There are three of them, all Alicorns living to the desert land south of the Everfree Kingdom, which is the land that will one day be Equestria. They are a family of three: an elder sister and the younger kin she raised long before Celestia and Luna had even been born.

Elinora of the White Flame rules wisely, alone until the others are of age and get their marks. Hasad is charismatic and an excellent mediator. Stellaura is nervous, paranoid, and wants nothing more to be like her brother and please everyone, including herself by overcoming her inferiority complex. All of them have their own wishes for the world.

Only one of them will have their wish fulfilled.

Major spoilers in the comments and groups! The cover art is by turnipberry but was edited by me. Contribute to the TVTropes page!

A spell gone wrong teleports Twilight and Rarity outside the borders of the world. Here, amidst a wasteland of barren soil and neverending rain, there is neither food nor shelter to be found.

In the absence of former responsibilities, and with the looming prospect of death being closer than ever before, they begin to open up towards each other. There is no place for dignity or restraint when you have nothing left to lose.

But in the end, none of it matters. Their only hope for survival is to get back to the world before they starve.

Lyra and Bon Bon have a fight.

Evil is a circle. A pony is hurt and in turn hurts another. It self-perpetuates, misery on top of misery, geometric, exponential. Lyra considers this.

Head of a pony, body of a stag, tail of a lion, and the horn of a narwhal. These are the marks of a True Unicorn. A more beautiful and powerful creature you will never find. Truly, this beast must be a remnant of a time when gods walked the earth.
-Yellowdust the Alchemist

It was a normal day of practice for Twilight Sparkle until an encounter with an ancient and powerful being leads her on a search for answers that challenges the notions of her very existence. Along the way, she meets a strange mare who could hold the key to unraveling the mystery of the Unicorn.

Early one morning, Twilight Sparkle gets up to make some tea.

Sometimes, a cup of tea is just a cup of tea. This is not one of those times.

Alex Meyers is a newly graduated lawyer looking for a calling. He thinks he might have found it when he lands a job at the firm of Artemis, Stella & Beat. The firm has only one (highly unusual) client, namely the AI called Celestia. Forging into totally unexplored legal territory and led by a boss who's either brilliant, crazy, or both, Alex will learn exactly how hard it is to be responsible for drawing the lines between right and wrong.

Set in the Optimalverse, so read Friendship is Optimal first

What if you could see guilt?

What if guilt looked like a dead lizard?

What if that dead lizard had your cutie mark?

This is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, as conceived by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Being an alicorn is wonderful... except when it isn't. There are plenty of things that put a damper on limitless vistas of possibility afforded by such a long life: Court, mortal needs and expectations, the occasional decade of ennui.

And the dreams, of course. Agelessness comes with its own special kind of dreaming. Celestia finds that her own "Inner Court" is a bit too literal, and it--and she--are troubled at the prospect of a near-immortal Twilight Sparkle.

If only she could articulate exactly why that was.

art by spectralunicorn

Part of the Monophysite Quartet, which also includes Celestia Isn't Real, Have You Considered My Servant, Twilight?, and The Esoteric Rites of Darkness. All four stories have a common origin point in an old story idea I called "Monophysite" and touch on who or what Celestia really is in some way. They are otherwise unrelated.

What does it mean to be immortal? Celestia has lived for too long. Her memories are old. She has seen many ponies, and many places, and many times, and many stars, and many dreams. She wakes one night to find she does not know the ponies and the stars of today from the ponies and the stars of any other day she has lived. She no longer knows what was real and what was only dreamed.

She desperately searches for the one pony she knows could not have been a dream.

The colony of Myinnkyun had enough problems without Peridot vanishing — trade ships were disappearing, and the island's native minotaurs had launched an attack on the city walls.

But now there's talk that she was murdered, and the city is about to tear itself apart before its enemies have the chance.

One part Spoon River Anthology and one part Rashomon, this story invites you to piece together the story of Myinnkyun's last days — and Peridot's final night — from the dreams of its inhabitants. "Dreams cannot lie," the Nightmares say, but everybody has a different understanding of the truth ...

Now with an official epilogue, thanks to the contest!

* Audiobook Version by Dubs Rewatcher *

Highly Recommended by Present Perfect! "Once again, horizon attempts something ambitious and in doing so effortlessly shows us how to write a story."

Rated ★★★★★ by Louder Yay! "If you're in the market for something truly original and are willing to work for your reward, drop everything and read this."

Praised by Cold in Gardez: "Dreams is the best story I've read in a long time. It deserved to win the last Writeoff, and if it had been a prose story instead of a poem, it probably would have ... but it wouldn't have been the work of art that it is."

Recommended by Titanium Dragon: "Really, you don’t need to be a connoisseur of poetry to appreciate this – the form of the poetry didn’t matter so much as the mystique it lent the piece."

Praised by Skywriter: "This story is destroying me right now. I mean, I'm just sitting here at my desk crying because of it. I don't know what else to do."

Rated Why Haven’t You Read These Yet? by PaulAsaran: "Poetry isn't my medium … [yet that] does nothing to dissuade my satisfaction with an ambitious concept and a fascinating delivery."

Reviewed by Chris: "The more you put into it, the more you're going to get out ... if you're looking for something opaque, surprising, and even poignant—and especially if you enjoy piecing together stories for yourself—consider this highly recommended."

Featured on Equestria Daily! Winner of the "Most Controversial" award in the August 2015 "Distant Shores" Writeoff!

(Also, first place in my own list of my top stories! "Everything that people appreciate about my writing is at a full-throated howl here.")