A classical Equestrian fable, passed from mouth to mouth; from quill to page. The children of yore are the parents of today, and as they grow and change, so does the classic tale. Let us explore this tale as it may one day be known.
In the magical land of Equestria, three regal alicorn sisters rule for the good of their subjects, all the types of ponies, until one day, the shadow of jealousy comes upon one of them. How will the three sisters deal with this? Will harmony be lost forever?
Open the storybook, reader, and let us find out.
Massive thanks to Sagebrush for the beautiful art piece and for his help with the story, and many more thanks to Blue Thrush and Lysis for their wonderful prereading and editing.
Chapters (1)
An Alternate universe, perhaps? This really needs that tag, considering that you're trying to make it the three of them. Aside from having improper tag usage... It wasn't bad. Wasn't mind-shatteringly awesome, but not bad. Certainly a unique take on the story-book idea and what might have happened were Twilight there from the beginning.
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It's not really intended as an alternate universe. Rather, it's the tale as would be seen by ponies born now that Twilight's the third princess. Hm... Perhaps some additional time clues would have been called for.
T'is a very original and cool idea. To create a legend that ponies told about the three Equestrian princesses. I love it!
A good story, but you might want to change this.
they would welcome her with open arms.
Great little story. An interesting exanimation of how facts give way to story give way to myth over a long enough time frame. Felt like something that could happen in Equestria.
I enjoyed it. A version of the first two episodes thousands of years down the line with new twists added over the generations. Happens today with tales from ancient times getting retold over and over again.
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Glad you like it!
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Good catch, thanks!
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I love the idea of Twilight (and her friends) being adopted into the mythology of the world. I've read quite a few creation myths, but never a myth like this.
One thing tho,
looks like you tried to fix it and only got halfway there.
Overall a fun short read.
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Hehe. That'll teach me to make fixes late at night.
That was a rather nice little story. Have something green.
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Ooh! Ooh! Is it a cabbage? Limes? A frog?
Glad you enjoyed the story, and thanks for the thumbs-up.
Something that might make this clearer would be an epilogue where a two thousand year old Princess Twilight while walking in the royal gardens over hears a school group visiting the gardens telling this story. Her reaction by thinking about her friends or looking towards some statues honoring them, could place the story in time and context.
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While that might make it clearer, I'm not sure the story truly needs clarification. I had a similar epilogue in the first version of the story, and my beta readers and I felt it really didn't add much, so I cut it.
I'll let people draw their own conclusions.
That's very popular opinion about Celestia but i still don't see how she failed her. She isn't psychic.
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It's one thing not to be psychic, and it's another to fail to notice that your sister has been upset for months, possibly years. There is a gray area between being perceptive and being clairvoyant.
oops :B
You've got quite the knack for legends and fables. :D
5964894 I would venture that it's not a matter of perception, but of empathy. Sadly, I have discovered that it is a lost art these days (although i'll concede that I'm not even that sure were ever were partiualrly good at it).
As someone who has repeatedly shone a light into the darkest places of men's hearts, I know all too well that even a little empathy looks positively psychic to most people. They're just not used to it. Some react positively, coming to understand that what seems irreconcilable is actually understandable and controllable, while others cannot stand to see their own pain directly.
It is with this experience, and dare I say talent, in mind that I recognise that the story isn't written for people like me. I went the other route and did a much slower, more thorough examination of the sister's breakdown, using Rarity as a mirror for Luna. I get it, perhaps too clearly to get much other than some mild disappointment that so many don't see the interplay happening here as rather obvious – which is, I imagine, your reason for writing the story in the first place.
So all I can really say about the story is this: I get it.
I suspect this alone will be quite sufficient.
Its a nice read. I wish we got more of the back story to NMM in cannon but the lack of iit allows for so many different interpretations.
Was there any style choices you made when weriting this? It reads like a folk tale and I can't quite figure out why.
Thanks for writing this!
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The main style choice was that I was trying to emulate the tone of the first episode's opening storytale as closely as possible. That's why it reads like a folk tale.
Hm, yeah. Fuck Cadence.
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Such vulgar words are highly uncalled for.
I appreciate Cadance, but given her unclear position in the show's cosmology and her general disconnect from the Nightmare Moon incident, I chose not to include her here.
