Letters to the Sun

by Horizon Runner

Loyalty

Dear Princess Celestia,

I must apologize. The end of my last letter was rushed, and I did not give a proper explanation why. Alas, I don’t think I adequately can. Times have moved more than you may realize, and the problems facing this new Equestria are stranger than ever.

Equestria has changed in two hundred years. A nation under your rule, but now an interstellar empire under mine. I suppose it is symbolically fitting; you and Luna represented celestial bodies that only had their great relevance from the surface of Epona, but my mark, the stars, are universal—no pun intended.

Yes, your humble little kingdom now stretches beyond Epona. Half a dozen planets fall under our banner now, along with close to a hundred hoofholds on moons, asteroids, and the like. It was the result of a great shift in attitudes and ideals that took place some time after you left us, a great alteration in the way ponies viewed the world.

The story of how this all started is a strange one, and it begins and ends with Rainbow Dash.

In the wake of your passing, she was far angrier than the rest of us. She was the one who blamed you most for leaving us without warning as you did. Given her Element, it is perhaps not that great a surprise, but it colored her actions ever since. Even though she has repeatedly and vehemently refused a government position, everything she has accomplished has been in the name of Equestria or myself, even when they were things I could never have asked her to do.

But, though it is perhaps not fair to her, I must explain not her personal story, but the story of her actions.

You remember her dream, of course. The Wonderbolts were her passion, and when she’d joined their ranks she stood atop the world. Once Spitfire retired and handed her the reins, her victory was complete. I think she realized then that she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Rainbow is not the sort of mare who can simply settle down and enjoy her victories. She craved more.

So she started the space race.

She already had a good deal of leverage, through her position in the Wonderbolts, her friendship with myself, and her status as bearer of the Element of Loyalty. She accomplished her goal through the most cunning and dangerous stunt she’d ever pulled; revealing her completely fabricated plans to send a pony into space in the presence of a gryphon ambassador. Needless to say, I was absolutely livid, but she simply laughed at my outrage. She knew what would happen next. In fact, I’m all but certain it was exactly what she’d planned.

Inevitably, the gryphons revealed their own plans a month later, and the gauntlet was thrown down. We were pushed inexorably towards the stars, all because Rainbow Dash was bored. At first, I was furious with her, but gradually I began to see the truth. We needed this competition. Just as Rainbow Dash had reached the top of a mountain when she took command of the Wonderbolts, Equestria as a nation had reached a peak. There was no driving force to push us upward. We had a stagnant little utopia, and sooner or later the gryphons were going to pass us up anyhow.

In all honesty, I was silently cheering her on by the time the ensuing crisis erupted. It was always a quiet dream of mine to accomplish space travel, but until Rainbow’s actions I simply couldn’t find a way to spare the funds. With the gryphons dead set on getting there first and the public stirred into a frenzy, I had all the funding I required.

Rainbow, of course, didn’t understand the technical aspects at all, which is where Apple Bloom once again makes her appearance. She needed a new project in the wake of the “thinking machine” scandal, and there wasn’t one more impressive or difficult than this. Still, it took her scarcely two years before Equestria had rockets that could reach past the atmosphere. I must say I am still impressed with that feat. I know I said this in my first letter, but Apple Bloom’s genius cannot be understated. Even now, she is constantly pushing the boundaries of the sciences.

But as much as we needed an inventress, we also needed a pioneer. We needed a pony whose face could be broadcasted across the world, who would be the first to touch the outer edges of the atmosphere, to fly higher than ever before. There were thousands of volunteers, but Rainbow overrode everyone else, as she is wont to do, and elected a familiar face.

I’m sure you remember Scootaloo, Princess. She was a tragic little filly, her parents gone before she ever knew them, her wings shriveled by a congenital disease. I know Luna watched over her for many years, and loved her dearly enough to give her a place in her will. Even before then, Rainbow Dash adopted her in all but name, as a sister if not as a daughter.

Luna once told me that Scootaloo’s dreams danced with the clouds. It was Rainbow Dash who lifted them to the stars. The filly wanted to fly more than anything in the world, and even though her friendship with Apple Bloom meant that she was one of the first ponies to own an airplane, she still clearly wasn’t satisfied. With this bold new step, she finally had her calling.

