Dying, she discovered, was actually very interesting.
Oh sure, it was painful, but some ways were always more painful than others.
Like, the first time she had died, from smoke inhalation and fire, it had been more like going to sleep, save for cramping in her lungs.
But one time she had been using the cloudwalking spell, only to accidentally cancel it. She had fallen for a bit, before smashing into the ground. The agony had been terrible, she very clearly remembered seeing a bone sticking out of one of her hooves, and she had swallowed a couple of her teeth. She eventually died of internal bleeding, only to wake up again, perfectly safe.
She had taken to wearing saddlebags on at all times, with everything she needed in them, so when she reset she had everything.
A part of her wondered what it would be like to inflict this sort of pain on others, but it was a small, ignored part in the very back of her head.
It gets . . . . not easier but manageable.
She no longer wakes up bawling her eyes out, instead she just goes on with her day.
(She still has nightmares though, dreams filled with the sounds of her friends screaming in agony.)
She is aware, of course, that she is no longer the same filly as she once was. At times, she felt like more of her mom's villains than anything. She was anything but Astral Plane.
Astral Plane was a sweet, shy and anxious little filly, who burst into tears if she even thought of doing a bad thing. Astral loved her friends and family, and would do anything for them. Astral Plane had her heads in the clouds, and was always scared of what others thought of her.
She was just trying to be that girl, to be Astral Plane.
She didn't know what to do; she wasn't smart like her moms. She wasn't brave like her Aunts. She was . . she didn't know what she was.
She was a simulacrum of the Astral the others knew, a twisted warped version of the original, with her callousness and selfishness.
(The old Astral never had hallucinations or nightmares, had never been as paranoid as she was, scared of something she couldn't name.)
She mourned her, the old Astral, mourned her for she had died, with an impostor taking her place.
(She wished she had died instead.)