Flashes Of Eventide

by SilverNotes

Humility (Celestia, Buffalo)

Sometimes even the oldest mare in the world has to be forced to swallow her pride.

Celestia drew gazes wherever she went for a walk. Also being the tallest mare in the world tended to do that, not to mentioned the golden regalia, the blindingly white pelt, the ethereal mane and tail, the presence of both horn and wings...

She's tried to discourage active reverence and worship, but so many have looked at the mare who had, for centuries, been the only alicorn in the world and saw something divine. Countless age implied wisdom verging on omniscience. The mare who knew everything, and for whom everything was going according to plan.

If only they knew.

If only they knew that the gambit with Twilight Sparkle on that Summer Sun Celebration had been an act of desperation, because she had a feeling that her apprentice had what it took to activate the elements but couldn't know for certain that she would find friends who embodied them. If only they knew that Nightmare Moon's imprisonment had been a failure, a last-ditch attempt to use the artefacts they'd once wielded together to pull her sister out of that thing when all the begging and pleading for Luna to come back had borne nothing.

Celestia does have a touch of prophecy, but she has never been able to fully distinguish what are glimpses of the future and what are just dreams. And even then, the Insight visits her so rarely, with disaster after disaster having knocked her off her hooves with its lack of warning.

Celestia is not a goddess. She's just a mare. Yet sometimes... she falls for her own hype, and then reality serves as the bucket of cold water to remind her that she doesn't know everything. Like Twilight's letter about Appleloosa.

Some of the new desert settlements had been coming up to the border of bison territory. There had been some intermingling in those border towns, a bit of immigration in both directions, even a mixed marriage or two, but the diplomatic situation between pony and bison had always been informal. Worked out between town and tribe, individual with individual.

I didn't know that the planned location for Appleloosa had crossed over into their land.

Celestia is walking, on the way to an important appointment, and the onlooking creatures see a crown-heavy head sink.

I should have known that the planned location for Appleloosa had crossed over into their land.

Not just their land, but sacred land. My ponies were planting apple trees on sacred land, right under my snout.

Unacceptable.

The diplomatic situation had been informal, and that had seemed to be the way the bison preferred it. There had been no hurry to formalize anything, because things were working as they were. It was a mistake, and it's one that Celestia knows must be corrected. One that will be corrected.

There is a bison cow waiting for her at the newly-opened embassy, with a coat the colour of clouds. Her blue eyes regard Celestia's approach with stoicism, waiting to see what the oldest mare in the world will do.

Celestia stops, and her front legs bend at the knees. Her long neck lowers, bowing until the point of her sharp horn meets the ground. Her wings splay out and dip downward, in an old pegasus form of curtsey, and the motions in her mane and tail slow, until the waves of energy are near-stationary.

"Ambassador. It is my honour to welcome you to Canterlot."

Comments

[Moproblems Moharmoney]

Nice to see more fics acknowledging how fucked up the Appeloosa episode is/was.

[FanOfMostEverything]

As you grow up, you realize the virtually every adult is scrambling to keep up appearances while desperately trying to figure out what's going on, assuming they haven't resigned themselves to never knowing. Celestia is that phenomenon writ large.