A full millennium has passed since Princess Luna walked free in Equestria. But now, after the darkest chapter in her life, she is herself once more, and free to rule her nation alongside her beloved sister. But as she acclimatises to her new surroundings in Canterlot, she receives an unexpected visitor. One who makes it abundantly clear to her just how much has changed since she was last in the world.

While preparing for her coronation, Twilight Sparkle questions why there's no royal sunflower contest in Canterlot. This line of questioning leads Princess Luna to let Twilight in on an open secret:

Celestia hated sunflowers.

Commissioned by KorenCZ11. Proofread by Venerable Ro.

Sunflower art taken from "The Art of Friendship," an Equestria Girls Summertime Short.

After taking the throne, Twilight had a lot of things to do - a transition that had never happened before was bound to be fraught with a thousand unexpected complications.

As part of the transition, Twilight finds herself going through Princess Celestia's old personal papers, finding secret after clue after instruction long forgotten about. And among those papers, Twilight finds a letter.

A letter addressed to My Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle.

A letter never sent.

Special thanks to RanOutOfIdeas and SymphonicSync for proofreading!

Featured 4/13/2021 to 4/18/2021!

Reviewed by Ghost Mike and rated as Really Good!

And by Loganberry in the blog Louder Yay!, earning a three out of five stars rating!

Now with an audio reading by StraightToThePointStudio!

And a second by Dear silent future me!

Today was a shaping up to be a bad day, Apple Bloom had been running for her life in the Everfree forest. Now she didn't even know if she was even in the same forest anymore. She had never before seen trees so tall, and never before had she met something so strange.

Something ancient.
Something overflowing with old and powerful magic.
Something green.

This story is a sequel to What I Am

Much has changed since that fateful day when the remnants of the old Krin Empire attacked our two worlds.
They crashed so many ships onto Earth, destroyed our cities, killed millions, and collapsed several governments in an instant, all as a diversion from their true objective, which was the blatant mass abduction of the citizens of Equis. Lives lost, families broken, and cities burnt to the ground, all to fuel the Krin war machine and their mad quest for power and vengeance against the snakes that had wronged them.

However, that's not the end of the story, or our involvement in its unfolding. A darkness is growing in the depths of space, and even though the snakes have done their best to assure us that they will take care of it, there are so, so many on both of our planets that choose not to listen to them.

And how could I blame them? After all, every time I look in the mirror, I'm reminded of the horrors of the Krin Empire, and more importantly, the promise I made in that accursed tank that remains unfulfilled. They came for us, they struck first, and I'm not about to let that go unpunished.

Yeah, sure, it's hard for me to do it right now, since I'm just a diplomat to the people of Equis, and we don't exactly have a fleet outside of the few ships we commandeered from the krin, but trust me when I say that both of those are just temporary inconveniences.

After all, it's rather difficult to keep a monster like me behind a desk, especially not when there's a perfectly good war brewing throughout the galaxy, and that's not even counting the other humans and ponies that are all chomping at the bit, ready for some good, old-fashioned payback.

The only problem with that, though, is that, somehow, deep down, I feel like we've already lost. Call it a hunch, or a premonition, but something deep inside is telling me that we messed up when we let the general's ship get away. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but somehow, I don't think so.

After all, I know better than anyone what the krin are capable of. We might be coming for them, but that doesn't mean the reverse isn't also true. They're coming for us, too.

The only question is: Who's going to be ready first?

Given that we've only just obtained (stolen) ships capable of spaceflight, I don't think it's going to be us...

This is the beginning of the next set of books in this series that I'm tentatively calling the Soul of the Milky Way.
The title up for change, as well as suggestion. Not only that, but the title of this story, as well as the set it belongs to is also up for change and suggestion, so feel free to leave them in the comments. If you're just starting with this one, please don't. I mean, you can if you want, but there's a lot here that you won't get if you haven't read the trilogy that predates this new set of books. They are, in order:

What I've Become
What I've Done
What I Am

They're quite good, if the feedback I've gotten is anything to go by, so if you haven't read these by now, please go and do that now. Don't worry, this story will still be here when you get back...

In the midst of a battle to protect Equestria, Twilight Sparkle falls. For a moment—just a moment—she wonders if she should bother getting back up this time.

A treatise on 2020, written and published 12 days late. Blame it on the Gregorians.

Starlight Glimmer has gone back in time. Each time Twilight tries to stop Starlight, she fails and is flung back through the portal and into a broken, twisted Equestria, ravaged by wars or monsters, each version worse than the one before, barreling toward the destruction of the world. Until she lands in a version of Equestria that ... isn't worse. It seems unchanged, happy, normal. The only real difference she can find on the cutie map is that her castle isn't there ...

... but the library still is.

Editing by Formerly Committed and JetstreamGW.

A Mother, a Father, a brother, a sister-in-law, and a niece. They are Twilight's family.

But there's one special member of her family that is about to be recognized.

FEATURED 8/19/2019!

For Raevyn, on this most special of days.

From the comments section:

"Speaking as someone who was adopted as a baby...and who's mother shared something very much like this with him many years ago during one of our talks...

Thank you, and damn you for making my 'allergies' act up." -Rescue Sunstreak

"This was one of the sweetest stories I have ever had the pleasure of reading!" -Real_Harmony Sparkle

"Beautiful I adore this story so very very much :D" -twidash1993

Anon is adamant that bananas are the best fruit in the universe. Applejack disagrees, for obvious reasons.

Fistfights ensue.

This happens more often than you'd think. It's all in good fun though.

Clover the Clever never asked for his life to get so complicated.  It was bad enough tricking a drunk Imperatrix Celestia, war goddess of the Three Tribes, out of her accidental coup against Queen Platinum.  But now the most dangerous pony in Equestria has returned to trade her claim on the sun for a chance to woo him.

On top of that, his erstwhile mentor Star Swirl the Bearded has saddled him with a mysterious magical necklace and a uniquely bleak and pointless prophecy: If he's brave enough, and if he's clever enough, he just might survive Celestia for long enough to break her heart.

Now with an audio reading by ScarlettBlade!

Recommended by PresentPerfect! "horizon gave me the story I needed rather than the one I wanted ... along the way we get some very strong lessons about love, and meditations on the value of a lifetime and what one pony can achieve on their own."

Featured on Equestria Daily!

First place, "Out of Time" Writeoff! (11/2015) At long last, expanded to novella size! The world-spanning, centuries-spanning romance as it was always meant to be told!

PRAISE FOR THE WRITEOFF VERSION:
"One of my favorite depictions of Celestia in a long time." –billymorph
"To the top of the ballot with it." –AugieDog
"There’s going to be a lot of tears shed when this one hits publish." –Georg
"You need to read Time Enough For Love. I literally swore out loud when my computer crashed when I was halfway through, and then I immediately whipped out my smartphone to finish it. And now I'm reading it again in a desperate attempt to figure out how it does its job so damn well." –Bachiavellian
"I can get behind some historical revisionism for such a brilliant story. The writing is second-to-none … I laughed, I cried, and I felt other things too." –Trick Question

Cover art by Nadnerb.