Asterism's Parable of the River

by gloamish

Night & Day

Celestia awoke to a presence in her bedroom.

Even with sleep still sticking to her mind like sweaty bedsheets, she knew she wasn't alone. For a moment, she thought it was her former student, that she had escaped from the mirror, somehow, and returned — to enact revenge or beg forgiveness, Celestia didn't care. Just to have her home at all would be enough. "Sunset?" she mumbled, lifting her head off the pillow.

Then, her mind took the reins from her heart. This room was warded by a rotation of the finest astrologists in Equestria. The configuration maintained by the nation's most stalwart guarded against all manner of wish, teleportation being one of the most important among them. It was maintained every night so the nation's Princess (and, by extension, her concerned citizens) could rest easy.

It could be broken, but only by one whose attunement to the stars was absolute, with astral connections honed like knife edges. It could also be circumvented by a creature who held a connection to something stranger than the stars, though none she knew of could enter a locked room.

Fie. Centuries of peace and borders as strong as her word had made her dopey. She flicked her horn to al-Awaidh and yanked, weaving a shield together out of nothing even as her higher reasoning kicked in: if something had truly entered this room to hurt her, it would have done so by now.

So, she let go of her shield, she looked around, and she listened. The only sound was rapid and stuttering breaths. And the only thing out of place in the room was a purple filly with streaming eyes and a button-eyed doll hanging at her side.

"Princess Celestia, I— I had a n—nightmare..." Twilight Sparkle choked out through sobs.

No.

"Th— There was a big pony, l— like you, but she definitely wasn't a Princess... sh—she was all dark, and she... she!..."

Whatever force kept the filly nailed to the floor was redirected, catapulting her into Celestia just as she broke down in sobs. The lack of regalia didn't seem to bother Twilight as much as it did before, but the warmth of the little body against Celestia did nothing to melt the ice in her chest.

Nightmare Moon had found her.

A guard burst into the room with a shout. "Your Majesty!" Behind her, the night warden lay on the floor, unmoving. The guard cast her gaze across the room until it landed on the filly huddled to Celestia's chest, looking back at her. Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. "Is... everything?.." she managed.

"Everything is fine, Chimney. Would you trot to the guard quarters and fetch somepony to take the warden to the infirmary, as well as a substitute? He should be fine, just a little overwhelmed."

"Of course, ma'am, but..." Chimney's eyes hadn't moved from Twilight, the crying filly who had apparently shredded an unbreakable ward like it was tissue paper.

"Is there a problem?" Celestia asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No ma'am!" The guard ducked in a quick bow, then closed the door, only stopping it from slamming in the last moment.

Celestia exhaled, then returned her attention to the shaking mass against her breast. She drew a protective foreleg around her, running a hoof through her mane. "It's alright, Twilight. You're okay. The Nightmare can't hurt you here." If Twilight heard the properness with which she pronounced the noun, she gave no indication.

While her student shaked and hiccuped, Celestia's mind worked. Was Cadenza a victim as well, now? Or was something else keeping the Nightmare away from her? And if foals weren't safe, what of Sunset? Cadenza wouldn't keep that kind of secret, but her last student... Had she been enduring these nightmares alone all along, being flayed for her secrets and weaknesses each night, having her self-esteem taken apart piece by piece?.. All without ever reaching out to her teacher?

Would Celestia's failures ever stop burying her?

She was pulled back to the present by a tiny voice. "P— Princess?" She looked down at Twilight. How unfair it was, to see her as 'not yet a failure of mine'. "... Did I d—do something wrong?" she asked, eyes glistening.

She shook her head. "No, Twilight. Chimney was only surprised."

That didn't seem to reassure her. The filly's breathing was still ragged with hiccups. Again, it struck her that Twilight Sparkle was among the youngest students she had ever had. Celestia just kept stroking her mane, feeling the rare but ever-present ache of inadequacy.

She could fix this here. She could push her away, tell her it's too dangerous to know her, send her back home to her parents... It was her fault. Her fault for taking on Twilight, her fault for inviting her to the castle, her fault for neglecting her dear sister. But... If she pushed Twilight away now, much worse things than nightmares awaited her and the rest of Equestria.

Perhaps they could weather it together.

"... Princess?"

"Yes, Twilight?"

"Do you get bad dreams too?"

In the back of her mind, hidden behind a curtain, lay stacked canvases thick with red brushwork. "At times, yes."

"... You can come sleep with me if it's scary."

