Heretical Fictions
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Heretical Fictions
(or, "Twilight Sparkle Reads 'Eternal'")
by Jeffrey C. Wells
www.scrivnarium.net
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WARNING: SPOILERS FOR DEVICE HERETIC'S "ETERNAL" AHEAD!
Please consider reading that one first if you're the type to care about spoilers – and you should probably read it anyway, even if you're not (if you have even the slightest interest in bittersweet Ponyfic, that is), because lawks almighty.
At any rate, without further ado, a much inferior (but hopefully still palatable) work. Read on...
* * *
"I'm going to tell you what to do," said Mrs. Stacks, brusquely, in that wonderful plain voice that always made the more obsequious members of the Court squeak quietly in the backs of their throats and, on occasion, rush to the nearest fainting-couch. "You're going to take that book and you're going to order me to remand it to Restricted Storage."
"Let me see if I understand," I replied, choosing to open the shutter a fragment of an inch and let pass a measure of my quite genuine affection. "You're informing me of what I should order you to do."
"I am," replied Mrs. Stacks, who had, in her own words, too limited a supply of pleasantness to waste same on honorifics. "You've read the book, correct?"
"As you well know, Mrs. Stacks," I said, "there is a great deal of fiction penned in our beautiful land. And a great many of those works give me at least a passing mention. I firmly believe that I could appoint a small cabinet of faithful ponies, whose only task – day in and day out – would be to monitor my every appearance in the popular literature; and still, they would still be unable to keep up."
"You've read the book, correct?" repeated Mrs. Stacks, who could always see through… my first few layers, at least.
"Yes," I said, allowing her the satisfaction of cutting to what she would believe was the heart of things. In her contented pause, I took a moment and scented the air. Crepuscular blooms, a bit of spring chill. Sweat. Musk. Hastily-prepared food. Ancient marble. And books, so very many books. Books, loading down the saddlebags of students rushing from one late lecture to the next. Books, filling the nooks and the crannies of each and every building we passed along the way, indispensable reference manuals and weighty tomes of classic literature alike. There, on a wrought-iron bench, a pale peach-hued unicorn with a Mark of cloth hearts, hungrily devouring the latest potboiler romantic, her luminescent horn emitting barely enough light to read Just One More Chapter in defiance of my measured lowering of the sun; however cheap and flimsy the papyrus it was printed on, it was nonetheless heady with intrinsic and essential bookishness. It was the smell of nightfall and of the Royal University at peace. I adored it.
After careful consideration, I had decided to "mix it up" a bit to-night. My sister's summons had a warning tone, and Luna would appreciate my haste, but it lacked the emergent tone that would necessitate dimensional dooring, or even the one that would necessitate flight. Walking was called for, and would furthermore allow me a treasured few more minutes to converse with the parchment-colored High Archivist, who was as earthbound as any unicorn. But my heart could not bear the retinue to-day. Let it never be said I do not have moods, and to-day, I was weary of trumpeters, however euphonious they might be. So it was that I decided to walk to the Royal University to-night, without guard, without attendants, accompanied only by Mrs. Stacks, who had as little patience for red carpeting as I did, for this evening at least. It is a better thing, sometimes, to walk unencumbered amongst my people.
My glance lingered for a moment on the bibliophile seated on the bench. "Pardon, Mrs. Stacks," I said, leaving her side and striding quietly up to the young unicorn.
"Hello," I said, in as gentle a tone as I could possibly manage.
"Hold on a mo," said the student, caught on the horns of a dilemma: acknowledge the stranger or… one more paragraph? She chose the latter; and when she finally did look up, mortification flashed across her face like lightning.
"Princess!" she exclaimed, dropping the book to the bench and then, after a moment's further thought, sitting on it. "I'm – I'm so sorry! I was caught up in the story and – "
"That's perfectly all right," I said. "What's your name?"
"H—Heartfelt!" she blurted out, trying to work out how to properly prostrate herself and still cover the book with her body. "Heartfelt, Your Majesty! I'm – I'm honored beyond words! Please allow me to make amends for my rudeness!"
"No amends needed," I said. "I was just interested in your book."
Heartfelt laughed, and it had a manic edge to it. "Oh, this old thing?" she said, hauling it out from under her brisket. "Nothing important! Fluff fiction! I'll put it away now!"
Something like oil trickled over my heart. "I'd just as soon you keep reading," I said, my smile nonetheless unwavering.
