Bare Tree 16th 3473 EE
Not feeling too good today. Last night was the Night of Ancestors, the traditional festival to remember those ponies that have joined the ancestors. While it's meant to be a celebration of their lives, with what happened, I can't but help remember how they died, and my part in it.
Looking back, I can see I was using the work to avoid thinking too deeply about it. I was even feeling pride in some of my works, because I needed to feel good about _something_. Though I am proud, proud of all my little ponies, both in Maresia and beyond. They've all worked so hard, accomplished so much.
Our latest magical scans prove it, the situation is stabilised. The sentient force of the ponies of Equestria is countering the suppressive effect of Atlas' slumber. The Running of the Leaves, the late harvests and fruit gathering, the pegasi even now building homes upon the three great cloud cities, they deserve the full credit for ensuring that life all over the world will continue.
At least as the season turned, the earth ponies could feel the difference in the earth, the animals and plants, just as the pegasi could feel the wrongness in the sky. Suddenly all our explanations were no longer academic, but real to them, and they worked like Trojan ponies to use the rituals we'd devised to fix things.
Sergeant Major Apony and the guard also deserve all the credit I can give them, they've shaken down into a first class force in an amazingly short time. I may have contributed the ideas, but he made them work. They've managed to keep a lid on a dozen minor flare-ups where idiot nobles have decided to divert resources to their own projects or line their own saddlebags.
Note to self: Work on some sort of uniform code of law, something that can be applied to all ponies, noble and common. Rather than having individual nobles sit in justice based on their own ideas, we need a way to make all ponies accountable, and protect all ponies equally. Sometimes there is very little justice in the current system. If I'm stuck with administrative work, at least I can get something useful done.
However, the ecological work is over, at least until Winter Wrap Up. While we have plenty of prototype patterns, problems with the snowflake multiplexers mean we'll have relatively little snow delivered, but there will be enough to trigger the changes and fruiting in the various plants that need it. But all that is work for the ponies we've trained, not the two of us.
These last few days before Ancestor's Night we've no longer had to run around, or work frantically on things, and that hasn't necessarily been a good thing. I've had far too much time to remember everyone we lost that day. Fixing Equestria's ecology isn't even a down payment on the debt I owe, nothing more than my duty.
We both made an official appearance at the ceremonies held in Ponyville, Trottingham and Shirefield, and the ones in Canterlot. So many candles lit, so many ponies lost, even with our best efforts at search and de-transformation. It may not be a general tradition for the Duke or Duchess of a Fife to travel around various towns to lead the ceremonies, but I felt we had to do something to show we felt the loss as deeply as any-pony.
Luna and I finally went back to the Keep, to mourn our own family and the servants who were closer to being friends than anything else. We walked around each room of the castle, remembering all the good things that had happened in each (and trust me there's few places an inquisitive pegasus won't go if sufficiently motivated, or even a far more sensible unicorn and earth pony, mostly to try and keep me out of trouble, which they did with limited success.)
I even used my solar sight to replay some of our more ludicrous escapades and some of our more tender moments, with Luna riding along using her mind-spells. It hurt, hurt badly, but at least we ended up remembering the good things as well as what we'd seen happen on that day.
It took us all night, and at the end of it, we crafted hundreds of small balloons from the materials left over from our experiments, and enchanted them with heating charms and light charms. Then we took them to the top of the highest tower and released them, one for each of the ponies we were remembering.
You may be wondering why we didn't just use a regular heat source; cotton wadding dipped in any number of igniferous oils would have worked. The reason is that law about non-magical heat sources for balloons is still on the books, even if it's pretty much dead. I just don't want to get into the habit of disregarding laws when it suits me. That code of justice, the two of us will need to be bound by it too, or the thing won't work.
I refuse to become a tyrant, even if I have the power to do so, even to enact the changes this society so desperately needs. I will work within the system to push things along. I have to, or I'm just the Pitiless Sun with better PR. It's one of the reasons for the Guard, being brought to justice by a group of regular ponies, even if it ends with a date with the headsman, is less arbitrary than an angry Alicorn smashing her way in and dragging you off, or just vaporising you on the spot.
I will work wherever possible through other ponies, provide them with the best support I can, but not use my powers except in an absolute emergency. I'm sure Luna will see the necessity for it, and for restraining her power too. Let us 'raise the sun and the moon', and allow our other powers be forgotten.
Enough moralising. I still feel absolutely awful, but reliving those memories of the happeir times, however much they hurt, has started to make a little difference, but it's left the two of us utterly crashed. After I raise the sun, I think Luna and I are going to take a day off, and eat honeyed oatcakes and tell each other silly stories. Maybe, just maybe at the end of it we'll have started to heal. Though just getting functional again would be enough to be going on with.