Celestia laughed. "I don't think I'd be able to fit in your bed, Twilight. But I appreciate the offer."

"I'll get a bigger bed!"

"Perhaps when the royal stipend kicks in."

"The huh?.." Twilight mumbled, then yawned. Sleepiness was apparently an effective ward against the ravenous beast. Noted.

Celestia stood and, with a gesture, drew Twilight from her bed. "I'll accompany you back to Cadenza," she said, knowing that Twilight would gladly fall asleep in her bed instead. The filly nodded, her doll bobbing as it hung from her mouth, and they walked to the door. On her way, Twilight slung the doll across her back, nudging it with her muzzle to ensure it stayed in place.

The door swung open to reveal Chimney and Sprinkles, the replacement warden, at attention and as professional as if nothing had happened.

"I'll accompany you, Your Highness."

"Thank you, Chimney, but that won't be necessary. I am awake and alert, and I happen to have quite an accomplished astrologist with me," she said, winking at Twilight. The filly jolted to attention, resolutely meeting the guard's gaze, whose face was a battleground of amusement and bemusement.

As soon as they turned away from the guards, Twilight clung close to Celestia's right hindleg like the cutie mark above really was the sun, all bravery forgotten. What would surely be an endearing sight to any other pony only made Celestia wonder whether Twilight would shun the night as well, now that she knew what sleep could hold.

She turned to admire her borrowed night and halted.

In her world, where ponies held rightful reign over weather, season, towering tree and shining star, being surprised by something on a scale beyond equine was a forgotten relic from the time of Discord. For all the cruelty of her foalhood, the drought and flood and freezing cold, there was beauty, too, in being dwarfed by something great and indifferent, a beauty she often feared was lost in the lines between weather schedules. But not everything had fallen under the sovereignty of ponies.

"Twilight," she whispered. "Look."

Her student peeked from around her flank and saw as she saw: a ribbon of spined shadow framed in the space between trees, coiling across the sky somewhere over Rambling Rock Ridge. Moonlight caught the texture of scales as countless and shining as bits piled in the royal treasury. At that size, the dragon was bound to be nearly as old as Celestia. She — because surely a dragon of such majesty had an impressive hoard — drifted lazily, like a banner in a summer breeze, slowly making her way eastward.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Celestia the Princess was already thinking of how to nurse the fear of the few ponies awake in the night from here to Appleloosa who would quail at the thought of draconic presence, but the rest of her mind was as sparse and peaceful as the castle's night-stricken promenades.

"How will... How will I recognize him when he's that big?"

Celestia's ear flicked. "Hm?"

"Spike," Twilight clarified. "He's only a baby dragon now, but... Someday he'll be like that, won't he?"

Perhaps. And, perhaps, Twilight would be around to see. "He will still be Spike, Twilight, no matter how big he gets. Just like any other pony."

"... Will I still be me when I'm as tall as you?"

Celestia turned and smiled down at the filly whose wide eyes stared up at her from somewhere around her fetlocks. "Yes, Twilight. No matter what, you will always be you." Her smile turned to taxidermy as her thoughts turned inward. This peytral and her ceremonial dress were a millennium apart, but she could not tell the difference in how they tugged at her.

Celestia looked back up and the dragon was gone. The moon alone hung in that gap between trees. She felt sure, looking at it now, that its silhouette was Nightmare Moon's, and that it was somehow looking right at little Twilight Sparkle. She turned and continued down the promenade, gesturing with a sweep of her wing for her student to follow safely at her hooves.

But the filly was tired from her nightmare and its rude awakening, and when she moved to follow she stumbled. Celestia didn't let her fall this time. Blinking her eyes wide, Twilight wriggled free of the golden sway and landed hoof-first. "I can walk... myself..." she mumbled, yawning midway through. Already, her eyes were drooping again. "I can... teleport..."

"I think you've had enough teleporting for one night, don't you?" Celestia said, continuing at a slightly brisker pace. Twilight was forced into alertness to keep up.

They continued down the promenade until they reached Cadenza's apartment. Celestia nodded to the guard and warden, who both looked with puzzlement at Twilight, a filly they had thought themselves to be protecting. Remembering herself, the warden opened the door, allowing them through.

Inside was pink.

It had been a few tasteful accents in the beginning, a design choice by one of the many committees that seemed to spring up like mushrooms in fall. At Celestia's direction, they had sought to make an identity for the Princess who still wasn't sure who she was or what it was she was expected to do, and, after much deliberation, came to the conclusion that Celestia had a white coat and Cadenza had a pink coat.

