Vortexes are Magic

by JeckParadox

Stars Part 4

"Discord, come here, I want to show you something!"

The Draconequus put down his meal, something he hadn't been able to do for a long time, and slithered down the hall, coming to a slightly creeked-open door. "Yes?" He jumped back as he heard the sounds of explosions and things were launched at his face. He cowered on the ground for a only a second before opening his eyes and taking in the decorations, the cake, the confetti falling off his horns, and most importantly the mares he loved. "I-is this all for me?"

"Yep!" Luna said cheerfully, lighting the candle on the cake. "It's the anniversary of the night we first met!"

Celestia lowered the cake to Discord's level and smiled as the foal's eyes widened in delight. "Make a wish."

Discord looked at the flickering candle and became very serious. He had heard about these, you only got one wish, and only if you blew out every candle in a single breath did it come true... there was only one candle at the moment, so that was all fine and good, but out of everything in the world, what should he wish for?

A year ago, shelter, a dependable source of food, a place where he could be safe and alive. But he had that now, he had more than he ever thought he would need or deserve. He was basically royalty, he had two friends who cared for him and... loved him. He was living the dream, his life was the best that could be had in this country. He was among the nobility, personal companion of the royal princesses, he had anything he wanted brought to him, he already had his every wish granted.

Keep things the way they are. He blew out the candle.

"Happy anniversary Discord!" Celestia and Luna cried, then Luna blew on her kazoo a few times.

Discord hugged Luna, and then Celestia. They began floating presents over to him. Discord smiled and delicately began untying the ribbon on the present. Then unfolded the wrapping paper, and placed it in a pile next to the box. He then raised an eyebrow as blue magic moved it back into place.

"Why did you do that?" Discord asked Luna.

"Do it right."

Discord sighed and began tearing the wrapper to pieces, but he kept the ribbon intact and maneuvered it around his tail. "Happy?" He looked at the chaos on the ground with distaste. But his attention shifted back to the box. He bit his tongue and looked into it with one eye, then lifted the large slab of obsidian out. It was covered in tiny sparkles. "What is this?"

"I call it 'Discord and Luna'." Luna smiled. She slowly outlined a serpentine shape and a vaguely alicorn-like shape among the many sparkles. "I'm trying to make a whole new art style! Do you like it?"

Discord looked at the sparkles and tried to re-trace the images of him and Luna. "I don't really get it... but it's beautiful, thank you Luna."

Luna beamed down at the Draconequus and nuzzled the top of his head with her chin. "Thank you, you're too nice to us, Discord."

Celestia looked at the speckled obsidian with a raised eyebrow, but decided not to say anything, she just didn't get art. She bent down and smiled at her Draconequus friend and lowered down her own present. Discord looked at Luna questioningly. "Do I have to rip up this one too?"

"Ugh, fine. But I don't see what the fun is in leaving it all in one piece."

"And I don't see the fun in having to clean up the mess." Discord retorted, sticking out his tongue. The two princesses looked to each other and shared a smile. Discord actually loved cleaning up, or rather organizing everything he found, he couldn't even enjoy his dessert until the red and blue sprinkles were on opposite sides of the ice cream. The cooks stopped putting in any other colors because they didn't like seeing their food melting before being enjoyed.

"Don't worry Discord, you can unwrap it any way you want." Celestia got down onto her knees and laid next to the foal. "I just want you to see what's on the inside."

Discord unwrapped it as carefully as Luna's present, but a little faster. His eyes brightened as he saw what it was inside the box. "I can't believe it! Thank you Celestia!" Discord picked up the gigantic book and waved it around as he spiraled around on his hoof. "A recipe book... do you think the cooks will let me go back into the kitchen?"

"I'm sure they will Discord, but look at the title."

"'making gourmet with modern magic', it's baking with magic?"

"Yep, it seemed like something perfectly fit to you."

"Thank you both so much!" He hugged the two of them, then sat on Celestia's bed and began flipping through the pages, slowly reading the instructions under the prettier pictures. He couldn't read very well a year ago either.

Luna heard the whispers of the sound of whooshing from the door. She turned to the two of them... her siblings, truly, and mouthed the word 'Doctor' to Celestia, before disappearing. Celestia sighed and let her head droop. Not even on Discord's special day did she ignore the call of the Doctor. Celestia tried following her before, but the Doctor would give her an infuriating wink and whisk her sister away to adventures around the world.

