• Published 12th Aug 2022
  • 5,392 Views, 479 Comments

Forgotten: The Crystal Princess - milesprower06



After rescuing Princess Flurry Heart from a frigid limbo with the help of the Crystal Heart, Sunny wonders where to go from here with the first alicorn Equestria has seen in centuries.

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Memories

With the late morning rays of the sun shining through the windows, the Crystal Castle somehow felt more of a ghost town to Flurry than before. When she was here last, the sun hadn't hit the castle for weeks due to the blizzard that had done nothing but intensified until she had made the call to evacuate the city.

Being in these halls brought the memories rushing back. She began to miss her staff, her hairdresser, but most of all, she missed Spike.

But again, she was grateful that they had evacuated in time. The very last thing she wanted to see in any building they checked out was frozen corpses huddled in the corners under blankets trying to get whatever warmth they could.

"So where do you want to look first?" Sunny asked as she walked beside the alicorn in the frozen castle corridors.

"My quarters... It was the last place I was before we put a stop to the Windigos," Flurry replied.

"Did it ever get lonely up here?" Sunny asked.

"Lonely? Not usually. Dull? Yeah, more often than I'd like to admit. It was something my mom always tried to warn me about, and I never really knew what she meant until I took over," Flurry answered, pausing as they came to her bedroom on the fourth floor.

The Crystal Princess' quarters were relatively straightforward and simple; a bed, nightstand, desk, closet, and a triple full-length mirror. The sun coming in through the open window further showed how nearly everything had frosted over; the sheets hanging off of the bed where Flurry had tossed them on her final night here didn't so much as billow in the slight breeze, as they had frozen in place.

Flurry walked over to the desk and her horn lit up as she reached into her saddlebags, coming out with a small ice scraper. She placed the blade diagonally against the frost, and began scraping away the ice, revealing the glass surface. Sunny had been looking at the frozen state of the bed, and came over to see what the princess was doing, watching as the scraping revealed a piece of parchment that had been sandwiched between the glass and the oak surface. When the frost had been cleared, she leaned over the desk, and read the writing:

To whomever finds this letter,

I won't presume to know who you are or what you're doing up here; perhaps a citizen of this fair city that is hopefully returning home, or a descendant. I hope it hasn't been too long. While I have not personally witnessed any of the unrest down south, the very mention of it breaks my heart.

I do wonder what the accounts will be like. To see what the collapse of Cloudsdale must have been like firsthand when it came down on top of Canterlot, or Ponyville as it was slowly overtaken by the Everfree Forest. Every report I have received in the months following have only described the situation as worsening.

While I yearned to join my evacuating citizens, I believe that it is my destiny to use the Crystal Heart to banish the Windigos to oblivion before they can end life everywhere. Ponies shouldn't cooperate together under threat of a frozen fate; they should do so because they love and care for each other.

If you find this, and the lives of Equestrians are still dire, I implore you; learn to love each other again, please. Princess Luna, Spike, and the crystal ponies sacrificed their home so that all of you would get that chance.

Sincerely,
Princess Flurry Heart of the Crystal Empire

"I'm always afraid to ask how bad things got," Sunny commented as she stepped away from the desk, looking over at Flurry for a moment before walking over to the window, looking out at the half-buried city. "All the unity that Princess Twilight and her friends accomplished... All that becoming undone... I don't like thinking about it."

"Honestly, neither do I, Sunny," Flurry said. "But if there's one caveat you could take away, make it this; that no matter how much you revere somepony, no matter how high a pedestal you put them up on, it's very important to remember that nopony is perfect; Not Twilight, not Celestia or Luna, or me."

Sunny smiled at the alicorn as she took the scraper and very gently began to pry the panel of glass up off of the desk, just enough to pull out the parchment, putting it in a protective envelope before depositing it back into her saddlebags.

"I'd say that's another piece for the museum, if you'll allow it," Sunny said. Flurry immediately nodded.

"You won't have to ask me permission for much, Sunny. The only things I'd like to keep are..."

The alicorn paused as she looked around, and came over to her nightstand, where a frosted picture frame sat next to the bedside lamp. She again took her ice scraper, and gently ran it from corner to corner, revealing a photograph of her mom and dad, Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor.

"This is all I really want to keep for myself. Mementos. I know there should be a journal of Twilight's that she sent me. I'm honestly not sure where I put it. It should be around here somewhere..."

Sunny began to pull on the frozen drawer of the nightstand, before likewise getting out a scraper and began to gently pry at the edges.

"What about Yakyakistan? That's further north, right?" Sunny asked as she began to gently work at the edges of the drawer.

"It is, in one of the valleys of the Crystal Mountains," Flurry responded as she carefully slid the picture frame of her mom and dad into her saddlebags.

"Do you think they're still up there?" Sunny asked.

"No reason to think they wouldn't be. But I won't even pretend to know that we'll be able to easily resume diplomatic relations with the other nations of Equus. When the civil unrest started, most nations wanted no part of it. Not when the nation that began to unite all the races began to break apart at the seams," Flurry explained.

"Do you have any idea how it happened? It couldn't have all been Cloudsdale collapsing down on Canterlot," Sunny asked.

"No, it wasn't all that. I don't want to recite events to you from memory, because those could prove to be inaccurate. But I will say to remember that nopony is perfect, Sunny. Nopony... And those that think they are were a very big part of the problem."

Author's Note:

Apologies for the re-publish.

Hit the wrong button. There are times I think a monkey could do a better mobile layout for this site.