Celestia stood in front of the Golden Oaks library.  She took a deep breath, let it out, and rapped gently on the door with one hoof.

There was a muffled sound of someone trotting for the door.  “Coming,” the Princess heard Spike say.  The latch clicked and the door opened – the lower half, anyway.  “Darn Dutch door,” Spike grumbled.  “Hold on a minute...”  The door shut, there were some fiddly-with-the-latches sounds, and the door reopened, properly this time.  “Sorry, if you’re here for the library we’re closed toda –”

Then Spike looked up, and saw who it was.

There was a pregnant pause.  After all, one didn’t see a princess on one’s front doorstep every day.  At least not one wearing a bowler derby, a business jacket and tie, and a handlebar mustache.  “Going incognito, I’m guessing,” he said in a monotone.  “Hello, Your Highness.  I guess you’re here to talk to Twilight.”

Celestia nodded and sighed.  “May I come in, Spike?” she asked.

The dragon whelp raised his eyebrows at how... subdued the Princess sounded.  She wasn’t just being polite; she was humbly asking permission.  He had no doubt that if he said “no”, and closed the door, she would simply turn around and walk away.  “O-okay,” he said, stepping aside.  “Twilight’s in the main reading room, if you wanna talk to her.  But I gotta tell you, I don’t know how she’s gonna react.  May I take your mus – I mean your hat and jacket?”

“No need,” Celestia said.  Magic sparked in her horn, and her outfit disappeared.  Three leaves, still glittering from transformation magic, fluttered to the floor.  Another spark, and her mustache disappeared in a puff of sparkles.

“Sweet trick,” Spike said.  He gathered up the leaves.  “I’ll, uh, put these someplace.”  He waddled off, leaving Celestia to gather her nerve.

The Princess shook herself, took a cleansing breath, and stepped through the doorway.  There was Twilight, sitting at an oak table, surrounded on all sides by books and papers.  She was perusing yet another volume and was carefully taking notes on an oversized scroll next to her, the quill sparkling purple as it danced over the paper.  Celestia didn’t know why she was surprised; this was Twilight, right to the core.  She would hear the end of the world was coming and would probably bury her nose in a book.

Come to think of it, the last three or four times the world nearly ended, that’s pretty much what she did...

Even somepony as bookish as Twilight couldn’t help notice an alicorn stepping into the room.  She looked up in surprise, her pen halting in mid word.  “Princess!” she said, starting to step forward.  Then she halted, remembering herself.  Her quill darted up and planted itself in the inkwell.  “...Your Highness.  What can I do for you?” she said, bowing formally.

So very formally.

Celestia felt a twinge of... she didn’t know what.  Anger?  Sorrow?  “I see you are continuing your studies,” she said, trying to distract herself from her feelings, addressing the book-laden table.

“Kind of,” Twilight said vaguely.  Celestia took a second look at the stacked books, reading some of the titles.  Continuing Your Post-University Education.  Internships for Dummies.  Correspondence Colleges for Unicorns.  College or Career: Choosing the Right Path for You.  Jobs for the Academic.

Twilight stepped over to the table.  “I’ve been trying to decide which direction to take, now that – now that I’m no longer your student,” she finished.  She flushed a little and looked away, hefting several of the books in her magic and pretending to peruse them.  “I’ve made arrangements with the Mayor; I’m now officially on the town payroll as librarian, so that’s taken care of – but other than that...  well, there are so many choices.  Should I choose an internship?  Apply for a grant for independent study?  Maybe take a teaching job at the School for Gifted Unicorns?  Work as a lab assistant for a Professor?  So many choices...”  She actually started to sound enthusiastic.  “And in what area?  Astronomy, Thaumaturgical Archaeology, Library Sciences, applied magical engineering, one of the ‘pure’ magic research fields – evocation, conjuration, transmutation...  I hear there’s always openings in the High Energy Magical Research Facility.  It seems their lab workers keep turning into stoats...”{1}

Celestia raised a hoof, interrupting Twilight’s rambling.  “Twilight,” she said earnestly.  “Please...”

