Twenty years. It has been twenty years since the Rainbooms graduated from Canterlot High. Their high school careers, finally looking up after befriending their one-time tormenter, Sunset Shimmer, took a dramatic turn for the worse when she disappeared without a trace, only for them to learn months later that Sunset had died in Equestria.
They never got to say goodbye.
Looking back, some days Twilight Sparkle can hardly credit her own memories. Friendship, Magic and the fiery-haired girl who extended a hand to her when she lost herself... Life moved on, memory faded into dreams, and dreams into mere nostalgia, these days, she can't even recall her face - only a pair of lambent wings and a crown of fiery hair.
Until the day when she found a leather-bound journal with the two-faced Sun sigil of Sunset Shimmer buried deep with the rest of her relics from her school days, and in it, a message from herself...
"Please help Sunset."
Set in the middle of an alternate Season 6, after the events described in the Sunset chapters* of The Sun Never Sets, up to about half way through Chapter 40 - Happy Birthday, this can be read stand-alone but the enjoyment is doubled if you read The Sun Never Sets first.
The prologue functions as a bridge linking The Sun Never Sets to False Dawn, and readers unfamiliar with the former may start reading at chapter 1 with little loss to the overall narrative and reduced confusion.
All credit to the redoubtable Mr Fislewait, pre-reader and editor, for making this entire enterprise possible, and for greatly improving the flow, pacing and consistency of the work. Any mistakes, plot holes and typos are, naturally, entirely his fault my own.
*In other words chapters 2,4,6,8,10,11,12,14,16,18,19,20,21,23,25,27,28,29,31,32,33,34,36,37,38 and the first half of 40. Except certain minor variations which will be made clear in the story itself, the chief amongst which is that Sunset's adventure took place after the events of Friendship Games.
