After the confrontation with Chrysalis at the changeling hive goes slightly differently than it might've, Princess Starlight Glimmer learns to adjust to her new life. Fortunately, she has practice with life-changing upheavals.
Starlight does a slightly better job at attempting to reform Chrysalis after freeing her friends and reforming the rest of the hive, and finds herself quite unexpectedly the new Princess of Empathy. Whether things go uphill or downhill from here will depend on who you ask. Twilight is thrilled, Chrysalis is miserable, Trixie is gay, and Starlight is just trying to cope with becoming royalty scarcely a year after being Equestria's most dangerous supervillain.
I've always thought Starlight more than earned her wings in the show, but, given that I also love Chrysalis, I decided to grant them in a way that ends with my two favorite characters not trying to kill each other.
This will be a series of mostly one-shots dealing with various aspects of Starlight's life after ascending, with a variety of tones; while it's marked as incomplete, the majority of chapters form complete stories. Obviously, there are an enormous amount of things to be done with such a premise, and, if you have anything you'd like to see explored—and also enjoy the story enough to comment—please feel free to request topics for future chapters!
Note: Chapters are usually, but not always, in chronological order. Where they aren’t, it will be made clear.
Starlight Glimmer was surprisingly calm when the world exploded.
Of course, the world was probably fine. It was unlikely that the harmonic energy released by the changelings had destroyed much more than the room they were in. Still, from the center of a cloud of smoke, all explosions looked much the same.
She breathed a sigh of relief as the dust slowly settled and it became apparent that they were still in a room full of bizarre looking, but alive, changelings, rather than something more gruesome.
Even better, as she lowered the shield that had protected her and… whatever Thorax had become, familiar shapes came into view. Familiar shapes that were no longer in cocoons, and that, slowly but surely, were moving!
…I did it.
She wasn’t shocked. Shock implied strong emotion, and were Starlight to attempt to describe her emotional state, the first description to come to mind would be that of an overwhelming calm. Still, that didn’t stop her brain from crunching to a halt as a possibility she hadn’t dared to imagine appeared reified before her and forced every gear in her head into reverse.
She couldn’t process that the changelings somehow now looked as brightly colored as ponies. She didn’t register that the princesses were all safe and unharmed, and the political crisis she’d been agonizing over would never come. She didn’t realize that the other members of her apparently-not-doomed rescue mission were safe before her; at least, not at first.
Instead, all she could think of was the fact that she, Starlight Glimmer, former tyrant and literal destroyer of worlds, personal protege of the only pony competent enough to salvage her broken mind, terrible friend, nervous wreck, and bane of therapists and manaphysicists alike, had succeeded. Without magic, without witness, without hope, she had saved them.
Looking back on the moment later—as little as five minutes later—she would be embarrassed at the selfishness of her reaction. But she would never become so embarrassed that she could stop herself from cherishing the memory; one’s first feeling of real pride, she reasoned, was worth preserving.
In the moment, her trance was broken by the sight of a cloud-colored mane. Trixie.
She dashed to the showpony, stopping herself from fully embracing her only when the rational part of her mind recovered enough to note that everypony here except her had just been in a changeling cocoon, and might appreciate some breathing room. Still, she couldn’t resist a small hug. Trixie was slimy, wet, and somehow both feverishly hot and unnaturally cold, but she was smiling, and she was alive, so every other adjective could wait in line.
The sight of Twilight slowly standing up finally managed to jolt her fully back to reality. She was going to be so proud—no, not the time. Quickly, she trotted over and offered a hoof.
Twilight looked as if she’d been to a spa with some radical ideas about what materials qualified as therapeutic. But she, too, was alive—thank Faust—and, if Starlight knew her, about to start asking questions.
She was right. “...Starlight?”
Starlight nodded, in what she hoped was an encouraging way. Thorax walked up next to her, standing at a respectful distance.
Twilight shook her head, dislodging a small fraction of the slime coating every part of her body. “What… happened?”
That was a good question. She should’ve prepared an answer.
“We defeated the changelings with no magic at all, and they found a new leader, and they’re all… kinda… good now?”
Not for the first time, Starlight wondered if any of her well-perused mental catalog of memory modification and mind-altering spells would work on herself. But Thorax nodded, so she supposed she could’ve done worse.
Twilight gaped.
Princess Luna wobbled towards them—had Starlight ever met Princess Luna? They’d spoken in her dreams before the whole mess began last night, but she couldn’t remember ever standing before the Princess of the Night. Then again, if there was ever a time she’d felt nearly worthy to do so…
Luna was panting, but smiling. “Well done, Starlight Glimmer. It seems as though you’ve learned a great deal since last we—“
The rubble behind them shifted.
Oh horseapples.
Every creature present whirled around in time to see the broken shards of Chrysalis’s throne shift to reveal the queen herself, standing painfully upright. She let out a feral hiss, horn flaring.
Starlight didn’t think she would be able to excise that sound from her nightmares if she lived a thousand years.
She stumbled back reflexively, immediately filled with visions of her (very recent) last confrontation with the queen. She couldn’t fail now! She didn’t know if she’d survive another fight like that, even though she hadn’t had magic at the time, but hadn’t she learned how much less valuable magic was than she thought, and how could she have told Twilight things were okay?! She hadn’t saved them yet, she hadn’t succeeded, she had to…
As she glanced around in her panicked spiral, she noticed, for the first time, just how many ponies stood behind her. Her friends the Elements were there, of course, exhausted but uninjured, and Trixie beside them. Shining Armor and Cadance stood firm, terrible expressions on their faces, and even Flurry Heart hovered next to them, comprehending nothing but that her parents were angry, and so she would be angry too. Luna stood by Celestia, Thorax—nearly as tall as the sisters now—lit his enormous antlers, and, between and behind them all, the colorful… reformed… changelings. There was an army at her back. Chrysalis had brought to her doorstep the most powerful collection of ponies imaginable.
But they stood still, unmoving before their enemy. They looked at Starlight, each and every one of them. And she stared back for one baffled second before she caught on.
They were waiting. They were waiting for her. They were… they…
They trusted her. Her friends. The Princesses trusted her. A whole other species trusted…
At another time, she might’ve burst into tears (and, later, she did just that). But now… She turned back to the queen, took a breath, and hoped her confidence held.
Chrysalis was barely standing. She could do this.
She stepped forward, and spoke carefully. “When Twilight and her friends defeated me, I chose to run away and seek revenge. You don’t have to!” Chrysalis looked at the ground. “You can be the leader your subjects deserve.” And, acting on the first and only instinct in her mind, she extended a hoof.
Chrysalis’s expression lept from uncertainty to absolute terror. Starlight cursed internally, feeling the tension behind her without having to look.
It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t have been enough for her—it hadn’t been enough for her.
Think.
She knew they were alike. She’d spent the past day thinking of little else, besides saving her friends; considering every uncomfortable way in which the evil queen she was striving against resembled herself.
So what would have worked on her?
Her first, and likely most reasonable, thought was… Nothing. There was no way in any sensible world that Twilight could have changed her mind back in those mountains.
But her second thought was that, if there was any remote possibility that she was wrong, any tiny loophole that would allow every single creature in the throne room to walk away victorious, and she didn’t take it, she would never be able to look in a mirror again. And she was running out of time.
So she threw caution to the wind blowing through her mane. “Look! I’ve been here before. Exactly here. And I chose wrong. You aren’t going to!” The fear was fading from Chrysalis’s face, replaced by guarded anger. She didn’t know if that was better or worse, but she soldiered on. “And I’ll tell you why!
“You have two options right now. You could run. You could run, and never see your children again.” She gestured behind her to the crowd of changelings she knew was watching. “They made their choice already! They’re not going to follow you, not there. If you leave and you look for revenge, you’re leaving them too.
“Or… you can stay. You can adapt, you can change, and you can stay with your subjects. They look different, but they’re still yours! You can be smarter than I ever was. You don’t have to lose this. You don’t have to lose anything.”
She stepped closer to Chrysalis, who flinched away, and looked into her eyes. “When I lost my village, I ran, and I chose revenge instead of the ponies who relied on me. I gave up everything… And because I did, I failed. I lost, again. I know you care about your subjects, just like I did. No matter what you’ve done, you told me, when you’d beaten everypony else, that you were doing this for them. So. Were you right?”
She extended her hoof again. Chrysalis gazed unblinkingly back at her, expression unreadable and unchanging.
So she flipped one last coin. “Also… that speech definitely bought enough time that nopony is going to be surprised enough for you to run. So… I guess you’ve only got one option?” She smiled winningly, letting the smallest glimmer of her old sinister grin into the expression. For once, it felt right.
Chrysalis slowly, uncertainly raised her hoof. Her face contorted into anger, then pain, and for a moment Starlight almost thought she might cry. But then…
“Damn you, Starlight Glimmer,” the queen growled. And their hooves met.
The moment they did, Starlight felt a physical force press her back as Chrysalis began to glow. She looked baffled, and then resigned, and then Starlight had to look away or risk being blinded.
It took several seconds for the glow to fade, but she looked back as quickly as she could, fearing the worst. Instead, her jaw dropped. Standing before her, wings fluttering, was… Queen Chrysalis. A version of Queen Chrysalis, anyway. A chorus of soft oohs arose from the crowd.
Her chitinous body had smoothed over, leaving her with a coat of fur so bright blue it was nearly white. The holes in her legs had sealed, and her ragged wings had filled out and grown to become a set of four sparkling dragonfly wings, reflecting the light as if dewy despite being entirely dry. Her formerly lank, teal mane and tail had lightened in color and looked almost healthy, and the crooked, angry spike that used to serve as her horn had been reshaped into an elegantly curved white bone.
Only her crown, and the expression of comical embarrassment on her face, made it clear it was still the same changeling.
“Get your staring done now,” she said bitterly. “While I allow it.”
Starlight repressed an undignified squeal of happiness. If she hadn’t been sure that Chrysalis, fluffy form or not, would still prefer her dead, she might not have tried so hard. Instead, she settled for saying, relieved, “Thank you. I’m happy you accepted.”
“Oh, yes, certainly,” Chrysalis grumbled sarcastically. “That’s what I have in mind right now, Glimmer. Making you happy. I should… bah.” Her now-voluminous tail flicked in indignation.
The two turned as a few hesitant footsteps sounded. An orange changeling had stepped out of the crowd. “Will you stay?” he asked hopefully. The other changelings looked at each other, murmuring amongst themselves.
Chrysalis hesitated, torn, looking around at the crowd. “Do you…” She seemed to realize that she was about to ask her subjects what to do, and instantly stood up straight as an arrow and forced her usual expression of haughty confidence back onto her face from wherever it’d been hiding. “Of course I’m staying. Do you honestly think I would let someling else do my job?” She glared disdainfully at Thorax, who smiled openly back.
Chrysalis turned to face the crowd, and strode forward, nearly managing to hide a limp. “I am the queen of the changelings! I have always been the queen, and I will always be the queen. After all…” She walked up to the princesses, staring Celestia in the eyes as if daring her to argue. “Whatever may happen, we will move forward as changelings, and we will weather this change under our power.”
Starlight, watching proudly, wasn’t sure how true that would end up being. But the princesses knew how to pick their battles, and Chrysalis’s grandstanding, as much for her own sake as for her audience, went uninterrupted. That is, until another glow began to shine from somewhere, dimly at first, but growing stronger by the second.
At first, she didn’t know where it was from. It seemed to originate from everywhere, glowing in every color of the rainbow, glimmering and sparkling across the damp stones of the throne room, ever-brighter and ever-faster, until she noticed where everypony in the room was looking—Chrysalis included—and connected the dots.
Oh. It’s me.
For the second time that day, the world exploded.
Starlight’s first thought was that she was dreaming.
She blinked instinctively, feeling as if her eyes should be bleary, but they weren’t. In fact, she couldn’t feel any of the scrapes and bruises her body should definitely have. She stood, completely comfortable, in a void of stars.
She wasn’t standing on anything. Instead, she floated, but without the sense of vertigo she was accustomed to feeling with weightlessness. Her muscles didn’t quite work normally; instead of moving them with her body, she simply thought, and found herself moving, as if she were a detached pilot of her own form. It took some getting used to, and she kept getting distracted by the sparkling beauty of the stars surrounding her, but, before long, she was walking aimlessly forward.
She passed nebulas, clouds, and whorls of sparkling stardust that parted before her hooves. She felt as if she could see with more than her eyes; she was somehow aware of the dazzling emptiness in every direction without ever turning her head.
After what felt like hours, but was probably barely minutes, a figure began to fade into sight in the distance. Starlight was surprised to be unsurprised to see Twilight emerging from the stars. She noticed that Twilight, too, seemed undamaged from her ordeals in the… real world.
Where was she?
Of course, Twilight would know what this was; hopefully Starlight wouldn’t make a fool of herself. Concentrating, she found her voice. “Twilight?”
Before the alicorn could reply, two more silhouettes appeared: one tall, and one still taller. The alicorn sisters. Starlight bowed automatically, the motion more elegant than she suspected it would ever be in reality. When she arose, all three princesses stood before her.
Celestia looked openly astonished. Twilight looked uncertain and confused. And Luna looked as though Hearth’s Warming Eve had come early.
Starlight looked between them. “Princesses?” She wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt so lost in her life. “Have I… done something wrong?”
They looked at each other. Luna found her voice first. “No, Starlight Glimmer. You have…” She shook her head, beaming. “You have accomplished something beyond what I had ever dared to dream.”
Was that what this was about? “You mean with Chrysalis?” Starlight smiled sheepishly. “Thank you; I’m just happy nopony got hurt.”