Of course, the whole affair reeked of cronyism. Images of Dash and Luna's little favorite did battle with images of the crippled filly who was getting a chance to fly higher than anypony. For both my own reasons and for the sake of winning the space race, I backed Scootaloo every step of the way, but the road was a tough one. The launch was delayed twice, and the gryphons managed to send a radio-equipped object into space before we were ready.

Still, their launch of Begleiter I was a wake-up call to many of those who opposed Scootaloo’s placement. We needed to one-up the gryphons, and fast. The date is remembered as a holiday now, but at the time it was the most stressful night of my life. I watched from a cloud-platform as the rocket ascended through the sky, ready at any moment to fly out and catch it should something go wrong. The entire event was televised, and all of Equestria held their breath as Scootaloo shot towards the sky.

Her first words to us upon reaching orbit? “Mission Control… I’m sending pictures. Lots of pictures.”

The craft descended into the ocean soon afterwards, but by then we’d already won. She was one of four ponies in the next capsule, which managed to enter true orbit before engaging in a controlled descent.

Those craft are in the Canterlot Aerospace Museum now, along with many of those images she brought back to us. It wasn’t long before we’d begun lifting clouds into orbit, constructing scaffolding and living spaces held together by magic. Equestria’s greatest scientists came together, and soon the Celestia Pillar was born, rising from the top of Canterlot Mountain all the way into a geostationary orbit. At its peak, a metal ring still spins, providing false gravity without the aid of magic.

It was the greatest achievement of the century, and we made the mistake of assuming the gryphons would never surpass it. Soon after that, however, they succeeded in the most bizarre of fashions by declaring that their entire empire would be uprooted and moved to an uninhabited world around a distant star. I didn’t believe the news when I heard it, but fifty years later the gryphon capital stood abandoned, its streets untended and its great skyscrapers crumbling.

As to what happened to them next, and how they became the first of several nations that formed with us what we now call the Federation of Allied Empires, that is a far stranger story. But, I’ll leave it for another letter, as it involves Fluttershy as much as it involves Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow and Scootaloo did not stop at mere orbital tethers. The moon was colonized shortly thereafter, an effort which its present inhabitants welcomed with open arms. By this time, there are frequent shuttle flights to and from the moon, and a “bridge” is in construction; a structure that would be used in conjunction with lunar manipulation magic to physically link the two worlds for a brief time.

Next was the greatest achievement, and the greatest challenge: easy faster-than-light travel.

Teleportation magic has existed for millennia, but the concept of transporting an entire spaceship across interstellar distances was much more than any unicorn—even myself—could handle. I’d all but given up on studying the problem myself, when all of a sudden the solution came from a source I had foolishly underestimated.

You may remember Trixie Lulamoon. She was known to me first as a boisterous troublemaker, then as a serious threat when she reemerged with the Alicorn Amulet in her possession. I lost track of her for a time afterwards, but shortly after Luna’s death I received a correspondence from her in which she asked that I take her on as a student. I would have politely declined under most circumstances, but something about her tone caught my attention, and I agreed to become her mentor in the magical arts. As you can probably guess from the context of this letter, that was no mistake.

It was as I was preparing my morning coffee two years to the month after she began studying under me that Trixie presented to me a perfectly ordinary looking gemstone. When I asked what it was, she told me to direct a small amount of spark magic into it. Not knowing what it was, but noting the strange grin on her face and the bags under her eyes, I did so with some trepidation, and found myself two hundred miles from Canterlot, sitting on top of somepony’s cloud-house.

You see, Trixie had invented what is now known as a “talisman”. The concept of binding spells to objects was by this point nothing new, but with Trixie’s method, massive amounts of formerly untapped magic could be drawn from the magical gemstones native to our world. Gem-reactors were the first invention created with this method. Tele-drives were the second. It was her first masterpiece, but not her last. In time, she has grown to become the most celebrated sorceress of this era, and now holds the title of Archmage. She remains second to myself, but she once told me sarcastically that she would settle for being the greatest and most powerful unicorn in Equestria.

She and I, along with the help of Apple Bloom, Dinky Doo, and many, many others would eventually find better methods of faster-than-light travel. Our current methods rely on artificial wormholes, as they require little power to sustain and can be kept open indefinitely. Tele-drives, however, remain the best tool for exploration vessels, as well as those ships seeking to establish a wormhole, as creation of such a path requires a spell crew at each end.