That's no reason to cuss.
This was really cool to read, I really enjoyed it. It felt like this story could be told thousands of years past cannon time and the history has been forgotten/rewritten. Although I don't think Twilight would ever let false facts be published, hah.
WOW THIS WAS AN AMAZING STORY I GIVE IT 6 PINKIE GASPS
AND 6 TWILIGHT SMILES 
History becomes legend, legend becomes myth. I can only imagine how many centuries would have to pass to forget the names of the Bearers and the fact of Twilight's ascension. Did some cataclysm befall ponies to make them forget so much? Was it simply the passage of time? Or did the princesses choose to let the knowledge be forgotten, to bring rest to those who had passed on? And where is Cadence in all of this?
A simple fable with complex implications. Thank you for it.
6321332 Agreed. I like Cadance, her character, characterization, and concept, but I cannot help but feel conflicted about what she truly adds to the FiM unicerse. I don't feel she detracts, by any means, but neither do I feel she adds anything on, nothing major at least...
Does that make sense?
this was INCREDIBLY cute, and is now part of my cannon!
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More than Twilight. I mean, the inclusion of Twilight for this piece is completely arbitrary anyway (not that that's a bad thing – it just is), so it seems odd to me for Autumn Wind to say what (s)he did. Cadance isn't relevant – but her lack of cosmological relevance is itself not really relevant.
Oh my, this beauty.
This was an awesome story! You just gained a like and a follow.
Wait no! -police man chucks into car- I didn't mean it that way I'm not a stalker!
Police guy: yeah yeah, sure, say that to the judge at your trial
...I don't even know, I was bored. Don't judge me!!
As a sequel, I'd like to see the same treatment of the The Crystal Empire story (S3E01/02) as seen by the far future's Crystal Ponies. Does Twilight figure into it greatly, or not at all? Do they revere Spike? Or has it all become a legend about their own resident Alicorn of Love?
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Not sure how this follows. The myth is a retelling of S1E01 and S1E02 from a point of view likely hundreds (if not thousands) of years in the future. It's a myth as much about how the Youngest Sister came to stand as an equal alongside her elders as it is about the Celestia-Luna conflict, and so Twilight's presence here feels very much relevant.
6343204 No, Twilight is relevant due to her being a) Celestia's student, b) a key member of the EoH, and c) her new status as royalty. Cadance has...uh...love...and CRISTALLLLZZZZZZZZZ...
6343663 But it's only relevant because the author has decided it's relevant. Since none of what is in the story is what happened as we know it, the results are pretty much the definition or arbitrary.
6343841 And you could make up reasons why Cadence is relevant and Twilight isn't. These are opinions, not facts.
6320820 Cadence would more likely be included in the lore of The Crystal Empire.
Wow. This puts a new spin on the tale of the two sisters, for all we know Celestia adopted Luna, some years into her reign, and they played along with the ponies calling them sisters, perhaps even forgetting altogether. Maybe because the strain of using both the moon and sun was too much for her in her early years.
6343876 Twilight's inclusion is the whole premise of the story. If she isn't included, you just have the opening to episode one in text form. If Twilight is irrelevant, then the whole story is. Irrelevant to what context, I don't really know, because the only context here is the story itself. Although you could make an argument that the premise is arbitrary, pretty much every premise is arbitrary.
6343901 I'm not actually sure what you're even responding to here. Yes, the entire premise of the fic is arbitrary, as it is with most stories. This is normal to the point of necessity. The point was that Autumn Wind said that Cadance was excluded due to her 'unclear' connection to the show's cosmology and I thought that was odd because neither Cadance nor Twilight have anything to do with the show's cosmology. So we were never talking about where Twilight is relevant to the story, but to the world of the show itself.
I can't help but think you're replying to something I haven't actually said.
Anyway, I don't think there is any merit to this conversation and it's probably just taking up space, so I'm out.
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It does. I personally feel she has clear worth, but that her alicorn-itude could have been handled better.
