Canterlot was just as stuffy and stuck-up as it had been so many decades earlier. Oh sure, more streets had been paved, more buildings had been built away from the Royal Mile road, putting the place closer to the look it has and character it attempts today: a “grand and glorious” city built into a mountain by the power of hubris. It had taken what seemed like forever to make it to the city gates on hoof but, once inside, it took almost no time at all to traverse the entire length of the Royal Mile to the Celestial Palace, its majesty absolutely unchanged.
As I approached, I began to realize the position I’d placed myself in. What was I going to do? Knock on the gate and just ask nicely for an audience with Celestia? That would be absolutely insane.
It was also exactly what I did.
As you can imagine, the pure white Pegasus guards in their gold-coloured armour eyed me with all the regard one gives a cockroach. I would have pleaded my case, but I did not know what case I had to plea. Eventually, I settled on telling the guards I had been cursed… which for all I knew may have been true… and was hoping to see Celestia or one of her Court Wizards for help. That somehow got them to let me pass, though one of the guards stuck by my side, clearly concerned that I might be a danger to Celestia. Silly, when you think about it: a little mare like me a threat to a giant Alicorn demigoddess. Still, I’ve seen stranger things happen.
The guard guided me through the palace to some antechamber where he asked my name. I gave him my full one: Antonovka ni Rosales da Malus. He narrowed his eyes and snarled menacingly upon hearing it. I apologized for my despised heritage and swore I was no threat to anyone. I think he took the obvious fear in my eyes as evidence I was telling the truth and brusquely said he would find someone in the palace willing to see me.
They left me in that room for what felt like, and probably was, hours. It had no clock or windows of any kind, so I was completely cut off from all semblance of time. I decided to take a nap. I don’t know how long I was in that dreamless sleep …maybe fifteen minutes, maybe three hours, but eventually a knock on the door shook me back to consciousness. Literally, as I fell off the velvet couch on which I had been resting, landing on the marble floor with an unceremonious plop. The medal given to me by the Missionaries of the Moon flew out of its safekeeping spot under my bonnet and bounced across the room, eventually sliding underneath a vanity.
I got up on my hooves to open the door but there was no need. A golden aura surrounded the handle and it opened on its own, revealing Celestia herself. She looked exactly the same as I remembered her from the last two times we had met. She eyed me suspiciously. No doubt she met with hundreds of ponies every single day, so I figured the likelihood she’d recall a farm pony like me, even considering that encounter in the Forest, was remote to nil. But then she allowed her pursed lips to shift into a warm smile. Genuine, as it reached her eyes.
“Hello, Antonovka. It has been a while,” Celestia said.
I was flabbergasted. “Y-you remember me, Princess?”
Celestia stared at me in confusion. “How could I not?” she asked. “You are a Heroine of Equestria, even if you refused such an Honour. Regardless, I am glad to see you again after so many years. How long has it been?”
“At least thirty years, Princess,” I replied.
She nodded, “Time has been most kind to you then,” she said without even a hint of sarcasm.
“Uh, yeah. About that,” I interjected.
Celestia tilted her head. “About what?”
“Well, look at me!” I said, maybe a bit more loudly than I should have, motioning to my own body. “It’s been over three decades and I ain’t aged a day. I literally look younger than my sister-in-law’s oldest son! What’s going on?”
For the first time ever, I saw Celestia look genuinely puzzled. “I… do not know. I removed the Ascension Spell at your request but, even had I not, it would not have had this effect. As I said during our sojourn in the Interstice, Ascended Alicorns live lifespans equivalent to regular ponies. I know this because I witnessed the last one pass centuries ago.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“I am intrinsically and indelibly linked to the Sun. As long as it shines, so shall I. The same holds for my dear sister imprisoned in the Moon. Yes, that tale is truth. Thus, regarding our Attributes: once we became as we are, always shall we be. Does that make sense?”
I nodded. Didn’t have the heart to tell her it made no sense whatsoever. Only after a bit of thinking later did I understand what she meant.
