During Lesson Zero, Spike warned Celestia of Twilight's impending breakdown. What if Spike did this during the course of many episodes, with Celestia valuing his input?
Sometimes, however, it backfires on the both of them, as in the case of A Canterlot Wedding. Afterwards, Celestia has a heartfelt chat with Spike.
First two chapters are letters being traded back and forth with one actual scene. Family Celestia and Spike, Momlestia. Cover art by JAEneth, used with permission.
Day 2 of my Self-Imposed 28 Fics in 28 Days Challenge
Chapters (3)
This was truly an enjoyable read.
Short but sweet^^
Well, that was nice and sweet.
Couple things in chapter two:
1) Celestia uses 'Bridesmaids', but Spike uses 'Bridesmares'. It doesn't come off as being a typo made by Spike, so I don't know if that was intentional, but it stood out as being odd.
2)
C'mon, Emp. You're better than this. It's Celestia saying it too, so you have no excuse.
And in chapter three:
Not sure what you were trying to say, there. 'To each one', maybe?
7915795 In the show, isn't the term "bridlemaids"?
7915833 Episode transcript on the Wiki has it as 'bridesmaids'.
http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Transcripts/A_Canterlot_Wedding_-_Part_1
7915838 Hmm, good point. For some reason I've always heard it as "bridlemaids," and I've seen fanfics that have it each way.
Myself, I like the more equine term, but that's just me.
More Momlestia and Spike fics!!!
mad man back at again with some FLUFF
Eyyy...Nice.
Wish I could go back and tell past me to get over watch and not battleborn
7915795 'To a one' is a bit of an archaic expression that kind of says "each of them" but also "down to the very last one of them". You also see it as "to a man" as in "Did Washington have their support? They supported their leader to a man".
Very nice chapter. Really like this insight into what was going on in other places.
behavior
7916350 i would think that's a pun? Isn't that so?
Because hay and ponies..?
7916244 I have both - actually preordered Battleborn with season pass.
Finally picked up Overwatch a few months later when it became almost impossible to find a match on Battleborn. And the worst part was I found Overwatch to be a MAJOR letdown. I loved Battleborn, but Overwatch was just a big pile of meh to me. No (in game) story, fewer characters, loot boxes that just give outfits, taunts, and other worthless crap (vs actual powerups that aid in your gameplay. Maybe you get useful stuff at higher levels?) No real options for leveling (vs. Battleborn where you can level your player overall, your individual characters, AND a 10 step leveling in-match allowing you to fine tune your buffs during the match.) And the characters are much more interesting - I'll take Orendi any day over any of the bland Overwatch bunch. Plus she reminds me of Discord! 
Battleborn was smothered by hype, nothing more. But that was enough. So annoying.
7916350 It's a pony pun
7916403 agreed
7916251 Ah, my mistake then.
Very nice!
I love these sorts of stories, and the Spike / Celestia relationship is almost always on I like to see explored. Looking forward to the rest of your challenge stories! 
Oh, and this of course deserves some
I love Momlestia and Spike stories. I love them to death.
Henceforth, I love this story.
7915828 Seconded.
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Thanks, editing the 'Luna and me' to 'Luna and I'. I rewatched It's About Time and ACW beforehand, and I think I know what happened: I used bridesmaids correct the first time as actually said in ACW, then tripped up on it the second time because I was thinking bridesmares again after Shining Armor's multiple uses of the term 'best mare'. 7916251 addresses that last point about 'to a one'.
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7916592 Thank you very much!
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7916766 Do you know, I actually had it as part of my headcanon that Chrysalis had a changeling take Twilight's place for a day? That's likely why I didn't even think about that even as I used the alternative perspective to flesh out Celestia abandoning Twilight so quickly. I suppose that can be the official reason for this fic, that a changeling imitated Twilight for a day, so everypony else was peripherally aware that she was supposedly still around.
Otherwise, thanks, yeah. ACW is something I've thought a little bit about in terms of the timeline, and so this fic employs a little of my reasoning (for example, that Celestia and Spike both realise Twilight hasn't seen Cadance in years and think Twilight is expecting Cadance to be the exact same pony she was five or ten years ago).
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7916397 It's actually Spike being a kid and not getting quite every one of his words correct. I mention that in my author's note in the last chapter that I made a few deliberate mistakes for him, along with of course the obvious differences in letter formatting where Celestia does indent and Spike doesn't.
7916692 Yes, Celestia error fixed, thanks (and yeah, the Spike stuff is deliberate).
7916344 Thanks, yep. As I mention in my Author Note for the last chapter, It's About Time fits perfectly with the idea Spike was trading letters with Celestia.
7916679 Different takes on canon for different fics, really.
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Agreed, I hate it when fics act like the two barely know each other. Even canon says that Celestia raised Spike through much of his early years.
Lovely and beautiful. Beautifully lovely. Beautifullovely!
Always refreshing to read something so family oriented, from anywhere. I'm glad I got to read this. I'd like to view what else you have in store. Very, well done.
Love it. Very big fan of Spike and Momlestia. Will be following you and hoping there could be more for this story.
Very detailed and in character. Amazing job.
Beautiful chapter. Loved it.
I love momlestia stories, especially if spike is the son in it. Great story, great dialogue, and even great imaginary as well. I want more momlestia.
