Cadance stood and cleared her throat. The sisters grinned and scooted closer together. They shared a short giggle while Cadance glared at them. If Luna was mostly immune to sisterly glares, both sisters together were absolutely untouchable to one’s coming from their niece.

Cadance snorted. “I don’t know… how you to manage to be so…” she waved her hoof. “Articulate.”

“Practice,” Celestia said.

“We’re simply better,” Luna offered helpfully.

“Old mares,” grumbled Cadance. She set the goblet down. “I guess it’s my turn.”

“Oh yes, tell us what you know of near-immortality,” said Luna with a grin. Celestia noticed, but did not mention, that she had shed her illusion. Her fangs were visible. Was she comfortable here, with Cadance seeing? Was it the effect of drink? She was sober enough to care but not enough to find out.

Cadance frowned, and hummed softly as she looked away. “Well… I suppose I would say this:

“Twilight, I don’t know much about being an alicorn. I only have a few years head start on it…

But what I do know about is love, so I suppose I should talk about that, right?

Don’t roll your eyes quite yet.

I think it’s important to talk about. Because, after all, it was in no small part thanks to the friendships you made along the way that you even became an alicorn in the first place! And that’s love, though I know you don’t call it that as much among yourselves. We use words like companion or friend, but don’t be fooled by language. Language is kinda dumb sometimes.

I don’t know a lot about living for a long time, and I’m only starting to figure out what being… what being what we are really means. But I can still tell you this: never, ever let go.

Don’t get so caught up in the day to day grind, paperwork and new responsibilities, that you forget what made you worthy of it all. Don’t lose sight of the friends you made along the way. Never, ever stop reaching out to touch the lives of others. You can’t be friends with the entire world, Twilight, but you can try. And beyond that?

Give love in all of its forms a chance, Twilight--or, really, I could say this to anyone. I have said it to many ponies! Love is… scary. Even when it’s just making a new friend. It’s exciting, but sometimes it is scary.

There’s lots to worry about. What if you say just the wrong thing? What if they look you up and down, and decide that you’re a fake? You’re a phony, not worth their time. What if they lead you on and use you to get something?

Love, in each and every form, is a risk. Just because you’re an alicorn now doesn’t mean that love has really changed. If anything, the risk is greater… but perhaps too the rewards are greater.

Yeah, live for long enough and you’ll know everything--you’ll see everything. All sorts of experiences. You’ll fight battles and win and lose and roll as many dice as you want or can. I can be a little flippant about that because I’m not entirely sober! Mostly? But also because I can’t comprehend that yet, and you can’t either.

But what you and I can comprehend, just maybe, is Love. Love is a well that never runs dry. It never fails. We do, sometimes, but it is never broken or used up. Where ponies fail, love endures like… like adamantine. No matter how smart you get, or how powerful you get, or even how old you get, if you lose track of love none of it will be worth anything.

Celestia smiled, but her heart twisted.

Luna, on the other hoof, seemed inordinately pleased. She stamped her hoof against the balcony. “Excellent! Bravo, and well said, Cadance.”

Cadance flushed and bowed. “I know it wasn’t quite as grand as yours, aunts.”

Luna shook her head. “Nonsense, ‘twas what it needed to be.”

They traded banter back and forth. Celestia was quiet, smiling faintly at Cadance before looking back over the gardens and the city beyond. Her thoughts flitted by like birds startled out of their nests. She imagined Twilight Sparkle, walking through those gardens below. She imagined herself, walking beside Twilight. Her royal regalia in the grass, her countenance bright, sharing some joke with Twilight, and delighting as her friend laughed.

Friend.

Her hazed and inebriated mind was free from the Inner Court at last. Dawn’s calculation, Noonday’s fearful anger, Dusk’s merry foolishness… they all fell away and left only Celestia, mere Celestia, simply herself. And in her fogged mind’s eye she saw not the teacher and the student but only herself and only Twilight, sharing the thousand thousand tiny moments that coalesced into eternity. What would it be like? What would those lips, moving now with wit and dripping with honey, taste like ages hence? What lights would dance in those eyes? Her lovers had been many, her friends without numbering. All of the ways that ponies could meet and look through the iron walls of the soul into another’s heart she had witnessed and experienced.

