revenance_rpg | And the sun shined down, immobile

Entry tags:

character: princess celestia

And the sun shined down, immobile

Who: Princess Celestia and OPEN
What: Celestia being fine... well, more than her sister.
Where: Ponyville, the library
When: Afternoon.
Warnings: None?

In the library, a hundred books danced and circled, each one wrapped in a warm summer glow. In the center of the circle their pattern formed, smiling wistfully, sat Princess Celestia. Even to a passerby outside, the magical manipulation shone out clearly through the windows.

Twilight Sparkle used to make the books dance like this... or at least she certainly had back in Canterlot, what seemed like a lifetime ago. She'd never seen it, but Celestia had no doubt that Twilight had set the books into motion like this, in this very room in the waking world, dozens of times.

If anypony asked, she would say this exercise had a purely practical purpose: she was searching for the Elements of Harmony. Twilight loved books, after all, and she had of course heard secondhoof of Rainbow Dash's discovered love of adventure stories. Of course, Celestia didn't truly believe that either of those could be considered where their hearts truly were, as the clue has indicated. But it didn't hurt to check.

Well. Perhaps checking hurt her heart just a little bit, even as it filled her with nostalgic memory.

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Tag was normally a...fun...game.

But when you're person was It, and hadn't necessarily play, and you stole something of hers to make her chase you?

Then, it was hilarious.

Fluffy flew low to the ground, a necklace clutched in his claws, ignoring the shouts from the person-now-pony behind him. He wanted to plaaaay. He just had to resort to drastic measures to get her to come after him. Abby followed behind, amused that Fluffy had even managed to get their person to play.

He took an upward turn to fly into one of the library windows, cackling as he went. He noticed the Princess near the books, and looped around her a few times before going to land on top of one of the bookshelves. Ziva came crashing through the door, tripping and sliding across the floor after she entered.

"Fluffy! I am going to KILL YOU!" She shouted at the bat in her field of vision...who just pointed at the Princess with a wing. Ziva looked up and over, before quickly standing back up from where she had ended up on the floor. "Uh, hi Princess Celestia."

"Good afternoon," Celestia said, inclining her head and spreading her wings a bit more as part of the gesture. "I believe your Dream Eater is unaware, or has not remembered, that I have Dream Eaters of my own and can sympathize with your position. Would you like me to hold him down?"

Celestia smiled slyly at Fluffy. Attempt to use her presence to get out of a skinning, will he?

Ziva looked up at Celestia as she spoke, before turning to level a death glare at her spirit, still sitting on one of the bookshelves. He squeaked in fear, before dropping what he was holding and zooming out the window. Ziva ran over to where the necklace dropped, picking it up as carefully as possible before handing it to Abby.

"Serves him right. Maybe he will run into a tree." She looked at Celestia again. "I am sorry for barging in. Was I interrupting you?" She glanced at the still floating books. It looked like it.

Celestia laughed quietly, watching the fleeing Spirit for a moment before turning her smile back to Ziva. "There's nothing to interrupt," she said, and the sad thing was she really meant it. "It is simple telekinesis magic, nothing more. It won't be disrupted by your presence."

"Oh." She stared up at it for a moment, still not used to magic. Especially dancing books. "Research on those things that are lost?" She realized how dumb that sounded after she said it. Celestia was the princess of this land...she would already know what they were.

"I think I know more about them than anypony in history," Celestia said with a little laugh. The books began reshelving themselves, snapping back into place with precision. "No, I was looking inside the books physically. When they were hidden by Discord during his return, they were in fact hidden inside a book in this very library. Unlikely as I thought that scenario to be at this time, it cost nothing to check."

"Hey, sometimes it pays to check a somewhat obvious place." Ziva said with a shrug...well, as much as one could do as a pony. She looked over at Abby for a moment, noticing the necklace still hanging off of one of Abby's paws.

"Princess Celestia, can I ask a small favor?" She didn't have hands to put her necklace back on... but maybe she could help with her magic.

"Certainly." She seemed to need no attention whatsoever to magic the books back into place, for Ziva had, if not quite all of hers, enough as to make no real difference. "What is it?"

"It is silly, but can you use your magic to get that necklace back around my neck? I do not want to lose it." There was too many memories and too much importance to lose it, even if part of her knew this was a dream, and her real necklace would be around her neck at home.

