A Mother You Shall Be
His blue eyes had been too young to really have seen you, or he would have known your gaze fell into an unhappy haze. You had held his head at a tilt, letting the swaddled babe of a colt look away from you just so. He had the same sunny looks of so many others before him, preceding Bluebloods all holding some iteration of that light. Of your light. Of your blood. Maybe the rest of your ponies have never thought of it, but you still try and look for that part of you every mother knows across the ever-expanding amount of "great-great-greats" in the chain that pulls you apart from them.
You had held this latest Blueblood, knowing he was supposed to hold that part of you. The sun saw a dandelion puff, beautiful and good, only that what you wanted was gone. Perhaps this was the generation when it hit you — striking you across your pale muzzle with an invisible force one could not think would be there in the company of a babe — that all the sun had left a tree long severed from its roots.
The first Blueblood was your own ray. Your first, and all the pain that brought him into the world could not compare to the love of holding your first foal in your hooves and pressing his soft, young ears to your heart. A mother you were, with the sire by your side as the not-quite-committed lover you always seemed to have before time's steady hoof claimed every last fellow. You cannot see his face, but the face of a mother's firstborn never leaves you. And you had enshrined his blood — your blood with his name: Blueblood. Your first son from your first mate had been swaddled, coddled, and spoiled in the way every mother spoils her first: from a gilded cage. He had manors you had built for him when he reached the age, every one overseen and proofed so your heart could hurt all the less when your Blueblood moved away and shared his name with a mare, and soon there was a second Blueblood between them.
You held this latest Blueblood because you felt he might be a key. Of all the foals pushed out of you, those from the first with their name still brassy and bold (Blueblood! Why, in olden days that name could sing!) were those who responded how you clung to them with such stifled desperation because they clung too, with more consistency than any other line, for Bluebloods never faded. For your warmth, they loved you so, as you were the mother and the sun.
And the mare with gold in her castle.
...
The brim of your sun hat divides the smoke curling from the length of your smoldering cigarette into plumy vines of vapor. The sun is dying on the horizon, and some of the intensity of the golden light on your horn dims as it falls ever so slowly. There are times when you cannot be certain how such a poison could have such a glamour to it, or why it calls you back, time and time again. Oftentimes, you find yourself on the balcony, the long, slender cigarette holder already tapping against your gold-shod hooves. It as if it dares you to throw it over your tower's balcony, yet knowing you never will. Then, the darned things will find themselves in your hooves, and smoke will reach your nostrils. Their warm, dirty scent mingling with the one you know is your magic.
And, you, the mare of everypony's hour, with her open-mouthed smile adorning the side of every coin to remind you of how you always talk-talk-talk-talk will be flooded with the veil of all the things you couldn't ever know how to say. They will not tumble like some lace from a bride's wear — (Ha! Such thoughts from a mare never once-wed!) — but fall upward from the veins of smoke you let flow into the sky, where they will be but a memory before you know when to blink.
(Or if you had at all.)
You're not sure if you've remembered a stallion that wasn't of your blood for long. Lovers was a strong word, too strong for the blinding mare of the sun you were. You threw yourself at stallions you would seduce with promises and sweet nothings of how you would always remember them, only to recall the flowing, golden-maned stallions holding swooning maiden mares on all your paperbacks with more clarity. They always gave you the most cherished thing you have ever known: motherhood. That was always more than enough, to know that once again you would hold some little one in your hooves, tighter than a student could be held, and you could look at each little one and the world of dawns untold in their eyes with a tenderness that broke if attempted to be given to anypony else. There was magic in holding somepony of your blood, and no matter how much every tried-and-true science ahem-ed and 'corrected' that only half that foal was you, you bit back an old, largely buried urge to scoff. You predated science. You predated everything, and your heart said every foal was all yours.
Every filly and colt with their gold-blue-green-pink and eyes of every color that followed carved themselves into your heart deeper than anypony ever had. You indulged them and coddled them anew, willing to endure the pain of bringing them into the world if only it meant you could know that love again. Let weight round your form here and there, they may jest at your figure if they please. Let it grow, and may the world know that you were a mother, and had been many times over.