“Perhaps an evaluation is in order. Come,” she said politely but firmly as she magicked open the doors to the waiting chamber. “I will accompany you.”
It wasn’t until we had strolled down the corridor and through the grand throne room with its high vaulted ceiling, far fewer stained glass windows along the wall than today (most were clear), and had reached a small stone door without handle or latch hidden behind a tapestry to the right of the throne if facing it, that I felt courage to ask Celestia, “Where?”
She did not answer immediately. Instead, she tapped a short rhythm on the middle of the door, whereupon it slowly opened, revealing a dark passage which led to an ancient stairway snaking downward into the bowels of the castle… or, given its length, into Equus Mountain itself. Using her horn as a light source as she ducked inside, she beckoned me to follow her.
The passage was taller than I expected. Of course it had to be since it was clearly designed to accommodate Celestia’s height. Still, it felt cramped once she pushed a wall-torch which activated a pulley system to shut the stone door behind us, severing us totally from the sunlight. I hadn’t felt such a longing for its light since Everfree. Instantly, memories of that long night, repressed for so many years, came flooding back. I wondered if Ruby existed. I wondered about the Moon Cultists; I’d neither seen nor heard from them since our chance encounter in Detrot way back when. Sure, Celestia had lifted the Heresy-Ban against them, allowing them to operate openly, but had she changed her mind in the meantime despite promising me to my face she’d leave them alone? I know to you and most everyone else in this realm it feels almost treasonous to question her word, but those were my thoughts as we slowly trudged deeper into the oppressive dark. Eventually it became difficult to breathe due to the staleness of the air, random particles of nothing just suspended amidst the gloom until we moved through them while breathing.
I would never be able to tell you how long that tunnel was or how far we descended, but eventually it bottomed out into a short, straight passage. Celestia allowed her light spell to flit off the tip of her horn. It floated in midair as an ethereal golden orb for a moment before splitting into four mini-orbs, which set themselves into four torches, two on each side of the passage, and lit up the place, flickering like actual firelight. Nice effect.
A few yards beyond us sat a large wooden door with no handle built into a makeshift vaulted archway. At a glance, it looked solid and heavy. On it, at my eye level, was a sign written in runes, so of course I couldn’t read a word of it. To the left of the door was a tiny cobweb-covered alcove with a stone plinth. On top of that sat a small purple velvet pillow cushioning two brilliant gold rings: one small, one large.
Celestia levitated the large ring toward me. It wobbled strangely as she did so, as if it had its own will and did not want to be levitated.
“Please slip this on,” she told me. “You must wear it in order to enter.”
“Why?” I asked. “Can’t you just magic that thing open?”
“No Magic Will Open This Door,” replied Celestia firmly, as if quoting from something.
I stared at Celestia. Perhaps the concern and skepticism registered on my face more than I intended, as she brushed it off with a reassuring smile. “Do not worry,” she said. “No harm will come to you.”
I slipped the giant ring onto my right forehoof. It was a bit large for me; it could have easily fit a full-grown stallion. But, as soon as it made contact with me, it contracted to fit perfectly. Well, whatever will this thing had, at least it was considerate, although I suddenly felt a bit… fuzzy, like I was untethered from the world and my senses had been dulled.
“If you would please push open the door for us,” said Celestia.
I walked up to the heavy door, a bit unsure on my own four feet, and applied some amount of pressure to it with my ringed forehoof. Much to my surprise, it swung open slowly but effortlessly, like its hinges were perfectly balanced to minimize friction… y’know, that thing that makes you stop whenever you’re sliding on the ground after tripping while running.
Beyond the doorway was an enormous chamber at least twenty feet high. The instant I opened the door, the entire place lit up courtesy of a dozen table lamps, some wall torches, and a simple chandelier stuck into the ceiling. Along one edge of the chamber, for only a few feet, a small cave creek flowed in and just as quickly exited to who knew where. Much of the area was nicely decorated with fine rugs, tapestries, and tables. It was also filled to the brim with seemingly random items, tchotchkes, wooden models, two ornate floor mirrors one of which had the shape of an inverted horseshoe, various unidentifiable things on pedestals, and thousands upon thousands of parchment scrolls. Many of the scrolls were rolled up inside traditional diamond-shaped holders, but several lay open on tables, some next to long-dried inkwells with quills sticking out of them.
