All life must end one day, even if you're an element of harmony. Unless you've become an alicorn, a princess.
All life must end one day, even if you're an element of harmony. Unless you've become an alicorn, a princess. And in that case, you have to see the lives of others go out slowly, while enduring immortality. Which is not easy, especially when you're the princess of friendship.
THIS IS A TRANSLATION OF A FRENCH WORK BY A FRENCH PERSON. I'm sorry if there's too many mistakes.
This fiction is a rewriting of two of my first one-shot (so, 2013 & 2014). The first chapter was my first MLP fiction ever, and one of my first real writing work. The sixth chapter was another one of my early one-shot. Even though the style of it wasn't what I write anymore already at the time (doing sad for the sake of sad, meh), I still had an interest in trying to finish this concept, especialy for the last chapter. It took 5 years to complete and was finished in August 2018.
There are actually two translations in spanish for this story. This one and this one.
Fluttershy looked at the sky. It was clear, blue, with a few clouds which only increased the feeling of tranquillity emanating from this sky.
In a plain outside of Ponyville, not far from her cottage. The wind was swishing in the trees behind her, her tail and mane slightly undulating. A tear was pearling from a corner of her eye.
Lowering her eyes on the plain, she saw the crater again. Still much visible. The impact had been rude, she had heard it from her house, and the ground was still lifter for many meters.
They must have all been at the hospital by now. Fluttershy had to go there, but she didn't want to. Going there would mean recognizing what was going to happen. And she could not bring herself to accept it.
But still, she had to go. Behind her, right before the trees, her animals were standing. Silent. All were looking at her with sadness. Finally, Angel walked to her, gently.
He came by her side and looked her in the eyes, slightly patting her foreleg. Fluttershy turned her head towards him. Angel nodded, indicating Ponyville.
Yes. She had a duty to go. For her friend. She took Angel in her hoof and hugged him a bit, before putting him back on the ground and making her way to Ponyville. To her. To say goodbye. To Rainbow Dash.
She went to the hospital, she was told the room. The door was open. After a bit of hesitation, she went inside. Her friends were there, gathered around a bed. Twilight, Rarity, Pinkie, Applejack and Spike.
And Rainbow Dash... laying in the bed, looking at her friends around her.
Her state was appalling. Her wings were broken, one of them spread and bent in an unnatural way. Scratches all over her body, bruises visible despite her coat colour.
She was suffering, it was beyond obvious, despite her best effort to hide it. And yet, she was wearing a smile, that was more of a wince because she was in such pain, but a smile nonetheless.
After she had knocked herself in the impact, she had woken up in the hospital, at the moment where the doctors learned the bad news. The internal damages were too grave and they couldn't do more than just limit the pain and keep her alive long enough to say farewell.
"We were waiting for you." Said Dash, turning her head towards Fluttershy at the cost of a considerable effort.
The blue pegasus looked at each of her friends in the room. Beyond the physical injuries, she was hurt for them. She knew what it was to lose a friend. What a stupid idea, to attempt to do a sonic rainboom and to only go up at the last second... She could have died a way cooler way. Saving her friends, for example. But anyway, it wasn't the time for regrets. It was time to say goodbye. And it was Twilight, on Rainbow's right side, who started:
"Rainbow..." She said, with a lumpy throat. "You've always been a loyal friend... Even if some of your jokes... weren't necessarily funny."
Dash had a little laugh, which transformed into a painful grimace, despite her best efforts.
"Not very original..." She said, one eye closed, with a short breath. "Citing my element of harmony as a speech. I was expecting more from a princess..."
Twilight smiled kindly at this supposedly comical observation and her eyes misted up. She hid them and lowered her head, not knowing what to add.
"Nothin' will ever be the same without you." Said Applejack, almost sobbing, holding her hat in her hoof.
Dash looked at the farmer in front of her.
"Sorry... You'll have to do the race alone this year, I think."
Applejack covered her head with her hat so that her friend couldn't see her eyes.
"I..." Wanted to start Pinkie, who was leaning on the left side of the bed, only a few centimetres from Rainbow, who instead kindly put a hood on her mouth.
"I want you to throw a big party," softly said the pegasus, "At least as big as the one for my birthday. Can you do that for me?"
Pinkie nodded, tears forming at the bottom of her eyes.
"And also..."
She coughed, quite violently, then continued, her voice getting weaker by the minutes:
"You always want to see others smile. Me, I want you to smile. To continue your parties forever."
The pink mare smiled, from ear to ear. Tears were flowing down her face, but she was smiling. And she kept that smile even after Rainbow removed her hoof from her muzzle.
"I'll take care of the decorations for the party..."
"Rarity..." Said Rainbow, as to say she didn't need to.
"Ah ah ah!" Cut the stylist. "I'll make sure your style is visible by all! So that no one will ever forget you!"
"As long as you don't forget me, it's fine by me Rarity," kindly answered Dash.
Rarity looked at her in the eyes for a brief moment, before turning to the window, staring at the sky.
"Of course I'll remember you... Sometimes, you really say stupid things, Rainbow," she said with a broken voice.
"You're crying Rarity?"
"Idiot!" She answered, still staring at a sky she couldn't see anymore because of all the humidity in her eyes. "A lady doesn't cry!"
Dash got a weak laugh out of her friend's reaction. She was going to miss this, after all.
"Make sure the decorations are cool, then."
"They will be", she said in a firm tone. "They'll be masterpieces."
Spiked put his little paws on the bed, Dash looking in his direction in return.
"You're the coolest pegasus I've ever known Dash!"
"I know. It seems kind of obvious to be honest."
She managed to laugh. At that moment, a tortoise harnessed with a weird apparatus came flying by the door. Tank headed straight for his owner, snuggling against her. The pegasus hugged him in return, smiling.
"I'm going to miss you as well, Tank."
The tortoise was sad, trying his best to stay as much as possible against his owner.
"I count on you to take care of him, Fluttershy."
As she was speaking, she turned her gaze towards her pegasus friend, who hadn't moved since she had entered the room.
"Fluttershy?"
"Why...?" She asked with a low voice, seemingly thinking out loud rather than talking to Dash. "Why are you leaving...?"
"Fluttershy..."
Dash looked at her friend, heartbroken.
"Why!?" She suddenly yelled, tears dripping on her face, staring at Rainbow right in the eyes, with fury mixed with sadness in her own eyes. "How do you expect us to live without you!? How do you... want me to live after that?"
Dash sighed.
"Because you think I'm happy with this...? Of what's happening? Of leaving you all?"
She sat up, slightly pushing Tank aside, despite the pain. The others came closer to try and dissuade her, but none of them had the will to. They all wanted to let her end her life as she wished.
"There's still a lot of things I wanted to do... with you all... But I couldn't anymore. And you'll have to deal with that! You'll have to find someone else for Loyalty, to take care of the weather, to make jokes... I'm sorry..."
She collapsed. The others helped her get back in place. She smiled. Her breath was growing weaker and weaker. She had trouble keeping her eyes open. Her strength was leaving her. She could feel it.
"I'm happy..." She whispered. "Altogether, to end like this... it's... cool. Surrounded by my friends... Yes, it's truly..."
Silence. All waited for an end to a sentence that was meant to never get one. The flame of youth and cheerfulness inside of her eyes was gone, forever.
Pinkie, as Rainbow had wished, blew into a party horn, even if she didn't have the will for it. And it was audible, the noise resembled more the sound of a clown sobbing than anything happy.
The friends stayed here, facing the young but now lifeless body of her friend. The tortoise snuggled against her owner, with an infinite pain in the eyes.
Three days later, all the preparations were done and the burial was happening. Pinkie invested herself like she never had before to make this event unforgettable, bringing along many party cannons.
Amongst balloons and other decorations were great banners portraying Rainbow Dash, superbly sewn by Rarity, as she had promised.
She had shown a lot of hesitancy about sewing one representing her doing her famous sonic rainboom, because it was, in a way, the cause of the accident. But it was also Rainbow's pride, so she ended up making a few in the end.
A great buffet was, of course, accessible and the Apple family had largely participated in its inception. Notably for a great cake in the middle of the buffet, decorated in different colours, reminiscent of the pegasus' famous rainbow mane.
And Twilight got busy with inviting many ponies that Dash had known. The princesses and her family, of course, but also A.K. Yearling, aka Daring Do, Dash's favourite author. And above all, the Wonderbolts, especially here to do a show in the memory of the one who had saved their lives in the past.
The only pony that no one had seen was Fluttershy. For three days. Most likely, she was home, moping, but her friend may have come to her place, no one answered. The door stayed closed.
"She could have come, at least..." Said Rarity, saddened to not see her at the party either.
"We couldn't force here..." Answered Applejack. "Everypony gets through this their own way and..."
That's when a shout, a powerful shout, coming from any massive creature, was heard. Then two other roars came, as powerful as the first one. The crowd stopped everything, looking at what was coming. Three dark and enormous silhouettes were flying towards Ponyville.
"DRAGONS!" Screamed a pony.
The guests started to panic. The Wonderbolts and the princesses prepared to defend themselves and the other if necessary, but Twilight noticed something.
"WAIT!" She yelled to the guests.
No one calmed down, aside from Twilight's friend, who then looked in the same direction as her.
On the head of the biggest dragon was a small silhouette, yellow and pink. Twilight thought she heard the words the silhouette was shouting at the sky.
"I hope three dragons is cool enough for you!"
The four of them passed above the party, breathing fire and in the air, like real fireworks.
Fluttershy had overcome her fear of dragons for her friend. To have a last farewell, as it should have been done, to make this party unique.
And it was one of the most memorable days of Equestria.
A little tomb was set in a plain, north-east of the town. A place Twilight could see from her castle, at the top of a hill. A small tree was planted there, a tree with a very long lifespan, so that it may be there for as long as the stone was visible.
All five gathered in front of the tombstone. A small rounded rock on which was written "R.I.P. Rainbow Dash - The Loyal -" Beneath that, a mention was put without Twilight's permission: "Friend of the princess," circling the engraving of her cutie mark. Tank lay down next to the stone and no one, from living memory, saw him move ever again, hidden in his carapace.
A final resting place, which would probably have lacked panache according to the one resting in it.
Inside of Carousel Boutique, two friends were discussing.
"Is everything alright, Fluttershy?"
Rarity looked at the pegasus with a worried face. She seemed upset.
"Y-Yes... It's just that... Angel isn't feeling good. He's getting old, this morning he was coughing a lot, then he isolated himself. I have a feeling that soon he's going to..."
Indeed, the little rabbit was coming to the end of his life now. He was way less energetic than before, even if he had kept a bit of his usual bad temper. Weirdly, he was pushing everyone away, animals or Fluttershy.
"Oh..." Said Rarity, saddened.
She briefly looked at the spot where Opalescence used to have the habit of sleeping when she was working.
"I understand what you may feel," empathized Rarity. "Animals' lives are so much shorter than ours and we have to accept to see them go... Even if it feels a bit empty afterward."
A tear formed in Fluttershy's eye, but she wiped it away and sat down on the floor, responding:
"I know. It's just that... I find that cruel."
The unicorn came closer to her friend and gently passed a hoof around her shoulder.
"The best that you can do is to try to let him go in tranquility, without regrets or pain."
