Remember When

by Ice Star


Polaris, Born Again

Over the years, Twilight Sparkle's castle had not become cluttered, but more had been moved into it, and there had been changes. While clutter was never allowed, Twilight liked to think that all changes were welcome under her roof. Some sentimental things were left intact: Rarity's memorialized sewing room, which was always cleaned by the maids, and the old bedroom Spike could no longer fit in, seeing as her drake-slash-brother was no longer able to fit inside her castle. There were offices, studies, and a group of tidy libraries scattered throughout that was a kind of recreational status symbol to Twilight. She now had converted a larger space into a lecture hall. There were bedrooms for any guests visiting on royal business and some for Twilight's staff, since a portion of them were not local.

She called them all her friends, and the generations of staff that came before them were called the same. Twilight would smile and wave her good-mornings to each and every one of them. She rarely called them by name when something like 'friend' would simply do.

Twilight walked through the crystalline halls that she had become more familiar with than the Golden Pines Library she had once called home... 'Golden Pines' had been its name, hadn't it?

She didn't stop to muse. It was all in the past, and ponies mattered more to her. All she needed to know was that Princess Celestia sent her to Ponyville, and that Pinkie had thrown her party there... her first sleepover had been there... and her friends had made it a happy place. Oh, and Spike was able to live with her then — and as a sweet little baby dragon!

Twilight smiled as bright as the morning sun that shone through the windows. Even if the sun hadn't been the same with Luna raising it, just as the nights of Celestia were often called 'lesser' — Twilight privately liked them, but she never said that to Luna's face. Not ever.

Her gray-purple-magenta mane was pulled into her signature bun without a single strand out of place. Her 'nerdy' bangs were still there, bobbing about in an almost measured way. Reading glasses hung on a jeweled chain around her neck, their gold rims twinkling. The crown she had once been so reluctant to wear was now an everyday fixture in her mane.

She went through her usual routine. First came smiling at the staff and saying cheery greetings as they went by. Then, she resumed her own walk to the decorative throne room that she had. Ah, but how glad she was to have company! Though she was no divine, the Princess of Friendship couldn't imagine a life without so much company: friends, pen-pals, her descendants, and crowds made up of subjects waiting to hear her friendship lectures made and marketed to the masses. Oh, to think of all the ponies she's touched with the Magic of Friendship!

Over the years, every hallway had become a historical exhibit — well, no, not really, but it was close enough. Twilight took care to keep plenty to cater to her rather modern tastes. Of course, there was still plenty she left out — the magi-tech and other 'wonders' that had become popular with Queen Luna and the... King's renaissance and reign had barely been adopted by her for... reasons. There was just enough in her possession to get by and nothing more. Never more.

She'd never admit that it was partly out of something like spite, even if she knew it for herself. Friendship princesses didn't feel spite.

So over time, every hallway had become a chronicle of the mare known as Twilight Sparkle. Her life could be mapped out with the orderly halls of photos, pristine mementos, portraits, preserved letters, invitations, and articles she kept on display. At first, she had been reluctant to even hang newspaper clippings of her accomplishments, even with her wife's encouragement. After Rarity passed away and Twilight's two foals moved out, she took up the suggestion after so many ponies wrote to her about it.

Even in the beginning, it was hard to find one of her alone. In foalhood images, family gathered around her. She was always surrounded by her parents, brother, and foalsitter. Even a few fillies from the School For Gifted Unicorns — now an unintended inheritance she only ever kept as it was while all the world moved on — found their way into these images. A school-aged Twilight was reluctantly captured alongside Moon-Prancer — that was her name, right? — and other friends, like Lime Hearts and Twinkledust.

There were numerous images of her and Princess Celestia, for she was the princess that Twilight held in her heart more than any other, the mare she thought a true ruler, and the Greatest Good. Celestia always found her way into photos with Twilight, even if it was more than just the two of them. Crowd shots were not free of the duo, and there were shots that had Twilight as a filly to the demigod she had become. While Twilight had grown up, she had never grown any taller after becoming a demigod, and age had robbed her of some of her gained height.