Celestia blushed as she though about this longer and longer. There was always a certain glint to Luna's eyes when she spoke about him, and they spent so much time together. From what Luna told her he might be over a millenia old. And Luna was thirteen, sure, but eventually Luna would become a thousand or so years old. She might marry the Doctor, or... or something. She already seemed to be in love with him... but then again, what experience did Celestia have with stallions or being in love? Luna spent more time alone with the Doctor every month or so than Celestia did in her entire life...

She shook the thoughts from her head. She looked back at Discord, who had noticed her looking at him and gave her another smile of gratitude. Now that was love, that was what Luna had for the Doctor, love like a brother... or is all love the same?

Celestia's parents were always so formal when others were around... and her mother had always been very quiet even when they were in private, so Celestia wouldn't be able to recognize romantic love when she saw it. She had always only known her family and Starswirl... she could ask him, she supposed.

Celestia turned back to her baby brother and read along with him in the cookbook, occasionally asking for him to bake one flashy food or another. And she bathed in Discord's love for her, and he in her love. That's what love is. Celestia told herself.

And the Doctor can't have my sister's.

"Do you think you're ready?" Orbitus asked.

"I... I am ready." Celestia answered.

"Just feel out for it. Reach out and take hold of the magical solar winds, ordinary Unicorns have been doing it since time immemorial."

Celestia reached out with her magic and found the sun's. She was filled with it's energy, and found herself going into a Unicorn's rage mode... but it was different. She became very calm, very understanding... like she had just grown up. Her skin lightened under her coat, and her mane burst into flame, but the light was channeled and purified into pure light... into solar wind, into a rainbow of fractured light being smoothed. Her mane became an ethereal mix of colors; pink, green, and blue. Her pink mane was gone, replaced by the ethereal mane of pure magic, Alicorn magic, not Unicorn, not Earth, not Pegasus, something new entirely... or perhaps even more ancient than the others. She took hold of the sun, and moved it from below the horizon to it's place above it, giving it a push so it would continue it's path for the next several hours, until the next day. A flash appeared near Celestia's tail and Orbitus observed the symbol of the sun on his daughter's flank.

He smiled. What did the servants do when their eldest child get their Cutie Mark? Something Spanish... cute-cenara?

Celestia sighed and let herself go from the sun, but now that she was in contact with the Alicorn magic she knew her mane wouldn't return to normal without her trying. But she liked it, she would keep the ethereal mane for a while. She trotted down the pedestal, her father following her.

"Celestia! You're so beautiful!" Luna gasped at her sister's mane. "And- you got your Cutie Mark! Hooray! What do you want for your cutecenara?"

"I don't really want to talk about that right now..." Luna looked behind her and stepped out of the way for her mother.

Umbra lowered her head to Celestia's level and gave her daughter one of her few smiles. "Celestia my dear, you lived up to your name, you're so beautiful, a true Monarch of Equestria." She nuzzled her daughter, and spread her wing over her. "We must speak about the next level of your training."

"My new magic training? To learn how to use my Alicorn magic?"

"No my Dear, there is no expert in Alicorn magic, and every Alicorn has an entirely different type of magic. The difference between my magic and yours is as plain as our manes, the manifestation of said magic, the only teacher you can have is yourself."

"Then what kind of training?"

"Political, economic, ethical, historical, cultural, the sciences of business and art. You must become the perfect ruler, Celestia, should you ever hope to be our replacements."

"What?! R-r-replacements? I'd never try and-"

"Celestia, we are immortal, but eventually we would want to retire, and we have children to pass our troubles to." Umbra pulled her head away from Celestia's and looked to the morning sky. "But in order to pass to you the eternal welfare of a kingdom will require us knowing you can handle it, that you will be a good ruler, and that we can trust you with it. Starting next week you will begin your tutelage under the finest of Equestria's experts in all the qualities of leadership."

Celestia wasn't sure to cry or be thankful... she did say that she had another week before she had to undergo her training. "Th-thank you Mother."

Starswirl flattered her as well, and Discord lost himself in her mane, not speaking to her at all, simply staring in admiration. Her Pegasus magic and Earth magic instructors were also there to commend her. Celestia accepted their praise with gratitude, but she felt herself beginning to worry about the future.

"Doctor, Celestia got her Cutie Mark today, she raised the sun, so... I think I'll stay home today, this is just a visit for you. It's Celestia's special day after all."