The pegasus pushed a bit against Rarity, silently nodding.
Eight years. It had been eight years since the passing of Rainbow Dash. The mares had aged slightly, but they all stayed pretty young, even though a part of their youthfulness had flown away with the rainbow pegasus.
Fluttershy thanked Rarity and decided to go back home, to keep company to Angel and let the dressmaker work. While going out, she crossed paths with a great beautiful mare, Sweetie Belle, who was visiting her sister.
Once her cottage was in view, Fluttershy noticed that all the animals were outside.
"What's going on?" Asked the pegasus, fearing the worst.
The bear explained to her, with gestures, that Angel had driven everyone out of the house. His temper was only getting worse it seemed and he was coughing more and more. Fluttershy opened the door.
"Angel?" Said Fluttershy, poking her head in.
No response. She entered, closing the door behind her. Fluttershy was seized with a small fit of coughing and, once it stopped, she heard small noises. A cough too, but made by a smaller animal.
She headed towards the sound and found Angel who was under Fluttershy's bed, laying on the floor, writhing because of the cough.
The pegasus got him out of there by kindly taking him into her paws. She looked at him with tenderness but also a touch of sadness in her eyes, lifting him to her head's level.
The bunny's cough calmed. He turned a weakened stare towards the pegasus. He had to squint his eyes to see her and, when he did, he raised his arm and pushed Fluttershy's head away, with a movement that greatly lacked in strength.
She gently put him on the bed and the rabbit then rolled over to turn his back to the pegasus. It seemed like he wanted to stay far from everyone.
"Angel..." Said Fluttershy, saddened. "Why do you refuse to see the others?"
The bunny turned his head towards the mare. Another cough came, but he still tried to designate himself.
Fluttershy tilted her head, confused. She coughed a bit as well, but didn't pay any attention to it.
The bunny wanted to start explaining the situation, but he didn't have the strength and no idea as to how she could understand him. He pointed to his own throat, and coughed again.
"What is it? Your throat is hurting?"
He nodded, weakly.
"But what does it have to do with you not wanting to see anyone?"
The bunny looked her in the eyes. He was sad. His little eyes were sparkling from the humidity that was invading them.
Fluttershy didn't understand, but she, in turn, was hit with a violent coughing. She coughed, again and again, to the point she couldn't breathe. The bunny suddenly turned towards her and walked to the edge of the bed, panicked.
The mare lost her balance and fell on her flank, still coughing once on the floor.
"W-What's happening to me?" She painfully whispered, while her breathing quickened.
Angel, too worried for Fluttershy, came too close to the edge of the bed and fell over on the floor. Unable to really get up, he crawled more than he walked towards the head of the pegasus laying on the ground.
She was out of breath, as if she had run a marathon. The bunny took one of her hoofs and looked in her eyes, briefly turning his head away to cough, looking desperate.
That's when Fluttershy understood.
"Y-You caught the liessite?"
Angel nodded, saddened and sorry. Fluttershy had heard of this disease before. She could be caught by bunnies, in very rare cases, it was thought to have disappeared. It was a devastating sickness that destroyed lungs, without a cure, and could rapidly spread to animals from other species. That's why Angel wanted to be alone, why she was coughing so much. As soon as he had understood, the bunny had tried to not contaminate the others, knowing himself to be doomed. But Fluttershy had insisted, searching for what was wrong. So she had caught it as well and Angel couldn't imagine worse. He was feeling atrociously guilty, blaming himself for it, lowering his ears, letting a few tears drop on the floor.
"Don't blame yourself, Angel..." Tried to reassure Fluttershy in a short breath. "It's not your fault."
They were both shaken by another, stronger, cough. Once this one was done, Fluttershy thought:
"I'm dying..."
She had thought about her own death before, since Dash had passed, but never Fluttershy would have thought it would be so... peaceful. She grabbed Angel's paws with both her hooves. She could barely move anymore, but she looked at him in the eyes while smiling kindly. Then she took him in her hooves and hugged him against her.
Maybe it wasn't that bad to go with Angel. She would have preferred for her friends to be there, to say goodbye to them. The animals would probably wait outside for a long time still, before understanding that something was wrong. And maybe they would feel guilty for not being able to help. But at least, she was with Angel for his last moments. What a shame Discord wasn't there, maybe he could have had a solution... But he was gone for a few days trip with Spike. As luck would not have it.
The bunny tried wrapping his arms around her, coughing and crying. She lowered her eyes on him and gently caressed his head, before coughing again.
The feeling was horrible. It wasn't that painful, aside from the burning sensation in her sore throat, but she was progressively choking, as her lungs were getting destroyed. Her breath weakened, her head started to spin, she had the impression that her crane was about to explode.
"Goodbye Angel," she said, shedding a tear. "Goodbye, friends... Goodbye everyone."
Finally, she wasn't able to breathe anymore. With her last strengths, she held the small bunny as tight as she could, and he hugged her back, also breathless. The pegasus' wings quivered for a brief instant, she dedicated one last thought to each of her friends, each of her animal companions. Then they went away together, in the silence of their loneliness, laying on the floor, unmoving.
"She came to me saying that Angel wasn't feeling good... Sweet Celestia, if I had known..."
"You couldn't know, Rarity," tried to reassure Applejack, despite the tears rolling down her face, sniffing loudly. "Ah didn't think it was still possible to catch liessite."
All four of them were in front of the body of her friends, still holding Angel. Pinkie was sitting right in front of Fluttershy and was slowly caressing her mane. She was the only one not crying, despite the infinite sadness displayed on her face, she was trying to smile. Dash's words had stayed in her head and she had swore to herself to never cry again. The three behind her, however, weren't holding back their tears. And further behind, Fluttershy's animal lamented and were trying to comfort each other. It was them who had reported Fluttershy's death. They had waited a while before entering the house and discovering her lifeless body.
Twilight was feeling so guilty. Once more, she had not been able to do anything to help her friend. Worst of all, she hadn't been there, not even to say goodbye. Angel had been there, and thankfully, because Twilight would never have forgiven herself if her friend had died alone. Never.
"At least she died the way she lived: with her animals... At least one," said Rarity, who was still wearing her dressmaker glasses as she had been interrupted during her work.
"Someone's gonna have to tell Discord," softly said the farmer, turning her head towards the alicorn. "Twilight, you alright?"
Of course she wasn't alright, nothing could be alright in this instant, when one of their friends had just gone away so suddenly. But Twilight's state was worrying Applejack. She had wide eyes, overflowing with tears, fixed on the body of Fluttershy, and she hadn't said anything since they discovered the pegasus.
Twilight only heard the farmer as a distant voice. In her own head, she was starting to understand something. The alicorn looked at Pinkie, then turned her head towards Rarity, before finally setting her eyes on Applejack.
The orange mare didn't realize what this gaze meant. That look of despair from Twilight. Applejack thought it was because of Fluttershy's death and only that. But there was more, something far worse, behind that sadness.
The funeral took place two days later. Pinkie organized a party again. Even if Fluttershy hadn't asked for anything, the pink mare was now determined to say goodbye to her friends this way. There had been a party for Rainbow, there was one for Fluttershy and there would be one for the following one, even if all made sure not to consider this inevitability.
Few ponies had the mood for a party. Some still answered the invitations nonetheless, even if it has to be said that, because of her shyness, Fluttershy only knew very few people.
Celestia, Luna and Cadance went, of course, and each of them made a speech for the pegasus.
All were more or less quiet when in front of the grave, but the most inconsolable was probably Discord, who was crying out loud. What would have been astonishing in any other situation wasn't even surprising in this moment. Everyone could hear him lament, angry towards himself.
"If only I had been there..."
Spike was holding and lightly patting the Draonequus' paw, trying to comfort him, as he was himself loudly snorting his sorrow.
The element of kindness had gone away. Her animals had come in masses to pay her a last homage, to her and Angel who was buried by her sides. They stayed there as much as her closest friends.
In a plain north-east of Ponyville, a tree was beginning to slowly grow, as a second rounded stele had just joined another one, put here eight years before, keeping company to the pegasus and the tortoise still withdrew at the foot of her tomb.
"R.I.P. Fluttershy - The Kind" was written on this new stone, with three butterflies surrounded by the sentence "Friend of the princess". Beneath it was also written "R.I.P. Angel Bunny".
"Who do ya think ya' talking to? Ah still have some in mah hooves!"
To support her claims, Applejack gave a strong kick to a tree next to her and all the apples fell in the basket beneath the apple tree. Except one.
Apple Bloom had a little giggle that she tried to hide. Her sister stared at her, angrily:
"What!? It happens, apples not falling on the first kick!"
The yellow coated, and now tall, farmer mare had to turn her eyes away to not burst in laughter in front of her.
Applejack gave another kick in the tree, but the apple firmly stayed hooked to its branch.
"Darn!" cursed the mare while giving a bunch of other kicks in the trunk of the tree, as Apple Bloom gave up and laughed without restrain.
Finally, the apple gave way and crashed on the ground, spreading its brown flesh all over.
"And rotten with that!" Said the mare by her side, holding her ribs laughing.
Applejack glared with anger at her sister, then her face softened and she finally started to laugh as well.
Their giggling lasted a few minutes, in the grand Apple family's orchard. As they were calming down, a foal crying was heard, coming from the farm. Apple Bloom turned her eyes towards the house visible in the distance and sighed:
"Big Mac's messing up with the littl' again! Gosh, I'll see what's up! I'm leaving the rest up to you AJ."
"Eyup, no problem lil' sis!"
The little sister, not so little anymore with the years gone by, took a few baskets full of apples on her back and went back to the farm where cries could still be heard, the first foal being joined by two others in the meantime.
The orange coated farmer continued her harvest, as she had been doing for years. Green apples fell in the basket. Some Granny Smith. Applejack glanced at the baskets and an old voice emerged from the past and echoed in her head.
The blond mare sighed and looked away, resuming her harvest with good kicks. But she miscalculated and her hoof slipped against the trunk, spraining her right leg. She winced in pain. Apple Bloom was right, she wasn't all that young anymore. The harvest was over for now, it seemed, impossible to keep going with a leg in that state.
She sat down and massaged her muscle a bit. Maybe it was only temporary. She couldn't let her sister take care of the whole orchard on her own. She had tried herself before, without success. And more apple trees had grown since then!
The cries had stopped, that was a good sign. Apple Bloom wouldn't take too long and could continue the work for her.
The farmer mare heard a little "tip!" above her. She looked up and a drop fell right into her eye. Surprised, she shook her head strongly before rubbing her eyelid with her hoof. New "tip!", accompanied by "tap!" were heard.
"Oh come on, really now?" Said Applejack, lowering her hat to cover herself.
Ponyville's weather team hadn't announced any rain today. There was probably someone slacking! Applejack looked for a tree with enough leaves to protect her and sat down beneath it, slightly limping from her right hind leg.
There she was. In her farm, as she had always been. Her coat was losing some colour and her mane, once so blond, had lost its former shine. And despite years going by, some old wounds didn't fully healed.
The downpour didn't last long. A pegasus, with a long purple mane, appeared in the covered sky and popped the grey clouds.
"It's about time, Scootaloo!" Laughed Applejack.