After staring in wonder at the place for a moment, during which time Celestia strolled into the chamber as if she owned it (which, it being underneath her castle, I suppose she did and does) I made my way through, almost tiptoeing.
Celestia noticed. “What are you doing?” she asked.
That sent me back to reality. “Huh? Oh, sorry. I was just… takin’ a gander at this place. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Sorta get the feeling like I just stepped into a time capsule. Kinda like when I, uh, met the Order in the Forest.” I said that last bit softly and quickly.
Celestia nodded. “In a way, it is. This is the personal work chamber of Starswirl The Bearded.”
“Who?” I asked, feeling very stupid.
“Oh, right,” Celestia said with a sigh as she facehoofed. “You are not only an Earth-pony, but also descended from Tarpanites; it was unfair for me to assume you would know of him. Apologies.” She cleared her throat. “Starswirl was the greatest sorcerer Equestia ever had. He spent his life studying magic in all its forms to discover its potentials and limits, creating dozens of new spells in the process. He was also a dear friend of mine who left this world far too soon.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her, “It’s never fun to lose a friend young.”
Celestia shook her head. “No, no. He lived a long life, as I am sure you can tell by all those scrolls he wrote and items he collected or created. But time waits for no pony or beast. Even at his most advanced age, he still had ideas he tried to write down and theories he wished to see to completion, but his body simply gave out before his mind.”
“Still,” I said, “Losing a friend hurts.”
Slowly, she nodded in agreement. “I have not entered this chamber in over seven hundred fifty years, shortly after he left this world. It has lain untouched since then, placed in a sort of magical stasis to keep his life’s works from rotting away, waiting for the day a worthy successor would show.”
“Princess, that ain’t me an’ you know it,” I said.
She chuckled. “It is not you, Antonovka. When that pony does appear, I will know. No, the reason I brought you here is because one of Starswirl’s scrolls might be able to explain your situation.”
I moved my head around, checking out every cubic foot of the chamber. “Uh, I’m not sure how you’d be able to find anything in here. Starswirl don’t seem to have been the best-organized pony ever.”
“No. He was certainly not,” replied Celestia with a chuckle as she rolled her eyes. “Few geniuses are. However, I knew him for many decades, so I wish to believe I have some insight into his unorthodox organizational style. Let us see…”
She approached, seemingly at random, a low shelf packed full of scrolls and quickly unravelled, glanced at, then re-ravelled and re-shelved each one in turn before moving on to another cache of scrolls. By the time she had worked through the third bunch, I could tell that, despite her attempts to keep up her regal bearing, Celestia was getting annoyed.
I figured it was best to not be near her if she lost her temper. I know; that’s not something you or any pony would expect of her, but you need to understand that, back then, to most ponies, Celestia was more of an idea than a living ruler. She didn’t leave the Palace much in those days, and even when she did she almost always stayed inside Canterlot’s fortifications.
As I lazily glanced along one wall, I noticed something familiar: a blue flower hermetically sealed in a glass case on top of a small pedestal.
“Uh, hey Princess?” I called out to her, loud enough to snap her out of ‘work mode’. She blinked several times as her brain adjusted to shift her demeanour away from annoyance.
“Yes, Antonovka?”
“What’s this blue flower here?” I asked.
She approached me and stared for a couple seconds at the five azure petals and silver-tipped stamens that appeared frozen in time under the glass. “That flower is the Moonlight Blue Orchid, also known colloquially as ‘Poison Joke’. They bloom only at night during the five-day period around the moon’s fullness each month. It was eradicated from Equestria on my orders shortly after the War. Despite knowing its dangerous potential, Starswirl insisted on collecting a specimen to study. Always curious, he was. Why do you ask?”
