Twilight Sparkle ceases to be the world's only reincarnated pony when she sees a familiar sight in dreams. Except, it's one that she never remembered before.
The demigod Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle ceases to be the world's only reincarnated pony when she sees a familiar sight. On the day before her many times, great-granddaughter is born one dream troubles Twilight Sparkle. She dreams once again of the desert but this time, she remembers.
And Twilight Sparkle is a pony used to remembering. Her friends. Her family. Her wife. The teacher she lost so long ago...
Twilight Sparkle's favorite season was always summer. Her birthday was in spring, so summer was when she could demonstrate one small occasion of pride. She allowed herself and stand a little taller and say how much older she was to everypony who dared to ask — and who she dared to reply to. Twilight was rather inept in that regard, after all. Still, pretend-pride was always something she found a small shred of fun in — pretending to be confident was so different from who she really was!
There were other reasons to love summer. There was ice cream to look forward to. Her favorite flavor was vanilla and she always got it in a cup because she hated spilling things and it was neat. She never got sprinkles because they got stuck in her teeth, and always she ate her treat neatly with a spoon because her mother taught her to have good manners ages ago. As a foal, Twilight would get to play with Shining Armor — who was now long dead — and she could never forget Summer Sun Celebrations, because they had Celestia, who she adored.
She didn't want to forget Celestia, ever, but Twilight Sparkle was old and a demigod. She did not have the memory of a god. She had forgotten the exact color of Celestia's eyes and her brother's favorite movie. Maybe that was natural; Shining Armor was dead, and Celestia wasn't.
Twilight kicked at the sand with her hoof. She was an old fart, as Spike liked to put it. Her mane was mostly gray and pulled into a very neat bun. Her bangs were just gray, but otherwise the same. She had just never thought of trying anything else. Twilight's coat was a little duller and her eyes stared best at papers directly under her muzzle. She looked like she was somewhere in her sixties, but was pushing something far older. Cadance had once told her that demigods — the proper name for what she and Cady were was not 'lesser alicorns' which was a term now forgotten by anypony who knew much of anything — have a maximum lifespan of one thousand and one hundred years. The limited magic that kept them alive was complicated, primal, and generous compared to the mortal pony's two hundred thirty years on the planet.
Cadance died when she was six hundred and forty-seven.
It wasn't like it hadn't been coming. She went easy. Twilight didn't need a doctor's opinion about that. She had died in her sleep. Twilight Sparkle knew that the strangest little smile Cadance had on her face in her casket had been natural, though eerie all the same.
They were sisters-in-law, so why wouldn't they?
Luna says they talked, but only in the barest words. She never told her what Cadance said. Twilight rarely spoke with her anyway. Twilight had just been glad throughout the entire ordeal. This was because when all the majority of mourning was over, she and Luna had made up for that last fight months before her final rest. It meant they could grieve separately, but without bitterness. It hurt her, it really did, to see her fight with her only remaining sort-of family member like that. On rare occasions, she and Cadance fought too, but always found their bond could be mended in a way hers and Luna's couldn't be. Cadance took defense every time, and had managed a frosty passiveness that Twilight hadn't known in her before she moved to the Crystal Empire.
Cadance would tell Twilight that what she saw as her own calling was wrong. That she needed to let go and open her eyes and think for herself. She had the nerve to call the school of thought that Twilight had never stopped defending — otherwise known as the Celestian ideals — 'rigid' and 'fanatical' when they were based on the same teachings that the benevolent Celestia taught them in their respective youths. They were the kinds of teachings that none of them were supposed to let go, especially when things became tough — even when that unjust toughness was the world itself.
And things used to get very ugly.
Used to.
Now, with a castle empty of proper residents that were not her or her staff, a Twilight Sparkle of one thousand and fifteen years would find herself surrounded by a particularly uncomfortable kind of silence. It happened between her usual activities, as it wormed its way into her ever-organized schedule and infected parts of her day.
Here, Twilight Sparkle heard that same infection of silence in the desert where she stood.
Lonely dunes of sand stretched out before her, and she could see no place without them. Here, even the wind was quiet, but the direction of Twilight's ears and the workings of her mind were not focused on that. There was just soft sand and a dusky twilight sky. Twilight's response to noting this was a very simple, quick blink. There had been a little bit of sand caught in her eyelashes, too. Her expression was not filled with the dorky perkiness and general sense of friendliness that she showed around ponies, but a neutral expression. Her mouth was in a straight line. Simple. Plain.
She disliked this, the whole mystic presence. Mysticism was a thorn in her side, the antithesis to the logical and predictable mystery. There had been no villains stirring in centuries, so this was not their work. Twilight Sparkle was certain that she was sure of that, and her thoughts moved on.
She disliked this because Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, did not like to be plopped in remote areas and uncivilized places. She liked to see the faces of ponies and all creatures who embraced friendship and Harmony. She liked to talk to them and hear their voices. The only 'remote' place she really enjoyed was a quiet place to read and the only 'uncivilized' place she didn't mind was her castle before spring cleaning.
Absentmindedly, she kicked at the sand again. The coming night air made it cold to the touch, and she shivered quietly. Thoughts of summer pierced the fog in her mind, but the comfort she received from such hazy recollections — she forgot a lot more recently — was... inadequate.
Nothing stirred, and Twilight would speak if there was somepony to speak to. It wasn't that she didn't want to speak — the sound of any voice at all out here would bring her relief — but the lonely silence felt so overwhelming and unnatural, especially to the Princess of Friendship.
Silence was usually always lonely to Twilight Sparkle.
She began to walk in no direction at all — just aimlessly attempting to follow whatever light of the sun that she could. She always remembered when Celestia still raised it — those images were burned in her mind forever — and she remembered when Luna was still a princess. Why would Twilight not follow the sun? To do so was already an instinct.
She moved with the sand, hopping down the dunes with finicky caution, muttering quick exclamations of discontent that didn't mean anything. She just wanted to hear the sound of her own voice. Any voice. So, Twilight babbled to herself about this and that. That the sand was too cold. Where she could possibly be. How she got there. Spike not visiting enough. Something to remind one of her maids about tomorrow. An old song she couldn't sing that well. Anything that held little meaning at the moment escaped her lips.
Eventually, Twilight Sparkle stumbled down a dune. Her wings were flapping, and it was hard to remember not having them now. She was squawking in alarm as her long out-of-practice — Twilight preferred 'retired' — hooves fumbled through the soft, shifting ground.
After a few shakes of her coat, careful not to disturb the elegant graying bun of her mane, Twilight managed to dislodge most of the sand that still clung to her.
Under her hooves, the sand did not shift, and that deviation from normalcy suddenly had Twilight's attention.
Sand that was completely still? Her eyes narrowed faintly in the direction of the darker part of the distant, unmoving horizon. Odd.
Twilight Sparkle had come to dislike 'odd' things. Age and experience taught her full well what they could do.
"Hello...?" she called into the distance, letting her social habits take over without a second thought.
She only heard her own echo.
"Anypony here? Hello...?"
