Twilight remembered things.
There were renegade units of the Storm Guard, who refused to acknowledge that the war was over. She was there, with Tempest, the two of them fighting back to back. There was a sudden movement in the corner of her vision.
It wasn’t entirely clear to her what happened after that, but she wasn’t with Tempest anymore. She was sitting in the middle of a snowy field. Everything around her was white, and puffy bundles of snowflakes drifted through the sky like spores. In the distance, there were little copses of trees, then hills, then mountains further on.
She should have been cold.
But she wasn’t.
There were rabbits in the woods. They would come to her cabin, when she left out seed or grass. There were foxes and wolves as well. But she never found blood or rabbit corpses.
She had flown for a long time, looking for any recognizable landmark in this strange new world. It was an uncivilized land, unworked by ponies, where forests were dark and fields were wild. The snow never stopped. In all the hours she flew, she didn’t see one break in the grey cloud cover, and when she tried to fly above the clouds, they never got any closer no matter how high she climbed.
She never saw the sun. The sky grew neither brighter nor darker. Without the cycle of day and night, with no feelings of cold or hunger or exhaustion, she had no way to know if she’d been flying for hours or days. It was a long time though; she was sure. Possibly a very long time.
Eventually, she found the cabin. It had one room, a bed, a franklin stove, a shelf with a few books, and a cabinet with some basic foodstuffs. She didn’t seem to need to eat, but the hay was fresh and the coffee was good. She didn’t feel cold, but the warmth from the fire was pleasant. And the books were all good. Either old favorites of hers or ones she’d been meaning to read.
Later, she found a shed nearby in the woods, full of gardening tools and seed that was being stored for spring. She did not think the spring would ever come, and the seed never seemed to run out in any case. So she fed the rabbits.
One day, as the rabbits were circled around the pile of food she’d left for them, she said: “You know, little guys. I’m pretty sure I’m dead.”
The rabbits looked up. Their noses twitched. And Twilight found herself tearing up. Saying it out loud was admitting it. Her words made it real.
“Heh.” She rubbed at her face, wiping away the tears. “Are you dead too? Is this heaven for rabbits? A world where there’s always plenty of food and the predators never catch you.”
One hopped up to her and nuzzled her leg. “Or maybe,” Twilight said as she picked it up, “this is heaven for the predators too. Like a cat chasing string. They don’t want to eat you. They don’t mean you any harm. They just like the chase. So they have fun chasing you, but never quite make it. Is that it?”
The rabbit hung there by its shoulders in her telekinetic grip, its round lower body curled inwards beneath it. Twice, it twitched its nose at her.
“Fluttershy would like that,” Twilight said. “Well. Run along now.”
She dropped it back down into the snow, and it hopped off to rejoin its friends.
The books never ran out either. There were always new titles and new editions. There were books that had gone out of print centuries before Twilight was born, and books dated years after what she knew as the present day. They were all good.
She never got bored, exactly, but when she felt she had too much time on her hooves, she made snowponies. Then she melted the snow on her stove, let the water freeze solid outside, and made proper blocks of ice to carve into statues. When instructional books appeared, she taught herself how to sing, how to dance, how to stand on one hoof. A book appeared on flower arranging, so she made flowers out of ice and colored powders. She practiced spellcasting and enchanting and divination and all the other things she’d never had time to learn.
It must, she reflected, have taken years. But it was so hard to judge the passage of time. There were moments, but not days, not really. And so many of the moments were the same. Each time she sat down to enjoy her coffee was the same as all the others before it. There was nothing wrong with her memory, but she often didn’t bother to remember them all.
Until there came a knock at her door.
Starlight didn’t fit.
She was wrong. So very wrong. Like an error in the world. Like an imperfection in a painting. Like an MC Escher painting brought to life. It hurt for Twilight to look directly at her.
Because she was bleeding, from a cut on her leg. She was bundled up against the cold, and a fog formed around her face and head. Her breath, Twilight realized. She was breathing.
Because she was alive.
“Don’t worry,” Starlight said, “I’m here to fix everything. I know, I know, don’t mess with the timeline. But I found a way to go back and change what happened. If Applejack goes on the mission with you as well, then she sees the ambush coming, and you never get jumped by the Storm Guard.”
The two of them stared at each other for a few long seconds, and Twilight realized she understood seconds again. With Starlight around, time mattered.
“Um…” Starlight said, a stiff smile appearing on her face. “Wow. You look really creepy right now. No offense. Your eyes have this… ice-blue, frozen over thing going for them. And you’re not, you know. Breathing. Or moving.”
When Twilight continued to stay nothing, Starlight took a half-step back, “Please don’t be an evil ghost.”
“I’m not an evil ghost,” Twilight finally said. She laughed a bit, looked at her hooves. “You caught me off-guard, is all. You want some coffee?”
“What? No.” Starlight blinked. “Look, you can’t alter an alicorn’s destiny against their will, but I’ve done all the legwork, and Cadence is helping me cast the spell. All I need is for you to agree you want your fate to change.”