"Of course. And if I see your Spirit again, I'll have a word or two with him about what is proper to take."

Putting that necklace back on was easier to do than to say, thanks to unicorn magic. With an aura of warm light around it, the chain arched up to fasten behind her neck without even so much as a gentle tug on her mane. "A family heirloom, perhaps?"

"Thank you." Ziva said, bowing her head a little before looking down at the necklace now its proper place.

"Kind of..." She said. "My friends gave me this one after the other one I have was taken from me. It means a lot to me."

"Taken from you?" The princess's manner darkened slightly, in subtle ways -- a shift of the wing feathers, a slight lifting of the head. "I take it this was from before you came here?"

"Yes. To both questions." She said. Saleem had ripped it off her neck when she was captive in Somalia. She didn't mention that to Princess Celestia though. "A few years ago."

The alicorn relaxed. She was no more pleased than she had been, but at least now she knew nopony she could reach, Dream Eater or person, needed a word or two spoken in their direction. "I am glad I could help you with it, at least. Did you come by Ponyville for a purpose, or did your Spirit just run through the portal in the course of his mischief?"

"Fluffy ran through the portal and I was chasing him. But I was probably going to stop by anyway and see if I could help with trying to find what has been lost." She didn't know exactly what she was looking for, but strange jewelry couldn't be that normal, right?

"Then I'm glad to see you're taking well to... all of this," she said, with a gesture at Ziva's pony form. "I know some people are not, though overall the response to this transformation has been quite positive." And why shouldn't it be? Pony form was a very good form to have.

"You probably would have been really entertained when I first came here. I know they did." She said with a gesture towards Abby, meaning her spirits in general. "But, practice makes perfect, I guess." She laughed.

"I never would have thought I would find myself as a pony, but it is kind of fun."

"I'm glad you think so. I hope that, if and when the situation reverses, I will think the same way about a human form."

She had spent hundreds upon hundreds of years as a pony, winged and horned and quadrupedal. As much as she believed she could adapt easily, privately Celestia questioned if she would handle that change as well as many of the people here had handled their own changes.

She did hope she would have the chance to try.

"Besides, the outer shells are nothing compared to the inner similarities."

Ziva looked at Celestia for a moment, trying to picture as a human...but it wasn't working the best. (Probably regal and with awesome hair.)

"True." She said to her comment. "And if it does happen, I promise not to laugh...too much...if walking is a problem." She had ended up laughing at herself at one point, so no laughter probably wasn't an option.

"Along with various other adjustments. I notice human females have certain anatomical features not reflected on mares."

If Ziva intended to laugh, well, Celestia would just cheerfully make her that little bit awkward in preemptive revenge.

Ziva continued to snicker, not awkward at all. "True. We do get to be a bit top heavy at times. Fortunately, I am not one of those."

"Whatever shall happen, I can't predict, except to say that if such a thing does come about, the adjustment will be as interesting for me as this one has been for you."

She looked down at herself with a smile, then up at her long horn with a thoughtful expression. "Perhaps I would even still have my magic, since some humans can cast spells without a horn."

Much like Twilight, Aqua's first reaction to a problem is to go see what she can find in the local library. She knows very little about the Elements of Harmony, and besides, maybe she'll even manage to find some sort of locating spell she can make good use of. She's not expecting to find one, however. This is hardly the library that the Land of Departure had boasted and so she isn't expecting to find a whole lot of things about magic.

That said, she hadn't really been expecting to find something already going on when she got there, and given that she isn't really certain what she'll find, she's very careful about pushing the door open. She wouldn't want to disturb anything, if what's going on is the sort of thing that shouldn't be disturbed.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"Hello, Aqua. You're not interrupting anything at all. I was merely doing a more thorough search of the library."

Exactly as planned, of course. The books began reshelving themselves, a fairly complicated process given their number. "I hadn't expected to find anything, but I think nopony can argue that I could check more quickly than anypony else."

Given what little she'd seen, Aqua couldn't deny it. Nor could she say that she really wanted to, and even if she half-suspected that things weren't necessarily what they seemed, she knew little enough about the situation to ask. Nor did she really know Celestia all that well. So for the time being, it was simple enough to act as if there really was nothing out of the ordinary and so Aqua simply nodded at Celestia's comment.

