Chapter 5: Old Haunts, New Beginnings
A lot of memories wrapped up in this tree.
Twilight sat on the untidy grass and looked sadly at her old home. She wasn’t totally sure how old it really was. She’d magically aged it by seven or eight centuries when it was planted, so that it was large enough to serve as both her home and the town library. It had continued to grow slowly in the eighteen hundred years since. The window frames and balcony doorways were all warped and twisted now, with not a hint of glass or paint anywhere to be seen. Nothing artificial at all.
She stood up and trotted slowly forwards, craning her head to look in through one of the many small holes that had once been windows into the ground floor reading room. Memory came flooding back. She moved around the tree to her right and found the old front doorway hidden behind a tall matting of grass. The door itself was long-gone, the frame splintered. She moved the grass gently to the side and stepped in.
Memories. Memories. The nooks that had once held bookshelves were bent and twisted from centuries upon centuries of growth. That made her happy, somehow. She looked around the large room. There was greenery everywhere, vines, creepers, grass growing up through the cracks in the uneven floor. Enough light must get in through the many holes and openings in the tree to enable all this wonderful life to thrive in here.
Walking cautiously up the wonky carved staircase to the second floor, she paused by the doorway to Spike’s old bedroom. She remembered the day he’d moved out. She was starting to grow up a bit herself by then, of course - she was a little bit taller than the average pony, but it took her a whole century to grow into the tall alicorn she’d become - though he was starting to scrape the ceilings at seven feet. That day... That magical day. He was thirty, and Rarity was thirty-nine. It was a beautiful wedding, absolutely flawless and perfect.
She smiled, sniffling, as she remembered Rarity’s thrice-weekly makeovers at the old spa. She’d ended up wasting so much time and money - alright, not really wasted, those massages had been good... But neither her nor her husband had seemed to age a second, from the time they'd been married to almost the moment their marriage died. Nopony really knew how or why, but Twilight was certain that Spike’s unconscious magic had been responsible. Spike had certainly never known himself. No dragon had ever been taught magic before, and look at how powerfully adept Spike had become at it. No dragon had ever been in love before, either. There really was no way to tell what a besotted magically-trained dragon could truly do, so in her mind it was simple - Spike wanted to spend a long time with Rarity, and somehow exactly that had happened. And he’d managed to stay small enough for comfort.
But mortal life is mortal life, and magic, if that’s what it was, can only go so far. The beautiful unicorn had aged centuries in her final hours. Twilight found herself forgetting and re-remembering things all the time, but she’d never get the memories of that day out of her head, or the day when Spike himself...
She stopped smiling. Nothing had changed in the eight hundred years since he’d died. Eight hundred years of nightmares. Eight hundred years of blame. She shouldered it, almost cheerfully.
She mentally scolded herself. She wasn’t to think about that. She was a Princess, and she was supposed to act like one, damnit. She crushed the memories deep down into her soul and continued up the stairs to her old study.
She looked at the place where her bed had been, eighteen centuries before. She sat down on the rough wooden floor, looking out the vine-grown lopsided hole that had once been her bedside window, and remembered seeing four faint stars come to life in the predawn sky of the morning that had had no dawn, to approach the shadowed moon, to almost touch it...
It was here. It was right here, in this very place, where all of this began. Not this tree, but one exactly like it, exactly here. Where she’d seen Luna’s four secretly-charmed stars begin their assault on the prison of so long ago, starting Twilight on her first adventure, the adventure that had left her as keystone to the Elements of Harmony, forever sealing her fate as the Master of Magic. It was here, too, on this exact spot, where her Element-driven ever-expanding magical powers had become too great for her unicorn body to contain. Her magic had remade her overnight into what looked like a winged unicorn - rare, but not unheard of. But not just a winged unicorn. An alicorn. Not a truly physical creature any longer, her magical body was capable of containing and controlling her enormous powers safely. Only the third to ever exist, though the other two had been born, not subconsciously changed themselves into something they should probably never have been...