Whenever Twilight neared a miniature memorial to the four friends she could never forget and the mare who became her wife, she would pause and give each photo a tiny wave, or her mouth would curl into a faint smile.

"Hello girls," she would rasp on occasion, as she heard herself do now. After that, she would move on.

There was a certain period of photos she could only bear to look so much at. Sandwiched between the period between a couple of years after Twilight and Rarity's wedding were two very important ponies: Gallant and Stellar Streak, the two little stars of Twilight's world who had called her 'mommy' and been welcomed into her home.

Stellar Streak, her centuries-dead youngest, had gone on to marry a unicorn sorcerer and start a legacy of magicians and other strong magic users — all carrying her pegasus blood in her veins and Harmony in their hearts. The Celestian way had never been lost on Twilight's descendants, even if some of them had been a little more... moderate over the centuries.

And oh, how that legacy had grown! To Twilight strolling down her hallways one chilly morning, it felt like it was only decades ago that one of her great-great-great grandfoals (truthfully, there were more 'greats' in there) by the rather plain name of Cosmic Dust had had two lovely fraternal twins that had Twilight jumping about with glee like the day she got her cutie mark. What a giddy matriarch she was that day! He bestowed such simple names upon them: Fantasy for the unicorn, like his father, and Feather — a name that almost bordered on a slur in this case — for his pegasus daughter.

When Fantasy was killed in a clash with a mercenary, Dusty had the nerve to declare the tragic event part of 'Gallant's Curse' and plunge most of his immediate family into hiding while Twilight had to cope with feeling like she had lost a son all over again.

She didn't know that Dusty started acting as the tyrant of his own family, and had Feather kicked out before she was sixteen. The domestic troubles she had experienced had caused her to cut off ties even further, and it wasn't until Twilight had learned that Feather was dead and had a granddaughter that she finally tracked down a mare that didn't want to be found. Twilight had learned the granddaughter had married into and settled in a community of earth ponies south of the big town of Appleloosa.

So, that was why she didn't look at photos of Gallant most of the time. She would ave to remember a cadet buried too young, and all the superstition that came after Her hooves didn't stop their steps on the cold floor, but she paused to glance at what weren't the photos she grew up with, but photos all the same. Magic advanced in Equestria where industrialization and technology were concepts doomed to fail, bowing to magic when needed at all, and bettered by magic. The queen and king had made sure that overly rapid and harmful technologies couldn't be produced, patented, or sold.

From a long table with a polished crystal surface that matched the rest of the castle's decor, Twilight levitated a picture frame into the air. Squinting at it futilely, she eventually set her reading glasses neatly upon her muzzle and peered through them at the picture she was holding so carefully.

Inside, a unicorn mare who bore a stallion's engagement ring on her horn was embraced by a Twilight Sparkle only a few years younger than she was currently. The gold band complimented the unicorn mare's coincidentally-colored pale lilac coat well. Twilight saw the way her crown slipped a little and a few strands of her mane escaped her bun, the gray and faded magenta a sharp contrast to the natural, sleek white of Twilight Starshine's.

She had a many times great-granddaughter named after her. And she didn't get to know her until she was a grown mare ready to start a family of her own with an astronomer as her husband-to-be.

Twilight watched the photo quietly for a moment. She saw the way animated tears pooled in her eyes then, and the way her forehoof moved to hug Starshine closer. While the photo moved, some things were not there, captured in their tearful reunion. There was no mention of how Starshine told Twilight she got picked on for having such a similar name too. Twilight's first part of her name had been her mother's before her, and as a filly, she had been teased for it too.

She became Starshine's 'Granny Sparkle' and never let contact drop between them. If her own family could 'vanish' within the borders of Equestria, who was to say what couldn't happen? Twilight had spent centuries avoiding adventures and disasters — anything like that, really — and sometimes it still seemed to catch up with her, no matter how much she was happy to have everything remain in order. Especially at her age.

