3. The Talk
Hours before dawn, Clover was staring at the darkened wall of the fortress — trying to pick out the texture of the stones by starlight, in an effort to give his racing mind something concrete to do — when Celestia cleared her throat.
"What's on your mind, Frumpy?" she stage-whispered.
'Everything', Clover thought, would not be an inappropriate answer. Every time he thought he was coming to grips with the reality of the situation, she would shift underneath him — and the leg across his back would squeeze a small whuff of air from his lungs before her pressure retracted to merely firm, and his mind would echo Cookie's warning again. Another part of his brain was replaying their first meeting — and the throne-room kiss; and the look in her eyes as she returned from clearing the sky; and her musical laugh; and her intake of breath as her wings snapped open during their free-fall, gravity pressing him into her embrace —
And part of his brain was chasing its tail in a tight circle. The earlier fear of self-preservation had been replaced by a far subtler and deeper and more troubling one — Luna's words, echoing over and over.
Alone and broken-hearted.
How unutterably cruel would it be to do that to her after what she traded for me? one voice argued. Ignore it, prophecy is garbage, another protested feebly. A sharper voice piped up: Idiot. If anypony could see the future, it would have been Star Swirl. Why deny the warning you've been given? Defensively: It's not even clear Star Swirl was talking about me to begin with.
Look, the calm, clever voice broke in. It's quite simple. The prophecy is about a mare who loves you. As much as you hate to admit it, Cookie was right about her. Let this play out and fade back away as her interest wanes. Don't make this into something it isn't, and you'll have nothing to worry about —
Pain flared in his ribs, and he jolted back to the fortress.
"Equestria to Frumpy," Celestia said, a trace of annoyance in her voice, retracting her hooftip from his side. "Don't pretend like you're sleeping. You've been squirming all night."
"Sorry, Imperatrix," Clover mumbled, and nestled closer into her chest, trying to ignore all of the inner voices' screaming. He decided to deflect. "I could ask you the same question."
"No you couldn't," she said. "I don't sleep unless I want to."
"… and you don't want to?"
Celestia snorted. "I figured it would be rude to accidentally crush you in my sleep. But I suppose if you want —"
"No, no," he said hurriedly. "That's okay."
"Mmh," she grunted, and adjusted her grip, horn briefly lighting to square the blanket off over him.
The room lapsed into the resounding hush of the high mountains.
Only to be broken several minutes later by another throat-clear. "I did ask a question," Celestia said, a bit more hesitantly. "If it's something I'm doing to keep you up, I'm gonna be pissed if you're not telling me."
Clover started, his mind kicking into a full gallop again.
"It, ah, well," he fumbled, then went for reassurance. "Not you. I — well, it's just something Luna said —"
Celestia shifted underneath him, sitting up slightly, as all of his inner voices stopped their arguing and facehoofed simultaneously.
Yes, brilliant, Clover thought. Let's just share sweet romantic prophecies of disaster.
"Hunh," she said. "You talked to Luna?"
"She, ah." Clover stalled as he thought wildly. "When she came to Everfree after our contest."
"Oh," Celestia said. "Yeah. That sounds like her. Always trying to stay in my shadow so I can be a distraction while she works."
"Yes, Luna said something … vaguely similar."
At least, Clover thought, the Imperatrix doesn't seem to know where the conversation's heading. This would already be significantly more awkward if she did.
"What did she say?" Celestia prompted. "I mean, to get your brain going this late."
Clover swallowed through a dry throat. Well, there's no lie like an incomplete truth. "To be honest, Star Swirl the Bearded," he said. "It turns out both you and I were students of his."
Celestia fell silent for a moment. "Huh," she finally said. "Now that's a story I should probably hear."
"Well, he appeared a couple of times during my studies." Again, Clover lunged for the deflection. "But before I bore you with the details — what's bugging me is, Luna never did explain what happened after he disappeared a century ago. Did you ever find him?"
