Forever Mare

Princess Celestia looked around the torch-lit throne room of the Everfree Palace, her eyes drifting past the occupied throne beside her to the guards leading the next pony into the throne room - she could already hear the rhythmic march of their hoofsteps and the sound of their armor in unison to those motions.

It was another day in the young nation of Equestria, and ponies still whispered reverently of the defeat of Discord at the hoof of the goddess sisters who ruled them with such care compared to First Equestria. The mysterious death of Princess Platinum was all the shaken then-Triarchy had known before the arrival of Discord, and the sisters' war against him.

Even under her pristine white coat, the thought of that war, of Discord made her divine heart feel as though it were being torn up a bit, each beat bringing a pulse of dark thoughts, wholly unbidden, to the edge of her mind.

Celestia did not hate much, but she hated any sense of shadows and monsters, and anything that could bash her optimism and the sense of Good and Harmony that was the foundation of this Equestria, Second Equestria, and her every philosophy.

She, the radiant and eternal mare had single-hoofedly done what no ruler had ever done - before Celestia and her shadow, the Tribes were all these ponies had ever known, save for tales of a world lost to ashes.

Celestia did not like those tales, and let them stay just that - tales - at every chance. This displeased Luna, but everything troubled the younger, honorary princess that Celestia found to be a leech in all but name. Her most common reaction to the otherwise silent, sullen creature that lurked about the castle and the wilds - seemingly not much more - and had never had anypony which she called friend or lover, was for Celestia to purse her lips into a thin line, and always did she refuse to make any sound of distaste at the different mare's presence in the polite company of her subjects.

Luna occupied a throne next to her, and that was the extent of her presence in Celestia's life, at least, between their fights. Luna was quiet. She watched the world with eyes that Celestia could never decipher. She conformed to no standard, and ponies, Celestia's beloved ponies, spoke of her as a footnote: the second princess, which she was, and Celestia's younger sister, a label that seemed to be drifting away between them farther than the distance between the sun and moon could ever be. There was also 'the dark goddess' which was such a queer and eerie title compared to Celestia's plentiful store.

Celestia was a mare of light and change. It was she that had done away with slavery, that had extended compassion to all, had given anypony regardless of class a chance to speak before her, who went on tours across her nation (her shadow following behind, of course), who made the 'castes' of the Tribal Era into a 'class' that could be changed. She funded the armies, the workers, and laborers who loved her.

Celestia was the mare who said that two stallions or two mares could wed when the Tribal 'sensibilities' would be appalled by such a 'condition' and exile such ponies. It was Celestia who spoke up for those who were abused, be they means of prejudice, magical, or whatever else under the sun could hurt her little ponies. If one were to ask why spouses were no longer thought of as chattel, why the pegasai practiced marriage instead of having broodmares or soldier-foals, and any number of questions on the traditions of this new land, the land where she had put her gilded hoof down and said that such acts were explicitly forbidden, then ponies would answer that it was because of their princess - near always singular - and that her name was Celestia.

She liked that very much. Every day when she rose to raise a sun that would not budge properly without her, donned her ever-present regalia, sang little ditties to Philomena when nopony would hear, picked her gown for the day, and applied the cosmetics of a mare of her station, she did it knowing that she was the mare who was going to help ponies and that she was the mare who acted as the pinnacle for the Greater Good, the only thing above the gods, and the dogma she would devote herself too.