Sandcastles
Twilight Sparkle watched curiously as the bead of sweat rolled down the guard’s cheek. He had just said something he wasn’t supposed to and had shut his mouth with an audible click.
“What was that about a secret room you just said?” Twilight asked casually. Or as casually as a curious Twilight could. Which wasn’t very much. “Or as I think you put it… Princess Celestia’s secret secret room?”
The nervous guard fixed his eyes on the wall dead ahead of him. He budged not an inch.
“I can still see you, you know,” Twilight told him. “Just because you stand real still doesn’t mean you turn invisible or anything. And I know Canterlot guards aren’t anything like Buckingtrot Palace guards who stand around all day like chunks of rock. It’s fine. Really. You can drop the act.”
Regardless of her encouraging words, the guard continued his statue impersonation. Now Twilight was getting worried about whether he was even daring to breathe anymore.
Twilight’s shoulders slumped. “Fine. You want guaranteed protection? You got it. Diplomatic immunity is on the way! Whatever you say today, stays between us. Okay? If something bad happens due to what you say, I’ll take all the blame. Every last itty-bitty-bit of blame! I promise. Sound good?”
Twilight ground her teeth together when the guard did not answer her. She sighed.
“And every second Friday you can now have off.”
The guard finally looked in her direction.
“And every Thursday will now be pizza day in the guard cafeteria.”
Finally, the guard’s rigid jaw moved to speak. “With unlimited salad bar privileges?”
Twilight smiled. She said, “Absolutely!” While in the back of her head, she truly had no idea if any of that would be possible. Yet it mattered not.
Delicious answers now!
Horrible worry later…
The once-again moveable guard pulled Twilight into a nearby broom closet and lowered his voice. “Fine. You heard correct. You asked where Celestia was and I guess I wasn’t thinking when I blurted out about her secret secret room, but…” He stopped himself and started again. “So, you’ve really never heard about secret secret rooms before?”
Twilight shook her head. “Nope. And sorry to correct you right off the bat, but shouldn’t they just be considered ‘secret’ rooms? There’s really no need to double up on the ‘secret’ tag.”
“Not if the room in question is secret and what is inside is also a secret,” the guard continued breathlessly. “Look. The only reason I said anything at all is because I thought you already knew. It’s sort of just a… unspoken thing around Canterlot castle. All the Princesses have secret rooms inside their castles. One room for one Princess. That’s just a fact. What exactly is inside each room?”
“Yes?” Twilight asked, her eyes bulging from their sockets.
“Is secret.”
Twilight suddenly felt like a deflated balloon. “That’s it? A secret room full of secrets? Well… where is it, then? Somewhere in the castle, obviously.”
The guard glanced down at his armored hooves. “I dare not say anymore.”
Twilight played her final trump card. “Ice cream bar. Unlimited toppings.”
The guard gulped dryly. Then told her all he could.
***
Three days later, Twilight was back at Canterlot castle. She kept her rump pressed against a stone wall and waited for the click of doors to sound off behind her. Supposedly, if rumors were to be believed, Princess Celestia had a knack for disappearing for hours at a time right after becoming stressed or overwhelmed. Large parties. Banquets. Speeches. Budget meetings. Foreign dignitary visits. Celestia would always handle the event with grace and ease and then tell her assistant she would rest for a short while. Only in this case, “rest” meant disappear entirely.
Now all Twilight had to do was wait until Celestia got into one of these “moods” and follow her right to her secret room. Or her secret secret room, as the guard had strongly suggested.
The snap of doors pulled at Twilight’s attention. She made not a peep and listened intently. Celestia’s heavy hooves clacked noisily against the floor as she made her way down the hall. Only one set of hooves, though. Her assistant had already been dismissed, it seemed.
Hurriedly, Twilight got to work, wrapping her own hooves in a magical aura that would silence them completely. Then she struggled to keep up with Celestia’s quick trot as she strolled further and further down the hallway. Whatever meeting Celestia had just been a part of must’ve been a strenuous one—even from a safe distance away, Twilight could hear Celestia muttering something about overly expensive pizza lunches with never-ending ice cream.
Twilight’s immense brain had to work overtime once they entered Canterlot’s cavernous basement. Cold gray stone. Flaming torches attached to walls. The whole dark-and-creepy deluxe package. Twilight counted forty-five lefts and twenty-one right turns before Celestia finally came to a final stop in the middle of a bare hallway. No doors or gates or anything at all lay in sight.
Until Celestia sighed aloud. A full-bodied one. The kind one can only let out when they know no one else is around. Or, in this case, believe no one else to be around.
And just like that a door appeared on the wall. One made of light that Celestia immediately disappeared into. Before Twilight could even blink in astonishment, the door sealed shut again, leaving Twilight alone and once again able to make some noise.
“Ummmmmmmmm.” The elongated word seemed to sum up her current predicament.
Either Twilight could try and backtrack her way out of the labyrinthian basement without a guide, possibly getting lost for all time, or…
“Ugh,” Twilight muttered before the wall Celestia had just been standing in front of. When nothing appeared there, Twilight added more misery to her sigh. “Uhggh!”
