//------------------------------// // Epilogue: Redemption // Story: The Name of Our Mistakes // by ObabScribbler //------------------------------// Twilight closed the book and laid both forehooves on the cover. She said nothing for a long time. “So … this is all of it?” “As best could be gathered.” More silence. She licked her lips as if they were dry. “I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “You have to understand … this is a lot to take in.” “I am aware.” A sliver of skin tore off her lower lip, allowing blood to bead. She had not even realised she was chewing it until the jab of pain made her stop. She brushed her mouth with a hoof and made to put it back on the book, pausing at the realisation she would wipe her own blood on it if she did. She settled for putting her hooves in her lap instead. “Who … who else knows this?” “Those who were there. Cadence. Shining Armour. I brought her here and let her read the book when she ascended and she requested to tell him the truth when they became engaged.” “Right. Right.” Twilight closed her eyes, the better to centre herself. When she opened them again, she first looked up at the ancient vaulted ceiling and then at her mentor. “I … appreciate that you trusted me with this information.” Celestia smiled sadly down at her. Twilight had seen many smiles from her over the years but this one was new. Or maybe it was seeing it in the context of these surroundings that made it seem new. She supposed it might be a very old smile that she had just never witnessed before. “I hope you understand why,” Celestia murmured. “Because I’m an alicorn now.” So many things could be explained away by those five words. She wondered how many more of them lay in her future. “Yes. And because you, too, are a Princess of Equestria henceforth. Like me, you now have power and, as Starswirl said, is the task of the powerful to care for the weak.” Twilight shifted her wings. The weight of them against her flank still felt odd and having two brand new limbs to move around was proving much more unnerving than she had anticipated. Sometimes it felt like they had a mind of their own and she had the alarming sensation that she was a guest in her own body. She glanced over her shoulder and rearranged her feathers, wondering whether she was truly ready for the kind of responsibility they were talking about. “You might think it was I who chose you, Twilight, but the Elements of Harmony were aware of you long before I was. My bond with them was broken but they were far from inert. They spent the last thousand years waiting and searching for ponies who would be eligible to bear them once there was a need to do so. They were part of your life and those of your friends long before you all met and used them to save Luna.” Celestia paused momentarily. “The way I never could.” “No, Princess!” Twilight stood. The desk, made as it was from pieces of broken stone, did not move when she jumped up but dust scattered from its surface when she thumped it. “You did save her! You kept her from being killed by the Founders!” “Peace, Twilight.” Celestia raised one gold-clad hoof. “I have had a thousand years to come to terms with my mistakes and their consequences. I have tried to honour the Founders the way they would have wanted: by helping the land and the ponies they loved to flourish and grow and by aiding their own families over the centuries. Never so much that their lives became of my design but a little aid here and there to keep them safe and alive. Bequests of lands, appropriate tutelage when requested, honouring of titles they wished to keep etcetera – though only one unicorn line actually chose to do the latter.” Twilight’s eyes rounded in comprehension. “Prince Blueblood is related to Princess Platinum herself?” “Indeed,” Celestia said with easy grace. “To be honest, Twilight, I am a little surprised you did not realise that earlier.” “I thought it was an affectation.” Twilight frowned at memories of her teenage years. Blueblood was older than her and had graduated from Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns long before her but he had maintained emotional maturity of a foal and the entitlement of a purebred cat on a silk cushion. She recalled the times he had tried to make her attend the Grand Galloping Gala as his date and the unpleasantness that followed the one time she agreed and realised he saw her not as a pony but as a stepping stone to networking with the throne. “I avoided him as much as I could whenever I came to the castle to see you.” She shook the unpleasant memories away. “So … all the Founders’ lines are still around?” “In some form or another. A few married into other families and the original names were lost long ago but their bloodlines remain in Equestria to this day. A thousand years is a long time, after all. Things change.” Twilight nodded. She looked down at the book with its hoofwritten cover, tattered bindings and plentiful ink splats. It smelled old when she breathed in, like the restricted section of the Canterlot Library. She never would have guessed it had been kept in a draughty, damp old castle in the middle of the Everfree if she had not witnessed Celestia fetching it from a hidden partition in the stonework. There were clearly enchantments on the book to keep it from disintegrating past the point when it was finished but the original author had not kept it in pristine condition up to then. “This must have taken a long time to assemble.” “Yes. Finding the finer details of events that happened when I was not present was indeed … difficult. Thankfully I was not alone in collecting it all.” “Starswirl.” Twilight tapped a looping capital letter. “I recognise his writing from the unfinished spell you gave me.” Celestia nodded. “He spoke to the castle ponies and painstakingly discovered who knew what, then