The Royal Ceremonial Headdress takes ages to fix up. Just ages. Plenty of time to chat about love, and time, and those big steel cups they serve alongside your milkshake.

Audiobook version: KwirkyJ

Now with a Spanish translation by Spaniard Kiwi!

Princess Celestia was there before the oldest mortal pony was born; she will be there when the youngest foal dies of old age. She is as much a fixture of Equestria as the sun, the land, and the sky. She is also the rock that keeps Twilight Sparkle's hooves on the ground. No matter how bad things get, they will always be there for each other.

Princess Luna is a newcomer to modern Equestria: a stranger in a strange land. She is a pony out of her time and out of her place, struggling to escape the shackles of her mistakes. When a spectre from the past manifests in the present and incapacitates Rarity, the two cross paths for the first time since Luna's return and something unexpected happens: they see something they need in each other.

Struggling with self-doubt and haunted by a magical malady, Rarity reaches out to the princess and learns more about Luna than most ponies ever will. While Twilight throws herself at unravelling a magical mystery, Luna and Rarity, with the help of a few of Celestia's hoof-picked elite guards, must fight to make peace with themselves before they can make peace with the past. Luna seeks to reconcile her relationship with Celestia, and Rarity must learn to overcome the harshest, most bitter, most devious enemy she has ever faced: herself.

Completed in it's entirety for the second time, Shades of Grey version 3 is the culmination out many hundreds of hours or work, both mine and that of the editors, teachers, pre-readers, and readers. It is the first story I conceived, and it's taken over two years to bring it to this final revision that I am happy with. This is a story I am proud to have written. For better or worse, it will always be a piece of me and vice versa.

Special thanks go to Chris, without whom my ability to write at all would never have gotten off the ground.
Huge appreciation goes to ReplayMasterOfTime for the cover art that I have come to love so dearly in those two years.
Additional thanks go to: Pascoite, who has helped me grow through his reviewing; Mystic, the one-time EqD pre-reader who also helped with early editing and learning; and InsertAuthorHere, just for being an established name who gave me a shout out and filled me with the will to keep going.

There are dozens more to whom I owe the existence of this story. They know who they are, and I love them all.

Please enjoy this legacy of mine.

-Scott

For Rarity, waking up with split ends is the absolute worst thing ever. Unfortunately, a mysterious stallion proves otherwise when he warns her that Armageddon is approaching and Equestria is doomed, and if that happens, she can kiss her well-coiffed mane farewell. Now the timeline is splitting worse than Rarity's hair as our intrepid heroine travels back again...

and again...

and again in order to save the world, with perhaps a smidgen of help from Princess Luna. And if she happens to find the time for a trip to the spa along the way, well... A mare can't be blamed for wanting to look her best, can she?

Thanks as always to JeffCvt for editing.

Further thanks to Prak for prereading!

Fantastic cover art provided courtesy of Pony-Berserker. Check out his other work—it's all amazing.

Celestia sends Twilight her last, greatest assignment. The lost masterpiece of Star Swirl the Bearded!

The spell that the greatest mage of all time couldn't figure out.

The spell given to her by the mare who thought releasing Discord was a good idea.

The spell that, upon closer inspection, seems about as stable as Rarity's emotional state and as safe as Rainbow Dash's usual workout.

... Maybe Twilight should double check with the princess first.

Winner of the Rage Reviews F*CK THIS PROMPT 6 contest. Prompt: "Equestria is getting a new Alicorn Princess."

Queen Platinum is dying.

She is cursed, and every day she grows weaker. If she dies, the kingdom will collapse, and the three tribes will once again fragment. Centuries of unity and harmony will come to an end.

There is only one thing that might cure her – a mystical, half-forgotten potion known as the Panacea. It can cure any curse, any disease, any poison. But all magic has its price, and the greater the magic, the greater the sacrifice it requires.

Prince Hyperion will do anything to save his mother. He will find the Panacea, regardless of the cost.

Even if he isn't the one who must pay it.

Winner of the April Writeoff Competition

Strange dreams are haunting the night in Ponyville.

The dreams are lucid and clear, indistinguishable from reality. And sometimes, when ponies wake up, the dreams don't go away.

Hallucinations stalk the waking world. Reality is bending in ways that Twilight Sparkle doesn't understand. But she intends to get to the bottom of this mystery and save Equestria from whatever is hiding in the dark.

Twilight Sparkle wonders, sometimes, if the pony in her dreams is the real her. If that is her soul laid bare.

She's about to find out.

Written for the Distant Shores Writeoff. Cover art by CosmicUnicorn, used with permission.

When Spike asked Twilight to help him create The Noble Dragon Code, he hoped a lot of things would happen.

Getting worshipped as a god by legions of theologically-inclined dragons wasn't really one of them but, hey, whattcha gonna do? Them's the breaks, kiddo.

It's Sisterhooves Social time again. This year, Dash catches wind of two new competitors and gets Spike to bet on the race. When her team is revealed to be a rather famous set of siblings, it looks like poor Spike will be her slave for a week! However, due to a team of masseurs, a minor invasion, unfortunate addictions, and dubious barrel components, victory might not be as near as she thinks...

For years, Twilight Sparkle and Queen Chrysalis have been at each other's throats. Both have experienced victory over the other, and both have experienced defeat. Out of all the creatures in Equestria, none despise each other the way the pony Princess and changeling Queen do. They seemed destined to remain locked in battle forever, or at least until one is finally dead at the hooves of the other. The cruel insults, the vicious loathing, and the powerful spells that have passed back and forth between them at each meeting have become the stuff of legend.

Imagine Twilight's surprise when she finds out changelings consider this dating.

And now they're married.

***

Sequel: Pony Courtship Rituals

***

Some beautiful fanart of the end of chapter three was done by Dmann892; you can see it here.

More awesome fanart, this time from chapter one.

Now with a TvTropes page (obligatory TvTropes warning goes here).

If you want a Russian translation, you can find it here.

There is now a reading of the story on Youtube, which starts here.

The alternate timelines visited by Twilight Sparkle during her showdown with Starlight Glimmer were shown only for a moment. But what is a day in the life like for her former friends and neighbors? This series peers into the lives of those living without the magic of friendship to brighten their world.

Rainbow & the Pie sister's story to come next chapter!