“You sure? It’s good coffee. The best coffee I’ve ever had, actually. I guess I was good in life.” Twilight picked up the battered tin pot off the stove, and poured a mug full. “Sorry, I don’t have two cups. It’s okay, take this one.”
“Twilight!” Starlight snapped, slapping the cup out of the air. It clattered against the rough-hewn floor, splattering coffee everywhere. “I’m not here to make conversation. I’m asking you to say you want to be alive again.”
“What does it matter?” Twilight asked. “We all end up here anyway.”
Starlight blinked. Her face fell, and she stared at Twilight, her probing eyes flicking back and forth over Twilight’s features.
“At least,” Twilight laughed, “I assume we do. Is there, like, a pony hell? Because this place is actually quite nice, if you like peace and quiet. Which, you know. I do.”
Starlight refused to leave. Not that Twilight would throw her out. She kept the fire going hot so that Starlight wouldn’t be cold, kept her well fed so she wouldn’t starve, and shared her books. It was nice to have somepony else to talk with.
But, Twilight noticed, when Starlight drank her coffee, the cabinet didn’t refill itself. Fuel burned to keep Starlight warm turned to ashes instead of burning eternally.
“You can’t stay here,” Twilight warned. “This place isn’t for you.”
“I’m not leaving without you.” Starlight snapped. She sat at Twilight’s table -- there was only one chair. “You don’t want to see your friends again? Fluttershy? Applejack? Rarity? Pinkie Pie? Rainbow Dash? Remember them?”
“I do,” Twilight said. “And I do miss them. I missed you too. But it’s…” She smiled softly. “It doesn’t matter, Starlight. Everypony ends up here eventually. A few decades of life, followed by an eternity of not-life. Infinity years. Even for me. Even if I live for thousands of years, it’s less than a rounding error, nothing compared to the time I’ll exist. Nothing compared to…”
She gestured out the window, at the woods and the fields and the gently falling snow. “Nothing compared to this. This isn’t the end of existence. This is existence. Life is just like… childhood. And I grew up.”
“Your friends aren’t nothing,” Starlight snapped.
“No. But they’ll remember me. And I’ll remember them. Forever. That’s the natural state of friendship, if you take a long-term view.” She took a deep breath. “This is the last of the coffee.”
“So why are you giving it to me?” Starlight snapped.
Twilight didn’t answer.
The coffee went. Then the food was gone. Then the well ran out of water. Twilight tried cutting down trees for more fuel, but the frozen wood never thawed no matter how much they heated it, and could not burn. When the firewood behind the cabin ran out, Twilight’s fire went dark, and Starlight started to freeze.
“You need to go back to Equestria,” Twilight snapped. “Now.”
“Make me, d-dead pony!” Starlight shouted back. Even through her thick parka, she’d begun to shiver. “You were there for me when I needed you, and I’m not abandoning you now.”
“This is pointless,” she let out a sharp snort. “You’re going to freeze within a few hours, maybe less, and I’m not going with you.”
“So what?” Starlight rose to her hooves. “So what?”
“So there’s no point in you making some… dramatic display.” Twilight waved her off. “It’s all going to end the same, so you should--”
“So I should just stay and die,” Starlight said. “Right? Because it doesn’t matter. Why do you care, if I die of old age or freeze to death saving you? What does it matter?”
“Stop being childish!” Twilight lowered her head and folded back her ears.
“I thought being alive made me a child.” Starlight held a shaking hoof to her chest. “And if you really think that life and death doesn’t matter, if you really think we all end up here anyway, then screw it, put your magic where your mouth is.”
“You’re killing yourself for nothing.”
“So what?” Starlight repeated, slamming her hoof into the ground. “Why do you care?”
“Because you’re my friend,” Twilight raised her voice, shouting over Starlight’s final word. “And… and you still have things to do.”
“You don’t?”
“It doesn’t matter! Okay?” Twilight shouted herself hoarse, her voice cracking at the end of her cry. “Nothing we do matters. It’s just this. This forever. This is the world, Starlight.” Twilight jabbed a hoof at the window, as tears started to flow from her eyes. “I’ve had a long time to come to terms with it. I don’t know how long. A day? Thousands of years? It doesn’t matter because this is all there will ever be and nothing we do can change that.”
“I know,” Starlight said. “But we live first, Twilight. In the end, everypony dies. But before that, everypony lives. Everypony gets a chance to see the world, and see Equestria, and make friends and…”
Starlight trailed off. A shiver ran through her. “Everypony lives. And that matters to them. And mattering to them is enough to make it matter to me. And to you.”
“I’m going to die someday, Starlight. You too. We’ll both be here again.”
“I know.” Starlight smiled -- a soft, wan thing. “One day. But first we live. You and me both.”
She extended her hand to Twilight. “Come on now. Before I wrestle your creepy ghost butt.”
Slowly, haltingly, Twilight put her hoof in Starlight’s. There was a bright white flash.
Twilight remembered things. Her time in Equestria. Her time with her friends.
Those things mattered.