A gamut of expressions flitted across Twilight’s face, before finally settling.  She looked around.  “I suppose you want to talk, then,” she said.  “I’d offer you a cushion, but...  I don’t think we have any in your size here.”  She laughed awkwardly.  “Really should do something about that.  You never know when an alicorn might be stopping by the library, ha ha...”

If you only knew, Celestia thought to herself.  She floated two or three of the smaller cushions over and lay down on them, pulling a fourth along for Twilight.  “Please sit, Twilight.”  Reluctantly, her former pupil did so.  There was a long, awkward silence as the two sat, neither willing to look the other in the eye.

“I... suppose neither of us knows where to begin,” Celestia finally said.  “So let us begin at the beginning.  Twilight...”  The Princess’ eyes were unspeakably sad.  “When did you start to lose faith in me?”

Twilight looked up at her, surprised.  Then, not so surprised.  “I guess that’s as good a way of saying it as any,” she said.  “When?  I’d say shortly after I moved to Ponyville.”

Celestia blinked in dismay.  “That long?”

“Oh, I bottled it up,” Twilight said, meeting Celestia’s eye.  “But that was when it started.  My little eruption at the palace was just the finish.”

“Why?” Celestia pressed.

Twilight’s brow furrowed, but her gaze never left Celestia’s  “For several reasons,” she said.  “It wasn’t long after Princess Luna’s return that I started thinking about how it all happened.  I mean, really thinking.”  Her pensive look slowly turned into a scowl.  “It didn’t take me long to figure out I’d been used.”

“Used?”

“Used,” Twilight said with finality.  “Come on, Princess.  ‘You really need to get your nose out of those dusty old books, Twilight?’  ‘I never said you were wrong, Twilight?’”  Agitated, Twilight got to her feet and began pacing.  “Funny how that book on the Elements of Harmony just happened to be part of my assigned studies.  And what a coincidence that the Summer Sun Celebration was in the town closest to where the Elements of Harmony were hidden.  And how fortuitous it was that I was picked to oversee the preparations.  Oh no, wait – that was all you.”  Her tail twitched as she paced back and forth, glaring a hole in the floor.  “You had it all planned out with a capital ‘P’.  Well, except for the part where I had to go into a magically cursed forest and face a mad moon goddess...”

She wheeled about, facing Celestia again.  “Why couldn’t you just tell me?  Did you think I wouldn’t do my best to help?  Did you think that I’d run away if I knew what I was getting into?

“Me lose faith in you?  When did you lose faith in me?”

She took up pacing again.  “But there was no time to think about that when we were going to face Nightmare Moon.  And afterward...”  She stopped pacing.  “And afterward, I couldn’t.  Because every time I thought about it, other questions kept bubbling up to the surface too.  How long had you planned this?  How much did you interfere with my life, with my friends’ lives, to make sure it happened?  How much of my life – of our lives – was just you pulling puppet strings to get what you wanted?

“But I packed that away...  and kept packing it away, again and again.  Every time some ‘crisis’ came up and you gave it to me, instead of to your generals or your archmages, or your thousands of other ponies who were supposed to be handling that sort of thing.”  She stopped in her hooftracks, head hanging down.  “I guess I bottled it all up because...  because I was grateful for that.  Grateful that once you got Luna back, you didn’t just wad me up and throw me over your shoulder.  At least it meant you still had some use for me.”

Celestia closed her eyes in pain at the words.  It was spelled out as plain as if Twilight had written the words in the sky:  You used me.  And if someone knows they’ve been used, then they know that someday they’ll be thrown away.  How had she misstepped so badly?

By keeping ponies at a distance.  All her efforts to ‘give ponies their autonomy’, all the excuses about ‘being discreet’ and ‘subtly steering them’...  that was all she was doing.  Keeping ponies at a distance, so she, Celestia, couldn’t be hurt.  So long as they were just part of a plan, then they couldn’t hurt her.  Well, look how well that worked out for you, foal.  One pony smart enough to see through her deceptions, and now here they both were – hurt all the same.

