//------------------------------// // Through the Looking Glass // Story: The Sun Never Sets // by Mr Fislewait //------------------------------// Evey Age 3 "Frankly I can hardly believe this is happening! It all feels so long ago now, I hate to sound like a bad friend but I was beginning to think she'd forgotten about us and moved on," Rarity said from the passenger seat of the truck. Applejack was driving while the other girls were squished together in the back. "Ah don't know what else to say, Sugarcube. This morning the journal began buzzing and jus' like that there's a letter from Sunset sayin' ta round up the posse and head over to CHS." "This is going to be super duper amazing!" Pinkie squealed from the back. "The whole crew back together at last and now we get to meet Sunny's little girl! I bet she's going to be adorable!" The truck pulled up to the school, none of the girls actually attended it anymore but thanks to the placement of the portal it was still the obvious meeting point for catching up with the Equestrians. "Hey girls!" Twilight called to them as they got out of the truck. She and Sunset were standing at the base of the portal, older than when the girls had last seen them but still clearly recognizable. Very little had really changed about Twilight, the noticeable differences were all in Sunset. Her eyes looked a little tired, bags hanging beneath them but she also appeared happy, much happier than she had for most of her time at CHS. She was kneeling down on the ground by the statue with a small toddler clinging to her legs, Sunset appeared to be trying to reassure the child but her grip on Sunset's leg showed no signs of letting up. "Hey, Twi, hi, Sunset!" Dash yelled sprinting over to the trio. "So I'm guessing this is her huh? How you doing kid?" She held out a hand for the toddler to hold but Evey shrunk away from it, trying to put Sunset's legs between her and the newcomers. "It's great to see you guys after all these years, sorry about Evey. She's a little nervous around new ponies- errr people and the whole fingers and toes thing is freaking her out a little." Sunset grabbed the offered hand and shook it then stood up and gave Rainbow a full hug. As the rest of the girls got over to the statue they took it in turn to hug both Sunset and Twilight, when everyone had said hello they were left standing in a circle with Evey doing her best to keep behind her mother and out of sight. "Evey," Sunset said picking her daughter up off of the ground. "This is Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Fluttershy. They're your godmothers, Evey, and they have all been looking forward to meeting you for a very long time. Think you might be able to say hello to them?" "Hello..." Evey whispered and waved at the group, her gaze lingering on her hand as she did so. "If it's too much for her I could take her back to the castle while you and the girls catch up, Sunset," Twilight suggested but a furious shaking of Eventide's head quickly shut down that suggestion. "Or maybe we could all go to Sugarcube corner and get her something sweet to eat?" ------------------------------------------ "...and the two of us have been traveling Equestria ever since. It's nice, I get to spend lots of time with my little girl, I've been seeing the world, getting back in touch with the life I left behind..." Sunset took a quick drink from her milkshake and smiled at Evey as the little girl nibbled on the edge of a large choc-chip cookie, "...I mean I do miss you girls and I wish I'd gotten back in touch sooner but the last few years are something I'm never going to regret. Before I came to CHS I'd spent my entire life in Canterlot and when I got back I spent all my time cooped up in a library in Ponyville. I guess I just hadn't realized quite how much I'd been missing out on. Equestria's a big place girls, and Evey and I are going to see it all." "That sounds wonderful. I'm so glad you're enjoying yourself, oh, but it would be nice to see you more often, Sunset," Fluttershy smiled at Sunset across the table. The last time any of them had seen her was about four years ago when she and AJ had visited in Sunset and that visit had ended on a somewhat sour note. It was nice to see their friend looking happy again. "Yeah, why exactly have you been away so long, Sunset? You haven't been avoiding us have you?" Rainbow Dash asked giving Sunset a playful nudge. "No, not you guys. It's more that I've been avoiding..." Sunset froze and turned to Twilight, a look of shame on her face. "...I sort of ran away from Twilight and Celestia. The whole alicorn thing had left me really freaked out, Celestia was using words like 'duty' and 'destiny', after everything I'd been through I just didn't want to deal with it. So I ran away, changed my name a little, took to the road and cut off contact with my past till I was ready to come back. I mean me not wanting to be a princess anymore is a reasonable wish right? We all remember how well that desire turned out last time." "Ya mean when you turned into a literal raging she-demon? Er, no offense," to Applejack's surprise Sunset