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Moment Subpages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.
- I want to go home...
- The story pulls no punches in that Cerea is effectively a missing person in her home dimension. Cerea contemplates what happened after she disappeared and eventually concludes that everyone has given her up for dead. She gets relief in Chapter 80 after killing Tirek and ending up in the afterlife, where Lala offers to take a message back to Kimihito and the rest of the girls.
- Cerea's entire situation in Equestria. It's made clear that because of what Tirek did, she will never truly be safe or accepted in the nation.Luna: "No place of safety, no people waiting to greet you. You have been hated with purposeful intent, centaur: I do not doubt that. But this will be something beyond what you have experienced. Something no one should ever go through — and yet at the moment we place you under Moon's light, another kind of sentence begins."
- Cerea's translator works on the concept of language, which means names don't translate very well. Especially her own: Centorea. She has another, but...
- Cerea's second experience with a large group of ponies is at the press conference. Everypony has been warned and prepared for her, and they still last less than a second before panicking and fleeing. And Cerea is moon-touched, so she's hyper-aware of all of it.The moonlight reached within her, and what it amplified was desperation, frustration, the anger which she had been repressing from the moment she'd learned that there might not be any way to return home and there was the possibility of spending the rest of her life as the only one of her kind, friendless and loveless in a world which reeked of fear.
- Take a walk through the Palace Gardens. Count the statues, especially the ones in armor. Blitzschritt saved Celestia's life. Now there's a honor statue in the garden, but it doesn't stop her from being a corpse.Who were you? How did you die? Why did you make that choice? Did you... the cold increased ...think about it? Was there a second where you knew you were going to die if you acted, but... she would live? Did you doubt yourself? Or was it instinct? Did you just move, and you didn't realize what had happened to you until... Maybe you never knew. Maybe it was that fast. You were here, and then you were..Emery Board:"It all adds up. Twelve hundred and seventy-five years. Wars. Assassination attempts. Accidents. The kind of stupid coincidences which can kill. Take enough time, enough chances, just exist long enough and there's going to be statues. The Generals could tell you every name. They need to remember. There's those who say that as long as there's somepony who knows what your name was, you're not completely gone..."
- Discord in critical condition.Celestia (Thinking):They keep asking about his condition. Everypony who was there. I hated you. I hate you. I don't want to owe you...
- He never could have loved me.
- Equestria is very angry that Cerea is there. And they can't get to her... but they can get to Nightwatch. A unicorn has the bright idea of burning a symbol into her door, but she doesn't understand how fire spreads. And when it's all over, everything Nightwatch owned is gone, her neighbors have nowhere to live, and a newborn foal is in the pediatrics ward. And Cerea has lost her one point of stability in this new world.A week ago, there hadn't been a wall of wind around a bunk. Around a pegasus who refused to let the centaur acquire the faintest whiff of her scent during any language class.A week ago, there had been more words between them than single terms and orders to repeat without the disc.A week ago, Nightwatch had looked at her.Not through.
- Due to this, Cerea hits a major emotional low point during her first live combat exercise to the point where she's almost relieved when Squall panics and tries to electrocute her.But she had too much else to worry about, and so her attention desperately spiraled to the earth pony whose name she did not know, just barely dodged the kick and doing so put her tail into the projected grip of the last standing unicorn, that light broke up on its own but they were closing in, Acrolith was coming and Nightwatch just kept blasting her with gust after gust, she couldn't defend everything, she was spinning and looking for a direction she could jump in, anything which would buy her a little more time and she was tired and she hurt and they were going to win because she always lost and she'd already lost she'd lost the one thing which mattered and she just wanted to stop —
- Cerea gets a chance, after, to put into words what's been going on in her head. It isn't a pretty sight.Nightwatch:"...do you feel like you’re so much of a problem, that anything you let somepony do for you is just another problem you've caused?" The little mare sighed. “I feel like it's that last one. Please... please calm down. Bruises hurt more when you’re tense. But we have to ask questions, both of us. Including the ones which upset each other, because those could be the most important. We have to talk. It's the only way —”Cerea:“...I’ve...since my arrival, I have done nothing except make things worse for everypony. I — may have caused deaths. The Princesses keep telling me there were no suicides, but they would lie to me, would they not? The world is so afraid of me that parts of it think death is better than having to exist in the same nation I occupy —“ her shoulders twisted inwards, even as her hands began to shake “— and the other nations watch through those they send out for training, watch in case a centaur means the need to attack, while ponies wait for me to attack and something happened to you, I know that, something happened which meant you had to come into the barracks, I do not know how you were attacked, but I know that you were, ponies are being hurt in every moment I exist here, ponies die —“
- Everything on this page? The burning of Nightwatch's apartment, the multiple assaults on Cerea, the severe damage to Cerea's self-esteem and mental state caused by her stay in Equestria? None of it had to happen as revealed in Chapter 63. Celestia and Luna never considered sending Cerea away to another nation, one that wasn't scarred by Tirek. Why? Because the Princesses were selfish and wanted to keep Cerea for their own nation.Celestia:"...I never let myself truly consider whether you would have been happier somewhere else. In another nation. I told myself that if the events had been so distant as to have them treat you as little more than a curiosity at the start, there would always be a traveler from Equestria. Who would bring the fear with them. But... how much grounding could you have gained in a new society, before that pony appeared? How many friends?"
