Does that surprise you? It probably shouldn’t have if you knew me. My whole life, ponies have remarked on the way I light up the room, the way I brighten things, the way the cadence of my speech or the lilt of my laugh can ignite whole crowds. But I know the truth.
I know that it's a willing burn. The ponies here, much as I love them, can be simple, shallow creatures. They are looking for a chance to be burnt, and for I to burn with them.
Goddess, have I been shallow in my lifetime.
But whatever magnetism I possess, whatever dying embers are in my eyes and mane or soul are but the waning glow of spent tinder versus the inferno that is her. And while I can create sparks that ignite those willing fires, she herself is fire incarnate. She dwarfs them all, she is light itself and I am left scorching, struck dumb by the music of her voice and the mirrored white of her coat. The whole time do I feel lesser in whatever afterglow I am fortunate enough to steal from the flickering trails she leaves in her wake.
But it’s a good lesser. A proud lesser.
After all, how can someone such as I compare to goddess?
It’s my domain, really. A part of me I cannot and would not excise.
Some part of me has always remained in summer, and I wane through the winter when the glow of the sun and the rich heat in the air is spent. But when life returns to the world so does it return to me. And I can prance and sing and play, everything that gives life zeal. And where is there more zeal but in the lips and scent and shine of a lover?
Is it any wonder that I should love her, when my whole life has been spent jealously hoarding away light and heat and bright things? Is it any wonder that, through her glow, I no longer wane? If anything, it should be a cosmic joke that I have ever lived with or loved with another. That I didn’t save myself right from the beginning for a mare that can eclipse the stars and make the sun itself look dim, and can return to me what the cruel seasons leave trapped in memory of light and heat and sweat.
Because she is the sun.
She is a goddess. And I feel ridiculous when it occurs to me that that’s what part of me was left while I suffered through cold and loneliness. More than anything, I missed the sun.
It’s the lifegiver as assuredly as she is my lifegiver. As certain as a flower dies in the dark, so too would I wither into nothing without the light she is. Without the heat of her smile and sanctuary of her eyes. How can eyes be so expressive, so as to weep at all times? Even when she smiles, and burns my eyes, how can those eyes brim with such meaning and compassion and beauty, that each feeling of hers, and mine projected, could be as single strokes on an oil painting?
A masterpiece.
I don’t know, nor do I think I should. These are answers for better ponies than I. I am simply humble and small, and so, so lucky to have found myself the one favoured by her light. That she might burn furiously until she’s burnt away all shade in which I may hide and there is nothing to stop us from burning together.
But ponies around here are shallow, and I’m no different.
But I am not fireproof, and sometimes I wonder how much longer I can live in her glow until I ignite entirely. Soot and ash and the dust of memory for a mare that could light the whole world.
Sometimes I wonder if she was ever lesser, like I was. In all ways, I was lesser. But goddesses aren’t like that, are they? They remain preserved in the state of perfection they’ve always been in. And though I know she could not possibly have always been as she is now, I find my stupid mortal mind unable to comprehend such a thing.
To think of her imperfect is to blaspheme.
And yet, a small, selfish part of me wishes that I had met her when she didn’t quite smoulder as intensely. When her heart was safe to hold. Because, hot-blooded as I might be, I am still just a mare who somehow stole fire from the heavens. I am still but a lovestruck fool playing with the whole sun and, when I touch it, it burns my hooves.
I wonder what it would be like to love her and yet not count the ways in which I am her lesser, though I recount as gladly as one would a prayer as each one feels sacred. I wonder what it would be like to not be rendered near-blind by my constant awe. I wonder sometimes whether she is awed by me? But, of course, the question is foolish. Because goddesses are always perfect, and the sun always shines, and not for one moment could a simple, foolish mortal mare shine even a billionth as bright as a supernova does.
But even through all that, it’s not that thought which makes me discard these notions and return to attempting to glimpse even just an afterthought of her shine, climbing on wax wings that could incinerate at any moment. No, what makes me stop, after I wonder about a life spent where I might not be always possessed by her, where I don’t submit myself as a parishioner in the face of almighty god, is when a simple notion occurs to me.
Because I am but one pony in a sea of faces and she is up there, commanding all of us. And we are distant stars eclipsed by the sun. And yet through so much of it, I watch the crowd. I watch with amusement how they stammer, how they gawp in utter disbelief that fire can be made flesh as she has been.
And when her eyes meet mine, in those flashes she needs to lean and I am here to be leant on, she smirks. Something playful and secret and sultry and only for me. That none of these other fools, who are even more blinded by those lights than someone who has touched the sun, could ever understand.
She knows what I do at times like this, she knows how I watch and laugh inwardly. At how they try to fathom perfection that even I cannot fathom after touching and kissing and being burnt by it. Because though I know I am a mere mortal, and she is a goddess, I still spent my life jealously hoarding away light and heat and bright things, and I make no plans to change now.
Because I might be a simple, mortal mare who stole fire from the heavens, but that fire is my fire, and that goddess is my goddess, and when she is done we all stand in rapturous applause.
When she leaves that stage, and parts the crowd like the sea on her way to find the only mortal that has come close to withstanding her shine, I simply stand and hope I can be her beacon. But, of course, she can always find me.
“How was it then, darling? I have to admit, I felt like I was going to die up there! I guess everyone feels like that on their first catwalk in Canterlot, though!” she says, and I am at once enraptured by the music of her voice, which is purer and more harmonious than the finest symphony, “You couldn’t tell how nervous I was, could you?”
“You were perfect, Rarity,” I respond, and lean down to capture those lips in mine.
And though it burns me, it’s a willing burn.
“Celestia,” she giggles, and I melt, once we part, “Me, kissing the princess in public like this? What will the papers say?”
“Let them look,” I reply, gasping, drunk on the scent of her perfume and the hitch in her breath that tells me I might just be able to ignite her back a fraction of how she ignites me, “They wouldn’t understand anyway.”
She smirks, and leans back in, and she burns away every part of me but my love for her and my worship and reverence for the sun. And though the mortals might have stared, I did not care for them.
I only cared to be the one mortal lucky enough to have gotten close to truly fathoming the divine, if only for a second.
