Eventide Descends
The silk of Twilight Sparkle’ wedding dress had been so wonderfully soft. Though it might not compare to the airy plushness of the cloud cradling her, the bliss from the ceremony still clung to her. Cool whorls of cloud weren’t able to dull the fuzziness in her chest, still there from just hours before. But Twilight couldn’t deny the temptation of clouds - and that alicornhood brought perks to learn long after she first gained wings.
Next to her, Celestia was smiling subtly. The crinkles of many thin laugh lines only Twilight could map perfectly were like frames to the overwhelming warmth in her wife’s purple eyes. “And what thought has wandered to you, my dear Twilight?”
“Hmm,” Twilight said, staring distantly up at the sky yawning above. One cloud in particular was breaking apart into faded curls of pale orange while her thoughts came together. “I’m trying to think about the best honeymoon spots in Equestria.”
“Oh my,” murmured Celestia. “The very best? Does anywhere come to mind?”
Mumbling, Twilight wriggled deeper into the cloud. “If only! Any place I think of just doesn’t feel right.”
Celestia brushed Twilight’s barrel with gentle touches of her feathers. In all their years together, Twilight Sparkle had never stopped marveling over how the feathers of her were the exact color of clouds greeting the first light at dawn. Anypony could see that Cadance’s feather tips darkened to rich lilac, and yet how many ponies could say they were close enough to Celestia to know the precise color of her feathers or the exact softness of her coat?
“Why is that?”
“I’m not sure any place could be good enough. Applewood is too cliche. Tall Tale feels too somber. Cloudsdale hotels, resorts, and leisure attractions have collectively lower average ratings than any other travel destinations in Equestria-”
“All of them?” Celestia’s calm demeanor had only a fraction of the incredulousness contained in her tone.
“Yes! I triple-checked my last round of quadruple-checks and asked Spike to cross-check with non-Equestrian sources to diversify results. Guests falling through cloud-floors to the rooms below makes for some, umm, awkward results to say the least. At least, that’s to kindly paraphrase one Ms. Florina-”
“Goodness gracious, to think that our little ponies still struggle with cloud architecture. Now, didn’t you find anything else, dear? I hear the Prancian Riviera is lovely this time of year.”
“Celly, everypony who has ever been married has their honeymoon in Prance!”
“We haven’t had our honeymoon in Prance,” said Celestia, giving her head a small shake and re-folding her forelegs neatly upon the shifting cloud.
“Everypony but us!” Twilight corrected herself sheepishly. “Cadance says that everypony tries to go somewhere warm for their honeymoon. If we do that, it might not be as memorable, and Cadance said that we should do what feels right while not being too ’mainstream’.”
“Twilight, love,” Celestia began, quieting her wife with a kiss on the cheek. “I think you’re stretching Cadance’s words just a teeny bit. Why, if everypony just tried to do everything completely unlike what most ponies were doing, then somepony would have tried to honeymoon in the most fiery pits of Tartarus and called it ‘trendsetting’.”
“B-But-”
“Oh Twilight,” Celestia tutted, her horn lit up with soft gold light she used to push Twilight’s mane behind her ears. It still bore the curls and waves from styling efforts that had brought most of the pin-straight purple locks into an elaborate updo to compliment the one her bride had worn. “We might be able to go somewhere cold if you want something different. Wouldn’t time in Yakyakistan be different? I, for one, would feel very privileged to say I could build a snowpony on my honeymoon. Doesn’t that sound so relaxing?”
One long white foreleg draped over Twilight in a comfortable and familiar embrace. That simple, mellow happiness had returned to Celestia again. While thinking on her wife’s words, Twilight watched the fleeting movements of sunset-crafting: the moon ready to rise above the horizon from where Princess Luna controlled it in Canterlot far below them, though that was never Twilight’s favorite celestial interlude.
The gorgeous pink sunset was drown out with the lazy workings of Celestia’s magic. Slowly, every luminous stripe of pink bled to shades of copper and gold. Of everything the sky could offer, that was her favorite moment of dusk: those rich golden shades that occurred so briefly before the darkest oranges endured just before the pitch-black of night claimed the world. Sunset was fleeting - unlike Celestia - but held the gentleness she did, and in it, those last moments of evening were what cradled the stars.
