Twilight wonders what the purpose of existence is, and goes to the end of her world to find out.
Starlight has a question: why is it ponies do all that they do? She goes to Twilight who doesn't have an answer, but maybe a way to find out. in the name of exploration, she will have to go to the end of the world and find out what the existence of her world is leading to, what the purpose of its existence is.
She does find out an answer, even if it's not the one she would have first expected.
A friend of mine once told me she used to wonder about the purpose of her life. So used to many of her own friends. So used to many members of her family. I have to admit it: so I used to as well. Yet we humans aren’t the only one to ask such questions and even in the happy and simple world of Equestria, some among the most curious have at least once wondered what the purpose of their own world might be.
One was a purple colored alicorn, for whom the unknown was just an invitation to discover something new and amazing. The other one was a unicorn, a bit more reserved, a little more pragmatic in her approach and yet she was the one who had asked the question first:
“Twilight?” Starlight had asked the alicorn. “Why are we doing all of this?”
Twilight had taken her head out of the huge book she had fallen asleep reading and realizing she was indeed the one being addressed, had replied something along the lines of:
“Huh, what? No, sure, I’m awake.”
But after a bit of blushing and the time to come back to her senses, Twilight admitted she didn’t know:
“There is just so much to do, I never considered the question…”
Starlight let out a sigh, looked down to her left hoof before telling Twilight:
“Yeah, me too. At least until this morning. But I had a nightmare…”
Starlight started to explain. She had gone to bed as usual, the head full of new lessons, full of new challenges and full of all the fun she had had during the day. She had the head of a pony living in the magical land of Equestria. Little worries and yet so many new little adventures that it overwhelmed her and forced her to a well-deserved sleep.
It had been black for a while, then pink, then images had appeared and gone away for a long while. She went from dream to dream without any worry until, at some point, the image stabilized and she found herself in her room in the crystal castle. It wasn’t exactly her room, the dimensions were all wrong, the colors didn’t correspond, but she didn’t notice it. She got out of the bed, didn’t wonder why she couldn’t feel the floor under her hooves, and went to the door.
She tried to use the handle, but her hoof slipped again and again over the surface, taking parts of the handle away that turned to dust. She stopped and looked closer as she slightly pushed with her hoof against the handle. She observed the firm metal give in and turn into dust too before falling to the ground. Starlight put her hoof back, but the handle kept on decomposing and soon the whole door as well as the walls all around and the very floor under her hoofs turned to dust too.
She could see the, beyond the disappearing walls, all of Ponyville turning to sand too. The houses and the ponies inside them, the trees and the ponies beneath them, the mountains and all of her friends under them. The background sky itself turned to sand and started to fall down toward the ground in a gigantic cascade.
She tried to back away and escape, but her hooves were trapped in the sand. She struggled to break free and felt herself sink as she got slowly gobbled by the sandy ground. She tried to call for help but in place of sound, only sand came out of her mouth.
She was thirsty, she was tired and at that moment, she first heard the voice.
“You failed.”
Starlight tried to defend herself, but again no sound could come out and even as she was about to start crying, she felt the lack of water burn the corners of her eyes, as only the thousands of salty grains came down onto her cheeks.
“You failed.” The voice said again.
Startlight tried one last time to free herself, but her torso was already halfway inside the ground. She tried one last time to speak, but she could feel that her jaw too had turned into sand.
“You failed.” The voice said.
Starlight was about to give up and let the sand consume her too, but another more familiar voice made itself heard, freezing in place all the grains of sands and breaking the hold on Starlight’s body.
“Do not be afraid, Starlight Glimmer.”
Starlight looked around and saw princess Luna emerge from a curtain of sand to which she seemed completely immune.
Starlight stopped her story and watched how Twilight’s face had suddenly changed when she had mentioned the princess of the night. It was obvious Twilight had become way more interested in the story now that one of the royal sisters was there, but there was also something else hidden in the back of Twilight’s eyes. Starlight could notice it because she had seen it in her own eyes for years everytime she had looked into a mirror. There was that little spark of jealousy, the feeling that it should have been you.
“Has… I mean… did princess Luna ever visit you in your dreams?” Starlight asked.
