And Half a Time
The first Celestia knew of her visitor was the quiet creak of the garden gate, the crunch of uncertain feet on the gravel path and the confusingly familiar voice that called her name.
At first she ignored it, believing it to be perhaps the early signs of aged madness that she could hear her own voice at the far end of the garden, or possibly heat stroke after too many hours weeding; yet she was beneath the shady boughs of her beloved cypress, and in truth had not been in the garden for that long anyway. "And I'm only seventy," she muttered as a shadow fell across the ground before her. "Hardly old enough to be demented, am I?
"Barely more than a child," said the voice, through a smile that was so loud it all but echoed from the distant hills.
"Child." She looked up at her tree. "I'm as old as they come, at least in this world. Why now?"
The shadow moved as her visitor, her companion, crouched at Celestia's side. A hand rested on her back, gentle and warm and familiar as her own flesh. But she didn't speak, this visitor. Not in words.
Celestia closed her eyes and sat back against her heels. Her arms fell to her side; the tools she had held, a trowel and a time-worn gardening fork, rang dull on the soil before her. She took a breath and shook her head.
"Were you curious, perhaps? About age? Sunset often told me, before she left, that you were ageless and unchanging. Like the sun." Celestia lifted her sight to the hills and pointed toward that same sun, drifting through the afternoon toward the horizon.
Or at least to the cloud that covered it now.
"Typical." She huffed and let her hand drop again, turning her attention to the abandoned tools before her. There weren't any weeds left and her seedling trays were all transplanted. Time to go back and sit on the porch for a few hours. "Perhaps you're here to impart some great wisdom to a dying old woman? Twilight – your Twilight – seemed to take great pleasure in reminding me of just how wise and all-knowing you were. Are. You can imagine how that might have made me feel at the time. Between her and Starlight, well..."
"She meant only encouragement," said her voice, to one side. "And perhaps she sought approval as well."
"She had it. She didn't need it. Be a dear and help me up, would you?"
Celestia pulled a leg up, and quite without thinking braced herself against her companion's arm as she rose. It felt natural. Right. To be held by that unending strength, to be lifted up. She looked up the, at the visitor. At the mirror of her own past, if she had to be poetic about it. At a smile that she could never wear, because it had seen more than she could possibly imagine. At eyes deeper than any well, any ocean.
She reached out, without prompting, to touch the the face that was her own, but not. The Princess – such a petty title, considering who bore it – reached back to brush a tear from Celestia's cheek that she hadn't even felt fall, and then to lift a greying lock of hair from her brow.
"We should sit a while," Celestia said, indicating the porch. The stoop, her grandfather had called it, except when he insisted it was a verandah. She supposed it must average out.
The other dipped her head, the brief motion reminding Celestia of a horse she used to ride every day of her childhood summers, when she would visit her aunt's farm. They were all supposed to be horses, where this Princess came from, or near enough as didn't matter.
She turned to shuffle toward the house – there was no other way to describe it, nor was she too proud to admit it was so, not when the lean grace of her younger self strode casually, effortlessly beside her, smiling all the while, as if this moment in this garden was the most pleasing experience in her whole life.
"So. A Princess," Celestia said, as they reached the three steps to her porch. A hand gripped Celestia's arm as she climbed the first; she reached out to pat it without thought. "Thank you. I dreamed of being a Princess when I was a little girl, you know. Luna always called it an idle fancy. It's impractical, she'd say, to waste your imagination chasing after silly things like crowns and fancy dresses."
Celestia didn't have to see to perceive her counterpart's nod. Some things must be constant. Silence surrounded the pair, as they muddled for a moment over which chair each would take, save for the gentle chirp of grasshoppers and the rustle of a breeze as it passed through the ornamental grasses that punctured Celestia's carefully tended lawn. Now finally in the shade, and finally free of the weight of her own body, Celestia let her head fall back and let out a heartfelt sigh.
"I suppose your Luna still spends time with you," she eventually added.
"When she is able. We find we both have so much to do that we have little time together."
Celestia laughed, though it felt closer to a cough. Not something to dwell on. Not yet. "And yet you have so much."
She rolled her head toward the Princess and tried to mirror that eternal smile.
"Take some advice from your own dear self. Immortal or no, however much time you think you might have with her, you'll regret every second you were apart. One day, you'll regret it."
The smile, until then seemingly as undying as its owner, faded away, shortly to be replaced by a melancholy twist at the corners of the Princess's mouth. "I know," she said, with a voice far smaller than Celestia could credit to a creature that ordered the very heavens. "But even in that regret I knew I would see her again one day."
She looked away to stare, hard-eyed, at the garden, at the tree Celestia had tended from little more than a seedling. At the sky.