This time, Celestia shook her head. “Not quite. Certainly, what you managed to do with her is something you deserve to be proud of for all of your days, but that is… not all we speak of.” She blushed. “Our apologies for the delay. I was… not expecting this, and got a bit turned around.”
Starlight’s confusion mounted. “Expecting what?”
Luna nodded to Twilight. “Princess Twilight, do you wish to do the honors?”
Twilight jumped to an impressive height. “Me?! But I don’t even know— well, I do, but I’m not— what I mean is, she should have someone— stop smiling!”
Luna did not stop smiling. In fact, Celestia had joined her.
Twilight inhaled deeply, the motion Starlight recognized automatically as her ‘hyperventilation forestalling’ breath. “Um, okay. I can do that.” She turned to Starlight, an expression of hesitant excitement on her face. “Starlight… ever since I met you, I’ve been in awe. Obviously it wasn’t always for good reasons, as you remember, even though it is, um, now… Gah, Celestia made this look so easy!”
Celestia’s calm smile dissolved into undignified giggles at Twilight’s helpless look. Regaining her breath, she said, “Why don’t you give her the full speech when we aren’t all in quite such a compromising position in the physical world? For now, just tell her what she needs to hear.”
The portion of Starlight’s mind not dedicated to exploring how many varieties of bafflement and apprehension one pony could experience at once noted that the phrase ‘physical world’ implied that the dimension they currently resided in was embodied by some other thing, which made sense—a world of the mind, perhaps? Or magic itself?
Her thought process was interrupted once again by Twilight, who was looking directly into her eyes. “Celestia’s right; I’ll keep this quick for now. First…” She leaned in, and gave Starlight a tight hug (bone-crushing, by the standards of Twilight’s muscle mass). “I am so, so proud of you, for everything. I mean it.” Starlight’s heart filled with an embarrassing degree of warmth at the sentiment.
“Also, you’re… going to wake up with wings. You’re an alicorn now.” Twilight grinned awkwardly. “Surprise?”
Starlight fainted.
“…shattered the dimensional framework…”
“…her, after all. I’m not…”
“…if Twilight hadn’t…”
“…told me too! It’s not…”
“…worry, we know you only…”
“...didn’t get a song…”
Starlight slowly opened her eyes, blinking in the light of the now-sunlit throne room. She’d been… dreaming? Twilight had been there, and…
“Oh thank Cele— um, you’re awake!”
She found herself both lifted to her hooves by the purple alicorn, who brushed off Starlight hastily. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, that was all my fault, I hope you’re not—“
Recognizing a nervous Twilight ramble when she saw one, Starlight raised a hoof and closed her mouth mid-word. “I’m okay. But what happened?”
As her eyes left Twilight, she noticed that the crowd that’d backed her against Chrysalis was now staring at her, mouths universally agape. “…Do I have something in my mane?” What had she done now?
Luna gestured behind Starlight with a wink. “Oh, something like that.”
Starlight frowned, and looked back.
And turned back forward.
And looked back again.
She appeared to have wings.
That dream… Oh, Faust.
Characteristically, it was Pinkie who broke the silence. “STARLIGHT! You’re an ALICORN!”
And indeed she was.
The spell broke, and the crowd broke out into excited chatter with each other and, rather one-sidedly, herself.
She was in no shape to respond, though. She was astonished that she was in shape to stand, or even to exist. It felt like this situation, if possible in the first place, should by its very existence cause reality and fate to simply give up, dissolve the world, and start a new one afresh. She had a vague sense that she was hyperventilating, but that seemed like something ponies who existed did. Clearly, she couldn’t possibly qualify.
Aided by Twilight’s reassurance, though, she eventually discovered her voice and the proper use of her lungs, and looked around in a daze. “Am I dreaming again?”
Luna chuckled. “I am quite sure you are not. What you are is owed congratulations—more than can be expressed.”
Starlight wasn’t sure she believed any of that, but she nodded wordlessly and focused on calming herself down, trying to ignore the bizarre sensations of an entirely new set of limbs appearing on her back. She was unsuccessful, and she was grateful to Twilight for staying next to her despite the panicked flaps that were surely menacing her face. The rest of her friends had approached—Trixie looked as though she would explode, and Starlight didn’t even know the emotion that’d be responsible—but maintained a respectful distance.
After a time, a thought broke through the haze. Chrysalis. Starlight’s eyes scanned the crowd…
There she was—standing solidly twenty feet from any other creature, and looking as though the sky had fallen down. Starlight waved; she didn’t react.
Starlight approached her cautiously. “Are you… okay?”
“You. You’re…” Chrysalis looked faintly ill. “Is it too late to change my mind?”
There was a pop, and Discord appeared standing beside the changeling; both she and Starlight yelped. “Oh, it certainly is, my dear Chryssy!”
“What did you call—“
“Trust me, I had no intentions of making this a permanent gig, but do you know as time’s gone on I’ve gotten to quite like some of the benefits!”
‘Chryssy’s’ look of illness intensified.
“Certainly they need to work on this whole draft system of theirs”—Discord conjured a vaguely military uniform, teleported into it, and vanished it with a snap—“but, well, noling’s perfect, hm~? And you’ve already gotten the new uniform!” He turned the same light blue as Chrysalis, sparkling merrily. "And of course now that you're on our side you won't even mind that the pony you didn't think to capture who defeated you with no magic is now going to live forever! How generous of you!"
“Please leave,” Chrysalis said faintly. Starlight would’ve been shocked to hear the queen utter the word ‘please,’ but even if she hadn’t just heard the phrase 'live forever,' Discord’s presence tended to stab one’s sense of shock in the back and bury it in an unmarked grave.
Discord chuckled. “Your wish is my command!” He popped over to put his arms around Luna and Celestia, who’d been excitedly talking with Twilight. “You know, if I’m not mistaken, this calls for a party! I have a dimension that’s perfect this time of year, but some of you might not have the requisite…” He stretched his neck fifteen feet to stage whisper to Fluttershy. “Mental fortitude?”
Oh! This she could help with. “You know…” Starlight winced as everyone’s gaze shot to her, as if they’d been waiting for an excuse to stare (except Fluttershy, who’d intercepted Discord’s neck and was whispering chastisingly to him). “I might have just the place.”
“Um, no, this is definitely necessary, and you’re smart enough that you agree with me.”
Starlight gulped, looking down at the cloud she stood upon and wondering when her luck would run out and find her plunging to her death—or worse, plunging to failure. “Stupid enough, maybe.”
She stood next to Rainbow Dash on the highest cloud for a hundred miles: a thin, semitranslucent cirrus that curled off into nothingness a foot in front of her, beyond which she could see nothing but open sky, hazy ground, and, far below her, the peak of the Canterhorn rising out of a much lower layer of clouds. She’d been dragged here unfairly and against her will, because—
“Come on, you have to learn this at some point,” Dash said, rolling her eyes. “Twilight started practicing before you have.”
“That’s not true at all! I can already fly! This is silly!”
“That’s like… like… saying you can bake because you can buy a pie from Sugarcube Corner,” scoffed Dash. “Sure, you can lift yourself or whatever, and it’s a fun party trick, but it’s not flying. Here, watch!”
The cyan pegasus leaped casually off the cloud, allowed herself to fall in a reclined pose for three seconds, then spread her wings, caught the air, and swooped back up through the center of the cloud, leaving a neat hole in the center. “See?”
Starlight sputtered. “I can do that! Almost as quickly, even; that’s how I got up here. Here, watch.”
She stepped to the edge of the cloud, only to find herself blocked by a blue wing. “Nuh uh.” Dash shook her head. “No magic, right? So unless you’re gonna show me up by flapping, we’ll start with something more basic. And it’s still not the same.”
“Is too,” Starlight argued, apparently having chosen to retreat to childishness rather than advance to hysteria. “I can move through the air with magic, I can maneuver in any direction with magic, I can walk on clouds with magic!”
“Right.” Dash pointed a wingtip at her skeptically. “And can you feel the air rushing through your fur?”
She couldn’t; the levitation spell blocked almost all sensation. “Well, no, but I—”
“Can you bust a cloud?”
“...Not without a spell, but—”
“Can you fly faster than any pegasus other than Derpy or Bulk Biceps? Can you nap on a cloud without panicking? Can you dive, feel your eyes tear up from the speed, do a sonic rainboom, and brake yourself so fast you almost pass out but then bring yourself up just in time to feel the blood get back to your wings?!”
Starlight frowned nervously. “Should I be able to do that?”
“Uh, well, maybe not that last one. I have to save some awesome for myself. But you get what I mean! You need to learn to use those wings.”
She was right, obviously. Starlight was stalling for time partially because she knew Rainbow Dash liked to feel like she’d won an argument, but also, if she was honest, mostly because the thought of stepping off that cloud without her horn lit terrified the living daylights out of her. Not that daylight was alive; she’d asked Celestia. Still, enough was enough, and she was pretty sure the air up here was thin enough that it was actively unhealthy.
“Alright. So what do I do?” She swallowed, pawing the cloud that was so thin she could see straight through it. It was like being supported by a spider web. “Just… jump?”
Dash looked at her as though she’d grown yet another set of limbs. “Don’t be silly. You’d never make it right now; you don’t know how to flex your radius joints independently, or angle your primaries, or decide how much of your tertiaries to expose, or, uh, choose when to, um…” She shook her head, raising her wings. “Nah, you’re right, that’d take too long and I’m getting bored. Let’s go!” And, with that, she gave a powerful flap, producing a gust of wind that instantly tipped Starlight off the edge of the cloud.
“AAAAAAA!”
Starlight plummeted.
Instantly, her horn lit, ready to gently slow her fall and lift her back up to the still-terrifying but stationary surface of the cloud. But as she spun and caught a glimpse of Dash’s expectant face (amidst the many glimpses of every body part she possessed, some of which she hadn’t even realized it was possible to face with her eyes), she forced herself, with considerable difficulty, to dim her horn and think.
They were multiple miles above the Canterhorn, itself multiple miles above sea level. At terminal velocity, plus an extra couple seconds for her increased friction profile given her new wings, she had a reasonable amount of time before she had to slow herself down.
First, she needed to stop spinning. Hesitantly, she focused enough to extend a wing, and was jolted as she began spinning even faster in the opposite direction. Duh. She’d obviously been right about the reduced oxygen levels at this altitude. She habitually extended her other wing to place it in front of her face in embarrassment—and rapidly stopped spinning, and started falling even faster than before, this time with a world-class view of the snowy, unnaturally sharp peak below her. Yay?
Okay, that had to be the hard part. Flapping should be easy; pegasi weren’t supported primarily by their wings, but by magic channeled through their wings. Surely that meant that her wings would understand her intent and keep her afloat? She had some muscle memory at this point; it would be trivial to—
Oh dear, the ground was approaching. She imagined it waving at her as the mountain strove to encompass more and more of her field of view. Inhaling what fraction of a breath she could while falling faster than a train, she gave a hesitant flap.
The angle of the ground changed—very slightly. As the stared downward, it began to revert, so she flapped again. And again. The motions were awkward, uneven, and decidedly incorrect in a thousand ways large and small, but they also served, slowly and steadily, to increase the angle between her and impending death (or embarrassment, since she could stop herself, but it certainly felt like death was approaching). And if she estimated correctly, if she moved her wings just a bit faster, she should be able to…
Pain shot through one of her back hooves as it clipped a pile of snow on a cliff—then she was free. The tip of the mountain shot out of view behind her, and the slope plunged away below as she narrowly avoided impact. And she was nearly horizontal! She was still moving downward, but she was basically flying! Without magic!
After an emotionally-electrocuting moment of grinning like an idiot, she noticed Dash waving at her from her right. She waved back, lost her balance, and did a few impromptu corkscrews before righting herself and resuming her shallow but blisteringly fast downward glide. She squinted; Dash was motioning between her forehead and her ears. What…
Oh. Concentrating on maintaining her wingbeats, she called up a direct communication spell. They must be moving too fast to talk conventionally without shouting. The roar of wind in her ears faded slightly.
She was immediately rewarded with a screech that sounded as if it originated inside her skull. “You are SO STUPID!”
Wincing, she adjusted the spell’s volume significantly downward. “I know!”
“You don’t do that, you don’t almost get yourself killed with some dumb—wait, what?”
Starlight’s smile had yet to cool down. “That was crazy! I should’ve stopped myself a mile back up! But I made it!” She let out an uneven laugh that was stolen away by the wind the second it passed her lips.
She heard Dash clear her throat uncertainly. “Uh, yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. But… you did make it, and I guess it’s mostly my fault? Buck me, Twilight’s gonna kill me…” She flew down so she was keeping pace with Starlight from below, and flipped to fly on her back. “But you’re not out of the woods yet! Stop flapping so much!”
Starlight blinked (she hadn’t stopped blinking rapidly since she’d begun to fall, but this time it was for a different reason). “How much… not so much?”
“I don’t know, maybe half as frequent?”
She obliged. She didn’t immediately fall out of the sky, which surprised her until she remembered her thoughts moments prior on how pegasi didn’t really support themselves with their wings. She’d probably just been wasting energy in her panic. Below, the mountain was beginning to recede below the thin, patchy layer of lower clouds; soon, she’d pass over Canterlot.
Dash gave a wave of approval from below. “Good! Now you have to change the angle of your thrust. You’re going straight forward, and you want to be going up. Bend your wings in just a tiny bit, so they aren’t spread quite so wide, and try to push down instead of back. I know you can do it! Just think about it, and it’ll happen.”
