Twilight Sparkle has never been one to get distracted by nature. She was a logical and orderly pony, at least most of the time. But here she is, chasing a butterfly of all things. She tries to shield herself with her wings since it is so hot here; for miles, there was nothing but endless sand as far as the eye can see. The sky is not the deep royal blue as she often knows it. Here there are no purple shades and layers of ebony high above her, nor are the stars so distant and mystical as she knows them to be. Instead, the sky is hazy turquoise with paths of misty stardust guiding mere glowing pinpricks that could not have looked farther away.
She has seen a place very similar before and knows that it is terribly important to remember so. Why is she here again, where all is sand and the sky is like the world where she found her Celestia-proclaimed destiny?
Twilight aims to find out, and do so as soon as she is able. She spreads her wings and with flight in mind and readies for departure from the warm sand that feels so loose beneath her hooves. It is then that she sees the butterfly. The insect flutters about eleven feet away and flies closer by the second. The very air around it trembles and pulses with a light that holds a divine, indescribable quality. Immediately, Twilight Sparkle's mind dances with outlines of the gods — Luna, Celestia, and the others — and she takes a step closer.
This creature is unlike any butterfly she has ever seen. When she gets close enough she sees that it is made of light and colored a brilliant white with verdant green undertones that would put a fresh lime to shame. No apparent divide between the body and wings is observable, giving the creature a fantastical sense of unity and purity. Surely, there was some divine meddling in this? What else could this butterfly be but an omen folded into her subconscious?
Or perhaps it was merely her mortal imagination. The butterfly could be a sign of her subconscious wanting her to see an omen instead. Never before had Twilight Sparkle known any of the gods to have an affinity for butterflies. There was at least some rationality to dismissing the sight; she had dreams that mixed the magical with heaps of the mundane before.
"Stars!" cries a voice.
Twilight's ears flatten at the suddenness of it all. She blinks in a moment of confusion and looks that around. Where did that come from? Who was speaking in her dreams, and better yet — why couldn't she place the voice?
"Brother, look at the stars!"
Twilight looks again for the source of the voice. She can tell it belongs to a filly, but it sure isn't any filly she can remember. The accent was throwing her off too — aside from the voice being female, there was something decidedly off about it too. That wasn't a native Equuish speaker, and Twilight found herself being vaguely reminded of the melodic Saddle Arabians. Except, there was a richer, 'off' quality her tired mind could not put a hoof on.
She stares at the butterfly and folds her wings now that the creature is even closer. "Is that coming from you?"
"The sky is always so clear here," says the butterfly. Twilight pauses and stares at it warily. Normally, her dreams are about books or some scrambled combination of things and ponies from her life mixed in with things she's read, like a bizarre twist on a Saddlespeare drama. This one has taken quite the surreal turn. In fact, it was far too surreal for Twilight. Perhaps it was a sign of an anxiety dream.
"I hear it snows up north," the butterfly adds in its filly voice. "How can anypony see the stars if the sky is blotted by snow?"
It is then that Twilight realizes that the butterfly isn't speaking her native Equestrian-Equuish-Everfree or what-have-you at all. Yet, she can still understand the warped language she hears. This makes her nervous but she isn't sure why. It's just a dream, right? She wonders what language it is because it sure isn't one she has ever stumbled across in any of her books. There was too much structure to it to be nonsense, too much order, and yet she could feel her guessing grasps slip away from the moment...
"W-what about the stars do you want to tell me?" Twilight asks digging her hooves into the sand. It made her feel a bit more anchored.
The butterfly soars above Twilight's head before dipping low to the ground. This causes the sand to stir but not in any natural way. A few grains being disturbed would be normal, and unstressful. Instead, she watches many grains of sand fly into the air as if they were blown by a large gust of wind she wasn't aware of, one that was as structured as a spell. She watches as they fly over to another part of the nearest dune.
That could be normal enough... but then, the grains don't fall back as they should, as Twilight Sparkle wanted them to do. They float there in complete silence, painting everything Twilight could see with sand concentrated in the air like ash. Soon, more sand crawls up from the ground, like a giant claw but not quite as menacing and without as clear of a form. The sand whirls and converges with itself folding inward, outward, and every which way until it forms a giant sculpture for Twilight to behold.
"Magic! Magic!" cries the butterfly in its filly voice. "Oh brother, it is such splendid magic!"
The sand has created a castle unlike any other that Twilight Sparkle has seen before. Onion-dome towers soar high into the distant sky, like needles poking through the sweltering heat, shooting upward to spear the stars too high above. She can see open-air hallways and what have might have been gardens. Empty fountains sparkled with cleanliness, free of even the faintest drop of dew as they sat, pristine, and waiting.
(Wait, how did she know that they were fountains?)
Tiles glazed in an uncountable rainbow of colors could be seen in the open corridors, each looking like it had never been stepped on even once. All around Twilight Sparkle, sand was falling toward the ground in waves like water rolled down the most spectacular terraced waterfalls of Canterlot. A castle to rival Canterlot's was erupting from where it had been hibernating, and Twilight Sparkle could comprehend none of it. What was this large, incredibly specific castle that had been sleeping below the dark, silky surface of the desert? Why did it burst out in perfect clarity, with each sandstone carving rendered in perfect detail?
Where was the city it was meant to be the beating heart and mind of? How could the most splendid minarets that Twilight Sparkle had ever seen stand sentinel over nothing?