The movement of the image continued, and Twilight saw Starshine's deep navy eyes blink away a few tears. While old photos — the ones that never moved — had a vibrancy all their own, there was something nice about being able to see everything as it was, even in glimpses: falling snow, drizzling rain, cheery waves, and widening eyes. Twilight never gave the art of photography much thought at all — it just lacked what really got her interested in things — she felt a connection to both still and enchanting images like the one she held now. Both existed in balance, represented equally in her hallways and the world outside her castle.

Not delaying herself with mementos any longer — she had centuries of them, and she wasn't one to dwell on things like this — Twilight continued her way down the halls. Rows of identical doors until she came to the one she knew she needed to enter, the neat numbers upon it shining in the morning sun. Twilight stretched her aching legs before lighting her horn to enter. She yawned once and rubbed at her eyes absentmindedly with one hoof. When she had first woken up, her throat was sore. She found her voice to be a bit hoarse, as though she had been stressed or something of the sort. There had also been tears stinging her eyes. She had wiped them away immediately and without care, knowing that her eyes must've been strained from last night's reading and yesterday's paperwork.

If she had a dream, she didn't remember it.

...

Twilight Sparkle called this room in her castle the communication room. Scrolls and parchment were arranged in neat towering stacks, cementing the 'stately office' half of the room. Quills, pens, and inkwells were arranged in orderly rows like soldiers. Upon a heavy table was a magi-tech-built machine bearing gears, tubes, shiny metal, and compartments. If she set the brass-colored, and glass contraption on the crystal floor, it would come up to her chest, and it was almost twice as wide. She could not lift it very easily at her age.

The magic rattling about in it hummed, tethered there with enchantments, and shoved within the modest bowels of the machine.

It was a decently practical machine, and was a little more 'tech' than 'magic' — so it wasn't the best working either. It was an old communicator, almost as though it were a discarded prototype. There wasn't any signature of the King's on it, so she knew it could not be of his making. Oh, but the knowledge — that word was always sour when it was in reference to him — was always his, wasn't it?

He had always been living up to that title...

Twilight swallowed something that was partly out of spite, and then she refocused. She had things to do today, things that began with a post-breakfast conference with her family, and a special one too. Twilight lit her horn, and magenta light bounced off the facets of the crystalline walls. She ignored their irregular patterns, and looked around the shelves on either side of her that were practically built into the walls and resembled honeycomb.

Within each nook where prisms from the Crystal Empire — which was no longer a colony of Equestria as Princess Celestia had wished it to be — were created by the abilities of the crystal ponies. The enchantments that could be put upon them were great. The crystal ponies knew the special stones of the world — and their magic — and what could be woven there. When Twilight first saw Crystalline magic — true Crystalline magic — with these prisms, she hadn't known it yet, but had been in awe anyway. It was Celestia who showed her the image of a then-lost empire with this kind of magic. At the time, she hadn't known it was anything unique or related to an endangered heritage.

However, these prisms were a bit different. They had to be in order to serve their purpose. Within each was a tainted center of smokey gray, weaker than anything she had known and dealt with in the past. This worked no corruption. It was a subtle form of the 'dark crystals' that had never been crystals at all, but magic made solid. Those crystals were dark magic that manipulated itself, those it corrupted, and could be manipulated by those who bore what Twilight would never stop thinking of as a chaotic taint that had gone too far.

Sleepily minding the hums and whirls of the gears and mechanical insides of a machine activated by magic before her, Twilight's horn glowed again and she reached out to locate an unused crystal. Once one was gripped in her magic, she checked the clock on one of the walls and paused. The ticking of the crystal wall clock could be heard over the faint rumbling produced by the contraption. She still had time to spare. Even after all these years, she was still a punctual mare... and a faithful princess.

She bit her lip. Her horn glowed with a smidge more magenta with the recollection of emotions she quickly tamed.

Telekinesis reached out and opened a compartment along the side, and the metal gleamed like the crystalline room before Twilight carefully loaded the crystal into the clunky machine. Magic flared again, and the entire contraption whirled anew and the sound or mechanics and magic grew stronger as the magenta aura sparkling around the machine intensified.

Twilight checked the clock again. Starshine would be starting up hers too, only it might be her husband, White Dwarf, who answers instead.

