Neither are very subtle unless they want to be
“Oh, sister...”
It was barely even a whisper, but the words left her mouth all the same as she raised the moon and gazed upon the image burned into it. Even after nearly a thousand years, Celestia's heart still ached each night and morning as she did the tasks meant for another. Even after nearly a thousand years, Celestia still missed her little sister no matter how wayward Luna had become.
She'd lost more than just a sister that day. She'd lost her best friend, her confidant, the only pony in Equestria who shared over a thousand years worth of experiences with her. Nopony else remembered all the struggles of running a fledgling nation and fighting off the evils that threatened it. Nopony else remembered all the good times, either – learning from Starswirl, discovering the world, in-jokes with ponies forgotten by the history books, and countless other details lost to the ages. Nopony else knew her like Luna did.
Certainly, she'd done her best to befriend the ponies around her. But it was difficult to form a real, deep connection with a pony whose entire family tree you'd seen grow up, branch off, and die. And it only became harder and harder with each generation as ponies were raised to venerate her...
Still standing on the isolated little balcony from which she did her cosmic duties, Celestia let loose a forlorn sigh. She wanted Luna back more than anything in the world. But...she couldn't help but dread the day she knew she'd see her precious sister once more. The 1000th Summer Sun Celebration was only about a decade away, and the stars as destined would align to release her...as Nightmare Moon.
Celestia averted her gaze from the Mare in the Moon, shaking her head sadly and walking back into her quarters. She didn't want to fight her sister. Not again. She'd never liked fighting to begin with, but to take up arms against someone she loved hurt more than anything else. Even with all the strength and wisdom she'd gained over the past millennium, even if she were somehow still able to wield the Elements of Harmony alone, Celestia didn't think she had it in her to defeat her sister once more.
But she'd known that for centuries. And if Celestia had learned nothing else from her long life, it was how to plan.
~*~*~*~
She needed somepony else to wield the Elements of Harmony, that much was clear. The question, then, was who? Her own painful memories and the fact that the Elements had become inert after being used to banish Nightmare Moon had prevented Celestia from doing any direct research on them to try and figure out who they might choose. This meant the only clue she'd had to go on for the past thousand years was the mysterious 'stars' symbol carved into the Tree of Harmony, but it wasn't much to go on. She assumed it was meant to be a cutie mark, much like her and Luna's marks had been carved into the tree as well, but what if the six stars simply represented the six Elements themselves?
Celestia had long since decided to keep an eye out for any promising ponies that appeared in the years leading up to the fated day. She'd thought she'd found a potential bearer in Mi Amore Cadenza, but it soon became apparent that the new Princess Cadance had a much different destiny in store for her. Then another few years had passed without any truly promising candidates appearing before either her or her intelligence network...
Until two unicorn fillies, wildly different in personality yet strangely similar all the same, appeared within the past year or so. The first was Sunset Shimmer, whose talent with magic was only matched by her ambition. Sunset was proud and boastful to a fault, however, and seemed to hold most other ponies in little regard. But Celestia could see great potential in her, and the makings of a true leader, if only Sunset could put aside her ego and learn the value of friendship. Even after nearly a year of private tutelage Celestia could only consider her a work in progress, but she held out hope that her lessons would get through to Sunset.
Especially if things with the second filly went as well as she hoped they would. Much like Sunset Shimmer the year before, Twilight Sparkle had aced all the preliminary entrance examinations set by Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Unlike Sunset, however, Twilight was humble and sweet. The only flaw of hers that Celestia could see was that, much like her senior, the young filly had little interest in making friends. Though at least in Twilight's case it was that she cared more about studying rather than seeing other ponies as being almost beneath her, as Celestia too often felt that Sunset did.
Still, Twilight seemed like she would be much more open to learning about the magic of friendship than Sunset currently was. And since she'd gotten a distinct feeling that Twilight might very well have something to do with the Elements when she'd first met her a couple months ago... Well, Celestia didn't feel remiss in raising her hopes for Twilight Sparkle. Already she was making plans on how to introduce her and Sunset, how to get them to bond as fellow proteges, how to encourage them to become friends...it almost made her giddy thinking about all the good those two could do together.