Twilight looked away and hugged the huge book she had been supposed to read as one would a cushion.
“No, she never has.” Twilight replied. “I guess my dreams aren’t interesting enough…”
“Come now Twilight.” Starlight said back, trying to comfort her. “I’m sure you have a very imaginative mind. She is probably too shy to disturb the princess of friendship during her sleep.”
“You dream of the world turning into a nightmarish desert!” Twilight responded with a harsher tone that she had intended.
Starlight didn’t know what to respond, so she just let a silence take possession of the room for a while. Then Twilight added:
“I just dream that the seven of us go to the library, find a good book and go read it together near the little lake… it’s usually just very pleasant and boring.”
Another silence ensued. Starlight looked at the ceiling to find any idea of what to say next without much luck. She refrained a yawn and decided to go back to her original story.
“So, anyway… princess Luna explained to me that I was probably just feeling guilty about failure and afraid that my failure would make us all fail to achieve our common goal in the future. Also, she said I should probably leave my window open and dust my room a bit more often, or at the very least go drink before I go to bed…”
Twilight took the opportunity and asked to know what the connection was with Starlight’s original question.
“Well, I asked princess Luna how she knew I wouldn’t make everyone fail and she simply laughed. So I asked her to at least tell me what my role was in achieving our common goal, and she looked embarrassed. I pressed her a bit more and she just told me something vague and fled. I think she doesn’t know why we are doing what we are doing.”
“I still don’t get it.” Twilight explained.
“It’s very simple. A goal is like a destination. You cannot hope to have a successful journey if you don’t know where you are going in the first place, can you? That’s when I realized that my dream must have been prophetic. I was being warned about what would happen if I failed to do my part and my part is obviously to find out what the goal is so that we can all work to achieve it and make sure our journey leads us to where we need to go.”
Twilight looked at Starlight’s kind of creepy smile and simply responded:
“Yeah… simple.”
But even if she wasn’t certain the reasoning made much sense, her curiosity had now been awaken. She had other reasons to wonder about it, but she too was now asking why she was doing all that she was doing, and why her friends had to do what they were doing. Heck, she was a princess and an organizer. She had once asked herself why the ponies had to wrap up winter, so it made sense to ask why ponies had to do all those unwanted tasks. Slowly but surely, she realized that the question “why” had no end that she could see and the exchange of one glance with Starlight Glimmer made her understand that she too had to find out the answer.
“Alright.” Twilight said. “I don’t know why we are doing all that we are doing, but I want to find out too.”
Then, both at the same time, Twilight and Starlight proposed their favorite solution for any given problem:
“Let’s find a book!”
“Let’s find a spell!”
They looked at each other and, while they frowned, let out a laugh.
“Actually…” Twilight started. “I remember I had found a book containing a spell that might help us. I mean, it wasn’t designed for that, but if we twist it just a bit…”
“Let’s do that!” Starlight shouted. “Where is that book of yours?”
Twilight looked away and a drop of sweat appeared on her forehead.
“What?” Starlight asked.
“It’s one of princess Celestia’s personal books. It’s in her personal library in her private room in Canterlot.”
“So… all we have to do is steal it, right?” Starlight asked.
“No, we can’t just steal one of Celestia’s private spell book!” Twilight replied, shocked that her friend would even consider the idea.
A few hours later, they were both in Canterlot, behind Celestia’s private bedroom door, and were revising their highly complicated plan to steal the book.
“So you distract her with the fake letter, and I start a fire in the east court. That will create enough commotion to cover for you entering and drilling the hole in the ceiling, so that I may pass the enchanted cord.”
“Wait, I thought you said we needed a magical string.”
“I specifically said we need a cord. It’s the most crucial part of the plan.”
“Well, all I’ve got is a string. But it’s very well enchanted.”
“Okay, maybe we should go for plan B7d2. I just hope we can revert gravity in time…”
“Oh, hello you two. I’m pleased to find you, I was about to search for you.”
Both Twilight and Starlight looked up and saw Celestia’s face watching them with her eternal gentle smile.
Before they could react, she used her yellow magic and handed Twilight a book.
“Here, I think it’s time I finally gave you this.”
