Eternal Twilight

by Squirrelloid

Dear Princess Celestia

"I think that's enough for today," Twilight said, ending the spell.

"But it's early still!"

"Yes, early enough for a little filly to get to school on time. I do still know what weekdays are, you know."

Dayspring pouted. "School is just a waste of time. I can learn more on my own, reading. And its not like we're learning cool secret history or magic or anything else awesome."

"Hey." Twilight put a hoof on the filly's shoulder and held her eyes. "All knowledge is valuable. I don't care if its crop rotation cycles or mathematics or even … hoofwriting." There was a distinct emphasis on that last word. "You never know what you'll need to know."

"I hate hoofwriting!"

"How do you think we got all those books in the first place? The printing press hasn't been around forever."

"Yeah, but..."

"Either you learn those things in regular school, or I will teach you. And I promise I'll be much harder on you than your current teacher is." She put her hoof down for emphasis.

Dayspring sat there, perhaps weighing the options in her mind.

"You know, there is another reason to go to regular school..."

"What's that, Twilight?"

"Make some friends. Certainly you aren't going to meet anypony besides me hanging around the castle."

"Yeah, but..."

"No buts. Off with you."

"But..."

"Make. Some. Friends. And don't forget this." Twilight levitated the letter to Dayspring, who took it in her mouth.

The filly sighed as best she could through the clenched teeth around the envelope as she slowly trotted towards the doors. She looked back once, when she reach them, but Twilight made a shooing motion with her hoof. And then Dayspring was out through the doors and Twilight was alone again in the hall of windows.

"Celestia as my witness, I don't think I was that stubborn... okay, it did take a royal order... you know, let's just say I deserve this... I'm talking to myself, aren't I?"

---

Dayspring's surprise arrival a couple days previous had disrupted long-established routines. Certain things had gone undone, remembrances that were important to Twilight, and so she found herself out in the gardens around the palace standing in front of a marble statue. Celestia as Twilight wanted to remember her. She was rendered with her legs folded under her, her muzzle and wing around a filly by her side. No cutie mark graced the filly's flank, nor did the statue commit to any specific detail which might have identified the pony. It wasn't important that the filly had been Twilight, and for all Twilight knew there had been others before her. One thousand years was a long time. It was Celestia's kindness that had been captured forever, written in every stone feather and muscle.

"You know, I'm not sure what should embarrass me more: that I waited several hundred years before I was ready to forgive you enough, or that it took me fifty years to work up the skill to make this. Guess we can't all be experts on everything."

Flowers had grown around the statue. Elegant tube-shaped flowers of a pink so pale they were almost white. Twilight didn't actually know what they were – she had scoured the library's botanical collection and utterly failed to identify them. For all she knew they were a novel species, somehow formed by the magic that had created this timeless place where she never need face the light of day.

"This isn't the first time I've wished you were here to talk to, but it might be the first time I could really use your help. And I know you aren't actually here in any sense... not even your horn, which is in the palace archives... and I had to call starlight for you... I wouldn't have been so cruel as to leave that undone, no matter how upset I was at the time... sorry, rambling... but my sense of you is here, and I suppose it doesn't actually matter if you can hear me or not, just talking helps sometimes.

"Um...

"Dear Princess Celestia,

"It's been a thousand years, give or take, since my last letter. I apologize for being a poor student of the magic of friendship.

"This week I learned that it doesn't matter if you think you can be forgiven or think you are worthy. Friendship is a gift that is not earned but given freely. The only thing you can do is try to be a good friend in return. So I'm going to try, and hope it doesn't all end in tears. Again.

"I think you'd like Dayspring. So young. So much wonder at the world around her. I think I was like that once, a very long time ago, when you took me in. It would be a shame to destroy that innocence, and yet, there are truths she needs to hear, and the enemy of innocence is ever knowledge. I could hide things from her, but you tried that and it didn't work out so well for any of us, did it? So what else am I to do?

"And yet childhood is precious. Is it so wrong to want to keep things from her, if only for a little while? But I can see the slippery slope down which you took us all from the top of that mountain. Just when did it all go wrong? When did it become easier to just let things continue on instead of coming clean? Did you fear I'd think you were a monster?

"I confess, I fear Dayspring will think us all monsters when all is told. How could she not? We are monsters, after all. Still, I'm not sure I could bear her reaction even now, and it's only been a few short days.

"I...

"I'm just going to talk myself in circles, so rather than work myself into a mess fixating on this, I'm going to think on it for a bit instead. Surely I have a little time to figure out how to get this right.

"Your faithful... no, that's not really true, is it? Your former student, Twilight."

The unicorn mare lowered her head to the statue, eyes closed. She breathed deeply, letting the fragrance of the flowers, whatever they might be, soothe her. She still had time.