penned it all and bound it himself. He sometimes had to travel to those who had left the area following that dreadful night, though he always returned to Everfree Castle for what he considered his real work: trying to decipher the secrets of the Elements.” Celestia looked between each of the empty plinths around them. “Though unfortunately, as you are well aware, he never did succeed in that endeavour.” There was that sad smile again. “I visited whenever I could. The pressures of building Canterlot and all that entailed often kept me busy but whenever he sent me a scroll I would be here in a moment. He was always waiting in the same place,” she added softly. “At this very desk by the plinths he had built himself to study the Elements. And come rain or shine, Posy would be along in a few minutes of my arrival with some special tea she had brewed from her herb garden.” Twilight swallowed. “What … happened to her?” Of all the ponies whose stories she had read in Starswirl’s book, that of the little earth pony who had loved and been betrayed by Luna had struck her the most. She hoped Posy’s tale had a happy ending. In answer, Celestia got to her hooves and gestured for Twilight to follow. Her horn glowed and the book floated along in their wake. “She never left here. Ever. Even when Starswirl travelled to interview ponies or follow up on some lead or other, Posy stayed behind. Her state of mind was always very fragile and I think she was afraid that if she left here, it would shatter again and this time Starswirl would not be able to help her put herself back together.” Twilight’s heart sank. “So … she just lived out her whole life here in an empty castle?” They reached the bottom of the main staircase and trotted into what might once have been a garden, judging by the remains of walls around it. In the farthest corner, set amidst a thriving patch of flowers, were two gravestones. Celestia gestured Twilight forward. “Posy,” Twilight read aloud. Her neck arched a little in shock at the name on the second marker. “And … Starswirl? But his tomb is in Canterlot! I’ve seen it!” “It contains the ashes of what we burned on his pyre,” Celestia replied. “But it was not his body. At his request, I held my own funeral out here and cremated his real body. He didn’t want any future evil sorcerers to break into a well-known tomb try to use his remains in dark magic rituals, so when he knew he was dying he revealed that he had spent years growing a fake skeleton out of calcium and other minerals and had clothed it in false flesh. I was never quite sure of the specifics to be honest but it worked for allowing ponies to mourn him without giving rogue spellcasters something to steal and use against those same ponies. The Canterlot memorial is just that: a memorial only. This is his final resting place, alongside the little earth pony I think he grew to love, in his own way. They were inseparable you see. Decades of living together and relying on each other will do that to ponies. When she died … that is when he began his unfinished spell.” “The one I finished …” Twilight breathed, still staring at the carved names. “It was the last piece of research he did into the Elements before mortality claimed him too.” From one to another, another to one. A mark of one's destiny singled out alone, fulfilled. Not for the first time, Twilight wondered what Starswirl had actually intended of that spell. This new information just provoked further questions she would come back to later, in quieter moments, when the weight of her wings and other ponies’ expectations made her question her own wording in how she had finished it and what ponies who came after her would think of her intentions for the magic. Celestia’s eyes were fixed forward but unfocussed on the present, instead looking back at her own memories. “When he died, a caravan of wagons came here. I thought them gypsies but they were nomadic hedgewitches who had come to honour Posy and the pony who cared for her. They and I were the only attendees at Starswirl’s true pyre. One of them was an elderly pegasus called Masquerade who claimed to be Posy’s relative. She planted the first flowers here on their graves. It has become a tradition since then for me to come and plant a new one each year.” “That’s a nice tradition,” said Twilight, instantly feeling idiotic at the banality of the words. How was she ever supposed to make speeches to nations and other world leaders if that was the best she could do during solemn moments? “I kept track of the family line after that, as I did with the Founders. Posy had no children of her own but I wanted to honour her bloodline as much as I was able anyway. The hedgewitches eventually died out, mostly from settling down and intermingling with ponies in established communities across Equestria. Masquerade’s line migrated up to Cloudsdale, which isn’t very surprising. What did surprise me was when the latest pony in the bloodline showed a proclivity for aspects of hedgewitchery that have not shown up for generations – and that she moved back to the ground, the traditional home of hedgewitches.” Celestia’s gaze slid to Twilight. “Specifically, animal language and Ponyville.” Twilight’s jaw dropped. “Fluttershy?” “Distantly but yes. I think Luna suspects, though she has not asked me to confirm it and I will not volunteer the information until she does. The resemblance is certainly uncanny. Given Posy’s omission from most historical archives, I doubt Fluttershy herself knows.” Twilight was not sure what to think of this information. She gawped at the ground for a moment, trying to absorb it. She looked at the gravestones again, reading them over while processing all she had learned since Celestia fetched her from her bedroom earlier today. There was a line of text under each name on the gravestones, clearly etched by unicorn