But, of course, Twilight still technically had to pass her official entrance exam. Which, happily, was in a few minutes. Since it had been obvious to the entire faculty exactly how much potential young Twilight possessed, Celestia had managed to arrange for a special challenge for her – hatch an abandoned dragon egg that had come into the school's possession a few months back. While theoretically possible given enough raw power, it was rather unlikely that Twilight would be able to actually do the deed at her current skill level. But that was the point – either she surpassed everypony's wildest expectations, or she demonstrated how she handled failure. So long as nothing catastrophic happened, Twilight was sure to pass.
Of course, not willing to show Twilight any favoritism quite yet, Celestia stayed well outside the classroom the filly had been assigned to. There were still plenty of other gifted unicorns that were taking their entrance exams today after all, and they deserved to be greeted and respected as well. And besides, Celestia decided, it was a beautiful day to be outside.
Then something like a large and distant explosion shook the earth and caused Celestia to stumble, and a rainbow-colored shockwave spread out through the skies over central Equestria. She looked up to see a rainbow shooting out from the shockwave's center and arc over where she knew Cloudsdale was currently located, and smiled. She hadn't seen a sonic rainboom since she was a filly herself, and she was certain it was a good (and quite lovely to look at) omen.
But her smile lasted only a moment before she felt a surge of magic nearby, and magical lightning soon started emanating from the spire she knew Twilight Sparkle to be in.
And then the head of a large but rather babyish-looking dragon burst through its roof.
She teleported inside to find Twilight Sparkle in the midst of a magical overload, her eyes glowing as she levitated a foot off the ground and grunted and groaned in obvious pain. The exam proctors were being levitated as well; the egg had most certainly been hatched; and Twilight's parents had apparently been turned into potted plants.
Well. Needless to say, Celestia's expectations for the exam had been thoroughly exceeded.
Without fear she put a hoof on the filly's shoulder, and smiled calmly at her. That alone was enough to snap Twilight Sparkle back to her senses, regaining control of her magic and ending the spells she'd accidentally cast.
“Twilight Sparkle,” she began to say, containing her swelling pride and joy as best she could even as she noticed the mark that had appeared on Twilight's flank.
“Oh I'm so sorry,” Twilight quickly and fearfully said. “I didn't-”
“You have a very special gift!” Celestia told her. “I don't think I've ever come across a unicorn with your raw abilities!” It was nothing but truth, and it pleased Celestia immensely. Though of course it would mean nothing if the little filly didn't learn how to control it all.
“Huh?” Twilight replied, her fear cut off entirely by slack-jawed confusion.
“But you need to learn to tame these abilities through focused study,” Celestia continued, making a snap decision to move up the schedule she'd planned for the filly by a little bit.
“Huh?!”
“Twilight Sparkle,” she said, sparing a brief glance back at the baby dragon sucking its tail on the floor behind her, “I'd like to make you my own personal protege here at the school.”
“Huh?!”
“Well?” Celestia asked, giving the adorably shocked filly a pleased and gentle smile.
She looked at her parents. They nodded vigorously.
“YYEEEEESSS!” Twilight exclaimed, jumping a yard into the air in sheer excitement.
Celestia barely suppressed a giggle. “One other thing Twilight,” she told the filly as she started to descend.
“More?!” she whimpered before landing with a thud on the tile floor, her legs all splayed out. Celestia simply stepped forward and pointed at Twilight's flank, drawing her attention to the cutie mark upon it – a magenta six-pointed star overlaid atop a white one, surrounded by five smaller white stars. The same mark that was carved into the Tree of Harmony.
“My cutie mark!” Twilight said, her excitement rapidly renewing itself as she started bouncing around the room in celebration.