The pegasus jumped in the air, not having noticed the farmer, and smiled when she laid her eyes on her, waving at her.
"Still sorry about that, some in the team still don't understand orders!"
"No big deal! Go, go!" Laughed the mare with a hat.
The orange pegasus waved goodbye and went back flying to Ponyville, leaving Applejack alone once more.
She hesitated on going back to work. For now, her leg wasn't hurting anymore, but for how long? She kept her eyes up in the sky, when a rainbow appeared. She had a sad smile. That weird multi-coloured half-circle was bringing back some memories. From her childhood, now so far away, and a friend as well, far gone too.
"You're losing yourself, sugarcube!" She said to herself, getting back on her four hooves, shaking her head. "Come on now, those apples ain't gonna harvest themselves!"
She got up and got her baskets in place for the harvest. But as she was putting on the last one and lifting her head back up, a small white thing appeared in her field of view. Thing that quickly vanished behind a tree.
The farmer frowned, intrigued, and took a look behind the tree. The small white spot was already gone, taking cover behind another trunk.
"What in tarnation is that thing?"
A tiny fluffy paw poked out from behind the trunk, followed by a bunny's head, ears down, visibly intimidated.
For a brief moment, Applejack thought it was Angel and her heart sank. But it was impossible. Yet, this bunny really looked like him. However, he didn't seem like he had Angel's bad temper. He was just scared.
"Ya don't need to worry, partner, I won't hurt ya," softly said Applejack, provoking a withdrawal from the bunny's neck.
A gust of wind suddenly lifted her hat, the animal got scared from this sudden movement and ran away as fast as he could.
The farmer maintained her hat on her head with a hoof, looking at the little bunny scampering as the wind was blowing even stronger, bringing in new clouds, darkening the sky without the orange mare noticing. A drop, but not from rain, fell along her cheek. She wiped it with the back of her hoof, before turning around.
"If even bunnies make ya think of the past, my poor girl..." She said to herself with a low voice, slightly tilting her hat in front of her eyes.
Suddenly, lightning struck less than a metre in front of her, blinding and deafening her as she jumped back. A smoking black spot was left on the ground.
Applejack backed off because of the surprise and put a hoof on her chest while grumbling. Her ageing heart had raced. She could feel it loudly beating in her rib cage, irregularly. Her back against a tree, her legs gave way and she leant against the apple tree, short breathed, a hoof still against her heart, trying to calm down.
Without her noticing, a small white figure had come back and was carefully approaching her. Once it was in front of her, Applejack looked up and noticed the bunny sat down in front of her.
Her heart skipped a beat, as they were getting more and more irregular.
"Everything's fine, small guy," she said, attempting a smile.
The animal titled his head, his eyes sad. He laid a fluffy pawn on the hoof that Applejack was leaving hanging next to her.
The farmer mare curled up in a new growl of pain as her organ was sending her a new pinch of ache, and the bunny took a step back.
Applejack closed her eyes while contracting, before releasing her breath and looking up, resting her head against the tree, staring at the sky that was starting to let its drops rain.
The bunny climbed up on Applejack's shoulder to take refuge below her hat. From the corner of her eye, the farmer mare smiled a bit when seeing the little white animal snuggled against her. Looking at the clouds, she whispered:
"I'm coming, girls..."
The downpour ended itself without the weather team's intervention, as they were overworked anyway. A voice echoed through the orchard. A call.
"Big sis'!?"
The mare with a yellow coat appeared, trotting in between the trees, looking for Applejack. The bunny got scared when seeing her and jumped off from the farmer's shoulder, which caught the eyes of the mare with a red mane.
"Ah! There you are!" She said upon seeing her, getting to her, noticing her state. "What happened to ya? You're all wet."
No answers came from the mare, who had her head leaning forward, as if she was sleeping.
"Hey!" Insisted Apple Bloom, shaking her a bit. "You fell asleep or what?"
The only answer she got was Applejack slowly tipping on the side and falling on the ground, her hat flying off during the fall, revealing a calm and fixed face.
The party that Pinkie had organised had just finished. There were only a few participants. Yet, a lot of people were here, in that plain north-east of Ponyville, under that small tree that had grown quite a bit and now possessed its first thick branches.
A crowd of ponies, gathered around a small rounded rock made on the same model as the two others that were here, apart from the fact that this one was topped with a hat. All the Apple family was here, as was the case every time such a tragic event took place in the family.
Apple Bloom, in front, was letting her tears flow in silence, staring at the tomb, her throat feeling tight, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo by her sides, silent as well. Big Macintosh had his eyes shut and was keeping his sadness for himself. The rest of the family had pronounced, one after another, some words, Braeburn being the one taking the most time.
"R.I.P. Applejack - The Honest," with the engraving "Friend of the princess" surrounding three apples.
A bit apart from the group, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Spike and Twilight were watching the scene in tears, the dragon on the alicorn's back. Another one had gone. And they didn't know if they should join in with the family or not.
Twilight looked at her two friends. Like last time, there was something in her eyes, a sadness that was detached from the present moment. The pink and the white mare exchanged a gaze, and understood when looking at each other's wrinkles. Twilight was the only one from the group which hadn't changed in all those years. Even Spike had grown a bit.
The two of them turned their eyes to the purple mare and came by her sides, hugging her, joined by Spike.
"Don't worry for us, Twilight..." Whispered Rarity.
"Everything is going to be fine, as always," added Pinkie with a bit of a forced smile.
The alicorn slowly nodded, snorting. No, it wouldn't be fine. Yes, she'd keep on worrying, because she had to. But, in such conditions, as a friend, she had to believe hers and listen to them, even if that implied denying her own certainties.
The three stones were now forming a quarter circle in front of the tree.
Four silhouettes were standing in the midst of the great Canterlot cemetery. Four alicorns, alone, mourning in silence in front of three tombs. One of those alicorns, the smallest one, was the most forward. She was looking at the last stone added.
On the two others was written the names of her parents. They had been there for some years, now. The pictures had slightly lost their colours. It was the duty of a child to bury his parents. And the son and the daughter of those good unicorns had been there to do so.
And it was, maybe, the duty of a little sister to bury her big brother.
Carefully levitating a bouquet of flowers, she deposited the wreath on the third granite slab, just under the smiling photo of that great white unicorn.
"Goodbye, BBBFF," said Twilight, containing her emotion and her tears, although her voice was troubled. "You were the best brother someone could ask for."
The purple alicorn moved back a little, her eyes still fixed on the grave of her brother. Now, she didn't had a family anymore. And that feeling going through her, that penetrated her heart, she knew what it was. It was loneliness.
"I-I... I would like to be alone for a moment," asked princess Cadance, who had trouble speaking.
The three other alicorns stayed silent and disposed of themselves. Cadance walked to the grave, her eyes wet with tears, before collapsing on it while crying her lost husband. The princess of love, which had just lost the latter.
Outside of the graveyard, the three princesses were waiting. A little further away, their guards stood there, also in turmoil.
"Why didn't you say it was this hard...?" Asked Twilight, her broken voice full of a bitter blame.
Celestia and Luna closed their eyes, understanding. They knew that this question would come up one day.
"Losing everyone I hold dear... You knew how I would feel... So why?"
"Would you have accepted to become a princess if we had warned you?" asked Celestia softly.
"No," answered the alicorn categorically, sniffing her own tearful fluids, "Of course no. Why did you transformed me if it was to inflict all this upon me?"
Her tone was begging. At this moment, the two elderly princesses understood that Twilight wanted, more than anything else in the world, to go back in time and refuse her title, to live a normal life.
But it was too late. So Celestia gently passed a wing over her, to comfort her, at least a little.
"Equestria needs its princess of friendship," she delicately said to her ear. "Look at everything you've done and everything you'll be able to do. We knew you would suffer, but beyond your pain, you bring so much to this country and its inhabitant. Your sorrow avoids so many others."
"We would understand if you hated us," continued Luna, also covering Twilight's back with one wing. "We didn't let you choose, but one day, I'm sure you will understand that this decision, painful for us as it is now for you, was a necessary evil for this country."
"It's a burden that we all carry. No offspring, every attach bound to disappear. To provide for Equestria, we must each loose so much."
Twilight couldn't hold it in any longer. She let her pain loose.
"How can you endure it...? Tell me how do you do..."
She was imploring them. She was begging them to give to her that solution, that allowed the two great alicorns to never cry. But it didn't existed. The only way was to get use to it, provided that it was even possible to get use to that. To their great regrets, Celestia and Luna were unable to help her. Only time could. Celestia's former student would suffer, for years to come. The pain would fade, but never entirely.
Cadance appeared, walking out of the graveyard, staring at the ground without really seeing it, absent. Without any word, she left the place and the other princesses followed in her steps, with a dead silence, joining their guards.
Back in Canterlot, the now widow left for the Cristal Empire by the next train, without saying a single sentence, nor changing expression.
Twilight went back to Ponyville the same way. She didn't had the will to use her wings.
Looking by the window of her wagon, she saw the verdant landscape of Equestria pass before her eyes, under a bright sun. Yet, everything seemed dreadfully bland. Wherever she would lay her eyes, there was only grey, obscurity. Her heart sank every time she saw something familiar. Here a bunny was cheerfully skipping around under a wild apple tree. There, in a small pond, lived a family of tortoise. In every object or living creature, she was seeing her own past.
And in this scenery, a face appeared. Her face. That purple face, with a violet stripped mane, and a horn proudly enthroned at its top. By the deformation of the window – and the shimmering colours that overlapped it – her face appeared without that terrible mark left by time and memories. It wasn't the wrinkles that had gone away, no, she unfortunately never had some. It was that expression of permanent regrets, those emaciated features, that left room to this still young head.
She had the impression she was facing a Twilight from the past.
"You don't have wings, you..." She whispered to her reflection. "You can still live with your friends... Without worrying about anything..."
The expression in her reflection seemed to change. Its eyebrows frowned, its head tilted slightly and a slim compassionate smile seemingly appeared. Twilight looked away. No one could change the past, lamenting was useless. That's what she was trying to convince herself, day after day.
"Ponyville station! Five minutes stop!"
The princess only paid but little attention to the controller announcing the stop and she got out of the wagon, without noticing the ponies that were still looking at her, despite the years. A princess always impress the population, even more so when this princess is walking with her head down, dragging its hooves around.
"Twilight!" Suddenly pierced the distraught voice of Spike.
The small dragon trotted towards her, with worries on his face. Despite all this time, he had barely grew. He got up to the alicorn and seemed to forget what he had to say when he saw her utterly depressed look. He went in front of her face and looked her in the eyes.
"Twilight, is everything alright?" He asked, while perfectly knowing the answer.
She simply looked on the side, having absolutely no wish to talk about all this. Walking by him, she let out a quiet:
"If somepony is looking for me, I'll be in my castle... But I'd rather be alone..."
Spike looked at her going away, with a small, sad and compassionate sigh. But the thing he had to tell her suddenly came back to his mind:
"Twilight!"
The alicorn stopped and turned her head towards him. For a brief moment, Spike wanted to reconsider, to let her scatter her sorrow in peace. He didn't wanted to say what he had to say. Not now. Definitely not. Twilight would not be able to bear it. But he had to, even if it wasn't gladly.
