> Hier kommt die Sonne
>  by Firebrand
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> Hier kommt die Sonne
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

     As I write this, the final few remnants of the world I have known for so long are in their dying throes. The final threads tying together what I knew as reality are about to break.

     In my life, I have seen many things come and go: Empires, rebellions, and wars; lovers, friends, and family; students and mentors, lessons taught and learned. I have seen the advent of more ages than are in any history book.

     Very little has remained constant all these years. The world around me, the citizens, the laws, the technology, all shifting so often and so quickly that it seems almost alien.

     The sky stopped being blue millions of years ago. Mountains have shifted and crumbled, seas have evaporated or been drained. Continents drifted apart and the oceans rose and fell. A map from the beginning of my reign would be nearly unrecognizable as being of the same planet.

     In the eyes of my citizens, I am an alien creature. The entire pony race has changed drastically over last 4 billion years. In my eternality, I have become the last example of a long-dead species. Modern ponies  are themselves almost entirely unrecognizable; if I hadn't watched the changes happen, I would not recognize them as equine.

     The original tripartite of species was surprisingly fragile. Despite a struggle for biological equality, the last of the Earth ponies died out more than 3 billion years ago. The remaining races, in turn, proliferated and diffused, evolving on their own into myriad subspecies. Pegasi tended more towards birdlike features, their wings migrating down to their front legs and becoming largely prehensile. Unicorns became strange, lithe, hairless things with tall, slender, graceful forms and large, immensely powerful horns. Neither species have tails anymore, and cutie marks are a rare sight.

     I alone now serve as a common link between the numerous species, being at the same time an amalgamation of their traits and also something entirely alien to them.

     Technological advance has been something equally awe-inspiring and terrifying.
    
     Sticks gave way to swords, swords to guns, guns to beam weapons, and beams gave way to weapons which manipulate the very fabric of reality. Bombs never stopped getting bigger. Mutually assured annihilation ensures that warfare is no longer a stark reality, but more of a vague tool wielded by politicians and extremists.

     Computers evolved from gargantuan calculators to minuscule devices capable of simulating whole universes. By the end of the first million years of my reign, it was commonplace for everypony to have some form of computer implanted in them; this abolished the need for libraries or even books, and allowed non-unicorns to harness magic, or at least a convincing-enough facsimile thereof. My divinity lost its meaning when everypony acquired the potential for virtual godhood.

     I had to scour long and hard for the quill and parchment with which I now write. I have had to readjust to the change of the language every couple hundred years, and even then my speech is usually so antiquated as to be foreign.
    
     As I write this, the sun is dying. We always knew it would happen someday, but I never expected to see it. Much like one's own mortality, it was always tucked away in the farthest corners of my mind. But I have never before had reason to dwell on the end of my own life; it was always an impossibly distant event, not worth considering. I have had the misfortune of watching more ponies come and go than there are stars in the sky. I grew comfortable with the notion that nopony lived forever, but I never thought to apply that to myself.

     I am bound to the sun. As it grows large and red, I can feel myself dulling. My powers are weakening, my thoughts are muddier, my mane no longer flows in its iconic wisps. I have lived, give or take, for 4,406,213,789 years, and my time is coming to an end.

     Luna died 782,309 years ago. In her absence, the moon was harvested—disassembled by tiny machines—and used to build grand vessels to bring ponykind to the stars. The oceans grew stagnant and the climate was altered drastically. Climate change was a far deadlier force than anypony could have predicted. The planet quickly became a nigh-inhospitable mire, swampy and desolate. With the rise of technology, we lost our world, and sought outwards for new homes, new ecologies to ravage. 

     As I write this, the sun is dying: it is growing cold and bloated, and the surface of our planet grows hotter and hotter as it grows. Within the next couple of years, I am told, the planet will become too hot for ponies to live on, internal climate change notwithstanding. Within the next thousand years, it will enter its final stages and burst apart at the seams.

     I am perhaps the last living pony who recognizes what a tragic loss this is; though our species may proliferate on worlds beyond, the loss of our home planet is still a harrowing premise.

     As I write this, I realize this is probably all for the best. It is, after all, my home planet, but not that of any of the ponies alive today. I am a relic of an era so ancient that the final textbooks to mention it are themselves parts of ancient, forgotten histories. The peak of my reign was closer to the birth of the realms than it is to this moment, this impending eschaton. I have no place here.

     The sun is dying. I am dying. I am immortal, yet the end of my life is on the horizon.

—Princess Celestia, 3789 Aevum Solis 447







     As I write this, I am dying. My body is weakened and frail. Any semblances of power or divinity I once held have shattered.

     The sun is dead, and with its passing so to has my own death warrant been signed. My immortality is lost. The accumulated weariness of four and a half billion years of rule are crashing into me all at once.

     I cannot even stand to lift the quill with which   I wrote before; instead, I must dictate these words to one of the few scholars able to interpret my ancient, outmoded speech.

     As I recite this, my mind wanders once more to the past, to those primordial days when everything seemed right. My memory is fading, but amidst all the fog, those days burn bright: an age of harmony, an age of primitive ponies living simple, blissful lives. Perhaps my mind is skewed by the rosy hues of the past, but this is something I aspire to. If I had to do it all over again, that would be my goal. No marvelous technologies, no galactic conquest: just a quiet, happy empire.

     And I have thought to the future. It scares me, thinking of where we might go from here. At the same time, it calms me, knowing that it is not something I will have to deal with. I trust the ponies of the world to know where to go from here.

     I am having trouble speaking any more. As much as it pains me to do so, as many thoughts as I still have to share, I must stop. I would be foolish to even try to share an eternity of wisdom in these final hours I have left.


—Princess emeritus Celestia, 604 Aevum Solis 448








     These letters were found among the personal belongings of the late Celestia, the eternal queen of all ponykind. It has been painstakingly translated from proto-Equestrian to be presented to the world on this saddest of days.

     The first was written some 800 years ago, near the end of the 447th Age of the Sun. The second was written in the last several weeks, whilst Celestia was gravely ill. 

     In honor of the late Princess, this day marks the end of the Age of the Sun, ushering in its stead the Age of Harmony. May this be a time of peaceful coexistence, with each other and with nature. May this be a time of friendship, and of consonance. Of laughter, kindness, generosity, loyalty, and honesty. Above all, may this be a time of harmony, among all ponykind and beyond. 


—An anonymous scribe, 0 Aevum Harmoniae 1