Seriously, Guys, How Do You Manage
Princess Celestia: Okay, we’re not going to lie; we had one and only one strategy in mind when the idea of compiling this list came to mind, and that was more or less asking each and every pony how old they were, and then writing it down. However, today we discovered a very interesting book titled 1001 Common Social Mishaps and How To Avoid Them.
To our surprise, Asking About Her Age was listed in that book as Social Mishap Number Twenty, right above Accidentally Desecrating Her Parents’ Corpses and below Refusing to Stop Headbutting Her.
This was quite the conundrum for us, but let it never be said that the Archive doesn’t think about Equestrians whenever they study something. So no actual, direct questions to any female.
Sadly, Princess Celestia is a female. Or at least we think so, anyway. We wanted to ask it too, but Asking if She’s a Female, No I Mean, Like, For Real, Are You Sure is listed as Social Mishap Number Two Hundred And Six, so we guess we’ll have to believe our hunch. In other words: we can’t ask her just how old she is, exactly.
But of course, the Archive will not let such a little thing to get in our way. We can’t ask Princess Celestia, but she’s been the leader of Equestria for ages – surely there’s at least one book in the Royal Library that details when she was born?
So we’ve asked two of our youngest members, Last Hope and Fiddle Diddle, to skim through them all and tell us the results. There are five thousand books in there, give or take. Last Hope and Fiddle Diddle said they weren’t sure if they were up to challenge, but, quoting the oldest member of our Archive, Dusty Book: “Eh. Yer young. Ye’ll manage.” Then he shook his cane and spat on the floor, but we’re not quoting that part.
Certainly, one can never stop learning from Dusty Book’s wisdom. The exact age of Princess Celestia remains then a mystery, at least until Hope and Diddle discover something.
Princess Luna: So far, the project of the Age List doesn’t look exactly promising. Then again, all great things have hard beginnings, don’t they?
Seeing how Princess Luna is also a female, or at least that’s what we think, we had an amazing idea – instead of asking her age directly, we asked her how old she was when she was banished to the moon. We knew that we just needed to add one thousand years to that number. Easy-peasy.
However, Princess Luna got kind of weird when we asked her just how old she was when she tried to kill everypony in sight. Thinking she was just confused, we made sure she understood what she meant. “The first time,” we said. “Like, not the second time you’ve tried to kill us all like some kind of horrible monster. We’re asking about that thing that happened over one thousand years ago. You know, when you betrayed your sister for the first time.”
But then Dusty Book said that hey, maybe she had actually betrayed her sister before the whole Nightmare Moon fiasco. We weren’t really sure, because it’s not like anypony really cares about Luna, let’s be honest. Plus, seeing how good she is at betraying her sister, there was no reason to believe she hadn’t tried to destroy the world more times. She’s kind of useless at that job, after all.
We told her this too, of course – the reason why her legend had been completely forgotten was that, well, she wasn’t that important. We mean, raising the moon is not exactly a big deal. Maybe we have one book that details all of this, but honestly who cares.
Princess Luna got even weirder after hearing this, and asked us if we really meant that. We answered that why would we say something we don’t mean. Then she asked if she was really that unimportant, and then we said that look, okay, you know what, if you are going to take this much to answer our simple question then we’re going to go away, your Highness, because unlike yours, our time is pretty valuable.
Then she started sobbing, and we went away, because, well, we had some stuff to do. Sadly, this means Princess Luna’s age is also unknown. We’ll keep trying.
Fancy Pants: We finally succeeded! Mister Fancy Pants was really nice, and had no problem whatsoever answering our questions. He’s, as per today, thirty-eight years old, and his wife Fleur de Lis is thirty-two. Then he added she’s been thirty-two for five years in a row now.
That last quote confused us greatly. We have no idea what it means. Our best guess is that Fleur de Lis is not an actual pony but a pure energy being, a superior form of life that does not flow with the river of time. We shiver at the implications of this information.
Also, Fancy Pants kept pronouncing his wife’s name as “Fleur Dis Lee”, but we chose to ignore this information because it sounds pretty freaking dumb.
Jet Set and Upper Crust: We’re not going to lie, we have no idea who is Upper Crust and who is Jet Set. Maybe Jet Set is the mare? Jet Set sounds kind of feminine, we think.