Celestia lapsed into awkward silence again — and Clover belatedly began to wonder whether the prophecy was the only topic they needed to dodge around.
He was fumbling for yet another topic change when Celestia chuckled wryly and said, "Can't say this is what I expected out of pillow talk."
"What can I say? Nothing keeps me awake like trying to think through a mystery."
"Not sure I'm gonna help you get to sleep, then. He's still alive. That's about all I've got."
Clover considered for a moment, inner voices warring. Curiosity won out. "I'd still love to hear the story."
"Eh, I guess." Celestia shrugged, the motion shifting both their bodies. "I should probably start way back when we got our marks. When that happened, he was supposed to take us to the queen to get drafted, but since he vanished —"
"Drafted?" Clover asked.
"Yeah, into the army."
"But you said queen. Didn't you live in unicorn lands? Drafting at the age of majority is a pegasus thing."
"Oh, no. Everypony did, back then. There was a tribal skirmish, like, every other week." She chuckled. "I'd always looked forward to joining the Bloodhorns, actually, and going out raiding. But when we galloped home to tell Star Swirl about our Marks, and he was gone, Luna started looking at the notes that had been left out on his desk. She said she thought she knew why he might have vanished, and we didn't have much time if we wanted to get him back. So instead of heading to the queen, we packed some saddlebags and took off, and that started some crazy adventures." Celestia smirked. "You know how it goes. Free some ponies from Abyssinian slavers, discover he's not among them but a second group just got shipped overseas, take over a pirate ship so you can follow them, end up leading the slave revolt that overthrows the Purrsian Empire."
Clover's eyes widened. "That was you?"
"Pfft, that was the start. We heard of a band of pony escapees heading east on the Silk Road, so we ended up in Qilin for a while. Had to take a break from the search to keep the Great Jade Dragon from escaping his bindings in the Forbidden Temple and eating the world. Beat back the Oni Kings' invasion, too." Her voice went uncharacteristically quiet for a moment. "Yeah, those were bad times. Glad they're gone. Anyway. Finally tracked down the pony refugees. Didn't find him, but some of them said Star Swirl had been with them up until the Llamalayas, so we backtracked. The rumors we followed started getting weirder and weirder. Like he was looking for something big. And every time we got a solid lead, we'd hit some ancient temple or fight some ancient monster or something, and find nothing but another breadcrumb to someplace else he might have gone."
"Huh. And how long did this go on?"
"Eh. Couple more decades."
"Decades—!?"
"Till we stopped finding clues, I mean." Celestia didn't even seem to notice Clover's outburst. "Then another … seventy years? Where we just wandered the Far Continent and chased every crazy rumor of weird ancient mysteries that we overheard."
"That's … wow." Clover shook his head. "I can't fathom why you didn't give up."
"Oh, we were tempted, all the time," Celestia said. "But … you know? He was basically our father. And nopony was gonna search for him if we didn't. By ten years in, it was pretty likely he was dead, but we weren't gonna give up till we knew." Clover wasn't quite sure what to make of her detached tone. "At some point, though — after we'd wrecked the face of yet another ancient sealed horror — Luna did the math. We'd been chasing Star Swirl so long that, even if we did somehow find him, he would have been the oldest unicorn alive. And every place we chased him into had crazier traps and fangier monsters than the last."
"So you did give up?"
"We tried! We trotted out to the Sword Coast to head home. Except we ran into a ship captain who swore up and down that a pony looking just like Star Swirl had bought passage on his ship for the trip into town, and then wandered off toward the way we'd come from."
"Which should have been impossible," Clover said drily. "In a manner I find all too familiar."
Celestia chuckled humorlessly. "Yeah. But it was enough to get us back out there, and we always kept hearing just enough to keep us looking. Like chasing a damn ghost. Right up until … almost two years ago, now."
"The Tribal Accords."
"A few days before. We were six hours' flight from a remote Llamalayan village. And the old geezer walks up to our campfire out of nowhere."
Clover laughed in sympathy. "I see we've got that in common, too."
