//------------------------------//
// Epilogue 
// Story: Sunset Shimmer and the Last Trial of Daring Do 
// by ChudoJogurt 
//------------------------------//

Cold. The next thing I remember was coldness, waves upon waves of it, and I was drowning in it. No pain, no fear, no anger. Just eternal, perfect cold and darkness.

And then the sun came up, and I saw my Princess. White walls of Canterlot General, the stark and tickly smell of chlorine and disinfectant, and a mild note of daffodils and sunflowers - Celestia’s scent.

“Hi.” Ignoring the beeping machinery, I waved her with my whole hoof and smiled weakly.

"How do you feel, my student?" she asked me gently.

I stretched a single sinuous motion, the tip of my horn to end of my hooves testing out my body underneath the sheets. It hurt — almost every little movement pinged back with the sharp pain of broken bones and torn muscles, muffled somewhat with pain-killing spells and medicines.

"I'm fine," I said, realizing slowly that it was — for the most part — true. The pain didn't bother me that much anymore, my limbs were all in place, my horn was uncracked, and the flesh would serve. The failure, still fresh in my mind, hurt more, but it was a thing of the past, and I knew to accept it and move on. I was fine.

...I was fine…

I was fine.

"They found you in the Everfree Forest," Celestia said, almost desperate for something to talk about. "The ponies of Ponyville. They said somepony told them you got in trouble there."

Green...

I smiled when I thought of her. She must've woken up first, with her earth pony resilience, and moved me away from Ahuizotl and his minions. Told somepony where to find me so that I don't bleed out too...I guess she really did like me, in her own strange way.

And then the question that hung in the room since the moment I opened my eyes was broached.

"How did that..." her eye slipped on my form, skipping over the wounds and the burns and the scars as if afraid to touch them with her gaze, even bandaged and covered as they were. "...happen?"

“I fell.” What else could I’ve told her? The bitter taste of failure constricted my throat, and anything else I could say would not leave my mouth. It was easier to lie.

"You fell," she repeated, incredulous. "You had a twisted foreleg, shattered hoof, a dozen fractured bones, a burned-off ear, at least three internal bleedings, and a ruptured spleen. That’s not counting blood loss, burns and wounds! All that — from a fall."

“Yes,” I said stubbornly, looking away. “It was a long fall.”

She didn’t press me for details anymore, but in her eyes there was something… distant. Even through the professional pain-killing spells that hurt.

I sighed. In that very moment, I wanted to tell her everything, to once again be that little filly who could tell her most wonderful teacher in the world anything at all…

Perhaps if I did, I’d be a different person. None of this would have happened, and I would be happier and better for it. But I remembered the coldness in her eyes, the distance at the mention of my other stories… and I found that I could not. I would rather lie and cheat, and bear the silence than have her look at me without seeing, to see her smile without warmth, to hear her say rote phrases without meaning.

She left after a while, and silence and failure stayed as my only companions in the emptiness of the white room.