Epilogue: Polarity
“Twilight?” came Tuni’Ro’s cooing voice one day.
“Yes?” Twilight answered quickly, turning around. The unicorn was, of course, sitting on her perch that looked out over the limitless horizon, where she had been visiting religiously for the past twelve years.
Tuni’Ro came over and sat next to Twilight with the creak of absolutely ancient bones. After settling herself down carefully in the bank of soft snow, she cleared her throat.
“Still waiting, I see. Any sign of him?”
Twilight shook her head slowly, though any sense of sorrow was quite absent.
“None yet. He’ll be here, though.” She laughed a tiny bit to herself. “I play a little game with myself when I’m here, I run so many scenarios through my head about what he might appear as. An Ekina or pony, sure, but maybe it’s something even grander. A dragon, maybe!” Even Tuni’Ro joined Twilight in her laughter, the likes of which was swept straight off the mountain by the gusty breeze. A short silence held over the pair for a time as they watched clouds wander past overhead in the afternoon sky.
“I’m certain by now you have a set plan for what you want to do when he gets here. Am I right?”
Twilight nodded in agreement.
“Absolutely,” the unicorn replied with another broad smile.
“I know exactly what we are going to do right before he has to leave, as well.” Tuni’Ro shot a sly look at Twilight, who reciprocated with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Why, ask Ento if he would like to give you back your key, just for a lifetime. And perhaps trade off for every life after that.” The Ekina’s smile grew wider and wider with each word of her idea, and then broke into a broad grin as she spotted Twilight’s look of off-key confusion.
“We… can do that?” she asked, genuinely taken aback. Tuni’Ro merely nodded to her little pony.
“Of course. You gave your key to him, remember, it can be done either way.” She paused, glancing at the horizon. “Do you think he will agree to it?”
“I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t think of the idea himself in the time he is here,” she said, smiling sheepishly and still slightly off-put that she hadn’t realized this beforehand.
A steady silence held over the pair for some time. The low moan of the mountain’s breath held over for several minutes, as waves of mist and snow crashed over the edge of the mountain’s peak.
“Twilight?” came Tuni’Ro’s voice once again.
“Hm? Yes?” Twilight asked, turning back to face the Earth-mother.
“I don’t think I recall telling you a little something about Ento.”
At this, Twilight’s ears pricked up in excitement. A little tidbit about her lover! She felt her heartbeat skip a beat at the colt’s name.
“Yes? What is it?” she inquired, a smile spreading itself across her lips.
“Do you know what the name ‘Ento’ means in the ancient Ekina tongue?” she asked, just a hint of enigma brushing up on her words as they caught on the gentle mountain breeze.
Twilight’s mind was enraptured. After all this time, she had never even thought of it meaning something other than just “Ento.”
“Well… No, no I don’t. What does it mean, Tuni’Ro?” The unicorn’s voice was tinged with impatient expectance.
“It means, ‘Dawn.’”
And with that, the wizened old mother stood back up on her hooves and padded back through the snow to the other side of the mountain’s peak, leaving a surprised unicorn sitting in her snowy bank.
“’Dawn…’” Twilight whispered. Her voice caught in the resolute breeze and was lost off the edge of the immense mountain. It flew off, finding its way far from the peak of the great mountain and off into the infinite expanse before her, to somewhere she could never guess.
The End