Celestia propped herself up on a foreknee, not returning his laughter. "Yeah. And get this. The first thing he says is: 'Your search is no longer necessary.' Can you believe that?"
Clover's smile turned into a wince. "Unfortunately, yes."
"I'm standing there sputtering, and Luna's bursting into tears and stammering out 'where've you been', and all he says is he's proud of our diligence, and we've each earned one future boon in recompense, do we understand, and he has to leave again but he assures us he'll be there the next time his presence is truly needed." Celestia's tone had turned decidedly bitter, and even in the dark, Clover could see her face curled into a scowl.
"And then what?" he asked, with a sinking feeling that he knew the answer.
"And then his horn glows and he vanishes in front of our eyes."
Clover gave Celestia a tentative squeeze. Her body remained rigid.
"Ungrateful son-of-a-timberwolf," she muttered. "So what else could we do but head home?"
"Only to find out that while you were gone, ponykind changed quite nearly beyond recognition," Clover murmured, trying to change the subject. "I can only imagine how strange it must have been to see us celebrating the first anniversary of unification, and signing a treaty between the tribes not forged in spilt blood. Though I doubt it was as great a shock for you as it was for us to learn that some remnant of the Great Herd still existed."
Celestia grunted, not taking the bait.
Clover sighed. "Look. I'm sorry."
"Not your fault." But she sighed and reclined back down to the bed. "It's just … it bugs me so much. Like, he was our father, he should have loved us, but he sent us on a wild-goose chase for two lifetimes."
Clover thought for several seconds — not about Star Swirl's logic, which seemed obvious, but about how to explain it.
"Imperatrix," he said, "correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like your plan after finding Star Swirl was always to head home and volunteer for the Unicornian draft, yes?"
"Yeah," Celestia said. "Just like I did at the Accords for the unified army. Why?"
"You're an alicorn," Clover said. "You're strong beyond comparison. You're unstoppable on the battlefield. Now imagine that immense strength deployed not against monsters, nor foreign invaders, but against your fellow ponies."
"Not much to imagine," Celestia said smugly. "We would've conquered the other tribes within days."
"Conquered, yes. And then there would have been no reason to work out our differences when the Windigos arrived — not when the Queen could have thrown you at the problem. So we'd still be living today with earthers and pegasi subjugated, and we'd be conquering the rest of the world as another one of the evil empires we're fighting left and right." Clover's voice softened. "So, yes, I think Star Swirl did send you on a wild-goose chase … because we weren't good enough to deserve you until two years ago."
"Hnh," Celestia grunted, and nothing more.
However, some tension eased out of her body, and she started gently stroking Clover's back with her hoof. And when he felt himself start finally drifting off to sleep, her breathing had become slow and regular.
The next morning, despite Clover's protests, Celestia dragged him outside right before dawn. He buried himself in her wing, teeth chattering, breath freezing into icicles on his lips. Then the horizon started glowing, and his jaw dropped, and his chattering died away.
He'd never watched sunrise from so close to the sky.
"Leavin' with her?" Cookie asked. "Or runnin' from her?"
Clover glanced up from where he was trying to wedge sheets of hardtack between the layers of clothing crammed into his saddlebags. Cookie, muzzle set in a poker face, was leaning against the doorway of Clover's modest room in Everfree Palace. Pansy stood in the hallway, watching over Cookie's shoulder, not meeting Clover's eyes.
Clover stood, turning away from his desk. "Neither. It simply turns out that her home is short on amenities that ordinary ponies take for granted."
"And things went well enough you're headin' back?"
Clover sighed. He'd been hoping to sneak in and out of the castle quickly enough to avoid this conversation. "As I already said, I have a moral duty to let this play out."
Cookie shifted — and his face, oddly, fell. "Oh."
Clover braced for several seconds before realizing that was all that was forthcoming.
"… 'Oh'?" he said. "What do you mean, 'oh'?"
