A room. A dusty, cobwebbed, opulent room.
Dark. Still. Quiet. Empty, save for the jeweled ornaments decorating the walls and ceiling, the tapestries of fallen heroes and friends hanging with them.
And in the center of it all, wheezing dryly on a bed much too big, lay a withered old pony. She had forgotten how long ago she had locked herself in that room, how long she had twisted and turned in those disgustingly smooth ivory sheets, how often she had thrown them off, only to rewrap her shivering, malnourished body.
She forgot how long she waited for death.
The tapestries gave her comfort most days. The monuments of friends long-dead, immortalized by their elements. Yes, most days, she could look up and smile at their faces, feel pride for the memories they created―the prosperous age they maintained.
Other days, those tapestries mocked her. A constant reminder of her failure, a nightmare from which she could never awaken.
Yet, they just kept smiling. So proud, so bold. Beautiful.
“Gone…” she whispered to herself. She’d forgotten how many times she said that word since she confined herself to that oversized coffin.
Gone. Every time she said it―every time she thought it―she’d die just a little more inside. The thought brought a smile to her face, brought her that much closer to peace.
“Gone…” she whispered again, her heart giving an pained lurch. “Gone…”
She rolled side to side amid the ivory sheets, chanting the word again and again like a desperate prayer, clutching her now-quibbling heart, feeling it break into smaller pieces than it was already in.
“Earth to earth…”
The chanting stopped at that inexorable whisper. She rolled to her stomach, her head and ears lifted high.
“Ashes to ashes...”
It was everywhere. A monotone, feminine whisper that struck a chord of bells in her ears. She willed her shaky, brittle limbs to lift her.
“Dust to dust…”
Her wings bristled at a sudden cold, a numbing cold, and she realized, perhaps for the first time in hundreds of years, that she had to move. So she did. And she fell off the bed, flat on her withered face.
Shaking even harder, she lifted herself a few inches. Her arms buckled beneath her. She didn’t bother to rise again. Instead, with labored breaths, she lied on her side, watching slithering streams of darkness creep up from the carved diamond floor.
Her tired, lidded eyes caught a pony’s lilac hooves just inches away, and they slowly rolled up to see who owned them.
Twilight Sparkle’s eyes slowly widened.
“Hello,” Starlight Glimmer whispered with a frown, “friend.”