“Because I ran through an entire clearing full of ‘em while chasin’ that Timberwolf,” I said. “They smelled sweet.”
Celestia’s eyes widened to the point I thought they would pop out of her skull, staring at me like I had sprouted a second head. The only thing she could say was, “What.”
I nodded as I recalled that long night. “Yeah, Ruby was able to float over ‘em, being a ghost and all, bu— Hold on. Whaddaya mean, ‘dangerous’?”
“I-it…” Celestia attempted to say, failed, and then simply sighed as she tried to muster her thoughts. “That flower’s pollen is poisonous to equines. Starswirl believed it was some kind of intrinsic magic. Its effect is unique on each pony based on what appears to be pure whimsy. For example, a Pegasus might end up with her wings flopped upside down, or it might shrink a workhorse, and so on. Worse yet, its effects are delayed, not appearing for at least half a day. I recall the longest period between affliction and manifestation was almost a week. While there is a cure for its effects thanks to Starswirl obtaining assistance from a few Zebra alchemists he recruited from the Southeastern Frontier, I did not want any pony to even consider the possibility of weaponizing it, should another civil war or border war break out.”
“I can understand that,” I said, remembering a story in the Detrot Dispatch about skirmishes between ponies and gryphons along the northeastern frontier near the large fortified trading post of Stalliongrad, another old city that was much better off then than now.
“And you… ran through a field of them in full bloom, stirring up and inhaling their pollen,” asked Celestia flatly.
“Yep.”
“Shortly before you fought the Spirit of the Corruption and then entered the Interstice.”
“Uh-huh.”
Celestia facehoofed again. “Ple… please take off that ring,” she asked, a twinge of unexpected sadness in her voice.
I removed the gold ring. It slid off effortlessly. Once it no longer touched my body, it enlarged itself back to its original size. Celestia levitated it, with difficulty, to her side.
“Stand in the middle of that working, if you would.” She directed me to an area on the far end of the chamber free of rugs or shelves… or anything besides a stone floor with the most ornate magic circle ever conceived carved into it.
I stood in the middle of the circle, admiring its detail. As I did, Celestia shot a beam at its edge, causing it to glow white as all the other lights in the chamber except for a nearby lamp went out.
Celestia levitated a book bound in green-dyed leather to herself. It had a fern on its cover. She quickly flipped to a specific page, read it, then gently tossed the book away. Then, she filled a tub with water from that stream, moved the tub into the magic circle, levitated me off the floor high enough to slide that tub under me, then let me drop in.
Cave water is cold. If you learn nothing else from my story, learn that.
I stuck my head back out of the water, sputtering and coughing. “Gah! Princess! What’d ya do that fer?” I demanded, my accent getting the better of me.
The look on Celestia’s face was one of clench-jawed determination as she conjured up five or six different herbs from an apothecary’s shelf along a nearby wall and held them over me. I stared at them, absolutely confused.
I was even more confused when she simultaneously spun the water into a floating spinning orb with me in its center, its rotation causing a slight heating effect which would’ve been pleasant if I’d been able to breathe; tossed the herbs into the water, where they quickly dispersed and disappeared, tinting it a very slight green hue; and shot me with some powerful spell. Only Celestia… and Luna now, perhaps Starswirl back when he was around… could perform such powerful simultaneous magic.
Unfortunately for me, all that magic caused me to experience the nastiest pain I’d ever known. It felt like my entire body was being twisted inside out, ripped apart, pulverized, burned, frozen, violated, put back together, plus the fact that I couldn’t breathe because I was still underwater despite hanging five feet in the air. My vision, already blurry, became just spots of every colour you can imagine, plus a few I’m pretty sure you can’t. I have no idea how long I was suspended like that. Maybe it was ten seconds, maybe fifty. Eventually, all at once, the holds placed on me lessened, and I soon felt solid ground underneath me again, and the water orb flowed away.
I spent the next few minutes laying on the floor, simply trying to get oxygen back into my lungs, waiting for my vision to return. Once it did, the first thing I saw was Celestia.
She was crying. They weren’t happy tears.
