Dear Princess Celestia,
In my previous letters, I have covered only history. I don’t suppose you’d find that particularly fascinating wherever you now reside, but it has eased my mind to talk of the past in this way. Maybe some day I’ll get around to writing history books myself, after I’ve handed over my Element and begin to grow old.
But I’ve started something, and I’ve always felt that a project, so long as it is not hopeless, should be seen through to its conclusion. It is only fair that I treat this silly venture with the same respect. You may or may not be reading this, but you remain my most beloved teacher. There is nothing I would not do for you, and a few short letters are certainly worth the sacrifice if they give you even the smallest comfort or joy.
In a previous correspondence, I said that if I were to compare Rarity to you, I must compare Fluttershy to Luna. That might seem somewhat incongruous, if one looks only at the Fluttershy and Luna whom were known before your death and my ascension, but there were similarities even then. Both mares were insecure in their positions, afraid of the reactions of others, and yet, when the need arose, ready to commit their entire beings to a worthy cause. Following your passing, the two of them ended up growing very close, and I must credit this fact with some of the changes that overtook Fluttershy.
But first, I should tell you of your sister.
In the wake of your passing, she shut herself out from the rest of the world. During that time, she later told me, she spent much of her waking life dreamwalking. I believe she was trying to find comfort in the purpose to which she had appointed herself, as custodian of the sleeping minds of her subjects. She continued to tend to the raising of the moon, whilst I took to the raising of the sun in your stead. It was strange, in a way, but I began to see her as more approachable than even yourself, not as a parent or mentor, but as a powerful and honored friend. That is not to say that I never considered you my friend, especially in the final years we spent together, but Luna and I were never separated by the inevitable gulf between teacher and student, between a precocious little filly and the ruler of the realm. By the time we got to know one another, we were all but equals.
Eventually, she did come out of her self-imposed isolation, and she did so with gusto. I first became aware of this change on Nightmare Night, some one hundred and eighty years ago, when the sky suddenly lit up with the most glorious meteor shower that has ever crossed Eponan sky. Standing on the palace balcony, I can still remember the shock with which I stared up at the heavens, now ablaze with glorious fire, and I still remember what she said to me as she came up from behind, tears falling like shooting stars across her nightly face.
“From now on, this night will be a celebration of the glory of the sky.”
It was at that moment that she pulled the sun up over the horizon, bringing it up to soar across the heavens for a brief moment, a great wave of meteors following its grand passage. Through her magic, she banished the sun’s blinding influence, and the stars shared its place in the heavens. Then, it was gone, and the stars seemed all the more glorious. It was an event witnessed all across the Epona, by every creature on the planet with eyes to see. It was beyond mere words.
It was the first time I truly, truly comprehended the raw power of magic. It might seem bizarre to hear me of all ponies say that, but it is true. What she did that night went beyond teleportation, beyond transformation, beyond even manipulation of the celestial bodies. What she did that night was more than any illusion or trick. She united the sky as one—in harmony, not in chaos. It was, as I’ve come to believe, the starting signal for the golden age that would soon rush upon us.
I later learned that she’d planned her display meticulously, that she’d been dreamwalking all across the world, placing prophetic words in the minds of millions upon billions of creatures, telling them to look up at the sky and behold its wonder. Her notes on the subject could have filled many books, and some dated back to before the Nightmare Curse. She wanted us all to see it, even if only once: her greatest masterpiece—and to behold it not in fear, but in wonder. It was never recorded on film, as far as I am aware, but in a way that makes it all the more spectacular. It lasted only as long as a summer night does, and yet it was the most beautiful work of art I have ever seen.
I hope you could see it, Celestia. I hope that my descriptions serve only to rekindle your own memory of the event, seen through eyes truly immortal. I hope that, at least, the cosmos was kind enough to allow you to see your sisters most brilliant moment.
I digress again. I’m sorry.
Luna grew bold after that. She cowed the nobility in Canterlot, backing Applejack’s courts and paving the way for Rarity to work her reform farther down the line. She stood behind Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo as they reached for the stars. She stood behind me when my trials were the worst, teaching me every political trick and tactic she knew—and she did know many, for if there is one thing Luna excelled at when she wished to, it was subtlety.
She was ultimately the reason I took Trixie under my wing (for if I am to be you, then it is not unfair to call Trixie my Luna), and, indirectly, she was the reason I established the Academy of Arcane Science, the reason I began the Hearthstar Initiative. Following that Nightmare Night—or as it has come to be known, the Night of Luna—the world truly began to change. Rainbow Dash’s adventures into spaceflight were mere weeks afterwards, and, ironically, it is in no small part because of that display of equnity’s power that the Gryphons chose to leave Epona.