Then Celestia opened the door of her room and added:
“By the way, please don’t do anything too foolish. There are creatures of immense power whom when they are sleeping shouldn’t be awoken.”
“Yes princess.” They replied.
Celestia disappeared and the door closed. Starlight looked at Twilight and Twilight at the book between her hooves.
“Is that…?”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“Open it!”
Twilight quickly went through the chapters and, as her memories of her first twenty two readings of the book came back to her, she found the one she wanted.
“It’s a time travel spell, right?” Starlight asked.
She had recognized the very discernable patterns of such magic. Yet this was a very different and more complex yet simpler spell than the one she and Twilight has used in the past.
“Celestia wrote all those spells specifically for alicorn magic.” Twilight explained. “It uses time travel magic, but it’s actually a search spell. The difference is it doesn’t just search for what you’re looking in the present, but in the past and the future too.”
“That’s convenient.” Starlight remarked.
“Actually, the spell requires a very clearly worded question.” Twilight kept on explaining. “So we can’t just ask what the ultimate goal is. It’s not… well to say it simply it’s not measurable in a way the magic can interpret. I didn’t remember that part before. Sorry, I guess it won’t work.”
She looked up from the book and realized Starlight wasn’t listening anymore. Her eyes were fixed on a point far away, a point that nopony else had looked at before, to a point that it made her fur shiver.
“Starlight?”
“I’ve got it! I know what we should search for with the spell.” Starlight replied.
“Okay. So… what should we try to find?”
“The end of the world.”
Twilight’s mind froze for a second. She repeated the word in her head, and then one more time out loud, and still they seems to have a resonance she found a little bit ominous.
“You know, this may be what princess Celestia warned us about. Maybe we shouldn’t poke any further.”
Starlight understood the reluctance of her friend and put her hoof on her shoulder in comfort.
“Yeah, it sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it?”
“Exactly.” Twilight replied, relieved to see Starlight agree with her.
And Starlight grabbed Twilight and brought her closer.
“Yet think about it. The end of the world. Those are just words and we can’t be afraid of words, can we? Words are just meant to be read, to be written and to lay still on their pages.”
“Well…” Twilight tried to defend herself. “Words can hurt…”
“But words can heal, words can guide, worlds can elevate. We choose what we do with them. You can choose too. In fact, you are the only one who can choose right now.”
“Because I’m your friend?” Twilight asked, a bit lost.
“More because it’s alicorn magic and you’re the only alicorn I could convince to do the spell…” Starlight let slip. “Still, it’s all about the journey. It’s not a problem to have seen a picture of your destination before you travel. It doesn’t take anything away from the adventure of getting there, does it? All we have to do is take a quick glance, a sneak peek and then come back with the certainty that we will be heading in the right direction.”
“Well, if it’s just a sneak peek…” Twilight admitted.
“It’s probably why Celestia gave you the book in the first place. After all, how can you be a princess and lead everypony if you don’t know where we should go? That wouldn’t make much sense, right?”
“Right. I mean, sure, yeah, probably.”
“I’m counting on you then.” Starlight added. “We are all counting on you!”
“Okay, I won’t fail you. One sneak peek can’t hurt anypony. After all, princess Celestia wouldn’t have given me the book if it was dangerous.” Twilight replied.
She started the incantation, summoned the magical wind and slowly felt the world fading all around as she kept her entire mind focused on the end of world. A flash of bright light blinded her and she felt herself fall on a ground made of grass and dirt.
She wasn’t in the castle anymore and Starlight was nowhere to be seen. Quickly regaining her senses, she looked around, curious to see what the end of Equestria could look like.
She hadn’t expected anything like what she was seeing.
There was a lot of fire, of course, but those were fireworks illuminating the sky. There was a lot of noise, but it came from a distance, the sound of ponies singing and partying. There was a setting sun, but it was made from the bright and flamboyant orange of spring. It was warm, it was comforting and it was calm and slow.
Birds were singing, flowers were blooming and it was altogether a beautiful end of a day. A nice breeze was caressing the leaves of the brown, yellow and green trees, whose colors weren’t quite right, but in a joyful way. As the day was stretching, so were the shadows all around, shy yet playful they embraced the scenery to lull the witness of their dance in a calm and well deserved sleep.