Shockingly, it did happen. Awkwardly and unevenly, of course, but still, Starlight quickly found herself rushing first straight forward, then upward, then steeply upward. The world slowly began to recede below her, and a memory flitted across her mind: herself, on the peak of a mountain enormous to a filly, leaping into the unknown, and realizing for the first time that for her, unlike for every other unicorn in the world, the laws of gravity were optional. The first time she flew, and how it had wiped every thought of Sunburst and cutie marks (for both were rampant at the time) from her head. The memory was alone at first, but it was quickly joined by more of the first flight, then several of later ones, images of all the beauty of the world she’d gazed upon from on high that most ponies would never be so lucky as to see, the awe of the rare acquaintance when they learned what she could do…
And, as she remembered, her panicked focus softened, and, beating her wings, she started to feel. She felt, for the first time, the flow of the air across her feathers, and her mind fizzed as an entire new category of feeling flowed over her all at once. She gave her left wing an experimental wiggle, then her right; what were awkward, useless motions on the ground here became the keys to control, to agency, to the exhilarating dance she partook in as she shot upward and drank in everything she could see. Every shade of blue and green, every snowcapped peak, every swirl of distant color and every familiar landmark, she drank in gleefully, and with every gasp for air, more sights flooded in to fill their place. She saw Ponyville, and Canterlot, and the dark mass of the Everfree, and the train winding its way through them all, like a map laid out before her.
“Starlight? You’re doing amazing! I didn’t expect you to pick up on the finer controls that fast, I honestly kinda thought I’d have to help—”
“I don’t care!” Starlight shouted gleefully, any thought of decorum or politeness left far below on the ground. “I don’t have to! I’m FLYING! I can feel it!” She pulled her wings, already familiar to her, in tight, and angled upward and back. She was rewarded with a clumsy but exhilarating loop that pulled her stomach into her chest and her heart into her mouth. Laughter bubbled from her throat seemingly without end, infinite and accessible as the sky. “Rainbow Dash! I have wings and I’m FLYING!”
She could vaguely see Dash flying not far from her, keeping up effortlessly with her every inexperienced flip and spin and dive, but staying out of her way. If her brain hadn’t been stolen by the wind, she would’ve appreciated it.
Sometime between three minutes and six hours later, Starlight collapsed awkwardly on a cloud, every muscle burning in protest. She wouldn’t have thought her knees would hurt after flying, but apparently she was wrong. Panting, she looked down at Ponyville—closer than the ground had been for a long while, but still a sizable distance down—and watched as Rainbow Dash landed gracefully next to her. She was in infinitely better flying shape than Starlight, but Starlight noted with dazed satisfaction that she was still breathing hard.
“Wow,” Dash said. “I mean, wow.”
“What,” Starlight panted. “Impressed… at my… amazing natural talents?”
“Ha, in your dreams. Just… Twilight told me you tended to go all in with things. I thought she was exaggerating.” Dash sidled up to her and flopped beside her on the ground, patting her with a wing. “I don’t even know if it was a good idea to let you land up here. You’re not going to be able to feel your wings for a week. Are you sure you can get down? I can carry you if I need to, but…”
Starlight grinned victoriously. “Oh, my wings are shot. But check this out.” She concentrated—a slightly more difficult task than usual—and her light blue corona surrounded her limp body as she floated into the air. “Not even a dent in my magic reserves!”
Dash gaped. “You can still do magic after that?”
She floated back onto the ground. Er, cumulus cloud. “Can I still do magic, she asks,” she said mockingly. “Now who ‘isn’t really flying?’”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dash grumbled, rolling her eyes. “I guess there’s some use to it if you’re tired or something.”
“Right? Imagine if I had to fight somepony in the air again! I could save so much energy if I didn’t have to keep myself up!”
Dash scooted up to the edge of the cloud, looking down at Ponyville in what looked like a comfortably familiar position. “I guess so. Hey, that reminds me. You fought Twilight in Cloudsdale in the past, right?”
Starlight winced. While the memory, from a purely magical perspective, filled her with pride, the more reasonable parts of her brain reacted… differently. “Er, yes.”
“So how in Celestia’s name can you fly with magic? Twilight could never do that- and I know she would’ve if she could’ve, even she’s not too boring to know flying is awesome.”
“Well…” Starlight sighed. Of all her magical achievements, ethical and less so, this really wasn’t one she liked to brag about. “If you really want to know? Dumb luck.”
Dash cocked her head, her mane flopping in confused solidarity. “Huh?”
“So… you know how unicorns have magic reserves? They refill automatically, and every unicorn has a different amount of magic they can draw on?”
Dash nodded. “Uhuh, and you can get more magic if you practice a lot, but it’s mostly fixed.”
“Right. Levitation, and telekinesis more broadly, isn’t hard. Every unicorn in Equestria can do it, barring disability, and most can lift between one and five times their own weight. It’s why Twilight and I can levitate you.” She lifted Dash into the air briefly to demonstrate, giggling at the pegasus’s startled yelp. “Rarity probably could too, if she wanted. So it seems like it should be easy to lift yourself. But it’s not. The magic you’re maintaining on yourself interferes with the magic you’re casting to maintain the magic on yourself. It’s like a classical Mareray Feedback Loop, but instead of the input fueling the output, the corrupted output…” Dash’s eyes were glazing over. “Uh, nevermind. Think of it like… trying to build a house while only standing inside the house. You just get in your own way.”
Eyes relatively deglazed, Dash nodded. “Sure. So what do you do to get around that? It sounds like it should be like trying to overpower physics, or something.”
Starlight snorted. “We overpower physics all the time. That’s why we have manaphysics. But that’s the embarrassing thing about it—I don’t do anything.” She harrumphed softly. “I just have… more magic. My reserves are, or were, closer to an alicorn’s than a unicorn’s. Enough that I can overcome the interference loop and lift myself anyway.”
“So… you got lucky,” Dash said, shaking her head. “You’re right, that is embarrassing.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t!” Starlight snapped. “But it’s not my fault. I mean, look at you—no normal pegasus can do a sonic rainboom, and you did one when you were a filly. It’s not—”
Dash stuck a hoof in her face. “If you’re going to say I’m faster than everypony else because of luck, shove it.” After a thought, the annoyance faded from her face. “And if I was… that would be okay, you know? I still work my flank off practicing more than anypony else. And I bet you did the same thing, right?”
Starlight uncrossed her eyes from staring at the proffered hoof. “I guess, but—”
“So you shove it too! So you got lucky and you’re the most powerful thing since sliced bread. Big deal. You still worked for what you have. Hey, do you know what I thought when I heard from Twilight that you could fly back in that meeting?”
“I… prefer not to remember that meeting, if it’s all the same to—”
“I was so mad, because you had something I had when I didn’t think you deserved it. Do you get it? I was jealous of you.” Dash stared into Starlight’s eyes, willing her to understand. “And I’m awesome. So if I’m mad at you for being too awesome, own it.”
Starlight wasn’t sure if her oncoming headache was from her ill-advised flight extravaganza, or being the victim of Rainbow Dash’s attempts at reasoning. “...I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
Dash facehoofed. “Just because you got lucky with this one thing doesn’t mean you can’t be proud. Your life sucked! Treat it like a reward or something. Everypony has stuff because of random chance. Heck, Twilight became the god of friendship—”
“Princess of Friendship.”
“—After having friends for like. A year. Sometimes things just happen. And if they don’t suck, you might as well be happy about them.”
Starlight frowned her I-want-to-agree-but-for-some-reason-I-feel-bad-about-agreeing frown. “I think that’s… almost good advice?” She willed her wings to flex. They didn’t. She stood up anyway. “Thanks, I guess. I’ve been… Oh, nevermind.” She moved to begin floating down from the cloud.
And was promptly flattened into a Starlight pancake by Dash pouncing on her. “Oh no you don’t. You’ve been what?”
Starlight struggled for breath. “Let me go!”
“Nuh uh. This is my cloud, and you don’t get to leave until you talk about whatever you’re worrying about. I can see it in your eyes.”
“You can’t see my eyes! And this isn’t your cloud!”
“All the clouds in Ponyville are mine. Kind of. That’s not important. What’s wrong?”
Starlight gave up the struggle and relaxed in defeat into the surprisingly dry embrace of the cloud. “Fine. I’ve been worrying that… all of this is like that. Being able to fly, I mean. It feels like I became an alicorn by chance, rather than doing anything.” She flipped over, gazing intently at Dash. “Twilight became a princess after only having friends for a year? Well, I was a monster until a year before I ascended, and then all of a sudden I’m…” She was what? Royalty? Immortal? Possibly the second-most powerful being in the world? A nervous wreck?
Dash nodded slowly, seemingly realized that she was still on top of Starlight, moved, and resumed nodding slowly. “Okay. I wasn’t gonna tell you this, but it sounds like you need it. Listen carefully.” Starlight listened. “...You are really, really good at flying.”
It wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “I… thanks? I think?”
Dash shook her head in frustration. “No, you don’t get it.” She motioned vaguely with her hoof, struggling for words. “You’re really good at flying, and even if you got a head start, you still basically only started today. You’re really good at making friends. You’re really good at magic, and saving ponies, and somehow getting rid of every villain we meet without having to rainbow laser their faces.”
“Rainbow las—”
“And you’re so good at empathy that you reformed yourself. I mean, come on! Do you know how cool that is? Well… I guess you do, you’d know better than me, which just means you’re being even dumber for not getting it! You’re a princess for a reason, Starlight. A lot of reasons. And if anypony thinks you got that because of luck, they’re gonna have to go through me! You included.”
Starlight was staring at her in mild shock. Rainbow Dash groaned. “Look, I’m not good at this, anypony in town’ll tell you that. If you really want to deal with your feelings and stuff, go talk to Twilight. Or Fluttershy. Or Pinkie. Or anypony who isn’t me. But since you’re here, you’re hearing it from me, okay?”
Starlight nodded hesitantly.
“So don’t worry about it. I don’t know what in Tartarus keeps giving my friends wings, but whoever it is, they’ve got pretty good judgment. Trust me.”
Starlight wasn’t sure if she could agree. But there were some benefits to being a former tyrant, and one of them was that she’d long ago been forced to internalize that just because she felt a certain way, that didn’t necessarily make it true. So even if she couldn’t agree with Dash… she couldn’t in good conscience disagree with her.
Dash was still looking at her expectantly, so she swallowed, and said, “I’ll try.”
Dash beamed and leaped to her hooves. “Awesome! I can’t believe I did that, AJ’s gonna be so proud…” She noticed Starlight looking at her, unimpressed. “Um, and I’m glad I could help, too. What say we ditch this place and go to the spa?”
It was comforting, Starlight reflected as she carefully followed Dash downward through the open sky, that some things really hadn’t changed.
There were all sorts of evenings in the Castle of Friendship.
There were exciting, joyful evenings, when two, or four, or nearly a dozen of the Princesses’ many friends were over, and Starlight was so busy laughing and smiling that she could scarcely spare the time to remember why they’d been invited in the first place.
There were quiet, peaceful evenings, when ponies were busy, Spike would prepare a meal for hours in no particular rush as Twilight lulled herself into a zen state reshelving books or researching that week’s magical obsession, and Starlight would read quietly in an alcove, or perhaps tinker with a kite in her room.
Then, there were evenings where the quiet was not that of peace, but of exhaustion. Evenings when the Elements and their allies returned from some world-saving mission or another so late that they would more accurately be called mornings, when clothes were strewn about rooms they didn’t belong, any food that did end up being prepared was as likely as not to end up burnt or forgotten, and nopony was quite sure who had gone home and who had merely fallen asleep slightly out of view behind a potted plant or a stack of books. It was on this third sort of night that Starlight, amidst a hazy walk to her bedroom, heard quiet sobbing emanating from the library.
This was far from unusual, of course; life, particularly as of late, provided many reasons to cry, good and bad. But typically, such a sound would be accompanied by voices speaking in comfort, especially in the palace of all places. This evening—whatever time it really was—there were no voices.
So, of course, Starlight peered in the door. She may have been inexperienced at discussing her own feelings, but that was no reason to let anypony else’s go unattended.
Her eyes quickly located Twilight Sparkle, face buried in her hooves, lying beside the empty fireplace. Without a second thought—her first being that of concern—Starlight stepped into the library and made for the distraught mare. Exhaustion be damned.
Twilight swiftly looked up at the sound of hooves on the crystal floor, face disheveled even in the dim light. “Who… Who is it?”
“Starlight,” said Starlight, sitting down a comforting but respectful distance from her teacher-turned-equal.
Twilight looked concerned. “Sh– shouldn’t you be in b-bed? We got back from Canterlot pretty late… I think…”
She thought correctly. After the catastrophe that was the inadvertent summoning of the Pony of Shadows, and the subsequent frantic research session and confrontation at Hollow Shades, the reunion of the Pillars and the alicorn sisters had run far into the evening, even before the Elements and Starlight had boarded the train for Ponyville. Between Twilight and Starlight, they probably could’ve teleported the lot of them back immediately, but nopony was interested in missing out on excited, adrenaline-filled reflection on the day’s events on the train home for the sake of a little sleep.
Were Starlight to reflect upon it, she wouldn’t actually remember the last time she’d slept. But that wasn’t important right now. As Twilight should know.
“You’re not in bed,” Starlight pointed out.
Twilight shook her head. “I w-will be in a minute. Don’t worry about me. Just– just—” She broke off, breathing unsteadily.
An ache filled Starlight’s chest. It wasn’t right; whyever Twilight was upset, she’d just saved Equestria, again—and if not Equestria, at least one very old, very grateful unicorn. The pony before her didn’t deserve to feel like this ever again after all she’d done. It wasn’t fair.
