Twilight,
I have done so many terrible things wrong. I have hurt so many people. All I really want is to be accepted again. I know I will never be her student again. Tell her for me. Please, tell her
Sunset Shimmer crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball and threw it into the corner of the room where it joined a dozen other scrapped drafts. She pulled her legs in and bent over her knees, becoming like the crumpled balls of paper that littered her floor. She held her legs tightly as she shut she eyes.
“I’ll never be able to get this right,” she whimpered to no one in particular. Her room was empty: devoid of no one but her and her crumpled thoughts.
She peeked out of her makeshift ball at the eastern horizon outside her window. The purple and dark blues of the evening sky streaked from where the moon was beginning to rise. It looked like the moon, but did not feel like it.
She remembered a story she had heard once as a child: The moon was the most beautiful thing in the sky. She should revere it. Respect it. Love it just as much as the summer sun. She smiled weakly as happy memories flooded her: memories of reading her first books and performing her first acts of magic. Those days did not last long. As soon as she had a taste for magic, she wanted more. She wanted power.
She winced.
The moon was the moon. She knew this; however, it still felt so foreign, so alien. It was still as mysterious and strange as when she first laid eyes on it so long ago. When she first emerged from the portal into this strange new world, she saw an opportunity.
Now? This new world was her prison.
She looked at the nightstand beside her. A framed picture of herself with five other girls smiled up at her. Reassured her. Comforted her.
They made this world home. Their happy expressions, forever frozen in time in that photo, told her that this world was not a prison. She would rise above all the obstacles before her: obstacles she herself had built. She would overcome and help those she had stepped over, hurt, betrayed.
She had made a start.
Most were at least acknowledging that she might have changed. Many even smiled at her in the halls now. Some still gave her looks of indifference, but at least it was better than when their glares were filled with disdain and hate.
She had already apologized profusely to those five that smiled alongside her in the photo. She had said she was sorry so many times that she thought they were angry with her. They taught her that friends do not need to apologize a hundred times. All she needed to do was ask for their forgiveness once, and she received it. They knew she was a better person. They respected that she still had a ways to go before she understood how to be kind and generous, how to be loyal and honest, and to be able to smile because she had made someone other than herself happy.
This was a magic she had never studied in any of her books. It was a magic she had ignored. It was a magic that had been shared with her back in Equestria and she threw it back in her face.
She hid her face in her knees again and tightened her arms around herself, compressing into a tighter ball as she sat on the old mattress lying on the floor in the clock tower above Canterlot High. The place she had strived to turn into her personal castle.
The picture resting on the crate beside her was her only solace in the somber night.
“Hello, Rainbow to Sunset. You there, girl?”
She broke out of her thoughts as a blue face topped with a mop of rainbow hair appeared in her vision.
“Yea, guess I kind of zoned out there, huh?” She blushed and scratched the back of her head.
“Ya’ think?” her blank expression may have meant she was stern. At least, Sunset would have thought that at one point in time. She now knew that Rainbow’s expression was most likely one of concern. “You’ve been playing the same chord for the past five minutes.”
“Sorry. I’m just… tired is all.”
“Are you sure nothing is bothering you?” Rarity asked.
“Really, I’m fine,” she smiled. She could feel her face attempting to pull her lips back down as she struggled to keep smiling.
Pinkie rubbed her chin as her eyes squinted. “Well, that does look like a smile.”
“Ya know you can come to us with anything, right, sugar cube?” Applejack held her hand. “We’ll always be there whenever you need us.”
“I know,” she sighed. She should probably tell them what was bothering her. The problem was that she was not really sure what was bothering her. “I appreciate that. It’s just that,” she looked at each of their faces. They all seemed so kind, so open to hearing about her problems, so accepting of who she was now and not…
“I…” She bit her lip and paused for another short second, gathering her thoughts before continuing, “…I’m really not sure what’s bothering me.”
She closed her eyes and let that hang in the air a moment. “I suppose it has something to do with the letter I’ve been trying to write.”
“A letter? Who are you writing to?” Rarity sat next to her, opposite Applejack.
“Twilight.”
“Don’t you write to Princess Twilight almost every week?” Fluttershy inquired.
“Yea, but that’s not the issue.”
