Missing Pages & Scrawled Footnotes

by Ice Star

Nopony's Sister [Original Version] [One Shot] [Bonus Material]

Author's Note:

This is the original version of Nopony's Sister before it was given the royal treatment in terms of editing. Not only was the dialogue much different, but the phrasing and overall content differ too. I liked it far too much to ever let it be lost, so those who want bonus material can enjoy all the little differences that this version has to offer.

All the same content and spoiler warnings apply to this version.

A black-cloaked figure galloped through the Everfree Forest at top speed. Only the flutter of air was left behind, so that nopony might see the height, build, and other defining features of the one who would dare run through a forest in night hours. Who but the few mad ponies who gazed upon the stars and monsters that the sun’s banished light would dare linger after dusk? More than half of the population of this young and terrible nation lived by the sun, shutting themselves up as soon as dusk fell. It was in pony nature to shun that which was irregular to any existence that deviated from being like a spoke in a wheel — no matter how harmless those differences may be.

Yet, if anypony were up, roaming the enchanted woods where only two gods lived, and did glimpse this particular runaway — yes, they were a runaway — they would likely miss all the details. Only the telltale whoosh of air and flutter of black fabric in the night and cry out that they had seen a monster! While there would be no burning of tomorrow’s accursed witch of the day when Princess Celestia’s day comes, there would be accusations all the same. These are but ponies, after all, and ponies are brutes. They only polish themselves up for their history-writing the way a peasant may force themselves more ignorantly into dirt all hours but dinner time. Only then might they wash — or at the very least, pretend that clean hooves were involved in the whole affair. Platinum’s rule and the First Equestrian Triarchy’s antics were just the most recent example of this ill spirit. No matter how unified the tribes have become, they are merely racially united in prejudice against all other species. This was not so when Tirek stomped across their old home, a northern basin now lost to the snow.

But, if a pony did somehow see this figure? Well, then they would see no wings, no horn, and barely any legs — and would be unable to make out the trace of a dark coat. Their eyes would be too weak to note much else, as their lack of night-eyes has always weakened their sight as soon as shadows lapped at the horizon.

A pony would see that the speed I moved at, but no more. All that was obvious about me was the swiftness that was so unnatural to them. This would confirm that I was no pony, and have done well in concealing myself, if all they were to see of me is where I have been.

I had abandoned the regal boots of my station and was careful to flare my wings as little as possible except to alight myself from whatever gnarled branch of a gnarled Everfree tree is able to support my weight. While good scouts — or even competent ones — number next to none, I wish to leave nothing that could be tracked by all but the most adept unicorn mages in distant Canterlote. Magical scouting before the other gods vanished was said to be a grand art, one of the finest sorceries a unicorn could master. Now, it has been reduced to a herd of earth ponies shaking a whole forest and stamping about the plains in the name of ‘stealth’ they do not have.

And they think that they can catch me, who they barely know to be a god!

Even if something was found — like a lock of my distinct mane that I have so carefully tucked away — it would be some time before Princess Celestia would be able to summon them. By the time such simpering hounds of pony-scouts are summoned, Equestria would be long behind me. My magic is unmatched by any mortal who has ever walked this world and my strength unrivaled now that I have the skill to temper it, so that none but a creature out of the legends of another world that disappeared with my family — could hope to drag me back to that horrid sprawl of a palace.

I settle into the crook of a large branch and draw a few deep breaths. As soon as I am certain that I am bathed in shadow once more, I start to shake with sobs. Even starlight and untamed winds of cold night air cannot budge the Everfree. It is a primal sanctum of a fortress from ponies, who think themselves all that the world will ever be — or that they could tame what has stood before the gods walked. Her Royal Highness loathes it — our own home, keeping her from her ‘precious’ social contact with such vile creatures — as ponies once loathed the two of us. They still loathe my domain with as much hate as they show the natural world in all its feral truth. Except, their hate towards all that I am and have is one of the few things they are honest about. Even their malice towards buffalo, griffons, dragons, and other creatures is poor rhetoric to disguise their malicious hippocentrism.