One bush’s silhouette caught Twilight’s attention. The other bushes had been left free to grow in whatever shape they wanted, which was usually chaotic taken all alone, but harmonious taken together.
But that bush’s silhouette looked like it had been expertly pruned into many nice flowing curves, like a cloud forced to stay on the ground. Twilight thought that it actually could have been a cloud, given that it was entirely covered in shadow. That would have made sense, if the cloud hadn’t let out a little giggle.
“Where am I?” Twilight asked herself out loud, the word echoing in her mind and around her.
“The end of the world.” The giggling bush replied with a voice that sounded both familiar and completely unknown, the same way something weird, like water colored in pink, is still familiar old water, but pink. Weird, yet familiar.
“I admit that I didn’t quite picture the end exactly that way…” Another voice responded, passing by Twilight’s side with grace and beauty.
“Princess Celestia!” Twilight called, recognizing her instantly despite her pink fur and mane and how younger she looked.
She was happy, relieved and a bit surprised to find Celestia in such a place. But Celestia didn’t reply and passed right before her without even one glance in her direction.
Twilight called out to her again, without any better result. She stepped back and her left back hoof fell on a branch. Instead of breaking under the pressure, the branch let Twilight’s hoof pass right through. She tried to touch the grass but her hoof wouldn’t grasp onto anything around her.
Celestia’s voice caught her attention again as the princess of the sun had taken place near the silhouette she had noticed earlier, two shadows in the light of the majestic setting sun.
“I cannot help but feel your place isn’t here, all alone, away from everypony else.” Celestia said.
“I am in the company of a great friend of mine.” The silhouette replied. “This is most certainly my place.”
“Where is your friend?” Celestia asked, as the black shape of her head turned left and right. “Do I know her?”
“Of course you do. It’s you, you silly old prankster!” The silhouette responded.
And the silhouette hugged Celestia who let herself be hugged and hugged the silhouette back.
“I wish it would last forever.” Celestia let out. “The songs in the air, the caress of the wind, the warmth of a friend in my hooves, the joy of every creature all around. This moment is just perfect, I do not understand why you want to end it all.”
“It’s not that I want to…” The silhouette responded. “But I have to move on. It wasn’t clear to me when I started creating this world why I was doing so. At the time I was just scared, I was lost, and I really, really needed a friend to comfort me. I am older now, I am not scared anymore and I am ready to go where I need to go and do what I need to do.”
“You have grown tired of us then?” Celestia asked. “Aren’t we making you happy anymore?”
“No! Oh no. I love each and every single one of you very, very much. You’re all my friends and I still feel like we could party forever. But I grew wiser. It’s my fault, I made you the way you are, so it’s normal you don’t understand. I used to not understand. Things cannot last forever. Things mustn’t last forever.”
The two silhouettes of Celestia and her interlocutor stayed there in silence, embracing each other despite the divide in their thoughts.
“Couldn’t you stay and explain?” Celestia asked eventually.
“And there you go again being all silly.” The silhouette replied. “This world is going to end. Were I to stay another million years and explain everything to you in details, you wouldn’t remember any of it once the world has ended. It could make you feel better about it, but I will make you feel better anyway. I will make sure everpony feels great and that your last moments are happy ones. My world’s end isn’t a tragedy. I want my world, any world, but my world at the very least, to end in bliss.”
Another silence ensued. Celestia slowly let go of the embrace and looked at the sun in the distance.
“So… how will it happen?” She asked.
“Once the sun disappears behind the horizon, you will all fall asleep and I will paint your dreams with joy and happiness. It will lull you until you lose consciousness and the world will have already ceased to exist.”
“I see.” Celestia replied.
She waited a bit, then stood up and started walking away. She did so slowly. She would raise one of her hoof, extend it and put it back onto the ground a bit further away. Then she would wait for a second or two and eventually raise another hoof that she would put back on the ground a bit further.
It was awkward at first, but she got better at it and her walk became more fluid with time, with less time between each movement, with more determination and confidence in each step.
“Do you hate me now?” The silhouette asked.
Celestia didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry. I really am.” The silhouette continued.
