Well, let's get this out of the way, shall we?
Of course, you can't have a What If without
a completely
and utterly
broken
F̶͈̅i̵̩̪͌m̶̡̢̔̾f̴̞̓i̵̧͆͜͠c̸̒͜t̴̫̘̽̀ị̸̛͕ȯ̸͇͌ń̶̪͖
There. Now that breaking the site is done and out of the way... on with the story! And of course, to a brighter tomorrow. The world's scary out there, y'all. But right here? This is our world. And we're gonna build it together.
~~~~~===+++{Twilight's Castle}+++===~~~~~
Twilight gently placed the previous eight years of her life's work onto her shelf, paying special care not to drop the absurdly thick novel of a thousand chapters.
One thousand.
That's as many as one hundred tens. Or ten one hundreds. Or twenty fifties. Two five-hundreds. One singular mill.
She'd come a long way from that day, when she'd frantically searched for something--anything, that she could possibly still do.
But this wasn't over. It never is. So long as there are words to say, experiences to feel, emotions to convey--it's not over. A uniquely permanent thing, ideas are; even as the ones that carry them come and go, swept away by the endless currents of time, ideas will remain. What may have once been tangible then becomes intangible, yet even if its physical permanence may be long-gone, this intangibility, this permanence--will linger on.
And so, the writing must continue. The speaking must continue. The art, the music, the memories both good and bad, the imagination...
They will go on.
Twilight Sparkle lifted a fresh sheet of parchment from the neat stack she'd set up on her desk. It'd felt like eons since she'd done anything like this. But now, staring at the blank page before her, an ink-dipped quill gently floating above its pristine surface...
There was fear.
There... is fear.
Of the unknown, of course; of new beginnings, of endings, of what may be, of what may not be. Of all the little things in life that linger in her mind. Of all the big things in life that she cannot ignore.
In a sense, this fear,
was of life itself.
.
.
.
Unpredictable as always, despite her best efforts.
It scares her.
It scares me.
But we live in the present, and experience the past.
It's said that beginnings and endings are always the hardest.
Twilight furrowed her brows. What would she even write about? How often would she find herself writing once more about something that'd already been written? How many times would she find herself staring again at a blank page, minutes, hours, days of work, all gone to waste?
It scared her. So much.
She felt her heart beating in her throat as she set the quill tip to the parchment.
...
...
No, not good enough.
Not good enough.
Not... enough.
If words could haunt, that phrase would be one of the phantoms to end all phantoms.
And she knew it well.
We knew it well.
They were the words that we whispered to ourselves, or even told by others; sometimes hardly, sometimes often. But rarely, if ever,
never.
.
.
.
Incorrect.
Those words are... incorrect.
Twilight ran a slow hoof through her mane. She drew in a long, deep breath.
It took a lot of strength to say that. Much more than she could've ever imagined.
And no matter how little it may have felt compared to all that surrounded her,
it was enough.
.
.
.
She steadied herself. She had to remember... first and foremost, she was in control. No matter how much it may otherwise have felt, she was the one at the table.
I am the one at the keyboard.
She had to remember.
She did this for herself.
And even then, if not for herself, she made for someone else.
She did this not for glory, or for fame, or for money or for clout or for anything else she could think of.
She did this because she enjoyed it.
Because we enjoy this.
She, the narrator. Me, the author.
You, the reader.
Even if it were only a precious few words on one day, or even no words for a month, what mattered most was that she enjoyed what she did.
She lifted her quill, peering at the minuscule dot she'd made on the parchment. It was like a singular, lonely star among a vast, empty cosmos. A lone traveler in an arid desert. A penguin, lost in the tundra.
She touched her quill on the parchment again, watching the tiny splotch of ink grow beneath the tip.
A little heart, beating for companionship.
There were so, so many things that it could become, that singular dot.
She set the quill upon the page again. That little heart-shaped splotch grew into a line, then another line, then a character, then a word. A sentence. A paragraph.
A story.
This story.
She really had to thank Spike for giving her the idea to write all those years ago.
Twilight stared at the words she had written. All the way down to this very word. There was a great beauty in making something with your own efforts. It didn't have to be big, nor did it have to be grand. It just had to be.
Become.
Befit.
Begin.
And that precisely was what she was doing. This blank slate had become a new beginning. The start of a whole new journey to who-knows-where, accompanied by companions she hadn't even dreamt of making yet, let alone encountered. New and old faces alike would surely be encountered, and more than likely some old characters and scenarios--or even all of them--would continue on, carried forth into this new iteration of her work.
She paused.
Spike peered through the crack of the door, illuminated from behind by the bright lights of the hallway.
"Is this a bad time, Twi? I brought some cookies from Pinkie."
He pushed the door open, waddling in with the plate of sweets.
He placed it at the corner of her desk and took one for himself.
As for Twilight, she continued to write.
"What if..."