Now, that's really not fair at all—but she does understand how it must look, and, unfortunately, there's no way out out this without revealing more of the plan than is really wise at this point.

She's going to anyway, because if Twilight and her friends don't trust her, this is all for nothing.

"Discord isn't my enemy," she says. "None of the statues are. Most of them, like Valiant Victory, asked to be turned to stone, that they might live to a day that Equestria needs them again. Discord—didn't, but if I didn't believe he was capable of good, I would have destroyed him, or banished him forever from Equestria. I didn't, because I know he can be redeemed. I was just waiting for the ponies who can actually do it."

"You mean us," says Applejack skeptically.

"But...we didn't redeem him. We just turned him back to stone."

"Not yet, my little ponies," says the Princess. "But you will. In truth, he wasn't supposed to return quite this soon. Even I cannot see the future perfectly."

"Hold up," says Rainbow Dash. "You can see the future?"

Yes, didn't she just go through this during Discord's First Decision Theory Lesson For Small Ponies—nevermind. "Not in the way you're imagining," she says. "I rarely know which future will come to pass, though some things are more certain than others. I had known for nearly a thousand years, for example, that the next bearers of the Elements of Harmony would be six ponies who got their cutie marks in the same moment, bound by fate before they ever met. Identifying which six ponies, and arranging for you to actually become friends, was my doing. And, I suppose, my sister's."

"I would have told you," says the Princess, "but, in fact, if I had, it wouldn't have worked. You had to make friends with the other Bearers for friendship's sake, not just to save the world—or impress me."

"And I'm glad I did," says Twilight, "but I think, nonetheless, that I would like to know about all the other things you've had planned for me for a thousand years without telling me. Pinkie Pie once said something about me 'ascending', and I ignored it at the time, but—"

"Yes. You will be, one day, the next Princess of Equestria."

"Wait, what?"

"That's a thing you can do?"

"I'd assumed it wasn't," says Abrogail, "since the version of you back home is a god and you're not."

"Yeah, about that—"

"Twilight," says Celestia suddenly, "I told you the truth because you asked me to, but it's also true that you weren't ready to hear it yet. The plan was not meant to come to fruition for some time. Please don't, because I told you sooner, do something that would disrupt it." (Twilight understands decision theory now, right?)

She understood, even before Discord's little game, the concept of not making people regret telling you things, but, really, the thing that Celestia needs to regret is not telling her much sooner.

"Of course not," she says. "I just...need to think about it. And I have a lot more questions."

"Later, my little pony," says the Princess. "It's very late; soon it will be time for me to raise the sun already. There will be time for all your questions tomorrow."

"Okay," says Twilight. "Tomorrow." She is, in fact, very tired.