The lack of clues on how much time passed between the events and the added things to Twilight's persona makes comes off as of an Alternate Reality than a retelling. Why would ponies ever think Twilight ,Celestia and Luna are related? There's also bits of information added that I personally think paints Celestia in too harsh of a light. This story makes it seem like it was Celestia who shot first. And the final solution, Twilight showing Luna that there where ponies that actually enjoyed the night, that was only 1000 years after she was banished( and only one night). I think that's just too big of a detail to just gloss over.
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It's neither Alternate Reality nore a retelling. It's a potential future. Let's take your points one at a time with this in mind:
By the point in time where a legend like this might be told, Twilight has been ruling alongside Celestia and Luna for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Would it be that strange for her to have become the honorary third alicorn sister?
The story does raise the point that Celestia may have had some fault, that I will admit, but I don't feel that it is to the point where "Celestia shot first". Celestia's fault in the story is failing to notice her sister's concerns before it's too late. I believe this is a fair criticism to levy, depending on one's interpretation of how the past happens. Surely, Luna didn't just one day wake up and go "Welp, time for eternal night!"
I think that, in the grand scheme of things, where immortal alicorns is concerned, a thousand years of banishment might eventually become 'a bad incident to put behind us'. It's not so much a glossing-over as it is a poetic reinterpretation.
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Yes, at least I think it would be. Especially since Twilight is already the honorary sister of Cadence.
You're right and there is no real way currently to know how exactly the events up until then preceded. But from the flashback we know Luna attacked Celestia first.
The sentence
makes it seem like Celstia had another choice then.
Maybe to them personally, but time is still relevant to everyone else. The ponies already tell stories about before Equestria was formed, and presumably before Celestia and Luna. They didn't see the need to add them in like you added in Twilight. And without the passage of time, the story doesn't feel as epic as the original, or as timeless as the Hearts Warming story.
And honestly, if Twilight was still around even thousands of years later, she would mandate the record be 100% accurate.
An intriguing idea.
It would also be interesting to see what TS's reaction would be getting made into a myth retelling the one that got her started--if you did a followup chapter?.
The way it's written, it's conceivable that Luna's banishment and the events of MLP's 5+ seasons were simply forgotten to history, but they managed to create a myth into one where the Mane 6 resolving the situation before banishment became a factor.
As Anne McCaffrey wrote in her introduction of Pern, "when is a legend legend? Why is a myth a myth?"
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You do realize this was written before the show ever revealed that flashback, yes?
We could be arguing for hours, but at some point, all I can truly say is that I respectfully disagree with your assertions. This story shows my personal interpretation of what the story. If my interpretation of Celestia is too at fault, my Luna too redeemed by time, or my Twilight not factual minded (many years of becoming wiser later, mind you), or my alicorns too sisterly, and altogether are not fitting with your interpretation, there is not much I can do about it.
There is always room for some interpretation in fiction. I gladly invite you to write your own take on this.
6346242
My first draft of this fic had a small scene with a much older alicorn Twilight gently set the book down on her student's bedside table after she found said student fallen asleep on said book. Her reaction was a simple knowing smile.
I leave this to your interpretation.
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A fellow fan of Anne McCaffrey and the Dragonriders of Pern! I didn't even remember that quote. Nice to meet you!
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Oh, I was thinking of the very first time Twilight sees the book after Celestia & Luna approved the publication & her reaction to it
Of course, that scene you spoke of would be the conclusion--maybe a few decades or centuries later, after she finally accepted that version
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Thanks! Nice to meet you, too.
Yes, that quote is from the Introduction "chapter" of her first book in the series, Dragonflight, before the story begins with Lessa in Chapter 1--it gives a little background history of the world.
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I figured out where it was from from what you said in the previous message, but it just didn't stick in my head. I'm a big fan of McCaffrey's work, though.
Loved the story, quite thought provoking. Could very much see this happening
Nice story. Thanks for writing.
That was well done. Especially the words of the Element's bearers.
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Thank you all, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Loved how original it was. Great job
"But it's nothing like what really happened!" Twilight protested.
"Ponies need stories that make sense and that have patterns in which they can believe," Celestia replied. "Let them have this Twilight. Your friends are hardly insulted by this tale and it serves a role in explaining your part in the greater order of things."
"Besides," Luna added. "E'en these millennia hence, we still know the truth of your friends and will never forget it."