Bravo, Emp! Momlestia and Spike is something there always needs to be more of, and this tied together several episodes very neatly.
Really nice to see a Momlestia and Spike story. Usually all the maternal Celestia stories are focused on Twilight (or more recently Sunset), so poor Spike is always overlooked. Well, either that or Twilight is his parent/big sister figure, and considering how big of an oblivious jerk Twilight is pre-Ponyville, that's not exactly a good role model.
Great way of weaving this in with canon too. The time travel episode was basically Twilight going crazy again, as well as coming up with good reasons for why Twilight hasn't talked to Cadance in years. If shapeshifters hadn't been introduced, Twilight would have been in the wrong at the wedding, but of course in the end the show has to have it so that Twilight is right while everyone else is wrong.
I do wonder sometimes about Celestia intentionally having Spike there as an early warning system on Twilight, especially at his age, but nice way of framing it as a learning experience for him too. I wish canon had more to say on how Spike fits into the sort of family between Twilight and Celestia, but otherwise great fics like this help fill in the blanks.
"Instruhments" shouldn't have an H in it.
Fuckin' cute.
Wow, I didn't know I needed a fic like this in my life. That was adorable. Nice job.
This is simply grand.
7918983 This story is in a letter format from Spike to Celestia. So while from a overall grammatical standpoint it's wrong, but that might have been a deliberate choice from the author to have Spike make that mistake.
7919508 I didn't realize that until I got to the author's note on the last chapter.
I really do like this. It's a nice change and an interesting insight into Spike's life, in addition to showing him in his more childlike form. I've seen fics with the odd premise of the Mane 6 sending letters to Celestia, but never Spike.
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See, I think that those are actually advantages of Overwatch over Battleborn. I might be dating myself here, but I've always approached shooters as contests of skill on an even footing*. It should be about which team is better (skills and coordination), not which team spent more time grinding or money buying things. The only part of that that sounds remotely acceptable is the in-match leveling, which would be alright in competitive but sounds like a stone bitch in modes that allow backfilling.
*Well, as even as possible. But I'd really be dating myself if I started ranting about LPBs.
That was awesome
Nice job weaving in various bits of other episodes, like the Moondancer reference. Good story.
This is a very good short story.
I really liked reading this.
7924247 I'm not sure if she outright confirmed it or just suggested this. I personally love this scenario but logically I think it was more likely either Spike spent his early years in a nursery raised by various staff or Twilight did take him home to his own family.
Interesting. Very interesting. I would like to read more Behind-the-Scenes stories like this.
7920809 Hi SR,
I saw your response when you first posted it. I just haven't really gotten up to responding to this until now. However, I am glad for your comment, as it is really fair criticism. In fact, it's the only real good criticism I've seen and don't mind getting a downvote over.
I did write this in under a day, but I've had the idea bouncing around in my head for longer than that, so that's not really much to defend it on.
Faux-Cadance's actions weren't defensable, but again, look at it from the perspective of Spike and Celestia. As far as they know, Twilight hasn't seen Cadance in a decade (roughly, given she describes Cadance as her foalsitter...and nothing more recent than that). In 9999 out of 10000 cases, it's not going to be that the broom has been replaced by an evil shapeshifter, it's that your mental image of how somebody should be is tainted by time and nostalgia.
Celestia does rely on Spike's opinions, too, since he spends significantly more time around her. Abandoning Twilight is a jerkass move of hers, but I would hope at least in the context of this fic she has better justification for it.
This was good, and I'd definitely like to see you explore this further in the future. There are a lot more episodes where this connection between Spike and Celestia would fit in in interesting ways, particularly the season 1 episodes when Celestia was really messing with Twilight, and there are also some interesting opportunities to play things the other way with episodes like Boast Busters where Spike was at fault and Twilight was being the more mature one where Celestia would have to read between the lines and tell Spike to step back. It also has some interesting possibilities in a few of the messes of episodes like Mare Do Well where Celestia could be a hidden player during the episode or running damage control after the fact, and it could open up some interesting opportunities to explore how Spike and possibly Celestia interact with the rest of the girls since there really isn't much there in the show.
And absolutely nopony got an alert that a certain magic-absorbing centaur got loose? Wow - great forethought there, Celestia. Let's not introduce a system that alerts the Princess if prisoners escape - after all, the prisoners are harmless and have no malicious bones or thoughts in their bodies.
Is it really any wonder why Tirek got so powerful? Not only did Princess Celestia fail to realise he escaped, but she also never bothered to check Tartarus to see if all the prisoners were there, never recaptured him when he was still heavily weakened, and when Lord Tirek regained the ability to absorb alicorn magic, she never smashed the 'Princess Twilight Sparkle' stained glass mural, thus alerting Tirek to said fourth princess's existence.
This should not have been such a lackadaisical (is that the right word?) letter - 'oh hey, the guardian of Tartarus got loose. No big deal - Twilight brought him back. It's not like a centaur managed to escape during Cerberus's absence, after all'. This should've been a dire warning, since there was no-one guarding the gate. Celestia, you're fired.
I liked the angle, but Celestia as "mom" i didn't like much. Twilight hatched him. If anything she is his mom. That may be just me.
What a wonderful premise! I don’t know about Spike calling the princess “mom” though. I like the letters and how they fit right in with the episode. Cute chapter.