If I wasn’t supposed to be the third Eternal Sister, then I’d be dead and gone and remembered by nopony. Even Celestia and Luna would have probably forgotten about me by now. There’d have been hundreds of new Bearers of the Elements, or perhaps the Elements would have died forever with my friends and me. If I’d died, would the Element of Magic have died with me? Would the Elements vanish, their task complete? Or would they have returned to the earth to await new Bearers in another time of need?
This is very depressing stuff. You’re supposed to be scouting locations, not trying to make yourself glum. Stop it, you silly filly.
She stood up and turned away from the ancient gnarled hole without another glance. Walking back down to her old study floor, she could almost see her desk, cushions, bookshelves, telescopes... She hadn’t thought about this place in so many years that she was quite surprised at the clarity of her memories. She looked out the eight-foot knot in the trunk to where a carved and painted balcony had been, so long ago that the language she spoke now was totally different to what was spoken then. She could practically see the balcony. She could remember studying on it on warm summer days, learning to paint the sky with Luna on cold and clear winter nights...
So long ago...
She leaped lightly through the hole and glided down to a soft landing near the base of the enormous tree. It was still recognisable as her old home. It just looked more... comfortable now, she thought. It had been allowed to stretch its boughs. There was nothing else around it, no structures, very few other trees, just rough grassy fields all the way to the distant edge of the Everfree Forest. A few slightly thicker clumps of grass showed where ancient foundations might still lie buried, but other than that, nothing. No evidence that a town had ever stood here.
Here?
There were plans, a decade in the making, to build an enormous city. All they needed to do was find where to build it, and Twilight had taken on the task. She’d been all over Equestria, surveying every square inch of ground for the perfect place, accompanied everywhere she went with about fifty draftsponies to do the measuring and surveying. Not here, though. This was her last stop, and she’d come alone. After her private visit, the teams would come in and measure and calculate... But not right now.
The proposed city was like nothing the world had ever seen. No tall high-rises like Manehattan. No terraced houses like Fillydelphia. They were going to build an enormous, beautiful, perfect city, a city so connected to nature that it would be as much a part of the landscape as a forest or a mountain range. Housing and entertainment and shops and stalls as far as you could see. Equestria’s shining achievement, the jewel in Her crown as it were. A place of peace and prosperity for all who would come.
And millions would come.
The population had exploded over the last few hundred years. Equestria had almost made the long-expected move to a real post-scarcity society. They’d never become a total one, of course, but they were almost as close as could be achieved without dipping into the realms of fantasy. Prosperity and ease, of course, had its drawbacks. Some of them minor, no big deal really, but others were pretty damned serious indeed.
There was almost no space left in the towns and cities. Parts of the ancient capital of Canterlot were now little more than slums. Apartment prices in the other large cities were skyrocketing. There were so few country villages left any more, and those that did exist were bigger than any place that could be comfortably called a village. Modern life had brought the ponies to the cities and away from the countryside, though there was plenty of that - Equestria was certainly not short of wide-open spaces, it’s just that hardly anypony wanted to live in wide-open spaces. Once the earth ponies had discovered how to use their connection with the land consciously, their magically-grown food had pretty much killed the need for farms - except for a few of the specialty ones. But even Sweet Apple Acres, growers of the finest foods in all Equestria, had finally closed more than three hundred years ago, after nearly seventy generations of loyal caretakers.
The Apple family itself was just as dilute now as her own bloodline. After so many centuries, she was guaranteed to be related to any pony she might meet. She’d given up trying to finally complete Shining Armor and Cadance’s full family tree - she only got fifteen generations down the track and then there were half a million descendants, and each one of those was related to about a million other bloodlines... More ponies than had ever lived, in fact, because you only had to go back a few hundred years and you discovered that everypony was related to everypony else. The Twinkle and Cadenza family’s genes were all over Equestria, that was certain.