I feel safest in a forest where travelers are commonly eaten alive more than I do in my own bed. None of this changes how my own thoughts sink their teeth into me. To have no sanctuary in my own mind hurts more than the condemnation of mortals ever could — I used to be safe here, now I find myself just as eager to keep myself from wellness as others wish I would.

Her presence felt so inescapable. For centuries I could not bring myself to leave her, no matter how bad each worsening falling out was… part of me still wanted to believe that I was the younger sister of Princess Celestia, that we still cared, and that all these wounds would heal with time and effort — or anything…

At long last, she is out of my head for the first time in centuries — and I can only feel how fear chills my blood? All this time, I have wished that I loved her not, and when it has waned enough I am left feeling torn to tatters by my own sick stomach!

But all my wishes and pleas — centuries of them — have been in vain. The sun is not in the sky, nay, she looms over me and burns. Unfortunately, I am too close to her, lying in her scorching grip and forever staring beyond her plaster smile and screaming to have my sister back. And why is this so? Because to pull me away from the one who I could remember no time without an unthinkable act for far too long.

Decades ago, it would have felt so treasonous… and yet when I finally began to ask myself why it would…

...or if I should really feel so guilty when...

Every ‘reason’ I ever had to stay began to crumble away. With each painfully real cause for me to desert her, it became clear that there was no true reason for me to stay — and that felt far scarier than remaining in her shadow, doomed to voice nothing and suffer the horrible thoughts that only the solitude eased.

I looked upward, pondering where I should go. Would it be north, where only wasteland and the closed Yakyakistani stronghold cities await, though they accept no visitors? Shall I head south, where mortals spill blood over attempts to claim stability, forever unaware of the irony behind the act? Perhaps I might even fly to the island-rich eastern sea in hopes of finding the lost Western Continents. I hear that the Roaman Empire founded in mortal folly fell because of it, and now they are no more than squabbling maritime republics. As backward as the idea of a republic is, I imagine that there might truly be something worth seeing in the land. Now that I was truly running away — to freedom, peace, and everything that could never be found with her — I would need to head somewhere where I would have everywhere to go.

I flipped the hood of my cloak back and flexed so the night air might stir my feathers. My night’s breeze is a cool reassurance blowing against my face. Next, I fly over to the tallest tree to grow on the rocky outcroppings and wooded hills that are abundant in this part of the Everfree. Each emerges right before the foothills grow into the smaller peaks beside the great Canterhorn.

Once I found myself a suitable perch where I could survey the sprawling enchanted wood spread out beneath my clear, cloudless night sky and surrounded by plains and lesser woods for many miles. It was a painter’s dream and a particularly adventurous surveyor’s paradise — the artists and the explorers; they were the sorts that I sponsored. Meanwhile, Her Highness tried to funnel all the funds I scraped together towards her political brown-muzzles and petty laborers. I was left with only more meager funds for the artists, adventurers, acting tropes, craftsponies, and independent magical prodigies to whom I chose to be the patron of. These were the ones who ‘helped’ none, according to Her Highness and her supporters, but I always insisted they enriched us all.

If only my words could fall on something more than deaf ears. Can nopony care?

Pushing thoughts of my subjects away was always something I wished was easier. Eventually, I managed to do so — ‘twas like how these brutish quacks Princess Celestia deemed doctors cut away a peasant’s warts.

Over the course of my two-millennia-long life, I have seen much of the surprisingly consistent but vast Northern Continent to the point where only my intuition and divine memory is needed to guide me around places I have not seen in centuries. I had little need or want for maps when my own mental visions would suffice and outshine what was little more than scribbles in comparison.

The north was both a strange and realistic option, as much as it terrified me. I had little knowledge of the highlands ruled by the Trottish clans and their budding moor kingdom. This was save for two experiences.

