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// The world we know 
// Story: Twilight the nostalgic 
// by CeresBane 
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I've always wondered what the humble earth pony felt towards a unicorn. Magic was an ambiguous thing with no defined limitations. Perhaps defined stability with each new attempt at greater feats of mimicking gods and demons, but that stability was only by the limitation of the mortal wielder. Even I, as far as I've gone, feel like the whole world truly sees me as this god. This omnipotent being that could make and do anything. Nothing was impossible to Twilight Sparkle. Everything was just an eventuality.

I try to imagine a world that they see. A world that you could only live in with the might of your own hooves and the ability of your own muscles. You followed a logic and pragmatism that accepted that many ponies could do much greater things than you, simply by being born with wings or horns. What good is a strong and swift pony when your fellow pony could just decimate you with magic hundreds of miles away, or assail your progress with a mighty maelstrom of weather and elements?

What progress could I possibly make with such limitation as holding the limitations of my own potential? And yet despite all this the earth pony stands to be an equalling rival to a populous of mighty unicorns. Where we could destroy a whole battlefield, they can send us misinformation or kill off our greatest mages and healers. Where we march forward like a machine of destruction. They move around us and nibble away our resources, leaving the machine with little to no fuel to function.

And when everything is said and done. When the fight finally comes. They bring it with the force of their whole being. With their might and their technology. They equalled the solar empire at every turn. Through eons of cowering to the might of a greater foe, they adapted and grew and evolved to equal their enemy with nothing as convenient as magic.

With this in mind, to remove this seal I will need to think like the humble earth pony and wear these scars of defeat with pride. Wear my own hurt pride brought on with such countless failures with pride. For soon I will succeed and it was all because of the past errors and mistakes and failures and... regrets.

This time this letter I wish to extend to Rarity. I will not reveal her future to you and I will leave it to you if you wish to pass this message onto her for me.

But today I am compelled to say that for the first time in ages I have felt the touch of harmony. It was only a little bit but I felt it for the tiniest of instants.

Not too long ago the demon of laughs was upon me with her usual madness. Drowning me in a waking nightmare as she reminds me over and over about the sins that I have done onto her and onto my other dearest friends.

Rarity. I'm so sorry for what I will do to you. You trusted me to do the right thing but instead I did what I believed to be right. Suffice to say, it was not in light of what a friend had in mind.

I called you many horrible things before we parted and did such horrible things to you.

The demon is correct to remind me. Despite all her evil she does mean well in her own demented little way.

And when I met this little filly named Charity.

When she ask me if I wanted her friendship. I realised that through all my knowledge I gained, I had also lost so much in return.

It is going to be a trial and it goes against all that I stand for. But I think it's time to stop thinking and seeing this world as a world split apart by empires and republics. But of two pony races that had forgotten what it meant to live in a world without the magic you hold so dear.

Now the demon laughs at me, calling me traitor and heretic as I had done onto the saint. But I see the world now as it is and as it should be. I should never have been proud of all the things I've done.

But for all I'm worth I'll look and live beyond what I perceive within the convenience of my position and power and ability. And look towards what a little filly sees me as.

I will be a friend unto her and a friend onto the others she is fated to meet. And this time I will be the one to remind the demon what it really means to laugh.

And when I finally once again remember the sheer power of harmony. Perhaps I will be inspired to transcend the limitations of a magical scholar and fathom things in a far greater way that no mere book can instruct you.

I'd intended to beg forgiveness before you and I do intend to. But until I find some sort of contentment of this existence.

I choose this world's problems over you.