When she thought about it like that, she could almost imagine that her friends were all still here with her in some way, whenever she was around other ponies. They’d all had foals - well, Rarity had no biological children, but her family’s line was everywhere. Sweetie Belle’s four consecutive sets of triplets, a record that still stood... Oh, and Pinkie Pie’s bunch. Her poor husband, he really had no idea what he was getting himself into. She remembered the legendary mayhem from so long ago and almost smiled again.
Almost. Because Spike hadn't had any children. So not quite all of her friends were sort-of still here after all.
She looked around the grassy hills and valleys surrounding her for miles. It looked just like any other undeveloped part of Equestria. The library tree was still here, and that was good, though the books were long-gone. It was the only thing that remained of the centuries-abandoned former town of Ponyville.
She would see this tree stand proudly in the very centre of the new city.
Here.
We’ll build it here.
“Well, there’s still two weeks to go on the castle,” Twilight told Luna as she tried not to giggle. The Princess of the Night was wearing a thoroughly unnecessary hard hat, a neat hole drilled through it for her horn. Luna had spent most of the last two years in a fairly silly mood, and had become known across Equestria as something of a practical joker. It seemed the excitement of the new capital city’s impending dedication and opening had been getting to her.
Twenty years, twenty very long and hard years had been spent on this project, with hundreds of thousands of ponies working on the construction and Twilight supervising it all. Ponies had been moving in for years already as the different parts of the enormous city were completed at different times. It seemed that everypony had a house, everypony had a job they all seemed to love, everypony had hobbies... True Harmony was coming to Equestria at last.
Just not to Twilight.
Celestia landed next to the other Sisters and bent down to look at the map they were checking over. “Just the castle, then?” she asked after a moment. Twilight nodded, then looked up to see her Biggest Sister wearing both a hard-hat and a very forced expression of nonchalance.
Twilight burst out laughing.
After a very uncomfortable few seconds - for Celestia and Luna, at least - Twilight, snorting with mirth, looked at her two Sisters and almost lost it again. “You two look ridiculous!” she managed, then promptly started laughing again.
The two older alicorns were now blushing furiously. Celestia started to levitate her hat off, but Twilight, slumped over the worktable and banging a hoof in laughter, pushed it back onto her head with a brief glow from her horn. “No, p-please, I’ve just w-worked it out,” Twilight managed. “I- you-” She started to get more of a grip on herself. “You’ve been wearing that thing for a week, Big Sister. And now Biggest Sister turns up wearing one too.” She paused for a moment and snorted out a chuckle. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you? And them,” she said, pointing at the construction crews above them on the gantries and scaffolds around the almost-complete castle towers. “You’ve been waiting for days for me to say something, and I didn’t. And you know no ordinary pony would dare -”
“I think they look good,” Luna said, twirling hers around her long midnight-blue horn. “And they make us fit in. Why would you think we were messing with you?”
“You might as well have turned up wearing pants,” Twilight chuckled.
“We’re wearing them to fit in with the workcrews, Twilight,” Celestia said, no longer blushing and almost laughing herself. “It makes them feel more comfortable to see us wearing protective gear around a construction site. They don’t really know that we’re indestructible, do they?”
“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. Really,” Twilight said, her eyebrows drooping, “I’m sorry, it’s just that you two looked so -”
“It’s true,” Luna said. “We do look completely ridiculous. And that makes me happy.” She danced back up to the table, adjusting her hard-hat as she came. “I’m in a very happy mood. I’ve been feeling happy for years, and I didn’t know why until last week. But then we figured it out.” Twilight looked her confusion.
“So, we’ve got a new school starting up soon,” Celestia said, seeming to change the subject even though she wasn’t. She smiled at the thought. “Bright young unicorns from all over Equestria -”
“Unicorns?” Twilight said. “Oh. The special magic school. Sorry, my head’s a bit full at the moment... We did just open a higher education school for the junior leavers that want to get into artistic trades, stuff like sculpture and so on, I thought you meant that one. There’s nine thousand schools of every different kind all up and running across the city now, and that one was the last. Well, apart from the magic school. It’s finished but unstaffed, it’s scheduled to start hiring teachers next month. What are we going to call it? If it follows the... pattern...” She gaped.
