"It's morning, Starlight. Time to get up..."
Starlight rolled over, the voices of her friends echoing in her ears. No it wasn't.
"Maple is making pancakes," Amber insisted. "Come on, you don't want to miss them!"
That voice was a dream. It belonged in the life she had left behind when she closed her eyes, a life she wished for where all her friends could live happily with her together, and not the life she had. Amber and everyone else were gone. She had forced herself to let go...
"Come on, sleepyhead!" A pair of very real hooves shook her, and Starlight squeaked in surprise as she was jolted awake. "We've got a few more hours before we leave. Maybe you want to sleep, but I say we all hang out as much as possible first. There'll be plenty of time for sleeping afterward. Don't you want to hang out with me?"
Starlight blinked open her bleary eyes. She remembered a restless night, and how it had taken forever to get to sleep... Amber looked wide awake and peppy. What time even was it?
"Also, Fluffy Fleece got here an hour ago," Amber added. "She's been asking when you would wake up."
Starlight yawned. She didn't remember Fluffy being a morning pony. What was so exciting for her about today? "Okay," she grumbled, rubbing the sleep out of her mouth with her tongue. "I'm coming..."
She slid out of bed, and her hooves hit the floor with a thump that she felt in all her joints. It proved the floor was real. The floor still existed. The world had existed. It hadn't all ended last night.
In a trance, Starlight followed Amber down the stairs, going back on the steps she had taken last night. Then, she had felt like she was walking to her end... but where was she walking now? Her friends were still here. This couldn't be her new life.
She still knew that she was in a dream.
"Hey, chum!" Valey winked at her as she stepped into the hallway, sprawled on her back on a kitchen countertop and having some sort of discussion with Shinespark.
"Starlight!" Maple greeted, wearing an apron and flipping pancakes. "You're awake! Trouble sleeping last night?"
"Seems like it," Amber said for her. "This girl was sleepy."
"You're up!" Fluffy chirped, looking up from where she was hunched over a table, a pencil falling from her mouth. "Did you see my sketchbook? It was moved from where I left it."
Starlight could only watch with a slack jaw, two different and incompatible worlds mashed together that she didn't know how to handle. She had gone to sleep expecting the end, and yet here she still was, caught between a present that refused to end and a future that was trying to start early.
After a few seconds of no response, Amber covered for her. "Okay, maybe let her wake up a little more before dropping a ton of questions on her. Maple, need a hoof over there?"
Starlight took a few steps, trying to shake herself out of it. "I'm awake."
"Did you read my sketchbook?" Fluffy asked, getting up and coming closer. "And are you okay?"
Starlight blinked. Was there any reason for her to be more or less okay than expected, given everything that was...?
Oh. Right. When Fluffy had left yesterday, it was because she broke down in the bathroom.
Again.
"All my friends are leaving," she replied, not quite making eye contact. "So no, I'm not okay. But maybe I will be. This is just a hard time."
Fluffy nodded in encouragement. "Well, I hope you get better. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you scared me yesterday."
"Sorry." Starlight's ears fell, and she took a breath. "I did read your book. It was cool. I'm not really feeling up to it right now, but after everyone is gone, maybe you could help me with ideas for my own room."
That was the right thing to say, and Fluffy lit up with gratitude. "Of course! You just say the word, Starlight. But, right." Her face fell. "You probably still have to focus on saying goodbye, don't you?"
Starlight hesitated. She already had said goodbye, she felt like. And a part of her, deep down, was still scarred enough from Sunburst that maybe she hadn't said hello as fully as she could either, just so this would hurt less. She remembered all of her thoughts from the night before on the ponies she called friends, even if they were more middle-distance friends than the close ones like Maple.
The hard part wouldn't be watching the Dream actually fly away. It would be waiting these last few hours while her world existed in two states at once, both ones she desired, yet couldn't have together. The present, where her friends were here and her new life was too, was too good to be true. Maybe she wouldn't miss it as much if she didn't taste it too much while it was here.
Maple came wandering over, meeting them at the table with a fresh stack of pancakes. "Some of the others have already eaten," she explained, "so help yourselves. But Gerardo, Slipstream, Nyala and Grenada went off to get the ship ready, and they'll be hungry too whenever they get back, so best to eat your fill now while you can."
"Thanks." Starlight took the plate she was offered, setting it down... and noticed there wasn't one for Fluffy. "Aren't you going to have some too?"
"Heheh..." Fluffy giggled, stretching and rubbing her stomach. "I ate while you were sleeping. I'm really full. They're good, though!"