The first was of the much, much farther basin vale that the three tribes called their own. Now it was a completely inhospitable and unnatural waste. All that it was home to were the frozen corpses of those who stayed behind during the exodus and the windigos that now called it home. Those frozen spirits frolicked around the icy bones of those who had not been entombed within splintered tombs while huddling or galloping away.

There was another valley nearby… one where one wizard had a tower and his four apprentices. I was never going back there; Tia died there.

But was the second really the worse option?

Saving the Crystal Empire had been the biggest failure of Princess Celestia and me, as well as the first great foe we faced together as Equestrians… only for King Sombra to separate us. He was more terrifying than the Old World sanctum city that was hidden only by the wintery elements themselves. It was not because of all I had seen there, but because I had seen something of him.

The way we had talked, how he spoke, fought, and simply existed gave me chills. Even now, I still shivered at the thought of such a dark enigma.

His magic was able to magic mine, as was the rest of him. Even to this day, I have doubted if he was truly a foe and why it was so hard to forget the two crimson eyes that glared at me from the depths of some shared madness. He was a mortal, but felt like anything but that. As soon as I laid eyes on him, it felt as though I had located the center of the world.

I had more than enough chances to kill him, as I was ordered to. I could not bring myself to end a life that only defied — and felt as if it had continued to do so in order to live.

Sometimes when I tarry alone like this, musing on all, I feel haunted.

If the chance I gave him — one I am not sure either of us will remember as time unleashes hidden machinations come to light upon us both, wherever he may be beneath the ice — does indeed amount to something perhaps I might see him again in the world. Stars know how long such an improbable meeting will be.

Or hopefully, hopefully, all this unwanted and eerie fascination will end and I shall feel no need to look upon him and ask him what secrets he has kept… if he remembers.

‘Tis unlikely the one creature I wish to speak to now, one as miserable as I am, would ever remember me. The raw divine magic Princess Celestia and I used to seal him are still subject to the same fundamentals as all other magic in this world. To be made immaterial, anchored, and displaced in time does not preserve memory or mental stability. He shall likely be insane, and even with that aside… to be displaced in time is a lethal matter. Any mortal being to come out of it will perish shortly, as all my magic books in the castle library have made clear. Exactly what the dread king did to that empire of his, I know not. His magic is beyond my ken and whether those peculiar crystalline ponies shall live or die if they could ever be fetched from the depths of the unseen is something I cannot answer.

Why is it that the one creature I have felt any connection to since my sister is none other than King Sombra? We exchanged so few words, and yet I would give up all the conversations I have had with hundreds of ponies in order to have a few minutes with him, just so that I may see somepony who feels as I do.

What must that say about me?

I am flecking faster than paint along a rowboat in a hurricane the longer I spend around ponies. The company of those Princess Celestia prefers has grown painful, and desperately overstimulating. All at once, I am thrust into unbearable loneliness and desperately seeking escape each time I stand around them.

“Oh, this all sounds so dreadful!” I sob into my forehooves. “Is this loyalty, however strange it feels, or a curse?”

I only want to know of his magic and his story, nothing more. Yet such an opportunity is a lost one and fifty years later I still mourn thoughts that I cannot banish because I must know — why?

It was what I had asked him, but I only ended up more lost with each exchange we had made. I feel that there is an answer in his magic — how strange and enviable it seemed! Since then, anything like it has become illegal. Yet, there has still never been anything quite like it since the Crystal Empire fell — and his attributes are not those that can be found on any other. None have curved horns or eyes that stream unearthly smoke as he did. As unnatural as that power was, talking about it would be a welcome distraction. I have not had a reason or want to welcome anything in a long time.

I sigh — a dreary sound — and try to lift my spirits and heavy heart by focusing on the darkened horizon, glad to have privacy from even the stars on this night.