seemed to jump slightly at the comment and shrink backwards into her seat, looking as though she had seen a ghost. "You okay there, sugarcube?" "Yeah, Sunny, that was the part where you were meant to say 'none taken', just like old times!" Pinkie chimed in, her hair deflating slightly as she looked at her friend in concern. "Huh? What?" Sunset shook herself slightly and sat back up, a smile on her face once more. "Sorry girls, just spaced out a little there. Hehe, none taken. Wow, that feels so long ago. Anyway, now I'm back these visits should hopefully be a more regular thing, assuming Twilight's okay with me using the mirror whenever I visit that is." "It's fine by me, Sunset. Honestly at this point I'd say you have a better claim to owning it than I do," Twilight replied as the girls began catching up on what had happened in their own lives over the past four years. ------------------------------------------------------ Age 5 "Happy birthday!" everybody cheered as Sunset and Evey entered Sugarcube corner. Pinkie might not be working there anymore but she was still firm friends with the Cakes and had convinced the two of them to let the girls host the party there. Evey squealed in glee and ran up to hug her mom's friends. The last two years had seen the little girl make several visits to see them and with each one she seemed more confident in her human body. As Evey ran off to play with Fluttershy and Pinkie, Sunset sat down with Twilight and the other girls. "She certainly is a very intelligent little girl," Rarity mused, looking over at the happy little child. "Yep, I've been teaching her everything I know in my spare time," Sunset proudly proclaimed. "Spare time? I thought the two of you were pretty much joined at the hip? You know adventurers, together forever!" Dash asked in confusion. Sunset rubbed the back of her head and sighed. "She's been spending a little time with her half-sister, they babysit her sometimes when I'm working in the area," she whispered. "She still doesn't know they are family though, so please don't tell her. I wasn't exactly keen on her meeting them at all but somebody," she turned and shoot a light glare at Twilight, "decided to take my little girl on a road trip the first time she was babysitting." "I stand by that decision, Sunset. I didn't tell her the secret and this way she gets to be friends with Flurry before she finds out. The two of them love each other and when you do decide to tell her the truth she'll hopefully take it a little better as she already knows them." "Yeah I guess," Sunset sighed again. "But it's raised all sorts of other problems. Evey's convinced that that Starburst character is her dad and she's developed a little filly crush on Flurry... I'm going to have a talk with her and straighten some things out, I just really don't want this to hurt her. She's in love with her sister, Twi! How do I even go about explaining how wrong that is?" "Anyhow, so ya said you were home schooling her huh? How's that going?" Applejack cut in. "Great. She just loves to learn, AJ! I get back from doing work for the local ponies at wherever we're visiting and she's raring to go. She just hangs on my every word like I'm Celestia herself," a look of immense pride came across Sunset's face. "We've tried a little bit of magic but that isn't going anywhere yet, she isn't an early magic bloomer and most unicorn foals don't pick it up till much later anyway. Still when her magic does begin to break in I'm going to be there to help her learn it every step of the way!" the mood around the little table was broken by the sound of shattering glass, everybody turned to see that Twilight had turned pale and dropped her glass onto the floor, a look of absolute mortification on her face. "You okay, Twi?" "I...I...I'm so sorry, it never occurred to me until now that you wouldn't have heard." Twilight whispered, carefully glancing over to Evey to make sure the little girl was still distracted with Pinkie and Fluttershy. "Heard what?" The three girls from CHS shuffled nervously in their seats, they weren't entirely sure what had gone down around Eventide's birth but they knew that Sunset had not been well and had run off without a proper checkup or filling in any paperwork. "Sunset, Eventide's magic might never break in. When she was born Dr Horse expressed some concerns about her size and her horn and-" "Okay so she's a little short!" Sunset snapped. "I still love her and when she starts learning magic-" "If, Sunset. If she starts learning magic. It's a birth defect Sunset, all that moving the sun while you were pregnant in the other timelines it... it might have damaged her magic. She should still be able to learn the basics but she's probably never going to be like me or you, probably not even like the Rarity from Equestria. I'm sorry Sunset, I thought you already knew." The sombre mood at the table was somewhat broken by the sounds of Evey's laughter from the other side of the room. "So it's all my fault huh? I was dumb and reckless and now she gets to pay the price? Is that what you're saying?" "I hardly think anybody is blaming you