//------------------------------//
// susageP 
// Story: The Once and Future Princess 
// by Rustling Leaves 
//------------------------------//

	As the day of her test approached, Twilight became nervous. She wasn't very good at handling her nerves, and after studying for two straight days her mother evicted her from the house, commanding that she "Go find some friends to play with, and not to return to [her] studies until she had calmed down." Initially, Twilight had started walking to see her sometime babysitter Cadence, but on the way she passed the library, and wondered whether she could visit Star Swirl and Starlight again.

She passed Paperback, much more cordially this time, with a proper 'hello' and a 'how are you?' and some proper nodding as though she understood the old mare's comments about rheumatism. She made her way down to 'her' cushion and pulled it from the wall.

At first, there was nothing. Not even the graven words from before. The stone was completely smooth. As she stared at it, though, words began to sink into the granite as though they were being pressed in by an enormous, invisible stamp.


My Pupil,

In Preparation for Her Examination


And when she turned around, she found herself walking up a steep, rocky hill.

“Today,” the older-looking and white-bearded Star Swirl said, “you're going to have to learn to fly.” Twilight was trotting to keep up with his lanky, loping walk as he trudged along the cold heather in the sunset light. They were well outside of Canterlot (which was much smaller then), stomping through an emerald and amethyst plane of flowering grass that would later become a lower district of the capitol. Brilliant orange and an off-putting magenta stained the sky in a beautiful, but garish display, giving a soft glow to the grass and the purple mountains surrounding them.

“To fly?” Twilight asked between gasps for breath. Her words wrapping up and around her head in cool tendrils of mist.

They arrived at the top of a black, stone outcropping at the edge of the field. A steep slope, almost a cliff, halted their progress and from the top, they could look out over almost all the western reaches of Equestria. They'd have been able to see Ponyville, if it had been settled at that point.

“Yes, Twilight. You've got to learn to fly.” Star Swirl dropped to his belly on the hard stone, putting him at eye-level with the tiny filly. “Since you've been recommended for Celestia's school, we haven't got much time. Besides, there is nothing in all the world so much like magic as flying.”

“But I can't fly. I don't have any wings, and...” she sniffed and stared at her hooves, “I can't even levitate my quill.”

“Twilight,” Star Swirl said. When she looked up into his eyes, he continued “Do not try to impress me with your shortcomings. I know exactly what you can and cannot do. I have seen the mare you will become someday.” He spun quickly away and moved to stare off the edge of the cliff into the dying sunlight.

“You've hit upon the problem, though: While I could give you wings of a sort, or the seeming thereof, no mere pony has the power to cross species, not in the true sense, and you don't have wings...”

“No pony?" Twilight asked, "So who can we ask for help?”

Star Swirl spun back toward her so suddenly that he almost slipped off the cliff. “Exemplary!” he shouted, and he grinned his cockiest grin at Twilight, then turning his head to point almost straight up at the sky, he called out: “Susagep a sa eram siht tpecca yldnik eh dluow dna sueZ ot stnemilpmoc s'lriwS ratS?”

Suddenly, above the castle edifice, and a little behind it, there appeared on a small, black cloud an enormously muscle-bound pegasus with dinky wings and a lightning bolt marking his flank. Around the lightning bolt, still puffy and healing, his flank had been shaved and a heart had been tattooed so that the lightning bolt now pierced it like a cupid's arrow. The word 'Hera' had been written across it in beautiful scrollwork, crossed out, replaced with three other mares' names, each crossed out, and now had a darker version of 'Hera' tattooed over the top of those.

A moment before, he had simply not been there, in that empty patch of blue sky, and now he was. 

He gave an accepting frown as he glared imperiously down at the little unicorn, and heaved his massive frame suddenly backwards to stand on his hind legs, then he fell forward, slamming massive hooves against the dark cloud. Lights began to shift and flash between the billowing lumps of cumulostratus beneath the huge pegasus. He leapt up and stomped again, and this time a crackling rumble accompanied the lights, now flashing purple and green and yellow. A third time he leapt, and the world, for Twilight, went white.