She shook her head. Getting angry at injustice didn’t solve it. She knew that firsthoof. “Twilight… I’m tired, but so are you. If you’re staying up, so am I.”
For some reason, all that did was make Twilight begin audibly sobbing again. Am I that bad at this?
Should she move closer, or stay there? Should she hug her friend, or wait until she was prompted? Faust damn her, why was it easier to comfort thousand-year-old supervillains than her teacher?
She considered waiting until Twilight wanted to talk, but six seconds of listening to her friend in pain shattered any resolve she had to carry out that plan. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t– You shouldn’t—” Twilight heaved in a breath. “It’s selfish.”
Well that didn’t make any sense at all. Starlight almost said as much, before realizing that it probably wouldn’t help much. “How can crying be selfish?”
Twilight mumbled something incoherent and disagreeable.
Starlight sighed. Fine. Be like that, you stubborn… “Twi, do you want me to go to bed or not?”
Twilight nodded, face once again in her hooves.
“Great. Then tell me what’s wrong.”
There was silence, but for her friend’s uneven breathing. But then it began, slowly, to even out, becoming less ragged, until, after a few minutes, Twilight almost could’ve been sleeping. Starlight waited patiently.
“Earlier…” Twilight’s voice arose at last. “Earlier, I didn’t listen to you.”
Immediately, Starlight wanted to object, but she knew better than to interrupt just yet.
“Before we returned Star Swirl and the Pillars,” Twilight continued, “I was just focusing on… Well, meeting my idol. I didn’t think about what it could do. What I could do. And I ended up… I almost…” She hiccuped, and pressed her hooves to her eyes. “And then– then after they were back, I was even worse! You kept telling me I was wrong, but I listened to someone I’d never met just because I read about them in a book instead of one of my best f-friends! You had to go to the others because you couldn’t t-talk to me, and because I was too stupid to listen to you, we almost…” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Sent somepony to limbo f-forever just because they wanted their friends to listen to them. Like you did.”
Starlight was about ready to say… Well, she wasn’t sure, but say something that would force Twilight to stop berating herself, but, before she could, her friend finally looked up. “Oh, Starlight, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so s-sorry. I’m… I’m…” Twilight trailed off, presumably to avoid another full meltdown.
Okay. Okay. You can handle this. Both of you can handle this. “Twilight…” Starlight said gently, but with no small amount of confusion. “It’s okay. Really, it is. But you already apologized earlier; we’re good, really! Why is this… hurting you so much now?”
A tiny bit of Twilight’s usual focus returned to her face; just enough to make her look even more concerned than she already did. “Well, I’m not sure I really apologized, I just said that—”
“I know, I was there,” Starlight said quickly. “But still, it was enough. I wasn’t mad at you—honestly, if I was mad at anypony, it was the other Pillars for not pushing back against Star Swirl more.” She chuckled. Twilight, understandably, refrained.
“That’s…” Twilight sighed. “That’s not all. I mean, I am sorry for that, I promise, especially because you’re my equal now, and I shouldn’t—well, obviously you were my equal before! All of my friends are, and not just my friends, everypony, obviously, just because I’m a princess I’m not, um, and you’re a princess, just because both of us are– Um.” She managed to stop herself (or possibly the capacity of her lungs stopped her, but the outcome was the same). “That wasn’t why I was crying. Not… really.”
Starlight nodded. She didn’t entirely know what was going on, but she didn’t need to to help, so her confusion would have to take a back seat. “Do you want to talk about it? Whyever you were—are—upset, I mean?”
Twilight’s swollen eyes darted all about the dim room; everywhere but Starlight’s face. “I really shouldn’t. And you should get to bed. Um, because it’s healthy, not because I want you to leave.”
She may not have been a cult leader anymore (to Trixie’s proclaimed disappointment), but Starlight knew a half-truth when she heard one, and she zeroed in on it with practiced ease. “Twi, I asked if you wanted to, not if you thought you should.”
Guilt flashed in Twilight’s eyes.
Starlight sighed. “I’m not going to be mad. Honestly, I don’t know what you could even do to make me mad”—a lie, since Twilight had done just that earlier that day (yesterday?), but she obviously wouldn’t be doing that again any time soon, if the tearful apology had anything to say for it—”But I care more about you feeling better and being honest with me than I do about that anyway. So come on.” Was that rude? That felt rude.
Rude or not, it worked. Twilight gave a reluctant nod. “Starlight… You’re immortal. Unless, Celestia forbid, you get killed somehow, you’re never going to die.”
Starlight blinked.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about it; ever since Discord had said the words ‘live forever’ in the changeling hive barely a minute after her ascension, it’d been tickling at the back of her mind (as the draconequus had no doubt intended). Intellectually, she knew that she was now a being many ponies would consider a god, and that she’d received all the perks that came with the role. She knew that.
But… She knew it in the way she knew that Trixie and Sunburst would one day die, or that the pony species would eventually go extinct, or that there were creatures starving on the other side of the world. She knew it as she knew that the changeling queen she’d made the unilateral decision to forgive was a largely unrepentant murderer, and that the Elements of Harmony she and her friends relied upon had decided to sentence a pony to a thousand years of solitary confinement, and that Pinkie Pie sometimes drooled in her cupcake batter while fantasizing about frosting. She knew it—but, for the sake of her sanity, she pretended she didn’t.
It wasn’t exactly easy. Every time she looked in the mirror above her desk, her brain helpfully reminded her that her horn now protruded slightly off the top and out of sight, and every night, as she lay in bed, it was uncomfortably apparent that her legs reached just a bit farther than they had a few months ago. Still, though, from day to day, she kept any thoughts that could force her to have to fully internalize her new agelessness swept neatly under a mental rug.
But now, Twilight was saying it out loud, directly to her entirely unprepared face, and the sweeping was beginning to have a difficult time keeping up. Or, rather, Twilight had said it, two minutes ago. Or was that three?
“...Sorry!” she registered the vaguely purple blob in front of her saying. “I’m sorry! I should know better, I went through this same thing, I should’ve known you wouldn’t have had enough time to deal with it… Knew I shouldn’t have said anything…”
The fact that Twilight was criticizing herself, again, cut through the panicked fog like a knife through particularly stubborn cheese, and Starlight found herself once again in the darkened library. “Huh? Uh, it’s fine.”
Twilight shook her head in disbelief. “It obviously isn’t! Please, forget I said anything.”
Starlight grinned awkwardly. “Too late, I think. Really, though, it’s…” She couldn’t bring herself to say fine again—not after begging Twilight to be honest with her in turn. But it wasn’t, she could reluctantly admit, as if she could avoid the topic forever. Maybeshe could let just a few of the panicked thoughts in. Just enough to help Twilight. And then… She could deal with the rest of them tomorrow. After a lot of sleep. And maybe a few of whatever mysterious, unlabeled drinks Trixie had in her fridge. “I can deal with it. Please go on.” Convincing.
Fortunately, it seemed Twilight had given up on arguing with her, as all she received in protest was a frustrated groan. “You’re… Um, immortal now. And, when I first realized that… Celestia, I was so happy.”
Frazzled as she was, Starlight wasn’t sure she could connect the dots here. “That’s… Good?”
“Don’t you see?” Twilight said wistfully. “When I first got my wings, I shut myself in the library for a week when I realized how long I might live. That my friends…” She didn’t say it—she didn’t have to—but it echoed off the walls like a firework. “…You know. Since then, every time I meet somepony new, every time I make a new friend, no matter how happy I am, I’m always a little sad too. Because I know… eventually, I’ll have to say g-goodbye. I felt that way when I met you.”
Starlight raised an eyebrow. “Well, when I met the new you,” Twilight amended. “But now… I don’t have to feel that way. I still do, all the time, with everypony else—but not with you.” Even with her eyes red, her wings a disheveled mess, and lying on the cold floor of a dark room, Twilight smiled. “Because of you, I have somepony, at least one friend, I won’t have to see… die.”
Starlight stared, open-mouthed, at her friend. Faust, she hadn’t even thought about… about…
Misinterpreting her shocked expression, Twilight quickly continued. “Not that I don’t love my friends! I love all of them, of course I do, and 97.6% of the time I don’t even worry about this when I’m with them, it’s just nice to have somepony I don’t feel like I need to accept is going to… leave.”
Latching onto the only coherent thought in her mind and pointedly not engaging with the thousand new anxieties stirring alongside it, Starlight said, “I’m really glad I can help you feel better. I think. But if you’re so happy, then why…?”
Twilight winced. “Right. Well… After we got back, I realized that part of the reason I felt so bad about not listening to you was… I was worried about losing you. Because you’re like me now. I didn’t want… It seemed so much more important. There are only so many immortal beings in Equestria, and the thought of losing one of them because of my carelessness…” She shuddered. “But that’s why I said I was being selfish. I realized I felt bad for myself, not for you. I was thinking of you for what you are, not for who you are, and as soon as I realized that I knew how much you’d hate it, so I started crying, and then I just felt worse because I was really crying for myself, and it just… Well, you know.”
Starlight did know. Twilight was right; the idea of her somehow being more valuable, even subjectively, because of what she was, made her fur stand on end. It was the thing about her new status that kept her up at night even now (though after this conversation, she suspected it might have some new companions). She’d had nightmares about her friends suddenly worshipping her and doing whatever she said—like the ponies in her village.
But… That didn’t mean Twilight was at fault for thinking that way. Or even that she was necessarily wrong. “Is that why you apologized for earlier, with Stygian?” she asked.
“Yes,” Twilight said, face still angled away in shame, embarrassment, or both. “I wanted to do it again. For the right reasons. Because it’s… Well, you, and you’re my friend. And I don’t want things to change, or to think about you differently, just because you’re a princess now.”
Starlight smiled. “It doesn’t sound like you have anything to apologize for to me.” A thought struck her. “But, if you’re still worried…” She scooted directly in front of Twilight, who looked up in surprise, and raised a hoof to her chest. “I promise you, Twilight Sparkle, that I will never treat you like a princess, or anything but my friend. Well. Unless you want me to, obviously.”
Twilight looked startled, then amused, and then sincerely touched. “Starlight… I promise you that I’ll always do my best to treat you as a friend first and foremost.”
“That’s a better way of putting it,” Starlight admitted.
Twilight giggled. “I have a bit more practice sounding what Dash would call ‘princessy.’”
Starlight shared in the laugh, and, for the first time, the silence that followed wasn’t tense, or solemn, or awkward. She let herself linger in it for a moment with Twilight before speaking again. “I forgive you, you know. For all of it.”
“You… you do?” Even restored to a semblance of stability, Twilight sounded painfully unsure.
“Of course I do. I mean, it’s not every day your friend becomes… immortal. I imagine it’s pretty weird to adjust to.” Twilight nodded emphatically. “And as for the stuff with Star Swirl, it’s not like I can blame you there. I’m sure I’d do the same thing in your place, if I wanted your approval.” Which she did. Constantly and perpetually. “You don’t have to worry about it. I promise.”
Twilight smiled. “Are you kidding? Today, you saved a pony I didn’t think could be saved. I’ve never been so proud in my life.”
You’ve… Starlight felt her throat tighten, decided that she was tired of waiting, and leapt forward to pull Twilight into a hug. Without a moment of hesitation, her friend reciprocated.
At that moment, inexplicably, warmth flooded Starlight’s body—more than could possibly be coming from Twilight, especially after lying on the cold crystal. She opened her glistening eyes in confusion, and was greeted with a beautiful, baffling sight: The fireplace had started itself.
The two pulled away from each other in surprise, facing the crackling fire. Starlight had been in the library at night before, but this time, the firelight danced across the crystals in ways both entirely new and comfortingly familiar. The fire was somehow both a darker red and a brighter white than ever before, and its glow shone through the semitranslucent crystals of the pillars on the walls, reflected off the opaque gemstones of the mantelpiece, and bounced happily between every facet and filigree in the room until the whole space shone as if in the light of day. She looked at Twilight, whose coat seemed in the light to have broadened to encompass every shade from turquoise to maroon, and who was staring at her, dumbfounded.
“This place,” Starlight eventually said, as much to fill the silence as anything else, “Is weird.”
“…Yeah,” said Twilight. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but it was suddenly hard to tell that she’d been crying at all. She turned to Starlight with a curious expression. “…This is gonna sound like a non-sequitur, but have you given any thought to your domain?”
“As in…?”
Twilight gestured with a wing. “What you’re the alicorn of. What you could be the princess of. I’ve got friendship, Celestia and Luna have the sun and moon, and Cadance has love. Do you know…?”
Oh. That. To be honest, Starlight had given it some thought, but, whenever she did, her mind inevitably decided to follow the thread of her seemingly-inevitable coronation to royalty, and that idea made her jittery. “Uh, no, I’m not sure.” Hadn’t it taken Twilight herself nearly a year to figure out?
Come to think of it… Over half that had passed since her own ascension, that afternoon on top of the changeling hive. How in the name of Celestia had that happened?
Twilight looked considerate. “Well… I don’t want to pressure you, or push you into anything you’re not ready for. But… If you want to hear it, I think I might have an idea, after today.”
Starlight’s ears pricked up. “You do?”
Twilight nodded. “Empathy.”
Princess of Empathy.
Despite the warmth, Starlight shivered; an odd wave washed over her at the idea. “…Princess of Empathy, huh?”
Twilight looked hesitant. “What do you think?”
Princess Starlight Glimmer. The words didn’t feel quite as dissonant as they always had before.
