In Which Really Stupid Things Happen
Today, Celestia decided, had been one of those days that simply would not do. The imminent invasion of sea budgies simply would not do. The number of nobles whining for her attention simply would not do. And above all, the shortage in supply in the cake vault, most likely due to embezzlement, prime suspect one irritating sibling who in moments like this made her wonder whether or not 1,000 years had perhaps not been too short a time, well, that especially simply would. Not. Do.
There was only one thing to be done, today. Philomena had to die.
This was not a decision Celestia made lightly. Out of cycle combustion played havoc with a Phoenix’s plumage, and Philomena would be simply impossible if not given daily grooming until her feathers settled down out of her own accord. That, and early combustion wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences, and she would need to bribe her with sugared plums, but that was a price easy enough to pay.
It would all be worth it to allow Celestia to get good and properly baked for the first time in...it was hard to say. Philomena’s last three cycles had all been at undesirable times, and she had missed the opportunity. Her next was still several months out and Celestia could not wait that long or she might do something she regretted, like turning evil and throwing Daring Do into the dungeon. Then, knowing her, it would all turn into some overly complicated plot and she’d probably fail at being evil and then? Then, well, she might end up feeling even more stressed, and that was disregarding how even more impossible Luna would become to deal with, what with the inevitable, 'Oh, so it's okay when YOU turn evil' speech her sister would assuredly spout!
Unless she could get Luna to go evil with her. That might well work.
“No, no, not now. Not worth the cost,” she muttered to herself as she swept past her door guard to enter her quarters and fling her tiara at near-supersonic speeds into the nearest mirror, which quite obligingly shattered into a million pieces.
It would be intact again within five minutes, thanks to the regeneration enchantment, but on days like this the sight of glass shards spilled across her carpet provided some small catharsis. Her shoes took out two lamps, a priceless ceramic statue, and scattered the pieces of Twilight Sparkle’s framed bit of foalhood macaroni art all over the glass. Those, too, would be fine in a few moments.
Celestia, in her more unguarded moments, might admit she had perhaps just a little too much love for watching things explode. While this was dangerous enough amidst the ordinary pony, it was especially dangerous if one day she decided that she wanted to see, say, the sun explode, as that was likely to do very dire things for all life in the immediate vicinity. Like, say, Equestria, and for the most part the life there would object very strenuously to the proposal of detonating the sun as a form of primal scream.
At least, they would in those few seconds remaining before they were incinerated by the aforementioned exploding sun.
“Although,” Celestia mused aloud as she ambled from study, one last crash sounding behind her as her chestplate cut free the chandelier and left the floor a hazard to all life and limb, “I suppose at that point it would be less a proposal and more a reality, and precision in these things is important.”
She stooped before her bed, shook haunches slightly, then sprung onto the mattress and let limbs splay outwards in thoughtless chaos, oozing along the surface of her blankets till her head hit the pillow and she muttered, “Ahh….to stay here forever.”
But still, the pulsing ache remained in her chest, the steady throb of stress for which neither wanton destruction nor hedonistic relaxation - however short - had properly relieved.
For that....one thing alone would suffice.
“Philomena,” she sung in musical beckoning, “Wherever you are, would you please come here?”
The phoenix announced herself in flaring flamelight as she swooped in through open balcony, and alighted upon Celestia’s outstretched forehoof. Celestia’s muzzle stretched in a fond smile. “Hello, dear friend,” she murmured. “I fear today is one I must ask you a favor.”
Philomena canted head to the side, and let loose a small chirrup, pitch rising at the end.
“Early combustion,” Celestia replied after a moment’s pause. “I know, it’s -”
Philomena squawked, much more loudly this time, and her plumage puffed outwards while claws tightened on Celestia’s leg.
“I know,” the Princess said, free limb extending to smooth feathers back into place. “I wouldn’t ask were I not chomping at the bit to tell the nobility what I truly think of half of them. I’ll make it worth your while. Your own private groomer, and a month’s supply of all you can eat on your favorite candied fruits?”