"Of course, Your Majesty!" Heartfelt fairly cried out. "I'll get back to reading right away!" She threw open the book with a flair and began "reading" for me, visibly moving her head back and forth and theatrically mouthing the words.
A discomfited moment passed. "I'll leave you to it, then," I said.
"Okay, all right!" said Heartfelt. "Sorry!"
And so yes, there, the other side of the coin. The price I pay, as is always the case when I take it upon myself to "mingle", is the startlement. I am news on four hooves, a walking event. I cannot blend. My very appearance irrevocably shapes the evening of anypony encountering me. I will be, in some cases, the most upsetting thing to happen in weeks.
I returned to Mrs. Stacks's side, maintaining my mien in a practiced pose of effortless, airy joy. I am very good at this particular expression. It fits me like a comfortable shoe.
"Quite finished with the hobnobbing, then?" asked Mrs. Stacks, testily, which was in all frankness a relief.
"Quite," I said, as we walked on toward the Central Library. "Mrs. Stacks, why aren't there more ponies like you around?"
"All stone dead of old age, I expect," she said, even as visions of twinkle-eyed Junior Assistant Archivist Lowey Stacks flickered before the eye of my mind, practically tripping over her own hooves in flusterment at the honor of assisting royalty during her first week on the job…
Mrs. Stacks frowned more deeply than usual, noticing the shift in my bearing. Too wide the shutter, too wide; careless, careless, Celestia. "Before you drop into some sort of distracted state," she said, her eyes narrowing, "may we please focus your waxing literary interest on the work that's the actual subject of this little outing?"
"Of course," I said, deftly returning the idea of Mrs. Stacks to the overwhelmingly crowded Ponies I Shall Lose Some Day file and closing the drawer. "Eternal, penned by one Roman à Clef, a quite respected pony wordsmith, if I'm not mistaken. So what would you like me to do?"
"Restrict access to the cursed thing!" said Mrs. Stacks.
"We do not censor fictions," I said, my voice perfectly even. The slightest stress on even one of those words over another could shape the world, and not in a favorable way.
"Heretical fictions!" protested Mrs. Stacks. "Bad enough what that horrible pony wrote about you. The bit near the end where Miss Sparkle is invading your mind – or something like it – constantly encountering "pieces" of you. I don't need to tell you, one of them was downright profane!" She glanced sidelong at me, her voice dark. "I think you know which one I'm talking about."
"Yes," I said. "That part with the omelet. Quite horrifying."
"Not that part," said Mrs. Stacks. "You're funning, and I can't say I care for it."
"How is it," I asked, "that you are so concerned about my image in the popular fiction and how other ponies might view me, and yet are in no way hesitant about being downright curt in our interpersonal dealings?"
"Flagrant double standards," said Mrs. Stacks, matter-of-factly. "As I said, bad enough what he writes about you. But those lies he pens about the griffons!"
"Mm," I said, evenly, snapping the shutter tight and putting a little lock on it for good measure.
"I mean, really," continued Mrs. Stacks, deep in screed now. "Implying that griffons are the direct hoofwork of Discord himself! Patched together to counter the pegasi in some ancient chaos war! Ridiculous! Ruinous lies and poppycock."
"Mm," I repeated, remembering a fateful meeting atop a snowy mountain, remembering an accord that all – griffon and pony alike – agreed never to speak of again…
How had he known? Father in Eohippus, how had he known?
"It's the kind of lie that could spark a civil unrest, it is," Mrs. Stacks said, blessedly self-absorbed. "Griffons are fine folk, even if their diet is a bit… strange. I have quite a few good friends that are griffons. They don't deserve such tales being spoken of them."
"As I said, Mrs. Stacks, we do not censor fictions."
Yes, Celestia, we reserve our censorship for the truth, don't we? Can't have anypony approaching that too closely. Ooh, and now it sounds as though it's time for one of your delightful distracting platitudes…
I shot my inner self, the voice that lives in the garden of my mind, a warning glance.
"To censor a people's fictions," I said, carefully, "is to censor their minds. And a censored mind is an enslaved one. I will have none of it."
Very nice, remarked my inner self. I ignored her.
"Well then," said Mrs. Stacks, as we rounded the last bend in the path, the great white columns of the Library rising before us. "You'll just have to be prepared to deal with the consequences, then."
"I am prepared," I said, lying shamelessly; but if Mrs. Stacks could tell, she spared me the upbraiding. We spent the short remainder of our walk in silence.
