the chance to cast still glowing on their horns.
Then the spell was broken by a soft sound like the tinkling of glass chimes, and our flanks lit up with the appearance of the symbols we wear to this very day: the emblems of the Sun and Moon. A great cheer went up all around us, and the solemnity of the ritual was forgotten as friends from both on the stage and off it swarmed us with embraces and congratulations.
Naturally, the first thing we did as soon as the festival ended was take to the skies and fly as fast as we could back to our old home to give our parents the news. There seems to be an unwritten rule of narratives like this one which states that, having achieved their greatest goal, the joy of this wonderful moment must be shattered when the heroes return home to find that their old homestead is no more, or that their parents had passed away in their absence, or that they had arrived just in time to hear their most likely trite and cliche dying words. I have never seen the appeal in such cruel twists of fate, and I can assure you that it was not so with us.
Our home was just as we had left it, other than that it had been spring then, and our parents, as hale and hearty as ever, welcomed us in with open arms. We babbled excitedly about our time in Canterlot over a delicious Earth Pony dinner of baked potatoes and corn, and our parents beamed with pride at the mares their two daughters had become. We spent the night and left the next morning, after a great many more hugs and nuzzles and promises to write.
The years in Canterlot passed quickly after that. We soon became the leaders of our respective councils, and over time the sizes of the groups began to dwindle. Not because of any disharmony or lack of interest, but because as ponies retired or moved on to take other jobs, there was simply no need to replace them. Where a score of Unicorns had previously grouped together their magic in a clumsy effort to force the Sun and Moon into their places, my sister's and my own mastery and growing power allowed us to do it with less and less assistance, and then finally, alone.
As the years passed, we became increasingly aware of how different we truly were from other ponies. Where others aged, we simply grew stronger. Even as we welcomed our elderly parents into our Canterlot home to spend their twilight years in well-deserved peace and comfort, we looked hardly a day older than we had upon our first visit to them those many years ago.
They passed peacefully some years later, and it was as happy a goodbye as there has ever been. Even as we ushered them through the final veil into the Wondrous Elsewhere, there was nothing but joy in their hearts at the honest life they had lived and the two daughters they had raised. And we shared their joy, and we knew that they would live on in the love they taught us, as we passed that same love on to all the little ponies who were increasingly beginning to look to us as figures of respect and authority.
Soon after that, we began to change with age again. But instead of becoming weak, our bones growing brittle and our sight going dim, we seemed to grow with the faith in us which grew among our ponies. Each aspect of our heritage strengthened: our horns became longer and our magic more powerful, our wings spread wider and our flight became more graceful, and our bodies grew larger and stronger, until we stood at least a head over any other ponies. We became the living ideals of female beauty, growing to become the noble and almost divine leaders our ponies envisioned us as. All the while, we showered our little ponies with all of our own love and affection, and Equestria prospered. We were each given the title of Princess, to signify the high status we had grown into.
The term "alicorn" refers to the material of a Unicorn's horn, and it is that material which focuses and shapes a Unicorn's unique magic. But Unicorn Ponies are not the only ponies with magic, and they are not the only ponies with alicorn. A Pegasus Pony's alicorn is in the bones of her wings, allowing them to push her far faster than they could without magic, and in her hooves, with which she manipulates the clouds. An Earth Pony's alicorn is in the bones of her body, giving her a near-unbreakable strength and resilience.
But my sister and I are all of those things, and something more besides. As we came into our power, as we exercised each aspect of our heritage, our alicorn grew and strengthened and expanded, until we became something which was both all and none of the three.
We became alicorn.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- The Equestrian Gentlecolt · 1.1k words · 82 2 · 1.4k views
- BrassHeart · 1.8k words · 159 5 · 5.7k views
- The Equestrian Gentlecolt · 1.2k words · 153 3 · 5.2k views
- The Equestrian Gentlecolt · 4.8k words · 61 1 · 2.9k views
- Ponysopher · 4.6k words · 53 1 · 1.4k views
- Ezn · 1.2k words · 143 3 · 2.5k views
- Baby Seal Burritos · 7k words · 67 2 · 2.6k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.034 seconds
Total duration
1,008 users online
4,027 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
That certainly is an interesting take on the subject.