You exhale, and like the stony, stoic dragoness poking out from her cave, two refined wisps of smoke streamed around your muzzle and up, up, and away. Everypony may say what they may, but blood built your family above all else. Others may be built on other stuff, and that could be done as your ponies pleased, but you had all the pain to know that nothing less could be your true family in your heart. One pink alicorn filly you cared for was just the other 'side' you needed to see to know that there was a gulf between how you had things and how other ponies did. Blood was what things boiled down to, as every foundling student you cradled in your hooves was nothing like holding your own little one.
Pegasus, unicorn, or earth pony, you loved all of your own no matter what, and with something so special that it was so unbearable when they were torn from her, and that hollow tomb yawning in her waiting forelegs could not be filled with the foal of another. For blood, she made her greatest sacrifices, and it was only the loss of her foals that you cried like when you had lost your sister. You held onto your foals until they all but fought their way out from under your wings. Never once did you listen to anypony when they suggested your correspondence to your not-so-little ones was excessive. Grown and away they may be, making their own lives and family lives, but you would never let a single one of your foals be on their own. Not if you could help it.
You stood here, lost in the foggy mind of the old gray mare under a flawless coat and godly, shimmering mane, and were adjusting the brim of your sun hat as the wind touched it. Each adjustment you made to it was made with the same delicacy that would be used handling butterflies before you returned your magic's full focus to that delicate, smoldering cigarette. The embers had dulled some, and the smoke that hung with such fragility in the air was growing thinner with every moment. Sparks budded in her too-cheerful magical glow again.
Let those who knew no better to call you an old nag who gave your foals every grief once they entered the world. Mortals told you that you had everything: all the riches in the world, the grandest castle, a parade of adoring stallions, prosperity to envy, and so the list went on. Everything you had, apparently, was something worth envying. Forget how often it was only the innocence of your young ones and those precious early years (though, for you that was closer to a few decades; the entire lives of your children were merely their early years) sated the peculiar immortal hungers you had. Your babies were your only treasure to which your heart could be so graphically, horribly, and messily connected, for they were pieces of you that you were letting off into the world and had felt growing inside, and any good mother would know just what you spoke of.
(If you told them.)
Some of those now-nameless stallions had whispered that outlived them, or perhaps those were the words of friends and helpers now long past, as everything was when given enough though. They told you, count your foals, count your foal's foals, and count those foals of your foal's foals...
...and count the foals of your foal's foals of their foals...
...and the whole mess went on. They told you, watch how they multiplied. Oh, you did. You always did. You kept the lines with such careful skill, marking marriages, births, and all there was to chronicle. Such silly ponies you had, always the silliest of sorts getting involved in your life. Your family trees did get big! Oh, yes they did!
They also were marred with mortal's blood. They got sick. They went to war. Your babies did multiply, and when they did they were no longer your babies. How could that be so? Multiplication only went so far; you population was not roving with your bloodlines, all tangled up in everything else so that when you felt it was time to keep a stallion for comfort you could only turn him away with revulsion at his connections, however distant, or the other peculiar protective grudges of the sort. Your blood thinned with every branch your saplings grew, and when they stood tall and mighty you found yourself in a forest alienated so permanently from your heart.
You tried to heed those words, like your tried to kick this silly little habit of smoking on your balcony, even when it was the silence that smothered you. Your life was spent bringing light to these ponies, waging war for them, and fighting with all you had for them. You even tried to pretend being their auntie, teacher, and mix of both were the same thing. Every fiber of your being lived for the subjects that you really did love, and you would never, ever regret your care for them as their ruler and teacher and friend. You would do it all.
And your reason? The compulsion buried deep in you, deeper than than the ashes from your now-extinguished cigarette would ever sink into the ground below, what could be that led her to these moments she hid from everypony?
Why, it was for nothing but a drop of blood, and one long gone from everypony who could be her child.
A mother would know.