Dear Celestia,

I thought about you a lot today. It has been a long time since this was your throne room, but sometimes it's still hard to believe you're not here. Even after all these years, a small, nagging part of me is still in denial. Like this is all just some absurd dream that I am going to wake up from. I'll wake up and everything will be how it used to be. You'd still be here, in Canterlot, and I'd still be in Ponyville, with my old friends. I'd still not have wings and everything would just be how it used to be. I have a confession to make. Every night when I go to bed, I pray that when I wake up it will be in my old bed in the Ponyville Library.

Every morning, when I wake up in my giant bed in Canterlot Castle, I just feel so angry. I never asked for any of this. I never asked for this responsibility, for this power. I was just a filly when I grew these wings. A filly with a crown and a title. I miss the way things used to be. I miss my old home. I miss my friends. And now sometimes when I think about it I get so upset I see red. I get so mad when I think about how this was your plan for me, to damn me to this life, and then leave me. I wish I knew that was what you were giving me along with your crown.

I would give it all up, all of it, for just one more day of my life before I became an alicorn. To have my friends back, my home back, and to have you back here. Even if it meant being mortal again. I would give it all up. In a heartbeat. I grieve so much these days. I grieve for the loss of my parents and my brother. I grieve for the loss of my friends. I grieve for the loss of my old life, as gone as surely as everypony I ever knew from then. With the exception of the last of us, alicorns. And dragons.

Spike has taken it better than I have over the years. Perhaps that is part of dragon nature. The cold distance they used to keep, the hostile indifference. It was a defense, I think, against the tides of time. To care only for themselves and not form long term attachments. Because in the end, time claims them all. Perhaps it was better to have never loved at all than to have loved and lost. Even Spike had accepted it when his lifetime crush left. I thought he would have been devastated. But it turned out he was the one comforting me when it happened. He was always stronger than anypony ever gave him credit for. He is a good friend. At least that has never changed.

I still miss them all so much. I miss the way things used to be. I miss my old life. And I miss you. The one other constant. I tried talking to your sister and Cadance, but it's not the same. I love Cadance as my sister-in-law. But it broke my heart when she remarried. Flurry doesn't like to talk about it either. But I know she'll never call him 'Dad'. She mourned just as I did, but I don't think she has the same feeling of regret that I do. An immortal royal life is all she has ever known. She had accepted very early on that her acquaintances would all be passing. She isn't haunted by the nostalgia of an old life like I am. This pervasive sadness that clings to me all day and night like a cold morning dew. This weight of regret.

I love you, Celestia.

Of everything, my biggest regret was not telling you sooner. I regret not coming to accept this feeling sooner. I mourn for the time we lost. Time always seemed like something that you and I had in abundance. But with each friend and family member that I lost, all I could feel was the regret of the things I never got to do with them, things I would never get to do with them again. And worst of all, the things left unsaid.

It has been a long time since that kiss you gave me. A long time since I turned away from your offer to be your lover. It was fear that gripped me. I was afraid that I held you in too lofty of a position to be able to be your partner. But now I can only regret having waited so long to tell you. But no longer. I'm not afraid anymore.

I love you.

That is what this letter is. A love letter.

- Love,

- Twilight