Very well written and amazing from my end.
-Randomosity19
Bravo, sir. I wish my random thoughts were this awesome.
Well, fancy that! A wonderful explanation that actually makes sense in regards of the name 'alicorn', but yet doesn't quite answer how genetics were scrambled so unusually to even create Celestia and Luna...
Either way I don't really care, because this provides a unique view on how they came to play such a crucial role and strengthen the ties with each 'tribe' and truly unite ponies.
Great work,
Frostwyrm
Hmm, so alicorn itself is simply the essence of the different talents of the three races. And an "alicorn" is just an embodiement, persay, of those three talents. That's an interesting concept, and actually quite believable, although the way that you phrase it almost makes it come across as it being possible for anypony to become alicorn, yet we know this isn't possible. Any one of the three normal races doesn't have the innate alicorn of the other two races, so a unicorn can't strengthen the alicorn of a pegasus, for example. Or, at least, if it is possible to do this, we don't know about it. Celestia and Luna were exceptions because they were born this way, while everypony else is born into a specific type of alicorn, and those like Cadence aren't "true" alicorns. Unless they also have the potential to become "true" alicorns like Celestia and Luna. Now that I think about it, were Celestia and Luna like Cadence originally, but became something more through their growth? It would make sense, or at least it would to my mind.
Never mind my ramblings on the subject, I enjoyed the story, and I understand the message you are trying to get across. It's nice to read something a little different and worded so well.
It gives a good possible theory of how Luna and celestia came into power. It was a nice read and I would recommend this to all of my brony friends that happen to like the two princeses.
Too bad Cadence...
Bravo, good sir. Have a moustache.
+1 for bucking the trend and not describing Celestia and Luna as all-powerful goddesses who've existed since the beginning of the world. I don't know why so many fics go down that path.
-1 for describing Cadence as an alicorn. She's a unicorn. She doesn't have wings. Those were just an... an... animation error! Yeah, a weird recurring animation error that accidentally made it look like she had wings. Haha!
I reject the weird alternate universe where Cadence has wings. In my world Derpy can be called "Derpy", Vinyl Scratch's eyes are a beautiful ruby red, and the only alicorns are Celestia, Luna and Nyx.
I like it!
Props for describing Cadence as a genetic aberration who isn't actually an alicorn like Celestia and Luna, that is my preferred backstory for her.
SPOILER ALERT!!! (But just one comment rather than my usual "Semi-Where-I-Read" style).
Thought you were going to end it with a more explicit bit about being empowered by the belief's of the little ponies, saying that they are the alicorn of the pony races themselves, the tool through which their belief works good for all of Equestria. Instead it comes off as more like it means that every part of their body is infused with their OWN magic, every hair as indestructible as the bones of an earth-pony, each primary feather as powerful as the horn of a weather-working unicorn, etc. Not sure which your intent was.
511189 / 511923 / 512855
Cadance/Cadence is an odd beast, especially since from our side of the Fourth Wall, her wings were apparently added late in the development process. To fit her into this story's canon, I would consider her to be a unicorn with some pegasus in her but without an earth pony ancestor ("niece" being an adoptive title, not a literal relationship). Thus, she wouldn't have the unique potential to "become alicorn" that the combination of the three seemed to grant Celestia and Luna.
The requirement that all three types be present, then, hints further at a forgotten shared ancestry between the tribes. Was there a time when whole tribes of alicorn ponies walked the earth? Well, that's another story, I suppose.
517479
Yeah, that's a part of the idea that didn't make it all the way out in the writing. While I wasn't going to state explicitly that they were the alicorn of the pony races (interesting idea as well, though!), and I did mean it as their entire bodies becoming their own alicorn, I definitely also wanted to get across the point you mentioned. Much of their power is derived from the love and respect of their people, and they are shaped by it.
Kind of like a changeling, if you think about it. There's another interesting thought to file away for later.