"It's... It's Pinkie..." he finally said, sorry for the alicorn.
Twilight opened eyes filled with despaired, as she felt like her heart was failing. It was impossible. For pity's sake, no. Not in the same day.
The happy pink mare was at the hospital. Accompanied by Rarity, Spike and Twilight. Lying in a bed, ironically the same bed in which Rainbow Dash had left this world, now decades ago. Three balloons decorated the room, two blues and a yellow one, probably inflated by what little breath Pinkie had left.
Time had ravaged this joyful face, smiling despite it's apparent weakness, only lifting it great wrinkles. Her mane had become a grey pinkie and seemed to have deflated over the years. Her coat spotted the same loss of colours. She was old and it wasn't just her appearance.
Her heart, worn out by so many years of parties and overexcitement, had just had a new attack. It was likely that this conversation with her friends would be one of her last. And that's why they were showing such upset looks.
"Oh, don't be so sad," said Pinkie. "We had a lot of fun, didn't we?"
Rarity and Spike answered with a small, sad and forced smile. Yes, they did had a lot of fun, particularly with her around.
"Every party must end. Everypony goes home, each at a different hour."
Pinkie philosophizing. It was pretty rare, although she had gained a tendency to do that at the end of her life, since she had more and more troubles exteriorising her emotions with over the top gestures.
"And when you stay too long, you're bound to be sad seeing the others go," continued the old mare of Laughter. "But there will always be new people to come around and throw another one... So don't you worry, Twilight."
The princess bit her lower lip to contain her tears, understanding what her friend meant.
"What's the point in making friends if it is to see them go away?" asked Twilight, her voice shattered.
"Because you're someone exceptional, Twilight. Your friends will be incredibly lucky to be ones, as we were. And also, times flies faster with friends, doesn't it?"
Her comforting smiled managed to make the alicorn hold back her tears.
"You too Pinkie," added Spike. "You are one of the most wonderful mare I know. You always know how to put the smile back on people's face."
The old Pie opened two big hooves, inviting her friends to come closer, which they did. She closed her hooves in an immense and final hug, that even got a smile out of Twilight.
"Thank you, friends... Thank you..." murmured Pinkie, holding them against her with all of her slim strength, closing her eyes, happy.
Coincidence, the three balloons in the room, two blues and a yellow one, symbol of the pink mare's cutie mark, popped at the exact moment her heart stopped beating. Or maybe it was the suddenness of that sound that ended that old heart, worn out by all the energy this pony had and had carried around daily.
Her hooves slowly fell off the side of Rarity and Twilight's coat, as in a slow motion, landing on the bedsheets, slightly creasing them.
Even while shut, her eyes kept that joy of living, despite the fact the she wasn't anymore.
Dead. Pinkie Pie, dead. It was the end of the joyful mare, jumping, hopping around and pulling out a party canon out of nowhere, spreading happiness and smiles wherever she went. No more Element of Laughter and maybe no more laugh at all, forever. At that moment, it was as if all joy had vanished from Equestria.
The smile. An eternal smile engraved on her face. What a better way for her to go than while smiling? Her friends where smiling as well, for her. For this brave mare, who's one and only goal in life had been the joy of others.
Twilight, Rarity and Spike stayed snuggled against her for a while, against that so warm body that would soon start to cool down.
No party was thrown before the burial. But a lot of ponies showed up. Pinkie was still well known around town, even if her celebrity had did out a bit over time.
The only family present was Maud's children, which were already ponies of certain age, as they came to say goodbye to the one they use to call "Aunty Pinkie" when they were foals. The rest, her parents and sisters, had gone before her.
And it was a silence for mourning that had fallen on the small hill, under that tree where half of the Elements of Harmony already rested. Words had been pronounced, but everyone found that no sentences could express the pain cause by this loss. A part of Ponyville's soul had gone away with her, and everyone was feeling empty, as if missing that small spark of happiness usually always there, even in those moments.
Four rounded stones, forming a third of a circle in front of the tree. The first one was starting to show some age. The tortoise was still on it.
"R.I.P. Pinkie Pie - The Laughing", with the now usual inscription "Friend of the princess" that still sickened Twilight, around those famous three balloons, now grey forever.
Two mares and a dragon. That is all that was left from their group. And the white unicorn was getting old as well, now.
"Say, Twilight, do you remember your arrival at Ponyville?"
The alicorn half-smiled, but it was a little bit forced.
In this hospital room, she was seeing with regrets all the ravages engendered by time. The white of the generous mare had gradually turned grey. Her face, once so smooth, had grown to be covered in wrinkles that her owner had ended up accepting, unwillingly, her eyes tired of fighting against her own age, now permanently displayed behind a pair of glasses.
"Of course, Rarity," kindly answered the princess of friendship. "You desperately tried to rearrange my mane because Rainbow messed it up."
"Then we all got thrown into that story with the elements of harmony and Nightmare Moon. Who would have thought it would be us."
The eyes of the unicorn had lost themselves on the beddings of her hospital bed. Her hoof in the paws of the little dragon by her side, she was thinking about her past.
"I cut off my tail to give it to that poor dragon that had lost his moustache."
"Good thing that she grew back right after," added Twilight.
Both shared a small laugh.
"And when we went to the Grand Galloping Gala?"
"Ha ha, you ended up yelling on the prince."
"While covering him in cake," remembered Rarity, adding with disdain, "He had it coming, I had never seen such a cad!"
"And Tom?" continued Twilight, with an amused smile.
The unicorn seemed embarrassed.
"I thought we had agreed to never talk about this..."
"Oh come on Rarity, I'm joking."
Spike wasn't reacting to this conversation. He was just looking at his ever beloved, in her eyes. His passion had transformed into tenderness with the years gone by, but hadn't weakened at all.
"The Cristal Empire as well, that was something... I would love to go back to it, to see my coat like that, once again."
Twilight lost a bit of her smile. She didn't dare to answer this time, not wanting to break her hopes. It was too late to go back to it now...
"And Coco," followed Rarity, full of nostalgia, "What talent she had, already back then!"
"A great dressmaker of Manehattan. Her name has been a reference in fashion for years now."
"I should pay her a visit, to see how the boutique in Manehattan is doing."
Here again, the alicorn did not answer, leaving Rarity to her beautiful thoughts. She simply could not remind her that Coco had died two years prior, it was beyond her strength.
Silence fell in the room, as Rarity appeared to be thinking, giving an affectionate look at Spike. Which had grown a little bit during the years, a few centimetres that allowed him to better approach his lady.
"... Twilight?" She finally asked, with a bit of a heavier tone than before.
"Yes?"
"Can you tell me... why do I remember all of this, even though I don't even know what we were talking about five minutes ago?"
The princess of friendship felt her own heart plunge. She was aware of it. Maybe not fully, but she understood that she was forgetting things. Yet, Twilight refused to demoralise her. This wasn't meant to be a sad moment. Not this time.
"Because those are good memories, Rarity. Even at your age, you remember this."
Another silence came after this answer. Rarity slowly caressed the dragon's claws with her hoof, still with a tender smile on her face. Then she turned back to her friend, thoughtful:
"... Say, Twilight, do you remember your arrival at Ponyville?"
The alicorn had to bite her own lip as to not collapse in tears. She had forgotten. Again. Deep in her, Twilight found the strength to answer with a saddened smile:
"Yes Rarity... I remember..."
The ex-dressmaker tilted her head, as much as her old neck could allow her to.
"Why are you making such a face Twilight?"
"I... I'm thinking about everything we lived... All those good moments."
Twilight rubbed a hoof on her misty eyes, discretely sniffing, as her friend was answering, her eyes fixing the void.
"Oh... I was also thinking about them. Such a coincidence, isn't it? It's the only thing I remember..."
"Yes... A coincidence..."
"Where is Sweetie Belle?"
"She couldn't come," said the alicorn, with a lump in her throat. "She's very busy."
"Oh. Shame..."
Rarity made a sad face. She would have like to see her little sister again.
From her side, Twilight was trying to hold in. Being forced to lie like this to her last friend, just because she couldn't remember. She wasn't realising how long she had lived for and how much everyone she had held dear had gone, one after the other. Amongst all the ponies that Twilight had met the day of her arrival in Ponyville, only Rarity was left. Even the foals of that time were elders today.
Twilight refused to let her go with such a sad thought. Rarity had lived long, but she had been happy, and making it all go to waste in those last moments was out of the question.
"And your shop in Canterlot, do you remember?" started Twilight, with a tone that aimed to be a smiling one.
But her smile quickly faded away when looking at her friend.
Eyes closed, a peaceful look, head resting on her pillow. The unicorn had passed away, a hoof still in the small claws of the dragon, collapsed next to her, sobbing on her mattress. It was over.
Two days later, Twilight and Spike were, again, on that hill, next to Ponyville. The breeze of air was caressing the purple alicorn's coat and making her superbe mane fly. Her quills vibrated under that gentle puff of air.
The dragon next to her legs was snuggling against one of them, shaking in sorrow.
Both of them stood under a tree with great foliages, quivering under the wind, slightly far off the town.
They were only the two of them on that hill. The princess and her number one assistant. Them, a tortoise's shell and five stones. No one else had come.
Spike was inconsolable. Never had he cried that much, and yet he had seen many ponies he cared for go. Oh he did. But now, he had been crying for two days. Twilight wasn't even sure he had managed to sleep or eat since.
In front of them, a stone once again too unremarkable for the exceptional mare resting under it. A great unicorn, a great dressmaker, but above all a great friend. A last friend.
This last leaving had been so harsh for Twilight. Her last friend passing without even remembering her last words. She had been loosing her memory for some years already. Going out of her house without even recalling she had opened the door.
Yet, it was towards the end of her life that she had shown her generosity the most, spreading gifts in town, sewing for free for everypony, until she could not lift a needle with her magic, or hold a fold in her hooves.
Maybe she had done so to compensate the wrinkles that had sullied her so beautiful body, body that she had tried, by all means, to keep presentable, distinguished, refined.
Such irony that it was the one most scared about the devastating effects of ageing, who lived the longest. At least fifteen years more than Pinkie. And so much longer than the others. More than half a century of difference with Rainbow Dash.
Gone with a smile while remembering, three times in a row without noticing, all the good memories with her friends.
And then all had calmly stopped. Her heart, her breath, her life and, worst of all for Twilight, her presence.
The last of her friends had gone away. And specially, for this time, the alicorn had asked for something personal. A burial alone. Because it was all that was left for her now: loneliness. Loneliness in the face of those five stones, ornamented by the cutie marks or her friends, bearing the mention "Friend of the princess" and their respective Element of Harmony. Nothing more.
Although, there was still this little inconsolable dragon. But that was it.
Two great purple eyes looked above the lengthy parchment, fixating the griffon who had just spoken. Hidden behind the piece of paper, the alicorn was thinking while looking at the messenger.
In a long sigh, she magically folded the scroll, revealing her svelte figure to the griffon who was awaiting a response, as well as her long undulating mane.
"This conflict is absurd," commented the princess. "The threats proclaimed by New-Yakyakistan are oversized compared to the harm they've been done. Oceanymph has other things to think of, they still have to take care of the ones injured by the last tsunami..."