“Well then, what is it? I’m sure whatever it is, we can beat it together. Hey, we took on a bunch of singing monsters, didn’t we? I’m sure one measly letter can’t hold a candle to us.” Rainbow had stepped onto her amp and was striking as heroic a pose as she could muster.
“It’s not that I don’t think you girls can help, it’s just that I feel like this is something I’ve got to do on my own.”
“But, you are never alone, sweetie,” Rarity squeezed her hand. “Now, tell us why you feel so stressed about writing to Princess Twilight.”
Sunset Shimmer was a former citizen of Equestria and former student of magic.
Sunset Shimmer was a student at Canterlot High and a student of friendship.
Sunset Shimmer was struggling with two identities.
“I,” she began. Her friends leaned forward in anticipation. Even Rainbow relaxed her pose for a moment. “I want her to relay a message to Princess Celestia for me.”
“The ruler of all of Equestria?” Fluttershy asked.
Sunset nodded.
“She was also your former teacher, was she not?” Rarity added.
Sunset nodded again. She looked, and felt drained. “I want to explain myself: explain how I felt about turning into a monster and betraying her.”
“Didn’t you turn into a monster after you went through the portal?”
Applejack glared at Pinkie.
“Oh,” she chuckled awkwardly, “you mean metaphorically.”
“Dang it, Pinkie”
“It’s alright, Applejack.” Sunset Shimmer did not know what to do. She did not know how to do it even if she did. All she knew was that she could turn to her friends for help. “You’ve all done so much for me,” she began.
Rainbow quickly interrupted, scowling at her. “If you finish that with your whole spiel about how you wish you could do something for us, then I will smack you upside the head.”
That took her aback. She smiled, this time genuinely and nodded with enthusiasm. She was never sure how it happened, but just being around her friends seemed to invigorate her. Whenever she felt completely drained, as if she had just performed countless complex spells and had used up all her magic, they would recharge her.
“Have you considered that, umm… maybe you should be writing to Celestia directly?”
Everyone looked at Fluttershy. She hid partially behind her tambourine.
Sunset thought that over. It would make more sense… “I would still need to figure out what to say? How do I say it? Where do I even begin?”
“You could always talk to Celestia. That should give you some ideas.”
“Pinkie,” Applejack smacked herself in the face with the palm of her hand and let it drop, “That’s what the problem is. How exactly is speaking to Celestia about writtin’ a letter to her gonna help? If she were speaking to her directly, then she wouldn’t need the letter to begin with.”
Pinkie rolled her eyes, “No, silly. She speaks to Principal Celestia about writing to Princess Celestia.”
“They are practically the same person. Ahem, more or less,” Rarity added.
She had promised them she would think about it. She crossed her arms over the balcony’s railing. The clock’s clicks were hushed and muted, but she could hear them. On quiet evenings, she could always hear its mechanisms. They were soothing and meditative in their own unique way. The alien, yet familiar moon’s edge could just barely be seen on the horizon.
The town she had come to call home silently lit up as street and porch lights flickered on. She sighed. Her coat wavered on her shoulders as it caught a light breeze. She breathed in the cool sent of evening as it fell over Canterlot High. Thoughts and scenarios of a possible discussion with Principal Celestia played out in her mind as she pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders.
That was another fear she should have expressed to her friends: she had never directly talked with the principal. The closest she ever came was when she and her friends had tried to warn her about the Dazzlings. Even then, Celestia was under their spell, so as far she was concerned it was not really her.
Silently, she paced around the perimeter of the balcony until she faced the setting sun to the west. “Celestia?” Her whispers faded into the light breeze that circled and curved around the pinnacle of Canterlot High.
The sun shone a deep orange with hints of purple in the twilight of its descent. Like this world’s moon, it too looked alien. Although for various reasons, she never looked at it. Truth be told, she had hated it. When she arrived, she associated everything about it with her: with Princess Celestia. For many moons after her arrival, she would curse it. She would curse Celestia. They were to blame for her failure and banishment.
But was it really a banishment?
No. She had come here on her own accord.
She looked into the alien glow, her words once more taken away by the soft quiet wind. “Celestia, I’m so confused. I want to tell you everything bu—but… I’m sor—” Her voice wavered and she could no longer force her words to come out.
The top edge of the glowing orb fell beneath the western horizon, taking with it the last rays of solar light, and the first of several tears.