---

Luna's memorial had its own private alcove in the maze, a small statue atop pedestal, carved together from one solid piece of marble. A cratered sphere – the moon – dominated the display. Curled before it was Luna as she was before and ultimately after her banishment, head alertly held up and face hopeful. Three small fillies nestled around her. Atop the moon, rearing, was Nightmare Moon in all her glory and terror. Around the column amaranth grew wild and untamed.

Twilight's lips twitched in a smile. Her parting shot at Celestia, carved in stone for all to see... well, all who could get to this garden. That was a remarkably small list.

"You were right. Well, most right. I blame myself, really. You and yours were the true innocents. You could have trusted me enough to tell me before events spiraled out of control. But for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

She wished she'd known the lunar alicorn better.

She surprised herself by voicing her next thought. "I forgive you and absolve you. It was not your fault." She paused. "I should have said that a long time ago. My friends would have forgiven you... if they could have... had they known. Too many victims." She worried her lower lip with her teeth. "I hope it's better wherever you are now."

She left the alcove uncomfortable and ashamed.

---

Life-sized statues of her friends were grouped together in a large intersection of the maze, the last ones she'd made. She'd spent a lot of time carving them, so many years ago, but now she only slowed her pace to look at them as she passed. She'd already communed with them a few days ago, and her sense of them was much stronger with the stained glass in the palace than here. This memorial wasn't for her. Too impersonal. Too public. This memorial was for others, someday. And she was already feeling guilty about visiting the last of the memorials several days late.

She disappeared deeper into the hedge maze, passing through a score of intersections without a moment's thought, turning sometimes this way and sometimes that.

Hidden within the maze was a small tombstone. It was far older than the other statues, and thus was just a simple headstone. Almost entirely replacing the hedge walls around the grave – and unlike the others this was a true grave – was a tight cluster of white lilac. Their perfume was heady in the close confines of the dead end.

The stone had no name or dates. Only a single sentence marred its face. An epithet.

Twilight stood in quiet contemplation, drawing strength from the place.

That which can be destroyed by truth should be, was all it said.

Author's Note:

Sorry its been so long. As I'm sure often happens, I had a clear picture where I was going up to a point, then some general notes, and a clear idea where it was ending. Well, I got to the general notes and couldn't make things crystallize. Serving two masters – the frame story and the history story retold within it – is hard. At this point I've torn apart and pieced back together my notes, shuffling a bunch of stuff around. The frame story will be better served this way.

And sorry its short, but the next part really wants to be its own chapter.

For the curious, the epithet is a quote from P C Hodgell (at least in our world!).

Next chapter shouldn't take me nearly so long. Its time for Twilight to talk to someone other than Dayspring, after all. (Wild guessing encouraged, although really, there's only one logical candidate). I'll also make a note about how this fits in with season 3 next time. We're going to be diverging. (If nothing else, it's obvious the season finale won't fit with how I've conceived the world).

Comments

[Knight of Cerebus]

What happened to Cadence?

[Obsidian]

I was thinking of Discord too...

Seems like Twilight had something of a falling out with Celestia, and something happened with Luna too apparently, prior to them dying.

[Commentaholic]

2088670

Yeah, if you can call Discord the "logical" choice ;)

[Zobeid]

You know... The thing that nags at me about this story is, I'm not sure if Twilight is even alive. Sometimes she seems very tangible (such as when she was writing the letter), and at other times it only makes sense for her to be a ghost, suspended between the mortal coil and the afterlife until her sun-and-moon duty can be passed on to another.

I did read another story here on FiMFiction in which Luna lingered as a ghost long after the downfall of Equestria, haunting the ruins of Castle Canterlot. It was very sad.

[Thespurgin]

2088739 I would call this the curse of eternity... and endless chain of heartbreak. A mournful sadness so great it strips the life from it's victim, much like a leech sucks blood. Twilight is not physically dead, but neither is she truly alive either. To live, one must have a definite end, just as a line segment must begin and end. If it did not, it is simply an existence.

That is Twilight's bane... she does not live, she simply exists. What life she had is nothing but a pale memory. A fate such as this is deserved by nopony, and noone.

And now, let us commence the continuation of the plot!

[Ten Speed]

I've been waiting forever for this! I really was beginning to think it had been abandoned.

[Shielded Myth]

im guessing either Cadence or Discord

[tirilee]

I hope you have enough time and ideas to come up with the next chapter very soon

[Squirrelloid]

So, i expected to be done with the next chapter by now. I did not expect to get knocked out by the flu for two whole days. Blech. I did get to repeatedly dream about the next chapter (and several others beside) in my feverish state, so if things go weirder than I was anticipating, I'm... sorry? And assuming I'm feeling well enough to be awake more than 2h at a time at some point here, there should be a chapter in the near future.

[Vash_ts]

I am guessing Spike, the only non alicorn who could live so long...