Chapter 30
I found Celestia at the top of one of the towers just before Sunset. Pushing the door open, I trotted up the last of the ice and snow covered steps onto the top of the tower.
I paused at the top and Celestia glanced back at me as I shaded my eyes against the bright sunshine., moving around into her shadow.
“One moment, Page,” she said and turned back towards the sun, looking at it without flinching.
I, on the other hoof, kept my eyes well away from her little ball of fun. It was bright enough just being out during the day, looking straight at it… no thank you.
Celestia's horn lit up with her golden sunlight and she raised her head high before starting to slowly, slowly lower her head and horn and the Sun started to set, moving with her horn.
This was something I had only seen a couple of times. Seeing Luna raise the moon wasn’t exactly uncommon, I watched that almost every evening.
But seeing Celestia do it was rare.
The sun started to dip beneath the horizon and it got darker, the stars starting to show above as she lowered it lower and lower.
The last red light slowly started to die down from beyond the horizon and Celestia sighed, the light started to flicker out from around her horn and she raised her head, stretching her wings again before she turned her head to look at me, “Page.”
“Sunshine,” I said, “Done lowering your big ball of fire?”
Celestia nodded, “Done checking out my rear?”
“You,” I said and moved up next to her as I tried not to blush, “are feeling better.”
“Not hearing denials,” Celestia teased before she nodded with a small sigh, “...You’re right. I was blaming myself for what happened.”
“‘Was’?” I asked, looking up to her.
Celestia shifted her wings a bit uncomfortably, “...Still am,” she admitted with a small smile, “At least a little. But I think that’s not what you came to find me about.”
I shook my head, “...No, it wasn’t,” I admitted and pulled my cloak a bit tighter around myself with my magic, it’s warming spell struggling against the biting cold wind. Celestia didn’t look bothered at all, she wasn’ even wearing anything but her regalia. Which was so unfair because I was pretty sure that even before the entire bat thing I would have found it cold right now.
Seriously, by far the coldest winter since I ended up in Equestria.
Celestia frowned, “Cold?”
I nodded, “It’s freezing. I’m not as resistant as most alicorns and even before this entire thing I would have found it on the chilly side today.”
Celestia moved a bit closer, putting her wing across me, “How’s that?”
A warmth radiated from her and her wing, it was like laying next to a fireplace! I blinked at her, “...Seriously, what’s your metabolism like?” I asked as I shifted closer to her side, resting my head against her warm shoulder.
She grinned and shook her head, “What did you want to talk to me about, Page?”
I shrugged my wings a bit and sighed, “...Thestrals. Do you know how many letters I have gotten so far?”
Celestia shook her head.
“One hundred and fifty three as of today,” I told her seriously, “One hundred and fifty three thestrals that had the time, inclination and opportunity to write to me. Some even sent me who they were.”
Celestia looked thoughtful, “...I had no idea there were so many left.”
I shook my head, “Sunshine, that’s only the ones that could, wanted to and dared to send me a letter so far and have gotten them here through the postal service so far. I don’t know exactly how it’s with ponies, but I know how few that would do that if it was humans. Sparks could likely give a better estimation, but my guess is somewhere between ten and twenty percent at most have answered. At absolute most. I actually think the number is way lower than that considering how shy about revealing themselves they are.”
She shifted next to me, “Over a thousand thestrals…”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “And I don’t know what to do to help them. I have some ideas… the idea of just telling them to unmask to let ponies get used to them won’t work with just a thousand thestrals.”
She slowly nodded, “What can I do to help?”
“That depends on everything else,” I said and smiled at her, “First, I need information. To be able to help, I first need to know how. I need everything you have and know about thestrals and the older the better. Do we have a copy of the original curse? The modification? Who made either?”
Celestia smiled, “My sister and I are old, but not that old. Thestrals existed when we were young.”
“I know the story, Luna told it to me a good while ago, before the wing thing even,” I said, “But I need as much as you have.”
“Well,” she said and flicked one ear, “We don’t have either curse or who cast either of them, that’s lost to history as far as I know. I don’t actually know how much we have on this at all,” she admitted with a small thoughtful frown and then looked to me again, “If we’re lucky, there might be some of what you are looking for in the oldest archives or at least something to point you in the right directions. They are usually locked down and only specific ponies are allowed in because everything there is so old and fragile. I’ll give you access.”
“Thanks Sunshine.”
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There's not going to be enough information, so Page is going to need to go back in time and talk to them, whoever made and modified the curse, that's how they're going to get the time-travel spells up and running, isn't it? That solves twin-lights issue too, just so.
Very nice!
10395671
This is possible , but i'm seeing more that it was page who goes back in time and is the one who fixed the curse, simply for the sheer absurdity of it and temporal logistics.
That is more shipping material to make this boat even bigger
Huh. That’s actually a good place to start.
hey look, midnight's problem could possibly be solved with some time travel, and uh page might learn some stuff as well with time travel....Now they just have to invent a delorean and get it to 88 mph
Page... your inner DWK is showing.
10395738
Madness
The one thing I hate about these stories is how short the chapters are. It always feels like we are just starting to get going when they end. The story is good but I always feel like the story feels a bit choppy but maybe that’s just me.
10395788
But the nice thing is that it updates daily, so you could just wait a month and have a complete story to read.
"You are my sunshine,
of firey death,
You make me blind with your toy,
every time you raise the Ball of Flaming eyes and Blindness... of Doom,
You'll never know,
How many times I've gone blind,
Please destroy it."
