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// V. Two River Roses 
// Story: The River Rose 
// by Stosyl 
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“When I was still apprenticed under Star Swirl the Bearded, I was married to a very beautiful Earth pony. She had a mane of the deepest scarlet you’ll ever see, her coat was the color of dry clay, and her eyes were set like adamantine chestnuts in her head.

“Her name was River Rose. She was the niece of the Prince of the Earth tribe at that time. We were in hiding because it caused quite a sensation that she had married an alicorn.  It wasn’t as bad as if I had been a unicorn, but the way things were, nopony was happy about intermarrying between tribes.

“We hid in a cottage deep within unicorn territory, nearby where Star Swirl lived. He protected us and taught me every Ward spell he knew. I had already been his student for several years, and it was around the time of our marriage that he began experimenting with alchemy. He viewed the magic like a potion, the world full of ingredients that just had to be mixed properly.

“I helped him with his research and experiments. When he finally discovered the technique, he taught it to me immediately so I could help him experiment with it. We called it a mental crucible, the place where the ingredients are broken down and mixed in the mind.

“You’ll recall that in those days it was common for alicorns to have no cutie marks for many decades. Naturally this made us the object of harsh words by the other tribes, but it was simply because we often had to live centuries before discovering our destiny. You were among the lucky ones, born into royalty, where your fate was secure, and you did not need to search tirelessly to find your place in the world.

“I say all this because it was in those days that I discovered my true talent for mixing these mental potions. One day while experimenting, I had an idea that made me very excited, and I decided to try it out without asking Star Swirl to watch over it. I took some soil and brought it into my mental crucible; then I released it immediately without trying to shape it.  You’ll recognize this process:  it is the alchemia vitalis, and I was its originator.

“As the flower grew, it took on the hue of my coat, then my mane, then my eyes, and I realized I had put too much of myself into the crucible. I plucked the flower from the soil and started over, this time throwing in a common form of thistle that grew in the forest. When it grew it took shape exactly as expected, and I knew I had made a very important discovery. I logged all the findings in a journal, and just as I finished writing there was a stinging sensation on my flank. When I looked, there was my cutie mark: this distillation flask filled with an emerald potion. I knew I had finally discovered my aptitude.

“But enough of that. I revealed this discovery to Star Swirl, and he was so captivated by it that he spent all night studying it to understand the principles I had used. Much of the time he was interrogating me fiercely. Not angrily, no, he wasn’t that type, even when he was impatient. Oh, but you know that. There was always a fire in his eyes when there was something to be discovered, and even his big white beard didn’t stop you from being fooled that he might have been an adventurous young colt under all those bells.

“It was a week after that we were attacked. River Rose was picking flowers for our lunch, so she wasn’t inside the barrier I kept up around our cottage. I was with Star Swirl trying to add to the research when we heard the shouts.

“A group of Earth ponies had come to steal River Rose back from me. They thought it was a crime for us to intermarry: in their minds she belonged to the Earth pony tribe. When she resisted, they tried to subdue her, and one of them kicked her very hard in the head.

“I was just in time to see her fall and keep them from dragging her away. Star Swirl convinced me not to chase them, though they called insults back at me as they fled. We brought her inside and Star Swirl did his best to brew potions and find spells to help her. I actually have a book in my bag that contains the very recipe he used to heal her fractured skull.

“But the damage was beyond the realm of potion magic. The only option was time magic, an idea I had been toying with for a long time, but one which Star Swirl refused to listen to me about. Now especially he told me to be reasonable, and to stay away from changing what can’t be changed.

“‘Chasing the impossible is the best way to forget reality,’ he said. But I didn’t listen. I kept looking for a time travel spell, and then I had a thought: what about time travel alchemy? If we’ve found spells that can rearrange existing matter, then can’t we rearrange existing time? I only needed to find the right things to put into the crucible.

“River Rose died a month after the attack. I slept only two hours a day after that, and spent the rest of my time doing research. It was the only way to keep myself from the misery I was feeling.