Celestia laughed and smiled along with Twilight's parents and the exam proctors, but it wasn't long before they all parted ways. Twilight and her family returned home to continue their celebration; the proctors went off to file the necessary paperwork to formalize Twilight's admission, among other things; and Celestia herself took the newly-hatched baby dragon to go and make the necessary arrangements for its care. She cooed and smiled and laughed with it as she walked, and as she walked she thought as well.
After everything that had happened in its wake, Celestia didn't think she could call the sonic rainboom an omen anymore. Rather, it was as if fate itself had flown up into the sky and started waving for all to see a banner that read “HEY! THIS IS AN IMPORTANT EVENT! PLEASE LOOK INTO THIS!”
She quite liked it when fate did away with subtlety.
~*~*~*~
The next few days were a flurry of activity for Celestia. A new school year was beginning that she needed to help usher in; Sunset was demanding more time and attention; the exact nature of Twilight's early tutelage under her had to be worked out; a baby dragon had to be taken care of; the rainboom had to be investigated; and all of that was on top of her usual duties as Princess of Equestria.
Fortunately, her duties helped work each other out. She decided to give Twilight the baby dragon to care for in hopes that it would become a friend to her, and she had plenty of intelligence agents to investigate the rainboom for her while she taught Sunset and performed whatever other tasks required her attention.
Though she would never say it aloud, she felt no shame in being most interested in the rainboom. It had caused Twilight to get her cutie mark, and Celestia felt certain that any other ponies destined to wield the Elements would have gotten their marks from it as well. This feeling was only confirmed when word got back to her of the source of the event – a pegasus filly named Rainbow Dash had performed the move during a flying race against two colts, and had gotten her own cutie mark from it. Celestia made a note to pay the filly a visit and congratulate her for doing what nopony else had thought possible, and had her agents start searching for other foals who had gotten their marks at around the same time.
Though the exact reason why was told only to the upper echelons of her intelligence agency, of course – most ponies regarded the legend of the Mare in the Moon as nothing more than a tale, and she didn't want to cause even a little undue panic by revealing the legend's truth to a pony in a critical position. It was enough for them to know that Celestia felt the sonic rainboom had been a momentous event, and was curious as to what had come from it.
It didn't take them long to find another filly who'd gotten her mark because of the rainboom. To Celestia's surprise it involved the race again, her agents reporting that Rainbow Dash had done it as a way of defending the honor of a friend of hers named Fluttershy. But apparently Fluttershy was a weak flier, and the sheer force of the racers taking off had caused her to fall from the clouds. Fortunately she had been saved by a passing flock of butterflies, and became immediately infatuated with the lands below. Eventually she had been (rather reluctantly, Celestia was told) escorted back to the Summer Flight Camp she and the other pegasi foals had been attending, and had told the counselors how an 'explosion' had scared all her new animal friends which in turn caused her to realize her special talent of understanding them and thus receive her cutie mark.
A rather cute story, Celestia thought. That was three fillies, out of an expected six. She had her agents keep searching, with a note to look into reports of foals that had gone missing as well.
The accounts of ponies that received their cutie marks around the time of the sonic rainboom piled up quickly, but Celestia was able to dismiss them just as fast. Either they'd happened before it, or too long after it, or hadn't been influenced in any noticeable way by it. On the surface it seemed odd considering how many ponies had witnessed the event, but at the same time...if it really was meant to be a sign of destiny, then it was natural that only a few ponies would be affected in the right way.
Soon enough, two more promising stories came forward. The first was a missing pony report from Ponyville which had been rescinded almost immediately – apparently, a unicorn filly named Rarity who'd been frustrated about the quality of the costumes she'd been tasked with making for a local school play had disappeared that morning. Her parents, unable to find her, had feared the worst; but shortly after they filed the formal missing pony report their daughter showed up with a large number of high-quality gems she'd decided to incorporate into her designs, as well as her cutie mark.