"Like every time, your majesty," the griffon allowed himself to comment, with a semblance of a smile, trying to lighten up the tone. "New-Yakyakistan has never been known its diplomacy."
"No, indeed," answered the princess with a very small laugh, before going back to her serious face. "But we have to prevent a new war. It is our role as founding member of the World Council."
"So, what will be the answer?"
The princess pulled out a new blank parchment and a quill, writing on it without the need for ink, using her own magic to engrave purple letters inside. She then rolled the parchment and append her seal on it, before handing it to the griffon.
"New-Yakyakistan's leaders must understand that they can't keep on acting like this."
"I hope they'll understand this time," answered the messenger, bowing. "Have a good day, your highness."
The griffon flew out by a nearby window, leaving the princess alone in her throne room.
Overlooking the rest of the room, the alicorn stood up, dismissing from her thoughts the problems that might happen after the last diplomatic incident she had just resolved. She had something way more joyful in mind. Indeed, today, she was going to see an old friend. A friend she hadn't seen in months.
With an undisguised enthusiasm, she went looking in her personal stuff for a small damaged bag, patched up with some clumsy sewing, and which didn't really fit her current stature anymore. But she accommodated herself to it, she was only using this bag on very special occasions, after all.
All the while humming a little song from an ancient time, she got busy with putting some stones and colourful gems in the bag. She had carefully chosen them amongst a shipment that had been delivered to the town's jeweller the day before. As a princess, merchants were more than happy to let her have a few stones for free, especially since she asked for some no more than once a year.
Of course, no one really knew why she asked for stones but she was a princess, who could have dared to ask what she was doing with them?
The bag was closed and the last princess of Equestria set off outside of her castle, wings deployed. A small breeze was going through Ponyville's megalopolis, and the alicorn flew off with grace and majesty above the great buildings.
Guided by the sun, she went south. Going over kilometres of housing, she glided a long while under the blazing light of the day star, sometimes looking up to the sky to see the moon. The latter, fragmented by an ancient cataclysm, separated in three gigantic pieces, hadn't moved for a long while. Even if Twilight had taken on her the duty of moving the sun, she had never tried to move the moon. Since then, the fractured body of the ancient night star rested forever in the sky of Equestria.
The alicorn shook her head to get out of her daydreaming. She was going to arrive at destination soon. The great mountains had been in view for a while now.
It is at the heart of those, near the summit of one of the most elevated peak, that she softly landed at the doorstep of a cave's gigantic entrance. Twilight wasn't afraid by the worrisome appearance of the cave and went in, walking by a wall spotting a scar the size of her whole body.
Inside was a source of light. A small magical fire was shining with a green glow, behind which was a great and dark mass.
The immense silhouette, that might have been mistaken for a rock, was suddenly illuminated by two great green circles, surrounded by white and possessing a black slit in their centre. The great dragon then redressed his massive head to look at the newcomer, unveiling his fangs in a smile.
Lifting one leg after another to get closer to the alicorn, he extended an arm as big as a carriage and took her in his claws with an infinite gentleness, getting her up to his face.
Twilight snuggled her cheek against the great reptile's one, smiling.
"Happy to see you again, Twilight," said the dragon with quite the emotion.
"Happy to see you again too, Spike," answered the alicorn with a big smile.
The old princess's friend gently put her back on the floor, before straightening all his height for a lengthy stretch, all while asking:
"How much time has passed?"
"Eight months, if I'm not mistaken," answered Twilight. "There is so many things going on, I'm loosing track of time a bit."
"Problems?" immediately inquired the dragon, looking at his friend.
"Nothing too serious," quickly added the alicorn, shaking a nonchalant hoof. "It's just that I'm trying my best to find moments to rest, between diplomatic matters, Equestria's economic problems, not to mention my student that sends me reports on his lessons."
"You still don't have anyone to give that task to?" Spike couldn't prevent himself to ask. "I feel like I'm asking this question every time we see each others."
"Well..." hesitated the princess, a bit embarrassed by the question. "Twinkle Dawn is making progress, but she's not ready to become a princess. I send her to Manehattan only a year ago, it's too soon. I learned it at my own expense. And even if I'm surrounded by advisors and mayors, taking on all that work alone is a bit exhausting."
The dragon stayed silent, looking at his friend, who he couldn't help, with sadness in his eyes. Twilight lowered her head, sighing.
"If I hadn't lost the formula of the spell to change into an alicorn, I would still have two of my ancient students by my sides to help me..."
"Can't you find it again?"
"I don't have the time for that," explained the mare while sitting in front of the fire to warm herself a bit. "And even if I had the time, the spell requires the magic of at least two alicorns to work. And the last alicorns alive, apart from me, don't know enough about magic to help me. It would take me months to find the formula, and years to teach magic to an alicorn."
Once again, the dragon stayed silent for some instants, seeing his friend trying to warm up near the fire, attacked by the humidity of the cave. Spike breathed in slowly and blew new flames to fan the ones already present. He then sat in front of his friend, looking at her while speaking:
"But it could be worth it. Equestria can just do without you for a moment so that y-"
"No, Spike!" firmly replied the alicorn, looking at the fire. "It is the duty that Celestia, Luna and Cadence entrusted me with! Every time I allow myself just a small pause for a week, I end up with ponies coming to me, panicked by something that goes wrong! I raise and lower the sun! I rule over Equestria, alone, and I've done so for nearly two millenium! And there's nothing I can do to change that!"
The alicorn wrapped herself in her own wings a bit, regretting her words.
"I'm sorry, Spike..." she whispered, lowering her head a little more. "I didn't meant to be this aggressive."
The big dragon sighed, bringing a long claw under the princess's chin to kindly lift her head and look at her in the eyes.
"You miss them, don't you...?" said Spike.
"Every day..." answered the alicorn, keeping her face up, whipping her misty eyes. "But it's not the subject, Spike."
"You are the princess of friendship, Twilight. Of course it is the subject. You've seen generations of friends succeed each others, without ever being able to keep some. Your mentors where snatched away from you by fate. You won't be able to keep on going alone, Twilight."
"I'm not alone..." said the princess with a sincere half-smile. "It's just that my friends change regularly. I got used to it, with time. And I have you."
The dragon looked away, letting go of the alicorn's chin. With a bitter look on his face and a grave tone, he decided to shatter the hopes of his friend with his words, because it was for her own good:
"I'm not immortal, Twilight. My fangs are no as sharp as they once were, my claws are less well honed, my scales are fading, my flames don't have their old spark. I'm starting to get old, Twilight. I don't know exactly when my hour will come, maybe in a year, maybe in a century. But it'll come fast, for you and for me. You-"
"I already know all that, Spike. And I'm going to greatly miss those conversations with you. But I've come to term with the fact that, one day, you won't be here any longer. I just don't want to talk about it."
The alicorn had lowered her head, her voice sounding a bit sad, but firm. The dragon felt guilty for bringing up the topic, even if it was necessary. Twilight had to keep a positive memory from this day. But it was the princess that changed the subject.
"Anyway. I've brought you some rare gems!" she started, trying to appear cheerful and forget about this discussion.
She grabbed the gem stones in her bag and showed them to the dragon. Spike's eyes gleamed when faced with those jewels with uncountable shining facets.
"I must admit, it's been a while since I've tasted gems that pretty," he rejoiced while extending his arm.
Twilight put the gems in his claws. Spike brought the stones to his eyes to better admire them and savour their appetizing look. Then he gobbled them up in a single bite, a bright smile appearing on his face.
The alicorn smiled, happy that he liked her gift.
"I sincerely regret to have nothing to give you back for this, Twilight! This stones must cost you a fortune every time!"
"As if," she answered, waiving a nonchalant hoof with a little giggle. "Jewellers are more than happy to gift those stones to the princess. The badlands' deposit are as productive as ever, gemstones are still our main source of exportation. More and more countries are becoming rich enough to afford that luxuries, and the magical catalysing abilities of sapphires and rubies make them really alluring to mages."
"Twilight?" almost interrupted the dragon.
"Yes?"
"I'm not your economical advisor, you know," said Spike with an entertained smile.
The princess's cheeks turned a slight pink, as she looked away, extremely embarrassed.
The great dragon burst into laugher.
"You still hold Equestria close to your heart, I see," he said with an almost tenderised smile.
"Sorry, I think I really need some rest," answered the alicorn with a nervous laugh, still a bit embarrassed by what she had said.
"You can give yourself that. The world is more tranquil than it use to, despite everything going on. The last great threat dates back a long time ago, now."
"Yes... I think allow myself to rest soon..."
"In the meantime, tell me more about the outside world!" said Spike, sitting more comfortably.
In the vastness of the city of Ponyville, there was a place that most of the residents of Equestria knew, if by name at least: The park of the five. Yet, no ponies, apart from those who took care of it and the guards, had visited it. No pictures of the place existed and yet it was immense.
Surrounded by great walls made out of stone, on a hill north-east of the town centre, a thriving vegetation could be seen above the wall, well maintained, and also, dominating the region on top of this hill, a tall tree with long leaves.
Reserved only for the princess, the only part known by the public was the one the entrance portal showed. A long path, covered in all kinds of flowers and, many affirmed it, sometimes with small animals joyfully wandering around, despite the fact that the park itself was close to the centre of the city. Even pegasus didn't had the right to fly over it.
Sometimes, during the week, often in the evening, the princess could be seen entering this park, only to walk out a few minutes later. Each time someone dared to ask her what she was doing in it, she simply answered that she was paying a visit to her old friends.
Those same old friend she would gladly talk about, and whose stories were written in very old Equestrian tales. This is what had given the park its name, and some harebrained stories about it existed, telling that the bodies of the princess's friends were resting there, locked away in glass coffins, to never loose their glow.
They were only stories. The bodies of the five princess's friends were curtly resting under big carved stones, slightly unpolished by the winds of times, with still readable inscriptions, thanks to the restoration works that the princess sometimes ordered.
Of course, the princess had graves of other ponies she cherished, elsewhere, often times in their native towns. But the graves here kept a stronger meaning to her.
She had that park built after Ponyville's massive extension that had occurred a few centuries after her crowning. She had been scared, hearing the machines and their constant noise, that she could never be at peace in front of her friends again. But the key moment of her decision was the deterioration of Tank's shell, pushed a few meters away by a ball launched by a clumsy foal.
So she had raised walls and forbidden the access to all. Anyhow, nopony knew them enough to commune with themselves on their tombs.
It was the last place, in all of Equestria, where she could rest. Entering that park was like crossing a gate towards the past, where all of her problems went away. Where there were no worries about tomorrow, no risks of war or famine, and where she wasn't so alone.
Finally, it was also now the last home for her oldest friend to date. In the middle of the five graves in a semi-circle, there was now a flat stone at the centre, bearing the mention "Spike the Dragon". Such had been his last wish, to rest with them, to rest by the side of his childhood friends, next to his first and purest love.
The princess had managed to bring back his massive body, and to bury him by her own means in that park. No ceremony, no one had been warned. The true was that knowing that Spike, the dragon who had been judged guilty of treason towards Equestria, was resting in the middle of Ponyville, would have been enough to create an uprising among the population. No one should know.