Starlight's ears fell, but she dug in regardless. "Just how late is it?" she asked around a mouthful of buttery, syrupy pancake fluff.
"Not very," Maple replied. "We went to bed earlier than we're used to, I think, because of the early sunset here. And we want to get an early start, since we don't know how much distance we have to travel and are hoping to make it as far as we can before nightfall. Better not to ascend through mountains when it's hard to see the ground, after all..." She chuckled, though the idea of the Dream ramming into a mountain because the terrain was hard to see wasn't very funny.
Starlight nodded, realizing her own travel time was a very poor measure of how far it was for an airship to reach the north from here.
"You're flying over mountains?" Fluffy blinked. "But there's nothing to the west except snow and ice for hundreds of miles. I thought you were from the east!"
Maple froze, and Starlight realized that likely none of them remembered Fluffy didn't know where they were from. She quickly stepped in. "We're actually from, um... It's sort of a secret." Her ears fell, and she glanced at Fluffy. "I'll tell you after they leave if you promise not to tell it all over the place? Talking about it might make the guards mad."
Fluffy stared at her in utter confusion, but quickly nodded resolutely. "Whatever that is, you have my attention. I promise, though."
Starlight sagged, grateful that her friend had a reasonable head on her shoulders, and went back to hiding her face with pancakes. Maple's cooking was a comfort, and unlike her other friends, it was a comfort she could hold onto. There was no reason she had to feel bad about enjoying this.
Eventually, the door opened, and Gerardo Guillaume stepped through. "We've done all our flight preparations," he announced, nodding at the mares and fillies. "After a solid month of flight, there were a few things Grenada wanted to check up on while the engine was off, but everything is in order now. We also, ah..." His headcrest drooped. "Made sure Jamjars is still present, just like you recommended. Seeing as there were fears she would attempt to ditch us at the last second."
Harshwater guiltily looked up, four breakfast plates stacked clean before her. "Pancake paradise time is over, is it?"
"Hey!" Amber snapped, trotting over and swishing her tail with a grin. "Just because Maple's the chef of our group doesn't mean I haven't picked up a trick or two of my own. You want pancakes, I can make a mean instant pancake mix any day of the week."
Valey and Shinespark looked up as well, but they didn't jest. "This is it, huh?" Valey raised an eyebrow.
"It seems this is it." Shinespark stood a little straighter, nodding at Maple and then Starlight.
Starlight blinked. It felt like she had been awake for bare minutes... Seconds, even. Last night, she had consoled herself over everything she hadn't done at the party with the fact that there would still be the morning. This morning, she had felt like the time couldn't pass quickly enough, like she was caught between two worlds that were destined to part and trying to hold them together would only bring pain. But now it was over?
Valey glanced across at her. "You wanna come down for a last goodbye? We've, uh... got a few things to give you. Or at least I do."
"And I have a few things to get," Maple agreed. "We'll also bring the guards. I want them to see me using the Writ of Harmonic Sanction out in the open, in plain sight. I don't know how they detect these, but I don't want there to be a shadow of a doubt that I belong here with you."
Starlight's eyes widened. "You haven't used it already?"
Maple wilted apologetically. "I was... waiting to see if you would change your mind. We've only been here for a day, Starlight, and yesterday was... Well, I wanted to make sure you had a night to sleep on it."
Right. That made sense. Starlight nodded.
There was definitely no part of Maple's decision-making that deeply, quietly hoped she would be allowed to go back to Riverfall and keep her whole world together, too. Why even was Starlight cutting both of them off from their friends?
Fluffy shifted nearby. Right. It was because of the home she could reclaim, settling back down where she once was. All of this was painful, but it was done for her future. It would work. She would live here and one day be able to laugh with her friends without breaking down because of it.
And this also said that Maple trusted her. If Maple thought this was the right decision, but didn't trust Starlight not to second-guess herself, she could have locked it in early by using the writ as soon as possible. But Starlight hadn't even thought about changing her mind. She hadn't thought about it, and Maple had trusted that she wouldn't...
Maple knew her. Starlight felt known. It was a much better feeling than she was ready for, here at the end.
She didn't trust herself not to cry, but knew that when the time came, her friends would understand.
"R-Right." She stood strongly, her legs ready and willing even though she barely understood her resolve. "Let's go get a guard and say goodbye."
Starlight Glimmer wasn't the only creature the morning dawned on. Far to the north and a ways to the west, the sun shone in through a cockpit's side windows, illuminating a dashboard stained with tears.