She was amazing, almost… no, every bit as amazing as you. More amazing than I could ever hope to be. When she died, the whole planet mourned as they had when you left us, but though the attendees were fewer and the ceremonies far quieter, for many of those ponies who had lived their lives under your rule, it was a far more sobering time. With her funeral, we saw the final passing of the legendary alicorn sisters, the two ponies who time and time again transcended their status as beings of flesh and blood and became legends. Cadance and I were alicorns, yes, but we were your shadows, nothing more. An era had passed, and I think all of us knew that whatever was to come would be irreconcilable with the beloved past. It is with great relief I find that I can accept what has finally come, for back then I could hardly stand to face the future.
But, once again, Luna’s is a different story from the one I wished to tell. I seem to have habit of prefacing my friends’ tales with those of the ones who influenced them, don’t I? In a way, I suppose I am trying to chronicle the time that has transpired since your passing, and in that endeavor focusing solely on five ponies would never do these two centuries justice.
I said that Fluttershy became like Luna, and thus I must also say that she is by far the most changed over these two centuries. The Elements have many side-effects—immortality being the most obvious—but I do not believe they are to blame for her transformation. It was something inevitable, something that was started long before I first met her, a certain dissonance between who she was and who she wanted to be.
The first clue I received to this change was something I did not witness personally, and something that, to this day, I scarcely believe to be true, despite all the documentation and evidence.
It was just months after your passing, scarce weeks before Rarity would suddenly vanish with Zecora. Fluttershy was in Manehattan, though I do not know why. I heard the news in my chamber, when a guard burst in to inform me that there had been an attack on the city.
At this time, there was a small group of ponies opposed to my rule. They were, shall I say, holdovers. Ponies who rejected the new and revered the past beyond all reason. They could not let go of what once was, and they turned their frustration with the changing world into violence.
There were six of them in total. I still remember all their names. Though there is little point in giving them here, I will say that they were ponies of some stature, hardly the type which you might expect to commit such an act. They walked into the Clydesdale building one cold winter day and took it hostage, using several admittedly ingenious magical charms that were designed to eat away at the building’s support structures. They barricaded themselves in the lobby, trapping close to three hundred ponies on the floors above them. They demanded my abdication, along with other things that were simply impossible. I remember those words, written in the crooked writing of a professor of arcane studies. I cannot bring myself to recite their demands here, for they were things I too wished for, but things which could never be again.
This was the situation when Fluttershy arrived. She did not speak to the police ponies surrounding the building. Instead, she flew right over their barricade, completely ignoring the warnings from all sides. She landed at the front doors and strode through before walking right up to the first terrorist and telling him calmly that she was exchanging her life for those of the ponies trapped in the floors above.
I do not know how she got him to agree, but it was only minutes later that the first of the hostages began running out of the building. She stood there with a repeating crossbow pressed to her temple as the terrorists allowed those ponies to flee, and then, the moment the last colt was out the door, she calmly turned to leave as well.
This was when we learned the extent of the Elements’ hold over our lives. Fluttershy had walked five steps when the sentry opened fire. As I understand, the terrorist in question was a former guardspony, an expert with the repeating crossbow she wielded. Five bolts were loosed, and five found the nape of Fluttershy’s. neck.
She never stopped walking. After those five bolts, no more shots were fired. The terrorists surrendered five minutes later, with not a single hostage in their grasp.
When I heard the story, I was speechless. Dozens of ponies witnessed it all, and there was in fact a news camera’s film, showing Fluttershy leaving the building. Though the footage was blurry—the camera itself a primitive model—I can recall with terrible clarity watching her stagger as she was hit, and the thin trail of scarlet that marked where she walked after. I saw to it that the footage was destroyed, but the images haunt my nightmares still. The look in her eyes cannot be described in words.
It is a darker story than I have typically related, but that is why I must tell it. The other bearers all had their whimsy, but Fluttershy’s tale was one of constant struggle and determination. For that alone, I must call her changed. Though in the past she always fled from conflict, in these two centuries trouble has always found her, and she has always faced it.
She grew steadily in influence as time passed, always mediating conflict wherever she could. She became synonymous with peace, and it was she who convinced the majority of the Eponan races to ally themselves with Equestria. In the wake of the One Night War, she was the voice of reason, calming us and demanding that we judge things carefully and reasonably. By the time of the founding of the Federation, she was a figure nearly as powerful as myself.