Trotting over to a different angle, she peered through a small strip of glass that allowed her to see how her prism was faring as the literal magic was worked within. The gray taint was within was drifting and spreading about, like something between mist and water rolling about in an empty bottle — something the solid prism was not. Away from the city of Ponyville, Starshine would be operating her own device with a similar prism, one that held a similar taint within it.

Magic crackled and formed, stemming from what was held inside the prism. Magenta static folded from within the machine and a window of translucent aura rippled across the space above the machine's body, floating there. Blurriness rippled and through it, shapes were emerging. Those shapes became outlines, and the outlines gained detail. However, the finished display still lacked the same details of life, instead of presenting a distorted haze highlighting a room and a pony. A unicorn.

Princess Twilight Sparkle raised her head, stepped back, and looked at a magenta-tinted projection of the world. Even through this machine, the din of Manehatten penetrated the walls of the hospital and carried over the hum of magic. Twilight blinked and looked at the image of a unicorn. It was blurry, and she could only be so sure of how things went, but she was certain it was a stallion standing there. She hated this old thing, but it did what it did — and it was all she had. She couldn't send a scroll for something like this.

"White Dwarf!" Twilight said with a smile. "Good morning, and how good to see you!"

The magenta image smiled.

Twilight knew that if she were to stand before this stallion, his coat would be caramel and his short, wavy mane would be silvery blue. Wire glasses were perched on his muzzle, and there were faint bags under his eyes. Overall, he looked a bit untidy, but that was to be expected.

"Princess Sparkle," he said, voice cracking with joy and crackling with magic. There was a grateful look in his eyes — without Twilight, neither he nor his wife would be able to communicate with the demigod. The spare machine that she usually lent to Spike was now in the maternal ward of a high-class Manehatten hospital — and, as promised, it was able to be set up so early in the morning.

"Hello, Dee," Twilight said, smiling. The laugh lines under her eyes creased like they always did. "Did everything go well? Am I—"

Dee smiled and laughed in his pleasant voice. "You are a grandmother once again! Well, technically you're her great-great-great-great-great—"

Twilight waved a hoof, blushing bashfully. "Oh, I know! I'm old, but enough about me, how is Starshine?" A fleeting bit of worry crossed Twilight's deep purple eyes as she looked around for her descendant.

"Star is doing fine," Dee said, shifting and standing taller. "She's just tired of all the work she had to do."

He laughed and Twilight cracked another smile. She had never given birth — not once. Rarity as her spouse had ensured that no foals of hers would be related by blood, but she loved them all the same. She always did.

When their laugh was over, Twilight stared into that magenta vision and smiled. "Did Starshine have a colt or a filly?"

White Dwarf's tired smile grew brighter. "Star had a filly-"

He was cut off by an unexpected squeal from Twilight — one that sounded like it could have come from a filly. "A FILLY?! How lucky! Fillies are always so sweet. They won't wave fake swords at dinner time, they'll chat about hoof polish in the cutest little ways, and fillies stay still when you brush their mane."

"Recounting your personal experiences with the Lady Rarity, Princess Sparkle?"

Twilight nodded, and White Dwarf's image bobbed his own head in some sort of thoughtless agreement.

Rarity's name still jolted her from any remembrances that drifted by her like a haze. Rarity's face always stuck with her, and so did Rarity's love. No date that Twilight ever went on could compare to the lingering legacy of Rarity in her mind. They were social. They were normal. She stopped them after a while, upon seeing them never work, but those mares — oh, and a few stallions — always left the fuzziest impressions in her mind.

It had been a long time since anypony had said 'Lady Rarity' in a way that made it clear she had been Twilight's wife instead of the Element of Generosity. Sometimes, not having that bothered Twilight. Today was not one of those times. Her heart was light in her chest.

"Does she have a name yet?" Twilight asked in an excited whisper that somehow managed to be carried through the distance between them.

White Dwarf shaking his head no only caused Twilight's excitement to grow. "She only saw the world a mere—"

Twilight bit back what might have been a curse as the projection wavered and static crackled throughout the room. The words of White Dwarf were lost in them — almost lost. She heard the time that little filly she would be Granny Sparkle to entered the world. She knew that exact minute because she saw it on her alarm clock as soon as she woke up. As the interruption died down and a bit of percussive maintenance was applied their connection was restored once again. Twilight knew that even as old she was, her ears didn't betray her.