Anyway, we asked the male part of the Jet Set/Upper Crust combo, and he got greatly offended by our question, which made us suspect we had actually asked the female part. Finally, however, he/she/it admitted being of thirty-two years of age. We mentioned off-handedly that Fleur de Lis was exactly as old as that, too.
Weirdly enough, he/she/it snorted and rolled his/her/its eyes at that information. This implies Jet Set and Upper Crust are aware of the true identity of Fleur de Lis. We might have accidentally discovered an ancient conspiracy involving Canterlot nobility, and we don’t know what to do with that information.
For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume the other half of the Jet Set/Upper Crust combo is also thirty-two.
Mayor Mare: We headed to Ponyville out of fear for the nobility. Some things are not to be played with. Mayor Mare, being the highest “authority” in the town, seemed to be the best pony to start this new section of the list.
Of course, Mayor Mare is a female, and we know this as a fact because the alternative is that her parents were both very blind and very cruel. Seeing how every single pony in this forsaken land has the eerie ability to absolutely nail down the names of their children, we’re pretty sure that was not the case. No parent would ever give their child the horrible fate that comes with a bad name.
Being unable to ask her age directly, we tried to cheat the system and ask her if she was as old as she looked like. She has gray hair, after all. One of our youngest members, Eiffel, guessed out loud that she was probably up to eighty years old. Mayor Mare looked annoyed at our inquiry, so Eiffel guessed again, saying eighty-five this time.
She sharply said she was only forty-years old, to which we said “yeah, right.” We write her down as being fifty years old, because come on, who is she trying to fool?
Filthy Rich: Oh. Oh, dear Celestia. Oh, dear baby Celestia, we’re so sorry. We take back everything we said about parents being able to name their children right. Just… Oh, god. One of our members is called Middle Finger, and even he got luckier than Filthy Rich.
He answered politely to our inquiries, explaining he was fifty-four, fifty-five by the end of the year. We made sure to ask him too about his daughter’s age, as well as his wife’s. He explained that Diamond Tiara is actually eight years old, and that her mother is twenty-six.
He then wiggled his eyebrows quite vigorously and said something about money and how easy life was when one has it.
Big Macintosh: Huh. Something funny happened. After interrogating Filthy Rich, we chose to stop our investigations for the day and camped outside of Ponyville for the night, and… For some reason, all of us had nightmares. Well, more like nightmare, singular. We all had the same one.
Something big, dark, and with fangs chasing us through a forest. Quite eerie. And yet nopony really thinks this is important. That fanged beast looked exactly like something one shouldn’t care a lot about. We’re not exactly scared, we’re just confused. It’s probably nothing.
So, we went to Sweet Apple Acres, because after asking the two ponies with some theoretical political power in this town, asking the ponies who really matter looked like the best option.
Sadly, Applejack was out, probably selling apples, or playing the banjo, or kissing her cousin, or whatever farmers do nowadays. That means we had to ask her brother, Big Macintosh.
He’s not the most talkative guy out here, but he’s not mute, as we feared. He says he’s twenty-five, and Applejack seems to be twenty-three. Apple Bloom is eleven years old.
Eiffel then said that such a thing can’t be, because Apple Bloom goes to the same class as Diamond Tiara, and Diamond Tiara is only eight. Big Mac replied that he really, really, really loves his sister, but that she’s not – and we’re quoting – “the brightest tool in the shed.” Coming from her family, that probably means Apple Bloom has difficulty recognizing simple shapes and colors, which, quoting Eiffel here, “would explain quite a couple of things, actually”.
We then asked Eiffel why does he know so much about the little fillies of Ponyville, and for some reason he got really nervous and asked us to please don’t write this down, because something something old crimes? He mumbled this part. Anyway, we promised we wouldn’t write it down.
Wait.
Oops.
Well, doesn’t matter. After this, we were planning on asking Big Macintosh about Granny Smith’s age, but Dusty Book accidentally desecrated Big Macintosh’s parent’s corpses. Because, quoting him, “the tombs were just standing there, they were clearly asking for it, so it’s their fault, not mine!”
Big Macintosh got a little angry, so we had to go away before we could ask. Such a shame, but at least we have some valuable information.