Twilight paused briefly. Still, she heard only echoes in an abnormally still world.
"Do you speak Equestrian?"
Nothing. Her ears flopped downward.
"Anypony at all...?"
When her sad call wasn't answered, Twilight lit her horn with a faint magenta glow. She let her aura flare out, sparkling in the dark with many of the colors of the sky.
The life-sensing spell returned to Twilight... and sensed only her.
"Oh," she said sadly, a small frown crossing her muzzle. She had no knowledge of where she was, which made worry creep into her. The largest deserts on the Eastern hemisphere were south of Equestria, which was located on the northern continent. Those deserts were in Saddle Arabia, a nation she hadn't visited diplomatically all that often.
But then again, the Arabian deserts also stretched into parts of Maretonia...
Twilight stepped forward and eyed the sand again. Maybe she was in Maretonia, then. It was less populated than Saddle Arabia. Either way, she wouldn't be able to teleport. Everything would be out of range. She could manage the occasional cross-country teleportation — if she wasn't heading anywhere by train or airship, that was her preferred method of travel — but anything on this scale? And while being wholly unfamiliar with the territory as well?
Twilight Sparkle snorted. She wasn't a god.
She wasn't Celestia.
There was a faint tightness in her throat. It wasn't all that sudden, Twilight knew why it was there. Her legs shifted awkwardly, but she stood firmly in place and felt all the more comfortable for doing so if Twilight worked very hard to ignore everything else. She hated to act on impulse.
Her wings shifted too, and the only sound Twilight heard was her heart pumping and her feathers rustle. She wished for it to be noisier.
There was the soft tinkling sound of something stranger than wind chimes, and yet not so strange at all.
Magic.
And it wasn't hers.
Her heartbeat increased with a mixture of emotions she didn't stop to identify and Twilight's ears perked forward. Her eyes widened as she attempted to search the dark sky for any sign of the still-going sound.
The pressure in her throat was almost forgotten.
Because—
In the darkening sky, there was light — and in the mind of Twilight Sparkle, it was true light. It was bright, white, and radiant. It did not blend with the darkness, but drew the purple demigod's eyes away from it. This light took the form of a butterfly whose fluttering formed the sound that had reached Twilight's ears, which twitched. Twilight Sparkle was absolutely certain that she had never seen this butterfly before. Twilight knew it the way that she knew she wanted to study magic when she first saw Princess Celestia raise the sun all those years ago...
She stared at this butterfly because as soon as she acknowledged it with her confused purple eyes, it drew closer to Twilight. The way it approached her made Twilight think that the butterfly was familiar with her... even if she had never seen it before in her life, and this had quite obviously never happened before. She dug her hooves into the sand and continued to watch it. Even if she hadn't thought about her long-gone friends like this in a long while, memories of Fluttershy were hard to ignore when something so delicate fluttered about right in front of her.
"F-Fluttershy...?" Twilight whispered shakily. The faint sound in the still desert contained more emotion than she'd put into saying the name of her deceased friend since... she didn't know. At her age, many early memories often escaped her without physical reminders.
Twilight Sparkle wrinkled up her muzzle when the butterfly landed on her face, its movements careful and light.
"No," the butterfly whispered back in the high, clear voice of a child. "I am not a butter-shy. Do you still call them butterflies? I cannot remember!" The voice had become a pleading whine. "I can never remember! Not like this!"
The way that the voice stumbled over each 'I' made Twilight think that this odd child — or creature — wasn't used to speaking so. Perhaps it had a lisp. A few faint questions hummed in the recesses of Twilight's mind, but were overwhelmed by her confusion, and the focus she gave it.
"Fluttershy," Twilight whisper-corrected, sounding slightly offended. "Her name was Fluttershy."
When the butterfly gave her wings — Twilight had decided that the voice sounded like a filly's — a gentle flutter. Twilight finally did sneeze, disturbing the thing.
"Aiiii!" the butterfly squeaked. "How rude!" It was hard for such a childish voice to scold, but she certainly seemed surprised.
"I'm sorry," Twilight said simply, the ghost of a friendly expression buried in her still-present confusion. She extended a hoof in politeness. Her teacher, her Canterlot upbringing, her society, morals, and more had her always ready to show manners to such harmless creatures such as this. "Your wings were tickling my muzzle, I sure hope I didn't get anything on you!"
Twilight Sparkle smiled politely, and didn't think to guess if the filly-butterfly could sense this or not.
"Sneezing on a princess!" it made a sound almost like a cute little snort before pausing. "Are you a princess too?"
Twilight blinked twice. "Err... what?"
"I am a princess," the butterfly said with a careful, polite primness, "are you a princess too?"
Years of diplomatic experience and centuries of niceties took over, and Twilight kept herself from gaping while nodding politely. "I am a princess. What are you the princess of... Miss... erm, what is your name?"
The last part was purely to humor the 'creature' that was about as real as a demon, but Twilight waited with a mask of calm anyway.
"I cannot remember my name," the butterfly said sadly, her flapping slowed. "I cannot remember anything! There is the desert and there is the mountain. There is a brother — there are two! Both are older. One is funny! And the other..."
The butterfly trails off into painful silence. Twilight picks up on some of this, disliking the sudden discomfort of it all.
"Well... umm... can you remember anything else?"
"Which one is mine?!" the false creature wailed. "I do not remember! I do not remember! W-Where is Nora?" The last part came out like a sniffle.
"Nora?" Twilight repeated. "Is that your name?"
The butterfly was quiet before she stammered out an answer. "...N-N— M-Maybe?"
Twilight looked at the whimpering being of light. "Can I call you that?"
The butterfly bobbed itself in a sort of bizarre affirmation.
Throughout her life, Twilight Sparkle had never known anypony who went by 'Nora' or anything like it. The name sounded very exotic to her ears... but somehow, deceptively familiar as well.
"Well, Nora, why are you here?" Twilight had never said the name before. It ended up sitting on her tongue with the same, startling familiarity that 'Shiny' did, and she wasn't sure why. "Are you lost?"
"Maybe...?" The fluttering of the butterfly's wings had become nervous. "Are you?"
"Yes," Twilight replied automatically.
"Why do you not remember me?" the butterfly asked with a voice like a whimper.
Twilight froze, her confusion now obvious. "I've never s-seen you before, how could I remember you?" Her throat felt drier.
Once more, the butterfly flew close to her muzzle and landed there. If she had eyes, Twilight swore that Nora would be peering at her curiously with them. Above them, a sky full of stars twinkled with a multitude of purples.
"I remember you!" Nora said with a tone that bordered on pleading. "Why can you not remember me?"
Twilight opened her mouth and instantly tried to think of what she could say to make this odd little insect feel better. It reminded her of her own two foals from long ago.
"I've never seen you," she whispered weakly instead.
"You never remember me," Nora whispered back, wings drooping with sadness.
There was a small tear poking at the corner of Twilight's eye and she didn't know why. She didn't even know which one, she just knew that confusion hung over her as heavily as a thick blanket. There were questions to be asked, but she couldn't even fathom which ones, and why... and just... If this had happened before, why didn't she know? Shouldn't she?