Celestia's nickname always reminds me of the You are my sunshine song. I came up with this reading this chapter
Thanks for the new chapter! Looking forward to the update!
10395671
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10395744
Yep, my theory and predicting senses are tingling
I'm calling it right now.
Page is going to time travel and in some way or another because he is an alicorn Thestral will cause the curse in some way
He will either create it or fix it
But the second one creates a paradox in time
Discord: See Cadance? Page and Celestia enjoying the sunset together! Does that make you happy?
Cadance: *sniff* ....a little.
Discord: Are you ready to ship again?
Cadance: *sniff* ...yeah I guess but what if that thing comes back again?
Discord: Then we memory-wipe ourselves of that moment and pretend it didn't exist. We may be a running joke in this world...and that's okay. We have our ships and each other! It is all that matters~!
Cadance: ...Damn you're more romantic than Shining.
Discord: Thank you...now let's move on after this. People are tired of this storyline in the comments!
Cadance: True...back to being running jokes!
Discord: Yep yep!
Celestia is the hottest mare. Luna is the coolest. Cadance the shippest. Twilight the most nerdy x 2
Blank Page will take em all in time...
Yes i left Flurryheart out for a reason...
later...
10396172
Indeed, a few hundred years will change alot.
10396328
Also the waiting line...
Luna is his prime mare now with Sunny as wing/bed mare, in line are:
Skitter, Celestia, Chrysalis, Twilight & Midnight, Cadance and perhaps Spike...
Wait who put Spike on the list?Flurryheart. Fluttershy etc is to short lived to make it in the prime waifu horder collection list.10396446
Nod's sagely Understandable
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Blank Page, father to a entire pony subrace 
( eatch containing 30 Page Larve at least 
Bomb ass idea... Perhaps all Thystrals are his descendants
One more reason to harvest his seed for his kind and perhaps a Changeling cluser of eggs or three
10395804
Doesn’t really help with the clipped nature of the chapters as you have to stop, click the next chapter button and then deal with figuring out when the next scene takes place. If you pay attention, there are a lot of really short scenes jumping to a different point in time. Those kind of create the choppy feel rather than reading short chapters daily. Part of me is just preferential to longer scenes that allow things to develop just a little more than these stories do.
Discord had a plan in making Page a thestral, if you catch him in the right mood he may give you a clue in his own way of were to look.
10395804
Hiver has started so much. Most of the story threads are abandoned. I am surprised we saw Midnight to the end before being swept unceremoniously under the rug like 90% of the "story" has done. Nearly every single chapter could use a few gundred extra words or even double down the word count.
I feel this story will never be complete. His "adventure drama" is shaping up like his "slice of life" in appearance. It is under cutting both the drama and the adventure.
The stakes don't matter much when the events don't matter enough to finish. Page goes out as a batpony and is treated like Zecora. That is bad and i feel for him as i can see it happen to him and have had that happen to me. Chased off public property by misguided guards? Much worse and i feel for him but it has never happened to me. I become more invested in him. He tries to get a job; we hear his emotion about it, we see that he feels and we will feel sympathy. Yet i, personally, don't get the anger. I am not a minority so i don't get it as deeply as he does. Another unimportant event. Show us why we should care.
Then we have Whats-her-face! You can tell how invested i am if i can't be bothered to remember her name. She runs a cafe, is a batpony and is having family problems. Which is about all we are given. Hiver did not invest; why should we? Its not like she is a token minority that the plot hinges on. Sarcasm aside our token minority is greatly undersold.
So many questions, so many threads. Any answers are given via info dump not events that might make us invested in the story.
The entire interest of the story relies on Page himself. I do want to keep reading his slice of life. I might want a drama story too, if one would build, but it is almost just background at this point.
10397634
It’s not that the story ideas have been abandoned, it’s more like Hiver has managed to do with a first-person narrative that most authors here haven’t been able to do: keep the first-person narrative ON that person and NOT allow the plot force him into switching to another POV.
There have been many events Page wasn’t privy to and wasn’t made aware of until another character informed him, and only then does he make the decision to get involved. Plus, Hiver has kept Page’s involvements realistic: Page can only do one thing at a time, so if his activities change, he HAS to drop one thing in order to focus on the other.
I don’t think Hiver has forgotten those other matters—and it’s not like many of the other commentators here have forgotten about them or haven’t reminded him about them, either—but Hiver has definitely been loading up a shitload of Chekhov’s guns and planting them all over the place. I’m pretty sure he’s been keeping track of them.
I would love to find out that there never was a curse. Just ponies spreading malicious lies. 🦇
10402143
I prefer to stick with a third-person perspective when switching from a first-person perspective to tell something the primary character would be unaware of. Switching characters like I've seen so many people do just causes confusion. It's even worse when people rely on gimmicks like changing the text color to tell the reader who's talking. A person who must rely on a reader due to vision problems isn't going to see the color shifts. Likewise, switching first-person perspective can be equally confusing if it's not clear right from the start that it's a new speaker.
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Silver leaf and moon beam are different ponies
When someone lived through at least 3 calendar systems and tells someone back than was something rare or unknown, that is something impressive.
I wonder if Celestia and Lna are secretly the creators of the Hypogriffon race...
Pony x Griffon? Sound like a Griffon lover with success with Celestia or Luna...
10402143
One can only hope...
There is a lot by now, more still later.