* * *
"There you are, sister!" said Princess Luna, Regent of the Night, Shepherd of Constellations, Queen of Dreams and Monarch of the Sunless Sky, a.k.a., Little Sissy Pants, although entire civilizations had risen and fallen since last I had referred to her thusly. She hurried up to me and began ushering me back into the library proper, crowds of students parting before us as we passed. "I summoned you to this place on a matter of grave importance, one which requires your immediate attention!"
"Mrs. Stacks tells me that it's about a book?" I said, feigning ignorance.
"Eternal," said Luna, her neck stiffening at the mere utterance of the name of the heretical text. Past twists and turns we finally arrived at a simple door of frosted glass, bearing the legend "Graduate Fiction Lounge".
"What of it?" I asked, lightly.
My sister snorted, gathering her words like thunderclouds. "There is something terribly wrong with that book, dear sister," she eventually intoned.
"What is it?"
Luna scowled and swung open the door with a flash of slate-blue energy, gesturing sternly into the room beyond with one silver-clad hoof.
"IT MADE," she said, "MISS SPARKLE CRY."
I ducked my head and peered into the room, blinking. A cloud of humid air greeted me; the atmosphere within the reading lounge was damp and tropical. Sprays of rare orchids covered the walls and bloomed in rough patches on the floor. And in the center of my view, framed all around with vegetation, was my dear Twilight, smelling as always of beeswax and cinnamon, weeping openly onto the surface of the scarred old reading table. More orchids were beginning to bloom where her tears fell. A cloth-bound copy of the offending text, Eternal, lay open beside her.
"This is interesting," I said, looking about. "Hello, my most faithful student."
Twilight yelped and tumbled backward off her reading bench. She scrambled to her hooves. "Princess Celestia!" she said, her voice half-choked. "I'm so sorry!"
"You see?" stated Luna, following me into the room. "She is quite beside herself! Miss Sparkle and I are now Astronomy Friends, and to-night was to be our first comet observation together; apparently I was not informed by the pegasi of the rescheduled evening of cloud cover. Incidentally, sister, I continue to be left 'out of the loop' on weather missives, which is most distressing."
"I'll have a word with Cadence," I said. "Go on."
"I shall," stated Luna, squaring away an errant primary feather on her left wing. "Miss Sparkle suggested that she would fain be Astronomy Study Friends as well as garden-variety Astronomy Friends, an idea I thought capital. So I instructed her to busy herself with pleasant diversions while I retrieved an old volume of Clopernican theory from storage. Suffice to say, it took me a trifle longer than anticipated – and when I returned, this!" She gestured about the room with her hoof. "This is what comes from reading popular fictions about oneself!"
"It is an interesting decorating choice," I said.
"It isn't a decorating choice!" growled Mrs. Stacks, charging into the lounge, finally having caught up with us. "It's that Eternal book! Horrible pornography, griffon libel, and it makes flowers bloom everywhere and turns my library into some kind of equatorial garden!" Mrs. Stacks trotted over to one of the encircling shelves in acute distress. "I can only imagine what this dampness is doing to the books in here!"
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Stacks," said Twilight, helplessly. "I'm sorry. It's not the book's fault. It's mine. I just… I just was reading, and I sort of… lost control."
"I HAVE TRIED ALL MANNER OF COMFORTING BEHAVIORS!" Luna declared, suddenly. "UP TO AND INCLUDING GENTLE PATS ON THE HEAD! ALL FOR NAUGHT!"
"The students are worried, Princess," said Mrs. Stacks, busily inspecting book after book for damage. "Rumors spread quick as fire through tinder here. We're already hearing whispers that there's some terrible secret contained in the pages of this book. One that makes the Element of Magic herself weep in the reading of it!"
"If so," I said, mildly, "a royal decree of censure will surely result in a full conflagration. Do you understand my reasoning, Mrs. Stacks?"
Mrs. Stacks muttered something that I knew was an agreement. Treading carefully amongst the occult blooms, I made my way over to the far side of the reading table, to my impossibly small and trembling protégé. She looked up at me, helpless.
"Twilight," I said. "Open your Stream to me."
Twilight did so, her lip quivering in a manner that quite nearly demolished me. The sheer laminar force of Twilight's Stream was, as ever, startling. Swirls of color broke out at the edge of my vision, time and space seemed to expand. She doesn't even realize, I thought to myself as I braced my psyche against Twilight's current. She doesn't know what it's like to live any other way.
