"Are you a god?"

"Excuse me?" Celestia blinked at me in surprise.

I had no idea she would be so easily nonplussed. Granted, it was an unusual way to start a conversation. But really there was no truly indirect way to breach the topic.

I had been in Canterlot for only a day or so at this point, and I was a brony fit to burst with questions. Thankfully, after my first rather revelatory meeting with the Princesses of Day and Night, they had urged me quite emphatically to be as open and forthright as possible with them, for the sake of communication. The excuse given was that the translation spell they had used on me would work best if I spoke clearly and without obfuscation. The real reason, I suspected, was that Celestia hated beating around the bush.

"Um, perhaps I should rephrase that. Do you regard yourself as a god? Or do your people?"

Celestia blinked at me again.  "Where do you get the impression I am a goddess? Or my ponies think of me as a goddess?"

"A keyhole problem," I said....this was already verbal shorthand between us. It stood for the problems inherent in understanding an entire alternate dimension by way of twenty-minute animated segments. As shockingly accurate as the show was, bronies were still looking at Equestria through a very, very narrow keyhole. "You're thousands of years old, you are phenomenally powerful, you raise and set the sun in your world...." I ticked off the reasons on my fingers. "Plus all your subjects bow and reverence you, ponies have been heard making oaths by your name---"

"And humans do not bow to their rulers?" Celestia pointed out. "Nor make oaths by the names of kings and queens?"

"Point," I admitted. "Though oaths by the names of rulers has become sort of antiquated these days. But what of the rest of it?"

"The unicorns, as a nation, once raised and lowered the sun and moon on their own," Celestia pointed out. "Thousands of years old sounds impressive... it's not so impressive if you're a tree. And phenomenally powerful? My sister and I are both far less powerful than, for example, Discord. Or the Elements of Harmony. Or even Queen Chrysalis, when she was fully empowered." She chuckled lightly. "Humans have rather low standards for deities, if that's all it takes to be one among them."

"Granted, raising the sun and moon would be far more impressive on Earth--- the Moon there is almost the size of the planet, in astronomical terms. And the sun is literally a million times bigger. But yes, Humans do tend to be easily impressed." I shuffled my feet a bit as we walked along. "Oh, I've been meaning to ask, actually..."

"Yes?" Celestia said.

"I know that Luna controls the moon," I said. "Does she control the stars, as well?"

Celestia actually stopped and laughed. "Merciful heavens, no," she said. "It takes all my power to raise and lower the sun. Do you think I would have managed to imprison her, elements or no, if she had control of millions of suns to my one?" She smiled. "The stars in our universe are unfathomably distant, so distant that light takes millenia to reach Equestria from them. And many are even more impossibly huge than your own human Sun.

"Mind, she does tinker with the shooting stars," Celestia noted. "And the Auroras, too.... but manipulate the stars themselves? I think not. (1) Don't take this wrong, Arthur, but--- where did you come up with such a notion?" she shook her head. "What is it like where you come from?"

"Pretty much the same." I told her. "But the thing with your own moon and sun is so radically different that we couldn't help speculate about the stars, too." . plus...." I hesitated to mention this. "Fandom speculative fiction. In addition to watching the show, a lot of fans make a hobby of writing stories that speculate about Equestria.... its past, its future, the ponies and other creatures in it, so on and so forth. Or simply sitting around and debating--- see 'arguing'--- about various attributes of your world."

Celestia hmm'ed. "And what 'interesting speculations' did you have about Equestria before coming here?" She asked. "What strange origins did you hypothesize for us?"

"Theme Park," I said simply.

She stopped again and stared at me. "Theme Park?"

"You do have those here?" I asked. She shook her head. "Well, I suppose you've caught glimpses of, oh, Disneyland, through that mirror of yours? Big castle, lots of people running around eating cotton candy and hotdogs, people dressed as giant mice?"(2)

She nodded. "Yes, I do recall something like that. That last bit rather confused me...."

"That's a theme park," I said. "Basically an amusement park built around a single concept or franchise. Disneyland... let's sum up and say it's built around the stories of a man named Disney."

"Who wrote stories about giant mice," Celestia said, cocking an eyebrow.

"Don't be too surprised. There are stranger ones. I suspect someday they might even build one built entirely around pastel-colored ponies with pictures on their bottoms." I gave her an irreverent smirk. She gave me a chiding look. "Seriously!" I said. "You have no idea how popular your show has become...."

Celestia sighed and shook her head. "You were saying..."

"Oh yes. Theme Park. Well, that was my working theory, really, when the show first started. A peaceful, magical kingdom, administered by friendly and let's say it, cute and cuddly pastel ponies, awash with virtually tame animals, home to mythical monsters, perfectly controlled weather, meticulously scheduled seasons, where even the day and night are controlled and set to a schedule? Only a theme park... a really high end one, like Disneyland... has such a deliberately pleasant and carefully controlled, even micro-managed, environment.