Philomena loosened her grip on Celestia’s limb. The phoenix bent forward and chirped once, insistently.
“Two months,” Celestia offered with a light sigh. Philomena chirped again, and dug her claws in once more, though not as tightly. “Fine, you greedy bird. Three months, but no more.” Celestia clucked once, and affectionately rubbed down her back. “Do we have a deal?”
Philomena let go, and hopped off Celestia’s leg, taking to the air to flit across the room and alight upon her perch. She nodded once, and Celestia sighed in relief. “Thank you. This…” Well. Philomena knew. It wasn’t as if Celestia would ask her to die lightly, even if she could come back.
It was just a matter of gathering the core of her magic, compressing it down, drawing in her inner flame, really. Eventually it would refuse to be contained and she’d explode. Quite simple. Sort of like a living bomb. Well, minus destroying everything in sight. That would be impolite, and phoenixes had impeccable manners when it came to setting themselves on fire.
Most of the time, anyways. Almost none of the time in Philomena’s case, actually, but she preferred practical jokes to, say, forest fires. Celestia tended to frown on the latter. It hadn’t even been her fault the one time and she’d STILL had to spend a year with no treats! Something about ‘Showing everypony that she was a good girl and not a public menace’.
Terribly unfair, that.
Whole process was quite uncomfortable, too, at least out of cycle. At end of cycle, natural magic was low enough it squished down without too much fuss. No, the unpleasantry there was all the shedding and coughing and general hacking.
Here? Well, try compressing coal into diamonds with one’s bare hooves. While it was on fire. It was rather something like that, except not quite, because out of cycle combustion was possible, and she had yet to meet the pony who could make fire diamonds with hooves alone. Supposedly Celestia had, once, but that was back in the days of the Great Plague of Tiki’Noth the Wrathful, and the pony had died. Not from the plague itself; all that had done was afflict ponies with uncontrollable flatulence, which while rather embarrassing, especially when one was the capital-P Princess, wasn’t exactly fatal.
No, it turned out that while the pony might have been able to make a fire diamond with his bare hooves, he was not in fact immune to lava, and his attempt to invent Volcano Diving as the newest Extreme Sports Craze ended just as everypony else would think.
It was with this thought that Philomena ignited, her entire body bursting into flames. Wings outstretched, the brilliant flare cascading up from them. Celestia rolled from her bed and came close, bowed her head in gratitude as the Phoenix became a living pyre, boiling away until but a pile of ash remained.
A single tear of gratitude trickled down the alicorn’s cheek.
Then she got to work, her magic gathering the still-smoking ashes, whirling them together, compressing them in a sheath of golden magic that began to thin out, turning solid, a paper shell to enclose the ash till Celestia was looking at…
“Smoking the Phoenix again?” came a voice behind her. “Raven has mentioned this.”
“Hello, Luna,” Celesta muttered. Of course. Little sisters were know-it-all pests to arrive at the worst of times. “I was about to, yes. Today -”
“Was terrible. And you believe that makes it justified to convince your pet to explode herself and then render yourself insensate off of her remains?”
Celestia bristled her wings and ground a hoof into the carpet. “Feel free to leave anytime, Luna. You’re not my mother!”
“I never said I was. As a matter of fact, I am here to join in. I think it is ‘High time’ to ‘Cut loose’ as the modern pony says.”
To say this came as a surprise to Celestia was akin to saying that Sweetie Belle’s cooking was a surprise to the taste buds. This, however, was a pleasant sort of surprise; the latter was an abomination against nature.
“Really?” Celestia queried, and bent forward. “Whatever happened to the ‘Purity’ you were so set upon that you refused even coffee?”
“One week without coffee,” Luna responded brightly, “Convinced me that it was utter folly. Now are you going to share?”
“Apologize for stealing my cake, first!” Celestia pointed a hoof at the suspected perpetrator. “The vault is sacrosanct!”