In her heart, Twilight had always known that Spike was innocent, and that he had been manipulated, but never had she found proof of it. The dragon then had to endorse the guilt alone, as initiator of the last great war between dragons and ponies. On top of having to watch, powerless, the massacre of his people, he had to run away, as an outcast, from his town of old, escaping the hatred from the only family he had left.
The alicorn was looking at his grave. A slight wind was blowing this evening, the weather was clear and open, the sun rays were slowly falling bellow the horizon as Twilight was lowering it.
"It's your last sunset, Spike."
She wasn't crying. She had long learned to not cry anymore. In fact, it was when she was talking to her friends like this that she had the least desire to cry.
She lifted her head towards the other gravestones.
"I hope you're giving him a good welcoming, out there."
The alicorn still had a pinch in her heart.
"I'm all alone here, now... I'm the last one to carry memories of you... For all the rest of Equestria, you are just an old story, from now on..."
The alicorn had already realised that in the dragon's cave. She wasn't sad to loose a friend. She was sad to loose her last friend, the only survivor of that era, other than her. From now on, she wouldn't be able to talk about those ancient moments, and to have a companion to remind her of something she would have forgotten with time. Now, if she were to forget a story, an adventure, the smallest piece of her friends, that piece would be lost forever.
For all of her fellow citizens, all of her subjects, they would only be a story described in books, or by the very words of the princess herself.
Thus, standing in the dying light of the last sun ray, Twilight was looking at the traces of her past friends. The time spent along Spike had seemed like an eternity, compared to the life of her other friends. But now, here she was, at eternity's end.
The alicorn lowered her gaze. Sat down in the library of her castle, she was looking at three foals sitting in front of her. Twilight smiled.
"What brings you here today, kids?"
"Is it true that the moon was only in one piece before?" asked the small pegasus.
"Oh, yes," answered the princess, tenderized by the question. "Before, it was an enormous sphere that soared in the sky, and only showed itself at night, taking the place of the sun."
"What happened?" said the little unicorn, curious.
"It's a long story, you know. Are you sure you have time for it?"
"Yes!" the little ponies answered together.
Twilight had a radiant smile, bringing some cushions for the foals and for herself to be better sited. When everyone had took their place, the princess started:
"Well, first of all, let me tell you about the other three princesses of Equestria."
"The other three?" repeated the foals, looking at each other, as they had never heard about another princess, beside Twilight Sparkle, before.
"It was in a very old and ancient time," explained the alicorn with a nostalgic smile. "I was still young back then. To be honest, I was born under the reign of those three princesses. A bit older than me, there was Cadance. She was the princess of love. Everywhere she went, she would spread love in ponies' heart and allow them to express their feelings."
The little unicorn had stars in her eyes while looking at Twilight.
"She must have been so pretty!"
"She was," kindly answered the alicorn. "So much so that she managed to seduce my brother, Shining Armor, and married him."
"There was a prince?" asked the pegasus.
"Two. My brother, who became prince after marrying Cadance, and Blue Blood, who was the nephew of the two princesses I'm going to talk about now."
The three foals were focused on the princess, carefully listening to her and with a great interest, imagining the characters she was describing to them.
"The youngest of the two was named Luna. The princess of the night, a great alicorn with a dark blue coat and a mane coloured like the night. She had the heavy duty of moving the moon during the night, and watching over ponies' dreams, to make them avoid nightmares. Her cutie mark looked like a night sky.
"So, she moved the moon, and you the sun, princess?" asked the earth pony.
"No, this task was endorsed by the greatest princess. The most ancient, princess Celestia, Luna's big sister. A tall alicorn, as white as a cloud and with a mane spotting blue and lilac tints, possessing, naturally, a cutie mark representing the sun. She was the main ruler of Equestria and it is her, with Luna's help, who founded Equestria."
"Luna and Celestia created Equestria?" said the unicorn, surprised.
"It was Celestia that moved the sun?" asked the pegasus.
"Yes, and yes," answered Twilight with a smile. "These princesses ruled Equestria before I became a princess myself. Cadance only a few years before me, but Celestia and Luna had already been there for a long time at my birth, at least a thousand years."
"Ooooh," said the foals, impressed to learn so many things.
"And where are they now?" asked the earth pony with a bit of a sad stare. "Are they gone?"
Twilight felt a little sting in her heart, slightly grimacing.
"Yes."
The mare painfully opened her eyes, not that she was blinded by the sun reigning over her head, but tired. With slow gestures lacking motivation, she tried to get back on her legs, but the ocean of sand she used for a bed was, as usual, a real ordeal to stand up on. The sand was sliding under her hooves, getting stuck in her coat, and an unpleasant sensation was running along her left flank, on which she had slept.
Ignoring the dark circles under her eyes, her tiredness and her hunger, she stretched in length, looking at the arid stretch of sand in front of her, spotting some dunes that broke the monotony of the landscape, overlooked by a sun at it's zenith and a fragmented celestial body. She sighed. Again, she would walk.
Not a cloud on the horizon. And it was for the better. In this place made of sand, any rain would cause torrents of thick sands and the poor mare had to galop in all directions, in search of a place where she would not sink to a certain death.
That being said, maybe death would have been preferable. Maybe it was more delicate than this great nothing that was animating her, that surrounded her and in which she was moving forward, with her slow steps.
"What happened?" enquired the little unicorn.
"A great disaster," answered Twilight, eyes closed and with a dark tone. "After many centuries of reign, something happened. An enemy, more ancient than princess Celestia herself, coming from a forgotten time, surfaced back. Its power was way beyond everything I had faced before, and even the Elements of Harmony, our most powerful artefacts, were ineffective against that master of magic. We thought that the end of Equestria had come."
The three foals were focused on the alicorn, not loosing a single word of hers, their little hearts racing when listening to such a story.
"But something was noticed," continued Twilight. "Despite all its strength, this enemy was easy to deceive. Magic had evolved in its absence, and some subtilises from spells, often times looked over as minors, escaped it. We could trap it with that, but not vanquish it. To do so, we'd had to resolve ourselves to use a magic that would have harmed the very essence of Equestria, and caused damages so great that it could not have been called a win. However, princess Celestia had a plan."
The princess remembered that day. That moment, in an isolated place of Equestria, where the four princesses had discussed their plan. The very moment when Celestia had exposed it. The serious look on her face, resolute and firm, shared by Luna, even if she had seemed a bit more saddened. The shiver of terror that Twilight had felt, even though she didn't knew the terrible consequences of that plan.
"A trap was set up. The three princesses lured the enemy in it, and forced it to fight them on a terrain where they could let go of their magic, without any risks of collateral damages."
"Where?"
As an answer, Twilight slowly raised a hoof to the sky, directed towards the fragmented celestial body. For that matter, it was strange that the sky was visible while being in her castle, but the alicorn didn't pay attention to it.
"The trap brought the enemy on the moon. But it would have quickly find a way to come back, if the princesses hadn't come with it. Once up here, alone with it, they used their magic. No one knows what spell they used, but a few minutes after the trap was a success, an enormous magical explosion, bigger than anything I had seen up until then, detonated at the surface of the moon. The light was so intense that it was as if another sun had bloomed in the sky, the shock wave so powerful that all Equestrian mana was disturbed for a few days. Horns crackled, enchantments momentarily fell, and even earth ponies and pegasus affirmed that they had felt a strange and powerful disturbance in themselves."
Twilight marked a stop, trying to not look too sombre while telling this story. In vain.
"When the light finally dissipated, the moon was in the same state at it is now: fragmented, smashed and disfigured. There were no traces of the enemy, nor of the three princesses. All of Equestria's telescopes were mobilised to search any traces of the princesses on the lunar surface, even on its dark side, but to no avail. All four had disappeared, and the moon stayed unmoving forever in the sky."
"And there was only one princess in Equestria," Twilight concluded in her own mind.
She had assumed that role. She had prepared herself to it, when Celestia had emitted the possibility that they might never come back from this battle. Twilight had to stay back, not because they thought to easily defeat the enemy without her. If they could have brought her, they would have, to ensure victory. No, if Twilight had been left in Equestria, it was because this nation demanded a ruler. After such a crisis, ponies could not be left on their own, running the risk to, once more, spread discord between the races.
At least, it was what Twilight had thought, for some time. But as the years had passed, while she was rehashing this moment, another conclusion had come to her mind. An explanation, coming from the remorse and the regrets she felt towards that plan, and what she had done before. She was left behind as a punishment.
"A punishment for what?" the little earth pony asked, even though she hadn't said any of this.
The princess had a little hiccup hearing this oh so terrible question. What she had done. Or rather, what she hadn't managed to get done.
"Before that plan was implemented... there was an attempt to use the Elements of Harmony. As the embodiment of Magic, it had been my duty to always find a new generation of Elements. And I did so. When the enemy appeared, I brought the five ponies that were responsible of them, to face it. We engaged our attack and..."
The alircorn's voice broke down, not willing to continue. The small pegasus came to her, a piercing and almost sadistic look on his face, eyes on her.
"And?" he asked without an ounce of curiosity in the voice.
Twilight's hooves trembled.
"I failed... The enemy infiltrated their hearts and managed to spread fear in Loyalty's one. The balance was disturbed and our attack didn't had any effect. The enemy then responded, killing Kindness and Honesty, causing Generosity and Laughter to run away... It's my fault if all of this failed. I wasn't careful enough in my researches for the new Elements and that mistake costed their lives, and many others..."
The mare looked up from the ground, feeling something flowing on her cheek. Water? Yet it wasn't raining. She had noticed that phenomenon before, sometimes, while she was walking, without ever finding an explanation. From time to time, it was accompanied by a strange taste in her mouth, and a feeling of tightening in her chest.
Occasionally, she would take the opportunity to stop and think. She was asking herself a lot of questions. She had always done so, since she had realised that she could think, in fact.
It had been something weird. All of the sudden, it was like she had discovered that, in her own head, she could qualify objects, put some designations, some "words". It had took her a moment to find the word "word", and to understand its meaning. Of course, it wasn't the first term she had used. No, the first thing she had managed to name was the sand. This word had come to her mind on its own, while wandering in the desert. It was a good word, "sand", it resembled the sound it makes from afar.
Then came the words "dune", "rock", "sky", "sun", "moon", "sound" and finally "wind", after she had seen sand falling from a dune for no reason. It was at this moment she had truly realised that she could name things. And those names associated ideas in her head. It was such a discovery, and what had followed was even more fabulous.
After the word "word", she had remembered "think" and "reflect", even if it took her an eternity to understand the difference between the two. Because, in fact, she couldn't get it. If the goal was for those words to designate things, why would there be many for the same thing? And, on the contrary, why could she qualify every dune she encountered as being a "dune", even though they were all different from each other? All those questions sometimes required a long thinking, that could have been counted in weeks if the sun was still setting. And, as far as she could remember, it was the only thing she had done, apart from walking.
And another question, more than any, had stayed without an answer: Why was she thinking, and why those words? What were they? For she, who had only known loneliness, could not even begging to imagine other living beings on this world. She didn't even knew what being alive meant. The fact that all of this had been invented to communicate was literally unthinkable for her. She could not imagine something she didn't knew.