Hundreds of years later, certain that her daughter was out playing with her friends...which was true, in a sense...Twilight Velvet was enjoying a well-earned afternoon nap—one of the first since Twilight Sparkle was born, actually. Something had woken her up suddenly, but as she looked around the room, she saw that everything seemed to be as it should be. The warm sunlight was pouring through the large window in their living room, splashing against her back and running down the tips of her wings. She stretched them, then tucked them against her sides like she always did when she slept, and laid her head back down on the long couch she was napping on.

Something was bothering her as sleep took her again. Something important was out of place, she was sure...but she couldn't think of what it was, and she was so comfortable...and so tired.




The first thing she noticed as she came to herself, was that her head felt light. If you have ever gotten a manecut after leaving it off for too long, you can perhaps relate. Twilight blinked and stood on wobbly legs. 

Legs that were much too long. Her eyes rolled as she looked at the ground way, way down by her feet.

“I'm tall,” she said. "And my voice is deeper."

“Not so very tall,” said her teacher. Star Swirl was now only a little taller than she was, not counting his horn. It made him look awfully tiny to be so close to his size. Twilight tried to move toward him, but immediately she tripped on the front edge of a hoof and crashed into the dirt.

Star Swirl smiled fondly at his protegé, “In order to allow you to learn to fly, you had to become an adult pegasus. When the lesson is over you'll be your normal size, never fear.”

Twilight had been whimpering on the hard, dark ground, but now she looked up in surprise, and spun her head around to see her back.

Sure enough, two massive, purple wings shimmered in the fiery light of the sunset, sprouting from new, muscular shoulders above her withers. Twilight gasped. “I'm beautiful!” She looked back to Star Swirl.

"You're surprised?" Star Swirl asked.

"Yeah." She said, and returned to admiring her wings.

“Twilight, you really must stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Doubting yourself. Nothing is more of a dampening force on magic—nor on flight, which we should get back to.”

When Star Swirl said “magic,” though, Twilight had stopped listening and moved a hoof to the top of her head.

Her horn was gone.

There was nothing in its place: her mane ran unbroken from the back of her head to the front. She pushed in a little harder, but her skull was smooth under the skin of her forehead, as if the horn had never been there. Twilight's eyes went wide as she tried to push outward with the magical senses her horn normally afforded her; although she was a very young filly, and her magic was sputtering and weak on a good day, all unicorns can feel, if not affect, the stirrings in the magical fields around them.

And she was totally numb to them.

In their place she felt a languid field of something else, something powerful and enormous and fluid, looming in a large blob over the mountain she stood on, rushing in little eddies along the sides of the stone faces, ebbing to the north and flowing from the south, wringing some other fluid from itself away to the west.

Star Swirl watched her closely and silently, trying not to show any worry as she panicked. She seemed to have relaxed some, now, so he ventured to speak.

"Twilight?"

"What is that?" Twilight whispered. Her hoof was frozen on top of her head, and the far-away look in her eyes made it seem she was staring through the ground.

This would have been an excellent time to show Twilight how knowledgeable a tutor she had—a well placed answer to her quandary would show her how wise he was, and how safe she could feel in her lessons.

But it took Star Swirl too long to answer; he was trying to figure out what she meant.

"...What is what, Twilight?" he finally asked.

"I can't feel magic anymore...but there's something else, and it's so big!" Now Twilight did look up at him. Big, childish eyes, though mounted now on an adult face, were searching his eyes for understanding, and Star Swirl smiled in relief—he did know the answer. Maybe he was as wise as he'd hoped.

"Very perceptive, Twilight. That's very perceptive indeed," he said. "That is the air, the shape and form of Father Sky. The Pegasi can perceive his shape and his flow, as can all beasts of the wing. It helps them to fly properly. Pegasi and Gryphons have a more detailed perception than most."

Star Swirl was very satisfied at how hard Twilight seemed to be concentrating on his explanation. She was nodding in time with his words and wearing a very becoming sagacious frown.

"Is that also why they make good weather ponies?" she asked at length.

"Twilight, it is truly a joy to see you extrapolating. That is exactly right," Star Swirl said.