Princess Celestia: We sent a letter to Last Hope and Fiddle Diddle, to ask how they were doing. No results yet, although the books are interesting.
They barely slept, but they had the same nightmare as us. Weirdly enough, Princess Luna came to them and asked about that very same thing, but Hope and Diddle replied that sure, they had had a nightmare, but not, like, a scary nightmare. More like a lame one.
For some reason Princess Luna sobbed and ran away. Diddle threw a book at her just for giggles, and hit her in the head. They laughed a lot after that. We did, too. How wacky, Fiddle Diddle.
Apparently Luna was sobbing even harder after that, but seriously, who cares about her?
Rarity: And again we try to guess how old a particular mare is. However, we already know how old Applejack is, and she had to be close to that. Plus, we knew that Sweetie Belle was around eight years old, so we just needed to ask her what age she was when Sweetie Belle was born.
That sounded like a really good idea, but just to be sure, we asked her how old Sweetie Belle was first. That was an even better idea, because it turns out Sweetie Belle is ten years old. Sadly, Dusty Book felt the urge to politely ask “Just how [censored]ing stupid are the kids of this [censored]ing town?” and Rarity got angry at this. She said that, well, maybe Sweetie Belle was, indeed “pretty [censored]ing stupid”, but “she was her sister, so she had to protect her, no matter how lacking her brains are”, and then she kicked us out.
We write her down as being thirty-five years old. We have no clue if that is true, but her kicks actually hurt, so there it goes.
It’s getting late. We’ll stop asking for today, and camp outside Ponyville again.
Celestia: Again with the nightmare. Even more meh than the last one; it seriously looked like the beast was, well, trying too hard. Like, its fangs were so big it couldn’t close its mouth, come on. That’s not scary, that just makes it look like it’s constantly surprised. Still pretty weird, though.
Fiddle Diddle and Last Hope haven’t slept yet. Too much coffee, they say. Their letter doesn’t make much sense, they ramble a lot. No idea about Celestia’s age yet. Apparently, Luna came back to ask them about the nightmares, and she was, like, smirking? But they didn’t waste any time with her, they just threw books at her face until she ran away, again sobbing. Celestia, that mare is so lame.
They keep reading and reading and reading, they say. Nothing matters. Only the books.
We’re getting kind of worried here, to be honest.
Scootaloo: This was supposed to be an entry about Rainbow Dash, but we had some trouble with her.
Turns out she lives in a cloud. None of us is a pegasus, because, well, the Archive staff has always consisted of unicorns, as far as we can tell. That looked like a problem, but then we had the brilliant idea of dragging her house down with our magic.
All of us but Dusty Book concentrated as hard as we could and dragged that little palace of hers down with us. However, turns out Rainbow Dash wasn’t in there – she was napping in another cloud, because apparently she likes to do that, and after seeing us she came to ask what were we doing.
But we were too concentrated, so only Dusty Book answered, and he said that we wanted to ask her for her age, because, at least for him, Rainbow Dash didn’t really count as a mare. Then he shook his cane and spat on the ground.
That angered Rainbow Dash a little, and she yelled at Dusty Book. Dusty Book rolled his eyes, shook his cane, spat on the ground, and then asked her about Scootaloo’s age, because he figured that we could “do some arithmetic or some [censored], I don’t [censored]ing care”.
Rainbow Dash, still a little angry, answered that Scootaloo was eight years old. And… Well, one needs to understand that dragging a house made out of clouds is kind of hard, so we seriously had no idea what was going on right behind us. Otherwise, we would have stopped Dusty Book. However, we were busy, so he yelled something like: “WHAT? ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT SHE’S THE SMART ONE? BUT SHE’S A PEGASUS!” And then he shook his cane and tried to spit on the ground, but accidentally spat on Rainbow Dash’s face instead.
Now, we’re not here to judge Dusty Book, but that’s pretty racist. We know he’s old and all that, but... Yeah, that’s still pretty [censored]ing racist, to say it in Rainbow Dash’s words.
So yes, as Rainbow Dash herself is a pegasus, she got kind of angry. Also Dusty Book had just insulted her protégé or whatever Scootaloo is. Eiffel said she was Rainbow Dash’s protégé, and then mumbled something about him wishing little fillies as protégés too? That was weird.