The southern continent was intact from whatever catastrophe shook the world when I was young, despite bearing the brunt of every catastrophe. That was the news we heard from many travelers over the centuries, for neither the princess nor I have traveled so far south on our royal duties. Yet some small nations of ponies and other creatures lived in that vast, unvisited part of the world, unaffected by the horrid degree of societal degeneration of the former tribal ponies. They were civilized enough to still speak of gods like myself, and have even the ghost of the Alicorns in their tales.

Some of these ponies — be they Princess Celestia’s subjects or the southern nations — even knew my name, face, or both. The farther away from the heartlands of this young nation one goes, the more that it is apparent I do not exist — few of these Equestrians know that there is a second princess at all. Instead, they envision a heroic sun-queen and tell tales of her enchanted shadow that she lets loose from the castle to help slay her enemies. I am no longer any kind of creature worth knowing, though I was the one who fought on the frontlines of the war to liberate this land from Discord and scouted the Crystal Empire all by myself before Celestia and I battled its king. I have done just as much for this nation, if not more work than the princess, and instead of treating me equally as I have wished for so long, I am erased and all my efforts are mocked with the kindest of smiles.

I have never known ponies to be anything more — they merely wrap their thorns and other barbs up in lovely silk and try to call that deceitful dressing both true skin and a solution to what they do not see as a problem. Unfortunately, Princess Celestia has always trusted such softness and sweetness more than she has ever been able to read the hearts of others, which is something that lies in the thorns when it comes to ponies. It is why she is so beloved and accepted, and why she could never have been the Bearer of Honesty.

Those that do know of me fear me, and I am to be kept at home by order of the professionals summoned. Oh, have none heard why — apparently I am ill!

...I do not entirely disagree, though I hate every terrible thing that has been commanded of me as an attempt at treatment.

These ponies, they could try to launch a hunt to get me delivered back to Princess Celestia if I tried to establish any — extremely unneeded — communication or alliance with any of these mortals. If their sun-princess promises a reward and spins a sob story, they shall eat of it like a weanling gobbles their first mashed meal and thinks it a feast.

I would need and desire the company of none. No crown would rest upon my head, and the princess would get to be the sole ruler that she has always wished to be — something she has mentioned often enough. Perhaps my mind would grow less troubled under the wonderful spell of a completely solitary lifestyle, where I can wander once more and rediscover life’s beauties at last. I feel that since the exodus from the Frozen Wastes — and even before that, when I first found ponies with my sister — that I have only ever ebbed away. I only remember what it is like to feel safe. Everything and everypony in this world is glass that accuses me of being a hammer. I throw more work than ever into crafting the sky, and yet I have not truly enjoyed it in decades. When I can bring myself to eat proper meals, everything is bland, and my dreams have dulled. Now, I only ever get to miss things, and I do not think I even have the energy for that anymore.

Flying south did seem to be the best option. The journey would be less tedious than if I went across the seas. The world’s news would also be less clouded by the particular prejudice of Princess Celestia’s northerners that blotted out all attempts at knowledge. I doubt I would find the culture of the western world to be like the quibbling mortal-ruled phases in the south.

I was sure I could do this, no matter how much I felt my stomach churn with worry. Some of that worry was still for her, though it should not be so… not after all this.

Sighing again, I buried my head right in my forehooves again, wiping my eyes with my cloak and thinking of just what I should do. All the chatter of ponies and tut-tutting of Princess Celestia that surrounds me is about how one must work for others, and that we always get what we deserve. She still preaches to this post-war nation of a rosy-glass illusion, but I think it has poisoned me as much as chaos poisoned the land because I cannot get her out of my head. Over and over I hear that it is good that always prevails, and this is said to my face as though I was not on the frontlines of a war we barely won, or bearing the World Tree’s Elements alongside her.

If goodness only ever comes to those that deserve it, then I really must be as rotten as I feel. Perhaps I am no more than what ponies say I am too.