“I uncovered stories of a flower, red and orange, that only grew under very strict circumstances: when there were two Harvest moons; that is, two full moons in September, this flower would grow on both these days, and only on these days. It would open with the sunrise and wilt with the moonset. This was a flower so dependent upon time for its existence, that time magic had to have been its source of vitality. I spent decades waiting for it, and I finally found it, fifty years after River Rose’s death.

“I named it after her. I called it the Thousand-Petalled River Rose. I worked like a madman to perform all my experiments before the moonset, and its properties vanished with the Moon. It couldn’t be used in potions, not as it was, unless the potion was consumed immediately.

“Before the full moon faded I was determined to study and distill its magic more closely. I reverse engineered it and created several time-related spells. But most of them could only be performed under the same conditions that the flower grew. They depended upon ritual.

“Only one of those spells can be performed outside of this window. It’s a spell that allows anything within a magic field to return to the way it was in the past, up to several hours ago.  And even this spell is stronger during the narrow window of the Double Harvest.

“Meanwhile, Star Swirl had grown tired of my obsession. He pronounced me hopeless and forfeited me as his pupil. I was too caught up in research to care. He abandoned me, but only because I had abandoned him, along with all reason. My only goal was to revive River Rose so that we could be together.

“But the decades dragged on as I waited for another opportunity to study the flower. I turned to astronomy to discover why those full moons were so magical, but I found no clues in the stars. I spent many days thinking only of River Rose and mourning. I realized I had spent so many years denying her death and hiding behind experiments that I never allowed myself to cry for her. But I cried then. I’m convinced the nearby town based ghost stories on my crying, since I carried on for an entire week.

“Ultimately I think her death is the reason Star Swirl ended up studying time travel magic. He loved her as a daughter, as surely as he loved me like a son. Of that I have no doubt. The time spells he created, I feel, were created because secretly he mourned alongside me and for me. Perhaps he wanted her back as much as I did. Maybe he just wanted me back, back to how I was before.

“I continue to regret that I did not have the magic to save her. But as the centuries passed a very important revelation came to me: I remembered that she was an Earth pony, always destined to die before me. Even if she had lived, I told myself, she would have been dead by the time I sat thinking about this. Though I may feel my time with her was shorter than I expected, by definition she would have died long before I was ready to let her go. I decided to give up on the flower.

“I hid my wings and became a hermit, traveling from town to town, using my weak time magic to treat the sick. I discovered a loophole in the spell. Even though it restricts entire objects to a few-hour window, parts of the body, I learned, cells and organs and even limbs, can be returned to how they were decades before. This meant a pony’s entire body did not need to be hurled backward along time to be returned to a previous state of health. It was an obscure discovery, but very useful in medicine.

“For millennia I’ve wandered throughout Equestria, treating people, and using a forgetfulness spell to erase myself from their memories. I’ve had no other purpose than to keep others from experiencing the same loss, the same agony, the same helplessness I felt when River Rose died.

“All the while I remembered you, Luna, the student Star Swirl didn’t abandon. Perhaps with a hint of jealousy, but then with respect I remembered you. When you rebelled against your sister as Nightmare Moon, I was watching, my only thought being that all of Star Swirl’s students were destined for dangerous obsessions.

“You were banished, and I waited another thousand years without consolation, Star Swirl’s only remaining pupil. But it was prophesied that you would return, so I bided my time. I didn’t know what would happen, but I knew you could help me to fulfill my dreams. You were the Princess of the Night—who knew more of the Moon’s secrets than you?

“I waited, and at last you returned. Instead of Nightmare Moon, the gentle Princess Luna once again kept balance in Equestria, so my quest was safer than I had hoped.

“I have been searching for a way to contact you since you returned two harvests ago. Now, through your sister’s student, who used her magic to restore you to Harmony, I have accomplished what I have sought for so long. Except that I now rely on you to tell me one thing: why is the Double Harvest Moon so unique?”