She fiddled with a few strands of her mane, distracted by her own excitement, and didn't notice that her straight mane was entirely gray, and not a single bit of magenta remained in the dull silver.

"So sorry about that!" There was Twilight's sheepish smile. How long had it been since the gesture was natural instead of just something she was known for? "You know how these can be." There was the smile again.

White Dwarf laughed conversationally and nodded in understanding. "Very true, Princess! As I had been saying, your many times great-granddaughter has yet to be named!" White Dwarf scratched the back of his head with a forehoof, awkwardly mussing his mane. "We can't think of the right one... but..."

Twilight looked steadily at him, confused. "But?" There was something like a mother's worry in her voice. "Did something happen...?"

Her thoughts reached and twisted into desperate, quiet, and quick pleas to whatever divine could be influenced by something so—

"No, no, princess! There's no need to worry! Our little filly is perfectly healthy, Princess Sparkle. There are no worries there."

Thank the gods. Maybe Twilight sighed. She did feel a momentary numbness fade, and that was enough.

"So... there isn't a problem?" She had been a mother. She needed the clarification.

"No, princess!" A reassuring smile she's seen thousands of times before from many other ponies. "It's just that Star and I were thinking about naming her... Twilight..." He swallowed. Quickly. Then, he continued, and Twilight looked at him wide-eyed. "...We were going to add something after 'Twilight' o-of course! Star and I just don't know what, princess."

There was the name again. Ponies did not have surnames, but they had clan names on rare occasions — very rare. After all, who hadn't heard of the Bluebloods, or at least what was left of the de-titled but iconic old house — or the Lulamoons? The Pies had faded over centuries, getting swept up in the trees of other families centuries ago. The Apples were still around, if not quite as strong. The proud House of Snjórinn to the north was known by all. Among the gods, there were but remnants of houses that Twilight had not given that much mind, chief among them was the Galaxias, with Queen Luna Galaxia as the current head. It was always a march of names.

And for every creature, pony or otherwise, there was another march of names. When any creature was born — but most especially an equine — the first most important thing that a pony would receive would be their name.

It was important for a pony's name to be as unique as could be possible. It marked them as an individual before their cutie mark did. Ponies in Equestria may have been drawn to consider themselves as part of a group — Twilight knew now that it was downright abnormal for a pony to be truly isolated and reject socialization — but there was something that a name granted them that was granted to every other creature too.

Some taboos were universal, and were not to be broken. Others were cultural, and didn't have any particularly and inherently harsh consequence for breaking them. No pony who lived the life of a hermit in Equestria would be considered a danger to themselves and to society, but they wouldn't really be accepted by it; they'd be a spectacle to it. Twilight did not think this cruel. All they needed was to accept friendship. She was sure she met a pony like that once — one who locked herself away in the dawn of Twilight's years as a princess. It didn't even matter that she locked herself away, she accepted Twilight, so that is what Twilight remembers.

One such taboo was to name a foal after another pony — especially one who was still alive. To tack a name like Blueblood or Lulamoon — hadn't she known a Lulamoon once? — onto the name of a pony was nothing. Those were house names. But to name a foal after their parent's as Twilight was named for her mother?

It was widely considered disgusting, to some degree, and yet the descendants of Twilight still saw fit to reuse her name. They had never been the most creative lot and continued to mostly marry minor magicians and students of the stars, but Twilight never minded. She had to bear the teasing from the name long ago, when Twilight was the name of a schoolfilly and a homemaker and author. Now it was a little more than a time of day, it was a synonym for an old hero.

So Twilight smiled, and there was the lightest flutter in her chest and a faint feeling in her head that she might not have realized was there since she had woken. It was as though some thin fog had sunk into her mind. Was she forgetting something? She recalled no dreams, except perhaps some dizzy impression of stars.