Long ago, my parents told me that it was important to set free what I loved. This had always been in regard to the kittens we used to keep in our gorgeous castle, where I first learned to control my magic by toting them around or pretending to fly with them on my back. All the lovelier creatures of the forest flocked to me — and really, all creatures of the Everfree Forest are lovely, no matter what these settler ponies think they may say about my ancestral home. I was always upset when it came time to put them down or send them back to their homes, for I was not sure if my friends would be able to play with me again.

Those words were meant to comfort me, and indeed they did. All my lovely pets would eventually come back to play. It was my pets and my parents who taught me it was also important to love myself as much as I loved others. Would they still say the same if they saw me now, a goddess made helpless by her own mind? They were great Alicorn gods that always strove for justice, harmony, and to bring balance to the world. How could they bear to know what has become of their daughters and their world? Could they even still love me, knowing what has happened to me?

My last sniffle dies away, and I stare at my forehooves in silence. They tremble in the night like the songs of crickets and star spiders, but even that is lessening.

If I am to set free what I love… I know now what I must do.

…

Feathers cut through the sky once again as I resumed my late flight wishing my head could be as clear as it was when I set out on this journey to disappear. I left all but one of my crowns behind, and stashed its accompanying set of regalia into the small bag I brought with me. The one that remained atop my head was a reminder — I did not hate the crown itself, for it was better than anything mortal-made. What bothered me was what it stood for.

They were among the few things I had left in my personal chambers, at least of the things that I had not hidden. I wanted to call them my favorite, as they had been my favorite for the longest time since getting them, but I was not certain if I was allowed to have favorites of anything any longer.

I landed on top of the tallest hill where I still had a view of the Everfree.

Seeing the palace so far away and knowing I had escaped it left me more breathless than the view and my tears had. How long has it been since I have felt like this? Being away from her was like being pulled from drowning because I did not have to feel that every day and conversation would hurt me anymore. Nopony was building smothering glass walls around me and scolding at me when I tried to crawl from them at last, if only so I did not suffocate. To be free of her is a lotus flower meal I wish to eat of until my stomach is taut with it and I am ready to throw it up again.

But I had still never felt more stuck in all my life. The choice weighing upon my withers was to drink deeply of spring water after centuries in the desert and letting the heat stroke my mind. Yet, I was still so torn between the two because of the knots of memory. Not to see Equestria’s lovely little ruler did not mean I had none of her words haunting my head — no matter how much I wanted her out.

Biting my lip, I held back a whimper. What was I supposed to do? Walls no longer surrounded me, and I was still sure that I was trapped.

Here I could be Luna, flying through the night air with few constraints that came from knowing I was still in this land, the one where I had heard I was nopony’s daughter. These same words came from the mare who told me, ages later, that she did not even want me as her younger—

I dive below — a bit noisily — into the treeline. I have settled in the branch of the last tree of the border between the Everfree foothills and the Unicorn Range that Mount Canterhorn is a part of.

From here, it was hard to miss anything. Even the uninhabited grasslands that surrounded the forest’s southern border were in clear detail to me. All of them were equally beautiful and dangerous — the wood, the grassland, and the slanting tree I sat myself in.

None would ever see these things. In the rare event that I spoke at all among ponies who tolerated no word that fits in with the normalcy that they craved; that was barely not Tribal Era dogma that had been refreshed for the Triarchy, I would get nothing but talk of how only monsters that must be slain lurked in the dark and that I should respect my elder princess instead of slander her precious day for suggesting anything in the world was worthy of fair treatment. That was ponies at their kindest — a mob so against the idea of looking at the stars a few moments and putting aside their talk of mooncalves and other invented monsters that could only be given life within such horrible minds. It was ponies who wished to drive out all from the land — be it the buffalo, timberwolves, or many other creatures — and deem them improper sapients or monsters to be tamed. Will it be in one hundred years from now or more that the buffalo no longer dominate the prairies that divide us from Arabian borders? Will it be less time for there to be settlements — or even cities — in the southern lands that Equestrians are so hungry for?

