Towards the Sunrise

by Pearple Prose

What Happens Next?

Epilogue

Celestia watched.

There wasn’t much more she could do, after all. Not anymore. She was inconsequential now, as irrelevant to the world as any mortal. Perhaps even more so.

She shifted slightly on her cloud, kicking up a few wisps of water vapour. She watched them dissipate in the thin atmosphere of her perch, before returning to watching the land far below her.

Her sister had been right, it seemed. Ponies were capable of so much more than she’d ever realised, when they were given the right encouragement. Celestia was certainly not that encouragement. In fact, her removal from the equation was that encouragement.

She watched her little ponies scurry back and forth through the paved streets of the sprawling supercity that was Canterlot. She saw the palace, and wondered how her student was doing these days.

She felt the resentment build inside her, and she quickly redirected it. No, Twilight wasn’t to blame for this. If anything, she was the victim.

Celestia knew who did it. She was all too aware who ruined everything, all those years ago.

A stray voice whispered inside her head, But she didn’t ruin everything, did she? She ruined you, and only you.

Celestia barked out a laugh. Of course, she was only deluding herself. She was the monster here. It just took her longer to figure out than everyone else; even after her sister left, it took an intervention from her most faithful student to knock some sense into her.

She looked down at her hooves. She remembered, vaguely, that she used to wear gold on those hooves.

It had been rather normal, at first. She’d taken her student’s words into account, given her ponies some leeway, stepped back from the proceedings. She had tried to stay, tried to keep them on the path she’d set for them.

And when she had eventually left, she had tried to be happy for them. Even though she had lost everything except her name —a name that had long since transcended history and become legend— she was still happy for them.

But as proud as she was of her little ponies —she still liked to think that she was their mother sometimes, watching from afar— she still couldn’t stop asking herself that one impossible question.

“What happens next?” she whispered, in a voice torn by time.

“That’s for you to decide, sister.”

Celestia’s heart froze. She turned to see an ancient, teal-eyed alicorn with terrible bedmane, smiling a smile that she hadn’t seen in a very, very long time.

“Did you miss me?” she said.

Celestia wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to shout. She wanted to laugh, and keep on laughing until her flesh faded and her bones crumbled.

But most of all, she wanted to cry.

Her sister smirked, donned her cloak, and turned to walk away through the field of clouds.

“Don’t leave!” Celestia hated herself just for saying it, but she couldn’t stop, “Take me with you!”

Luna glanced back over her shoulder at her sister. Slowly, she pointed at the sun as it rose over the horizon.

“Come, sister. Come with me towards the sunrise.”

Comments

[flutterpunk]

Interesting

[Willsons]

Well that certaintly wasn't what I was expecting and I'm sure that this gave me more questions then it answered but if you dont write any more of this i will still be happy because short as it may be it was still written fantastic and made me want for more.

[Pearple Prose]

3093109

Hehehe, did you really think I would write something that would explain anything?

Seriously though, I'm glad you liked it. I like this story the way it is, and I feel that explaining what happened in the interim would take away the magic of it, if you know what I mean.

Thank you for reading!

[Skeeter The Lurker]

Curious end.

~Skeeter The Lurker

[Craine]

Hmm. A curious end, indeed. A satisfying one at that. I was impressed that, in so little words, you've captured Celestia's hopelessness, at least so the ending made more sense. Quite a tragic way to pass the torch, I think; with Twilight wearing Celestia's mantle, it must've been rough to let go.

My ONLY qualm with this is the lack of detail involving Twilight's influence on our little technicolor meat bags... Ah well.

Until you next piece!

Craine...

[Willsons]

3093126 I compleatley understand where your coming from and that it was just a pipe dream to think otherwise.

Thank you for writing this.

[WrathOfGod519]

3092117
Nobody cares about the other 464. That was clearly just filler.

[Mourning Zephyr]

I was looking at your userpage and the premise of this story interested me, so I took a look.

Your writing has improved a lot since I reviewed your story in SFNW. There's a whole lot less of that huge purple prose problem you had, and the writing in general is better. Though I did notice a few things like the fact that you didn't describe anything about Luna's surroundings while riding the train. Yeah, we know she's going over land, but we don't know if it's forest or plains or by a lake; maybe even through mountains. This is a missed opportunity to give the reader a good mental image.

But that wasn't a serious problem. It had little impact on the story itself. And most of the other errors were the same, though you tense-swapped at one point. ("But who knows?" is present tense. The story is in past tense so it should be "knew".)

On the whole, it did its job as a very suggestive fic - and not in the sexual sense. It was easy to make a lot of inferences based on what information there was. And that's the essence of showing instead of telling: allowing the reader to make a lot of easy inferences that they nevertheless feel clever for having made. Yeah, that's something a lot of people don't know. Showing instead of telling is very important for characters and sometimes things that happen offscreen, and can even apply to plot points.

And dat epilogue ending. Though I don't know what anyone's talking about; I thought it wasn't confusing at all. It didn't explain much, but it was pretty easy to figure out what had happened.

Anyway, you're improving, so just keep up the writing!

[Pearple Prose]

3117726

Oh, thank you!

Good to know that I've improved since then, and thanks for the insight.

[Pearple Prose]

3167663

Thankies

[twilight the scribe]

intriguing story. it makes me wonder what Luna really did? What did Twilight do? what happened to Canterlot? and yet, it didn't matter to the story. this whole thing was about Celestia and luna in the end. I must say, it was good. a sort of...magic around it.

[Midnight Rambler]

That first chapter read like it would be the start of a big and epic adventure story, with long journeys, great battles, deep moral questions, and lots of character development. Seeing that the second chapter was called "Epilogue" was... disappointing.

[Biochi]

I loved how you pared away from this story until the only thing left were the central emotions. I think every aspiring writer on this site should read this short to learn what is the true core of a story. It reminds me of one of the shortest (and famous) short stories ever.

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

[Pearple Prose]

3834310

Wow, thanks for the fave and awesome comment!

Big fan of your stories by the way. I'm glad you liked mine too.

[Biochi]

3834527
My pleasure. I try to make time to read stories by those who fav one of my stories or follow me. It show that they have good taste.

I appreciated your comments as well. Relatively few people have read TIHWSfF and it means a lot to me that those that have seem to really like it.

[chono]

Quite the fun read. Glad I decided to read it, and of course thanks for writing it.

[Soge]

This is almost a doodle of a story, but I loved the imagery you used, and the emotions come through nice and clear.

[PaulAsaran]

You can has review!