//------------------------------// // The Magic of Friendship // Story: The Last Princess // by bookhorse125 //------------------------------// Izzy leaped into the cave and dashed towards Sunny as she ran towards her unicorn friend. The two met in the middle and pulled each other into a hug. Over by the entrance, three more pony heads poked into the opening, which belonged to Zipp Storm, Pipp Petals, and Hitch Trailblazer. Pipp flew over to Sunny immediately, while Zipp, hovering just above the ground, helped Hitch into the cave. “Sunny!” “What are you guys doing here?” Sunny asked, letting go of Izzy to embrace her other friends. “Did you seriously think that we would let you just disappear like that?” Pipp asked, holding up Sunny’s note that she had left in the Crystal Brighthouse. “Zipp did some investigating and used her spy gear to find some kind of magical energy leftover from whatever took you, and Izzy cast some kind of finder spell, and we’ve been following you ever since.” She looked around, as if noticing where they were for the first time. “Um… where exactly are we?” “And who is that?” Zipp asked, pointing behind Sunny to where Twilight Sparkle was standing, looking at the group of friends with a forlorn look on her face, like she remembered having something like this but had it taken away from her. Hitch tilted his head at the alicorn. “Is it just me, or does she look kind of familiar…” “Oh!” Sunny shook her head, and her wings and horn disappeared in small bursts of golden light. “Guys, this is Twilight Sparkle. She’s the pony my dad told me about, who saved Equestria with her friends and created the crystals. She lost her friends and was so sad that she basically forgot who she was, but I think she’s okay now. We’ve been talking for a while.” She grinned bashfully. “Twilight, these are my friends that I told you about: Hitch, Izzy, Zipp, and Pipp. If it weren’t for them, magic never would have been brought back, and ponies would still be divided, and I wouldn’t be an alicorn.” “And…” Twilight’s emotions flashed across her face, and she firmly held them back. “They followed you all the way out here? Because they care about you?” “Yeah!” Hitch said at the same time Pipp said, “Of course,” Zipp said, “Totally,” and Izzy said, “Abso-tooty-lootly! Sunny’s our friend!” Twilight looked from each of their shining faces to the look in Sunny’s eyes that hadn’t been there when she first met the earth pony, but had begun to show when she was talking about her friends, and now her face was practically glowing with love and affection for these four ponies. It reminded Twilight so much of how she and her friends used to be that she almost sank into the nothingness again, the loneliness again, but she held herself back. Her friends were still with her, even if she couldn’t see them. They loved her too much and she loved them too much for that to ever happen. Izzy leaped towards the cave exit again. “Come on, Sunny, everypony’s been wondering where you’ve been! And it’s going to be Maretime Bay Day in, like, two weeks, and we have to be getting back!” “Oh.” Sunny hesitated as the rest of her friends joined Izzy by the exit. She turned her head around to look at Twilight, who was staring at the ground, her eyes filled with emotion. When she didn’t move, her friends turned around to stare at her, their faces identical expressions of confusion. “Sunny?” Hitch took a step towards her. “Sunny, what’s going on?” She took a deep breath, but didn’t move her gaze from the Princess of Friendship, who had now turned away and wasn’t facing Sunny at all anymore. She looked just like the sad, dejected, hopeless pony who Sunny had met that she felt her heart begin to beat faster in panic. But she knew that she was different now. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the other alicorn, all alone like this. “M-maybe we could stay a little longer?” Sunny stepped towards Twilight as the other pony turned her head to look at her, her purple eyes sad. “No, Sunny,” she said quietly. “You have to leave. Equestria belongs to you now. Protect it.” “What?” The words didn’t register in Sunny’s mind. She wasn’t a princess, or a queen, and she was barely an alicorn. How could she protect Equestria? “B-but you’re a princess - you can still fix your mistakes! Are you just going to sit here in this cave forever and mope?” The words came out harsher than she meant, but she was getting frustrated. She thought this pony had changed, that she was beyond this! Nevertheless, Twilight just gave her a sad smile. “No, I had my time. I did with it what I did with it, and I won’t say that it was everything I had hoped it would be. But you know my mistakes, and you are smarter than that.  You see ways to fix, truly fix things. I failed Equestria, Sunny. But you didn’t. You did everything I ever wanted to do and so much more, and you’re just beginning.” Sunny’s eyes filled with tears. “B-but I don’t know how-” “You know more than you think you do,” Twilight said. “Look at how you brought ponies together, how strong your hope is, when all you had to go off of was some stories that you weren’t even sure were true! You are going to change the world, Sunny.” Twilight lit up her horn and picked up the wrinkled and aged picture of her friends and slid it inside the cover of the Journal of Friendship. Then she picked up the worn purple book and levitated it over to Sunny and set it in her outstretched hoof. “Tell them the story,” Twilight told her. “Make sure… they never forget…” Her eyes got a far-off look in them, and she stared off into space. “My friends…” She gently closed her eyes, and a contented look settled across her face as she began to fade. “Wait…” Sunny dropped the book and ran towards her as fast as she could, but the alicorn was fading quickly. “No! Come back!” But by the time Sunny arrived, she had dissolved into purple mist that passed right through Sunny’s hoof as she tried to grab onto the last pieces of the pony she had always held as her hero. Sunny’s tears filled her eyes and blurred her vision before sliding down her cheeks and splashing onto the ground as she let her emotions come pouring out. She hated losing ponies, hated it more than anything. And here was another pony she had lost that she could have saved. How could she rule Equestria? She was a failure. She couldn’t save anypony… Stop that, came a voice inside her heart that sounded familiar. Sunny gasped and looked up, hoping to see Twilight Sparkle standing in front of her again, but the purple alicorn was nowhere in sight. Yet, Sunny could feel her, could hear her… You did everything I ever wanted to and so much more, the voice reminded her. You are incredible and extraordinary and different in the best ways possible. It’s up to you now to lead Equestria, to protect them and keep them safe. Don’t let them forget, like I did. Don’t let them lose hope, like I did. Show them how to sparkle just like you do. A magenta glow filled the corner of Sunny’s vision, and she turned to see the six pointed star on the cover of the friendship journal glowing the same color as Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark. One by one, the gems surrounding it also began to glow, blue and red and purple and pink and orange, until they created a beautiful rainbow that shone and danced across the cave. Sunny could feel her heart swelling with friendship and hope, and her horn and wings returned, the colors in her mane beginning to glow with magic. “Sunny?” Zipp asked. “Woah.” Sunny walked towards the book and looked at it. “I will, Princess,” she whispered. “I promise to tell them. I promise.” She touched her hoof to the cover of the book, over the pink star, and all the light was sucked into her hoof. Sunny lifted her hoof to place it over her heart, and the magic flowed into her so that, for a moment, she closed her eyes and saw six ponies, young again, laughing and running together, truly happy for the first time in centuries. “Hoof to heart.”