How did I never run through that train of thought before?!
“How does teaching grab you?”
Twilight was taken aback. “Teaching? I.. No, I... Just... No. That’s too... No.”
“You managed just fine in Court,” Luna pointed out. “You did a great job there for more than a thousand years. And you’ve been a fantastic forepony here ever since we broke ground -”
“That’s not - I mean, if I -”
“Celestia and myself both have schools for the most talented unicorns in the land, Little Sister,” Luna continued as she tilted her hard-hat to the side. The hole... moved with her horn. Twilight was distracted by that rather swanky bit of magic before she remembered what they were talking about.
“I can’t! The headmistress of a school... that’ll mean I’ll have contact with the teachers, maybe some of the students -”
Her sisters pressed their attack. They’d thought this construction project would pull Twilight out of her centuries-long funk, but it hadn’t, and the project was almost over. But now, they truly believed they’d found a way that would really work.
“You have lots of contact with lots of ponies,” Celestia said, even though she knew exactly what Twilight was trying to say through her surprise.
“I can’t, you know what I- I can’t risk getting close to anypony,” Twilight said in a panicky tone. “You know that. I don’t want that heartbreak again.”
“You used to be fine in Court because you’d almost never see the same pony twice. The guards and servants, you could ignore them, fine, they’re guards and servants and they’re paid to be ignored. There was no risk of you forming an attachment to another pony. You got to sit on your throne and act all detached, hear the petitions and make your proclamations and judgments, generally behave exactly like a monarch is supposed to behave,” Celestia said. “That’s fine. Luna and I do it too when we’re in Court. And the chances of you making a friend -”
“I don’t want any friends.” Twilight’s mouth had contracted and her ears were twitching. “You know that I don’t want any friends. You know that I can’t risk making any -”
Luna cut right across her. “We know perfectly well. That’s the same reason you’ve managed so well out here. There’s so many ponies working on this project that you have no chance of getting to know any of them.”
“But... A school!” Twilight said, almost wailing in her distress. “I can’t! I just can’t! I’ll see the same faces every day, I won’t be able to treat them like servants, I have a hard enough time treating servants like servants, I’ll form attachments -”
“You’ll only form attachments if you want to,” the Princess of the Night said very firmly. “You can’t make a friendship just by looking at somepony every day. You can’t make a friendship by attending meetings with the same ponies every week. If you really don’t want friends, then you won’t make friends, Little Sister. I’ve been feeling happier and happier for years and years now because this day was coming. I must have been sensing it, like a changing tide, though I didn't know what it meant. But Big Sister and I figured it out last week. We figured out how to make you happy again, and that makes me happy!” She twirled her hat again.
Twilight’s intellect had been taking hold for several minutes now. She couldn’t deny that the chance to run a magic school, one of the Royal Pony Sisters’ very special schools, was a challenge she would relish, a task she would attack with great gusto.
Princess Twilight’s School For Gifted Unicorns...
But the same ponies every day? Colts and fillies too? I’ve always loved children the most out of all of my subjects... How will I not get attached?
She really wanted to do this.
“Try it for a while, and if it doesn’t suit you, nothing could hold you if you don’t want to stay. But you might just do the most important work of your life there. After all,” Celestia said, already knowing that she’d won, that she may just have saved Twilight from centuries of misery and loneliness, “who better to teach the most talented unicorns how to perfect their magical skills than the Master of Magic herself? Such a possibility should at least be tried, Littlest Sister.”
It was a very persuasive argument, and it wasn’t as if she wouldn’t enjoy the task. She’d take immense pride and pleasure out of such a worthy endeavour. Twilight found herself, still reluctantly, nodding her head.
She was terrified.
I’m going to have to be so very, very detached. This is dangerous. What if I make a friend? I can’t possibly allow myself to make a friend. I really will go mad from grief if I lose one more friend.