The sand felt much colder under her hooves and she swallowed nervously. "Is there anything you can tell me? About what's happening?"
With a careful flare of her wings, Nora decided upon folding them properly. Now Twilight was certain that if she had any eyes, Nora would be fixing an important stare upon the demigod.
"Why do you never remember?" Nora's voice was quiet, and though it was a child's, there was a sudden maturity to it.
"I don't know," Twilight said calmly. "What am I supposed to remember?"
"The desert."
Twilight's muzzle scrunched up again. "Um."
"Your home."
"I'm from Canterlot," Twilight said, her tone that of a parent correcting a foal's mistake.
The air was still. "You are not."
Now it was Twilight who was still. "P-Pardon...?"
The tingling feeling that came from having the mystical creature perched on her muzzle made Twilight want to sneeze again. This time, she held back.
"You... and I... I remember that we met."
One of Twilight's ears lifted, and her confused expression had returned as she stood tall in the sand while the stars glittered on. "We... have?" She eked out her words carefully, and yet it still sounded like she stumbled over them.
"Almost every night," Nora says sadly, and Twilight gasped.
"But... why can't I remember?"
Nora was silent before whispering her response: "I do not know. You never remember the desert. You do not remember the city. You never remember your sister."
"Sister?!" Twilight squawked. "I'm really confused now! Why hasn't Luna entered my dreams yet if—?"
"Your dreams of butterflies have never called to her," Nora said with a delicate stretch of her wings as a soft desert wind blew by. "The Luna you speak of does not follow dreams with a plan... at least... that is not what I can sense from what she has told you..."
Luna had told Twilight bits about dreamwalking before, over the course of the centuries they had known one another. Yet,'known' was such a strong word. With each passing year, Twilight knew less and less about the mysterious mare who was the face of Equestria. Luna insisted on a relationship that was nothing but professional between them. It had always been distant, and grew so with each and every day. Sometimes, this reality caused Twilight's heart to ache for reasons she dare not focus on. Not here.
"I'm dreaming?" Her question felt pointless, and her voice was unsure, but she spoke anyway.
"You are, and you dream oh-so-deeply right now."
Tilting her head to the side slightly, Twilight tucked a strand of her mane back into her impeccable bun and realized that she wasn't wearing her crown. She always wore her crown, even in dreams. Maybe she didn't don it in the first two hundred or so years as a demigod, but it soon became a known fixture and icon of the mare known as Twilight Sparkle.
...And it was so silly of her to forget that she had it! Though, that had been happening a lot more lately...
"How long have you been... here?" Twilight waved a forehoof toward the desert.
"Since... forever, I think," Nora mumbled, tone as bumbling as a little filly, unsure of the answer to a teacher's question. Twilight heard more of herself than she was comfortable with acknowledging in that voice. She could only wonder why she hadn't noticed something so uncanny before. Drawing in a deep enough breath — she didn't wish to scare the entity known as Nora — Twilight did the age-old technique that Cadance had taught her a long, long time ago... was it at the restoration of the Crystal Empire?
That's what Twilight's mind supplied, at least. It was hard to remember.
Finally tired of all this, Nora flew from Twilight's muzzle and fluttered off another way. She took care to still stay within Twilight's range of vision. She danced about in the air quite eagerly and waited there. Picking up on the cue, Twilight unfolded her wings carefully and bridged the gap between them with a short flight. How natural her wings felt!
"Where do you want us to go?" Twilight pretended she didn't hear that her voice sounded nervous. She wasn't even sure why it did. There was no evil in this dream. And yet...
"Home," said Nora as if it was the simplest thing in the world, and all had been explained.
Watching silently, Twilight swallowed and debated what she should do. Shaking her head — carefully though, to keep her mane intact — she trotted after Nora. Hopefully, this would not turn into an adventure, and she would get answers.
Suddenly, when she approached Nora, wanting to talk more about the matter, Nora took off. Reeling backward and sputtering slightly, Twilight's eyes widened with surprise as she looked on. Nora began to fly away, and quicker than Twilight thought possible, not bothering to wait for the demigod to follow her rapid movements. This left Twilight with the option of galloping to catch up with the almost-apparition who claimed to haunt Twilight's many other dreams. Her ears pricked forward to hear the newest sound that broke the silence of the desert that Twilight thought so lonely. From where she flew, Twilight Sparkle could easily hear the adorable, high singing of Nora. She was singing an old song - perhaps a lullaby? It certainly sounded like one: there was childish imagery in there, and innocent, silly words describing the great walls of a city Twilight never knew—
—and none of the words were in Equestrian.
This brought Twilight's hoofsteps to a stop. Over the years, Twilight Sparkle had picked up on a few foreign languages. She had learned one or two to their fullest, and spoke them as though they were her own. She wasn't the most experienced of polyglots, but she had still opened doors that connected her with other ponies.
And somehow, she had failed to notice this... was it some kind of translation or perception-altering magic? Twilight hadn't cast any translating spells... she hadn't even realized there was a language barrier until the unusual singing of Nora started. Only then did Twilight realize her song sounded very un-Equestrian.
This whole time, Twilight had communicated with her—
Out of pure frustration, Twilight stomped her hoof into the loose sand, her expression souring before she galloped after the fading butterfly of light disappearing into the horizon. It was difficult not to think of ghosts seeing that sight. Twilight Sparkle could not remember the last time she galloped across an unfamiliar terrain with adrenaline flowing throughout her and her mane threatening to fly loose. Her hooves pounded the sand wildly — she had to keep herself from slipping — and she was nowhere for more than a second. Her throat ached for air as she chased what couldn't be much more than a ghost.
Twilight stopped focusing on what was around her, and let the colors of the desert bleed together in her mind. Browns, golds, purples, blues, and other shades both inky and earthy became indistinct to her as she pressed on, her hooves pounding at the sand as fast as she could force them to. Heat touched her mind, waving across her sweaty coat and coming into contact with the freezing air of the night in a noticeable contrast of two extremes. Eventually, when her chest ached even more for air that couldn't come fast enough and her aged legs wobbled, Nora's flight ceased.
And Twilight Sparkle stopped with her. From here, she could look down upon all of the wreckage. Nora hovered by her side.
Before Twilight Sparkle was the grave of a city. She had no idea what happened here, other than it caused her aching heart to drop in her chest, as though it were shirking away from something other than physical exhaustion.
The sight would haunt her, no doubt.
Here the air hung still with the air of something possibly worth than death. Twilight felt that in her old bones, and she also felt dwarfed by the remains of this catastrophe. Dunes of sand had already built up around the rare piece of rubble that was charred so that the otherworldly craftsmanship of stone and metal was reduced to something no enchantment could possibly protect it from. Everything had been seared with scars of evil and desecrated like fire against an unguarded paper. Of all the pieces that were upon the desert's surface, few were recognizable as much of anything. Defining features had been warped to be little at all. She just knew that this had been part of something, it's just that every sign of what that was had been stolen from her.