Starlight considered, not for the first time, teleporting out of the train. In her new form, the energy required to teleport back to Ponyville from the base of the Canterhorn would barely even register to her magic reserves. Only the thought of Twilight’s disappointed face kept her fidgeting in her seat.
It had taken Twilight the better part of a week to convince the new alicorn to visit Canterlot, and it’d taken every argument, bribe, logical deduction, and rhetorical flourish at her disposal to do it. Normally, Starlight wouldn’t terribly mind visiting the capitol. Though the unicorn aristocracy left the city positively drenched in pretension, and she could never speak to Celestia nor Luna without the nagging feeling that she was one wrong move from being banished to the moon, it was a beautiful place, and one she could stand to get acquainted with, given her new status. She had the luxury of remaining in Ponyville now, but she couldn’t believe that could last forever; not with how Twilight’s life had gotten ever more complicated with each week that passed since her ascension.
Faust above, she was a princess. If there was ever to be a day when she awoke and didn’t do a double-take at the fact, it was as far off as the moon she maybe wouldn’t be banished to.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t just any visit to Canterlot. Normal though the city looked from her train window as she wound through the mountains—no shimmering shield, no apparent increased security, no extra wards she could detect—it was currently playing host to a particular guest.
Queen Chrysalis had come to negotiate.
Technically, the Hive had entered a state of negotiation with Equestria as soon as its location had been discovered. Equestria’s governance might have been lax by the standards of some, but a new city-state home to an independent species sitting on the edge of the Badlands was as much a magnet for difficult paperwork as a bowl of candied lawyers.
After Starlight’s ascension and the events at the Hive, though, Chrysalis had requested (in a stunningly shaky message delivered by an equally shaky changeling who had fled out a window the moment Celestia offered her tea) a temporary postponement of meetings in order to “Get things in order in this abhorrently stupid situation,” as she’d put it.
According to a letter from Celestia, today was the day the queen would finally arrive. And Twilight, in her infinite wisdom, had insisted Starlight be present.
Nevermind that she was certain to be the pony Chrysalis hated most right now, and no matter that the only part of politics Starlight had any expertise with was lying, and forget that she had a history of dealing… poorly… with high-pressure situations.
She didn’t care that the wings on her back supposedly meant she had grown enormously as a pony. The business with Trixie, Discord, and Thorax was an isolated case, she was sure. Besides—
Oh, the train had arrived.
She swallowed, mentally reviewed the directions to the palace (she could teleport, having been there before, but that would involve arriving faster), and plodded reluctantly out.
Starlight’s footsteps echoed ominously in the hallway.
She was pacing outside a nondescript room in the palace, in a hallway decorated with Canterlot’s characteristic minimalist white decor. Rarity would love it. She’d passed a not insignificant amount of time gazing at the glorious view of the mountain and lower city after being directed here by a suspiciously kind guard.
…Or a guard showing a new member of royalty the respect she deserved and doing the job they’d signed on to. But Starlight could never quite shake the instinct that every conversation she had with an authority figure without being thrown in a cell was a loan from fate, and that, eventually, her debt would come due.
…Twilight might have a point about the guilt complex. Maybe she should’ve volunteered to stay home and discuss that rather than coming on this trip.
Without warning, the click of the doorknob interrupted her inner monologue. She jumped; each room in this hall was enchanted so as to prevent discussions inside from being overheard by passers-by, and while she could probably have easily overcome such safeguards even before accidentally acquiring an extra set of limbs, it seemed an impolite idea.
The door swung open, and Starlight opened her mouth in relief to greet Celestia.
Instead of Celestia, she was faced with an enormous insectoid figure, with a light blue mane, an even lighter blue coat, a curved, sharp horn, and four shimmering wings.
Ponyfeathers.
Chrysalis had already arrived.
Starlight’s mouth remained open. Chrysalis’s joined it in short order.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a staff member awkwardly standing behind the frozen changeling queen. They finally resolved to squeeze their way around her into the hallway.
“Ms– Star– er, Princess! I apologize for the wait; the Princess, um, Celestia, asked me to brief Ms, well, er, the queen, on protocol and security, and, I, um…” He (it was now apparent that he was a stallion, though she hadn’t taken her eyes off Chrysalis) seemed to realize the rapidly thickening tension in the hall, and trailed off awkwardly.
Chrysalis found her voice first. “Leave us,” she said emotionlessly.
The stallion nodded rapidly and took off so quickly it was a wonder he didn’t slip on the polished floor.
The staring contest continued.
After what seemed like an hour, Starlight’s mind managed to resume functioning, and she rapidly took several steps back from the door, as if to make up for lost time. This was okay. She would be okay. Chrysalis wouldn’t be here if the princesses didn’t trust her to stay out of trouble. Dammit, Starlight should trust her to stay out of trouble! Everypony apparently managed it for her, and she felt like she even deserved it sometimes, so why should Chrysalis be any—
“You’re drooling.”
Ah. So she was.
She hastily cleaned her jaw with a telekinetic swipe. “Sorry.”
Chrysalis sneered, the first sign of emotion other than shock she’d displayed. “Don’t apologize to me unless it’s going to be for something that actually matters.”
Starlight winced. She’d been expecting this attitude—she was used to expecting it, if for different reasons—but it still stung.
Chrysalis continued. “You know, I really thought I might never see you again.” She straightened, shoved the door closed with a flash of magic (now nearly the same color as Starlight’s), and began to pace. “How utterly foolish of me. When would I be so lucky.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely fair. “I didn’t expect this to happen,” Starlight protested, flicking a wingtip, which had an effect closer to mimicking a localized seizure than to anything she intended. “You’re royalty. I’m… royalty. We’re going to have to get used to seeing each other sometimes.” Chrysalis glowered. “It was Twilight’s idea,” she added reflexively, mentally smacking herself the instant the words came out of her mouth.
Predictably, that did little to defuse tensions. “Do you really think trying to deflect responsibility and invoking her name is going to help your case, Glimmer?” Chrysalis glared at her. “I wouldn’t care if you were the empress. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want you alive, though unfortunately I can’t do anything about that—for now.”
“Why stay, then? You can leave whenever you want.” Idiot, why am I antagonizing her?
Chrysalis lunged towards her, ending up a mere foot away and hissing furiously. The sound was arguably more terrifying coming from her soft, blue form than it ever was before. “Maybe, you insolent pony, it’s because I’m hoping I’ll overcome whatever ridiculous pretension of peace is keeping me from draining every drop of love you’ve ever felt and watching the light leave your eyes forever!”
It took every ounce of willpower in Starlight’s mind not to cower---if nothing else, simply from the height of the creature threatening her life. But if she was going to run, it wouldn’t be from an empty threat. “You couldn’t do that if you tried, and you know it. You don’t have your nullifying throne anymore, and you’ve heard what I could do before our last meeting.” She didn’t particularly enjoy pulling the ‘I’m more powerful than you’ card, but it could be satisfying on occasion. It also had the undeniable benefit of being true.
Chrysalis backed off perhaps an inch. “Oh, maybe I could, maybe I couldn’t. This city is positively stuffed with love; I could scarcely skim off the surface and feed myself better than ever before. I don’t think you want to take unnecessary risks.”
“Well, you don’t have to do that now, right?” Starlight retorted, attempting to de-escalate the conversation. She gulped as Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t hungry anymore. None of you are.”
Some of the rage left the queen’s eyes. “No.” She leaned back in. “But do you really think I’d pass up a chance at the revenge I so dearly deserve because I don’t have to?”
“Yes, I do,” Starlight said, with more confidence than she felt. “Chrysalis, you’re not stupid. You know you can’t touch me here, and you probably couldn’t anywhere. You’re not going to risk your children for my sake.”
Chrysalis hissed again. “Don’t even speak of my children. You have no right.”
“Maybe not, but… Look, you called this negotiation. I can leave if you want, but I know you won’t, and I don’t know why you’re going to act like this if you really care about them!” Chrysalis opened her mouth, likely to deliver some elaborate threat, but Starlight pushed on. “I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know what I did, but I clearly hurt you somehow, and I want to be able to exist in the same city as you without this happening! Can we at least… I don’t know, try again? Get a fresh start? I know we have plenty in common.”
“When Tartarus floods and your precious sun falls out of the sky,” Chrysalis spat.
“Why? You’re already lost. Trust me, I know how you feel, but what else can happen? What’s the point? Why can’t you accept that things are different, and the past is—”
“I will never do that!”
“Well why not?!”
“Because I’m scared!” Chrysalis shouted.
Both of their eyes widened simultaneously. Before Starlight had time to blink, or even open her mouth in astonishment, Chrysalis had jumped back, pried open the door to the conference room, bolted in, and slammed it shut behind her.
Oh no you don’t.
After a brief moment of shock, Starlight focused and teleported into the room Chrysalis had retreated to. She saw the queen sitting and apparently staring at a wall, before she noticed Starlight’s presence and immediately lit her horn.
Thinking fast, and banking on the fact that Chrysalis was planning on fleeing and not disintegrating her, Starlight mentally ran through, and cast, every barrier spell she could think of on the door (she didn’t think that list used to be alphabetized, but living with Twilight for so long was sure to leave a mark). She froze the handle in a stasis enchantment, melted the lock with a burst of heat, spread a thin layer of crystal across the floor and walls like frost, and rendered the windows hard as diamond with a spell of her own design. In five seconds flat, the room was likely the most secure place in the city outside of the royal vaults.
Chrysalis’s horn had dimmed, and she was gaping at Starlight. “You… how…”
Starlight harrumphed. “I told you you couldn’t fight me without your throne. Now, what—”
“Release me at once!” the queen commanded. “I’m here on a diplomatic mission. I don’t know how you imbeciles do things around here, but you can’t act with direct hostility while I’m here.” She paused. “...I checked.”
“Who’s being hostile?” Starlight asked innocently. “I wanted a place to talk, so I created one. You’re perfectly safe—safer than almost anypony in Canterlot, actually.”
Chrysalis growled. “Don’t play—”
“And even if I was being hostile… well.” Starlight made eye contact with Chrysalis. “I was like you not that long ago, even if you don’t want to admit it. It’s really only been a few months. Try me.”
Chrysalis considered. “I could fight you.”
“You could, and it probably wouldn’t end well for either of us, and then you’d have to explain to Celestia why her favorite student’s student was injured at your hoof during a peace conference. It’d be your word against mine, and I think we both know who has the authority now.”
Starlight desperately hoped her threat rang truer to Chrysalis than it did to her own ears. But after a second, the queen’s lips curved into a small smirk. “Maybe we aren’t that dissimilar. What do you want.”
Relieved, Starlight relaxed her magic and sat down at the table, looking intently at the tall changeling now across from her. “Tell me what you meant by saying you were scared.”
Any positive emotion evaporated from Chrysalis’s face like pollen in a forest fire. “No.”
I’d hoped I wouldn’t keep Celestia waiting… again. “I’m not going to gain some advantage over you when you answer this question,” Starlight sighed. “Being understood can literally only be an advantage for you right now.”
“Knowledge is a weapon, Glimmer. I invented manipulation. Don’t tell me what is or isn’t an advantage.”
Starlight flinched. It sounded discomfitingly familiar to something the old her would’ve said. She shook her head to clear it of unwanted memories. “What do you stand to lose?”
“Myself.”
Confused, she stared at the changeling. “You mean more than your body? Because, I’m sorry, but… You’ve already changed. You’re here, in Canterlot, negotiating with ponies. You’ve already made huge progress; for your hive, sure, but also for yourself.”
Chrysalis stared back intently. Multiple times, she opened her mouth, only to shut it again.
She inhaled.
She let out a long, long sigh, and slumped down in an ill-fitting chair.
“Fine. That is exactly my concern. Happy?”
Starlight blinked. “Your concern? You mean what you said you were—”
“I’m not saying it again.”
That was… fair. Not something Chrysalis would get away with for long, if Starlight knew Celestia at all, but she certainly knew the feeling.
Chrysalis continued. “Let me tell you, Glimmer, what you are. You’re powerful, yes—you’re a princess now—but fundamentally, you are just a pony.” Starlight listened, not entirely sure where this was going. “You had a perhaps unfortunate but ultimately incredibly average foalhood, you did plenty of impressive but idiotic things, and, through some ridiculous quirk of fate, ended up friends with the most powerful ponies in the world.
“Your life has consisted of you idly making one poor decision after another and bouncing back and forth around Equestria until you somehow ended up here. Sound correct?”
Starlight frowned. “...Yes, but you don’t need to be rude about it. Trust me, I’ve considered my poor decisions enough for both of us.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Chrysalis snorted. “The point is that you are normal.” Seeing Starlight open her mouth to argue, she amended, “Relatively speaking. You told me, once, that we were similar. In the ruins of my throne room, surrounded by the debris of my failed plans, you convinced me to give up everything I was, in favor of…” She looked distastefully at her light blue, soft-furred body. “...This, by saying you knew what I felt. Well, I’m here to tell you now what I should have told you then. We are nothing alike.”
“How can you say that?” Starlight asked in disbelief. “You know what I did, right?”
“Yes, as I just explained. That’s not what I’m talking about,” Chrysalis said. She paused. “Do you know where I came from?”
Starlight opened her mouth to respond, and realized suddenly that she didn’t.
She’d wondered, idly, on the occasions she wasn’t freaking out about her new body or panicking about something or other. Twilight had even mentioned Chrysalis’s past at one point, but she hadn’t bothered to ask after further details.
Chrysalis was watching her expectantly. No point in hiding her ignorance. “No, I don’t; I’m sorry.”