Mi Amore, adrift, had latched onto the concept like barnacle to hull and amassed pink like hull to barnacle. Now, in Celestia's opinion, a glimpse of her room to the public would likely crumble all the committee had built. Even in the dark, it very nearly gave her a headache. But Cadenza treasured it, so she did as well, though through a squint.

One of the original pieces that still persisted was the alicorn-sized bed with its four posters and gauzy canopy. Mi Amore made the most of its ample real estate, sprawled out wildly with each limb in a different direction and her mane and tail spread everywhere. The only thing in tension about her was her face, where her brows were knitted together in an expression of consternation. Celestia froze; had the Nightmare moved on to its next target?

Celestia's worry melted with Cadenza's tensed expression as Twilight took a running leap onto the bed and landed beside her foalsitter, too small a mass to wake the Princess but enough for her to seek out the filly, her forelegs wrapping around and pulling close. Twilight herself seemed perfectly content with this, settling sleepily into her foalsitter's embrace. Curled up together, the two looked like sisters, swatches of pink and purple pulled from the same palette.

Twilight's eyes were shut, her entire self being pulled back down into the ocean of sleep. The blood was in the water, now, and the shark knew her scent. But still, even the Nightmare had limits: it could only plague one dream at a time, and its network of little schemes and influences was slung wide. Even when it turned to base cruelty, the castle was full of staff, and Celestia would still be its favored target.

Again, she thought of Sunset Shimmer and wondered whether she had hid all this. She couldn't let Twilight withdraw in the same way. Now, in her slumbering innocence, Celestia couldn't predict which way the filly would grow, nor how the Nightmare would attempt to stunt that growth. All she could do was plant her stanchions to help the filly find her way: generosity, laughter, honesty, kindness, loyalty, friendship.

Twilight's mussed fringe exposed a spot of ruffled fur, just below her horn, the horn that weaved such wonders so early. She leaned down, and...

Drew back.

"Sweet dreams, Twilight," she murmured.

"G'nigh', Princess..." The filly yawned. "Thank you... for..." she trailed off, breathing becoming slow and even.

The night insects carried on outside. Birds rested in the boughs, souls too fleeting for their dreams to reach all the way up to the threshold of the moon. Celestia stood in the room a while, ivory coat ghostly in the dark, her mane swimming in the shadow with unseemly cheer. She watched to be sure that neither of her charges stirred in their sleep. That their foreheads did not crease with concern. That their legs did not twitch under the sheets, running through a deep, dark forest. That they did not cry out in fear.

A whole nation relied on Celestia. She had been called the virginal mother, and though the moniker was incorrect on both counts, 'playing favorites' among her subjects still sat wrong, even if they represented Equestria's future. Sometimes she would compliment a chef's cooking or an astrologist's studies and be beset by a paranoid delusion of her old acolytes emerging from the wings and garbing the favored one in prelate's robes.

She remembered it so vividly. Covered in dust and mortar, the absence of ceremonial dress outlined in dried blood, she had torn the temple in Everfree apart. First with rage, then with shame, then with simple resignation. Always with her hooves. Worshippers gathered at the edges of the grove, the pull-push of reverence slowly being replaced with the push-pull of horror as their Goddess toiled and lathered like a little pony. "Leave this forest," she had said when she was satisfied, simple and without threat. The edict had held since, as resolute as the temple's ruin, still visible from the Sunrise Balcony.

She remembered that filly in the Whitetail Woods, the first to seek her out for wisdom, not worship. Visits had become councils held between the trees as that filly grew and brought others, and she had been drawn ever closer to Canterlot, until she found a castle waiting there for her. Had it not happened over ten generations, Celestia would've compared it to a predator drawing out its quarry.

She was a Princess, now, not a Goddess. So why did she still, after hundreds of years, dream of those forests? Why did she still cast such a shadow? Why had she forded the river and found the other bank to be just the same?

Eventually, she returned to her own chambers, and, after, her own nightmares.

---

Except they weren't really nightmares anymore. In the beginning, they were life-consuming. First in the Nightmare's toolkit was deception, and after half a century she could reliably tell dream from reality. Then came horror. Every possible iteration of her friends dying and her body rotting and her foes rallying and her nation burning and her firmament cracking and her world ending had lost meaning. Subtlety and narrative had been abandoned long ago. Celestia could not tell Twilight about her nightmares because there was no story to tell.