Gradually, I found the kinked areas in her Stream, the points at which her emotions had thrown up jagged rocks and caused ferocious eddies, manifesting themselves in the greenhouse-like atmosphere and the spontaneous flowering plants. Slowly, patiently, I smoothed the bed of her Stream, watching the whirlpools spin away to nothingness. The temperature in the reading lounge began to fall.
"There," I said, smiling at my pupil. "All better." With a quick afterthought, I uprooted the orchids and magicked them to a sunny jungle many miles away, where they could live the remainder of their new lives in peace.
Twilight looked up at me with silent, haggard gratitude; Luna was patently biting back words; I was lost for a moment in contemplation. Of the four of us, Mrs. Stacks was predictably the first to find her tongue.
"There," huffed Mrs. Stacks. "Finally, some sanity. Unfortunately, damage's been done; nothing to do but move all these down to Restoration." And with that, her horn flared and she began sorting and shifting great stacks of compromised books.
"Twilight," I said, amidst Mrs. Stacks's furious activity. "Is there something you read in that book that you'd like to speak with me about?"
"You're about to tell me it's all true," she said, quietly. "Aren't you."
"Sister!" hissed Luna. "A word, please!"
Time slowed to a crawl. The reading lamps about us dimmed. Somewhere outside our little bubble, Twilight still gazed up at me – or the place that I had been – and Mrs. Stacks still fumbled with her over-ambitious book piles. A single volume from the top of one such stack, dislodged in the bustle, crept lazily toward the floor.
"Regard this, sister," said Luna, her voice sharp. "Are you prepared to now reap what you long ago sowed?"
"No," I admitted. "But it seems my hoof has been forced." I shook my head. "Who is this stallion, Luna? Who is Roman à Clef?"
"I am flummoxed," said Luna. "He may even be a mare, from aught that I can glean." Luna scowled. "These 'pen names' are so frustrating to proper record-keeping."
"It's a very good book," I admitted, glancing sidelong at the tear-stained pages outside our sphere of Quick Time. "Containing no small measure of uncomfortable truths and quite a few dangerous secrets. And while nothing happens by chance, it seems doubly certain that Eternal did not."
"He knows of the Mountain Accords, sister."
"Or has guessed," I said, unconvinced. "Regardless, his ideas are loose now. With luck, and with our lack of action against them, perhaps they will fade again."
"Leaving only the matter of my friend," said Luna.
"Who?" I said, unforgivably confused for a fraction of a second.
Luna recoiled as though struck. "Twilight Sparkle!" she exclaimed, gesturing angrily at the frozen form of the purple unicorn at the desk, still gazing up at empty air. "My friend!"
"And my student, yes," I said, closing my eyes and tapping the base of my alicorn with one hoof. "I was hoping to put this off for a few more decades, but perhaps that was only my cowardice speaking."
Undoubtedly, said my inner self.
"It seems you cannot," said Luna. "Inform her now. Or I shall. And then, as a 'bonus', I shall recount to her tales of the Alfalfa Monster."
I blinked placidly at my sister, who will always and eternally be, until the sky melts and the stars go cold, the world's most perfect brat. "Thousands of years have passed," I said. "Scores upon scores of generations of our people have sprung up and been lost to the slurry of time. Entire mountains have fallen to dust, Luna. And still you will not leave behind the Alfalfa Monster incident."
"It remains potent, in my mind," said Luna. "And in yours, it seems."
I sighed. "Very well," I said. "Time for the Talk." I returned to Twilight's side and dispelled Quick Time. The suspended book from Mrs. Stacks's pile thudded to the floor, to the noise of quiet cursing from Mrs. Stacks.
Twilight gazed up at me, still awaiting my response.
"I will answer you," I said, finally. "But there are many ears here. Return with me to the castle. There, in Canterlot Tower, will we speak."
"Okay," said Twilight, miserably, clambering down off her bench. I nodded to Luna, abandoned Mrs. Stacks to her duties, and left the reading lounge, en route to my palatial home.
I had only proceeded a few steps when I realized that my student was not following me. I turned around and saw her standing at the threshold, looking tiny and crumpled but with knees locked in a posture that could hold back the world.
Twilight's jaw trembled. She spoke, inaudibly.
"I'm sorry," I said, inclining my head. "I couldn't quite hear that?"
"…no," whispered Twilight.
Oh, dear.
"I'm so sorry," she continued. "But… no."
