Twilight had a lot of reasons to be thankful to Celestia. Not many unicorns alive today could say that they’d been more or less raised by the alicorn, studied under her wing, even get to see her in her most equine moments. Even fewer had the Princess as a personal confidant, mentor, and pen pal. But perhaps most importantly of all was that her and Celestia were such close friends that Twilight could literally hit Celestia in the face with an encyclopedia and get away with it.

To Celestia’s credit, she took a five hundred page book to the face exceedingly well.

The sudden attack had left Celestia stunned on her hooves, wings extended in surprise, and shock plainly carved into her face. By her hooves, the ruffled pages of Prolix Writ’s Encyclopædia of Everything, Vol. XXIV lay face down, collecting dust off of the library floor. When Celestia could move again, her eyes fell to the book, then raised just in time to see its siblings, volumes XXV, XXVI, and XXVII likewise come hurtling towards her face.

Celestia caught all three with a shield of golden magic, leaving them floating about a foot in front of her face. “Twilight?” she asked, raising an eyebrow as her magic collected more and more encyclopedias. She knew she was in dangerous territory when the volumes of Marecel Proust’s novels began flying at her. “What’s the matter?”

“EW!!” was Twilight’s response. She had a mixture of disgust and abject horror across her muzzle, and her magic pulled books off of the shelves at random to toss in Celestia’s direction. “EW EW EW EW EW!!!”

The unhelpful answer warranted a glance at the silently snickering alicorn in the corner of the bookshelves. At Celestia’s gaze, Luna immediately quieted, and the curves of her features fell into a neutral expression. “What?” she asked, managing to hold the emotionless and slightly confused visage against Celestia’s mild irritation. Then the corner of her mouth twitched, and the dark alicorn could barely stop the tittering laughter from escaping her muzzle.

Sighing, Celestia bundled up the books she’d collected in her magic—which was no small amount—and dumped them on her sister’s head, eliciting several surprised yelps from the Princess of the Night as she was momentarily buried by literature. Then she calmly entered their little reading space and sat down on her cushion. When Twilight’s magic groped for another book, she calmly pushed it back on the shelf with her own. “Twilight, I don’t know what this is all about, but surely there are better ways to communicate than flinging the written word at my face?”

“You… Hurricane… foal…” Twilight spluttered, wildly looking back and forth for something more to punish with her disgust. Instead, she settled for an animalistic howl and slammed her muzzle into her cushion. Only a muffled scream escaped its purple fabric; even though Twilight was in some sort of book-flinging rampage, she at least remained courteous of the silence simply being in the presence of a library’s shelves warranted.

The synapses fired in Celestia’s brain. Her magic took hold of the teacup she’d left by her cushion, and she gently took a sip of the now lukewarm broth. Then her head slowly, inevitably turned to the right, and pink eyes focused firmly on the half-buried alicorn sitting in the corner. Somehow, the tip of Luna’s horn had gotten wedged between the pages of Goodnight Moon, and now it spun slow circles above her ears, like some kind of literary halo. She met Celestia’s gaze with an even stare, and an even more deadpan tone. “We did nothing.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed, as if sizing up a rival. Then they traveled down her sister’s body until they found a tattered old journal sitting on the floor not more than a foot away from Luna’s hooves. Her magic took hold of the ancient work once more, pulled it out from underneath one of Prolix’s numerous encyclopedias, then lightly smacked Luna on the snout with it. The resultant sneeze was enough to make the book on Luna’s horn tumble into the pile surrounding her.

“I’m glad you were enjoying yourselves,” Celestia commented in her diplomat voice, and she began to skim through the pages. Sure enough, the journal opened easily to Hurricane’s meeting with Platinum in the gardens, and it only took her a few seconds of skimming the pages to know exactly what had been covered. She purposefully set the book face down on her cushion and crossed her legs at her sister. “I would’ve liked to have been present during this reading, sister of mine.”

“We believed thine voice to be growing sore, so We endeavored to lift some of the burden from your shoulders,” Luna returned with a casual shrug of her wings. Her left wingtip twitched by her side, a tell Celestia had learned over the millennia that meant she was trying to hide her amusement.