“Apologize to me again and I’ll stop caring about who blames who if we kill each other in here,” Chrysalis growled. “Well, let me enlighten you. I’m sure you imagine I have some tragic past, some excuse, some reason, some logic that let me do what I did for so long. But you’re wrong. I was born exactly the way I always was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Changelings are not a natural race, Glimmer. I would’ve thought your teacher had told you this, but I suppose she was preoccupied when it would’ve been relevant.” The queen gave a cruel smile, but it left her face rapidly. “But… We, and I, simply came into existence one day, long ago. We weren’t corrupted into our forms the way I’ve heard many of your kind speculate. We appeared, and we did what we always did best.”
Starlight wasn’t sure what that meant, though she was beginning to have an uneasy sense of what the conversation might be about. “What exactly do you mean, you… appeared?”
Chrysalis hissed. “Do you need it spelled out for you? Some ridiculous spell went wrong, or some curse went too far, or something, and I walked out of the earth.” Her voice was rising at an alarming rate. “My race, my people, my children, are an accident.”
“But that doesn’t mean anything!” Starlight protested, pushing the fascinating magical implications of such a claim aside. “It doesn’t matter where you came from, just that—”
“I don’t care where we came from! I care that you foalish, harmony-addled, insipid idiots are treating me the same way you would a pet that made a stupid mistake. I care that you don’t care.”
Starlight’s mind swirled. “You want us to treat you harshly?”
“No, I want you to stop denying reality,” Chrysalis spat. “You were a stupid foal, and the Elements treated you accordingly. You were born a blank slate, and you’ve managed to write something you can live with on it. You chose, and when it stopped working for you, you chose differently. Do you know what of my life I chose? Do you know what I did to end up queen? NOTHING! I didn’t choose to be the queen, I am the queen! My children didn’t choose to be monsters, they are! We didn’t choose to feed on love, we didn’t choose to hunt ponies, we got nothing while your kind sat here in your paradise with the world at your hooves!”
Chrysalis was panting at this point, and Starlight took her pause for breath to interject. “But you had options. You just need love, you don’t need to steal it, right? You don’t even need to take it at all, now!”
“Oh, of course, we could’ve just asked,” Chrysalis mocked. “Asked the ever-generous ponies who nearly destroyed their own species with pointless infighting to help the monsters that crawled out of a swamp. It simply never crossed my mind.”
A swamp? What—no, it wasn’t the time. “...You’re right, I suppose, but you must have known that there was some way to be better-received? Equestria had peace for a thousand years before this past decade; why wait until your hoof was forced?” Starlight wasn’t sure what she even wanted to know. She only knew that she hadn’t seen Chrysalis so emotional since her defeat at the hive months ago. How long had she been thinking on this?
Chrysalis stood up abruptly, knocking her chair over and several feet across the room. She didn’t notice or care. “Because I. Am. It. Maybe we could’ve done that. Maybe we would’ve been received with the ridiculous kindness you value so much. Or maybe we wouldn’t have—and then what? When I said I am the queen, I meant it! The only queen. Ever. I am responsible for my children because they are my children, and I am responsible for myself because I’m the only mother they will ever have. If I die, they die.” She paced faster and faster. “Equestrians have royal bloodlines. But the birthright of a changeling queen—the only changeling queen—is more than blood. It is the leadership, motherhood, and command of an entire species that fate has placed on my shoulders and that I can never, ever set down. And that is why– that’s why–”
Chrysalis’s voice caught, and Starlight’s eyes widened as she realized how disheveled the changeling queen looked. Her teeth were bared, she was blinking rapidly, and her breathing was only accelerating even after she’d stopped talking. She looked like Twilight when her mental state was in a particularly steep spiral. She looked like Starlight’s own reflection in the mirror after she broke down thinking about her new immortality all those weeks ago.
In fact, she looked like every anxious, overworked, barely-held-together pony Starlight had ever seen in her life. Starlight swallowed, her own breathing quickening at the horribly familiar image.
Questions later.
Instantly, she stood, teleported to Chrysalis’s side, and, before Chrysalis had recovered from her resulting start, Starlight placed a wing awkwardly over the taller mare and leaned into her shoulder. It was astonishingly soft.
Chrysalis froze, and looked down at Starlight in disbelief. “...What are you doing?”
Refusing to blush, Starlight looked back steadily. “Getting you to calm down.”
The queen’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
“If you can honestly tell me it isn’t helping, I’ll move.”
Chrysalis growled softly. Then, after a few frozen seconds, she hesitantly leaned down and placed her head on Starlight’s. Slowly, the fluttering of her chitinous wings calmed.
Feeling Chrysalis’s breathing return to a level approaching healthy, Starlight closed her eyes and instinctively nuzzled into the queen’s shoulder softly. Then her eyes shot open as Chrysalis jumped away like she’d been struck by lightning.
Oops.
“No. I– you– no.” Chrysalis shook her head rapidly as Starlight lost her balance and nearly collapsed onto the plush carpet. “Ugh… Tell anyone anything about… any of that, and I’ll—”
Starlight held back an unreasonably wide smile. “I know.” She stepped over to Chrysalis, careful not to touch her again so soon. “Better?”
Chrysalis mumbled something that might, in some dialect of bear only Fluttershy would be familiar with, have qualified as a ‘yes.’ Then she shook her head again, and continued. “As I was saying. That is why we’re nothing alike.”
Starlight frowned in concern. “Are you sure you want to keep talking? I think I more or less—”
“I am not a coward, or a nervous wreck, despite what I’m certain you’re thinking,” Chrysalis grumbled. “I’m not finished. Not even close. My point is that you chose your actions. My actions chose me. They chose all of us.”
Starlight didn’t want to question the still-stressed changeling too harshly—then again, she’d insisted she wanted to continue—but that brand of logic felt uncomfortably similar to what she had used herself to justify her own line of thinking back in her village. “But you still acted that way of your own accord. Even if it seemed like the only way.”
“Oh, please, don’t write me off as some repentant whelp like the rest of your motley crew,” Chrysalis sneered. Right, she’s feeling better. “I enjoyed every second of it. That was just how it worked. Have you been fed on by one of my kind, Glimmer? It isn’t pleasant. And we need– needed– we had to do it to survive. If we hadn’t enjoyed it, and if I hadn’t let myself relish every single time I watched the happiness in a helpless pony’s eyes fade, or watched a perfect lie play out, or punished a disloyal infiltrator, we would have starved a thousand years ago.”
Starlight was not at all sure she was comfortable being in the same room as the expression Chrysalis made while reminiscing about feeding on love.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Chrysalis said, rolling her eyes. “I couldn’t do it now even if I wanted to. But this is exactly what I mean. This is what I am. It has always been what I am. So when you ask why I’ve done what I have, I’ll tell you what I told Sparkle, the second time we ever met: There is no story. I was born this way.” She looked Starlight dead in the eyes, daring her to disagree. “So what am I now?”
At last, Starlight understood what Chrysalis was scared of. And no matter how much the queen insisted otherwise, as she looked into her bright blue eyes, she felt like she was staring at her old self. Not the evil one, but the miserable one from the first weeks she was in Ponyville. The one she still felt echoes of sometimes, when she walked past a guard and wondered if they could see straight inside her and read her rotten soul like a book.
She had to make Chrysalis see that.
“I understand how you feel.”
The queen stared at her as if she’d just said the Crystal Palace had been carried off by butterflies. “Are you not listening to me? Are you just standing here for fun, keeping me in here so you can… do whatever it is you want to do?” Her eyes flitted to the side almost imperceptibly, to the spot Starlight had stood a minute or two ago as she awkwardly hugged the queen.
“I am listening, Chrysalis, but now you need to listen to me,” Starlight said calmly. “If it helps, you don’t have a choice.”
Chrysalis let out a slightly hysterical, buzzing laugh, but didn’t speak.
“You’re right, I’m not the same as you. No two ponies are the same. But I don’t need to be. Tell me if I have this wrong.” She watched Chrysalis’s face closely. “You think—”
“I know—”
“—You think that you haven’t had any say in your life. That something, magic or fate or Harmony or whatever, is the only reason you’ve ever done anything, good or bad. You’re the way you are, and that can’t change. And normally… somepony would think that because they didn’t want to feel responsible. But all you feel is responsible, even if you don’t think it’s why you are the way you are. And because you’ve had to do terrible things, but you also have so much power, you feel as though terrible things—whether you enjoy them or not—will be the only thing you ever do. You feel like they’re what you are, and that anypony who thinks you can or will be anything else is wasting their time, and the more they try to convince you, the more you hate them for it.” She kept eye contact evenly. “Am I right?”
Chrysalis looked away, and resumed her pacing. Starlight swiftly stepped in front of her. Pacing was all well and good—she was friends with Twilight, after all—but she needed an answer, and the thought of seeing Chrysalis in the same state she ended up in before made her chest tighten. “Please, just tell me if I’m right.”
There was silence for what felt like ten minutes.
“...You’re right, you… you’re right.” Chrysalis squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. “But how can you possibly have felt like that? What you’ve done… it’s nothing. Not next to me, not next to us. You’re a child. I was born into this world a monster, I lived as a monster, and I will die a monster. You couldn’t do what I’ve done if you had a thousand years.” She shuddered. “Which you… do.”
Starlight smiled. “I mean, you’re right about that. You’ve accomplished more than I ever did.” Since she thought Chrysalis would appreciate it, she added, not untruthfully, “The old me probably would’ve been pretty impressed at a lot of it too. But that’s not really the point. You’ve lived… I don’t know how long, but over a millennium. I’ve lived less than thirty years. It doesn’t really matter what you’ve actually done; it matters how you feel about it. And you’ll just have to trust me here, but I’d bet that those first nights I spent in Twilight’s castle after she defeated me and dragged me there were as miserable as how you’ve been feeling lately.
Chrysalis frowned. “You realize that I just said I enjoyed—enjoy—being a tyrant, correct? I’m not guilty. I’m… uncertain as to my role now that my old habits are…” She shuddered again. “...Obsolete.”
“Maybe you haven’t felt guilty, but feeling like no one in the world will ever accept you isn’t much better,” Starlight pointed out. “You’re miserable. I’ve been miserable. That’s what’s important here. Most everypony you’ve hurt in your life is dead by now—you’re not, and that makes your feelings a problem worth caring about. You can be guilty later.”
Chrysalis stared at her in mild disbelief. “...You’re a princess. Shouldn’t you be telling me that guilt is how I learn, or some sanctimonious nonsense like that?”
“Er… probably,” Starlight admitted. “But I’m new to the whole princess thing. Besides, I’ve always been practical.” Chrysalis gaped at her. “Look, you feeling bad isn’t helping anypony. It took me a long time to figure that out, but I’m telling you now based on experience that nopony who you have any chance of getting to like you is going to be any happier because you feel like everypony is going to hate you forever no matter what.”
“So what, you’re just going to tell me to… stop being worried?” Chrysalis said skeptically. “Forgive me if I refrain from bowing in awe at your wisdom.”
“No, I’m going to show you how to stop being worried, or at least try.” Starlight allowed herself a smug smile. “And I can tell I’m succeeding, because you haven’t threatened to kill me in over five minutes.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I still want to,” Chrysalis said. “I’m just… distracted. For now. I can plan my revenge against you another time.”
Starlight sighed. “I think I’m contractually obligated to inform you that revenge is unproductive. Mostly because I tried it, and so did you, and, well. Look where we are now.”
“Look where we are indeed.” Chrysalis looked around the room with a mixture of disgust and admiration. “I have one question. Or… I have many, but I have one I care about the answer to enough that I’m going to risk prolonging this… interaction. Why?”
Starlight suspected she knew the answer, but asked, “Why what?”
“You know the answer to that,” Chrysalis said, resuming her glare. Honestly, it looked quite endearing on her new face, and would probably have looked even more endearing if the creature the face was attached to wasn’t a thousand years old and responsible for thousands of murders and foalnappings. “Why are you being nice. Why aren’t you shouting at me, or imprisoning me, or harping on about friendship? You could even try to enchant my mind, if you wanted to test your abilities.” She grinned, muzzle full of still-sharp teeth. “I’m something of an aficionado. You might even survive the confrontation with some of your capacity for love left.”
Starlight gulped. “I’m, uh, trying to break the habit.” There were many answers she could give to the former question. Most of them were probably deeply meaningful, and could perhaps inform Chrysalis about the philosophy of the inherent value of life and kindness omnipresent in the society she was about to enter. But they wouldn’t ring quite as true. “As for why… Well, didn’t you hear? I’m the Princess of Empathy.”
Chrysalis snorted. “Plainly admitting you don’t care, then?”
“Well…” Starlight shrugged. “I thought you might appreciate someone motivated by a role foisted on them outside their control.”
Chrysalis gave what might have been the first genuine smile of the entire exchange, if one looked past the fangs, and the clear frantic attempts to quell the rebellious muscles making the expression. She eventually gave in and settled for turning it into a smirk, before righting the fallen chair with her now-teal magic and sitting back down.
There was a slightly less hostile silence, which Chrysalis eventually broke.
“Glimmer. Do you think I will succeed?”
Starlight considered. She thought about her own experiences, her conflicting desires for revenge, acceptance, victory, and love.
Chrysalis continued. “My first thought, the first thing I remember, was hunger. Deep, painful, aching hunger, and absolutely no care for what stood between me and satiation. It was the only thing I felt for years, and the primary thing I felt for centuries.” She looked at Starlight, desperation leaking through to her face. “What place is there for that now? For the kind of creature that hunger created?”
Starlight thought carefully. “Well… you aren’t hungry anymore, are you?”