I blinked. I tried again. "My meditation gardens," I said. "The fireflies will be out to-night. We'll light the vapor bowls and – "
"No!" said Twilight Sparkle, a bit more forcefully, uncrumpling slightly. "If you have news for me, it shouldn't matter what setting you give it to me in. And I realize I just ended a sentence in a preposition, but it's the only way I could make it make any sense." Twilight dropped her eyes. "I'm – sorry for speaking out. But if you want to make me comfortable, there's nowhere I'm more comfortable than in the middle of a library, surrounded by books. And I know I should follow quietly where you lead, but on the other hoof, the Twilight Sparkle in that book spent years of her life doing that." Twilight turned around and walked back to the reading desk and the open copy of Eternal. "Decades. And all the while her relationship with her teacher grew sourer and sourer just because she wouldn't talk about the hurts that were on her mind. And… I'm just not going to let that happen!"
Oh, Roman à Clef, I thought. What have you wrought? To Twilight, I said, "Very well," accompanying the words with the best of the best of my gentle smiles. "Mrs. Stacks, the Element of Magic requests the use of this room. Would it be a bother for you to put off your book-gathering just for a few minutes, while we converse?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Stacks. "Doesn't mean I won't do it."
"That's all I ask," I said. "Dear sister, please stand outside the door. Make sure none approach within earshot. We will be discussing matters of state."
Luna nodded. She and Mrs. Stacks left the reading lounge, closing the door behind them.
As the latch clicked shut, there was a brief moment of silence, and then: "STUDENTS OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY AT CANTERLOT!" Luna's voice rang out. "I, PRINCESS LUNA OF EQUESTRIA, HEREBY ISSUE A ROYAL COMMANDM—"
"SHH!" hissed the voice of Mrs. Stacks. "This is a library!"
"Oh," said Luna, abashedly. "I am, er, sorry."
I turned back to my faithful student. "That Mrs. Stacks," I said, lightly.
"You were going to tell me something," said Twilight.
"Yes," I said. "To business. The book of fiction." I inclined my head toward the copy of Eternal, still lying open on the desk.
"Not so fictional, you're about to say."
I pursed my lips. "Come sit with me, Twilight," I said, walking purposefully past the piles and piles of scattered books, over to an assembly of floor cushions, taking a moment to sort through them and find a good one. Thankfully, Twilight's obstinacy had dimmed somewhat, or else she truly did feel like getting a bit comfy, for she followed suit. I squared my cushion to face hers and settled to my knees.
"I was never meant to rule alone," I began. "My sister and I are two halves of a whole. It is possible for one pony to manage both the daylit and the nighttime skies, but… not on the scale that I attempted. Certainly not for the duration. I knew that Luna would one day return to us, that the wicked creature of darkness she had become would vanish like the nightmare that was her namesake; but not soon enough. The damage has been done, Twilight. Luna's return has not reversed it; it has only slowed its progress."
"So you never rested," said Twilight. "Never renewed yourself. Just like Celestia in Eternal."
"Equestria needed its Unconquered Sun," I said. "And I could not risk leaving our borders unsecured. My aphelion is centuries overdue, and I am beginning to feel it approaching at speed."
"But Luna's back, now!" said Twilight. "I mean… I don't want you to go away for a hundred years or anything like that, but you could! You could rest, you could go… wherever it is you go when you go away!"
"A place called Eohippus," I said. "Also a state of mind called Eohippus. And it will not require a hundred years. A few Equestrian days, at most – time is a different thing, there. It is difficult to explain without showing it to you, and unfortunately, it lies beyond a shell that no mortal pony may cross. It is the demesne of our father, the Cloverlord, and it is where Luna and I spent our childhood, before we made our way to this land."
"Okay, great!" said Twilight. "I'd miss you, but this is bigger than me, right?"
"It is, in fact, not very much bigger than you at all," I said. I closed my eyes, picking my next words carefully. There is only so much truth that anypony can manage in one go.
I selected my tack, for better or for worse, and set out on it. "Our father is… unwell, Twilight Sparkle. The Cloverlord waxes and wanes in cycles as we all do, but this is something more profound. I fear that there will come a time when neither Luna nor I will be free to sit on the Solar Throne, occupied as we will be with the business of his final waning."
"I'm sorry," said Twilight, meekly. "Luna talks to me about your father sometimes, but I… didn't realize there was anything wrong with him."