But every time she would discover a new word, or answer a question, she got a strange sensation out of it, that she appreciated because it broke the monotony of her travel, but at the same time, it scared her. With that feeling, sometimes, came reactions from her body. Some kind of convulsions, with small sounds emitted by her mouth. She didn't even knew what those sounds were, neither how to do them on purpose! She had tried moving her lips, but no noise came out of them.
Alone, the mare was learning, slowly, what language was. She had successfully managed to name parts of her body, and she had even given herself the word of "pony" to designate her entire being. She had acquired self-awareness, without really knowing what it meant. Her thoughts wandered without a destination, as her body did in the desert. Even if she recovered thoughts, she couldn't see any purpose to it. In fact, she didn't even knew what "purpose" was. A thinking shell, without a goal, without a past, without a future, without anything. Lost.
"And then?"
The princess opened her eyes, looking at the three foals facing her, that seemed to be rapidly decomposing. Yet, despite their state, they kept on staring at her, without blinking, probing her being with there empty look.
"Then..." continued the alicorn, rehashing bad thoughts, more recent and yet so far. "There was a great time of peace, where Equestria developed, as well as the rest of the world. Many things happened, but few great catastrophes..."
"And?" the foals then insisted, as if they only wanted to hear what followed.
"Until the day... of the first great extinction."
Twilight's throat tightened again. Oh no, she didn't liked that story. Even less than the previous one.
"The Tree of Harmony. It had always held the roots of evil captive. The evil of the Everfree Forest, that could not be destroyed, only contained. An evil that only sought to eradicate all order, all the good in this world.
A day came, after hundreds of millennia, where the Tree... withered. Exhausted by all those years, by the use of it's fruits, the Elements of Harmony, it died. It was a possibility for which I had been prepared for a while. At least, I thought... The brambles of the forest spread faster than ponies could gallop. The trees uprooted themselves to chase the survivors. Foul creatures, forgotten, came out of the bushes looking for fresh meat. I was ready for everything but that.
All the old land of Equestria was covered in a few days, and all our efforts in trying to stop the forest only delayed something that now seemed inevitable. The problem started to spread to the neighbouring countries, and would soon expand to the whole world."
The alicorn took a little pause, her voice lighting up a bit while pursuing:
"But then, something we couldn't hope for happened. As of today, I still don't know if it was an ultimate attempt to save us done by the Tree, if it was all planed from the beginning, or if it was simply the product of the determination shown by all of those fighting the forest. But a seed sprouted in this chaos. A new Tree grew, and ponies unveiled themselves to carry the new Elements, different from the old ones and yet very similar. Bravery, Dream, Hope, Altruism, Felicity and Wisdom.
Together, after weeks of fierce fights, they pushed back the forest and even got her further away than she was at the origin, reducing the forest to a square of only a few kilometres wide. The new Tree of Harmony was planted at its centre, to contain it, like its predecessor, and the stones were put back in their place. After the disaster, the world preferred to unite, to avoid such cataclysm from happening ever again. Cultures mixed and a durable peace finally set everywhere in the world."
"But it was short-lived."
Twilight retched when seeing the face of the foal that had just spoken. Or rather, the absence of a face. He was only a skeleton, and so were the two other foals by his sides. Even with their eye sockets empty, Twilight could paradoxically feel their morbid little stare directed toward her.
"The world fell," continued the apparition, seemingly growing as Twilight suddenly felt crushed under its presence. "Life went extinct. By your fault."
"No!"
The mare jumped, frightened. Her ears lifted, solicited by this sudden of brutal use. The sound was still echoing on the dunes, weak, and ended up vanishing completely. It was the first time she had heard a sound like this one, aside from the thunders she had sometimes witnessed, and weirdest of all, it originated from her. So strong, way more than all other sounds her body had produced up until now.
She tried to reproduce it. But, like each time, the mechanism to make sounds was a mystery to her. Small screeching sometimes got out of her mouth, but nothing comparable to what she had just heard. And, just like the sounds her belly occasionally produced, she ignored the meaning of all of this.
So, head low, the mare continued her journey, allowing herself a couple of hours to think about what had just happened. After some time, something attracted her eyes. A familiar shape was drawing itself on the horizon, getting the traveller to stop when she noticed that she had, once again, come back to this place. Lotte.
Lotte was tall. Taller than everything else the mare knew in this world. A great rock, that stood many hundred of meters tall, composed of a serrated plateau at its summit, as if broken by some kind of astronomical force.
But the detail that got the mare thinking it was indeed Lotte, and not just any big rock, was this strange formation. On Lotte's left flank, great rocks were poking out. They took on shapes the mare had never seen anywhere else. Flat, suspended in the air, pics arose from it and one of them, the tallest one, ended in a broken half-sphere.
Lotte was unique because of that. Every time the mare had seen a great rock formation, she had come to realise it was Lotte. There were no other great rock formation in this world. It was the fifth time that she had encountered Lotte and, each time, she had try to depart from it from another direction. But her hooves seemed to always brought her back here. In this place she called "The mountain can't her Lotte," or Lotte for short. She had no idea about the meaning behind the words "mountain", "can't" or "her", of course, but that name had came up to her mind when seeing the structure, without any raison.
Once, she had climbed to Lotte's top, to see the strange formation at its summit. From up close, it looked like what the mare had sometimes encountered during her travel: Rocks almost smooth, at times put in a single bloc, wide, and at others slimmer, thinner, often linked to other rocks of the same kind, creating geometrical shapes, squares, domes. All broken, of course, largely incomplete. And other rocks lied on the floor, anarchically. She knew how to differentiate between stones with a pattern and those without one.
This had been an occasion for the alicorn to learn many new words. She sometimes called those rocks "walls", "houses" or "ruins".
That being said, Lotte was much different from the other ruins. There was this great hollow rock, that stretched to the sky. The mare had one day gone into it, and found a way to climb to its top from the inside.
There, she had took a stunning view of the surrounding area. Never had she stood so high, at least from what she remembered. The vastness of the sand, dunes and desert that had unveiled to her eyes, and the wind that had blew in her mane at that moment, the mare still remembered it. A pinch had caught her torso and still now, as she was thinking about it, the feeling was overwhelming her.
Once more, so, she found herself nearby Lotte. It had been a while since she had seen it. Even if it was difficult to have an understanding of time, literally since the mare had never thought about that concept. She knew she had walk a lot before coming back to Lotte. She had encountered two oceans, some rock formations and even some white sand, some "snow".
As the mare was trying to locate where she was, to find a new direction from which to depart, something caught her eyes. A big formation of dark clouds had appeared out of nowhere, on Lotte's left. Weird, usually rain clouds would take some time to group up.
The clouds darkened more and more, nearly condensing in a single point, as small purple lightings could be seen on their surface, despite being far away from the mare.
The latter, intrigued by this phenomena, lifter her head to try and take a better look at what was happening.
The wind stopped for a fraction of a second. Then there was a violent, but brief, aspiration, that the mare felt from where she stood. A huge layer of sand was lifted, dragged towards the clouds, before slowly falling back on the dunes, just a couple of moments later. Silence fell once more and the mare saw a great purple lighting burst the sky, violently striking below the cloud, a few kilometres away. The shock was so great that it lifted cubic meters of sands in the air, before everything settled again, as the sound wave was propagating in the air. The mare saw the wave come, shaking the dunes in its path, before it got to her, ruffling her coat and pulling back her mane, while she had no idea of what all of this was.
On the other hand, she could clearly see that the clouds had dissipated. And that event was something new. Her curiosity, her only driving force, told her to go and see what it was. And she went.
Twilight was surrounded by tall shadows. The three alicorn's gigantic skeletons were judging her with their empty eye sockets. Despite being made of bones, their figure and their voices sounded horribly familiar to the princess.
"Well, Twilight?" asked the tallest. "Where is Equestria?"
The four of them stood in the middle of a desolated field, the soil turned over, covered in debris and corpses, as if a hurricane had passed her a couple of minutes ago. The sky was dark, grey, as was the landscape nearby.
Twilight didn't have the will to look up. Sat down, she kept a low head, hooves shaking.
"In front of you, princess Celestia," she answered with a lump in her throat.
The skeletons were deprived of eyes, but Twilight could feel their gaze getting a lot more aggressive. She knew she was going to get reprimanded, and she deserved it. She deserved the anger of her mentor, but it's not what she got.
"You disappoint me, Twilight..." whispered Celestia with a horribly cold tone, way worse than if she had started to yell.
"We entrusted you to take care of this country," continued princess Luna's skeleton.
"I know," stuttered Twilight, shaking with her head still lowered.
"We had faith in you," said Cadance.
"I know," the alicorn answered once again, on the brink of tears.
"I thought you would knew better, when finding the new embodiments of the Elements of Harmony," concluded Celestia.
The three skeletons stood up and looked away from the mare made of flesh.
Twilight lifted her head. She was silently crying, looking at the three figures going away, without daring to move to follow them. In a last ditch of hopelessness, she bursted into tears, yelling:
"What did I do wrong!? Where did I made a mistake!?"
She collapsed on herself, her face finding a refuge under her hooves, crying. The three skeletons had stopped, but weren't saying anything.
After many long seconds, even minutes maybe, Twilight finally slowly stood up, whipping the tears flowing on her cheeks in vain.
"The world was at peace since the first great extinction... All the peoples of the world were united... It had been centuries without any danger... And yet, I was still finding new creatures to bear the Elements of Harmony. Yes, I was less cautious, I was mostly trusting the reaction from the stone to designate them. But I thought the world would never have to use that ultimate weapon... I thought the mere strength of all creatures united would be enough to push back any danger..."
Celestia slightly turned her head towards her ancient student, looking at her from the corner of her empty eye.
"You lost everything we gave to you... Here is where you made a mistake."
Without any other words, the three skeletons went away, slowly, before vanishing in the darkness, leaving the alicorn alone, in distress, as she could only lament.
"It's unfair... You abandoned me..."
The light slowly went back around the alicorn, as she was completely collapsing into sobs. A slow hoof sound approached and a great mare with a pearly white coat and a long ethereal mane entered into the light.
With an infinite kindness, she passed the bottom of her wing under her student's chin and slowly lifted her head, looking at her with compassionate eyes.
"Don't let yourself be fooled, Twilight," said Celestia with tenderness and compassion. "I would never say such things. Those dark ideas were ingrained into your mind by the Enemy and the years gone by, don't listen to them."
Twilight looked at her mentor, with tearful eyes and shaking jaw.
"B-But they are right..." she sobbed, "I failed... If you had been in my position, you wouldn't have failed... I was dumb, I chose the wrong Elements."
"You were alone, Twilight," wisely answered Celestia, "By our own fault. During my reign, I only had one trial where I was alone, where I was Equestria's last hope. During your reign, you've been in this situation dozens of times. You have always been put in moments where you were Equestria's first and last defence. And you succeeded, every time, but one. If someone would have to reproach you for that one and only failure, it would most certainly not be an old alicorn who always had her sister and her student to succeed where she would fail."
The great mare gave a kind smile to her student, trying to reassure her, and she dried her tears, giving her back a small smile, still sniffing.
"You really think that...?" the purple alicorn still asked.
"I'm the product of your mind, Twilight. A memory. The important thing is not that I think it's true, but rather that you think it is, and that you be honest with yourself."