"If we could all be so lucky." It was Celestia's turn to smile now at the reaction of her counterpart. "I was right, wasn't I?"
The Princess blinked rapidly as the words sank in, but she didn't deny it. Instead she looked away to the horizon.
"I am no stranger to age," she said, but only after a moment's hesitation. "I have seen death for as long as I have lived. I regret every passing of every mortal that I have known, yet in time I know that their like will be reborn, that I will see the same faces, hear the same voices, know the same lives.
"The patterns repeat, given time." The Princess lowered her gaze. "My sister and I are anomalies, outside of that weave, at least in our world. But here..."
"Here you're old and she's dead. Oh don't make that face." Celestia wagged a finger at the Princess. "I've lived too long to hem and haw about things when a few straight words are all that's needed. I'd wager Luna is why you're here, too."
"I thought—" The Princess sat back, no longer smiling. Her face was open, the mask she had worn up to now peeled away like so much flaking paint. "I believed I might provide comfort of a sort."
"And Luna?"
"She felt it impractical."
Celestia laughed. "Some things never change," she said, wiping her eye. She reached out to the Princess, enough to touch the tips of her fingers. "I'm glad you didn't force her to come. I might have, if I were the younger of us. But then you're not, are you? Not really."
"By many years," the Princess agreed.
"I can't imagine how you would stay sane, living for so long."
Silence. Perhaps she'd touched a nerve, Celestia thought. Then the Princess stood, paced the short distance to the porch rail and leaned against it to look out at the garden. She seemed fascinated by Celestia's cypress in particular, her gaze flitting from branch to branch.
"I would wonder the same of a mortal life. The knowledge that it must surely end in so short a time..."
She turned her back on the garden and sat against the rail, the smile still absent as she watched Celestia, watched her as if she might disappear at any moment.
"Tell me," she eventually continued. "How did Luna—"
"Servicing her motorcycle. One minute she was flailing at it with a wrench, next thing she's dead on her back. Doc said her heart just stopped." Celestia gingerly lifted her hands behind her head and looked up at the ceiling. "I'd always said she'd kill herself, riding that thing at our age. I swear she did it just to prove me wrong."
"She has always had an odd sense of humour," the Princess replied.
When Celestia looked at her again, she saw the Princess twisting her hands together, over and over, slender fingers twining and flexing in a never-ending dance. It was such a natural thing, but it felt wrong, somehow, to see her do it. Alien.
"If—" The Princess balled her hands to fists and pressed them against the rail at her back. "If she were to visit—"
"No." The vehemence of her own reply surprised Celestia. She lowered her arms. "If you know what it's like to lose her, then you know that I would give anything to hear her voice again, even for a moment. Fact is, if you hadn't offered just now, I might even have asked to see her."
"Then why refuse?"
Celestia leaned forward, folding her hands together to mirror her counterpart. "Does she know what a motorcycle is?"
"She—" The Princess hesitated, frowning. "My sister has some knowledge of the device. You can be sure that she has never ridden one."
"Luna loved her motorcycle so much that she sometimes kept it in her bedroom. It was silver. She called it Tiberius." Celestia shook her head. "This sister of yours wouldn't know that. She'd know nothing about the summer we spent riding to Applewood and back. The drive-in we found out in the middle of the desert, showing old movies to an empty lot, because the owner thought it'd be a fun way to retire. The old pulp scifi movies we all watched together all night.
"She'd sound like my sister," Celestia concluded. "But she wouldn't be her. She'd just be a voice saying what I wanted to hear."
"Of course. But perhaps one day?"
"Perhaps, when it isn't so raw," said Celestia. She smiled. "I've sometimes wondered why I didn't visit your world before, but then I suppose things have rather occupied my time. Work, family. You know how it is."
"Work, yes. Alas I have no family, save for those I adopt as my own. My nephew, Blueblood, whose grandchildren Luna spoils far too often, my niece—"
"Cadance?"
The Princess perked up at that. She leaned forward, still holding the rail with her hands. "You have adopted her as your niece as well?"
"Adopted? No, she's from my dear departed husband's side of the family."
The Princess pressed her hands against the rail at her back. "I see."
"She's running Crystal Prep these days," Celestia continued. "It seems to suit her."
The Princess nodded slowly, as if acknowledging some great truth of reality. She turned again, looking out at the garden, while her hands ran gently back and forth on the rail. Now and then her fingers would twitch as they found some new texture or shape to trace in the time-worn wood.
"I have not been married," she murmured, "for nigh on two thousand years. We had no— no children."
