Glowing Embers

by Sun Aura

Spark

There was a white void, almost like a pocket dimension constructed of Magic. The void itself felt calming, nice, but she wasn’t sure. All of her other emotions surrounded her. Anger and jealousy and sadness and fear, it felt like red-hot knives boring into her skin. She cried, because she never wanted this, because she wanted this to stop.

There was a purple hoof in her vision, and an aura of emotion with a simple message: “Let me help you. Let me show you there’s another way.” The feeling was so sincere, she couldn’t help but believe her.

Sunset took the hoof in her own, surprised to see she had hooves at the moment. And the void cut out.

---

Everything hurt, but at least it was physical. Her back burned, and she was at the bottom of a crater. And some things she understood.

She understood how much she fucked up. For a while, she was happy. She had managed to lie her way into friends, she had some people she thought of as a family, people she cared about and who cared about her. Even if the beginning was a lie, it had felt real, and she threw it away chasing old dreams of a mare that had never loved her.

She understood why the Element of Magic had reacted the way it did. Laughter, Generosity, Honesty, Loyalty, and Kindness, the other Elements. The Princess took those from her, but she had gained them back, and threw them away again before doing the same to others.

For a moment, she remembered the Fire of Friendship from the Hearth’s Warming story. She’d tried for so long to light her own, and had smothered the glowing embers in favor of something that would never light.

Now she had no clue how to fix it now.

But she never understood. Why was she so unworthy in the first place? She’ll admit she screwed up, she made terrible choices, but all of it was just because she wanted one mare to care about her. So why…?

“Tonight, you’ve shown everyone who you really are. You’ve shown them what is in your heart.”

Gasping apologies through sobs, she took in those words. She’d become everything she’d felt, everything she’d done. And she had no idea why she deserved to feel this way.

Still, the girl, the mare, Twilight, offered her a hand.

“The Magic of Friendship doesn’t just exist in Equestria. It’s everywhere. You can seek it out, or you can forever be alone. The choice is yours.”

She had sought out friendship. That’s what brought her here. Was she doing something wrong? What was she doing wrong?

“All I’ve ever done is drive everyone apart,” Sunset choked out the words. “I don’t know the first thing about Friendship.”

“I bet they can teach you.”

The five girls she’d hated. Sure, they could. But why would they? They should hate her. And she wouldn’t blame them. She wouldn’t blame them if the moment Twilight went home, they dropped her, or worse.

The one pony she wanted to care about her never had, and she made everyone else hate her trying to change that. She couldn’t see a way out, a way forward. Even stubborn determination didn’t want her to keep going.

Yet… she remembered the white void, created from the Elements. Everything she had felt, but also what they had felt, what they had offered. That in itself was a Spark. It was small, and she didn’t quite trust it yet, refusing to give hope that it would stay.

But it was a Spark all the same.

Author's Note:

Here we have the finale of Part One. Part Two will pick up in a sequel story, and will be posted either today or tomorrow.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Was making Sunset look fat in the picture intentional?

[Sun Aura]

8665979
No????
She... maybe it's just my artstyle but that's not really 'fat'. I guess she's fat compared to the toothpicks that are the canon character models, but for my art she's not fat.