But yes, we’re digressing. Um, Rainbow Dash got kind of angry because of the racism, which is totally understandable, because pegasi are dumb like that and they get offended easily.
Aaand that was the moment we finally brought down her house. Only we kind of miscalculated, and her house crashed against the ground. And, well, it kind of exploded all over the place.
That was when Rainbow Dash went, um, livid, to put a word on it. And long story short we woke up two hours later, full of bruises, to realize we’d been beaten up by two Elements of Harmony in two days. That has to be some kind of record.
Anyway, just for the sake of completing this list, we’re writing Dash down as being twelve years old, because… Well, because, quoting Dusty Book, “oh sweet baby Celestia, just [censored] her, my back hurts so much.”
Fluttershy: We were hurt pretty badly, Dusty Book more than anypony else, and we knew Fluttershy is good with animals. Not exactly a doctor, we know, but at this point we were desperate. He just wouldn’t shut up. We had to do something.
Luckily for us, Fluttershy was eager to help. We’re pretty sure she confused Dusty Book for a very malformed tortoise or something, because she kept offering him lettuce and asking where his shell was, but… Well, to be fair, that’s kind of an understandable mistake.
While she was making faces at Dusty Book and calling him “poor baby”, we tried to approach a way to discover how old she was. For some reason, everypony knows she’s one year older than Pinkie Pie, so maybe asking her about that would be a good idea.
However, when we asked her about Pinkie Pie’s age, she asked us why we wanted to know that. And we, of course, replied with the truth – we explained everything about the list.
And with this, we mean everything. And then, the most horrible thing happened – after we said Fleur de Lis was thirty-two, she giggled a little.
This means she knows. She knows. It’s not just a noble thing. Everypony knows about this. And they know we know. It’s the only reason why Fluttershy would act like that.
There’s a conspiracy. There’s a conspiracy out there, and Fleur de Lis is somehow immortal and probably has some weird superpowers that can destroy the world, because it’s the only explanation that makes sense.
We didn’t know what to do. This was a shock. Fluttershy is one of the biggest heroes of Equestria, and she’s one of them. We were scared, scared out of our minds. So we did the only logical thing – we hit Fluttershy on the back of the head with a baseball bat and shoved her in the closet.
We couldn’t ask for her age. We didn’t dare to. She’s too dangerous. We’re safe… but for how long?
We couldn’t continue after this, and called it a day. It was too much. That, of course, didn’t mean we were going to stop with this list. The Archive never surrenders.
Princess Celestia: Uh. Okay. We’re just going to quote the letter Last Hope and Fiddle Diddle sent us:
We’ve forgotten what the Sun looked like. We don’t know how long we’ve been trapped here. Two days? Three? Sleep is only a memory, a faint one.
Books. Books. They never stop. They don’t mean anything anymore. The words come and go, the meaning is lost, we don’t know what we’re doing. Every book brings us closer and closer to Tartarus, and we can do nothing about it. Inside us flows an invisible river, death laughs in our lungs every time we take a breath, a village of worms quivers in our heads.
Age. Celestia’s age. We don’t know. We drink coffee. It’s the only real thing. What is sleep? Why are we reading? We don’t know.
Luna came again. We ignored her. We didn’t even throw books at her. She’s not worthy. She eventually went away. She looked darker than usual. Sharper than usual. We gotta keep reading. We gotta find the solution to this mystery. Not the mystery of how old Celestia is, of course. That doesn’t matter.
No. The biggest mystery of them all, that’s what we need to answer: WHY ARE WE ALIVE?”
Uh-huh. Yes. Whatever that means. Also, there’s no sun today?
The Cakes: This was supposed to be Pinkie Pie, but she wasn’t home. Apparently she’s out there, saving the world. Nightmare Moon came back, go figure. Seriously, Luna keeps getting lower and lower. Every time we think she’s hit rock bottom, she manages to surprise us once more. Ugh. No wonder she has no friends.
So, with Luna trying to go omnicidal again and Pinkie Pie and the rest of the Elements trying to bring her back, we had to ask the Cakes, just to do something. We of course asked Mister Cake, because his wife is a female and thus off limits. She tried very hard to talk with us, but we collectively ignored her because we didn’t want to be rude with her.