No deal. No door.
Then Twilight thought about the mountain of paperwork back at home she’d completely ignored the last three days—the hours of work it would take to complete; the sleepless nights; the quills and ink bottles and endless rolls of paper she would need. How organized she would have to be in order to possibly get it all done in time!
But that thought only made her squeak with excitement.
Then she thought about all that paperwork coming to an end and she let out the loudest sigh she could muster. And it clearly did the trick, as the hidden door reappeared before her.
***
The large room Twilight stepped into was open, warm, and very, very bright. Whether it was truly located inside Canterlot’s basement was doubtful, for high up on every wall was dozens of open windows, letting shine in the golden morning sun and gentle breeze.
At first, Twilight could understand wanting to disappear to such a place when things got too stressful… yet there was far more in the room than just tall walls and windows. Twilight’s first thought was “playground” and she wasn’t far off. “Indoor playground” is what she would refer to it once taking in the place.
Along the floor was either fluffy carpet or fake grass. Hundreds of multicolored pillows and blankets had been thrown around the place without care. At the very center of the immense room was a metal play structure and next to that a tall circular slide.
In the shadow of these giant structures were more traditional playground fare: seesaws, swings, sandboxes with small plastic shovels and buckets. Opposite the playground set were a random assortment of puffy couches and chairs littered with various coloring books and markers. An immaculate tea set sat beside all this on its very own round table with accompanying short stools.
Near the (now vanished) doorway was perhaps the only thing in the entire room that didn’t quite match the “child’s paradise” theme. A simple bookcase loaded with vials upon vials full of bright liquid. Small. Medium. And large sizes currently available.
Twilight made a mental note of that. Then made a mental note of something else.
Just where was Celestia in all this? Such an open, large room and Celestia was not to be found. No second set of doors were in sight. Another hidden door somewhere, perhaps? Or did this secret room have a secret basement? Secret attic, perhaps?
“Hi,” a small voice said.
“Hello,” Twilight answered automatically, her mind still questing for answers. “Or had Celestia simply flown out one of these windows? But why come all this way to this secret place just to leave it so soon?”
“Did you come here to play with me?” the small voice asked below her.
Twilight was brought back to the world like she’d been slapped in the face. She glanced downward and found a small filly peering up at her with avid interest. She had a white coat with a bubble-gum pink mane and tail. Also, both wings and a short white horn.
Twilight let out the same squeak noise from before as a dozen heated thoughts quickly came to mind. So, Celestia had a secret daughter all this time? And if that was the case, she kept her daughter locked inside some secret secret room? How horrible. How horrific!
She took a moment to glance around the disgustingly cheerful place.
Current surroundings aside, if Celestia did have a secret child, why not show her off to the world? Her and Flurry Heart could even be friends. Best friends, even! But wait. Wasn’t Twilight forgetting something? The fact that Celestia only came down here when she became stressed or overworked? Did that mean seeing her secret daughter made all her worries disappear? Granted, there was something rather soft and sweet about that thought, but that did not change the fact that Celestia had kept something so big and important a complete secret for all these—
“Do you wanna see my sandcastle?” the little filly asked from inside the nearby sandbox.
Twilight stood confused. A good chunk of her wanted to track Celestia down right that very minute and give her an earful—if not a complete face-full—of very choice words. And yet another part of her, growing larger by the second, did indeed want to view the child’s nicely made sandcastle.
Careful not to disturb the sand, Twilight sat just outside the sandbox and admired the filly’s work. It honestly was good work. The sandcastle even had a moat filled with water, along with a drawbridge made of taped-together popsicle sticks.
Twilight whistled in astonishment. “Very nice castle you have here. Would you like to live in a castle like that when you get older?”
The filly nodded, busily putting together a small flag made of straws and bits of cloth with her hooves. “I would indeed.” She held out the finished flag to Twilight. “Wanna put the flag on top?”
Twilight Sparkle knew there were just a few things in life one couldn’t say no to.
1. Saving the world for the sixth time.
2. Helping finish a sandcastle when a foal asked you to.
By the time Twilight had meticulously set the flag in its correct position given the time and date and weather conditions, the pink-and-white filly had already moved onto the seesaws. After she took her seat, the filly used her (rather impressive) aura to shove down on the other side so she’d be lifted into the air. She laughed happily. Rocking back and forth over and over.
Twilight felt a pang of sadness watching all this. She asked carefully, “Does anyone else ever come down here to play with you?”
The filly shook her head. “Not that I can remember.”
Twilight’s pang of sadness only grew. “You poor thing. Not even your mother—”
But Twilight’s final word was cut short as the filly used her aura to lift a large rock from underneath the play structure to hover above the opposite seat of her seesaw. She said, “It’s fine, really. Because if I don’t feel like using my horn too much, I can just—”
SMACK! WHOOSH!
