Dear Princess Celestia,
I miss you.
I want to hate you, I want to hurt you, I never want to speak to you again, but still, I miss you.
I've been in Ponyville nearly a month now, enough time to send you a few reports on the magic of friendship, and in that time the bonds I share with the ponies here have only grown stronger. By many measures my life is better here than it ever was in Canterlot. I spend time with my friends, I laugh with them, I learn about their interests, and I help them when I can. I'm known around town for my level head and strong magic, the very qualities I take the most pride in. Running the library is a dream come true for me. I should be happy with what I have.
And yet, I miss you. The old you. The you I thought I knew. I'm tired of trying to act like nothing is wrong. I'm tired of you pretending that everything is the same, as if a few lines in a letter about your duty to your sister and how I should feel honored could make me forget what you did. I had read ancient texts that mention you as a master manipulator, but I dismissed them all. How could the cold-hearted mare they described be the benevolent princess who had been so true to me for so many years? Oh, what a foal I was.
It started as a tiny suspicion, but you know me, princess; I can't help but try my best to find every minute detail, to get the clearest possible understanding. You taught me that. You taught me so many things. The more I thought, the more the evidence piled up.
You gave me a break from formal study knowing that I would take the time to pursue my own interests, which inevitably means the library. The librarian just happened to have a new book to recommend to me that day, on one of my favorite subjects. You've always told me that the myths and legends of ponies have some grain of truth to them, and so my curiosity was piqued by the story of those alicorn sisters, and I had to look into the Elements further. I still don't recall when you told me about them, but it must have been you; no other source could have made such an impression on me that I remembered a mere mention years later. When I read about the Mare in the Moon in the copy of Predictions and Prophecies that you'd given me for some birthday long ago, I sent you a letter. Your immediate reply was surprising at the time, even with my hope for a quick response. In retrospect, you must have had it prepared.
Am I so transparent that you don't even need to read my letters? Are my friendship reports merely wastes of ink?
In any case, you replied in the only way that could have guaranteed that I wouldn't drop the issue, that thoughts of the Elements of Harmony would stay with me: by dismissing my concerns completely, in the most supercilious manner possible. I was concerned for Equestria, concerned for you, and you mocked that concern. What better way to ensure that I would remember the Elements of Harmony and the details of the legend than to kindle within me a burning need to prove myself to you? It was masterfully done. If you'd told me that you'd made arrangements for the Mare's return, or that you'd strengthened the wards, or that you knew of an error in the book I read, and perhaps thrown in a word or two of praise for my diligence, I would have dropped the issue in an instant.
But I couldn't drop it, and you sent me to Ponyville, and a tiny library that happened to have just the book I needed. The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide? How many copies of a treatise on an artifact lost for a millennium could possibly exist? Of course I didn't find that until after I'd gone over the checklist of celebration preparations, and met the ponies that you'd chosen to oversee preparations. The only one of my friends that you didn't set in my path was the one that would have found me and thrown me a party no matter what I did. How long did you know that those were the ones? How long did you know that they'd make great friends for me? How long did you keep that knowledge from me, knowing how alone I was?
You knew what I would face at the Summer Sun Celebration, but you didn't warn me. When I noticed that duplicity, it opened the flood gates; there were so many elements of your plan that had to have been set up years in advance. You wrote that letter to get me to do what you wanted. How much else in the time that you've been planning this has been a lie? Did you stage my entrance examination to the royal academy? Did your words of encouragement follow a secret script? When I did well at my studies, were the looks of pride and affection that you gave me coldly calculated? If I write an autobiography, will it end up in the fiction section?
We elements acted out our parts, following the script you wrote, and now your sister is free. You've even managed to rid yourself of me. By my own request, no less! Congratulations. Your grand design, come to fruition. At least I was a useful tool. I suppose we all have a role to play.
Every life is a story, and every story has a plot, a theme, a goal, something essential at the center of the narrative. Was saving Luna the great goal of my life? Was my character written for your plot? I wouldn't be surprised. I've known for a long time that you're the main character in my life, though I never dreamed that you would also be the antagonist.
You were my world. Your voice, your approval, those were the reasons that I got up in the morning. Everything I've done, from the first time I saw you at that Summer Sun Celebration so many years ago to the present day, has been for you. Through good times and bad, you've been a fixture in my life. You're my teacher, my mentor, my ruler, and my goddess, but you mean even more to me than that. So much more. I wasn't even old enough to know what a schoolfilly crush was when I first saw you, raising the sun and filling the world with radiance. I fell in love with you then, and I've loved you ever since. All of my studying was for you. First it was just to get into your Royal Academy. Since then it's been the fact that when I succeeded, when I read the books, and did precisely what they said, and worked the magic better than anypony else in the class, you would smile at me. A simple constant that I built my life around: you smiled at me, and your eyes filled with pride. Were you proud of me, or were you proud of yourself? I'm afraid to even consider that it might be the latter.
I feel so betrayed. I've read half the royal library, and yet I still cannot find the words.
Even so, I miss you. I feel a deep pit somewhere within me whenever I see the sun. I feel it because you're missing from my life. The rays cannot warm my heart the way your presence always did. Its beautiful radiance is no substitute for your radiant beauty. It gives me life, but it does not make me want to live. The sun is yours; I must shun it, lest I be reminded of you.
So much reminds me of you.
I saw Luna today. She had no part in what you did. I hate her still. She's here because you used me. My anguish was the cost of her salvation, and you gladly paid. I don't know if I can ever forgive either of you for that. I know that I certainly can't forget it; the moon reminds me every night. Her presence seems like a pale reflection of yours. She is cold and distant, but there is an undeniable beauty. The moon is hers? I can believe it.
You are like the sun and she is like the moon. With those celestial bodies barred to me, what can I strive for? My cutie mark, of course, bears my answer.
I must be the stars.
My trust in you was my downfall. The fact that I love you is what made your betrayal hurt so much. I won't let that happen again. I can't live with another wound that hurts this much. And so I won't trust, and I won't love, and I won't be hurt. The moon and the sun dance through the sky, but they have no effect on the course of the stars; the stars care not for them. That is how I will protect myself. Apathy will be my armor. No matter what may transpire with the sun or the moon or Equestria below, my course will be unaffected, and I will not feel the pain. That is my goal. I must become like the stars. I must give up trust and love. I will dedicate myself to this.
But I may still miss you.
Your Wayward Student,
Twilight Sparkle
* * * * *
Flames consumed the letter, hot and red. Twilight Sparkle's magic held the paper above a candle as she watched smoke rise from the message. She could not bring herself to send it. A clean cut, she reasoned, was best.
In truth, reason had little to do with her actions. Deep within, she felt that as long as she didn't send the letter, the contents wouldn't be true. They couldn't be true. She desperately wished that it were all just some dream, that she'd wake up in her bed in Canterlot with a jolt, already forgetting the details of her vivid nightmare.
The letter burned, but its words did not. They stuck in the unicorn's mind, and played over and over again. They sounded like the world crumbling.
Twilight stared at the ashes, a pile of burnt paper and burnt bridges. She whispered to herself, "I've got to be like the stars, and the stars don't cry...."
Indeed, the stars did not cry that night, but Twilight Sparkle did.