If she did tell her, it would go something like this: pain.

Every instant the Nightmare could spare in Celestia's sleeping hours was pain. Every nerve in her body sang in the dissonant choir conducted by that which Harmony had forsaken. She was a vessel, and the Nightmare filled her up with pain, then threw her against the wall and let her consciousness splatter on the floor. Then, it would gather her up, sculpt a new vessel with unfamiliar edges, and begin again. On bad mornings, it could take an hour to remember her body was meant for anything but hurting.

That was why Celestia loved breakfast. It was a simple matter of pleasure. Syrup-doused farina, waffles and pancakes, pastries and Prench toast, all of it grounded her in the world anew. If the tea was a little hot and burned her, she only laughed at the singe. Just as pain did not dull with centuries, neither did enjoyment. It was suffering to be alive. It was a joy to live.

Many fasts were broken in the morning at that table, the fasting from pleasure first among them, with the scent of freshly brewed tea brought in by the staff reminding her how good it was to be. And then, the fasting from love: Cadenza entered, followed by a sleepy Twilight, who yawned hugely. "Morning Auntie!" her niece chirped, filled with enthusiasm.

"Good morning, Mi Amore, Twilight. Did the two of you enjoy your sleepover?"

"Yeah! Twilight and I had a lot of fun, didn't we Twilight?" Cadenza said, turning to the younger pony.

"Cadence showed me her bug collection!" Twilight said, roused from her half-sleep. "Did you know there's a bug that looks like a stick but it's really a bug?" Twilight's head whipped to Cadenza. "You didn't lie, right? It was really a bug and not just a stick?"

"Ah, phasmids. Yes, Cadenza's collection is impressive, isn't it?" Celestia's gaze wandered to the fresco on the ceiling, as if recalling something. "I recall it also served as a fine lesson on personal responsibility, since most of the staff are terrified of it."

Cadenza rolled her eyes, which was fine in a private setting. "Scaredy-cats. At least Twilight gets it." She laid a wing over the filly, then pulled her in closer with it. "Even Auntie thinks they're icky," she said in a conspiratorial whisper. Twilight's eyebrows shot up.

"I think all the world's creatures are beautiful, in their own way, but, ah... some are an acquired taste."

"You've had like a billion years to acquire it!" Cadenza groaned. Their shared charge giggled.

With that, the two of them approached the table. Twilight recoiled slightly from the staff who appeared out of nowhere to place a cushion at her place, then sat on it as if it might have a snake hidden beneath. While she checked and double-checked her seating, a member of the staff wheeled in a cart full of even more breakfast. Twilight's eyes boggled at it, and she did a double-take to the contents of the table, surely comparing it to mealtimes at her own home.

Well, her own home lacked a pair of unbound alicorns, fully-grown and growing. Cadenza didn't hesitate to begin transferring items to the table with her horn, one-by-one, pink tongue stuck out slightly. When Twilight recovered from her shock, she helped, moving them in trios. With the spread on the table, Twilight opted for Prench toast smothered in syrup.

"So, Twilight," Celestia began, as fork and knife dismantled her own pancakes with a golden glow, "I would say you've gained a firm grasp on teleportation by now. How does it feel?"

Twilight's own cutlery paused, and she looked down at her breakfast thoughtfully. "It's... kind of just the same? I like knowing how, and it's useful, but... Mom said I didn't grow at all."

"Pardon?" Celestia said. What exactly had Twilight Velvet implied?

"She measured me, and I'm just as tall as the notch from my last birthday!" Oh. "That wish should've been worth at least a centimeter!"

Cadenza stifled a laugh (poorly). "Twilight, you know that you don't become more of an alicorn for every wish you learn, right?"

"Yeah I do!" Twilight said with the unstoppable confidence of youth.

"Nuh-uh!" Cadenza responded with the immoveable brattiness of teenagers.

"Yeah-huh!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yeah-huh!"

"Nuh-uh!"

Princess Celestia didn't lose her patience, but she did have to look for it. "Cadenza, the mechanisms of alicornhood are very mysterious," she reminded. "Twilight, one should be careful not to chase one's means to their ends."

"Yes, Princess," the two of them chimed in chorus, then giggled likewise. Celestia rolled her eyes at them both, to Cadenza's delight, then returned to her meal.