It was she who drafted the charter by which the Federation’s members now abide, and it was she in great part who convinced the other signatories to come together with us. She visited them all personally, first the new home of the Gryphons, then the great caves of the Grom, the drifting cities of the Haarkin, the brilliant fleet that is home to the Kahri, the ring-world of the Nivenn, and the dozen and a half worlds claimed by the Empire of the Hand. I have spoken little of these beings, for frankly I encounter them little in my day-to-day dealings, but you must understand that what she did was more than a diplomatic visit. These were alien creatures with alien cultures, and aside from the Gryphons they hardly knew what we were. Some feared her, some thought she was mad, and some laughed in her face when the first saw her, and yet, in the end, she convinced all of them to join with us, forming the first foundations of the Federation that now unites more than a hundred races in relative harmony.
This was her doing, and it is her signature that rests at the very bottom of that charter, written out in careful strokes of black ink alongside those of empresses and kings, and preserved with the most powerful magic available to me. Hers is the final name on that document, as if her penstroke was the one that gave it life.
If she did not look as she did all those years ago, she would be all but unrecognizable as the mare who was so frightened of me that she couldn’t even tell me her name when we first met. She is powerful, not in the way that you or I execute our power, but in the way that Luna so often did. Her voice, soft as it remains, can move mountains, and her eyes can compel any warlord to bow before her. I believe fully that if she ever wished to see my rule fall, she could do it with a single word. I do not believe she would, but I believe with all the certainty I have that it is within her power, and that were I to somehow become a tyrant, she would do so. That is the extent of the change, and I believe, in the end, it is a good change. As much as I have cast her in a serious light, she is far happier now than she ever was before. The look on her face when she speaks to someone new for the first time is incredible, a pure, lovely, quiet joy. She’s become her antithesis, perhaps, but in transcending so many of the flaws that once made me roll my eyes at her she has become the pony she wanted to be.
But there is darkness here. I must confess that I am not certain that this change was willing at the onset. Discord had his claws in the pie the entire way. I suspect that even if he did not use his magic to shape Fluttershy in any way (for such he has taken great pains to claim to me) he certainly had a claw in helping her overcome her fears once and for all.
Ah, Discord. Now there is a subject which deserves its own letter. Even with Fluttershy as his ward, he continues to wreak all kinds of chaos, in Equestria and beyond. Thankfully, however, he fervently claims to detest war and bloodshed, and thus his madness remains restricted to the “harmless” and “fun” varieties (and I do mean those words with all the sarcasm I can imbue).
He and Fluttershy are very close, closer than she and I ever were, and I suspect that they work together more often than not, with Fluttershy presenting her face and her words, while Discord backs her up with his formidable powers. Discord does, I think, love her. Not in a romantic sense (I have reason to suspect that he is incapable of romantic attraction as ponies understand it) but he does love her. As family, as a deep friend, maybe even as something of a rival. As he is a being of chaos, she is a beacon of harmony. As he is capricious and sometimes unintentionally (or so he claims) cruel, she is thoughtful and kind. She is the yin to his yang, so to speak, and he rarely leaves her side these days. When he does, he is never far away.
I suspect that had Fluttershy seen the end of the road, she would have turned away from this path somehow, but regardless I believe wholeheartedly that this change has been for the better in the end. As I said before, she is happy now, confident with her new self.
She remains one of my closest friends, of course, but out of all of them she is the one who remains closest in contact with me. We share monthly dinners at her house in ponyville, along with Discord and whomever else among my friends can make it back—generally Rarity and Applejack, with Rainbow and Pinkie being so tragically busy that they only appear once or twice a year these days. If I’ve made it seem like she’s become in any way harsh or cold, let me stress that her home is the proof to the contrary. It remains much as it was, though she’s made several additions to accommodate the immense population of animals that now resides there, far more than there ever were before. I’d initially feared that immortality would take the hardest toll on her, given the fleeting lives of her closest companions, but she seems to have handled such things incredibly well. I never really realized it before, but she has an intuitive understanding of the circle of life, such that death does not frighten her or even overly sadden her.
In this way, she is much like Luna, for as the latter explained to me once long ago “We were all born from the blood of the stars, and to them again we will someday go.” Fluttershy would perhaps phrase it differently (I suspect she’d use a metaphor involving rabbits and grass, consumption, decomposition, et cetera) but I believe her philosophy is essentially the same. If I had to guess, I suspect she will be the first to relinquish her element, if we do not give them up all at once as you did.
There is more to her story, as there to all these stories, for life is very long these days. But, for better or worse, it is my habit to write these letters in a single sitting, and I must depart soon on an urgent matter. Perhaps I will be able to revisit Fluttershy's tale someday, but this is all I can give you tonight. Thank you, for reading this far into my strange ramblings, my dearest teacher. I hope you receive this, as I hope you receive all of these.
—Princess Twilight Sparkle