Never do the Equestrians think that it might be they who are the beasts in need of firm guidance.

Sadness welled up within me again. Could I really do this? Relinquish the damn-near ‘honorary’ title and ‘meaningless’ duties that come with being the ‘spare’ princess to Her Highness? She has never once tried to do away with the limbo we are at, where after the war upon Discord she was crowned the ruling princess. I was the one who planned and fought; she spent most of the war shut up in the mountain strongholds and only took to the battlefield shortly before we discovered the Elements of Harmony. She has all but told me to my face that I am the second, the ’in case’ if something were to happen to her, and ponies are in full support of this. ‘Twas in the very founding papers of this monarchy — yes, the Second Unified Nation of Equestria very much, not a diarchy as I wished it could be.

Of course I could give it all up — she never gave me anything, yet still tells me I am ungrateful. How is it that I can be ungrateful for nothing at all? Her Highness the All-Wise, Kindest, and Most Generous has never been able to answer this fundamental question. Only by reminding me that there is a roof on my head, a title to my name, and other such things does she seek to explain what a foul brat I am. I have a squadron of physicians to tend to my needs, she will remind me, I have grand parties that I get to attend. I am the namer of all the known stars — yes, the very ones that only sailors and artists bother with!

Could I evade any ponies that were sent after me? Undoubtedly, they would be but ponies, after all — and whether or not they were motivated by coin, they are still bumbling, unexpert mortals. If they managed to figure out what direction I fled in, I shall honestly be surprised. Perhaps I would even laugh, if I did such things any longer.

But could I manage to flee without guilt that should not be and a kind of loyalty that need not remain in a heart that only wants to reject it?

I looked out at the hint of a red morning that was starting to break. It was a silent testament to how long I had tarried. More than that, it was an indication that my keeper would rather cause an eclipse and get her sun into the sky.

Of course, she was already raising the sun without me…

I was not worth waiting for this morn, if I ever was. Perhaps on that, we still had something to agree upon.

As I flew back to the castle at the heart of the Everfree, I knew that I had not made the right choice. My heart was heavy enough to hurt for it — but what did it matter? Most would agree that this was what I deserved and that anypony who acted the way I did ought to have the thoughts and urges I did — the urges of melancholy to turn upon oneself, to deny all the care that kept me anchored to gloom and my energy sunk lower than a shipwreck.

I have spent too much time shadowing Her Highness to disagree with the sentiment.

…

Silence was always something I had favored in life, both in the past and present. Rarely was it unbearable or suspicious — and when it was, then the solace of such an inevitable aspect of the solitary lifestyle felt like a mockery of its usual self. To be around ponies with my own monsters in my head — the kind not even the physicians wanted to talk about — only became more overstimulating. Why make things more unbearable than they already were? I am well aware that it is probably what I deserve, but I don’t hurt myself because I want to. ‘Tis just easier to neglect the source of all my woes. Princess Celestia should be happy that I treat her greatest nuisance so foully — especially now that I cannot bring me to stop.

One cannot summon a pest-catcher for my subjects anyway. As unbearable as they are, I cannot escape them.

I am not sure if I am even allowed to anymore.

Unfortunately, it does seem that the thing about throwing oneself into a hole is the aftermath. Everypony would rather gawk at me or tell me I bring shame to Her Royal Highness of Equestria — and she does not disagree. I would just rather be buried. I already speak only slightly more than a corpse, can my subjects at least not treat me like one? They have already treated all my art as something that they might kill. What more is there to loathe, fear, and scapegoat? I have stopped asking for my own holiday decades ago, and I have even given up on asking those summoned and escorted to the castle to greet me too. I am a phantom figurehead in court. It has been five years since I last cried without warning at one of Princess Celestia’s parties.