"Oh? hmm... Cutie Marks, it's the symbol that appears on your flank right?"

"Yes, and it shows your special talent, Celestia's is apparently raising the sun... how did you get yours Doctor?"

"Oh, this old thing? I was regenerated with it!" He looked at the hourglass. "I don't see how it relates to any talent of mine, I'm a time traveler, sure, but there are better ones. I'm brilliant, but that isn't really a talent, and I don't see how an hourglass relates to getting into trouble, which I think is my real talent."

"Doctor... next year I'm going to try and raise the moon."

"What? But that's-"

"I already have more sheer magic power than Starswirl, Alicorns are a combination of the three races, and we have an abundance of all three types of magic, plus, as Celestia calls it, Alicorn magic. Her mane became a rainbow when she used it!"

"A rainbow?" The Doctor remembered Celestia's hair in the future. "It seemed like just three colors to me, more like oil than rainbow, isn't it?"

"Oh hush, it's beautiful." Luna remembered why she was there. "Doctor, during my moon-raising ceremony, I want you to be there, with me, in front of my whole family and my teachers, okay? I know less than a dozen ponies well enough to call them worthy of my trust, and all but one of them will be there for me at the ceremony. Doctor, I've kept you a secret my entire life, only Celestia knows, and that's your fault. I haven't told my parents, I haven't even told Discord! I'm sick and tired of lying to them, if I raise the moon next year I'll begin training to be the future ruler of Equestria, they are already naming Celestia 'Regent of the Sun' if my dad get's sick she'll raise the sun every day he's not there, I'll inherit so many new responsibilities, and I won't have any right to lie to them any further. I won't be their daughter, I'll be their heir. My parents have to trust me, and they have to trust you."

"Lulu I..." The Doctor looked back and forth, his eyes resting on the monitor. "I... it might create a paradox Lulu! I could lyse Equestria."

"Doctor... If you don't reveal yourself then, then we'll have to keep it a secret forever. I won't be just a little child after I accept becoming heir to the thrones, I'll be someone they have to be able to trust. Trust is everything. Either we tell them when I'm still a child, or we don't tell them until it won't be dangerous for either of us."

"So... either risk it now-"

"Or wait centuries, or millenia. A millenia of me keeping a secret from them, and that's only if Celestia decides not to tell."

The Doctor paced a few feet, then turned back around. "Ugh... Lulu..."

"Yes?"

"I really hoped I would never have to use this..." The Doctor walked over to the monitor and changed it until it showed line upon line of text. "Lulu... turn around, you learning the future is more dangerous than me."

"Alright." She turned around.

The Doctor skimmed through the lines, one after the other, trying not to pay attention to any details but one that specifically definitely pointed to him. "Alright Lulu. I'll come to your ceremony, I promise. You were very kind to keep me a secret for so long anyway. And it was wrong of me to keep this over your head." He put up a hoof, and Luna met it with her own, a gesture the Doctor was partial to, apparently it reminded him of having 'hands'.

The Doctor was waiting on the grass, of the balcony, lying on his back and looking up at the moon. He would stay there the entire night, waiting for Luna. It was the place they first met, well, that she met him. He still couldn't believe it. It happened between voyages, he was alone, and was considering taking Luna to other planets. So he looked for them, and looked, and looked, and looked, but he couldn't see any, couldn't visit any, it wasn't like when the universe collapsed, leaving the Earth the only world and the Tardis's infinite explosion to light it, this world was much more similar to another event in his past... long, long ago in his past.

The Time War. The ultimate battle between the Time Lords and the Daleks, both of them using their greatest weapons, their most fearsome monsters, their greatest geniuses, in the end it had to be sealed away from everything, or the war would spread and engulf all of creation. A bubble of time and space was built; the portion of the galaxy that was ravaged in the war were sealed with a barrier, nothing able to pass, not a single atom, not even something hiding in the spaces between atoms, not a single electron. And the bubble also made a barrier in time; no time-travel device could enter the time stream of the war, and any device in the war could not leave.

Equestria was essentially a bubble. It was several large planets wide, much smaller than the Time War, Equestria itself had similar gravity to planet Earth, but in reality it was closer in size to Saturn or Neptune, much, much too large for it's gravity.