"Not 'wrong', Twilight Sparkle," I said, in my best enlightened tone. "It is a natural thing, and the way of the Universe." And even as I said so, a tiny thing deep within my soul clutched at her plush duckie and wept in sheer black incomprehension of the idea that Daddy would soon be going away, never to return. "But if it were to coincide with my aphelion and the end of Luna's synod," I continued, not missing a beat, "it would be a dangerous conjunction. For all Equestria."
"So that's what this is about," said Twilight. "You want me to manage the sky for you."
"Nopony has held the title of Vicereine of the Solar Throne since the Mythic era, Twilight. Once upon a time, celestial motion was solely the province of mortal unicorn ponies like yourself, albeit working in consort with one another. But the Stream has dwindled, now, and to even touch the Sun requires talent on a very special level. Talent like mine, like Luna's. Like yours. I did not know your face or your scent, but I sensed your coming for many years, and… I have been grooming you for this position since first I met you. I have presented you with challenge after challenge, not only because I need strength of spirit to bloom in you, but also because the land needs to know that, in the absence of their Princesses, the Throne is held by a folk hero. Equestria is too large to be ruled by any one or two ponies, no matter how royal; it must also be ruled by the Idea of royalty." I smiled. "On this front I am constantly stymied by your relentless self-effacement, but that is neither here nor there. In any case, I will not ask you to govern, nor manage affairs of state; my advisors are more than capable of keeping the kingdom from going to flinders for a period of a few days. But they cannot move the Sun, nor keep the borders from falling."
"Huh," said Twilight, taking a moment to soak this all in.
"I realize it's a lot to comprehend all at once."
"No, not that. That was a 'Huh, Rainbow Dash owes me ten bits' huh."
I blinked. "Pardon?"
"Yeah," said Twilight, a sheepish smile playing at one corner of her mouth. "Rainbow agreed that you had a special plan in mind for me, but she bet me that this was all leading up to some kind of massive prophesied cataclysm that you needed me to prevent, sacrificing myself in a messianic blast which would forever ensure Equestria's safety but which would consume me in the process. And possibly her, as well. If you ask me, Rainbow is a little too fond of the idea of messianic blasts in general, but then again, she's always been the 'live fast, die young, leave an atomized corpse' sort."
"…Oh," I said.
"And Fluttershy agrees with Mr. Clef," Twilight continued, rising from her cushion and crossing back over to the reading desk. "She thought that I was a whim of yours, that you were so touched by the sight of me helpless in the middle of my first storm surge that I melted your regal heart. But I know you, Princess. I know how you see things, kind of. I know you deeded the land that's now Ponyville to the Smith family just because it's the closest you can get to the old city of Everfree and the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters while still staying within the Equestrian borders. You made Ponyville exist, just so that one day you could send me there on the pretense of supervising preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration. Right?"
"You are a very perceptive pony," I said.
My inner self grinned at me viciously. So much for her not being ready for your monumental truths.
Quiet, you, I replied. "But there's more," I said to Twilight, smoothly, conveying as best as I could the idea that I had never intended to stop. "The Solar Throne has a… sustaining effect. It is likely that you will outlive your friends. It is likely that you will outlive many ponies not yet born. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Princess," said Twilight, telekinetically selecting a volume from one of Mrs. Stacks's stacks and placing it on the desk next to Eternal. "Just like in this story here. Or this one, or this one, or this one." A second, third, and fourth volume followed the first. "There's also a part like that in Eternal, where I'm standing at the tomb of all my friends and mourning their loss, but it's all a trick, and it ends up that I'm not immortal after all. Mr. Clef apparently thinks that his Twilight's greatness is only magnified by the fact that she accomplishes so much in a single pony lifetime. And there's something to that idea, but… things are what they are. I'm not going to pretend that I'm going to enjoy seeing my friends get old and die, but we all talked it over, the possibility that it would be just me and Spike after enough years, and we're okay with it."
"You are," I said, even as my inner self pounded the floor with one hoof, laughing hysterically at me.
"Yep," said Twilight, shrugging. "Pinkie even went through this phase where she would hobble up to me and complain about her Navicular Disease in a creaky old voice, then laugh and run off. It got a little wearying. But she moved on."
"You're… dealing with all this quite splendidly," I said, rising from my cushion as well, not knowing quite what else to say.
"That's the reason I read all these books about me!" said Twilight. "I don't want anything to take me by surprise. I want to know what it's like to lose a friend. I want to know what it's like to have you reveal that you're my mother."
"I'm not," I said. "You know that I'm not."
