Epilogue
*Starlight's POV, first-person*
A lot has happened over the last two years. One year ago, Twilight opened a friendship school and picked Pinkie, Rainbow, Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow to be her teachers; I was the school's Guidance Counselor. If he were still here, I’m sure Sam would have teased Twilight about opening a school just so she could teach how to give “corny” friendship speeches. Twilight even said the same thing. Next to Sam being a great guy, I think that's what she misses the most about him.
But as for that school, two months ago, Twilight entrusted her school to me when she took over for Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, so she is now the ruler of Equestria and has moved back to Canterlot. I can hardly believe that I, Starlight Glimmer, the mare that once stole Cutie Marks under a misguided view of friendship, went on to become the Headmare of a school for friendship that teaches it the right way! Did I change for what?
Something about me that didn’t change is that I still stayed in Sam’s, or my, house. His dad’s chair stayed in the same spot in the living room as always, and NO ONE sat in or even touched it. I became almost as protective of that chair as he was, but I never sat in it. I also took an idea that Sam had joked about and opened my own kite-making business in Ponyville (Rarity give me tips on how to run your own businesses) but I still needed to find someone to run it for me permanently. I would maybe think about asking Trixie, who I’m very close with now, but she’s Twilight's--uh, my school’s Guidance Counselor, and Sunburst’s the vice-Headstallion.
Things weren't all good over the last two years, though. We had to face more threats. One that was definitely the most surprising was a pegasus filly named Cozy Glow, a former student of the school, who tried to get rid of all the magic in Equestria. I still can’t believe I didn’t see the signs that she wasn’t the sweet filly she acted.
If that wasn’t enough, later on she, along with Chrysalis and Tirek, attacked Canterlot and nearly succeeded in taking over Equestria, or possibly even worse. Luckily, they were stopped and are now in stone.
To be honest, I have mixed feelings about Cozy being in stone. She was awful, but she was still just a filly. However, I’m sure Twilight will someday give her another chance. She was just as conflicted about it as me, and I don't think Sam would like it if we never, at least, try to give Cozy one more chance. At the very least, Twilight ran some tests and found that Cozy, Tirek, and Chrysalis appear to be in a state of suspended animation, so they aren’t conscious. I am so thankful of that.
Anyhow, back to Sam. At first, I visited his grave almost every day, but now I do it at least once a week. It is where I was at. My friends' and my final gifts to him lay in front of his tombstone; it took a while for me to get used to not wearing my collar anymore. Twilight and I also cast a preservation spell to keep Applejack’s apple from spoiling, so it remained just as fresh -- and shiny -- as it was during Sam’s funeral. Pinkie’s balloons still floated in the air, only held back by the rocks and string tied to them. If they weren’t balloons from Pinkie Pie, I would question how they didn’t deflate by now.
The pain of losing Sam is still there a little, but I don’t think the pain of loss ever completely goes away. Still, I worked hard to keep my promise to both be happy and be the best pony I can be, even if I still made mistakes sometimes.
I wasn’t getting any younger, so I was starting to think that maybe it was time for me to...settle down and get married. Question was...to who? Sunburst? Big Mac was taken, so he was out. Spike’s still as sweet as ever, so if I’m still alone in a few years and he still has a crush on me, maybe, just maybe, I’ll see if he wants to start something.
He is a little cutie pie. He won’t be a small dragon forever and even got his wings not long after Twilight opened the School of Friendship. I wish I were there to see his face when he first grew the wings, but at least Twilight was.
And possibly Sam, my best friend, in spirit.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- TheHardie-Boy · 14k words · 74 8 · 2k views
- Silverwings Productions · 2k words · 37 3 · 2k views
- Silverwings Productions · 1k words · 39 4 · 1.1k views
- SapphireWings999 · 47k words · 28 18 · 729 views
- ThePinkedWonder · 62k words · 79 10 · 3k views
- ThePinkedWonder · 22k words · 59 7 · 3.7k views
- Diloboi · 3.9k words · 18 0 · 445 views
- ItsVelvet · 1.6k words · 270 views
Stats
Page generated in 0.043 seconds
Total duration
745 users online
799,036 hits today, 2,782,760 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Looking at my story, it’s 14k words before I gave up. To this day, I feel bad I asked you to do this, especially seeing how much the story inflated. I swore up and down my story wouldn’t be left undone like the original, but in the end, I just couldn’t do it.
