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// Alicorn Tears 
// Story: In Which SPark Attempts to be Slightly Less Verbose. 
// by SPark 
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	The weight of the sun is always on my shoulders.  Ponies say that I raise the sun, as if I merely fling it into the heavens at dawn and then leave it to make its own way across the sky.  It is not like that at all.  The weight is always there, from dawn till dusk.

For a thousand years I carried a second weight as well, from dusk till dawn, though that has finally been taken from me.  But neither the sun nor the moon are the burden that weighs most heavily upon me.

“The train is almost here,” says Twilight Sparkle.  I know her well enough to hear the faint note of strain in her voice, to notice the few wayward, curling hairs escaping her mane, as they always do when she is fretting over something.

“Yes,” I reply simply.

“Should I write?” she says suddenly, piercing me with those words.  Nothing of that shows on my face, of course.  It never does, not after so long.

“If you wish,” I reply.

“I... I'd like to.  I might have questions,” she says.  I nod.  The rule of an entire nation, even a small and fledgling one like the frontier country she will soon reign over, is not an easy thing.  It too is a heavy burden, one that weighs on the heart as well.  But Equestria is a weight I have born almost as long as I have carried the sun.   It is not the burden that weighs most heavily on me either.

“I will always be happy to give you any advice I can, Twilight,” I say.  I smile at her warmly.  It is true.  I have guided her this far, after all.  But this next step, onto the train that even now is pulling up to the platform, will take her out into the wider world in a way even more profound than when she first left Caterlot.  The thought brings to mind many other such moments, may past students stepping out, taking wing, moving from my tutelage into their new lives.

“You've taught me so much!” she suddenly says in a rush.  “You've taught me so many things, and helped me learn so many lessons.  I think I'm ready, but I know there's still so much I can learn from you.  I will never know everything there is to know.”

I nod again, seeing suddenly the shape of her worries and fears, and feeling something crack deep within me as I do.  She fears not just for her new kingdom.  Not just for the duties and responsibilities to come.  She fears what I too fear, that now that she too is a princess in truth and not just in title, now that she too rules, that this will somehow build a barrier between us.  I understand and am moved to speak without my usual careful weighing of words.

“You will always be my Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle.  Whatever else happens.”

Her eyes suddenly shine with gathering tears and she flings herself towards me.  I embrace her gently.  

In the distance a cheerful clatter heralds the arrival of her friends, here to see her off to her new life, her new duties.  She steps back and wipes the tears from her eyes.  I smile, finding that I must blink a little moisture from my own.  “Go say goodby to your friends,” I say, and she smiles and trots off for a final round of farewells before she boards the train to Appleloosa.

Looking at her go I feel a lightness in my heart.  The thing that cracked within me has now fallen away, a burden I had thought never to be lifted has been eased.

Once, years past, Twilight Sparkle lifted a burden from my shoulders when she broke Nightmare Moon with the elements and restored my sister Luna to me.  I no longer carry the moon.  And now it seems that she has at least lightened another, heavier weight as well.  It has always lain on my heart, the weight of knowing that all of my students, the ones I love most dearly out of all my little ponies, will move on to lives that do not include me save as a scrap of past memory, an occasional letter, an invitation to weddings and then, eventually, to funerals.

Twilight is different.  I still do not know the full extent of what she will become.  I have shaped and guided her course thus far, but she moves beyond my guidance now.  And yet what I said to her in that sudden, unguarded moment was true.

She will always be my Faithful Student.