“I see,” Celestia said, picking up the journal again. “How very kind of you—even if you are playing with fire.” The demure smile she brought to her lips seemed harmless, but it made Luna’s eyes widen by an almost imperceptible margin. Celestia maintained eye contact for a moment longer than necessary before turning back to Twilight, who’d finally finished screaming and was simply lying on her cushion, red in the face. “In case it makes you feel any better, Twilight, Hurricane and I only laid together one time.”

“Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup,” Twilight muttered, trying to hide under her forehooves. With a jolt, she sat up straight and took as deep a breath as her lungs could manage, and then inhaled another little gasp as extra. She planted her forehooves on the couch and let it all go in one ragged breath, hanging her head between her shoulders. “Okay!” she exclaimed, doing her best to force a strained smile to her muzzle. “So you and Commander Hurricane had… you know… intercourse… and you had a foal from it as well?!”

“That would be an accurate statement, yes,” Celestia said. At Twilight’s strangled groan, she couldn’t resist adding, “Should I recount that for your historical account?”

“NO!” Twilight screamed, then slapped her hooves over her muzzle. Foalhood fears of getting quite literally kicked out of the library rushed towards her before her better senses managed to take hold once more, and she momentarily looked around the room. Seeing nopony other than the princesses, however, Twilight managed to take a gasping breath and lay her chin down on the cushion. “Okay. So. You and Hurricane had sex, and you two had a foal, which you passed off as Queen Platinum’s. Great. Glad to know that,” she hissed, turning to Luna, who was trying very hard to feign innocence. She sat upright and attempted to straighten her disheveled mane into its usual razor-edge while fixing Celestia with a pointed look. “I’m assuming that since this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this, Platinum’s plan worked?”

Celestia nodded. “It did—mostly. As it turns out, there is some merit to the rumors about the Line of Platinum having my blood in it near its roots.”

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Twilight grumbled. And then, slowly, realization dawned on her face. “Gale was your foal?! All those stories you used to tell me… ” She sighed and grabbed her notepad to make a few notations, but stopped and slowly looked Celestia in the eye. “Did… did she know?”

Celestia pursed her lips, but ultimately shook her head. “Not until she was older,” Celestia said, and Twilight caught a hint of remorse in her words. “We didn’t tell her for a long time. We simply let her believe that Platinum was her mother—the fewer ponies that knew, the better.”

“Gosh,” Twilight murmured, staring at her hooves. “That… must’ve been hard for you.”

“It was,” Celestia said, noncommittally bobbing her head from side to side. “But she wasn’t ever far away. Officially, I was her godmother, and she loved spending time with me.”

“And I,” Luna said, the corners of her lips curving.

“And Luna, too,” Celestia confirmed with a short nod. “So I wasn’t wanting for time with my daughter. I just had to keep myself a foreleg’s length away.” A wistful breath flared her nostrils, and her eyes sought a portrait of a purple unicorn in regal clothing hanging on the wall between two massive windows. “But she had good parents. Good, loving parents. That’s all I could’ve asked for her.”

“Yeah.” Twilight scratched a few more things on her notepad, then chuckled and shook her head. “Hurricane and Queen Platinum. Who would’ve thought?”

A knowing smile adorned Celestia’s muzzle. “I had a hunch,” she said, and her magic began flipping through the pages of the old journal. “I just didn’t think they’d take off like they did.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Oh yes,” Celestia said, finally settling on an entry. “A foal changes a pony.”

Then she began to read.

“Come on, Gale, you have to eat.”

Platinum’s usually melodic voice took on an irritated tone as she picked through her meal. It wasn’t exactly the finest of fares, at least not what she was used to, but her husband had insisted that he’d cook, and after an entire day of dealing with Parliament, she wasn’t going to argue. Besides, sometimes she needed a break from the formalities of the castle, and it was nice to just relax as a family mare for once. It didn’t hurt that Hurricane had a lot of time to practice his cooking these days.