“I don’t know,” Twilight murmured. “Honeymoons aren’t something I think are meant to be relaxing.”
At first, Twilight was worried she had said something wrong - certainly not upsetting wrong, just that it was one objectively incorrect response to have. Celestia had been on honeymoons before, and the mellowness that Twilight couldn’t feign in this situation was one that made Twilight reek with her own inexperience.
Celestia didn’t say what she wanted. “What is it that makes you feel that way, love?” That was what she told Twilight instead.
“When Shining and Cadance had their wedding, everypony knew that they wouldn’t forget it. They went to explore Maretonian jungles, and how could that be anything but thrilling?”
“Not everypony wants a thrill from life,” said Celestia quietly, and Twilight knew in her heart that ‘not everypony’ was one mare in particular.
“I just want our honeymoon to be perfect,” Twilight whispered, watching the stars wink above, glittering and wholly unreachable.
“And that is a good thought to have,” Celestia added, the reassurance in her tone and the touch of her feathers masking the wistful sigh at the edge of her voice. “I’m not sure if we can have ‘perfect’ outside of planners and papers.”
You’re perfect, thought Twilight Sparkle.
“Our wedding was perfect,” Twilight said instead, the gold gleam of Celestia’s wedding ring upon her horn the closest sight to a star.
All Celestia did was chuckle. The sound was identical to the giddiness a desk bell in the distance; she could hear that ping, ping, ping under the manners that made the mare.
“Celly?” Twilight asked, unable to look away from the pretty sight and the twinkle of a ring barely different from her own.
“Yes, my star?”
“Where would you like to go?”
Celestia paused, and as slow as syrup, one sweet smile made its way across her muzzle. The white of Celestia’s teeth was almost lost in the dark that kept falling around them. “Years ago, I had a little cottage on Horseshoe Bay. I would visit the silly old thing every year I could… that is, until I took you on as my student. After that, I only sent a maid to clean three times a year.”
Twilight blinked, mostly at a loss to connect the idea of towering Celestia being able to duck into the dollhouse of a place she had forming in her mind’s eye. It was the greatest curse of being Celestia - if Celestia could be cursed - that she could think of: requiring every building be made to accommodate your size. There was a reason that Celestia always landed upon the balcony of the long-gone Golden Oaks Library more often than she accepted invitations inside.
“I would like to go to my beach house,” Celestia said gently, “by the seaside.”
“Would it be perfect?” Twilight asked, snuggling closer to Celestia. Her mind working through images of shutters in need of painting and wallpaper peeling in curls. That aside, a mere little seaside cottage didn’t sound like it ticked all the boxes of her Qualities of Excellent Royal Honeymoon Destinations list.
“Oh, biscuits! Definitely not. There will be whole colonies of dust bunnies, no icebox, and I do think I forgot to make the bed on my last visit. We’ll have to polish the furniture and wash the windows. My seashell collection will no doubt be raided by those pesky hermit crabs that always would always scutter underhoof.”
“Is that all?” Twilight swallowed nervously.
“I don’t think so; I just can’t think of anything else!” Celestia chucked again. “Now, doesn’t that sound absolutely perfect? I can feel the salty sea breezes in my mane already!”
Celestia pulled herself from Twilight with unparalleled grace, rising up to stand tall on the sluggishly drifting cloud the two mares had been cuddling on. The silhouette of Celestia’s tall form and waterfall of a mane and tail made for a dramatic figure to cut the shadows of the night. Her wings unfurled abruptly, and her unmatched wingspan plunged Twilight under another layer of darkness.
“...No, that doesn’t sound anything close to perfect,” admitted Twilight, rising also. She came to stand under her wife’s wings as a petite tea spoon personified, while Celestia was the obvious ladle of a big spoon. “We should go anyway.”
There could be no hard feelings over heights, even when Twilight knew her stature made her the mayfly to a moth because anything that could have ever bothered her about the arrangement was dissolved when Celestia leaned down to nuzzle the top of her head.
Neither mare needed a spell to know that the other was smiling. Twilight only needed to see Celestia’s shadowed body flying through the night for her to follow, where there would still be memories to make and time to spend with her new bride. And even if their honeymoon was spent on housecleaning and tide-chasing, getting to see fly with Celestia under stars and stellar winds was a perfect all its own.