She was so tired. So very, very tired of so very many things. Only by chasing what the light showed her had she retained herself. Only by chasing with laughter and falling into love, one way or another.

Celestia bit her lip. For all that she had seen and overcome, she was not without her flaws. Somewhere, she had always known Cadance’s lesson. Her exhortations were, after all, more cleverly constructed than they appeared on the surface. She had mirrored some of Celestia’s own words over the years.

Patient. Kind. Keeping no record of wrongs and rejoicing in truth. She’d said love was all of those things, and Cadance had learned. It was a strange and altogether new experience to be taught the thing you yourself had taught.

And the princess that shepherded the sun took a shuddering, rattling breath. Had not love pushed her towards all of the things she had boasted of, love that never ended, for the world and those who lived in it? And now, when she felt the stirring of the world-love focus itself again in the person of a single pony, she had… what? Refused it? No, she had just sidestepped it. Averted her eyes and walked quickly by with a meandering whistled tune.

If she were honest with herself, Celestia felt a bit like a hypocrite. Just a bit. She’d been called out in love, yes, but it did not ease the sting. Her sister had prodded her, bothered her, cajoled her… but it was young Cadance who had called her to task.

She was being a coward.

Celestia sniffed, and saw still Twilight and herself in the gardens, lying in the soft grass. She felt somepony touch her, and startled. Luna was beside her, and Cadance came to block her vision.

“Au… Celestia?”

Cadance’s voice was uncertain, clouded by drink but still possessed of all of that mare’s natural kindness. Celestia wondered what was wrong with her eyes, that Cadance seemed to swim before her.

Luna’s embrace was fierce, as if she might banish her sister’s worries by force. “Tia, what is wrong? You… you left us for a moment.”

Celestia opened her mouth to speak, and found that she could not. How curious. What was happening to her?

“I’m so sorry… I went too far, didn’t I?” Cadance was fretting. Why? Her words had been lovely and true. “I shouldn’t push you too hard, I know… I know you have a lot on your mind… I didn’t think you would react this way.”

“Tia,” her sister said, picking up where the young alicorn fell to silence and worry, “what has happened? I do not remember you to be given to despondency when we shared wine together.”

Oh. She was crying. Celestia coughed, hiccuped, and then felt incredibly stupid. “I’m sorry, I… I get that way when I drink alone, actually,” she said, swerving to avoid the obvious as always. “I just… I got a bit too emotional, there.”

“Celestia… We really should talk about Twilight. And you.” Cadance sat in front of her unhappily, hesitating a moment before leaning into nuzzle her aunt. “You’ve been agonizing over this for weeks. Aunt Luna’s pestered you, and I’ve tried to give you advice…”

“We just wish you to be happy,” Luna said.

Celestia nodded. She felt weak. “I know. I know. I just… I’m sorry. It just hit me all of a sudden, I was thinking about how she will be here tomorrow and I’ll have to… to make sure, and then I don’t know what to do.”

“But you will,” Cadance said firmly. “I know you will, auntie. If not right now, then soon. You have…” Time went unspoken. “You’ll have her here to talk to. You always told me you believed in the power of--”

“Conversation,” choked Celestia.

“How boring of you,” Luna said in her ear, and Celestia tried to laugh but mostly coughed.

“I think I’ve loved her all along,” Celestia said. “I keep trying to find some way around it. I’ve been so detached and philosophical about the whole thing. I just… talked and talked and talked. I made it something to debate over in my Inner Court, for heaven’s sake, as if it weren’t a question of love or even about a real pony but just…”

Luna nuzzled her. “Come to my court, tonight. Will you, Tia? Do say yes. I would not hand you over to that vile panel.”

“I’ve been gone too long,” Celestia whined.

“You can afford another night,” Luan said firmly. “I would know.”

Twilight Sparkle, Princess newly-minted, could not sleep.