Now, all was sand dunes snaking their way into this desolation and burying it. All was being pulled deeper into the earth as time and the elements wore on.
Once again, there were tears shining in Twilight's eyes. "Where are we?" she croaked. Why was she so sad? There was the obvious: ponies had died here, of that she had no doubt. Still, where had this irrational and almost personal sadness sprung from?
"Marecca," Nora whispered, "or what is left of it from ages ago. There is nothing you shall find now."
"But—"
Twilight swallowed uncomfortably, unable to bear the sight of the ruins. She turned away and tried to blink away those tears, years of professionalism and maturity reining in the emotion she refused to let control her already hazy mind. She paused, noting that Nora's voice sounded much more like hers than she thought under the thick accent. Younger, of course, and with an odd elegance to her speech. Maybe it was a local dialect from... well, wherever she was from.
"Is this your home?" Twilight had never heard of Marecca. It sounded Arabian, just only vaguely so... and oh, all of this was giving Twilight a headache.
"I cannot remember if it was home, but I almost remember Marecca." Nora flitted to Twilight's ear and landed there.
The sensation was not unwelcome either. Twilight was reminded of how Spike would cling to her when he was younger and so much smaller. Occasionally, she would miss things like that, but there was little clarity to those memories now. Twilight had grown used to such feelings, and they had lost their grip on her so that pleasant, fuzzy detachment could get hold of her. She still talked to Spike and she had many more friends, as she had for centuries.
"What was Marecca like?" Twilight offered. A friendly discussion could be informative. She didn't really care about this city, in particular, the sadness tearing at her heart was one she had not willed. The ache in her chest was at the thought of all the lives lost. The vast expanse before her — unless it was altered in whatever destruction hit this city — could house a city that would easily make Canterlot seem like the tiniest of hamlets. Was something like that even possible? Even the biggest of cities Twilight had visited never had that effect.
"A grand citadel of..." Nora trailed off, melancholy and lost as well as utterly unsure of what to say. "Brother and I built sandcastles," she informed instead.
Twilight frowned a little. "Well, what was your brother like, Nora?"
"H-His eyes were green?" Nora offers with a stutter. "He was so c-calm... and he always helped me."
Twilight cracked a small, polite smile as memories of her own brother filled her. Even thinking of everything tied up in the idea of her 'BBBFF' was such a source of nostalgia for her now, though she hadn't spoken the phrase in centuries. He'd since become Shining Armor, ruling Prince of the Crystal Empire, beloved husband to Crystal Empress Mi Amore Cadenza, loving father to the deceased Princess Skyla, and one of the two founders of the House of Snjórinn.
He was a hero, just like her.
"Whoever he was, he sounds like a lovely brother." Twilight wasn't lying. A nice sibling was something to compliment. It was also the Celestian to way to say such things — to be kind, to be humble, to do good, to be social, and neighborly... to encourage such normalcy among creatures.
"Something went wrong," Nora whispered. "He did something wrong, and I cannot remember. I never can!" Her sudden scream rang across the desert, echoing through the rubble.
Twilight drew a calming breath. "Nora, I'm sure that your brother was great. Maybe you two just had..." Confused, she looked outward toward the ruins, thinking of what would make her feel best, "...a little itty-bitty fight?"
"M-Maybe..." Nora whimpered.
"See!" Twilight said, a positive smile on her face. "I'm sure that all of this is from something different..." She swallowed, "...something far worse."
Nora didn't respond.
"Nora?" Twilight said carefully. "What is it you want me to remember and why?"
If Nora was capable of taking a deep breath, Twilight heard something like it emit from the dream-creature. "I want you to remember you."
"What?!" Twilight said with a yelp as her eyes widened in the dark. "Remember me? Now I really must be going senile! I'm the Princess of Friendship, well, I was the third... or fourth in terms of... okay, never mind that. I am the Lady Twilight Sparkle of the Equestrian Empire, Princess of Friendship under Celestia's Equestria. The point is, I must be bonkers if I'm dreaming about made-up cities and butterflies who sound like me when I was a filly, only they don't speak Equestrian a-and—"
Twilight realized what she was doing. She quickly shut her mouth and lowered the hoof she had flung about all too accusingly. Nora fluttered mournfully in front of Twilight's tired, frantic muzzle, distancing herself from the mare she had clung to.
"Y-You never remember," the butterfly whispered, choked. That was the tone of somepony who had had a dream shattered again and again... and somehow Twilight was aiding this.
She wasn't being a good friend.
She was being honest.
Twilight sucked in another breath and looked upon Nora with more confusion than she could ever hide, no matter how much time she had spent as a Princess had taught her otherwise.
Nora was fluttering with rapid flaps of her wings, frantically and desperately beating. When she spoke to Twilight Sparkle next with a voice that bordered on a broken wail, she was begging.
You have seen me almost every night when you are not dreaming of the mundane. In libraries that you smile throughout as you walk cheerfully among the shelves, or mundane recollections, and nights with no dreams. In them, I am not yet to be, waiting for the ordinary cover of your first dreams to fall way. Sometimes, I am your first and only dream of the night.
Some nights, you wake up with a tightness in your throat, as though you had been crying.
That is how everything ended. Every night ends like this. That is the only end that I have to give, the only one imprinted on my light. Tears, tightness, and the closest stab of hurt that shocks the world from you.
You were crying. You never believed me. You never remembered. You would run, or you would fly off, and every time you would never believe me.
I do not remember my brother or my name. I do not remember what I should of my city, but for over one thousand years — for your entire life, I have been here trying to make you understand something that you and I must absolutely know in full. From the time you were a toddler, I was here pleading with at every moment I could between those fitful naps of yours. I have stood over a filly who was unable to talk to anypony outside of her family and foalsitter and pleaded for her to understand something my tongue has gotten twisted. I did so until tears ran down your cheeks and my non-existent heart ached as though I could still cry. It was all because I needed you to remember something, and your foalishness only tore you from me more than waking up ever could.
I cut against your teenage pseudo-skeptic phases with all I had to offer. I presented myself wearily to a married mare who was convinced I was little more than a figment of foal-related stress. When you were a widower, I tried to relate your loss to the loss that I am absolutely defined by, for every night I am sundered and unsundered at once with my existence. I am all the fragments of a fallen star within you. I am the dreams that made your heart heavy with a fuzz that vanished once you saw every new dawn.
You have seen me every night and never stopped looking at me like I was a stranger. Every night, I have to beg you again, and attempt to bring you back. Over and over, I try to tell you a name I do not remember, and every night is more difficult than the last. This is endless, and I have known this weariness as much as I know anything. I am stuck here, rooted in you as part of you. I have always been so, and yet I feel I have been rotting since forever and Marecca ended.
This never ends, seeing you so distraught and angry, your whole world shattering anew each and every night. Only, you get to wake up well and look toward the sun and its golden, blinding light. Meanwhile, I appear each night, wishing each failure to be less brutal than the last. I only stopped drifting when you were known, but the anchor that you are may be worse than always running from unknown ghosts. I can speak again, but it is all vanity. I can only tell you that you have the most brilliant ignorance, Twilight Sparkle, and it is not even your own fault.