Twilight beamed at him.

"Now," Star Swirl said, "The first thing to learn is how to take off."

"I would have thought landing was more important."

"A little praise and they become impudent," Star Swirl muttered to himself. "If landing were something that could be taught on the ground, I would teach you how to land first."

Twilight blushed a little. "Oh."

"There are two ways to take off," Star Swirl began, watching for a moment to see whether she'd interrupt. When she didn't, he continued.

"The first way is to take off at speed. Pegasi are built well suited to this since, from the withers down, they are ponies with powerful muscles and extra-light bones. You will find, however, that with powerful wings like that, a running start is rarely necessary. Takeoffs at speed can also be accomplished by dropping from a great height like this cliff—but we will not be trying that today."

Twilight's eyes had gone wide when he'd mentioned dropping off the cliff, and she looked relieved when he said this. She turned her nervous eyes back to the green, heathery field opposite the steep slope at her side.

"No, today's takeoff will be a straight, vertical climb. This is the most challenging, physically, but it is also the safest."

"So I just...flap?" Twilight asked.

"Basically, though there is a bit of science to it. It's harder than-" Star Swirl stopped when Twilight turned her head back to look at her wings, clearly not listening.

Twilight gave a timid, experimental flip of her wingtips. Nothing happened. She braced her feet wide apart, straightened her wings out at her sides, and pushed at the air with all her strength. Dust flew everywhere, stinging her eyes and catching in Star Swirl's beard. When it settled, and Star Swirl was irritably spitting dust out of his mouth, Twilight looked a question to him.

"Oh? You'd like to know what the science is?" Star Swirl asked.

Twilight looked annoyed. Star Swirl said nothing as he took his hat off and beat it against his foreleg.

"Yes!" Twilight finally said. "What do I have to do?"

"Very good, Twilight. A bit slow that time, but very good." Star Swirl straightened out his hat and replaced it atop his wild mane. "Try again. This time keep flapping until I tell you to stop. Wait," he said—she'd braced herself again. "At first, until you take off, try to clap your wings together at the top of the stroke. That  will help you get off of the ground."

Twilight nodded. "Keep flapping, clap the wings," she listed. She lifted her wings back and up as far as they would go and felt the primaries touch at the top of the arc. She shut her eyes and took a slow, deep breath.

And another.

And another.

"Twilight?" Star Swirl said. "Is something wrong?"

Twilight blushed. "No, no...just, getting ready."

"The light is fading." Star Swirl said. Sure enough, barely any of the sun was visible between the far-off hills.
Twilight took one more long, slow breath, held it, and started.

Flapping like this was much harder than her previous attempts. It felt like she was scooping her wings through water or something thicker. A part of her idly wondered whether she could learn some way to express how hard it was to drag something through the air. And whether temperature or moisture could affect it. Might there be an easier way? She shook her head to clear it, and tried again to focus on the task at hoof. She'd study that later.

Each flap whooshed loudly, and the next began with a clap that forced her ears down against her head. She squeezed her eyes shut in a grimace at the noise and the strain, focusing on the effort of flapping harder and harder, and on the burning in her shoulders.

She was very surprised that after a short while, the effort became sustainable. She was even more surprised when she opened her eyes and found herself her own height off of the ground, looking down at a very proud Star Swirl.

"I did it!" she yelled down, "Star Swirl, I did it!" Twilight pumped two victorious hooves into the air, forgot to flap, and began a quick and awkwardly controlled landing. She collapsed to the ground with an undignified squawk.

"A good first effort, Twilight."

Twilight huffed, visibly winded and sweating. Again, she glowed at the praise.

"When you're ready, try again," Star Swirl said, again he looked to the western horizon. The sun was now quite gone. "Do hurry."

"I...I don't know. I've learned a lot...are you sure we need to keep going?"

Star Swirl looked back at his tired pupil. "What's the matter?"

"It was kinda...scary," she admitted. "It was exciting to be up there, but then I fell..."

"You have to trust Father Sky, Twilight. To flow with him, to follow him up to the top of the sky and see what he sees. I'll be right here, and, if you keep flapping, he won't drop you." Star Swirl cautiously nuzzled her shoulder to push her out toward the cliff. "And I am right here. You must do things, sometimes, that are scary. That is when you grow the fastest."