“Twilight,” Celestia said, forcing herself to open her eyes and look at her student.  Twilight had sat down on the floor, her back to her, head down, tail tucked around her legs.  She turned her head and looked back at Celestia over her shoulder, her eyes filled with pain.  The way she always had back when she was a filly, when she was sad or her feelings had been hurt.  Oh, the memories.  “Twilight,” Celestia said, “I can’t excuse what I did, but at least I can explain.

“Yes, I did plan out... much of what happened to you and your friends.”  Twilight’s ears pricked at the ‘much.’  “But believe me, I did not orchestrate your lives, or trick you into doing what you did.

“Twilight, I have lived for thousands of years. I lay out plans on the order of centuries because I have to.  But I am far less in control of things – especially of individual pony lives – than you or anypony else believes.  And well and good that I am not.  It’s one of the few lessons I learned from Discord, back when we were young and he was still sane; that to try to control too closely, to plan too much, is to invite fickle fate to topple all your plans.  The greatest and most carefully-arranged plans can be knocked askew by the tiniest things – by the flap of a butterfly’s wings, or a chance roll of the dice, or by ponies simply being ponies.  I could tell you stories from my early years.  Like the one time that a plan three hundred years in the making went completely awry thanks to a tenpenny nail, five scrolls and a misplaced banana...

“But I’m getting off the subject.  Yes, I planned ahead for my sister’s return.  But you would be surprised at how vague that plan was.  I knew my sister would return in a thousand years, when the stars aligned; I also knew that the Elements of Harmony would – not could, would – stop her.  But I also knew that I could no longer bear them, because I had turned them, forced them, to act against my sister.  Both Luna’s fall and my using them to banish her, you see, had thrown them out of balance, and it was in their nature to seek balance.  Like marbles rolling towards the center of a bowl.

“I also knew that they would seek out new ponies to bear them... and that their Bearers would seek them out in return.”  Celestia shrugged.  “That is how they work.  You see, the Elements and the Bearers are two parts of a whole.  And the Bearers are, in their own way, often as extraordinary as the Elements themselves.  When it is time for them to select a new Bearer, they... radiate... their natures outward.  Pulling the chosen Bearers towards them, motivating them over their lives to turn and move in their direction, like a magnet pulling a compass needle.  And bringing out the Bearer’s unique gifts, the closer they come to their destinies.

“When Luna and I were selected, we were nothing extraordinary.  Well, save that we were the first ponies ever born with earth-pony parentage, unicorn horns, and pegasus wings.”  She smiled and fluttered her pinions briefly.  “Most chalked it up to a quirk of heritage and left it at that.  It was only as we grew older, and came closer to our destiny to find the Elements, that our extraordinary gifts in unicorn, earth-pony and pegasus magic began to surface.  And when we did find them... well!”  She smiled.  “Would it surprise you to know that it was decades after we defeated Discord before we were raising the Sun and Moon on our own?”

Twilight forgot herself in her curiosity.  “Really?”

Celestia nodded.  “Oh, we were crowned as royalty shortly after Discord’s fall.  But the Unicorn Archmages were still leading the unicorns in raising the Sun and Moon for a long time afterward.  Then we started noticing we needed fewer and fewer unicorns to help... until one day, my sister and I did the job alone.  My, wasn’t that a tumultuous day,” she said, smiling to herself.

“But like I was saying.  I knew that the Elements, once they had restored their inner balance, would draw the Bearers to them, and give them the power to defeat Nightmare Moon.  I did not know who, or what sort of ponies they would be, or when.  So I took the Elements, placed them in our abandoned castle, deliberately let the Everfree grow wild and engulf the castle to protect them from being scattered... and waited for the signs.”

“Signs?” Twilight asked.