These inventions opened the road to the stars, and all the infinite troubles that came with them. We knew we would encounter the gryphons again, but we weren’t wholly prepared for everything else out there.

There is so much beyond Equestria, Princess. I wish you could see it all. I hope you can see it all.

But I’m rambling again. I need to do Rainbow Dash justice.

She couldn’t sit still. She was on the first ship to travel to another star (I joined her on the second), and she was the third pony to set hoof on an extrasolar planet, behind Scootaloo and a mare named Comet Dust. She named the first Equestrian colony world “Prism”, which I reluctantly agreed to.

Then, we found ourselves suddenly and brutally at war, and everything changed.

The enemy were an alien race we had never encountered before, and one we have not seen since. They arrived at the edge of our solar system and started blowing apart sensor outposts at the far rim. They moved in, slowly eradicating any traces of our presence that they discovered. We had little time to react, less time to prepare. Rainbow Dash found herself at the tip of the spear as the hastily christened Equestrian Royal Space Fleet headed off the alien armada. We won by the skin of our teeth, but Rainbow came back changed. She never discussed the battle with me, only responding to my queries with the simple statement that “War is Tartarus”, said in a tone that haunts me to this day.

She’d never known true battle before, I think. We’d fought against many foes, but more often than not the fights were small, or took the form of non-lethal combat. Weapons were almost never in the field. Even in the Wonderbolts, she flew for show. There had never been a war to fight.

From the recordings that survive, I know the First Battle of Epona was nothing like anything she’d seen. It was a blizzard of lasers, magic, and kinetic projectiles, as alien drone-fighters ripped at our shields, and we wiped out entire swathes of their fleet in single shots. I know that Rainbow’s ship was hit, that her command bridge was all but blown off. I don’t know the details, but a great many ponies did not survive that battle.

We never discovered why the aliens had attacked us. We never found where they’d come from, nor did we ever recover any true information from the destroyed ships. In the end, the One Night War remained exactly as strange as it sounds.

But it opened our eyes. We were not alone in the universe, and we had precedent for hostile first-contact scenarios. The laughable Equestrian Royal Space Fleet evolved into the Royal Navy of Epona, which is now the greatest military force in known space. Even those few civilizations we’ve made contact with have nothing that can compare to our battleships.

It was not my idea, but the greatest of these, constructed above Equestria at the Hoofington Orbital Yards, is named in your honor. I know that you would not have appreciated your signature adorning the side of a vessel of war, and I made my moves to block it, but in the end even I could not go against such a popular measure. You are loved, Princess. So much so that the people would allow the flagship of the fleet to carry no other name.

Thankfully, we have seen little need to use the guns of the fleet. In most cases they serve merely as escorts or, in the worst cases that have so far occurred, intimidation. The Celestia itself remains in orbit over Epona most of the time, a symbol, more than anything else, of the heights to which our humble little kingdom ascended.

You see, after the gryphons made their exodus from Epona, we had no opponents. The zebras gladly joined with us, as did the many other species which share our world. We formed a great coalition, combining our varied strengths and reaching heights we’d never even imagined. Even still, the Alliance of Eponan Peoples was nothing compared to the Federation of Allied Empires… but I will leave that for Fluttershy’s story.

Rainbow Dash never stopped moving. I do not believe she even can, at this point. Now she owns her own ship, the Bifrost, and sails it across the stars with a crew of her choosing. She goes, to quote the mare herself, “wherever she’s needed,” carrying the Equestrian banner with her on a continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where… well, you know the rest (I’m not apologizing for making you read that series; it was great, and you know it).

Though she no longer brags the way she once did, stories of her exploits have become legends of their own. She is a beacon of peace and prosperity, bringing young struggling species access to our wormhole network and placing them on equal ground with us, expanding the Federation through trade and technology. Yet even then, she finds her fair share of trouble. I’ve heard tales of her stopping wars with just her little, unarmed ship, of her discovering ancient mechanisms that rivaled Discord in power and defeating them to end their threat to those she loves. She’s managed to be an adventurer in this new age, a living homage to the Daring Do books that inspired her in her younger years.

I’ve asked her to keep in touch, and she’s never forgotten to send a letter, but we have grown somewhat distant in recent years. I will need to make a note to fix that someday, perhaps accompany her on one of her adventures. It will be a welcome change, to be sure, to travel about unfettered by political chains, going towards the closest unmarked star in the sky and damning the consequences.