Of course, he still burned the fish from time to time. Platinum had to tell him that wings weren’t acceptable substitutes for a grill.

Across from her, a little filly scowled at her food. Her coat was a faint lavender that almost seemed blue, and existed in a reluctant coexistence with the sandy blonde mane atop her head and parted around her horn. Magenta eyes like her father’s stared at the asparagus on her plate, wishing it to disappear so she wouldn’t have to eat it. At Platinum’s voice, she scowled just a little harder. “I’m not hungry.”

“Yes you are,” Hurricane said. Unlike Platinum, who was still in the ripe age of her mid-thirties, time was beginning to take its toll on the pegasus. His mane had completely silvered, leaving not a trace of the sky blue that once colored it, and his coat was following suit. His muzzle was streaked with gray, and the tight muscles that once were the core of his legendary combat prowess were beginning to thin. The only parts of his body that hadn’t seemed to succumb to the march of time were his wings. They were still just as full of charcoal feathers as ever, and the silver streaking towards their tips remained bright and vibrant. And they were still soft, Platinum happily noted as one brushed her side.

Gale’s pink magic took hold of her fork, and the filly stabbed it aimlessly around the plate, hoping it would satisfy her parents. Hurricane went back to surgically picking through his fish and asparagus, and Platinum rolled her eyes and took a bite of her own dinner. Sometimes it still seemed strange to her to eat fish like the pegasi do, but she found it wasn’t all that bad. There were only so many ways a pony could prepare vegetables and flowers, and the oils from the fish did wonderful things to her coat, so really, she couldn’t complain.

Nothing but the sound of silverware against silver plates filled the silence, something Platinum had grown used to over the past five years. Hurricane wasn’t a very talkative partner at the best of times, and when he ate, he all but shut up completely. Platinum, naturally being a creature of gossip, at first found the silence frustrating, but soon came to appreciate Hurricane’s natural quietness. Mostly because it let her vent uninterrupted, and between trying to teach his daughter the basics and having to deal with the Chancellor’s shenanigans, she had a lot to vent about.

Hurricane finished his meal first, and stood up to go deliver his plate to the sink. After Typhoon took his place in the Triumvirate, he’d traded homes with his daughter. Now, Typhoon’s house in the city was his, and the mare and Tempest lived in Hurricane’s old quarters in the castle. Platinum liked the house; it offered her privacy she always felt she was lacking in the castle, and she usually spent the weekends at Typhoon’s old house instead of in her quarters in the castle. For the most part, she, Hurricane, and Gale lived at the castle, but it was nice to have someplace personal to retreat to every once in a while.

While Hurricane began cleaning up the pots and pans from dinner, Platinum shifted her attention back to Gale. Once again, the filly was back to glaring at her plate, obviously holding out until her father felt bad for her and let her have cookies instead. Platinum, on the other hoof, was not as easily swayed as her husband. Furrowing her brows, she put on the most menacing look she could and lowered her head to the table. “Platinum Gale Stormblade, if you do not eat your dinner, you won’t be getting any cookies for the rest of the week, and I’ll tell the chefs at the castle to give you extra broccoli for lunch. Do you understand?”

Gale stuck her lower lip out and crossed her hooves. She pointedly ignored her mother’s eyes, instead redoubling her hatred of the cursed asparagus before her.

Platinum drew a short breath. It was going to be the hard way, then.

She finished her dinner over the next minute and very pointedly set her fork down on the table. Then, sliding out of her chair, she trotted across the room to the counter. Hurricane’s ears perked at her hoofsteps, and he turned towards her, raising an eyebrow. Even Gale had momentarily broken eye contact with her food, instead watching her mother through her sandy bangs, and not without a touch of uncertainty. That uncertainty turned into outright fear when Platinum grasped the cookie tin in her magic off of the high shelf.

“Mommy, what are you doing with the cookies?”

“Oh, these?” Platinum asked, smiling at her daughter. She gave the cookie tin a little shake for emphasis. “I told you. No more cookies for the week if you don’t finish your dinner.” Turning to Hurricane, she practically draped herself over his shoulders and held the cookies before him. “Cane, dear, could you incinerate these with your magic? Our daughter doesn’t seem to want them anymore.”