Celestia chuckled.  “Like, for instance, a school-age filly with a magical surge powerful enough to take the roof off my school?”  Twilight blushed.  “Or a pegasus filly still in flight camp performing a sonic rainboom?  Or another who had the power to talk to any animal she met, when mere moments before she’d never seen a wild animal before in her life?  Then there’s your friend Rarity; as I understand it, she found a king’s ransom in gems from miles away.  And earth ponies are slower and more subtle to show their aptitudes, but haven’t you ever wondered at Applejack being able to run that enormous apple farm virtually single-hoofed?  And, well, Pinkie Pie...”

“– is Pinkie Pie,” Twilight finished with rueful amusement.

“Though granted, I didn’t know of the others at the time.  Which is probably for the best; mentoring the most likely candidate for the Element of Magic was enough of a hoof-full on its own.”  Celestia shook her head ruefully.  “Can you imagine me taking all six of you under my wing at the same time?”

“That was your plan?” Twilight said.  “To... to find all six of us and mentor us?”

“Exactly.” Celestia nodded.  “But I only ever found out about you.  Even though I saw the sonic rainboom, I thought it was a side effect of your magical surge.  And the others, well, my eyes and ears are not as far-reaching as all that.”  Celestia closed her eyes and shook her head.  “You have no idea how much of my plans to save us all from Nightmare Moon hinged on hope.  I had hoped to find the Bearers before the thousand years was up.  I had hoped to train and prepare them.

“When Applejack’s ancestors came to me looking for a claim to stake, I leapt at the opportunity to give them that plot of land.  I knew that the Bearers would eventually gravitate towards the Elements; I had hoped that starting a settlement close by the Everfree would give them a place to gravitate to, as they manifested.  And I hoped that mentoring you was the likeliest guarantee that I would find the others, too; you see, just as the Bearers gravitate towards the Elements, so they inevitably gravitate towards one another...”

“The connection of Friendship,” Twilight murmured.  “The bond friends share, even before they know each other.”

“Exactly.  But the dwindling years went by, and nothing really of note had happened in Ponyville.  And while I was still convinced that you were, at least, the inevitable Bearer of the Element of Magic, you had yet to make any friends – and seemed dead set against it.”  Celestia cocked an eyebrow at her.  “Perhaps I should have told you about the Elements, about being a Bearer – but I was afraid that if I told you, then it might... jinx it.  Send you haring off, trying to force the Elements and the Bearers to reveal themselves.  Trying to force friendships, rather than letting them guide you.

“When I sent you to Ponyville on that last day, I wasn’t executing some grand master plan.  I was taking a contingency.

“I knew my sister was returning, and empowered after ten centuries of imprisonment in her own Moon, she would easily defeat and imprison me.  I sent you to Ponyville thinking – hoping – that after Nightmare Moon ascended to the throne, you would take shelter there, in an obscure little town away from the Palace and its new Queen.  That eventually the other Bearers would join you there, and that some time in the future you would find the Elements and defeat Nightmare Moon.  I even had a scroll sent on a magical delay, telling you to hide in Ponyville, set to arrive in your hooves if the sun had not risen the next day.

“Imagine my astonishment when it did.

“I expected to be imprisoned in the Sun for years, decades.  I expected to return to an Equestria waking from a long, terrible nightmare under a ruler possessed by evil, and a long, hard road of rebuilding a nation half-destroyed, or worse.  But to be rescued, to have my sister not merely defeated but restored to her true self and her right mind – and all within the length of a single day...!” Celestia shook her head.

Twilight listened to everything Celestia said, fascinated.  “Why...?”  She couldn’t think of anything else to add to that one word.

“Don’t you see, Twilight?” Celestia said, thumping her hoof in one of the cushions and rolling her eyes heavenward.  “I was never in control of anypony’s fate, Twilight.  I never had any grand master plan, and I still don’t.  In the end, I’m playing it by ear, just like every other pony.  Hoping and praying and guessing and... and improvising.

