In Which SPark Attempts to be Slightly Less Verbose.

by SPark

The Twilight Shall Last Forever

The sun balanced on the edge of the world off Twilight Sparkle's left wing. The moon just touched the horizon off her right. The sky above was a soft purple, the evening star just showing, a bright diamond against the purple backdrop. A rising current of air welled up from beneath her. She would not look down.

There was a hole in the side of the mountain.

The air rising under her wings carried a strange energy with it. She latched onto that thought. I wasn't magic. I couldn't have been magic. Nopony had that much magic except for Celestia and Luna.

Oh Sun, no. Oh moon and stars, no.

She refused to look down. If she didn't look down it wouldn't be real.

The city below was wrecked. Some of the stronger buildings still stood. Anything that could burn had burned.

She wouldn't think about magic. She wouldn't look down. She would think about this odd energy that washed over her. It was passing through her, she noticed. There wasn't a lot of it, but it seemed to be the residue of... something. Yes, something she couldn't think about. Wouldn't think about.

The hole in the side of the mountain did not smoke, though some parts of the city did. Nothing there had burned, it had all been reduced to glassy slag in an instant.

A new kind of energy. That should be exciting. A wonderful discovery. A great day for science. She should be able to shout her joy at the evening sky above. She should be able to run to Celestia and tell her about it, like she always had when she'd found something exciting as a filly.

No, she wouldn't think about that either. She wouldn't think about the hole, and the ravaged city. She wouldn't look down. She would just look at the peaceful twilight sky.

The tears that had welled in her eyes began dripping down her face. The peaceful, unmoving, uncaring sky arched above her, just the color of her own coat.

The mushroom cloud had long since dissipated. Those who had been outside the blast were moving about among the ruins, doing the best they could to help the wounded. Near the center of the blast there were no wounded, only ash and slag.

Twilight tried to reach out, but she couldn't feel the sun, not the way she'd felt it when Celestia... not the way she'd felt it when she'd held the power of all the alicorns. She couldn't feel the moon either. She fumbled around with her magic, trying to get some kind of handle on them, trying to find some way to move them. Time, in some unknown, unmarked amount, passed while she tried, but there was nothing, no way for her to grasp the sun.

Finally she stopped trying. It wasn't her sun, of course. It was Celestia's sun. Twilight looked away from it, but that only brought Luna's moon into her view. They couldn't be gone. It wasn't real. She wouldn't look at any of it, and it wouldn't be real.

Twilight closed her eyes.

The sun balanced on the edge of the world off Twilight Sparkle's left wing. The moon just touched the horizon off her right. The sky above was a soft purple, the evening star just showing, a bright diamond against the purple backdrop.

Author's Note:

This was an entry in the recent Writeoff. It was a bit of a flop there, it went out in the initial round and it's obvious that people didn't much understand the point of the story. I've tweaked it to be slightly clearer, but I still feel that making everything explicit instead of implicit would be a mistake. There are certain additional hints now, though, so hopefully at least some of you will get what I'm going for here.

If you'd like to support me in making more stories like this, consider becoming a Patron.

Comments

[BenRG]

Why nuclear fission is not your friend if you're not fully prepared to handle something as hot as the sun that poisons all around it for a thousand years or more.

[AcademicPony]

7991812
Yes; I wasn't sure whether to read "nuclear fission" as the implication of "mushroom cloud" (any sufficient concentration of heat can do that, including volcanic eruptions and forest fires, so runaway mystery-magic works too). But if it is that, then everyone combing the ruins for survivors is going to have a bad day and the day of anyone downwind doesn't look so good either. Twilight's immortality will also get a serious stress-test.

(Fortunately, IRL it's a lot harder to do this accidentally; a criticality accident normally just gives you an extremely radioactive puddle of slag where your fuel used to be, an activated room or building that kills anyone who stays inside it, and maybe a steam explosion if you were using water as a moderator.)