Epilogue Epilogue
✶ ✶ ✶
There was silence atop the small cafe as motes of sunlight dissolved in the wake of the two Celestias leaving. Luna took the opportunity to drain her cup in one long draw before setting it down with a quiet tap of porcelain on porcelain. “Are they gone, do you think?”
Twilight could only shrug noncommittally. “No way to know, but they’ve probably got other things on their minds than spying on us through the sunlight and… sunheat? I’m kind of curious how good that one’s celestial sight is, actually, considering it normally conducts through light.” Twilight glanced up at the virtually invisible thermal source in the sky. “Then again, I suppose nopony said it had to be visible light.”
“Yes, well…” Luna pressed her hooves into her face, took a deep breath and then thrust them out in front of herself. “What the bucking hell?!” she yelled, rattling the tableware. “What in tartarus was she thinking?”
Twilight took a much more sedate sip of coffee and raised an eyebrow at her.
“Okay, okay,” Luna said, rolling her eyes and falling back into her chair. “I understand, Twilight, really, I do. It would have been disturbing and borderline inappropriate to raise an alicorn from foalhood to be Celestia’s partner and paramour, even if she’d passed the job onto us—and I thank the moon that we dodged that arrow—but this alternative is most abnormal, bordering on the bizarre, is it not? Could we not have just… lost the foal in the country for a decade or two?”
“Presumably, if we did that, then the foal would fall into the hooves of Celestia’s bitter and vengeful ex-student, Sunset Shimmer, and be raised to lead a revolt against the rightful rulers of Equestria.”
“Which would be fine!” Luna said with an exasperated whine in her voice. “Gryphons would call that courting!”
Twilight tapped her hoof on her chin, thinking. “Well, she didn’t seem to mind too much when we invaded the royal archives, and I can absolutely see her just abdicating the throne and dropping a crown on somepony, but unfortunately Sunset Shimmer doesn’t exist and the reality would have the potential to be a lot uglier.”
“I suppose,” Luna grumbled, crossing her front legs over her chest.
Twilight busied herself wiping up the last of her fried egg with a stack of daffodil petals. “Does it really bother you that much?” she asked, finishing off her breakfast and following it up with the last of her coffee.
“It’s…” Luna hesitated, holding her breath. “A little soon after there were two of you in a roundabout way, and that did not go all that well,” she admits. “Historically, applying mathematics to alicorns hasn’t had encouraging results.”
Twilight couldn’t help but wince at the reminder and absently ran a hoof along the edge of her shiny new peytral which represented her new status as a properly manifest alicorn. “That was probably one of the reasons she did it, though—to balance the equation.”
Luna made a grumble of acknowledgement. “I suppose we shall just have to see.”
• Patreon Funded •
This chapter is a completely legitimate snippet and was absolutely not posted only to point subscribers to the sequel, Sharing the Nation, which is now live, and the first chapter of which has now been posted!
On a completely unrelated note:
Sharing the Nation is now live!
And the first chapter has been posted!
I have six chapters at over 5,000 words each—nearly 35,000 words—ready for posting, so come back for a new one each day until I'm dry and head over to Patreon to check progress on further chapters.
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My yes. Have it. All of my yesses.
How have you been working on this for seven years?
Applause.
Is this story in any way related to Myths and Birthrights?
9761547
No
I've been following this story since the beginning—it's crazy to think about how long ago that was—and I'd just like to say, thanks for writing!
Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh yesyesyes
YES!, its back! I was totally not expecting a Sequel
Pretty much never, yeah. Guess we'll see.
This a great way to start a new month!
9762742
While technically, Discord could, maybe still be alive, he would at minimum be back to the situation he was in before he was given dragonfire (Blind and basically on death's door, since Solaria rescinded her gifts of light and life from him), so… yeah, I'm gonna say he's gone unless I come up with a really compelling reason to bring him back.
Well, it took me long enough, but I finally finished this. Thank you for a truly fascinating Equestria and one of the funniest climactic peaks I've ever seen. On to the sequel!
Like I said in a comment on a previous chapter, something I love about this fic is the absolute chaos that reigns. And chaotic as it might be, everything has a cause and effect.
There's so many "what the hell" moments, and yet you know they'll eventually be explained.
Throughout the second half of my re-read, I was so impatient to find out what happened next that I prioritised reading over sleep. Probably shouldn't do that.
Now, onto the sequel
OK, now that I've finally found time to start the sequel I find that this bit exists.
Good to see Twilight and Luna finally somewhat stable, even if they have their work cut out for them....
I remember starting on this in 2012, the peak of pre- canon Alicorn Twilight. It stuck with me like few other stories have, popping into my head randomly. It (among some others like Apotheosis) became part of my personal headcanons for Twilight's ascension. Now, many years later, I finally had time to reread and finish it.
There were quite a few moments during this story that I had to take a moment and calm myself, because it excited me that much. I absolutely adore how you capture the cyclic and spiraling nature of Twilight's thoughts, without becoming repetitive or out of character. I could envision scenes in my mind vividly without much ambiguity or confusion, and feel the emotions taking place.