Twilight still looked nervous. "I don't know if I can do this by myself."

"Do not whine, Twilight Sparkle" the wizard cautioned. "Fly."

Twilight shut her eyes tight and began again the arduous task of lifting off, wings clapping furiously above her. She was breathing hard, both from exertion and from nervous tension by the time she was a hoof's width off the ground.
“Come with me!” Twilight shouted over her beating wings.

Star Swirl opened his mouth to respond. He looked like he was about to refuse, but whether it was the desire not to leave her to flounder in the sky by herself, or (the writer suspects) the fact that no real adult female had paid him any attention in a long time, he took off at a run, parallel to the cliff, twisted suddenly and leapt up into the sky, and instead of plummeting off the edge, grey wings hefted him upward.

He'd passed Twilight in a few flaps, so she clumsily rounded a tight turn and flapped her own wings hard to follow him in a steep climb, clapping them behind her back like he'd showed her to gain height.

Up only a few feet, the wind was terrible. Not so much that it was fast (although it was a mountain breeze, which are never gentle) but with the varied rises and valleys in the mountain around her, the wind buffeted Twilight with sudden changes in direction. She cried out in surprise, but the sound was drowned out by the roaring of the wind in her ears.

After fighting for only a few minutes, she was getting very tired. Star Swirl had lifted himself up much higher than Twilight, and seemed to be floating gently around in circles with practiced ease. She took a deep breath and yelled up to her master.

“This is really, really hard!”

“Yes!" Star Swirl shouted back, "Yes it is. But Twilight, like anything worth learning, magic and flying are both really, really hard at first. Come up here!”

Twilight spun on a rogue burst of wind. Flapping desparately to stay aloft, she couldn't spare the energy to turn and face him. 

“I don't think I can!” 

“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” boomed the wizard, his voice much louder than it should have been at that distance. “You will stop telling me what you cannot do, and you will COME HERE!” 

Twilight was shocked for a moment, then plunged all of her strength into plowing her wings into the air. She was clumsy and slow, and she felt so heavy. Her wings burned and quivered as she lifted herself the last few feet... and suddenly the wind was holding her aloft. Her wings flared out wide and twitched unconsciously, catching invisible eddies of the suddenly up-drafting wind beneath her. The roaring stopped, and the two of them began to rise.

“Is this some kind of magic?” Twilight asked.

“You could call it that,” Star Swirl answered,  “but it is not my doing.” Star Swirl flew in close to Twilight and just forward of her in an acrobatic arc. His proximity seemed to be cutting a path through the air that made flying even easier than the updraft had. "This is called an “updraft.” Some are caused by heat rising off of sand or stone, this one is caused by wind crashing into the cliff," he explained.

Twilight made a mental note to find a book on updrafts when she got home. She had quite a mental list of books to find.

"This makes flying so much easier!" Twilight exclaimed.

"You will find, if you take up watching them, that all winged-things look for thermals they can ride up, for pockets of high pressure they can glide across. With a little practice, you will be able to feel them. How could this help you when you study magic?"

Twilight thought for a moment, closing her eyes as they slowly drifted on the soft, cool air. "Magic flows, too, sometimes..." she began.

Star Swirl fought to hide his excitement as he listened to her. "So?" he prompted. His mad grin was fighting with him for control over the edges of his mouth, so he looked away from her.

"So there might be...Star Swirl, are there updrafts in magic?"

"Aha! Then you've understood the lesson!" Star Swirl laughed. Twilight laughed too. 

They floated around on the evening breeze until just after it was too dark to see each other, landed (which was not so hard, with confidence in her flying), and walked back to Star Swirl's home. Twilight was too busy telling and retelling her experience to notice that Star Swirl and the buildings around her seemed to be getting taller as they walked. She retold it again to Starlight when they entered, and at least once more that night. The first time she told Starlight the story, she flapped her (now tiny) wings to illustrate. By the end of the day, the wings were nothing but a memory. 