The second strange thing was that the Doctor found that the sun and moon were close to the same size and distance from the earth, and that the moon didn't reflect light, it made it's own cold light. The shadows on the moon were there because there was simply a side of the moon that didn't glow, and as it slowly rotates it shows the side that's dark. It was completely different from any solar system he had ever seen, and he had run from carnivorous suns with fins before. It was a planet with two moons, one of which was a miniature star, trapped inside a bubble in space and time, in an alternate universe with a different set of laws of physics.

The Doctor's thoughts were interrupted gratefully by Luna's approach. "Hello Lulu."

"Hello Doctor."

"Lulu... did you ever get tired of that name?"

"hmm... for a while, in between visits. I accidently signed that as my name on a test. Starswirl began laughing at me, well, not at me. He only laughs at Celestia, but that's mostly friendly teasing, but he laughed at the name and I got mad. That was actually the first time I let your name slip out to Celestia. But by the time you came back I didn't really care."

"Luna... heh, it feels almost as natural. Have I told you about the first time I entered Equestria? No, probably not, it happened far, far into the future."

Luna's eyes widened. The Doctor made several clear rules regarding time travel, besides that Luna wasn't allowed to do it, he made her promise not to ask about the past or the future beyond her time, beyond what she could read in a history book or predict by simply noticing the signs that appeared in society. He never spoke about the future, he said that it could lyse Equestria if he said something he shouldn't have. Or rather, if Luna heard something she never should.

"I met you Luna, and you already knew me. You were Princess Luna, you had your own beautiful Castle in a forest, you had a darker coat and an ethereal mane that looked like the night sky. You had guards that followed your commands, and you and Celestia talked like sisters, not like one princess to another... as you should."

"M-my parents? Discord? Starswirl?"

"I didn't meet them in the future, though if they're all immortal, then they'd still be around, wouldn't they?"

"C-can I ask you anything else?"

"...Maybe, tonight is a night for risks after all."

Luna opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Does my art ever take off?"

The Doctor laughed loud and hard, uninterrupted for three minutes. "Oh Luna, every pony, dragon, and anything else with any sense sees your art at least daily, and so so many will admire it for centuries."

"Every creature in the world can see my art daily?!"

"Heh, you made quite a lot of it, and you put it in places where a lot of people can see it." The Doctor dug into the grass with his shoulders, trying to make himself more comfortable in the ground in the balcony garden. "Luna, do you know what stars are?"

"Sure, they're pointed shapes, like a bunch of triangles strung together, it's used when recording spells geometrically."

"Well, in my universe, or... well the universe I came from. The sky is covered in billions of pinpricks of light."

"Billions?!"

"Trillions, quadrillions, numbers so large that no one can ever count to them, even if they could count at the speed of light and lived forever."

"Your night sky must be very bright."

"Oh it is Luna, it is. So many pinpricks of light, so tiny, so far away. Luna where I come from, the sun is simply whatever star is closest to the planet you're on. Each 'star' is a different world's sun, and each one is so far away it looks to us as merely a glowing grain of sand in the night. The sun usually will block out the stars's shine with it's own light, but moons rarely compete." He let out a deep, painful sigh. "Oh Luna. The universe I came from was so big, so wide, it was insane and random and perfectly planned all at once. My universe has a beauty that is only achieved through the careful planning of a greater mind, or the beauty of absolute chaos becoming still. There were so many stars Luna, I miss them so much, sometimes I would just fly the Tardis away from any star, until I had the maximum number of stars in my view. And then, I would just leave the door open, and I'd swing my legs over the edge so they'd dangle, and I'd fiddle my toes and stare out at space and..."

"...And?"

"I would stare out at space, and look at the beauty of the placement of the stars, making the greatest of designs from any possible angle... Luna, either there is a God with a sense of beauty so refined that he created a piece of art beautiful from any perception or angle, or the creatures who look up at the night and see it's beauty can see it no matter where each individual star is, it... I'd sit with my legs hanging out, and I'd just take it all in for hours at a time, and..."

Luna didn't say anything, just following the Doctor's gaze and trying to see what he saw.

"And it would be like the night lasted forever."

Comments

[Slateblu1]

Discord smiled and began delicately began untying the ribbon on the present.

you've got began in there twice. Take out either one, shouldn't make a difference, but you only need one.

The ending there was wonderful.
Keep it up fellow author.

[Pax]

Wow...

[OncomingStorm]

1713774
So that was the doozy!