Twilight calls for help. Unfortunately, it comes.

Note that this story deals heavily with depression and suicide. There's no shame in deciding not to read.
Thanks to Quill Scratch for prereading.

It's not easy to go back to your life after a thousand years of insanity and exile. It's not easy for Luna to even leave her room. All the same, there's a special somepony that Luna desperately wants to get closer to, and that's worth facing the outside for. All she has to do is get up the nerve to talk to her.

Equestria burns, its citizens enslaved, its goddesses silent.

Clinging to Celestia's teachings of mercy and forgiveness, Twilight journeys south across the Sand Sea to make peace with the enemy who devastated her homeland. But every step of the way, the brother they killed is there to haunt her. The brother whose family they butchered. The brother so filled with hatred he'd see Twilight betray everything she believes in to satisfy his need for revenge.

Two magical prodigies cast in Twilight's shadow stumble about in somepony else's story and try to find meaning in their lives.

***

An affectionate parody of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Which is in itself an absurdist and existentialist parody of Hamlet.

Russian Translation
Chinese Translation

Pinkie has a bad Hairdra day and winds up peeking further beyond the Vale than she’d have liked.

But, more certain than death and praxis, she’ll make sure everypony else has fun again.

Written for the October 2016 Writeoff, where it won first place.

Note: This story is written in the style of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, a classic work of English literature that is notorious for being hard to read. While this story is not as cementically dense as FW, it is still full of wordplay, literary references, portmanteau words and puns and will be a challenge for many readers. If this isn’t your sort of thing, try one of my other stories. If you’re game, dig in! It can help to read the story aloud.

Image background by Chaz1029, foreground by Mahaugher, with edits to both by GGA.

Thanks to Morning Sun, FanOfMostEverything, Quill Scratch, Baal Bunny, and Not_A_Hat for criticism, suggestions and corrections.

A bolt of fire, a mighty crash
A demon turns to powdered ash
Remember the day that Tirek died
And also the day the Princess survived
―Equestrian Nursery Rhyme

Every year, on the day Princess Twilight Sparkle saved Equestria from its greatest threat, she mourns the loss of who she was.

Preread by Waterpear!

Edited by Dubs Rewatcher!

There once was a story about the beautiful dark alicorn who moved the moon. In the tranquil countryside, a young boy listened to the story, looked at the stars, and imagined. He grew up and fell in love with the ruler of the night … and she loved him, too.

It was perfect, except for one nagging doubt in the back of the quiet boy's head: she was a character from a children's story.

Winner of the Writeoff Association's "Written In The Stars" competition! ** Featured on Equestria Daily ** Featured by The Royal Guard (twice! )

Rated ★★★★★ by Louder Yay! "This is, perhaps, a Lucky Dreams story for grown-ups. ... Plenty of magic and friendship here, but also sadness and loss ... a clear classic."

Highly Recommended by Present Perfect! "An excellently written story about an emotional encounter between the titular characters … yet a good bit more than that. If you like reading, you will like reading this."

Recommended by Titanium Dragon! "This story had an excellent style to it, a sort of fairy-tale-like quality … really, this is a work of original fiction which pokes at MLP in only the barest of ways. But that doesn't mean it isn't relevant to your interests."

Art: Assembled by me. Luna vector by azur-wing.

The tensions of estranged family run high when Cloudy Quartz's mother, Change, comes to see her newborn grandfoals. Things only get worse when Change makes a discovery that spells hope for her species, and promises disaster for her relationship with her daughter.

Pinkie Pie has the soul of a draconequus.

***

Originally Written for the June 2015 Write Off: A Matter of perspective.

Special thanks to Softy8088 for help with Igneous Rock's dialogue, and to Feathers for the cover art!

Celestia's morning has been difficult enough, between hearing Twilight's confession of love, and then breaking her heart as gently as possible. Mere moments later, her private chambers are rocked by the shockwaves of a time-traveling spell. This marks the arrival of Celestia's alleged lover from five thousand years in the future, Princess Twilight Sparkle—or as she insists on Celestia referring to her, Glitter-Flanks.

Armed with thousands of years of knowledge of which buttons to push and how to make her squirm, Glitter-Flanks has traveled back to this date for one singular purpose: to establish the closed time loop that sets the two of them up as a couple.

The colony of Myinnkyun had enough problems without Peridot vanishing — trade ships were disappearing, and the island's native minotaurs had launched an attack on the city walls.

But now there's talk that she was murdered, and the city is about to tear itself apart before its enemies have the chance.

One part Spoon River Anthology and one part Rashomon, this story invites you to piece together the story of Myinnkyun's last days — and Peridot's final night — from the dreams of its inhabitants. "Dreams cannot lie," the Nightmares say, but everybody has a different understanding of the truth ...

Now with an official epilogue, thanks to the contest!

* Audiobook Version by Dubs Rewatcher *

Highly Recommended by Present Perfect! "Once again, horizon attempts something ambitious and in doing so effortlessly shows us how to write a story."

Rated ★★★★★ by Louder Yay! "If you're in the market for something truly original and are willing to work for your reward, drop everything and read this."

Praised by Cold in Gardez: "Dreams is the best story I've read in a long time. It deserved to win the last Writeoff, and if it had been a prose story instead of a poem, it probably would have ... but it wouldn't have been the work of art that it is."

Recommended by Titanium Dragon: "Really, you don’t need to be a connoisseur of poetry to appreciate this – the form of the poetry didn’t matter so much as the mystique it lent the piece."

Praised by Skywriter: "This story is destroying me right now. I mean, I'm just sitting here at my desk crying because of it. I don't know what else to do."

Rated Why Haven’t You Read These Yet? by PaulAsaran: "Poetry isn't my medium … [yet that] does nothing to dissuade my satisfaction with an ambitious concept and a fascinating delivery."

Reviewed by Chris: "The more you put into it, the more you're going to get out ... if you're looking for something opaque, surprising, and even poignant—and especially if you enjoy piecing together stories for yourself—consider this highly recommended."

Featured on Equestria Daily! Winner of the "Most Controversial" award in the August 2015 "Distant Shores" Writeoff!

(Also, first place in my own list of my top stories! "Everything that people appreciate about my writing is at a full-throated howl here.")