I was angry, but at the same time I’d never seen her cry. To this day, I’m not sure anyone other than Luna and Starswirl has seen her in such a state; it knocked my brain for a loop. The first time I tried to talk, all that came out was a wet coughing fit as I still had a bit of water in my system. Soon enough, all of that was out, and I could at least say words.
“Why?” I croaked.
Celestia closed her watery eyes and levitated a small mirror toward me. I looked into it and, had I been able, would have died of shock.
Staring back at me was a green Alicorn: horn, wings, the whole shebang. She blinked when I did, cocked her head when I did, and took on a livid expression when I did.
“Princess! What gives?! I told ya I didn’t want this!” I near-screamed.
“I… I am so…” Celestia barely choked out.
“So what?” I snapped.
Celestia steeled herself and took in a deep breath, her eyes still closed and shedding tears. “I am sorry! I genuinely believed I had reversed the Ascension Spell! So, I brought you here to double-check. But…”
“But…?” I asked carefully.
“I had… no idea you had had contact with Moonlight Orchid when I found you in Everfree,” she explained, trying to regain calm but failing. “Upon your Ascension, its poison reacted with my magic within your core and twisted it into some new permutation I have never encountered. The liquid herbal cure merely removed the outer manifestation of the affliction, which appears to have been… your original form. But beneath that shell…”
I didn’t like where this conversation was headed. “So… what’re ya tryin’ to tell me?”
From Celestia came a guilty gulp. “I cannot undo the Ascension Spell.”
“What?” I inquired for clarification.
“And…” she continued, hanging her head as low as it could possibly go. “I believe you have been made nigh-immortal, tethered to the earth.”
“…What.”
Celestia raised her head slightly, reluctantly making eye contact with me. Her voice was quiet, like a filly who’d been beaten within an inch of her life. “You will never grow old. You cannot die.”
“What.”
“I am also reasonably sure you… will never be able to bear foals, for the nigh-immortal… are sterile.”
“WHAT?!” I screamed.
That is the moment Princess Celestia, wise and glorious ruler of Equestria for well over a millennium, broke down into a bawling mess in the middle of a secret chamber deep inside a mountain, where no pony but myself could see or hear her. She continued crying for several minutes while still trying to talk to me; it came out as barely coherent babbling.
“I never expected this to happen! The last thing I ever want is for any pony under my care to suffer, but you will suffer so much because of me and you do not, cannot!, yet understand! I have ruined your life! I am so sorry! An apology will never be enough, but I do not know what else I can do! I am so so sorry!”
My brain was still trying to process what she was trying to tell me. The import of her words would take years to truly sink in.
After a few minutes, Celestia stood up and composed herself, trying to pretend what I had just seen had not happened, although her bloodshot eyes gave her away. She turned to me, and bowed her head again.
“I… suppose I will need to train you in using your powers,” she said.
I grimaced. “Guess so,” I replied as my wing twitched. This was going to take a lot of getting used to.
Once I knew my situation, I figured I had best get used to being away from home for Celestia knows how long.
Turn of phrase there; she didn’t know how long when I asked her point-blank, telling me it was up to my own progress in harnessing my magic. Which, much as I hate to admit it, made sense. It also gave me a sense of purpose as I found myself a semi-willing prisoner in the grandest estate in the world. Sure, I got a nice set of chambers out of the deal, fancier living than I could have ever dreamed. It never felt like home though, no matter how many times I would return.
It is difficult if not impossible to separate ourselves from our origins; we can try and hide it, fake it, but it never fully leaves us. I never felt like I belonged in such opulent surroundings. I am a farm pony from nowhere special and I had no desire to be anything other than that.