“You and your friends were more extraordinary than I had expected; more than I was prepared to deal with.  So I made a choice that turned all my necessary little sins in the past into a single, terrible mistake.  I chose to keep on keeping the truth from you.  I kept it all close to the vest, I continued on the way I had – to tell you little to nothing, to throw harder and harder tests at you, while I tried to figure out what to make of you.  And in the course of things, I forgot you weren’t just a subject for me to test... you were my faithful student.  I understand that now.  I had plans for you.  I should have known all along that I could have my precious plans, or I could have you.  But not both.

“I deceived you.  I pushed you too hard, and left you in the dark about what I was doing.  I was wrong.  I am sorry.”  Her voice cracked.

Twilight was stunned.  Even the one time she’d seen Celestia cry, when she had been reunited with Luna, the Princess of the Sun had been dignified and in control.  This time, she wasn’t.  Her voice broke, her tears streaked.  For the first time Twilight Sparkle was seeing her former mentor – the great, wise, and foresighted leader of Equestria – as she was:  just another pony, completely lost at sea, unprepared for the future, but making the best plans she could... and realizing too late that she’d made some terrible mistakes.

She wanted more than anything to rush to Celestia’s side, bury her face in her rainbow mane, and beg to be reconciled with her.  But some tiny, selfish corner of her heart held out, demanded that she ask one last question.  She magically whisked a box of tissues over to the Co-regent of Equestria, who plucked a good half-dozen of them from the box and mopped her face with them.  “But that doesn’t explain – why did you keep giving us... giving us such dangerous assignments?  The dragon, Discord, the Crystal Empire...?  Why did you pin so much on us?”

Celestia sniffled through her wad of tissues and laughed.  “Because, my dear Twilight,” she said, “you had gotten into something of a habit of exceeding my expectations.”

Then Twilight did run across the room and bury her face in Celestia’s mane.

Several moments of crying and heartfelt, half-stammered pleas for forgiveness passed.  There was a muffled thump at the door, startling them both. Twilight heard a loud, familiar-sounding snuffle on the other side.  “Spike?”

The door swung open, revealing a small purple dragonling blubbering into a handkerchief.  “Spike? What are you crying about?” Twilight said.

Spike looked at her.  “I don’t knooowwwwww!” he bawled.  He blew his nose with an enormous honk.  Twilight and Celestia could only laugh.  Magic enveloped the dragonling and carried him across the room to them, where they enveloped him in a hug.

—— —— — —— — —— ——

Some time later, after they’d laughed and cried themselves out a little and things were calm, Spike raised the question.  “So, are you her student again, now?”

Twilight bit her lip and shared a look with Celestia, then sighed.  “No, Spike,” Twilight said.  “I’m still through with my studies with the Princess.”  At Spike’s disbelieving expression, Twilight laughed.  “Spike, I was ready to graduate years ago.  All my classmates from the School for Gifted Unicorns got their degrees...  I’ve got half a dozen theses already set aside.  Did you think I was going to spend the rest of my life as a student?”

“Kinda,” Spike admitted.

“I have to concur,” Celestia said.  “Things between us are mended, but they’ve still changed.  It... could never go back to how it was.  And knowing what she does now about how the Elements work – I think she’s grown past the phase where I can test or teach her without tipping my hoof.”

“So no more lobbing Fabergé eggs for her to catch?” Spike said dryly.

Celestia grinned and, to Spike and Twilight’s surprise, turned red.  “You never forgot or forgave that, did you, Spike?” she said.  She rubbed her upper lip with her hoof.  “Would you believe I thought it was a leftover Hearthwarming-tree decoration?”

Spike’s eyes went round.  “No way.”

Celestia chuckled in chagrin, facehooving.  “I saw it sitting there and thought, ‘Oh, one of the servants must have missed it.  Light, fragile and cheap – perfect!’  And so...” she shrugged.

Twilight’s hooves were pressed to her mouth in horrified glee.  “Oh my gosh.  When did you realize...?”

