//------------------------------//
// The Grand Illusion - Part 2 
// Story: The Grand Illusion and Other Short Stories of Pony Wisdom 
// by Knowledge 
//------------------------------//

Earth Zulu - Somewhere

Twilight flew through the sky for what felt like forever. At first, she screamed, but soon it just became boring. Tossing and flailing became monotone spinning around and around. The Princess of Friendship found it odd that she couldn't feel her wings, but she could figure that out when she landed - if she landed.
In a few hours land she did and hot. It was like a meteor, not a princess, was falling out of the sky. A fiery red aura surrounded the pony as she descended from the atmosphere and crashed into a desert. Twilight continued smashing through sand, leaving glass behind, for several yards before coming to a complete stop.
When she weakly arose, she found her dress completely destroyed, and her wings gone. Worse, her magic wouldn't cooperate anymore. Her voice was too hoarse to scream, so Twilight settled on a gesturing in a panicked manner. 
'I look like a unicorn again! Why can't I use magic? What happened?! How am I not dead? Did I instinctively use up all my alicornhood to protect myself? I didn't know that was possible. Is that possible?' the lavender pony wanted to say.
Twilight wandered the desert once she calmed down. It took her two weeks to find a town, surviving on cactus juice and the occasional grass next to an oasis. 
In the town, she found that she had flown clear across the sea into Zebrica. Nozebra knew who Twilight was or believed that she was actually a princess. Heck, even Twilight wouldn't believe she was a princess at that point given she didn't have wings anymore.
So she begged. Twilight sat in the streets of that sandy desert town for months, trying to get enough bits just for good food, much less a ride home.
Eventually, the King of the land saw the state of his Kingdom and frowned upon all the beggars. 
"They are making us look too poor to feed our people to our neighbors to the north," the King said. "Begging shall be illegal. All those who cannot afford to live on their own four hooves shall be sent to the dungeons."
As a result, the then magical-less unicorn with no marketable skills found her in chains deep in dungeons of a foreign land. There she spent two years in grim and grime. The food was bad, the water worse. Many of the other prisoners just died, two of which she had befriended. Twilight stopped making friends after that. You would too if it meant losing another friend.
After two years, the King looked upon his dungeon and found that it was getting too full and too expensive. Since his kingdom lacked straightforward capital punishment, the ruler had to get creative. 
"The prisoners are not dying fast enough. Tie them up and leave them in the forest," the King ordered, and so Twilight found herself tied up and left to die in the woods. They had blindfolded her as well in order to make sure she couldn't easily find her way back and start begging again.
For what must have been the hundredth time since the pony had removed her crown in front of Guild Leader Lulamoon, Twilight watched her life pay out again in her mind. It was like watching marathoning all the episodes of her life over and over again.
When she finished her reminiscing, some slavers found her. They had gotten a tip off from a sleazy guard that the King had abandoned his prisoners in the forest. Twilight, tied up and without her magic, was just easy prey.
The slavers caged her and took her all the way to the port city at the northern edge of Zebrica. Along the way, they barely fed the pony, and she became even more emaciated that she had been in prison or on the streets begging. They sold her for the first bid they got for her - ten bits. 
'From Princess to a unicorn not worth the amount of bits it costs to take a chariot to Fillydelphia, how the mighty have fallen,' Twilight lamented in her cage.
The purchaser was a stone mason who was getting on her years. The stone mason treated Twilight as an apprentice, making her do all the grunt work as the master did all the important stuff. It was hard work and definitely more physical labor than the pony had ever done in her life, alicorn or otherwise.
'Is this karma for treating Lulamoon like a slave?' Twilight wondered during one of her admittedly short breaks.
Because slaves were people too, her mistress allowed Twilight to find a mate among any of the other slaves of the town. No breeding between free equines and slaves were permissible unless the free equine was willing to buy the slave's freedom. Most zebras or ponies didn't want to spend the bits though some did out of love. Twilight successfully found somepony to love and together they had two children, a earth pony and a pegasus. The unicorn lamented that neither could learn from her magic but love them nonetheless.
When the stone mason became too old to work, she passed her business on to a slave she had bought a few years after purchasing Twilight. The stallion was stronger and more deft with a hammer than Twilight, but he lacked the discipline to run a business. The unicorn had urged her owner to reconsider, but the old zebra would hear nothing of it. Everyday under the young stallion's leadership, he berated Twilight, blaming her for any shortcomings. "Look at this crack? Now, we have to start all over" and "No one wants to buy from us because you are scaring them off with your ugliness" would play over and over again in Twilight's head as she slept due to how often he criticized her.
After fifteen years of grueling labor, Twilight earned her freedom. The stone mason's daughter, as was custom, hoofed Twilight enough bits to get her life started.
She bought a sail boat and brought her family along with her across the sea. During a storm, the mast broke, leaving them stranded. They were running short on food and the foals were complaining loudly about being sick of oranges on sardines. 
Twilight took out a fishing pole and began fishing for her family. She caught nothing for days but never gave up. The unicorn stayed up late into the night, trying her best to keep her family alive. Her husband had taken turns with her, but she insisted on doing the fishing.
"It is the least I can do since I don't have any magic," she stated. Their daughter, the pegasus, had been scouting for ships, and her husband had been keeping their young son entertained. 
On the third day, Twilight finally got a nibble. A nibble quickly turned into a wrenching. Twilight couldn't hold on. Her husband and their foals had to glomp onto her just to keep her in the boat. 
"Let go, Honey!" the stallion called out to her.
"No, this could be that last chance we get for more food."
"It isn't worth your life."
"My life isn't worth all of yours!"
A unicorn not even worth a ride to Fillydelphia.
With all her and her family's might, Twilight finally reeled in the beast. It was a narwhal. It's weight almost capsized the sail boat.
Twilight quickly gutted the beast and found dozens of squids, rockfish, halibut inside it. This delighted the family, but Twilight's eyes zoomed onto something else.
A lone king crab lay in the pile of dead, stinky fish. Upon its head lay a familiar golden crown. Twilight fought the crab for the crown hoof-to-claw. Her family stared at her as if she were crazy, and perhaps she was at this point.
Resting control of the crown, she looked at the crown and then to her family. Twilight told them the truth. That she had been a princess all along, and that in reality they were all royalty.
Their foals believed her, but her husband just became distraught.
"Dear, only alicorns are princesses. All ponies know this."
"No, I will show you. Once I wear this crown, everything will clear again."
Twilight put the crown on again and everything was indeed clear again.
"So what is 'true illusion magic' like, Sugarcube?" 
Twilight blinked. She was once again surrounded by her advisers. She could once again feel the magic flowing through her horn and the wings upon her back. More importantly, she was young again. A small layer of fat covered her features and gone was the gaunt unicorn from moments ago. The Princess once again stood tall and regal above Lulamoon.
"Dear, don't hold us in suspense. We all want to know more about this mysterious and, might I add, alluring magic."
"Was that real?" Twilight wondered with tears building up in her eyes.
"That isn't the question you should be asking," Lulamoon replied with a smirk. "You shouldn't even question if this is even real." She indicated the room around her and the advisers within it. "What do you think the right question is?"
Twilight bawled her eyes out before her very confused friends. She couldn't answer her fellow alicorn for there were no correct questions. The Princess had finally learned the wisdom of True Illusion Magic that could only be experienced and not explained.