"I want to know what it's like," she repeated. "I want to know what it's like to have children. I want to know what it's like to be a colt. I want to know what it's like to have wings. I want to know what everything feels like."
She glanced down at the desk. "I want to know what it's like to be young forever," she said, her voice small. "So I can be like you."
My heart shattered to pieces. I had not thought such a thing possible any more.
You don't deserve her, said my inner self.
No, I agreed.
My most faithful student, I thought, then, please don't be like me. Please, however long our dance persists, please don't ever be like me.
"Well," I said, clearing my throat. "You've given this a lot of thought. I am impressed."
She looked up at me, then, with a tiny secret smile. "You know what I think?" she said, gesturing at the surrounding books. "I think that all of these are true. All of them. That somewhere out there, there's a world where Rainbow Dash and I get married and have a whole gaggle of children through parthenogenesis. That there's a world where there's a great war that destroys everything and our descendants have to soldier on and rebuild all Equestria from the ground up. That there's a world where our world is built on the ashes of an advanced civilization of giant hairless apes."
I frowned. "That sounds rather peculiar."
"I know, right? It's far out. But I think it's true, somewhere! I can't quite explain it, but I think everything I read… is real."
She blinked. "Except for that one where Pinkie Pie goes monkey-doo crazy, kills everypony and bakes them into cupcakes," she said. "Not sure about that one. But most everything else, sure! I read a lot about myself, Princess." She looked back down at Eternal, then. "But this one… this one is particularly good."
"You were crying," I said. "I… thought you might have been upset by some of the uncomfortable truths in that book. But that doesn't seem to be the case."
"I was crying because it's one of the happiest, most triumphant things I've ever read!" said Twilight. "After you… die, in this book, you get reborn, and as penance for your many sins against the Sun, you live an entire life as a mortal pegasus pony. An entire life together with me. And we laugh and learn and have fights and make up and our friendship becomes something of legend, and when we both finally die from that life, I pass on and you are restored to the Throne, having been changed forever for the better."
She broke eye contact again. "Not that… there's anything wrong with you in the first place," she said. "But the Celestia in the book. She has… some flaws."
"But you feel that that Princess Celestia…"
That entirely fictional Princess Celestia, yes?
I did not rise to my inner self's baiting. "You feel that that Princess Celestia is real, as well."
"Well, yes," said Twilight. "And I thought about it and… I got upset. Because I wanted what they had, so badly. They got scared, and hurt, but they came through it together, and were rewarded with the happiest decades of their lives together. And I know it's not going to be like that. That it's never going to be like that. But… I wanted it to be like that. So very much."
Twilight wiped away a stray tear. "So then I started growing orchids on everything," she finished.
"I want to make sure I understand you," I said. "You want me to be more like… a fictional character."
My faithful student stiffened her lip and began leafing through the copy of Eternal, to a point near the end. She cleared her throat and read:
"She was tall, and of medium build, for a pegasus; not quite as dainty and petite as Fluttershy, nor as athletic as Rainbow Dash. Her coat was a rather dull white, where it had always seemed silvery and slightly iridescent before; and like Dash, her mane was bright and multicolored; but it wasn't the teal and blue and purple it had been; instead, it was gold, and red, and violet, like the setting sun that was emblazoned on her flanks, half-hidden behind an arc of horizon."
"That's you," she said, looking up at me. "That's you as a person, not as a Princess. That's The Sun In Repose. That's the person that Twilight Sparkle spent many years with. Just… doing things together."
"We do things together," I said.
"You invite me to galas," said Twilight, the words fairly tumbling out of her now. "To parties, sometimes. You decreed that I and my friends should star in the Canterlot Hearth's Warming Eve pageant."
"And you were very good in that," I said. "The most excellent Clover the Clever I've seen."
"And you came backstage and you told me that!" she said. "And then… and then you left again!"
"I had thought you would want to spend time with your friends."
"I DID!" shouted Twilight, and the air began to grow steamy again.
We locked eyes for a moment. Then she relented, and the air cooled. "I did," she repeated, sinking to the bench. "Don't you see? I did want to spend time with my friends. And that means you, too."
A brief silence.
"What would you like to do?" I asked, simply.
"Dinner," she said, almost automatically. "Qilinese tofu, sweet-and-sour style. You, me and Luna. Luna keeps talking about how much she wishes you would join us sometime, after all."
"She… does?"
"Yep," said Twilight.
