Little candle, why must you try and be so bright?
Can you not see that the Sun high above you provides enough light?

This now has a reading by Sunlestia! Russian translation courtesy of NovemberDragon and Randy1974.

After dying in a train crash, Twilight finds herself offered a deal by the Reaper: a game of chess for her soul. Twilight accepts, but there's something off about the game. Something she can't put her hoof on.

But the answer to that question is just perfect for who she is.

Cover art is from the Poets of the Fall album Clearview.

One hundred and thirteen people find themselves standing in a dark, round room. They are neither living, nor dead. They will be offered a single choice, and they will be asked only once.

This is a story set in Iceman's Friendship Is Optimal universe, but knowledge of that work is not needed to understand this tale.

Twilight takes a bath to forget.

Second place in GaPJaxie's Happy Stories Speedwriting Contest, where it was conceived and written in 60 minutes.

Now with a reading from StraightToThePointStudio!

Celestia has been here before. It's not the same, it never is, but it always ends the same way. She's seen it all before, and no matter how inevitable it feels, she's never been the biggest fan of Fate. She just needs to know why it keeps happening.

The guards are scared to say it.

Sunset Shimmer has returned to Canterlot.

And the Princess is furious...

Not in continuity with my other stories. Just something that popped into my head one day.

Spell Nexus (mentioned only) is from Past Sins, by Pen Stroke

Twilight faces the thought of immortality with her usual aplomb: falling down into a ball of misery and confusion about her role, and what she will do in the eventual absence of her friends and family.

That is, until a much older Twilight Sparkle takes the time to talk to her.

Three days into her latest stay on Earth, Twilight Sparkle is enjoying learning about Europe in the company of her mentor while staying in the nation of Equios, a European microstate bordering Switzerland that functions as Equestria's outpost on Earth.

But when a solemn Celestia wakes her early one morning and asks Twilight to accompany her to a new place a thousand miles away, she will learn that not all is Friendship and Harmony when it comes to humans. That there are some very dark and dangerous events in humanity's past whose nature may rock her to her core. Can Twilight solve the mystery her mentor presents of what happened decades earlier near a town named Pripyat? And can anything be the same afterwards if she does...?

Inspired by the HBO series Chernobyl.

Thanks to user Eezee, there is now full text to speech version of the story available with pictures up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__0FF-VeXKg

Set during FiM season 2, the story takes place in the Phoenixverse of Turnabout Storm and The Lawyer and The Unicorn, but familiarity with those two stories is not required to read this one.

Author: Firesight
Prereaders: AJ_Aficionado, James CyberLink, Silentwoodfire, Denim_Blue

Picture Credit: James CyberLink

• Graded at 25/30 points by Nano Discussions of the My Little Reviews and Feedback Group.

This story is a sequel to A Foreign Education

Twilight was sixteen when she became an alicorn. She hasn't aged a day since. Some ponies ask her what it's like, not being able to grow up.

Twilight can't really say. She's never known anything else.

When I first met Princess Twilight, she was confused, lost. Adrift in an alien world. I thought of her as a rich eccentric, certainly a foreigner. I humored her as much as I believed her, really. Even when she dragged me to the very ends of the world in her mad quest for a mythic well, I really did it all for her. I figured it would help her find some closure, and we could go home.

I was right, in a way.

Based roughly on the game 80 Days.