Prophesy says that Twilight Sparkle will not outlive her friends.

To preserve the Princess, her friends must survive.

They may not be immortal - but one year can become a thousand at the speed of light.

An entry for Science Fiction Contest II, where it took a Committee Prize!

Additional tags for spoiler purposes: My Little Pony: A New Generation ; Mane 5

Featured 3/23/2023 - 3/28/2023!

And featured on Equestria Daily on 4/4/2023!

Thanks to my pre-readers: The Sleepless Beholder, Dewdrops on the Grass, daOtterGuy, and Avery Day.

Spike is the perfect assistant. He's been programmed that way, after all.

Unfortunately, he and Rarity and Twilight were programmed by Master Simon to help out around Mistress Olive's apartment before Mistress Olive kicked Master Simon out. And Mistress Olive doesn't like her assistants to have faces and names and personalities, especially when they come from some eighty-year-old cartoon show she's never heard of...

The original version of this story had no Pony content whatsoever and came in 2nd in the 247th Writeoff contest, "The Hurricane's Eye Blinked." It's been extensively rewritten since then and was now an entry in the 2023 Science Fiction contest where it didn't make the Top 12.

Three million years ago, at the very beginning of the starfaring age, the daughter of a powerful noble house headed out into the galaxy, ready to uncover the mysteries of the Milky Way. However, Helena never expected her greatest discovery would be hidden away inside a foreboding nebula.

Twilight Sparkle's love of astronomy was well known, but she never imagined a day would come when she aimed her telescope to the heavens and found nothing but a dark, empty void.

Additional notes:
-First contact story with an ominous setting and mild conflict between human and ponies-
-The main character is not your average human-

Proofread by Snakeskin Ducttape and PresentPerfect
Artwork by: Rossby Waves
Featured on Equestria Daily
Review link: PresentPerfect and PaulAsaran

Strange symbols have started appearing all across Equestria that nopony can read, except Discord. As he comes to grips with what this message means, he is determined that nopony find out its secret. If they do, absolutely everypony in Equestria will die.

This story is a cosmological crossover with The Three Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu, and thus contains spoilers for that universe. But can be read without prior knowledge of that story.

Audiobook available on YouTube!
Featured on Equestria Daily!