The other arrived not long later, in the form of the daughter of the core branch of the Apple family that lived at Sweet Apple Acres in Ponyville. A smattering of eyewitness reports and testimony from her relatives painted a heartwarming picture of a filly who'd decided to stay with her aunt and uncle in Manehatten to get a taste of the city life, but had soon gotten homesick for rural Ponyville. The sonic rainboom had apparently brought about a realization in her, and a string of sightings implied that young Applejack had traveled all the way back to Sweet Apple Acres by her lonesome. She received her cutie mark upon arrival.
Celestia had smiled at that story as well. Tales of young ponies finding themselves like that had never failed to touch her heart, and she didn't think they ever would.
But the simple pleasures in life aside, that meant there was likely one more filly out there who'd received her cutie mark due to the sonic rainboom. Most likely an earth pony at that, considering that there were already two unicorns and two pegasi among the six. Unfortunately, she seemed to be the most elusive one by far. Equestria was a large country, and even with all the ponies out searching for her there was only so much ground they could cover at once. Days passed, and one by one each town and city was squeezed dry of any potential candidates. Whoever the sixth Element bearer was they lived far from civilization, and it could be months before every last family was tracked down and interviewed.
Eventually Celestia started entertaining the idea of expanding the search outside Equestria's borders, but before she could give the order it became unnecessary. A candidate had been found in a small and isolated rock farm owned by the Pie family; their third daughter had been working in a field when the rainboom happened, and upon seeing it she felt true unbridled joy for the first time in her life. Her attempts to share that joy with her family had led her to throw a party for them, awakening her special talent and cutie mark.
No other reports of relevance came in after that, and Celestia happily let her agents know that she was satisfied in that regard. All that they had to do from then on was keep tabs on those five fillies...for curiosity's sake, of course.
~*~*~*~
Alas, it seemed that every good turn of fate invited a bad one. Before Celestia could even start to broach the subject of including Twilight Sparkle in their lessons, Sunset Shimmer took a very rapid and very dramatic turn for the worse. Perhaps she'd been irritated by how distracted Celestia had been recently, or perhaps Celestia had made a mistake in showing her Starswirl's mirror, or perhaps it had simply been the natural result of Sunset's personality and too many warning signs ignored. Regardless, an alarming series of events rapidly culminated in Celestia being forced to banish Sunset only for Sunset to overpower several guards and escape into the world the mirror held.
Another part of Celestia's heart broke that day. Her high hopes for Sunset had been thoroughly crushed, leaving only a wish that one day Sunset would see the error in her ways and return. It was for that purpose, and to remind herself of her own hoof in it, that Celestia had the mirror moved to the throne room.
She renewed her focus on teaching and guiding Twilight not long after. Twilight had become like a seed sown in Celestia's heart, a seed of the future she so desperately longed for.
~*~*~*~
The years continued to pass, and Celestia watched with delight as her beloved pupil Twilight Sparkle grew up, and so did the five ponies she shared a destiny with. And from afar, she watched the five slowly come together in Ponyville.
Applejack and Rarity were locals, of course, and neither seemed too inclined to leave their hometown. They were joined by Fluttershy the moment she came of age, taking up residence in a cottage at the edge of one of the more tranquil stretches of forest and opening up an animal shelter for all her little friends.
Then came Pinkamena Pie, who took up an opening as a tenant and assistant at a local bakery – and quickly established herself as the town's beloved party planner as well. Rarity came of age at around that time as well, moving out of the family home to take over a boutique when its previous owner retired.
Those four quickly became friends to varying degrees, enough so that Fluttershy ended up enlisting the help of Pinkamena (now going by Pinkie) to throw a birthday party for her old friend Rainbow Dash. Details of it were vague, but the party had apparently left a big enough impression on the pegasus that she decided almost on a whim to take up a vacant weatherpony position just to be with all the new friends she'd made.
And thus the stage was set in quaint little Ponyville, settled not even a century ago in Canterlot's shadow near the Everfree Forest. Celestia hadn't visited it much, but from what she'd heard it was a peaceful place and one of the few towns in all of Equestria where the three types of pony lived in equal numbers. Perhaps more fatefully it was quite close to the ruined Palace of the Two Sisters where the Elements of Harmony lay dormant, and thus to the Tree of Harmony itself...