“About a split second after you caught it... and a split second before you shrieked out what it was.  I don’t know how I kept my composure.  I had about four different kinds of heart attack after you left the room...”

Spike rolled on the floor, laughing uproariously.  Twilight waited until his hoots died down.  “Well, in the current mood of enlightening revelations and openness,” she said, only a little sarcastically.  “Princess...  I do have one very important question.”

“Of course,” Celestia said.

“...What were you planning for me?”

Celestia blinked.  “How do you mean?”

Twilight scowled.  “Princess...”

“I know, I know, Twilight,” Celestia said hastily.  “But... well, that’s rather complicated.  What exactly have you been hearing?”

“All sorts of rumors, most of my life,” Twilight said in annoyance.  “That you were grooming me to be the new Chancellor, or to be the next Archmage, or the Headmistress of the Unicorn Academy, or even to be royalty...”

“I’d heard that you were going to make her into an alicorn,” Spike volunteered.  “And crown her as the new Princess of Equestria.”

“What?  Hah HAH!” Celestia whooped.  “Oh, I’m sorry, Twilight, I didn’t mean to make it sound like... but seriously.  No.”  She shook her head vehemently.  “I’d never do that to you.”

“The alicorn thingy or the princess thingy?” Twilight asked suspiciously.

“Well, I have no clue how to turn a unicorn into an alicorn,” Celestia clarified.  “And foisting a country off on you to rule?  Oh, I’d never be that cruel.  You’re a scholar and a learner, Twilight, and quite the troubleshooter.  But you’re not a politician or a ruler.  You’d be taken away from your studies and your books, forever busy trying to run a government.  You’d be absolutely miserable.”

“Are you sure?” Spike said.

“Spike...”

“Yes, quite sure,” Celestia told him.  “You know how Twilight gets when simple plans get derailed?”

“Do I ever,” Spike said.

“Well, running a government is like being in the middle of a thousand carefully arranged plans – all of them on the verge of coming apart at the seams, every single minute of the day.”

“...yikes.”

“So, no, I never was going to lob the crown at her.”  Celestia dimpled.  “The Fabergé egg was more than enough.”

“So no new alicorn princess, huh?” Spike said.  He snapped his fingers.  “Darn, I lost money.”

“Spike...!” Twilight said angrily.

Celestia laughed.  “Twilight, I’ll tell you this straight.  I’ve prepared for a lot of possibilities.  But I’ve never set a course.  What you become is your own choice, and always has been.”

Twilight smiled happily.  “Thank you, Princess.”

Celestia sobered.  “Though... as for that... you becoming an alicorn, or a Princess... perhaps I – perhaps we should make arrangements.  Just in case.”  At Twilight’s befuddled look, she said “Honestly, Twilight, haven’t you been listening?  I don’t have a single master plan.  I have preparations.  I keep my options open, but I make ready for all the options I foresee.  And as to you becoming a Princess, or becoming an alicorn, either one is a possibility.

“Those selected by the Elements have always been extraordinary ponies, and they only become more extraordinary as time goes by.  You are already quite possibly the most powerful unicorn of this generation, and it looks like your power will only continue to grow.  And power gravitates to power.  It may be that someday, with the passage of time, through no fault of your own, you will find yourself seated on a throne simply because ponies will keep turning to you for answers to their problems, until finally...”  She shrugged her wings.

“And as to becoming an alicorn... please try to understand.  Luna and I were merely two fillies with what seemed an odd quirk of form when we were born.  Whether we became what we are because of the Elements selecting us, or the Elements selected us because of what we were going to become – I could not say.  But... you and your friends could very well be destined to become alicorns as well.  Or perhaps even something which the world has not even heard of yet.”

“That’s... a lot to take in at once,” Twilight said weakly.

Celestia smiled.  “I think either way, those are concerns for a long ways in the future,” she said.  She nuzzled Twilight.  “But for now, I think we should speak to – ”

There was a knock at the front door of the library.  “I’ll get it,” Spike said, hopping to his feet.  He was back in a few moments, the rest of the Bearers trailing hesitantly behind him.