Celestia understood my desire to communicate with my family, so she had a postbox set up for me in Canterlot in the main branch just a few blocks from the palace. But, she insisted couriers ferry my letters to and from the place, because she worried that if any Nobility saw another Alicorn in the city, it could lead to a lot of trouble. This was fine by me as, like her, I trusted the Nobility about as much as I could trust a scorpion. However, I also had to trust that neither Celestia nor her guards would censor or disappear any correspondence. She gave me her word. Put it in writing, in fact. To my knowledge she never broke it, but she also asked me to keep quiet about the whole being-a-Princess thing, which I had planned on doing anyway. After all, no one back home would have believed it even if I proved it with a photograph… if photography existed then beyond a few crackpots in Koniksberg doing early experimentation.
The very first letter I sent out was to Sweetgum and Nick, telling them I had taken ill in Canterlot and could not return to the farm for the foreseeable future but hoped to be back as soon as I could. A little over a week later, I got a reply from them wishing me well and that Pa, bedridden by that point, said to steer clear of any Unicorns or rich-looking ponies in general except the Princess if I happened to encounter her, in which case to let her know he had grown old but was still trying his best to ‘civilize’ the land she had granted him. If they only knew. Celestia smiled at Pa’s message when I told her.
Meanwhile, I began intensive training sessions with Celestia in how to fly and, more importantly to me, how to harness and use my magic powers. Assuming that, like a chimera, it would be impossible to decouple the two spells that had warped my body, my ultimate goal was to learn transmogrification so that I could use it on myself. Before that, of course, I had to learn the basics. The first was levitation, the basis for the majority of Unicorn magic, which turned out to be surprisingly easy once I knew what I was doing. Following that were lighting, elemental manipulation (boy were those a pain to get right; I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally destroyed part of the palace), and so on.
Weeks turned into months turned into years as I settled into a routine. I just about lost track of any semblance of time beyond night and day. Celestia cautioned me that, while routines in general can do that, it was (and I assume still is) especially pernicious within the walls of that palace, so it was best I try and keep contact with the outside world. Every once in a while, I would find spare time to send a letter back to the farm. It was during this period that I learned Pa finally passed on, about a year after I left. I sent my condolences, but I can never forgive myself for missing his funeral. The rest of the family thought they understood.
In all, I ended up stuck in Canterlot for over five years before my magic was controllable to the degree that I could perform high-level spells like projection, teleportation, and finally Transmogrification, the most difficult type of magic; even the majority of Unicorns can’t do it. It includes things like age spells, turning frogs into oranges, shrink/grow spells, altering one’s cutie-mark. I could keep going but won’t.
Celestia told me to start small, so I did; I decided to work on my little trinket from the Moon Cultists. I used all the knowledge I’d gained through living in the palace under her direct tutelage and fired an orange beam at my old gift, and… nothing. I put more power behind my blast. Still nothing happened. Frustrated, I tried to set it on fire. Nothing but scorch marks around it.
I called Celestia in to ask what I was doing wrong. She stared at the scorched tabletop in mild confusion.
“What is that?” she asked.
“This thing?” I gestured to the medal. “The Moon Cultists gave it to me when I met their second-in-command in Detrot. I didn’t want to show you because it’s …apparently proof I’m their High-Priestess or something. You’re not gonna kick me out for this, are ya?”
Celestia laughed, but lightly. “Your past with the Order means nothing to me, for they are no longer Heretics under the Law and may operate as freely as individual domains allow. However, neither your magic nor mine will ever have any effect on that medal.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is forged from pure platinum,” she said. “Allow this to be your first lesson in alchemical magic. Certain metals, gold and platinum most notably, cannot be transmuted. Erm, that means ‘transformed’, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I replied with a bit of sass.
Celestia continued. “Even crossing a dimensional barrier where the rules of the Universe itself shift would have zero effect on it. That is one of the immutable laws of magic. Try again. How about on the inkwell at your desk?”
Reluctantly, I did. I missed the inkwell and got the desk. Within about five seconds, it let out a hee-haw, kicked open my door, and lumbered away.
Celestia blinked a few times before turning to me. “Impressive,” was all she would say.
The last and most difficult thing was, of course, trying to transform my own body. To explain it simply, since the Ascension Spell was and still is irreversible, self-transformation is sort of equivalent to donning a cloak that cannot be removed except by me or some pony more powerful. The first few times I tried it, I think Celestia was tempted to call in her guards to fight off the abomination had suddenly appeared in my chambers. Or laugh at me. Or both. Probably both.