"I think —" Cookie started as Pansy finally worked herself up to a "You should —"
They both stopped. Cookie glanced over his shoulder. Pansy shrank back, and nodded at him to continue with a mumbled "Sorry."
"I think," Cookie repeated, "we've all had some time to think about whatcha said yesterday. I'd gotten to hopin' you'd stop pretending this is nothin' more than principle, but —"
Clover winced. "Cookie," he interrupted, keeping his voice as level as he could, "you're not the only one who's had time to think. And it is exactly a matter of principle. Nothing more. There are some problems which even I am smart enough to run away from."
Cookie's brow furrowed. "You went to a lot of effort convincin' us of the opposite, yesterday."
"That's not …" Clover stopped himself; explaining the prophecy would unnecessarily complicate things. He turned back to his packing to conceal his reddening face. "… Not important, because you were right. I'm just a toy. So I'll let the Imperatrix play for a while. She has some fun, then loses interest, and I come home with an as-yet-undetermined level of injury. End of story."
"For somepony makin' such a big deal of principle, that don't sound like giving her a square chance."
"I'm going back, aren't I?" Clover snapped.
Cookie sighed loudly. "Damn it, Clover. You are really not makin' it easy to apologize."
It took Clover a moment to confirm he'd heard that right.
He slowly turned back around, one eyebrow raising. "If that's your intention, you're taking rather a strange approach."
"Sure. Because last night, the one being selfish was us."
Pansy — who had opened her mouth several times as she worked herself up to joining the conversation — snapped her jaw closed with a toothy click.
Cookie drew in a deep breath. "Listen. We were tryin' to think of you. We didn't want to see ya hurt. But keepin' ya safe ain't always a friend's job. You're puttin' yourself out there for something you believe in — and a real friend helps ya leap for your dreams, even when it means bein' there to catch you when you fall. Right, Pansy?"
She froze up, and her eyes flicked around the room even faster. "Um," she said. "Yes."
Clover nodded uncertainly. "What's this about being selfish, then?"
"Because this ain't a drinking contest you're refereein'," Cookie said, and his voice softened. "You're right about the principle of the thing. But you're makin' the mistake I made last night — focusin' on how you might get hurt if your 'interest' brings ya too close." He lifted his forelegs for the hoof-quotes. "If you want to be fair about her wooin' ya, though, you can't close your heart up front. You've gotta be ready to fall in love back."
Clover felt his muzzle flush again. "It's not that simple."
"No," Cookie said pointedly, "love ain't."
"I mean it." Clover squirmed. "Trust me, it's a bad idea."
"That kicks it right in yer wheelhouse, then." Cookie gave Clover a grin — which quickly fell away at his friend's expression.
Cookie let out a breath, stepped forward, and set a hoof down on Clover's withers.
"Alright," the earth pony said, gentle but unyielding. "If you can look me straight in the eyes an' tell me there ain't nothing but pain that can come from this … then you throw those saddlebags away, an' the three of us will march out there together to tell her no. But if you're just scared …" Cookie looked at Clover sympathetically. "I get why. But it ain't no excuse not to do this right."
Clover winced inwardly. That was an overreaction … wasn't it? This wasn't really a matter of being scared of what Celestia might do to him — and even if it was, the argument of principle still applied. But the prophecy did change things.
If it was relevant.
If. If! What an unfunny joke. Here he was obsessing over a bunch of weird, squirrelly words that sounded just plausible enough to obscure their withering improbability. Yes, Clover was perfectly capable of falling in love — perhaps even madly, impossibly, dangerously in love. But the danger here — even if Star Swirl had been talking about Clover; even if the necklace somehow ended up in his hooves — required that Celestia be capable of falling in love back.
Clover let out a long breath, feeling some tension drain from his shoulders. That, at least, was impossible. And that meant there was no call to spook and cause hurt feelings. He could let Celestia be the one to walk away, and let this play out safely.
For some value of 'safe', he thought with a tinge of irony, which a week ago I wouldn't have touched with a ten-hoof pole.