What a ride. Thank you for never giving up on this story. I look forward to starting on the sequel tonight.
What a ride... :D
9792880
Well… Both? Reprising Sharing the Night in various ways is interesting to me, but I don't actually have any definite plans; I'm quite busy with what I have at the moment.
Well great. Now I have to read it all over again so the sequel will make sense!
I know this was started wayyyy back in 2012 but this is a strange strange strange story.
The first half of the story is good. But 90% of the second half of the story is so repetitive and shallow, it drags the story way, way down. Applejack literally left the story a dozen or so chapters ago and you bring her back that late in the story to turn her into a demigod? Seriously?
9795413
I appreciate your feedback and I'll definitely be thinking about it if I ever get around to actually making revisions to the story. That said, can you expand on what's repetitive? I understand that the bits with Astri definitely are since she was so flat a character and the changes between each iteration of the argument are relatively small, so I definitely could have handled it better. You specifically cite the entire second half of the story, though, so I'm curious to know how you see it. Are you referring to story beats being repetitive, or do you just mean the slightly rambling nature of Twilight's narration as she loses her grip on herself? I can never get enough feedback.
Edit: Regarding Applejack, I'm not saying your critique is invalid, but the estrangement of Twilight from her friends and the craziness of just making them all demigods is absolutely intentional. It's not supposed to come off as a well-reasoned and sensible solution.
9795623
This isn’t exactly the greatest community when it comes to feedback.
There’s a lot of repetition after Twilight sees the ancient past (for lack of a better term). After that point the story is obviously a “break the cycle”-narrative but we’re reminded nearly every chapter.
We don’t need a lore dump recap every time Twilight brings someone up to speed. We don’t need to be reminded that Celestia, Luna and Twilight are literal gods. We don’t need to be reminded of the hammerspace Luna sleeps in when she loses tangibility. We don’t need all the constant reminders of Twilight’s new powers or the fact that, yes, Celestia and Luna have planet-killing capable powers themed after their cutie marks. We don’t need an eleventh hour appearance by Discord just to remind us that, yes, he is older than Celestia and Luna just to have him become an invisible punchline maker. (Giving details would be better but I’m not doing that on a phone.)
For all my issues with the story I still give it a thumbs up. The story was written across six years so things were obviously lost in the shuffle (Spike is a dragon and dragons go to sleep under the planets surface....) and I don’t hold that against the story.
9796524
Thanks for taking the time to explain. On recaps—I admit, I do have opinions about stories that just cut to black and assume someone basically got some kind of perfect download of everything that happened in their absence. I've also had reader comprehension issues in the past and believe that such situations are an opportunity for other characters to show their opinions. I'm not making excuses, just explaining. I'll definitely consider how to streamline things or find a middle ground in the future. Your specific examples don't jump out to me, so I'll have to do a read-through sometime with your comments in mind when I get the chance.
Now, I don't doubt that the sequel is all kind of recap-y, but out of curiosity, have you checked my other story, A Sparkle-ling Perfection, and if so, do you feel the same about that one? I've had comments about the characters making logical leaps without explaining much, but I also know that there is a lot of internal monologue about anything and everything, so I'm curious where that story would stand.
9875297 9878823 9885739
Thanks for pointing these out, though et is, in fact, the intended word.
(I apologize for taking so long to respond. I've been fighting with my writing for a couple of months, and it hasn't put me in the mood for keeping on top of things.)
10009509
Uh...that’s kinda what I meant. For you see, it’s not the ones who yell when they get angry or lose their temper that you should be afraid of...it’s the ones who speak softly.
10010825
It's just always extremely bothered me when I see it in stories.
I see a lot of potential in this story and your work in general, but I also see a lot of stuff that's just... cringe mistakes.
Considering she never shouts or talks like that at all after Eclipsed, the Canterlot Voice was Celestia fucking with her. Contemporary Ponish for her appears in Shadow Play. They spoke true Old English at that time, not bad Shakespeare.
It's still good though.
Hi, there!
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I hope to receive your early reply. Have a nice day!
I reviewed this story as part of Read It Later Reviews #88!
My review can be found here.
Holy crap! You actually finished this? I remember reading this when it was still a WIP when I was like 17, and now I'm 25. I remember it being a great read :D
I look forward to reading it through to the end!
Thanks for this wonderful fic
luna is the alicorn of the night and the moon, not the stars.
celestias the princess of the stars and the sun.
twilight is the princess of magic and friendship.
Right, so. Here we are, at the end.
I think I'd like to say 'I came around'? Not sure if that's the most fitting description, though. I had... issues with this story. Some have been remedied completely with little effort to boot, others... not so much. Still, the writing was absolutely sublime and every other element about the story kept me thrilled enough to read on and on and on. It's... different. But that ain't a bad thing.
Despite my earlier nitpicking, I do quite like the tale. I stand by my words that I find your version of Twilight to be jarring at times, but I think that's just something I have to get 'used to', so to speak? To be honest, I can't even exactly tell you why this appears to be so hard for me, I can read several different versions of RD or AJ without problem.