Eventually, I managed to successfully perform the spell on myself. When I looked in the mirror, I was confronted with an ancient-looking Earth-pony mare, withered from age, with bone-white hair. My eyesight was blurred. My teeth were also in poor shape. In other words, I looked my age if not even older. Celestia was pleased at my magical progress. Indeed, she requested I remain at the palace.
That poor gal just wants company sometimes. It’s lonely at the top. But I insisted I needed to get back.
As it happened, our next family reunion was just about to get underway. That, I didn’t want to miss. I sent a letter via courier informing Sweetgum of my arrival. Celestia arranged for a flying chariot, which I refused but she insisted.
Before I left, I turned to Celestia and said to her, as seriously as I could, “If you really want to atone for your mistake, Princess, then how about this? Promise me you’ll protect my family, our homestead, and that village just upriver along with the ponies who live there, now and forevermore.”
As I boarded the chariot, I saw Celestia bow her head. “On my honour I swear it, Antonovka,” she said.
“Call me Annie. I think you’ve earned it by now… Celestia.”
I asked the guards to drop me off at the edge of the village that had sprouted up near our farm.
That transformation spell had worked both outside and in, so I felt like an extremely aged mare. It took forever to walk from the chariot where I thanked the guards for their service, all the way to the farm. The unnamed village had been given a name in my absence. While it had been founded by Earth-ponies, a significant number of Pegasi and Unicorns took up residence there as well. That’s why it’s called ‘Ponyville’. Simple, really. Anyway, by the time I had made it the mile and a half to my old home, my joints were achy and I was sweating buckets. I thought I finally got the chance to understand how Sweetgum felt.
At first, I encountered only extended family, none of whom recognized me, but Sweet and Nick soon saw me and gave me a big ol’ hug strong enough I almost felt my bones crack (not like they wouldn’t have healed instantly). They commented on how badly I’d aged in just a few years, before we all justified it by saying, well, illness does that to you, and I felt lucky I could make the reunion at all. To be sure, they didn’t look much better. Nick’s mane had become noticeably thinner, probably due to having to deal with Pa and his ‘legacy’.
Now home, I resumed my duties on the farm as if nothing had changed, albeit a lot slower.
Sweetgum had recently become a grandmother (again) as Apple Cobbler had gotten herself hitched in my absence and given birth to a filly the family decided to name Apple Brown Betty. Cobbler told me once that she had tried her best to follow in my footsteps but nothing could beat the original. I told her my mother was the original, to which she replied that she didn’t talk to ‘Granny Margil’ much while she was still alive. I said I understood. Ma could be right scary when she wanted to be, and only got meaner as she got older.
It was a wonderful feeling being a great aunt, doting on that little filly and the others that would inevitably follow. For the first time in a good long while, I was content.
But life goes on. As my parents had before them, Nickajack and Sweetgum eventually passed away. Apple Cobbler sent for one of her brothers, Pippin, to help out since there were no stallions left to work the farm, and we mares simply were not strong enough (well, I was, but they could never know). Manx, after a life in pear farming, passed on not long after, though I did not learn of it until more than a month after the fact, by the good graces of a member of their clan who dared defy my mother’s angry edict of No Contact, which remained de facto law for two centuries after her death.
It was simultaneously amusing yet psychologically difficult to sit foals down during reunions or on a boring weekend night and tell stories about being a refugee and encountering this area when it was still wilderness, not a farm with orchards slowly but surely expanding beyond our valley into the surrounding hills. They loved my tales about the Everfree Forest, with its Timberwolves and other sundry demons, but I tried as best I could to dissuade any of them from going in there. As the last surviving member of my generation, I was the only one who could tell these tales with the conviction of experience.
One day, at yet another family reunion, I overheard someone mention how long ‘Granny Annie’ had been around and wondered how much longer I was for this world. I looked at the calendar: the year was 814AB. I was eighty years old. In those days it was pretty rare for any pony, even in the cities, to live that long.
