A simple question.
Princess Celestia gazed into her cup of tea, losing herself in its murky depths, letting her thoughts wander to and from the question she had just been asked by a reasonably smart lavender unicorn.
“What’s a windigo?”
An innocent enough question…
“Why are they only ever mentioned once in all of Equestrian history?”
By itself, at least.
“With all due respect, there’s no way there’s been harmony for a thousand years, or even since the founding of Equestria. Right?”
A very perceptive unicorn.
“Twilight,” Celestia said, rousing herself from the depths of her cup. Which she placed down on the table in front of her. Carefully. These cups had been imported from the Crystal Empire before it disappeared in the frozen north. Which hadn’t always been the frozen north.
She wondered how she could follow up her statement of her student’s name. She looked at the lavender unicorn directly. Her mane was getting long and she kept raising a hoof to push it out of the way of her purple gaze, which stared at her with an almost uncomfortable intensity. Fierce devotion and adoration radiated from her student and Celestia wondered if that was a good or bad thing. Not the point. Not yet. Something for another time. Maybe.
Celestia grabbed her thoughts in a vice and squashed them, before taking a breath. She blinked and met Twilight’s gaze squarely.
“Windigoes don’t exist.”
She watched as her student heard the words, processed them, paused, processed them again, and then a third time, and then gathered her thoughts to unleash an eloquent: “Bwurhgh?”
Not the word Celestia expected, but given who was uttering it, she wasn’t all that surprised. Twilight tended to come up with a very wide range of not-quite words. They were usually a sign that her mental state had suffered a rapid change from composed to panicking. Something Celestia had noticed had been increasing in frequency the longer her student spent reading books and she once again thought about her plan of sending her abroad to make some friends. Maybe later.
Twilight took a breath to compose herself, failed spectacularly, and then sputtered for a moment before trying again. She only failed once more before getting it right, much to Celestia’s relief. She’d been trying to teach Twilight how to organize her thoughts as well as she organized her notes, but the unicorn tended to misfile and refile mental information at a speed that left Celestia exhausted every time she tried to help her. Which led to the unicorn – Twilight, Celestia chastised herself, her name is Twilight Sparkle – often suffering nervous breakdowns whenever she couldn’t immediately figure something out or was placed under any kind of pressure.
Really should have that looked at, Celestia thought as Twilight managed to speak her piece.
“The history books can’t be wrong, right? That’d mean Equestrians have been learning the wrong history for thousands of years.”
A lot of history is wrong, Celestia thought, fighting the urge to glance outside. No reason to. The moon was still below the horizon, while her sun lit the afternoon sky with a warm orange-yellow glow that turned the city of Canterlot a lovely shade of amber. Her sun. Celestia blinked away a sudden onset of emotions to focus on her student instead.
“The history books are wrong,” Celestia said aloud. “But only because I choose for them to be. For the safety of Equestria.”
“Why?”
Celestia bit back a sigh. Why was probably Twilight’s favorite word, because it meant that she’d be given answers to her question, because it was a word without an answer.
“Because windigoes aren’t born out of conflict. Conflict is born out of conflict. The opposite of harmony gives rise to… to cold feelings. You’ve shouted in anger, right? You’ve felt that slight chill when you do so, correct?”
Twilight nodded slowly.
Celestia stilled her wings, which had begun to fidget in agitation, which usually meant she was entering uncomfortable territory she didn’t want to be in, but she pressed on regardless.
“If that cold is left to fester and grow, it eventually spreads, covering the pony in snow and ice. I don’t know why that happens, and no scientist has been able to figure it out either.” Celestia’s lips pressed together wryly. “It’s magic. Old magic, ancient magic far beyond our understanding, whether by choice or design, no one knows. All we know is that it’s really bad in large groups of ponies. Like the early tribes.”
Celestia looked out the window, eyes turned north. “It’s why the frozen north is the way it is.” Her gaze turned south, towards a sleepy little village beside a forest of horrors. “It’s…” She took a shuddering breath. “It’s why the Everfree is eternally frozen.”
“Cold born of emotion, frozen north, frozen forest to the sou” – Twilight’s voice and quill – where did she get that from? Celestia wondered – stopped and she looked at Celestia as realization dawned on her face.
“You’re a windigo.”
Celestia nodded.
Twilight’s breathing grew quicker as she scribbled furiously. “So… So… When you were fighting with – I mean… When you… Back then… Uhm…”
As much as Celestia enjoyed watching Twilight stumble over her words as they leapt unbidden and unorganized to the front of her mind, she didn’t need the headache that came from listening to Twilight trying to fix her sentences.
“When Nightmare Moon and I fought, our cold emotions clashed, creating the mist that shrouds the Everfree forest to this day. Our bout was so great that nobody dared approach, and all they saw and heard was ethereal screaming shapes in the mist, which scared them. And scared ponies try to rationalize their fears by turning them into something they can understand. Like, say, a sky horse that brings cold where there is no harmony.” Her lips twitched wryly. “That came later once they applied it to the Founder’s Tale, which was passed down and repeated until it became the version it is today.”
“Why don’t you correct them?” Twilight asked. “They adore you, and would want everything to be accurate and honest, right?”
“Honesty isn’t always the best policy,” Celestia replied, wings itching again. “Imagine, for a moment, a world where one’s anger, or outrage, or negativity can be used to spread further discord and chaos. Imagine an entire group like that, and how much damage they could do to this wonderful place we call home.”
“Did a group like that ever exist?” Twilight’s voice was incredibly small and Celestia was reluctant to respond.
“Yes.”
A simple word, a declaration with a hard end that invited no further inquiries. Even Twilight could pick up on that and she went silent.
But only for a moment.
“Will you ever tell the truth?”
Celestia shook her head. “What would that solve?”
Twilight nodded slowly, putting her notes down. She stared at them, then at Celestia. “Do you want me to destroy these?”
Celestia was touched by Twilight’s question, because to Twilight, notes were considered sacred, and to be preserved for all time just on the off chance they may be needed again.
“You don’t have to.” The words surprised them both, and it took Celestia a few seconds to realize they had come from her. “But you are not to share them with anyone. Not even Spike. Do I make myself clear?”
“Of course,” Twilight replied, gathering them up before pushing them towards Celestia. “Can you put these with the other restricted documents in the archives?”
Celestia arched a brow as Twilight suddenly blinked, then turned scarlet. The archives were supposed to be a secret, and if Twilight knew about them, then that meant the unicorn had been doing some snooping.
As usual, I see, Celestia thought with a slightly more affectionate sigh. “I’ll be taking these, and you’ll be giving me a ten thousand word essay on why breaking and entering and looking at things you’re not supposed to is not a good thing a pony should do. Without mentioning specifics, of course,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
Might as well make it interesting.
Twilight’s eyes lit up at the idea, although dimmed slightly. “Only ten thousand?” she asked, disappointment coloring her voice. “That’s barely anything!”
“For you,” Celestia replied wryly. “Meanwhile, I’d like to get to sleep at a decent hour and grading reports takes time I wish I had.”
Twilight ducked her head. “Of course, Celestia.” She gathered up her quill and saddlebags, draping the latter over her barrel after putting the former carefully within them. She paused as she turned to leave, and turned back to face Celestia.
“When is the paper due?”
“When it’s done,” Celestia replied, reaching for her tea.
Twilight blinked before nodding. “Alright. Thanks. Have a nice afternoon. Er…are we still on for dinner?”
Celestia glanced up from her tea. “Of course. See you then.”
Twilight had her essay done by dinner, of course, and neither of them mentioned windigoes again.