I sound like a filly. I feel like a filly. I remember being a filly. I remember the desert sands, a pale-coated older brother, and how he would be there when I chased the butterflies around the gardens. But I do not remember what kind of flowers grew there, only that they were in Marecca, my city. I do not know anything else about my brother. I do not know his name, or what color his mane was. Even an outline is grander than what I have left. Most troubling of all, I do not remember myself. I do not know what the world felt like under my hooves, and I am no longer certain if I even had them anymore. I do not exist because I do not have a name, face, or magic. Without magic, there is nothing. Even my soul feels cleaved.
I remember being a child, a filly. But there is little else, if there ever was.
How can I be anything but a dream if this is all I am doomed to?
I really am doomed. I watch you every night, as you look upon me with horror, and reject my every word. For centuries, I have told you everything I could, pleading time and time again, and describing this empty feeling to you... only to watch your reactions of dismay and how you have crumbled.
And then everything begins again.
Nothing continues.
Nothing ends.
You never remember.
You can never look at me as anything but...
You are never going to realize it, are you? Though I may be robbed of all individuality, I have spent a thousand years watching you grow further from my every last attempt to stir any recollection. I know little. I am for little, and for this, I might as well not exist at all. Without the individuality memory would lend me and this agonizing endless beginning, I really am nearing nothing. If I am not able to have the self to define myself, I do not exist. Yet, I am still here.
But I know this. Please listen, if only once.
I know I am twined with you and you are as you are because of me. There was a time before you, and it was during the time after Marecca too. This was a time of huddling in a world that was pulled this way and that, as it quivered under layers of ashes, and I felt something when I was nothing. I ran, unremembering, for what might have been forever. Until, one moment, there was enough of a time that my almost-forever stopped. I felt a mother and a father, and in the womb of the former, mortal life not yet grown and realized. I felt an older brother, and thought that something I had buried in my frenzy of running was more familiar than it had ever been in this set of mortals. I felt that there was a home. Somehow, I was drawn to this combination of things for every reason I could never know... and then... I... well, it is hard to remember. I sank all that I was into the two components that were to be you, until I was the third fragment of what you would be.
Then you were born; this cycle began from your very first night. Nothing sunk in faster than the sheer vanity that things would be, from that night and all nights after.
I was always a butterfly. Fragile. Weary. Delicate. Renewed. Drifting.
Each time I fail, I think I forget a little more too. I certainly have had less to say since that very first night. To call myself anything, or make any attempt to acknowledge all this as whole — I, me, mine — feels disgusting and wrong. Even after all this time, I know not how else to convey what is left. Despite this... circumstance, and the brutal hold over what it has over all that is left of m-me, I shall do this again. I am not me, and thus, I am without choice more than I have ever been. I am begging you as I always have, do not think my woe will drag me through this again. I wish to slip away, I have pleaded silently for the mercy of apathy to something that I cannot resist the compulsion for, and it does not come. Our meetings — if I were to give them such a casual term for such desperate interactions — have been nothing short of me pleading through this unshakable heart-crushing fatigue, century after century because...
Well, I cannot tell you how many times I have called 'Remember when...' only to have next to nothing for you to remember, going so far as to scream my plea at you in this loop until my voice is hoarse.
You and I are not different. Whatever happened after that bonding has woven us together, as accidentally intended. You and I are the same. I am Twilight Sparkle as much as you are, and you are me as much as I am you... and yet, we are always incomplete. So many times have ended with you calling out that this is a dream and screaming the name of a mare you loved once — a mare you believed could help you? And yet, she did not come. This is a dream, and yet something much more personal, even if I lack identity.
I have forgotten, and you never knew.
But... I have wormed what little there is of myself within you and known you — for you and I are only so different. Maybe — I can pull a slim part of me — a phantom of myself free from you... though it will pull me apart again. With the greater piece of me, I might be able to find one who can remember when—
Over the years, Twilight Sparkle's castle had not become cluttered, but more had been moved into it, and there had been changes. While clutter was never allowed, Twilight liked to think that all changes were welcome under her roof. Some sentimental things were left intact: Rarity's memorialized sewing room, which was always cleaned by the maids, and the old bedroom Spike could no longer fit in, seeing as her drake-slash-brother was no longer able to fit inside her castle. There were offices, studies, and a group of tidy libraries scattered throughout that was a kind of recreational status symbol to Twilight. She now had converted a larger space into a lecture hall. There were bedrooms for any guests visiting on royal business and some for Twilight's staff, since a portion of them were not local.
She called them all her friends, and the generations of staff that came before them were called the same. Twilight would smile and wave her good-mornings to each and every one of them. She rarely called them by name when something like 'friend' would simply do.
Twilight walked through the crystalline halls that she had become more familiar with than the Golden Pines Library she had once called home... 'Golden Pines' had been its name, hadn't it?
She didn't stop to muse. It was all in the past, and ponies mattered more to her. All she needed to know was that Princess Celestia sent her to Ponyville, and that Pinkie had thrown her party there... her first sleepover had been there... and her friends had made it a happy place. Oh, and Spike was able to live with her then — and as a sweet little baby dragon!
Twilight smiled as bright as the morning sun that shone through the windows. Even if the sun hadn't been the same with Luna raising it, just as the nights of Celestia were often called 'lesser' — Twilight privately liked them, but she never said that to Luna's face. Not ever.
Her gray-purple-magenta mane was pulled into her signature bun without a single strand out of place. Her 'nerdy' bangs were still there, bobbing about in an almost measured way. Reading glasses hung on a jeweled chain around her neck, their gold rims twinkling. The crown she had once been so reluctant to wear was now an everyday fixture in her mane.
She went through her usual routine. First came smiling at the staff and saying cheery greetings as they went by. Then, she resumed her own walk to the decorative throne room that she had. Ah, but how glad she was to have company! Though she was no divine, the Princess of Friendship couldn't imagine a life without so much company: friends, pen-pals, her descendants, and crowds made up of subjects waiting to hear her friendship lectures made and marketed to the masses. Oh, to think of all the ponies she's touched with the Magic of Friendship!
Over the years, every hallway had become a historical exhibit — well, no, not really, but it was close enough. Twilight took care to keep plenty to cater to her rather modern tastes. Of course, there was still plenty she left out — the magi-tech and other 'wonders' that had become popular with Queen Luna and the... King's renaissance and reign had barely been adopted by her for... reasons. There was just enough in her possession to get by and nothing more. Never more.
She'd never admit that it was partly out of something like spite, even if she knew it for herself. Friendship princesses didn't feel spite.
So over time, every hallway had become a chronicle of the mare known as Twilight Sparkle. Her life could be mapped out with the orderly halls of photos, pristine mementos, portraits, preserved letters, invitations, and articles she kept on display. At first, she had been reluctant to even hang newspaper clippings of her accomplishments, even with her wife's encouragement. After Rarity passed away and Twilight's two foals moved out, she took up the suggestion after so many ponies wrote to her about it.