She knew that the ensuing warm silence of ponies enjoying a meal together was only a prelude. The three of them were burdened with minds that were always working, each in their own way. It was just a matter of whose would go off first.

"Princess?"

"Yes, Twilight?" Celestia responded. For some reason, the filly just didn't seem to think of Cadenza as a Princess, despite having the prerequisite anatomy and some of the authority. Was it the height, or the duties, or the way she carried herself? At least the two of them could find some reprieve from fears of image with each other.

"I've been thinking again." Surprise, surprise. "About the river, I mean," Twilight clarified.

"Asterism's? I had thought you'd gotten over that. I saw you get over it, in fact, about twenty times," Celestia said, sipping her tea. The river in question had been Bronze Brook, one of the many tributaries flowing through the meadows around the back side of Canterlot. Twilight had taken up most of one of her lessons with a trek out to it, Celestia obligingly following in her wake. On reaching the river, she'd teleported back and forth across it until she was exhausted, just to prove that Asterism was 'uncurious'.

On the way back, the filly had complained about the walk, and Celestia hadn't been able to resist asking why she didn't just teleport back. The hastily-amended glare she'd received in return had been worth it.

"Uh-huh." Twilight poked her food with her fork. "I think I figured out why Asterism is wrong."

"Yes," Celestia said, "you've insisted that the two banks of the river aren't, in fact, identical." Cadenza looked pleasantly lost as she worked through her second plate.

"That's not it," Twilight said, and the intense way she looked at her remaining triangle of Prench toast drew Celestia's attention away from her hundredth mental reshuffling of Cadenza's lesson plan in search of a gap which would fit some astrology tutoring. "Even if the two sides were the same in every way... You're not."

The assertion struck Celestia like a clapper to a bell. She put her teacup down. "Pardon?"

"You said it's not a parable about teleportation. To get to the other side, Asterism would have had to wade through. She'd be soaked. Stuff like the grass being exactly as tall on either side doesn't matter when she's getting water all over it!" Twilight said, hooves planted on the table as her voice rose. "It doesn't matter whether the sides are the same, because you're not the same pony once you cross it. Even if they're the same to anypony else, you feel them differently!"

Celestia stared at Twilight, again filled with that feeling she'd had on their first meeting: somehow, this filly could see to her core, and somehow, she saw a pony like herself. Not a Goddess, not a Princess, not a wisdom in the wilderness. A pony. She swallowed a lump in her throat, then dabbed at her mouth with a napkin to pretend it had been food. "That's true, Twilight. The way we experience the world matters, especially when wishing."

Goddess, Princess. Even if the roles resembled each other, the actor who played them did not. Those titles weren't identically-structured but differently-gilded cages. They were steps on a journey, following each other. Celestia wasn't doomed to repeat her mistakes. Nopony was. Her sister could come home, and together—

"Princess?"

Celestia swallowed again. "Yes?"

Twilight glanced at Cadenza, who looked back at her innocently, then returned her attention to Celestia. "When are you going to teach me to shoot beams out of my horn?"

"... When you're older, Twilight."

Comments

[Mockingbirb]

But the filly was tired from her nightmare and its rude awakening, and when she moved to follow she stumbled. Celestia didn't let her fall this time. Blinking her eyes wide, Twilight wriggled free of the golden sway and landed hoof-first. "I can walk... myself..." she mumbled, yawning midway through. Already, her eyes were drooping again. "I can... teleport..."

"I think you've had enough teleporting for one night, don't you?" Celestia said, continuing at a slightly brisker pace. Twilight was forced into alertness to keep up.

The fact that this Celestia makes this choice, instead of carrying the sleepy child 'homewards' to her tower room, in itself is an interesting and meaning-carrying choice by the author (and by the author's Celestia, of course.)

The fact that Celestia, in the face of the conflict between herself and Twilight Velvet we see towards the end of ch1, chose to gift or long-term loan her young student that tower room in the castle, a room which comes with a (possibly history bearing!) ready-gathered large collection of books and an official status as a 'residence,' is of course ANOTHER interesting and significant choice.

Maybe more importantly, your ideas about what the Nightmare has been doing these last nine hundred and eighty-some years, while Luna has been on the moon? Haunting (oh, a pun, oops ) in a powerful way.

[Lurks-no-More]

The Nightmare's influence here is a pretty creepy touch! And that's quite insightful from Twilight, at her age. Very Heraclitean of her!

Also, Cadance having an affinity for insects, including stick bugs that pretend to be something else entirely...