magic and ensorcelled to not wear away over time. “Here lieth Posy, she of the woods and hedges, greatly missed in every second the silence be not filled with the sound of her voice and hoofsteps,” Twilight intoned. “Here lieth Starswirl the Bearded, mage, friend and father, though he admit to that affection only in death, now reunited with C-Clover and … and P-Posy.” “Twilight?” Celestia stepped closer to her. “I’m sorry, it’s just …” Twilight brushed furiously at her wet eyes. “It’s all so sad.” “It is that.” She laid a hoof over her former student’s withers. “It is indeed that.” “Was … was Posy ever happy again?” “In her own way. But I will not lie to you, Twilight: her pain over Luna’s betrayal was a wound that never, ever healed. Not all stories have satisfying endings.” Celestia’s ears laid flat. “Nor neat and tidy ones. Sometimes the ending of a story makes you question the validity of everything that happened within it.” “Why did I need to know these things, Princess? Could you not have just … told me the truth about Luna and the Founders and the Elements … and left out the rest?” “I could have. Do you think I should have?” Twilight’s own ears folded back. “No. No, I don’t. Even if wider Equestria doesn’t know it … someone has to remember those ponies.” Her eye was drawn again to the sad little graves with their meagre markers. “And what they went through.” She felt the tingle of Celestia’s magic as the book levitated up to her face again. “Finish reading, Twilight.” “Wh-what?” Twilight’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I read it all, Princess.” “Look at the back page.” Twilight accepted the book into her own telekinetic field. She had stopped when she reached the end of Starswirl’s writing and seen it was followed by nothing but blank sheets of paper. At the very back, however, pressed flush to the worn cover, was a page with fresh writing on it. Twilight could tell at a glance that this was much newer and had not been penned by the same pony. It had none of the flourishes of Starswirl’s penmanship, instead being rather scratchy, as though whoever wrote it was unused to holding a pen anymore. Twilight stared at it, then at Celestia. “I gave her the book when she returned and offered to let her keep it in Canterlot. She opted to leave it here, with them.” Celestia nodded at the graves, which Twilight now noticed were not nearly as overgrown as they should have been for their age. Somepony had been diligently tending the flowers there, encouraging them to grow healthy and strong. Nearby, fresh seedlings had been planted and were just beginning to poke through the turned soil. “She spent much of her first year recovering from her imprisonment. Being here brought her comfort; allowed her to regain her strength and confidence before returning to public life. Did you not question her absence whenever you visited Canterlot to see me? Nor her changed appearance when she came to Ponyville for Nightmare Night?” Twilight felt like she was supposed to say something profound and meaningful but all she could do was press her tongue to the roof of her dry mouth and try to force sounds out. “I wasn’t sure it was a good idea at first but … I think it been benefited her in the end. Brought her some closure.” Celestia sat down in the dirt and loam. Her white fur was instantly stained but she seemed not to care. “I love my sister, Twilight. She is my family. I have missed her more than I could ever put into words and I am grateful beyond reason to you for bringing her back to me – and for helping her to heal after her return. Becoming her friend, forgiving her past indiscretions, welcoming her into your life and the lives of your friends … she is my Luna again.” With a start, Twilight realised that tears glistened in Celestia’s eyes. “The Luna I remember from when we were foals, before we lost our family, before the Elements changed us and before we took on the burden of ruling a country that wasn’t even sure it was a country yet. I see some of that pony shining in her eyes again now. There is still a lot of healing to do but … you have given me hope that it can be done. That we can be a true family again.” She paused. “That I, too, can be forgiven for what I did.” “Oh … Princess …” Celestia cleared her throat. When she spoke again, her voice was rusty, as if reciting lines from a play last performed long ago. “Wouldst thou sit with me a while?” Twilight blinked at her. She was about to question the sudden switch to old Equestrian, but in that same moment what Celestia wanted from this exchange clicked in her mind. She drew in a breath. “There is yet much work to be done.” “I am aware. I ask not for the whole day. Only a while.” Celestia looked up at the night sky and the stars arranged in the pattern of a trio of flowers. “My friend.” Twilight placed the book down on the grass and sat beside her. She looked once more at the last page but said nothing. There was nothing left to say in this moment. There would be time later for words. For now, she joined Celestia in watching the sky. A light breeze ruffled the old paper of the book, half concealing the words written there. My Posy. I never deserved you and I shall never forgive myself for what I did to you. I wish I could tell you that I returned your love even from the dark place to which I went. What little there was left of me in the Nightmare loved you even at the end. I wish I could hold you now and give you the life you should have had. I wish I could take away the pain you felt. I have a million wishes for you, yet I can grant none of them. So instead, I shall honour those wishes and you with a new constellation; the first in a thousand years. I hope ponies make wishes on those stars and find the happiness we did not. Sleep well, my Posy. I love thee still and shall until I do see thee again. Your Luna.