Trying at anything is just as grueling as succeeding now. I have drained myself of all such audacities and only my presence remains. Why can the high and mighty Princess Celestia not just order me away? Then she would have nopony who would be detracted from appreciating her. I would not even ask her if she could command all the terrible thoughts that swarm and feed off me to leave too. Let the maggots of the mind have me, I suppose.

This particular dawn was one of those occasions of solitude. Not even the halls of the castle yawned before me. They simply waited, the air in them still. In the throne room, I found the castle’s only other resident. She was perched obviously upon her golden throne as though I was only the Clover to her Platinum — a servant and little else. Her magenta stare flicked past me immediately, and she became fixated on my cloak and lack of being completely outfitted in regalia.

The latter part made her neck flush an embarrassed red. I would no doubt have to be cornered with a lecture on proprietary between class or something of the sort later.

“Where hast thou been?”

Her tone was always that of a mother glacier — concerned, untouchable, and slow to show just how freezing cold she could be. Faint barbs of iciness always crept out quickly when she spoke to me. There was the distance of a politician that she could not pull herself out of — that had set in far too early for my liking.

“I was flying in the Everfree,” I whisper, my words having to be all but pulled from my throat. “My sleep was troubled, Your Highness.”

Too often I find that I cannot speak even when I know just what to say. My anxieties are just too choking. A few decades ago, Her Royal Highness finally got frustrated enough with me that she paid a physician. The medical mare insisted I was afflicted with a sort of partial mutism induced by melancholy after she spent the whole time talking with Princess Celestia. I had not been able to summon a single word no matter how much I tried. Instead, I had to sit across from them both as they chattered like I was not there. Apparently my diagnosis is one that only afflicts foals and those deemed ’idiots’ who choose not to speak, even though I chose nothing.

The cure was to punish misbehavior and praise good behavior.

I do not have a lot of good behavior.

I just wish I could at least have my poetry books back. I do not care that I have read them more times than a pony can possibly live, I bound them myself and I love them. This horrid therapy that is all the rage for silent foals involves selecting all that I have not hidden and putting it in Princess Celestia’s chambers — as though they were not overstuffed with gowns and her own trinkets already — and rewarding me with my own belongings when I ask for them back. Nothing necessary is supposed to be taken, so I still have my toothbrush, combs, clothes, and by Her Highness’ decree — my regalia. I am supposed to have her magic clutch my forehooves to quiet them when I play with my mane too much too. I do not even get to write notes or gestures — I have to talk, and just cannot!

At least if she had put magical wards on my things and stashed them anywhere else, I could have broken any of her spells. Princess Celestia knows that I am stronger and better at magic than she will ever be — otherwise I do not think she would deny fearing me as much as she does.

‘Tis not fair — more than my will is burned out and all my words have left me! Why can nopony understand? I am treated like I am cursed though I suffer no magical ailment!

Those twelve words are the most I have said to her in weeks. I always refer to her exactly as she likes to be, instead of by what she is not. To appease her is better than prolonging things. I want to thank all of my stars for letting me be able to rattle off anything at all.

It was always best to tell the truth — yes, even to Princess Celestia of all creatures. I would not reveal all, and was relieved to feel that I had automatically assumed the chilly, but un-intense gaze, and naturally aloof demeanor I had would get me out of this social situation. That array of my behaviors were some of the most useful I had — especially when the princess was involved.

“If thou finds thine sleep troubled, do not go roaming around the forest!” Her expression is aghast with something that is too much pure horror bled over what could have been worry once. “Any dreams of what is to come are best disclosed to Us, hm?”

She gives me a winning smile I find no warmth in, and I loathe how she pretends each day between tragedies is something that can be walked away from so easily. Why must she pretend like this? Ever since my foredreams only ever grew stronger and deeper than hers ever would be, something has emerged. She wants to know my every dream and thinks that they can be pruned with the same mundane methods gardeners might use for their harvests. The mare who was once my sister became my keeper. ‘Tis an ordeal that is little different from plucking feathers in terms of tension and true impropriety. All parts of her that disguise quiet domination as an idea of Harmony only she seems to hold have only sunk their roots more deeply after the war. That which can be controlled, must be so. Be they dinner plans, my alleged post-war ’idiocy’, or even the future itself.

