• Published 24th Feb 2014
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Letters to the Sun - Horizon Runner



It's been two hundred years since Twilight Sparkle last saw her beloved teacher. Now, she begins writing to her once more.

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Generosity

Dear Princess Celestia,

I’m sorry for the tone of my last letter. For your entire reign you were loved by your subjects, and you never allowed any harm to come to your domain. Perhaps the methodology you used to accomplish this bothers me, but you were far more successful in your reign for a millennium than I was for even a single century.

The truth is that Equestria could easily have fallen apart in those first few decades. You were gone, Luna was aging and soon to follow you, and I was lost. Your sister guided me well for many years, but she too lacked your experience. I think your passing hit her hardest; barely two decades after her return, the sister she loved so much passed away without so much as a goodbye. If there is anything I truly blame you for, it is that last injustice. I hope that wherever you are now she is with you, for she loved you more than all of your subjects combined, and the Nightmare’s Curse hurt her far more than I think you ever realized.

But the fact remains: You were the greatest leader Equestria has ever known, and in all likelihood I will never surpass you even if my reign lasts a hundred times as long. You raised me as if you were a second mother, and you treated me like the willing student that I was, never like the precocious yet unready child I would have been seen as in any other pony’s care. I loved you then, Celestia, and I love you still as I write this to your soul. You were a brilliant leader and a great mare, and I will miss you. Equestria, no, the entire world will miss you forever.

I don’t know if you could watch your funeral from the great beyond, but there were so many people there. Gryphons by the hundreds, zebras by the thousands. Dragons circled overhead, dancing in a tradition as old as the stars while diamond dogs placed claw-carved statues on your casket. The minotaur king attended, and made a speech the likes of which I had never before heard, and Discord himself donned a dark suit and remained silent throughout the ceremonies. Even the Queen of the Changelings paid her respects in secret, leaving behind nothing save a tiny block of frozen ichor, which a careful study revealed to be some of her own blood (it is sealed, with all of your other gifts, in your tomb within Canterlot Mountain, as I discovered that, contrary to so much of the changelings’ nature, the tiny cube was inert and harmless).

And the ponies who attended were enough to necessitate that we moved the ceremonies out of Canterlot. The city would have fallen into the valley if we had stayed there. You were adored, Princess, and you will continue to be so long as history refrains from being rewritten.

And yes, as you would probably imagine, I have created enchantments to prevent that. It never hurts to be careful.

But I shouldn’t dwell on things such as this. You never did approve of fanfare over yourself after all, no matter the fact that there was never a more deserving being on this planet of ours, or on any other.

I should perhaps continue telling you of what has happened these past few centuries. It seems strange to so much as write this letter, but at the least I should remain consistent.

I have told you of Applejack’s current life, so let me move on to Rarity’s.

Out of all of us, Rarity was the most stricken with your loss (save myself, but considering our relationship, I think it is fair to say the situation was somewhat different. My, grief is a strange thing to consider after the fact, is it not? Here am I, quantifying the feelings of loss felt two centuries before to the mare for whom they were based. Somehow, I almost feel like I can see you smiling and shaking your head. Sorry, it seems this parenthetical got away from me.)

I think Rarity, like many ponies, had come to revere you in an almost religious light, and when you were proven to be as mortal as anypony it hurt her vastly more than any of us could ever have anticipated. For six months she vanished into seclusion, closing down her shop and refusing all visitors save her sister. Sweetie Belle told me of her, and there was little good in her stories. She talked of how Rarity became obsessed with your image for a time, then one day tore down all of your pictures and set them ablaze. She told me how she briefly toyed with an almost romantic devotion to your sister, then began cursing herself and chopped off her mane.

Then she vanished into the zebra lands with Zecora.

For another six months, no word came. I spoke to the Zebrican ruling council, but they claimed that they had no knowledge of her whereabouts, no understanding of her situation, and “no worries about her safety.” I would have pushed the matter, but something in their eyes told me they knew exactly what was happening to Rarity, and that I should stay out of it for her sake. I can’t say why I was so certain, but in the end I placed my trust in Zecora, and sure enough Rarity reappeared as suddenly as she had left.

I spoke briefly with Zecora, before I went to Rarity. She told me, cryptically as always, that Rarity had “Asked for a spiritual guide,” and that Zecora had “Little choice but to provide.” She refused to disclose more than this, however, citing what I believe to be the zebra shaman equivalent of doctor-patient confidentiality.

When Rarity finally returned to us, she was profoundly and deeply changed. It’s hard to say how, precisely, but she was… more stable, perhaps. Some of the irrepressible whimsy within her had gone, though by no means all of it, and it seemed to return on its own after some time. Still, a gap remained, only slight, but always there. I’m not sure it will ever be filled, or even that it should be.

Her dresses were all the evidence I needed that she had truly become something else while she was gone. I have watched her work many times since then, not only because she is my friend and I enjoy her company, but also because she’s incredible. She’s cast away her sewing machine, and opted instead to use some kind of elaborate magical needle-dance that far surpasses anything that I have ever seen in any nation I have visited. I asked her once where she had been, and she told me she was looking for something. When I asked if she’d found it, she told me with great gusto that she had not, and that she had found herself instead. I still have no idea what that means.

Her business, as you probably remember, was already booming. After that year of absence, she became the dressmaker of Equestria.

Fashion as Canterlot knew it simply was not equipped to comprehend her work at first. The first dress I ever saw her make following her sojourn apparently repulsed its recipient so much on first sight that she immediately tried to burn it, only to find that it resurrected itself like a phoenix. Apparently, once she’d actually tried it on, she sent a letter of explanation and apology, along with a promise that she would show the dress to everypony she knew at the next opportunity.