Her letter to Celestia had been so cheerful, and the response had been… well, no, to call it flat was so unfair. It had seemed a little rushed, and Twilight wondered briefly if she could prolong her stay a day or so and perhaps assist her former mentor with some of the burden of rule. True, she didn’t have anywhere near the authority to do much of anything Celestia did. But she could definitely do paperwork, and she could at least be moral support.

Yawning, she sat up in bed. Maybe somewhere along the way, she had learned how to fret and worry and overload on work from Celestia. Probably. It was pretty efficient in the short run, at least. Until she ran out of coffee and woke up after passing out on the stairs after a seventy-eight hour straight work period.

Spike was still sore about it.

All in all, she was happy and excited about her trip in the morning. It had been months since she had been able to go back to Canterlot. Two months. Well, forty-nine days. But it had been even longer since she stayed more than a single night.

She was happy. She just… was something else, too.

It felt like she saw less and less of Celestia these days. Since her coronation… no, it made sense. Twilight was a rational pony. She wasn’t coldly logical at every single point, no, but she did take solace in a bit of detachment. Celestia was running a country with a burgeoning economy and a changing culture. She had a lot on her plate. Those times when their paths had crossed, Twilight and her teacher had shared again the old warmth freely. Over and over, it had been a kind of miracle that no amount of separation had made frail that connection.

But the letters had slowed down. Partially, this was Twilight’s fault and she knew that on a purely intellectual level. But at the same time, the slowing of word had wounded her. She missed the warm feeling that made every letter from Celestia so utterly unique.

The last letter she’d received before this week, before the quick answer to her inquiries, had been two weeks before. Celestia had written her, offering thanks for helping look over a long proposal by some of the assembly ponies. She’d wanted another pair of eyes, and Twilight had felt so honored.

And there had been, of course, the second page. That most holy, wonderful second page. There was always that second missive, for a year now, where Celestia would write anew and simply be Mere Celestia, the regalia and the titles burned away like dross so that only the value shone beneath. Tales of minutia, of palace maids and her sister enjoying the jokester’s gambit. She had read that letter twenty-six times. The second missive before it had been a little shorter, and she’d read that one forty-six times.

There were so few of them. Far too few.

More and more Twilight began to wonder if she was in over her head. She thought this as she rose and left her room behind for the darkened halls of her high castle.

Tomorrow, she would be the subject of her teacher’s thaumic and scientific inquiry, and as much as she was painfully aware of the various ways that could be taken, she was excited. Paperwork and correspondence were one thing, but this was really and truly a chance to work side by side.

When she’d been younger, Twilight had spent a lot of time side by side with Celestia. When she had been working to master fine, precise telekinetics, Celestia had sat down beside her and leaned in. As the young Twilight had worked, Celestia’s smooth, warm voice had guided her. Encouraged her. When at last she had completed the exercise flawlessly, it had felt as if they had been victorious together.

She was older. Advanced alchemy, her worst subject and yet still she prospered. Celestia was on the other side of the workbench, not merely watching but contributing. Their voices were tight, muffled by masks, taking on the cadences of mares in the forges of their craft. There had been no conversation, no sharing of self, and yet in those moments as together they feverishly worked at the Four Transformations of Magnum Opus, guiding the solution through the four stages of his greatest and final work.

Twilight missed being a student, but she could take some solace in that the true mage, the true scientist, was a student forever and always of the world. What she really missed was Celestia.

Her hoofsteps echoed softly in the long, darkened corridors. Hallways were made for talking, she decided in that moment. Without words they were just far too empty. Not for the first time, she thought about hiring a real staff just to know there were living, thinking beings in the building beside herself and Glimmer and Spike. A high castle is a lonely one, that was Twilight’s verdict.

She could easily delay her return a few days. Celestia was certainly busy, but she always stopped her working by sundown this time of year, when spring was giving way to summer. Twilight would worm her way into whatever niche she could, help her friend, and then by that labor they would earn their evenings together.

The thought made her smile. She wondered if Celestia would be interested in walking in the gardens.

Author's Notes:

Wait long enough, live long enough
you'll be an imposter, a hypocrite
soon enough, you don't need a lifetime to be
vile, and you need only a few moments to be
the truest thing--a liar who lied
to themselves