But at the same time, I am glad I did ask you to do this, because this is a lot better than anything I could’ve come up with. Whether or not you post any bonus chapters, this story became amazing (despite the sheer length)! Keep up the good work, my friend
Wow, that was heavy... And perfect. And awesome... And of course I would love to see more chapters of this story...
So Starlight, the mare that perfected a time travel spell, has her best friend die.... and she is not even a bit tempted to go play with the fabric of time again to try and change things?
Also, for those of a theological bent, did Sam end up in whatever passes for the Pony afterlife?
10632733
In this universe, Starlight never tried to use time travel
10631879
10632212
Glad to hear you think I ended it so well!
10632124
Thanks man. As I said before, I did not expect it to be so long and it was tough at times, but I'm glad I was able to finish this thing, so there's one less unfinished story on the site. This was a definite change of pace from my typical short comedy stories.
10632733
It was already pointed out that this Starlight never learned the time-travel spell her canon self learned, but even if she did, time travel is far more complex and confusing than it sounds. Going by how it seemed to work in the season 5 finale of the show, if Starlight did go back in time to save Sam, she would have had to share him with another Starlight in either a rewritten timeline or in an entirely separate universe, the latter would have meant her leaving the "original" timelime.
Good question. I would say he entered the afterlife for Equestrians, but who's to say that our & the Equestrian afterlife are separate...?
10632909
10633885
Ah, your right I completely forgot that. I guess if she did learn about it eventually she might be tempted. Might make a decent omake actually. I doubt Sam would have much problem sharing though
Was a good way to end the story though, few authors are brave enough to go that direction.
I'm not really sure how I feel about this ending. Sam dying so quickly once it was introduced, and the story obviously concluding with that, discourages "filler/bonus" chapters for me. It seemed like the story was setting a foundation for a larger tale, but for me at least, Sam dying without any attempt at desperate or even risky measures like going through the portal or having Discord try something, shrank the scope of the story.
Here's an AU where Starlight dealt with a better past than the show gave her, with Sam integral to that from the very start. However, despite the Mary Sue level of power she has in the show, and her given ability to make exotic magic work if she's passionate about it, she sat in the room with her best friend and watched him die without trying anything. Petrification until they can understand the problem and find a cure, putting him in magical stasis, using the time travel spell that Twilight knows, acquiring a human doctor to go through the portal and diagnose him, taking him through the portal and to a hospital; Nurse Redheart says he has a few days to live and Starlight gives up right away. Any bonus chapters are going to be tinted with the thought, "Guess it didn't matter that much to her."
10636315
Attempts to save Sam were actually discussed in Chapter 31 and they did look up things, and the reason why they didn't try anything was in that chapter. In short, it wouldn't have helped even if they did, and they knew it. Reread chapter 31 if need be, but trust me: Starlight did not give up right away. I didn't want to try to go heavy-headed about the fact, but it's there.
Although, I could have made it even more clear, or went on about it a little bit longer, even if it might risk taking a heavy-handed approach, or just show them trying to find out instead of having the attempts be off-screen instead of the characters just saying they did.
If it can further help, here's an analogy. Just say someone is dying of an unknown vemom, and nothing is working on it. Doctors will try all they can, but they won't do something like inject snake anti-venom in hopes that it would reverse the unknown venom's effect if they know it won't do any good.
However, something I did overlook as I was writing and editing the chapter and forget to put in the chapter was that Discord didn't know what was wrong, and since he couldn't cure himself when he was sick in the season 4 episode "Tree's a Crowd", I used that as a reason as to even why he would be powerless.
10636470
Right, Twilight reasoned that Sam could die in pain rather than peacefully in a coma. Although, you had Sam responding to several external stimuli, which makes me wonder if he was unconscious in a coma or just slipping in and out of consciousness as his body shut down. And I know that Twilight told Starlight she stayed up at least the last night going over medical books and looking for a cure, and said something along the lines of 'it would take ten to twenty years to develop one'. But twenty years is something they can get; even barring the EoH or the stoning-'nades that Tempest Shadow used in the movie, Twilight has personal experience from her encounter with the cockatrice. Also, I feel like they didn't try Zecora, but I'm on my phone so I can't check easily - I may be entirely incorrect on that one.
It was also incorrect of me to say Starlight gave up right away, you're right. It definitely felt like she accepted the outcome and gave up too quickly, though. She didn't rewrite Starswirl's time spell in this setting, but she still has the ability to create or develop a spell or project of equivalent power and complexity with the right motivation.