509715
So far, device heretic had the best theory I've seen on pony genetics. Something about pony semen being a combination of Chemical X, the t-Virus, and the mutagen from TMNT. I can't quote the blog post because it's not there anymore, but the attached illustration was a bottle of Code Red.
A slow clap is in order I do believe.
I can dig the 'most humble of origins', another that this idea appears in would be in Paradise, only they started as earth ponies there and grew the missing appendages.
I know I had believed (for a while) that they probably were "the Lords" incarnate, but I like this kind of idea better. Sure "King is a bit of a step down from God" but it has a certain charm to it that fits better.
I prefer this explanation
555308
Of course you do. Mine doesn't have Twilight and Celestia making out.
555638
I think we can all agree that it lends a sense of seriousness and grandeur to the whole process
That was a great read. I Loved it!
It feels like this could fit in well to explain those simple curiosities about alicorn.
This is both different from and quite similar to my own interpretation of the princesses. I've always favored the idea that they aren't all-powerful goddesses, and had fairly normal lives for a while. However, I usually think of them as becoming alicorns through transformation, rather than being born different at all. Since I've never done much writing and couldn't put my story into words well enough, I made a long comic a while back in which Luna and Celestia started out as regular unicorns, then ascended, so to speak, by their connection to the ponies of the world.
Cadence (I refuse to spell her name with two As) complicates things, but I came to the same conclusion you gave here, that she's a pegasus-unicorn hybrid. Of course that'd probably mean there are other hybrids out there too, but any earth pony combination wouldn't look visibly different from a typical unicorn or pegasus, so would go unnoticed. Although there's also a part of me that rejects the idea that Cadence is anything but an ordinary unicorn like any other, and those wings were just an illusion. It's annoying to know she wasn't supposed to have wings, but just got them awkwardly shoved on for marketing.
Jesus Christ, that story was both incredibly brilliant and somehow very sad
Simply Smashing!
Very well done!
Interesting idea. very cute short piece but I gotta admit the line "We became the living ideals of female beauty," rubbed me the wrong way. It made them sound sort of arrogant as well as the whole issue of any sort of beauty standard varies wildly from pony to pony surely.
845984
When you're an immortal goddess with a razor-sharp wit and a heavenly body (*snerk*), it can be hard to state the truth without sounding a little arrogant. What I think she meant to imply is that every pony wanted to be like them, specifically because they were who they were, and thus everything they did or were became the thing to emulate. And we still see that today in supermodel ponies like Fleur de Lis, and I hear there's a picture of a mare with similar proportions in the Ponyville Beauty Salon somewhere (although I haven't been able to dig up the episode to confirm it).
846269 *Laughs* touche oh punny one
Yeah I can accept that, jus got my dander up a touch. I could totally see fleur or someone similar up at the spa. i'll keep an eye out.
Ahah!! This mainly caught my interest because me and my brother are constantly arguing over the meaning of "alicorn." We both acknowledge the obvious definition of the unicorn's horn, but because neither of us is entirely sure where the term originated in this fandom to refer to Luna and Celestia, or who else uses it, he refuses to let me us it even in reference to this fandom. Anyway, that's just why I clicked over - alicorn on my mind.
Anyway. More then anything, I like the "origin" thing in this. I don't like the idea of Luna and Celestia being around forever. I don't like the idea that they were always around, and I don't like the idea of them being immortal. No idea if that's your belief, seeing as it really wasn't a big deal to this fic, but I really, really did appreciate the concept behind their genetics and conception, and growing up, etcetera.
-Dash
1549948
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Although I've entertained many possible origin stories for the princesses, and do like exploring the idea of them as minor deities, I honestly think that established canon supports a background like this one the best.
As for the word itself, I'm not entirely sure how it got associated with winged unicorns. All I know is that its history goes back to before FiM; I had encountered alicorns in at least two RPGs before FiM came around and I heard the term applied to the princesses. I imagine it stuck so solidly here just because it sounds so much cooler than "pegasus unicorn" or "pegacorn".
If any fan made backstory for them became cannon, I'd want it to be this one.