Celestia was not wrong, but it was also true that within the sacred texts detailing just how alicorn sibling rivalry was to be carried out, also known as ‘That thing that didn’t actually exist’, apologizing for pilfering sweets was forbidden. Luna was well aware of this. Celestia was well aware of this.
On the other hoof? Luna really wanted to get completely blazed on Phoenix Dust.
“I am sorry,” she said, and dipped her head. “And I will replace the cake with two more.”
Celestia, rightfully, narrowed her eyes, leaned forward to sniff closely at her sibling, and then horn light, a flash of magic washing over Luna’s coat.
“Hmm,” came elder’s reply. “You are not a Changeling. And I detect no mind control. That was...sincere.” Surprise echoed, and finally she nodded. “Okay. Fine. I’ll share. Just one moment -” A trot across the room, quiet words outdoors to the guard, then back in. “Right. Food will be up in half an hour, express orders are to not disturb us unless Twilight Sparkle is dead, and I for one -”
Her horn light, and the tip of the Phoenix Dust-infused blunt was lit, and Celestia immediately took a long drag. A slow smile spread across her face as Luna nabbed the burning joint in her own magic, and even as younger sister joined in, Celestia broke down in a coughing fit as red smoke rose above to cloud up at the ceiling.
“Oh...ho...hah...yes. Yes, that is good,” Celestia snorted, already feeling the drug-induced phoenix haze take her. Luna, once she could breathe again, was quick to voice agreement.
Quite soon, the two had broken down into peals of bubbling laughter, collapsing on the floor to stare at the ceiling as colors wafted across their vision. Reds, purples, greens, octarine, pink, the colour out of space, and more - time ceased to have meaning as the Philomena’s ashes were passed between the two, continually going further and further up in smoke.
Thirty minutes later, when the food arrived, it took the sisters three minutes just to make it to the door, for they had forgotten how to walk, and had to make do slithering about like clumsy snakes to snag door open and snatch in food even as surprised guards wrinkled their nose.
Phoenix Dust was a highly, highly potent thing - and it left quite the noticeable smell, even if none of the guard knew just what it was they were smelling.
“You know,” remarked one to the other, “I have said this before, and I suspect, in my time at this post, I shall say it again. I don’t want to know.”
His companion nodded. Some questions were better off unasked, chief among those what happened to that one sock that went missing that one time, because anypony who seriously pursued that line of reasoning inevitably sunk into madness and usually that ended with them trying to take over Equestria.
Just one of those things that happened, sometimes, like snow and rain and raising taxes on the Apple Family.
As for the alicorns?
Were this another sort of story, this would be the event that caused them to look at each other with new eyes, especially that night, the sort of look that led to sordid affairs absolutely not appropriate for a mostly-all-ages audience. This, however, is not that sort of story.
Mostly, they just ate far too much food, tickled each other senseless, talked about how amazing their hooves were and how they could totally FEEL things now, and, eventually, they passed out in senseless heaps of twitching, pleasantly dreaming pony princess.
The next morning found them snoring, completely dead to the world, and it fell to Twilight Sparkle to raise the sun. This, quite expectedly, produced a good deal of panic on the part of the unsuspecting alicorn, and once she discovered just why Celestia and Luna were late, it was only being granted Starswirl’s Third Undiscovered Journal that prevented her from attempting to depose the sisters then and there.
Philomena, well, she was quite back to normal within a week and considered the three months of sugary sweets well worth the price.
Celestia and Luna? Turns out they had, in one of their ‘bright’ ideas during their time not quite right in the head, actually told the nobles what they thought of them. On one hoof, this led to open rebellion on the part of the nobility, for a short time.
On the other hoof, that led to getting rid of most of the most disagreeable parts of the nobility.
At the end of the affair, the sisters agreed it had been quite worth it to end up high-writing a bunch of snooty ponies and resolved to do it again the next time things became intolerable.
And last, Princess Cadance continued to freeze her butt off in the Crystal Empire, because nopony had yet bothered to install central heating.