Even in the beginning, it was hard to find one of her alone. In foalhood images, family gathered around her. She was always surrounded by her parents, brother, and foalsitter. Even a few fillies from the School For Gifted Unicorns — now an unintended inheritance she only ever kept as it was while all the world moved on — found their way into these images. A school-aged Twilight was reluctantly captured alongside Moon-Prancer — that was her name, right? — and other friends, like Lime Hearts and Twinkledust.
There were numerous images of her and Princess Celestia, for she was the princess that Twilight held in her heart more than any other, the mare she thought a true ruler, and the Greatest Good. Celestia always found her way into photos with Twilight, even if it was more than just the two of them. Crowd shots were not free of the duo, and there were shots that had Twilight as a filly to the demigod she had become. While Twilight had grown up, she had never grown any taller after becoming a demigod, and age had robbed her of some of her gained height.
Whenever Twilight neared a miniature memorial to the four friends she could never forget and the mare who became her wife, she would pause and give each photo a tiny wave, or her mouth would curl into a faint smile.
"Hello girls," she would rasp on occasion, as she heard herself do now. After that, she would move on.
There was a certain period of photos she could only bear to look so much at. Sandwiched between the period between a couple of years after Twilight and Rarity's wedding were two very important ponies: Gallant and Stellar Streak, the two little stars of Twilight's world who had called her 'mommy' and been welcomed into her home.
Stellar Streak, her centuries-dead youngest, had gone on to marry a unicorn sorcerer and start a legacy of magicians and other strong magic users — all carrying her pegasus blood in her veins and Harmony in their hearts. The Celestian way had never been lost on Twilight's descendants, even if some of them had been a little more... moderate over the centuries.
And oh, how that legacy had grown! To Twilight strolling down her hallways one chilly morning, it felt like it was only decades ago that one of her great-great-great grandfoals (truthfully, there were more 'greats' in there) by the rather plain name of Cosmic Dust had had two lovely fraternal twins that had Twilight jumping about with glee like the day she got her cutie mark. What a giddy matriarch she was that day! He bestowed such simple names upon them: Fantasy for the unicorn, like his father, and Feather — a name that almost bordered on a slur in this case — for his pegasus daughter.
When Fantasy was killed in a clash with a mercenary, Dusty had the nerve to declare the tragic event part of 'Gallant's Curse' and plunge most of his immediate family into hiding while Twilight had to cope with feeling like she had lost a son all over again.
She didn't know that Dusty started acting as the tyrant of his own family, and had Feather kicked out before she was sixteen. The domestic troubles she had experienced had caused her to cut off ties even further, and it wasn't until Twilight had learned that Feather was dead and had a granddaughter that she finally tracked down a mare that didn't want to be found. Twilight had learned the granddaughter had married into and settled in a community of earth ponies south of the big town of Appleloosa.
So, that was why she didn't look at photos of Gallant most of the time. She would ave to remember a cadet buried too young, and all the superstition that came after Her hooves didn't stop their steps on the cold floor, but she paused to glance at what weren't the photos she grew up with, but photos all the same. Magic advanced in Equestria where industrialization and technology were concepts doomed to fail, bowing to magic when needed at all, and bettered by magic. The queen and king had made sure that overly rapid and harmful technologies couldn't be produced, patented, or sold.
From a long table with a polished crystal surface that matched the rest of the castle's decor, Twilight levitated a picture frame into the air. Squinting at it futilely, she eventually set her reading glasses neatly upon her muzzle and peered through them at the picture she was holding so carefully.
Inside, a unicorn mare who bore a stallion's engagement ring on her horn was embraced by a Twilight Sparkle only a few years younger than she was currently. The gold band complimented the unicorn mare's coincidentally-colored pale lilac coat well. Twilight saw the way her crown slipped a little and a few strands of her mane escaped her bun, the gray and faded magenta a sharp contrast to the natural, sleek white of Twilight Starshine's.
She had a many times great-granddaughter named after her. And she didn't get to know her until she was a grown mare ready to start a family of her own with an astronomer as her husband-to-be.
Twilight watched the photo quietly for a moment. She saw the way animated tears pooled in her eyes then, and the way her forehoof moved to hug Starshine closer. While the photo moved, some things were not there, captured in their tearful reunion. There was no mention of how Starshine told Twilight she got picked on for having such a similar name too. Twilight's first part of her name had been her mother's before her, and as a filly, she had been teased for it too.
She became Starshine's 'Granny Sparkle' and never let contact drop between them. If her own family could 'vanish' within the borders of Equestria, who was to say what couldn't happen? Twilight had spent centuries avoiding adventures and disasters — anything like that, really — and sometimes it still seemed to catch up with her, no matter how much she was happy to have everything remain in order. Especially at her age.
The movement of the image continued, and Twilight saw Starshine's deep navy eyes blink away a few tears. While old photos — the ones that never moved — had a vibrancy all their own, there was something nice about being able to see everything as it was, even in glimpses: falling snow, drizzling rain, cheery waves, and widening eyes. Twilight never gave the art of photography much thought at all — it just lacked what really got her interested in things — she felt a connection to both still and enchanting images like the one she held now. Both existed in balance, represented equally in her hallways and the world outside her castle.
Not delaying herself with mementos any longer — she had centuries of them, and she wasn't one to dwell on things like this — Twilight continued her way down the halls. Rows of identical doors until she came to the one she knew she needed to enter, the neat numbers upon it shining in the morning sun. Twilight stretched her aching legs before lighting her horn to enter. She yawned once and rubbed at her eyes absentmindedly with one hoof. When she had first woken up, her throat was sore. She found her voice to be a bit hoarse, as though she had been stressed or something of the sort. There had also been tears stinging her eyes. She had wiped them away immediately and without care, knowing that her eyes must've been strained from last night's reading and yesterday's paperwork.
If she had a dream, she didn't remember it.
...
Twilight Sparkle called this room in her castle the communication room. Scrolls and parchment were arranged in neat towering stacks, cementing the 'stately office' half of the room. Quills, pens, and inkwells were arranged in orderly rows like soldiers. Upon a heavy table was a magi-tech-built machine bearing gears, tubes, shiny metal, and compartments. If she set the brass-colored, and glass contraption on the crystal floor, it would come up to her chest, and it was almost twice as wide. She could not lift it very easily at her age.
The magic rattling about in it hummed, tethered there with enchantments, and shoved within the modest bowels of the machine.
It was a decently practical machine, and was a little more 'tech' than 'magic' — so it wasn't the best working either. It was an old communicator, almost as though it were a discarded prototype. There wasn't any signature of the King's on it, so she knew it could not be of his making. Oh, but the knowledge — that word was always sour when it was in reference to him — was always his, wasn't it?
He had always been living up to that title...
Twilight swallowed something that was partly out of spite, and then she refocused. She had things to do today, things that began with a post-breakfast conference with her family, and a special one too. Twilight lit her horn, and magenta light bounced off the facets of the crystalline walls. She ignored their irregular patterns, and looked around the shelves on either side of her that were practically built into the walls and resembled honeycomb.
