Ponywatching

by ThunderTempest

Prompt #276: A Thousand Years

One thousand years. The number rang in her head constantly. One thousand years. Of course, it was really just a drop in the bucket that was her lifespan. She wouldn’t fade out until the very last moment, before the absolute final end.

But a thousand years alone, without her sister, had been torture. No other pony could truly comprehend the sheer enormity of time the way they did. Well, perhaps Discord could, but there was a good reason why they had never asked him about such things, even in the before times. Also, that would mean setting him free. One thousand years of being the static ruler of Equestria. One thousand years of the same adornments, one thousand years of the same problems with neighbouring nations, the same uppity nobles, the same political manoeuvring.

Celestia, like her sun, was unchanging and constant. Oh, there had been experiments. In the early two hundreds, she’d managed to wrangle her hair into a style so impossible that two architects had gone mad trying to figure out its geometry. In the five hundreds, she had attempted to shave her mane entirely; it had grown back the next day, and she’d decided it was far too much work to keep doing. And in the late seven hundreds, she’d dyed her entire body pink for a year, just to see if the nobles would follow suit. They had. But despite these, Celestia never changed. Underneath the golden crown and shoes, behind the floating mane, Princess Celestia was still the same mare she had been when she turned on her sister and banished her. She felt locked in time, a piece of ancient history preserved and still walking around.

She had been standing on the observatory’s balcony when the moon flashed, and then everything went black for her.

When she recovered her sight, the very first thing she did was raise the sun. She could feel, for the first time in a thousand years, the familiar signature of her sister’s magic.

With a flash, and a teleport, she appeared in the old castle in the Everfree Forest. Celestia had been locked into the same patterns since the banishment of her sister, fearing that if she changed, her sister would not recognise her when she got back.

But now, Luna was back, and as her younger sister nuzzled into her chest, Celestia felt that maybe, just maybe, she could start to not be the immortal, eternal and unchanging ruler that the history books always talked about.

Author's Note:

Written for Prompt #276: “Old Habits Die Hard, Holding On”

The prompt: I need to change, but I don’t think that I can.