Clover refocused and fixed Cookie with a calm, steady stare, pausing only to give a miserable-looking Pansy a comforting smile.
"You're absolutely correct," he told Cookie. "This is worth doing right."
Celestia's wings flared out as she advanced with a mad grin. "Because we're gonna do this right."
Clover took an involuntary step back over the fort's threshold, feeling the mountain wind he'd just escaped start to whip around his hinds again. "Wait! Now?"
"No time like the present. You've already got bags packed."
"Not for a trip!" he protested, realizing as he said it how ridiculous that sounded. "Not to mention how many arrangements I'd have to … wait. What was the first thing you said, again?"
" 'Next stop, Abyssinia'?"
"Abyssinia." Clover opened and closed his mouth. "Imperatrix. No sane captain sails the Griffon Ocean during the dragon migrations."
She threw her head back and laughed. "Who said anything about a ship? Let's go."
Celestia reached for his shoulder. Clover flinched.
She stopped, her smile falling away. "Okay, seriously, what."
"I am not opposed to a trip, in principle," Clover said. "But we really need to talk about this first."
Annoyance flitted across her muzzle, then settled in for a longer stay as she refolded her wings. "What's there to talk about? Yesterday went well. And our talk last night gave me an idea — we'll go hit all the most awesome spots Luna and I found as we explored. You want romance? We'll go take a romantic trip no other pony could ever give you."
"Do you also remember our discussion about the benefits of taking it slow?"
Celestia gave him a flat stare. "That's why we haven't taken off yet — which I'm already starting to regret. Do you remember the part yesterday where I grabbed you and we did something intense and you finally had fun?"
Clover winced but held firm. "Yes, but there's the fun that I can enjoy, and the fun that kills me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you were planning on getting there by grabbing me and flying?"
"Yeah." She raised an eyebrow. "Are you going somewhere with this?"
"Over an ocean that takes two weeks to sail."
"Pfah. Day and a half at top speed."
"Just … what, holding me the whole time?"
She raised an eyebrow. "How else?"
"During the dragon migration."
"If they go for a snack, I'll take one down as a warning and outfly the others." Celestia waved a dismissive hoof.
Clover held himself back from contesting that. It was probably the least insane part of her plan.
Finding further objections was an oddly difficult task given how transparently ridiculous the idea was. But he managed a weak one. "Are you bringing any water? We'll be flying over ocean, and I didn't pack anything to drink."
Celestia opened her mouth to shoot something back at Clover, then paused, eyes flicking side to side. Abruptly, she sat, crossing her forehooves.
"Okay," she muttered. "I could have solved that along the way, but if grabbing a water-gourd gets us moving, it's not like that slows us down any more than this does."
Solved along the way?! Clover thought. What was she going to do, boil the ocean until clouds formed …
… Oh. Right. She probably can.
Clover looked down at his hooves, guilt beginning to gnaw at his belly. The Imperatrix hadn't been thinking about his problems — her response had confirmed that. Perhaps she wasn't even capable of thinking about some of his problems. But every problem that had leapt to mind had been in her blind spot only because it was something she could solve as easily as breathing.
It was a thoroughly bizarre feeling. She was impossible. This entire thing was impossible. But every minute he spent with Celestia was warping his definition of impossible even further.
"Well?" she prompted. "What else is gonna go wrong?"
Clover glanced back up. While he'd looked away, Celestia's muzzle had settled into a defensive frown — and, seeing it, his heart twisted up. He was an idiot. Here she was, literally offering him the world, and he was ruining the moment with fear, exactly like Cookie had told him not to.
Clover let out a long breath, ears drooping. "Imperatrix," he said, "I'm sorry. This sort of intensity is still scary sometimes — but you deserve better than my fear. The trip sounds amazing, and you're absolutely right, we should go."
Celestia studied him for several seconds, her face unreadable.
"Why?" she finally said.