It had the desired effect. Gale’s head shot up almost immediately, and with a cry of “W-wait!” she began shoveling her dinner down her gullet. In a few seconds her plate was clean, or as clean as any foal could reasonably dedicate their attention to making it. The filly grimaced and went from one disgusted face to the next, but finally managed to swallow the accursed bolus of asparagus and fish.

Smiling, Platinum trotted over to Gale and mussed her mane. “See? That wasn’t so hard,” she said, to which Gale pretended to retch. She popped open the tin and set a single cookie down in front of Gale, who stared at it with wide eyes. “For being such a good filly,” Platinum said, bending over and kissing her adopted daughter on the forehead. She’d barely taken a step away from the filly before the cookie disappeared into a gnashing void of little teeth that swiftly trotted away from her.

Platinum’s magic returned the cookie tin to its place on the shelf, and after watching Gale happily trot back to the living room and sit down amongst her toy legionaries, she set her eyes on Hurricane. She took a slow, deep breath, puffed out her chest, then began to saunter across the floor, carefully placing her hooves in a straight and narrow line that made her hips sway and her tail dart from side to side. Her flirty walk took her straight to Hurricane’s side, and speaking in a husky tone, she placed her muzzle beside his ear. “Hello there, handsome. Is your heart for sale?”

The tiniest, faintest smirk pulled at the corner of Hurricane’s muzzle. He didn’t stop washing the dishes, but his eyes briefly darted in Platinum’s direction. “Sorry, Miss, but my heart belongs to the crown.”

“Awww, that’s too bad,” Platinum huffed. Her hot breath made Hurricane’s ear flick, and she pressed her weight against his side. “She must be an absolute saint.”

“You’d be surprised,” Hurricane replied. His eyes wandered over to Gale, who was reenacting the battle of Stratopolis for the third time that day, completely oblivious to the world. “She willingly married outside her race. Imagine the scandal.”

Platinum chuckled, then gingerly nipped the tip of Hurricane’s ear. She gave it a little tug, making Hurricane’s wing twitch against her side, then stepped away. Their eyes locked, and Platinum gave him a deadly smile. Hurricane shook his head and went back to cleaning the dishes, but Platinum already knew she’d won. She wandered to the living room to sit with Gale while she played, but her eyes kept traveling to the bedroom.

Hours later, both ponies collapsed on the bed together, panting and reeking of sweat and sex. Platinum wrapped her hooves around Hurricane’s barrel, and Hurricane responded by enveloping her in her own downy blanket. Their heartbeats, at first so chaotic against each other’s chest, slowed down into one rhythm as they nestled in their embrace. Platinum happily trilled and pressed her nose against Hurricane’s chin, breathing in his scent, rich of ozone and humidity like the calm before a storm. Hurricane’s lips moved to the tip of her horn, planting a careful kiss there before moving down its length at regular intervals, making Platinum giggle and moan until he reached her forehead. They parted heads just long enough to meet each other’s eyes, and then they drew in for a long, loving kiss.

When it was over, Platinum carefully nestled her head in the crook of Hurricane’s neck like she’d done so many nights before, careful not to jab him with her long horn. Hurricane buried his muzzle in Platinum’s mane, and their tails, one short and one very long, intertwined as best they could. In the stillness of the night, they laid together, while the katydids buzzed outside their window.

“Do you think we’re doing good?” Platinum mumbled, her eyes shut as she let Hurricane’s breathing lull her closer to oblivion.

“Of course we are,” Hurricane mumbled back, his chest producing deep bass vibrations that shook Platinum’s ribs. “She’ll be a great mare someday.”

That was all Platinum wanted to hear. “I know,” she said, carefully shifting her body to slide deeper into Hurricane’s embrace. Sighing, she breathed in Hurricane’s scent again and felt her consciousness begin to slip away. “It’s been a quick five years.”

If Hurricane said anything, Platinum didn’t hear it. She’d already given in to sleep.