Sun and Daughter

by brokenimage321

Chapter 2

Luster took a deep breath, then smiled and snuggled deep into her bed. She spent a few more minutes luxuriating in the simple pleasure of having her Sun-blessed room to herself before finally opening her eyes.

Luster had spent her entire fourteen years turning her bedroom into a space she would never want to leave. She had carefully filled every one of her bookshelves with her favorite books, each and every one read and cherished and loved multiple times over, with a hoofful of tasteful curios rounding things out. Her desk, polished until it shone, was organized with razor-precision, with a world map tacked on the wall above it. Her reading nook, the one spot of careful disorder, was filled with an oversized bean bag chair that sat at the foot of her glass-fronted case of first-edition books. Even the mobile that hung in the center of the room, with models of the sun, the moon, and Equus, was exactly as she remembered it.

Luster gazed fondly at her things until the scent of breakfast tickled her nose--eggs and hay-bacon, by the smell of it. Luster’s grin widened, and she rolled out of bed. She looked herself over in the mirror on the back of her door, straightened her mane a little, then stepped out to greet the day.

When she entered the kitchen, Mom was still juicing oranges at the kitchen sink.

“Morning, Sunshine,” she said with a smile.

“Good morning, Mom,” Luster replied, slipping into her chair at the kitchen table.

Mom had already laid out breakfast for her--fried eggs, two strips of hay bacon, and a generous slice of homemade bread to boot. Of course, Mom’s portion was easily twice the size of hers, her bread already spread with butter and strawberry jam, but that was to be expected.

Luster only had to wait another moment until Mom brought over two glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice, setting the smaller of the two in front of Luster, keeping the larger one for herself. As soon as Mom sat down, Luster grabbed one of the strips of hay bacon and took a big bite. So crunchy it was almost burned--just the way she liked it.

Mom took a bite of her bread and chewed thoughtfully for a moment as Luster plowed her way through her breakfast.

“So,” Mom asked, “how’s school?”

“It’s fine,” Luster replied automatically.

Mom waited for a moment for Luster to continue, but she just picked up her next strip of bacon and started eating that, too.

“What are they teaching you?” she asked.

Luster swallowed, but kept her eyes on her plate.

“Math,” she said. “And science. And a little bit of art and literature, too—”

Mom frowned. “Math?” she repeated. “At the School of Friendship?”

Luster nodded. “Headmare Starlight says it’s to make us better-rounded ponies,” she said. “Make us smarter. Even if we never use it again, it’s supposed to teach us how to think about problems.”

Mom gave a little nod. “That’s fair, I suppose,” she admitted. “But, what about, you know--the friendship?”

Luster picked up her slice of bread in her magic, and began to butter it.

“They don’t call it friendship, Mom,” she said. “They call it SEL—Social-Emotional Learning.”

“What’s the difference?”

Luster shrugged. “Science, I think. SEL has been studied and peer-reviewed and all that. Not like the old days, where everything was done on the fly.”

Mom gave a little snort. She had quite liked the old days.

Luster took a bite of her bread, and said no more. Mom watched her for a moment before a little smile crept across her face.

“So,” she said to Luster, “Let’s say that there’s a bully who won’t stop teasing you. What do your teachers say you should do?”

Luster swallowed her bite before she spoke.

“Talk to them,” she said firmly. “Try and get a sense of what their needs are as individualsl, and see if there’s another way the two of you can meet those needs. Maybe try and do another activity together to help them lower their guard. As long as you feel safe, that is.”

Mom frowned her diplomatic frown. The one that, in the old days, meant misery and war and famine.

“But why not just walk away?” she asked. “Get out of the situation and tell someone?”

“Because then that might exacerbate whatever problem the bully has in the first place,” Luster said automatically. “It would work in the short term, but exercising empathy--Kindness--might keep another creature from getting bullied later on.”

Celestia’s frown deepened. Luster’s answer was correct, of course--too correct. She had rattled it off with textbook precision, but without any actual feeling. It was almost as if she understood the theory of the thing, but had never had reason to put it into practice.

She briefly considered writing a letter to the school, informing them of the shortcomings in their curriculum--but, when she realized who might actually read said letter, dismissed the thought out of hoof.

---

Celestia had suspected that something had changed within her almost as soon as she put the crown on her head. But she didn’t know for certain until Prince Bert.

Celestia had still been consolidating the various pony kingdoms into what would become Equestria, and it was proving to be slow, difficult work. One of her rival kingdoms, however, saw the writing on the wall and sought an alliance with Equestria--on the condition that Celestia married their crown prince and produced an heir. After all, if they could breed into the Equestrian royal line, then their kingdom would last forever too, wouldn’t it?

As reluctant as she was to submit herself to a purely political union, Celestia felt she could not refuse. She had brought rivals under her wing through promises of economic prosperity and threats of violence, but those deals took years to forge, and their loyalties were shaky, at best. Here was an opportunity to weld an ally to her cause overnight, if she could, with bonds that would never break. And, perhaps--though she almost didn’t dare admit it to herself--to finally fulfill one of her fondest dreams.

Her marriage to Prince-Consort Camembert turned out to be short and unsatisfying. She tried everything she knew how to do, and a number of things she didn’t. Yet, no matter how many evenings she spent with her husband, the promised heir never came.

As much as it destroyed her to admit it, the problem was entirely hers. After all, Prince Bert had foisted enough bastard foals upon the serving-mares to leave little enough doubt about the matter. But, as desperate as she was for peace, the only thing holding their alliance together--to say nothing of their marriage--was the increasingly-faint promise of a child.

It was odd, to say the least--the thought that she could save her people if she merely locked her knees and thought of Equestria. But in the end, her efforts proved fruitless, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Bert eventually, but predictably, lost his patience, and left her to sire a foal with a filly a quarter his age. His father, in anger, declared the union between their two countries null and void, and raised the banner of war. And Celestia, her heart broken into a thousand little pieces, led her soldiers to the field of battle for the first time since she had taken the crown.

Ten thousand mares widowed, twenty thousand children orphaned, forty thousand lives wasted. So much meaningless loss and suffering. All because Celestia could not make herself do the one thing that every single one of her foremothers had accomplished almost without trying.

To be fair, Celestia would have made a terrible mother. What time she did not spend surrounded by diplomats, lawmakers and soldiers was often spent in some daredevil stunt, anything to make her forget her pain and make her feel alive. That would have left little time to do more than say goodnight to any offspring she might have had. She knew it, and she knew that she knew it, and to believe otherwise would be nothing but a waste of effort.

At least, that was what she told herself when she lay awake late at night, visions of giggling foals trampling across her heart.

Comments

[Levi the Liberator]

I am interested keep it up.

[Level Dasher]

Hm. Alrighty then. I eagerly await when we get to the events that lead up to Luster's adoption.

[KarmaSentinal]

10836484
What if, Luster is Starlight and Sunburst's foal, but gave her up for adoption because of how busy they are? This is why Celestia doesn't want to get involved with school because she doesn't want to bring this up to Luster who may not know about it?