"I see," I said, manipulating this new information like an interesting pebble. "Very well. Some day, we will. Some day soon. To-night is not best, though; I am a bit weary of commotions."
"Then let's not make a commotion!" said Twilight, in tones of heartrending hopefulness. "Luna and I go out all the time and nopony is the wiser! Every night after we get done stargazing together. She goes as an earth pony named 'Moonbeam', based on a character in another one of these books, one that she quite enjoyed. She says it helps her to reconnect with Equestria, with life. I mean, not that you need anything like that… but it still might be fun, right?"
"A costume," I said, raising one eyebrow.
"Luna's quite good at them," said Twilight, proudly. "She's a whiz at illusion magic."
"I, not so much," I said. "The Sun is concerned with truth and wakefulness, not deceptions and dreams."
"She's perfectly capable of doing it to other ponies, too. Not just herself."
I laughed, plastering over a rising sense of ancient and difficult-to-name panic. "Twilight, I think that might be a bit disingenuous, don't you?"
Somewhere in the garden of my mind, my inner self reared up, took me by the shoulders, stared me in the eyes, and then, sharply, cuffed me across the cheek with one hoof.
You thrice-damned hypocrite, Celestia, she said. Is there any pony in this entire kingdom to whom you haven't lied, in one way or another?
No, I admitted.
Then what are your grounds for refusing her?
Flagrant double standards, I replied.
Good try, replied my inner self. But you can't sell that line like Mrs. Stacks can.
She's my student! I cried out. It's not typical!
My inner self sighed, shaking her head. She will always be your student, she said. And your teacher. And you will forever fill the same roles to her. I realize that it isn't typical – but she is not a typical student. And you are most certainly not a typical teacher.
My inner self smirked at me. Quite atypical, as a matter of fact, she finished.
I had nothing more to say. I snapped back from my inner garden to the sight of Twilight gazing up at me, eyes gleaming with hope.
And I thought of another Celestia who faced a choice much like this one, and who elected to let her Faithful Student stand alone in the fear that she would never grow into the great mare she was destined to be if she were to cleave too tightly to her teacher; a Celestia who spent years and years paying the price for that decision. Another Celestia, divided from me by a shell even more impenetrable than the one that separated Eohippus from Equestria; a shell that nevertheless, through some miracle, could be pierced by nothing more than a mass of wood pulp and ink and dreams.
I made a decision: the correct one, I believe.
"Yes," I said.
"Great!" said Twilight, positively quivering. "Dinner! And drinks! And then karaoke!"
"Let's leave it with 'dinner'," I said. "My aura of cosmic purity converts all toxins to distilled water at my merest touch, alcohol included."
And you can't sing worth a damn, added my inner self.
"All right," said Twilight, smiling a little abashedly at having pushed it too far. "No liquor. Just colas. Do you know who you're going to be?"
"Well, not that thing," I said, gesturing absently at Eternal. "It's too dangerous a book to have its characters trotting about Canterlot City."
"Gotta pick something!" said Twilight, grinning from ear to ear.
Images again flickered before my mind's eye, and one held its gaze: the peach-colored unicorn on the park bench, from before. Miss Heartfelt. The same qualities that had sparked me to approach her in the first place now anchored the attention of my spirit. The way she sat there, in the dying light, her alicorn flaring in defiance of the onrushing dark – and for what? For another chapter of cheap romantic fiction? Could something so small be so valuable?
Yes, I concluded. Yes. Dear Twilight Sparkle: Sometimes, the time one spends on a thing so very frivolous as a romance novel, or on a "dinner night" with family and friends, or even… or even on a fanciful story about fictional versions of oneself, living in a universe far distant but not so far different from one's own… sometimes these petty hours can make all the difference in the world.
Signed, your faithful…
…student…
…Princess Celestia.
"Very well, I've picked." I said. "I'm not very creative, I'm afraid – it's just the likeness of a pony I saw earlier this evening. Of course I'll have to jumble the details a little to avoid any tedious Mistaken Identity plots, but it should suffice."
"I can't wait to see her," said Twilight, bouncing a little and then cantering to the door of the reading lounge. "C'mon, let's tell Luna the good news!"
"In a moment, my faithful student," I said, crossing back behind the reading desk.
I leaned in close to the open copy of Eternal.
"I don't know if you can hear me," I whispered. "But… thank you for what you just did."
I quietly closed the book and then followed my student out into a different world.
* * *
This arc continues with "Beloved". Read on!
