//------------------------------//
// Prolegomena 
// Story: As Long as the Earth's Orbit 
// by Cynewulf 
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Dear Rarity,


I am aware of the irony in this situation. I, out of all of the creatures on Equus, am having trouble sending a letter. I am perhaps the most letter-writingest pony in Equestria’s long history aside from Crabapple Hoofson himself! I almost included Highland’s biography of him on your scroll tablet but decided against it. You already had so many books! But you’d like him. Well, no, you’d actually probably loathe him, but in a fun and relaxing way!
What I’m trying to say is that I miss you already, and when you hopefully will be reading this (if I remember to tell you to read it at the right time!) you will be on the space elevator already. Not even in space yet! But it feels already like you are a million miles away, and I cannot help but be sad, even if by my reckoning of time you will not be leaving until tomorrow.
So I will miss you terribly. But I cannot help but be proud of you. I was shocked when you spoke up in council. I had been scrambling over who to send to Frontier, and there you were. I know you will be able to do far better in your task then I could ever hope to. The ponies of Frontier need to know we have not forgotten them, and they need our guidance now that we’ve spotted the first ghostly suggestions of movement among the stars.
I confess, decades of fiction come crawling out of the shadows of my youth to haunt me. Will these ghosts be merely radar pings, flocks of birds that confuse the radio waves? Or something worse? Or perhaps better! I do not know what I am expecting. I fear for you. But I also know that you are brave, and resourceful, and above all the mare I trust most in all of the universe. 
My fervent wish is that you will arrive, and the presence of Our Royal Consort will be enough to assuage their worries and galvanize the population into action.
Luckily, with time dilation, for you it will only be a few weeks of transit either way and a month with the colonists. For myself, of course, It will be a year until I see you again.
I love you. I love you more than I can express. My words—and you know, Rarity, how many I have to talk forever on every subject—fail me only here, when it comes to expressing just how much I love you. We say that a pony completes us not because we were un-formed or empty or needed completing, but because we do not have the words to explain the way in which wholeness can be perfected further into entirely new dimensions. 
Please don’t be too much of a bother for poor Colonel Hardtrot, would you? I know you think he is a bit dull, but I promise you he has hidden depths! And he plays a mean game of chess. You should ask him about it sometime.
You should be able to receive longwave between jumps. I’ve notified the ship’s captain to signal by ansible when you are becalmed. We shall not be out of touch at all! Not truly. That is what I say to myself. But I can see you rolling your eyes at me, love, and my silliness. But if to all the world I am Princess of Equestria, to you let me be a silly mare who will miss her wife. Even the stars must be allowed their loneliness from time to time.
Yours,


Twilight