I did put up 'Sharing the Nation' on my read-later-shelf because of this experience. I do find it engaging and want to know more/read more of it. So there's that, I guess.
I hope I don't come across as ungrateful. Or came across, rather. You are a talented artist and I enjoyed your craft.
Thank you.
Great story all the way through. I adore the interactions between Twilight, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash. The story between Twilight and Luna is engaging, and the danger serves as a good backdrop to drive the story forward.
I didn't particularly enjoy any of the Celestia scenes that happened after Luna moved to Ponyville, however, and I would have preferred if they had been cut and replaced with interactions between twilight and her friends or else just cut entirely. Same for Harmony. I believe their contribution to the end of the story was small enough that they could have been replaced without changing any of the major points in the story.
Besides some other minor nitpicks, the story was fun, and I'd definitely recommend others read it as well.
I like this! It is a good fic, if in a need of a tad of proofreading.
11650391
You're alive!
Anyway, so, if I'm getting the picture right:
Twilight and Luna are two halves each of the two old lunar alicorns, amounting to a full new alicorn each. Harmony is, as you said, the emotional "heart" of Solaria; Celestia was instead formed from Solaria's remaining essence after she died. Since Solaria was the fusion of two alicorns, she had essentially twice the spiritual clout of a normal one; I think you mentioned in older comments that Celestia still works out as having more than the "normal" amount of alicorn power, since she inherited the majority of Solaria's combined essence, so by extension this would mean that Harmony would have the least magical clout of the second-generation alicorns?
11650964
Yes, Twilight and Luna are 50/50 and my personal ballpark figure is that Celestia and Harmony are about an 85/15 split.
Well! Well well well well.
Reading the big old fantasy stories is always a fun trip, especially insofar as they serve as fascinating windows into the show and fandom's evolving and often diverging worldbuilding. This is a beautiful example of that, and I commend you here for resisting the temptation to alter the ongoing story to match the show's changing world.
So, let's see, specific thoughts...
I feel, generally speaking, that fantasy is often far too hesitant to let itself be strange, and tends to stick far too carefully to worlds that are basically Earth or Middle-earth or at least close in that conceptual orbit, just with the geography shifted around and maybe a fancy name for elves if you're lucky. It's a rare treat for me to find a work that really digs into the concepts of mythology and creation myths and asks, well, if creation was made such and thusly by manifest gods, what if they decided or had to make it differently? What if this or that or the other major concept that we take for granted was very different? How far into the concept space of magic and myth can we actually push?
That is to explain why I really love your worldbuilding here. I love especially your celestial mechanics, and the dramatic evolutions of the daytime and nighttime sky to match the changes of the divine beings embodying them -- and especially the emphasis on the fact that this very much not a once-and-done process, and that the familiar sky of stars and sun and moon is ultimately one era in an evolving world. The geocentric mechanics, with the night and day being two distinct "blankets" alternating between covering the sky and being tucked around a dimension fold, was also interesting, and I was really drawn by how you depict dragons. I'm very much looking forward to tucking into Sharing the Nation because the synopsis promises more on dragons, and I very much look forward to seeing what else there is to say on that.
Now, setting aside, let's talk characters.
Twilight was... difficult to follow. Her arc really clicked for me once I got how and why exactly she was meant to be acting irrationally, but that realization came fairly late in the story and I admit to being rather frustrated with her behavior for... I would say most of the middle of the narrative. Luna was also interesting, but much easier to follow. Celestia's, I think, might have the most compelling individual arc for me, at least insofar as I'm much more confident in my understanding of her character evolution -- Twilight's will likely click for me more once I've had more time to think about it.
(Also, I literally just realized that Celestia solved her problem by doing the exact mirror opposite of what caused Solaria's to begin with -- Solaria was a fused alicorn who remembered having been two people, missed both, and was chronically lonely as a result, so Celestia reversed that to cure her own chronic loneliness by becoming two alicorns that both remembered having been her. Clever.)
The other Bearers and Discord felt... somewhat half-used. The Bearers feel underutilized for a big chunk of the story, and while the closing segments do a lot to remedy that -- Twilight's confrontation with Rarity was good, the one with Applejack was great, and Rainbow's... rainbow thing was very interesting -- they still don't feel entirely integrated. Again, it seems like something addressed with the next story, so we will see what we will see. Discord also feels odd, since -- if I may make an assumption -- I suspect he may not have been intended to feature in present capacity in the original draft? He feels a bit like he may have been worked in in response to his increasing prominence in canon, and in that case I think I understand why he would have been difficult to properly integrate into the preexisting narrative.
Also, kind of a sidenote, I'm still surprised how much I find myself mourning that star beasts and the Everfree. They're such big things, conceptually, that their utterly unceremonious ends feel extremely sad to me. I wonder what strange things will swim in the depths of Everfree Lake one day...
Anyway, this was a fun ride; onto the sequel.
Amazing story. I love the slow build up in Twilight and Luna's relationship. Only criticism I have is in the last chapters, it is rather hard to follow what's going on sometimes.