//------------------------------//
// Epilogue 
// Story: A Town's Story 
// by RoMS 
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Footnote Dear Miss Mare, when it is right, please give this letter back to Luster.

Dear Luster,

I can only guess Mrs Cheerilee and Mare have welcomed you well, and that you’ve been the utmost respectful student :0. I hope you will enjoy your next few days in Ponyville. Yes, you heard that right (or well, read it). I have cleared your schedule!

You have absolutely no excuse not to stay and enjoy the apple of my eye. No pun intended. :)

Are smileys okay by the way? I don’t know if it’s hip or whatever you, students, call it these days. Anyhow, I really think this will be a great opportunity for you to discover new things, and get some great countryside air. Canterlot can be quite the drain on a pony’s mind.

If you’re reading this, I hope you’ve heard that important story from Mare, Cheerilee, and anypony who has by now swung by their home — unless you’ve opened this letter up before-hoof like you did that one time… If that’s the case then I am very disappointed. But I am quasi-certain you did follow through with my to-do list for once.

Dear Luster, 

This is both a punishment, and a lesson. But I am confident you already know that. You’re used to them by now, I think. Wink, wink. What I am also quite sure of, as well, is that you must be finding it quite jarring. Strange. Out of the norm for you or I.

And, well… You’d be right. 

This story I wanted you to hear, it’s about ponies and responsibilities. And I hope that with time, you’ll come not just to understand it, but appreciate it. Experience must be passed on. But it can’t be replicated, only taken into perspective.

We are not heroes of our little stories. Well… Sometimes, we are but that’s not what matters. Everypony has to rise to the fore and face their lot, the hoof they’ve been dealt with. And sometimes, that lot is dealt not by fate, or by villains, but by the very heroes of other stories. They come, perform, and fly away, leaving you to clean up the damage.

Look around you. 

Stories, in the end, aren’t made of stone. They’re made of ponies. Ponies we impact, hurt, save, forget, and often pay no heed to. But they are still there, behind those stones. Stories abound. Maybe not just yours, or mine, but a myriad of stories that form a universal narrative in which we all share a common destiny.

It’s too easy to think there is only our story. And forgetting that, and the ponies around you, is a risk you will have to contend with one day. Especially when you are as gifted as you are. That’s what growing up means, I think. I don't really know yet myself.

It’s a way of looking at the world I want to impart to you. It may seem a bit vacuous or grandiose for now, I am sure, but in a sense I hope you will come to understand its ramifications, Luster. 

You are a great student, a wonderful unicorn, but you are lacking something that I once lacked as well. 

A sense of belonging, and friends.

I would love to see you make some friends, Luster.

This is your next assignment. And no! The punishment is not making friends. Stop pouting. Tsk-tsk.

Education also comes from how you embed yourself in ponies’ lives. A proper worldview does not just come from adventure or surmounting dragons, or just reading about them. It comes from building yourself up with others, finding an authentic way to take part in this wonderful world, not as a driving force, but one of its many puzzle pieces.

And friends are the first step.

Go make some. And have some fun along the way.

Your devoted and still learning teacher, Twilight~