Starlight gave Star Swirl a scolding glare as she took the little filly to prepare for bed. She muttered something Twilight couldn't quite hear about 'wearing the poor dear out.' Once Twilight was all tucked in, Star Swirl came in to wish her goodnight.

"That was amazing...er...educational, Star Swirl. Thank you," Twilight mumbled. She was too tired to retell the story a fifth time.

"I am glad that you enjoyed yourself, and gladder still that you learned something."

"I'll miss my wings, though." Twilight sighed.

"Not forever." Star Swirl said. Twilight was already falling asleep as he stood and left, and she thought she heard him chuckling as he went.




Twilight was, at first, happy to be waking in her own bed. She was happy until her mother came in to her room and thrust open the curtains; somehow the way she bustled suggested to Twilight that something had made her mother tense. That tension she sensed reminded her that something had been weighing on her own mind recently. It was something important, and terrifying, she recalled. Her mother was hurrying, too, setting out different outfits and deciding against them, only to draw them back out again.

"Something to do with me, then," Twilight decided.

"The test is today." the more awake part of her memory reminded her.

Twilight let her head fall back on her pillow and sighed. Her left eye had begun to twitch. The day had come. Apparently, her mother had noticed the action.

"Twilight, get up honey; you'll be late."

"Not exactly words of encouragement, Mom," Twilight thought. Aloud, she only whimpered.

"Do not whine, Twilight," her mother said, sternly.

"Fly" said another voice. Twilight opened her eyes, expecting to see the old wizard the voice belonged to. He was not there, and her mother seemed not to have noticed anything.

Her attention now on watching to see, and listening to hear, whether Star Swirl would interfere with the day, Twilight was able to (almost) completely forget her worries, and felt only curiosity and excitement in preparing for the test.

Until the moment arrived.




Old ponies, wise ponies, all of them unicorns dressed up in important-looking clothes and wearing important-looking frowns, encircled the testing area, sitting in important-looking, high-backed chairs or leaning on the (subtly armored) alabaster breastwork of each row of seats. In an important-looking central location, on the largest of the important-looking chairs sat Princess Celestia herself; taller than everypony else by half, and not a day older than when Twilight had last seen her. Near the Princess, and looking quite cowed by their proximity to her, Twilight's mother, and her teacher, Shimmering Mist, were leaning forward giving encouraging smiles. Her father and Shining Armor were on the other side of the princess, waving shamelessly.

The rules of the test were explained to her: she was to use magic (apparently the only thing that could open a dragon's egg) to open a dragon's egg in a hay-filled box on the floor in the center of the room. She was allowed to take all the time she needed until she succeded, gave up, or her Highness called a stop to the test. 

Celestia seemed to be wearing a worried expression as she looked at the egg. She caught Twilight watching her, and gave a halfhearted, encouraging smile.

Celestia thought she would fail. 

The sudden realization shocked Twilight. Normally, Twilight would have been hurt by the lack of confidence, but unlike foals who mocked failed attempts at magic, Celestia didn't look like she took pleasure in the assumption; Celestia looked sad. No... Twilight decided, Celestia looked afraid. That same nervous feeling that Twilight had begun the day with. Celestia looked as though she herself were the one in danger of failing. Twilight was surprised to find that she ached to help the ancient Princess. She found herself wondering how many other foals had taken this test and failed.

In truth, though Twilight couldn't know this, nopony had ever taken this test. It was unfair in the extreme; the effect of some perpetually cranky bureaucrats demanding a harder test for a better-reviewed savant. It was a political maneuver that had been slipped past Celestia in a last minute effort by some power-hungry nobles to retain their horseshoe-scraping position of perceived importance by blocking out what was, from reputation, a more impressive filly than any previous entrant from their own families. 

Celestia suspected this, of course. She was growing more certain of it by the second, but that didn't take away from the cruelty of the test. Celestia was absolutely certain—and she was right—that no little filly could do this on her own.
The little filly seemed totally unaware of the sheer impossibility of the task as she bowed to the princess, turned, and squared her shoulders, pointing her horn at the egg.