Where was Gazelle going? North, because he would be foolish to stay in Equestria, and west, because he didn't care to share turf with Garsheeva. Beyond that, it didn't matter. Maybe the yaks had a use for a bitter, scheming sphinx whose schemes weren't even good enough to keep one filly alive, let alone conquer her an empire. Maybe he'd go to Varsidel. That warring cesspool could always use an extra tyrant, or maybe some vengeance for taking his parents and leaving him to fail Lyn on his own. He didn't even know what was to the northwest between the two, and while the odds weren't favorable that it had any pastimes suitable for drowning out the sorrows of a god, he had nothing better to do than find out.
The sun burned like a knife through his right-side window, blazing and purging and unable to burn his woes away. Yet what if it could, if given enough time? He felt like laying down in a desert and letting it bake him until he was a corpse, until the brands he had found ran out of whatever let them heal him and he became dust, just like Lyn. But maybe he couldn't. Maybe the brands would lock him into life forever.
But did he really want to die?
He had nothing left to live for, that was certain. Everything he had dedicated himself to had been brutally torn away by his own failings, and a tyrant madder than he was called fate itself stood in the way of regaining it, wearing the face of a little lilac filly. He couldn't even put words to why he was so scared of her, just knew that she would haunt him for the rest of his days.
Which, if fate truly hated him, would last forever.
What was the point of that? Why was he running, instead of attacking and fighting and being smart and getting himself killed? His enemies had been sleeping. All rationality said he could have killed them with a single claw, but there was nothing rational about the whims of gods. Lyn was dead, and Starlight mandated that she stay so.
Probably.
She had given her back, once...
And then taken her away again. Gazelle tightened his jaw; she was just as fickle as he was. Another sign that he was outmatched. He might as well be an ordinary pegasus instead of a sphinx, with nothing but a normal death separating him from his sister. It would be just as insurmountable. And yet it happened to the entire, accursed world. Everyone but immortals died. It was his birthright to be above all this! It was supposed to be...
He was above the landscape, at least, glistening peaks and mountain walls that were as far below him as all his troubles deserved to be, yet weren't. Maybe if he was lucky, the wilderness would extend forever, and he could do nothing for the rest of eternity save for flying away. But the world would end somewhere. There would always be an edge, after which he could fly no further. What were the odds that before then, he would find a good way to die?
Zero. He already had a good way to die: turning around and challenging Starlight and her friends. But spite or pride or something else kept him from doing that, even though his paws shook with intensity against the ship's wheel. The sun burned his coat, but only because its rising wasn't meant for him: all he deserved was to slink around through the dark, after everything he couldn't do.
Gazelle shivered. Gazelle cried. He didn't know where he was going or why he was going there, but if there was anything he wanted, anything that could possibly find room alongside Lyn in his heart, it was to find out.
Below, a lake was trapped between two ridges, snow lining all the way down to its frozen shores. The surface was frozen, but to one end was a tiny outlet, the water pouring out from beneath the ice into a fast-running mountain stream. If you drained a frozen lake but didn't let the surface sink with the water level, would you get an ice cave, an underground sea that was miles high? Almost like an empty heart, looking normal on the outside, yet without containing any of the things that were supposed to compose it.
The water drained through a canyon, rushing around twists and bends with a violence that was constant and unending. There was a place where it backed up, where an avalanche had fallen into the canyon and created a lake, until the waters overflowed and continued on their destructive way. Gazelle wanted to punch the canyon walls like they did, leave his ship and hammer at them until the end of time. Just like a sphinx, they were always violent, even when they tried to block themselves.
Sometime in the night, he had passed the mountains' divide, and the terrain grew lower as he flew. Here and there, valleys grew forests, their trees snow-capped yet sheltered from the wind by the walls. But the valleys without outlets only grew lakes; the ones where forests flourished had rivers that drained away, preventing them from flooding yet providing water for the vegetation roots. If Gazelle was the water, what was he here?
Were sphinxes and rulers and gods life-givers, sources that trees and ponies and griffons couldn't grow apart from? No trees grew where there weren't rivers.
But the rivers did nothing but drain, carrying the water away from everything they created and preventing those things from drowning. If Gazelle was the water, his destiny was to be removed and carried away.
That was what Garsheeva had done, ending the age of sphinxes in the east. That was what Crystal had done, robbing him of Lyn. Maybe it was what he should do too, flying away endlessly until he and the world were nothing but memories to each other. He had no place here, after all.