"Well," Clover said, lost. "As you said, we can share the highlights of your journey —"
A flicker of irritation crossed her muzzle again, but receded back into guarded neutrality. "No. Why is it still scary, after everything we said last night."
"Um," Clover said, lost for entirely different reasons.
"Don't you trust me?"
He swallowed, throat going dry. Well, he'd galloped into that at full tilt.
Clover paused for a moment to line up his thoughts. "Last night is proof enough that you respect my mortality," he said. "I trust you on that — or, at least I know I should, even if my instincts still fail me. But I don't trust myself to live up to your assumptions. I am acutely aware of my own limitations in a way that you aren't. I don't want you to make a choice that you end up regretting because I pushed myself too hard to keep up, and broke myself the way that other ponies trying to impress you have done."
Celestia stared at him, then snorted, shaking her head.
"Wow," she said, sounding disappointed for the first time. "I can't believe you of all ponies don't get it."
"Get what?"
"Why do you think you're even here? You're the first pony who hasn't broken themselves trying to impress me. I assumed you wouldn't be stupid enough to start."
Clover felt his muzzle heat. There was an uncomfortable amount of truth behind the jab. Doing anything more than looking out for himself was stupid here — both stupid and unnecessary. He merely needed to stay in this until she lost interest.
And yet.
He lifted a hoof up to her shoulder, resting it there as he spoke. "I beg to differ, Imperatrix," Clover said softly. "I think we're here because you wanted our contest to be fair. My best isn't even a fraction as magnificent as your best — but you still wanted to test yourself against it on equal terms. So how is it fair to you if you're bringing your best to winning my heart, and I'm not trying to be the best pony I can in return?"
Celestia didn't immediately say anything. But her expression softened as she stared, and the corner of her mouth twitched.
"Heh," she said, and Clover's gut unclenched as her muzzle curled into a genuine smile.
"I don't want to break," he quickly added. "Let's please not do that. But that's a mortal's hardest fear to shake, and the last day has been quite a crash course in how often that fear lies to me. So if you're willing to be patient with me as I learn how to ignore it, I promise I'll make that patience worthwhile."
Celestia pressed a hoof to Clover's leg. "You're some kind of poet, Frumpy," she said, her usual energy returning to her voice. "Apology accepted."
"I'm glad. You're worth the effort." Clover smiled back at her.
"So," Celestia said, her horn beginning to glow as she stood back up. "Enough of that. Where's the nearest water-gourd?"
Clover advanced, leaning tentatively in against her. "About that," he said. "I seem to recall you saying that was something you could solve along the way. So do you remember the part yesterday where you grabbed me, and we did something intense, and we had fun?"
She grinned. "I like what I'm hearing. Are you going somewhere with that?"
"No," he said. "We are."
Celestia's laughter was musical as her wings flexed and spread. And quite before he knew it, they were airborne.
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Huh, looks like they’re going to buck their way towards there. Noice
I still get nervous when anyone even mentions flying east. Hopefully this story doesn't bloat to those proportions. I can't wait till the Sunday after next!
Pansy and Cookie are gonna think she kidnapped him, aren’t they?
It's scary to see an author playing 4D Chess within their own story, right before our eyes.
Starswirl ploy was brilliant, and by extension that says things about you, Horizon. All in one, it gives the sisters something truly engaging to do, teaches them skills that can't easily be taught by anything but personal experience, they get more cosmopolitan through exposure to new and different personalities and mindsets, ancient dangers are verified and still secured, and the ponies get time to sort themselves out for the betterment of all parties...
Wow...
They've got a long adventure ahead of them; Rainbow Dash has hundreds of thousands of words of head start on them.
Am enjoying the hell out of this so far. It keeps getting better and better!
9741156
If that's the case, I think our dear author believes the next bronycon isn't for approximately six more years.
If only he had said more! If Celestia knew how her sister felt on the matter, a disaster might have been prevented. But then again, they don't call him clever because he has precognitive powers.
Er, wait.
