//------------------------------// // Seasons // Story: Stars Relit // by Rocinante //------------------------------// “Look at that!” Celestia pointed past her sister at the night sky. “I can see the Winter Fox.”     “Tis fall sister,” Luna said turning towards the familiar constellation; not quite sure why her sister seemed surprised.     Then it dawned on her, she could see the dim little stars that made up the fox shape. “I think your little ploy with the foals worked, I have not seen those stars since before she left.”     “It wasn’t a ploy. I merely introduced her to some new ponies.” Celestia said searching the night sky for other emergent constellations.     “I didn't have time during the Summer Sun celebration to meet them,” Luna said flatly. "Me ether," Celestia said. "We should fix that."   Celestia looked back, Luna had a smile that meant mischief.         - - -     The end of another night’s lesson. Twilight smiled at her two students. Six months ago she had found them in their trance, since then she had fed them knowledge and skills as fast as their hungry minds would take it.     She would miss the nights of teaching; and learning. But, a season to all things; as Luna would say.     She had a promise to keep.     “Well girls, it's been a good six months,” Twilight said. A look of dejection on the two made her choke up. “This isn’t goodbye okay. It’s never goodbye.”     The two watched with curiosity as Twilight presented each of them a letter with the royal seal on it. They had been uncertain about this day. Just how much would change after tonight?     “You are welcome in my study any time. Even though I won’t have time for proper lessons, you’re still my apprentices, and always will be.” Twilight’s words were rewarded with smiles.     Opening their letters, Morning found a page made of gold, and Evening one of silver. They were acceptance letters to the royal schools for gifted unicorns, albeit separate ones.     Twilight preempted their question. “As good as you are at working together, you need to work on your personal strengths. Morning, you’re better a solar magic. Evening, you’re better at lunar. It’s not like you two won’t take every opportunity to teach each other anyway.”     “Princess,” Morning said. “We were wondering if you...”     “With everypony going off to secondary school,” Evening continued. “The girls are going to meet every other Sunday for dinner, so we can stay in touch. We would like it if you join us. When you could.”     Morning nodded. “We would like it if we could just hang out, like friends.”     ‘The girls’, Twilight thought, the familiar phrase sparked deja vu. It had been bittersweet watching them make friends with Surprise, Iris, and Tranquility. The five fillies took to each other like lost sisters.     “I, I would like that,” Twilight said. She had learned Celestia and Luna’s pain over the years. The stature of alicorn ment ponies feared you, or sought you for their own means. Honest friends came few and far between.     “Awesome!” Evening cheered.        - - -     Twilight leaned over the Elements. Long ago she had assumed they would be the easy answer to finding her friends. Long ago she had abandoned them as ever being useful, but perhaps she had missed something. There was magic here that had touched her friends' souls: there had to be a connection she could exploit. Wild ideas and questions, gathered from her renewed effort, littered her notes; tonight she would start weeding out the laundry list of hypotheses.     Opening up the case she paused, hovering a hoof over one of the stone orbs; she felt like she was forgetting something. Looking over to her calendar Twilight winced; it was Sunday, the twins' dinner was in an hour. Her new work tempted her to send a guard with an apology, but looking back at the elements, the stone orb of laughter glared at her.     “Ok, fine Pinkie. I’ll go.”     Twilight made a few notes before leaving her work station and walking out into her balcony.  She flared her wings for flight, but paused. “No, no. This won’t work at all” she mumbled.     Lighting up her horn she began to weave an old spell. Her magic crawled around her body, reshaping it bit by bit; wings dissolved into starlight, and her body shrank.     “There,” Twilight said, content with the spell’s effect. Gone was the alicorn Twilight Sparkle, in its place was her alter ego Galaxy, the simple unicorn. Stretching her legs, she familiarized herself with the smaller body. “Been a while,” she mused.     Lighting up her horn, she vanished in a puff of smoke.     - - -       The twins and Tranquility sat at the largest table in the diner. Big enough to sit eight, it made the three look like lost yearlings. Three drinks and one large basket of hay-fries marked them as paying customers.     Tranquility eyed the pile of catsup packets near the basket. Carefully sliding them off the table, she bundled them in a napkin and placed them on the seat beside her.     “What are you doing?” Evening asked.     “Iris and Surprise just landed outside. No need to tempt her. I got enough fake blood on me this week at school.”     Morning and Evening giggled at the memory of Surprise's use of condiments as makeshift blood squibs. “What did they have you doing?” Morning asked.     “Compression and tourniquet use to stop bleeding.” Tranquility answered. She shook her head with a little grimace. “They have us work on these dummies. But they're so real; you can forget they're not alive.”     “Ooo that sounds creepy,” Surprise said sliding into the booth. “Think I could borrow one for our fall production?”     “Oh? Did you all finally settle on what the fall play will be?” Iris asked, taking a place opposite Surprise.     “Iris, why do you smell like Ozone?” Morning asked.     Iris laughed at the question, waving her wings a bit, in an effort to wave the smell off her. “Well, I actually just came back from my aptitude exam at Equestria Central Weather.”     “How’d you do?” Evening asked leaning forward to hear the news.     “I scored high enough on lightning and severe weather, that I’m getting sent to school for storm training. I’ll be a severe weather manager if I do well!”     “Congratulations!” a familiar voice cheered. The five young mares stared blankly at a lavender unicorn they had never seen.     “Thank you?” Iris said, confused by the familiar tone of the stranger. But no, she looked strikingly familiar...     Morning blinked a few times. “Pr-”     “Shhh!” Twilight interrupted. “It’s a disguise. Call me Galaxy.” Taking a seat next to Iris, Twilight sniffed the air, then looked at Iris as if searching for something. “No burns, good job.”     “Huh?” Iris managed to say, her mind still catching up to what was happening. She knew the invitation had been extended to the princess, but sitting next to her in a burger hop, was a little more than she could absorb all at once.     “When Dash took that test, she caught a lightning bolt to the muzzle. Couldn’t taste anything for weeks.” Twilight reached over to steal a hay fry. “That’s when she developed her taste for hot sauce,” She said in a tone that implied she just figured that out.     “But she was a storm manager, before the Wonderbolts?” Iris said looking confused. Getting hit by more than mild static was normally enough to get you disqualified from the test.     “Yea, they gave her the job because she finished the test after taking the hit.” Twilight said before popping the fry in her mouth.     “Oh,” Iris said. “Surprise, what play did your class settle on doing?”     “Cabin of Heads,” Surprise said with a grin.     Tranquility winced. “That’s a horrible play. Ponies getting killed, and all those heads on the wall.”     “Yea! isn’t it great!?” Surprise said.     “A head by dawn, a head by dawn,” Morning and Evening chanted in giggles.     Iris face hoofed at the outburst. “That play is so campy.”     Twilight laughed. She knew the play, it was an old favorite for Nightmare Night. While bloody, it was too silly to be called scary by most. “That’s right, you’re going to Canter-Art, for stage production,” Twilight said.     “MmHmm,” Surprise nodded. “They need a few of the ponies in production to be heads on the wall. So I volunteered. You should totally come see the play!”     “Okay, I think I could manage that,” Twilight said. She was about to wave the waitress over when two lost looking ponies entered the diner.     Twilight moaned and rubbed at her temples. Iris started to ask if she was okay, but held her question as two mares approached the table. A dark blue earth pony, and a white pegasus trotted up to Twilight with eagerness that seemed out of place.     “Hi Galaxy” the earth pony said.     “Mind if we join you?” the pegasus asked, already taking a seat next to Twilight.     Twilight motioned for the blue pony to sit next to Surprise. “Everypony, this is Moonbeam.” Then she pointed the the pegasus besides her. “And this is Sunny Skies.”     The two each dragged a menu in front of them and gave it a once over. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a dazy burger!” Sunny said.     “What are chilly cheese fries?” Moonbeam asked.     “Only the best thing ever!” Surprise chimed.     Iris traded glances with Morning and Evening before looking to Sunny. “So you two are...” she pointed to Twilight. “Galaxy’s coworkers?”     Moonbeam looked up from the menu that Surprise was explaining to her. “Yes, but please, we do hate talking about work during meals.”     "Iris took the aptitude test at the weather factory today,” Twilight said in an effort to generate some mundane small talk. “She's going to do storm training.”     "Really?” Celestia said. “I thought you had made the Wonderbolts recruiting list.”     “Well...” Iris said. “I did, but I withdrew my name.”     Every head at the table turned to face Iris. “Why would you do that?” Evening asked.     “Well, they only had room for one more. And it was going to be between Tumble Wing and I,” Iris said. “Getting into the Wonderbolts is his life’s dream. I couldn’t take that from him. So, I told them I wanted to wait a year or two before I enlisted. The old find myself routine,” she said waving a hoof.     “Are you ready to order?” A chipper waitress asked, interrupting the moment.     “Yes,” Luna said. “I would like the chilly cheese fries and an espresso milkshake.”     - - -     “By the time I get to Ponyville, the entire town is under her want-it need-it spell.” Celestia said, absently fishing the fruit out of her desert.     “All that over a late report?” Evening snickered.     Twilight laughed a little. “And of all things, Applejack’s brother ended up with Smarty Pants.”     “What did he want her for after the spell was broken?” Morning asked.     Twilight sipped her drink for a moment before answering. “My attention. Trading that doll became a bit of a game between the two of us that summer.” An impish grin curled around her face.     “Galaxy!” Luna said in mock offense. “I never knew.”     Twilight shrugged. “It was just a fling.”     “How’s your new research going?” Morning asked, trying to derail the current line of conversation.     “What are you working on anyway? You’ve never mentioned what your big research project is.” Evening said.     “Is it a secret?” Surprise asked, leaning closer over the table.     “No,” Twilight said. “It’s not a secret.”     Luna cleared her throat. “Being immortal has many burdens. Watching friends pass away is among the heaviest. Twilight believes that ponies' souls rest in the stars. But as one collective consciousness.”     Twilight nodded, it was a good explanation. Luna had always been a bit more sympathetic to her search than Celestia. "I’m trying to separate out their voices from the crowd. So I can talk to my friends again.”     “Your friends?” Iris asked     “The Elements of Harmony,” Celestia answered.     “All this time and you still think of them as friends.” Evening said wistfully. A look of admiration turned sad as she thought about the implications of living so long.     “You should go visit them in their dreams,” Surprise chimed.     Twilight opened her mouth to explain how that wouldn’t work, but the words didn’t come. She couldn’t think why that wouldn’t work. Slack jawed she turned to Luna. An unvoiced question passed between them; Luna shrugged.     The world faded from Twilight as her mind spun around this new idea. Dreams were Luna’s specialty, but she had learned the art over the years; a perk of their overlapping domains.     A sudden squeal form Celestia snapped Twilight back to the table. Surprise and Luna leaned against each other laughing, as a rubber spider in front of Celestia was picked up with a wing and bounced off Luna’s head; sending the rest of the table into giggles. Twilight joined in laughing at the silliness, but in the back of her mind she was already forming new ideas.       - - -     Twilight entered her chambers with an exhausted sigh. Unraveling her disguise, she plopped down at her writing desk. The evening had been surprisingly fun, and going to bed sounded wonderful. But, she was eager to work on the new theory. Taking out a fresh parchment, she began scribbling out her thoughts—but her eyes protested the strain, by the second paragraph they refused to focus altogether. Forcing herself to jot down a few last ideas, for fear of forgetting them, she laid down her quill and shuffled off to her bed. She found herself standing among her stars before she even realized she had gone to sleep. Twilight could remember when sleep meant a blissful nothingness, but only barely. For far longer it had meant exile from her body into her divine planescape. She had taken up dream walking as a hobby for the countless hours she was trapped in this other existence. How Celestia just meditated during her sleep was a mystery to both her and Luna.     “Well, I guess there’s no time like the present,” she mused aloud. “Now, how would I find their dreams?”     While Luna browsed dreams like books on a shelf, Twilight needed some point of reference to find the dreamer: their name, cutie mark, where they were sleeping. Something to let her get close enough to feel the dream. This was not enough to find her friends though; the Crone had stricken those things from the list of creation.     “The elements,” she thought. “Maybe that’s the answer.”     Reaching into herself she awakened the Element of Magic, letting it twinkle in her heart for a moment before taking it in her magic. Commanding it to find the other elements she felt it reach out and look for its counterparts. But there were no elements here on the astral plane. This is where it had always ended before. A search for something that was not there. Again she commanded the Element, but this time she did so while reaching out for a dream. She would use her own element as a reference to find a dreamer.     