"Talk about a dry spell," Celestia huffed. The Princess's hands paused a moment, but she remained silent. "I have a son, though heaven knows what he's up to these days. Breaking hearts and touring the country with that band of his, I suppose. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was Luna's."
"He sounds an interesting character."
"That's one way to put it." Celestia leaned forward again, waiting, but it seemed The Princess would say no more. "Blueblood is another adoptee?"
The Princess twitched, as if struck by those words. Then she nodded, once.
"It was a formality, a relationship in name only," said The Princess. She smiled again, without humour. "Prince Blueblood is heir to the Duchy of Canterlot, a position that his line has traditionally deferred to me in exchange for certain privileges of rank and title. Cadance I adopted because of her ascension. Others I adopt because they are lost and alone, because they have served in some way, or simply because it is my right to do so.
"They were my children, for all those centuries," she continued, looking up at the sky. "And shall be for all the centuries to come."
"Prince," Celestia muttered. "As if he wasn't already a stuck-up little–"
"He tries," The Princess cut in. "Even if he fails often, and without grace, at least he tries."
"I suppose you're right," Celestia sighed. She leaned back and closed her eyes. "Though it's strange–"
She paused at the sound of crunching gravel, and looked up
Celestia leaned forward too, ears straining against the peace until she heard the quit crunch of wheels on gravel. She smiled. "Another thing your Twilight always told me about was your uncanny knack for arriving at just the right moment, though I'll assume it's a coincidence this time."
The Princess looked over her shoulder, smiling that secret smile once again. In her time, Celestia had often exploited coincidence to generate the appearance of uncanny knowledge of the goings-on in the halls of her school, but this Princess seemed to have perfected the art.
"The advantages of time," she murmured, hauling herself from the chair at last.
The Princess gave her a quizzical look, but then a light seemed to cross her face and she smiled once again, this one creasing the corners of her eyes. They turned to face the garden and the drive, and the car rolling to a halt across it.
"I have beheld such marvels in this world, but the most mundane creations still amaze," the Princess declared, her eyes dancing back and forth across the car's silvery skin. When the doors popped open she bobbed her head, so like a horse that Celestia was sure she would have twitched her ears if she could, and smiled at the driver as he emerged.
The driver paused, one foot resting on the gravel, and stared at first one then the other. He rubbed the back of his head and glanced across the roof of the car to his passenger, who half stood behind her door, squinting owlishly from beneath a mussy, silver-threaded fringe of purple hair.
Her hands left the door and she ducked briefly back into the car, emerging again as she attempted to mash half-folded glasses against her face. Her gaze fell on Celestia, then on the Princess, and a strange smile touched her lips.
"You've met Twilight, of course," said Celestia, as the couple huddled huddled together by the rear of their car, lost in animated conversation. "And I assume you know some version of Flash."
"I have spent many a day with General Sentry," the Princess replied. "He is a firm friend."
Celestia raised an eyebrow at that, but then Twilight's laughter caught her attention before she could think of a reply. A teen had stumbled from the back of the car and was already investigating Celestia's carefully tended garden, his slender fingers brushing and pinching at everything he could see, but gently, as if they might shatter at the slightest touch.
"My Twilight has not married." The Princess's voice was quiet, her words spoken slowly. She watched the boy a while, until he had disappeared around the back of the house. Her attention returned to Twilight, and to the slumbering child she now cradled. "Curious."
"What's curious is that your Twilight would find her way here during my lifetime," said Celestia. She gestured toward Twilight, Flash and the child. "That those two would exist at the same time is not surprising, I suppose, but that I'd be alive now..."
"When your life is so very short." The Princess, though she seemed to be watching Twilight, had a distant look to her. Celestia wondered what place and time she might be watching instead. "I confess, I had not considered the ramifications. Perhaps we are an anomaly here, as well."
Footsteps echoed on the porch, jogging the Princess from her reverie. She looked into Twilight's face before her, frowning slightly, but smiling too as her gaze took in the greying hair and first hinted wrinkles at the corners of Twilight's eyes. Then she looked down at the child, reached out to touch the flowing locks of her pale blue hair.
"A beautiful child." She spoke with a low voice, but the child started and grouched at her even so. "What is her name?"
Twilight glanced at Celestia, perhaps seeking permission. "Selene."
Taking young Selene's hand between her fingers, the Princess hummed and nodded slowly. At her gentle touch, the child yawned and looked up at Princess Celestia with a broad, toothless grin and shining, bright green eyes.
"I have seen nothing so beautiful," the Princess said. She glanced at Celestia.
"And I'm sure you'll see her again." Celestia put an arm about the Princess's shoulder. She reached out to poke Selene's tiny nose, then brushed a stray lock of hair across her forehead. "After all. The patterns repeat."