“Oh please,” Chrysalis scoffed. “Of course I am. I might not need love, but hunger is just an omnipresent desire, and I’ve got plenty of those. You feature in several of them.”
It was comforting, in a way, that she wore her hatred on her sleeve. It might even serve her better than concealing it. For now, though, Starlight saw an opening. “Sure, I get that. But are you hungry now?”
The ensuing silence was answer enough.
“Maybe that’s all you need. It’s going to take some getting used to, I can tell you that for nothing. But if you can live in the moments where things are okay, eventually, you can build a life out of them. A life without that hunger. And… Maybe the pony, or the changeling, that life creates can find a place here.”
Chrysalis seemed to consider that for a long while, and, eventually, Starlight decided she’d accomplished more than she could’ve hoped to in her wildest dreams, and that she really needed to collapse on her bed and hyperventilate until the tension she’d siphoned from her former archenemy had dissipated. It was as good a time as any to unseal the room.
Stretching, she walked for the door, concentrated, and enjoyed the relaxation in her horn as the crystal retreated from the floors and walls, the windows ceased to be enchanted diamond and resumed being mildly magical glass, and the door became functional once more. She saw Chrysalis watching her closely from across the room, and opened the door.
She stepped directly into the second-largest pony she’d seen that day. “P-princess?”
“Starlight Glimmer!” Princess Celestia beamed, stepping back and allowing Starlight to get a better view of the alicorn. “We’ve been looking for you! I hope your discussion was productive.”
“You’ve– our– what?” Starlight stammered intelligently, before remembering who she was talking to. “I mean, I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Celestia.” The much older alicorn had politely but firmly requested Starlight only use her name, the same as Twilight had done since her ascension. Ironically, it had only increased her respect for the princess.
“Oh, think nothing of it. I’m very glad you—”
Chrysalis, having seen the door would be remaining open, shoved past both of them. “What an unfortunate coincidence, my time has just run out! Apologies, Princess– er, Princesses, I’m sure I’ll be back later, I have to, to, goodbye!” Starlight stopped blinking just in time to see a turquoise tail disappear around a corner.
“...Have you met with her yet?” she asked curiously.
“I haven’t, and I was quite looking forward to our reunion,” Celestia said, with what seemed to be genuine merriment. “But there will be time tomorrow. Besides…” She leaned conspiratorially in, despite Chrysalis most likely being halfway across Canterlot by now. “I think that was considerably more productive, wouldn’t you agree?”
It was Starlight’s turn to gape. “Did you… plan that?”
“I would never!” Celestia feigned offense, before losing hold of her expression and giggling. “But no, not truly. I just thought you two should meet before our negotiations had formally opened to get any avoidable tensions out of the way. That, Princess Starlight, was all you.”
Starlight was still too flummoxed to reply as Celestia began cheerily pushing her down the hall. “While you’re here, come with me! I’ve been trying to decide what sort of cake our guest would prefer, and it’d be wonderful to get a second opinion…”
Starlight trotted down the central street leading away from the crystal palace, treating those she passed with waves and ‘Good morning!’s. This earned her a great number of confused looks, as it was, as she would later learn, 4 PM. For that matter, she really wasn’t known as much of a trotter, or a waver, or a Good Morninger, but she was off to visit a very good friend whom she hadn’t given nearly enough time lately, and that made up for the discrepancies in her mind.
Except the good mornings. Those were a result of a faulty alarm spell.
She had a few items on her itinerary before her arrival. The first required a visit to Bon Bon’s Bon Bons, so she took the well-practiced turns down the dirt paths that made up most of town. She could fly—really, she probably should fly, given that it gave her the opportunity to practice either her wing technique or her magic—but there were two reasons she dreaded going to BBBB (B4, as she’d heard certain ponies call it, though she'd always found the abbreviation ridiculous), and she didn’t need the anticipation to be worse.
She was, of course, making the anticipation worse by choosing the slower route, but her conscious mind didn’t need to know that.
The shop was considerably off Mane Street, and opened onto a road that in a denser town would’ve been termed an alleyway, and which served to display the backs of every other building on it. Bon Bon said she positioned it as far away from Sugarcube Corner as was convenient. Starlight privately thought that there was nothing about the location that could be considered at all convenient; it was the only place in town that gave more trouble to find than the castle map room.
Regrettably, it was also the only place in town that sold orange mocha truffles, and she was friends with ponies with terrible taste.
“Good afternoon, Princess!”
Starlight rolled her eyes fondly, the yellow door swinging shut behind her and the bell ringing cheerfully. “Afternoon! Just Starlight is fine.”
Bon Bon waved her hoof. “Whatever you say, Princess.” She began searching under the counter. “Your usual, I assume?”
“Yup. Business still going well?
Bon Bon leaned in conspiratorially. “Don’t tell anypony, but ever since Pinkie’s started focusing on whatever wild things go on in that palace of yours, I’ve been stealing more and more of her customers.”
“Don’t worry, my lips are sealed. How’s Lyra?”
Bon Bon shook her head. “Haven’t actually seen her since yesterday. I’m not sure what she’s up to, but being with her, you know, I’ve gotten so used to being concerned that I don’t worry at all anymore about the little things unless I have to.”
Starlight thought about Discord, and the Elements, and the pony she was visiting. And the princesses, new and old. And the general track of her life. “I know what you mean.”
Bon Bon carefully set a box on the counter, and Starlight counted out a number of bits she’d long since memorized. “You?” Bon Bon asked. “How’s your marefriend? I see her taste hasn’t gotten any better.”
Starlight froze. “I don’t have a marefriend.”
Bon Bon raised an eyebrow, and then, for good measure, raised the other one. “Whatever you say, Princess. You know, you’re just making things difficult for yourself.”
Starlight levitated the box to her side. “I am not. I’m telling the truth.” More or less. According to the least inaccurate understanding of her feelings on the situation she’d been able to come to.
“Right… Well, tell her I said hi. And that I poisoned one of the truffles.”
“I’ll do that.”
A few minutes later, she’d made it to the tea shop, perusing options under the watchful eye of a pony whose name she could not for the life of her remember. At one point Starlight had been tempted to ask again, but, upon realizing that she was instinctively planning to make the clerk forget that she’d asked, she’d hastily changed her mind and given herself a lecture.
Having selected an unusual-looking variety of lapsang tea, she walked to the counter, and the clerk gave her a knowing look.
“Your special somepony is going to love that one, if I know her at all!”
Starlight winced. “Yes, thank you, how much will that be?”
Roseluck hurried Starlight away from the flower stand. She always did; the longer a pony stood around, the more chance there was that they’d somehow damage the flowers. Or something.
“Hurry along now, don’t you worry! Tell your special somepony I said hi and come back soon! Royalty is good for business!”
“She’s not—slow down!”
“Ooh, better run Starlight! It’s not morning anymore 'cause your alarm spell went off wrong, and you don’t want to keep your special somepony waiting!”
“Pinkie Pie—“
Groaning, Starlight knocked on the door of a blue wagon, various items levitating around her and mud in her mane from a disastrous attempt at flying while carrying things to save time.
If she isn’t home…
But, after a brief second, the door burst open.
“Starlight!” Trixie leapt out and directly into her, causing her to drop everything unceremoniously onto the ground and somehow fall on her face and her back at the same time. “Oops. Ooh, you brought me truffles! You’re the best marefriend a pony could ask for! How’s B4?”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie moseyed elegantly up the aisle of the convenience store, with the grace and sobriety of a pony possessed—”
“Isn’t that supposed to be a bad thing?”
“—possessed by somepony very elegant, when her eyes met with those of the hot clerk pony at the desk, and she came to a startling revelation! Zounds!”
“‘Zounds?’”
“What if the clerk thought Trixie was high?”
“You were high.”
“I’m telling the story. So Trixie devised an ingenious scheme: She would return to the aisles of the store, and pretend as though she were merely shopping, rather than seeking to satiate substance-induced cravings! So, carrying her whole haddock, she seamlessly spun on her hooves and walked up and down the aisle, and at last arrived at the item that would allay the clerk’s suspicions: an extra-large box of oat bars. With this stroke of genius, she strode confidently back towards the front of the store, only to arrive in front of the clerk pony and enlist her incredible powers of deduction to consider a possibility! What if the oat bars weren’t enough? So she winked at the clerk, with both her eyes since she was lacking her usual unparalleled motor control, and turned around yet again! She paced the aisles, wondering to herself what to pick up, calculating and considering what magical third item could be added to an extra-large box of oat bars and an entire raw haddock to make the perfectly ordinary combination of ingredients that would render the Great and Powerful Trixie flawlessly disguised and the clerk pony bedazzled by her normalcy! She thought and thought, and then the idea came to her like… like… well, it came to her! More oat bars! So, confidence restored, she turned back to the front of the store, and she walked with single-minded focus—”
“How did this end?”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie was kicked out of the store.”
“It feels like a lot of your stories end that way.”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie would not be The Great and Powerful Trixie without her Great and Powerful Thematic Consistency.” The pair giggled.
Even after months of knowing her, Starlight couldn’t understand for the life of her why Trixie was so unpopular among the majority of ponies in town. Whenever she tried to entertain the idea of not being delighted by the presence of the adorably egotistical showmare, the gears in her brain ground to a halt and quickly backtracked to the most recent point at which she was thinking positively of Trixie. They usually didn’t have to backtrack very far.
She knew the ego was largely a fabricated act, but she also knew that Trixie adored her own stage persona, and had resolved long ago to give her the most opportunities possible to express it. Trixie let her be the neurotic, nervous, and occasionally morally-ignorant pony that she was; it would be terribly rude not to return the favor. Not to mention boring. Besides, to someone as insecure as Starlight (a flaw she would be the second to acknowledge, after Trixie), being around a pony who, despite frequent failings, displayed a literally unmatched confidence and spontaneity, filled her with… Well, it filled her with a lot of things.
She nudged Trixie, who was currently trying to see how dramatically low she could wear her hat without tripping over a tree root. “Um, where are we going? You realize I just walked this whole way, right?” Not to mention that she’d brought tea so it could be drunk, not so it could be shoved in Trixie’s cupboard before she was dragged out the door.
The two were walking swiftly along the river, and, more relevantly, along the path back through the center of Ponyville. Trixie almost invariably made the plans for their incredibly sporadic meetings, which Starlight appreciated, having such a busy schedule herself. Besides, she liked to think the sense of mounting dread Trixie could sometimes instill was good for her complexion.
Trixie scoffed. “Of course Trixie realizes! She was watching you the whole time, as she does at all hours of the day. That came out weird. She is merely building suspense, as behooves somepony of her craft.” She leaned over conspiratorially, the effect somewhat diminished by her hat slipping down entirely over her lilac eyes. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be bringing you along if I didn’t think it’d be fun.”
Starlight nodded uncertainly. “Riiiiight. And this won’t be like the time you dragged me all around town looking for a table?”
“Not unless you have any more magic bottles of hatred lying around. Let me know if you do, though, ‘cause that gave me some ideas.”
“And it won’t be like the time you accidentally plucked Fluttershy’s songbirds?”
“Of course not!”
“Or the time you tried to get me to cut part of the palace off to use as a mirror in your wagon?”
“It matched the color scheme.”
“Or the time you asked Thorax if he could help you shapeshift into Princess Celestia?”
“It…” Trixie paused, scrunching her face. “There are things this is less like.”
Starlight shook her head and levitated Trixie over a large stone she was about to trip over. “Well, at least now I know you’re being honest.”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie is alw—”
“Oh, you are not. You’d get bored.”
This banter continued in much the same vein for the following ten minutes, until Starlight realized that her retracing of her earlier walk was not stopping, and was beginning to look as though it would continue right back to…
“Trixie, why are we going to the palace?” she asked, with a (currently) small amount of concern.
“Because Trixie,” Trixie said, waving enthusiastically to ponies who responded with looks as though they’d never encountered the gesture before, “Has had an idea. And you’re going to help me with it!”
“I am?”
“Yes!” Trixie patted her on the head. “It’s very nice of you. One of only many reasons you deserve to be”—Starlight’s eye twitched—“Trixie’s special somepony!”
The pair entered the palace (which was open to the public and generally lacked security, as Starlight was very acutely aware) and walked down a corridor. Then they walked down another, identical corridor. And another. And another. And a few more for good measure.
Trixie had begun to complain sometime around corridor number… What was it? One? “Starliiiiight! You live here! Why are we lost?”
Starlight glanced at her in disbelief. “I don’t know, maybe because I’m not the one leading us?”
“Trixie hoped having you here would reassure the palace that Trixie meant well,” Trixie sulked. “But apparently nothing can quench the flames of hatred in the hearts of—”
“Okay, okay, calm down,” Starlight quickly said, having heard a similar spiel several times in the very recent past. Reassure the palace, right. Why didn’t that seem as absurd as it should?
After a moment of confusion, she remembered the fireplace, that night after they’d saved Stygian and banished the Pony of Shadows. After she comforted Twilight and had been smacked in the face by the prospect of her new immortality, when she’d first considered her domain as a princess, it had lit itself.
Perhaps Trixie was onto something?
“What if, instead of hoping the palace likes me, you just… ask it nicely?”
Trixie blinked and gave her a look of confusion. “Palaces aren’t intelligent, silly.”
“Then why—of course, you’re right, silly me. But, er… try anyway?” She gave Trixie what she hoped was an encouraging smile.
“Okaaaay…” Trixie thought for a moment, pacing back and forth in the wide crystal hallway. “Starlight’s palace! Um, and also Twilight and her friends’ I guess! Can you pleeeeeease let the Great and Powerful Trixie find the room she’s trying to go to? Trixie means only the best for Starlight, and she’ll be very careful!”