And if, along the way, some of those geese turned out to be demonspawn that needed to be subdued... well, a wizard never does just one thing at a time, after all.
9741278 I have this mental picture of Starswirl playing Wack-A-Mole with all the ancient evils that could threaten the three tribes, using Celestia and Luna as the hammer.
"Ok, we have the Jade Thrasher of Infinite Pain dealt with," he mused, "so if I convince them to travel the Oblong Sea, that should stir up the Deep Mangler from his eternal sleep, deal with the Llamatian pirate kingdom in the process, and settle that dimensional rift issue that will pop up in a few centuries. Then if I can get them to turn north..."
Happy birthday! Good luck leading the training.
Also, methinks the stallion doth protest too much. He's already finding things about Celestia to fall in love with beyond mere divine beauty.
Loved the landscapes painted with words in the last two chapters, striking and evocative in their simplicity. Here's hope for more
I'm liking a lot all the directions this story is exploring so far, and I'm definitely looking forward to new chapters. As a simple reader, I'll leave theorizing about 4D chess to smarter ones, but the hype for the day after tomorrow is still strong
You've done it again, Horizon--gotten me to care about a romance story.
This is a ton of fun--worth the wait, I'd say.
However, I notice something...
Roll initiative.
Happy Birthday! Hope you have fun training!
That's a good way to phrase that.
I don't remember the exact phrasing of the prophecy, but I'm a little bit suspicious that Celestia isn't the one who is going to get her heart broken.
Oh this is gonna be a good one.
And hear I thought he was worried about G forces.
Damn this is good.
I like this story. I like this Celestia. I like this Clover. I’m liking and favoriting this, because it deserves it.
Found this while going through the depths of my imgur album. Figured it belonged.
i.imgur.com/LBlwKeb.png
I must say this version of Celestia interests me. She's basically a goddess pony with a good dose of Rainbow Dash's ego but you can still tell there's the Celestia there. I'll be delighted to see where this goes
This is a great romance story. Both parties have to change in different ways, and not necessarily ways that are obvious at first glance. Things that are not often seen as flaws in general.
And stories that make you think about things are always the best ones.
Well, I'm enjoying this so far! This Celestia is fantastic. It makes me wonder how much the adventure-romance arc of this will resemble the not-really-similar-*but* story I have in the "probably never to be finished" pile, which was built around a middle portion with an adventure-romance thing.
This is EXACTLY how I imagine Celestia was, when she was younger. From everything we’ve seen in show and comic cannon, I tend to picture her being brash, egotistical and mischievous, very much like Rainbow Dash, but with ten times the power to back up her ego.
I like to think it wasn’t really until the Nightmare Moon incident that she was forced to really look at herself and realize that she needed change.
9743303
Thank you!!
And I'll bite. Spoilers are nothing compared to waiting, especially since (judging from the word count) you're adding so much new stuff.
It's finally starting to hit home to me (and, I think, to Clover and Celestia) just how much bravery this relationship is going to require on both parts.
Obviously in Clover's case: Celestia's so far out of his power ballpark that she has to stop and realize that Clover requires water to survive. A pony with so much raw power that the concept of fearing physical harm appears to be completely alien to her.
Celestia, on the other hand, has to remember to slow down. Knowing that her normal antics would kill Clover in minutes. Not easy, given that she's probably never needed to hold back in such a way.
That said, her biggest challenge seems to be breaking down the social barriers created by the difference in power. The constant press of ponies wanting to impress her, to best her, seeing her only as a challenge to be faced... seems to have left some deep marks.
I do believe I understand Star Swirls riddle, I'll put it in spoilers, It means when he won't be there for her or he won't be there for her. It means he stays mortal and dies and her heart is broken, or he doesn't get with her at all when it would've helped her grow as a person. I think, but Pansy clearly fancies Clover, so that leaves that this interpretation could be wrong hinging on a future plot element.
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Last chapter posts tomorrow, so by the time you finish reading through you won't have long to wait to see if you're right!
Omigosh I am loving this so much hehe