For some reason, that made Mister Cake very angry. He yelled at us, saying that we were disrespecting his wife, and we said that no, we’re ignoring her. Disrespecting her would be pointing out, for example, that she’s really really fat. Also she’s probably dumb, because look at her.
And then Mister Cake got angrier! That was weird. He refused to answer to us, so we don’t know how old he is. He even told Eiffel that no, he couldn’t see the twins. Which is weird, because Eiffel was very polite. Sure, he was licking his lips all the time he said the words “baby twins”, but we’re pretty sure that’s just his way to say “please.”
Also he said he was going to call the Royal Guards, and we said that yes, that would be a good idea. You see, we said, we shoved Fluttershy in her closet yesterday, and by now she’s probably not unconscious anymore, so she might get out any moment now.
They got very pale after hearing this. Clearly, they understood Fluttershy is dangerous. Mister Cake said he was so going to call the Guards, to which we said that yes, do that.
So we went away without knowing how old they were, but at least we’ve advanced a lot when it comes to fighting against that horrible conspiracy.
Princess Twilight Sparkle: I’m afraid the worst possible thing has happened. They got us. Everything is lost.
We had to wait for Princess Twilight Sparkle in her palace, because, as we already said, she was busy defeating Luna again. Spike was there, and he’s quite the pleasant fellow – Eiffel didn’t seem to like him for some reason, though. He kept saying that “young dragons are not his type. Not innocent enough. Not pure enough.” Eiffel can be so weird sometimes.
Anyway, we actually asked Spike how old he was, and how old was Princess Twilight. However, he looked very wary of us, and didn’t really answer anything. He kept walking away from us, and saying things like “one step closer and I’ll burn you with my fire, you monsters!” We didn’t understand what that meant, but now it’s clear it was code for “run, you fools”.
Because, alas! When Princess Twilight finally came back, she came back with the Royal Guards, and told them to get us! That was madness! We asked why, and she told us that we had “committed assault,” and she also pointed at poor Eiffel and said something about how they didn’t really need any specific reason to throw him to the dungeons, because his mere existence was enough.
That made absolutely no sense, and then we understood. Princess Twilight Sparkle was in it too! The conspiracy! She probably wants to take over Equestria alongside the traitor nobles and Fleur de Lis!
It all made sense! So we did the only logical thing and charged against her. It was a horrible battle, and many of our brothers fell against the Guards.
Well, they didn’t really “fall”. They just got arrested. And maybe it wasn’t as much a “battle” as it was “a group of adult ponies running around and crying their eyes out in terror while the Guards chase them”, but the important thing here is that we managed to get away. Some of us, at least.
It’s nighttime now, and we’re at the Everfree Forest, hiding. We don’t know what to do. We’ve discovered the conspiracy, they want us dead, and we’re the only hope Equestria has left. Probably. It’s the only explanation.
We’re ready, though. We’re wise. The Archive has been reading books for years. We know all there’s to know about epic battles. There’s enough wood in the Everfree to make weapons. Sure, the trees have faces, so what? We can still cut them down. What could possibly go wrong?
So tomorrow, once we’re ready, once we’ve fabricated some weapons, we’ll attack Ponyville. It’s clear now that the whole town is filled with traitors to Equestria. We’ll take it by force, and then we’ll slowly make our way towards Canterlot, conquering in the name of the one true Princess. And maybe Luna too, who knows.
Now we must stop writing. We send you this unfinished list now, Princess Celestia, with the hopes that it will get to you in time. It probably won’t, but it’s worth a try. Know that, in this world of dark secrets and betrayal, we, the ponies of the Archive, remain loyal!
So carry on, Princess Celestia! Carry on, and fight! We’ll be there soon!
Signed,
The Archive
Celestia just stood there in silence for a couple minutes, staring at the letter she’d just read.
Then a Guard knocked. “Um, Princess?” he asked, opening the door a little and poking his head. “There are two ponies at the Library, and they look a little… Uh…” He licked his lips. “Um, I’m going to say delirious, I guess. They’ve barricaded themselves inside, and are throwing books at anypony who dares enter, uh, ‘their realm.’”
Silence.
Celestia closed her eyes and massaged her temples with a hoof. “Suns and Stars ,” she muttered, “I seriously need to hire smarter ponies.”