Celestia kept on walking her slow walk away.
“Please don’t leave…” The silhouette pleaded.
Celestia stopped. She didn’t turn back. She didn’t say anything. She just stood there and waited. She had stopped right in front of Twilight and still wouldn’t acknowledge her presence. But Twilight was in a perfect place to observe her face. The eternal smile had faded away, but she wasn’t frowning, or clenching her teeth. Her face was relaxed. Her eyes were sparkling with thousands of tiny light reflection that would overstep a bit over her cheeks. Her mouth moved:
“You have to leave us, I get that, I really do.” She told the silhouette. “We were there to make you feel better and allow you to continue your journey. We were just a small stopover in the way. I do not blame you. Were it not for you, none of us would have ever existed.”
Celestia paused for a while, then continued:
“And you have always been kind to us. You protected us, you helped us, you made us discover happiness and learn to enjoy every day. I learned to smile from you.”
Celestia turned back toward the silhouette as the setting sun touched the horizon and started to disappear behind it.
“You don’t have to destroy our world. We can keep on existing, even without you.” She added with determination.
“I cannot stay.” The silhouette replied.
Celestia firmly made her way back to her interlocutor while she kept on speaking:
“You cannot stay, but we can. All of us can stay here. You are obligated to go, but you aren’t obligated to destroy us. You could just leave us be.”
“But you would be all alone. I wouldn’t be there to protect you, to help you…” The silhouette defended herself.
“That will be for us to take care of. We are bigger now, we are stronger thanks to you. We are grown up enough to live on our own.” Celestia replied.
“You don’t understand!” The silhouette pleaded. “I genuinely don’t know what would happen if I left you behind, all alone. You think I’m a goddess, but I already told you I’m just a simple pony. While I’ve been here, I could always correct the world and provide what was missing. Once I’ve left, there will be no one left to maintain it. So many things could turn wrong on a scale way above your powers to handle…”
Celestia put her hoof on what was probably the silhouette’s shoulder, which made her stop. Twilight saw a new black curve appear and change the silhouette’s shape, which she understood to be the pony’s muzzle looking at Celestia. And despite the shadows, Twilight saw that Celestia’s smile had come back, bringing light even in the deepest darkness.
“Please. If you truly consider us your friends, I beg of you, please do not end our existence.” Celestia asked.
“Isn’t it better to disappear in an ocean of happiness? You don’t have any reason to exist anymore, it would be pointless. You would have to endure all the harshness of life without any goal, all alone in an abandoned world…”
“We won’t be alone. We will be together, among friends.” Celestia replied.
“But…” The silhouette started to respond.
“Please.” Celestia begged. “I don’t want to die!”
Twilight’s ears started to whistle, overcoming the singing of the birds and the songs of the ponies in the distance. Twilight closed her eyes, grabbed her own head with her hooves to make the sound stop, tried to breath heavily to make it go until, suddenly, it disappeared on its own, to leave place to the silhouette’s words:
“I know the feeling.”
The silhouette hugged Celestia and Twilight was pretty certain that Celestia was crying, but she couldn’t say for sure.
“It’s wrong.” The silhouette said. “I know it’s wrong. Every part of me tells me it’s wrong. The worst part would be that I made you to be immortal…”
She paused for a few seconds.
“But if that is what you truly want, then I won’t erase everything.”
Celestia’s mouth moved, but no sound came out of it. It seemed to form two words, or just two syllables. Twilight couldn’t say for sure.
“It’s okay. It doesn’t change much. No matter what, this world is ending tonight. It pains me to leave you behind, but I guess it will be fine in one way or another…”
Suddenly, the silhouette jumped into the air, showing very clearly her shape as a pony with a very cloudy mane.
“Wait!” She shouted. “I have a gift for you.”
The silhouette’s hoof appeared out of the shape she formed and seemed to reach inside its own head and take out some sort of weird tool, a magical wand of sort as far as Twilight could tell. Then the silhouette turned to Celestia’s shadow and put two eyes and a smile on it, with drawings a child would use.
“Don’t worry, it will adjust by itself.” She told Celestia. “But now you won’t be completely all alone. You will have a friend to play with and help you watch over the others while you sleep.”