darling, these things happen," Rarity said placing a reassuring hand on Sunset's shoulder. "I... I'm going to spend some time with Evey," Sunset muttered as she pushed Rarity away and rose from the table. -------------------------------------------- Twilight banged her head against the wall outside Sugarcube corner. Why hadn't she told her earlier? Why in Equestria did she not realize that Sunset wouldn't have heard Dr Horse's diagnosis of Evey? "Hey there, Twi! Mind if we have a little word?" to Twilight's surprise Pinkie had somehow snuck up on her. "You know what I do at college right?" her normally bubbly friend asked through a forced smile. "I don't mind at all, Pinkie," Twilight sighed, still internally bemoaning her lack of foresight about the situation with Evey, "It was... psychiatry right?" Pinkie had mentioned something like that during one of Twilight's previous visits, much to the princess' surprise. "Psychology actually, knowing how people think makes it much easier to help them smile," Pinkie gave a wistful sigh and reach into her handbag pulling out a handful of brochures. "What are these?" Twilight asked looking them over carefully. They appeared to be self help pamphlets for family and friends of those suffering from various problems. PTSD, Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder... Twilight hadn't even heard of half of these. "I've noticed that Sunset's been a bit of a grumpy guss since she started visiting us again, she hides it well Twilight but I think there's something really wrong with her. So I took some notes, I did some research and I asked Evey a few questions and this is the shortlist." "Shortlist?" Twilight froze. "Pinkie, there's nothing wrong with Sunset. I've been seeing her regularly for the past few years and she's fine, she's happy! Besides with the exception of her eye everything that was wrong with her when she came back to us was cured by her ascension." Twilight passed the pamphlets back to Pinkie and frowned. "You sure, Twilight? Cause I was speaking to Evey and she said that sometimes Sunset talks to herself..." "Everybody does that! I do that sometimes, it's a perfectly normal thing to do. Sunset. Is. Fine." Twilight glared at the pamphlets in Pinkie's hand. "I haven't even heard of half those things before, most of them probably only effect humans because we certainly don't have whatever PTSD is in Equestria." "Post traumatic stress disorder," Pinkie said, her hair now flat against her head. "We didn't know about that one for ages and the first time we came across it we called it 'shell shock' and tried to pretend it didn't exist. A lot of people got very hurt because the men in charge thought they were just scaredy cats faking a problem to get out of a war." "Well there you go! Equestria doesn't have wars, Pinkie, so we certainly don't have this PTSD!" Twilight sighed and gave a reproachful look at her friend. "Sunset is fine, I'd have noticed if she wasn't. Now please, Pinkie, don't go putting ideas in Evey's head, she doesn't need to go around thinking her mom is loopy." "Okay, Twilight," Pinkie whispered. After a moment her hair bounced back to it's normal exuberance. "Evey! Ohmygoshohmygosh! I totally forgot her present!" "Ummm no you didn't," Twilight remembered Pinkie having given Evey a very large box of cookies. "No you silly! Her other present! I'll be right back!" and with that Pinkie shot off towards the shops, going entirely the opposite direction to her house. ----------------------------------------- Age 12 Eventide stood outside a house in the nice part of Canterlot, her hand hovering nervously over the doorbell. Taking a deep breath she extended one finger and pressed down on the button sending a ringing sound echoing through the building in front of her. Almost instantly the door swung open to reveal a familiar young woman that Eventide had never met. If it wasn't for her dowdy clothes, glasses and ponytail she would have been identical to Eventide's aunt Twilight, but this wasn't really her just a doppelganger from another world. "Hey there, can I help you?" the other Twilight asked, looking over the young girl with a look of surprise. "I...uhhh I was...that is I read that..." Eventide breathed deeply and collected her thoughts. "I'm sorry but I thought that Mr Shining Armor lived here." "He does, I'm his sister. I was just visiting for the day, hold on I'll get him for you," the other Twilight turned her head back into the house and yelled "Hey, Shining, you have a visitor!" "Evey!" Twilight and Eventide turned to see a young woman, about the same age as Twilight sprinting down the path to the house. She had long red and yellow hair and a look of absolute terror in her eyes. "Evey, you aren't supposed to be here," she said grabbing the young girl by the arm and trying to drag her away from the door. "What's the problem?" Standing in the doorway behind Twilight was a man with short blue hair and pale white skin, standing at his side was a tall woman with a pink skin tone and multi hued hair. "I read that there's this test that you can do and it's really cheap and we only need a