Twilight poured every ounce of her concentration into this moment, trying to feel the magical flow around her like she felt the air when she had been a pegasus. As she focused, she began to perceive it. Other ponies in the room were their own little swirling eddies of magical power, Celestia was a vortex toward which the other ponies' magic leaned precariously, as though it would be dragged in. The center of Celestia's vortex seemed to rage chaotically rather than to swirl or flow, as though there were a waterfall or a fire at it's core. Try as she might, Twilight could not siphon the tiniest bit of magic off of anypony else, and the flow around her seemed to be quite slow and stagnant. 

There were no updrafts here; she would fail.

Her teachers would be so disappointed. The other foals at school would laugh. All of these ponies that had come to see the youngest filly ever to enter Celestia's school would be disappointed. Her brother would try to comfort her, but that would only make her feel worse; she'd failed to make him proud. And her mother! And her father, too! They'd be so disappointed. And the tall, beautiful princess who was subtly pouting at the other end of the room: she'd been right.

"TWILIGHT SPARKLE! You will stop telling me what you can and cannot do and you will COME UP HERE" her mind echoed. She shrank under the guilty feeling it gave her—she'd almost allowed herself to fail Star Swirl, too. She braced herself for one last try, took one of her slow, deep breaths, and searched again.

There was a faint pulsing somewhere. She could feel it...almost taste it. It was not nearby, but distances became a blur as she felt around for it's source. An amethyst, crystalline hum calling to her from far away...or was it far at all? The thumping of that pulse reverberated down her horn and into her spine as though it were a very deep noise, pulsating here in the room. It was speeding up, almost like the heartbeat of some massive, excited being. Other 'hums' (for it was her best analog for the sensation) joined in different tones, each pulsing along with the first, their chaotic, harmonized ringing sending shudders of power down into her core through her vibrating horn. 

Faster and faster they pulsed... suddenly she felt the wind flying past her face, cold and tearing. Gravity's grip on her was slipping as she plunged faster than mother earth could pull on her. 

And then even more sensations came all at once: on top of plunging toward the earth faster than gravity, she was standing among a veritable zoo of animals in the warm sunlight, all at once deeply aware of her purpose; she was alone in a dark field of stones, weeping that she would never be free of wherever it was; she was in the upper room of a high-class manor somewhere, wishing she'd never left the...farm? She was staring at a huge rock on a stony cliff, cursing her destiny...

The wind rushed faster and faster, and for some reason she did not understand, and in a manner totally uncharacteristic of Twilight Sparkle, she thought the words "The only thing better than racing, is winning!"

And then the sky cracked. 

Rainbow light filled the air around her, filled the clear sky above her, filled the far away sky of a hometown that didn't belong to her, above a farm she'd never been to.

Twilight opened her eyes. The room was dim, or rather, her eyes were so full of light that the room seemed shadowy by comparison. Ponies that had come to judge her were cowering behind chairs or taking cover behind the low stone wall they'd leaned on. Princess Celestia was wide-eyed and smiling in disbelief. Twilight looked down at the floor, a few feet below her levitating hooves. There sat the egg.

"Crack, please," she thought.

The egg exploded.

Fiery light rippled and pulsed and gathered and shattered around every object in the room. alabaster plating over the reenforced steel breastwork cracked, or liquified, or changed into a myriad of other things (it was later reported that an entire section of it had been replaced with lime-flavored fondant). Ponies were now hidden completely, or had been transformed into random objects (her father was a potted cactus). Celestia, who was the only pony not cowering, was clapping her hooves so loudly that it could be heard over the reality-searing flame.

Finally Celestia approached the illuminated filly and gently placed a gold-shod hoof on her shoulder. The fire died, and the room, to Twilight, regained its normal luminance, Twilight descended again to touch her hooves to the floor. Ponies that had been transformed were released from the magic that held them in impossible forms. Ponies that had been fast enough to hide began to peek cautiously from their razed hiding places. The cutest, pudgiest baby dragon ever calmly sucked on his tail amid the pulverized remains of his egg.

"Exemplary," an old stallion's voice near Twilight whispered. When she looked, there was only the princess, who seemed not to have heard.