I have no idea how she enchanted that dress, and I am almost afraid to ask. I’ve seen similar things happen to other works of hers, including a garment I myself wore that had wine spilled all over it at a Grand Galloping Gala. The stallion in possession of the wine glass apologized profusely—and drunkenly—but before both our eyes the dress not only wrung itself completely dry, but spawned a ghostly silhouette of shimmering silk to guide the inebriated stallion to his room. Once its duty was complete, the silk returned to the lining of the dress without the slightest bit of fuss.

That, I think, was when I realized what I have told you about her, how she had changed. Her dresses became more beautiful, of course, but that was merely the progression of her art and the aggregation of skill. No, the enchantments were something else, something more beautiful, and they have continued to grow more amazing over the years.

She gave Rainbow Dash a dress that not only did not hamper her mobility, but also sent fireworks flying from between folds of cloth to dance like fireflies as she flew. She gave Fluttershy a dress with actual vines woven into the fabric, which I watched save my friend from a falling chandelier by growing up around her and catching it in the branches of a tree that had not existed before that night. She gave Applejack a dress which has endured two centuries of wear, which I have seen her wear to the fields and bring back covered in mud and dust, and yet which becomes perfectly clean in seconds whenever she decides she wants it that way. She gave Pinkie a dress that appears to be completely indestructible, and which contains an indeterminate number of pockets that seem to augment Pinkie’s incredible ability to bring entire parties with her wherever she goes.

And for me, that dress I have already mentioned. The pony of silk has become almost as much my assistant as Spike used to be. It can be summoned by a simple request for help, knows the location of anything it is asked to find, and it can write fluently in hoofwriting that appears to be identical to Rarity’s. I think it goes without saying that I was terrified of the thing at first, but through testing I discovered something strange, beautiful, and heartbreaking.

The dresses—all five of ours, at the least—contain a tiny piece of Rarity herself. I don’t know if I can realistically call this a “soul”, but it is most certainly a fragment of her being, fixed forever within her fabrics. I do not know for certain if she has given these things to her other clients, but I believe that she has, a fact which still frightens me.

I asked her once, after finding this out, what it meant for her, if what she was giving up was hurting her. Her answer made me weep in her arms.

“Darling, nothing I could keep for myself is worth as much as what I can give to all of you.”

She still makes her dresses, but in the years following her vanishment she has moved on to other things as well. She’s become something of an activist, aiming to mitigate the class conflict which has defined Equestria for so long. I know for a fact that the nobles despise her, and I also know that some have sent assassins for her. Whether the Elements have protected her, or whether it is some skill of her own I cannot say, as the subject rarely comes up unless one of the assassins is caught in the act, at which point she calmly but firmly demands that the culprit go free.

The movements she has started have done marvelous things to Canterlot. That city has resisted change for hundreds of years, but it seems that Rarity has finally broken that pattern. The gentry has fallen out of power, and the mountainside districts have become as beautiful as the hanging city itself.

Beyond Canterlot, her influence is far greater. She was the force that built the golden age, and her actions wiped away so many decades of corruption that you and I could never touch. There are no poor in Equestria now. There are those with more, and those with less, but no foal must live on the street, and no mare must beat another in a dark alley simply to feed their children. This is true wherever my rule holds, but though she has used her connection with me to make it so, this was her dream. Not a classless society, but a society where no one is forced to grovel before another for the simple necessities of life. A place where, if one wishes to be an artist, they need not kneel to the whims of a wealthy sponsor. A society where one can pursue an education without being mired in endless cycles of increasing debt.

And how? A single tax, on those who make more bits in a year than an average pony sees in a lifetime. And then a program to redistribute this capital to everypony in need. It is quite incredible how far you can stretch a trillion bits every year, if you are careful.

Oh, the outrage. The accusations of tyranny were thick and strong. Especially in the still-fresh wake of your passing. But in the end, little changed. The gradient between have and have-not evened out. The world spun on, a great stripe of injustice wiped away.

It is little compared to the social contributions of Fluttershy or Pinkie Pie, perhaps, but their stories are ones of far different circumstances and greatly vaster scales.

Sweetie Belle aides Rarity greatly in these endeavors. Strange though it may sound, knowing her as you did, Rarity often allows her sister to steal the spotlight while she works in the shadows. Sweetie Belle’s status as a minor celebrity did little to harm her or her sister’s success. (Were any of us truly surprised when she became a songstress? Her voice is a miracle all on its own.)

I suppose what most surprises me about Rarity is how much she has become like you. She would never ask for a throne, nor would I curse her with one, but if there is anypony among my friends who could do this sort of thankless work, it is her. I speak of Sweetie Belle because she can mold the emotions and opinions in a room like a work of clay, but Rarity can command in a way I had previously only ascribed to Fluttershy—and indeed the two of them are much closer now than they were previously. (If I were to compare Rarity to you, I must then compare Fluttershy to Luna… but I am digressing again. Fluttershy’s story deserves a letter all of its own.)

Though I have hardly done her tale justice, I must close this letter with a confession. I once confided you in you that I was uncertain whether Rarity truly represented the Element of Generosity. I need not repeat for you that conversation, but I remember what you said to me.

You were right, as always. It just took me a while to see it. Any doubts I ever had about Rarity’s right to the Element of Generosity were dispelled long ago. It seems absolutely disgusting to me now to even admit to entertaining such feelings, but the fact is I simply did not know her as well as I believed I did. That, itself, is a tragedy, one I feel I have yet to fully repent for.

Alas, I can not go on here. There is much to tell, but only so much time to tell it. I do not know when I will next be able to send another letter (nor, frankly, whether there is any point in sending them beyond my own conceit), but I will do so as soon as I can. I wish that you receive these messages, and know that I still love you as I always have.

With the greatest sincerity,

—Princess Twilight Sparkle.