“Ah, just the ponies we were wanting to see,” Celestia said.

“Come sit with us,” Twilight urged.

The others ambled into the room.  “So... does this mean you two all patched things up?” Applejack asked carefully.

Twilight nodded.  “Yes, we’ve worked things out.  Well,” she said, giving Celestia a glance, “we’re taking things one day at a time.  But yes.”

“So are you her student again?” Rainbow Dash asked, hovering overhead.

“No.  I’m still going to be... taking a different direction,” Twilight said.

“Aww, man,” Dash groused.  “I lost money.”

“Dash...!”

“Pay up, dear,” Rarity said, holding out her hoof.  Grumbling, Dash landed and dropped several bits into Rarity’s outstretched hoof, while Twilight gaped at them.  “Come on, you lot, let’s be up front...” Rarity said.  There was some grumbling and smirks among the others as bits exchanged hooves and, in one case, dragon claws.  It seemed to be an even divide between the winners and losers.

“Aww, poopers.  That was my bubblegum money for this week...”

“I’m sorry, Pinkie, but Angel Bunny was certain she’d never go back...”

“Ahyep, a bet’s a bet.  Shoulda seen that one a-comin’...”

“Argh!  You guys bet on whether I’d – augh!” Twilight shouted in exasperation.  “Oh forget it!”  After she composed herself (and Celestia stopped tittering) she addressed her friends.  “The Princess and I have been talking for a while, and there are a few things that I’ve learned...”

“Oooh!” Pinkie Pie hopped about.  “Did she finally tell you her super-duper ultra-special secret plans for you and how she was gonna turn you into a hippocampus princess and make you Queen of the Sea Ponies?”

Twilight (and for that matter Celestia) stared.  “What?  Pinkie Pie – no, she’s not making me a princess or turning me into a – into anything.  In fact she’s pretty much told me that my future is my own decision.”

Groans went up all around.  “Okay, Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash said, “what was the spread on that?”

From seemingly nowhere Pinkie Pie pulled out a blackboard with a complicated betting table on it.  “Okay, Rarity had fifty down for her becoming a princess; Applejack had twenty – and a jug of Sweet Apple Acres cider – on her becoming the royal librarian; I bet a tray of cupcakes on the Sea Pony thing – what a bust! – and Fluttershy had fifteen on her being made ‘Alicorn of Nature’ –”

“You would have made a very nice Alicorn of Nature, Twilight,” Fluttershy said consolingly.

“– and Rainbow Dash had money on ‘princess’, ‘alicorn’, and ‘something awesome, like stars or something’... we got bets from Lyra, Bon Bon, Mr. and Mrs. Cake, Time Turner, all wagering some combination of ‘alicorn’, ‘princess’, ‘archchancellor’, ‘archmage’...  That one weird creepy pony who smells like Cheetos who said ‘royal consort.’  Ewww...  Hmm, looks like Big Macintosh and Applebloom are splitting the pot.  She said ‘herself’, and Big Macintosh said ‘Nuthin.’”

“Wait, he said ‘Nuthin,’ or he said nuthin’?” Applejack said.

“Actually, he said ‘Eenope.’  It’s the same difference with him.”

Twilight’s eye twitched.  She waved a hoof in melodramatic defeat.  “Princess Celestia, allow me to introduce my friends.”  She faceplanted in a cushion.

It took a minute for the laughter to subside.  When it did, Twilight sat back up and looked at her friends.  “As I was saying,” she said.  “Princess Celestia has been telling me some things I hadn’t known before.  About the Elements, and about us, as the Bearers.  And I think if I was overdue to hear them, then so were you all.”

She told them about the Elements, and their role in the founding of Ponyville, and in each of their lives, and of all the possibilities yet to come.  And her friends’ eyes grew wide as they listened...

{1} They get better.