‘Twas not even a beat and she managed to find the political mare’s blank face a sentence later. I think she puts more effort into being seamless around our subjects, but around me, this is the closest to casual she has become. Things were not at all like this before we found those cursed pony tribes, and I am still sorry for that.

“My subjects deserve to know what the future might bring,” she chimes, her words an attempt to press for what there is nothing of at the same time. Such is a common tone with her. One that is best reserved for the peskiest of foals and our subjects, if it must be used at all.

I wish that she had been an only foal.

When the princess received no reply from me other than a partial bob of my head, she sighed. The sound was that of a deeply inconvenienced mother — the kind who demands her foals answer for why they eat so much instead of why she lets them go hungry. Clearly, I am only some foal that has troubled Her Royal Highness, the great Dawn-Bringer, who sits here in her castle clad in lace. She is forever free from dirt and dust, never once acknowledging that when we returned here from the north and found our magnificent old home here, it was she who razed it to rubble and buried the deed under a mountain of excuses. Now, we only have this lesser tomb of darker corridors to inhabit.

Our ponies never hesitate to call her immaculate, and yet I stand before her differently. I have never been able to do otherwise. I am forced to look up to her, with my black cloak still draped about me and a few leaves snagged in my waving mane. Just last week, she was claiming — not complaining; you see, she never complains — that I do not go out enough.

Last year, it was that I went out to the Everfree Forest too much. She is unpleasable in that regard.

She began again, her expression was one that many would find utterly pleasant. I thought she looked distracted. “You are still a princess now, and whether we find ourselves as rulers or nobility—”

So, she admits that I am redundant.

“—the way that ponies look upon the two of us and feel about us both is of the utmost importance. We must always give them as they deserve, in accordance with destiny. It is your duty as well as mine to be looking after them and act less like… a warrior.”

What might our legionnaires think if they heard the ornament of a mare they fight for sneer at such a fine occupation? I helped lay down the laws of this country within all its documents, and the best I got was merely the second, non-sovereign princess despite all my own work and efforts toward building this nation.

“Duty first. Ponies first. No more of these night trips. Not like this, when you go to see nopony. Even though you refused all the marriages We arranged for you, We would still have some understanding if you wished to see a lover. Yet, you go to see nopony, and instead insist on fruitless queer habits. Those scare ponies. No more rebellions. Please, try to bring your behavior up to standard. You know that We care about thou. Ponies expect their gentry to have less frivolous habits — such as silly travels and night-walks. It is always dangerous in the dark. Why would you walk in the hours when monsters prowl — and in the nation’s most dangerous place?”

If the princess expected an answer, she got none from me. I was too drained from my worries, from this unshakeable weariness that drains my emotions. I tried to do my best, I really did. But this is the mare who reminds me that my best is never enough. I use what little energy I have left on a shrug, before fatigue fully clouds my mind. Her Royal Highness does not understand how I cannot speak constantly when I speak at all, among everything else about the malaise that digs at me.

Her expression pinches with offense. “For shame, We art worried about thou!”

I dragged my hooves in a weary haze back to where my chambers were. As I neared the shadowed halls behind the throne, the light of dawn shone down from a nearby window. It illuminated the displeasure all too obvious in Princess Celestia’s expression — it was a momentary, fleeting thing upon her face. Mechanical serenity eventually overtook it once more.

I almost wanted to stop, but my head was dizzy. Her masks are always an unsolvable puzzle that somepony is shouting at me to perfect, and I am not even given rules. Even still, my moods alone can throw me into this downward spiral of mania and exhaustion alike. I would have said that I missed her too, and I even paused to consider it before I remembered that those words would be a lie — if I could speak them at all.

With that in mind, I resumed my walk.