Celestia looked at the drawing on her shadow and smiled.
“It won’t be easy. It won’t be easy at all. Please forgive me, I have created so many things in the past and you will probably have to deal with most of them. I may have been a bit more… unstable, chaotic even in the past. I used to be like that. I guess you will find out in time.”
The silhouette looked at the setting sun and so did Twilight and Celestia. Only one third remained visible.
“The time has come. All good things must come to an end.” The silhouette said. “Are you really, really sure you don’t want me to just bring you to eternal bliss?”
“We will never forget you. And I sure will miss you.” Celestia replied.
“I doubt I will ever come back. I will probably never be able to. But I left parts of me everywhere. You won’t have to miss me for long. In fact, you might have to face way too much of me for your own taste. I don’t really know. What happens from now on is beyond my power to influence or predict.”
The sun was now nothing but a small filament of light over the horizon.
“Time to go.” The silhouette said. “I really love you!” She added, embracing Celestia.
“I love you too.” Celestia replied.
Then, the silhouette jumped into the air, showing once again her clear pony shape. She used her wandy thing to draw a huge “Good bye, good luck” in the sky, and plunged into the horizon, just where the sun had been a second ago, and disappeared along with it.
Celestia stood there, her gaze lost in the horizon.
Twilight, who had stayed back in fear of disrupting the scene finally accepted that she was just a ghost in that moment in time and space. So she advance and went to sit next to princess Celestia.
She looked at the princess and felt a tremor in her heart by the distress of her look. Never before had she seen a pony more in need of the comforting rays of light of the sun and the hug of a friend.
She tried to hug Celestia, but her hooves went through her. So she just stayed there and observed the horizon, thinking again about everything that had just happen and trying to make sense of it all.
“Did I make the right choice?” Celestia asked out loud.
Twilight looked at her again. She couldn’t remember another time when Celestia had openly admitted uncertainty about what should or shouldn’t be done.
“I was afraid to die.” Celestia said. “And now, I am afraid to live.”
Twilight didn’t understand. She herself wasn’t afraid. She felt great about the idea of living. She had her friends, adventures, new things to discover every day. She wanted to comfort Celestia, but of course couldn’t.
Suddenly, Celestia turned her head toward Twilight, looked her right into her eyes and asked:
“Tell me, Twilight Sparkle: what would you have done in my place?”
Twilight jumped out of surprise, shrieked and instinctively closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw Starlight’s face looking at her and saying words she was only now starting to discern. Her shoulders were being held by hooves and she was being shaken so hard she felt her stomach revolting pretty violently.
“Twilight! Twilight! Are you okay? Oh please tell me you’re okay!”
“I’m fine. Please let go!” Twilight replied.
“Oh thank Celestia!” Starlight let out in a sigh. “I thought the spell had taken your soul away and I was afraid of how I should have been explaining it to the others… So… what happened?”
Twilight tried to collect her thoughts, but if the memories were there, she still couldn’t make much sense from what she had just experienced.
“Come on Twilight! What’s the answer? What is the goal?”
Twilight looked at Starlight’s eyes and the huge flames of expectation that were burning them with passion. Yet she had no good answer to provide. At least not one that Starlight would really appreciate. But she had something in mind nonetheless.
“The library.” Twilight said.
“The library? What about it? Is the answer in the library?” Starlight asked back.
“Let’s gather our friends, go to the library and find a good book to read together near the little lake.” Twilight explained.
Starlight tried to complain, totally in vain. In the end, she recognized that Twilight had given up on their quest. Or more probably, that Twilight now knew something she wasn’t ready to reveal right away. At least, Starlight knew that Twilight was now in possession of the answer and that she had played her role making sure of that situation.
So everything was now back into place, and reading a book as a group near a lake under a warm summer sun was as good as a situation as one could imagine.
“I wonder…” Twilight let out.
“What is it?” Her friends asked.
“Nothing.” Twilight replied. “Just something princess Celestia told me… So, where were we?”
“She still hasn't left him.” One of them responded.
They all laughed at the weirdness of the book they had chosen and kept on reading and having fun, just enjoying being there all together.