single drop of blood to carry it out and-" the words flew out of Evey's mouth rapidfire until Sunset clamped a hand down over her mouth. "I'm so sorry about that! We didn't want to be a bother, we'll just be leaving now..." Sunset began tugging Evey towards the path but the little girl was resisting. "Hey I know you!" Twilight exclaimed pointing at Sunset, who suddenly stopped in her tracks. "You're that girl from CHS who went missing... wow it must be about thirteen years ago!" "I get that a lot," Sunset muttered, "Come on Evey, it's time for us to go." "Hold on now, Miss, if your sister doesn't want to go she doesn't have to go." Shining said observing the scene carefully, reaching into one pocket he pulled out his police badge, technically he was off duty right now but something about the scene seemed a little off. "She's not my sister...she's my daughter," Sunset sighed in defeat. "That can't be right," Twilight mused. "I mean she looks about ten, maybe thirteen tops. I mean if she was your daughter that means you'd have had to have gotten pregnant about..." the gears finally clicked into place in Twilight's mind. "Oh... I think I'll be going upstairs, Shining," Twilight retreated inside before she could make the situation any more awkward. "How about we all step inside and have a sit down?" Cadance suggested looking over the increasingly awkward scene. ---------------------------------------- Sunset was mortified as she sat across the table from Shining Armor. Eventide was sitting on the sofa chatting with Cadance and from what little Sunset could hear of the conversation it sounded as though the topic was how Evey was doing and if Sunset was caring for her properly. "You know I don't think that missing person case was ever resolved," Shining pointed out as he passed Sunset a mug of coffee. "It wasn't," she replied. "I went missing, got myself knocked up then couldn't bring myself to face everybody at school. Ran away and now... now here I am with a wonderful albeit reckless little girl to look after." "Well the two of you seem to be doing okay for yourselves," Shining said looking over at the girl talking to his wife, "I'm not seeing any real signs of abuse or neglect and I can respect you wanting some privacy... but if you don't mind me asking why did she come here looking for me?" "She thinks you're her father." "So the blood test..." "She got it in to her head that if she can track down her dad and convince him that she's his daughter then the two of us will fall in love get married and the three of us will live happily ever after," Sunset sighed and stared into the depths of her coffee. "I'm really sorry you got dragged into this. I've told her a little about her dad, she knows he's got pale skin and blue hair... that his work involves helping others and putting his life on the line..." she sighed again. "Well she's a smart girl, she did some research, looked for possible people who were about the right age and matched the other criteria who were living in the area at the time..." "And she came up with me." Sunset nodded. "I've never met you though, the first I ever heard about you was when my little sister came home feeling horribly guilty about nothing." "What?" "Twily was meant to be taking part in some school pride sporting event for Crystal prep, she didn't want to but according to her, refusing would have jeopardized her academic career. So the day of the event she comes and sees me in the evening and starts asking me all these questions about wishes and stuff. Apparently the whole event was called off because a popular girl had gone missing without a trace, possibly abducted. Twily felt dreadful, she'd wished the whole thing wouldn't happen and when her wish came true... well she felt a little responsible for you vanishing." "She got what she wanted but felt it came at the cost of someone's life." "Exactly." Shining took another slurp of his coffee. "You know I really should take you down to the police station, your case is still open." "Please...don't. There's so much I can't even begin to explain about it and... I don't want them taking Evey from me," Sunset glanced over to her daughter. "I can respect that," Shining sighed. "You know if you want I'm happy to go through with the blood test, just to let her know I'm not her dad. You know, give her some closure." "No! I mean, thank you but no. I'll explain it to her, tell her more about her dad so this doesn't happen again, but please don't help her with her tests, I don't want to encourage her running off like this again." "Fair enough." Shining finished the last of his coffee and stared at Evey. "You know if I didn't know better I'd swear I was her father, there's some real similarities. No wonder she came here." He chuckled to himself and turned back to Sunset. "Now then, I'm not going to force you to come with me to the station, but if you two ever run into trouble you are welcome to come here for help, you seem a good kid and whatever it is that you went through... well I'd like to help in anyway I can." "Thanks, I'll bear that in mind," Sunset replied as she finished her own drink.