The oddly strong filly let the rock fall onto the opposite side of the seesaw, effortlessly launching her high into the air and across the room. While she giggled with delight, Twilight gasped, taking to the air herself to try and catch her. She shouldn’t have bothered, though. The filly was more in control of her wings than perhaps even Twilight was, zooming across the big, open room like a miniaturized Wonderbolt.
Less than a minute later, the pair were back on the ground, the filly’s tiny hooves wrapped around Twilight’s foreleg. “You’ll stay a little longer? Please-please-please?”
Twilight grimaced. “I do have ponies to chew out right now. But… five more minutes couldn’t hurt, right?”
***
Fifty minutes later, Twilight had completely lost track of time. Between the swing set, the slide, the coloring books, and the dozen or so rounds of increasingly dangerous tag (the filly’s ability to teleport and fly so well at such a young age made things more hazardous than usual), Twilight had nearly forgotten just why she’d come down there to begin with.
Until it flat-out landed on her.
As Twilight lay flat on the room’s fake grass, she used her long forelegs to launch the small filly into the air and catch her all over again. One throw. Two. But then on the third…
Pop!
Celestia was suddenly above Twilight, both faces full of confusion and much more. Twilight had but a moment to blurt out, “Oh, sh—” before the ample princess above her slammed her into the fake grass.
Eventually, both parties retreated to one of the nice couches, neither one meeting the other’s eyes. Twilight broke the rather thick ice between them.
“Any particular reason you didn’t tell me from the start you were actually that filly? Because I’ll be honest with you, Celestia. When I saw that kid—the one that looked a whole lot like you—I had more than a few questions at the ready.”
Celestia nodded, giving each leg a quick stretch. “Understandably. So, here’s your first answer: I had absolutely no idea it was you playing with me today. Nor that I was Celestia or would even grow up to become her. Or end up having a castle one day. Or become a Princess. Or…”
She trailed off and gave a sigh. A sigh not nearly as anguished as the one she’d given to enter the secret secret room earlier. She nodded at the bookcase near the vanished door.
“Those vials you noted earlier,” she continued, “each contain the same potion, but in different doses. Smallest give me a half-an-hour, medium one hour, and the largest around two to three hours. When I come in here, I select one based on my current mood, and then disappear into childlike bliss for a short time.”
“Then why forget everything?” Twilight asked.
Celestia raised a brow. “Wouldn’t be much of a stress reliever, would it? If all I could think about as a filly was budget cuts and deadlines and monsters beyond time and space.” She smiled faintly. “My childhood was so long ago, Twilight, I can hardly remember any of it. This… this just gives me a little slice of childlike wonder every once in a blue moon, when the weight of the world can be a bit much sometimes. Most ponies need to destress from time to time. Some ponies collect stamps. Some ponies read adventure stories. Some ponies drink. I…”
She glanced toward the sandcastle near the center of the room.
“I build sandcastles while dreaming about living in a real one.”
Twilight nodded. Unsure of what to say next. “It is a nice sandcastle.”
“The best.”
The conversation lulled again. Twilight asked, “You ever sleep in a sunbeam as a filly?”
“All the time.”
“That must look adorable.”
“I’m sure it does.” Celestia then rose off the couch. “After spending a bit of time as a filly, I feel as serene as a cloud. My body on the other hoof…” She stretched out her large back and wings. “I’ll forgo the fact you went behind my back and followed me here, Twilight, simply because I have made mistakes of my own.”
“Oh?” Twilight furrowed her brows.
“Never telling you until now about secret secret rooms to let off steam and retreat from the world,” Celestia clarified. “Or even the spell necessary to create them. Luna has a secret room somewhere in Canterlot. As does Cadence at the Empire. Although, for all I know, it might just be a second bedroom to—”
Celestia suddenly realized who she was talking to and ceased.
“So, with all that in mind… any idea, Twilight, what you’d like inside your secret secret room?” She smiled good-naturedly. “You can keep it a secret, too. Luna’s room remains secret to me. Although I do know where it is located.”
Using a hoof, Twilight tapped her chin in thought. “Honestly, I haven’t even begun to think about it, Princess. Would I make it a second library? A beautiful forest setting with hot springs? It’s hard to say.” She glanced up. “But I know what I’d like to try. At least… just to say I did.”
She glanced towards the vials on the bookcase.
***
Princess Luna entered the room through the blinding white doorway and staggered where she stood. In her aura was a loosely held mug of something brown and strong smelling. She asked openly, “Hey, Tia. Your secret secret room have any bourbon left? Mine… sort of… it’s a secret where it all went, it truly is.”
Her words faded as the two fillies in the room looked her way. They hurried off the play structure to greet the room’s latest visitor.
“Play?” the filly Twilight asked.
“Play!” the filly Celestia demanded.
Luna blinked heavily, glancing from her cup to set of fillies and back. Then she drained what remained of her drink and belched. “Fine. First game: hide-and-seek. I shall hide in plain sight on top of that rather comfy looking armchair. You two shall seek. Seek out what? More bourbon. Maybe some ice, too. And snacks. Correction. Seek snacks first. And some super small cupcakes, as well. I want to watch you two eat them… for it will be adorable!”
And so it was.