Twilight's head lowered a bit, before Celestia added with a lighter tone:
"I'm also flattered that I'm still the pony your mind calls to comfort you, despite all this time."
"I understand..." the student said, slowly recovering her composure. "I failed, but I did what I could, and for a long time."
"And the time as come for you to take a well deserved rest..." continued her mentor.
Twilight looked up at her, a bit perplex.
"You mean... to die?"
"The world has died, Twilight," said the alicorn, once again with wisdom. "Evil has consumed every bit of life in this world, and died of hunger after destroying everything. It is what the Enemy desired when it planted the seed of the Everfree. A world freed from good and evil, forever deprived of life. My sister and I sacrificed your life by making it eternal, to allow billions of others to know a happy passage in this world. You've wonderfully fulfilled your role, thanks to you all this ponies, and even uncountable other creatures, were able to live happy. Equestria is no more and so is your duty to protect it. I won't force you, not this time at least, but I think you could use some time to rest now."
Twilight remembered it, the second and last great extinction. Only a few centuries after the first one, while the world was still recovering from it. The last embodiment of Bravery had heard tales of the heroes from the first great extinction, and wanted to become one too. He wanted to cut down the tree to free the Everfree once again and save the world from it as well. Twilight had responded that it was dumb and to really not do it, but she hadn't paid much attention to that idea. Yet, Bravery convinced Dream to help and, together, one day, they cut down the Tree of Harmony.
The Everfree was released and they died only a few seconds after that. Twilight realised what was happening too late and the world plunged into chaos once more, submerged by the strength of the forest embolden by its first failure. Twilight wanted to fight, but she was powerless and, this time, no new seed sprouted. The princess managed to save herself by flying higher than the brambles, higher than where the pegasus could fly, higher than where ponies could still breath. But, when she turned back, she only saw a devastated world, covered in brambles, from which echoed yells of desperate creatures, for a few days.
She tried to save many, bringing them along in a magical construction. But there was no food nor water up above the clouds, and Twilight's magic was fading as the Everfree was consuming all the sources of mana in the world. Only the alicorn was able to survive, her body only needed so little natural mana to keep on existing. She saw, one after the other, the last beings of this world die of hunger, of thirst, or even suicide and kill each-others. She witnessed that ultimate carnage, helpless.
It's only months after all this that she was finally able to go back to the ground. The evil had died, along with the rest of the world, and there was nothing left, aside from fine sand, dust and an alicorn, alone.
"I understand your opinion," Twilight finally said, after thinking back about all this, "But... I refuse to believe that life is going to stop there... I want to keep on hoping, that life will come back. And I want to be here to welcome it, to guide it, if it accepts me..."
"Twilight..." said Celestia, a bit saddened, "Look at the world around you. It could take tens of thousands of years, or even more. Do you really plan on spending all that time, alone, without anything? You will become mad from it, Twilight..."
"I already lived a few thousands years, I can go on with living some more, if it allows me to save a new world."
"But y-"
"I am alone, princess," interrupted the alicorn, a bit abruptly, looking at her directly in the eyes. "You said it yourself. You're just an image. There is only me and some ruins. Not a skeleton, not a grave, nothing can still attest that there was a world before the ocean of sand. That there was life. I am the last witness of this world. If I die, everyone will die with me. If life emerges after, and I'm not there to teach them why the world is made of sand, or why the Moon is how it is, never will they know that you existed before them. I watched over this world and even if I already don't recall most of the faces I have known, I still remember our traditions, the big events, our mistakes. If I die, the world will die a second time, the Enemy will have won, and I will have been useless. I allowed a lot of people to live a happy life, yes. But, for me, my mission is not done. I'm the memory of this now gone world."
Celestia stayed silent for a moment, before closing her eyes and bowing slightly as a sign of approbation.
"I understand your choice Twilight. However, you said it yourself: You've already stated to forget the faces you knew. How much time will you go on before forgetting Equestria?"
"I casted a spell on my own memory, a long time ago, to not forget important details and... some people I knew a while ago. If my brain wants to succumb to forgetfulness or madness, I'll let it be. But if the magic from my spell holds, and if one day I encounter another form of life, the spell will bring back those memories. And my sanity with it, I hope. The spell has some side effects, like uncontrollable recollections during dreams, but they are forgotten on waking... And it's worth it."
The alicorn attempted a smile that was trying to be reassuring, but sadness emanated from it. However, her mentor approved once more in silence, recognising her student's motivations. After all, who was she to judge her, aside from a simple memory? After a short reflection, she had a light smile, both proud of her and moved. That's when she followed with:
"In that case, princess of the sands, I'll stay by your sides in this journey, for as long as you will allow me to."
"For as long as my memory will be willing to, you'll be with me," answered Twilight with a little laugh, amused by this sudden serious tone.
She was joined in her laugh by Celestia, both continuing for a while as the light around them was fading.
It took the mare some time to find the place where the lighting had struck. But in the end, she managed, through back-tracking, to put her hoof on it. And to be honest, it was pretty obvious, there wasn't many craters in the area. A perfect circle, around the point of impact, of around twenty meters of radius.
A soon as the epicentre was in view, she felt that something was different. Or rather, she saw. Something she had never imagined. She had already noticed that things, in addition of being different in form and touch from one another, had another visual features. A colour. And while she had found sand yellow, sky and sea blue and herself had been purple, here it was something else. Like blue but more... yellow? The mare wasn't sure. It was different. Definitely not blue, nor anything she knew.
By approaching this little bed of unknown colour, she also noticed that a few rocks, grey, were arranged in a semi-circle on it. Surprisingly, they nearly all had the same shape, rectangular at the base and a rounded top.
Stones, she had seen a few yes, but such a pattern repeated and so well disposed, no, apart in ruins. Where those ruins then?
The mare stopped at the edge of the little circle, looking down. In front of her hooves, there were small things, long, thin, pointing in the air, and it was those who gave the bedding its colour. They were mixing, superposing, but all came from what was bellow. The beast leaned a bit forward to take a closer look. There was another colour, this one closer to the sand, but deeper, less bright. But it's not what assailed the mare and made her move back a bit, surprised. No, it was something else.
Her muzzle. It had shivered and her nostrils had suddenly found themselves filled by a fresh air, and a taste that was just as much. Never had she known such a stimuli. It was soft, far from the smell and the heat of the sand, fresh, unlike the dusty ruins, and very different from the tumultuous ocean. Nice, that was the word.
The mare was going for surprise after surprise, but she didn't had enough. She had to learn, to feel more. Closing in, she inhaled the air, willingly this time, just above those little sprig-of-things-with-a-weird-colour, and savoured this new smell. It was the best she had known up until know, which was surprising because she had never thought about ranking them before. But this one beat all the others, without any hesitation.
After enjoying this scent, she had to resolve to the next step. Feverishly raising her hoof, she brought it close to those little things. She was expecting to get cut and stabbed, seeing how the sprigs seemed sharp, but to her relief, it didn't happen. The stem was flexible, and those odd things slowly pack down under her hoof. It was soft, unlike stone, and she wasn't sinking into it, unlike sand. It was fresh without being cold, and it slid on the hairs of her hoof without sticking to it. What a feeling.
Without hesitating any more instant, now convinced that nothing bad could came out of those things, the settled her other hooves on it and enjoyed, for the first time, not being on sand or stone. Gently, she raised her hooves one after another and rested them back again on this ground. It was truly incredible.
The idea of closing her eyes came to mind. She stayed fixed, slowly breathed in the air as a soft breeze undulated in the crater and her mane. A shiver ran through her whole body, climbing back along her spine. To her surprise, other sensations added themselves in this instant. A stronger wind shook her coat and, for a brief moment, appeared before her a different landscape. A colourful landscape, endless, made out of small hills. Weird things poked out of the ground and were growing sometimes along many meters, others stayed more modest, contempt with spreading at ground level, in a myriad of different and previously unseen colours.
In herself, she felt something calming down. It wasn't the weariness she had in front of the endless ocean, nor the satisfaction of avoiding a sand slide during rain, or the pinch she felt in the heart in the ruins, and even less that typical void in the desert. No. For the first time, she was chilled. Calm. No tumultuous thoughts, no questions, despite the fact that her mind was trying to ask some about this vision, in vain.
"Why having them send to the future?"
The mare took a moment of reflection, to find what this person was talking about.
"Because I didn't wanted to let them get devoured by the great extinction... They were important, and since I can only send unanimated objects and simple forms of life into the future, I saved what I held the dearest. It was selfish, especially since the world was in crisis but... I had to. I think they should reappear in a hundred thousands years, if I don't summon them before."
"I understand, your friends mattered to you."
"They were my friends...?" slowly said the mare, realising something.
Slowly, she turned her head towards the weird white shape, undulating like fog, and which was talking with a denatured voice.
"Who were they...?" asked the mare, suddenly looking desperate.
The white cloud sighed, sadly. The alicorn stuttered.
"Princess... Princess..."
She was trying to say its name, but nothing was coming out.
"I-I forgot!" continued the mare as panic was getting to her.
"I know," answered that figure that was follwing her everywhere. "You already said that, a couple of hours ago."
"I-I'm sorry..."
For an unknown reason, that figure was important to her. And she had just forgotten its name. But there was more grave, and tears slowly came to her eyes.
"I-I forgot their names... I forgot why I saved them... Who they were... Your name and..."
The mare stopped, suddenly horrified.
"Who am I...?"
The cloud sighed once more, answering with sadness:
"I don't know."
The mare slowly reopened her eyes, going back to it's landscape of desert and desolation. But thankfully for her gaze, there was also those six stones. Five where arranged in a semi-circle and the sixth one was in the middle.
With a slow pace, still savouring every push of her hooves on this green surface, without even realising that she had just remembered the name of that colour, she walked towards the stones, stopping in front of the middle one.
As much as that green thing seemed common, she felt just as much that those stones were special. And when she really looked at them, she saw strange particularities. There were holes in those stones. Not deep, but the mare had never seen such things. The holes, unlike those she had seen in the ruins, were regular. She wasn't understanding what she was seeing, but there was something satisfying in those hollow curves. And they all had the same depth to it, were all arranged the same way on the stones, and some shapes repeated. Somehow, one could have thought there was some kind of organisation in those holes, but the mare ignored the meaning of that word, "organisation".
While she was observing the stones and thinking, something was going on in her. Something she didn't noticed until a few seconds later, when she felt a bit of water falling on her hooves. Lowering her gaze, she noticed that she was shaking. Her breath had quickened and water was still flowing from her eyes.
With total incomprehension and a feeling of uneasiness that was slowly invading her, she looked up at the stones again. It was them who were provoking this feeling, but why? She didn't knew. She had...
Forgotten. Not remembering something. She had knew. She she didn't knew anymore. The meaning of those tears. Simply, forgotten. That knowledge was lost forever, she would not remember it, despite all the tears her body was shedding now. Sobs were shaking her, in vain, and it seemed like her forgetfulness was only reinforcing them.
"I have forgotten you..."
The mare's incomprehension turned to a total loss of every notion she had up until know. That thing that had just spoken in her head, it wasn't her, it was like an echo, a distant noise, desperate.
The mare collapsed into tears in front of those stones.