Again the element found nothing to connect with, but she felt several dreams bubble up to her perception, only to fade away just as fast. With desperate abandoned she dropped every thought and magic to grab onto one of the dreams. The other dreams faded from her senses, but she had purchase on one.     Gathering her magic, she calmed herself and focused on the dream. After a moment she began to merge with it, and entered the dreamer's realm.     A fog parted and Twilight found herself standing between a row of trees. The thump of apple bucking rang out in irregular intervals. Twilight forced herself to keep her composure; she couldn’t let herself get her hopes up just yet. Walking through the rows of trees she followed the sound till falling apples caught her attention.     Rushing closer she stopped in confusion as the apple-bucking pony came within sight; it was Morning. She watched as Morning moved the baskets to another tree and gave it a solid buck. Their eyes met just as Morning’s hooves hit the ground.     “Twi!” Applejack’s thick voice called out. “It’s been ages! Where you been?”     “A-Applejack?” Twilight stammered.     Morning trotted over to her. “Don’t act like you don’t know me.” She said in Applejack's voice, as she pressed into a hug.     Twilight held her friend for a moment; it felt like Applejack. Then her friend pulled away, gone was the young unicorn and in its place was her old friend, but she had a confused, lost expression.     “Princess, why are we in an orchard?” Morning’s voice asked.     The Element of Magic stirred within Twilight. She tried to quiet it, but the magic had already taken action. A spark of white magic jumped between them, sending Applejack to her knees. She clutched her head for a moment and groaned. Morning’s voice twisted till it again became Applejack’s.     “Are you okay!?” Twilight asked, helping her friend to her hooves.     Applejack just sat there, blinking at her from a moment. “Wow,” she finally said. “Twilight? why are we in Sweet Apple Acres?”     “Applejack?” Twilight asked again.     “Yea, I suppose,” she answered, scratching her head. Again she looked confused and she patted her forehead. “Where’s ma horn go?”     “What?”     “Ma horn. Make a lousy unicorn without it.” Applejack's form blurred, a moment later Morning sat where Applejack had been. “That’s better,” Morning said, the voice and body matching.     “I don’t understand...” Twilight said, confusion and fear edging into her voice.     “Well, Dash and I got bored waiting for you, so we decided to come back and find you.”     It was Twilight’s turn to sit and blink. “Where’s Dash then?”     Morning  looked around. “I don’t know where sis went off to. Where are we anyway?”     “This is a dream, your dream,” Twilight said.     Morning smiled. “Oh. Well, I guess that explains it. Wonder where the other girls ended up?”     “You only know where Dash is...” Twilight asked, her ears sinking.     “Well ya. We went together, thought it be fun to be sisters. And I was always a bit jealous of unicorns. As for the others. Well, Rarity was the first, she didn’t like not having a body. Then Shy went, she missed being able to help ponies. Pinkie was holding out for you when we left.”     “Iris, Tranquility, and Surprise,” Twilight blurted.     Morning nodded her head. “You know, I bet you’re right. Rarity kept rambling about how she want to be a pegasus.”     “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you up there,” Twilight said. “An’t your fault.” Applejack's voice crept back into Morning body, the form slowly shifting with the accent. “Besides, we found you.” The world blinked and the trees began to fade away. “You're waking up,” Twilight said. “Oh, okay. Well, I’ll see ya around.” Applejack said, waving goodbye and the world faded bit by bit. As the dream crumbled around her, Twilight watched her friend fade away. She wanted to laugh. Everything seemed so ridiculous now. All her magic, unicorn and divine, hadn't found her friends. She’d been talking to Applejack and Dash for six months now; as a break from looking for them. Twilight chuckled and waved at Applejack as the last of the dream unraveled. “Oh no!” Twilight blurted, the thought of Morning waking up and remembering this dream dawning on her. She had no idea how this would affect her. Having an entire past life crammed into your memories over night didn’t sound healthy. She had waited this long, she couldn’t risk her friend's well being. With a flair of her horn, Twilight bound the dream and Morning’s mind in a forget-me spell; sealing the dream deep within Morning's subconscious. The spell took hold and the dream collapsed, sending Twilight back to her stars. Their murmur sounded different to her now. Five voices were missing from it, they had been for a dozen years.