She laughed too. Quickly. It didn't sound that mirthful, just everyday and ordinary as ever. "Oh, your Granny Sparkle is very biased here, but Twilight sounds like a lovely name!"

White Dwarf was able to muster a sheepish smile of his own, and a thin chuckle too. "Twilight it is! But, uh, the rest is still up in the air, princess."

"Well," Twilight said softly, a momentary brightness in her eyes, "Could I see her? Or...?"

On the other end of the projection, White Dwarf's eyes widened and his mouth formed a silent gasp. "Oh, princess! I apologize — just, uh, stay where you are!"

He shuffled away and Twilight's heart skipped with excitement as the minutes ticked by. As that time passed, she did not count anything other than the brief flutters of excitement in her chest. This never ceased to have her yearning to see a fresh face — a new birth was something to behold! Then, there was the sound of soft cries that split into brief wails, like the horrid peals of some discordant bell. Twilight loved the sound.

White Dwarf shuffled back to where he stood before his departure, his ears pinned back to avoid the infant filly's racket. She was swaddled, and Twilight had yet to see her face, but she could plainly see how White Dwarf's was aglow and he cradled the fragile young pony in his aura.

Twilight gasped, her eyes wide with love at the sight. "Oh gods and stars, she's beautiful, Dee!"

He shushed the little filly as best as he could before answering her. "Yes, yes. Beautiful and noisy. I imagine that you wish to see her face, Princess Sparkle?"

Twilight nodded vigorously, clapping her purple forehooves and tossing her gray mane behind her. A few pesky strands had freed themselves once again. "Oh, of course!"

Carefully, the sleeping Twilight-to-be was held at an angle where the elder Twilight could glimpse her face... and she found herself stunned into silence.

Magenta may have washed out what color her coat was supposed to be, and spilled across the little bundle that stared up at Twilight Sparkle. Twilight shared no blood with this filly, and yet she looked like something out of a dream, resembling the very mare she would be named for in a hoofful of ways.

No matter the magical monochrome aura, the face of the little filly was clear, and her shades could be guessed. Her coat was dark — something earthy, but not rich — and she had eyes that were impossible to look away from. Their paleness indicated a light color — blue, most likely. Starshine had blue eyes, but Starshine's father had pale ones. It was her mane that was truly familiar to Twilight. It would be a dark mane, and based on how the projection's aura blurred things, her mane would be something very close to purple or blue. Maybe it was magenta. Yet, it could also be something else — perhaps royal purple? Though she looked upon a filly, a few things were clear. Her mane was striped like Twilight's, but from what there was upon her little head, it was darker, thick, and wavy, even for an infant filly.

Twilight's tired magenta eyes met the pale ones of the filly who had an impossible resemblance to her. She thought that this must be what Princess Celestia had felt centuries ago, when Twilight Sparkle had been gaping excitedly at her own rear, and the starburst that marked her for a destiny she had yet to know.

Those pale eyes looked back at her, without any understanding, and only showed awe at a shimmering figure before them. The filly's cries had stopped the moment she laid eyes on Twilight, who heard the little one coo softly. For the briefest moment, Twilight noticed how there was a familiar quality to those eyes she couldn't place, and that thought came with sudden dizziness — just a faint haze in her mind, really — that had been plaguing her since she woke up. It was a forgetfulness, and the vague acknowledgment of some absence that might have been there before. She felt different, but barely — she was bound to, witnessing this little filly staring up at the projection of a lavender demigod with a mane of silver.

It was almost like a dream, but Twilight remembered having no dreams last night.

But when she half-closed her eyes in a simple blink, she felt she might've: a mundane dream, if all it had was a butterfly among the stars.

So Twilight's thoughts settled on stars.

"Polaris," she said, quietly but clearly. "Call her Polaris."

White Dwarf nodded, rocking his daughter gently. "An excellent idea, Princess Sparkle." He smiled kindly at her.

Twilight Sparkle was too busy looking at Twilight Polaris to have caught it all, and she swore that when she looked at this filly, she saw a bit — no, felt - a bit of something so familiar in her, and she hadn't the foggiest idea as to what, how, or why.

In fact, it almost felt like something out of a dream.