I suppose this is why you made sure I didn’t spend my young life buried in stacks of notes and tomes. To live life the way she does is an exhilarating thing, and sometimes I wish I could throw off my crown and live in the wilds for a time, even if that wish is but a mad dream.

But that’s just what so much of this is; a mad dream. The idea that you’ll receive these letters, the idea that I’m doing more than wasting precious time, it truly is my own conceit, isn’t it? In the end, I may never know if you can hear me.

But that’s all right. If Rainbow has taught me anything over these many years, it’s that sometimes we need a little madness in our lives.

I hope that you have a little share of crazy wherever you are, Celestia. I know how bored you'd be otherwise.

-Princess Twilight Sparkle

Comments

[MellowBrook]

Wow such great work, and I have not seen a single comment in any of these. Either I am blind or you do not have the publicity you deserve.

[AppleTank]

Yay! Space!

[Horizon Runner]

17 likes and 0 dislikes? I... can't even find words, you guys. Thank you, all of you. I've had a really rough week, and this... like I said, I can't find words to describe the feeling.

I'm actually crying a bit right now. Keep being awesome, everybody, and once again... thank you.

[prizmatiq]

Haven't read the rest of the chapters, but I'll ask anyways... is Cadance still alive? How is the Crystal Empire? Sounds like it could be a part of that Allied Empires thing.

Wonder if there has been anything important named after Luna. I mean, Twilight obviously would've tried to make that so, but was the name decided in the ways the Celestia was?

[Horizon Runner]

4899903 I'm going to do a bonus on this, I think, but for now I might as well answer your question. World building, ho!

Cadance and Shining Armor have passed away. The meaning of the "Element" of Love (separate from the EoH, and manifested as the Crystal Heart) changes with each bearer, and in Cadance's case it left her mortal so that she would not be forced to outlive Shining Armor. They were both in their later years when life-extension magics started being developed commercially, and elected to live out their lives naturally. They passed peacefully in their sleep on the same night, and were buried together in the Royal Cemetary in Canterlot.

There is a new Bearer of the Crystal Heart, though I'm not going to be touching on that much in Letters itself. The Crystal Empire remains on good terms with Equestria, and though crystal ponies are considered a relative minority, they can be found most places that other ponies live.

Luna's reputation is much different now. A great many monuments to her exist, and she is often paired with her sister in sculpture. She's not as revered as Celestia, but she's no longer remembered solely as Nightmare Moon. Twilight saw to that in part, but Luna herself did just as much to shake her reputation.

The most obvious places named after her are Luna City—the first city on the Eponan moon—and Lunanapolis, the largest city on any of the colony worlds. The latter of those two may or may not end up forming the setting for a future story. There are also the Night Fleets, the special operations divisions of the Royal Navy of Epona. The five Night Fleets were initially formed from the ranks of the Night Guard, and serve as Equestria's eyes and ears both past the rim of the Federation and within the territories of the other member empires. The fleets' operating procedures are, like most of the RNE's doctrines, based on Luna's writings on strategy and warfare (specifically the passages on stealth and intelligence gathering) , though the Night Fleets treat these texts with much more reverence than most.

[Meridian Prime]

Okay I have adored each and every one of these so far, but this one in particular I feel the need to comment on because it is such a perfect summary of what an MLP Sci-Fi epic should be. It's something that precious few MLP stories seem to manage, and you've done it in 3000 words. Outstanding.

[Yet another time lord]

So apple bloom became steve jobs, AJ became some sort of judge dreed,rarity is some dalai lama of fashion, RD is basically capitan kirk in a ship named after the bridge to valhala. And to top it off equestria is now something akin to the galactic comunity of mass effect, I really don't have anything but praise for you sir bravo,really a magnific story,a pity that sunset shimmer couldn't have a part in all of this but well

[Greatazuredragon]

Inevitably, the gryphons revealed their own plans a month later, and the gauntlet was thrown down. We were pushed inexorably towards the stars, all because Rainbow Dash was bored.

Rainbow Dash never stopped moving. I do not believe she even can, at this point. Now she owns her own ship, the Bifrost, and sails it across the stars with a crew of her choosing.

Oh that was bucking perfect!

Loving this story so far, amazing work.

[Draco Dei]

Not seeing as much of Dash's Elemental Virtue in this chapter as I saw of Applejack's and Rarity's in the previous two. Still good!