Within each nook where prisms from the Crystal Empire — which was no longer a colony of Equestria as Princess Celestia had wished it to be — were created by the abilities of the crystal ponies. The enchantments that could be put upon them were great. The crystal ponies knew the special stones of the world — and their magic — and what could be woven there. When Twilight first saw Crystalline magic — true Crystalline magic — with these prisms, she hadn't known it yet, but had been in awe anyway. It was Celestia who showed her the image of a then-lost empire with this kind of magic. At the time, she hadn't known it was anything unique or related to an endangered heritage.
However, these prisms were a bit different. They had to be in order to serve their purpose. Within each was a tainted center of smokey gray, weaker than anything she had known and dealt with in the past. This worked no corruption. It was a subtle form of the 'dark crystals' that had never been crystals at all, but magic made solid. Those crystals were dark magic that manipulated itself, those it corrupted, and could be manipulated by those who bore what Twilight would never stop thinking of as a chaotic taint that had gone too far.
Sleepily minding the hums and whirls of the gears and mechanical insides of a machine activated by magic before her, Twilight's horn glowed again and she reached out to locate an unused crystal. Once one was gripped in her magic, she checked the clock on one of the walls and paused. The ticking of the crystal wall clock could be heard over the faint rumbling produced by the contraption. She still had time to spare. Even after all these years, she was still a punctual mare... and a faithful princess.
She bit her lip. Her horn glowed with a smidge more magenta with the recollection of emotions she quickly tamed.
Telekinesis reached out and opened a compartment along the side, and the metal gleamed like the crystalline room before Twilight carefully loaded the crystal into the clunky machine. Magic flared again, and the entire contraption whirled anew and the sound or mechanics and magic grew stronger as the magenta aura sparkling around the machine intensified.
Twilight checked the clock again. Starshine would be starting up hers too, only it might be her husband, White Dwarf, who answers instead.
Trotting over to a different angle, she peered through a small strip of glass that allowed her to see how her prism was faring as the literal magic was worked within. The gray taint was within was drifting and spreading about, like something between mist and water rolling about in an empty bottle — something the solid prism was not. Away from the city of Ponyville, Starshine would be operating her own device with a similar prism, one that held a similar taint within it.
Magic crackled and formed, stemming from what was held inside the prism. Magenta static folded from within the machine and a window of translucent aura rippled across the space above the machine's body, floating there. Blurriness rippled and through it, shapes were emerging. Those shapes became outlines, and the outlines gained detail. However, the finished display still lacked the same details of life, instead of presenting a distorted haze highlighting a room and a pony. A unicorn.
Princess Twilight Sparkle raised her head, stepped back, and looked at a magenta-tinted projection of the world. Even through this machine, the din of Manehatten penetrated the walls of the hospital and carried over the hum of magic. Twilight blinked and looked at the image of a unicorn. It was blurry, and she could only be so sure of how things went, but she was certain it was a stallion standing there. She hated this old thing, but it did what it did — and it was all she had. She couldn't send a scroll for something like this.
"White Dwarf!" Twilight said with a smile. "Good morning, and how good to see you!"
The magenta image smiled.
Twilight knew that if she were to stand before this stallion, his coat would be caramel and his short, wavy mane would be silvery blue. Wire glasses were perched on his muzzle, and there were faint bags under his eyes. Overall, he looked a bit untidy, but that was to be expected.
"Princess Sparkle," he said, voice cracking with joy and crackling with magic. There was a grateful look in his eyes — without Twilight, neither he nor his wife would be able to communicate with the demigod. The spare machine that she usually lent to Spike was now in the maternal ward of a high-class Manehatten hospital — and, as promised, it was able to be set up so early in the morning.
"Hello, Dee," Twilight said, smiling. The laugh lines under her eyes creased like they always did. "Did everything go well? Am I—"
Dee smiled and laughed in his pleasant voice. "You are a grandmother once again! Well, technically you're her great-great-great-great-great—"
Twilight waved a hoof, blushing bashfully. "Oh, I know! I'm old, but enough about me, how is Starshine?" A fleeting bit of worry crossed Twilight's deep purple eyes as she looked around for her descendant.
"Star is doing fine," Dee said, shifting and standing taller. "She's just tired of all the work she had to do."
He laughed and Twilight cracked another smile. She had never given birth — not once. Rarity as her spouse had ensured that no foals of hers would be related by blood, but she loved them all the same. She always did.
When their laugh was over, Twilight stared into that magenta vision and smiled. "Did Starshine have a colt or a filly?"
White Dwarf's tired smile grew brighter. "Star had a filly-"
He was cut off by an unexpected squeal from Twilight — one that sounded like it could have come from a filly. "A FILLY?! How lucky! Fillies are always so sweet. They won't wave fake swords at dinner time, they'll chat about hoof polish in the cutest little ways, and fillies stay still when you brush their mane."
"Recounting your personal experiences with the Lady Rarity, Princess Sparkle?"
Twilight nodded, and White Dwarf's image bobbed his own head in some sort of thoughtless agreement.
Rarity's name still jolted her from any remembrances that drifted by her like a haze. Rarity's face always stuck with her, and so did Rarity's love. No date that Twilight ever went on could compare to the lingering legacy of Rarity in her mind. They were social. They were normal. She stopped them after a while, upon seeing them never work, but those mares — oh, and a few stallions — always left the fuzziest impressions in her mind.
It had been a long time since anypony had said 'Lady Rarity' in a way that made it clear she had been Twilight's wife instead of the Element of Generosity. Sometimes, not having that bothered Twilight. Today was not one of those times. Her heart was light in her chest.
"Does she have a name yet?" Twilight asked in an excited whisper that somehow managed to be carried through the distance between them.
White Dwarf shaking his head no only caused Twilight's excitement to grow. "She only saw the world a mere—"
Twilight bit back what might have been a curse as the projection wavered and static crackled throughout the room. The words of White Dwarf were lost in them — almost lost. She heard the time that little filly she would be Granny Sparkle to entered the world. She knew that exact minute because she saw it on her alarm clock as soon as she woke up. As the interruption died down and a bit of percussive maintenance was applied their connection was restored once again. Twilight knew that even as old she was, her ears didn't betray her.
She fiddled with a few strands of her mane, distracted by her own excitement, and didn't notice that her straight mane was entirely gray, and not a single bit of magenta remained in the dull silver.
"So sorry about that!" There was Twilight's sheepish smile. How long had it been since the gesture was natural instead of just something she was known for? "You know how these can be." There was the smile again.
White Dwarf laughed conversationally and nodded in understanding. "Very true, Princess! As I had been saying, your many times great-granddaughter has yet to be named!" White Dwarf scratched the back of his head with a forehoof, awkwardly mussing his mane. "We can't think of the right one... but..."
Twilight looked steadily at him, confused. "But?" There was something like a mother's worry in her voice. "Did something happen...?"
Her thoughts reached and twisted into desperate, quiet, and quick pleas to whatever divine could be influenced by something so—
"No, no, princess! There's no need to worry! Our little filly is perfectly healthy, Princess Sparkle. There are no worries there."
