//------------------------------//
// Epilogue: The Morning Always Comes 
// Story: Links in a Chain 
// by Touch the Sky 
//------------------------------//

Rainbow Dash's body was buried beside those of her friends, so that six gravestones stood side by side. But the six were never forgotten, and there were many tributes left on the graves.

Spike accompanied Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Applebloom to the graves one morning in springtime, and they planted a bush or sapling on each grave.

Applejack's grave naturally bore an apple sapling, while Rarity's had a white rose bush. Twilight's grave was adorned with a hawthorn sapling, Rainbow Dash's featured a colourful red stapelia bush, and Pinkie's had a plant none of them recognised; Scootaloo had seen it as she flew over the Everfree and had taken a cutting of the bush, which had lovely, bright pink flowers.
Fluttershy's grave bore a simple cherry tree.

Scootaloo already had her cutie mark, a lightning bolt, white against her flank, after she had flown so fast in her fruitless attempt to save a falling Rainbow Dash. Scootaloo had blamed herself for Rainbow Dash's death, but found solace in cloudbusting and stunts. Once, when privately re-enacting her dive after Rainbow Dash, she managed to accidentally pull off a Sonic Rainboom, and she took this as a sign that her hero was watching over her and egging her on.

Applebloom had consoled herself by pretending, with a vivid imagination, that apple trees in the orchard were the snake which had killed Applejack, and with her talent for applebucking had found her cutie mark: a shiny apple with an apple blossom beside it. She still liked to paint and design, but she pushed this into a back seat as she focussed on becoming as good an applebucker as her big sister.

But it was not until a year later that Sweetie Belle finally found her cutie mark. There was to be a festival to remember the six original ponies of the Elements of Harmony, and with a lot of encouragement from her friends, she sung a song of her own creation before the whole town. Though she took fright and had to flee and hide halfway through the song, she gained a glittering microphone and musical note for her cutie mark.

Six ponies living in a town on the other side of Equestria had taken up the Elements, and though their names would go down in the history books, they would never go down in legend like those of Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity and Rainbow Dash would.

And whenever Spike or one of the others missed them, they would always remember Twilight's words at Fluttershy's funeral:
'Though it may seem dark now, the morning always comes.'