I decided it was time to stop.
In the dead of night, I left the farm, using my platinum medal to fasten my red-checkered cape to keep warm, and headed into the Everfree Forest. I wanted to check to see if my old friend had returned. After much effort, I made it to the fence surrounding Sunny Town. No Ruby, although to my undying day I’ll swear I heard her voice whispering through the trees, telling me, “Soon, Annie.”
I then followed the now-even-more-dilapidated roads to the Scorched Valley… much quicker when not traipsing through underbrush. The Missionaries of the Moon looked a lot less grand than I remembered, though they really weren’t that grand to begin with. Nearly all of the ponies I had met there had long since died, succumbing to the remnants of the Forest’s corruption; they were buried a furlong outside the Forest just in case. There was one notable exception: Kharon was still alive, though much worse for wear after fifty years. She wore Rhea’s gold insignia and her coat and eyes had become corrupted, proving the effects of the Forest had still not gone away even after more than half a century. Regardless, we both slowly approached each other and embraced like old friends. ‘Old’ at least was certainly apt.
Kharon informed the younger members that I was the Order’s High-Priestess. Technically true, and those ponies immediately bowed their heads for a moment before resuming their activities. She then told me that there was a message waiting for me in the old library. She guided me further into the valley.
Sure enough, inside that makeshift study, now dishevelled and dusty without Callisto’s obsessive attention to detail, sat a scroll on the writing desk. It was written by Callisto on behalf of Rhea and the Order. First, she congratulated me on my promotion to High-Priestess, which Rhea felt I deserved upon learning from Celestia’s personal guard about how I had very literally saved their necks without them knowing it until then. With the lifting of their Heresy ban, Callisto felt their Order’s members could finally preach openly anywhere in Equestria. Indeed, many did, though she and Rhea stayed in the Valley, and Japetus eventually returned although he passed away not long after. Rhea wished to apologize from the bottom of her corrupted heart for not helping me up-top or allowing anyone else to, believing in hindsight the Order’s assistance could have prevented my own ‘corruption’. Rhea also apologized for finding no sign of Ruby despite several stakeouts of Sunny Town’s perimeter; they could not enter the village itself due to continuing threat of the undead.
Callisto continued on her own, saying she knew deep down I would return eventually, which is why she penned the scroll and left it for me. Finally, she expressed guilt for not being alive by the time I came back.
With an even heavier heart, I made my way to Canterlot. I hadn’t quite mastered undoing the transmogrification spell at that point, so I was still a dottery old lady. I found a passing wagon outside the Forest and hitched a ride up the mountain. Once there, I slowly walked to Celestia’s palace. This time, all I had to do was give my name and the gates opened. A guard escorted me directly to my old chambers, left nearly untouched save for dusting since I left. After the sun set, Celestia greeted me.
She helped me undo the spell I had placed on myself, reverting me back to an Alicorn. After that, I took a few days to write a long letter, similar to this one, to Apple Brown Betty. I did not write to Apple Cobbler because I had no idea if she would still be alive by the time I returned (turned out she wasn’t), so her daughter was a safer choice. After I finished, I asked one of Celestia’s couriers to ferry it directly to Betty, and to make sure no one else read it.
Then, as I do today, I told her the Truth about myself and that long night in the Forest, and my message to her nearly two hundred years ago is the same one I’ll tell you now:
You are the one I have chosen to carry on my legacy, the one I’ve entrusted with the Truth, because you have proven most dear to me. It may be a heavy burden, but you must not tell anyone, not even your best friends.
Some years in the future, at the next reunion or the one after that, a new pony will appear with a green coat, blonde mane, and orange eyes. She will look quite young, use a different name, and sport a different cutie mark. The pie was my third, in fact. I don’t know yet where she will claim to come from. Regardless, treat this mare in public like you never met her before. If you find yourself alone with her, mention Sunny Town. I guarantee her reaction will be… amusing.
I look forward to seeing you again, whenever that may be.
Thank you.