//------------------------------// // Here Comes The Sun // Story: "Better Luck Next Time" and Other Short Stories // by Tarot Card //------------------------------// The Prompt: The last pony in Equestria It had been so simple, really. No pony ever truly appreciated how much their lives revolved around the sun’s movement, and by extension, it’s stewardess. She took a step forward, a blackened plant crumbling to dust beneath her hoof. The heat coming off of the stone pathway was bending the air around it, limiting her vision to only a hundred yards or so. The blaring sun was veiled by the smoke and dust high in the air. The whole sky was black  with a large gray disk at the center. It hurt her eyes to look at it. On the day of Twilight Sparkle’s funeral, that same stewardess was absent from the ceremony, in spite of the eulogy she was expected to give. After every other pony had made their own speeches, the crowd waited hours in the blistering sun for the princess to arrive, until they decided to end the funeral, princess or not. Nopony noticed the sun had halted at the height of its arc. Each house was a smoldering husk. Strewn about the streets, scorched and nearly indistinguishable from the debris, was the evidence of an attempted evacuation. A suitcase here, a broken carriage there. And of course, blackened skeletons. Trapped under collapsed buildings,  huddled in the train cars, and train station, lying in the streets. By the next day -or at least what should have been the next day- the sun had not budged an inch. The growing line of concerned ponies outside the Canterlot castle were informed the sun goddess was missing. Poor luna, whose magic was much feebler from a millennium of disuse, was unable to move the sun. She surveyed the destruction of the farmland. Every patch of soil was dry and cracked. Every tree in the barren farm (Sweet Apple Acres, the metal plated sign informed her)  was a blackened pillar, some still glowing red with embers. Not a soul left, plant or equine. All around her was death and fire and ash. As crops began failing in the relentless sun, ponies all across Equestria began searching for their princess. They were sympathetic, and had allotted her a few days off duty to grieve for her student in private. But this was going too far. If the sun didn’t drop soon, they would all starve. Pegasi were pumping out clouds at the maximum rate, but there was nowhere near enough to provide shade for all the farmland in Equestria. [Time Limit] In short, like every other town she had seen. Celestia watched the growing panic of her citizens through her spyglass, perched on top a mountain. She would not aid them now. Or should she humor them for another century or so? Let them play out another generation, one more cycle of ponies growing, eating, giving birth to more ponies, then dying? A flicker of mercy darted through her heart, only to be replaced by steely resolve. No, She’d been wanting to do this for millennia. It was not the extermination of individuals, but the ending of a tired, infinite cycle. She focused on the sun, her glowing, and let it go. As simple as letting an egg slip out of one’s telekinetic grasp. And like that, the sun fell. She wondered how the ruler of Equestria could have grown so cold, so apathetic to her people, that she would be able to do this. Had she really forestalled this holocaust for the sake of one pony? Kept the world alive and running for one more generation so her student could live a full life? Aside from the howl of wind, it was very quiet. She continued walking across the field, but stumbled over the skull of a pony, hair and a bow still attached to it. The sun fell to the ground as if it were sinking through molasses. Ponies ran, ponies screamed. Some packed their bags, and tried to flee to the countries that were not directly under the sun, growing ever larger. Some made it. The rest perished in the inferno when the sun kissed the earth. Luna flew with them, became the guardian of the dark side of the world, ruling over the dozen or so survivors. Celestia bent down, and looked at the skull. She remembered this pony. Her name was Apple Bloom, wasn’t it? She looked deep within herself, tried to feel something. Some pang of regret, remorse, ending the life of this filly, for bringing about the end of the world.   But she felt nothing.   A world without Twilight Sparkle was not a world worth keeping. A/N: Due to a snafu on my part, the story was submitted to the tumblr blog without the italicized parts being, well, italicized. Long story short, the original was in a format that was admittedly slightly confusing. The italic portions convey the events leading up to the story, while the plain text describes what is happening at the moment. It is all from the perspective of an omniscient narrator.