The thousandth Summer Sun Celebration was drawing ever closer, and once again Celestia thanked fate for foregoing its usual subtlety. She made arrangements to hold the main festival, from where she'd raise the summer sun, in Ponyville at the first opportunity that presented itself.
All that remained to be put into position was the seed she'd been nurturing, Twilight Sparkle.
Twilight was just about all Celestia could ask for in a student – bright, eager, dedicated, humble. Sadly, she'd also remained as stubbornly disinterested in making any friends as she'd been in her youth. Oh, certainly, she was amicable enough around other ponies and did make a point to spend time with a few she called her friends, but Celestia could tell it was done mostly to appease her and that Twilight cared much more about her personal studies. It seemed that no matter what Celestia tried to teach her about the beauty and wonders of friendship, Twilight's heart just wasn't listening.
And yet, Twilight remained Celestia's best chance for securing Equestria's future. As the date of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration became months, then weeks, then days away, she hoped her student would finally have an epiphany once she was finally surrounded by the ponies that shared the same destiny as her. But until then, Celestia just made sure to guide Twilight's thoughts to what was about to occur with a few offhoof comments regarding Equestria's history, just enough to spark her interest in the subject...
When she finally received a letter from Twilight warning of Nightmare Moon's imminent return mere days before the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration, Celestia smiled. She waited a couple minutes, then sent out the reply she'd prepared well beforehand that ordered her to help with festival preparations in Ponyville (with a specific emphasis on the tasks she knew the other presumed Element Bearers had been given), and most importantly make some friends.
Within the hour Twilight Sparkle was begrudgingly and unwittingly headed towards her destiny. All that was left to do now was wait, and see what the seed in Celestia's heart bloomed into.
~*~*~*~
Even if she'd wanted to, Celestia wouldn't have been able to sleep. Not that anypony had expected her to with the festival going on. But even though she'd been in Ponyville all night, she hadn't made a single appearance at the festival. Instead, she'd simply been sitting out on an isolated balcony since moonrise, magically hidden from sight as she watched the stars slowly approach her imprisoned sister.
So much of what she'd done these past few decades, so many plans and preparations, had led up to this this night. And yet, as she sat there with her heart filled with loneliness and grief, she couldn't help but start to doubt all of it. Here she was, the most powerful pony in the entire world, about to trust its fate to six young mares with no experience, no preparation, no idea of what she'd decided to thrust onto their backs. And only one of them even knew what was about to happen! All because of a symbol carved into a magical tree and the cutie mark that matched it.
There were just too many things that could go wrong. What if she'd misinterpreted the symbol? What if she'd misinterpreted the sonic rainboom? What if they couldn't band together as friends? What if they failed to stand up to Nightmare Moon?
What if the prophecy of her sister's freedom was wrong?
So many thoughts. So many doubts. But it was too late to do anything about any of them. All she could do is hope that she'd been right, and that the six would succeed. That they'd be able to do what she had not so long ago.
The scheduled time of dawn was approaching fast, and so too were the stars to the moon.
They aligned.
The Mare in the Moon disappeared.
Celestia dropped the magic that hid her from the world.
A familiar mist, barely visible against the night sky it tried to emulate, started snaking its way towards her.
Celestia took a deep breath, knowing she had one last decision to make. Did she take a stand here, raise her hoof against her sister once more in the hope that it would give the six a better chance at defeating her directly? Or should she go quietly, hoping that it would make her sister more arrogant and proud so she'd underestimate her true foes? Both options were massive risks. One of them had to be taken.
The mist was almost there, and she fought back a tidal wave of emotions within her as it began to coalesce into an all-too familiar form – sorrow, regret, fear, righteous protective anger, and even joy...
“Oh, sister~!” Nightmare Moon whispered in a mocking singsong.
And Celestia took her gamble.