"My working hypothesis was that humans, or creatures much like humans... Elves, perhaps?... had constructed the realm or world of Equestria as a sort of vacation spot, a save haven where one could go with the wife and kids, and staffed it with Earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns... and that for whatever reason they abandoned it millenia ago, so long that the 'park staff' forgot all about them and claimed the 'park' as their own." I shrugged. "Wild supposition and fancy-spinning on my part, of course. Not that I've seen anything yet that's really contradicted it." I looked over at the Princess. "So what is the real story?"

"Noone knows for sure," Celestia said. "Our origins were so far back and so long ago that any records we may have had were forgotten." She held up a hoof and waggled it. "Primordial ponies weren't big on writing, I suspect. Who knows? Your theory might be true."

"It might be," I admitted. "I've seen certain things that had no basis in the actual canon... but were commonly held in the fanon-- the, er, communal fandom's theories," I explained. "The names of certain ponies only seen in the background. Certain aspects of your culture. This and that.... " I thought of a certain derpy-eyed mailmare. At that time I hadn't had the opportunity to investigate to determine the truth, but even then I had a suspicion....

"Do you have any other cosmological questions?" Celestia said.(3)

"Well yes," I said. "Winter Wrap Up. the Weather patrol. Back on Earth I saw things here that seemed... monstrously inefficient and wasteful. If not outright ridiculous."

"Such as?"

"Well, first: do you really have ponies individually hoof-craft the snowflakes? I mean, one cubic foot of snow holds over a billion flakes! It would take.... I can't even estimate how many labor hours just to craft a single snowfall..."

Celestia laughed again. "Mrs. Faust, I fear, succumbs far too often to whimsy. Of course not! We do have to magically "seed" loads of snow clouds with a few crystallized flakes to make it produce more, otherwise the entire snowfall is just tiny shapeless chips of ice."

"Hmm, yes. Like artificial snowmakers produce back home," I said. "Is there some practical reason, though?"

"There probably is, but I've never heard it," Celestia said. "But it does have a certain... artistic value. I like to think every now and then a foal catches a snowflake on a scarf or an eyelash and sees that tiny bit of beauty before it melts away..."

"...And, um, winter wrap up. Do ponies REALLY have to plow the snow off the fields? And carve up the ice on the lakes and rivers?"

Celestia looked at me in bafflement. "Why in the world would they need to do that? I warm up the sun to springtime settings that day-- it would all be melted within an hour! Plowing the roads and clearing the sidewalks one last time, yes, but the fields??" She frowned and muttered to herself. "I think I'm going to be investigating the weather bureaus for work padding again...and snow-plowing the fields would scrape all the topsoil off, to boot...." she muttered a bit more, largely imprecations against self-important featherbedding bureaucrats....

I cleared my throat. " Ah, it may just be that 'whimsy' thing again," I pointed out. "just saying."

"Yes, but I think I shall be giving the bureau the once-over all the same," Celestia said firmly. "My little ponies are not so rich that they can afford to have their bits or their hours wasted on busy-work foolishness." My respect for her went up several notches. "Forgive me, do continue."

"The birds being guided North each spring by pegasi?"

"Guided, no; flocks surveyed, yes," Celestia answered.

 

"The other kingdoms outside Equestria... do they object to you having control over the moon and sun? Or.. do they have their own, that they use for their own kingdoms?"

Celestia laughed. "No, we only have the one moon and one sun for the whole planet. Though I do hear the gryphons keep a spare one in storage just in case." She dimpled. I wasn't sure whether to take her seriously or not. "And thus far, noone has made a fuss. I suppose as long as it rises and sets, noone cares who does the raising. It would be quite the squabble if they did... what is so funny?"

I was chuckling so hard my belly was shaking. "I just had the most outrageous mental image....." I picked a cattail out of a nearby floral arrangement and used it as a microphone. "this is it sports fans, the event we've all been waiting for-- Daytime! The referee just blew the whistle and here comes the sun! It's Apollo, straight outta Greece--- he's got the sun and he's powering down the field, oh, nearly blitzed by Raven and Coyote, and it's a long bomb pass to Ra, Ra to Isis, Isis to Horus--- interception by Rama, he's making a break for the horizon, handing off to Raven, Raven to Coyote, it's all over folks-- no, it's Celestia, Celestia has the sun and she's got nuthin but daylight (ha HA!) between her and the goal line, yes, it's Celestia all the way to the center of the sky and it's HIIIIGH NOOOOON!!"

"Now there's a sunrise noone would forget..." I said, wiping my eyes.

Celestia laughed so hard she nearly choked.

 

---

 

1) I now wait with bated breath for the script writers to completely bugger that all to merry hell in the next season, the rotters.

2)At the time I had the notion that Celestia possessed a magic mirror. I had no idea of the nature of it, or that it was not a mirror but a door....

3)At the time I was unaware she was deliberately changing the subject.