She keeps looking at the castle hoping for a clue to what's happening. All Twilight sees is a large sand-colored castle, a crystallized skeleton of something else, and one made almost entirely out of the now-still sand. The style of everything, rounded symmetrical angles, it all looks like what she'd imagine a Saddle Arabian castle would look. Except that Twilight had never seen a Saddle Arabian castle of this scope — Canterlot's castle and the city that spilled from it was the closest in size — and with such perfectly captured, esoteric details. This site boasted a corked, vintage nostalgia one reserved for their foalhood homes and first vacations.
Twilight Sparkle had never seen this off-Arabian palace, and everything about it said that it had seen her so many times before.
When she looked closer she noticed that some of the accents were moving. Outlines became more visible than they already were, each painstakingly captured nuance leaping out at her. Twilight could see that they were indeed fountains that she had seen, though they were frustratingly naked without skirts of water to gush from them. Soon her eyes were drawn away, right to where outlines of standards were appearing. A star, a six-pointed star exactly like the Spark of Magic burst into being, one woven entirely out of the richest, closest-to-purple shades of sand that there were. Behind each star, an equally mysterious light was pulsing with an alien heartbeat so that the sand that made up each star glowed magenta.
Twilight's jaw hung stiffly agape. This was no nightmare, but what exactly was it? How could any single dream be so determined to hold her in its jaws and sink its every little complication into her like teeth? Was this some magical affliction that she needed to remedy? Was that why there was a fuzzy feeling of yearning and fear perched in the chest of her dream-self?
"Do you remember?" asked the phantom butterfly, who was still at Twilight's side. This time it seemed to be speaking directly to her, but alas, she still wasn't sure why or who this was meant to be.
What little stranger could have a reason to address her with the kind of ominous visions best reserved for the gods? The Tree of Harmony did not give Twilight such complicated, indecipherable things to interpretation. Its spirit knew to sow conversation when Twilight was awake. What Twilight was being faced with now was the closest thing she could imagine to what Luna's foredreams were like. If only Celestia could save her from these sights and push her where she had to be!
The light from behind each star broke out from the sandy shell of the castle and Twilight watched. She stood still, frozen, spellbound, and utterly confused. Though Twilight had yet to register the dull sensation, she would have said she was even a bit terrified, if she had anypony she could say anything to. Miniature magenta comets came flying out, their tails were wilder than fire and exactly the color of Twilight's magic aura, cutie mark, and Element of Harmony. Despite their fiery beauty, the movements of each were strangely, shockingly silent.
The butterfly nudged Twilight and she felt a cold-than-the-grave sensation shoot through her fur. "Do you remember now? You are but a fragment of a fallen star. Please, just listen to all that can be said to you. Remember the stars! So much happened, and your form is mortal-pale now. Why do you not remember?"
"What do you mean I'm 'the fragment of a fallen star'? I know my cutie mark is a star... sort of, it's the Spark of Magic, but I still don't understand. You need to speak more clearly!"
The butterfly was silent and Twilight frowned and went back to focusing on the comets that had soared so high in the sky, twisting and turning so complicated trails of magenta light was left behind.
Inside each of them, Twilight heard voices and was startled to hear that one of them was her own.
"BBBFF, look! That was a shooting star! Hey! Why weren't you looking, Shiny?"
"Brother, come see! A star has fallen, why do you not watch? It is so beautiful, how its tail will be so like our own one day! Do you think that when we are old enough to fly we will be able to see them up close? We could soar past the coats of air hugging the planet, just like Nora talks about doing!"
The butterfly spoke and it was with great happiness in its tone usually anxious tone. "The same, the same! How can you not see it? You are me, I am you, we are she! I was split, you were split, and we were hidden away! Our face was taken, our form desecrated! Oh, but I have finally found you! We need only to find ourselves, the fullest that I was, of which you and I are but the palimpsests!"
Twilight stamped her left forehoof. "I still don't understand what exactly you're talking about! Are you my conscience? Is that what this is? But if you aren't how can you be me?! If you're a butterfly, why don't you belong to Fluttershy? I'm Twilight Sparkle, Spark of Magic, and a Princess of Equestria! Who can you possibly be that claims to be more whole than that? I'm not a goddess, and neither are you!"
Whatever the butterfly was about to say next was canceled out by the noise of dozens of comets going off with rumbles louder than dozens of firecracker stories having their contents set to the sky all at once. Sparks rained down on the castle and Twilight caught a fleeting glimpse of the sand burning to gobs of glass before she woke up in a cold sweat, with her heart racing and a hoarse throat. Her eyes were damp and her ears ringing with a sound that did not exist outside of her.
She had no idea why she had been weeping.
With very few exceptions, the pony known to so many as Twilight Sparkle has had this dream every night. But without her memory, she would know that. She never remembers, and an unremembered dream is an unsalvageable thing that is worse than nothing.
Every time, it is the same. She can't remember because she is only a fragment of a fallen star, and her dreams might as well not be dreams at all. A fragment of her soul made its way into the world as the first-and-only reincarnation, albeit an incomplete one, as such an un-concept is doomed to be. She will never be whole again, part of her soul has lost itself in making itself mortal, for there is no greater loss than the change only mortality brings.
Part of her was still left, if only she could see it. She is the once-and-never-future now.
Stellaura will never remember.