Chapter 2: Royal Explanation

"Princess what?" Rainbow asked, giving Celestia a confused look. Twilight gasped in surprise as she ran off towards one of the bookshelves in the room labeled "Equestrian History", mumbling something about how she's heard that name before. Celestia smiled at Twilight as she frantically pulled out book after book, searching for anything that mentioned the name Princess Aurora. Rainbow watched as Twilight squealed in joy as she read through a book, finding what she was looking for.

"Did you find the book you were looking for Twilight?" Celestia asked, knowing that the answer was yes.

"Yes Princess, it says here that Princess Aurora was your daughter, but then..." Twilight trailed off, reading the rest of the page. Her smiled quickly faded as she read the rest, Celestia giving her an all knowing nod, making Rainbow start to worry.

"What happened to her?" Rainbow asked slowly, starting to walk towards Twilight so she could read out of the book herself.

"There was an accident, and she disappeared" Twilight said sadly, "They thought that she had died"

"That is correct my student, we did think she had died but there was something unique about her that nopony else had" Celestia said calmly, looking over at Rainbow's multicolored mane, "She had a beautiful mane, just like this, with all the colors of the rainbow..." A somber look came over Celestia's face as she thought about her long lost daughter.

"So, that's why I'm changing into, well, this?" Rainbow asked, waving a hoof towards her wing, the tip of which was now completely white. Celestia quickly snapped out of her depressing mood and looked at Rainbow, noticing something odd about the way her body was changing.

"Why do you still have the same basic form as everypony else?" Celestia mumbled quietly to herself as she continued to look at Rainbow's body, "You should be at least my height, and your wingspan..."

"Uh, is everything okay over there?" Twilight asked, watching the scene in front of her unfold in confusion. Celestia giggled to herself for a moment before walking over to Twilight.

"You can go for now my student, I would like to spend some time alone with Rainbow Dash" Celestia said sweetly, and Twilight happily obeyed, leaving the room with a smile on her face. Rainbow moved to sit down on a nearby chair when Celestia pulled her into a hug, a few tears rolling down her face. The sudden display of emotion caught Rainbow off guard and made her stumble backwards, the two of them falling to the ground in a heap.

"Princess, are you okay?" Rainbow asked, looking at Celestia's watery eyes as she got up.

"Yes, yes, my apologies, you must be very confused right now" Celestia said sadly, making Rainbow look at her worriedly. What has got her so upset? She rarely shows emotions like this... Rainbow thought as she moved to get up.

"So, what's going on?" Rainbow asked as she sat down, looking at Celestia as she rubbed her eyes, trying to fight back tears.

"A long time ago, I had a daughter named Aurora Borealis..."

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"Aurora please stop doing that, it's dangerous" Celestia pleaded, to no avail as her daughter continued to fly around the throne room, taking sharp turns and doing dangerous dives, all the while terrifying her mother. Eventually Celestia grew tired of it and pulled her down using magic, much to her daughter's annoyance.

"Why did you pull me down mother?" Aurora asked, eager to continue flying again.

"Because it is not safe, you could hurt yourself by doing that" Celestia said calmly, giving Aurora strange look or both anger and love. As much as Celestia hated how rowdy Aurora was, she loved how ambitious she was about reaching her goals. Despite Aurora never having much success with magic she would always pay attention when Celestia would try to teach her a new spell, the most recent of which being how to raise and lower the sun and moon together.

"Mother?" Aurora asked as Celestia let her go, making Celestia's attention return to her energetic child, "Will I get to raise the moon tonight?"

"Of course dear, now go get ready, it is almost time" Celestia said happily, smiling as she watched her daughter speed away to her room so she could prepare to raise the moon that night. As the time came a loud explosion could be heard from Aurora's bedroom, and when Celestia went to investigate she found nothing but a large ball of rainbows, sitting in the middle of a large burn mark on Aurora's balcony. After heading inside to investigate further she found a book opened to a page that explained how to create a beautiful night sky. That night, as everypony searched for Aurora, a large portion of the stars were colored like rainbows, each shining their colors across the land.

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"Many ponies, including myself, took to calling that occurrence an Aurora Borealis, named after the mysterious disappearance of the Princess" Celestia finished, taking a deep breath to calm herself down after the memories of the night she lost her daughter came rushing back to her.

"So she just vanished, poof, gone?" Rainbow asked, not entirely believing the story.

"Not entirely, until almost twenty years ago when the rainbow orb disappeared from my room, while I was looking at it" Celestia said, looking at Rainbow with a sly smile.

"So because of that, and my rainbow mane, you think that I'm daughter?" Rainbow asked, still not entirely believing what Celestia was trying to say. Celestia nodded slowly before grabbing the nearby mirror and holding in front of Rainbow, letting her see her new mane, which was strangely similar to Celestia's, along with her facial features and horn...

"As you can see, it is almost impossible to say that you aren't my daughter" Celestia said happily, smiling as Rainbow looked into the mirror again, making all sorts of weird faces to see if it wasn't just an illusion.

"But if I'm a princess..." Rainbow said sadly, thinking about everything she had hoped to have and do. Being a Wonderbolt, traveling across Equestria, having a fan club. Being with Big McIntosh...

"I know it's hard my dear, but it will all end well, I promise" Celestia said before leaving the room so that Rainbow could have time to digest all this new information. There's no way Big Mac's going to want to be with me now! Rainbow thought to herself, And there's no way I'd get to live a peaceful life if I'm a princess!

"Why did this have to happen to me?!" Rainbow cried out, putting her head in her hooves as she cried, feeling all her hopes and dreams being slowly pulled away from her as she slowly turned into Princess Aurora.