It may be uncomfortable to think about, but experimenting with treatments on terminally-ill patients is one of the main ways our own medical science and practice developed for literally millennia of recorded history. If the doctors knew he was dying from venom, in your example, and with him being their first of an uncertain potential number of humans to later arrive in Equestria, he's the ideal subject for experimental and untested medicines and procedures. Otherwise they wouldn't have a way to test them for when the next human drinks the magic bleach and starts dying shortly thereafter.
That was why it felt to me like they gave up too early and without trying anything.
10636791
On one hand, going by how fast Twilight was able to write "new magic" in season 3 and how Starlight is, at least, around Twilight's level when it comes to learning spells, maybe a bit higher, Starlight could figure out some kind of time spell, especially if Twilight helped. But, with the exact complex nature of time travel and what happens when you do it, it might not have worked that well, and is a big reason why the effects of time travel vary in fiction. Some, like in Dragon Ball, have it impossible to change the timeline, but you can instead create new timelines, while the season 5 finale of FIM seemed to go with timelines being rewritten instead, and other shows do something else.
Interestingly enough, time travel was mentioned (but the idea was quickly shut down) in the early drafts, but I took it out because I didn't think it was necessary. It's beginning to look like it was something I should have kept in to avert the question of why time travel wasn't thought about.
That is true, but would have been something best decided by and done by the doctors, and they did do all they could with the knowledge they had. Starlight (and even Twilight) didn't have the knowledge and experience to try that themselves, even if they are incredible mages.
On a related note, even if Twilight and/or Starlight did turn Sam into stone as a last-ditch attempt to buy time, how to treat what was wrong with Sam didn't exist in Equestria. He would have just been in that state indefinitely, so they really made the right choice by not trying it. Treatments for Equestrian bacteria would have no effect on the type of bacteria that was killing Sam, so his illness was incurable in Equestria. The only way they could have saved him would be to get him through the portal, but that would have lethal to him once he become sick a second time.
i.ibb.co/WVt64wV/981-E735-D-D722-4-FE5-A84-A-69-EBFA6692-F3.jpg
10652192
Not quite, since most of the story, overall, wasn't really a downer story, and things still ended on a more optimistic, positive note. particularly, this narration line from Starlight.
I was even debating removing the "Sad" tag at one point, but Sam dying near the end was the main reason it stayed.
10652288
understandable
10671959
It's loveshot! It's like buckshot, but love-themed. Still blow you in half, though.
rip
Damn you for making me cry!
10/10, would feel again..
10763458
Don't worry about it, just trying to lend a hand
This is just me but I think had Sam lived, he and Starlight might have gotten together. I could be wrong of course.
10776812
Given some more time and if Sam went on to feel romantic feelings for mares, they might have gotten together. They were close enough for it to potentially happen.
I KNEW IT YOU KILLED HIM OFF TO AVOID A SEQUEL! MURDERER
!!!
10871633
TheHardie-Boy had asked me to have the story end with Sam dying before I even agreed to take over the story, so that was planned from the start, so it was really less me trying to get out of writing a sequel and more sticking to our original plan.
That said I did have thoughts about calling an audible and instead have the ending happen in a sequel. But to be honest, I wasn't sure if I would have even been able to finish it if I did try to give writing a sequel a go.
11678289
Yeah. I was kinda in an alright mood when I got to the end and I was like…”what.” And then I actually started feeling sad. I’m just glad it didn’t make me think of my late grandparents, cuz their one year anniversary is coming up in September. It caught me so off guard because I wasn’t expecting anything like that when I read the fic.
But otherwise, it’s a testament to how good your writing is! (Not to be like people who say “I never normally feel feelings when reading fiction” but I felt my real happiness dim when I came across it). You were able to make that happen! To someone that doesn’t happen often to! Congrats! (Is this a weird thing to congrats? Maybe. But I am like Twilight in that I will obsessively wonder and worry about something so this is why I am rambling. Me being Twilynanas
)
11678298
I was thinking that too about it being weird. It's what I was going for when I wrote the final chapters since they were some pretty sad chapters, save for the more uplifting epilogue, but there's an innate weirdness to aiming to create a feeling of sadness in a story. Doubly for me who usually write comedies, making this story one of my few outliners
11678801
I’m usually one who finds it hard to write fluff, as I am all about the angst. But I’ve never really purposefully wrote in a sad ending I’d have in mind before writing the fic, so this is new for me. It’s always interesting to see how people write something different from their usual, especially if it is something not too close to the original genre/style of stuff they write.
I’m glad the epilogue was more uplifting, otherwise I don’t think I’d be able to handle it.