"I thought I'd come see what I could find about the Elements of Harmony. There has to be something like a history here."

Impenetrable walls of unflappable calm and royal serenity did an excellent job of keeping people out of her inner thoughts, as they had done for hundreds of years.

"I could find you a book easily, but it would be incomplete. Before my student and her friends used the Elements of Harmony the first time, they had been left behind in an abandoned castle for a thousand years, and much lore on them forgotten. However, you chose a good time to come looking for a history... because I am here." Celestia smiled, folding her wings in a bit more. "What would you like to know?"

Of all the things she'd been expecting - or half-expecting - Aqua hadn't really thought she'd run into someone who actually knew most of the relevant lore on the very thing that she'd been looking to find something on. Still, even if she hadn't expected it, she wasn't about to to let the offer pass by.

"Mostly I was looking for more about what they're like. We know what they're for, but that's not really not that much."

"The Elements of Harmony are ancient magic... a deeper magic than spells and illusions. Deeper even than the Fire of Friendship, and more powerful than the full might of disharmony. That is reflected in what they are, of course -- Kindness, Generosity, Loyalty, Laughter, Honest, and Magic. Magic is the center, for the other five are what create it and empower it. To properly use them, one most embody the principle of the Element they bear."

Celestia's wings, head, and tail all lowered slightly, the only outward sign she would allow herself to show of what these thoughts had brought to mind. "One pony may use more than one Element, if they embody them. When we defeated Discord, my sister and I each used three. Later, I was able to use all six by myself, though their power was only a mere fraction of what it could have been."

The mention of the Fires of Friendship doesn't really mean much of anything to Aqua, but she can understand a magic that is deeper than spells, and older too. It's not quite the same with the Keyblade or Kingdom Hearts, but those are old enough to be legend and if the same can be said of the Elements of Harmony then their dealing with powerful forces indeed.

"Ah, that's good to know but it's probably going to be hard enough to find any one of them. We shouldn't ask people for more than that."

Celestia shook her head. "They go together. And even if they did not, I believe the note implied very strongly that we would need all six. I also believe they will not be found in any physical location, but rather, will appear when the element they represent is embodied in the hearts of people here."

"Yes, but if we can find six people isn't that better than asking some people to take more than one?"

Especially if most of the people who might end up finding them aren't from a world where such things are even really common and thus might not be terribly used to using them. But if someone happens to find multiples... well, there's nothing saying that they can't, and she isn't going to insist that things go one way or another.

"Ah, you meant asking people to find one individually, not one Element in general. I'm sorry, I misunderstood." The alicorn bowed her head slightly, with an apologetic smile. "It would indeed be best if all six Elements had a different bearer. When my sister and I used them, and when I used them alone, it was because we had no choice."

"No, it's not your fault. I should have been more clear."

It may have made sense to her, but that's no excuse for not being clear. Not when there are such important matters at hand. Especially when she has a sneaking suspicion that things aren't going to be easy.

Celestia still felt responsible for the misunderstanding, but arguing over which of them should shoulder the blame was possibly the least counterproductive thing ever.

"Now that I give it consideration, I don't believe the Elements could be distributed unevenly. One could wield six, two could wield three, three could wield two, or six could wield one each. All of them have happened but the third. But friends share friendship equally."

"It makes sense," Aqua answered with a nod. "And you're right. So really, if the Elements are aligned with friendship than it would only be right for them to work that way."

It still meant having to find a person or people to bear them, but that could be dealt with soon enough, or so Aqua was hoping, if nothing else.

"And I have no doubt they will find new bearers here. Not when friendship binds us all, and so many here embrace it so deeply." She smiled at Aqua in sad sympathy, remembering too well the woman's grief from weeks ago, when they had first spoken. Loyalty would not go amiss for Aqua. Nor would Kindness, she though.

"Mmm. I agree."

There was the matter of getting the right people to try the right things, but Aqua has faith that it'll work itself out. They just have to give it time, and perhaps a little bit of nudging if things seem to need, but that is for later. Right now she has at least a general idea of what the Elements are, and given that's more than she'd had before, it's good enough for now.

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And the sun shined down, immobile

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/discovers this tag went missing :(

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