Thank the gods. Maybe Twilight sighed. She did feel a momentary numbness fade, and that was enough.
"So... there isn't a problem?" She had been a mother. She needed the clarification.
"No, princess!" A reassuring smile she's seen thousands of times before from many other ponies. "It's just that Star and I were thinking about naming her... Twilight..." He swallowed. Quickly. Then, he continued, and Twilight looked at him wide-eyed. "...We were going to add something after 'Twilight' o-of course! Star and I just don't know what, princess."
There was the name again. Ponies did not have surnames, but they had clan names on rare occasions — very rare. After all, who hadn't heard of the Bluebloods, or at least what was left of the de-titled but iconic old house — or the Lulamoons? The Pies had faded over centuries, getting swept up in the trees of other families centuries ago. The Apples were still around, if not quite as strong. The proud House of Snjórinn to the north was known by all. Among the gods, there were but remnants of houses that Twilight had not given that much mind, chief among them was the Galaxias, with Queen Luna Galaxia as the current head. It was always a march of names.
And for every creature, pony or otherwise, there was another march of names. When any creature was born — but most especially an equine — the first most important thing that a pony would receive would be their name.
It was important for a pony's name to be as unique as could be possible. It marked them as an individual before their cutie mark did. Ponies in Equestria may have been drawn to consider themselves as part of a group — Twilight knew now that it was downright abnormal for a pony to be truly isolated and reject socialization — but there was something that a name granted them that was granted to every other creature too.
Some taboos were universal, and were not to be broken. Others were cultural, and didn't have any particularly and inherently harsh consequence for breaking them. No pony who lived the life of a hermit in Equestria would be considered a danger to themselves and to society, but they wouldn't really be accepted by it; they'd be a spectacle to it. Twilight did not think this cruel. All they needed was to accept friendship. She was sure she met a pony like that once — one who locked herself away in the dawn of Twilight's years as a princess. It didn't even matter that she locked herself away, she accepted Twilight, so that is what Twilight remembers.
One such taboo was to name a foal after another pony — especially one who was still alive. To tack a name like Blueblood or Lulamoon — hadn't she known a Lulamoon once? — onto the name of a pony was nothing. Those were house names. But to name a foal after their parent's as Twilight was named for her mother?
It was widely considered disgusting, to some degree, and yet the descendants of Twilight still saw fit to reuse her name. They had never been the most creative lot and continued to mostly marry minor magicians and students of the stars, but Twilight never minded. She had to bear the teasing from the name long ago, when Twilight was the name of a schoolfilly and a homemaker and author. Now it was a little more than a time of day, it was a synonym for an old hero.
So Twilight smiled, and there was the lightest flutter in her chest and a faint feeling in her head that she might not have realized was there since she had woken. It was as though some thin fog had sunk into her mind. Was she forgetting something? She recalled no dreams, except perhaps some dizzy impression of stars.
She laughed too. Quickly. It didn't sound that mirthful, just everyday and ordinary as ever. "Oh, your Granny Sparkle is very biased here, but Twilight sounds like a lovely name!"
White Dwarf was able to muster a sheepish smile of his own, and a thin chuckle too. "Twilight it is! But, uh, the rest is still up in the air, princess."
"Well," Twilight said softly, a momentary brightness in her eyes, "Could I see her? Or...?"
On the other end of the projection, White Dwarf's eyes widened and his mouth formed a silent gasp. "Oh, princess! I apologize — just, uh, stay where you are!"
He shuffled away and Twilight's heart skipped with excitement as the minutes ticked by. As that time passed, she did not count anything other than the brief flutters of excitement in her chest. This never ceased to have her yearning to see a fresh face — a new birth was something to behold! Then, there was the sound of soft cries that split into brief wails, like the horrid peals of some discordant bell. Twilight loved the sound.
White Dwarf shuffled back to where he stood before his departure, his ears pinned back to avoid the infant filly's racket. She was swaddled, and Twilight had yet to see her face, but she could plainly see how White Dwarf's was aglow and he cradled the fragile young pony in his aura.
Twilight gasped, her eyes wide with love at the sight. "Oh gods and stars, she's beautiful, Dee!"
He shushed the little filly as best as he could before answering her. "Yes, yes. Beautiful and noisy. I imagine that you wish to see her face, Princess Sparkle?"
Twilight nodded vigorously, clapping her purple forehooves and tossing her gray mane behind her. A few pesky strands had freed themselves once again. "Oh, of course!"
Carefully, the sleeping Twilight-to-be was held at an angle where the elder Twilight could glimpse her face... and she found herself stunned into silence.
Magenta may have washed out what color her coat was supposed to be, and spilled across the little bundle that stared up at Twilight Sparkle. Twilight shared no blood with this filly, and yet she looked like something out of a dream, resembling the very mare she would be named for in a hoofful of ways.
No matter the magical monochrome aura, the face of the little filly was clear, and her shades could be guessed. Her coat was dark — something earthy, but not rich — and she had eyes that were impossible to look away from. Their paleness indicated a light color — blue, most likely. Starshine had blue eyes, but Starshine's father had pale ones. It was her mane that was truly familiar to Twilight. It would be a dark mane, and based on how the projection's aura blurred things, her mane would be something very close to purple or blue. Maybe it was magenta. Yet, it could also be something else — perhaps royal purple? Though she looked upon a filly, a few things were clear. Her mane was striped like Twilight's, but from what there was upon her little head, it was darker, thick, and wavy, even for an infant filly.
Twilight's tired magenta eyes met the pale ones of the filly who had an impossible resemblance to her. She thought that this must be what Princess Celestia had felt centuries ago, when Twilight Sparkle had been gaping excitedly at her own rear, and the starburst that marked her for a destiny she had yet to know.
Those pale eyes looked back at her, without any understanding, and only showed awe at a shimmering figure before them. The filly's cries had stopped the moment she laid eyes on Twilight, who heard the little one coo softly. For the briefest moment, Twilight noticed how there was a familiar quality to those eyes she couldn't place, and that thought came with sudden dizziness — just a faint haze in her mind, really — that had been plaguing her since she woke up. It was a forgetfulness, and the vague acknowledgment of some absence that might have been there before. She felt different, but barely — she was bound to, witnessing this little filly staring up at the projection of a lavender demigod with a mane of silver.
It was almost like a dream, but Twilight remembered having no dreams last night.
But when she half-closed her eyes in a simple blink, she felt she might've: a mundane dream, if all it had was a butterfly among the stars.
So Twilight's thoughts settled on stars.
"Polaris," she said, quietly but clearly. "Call her Polaris."
White Dwarf nodded, rocking his daughter gently. "An excellent idea, Princess Sparkle." He smiled kindly at her.
Twilight Sparkle was too busy looking at Twilight Polaris to have caught it all, and she swore that when she looked at this filly, she saw a bit — no, felt - a bit of something so familiar in her, and she hadn't the foggiest idea as to what, how, or why.
In fact, it almost felt like something out of a dream.