Very careful? With what?
Trixie waited for several seconds. Then she sighed and began walking back in the direction they’d come. “Oh well. The Great and Powerful Trixie’s critics truly have no shame. And to think, they say—oh here it is.”
And indeed, through reluctant acceptance by the palace or sheer dumb luck, there was a door off to the side that was slightly different from the others. Trixie sauntered towards it, all moping forgotten, and, with a dramatic swish of her cape, swung open the door. Starlight followed her in.
It was the room with the mirror portal. The one to Canterlot High.
Starlight’s brain instantly made several connections, projections, reflections, and, for good measure, some objections. “No. No. No, no, no, no no no no no.”
Trixie had started waving her hoof dismissively before she’d even reached the second no. “Oh, Starlight, you worry too much. You haven’t even heard the plan yet!”
Starlight began pacing in a manner that would’ve made Twilight proud. “Trixie, the last time I went through this portal, we ended up fighting—no! That doesn’t even matter! It doesn’t matter that things turned out okay last time, this is too much. The stakes of anything to do with this portal, with that world, are too high.”
Trixie walked over and attempted to put her hoof on Starlight’s shoulder. It promptly slid off as the pacing continued. Undeterred, Trixie said, “I bet I can convince you. Especially when you hear my plan!”
Starlight, with some effort, slowed from a pace to a sort of stationary trot. “Oh, okay! Explain it to me, then—explain the one perfect idea that’ll make this okay. I know you’re much smarter than ponies give you credit for, Trixie, and I’m sure you’ve thought this through, but I’m sorry, no matter how good it is, we just can’t—“
“We’re going to sell interdimensional magic fireworks!” Trixie announced with glee, having waited long enough for the opportunity to leap into the air.
Starlight’s trot petered out, along with, she’d later conclude, a not-insignificant portion of her sanity. “...Okay. I was prepared to poke holes in your plan even if it sounded really clever, but that actually sounds so straightforwardly bad that I don’t really know what to say now.”
“Don’t worry, my most trusted assistant marefriend helper pony, Trixie will say it for you: ‘That’s a great idea, my Greatest and Most Powerful Commander Trixie! Let’s do it right now!’” Trixie wrapped Starlight’s left wing around herself and began walking happily towards the portal.
Starlight’s hooves scrabbled on the crystal floor. “Commander?”
“Aw, do you not like it? I was trying out a new title, but I’ve got a lot of ideas, I’m sure you’ll like one of them.”
“No, it’s, er, great, but, I just don’t think for the love of Celestia stop moving!”
Trixie gave a long-suffering sigh and acquiesced. “Whaaaat.”
“Don’t give me that. You know we can’t do this.”
“Trixie knows nothing of the sort!” Trixie said indignantly. “Give me one good reason we can’t.”
“Okay, first, what on Faust are interdimensional magic fireworks?”
“Trixie is so glad you asked. You know how Trixie has always wanted to magically enhance her fireworks for her shows? Well, she finally managed to make spells stable enough to imbue them into powder! And she’s so excited that showing them off in this world simply isn’t enough! Besides, imagine how much more impressed ponies will be in a world where they aren’t even used to magic!” Trixie bounced in excitement, looking hopefully at Starlight. “Oh, and the interdimensional part is just because that’s where we’re selling them.”
Starlight had promised to kick the habit of bottling up her emotions, figuratively or otherwise. This was an advantage in this situation, because, had she not, she would’ve already graduated from a glass bottle to a milk jug. Or possibly a barrel. “It’s ‘people’ in that world, not ponies. And have you considered that selling magic items to a population not familiar with magic could have disastrous consequences? I mean, look at what’s already happened every time magic artifacts show up there! You heard about the memory stone, right? Or the crown? Or the sirens?”
“Ah,” Trixie said, with all the crafty manipulation skills of a baby tadpole, “And have you heard of, oh, Trixie doesn’t know, the Elements of Harmony? Which have saved the world like, twenty times?”
“That is not remotely the same thing.”
“And all those bad things have been happening because magic has ended up in the hooves—”
“Hands.”
“—of the wrong ponies! People, whatever. Obviously magic is great when the people using it are good! Trixie would never be foolish enough to sell anything dangerous to people who wouldn’t handle it well.”
Starlight was beginning to reconsider her assumption that she wouldn’t need to deconstruct Trixie’s plan. “How do you know anything about the people in that world? You’ve never even visited.”
“Trixie knows from what you’ve said that the people there are basically the same as the ponies here. So if they’re trustworthy here, they’re trustworthy there, right?” Trixie rubbed the back of her head with a hoof. “Also, Trixie maaaay have looked through Twilight’s journal communication thingie to cross-reference responsible customers.”
“You wha—nevermind.” This was getting ridiculous. And something didn’t add up, given what Starlight knew about her friend. “Why are you putting so much effort into this?” She searched for a diplomatic way to put her concern. Trixie wasn’t lazy. Far from it—she’d lived on her own for years before Starlight ever met her. It was just that… “You’ve always been very… path of least resistance. This doesn’t feel like you.”
Trixie huffed and finally stopped pacing around the portal. “Fine. I want to visit the human world. I really really want to. And…” She thought for a moment. “Yeah.”
That made more sense. “You know, you could’ve just asked.”
“And you would’ve said no!” Trixie said accusatively.
“No!” Yes, she would’ve. “At least, I would’ve been more likely to say yes than I am to this.”
Trixie smirked. “Ah, but you’re already thinking about going along with Trixie’s plan.”
She was? “I am?”
“Uhuh! You want to go back there too. Don’t you want to see Sunset when you’re not both trying not to die? Trixie can see it in your face.”
“I… don’t think you can see something that specific on anypony’s face.”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie can.” Trixie bowed lightly. “Also, it’s not fair that you’ve gotten to go and Trixie hasn’t.”
Unfortunately, that was true, and the part of Starlight that aggressively demanded fairness in all things (a more substantial part of her than she’d admit, even though in any other pony it’d be a trait considered worthy of respect) immediately sympathized. After all, how often did somepony get the chance to visit another world? How many ponies even could? Wasn’t it the duty of the ponies with that opportunity to take advantage of it, rather than wasting their privilege? And didn’t she have the authority to think about this kind of thing, now that she was technically a princess?
Shut up, me! We’re trying not to agree with her!
Trixie continued, unkindly not giving Starlight the chance to win her argument with herself before attacking from a second front. “Come ooooon, you know you want to give Trixie what she wants!”
For Celestia’s sake. “You know, usually it’s considered polite to not say that part out loud, even if you’re hoping it’s true.”
“Why would Trixie be polite instead of winning an argument?” Trixie began slowly walking towards the portal, not breaking eye contact with Starlight. “Plus, she’s right, isn’t she?”
…
“Yes.”
Trixie squealed in delight and leapt on Starlight for the second time in half an hour, leaving her hat to float to the ground where she’d been standing. “Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou! I’ll make sure you don’t regret this!”
Starlight choked, partially from surprise and partially from being choked. “I didn’t agree yet!”
“Yesyoudid! Come on, help me with the boxes!”
“What boxes?”
Twenty minutes later, a pile of boxes—some cardboard, some wooden, and some mostly tape—lay in front of the portal.
Trixie, in her eternal wisdom, had lugged all of them into the palace the day before (or rather, into the first room the palace would let her find, which turned out to be a pantry that Spike hopefully hadn’t used in the past day) in the assumption that Starlight would agree with her proposal. Starlight was beginning to suspect she was the most manipulable pony in Equestria, but she could worry about that after administering… interdimensional magic trade.
Twilight was going to kill her.
“Hey, Twiwight won mine tha we’re doin thih, righ?” Trixie mumbled around a box she was dragging with her teeth, five other boxes grasped in her magic aura. They plopped down unceremoniously with more momentum than Starlight generally preferred to see explosives moving with.
“Ha! Hahahaha! Nope! Not at all!” Starlight said believably.
“Great!” Trixie beamed. “This should be everything. We’ll need a couple trips. Let’s go!”
Starlight pulled her back across the largely frictionless floor with her magic. “Waaaaaitwaitwaitwait. If we’re doing this, you need to be ready. How much do you know about—”
There was a loud sneeze.
It didn’t come from Trixie.
The two looked at each other. “Trixie… Do any of your fireworks sneeze?” Starlight asked with trepidation.
Trixie thought for a long moment. “Not anymore, I don’t think. Those weren’t super stable and I didn’t want the others going off, soI—”
There was another sneeze.
Starlight immediately ran a scanning spell over every box in the pile. Fireworks, fireworks, concerningly large fireworks, fireworks, signs, fireworks, a pony, fireworks— wait. She grabbed a box from near the bottom of the pile, shoved another in its place before gravity could work its whims on the above boxes, and opened it.
Inside the box lay a curled up, trembling Lyra Heartstrings.
Starlight made a strangled noise. “Wh— you— This portal is not a public transportation service!”
Lyra raised a hoof sheepishly. “Um, I can ex—”
“No! No explaining! This was a terrible idea and I don’t care why you want to go to the human world, we’re leaving, Trixie, grab the boxes—”
“Actually, I am a human,” said Lyra nervously.
Trixie looked at her as though she’d grown two heads, or perhaps two hands. “Um, you don’t look like one. Do you mean, like, in a past life or something, because I don’t think—”
“No, I’m the human Lyra!” the possibly-human Lyra said, voice cracking. She sat up in the box. “I’ve been stuck here since the Friendship Games! I promise I’m telling the truth!”
Starlight blinked. “What.”
“After the games, the Twilight from this world came through our portal to visit—I saw her come out! But there was already a Twilight there, who I think must’ve been the original human Twilight, so they were confused and went to talk for a while, so I figured the portal would stay open for a bit, and I wanted to see the magical pony world everyone was talking about so bad, so I went through when they weren’t looking and even though it was super weird it was also the best thing I’d ever seen and I thought that maybe the Lyra here would want to visit my world so I managed to find her and she did so we switched places and then we haven’t been able to talk to each other or get back through the portal because I don’t know how it works!” Lyra gasped in another breath. “And it’s been so long and I love it here but I just want to go home and I overheard Trixie a couple days ago saying she’d be visiting and I thought since you’re her marefriend and a princess and all it’d be okay so I put myself in this box and please take me with you?”
Starlight’s brain had shut down and gone into emergency power-saving mode several run-on sentences ago. Trixie, on the other hand, grinned widely and hugged the tearful Lyra. “Of course we’ll take you! This is perfect!”
That comment was sufficiently insane to jolt Starlight back to reality. “What about this is perfect?! Were you even listening?!”
“Trixie was listening very well, thank you. And now she guesses we have to go to the human world, don’t we~? I mean, we can’t just leave Lyra here!”
The Lyra in question frowned—or, gave it her best shot, given that Trixie’s hooves were squishing her cheeks. “That kind of hurts.”
Starlight stomped over to Trixie. “Did you plan this?!”
“I’m actually a bit offended you’d think I’d do that,” Trixie said, removing her wandering hooves from the relieved Lyra’s face.
“...I don’t.” Starlight sagged. “I’m sorry. This day has just been… crazy. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon.” She turned to Lyra. “I’m so sorry about all of this, and especially that you didn’t feel you could seek help from any of us. Of course we’ll take you home.”
Lyra smiled a slightly watery smile. “It’s okay. Really, I did choose to come here, and I never hated it. It’s just… a lot.” She curled back up in the box, shifting into a relatively cozy-looking position. “Can we go now?”
Starlight stared. “Well, now that we know you’re here, you can just walk.”
“Oh.” The mint-green unicorn sat up. “Um. Right.”
A minute later, Starlight, Trixie, and an anxious Lyra were lined up before the now-activated portal (the fireworks being left for the second trip).
“Ready?” Starlight said, glancing at the others. “Well… Lyra, I guess you know what to expect. Trixie—”
“Two legs, weird spider hooves, yeah yeah. Let’s go!” Trixie leaned back and took a flying leap through the portal, once again leaving her hat behind.
Starlight groaned and picked it up with her magic. “She’ll be the death of me. Come on.”
They stepped through.
Immediately, Starlight was thrust into a swirling vortex of colors, reduced to weightlessness, and had all sense of direction wrung out of her like a damp towel. It felt as though she would be sick, if her stomach could only decide which way was up. She’d been through the portal before, but it wasn’t exactly something you could prepare for. She felt freezing- or was she on fire? Or did she have no nerves at all? Or was she standing upright on the pavement in front of Canterlot High School?
She was, as it turned out. The portal didn’t give you much of an adjustment period.
She leaned against a solid side of the horse statue, panting. Something was wrong with her eyes. Everything was grey, and she could barely see… Or, no, it was dark. Why was it dark?
“Trixie?” She said, voice surprisingly steady. “Why is it night?”
Trixie stepped into her vision from the left, stride confident but wobbly. “I planned it this way! In Equestria, the princesses move the sun and moon. But Twilight says they move themselves here!” Starlight was fairly certain Trixie had lost her balance by now and was just trying to prolong her slow fall to the asphalt. “And you say they don’t have magic. So at this time of year, it’s already nighttime! Cool, huh? Ow!” She finally gave in and tumbled to the ground. “I figured it’d be safer.”
As she got up to help Trixie, Starlight spotted Lyra looking around out of the corner of her eye, and waved. “Are you okay?”
The now-ex-unicorn nodded, wobbling her arms to keep her balance upright after so long on all fours. “The portal was… a lot, but I… I’m just glad to be back. I need to find Lyra. The other one. She’ll be at my house.” She swallowed. “I hope.”
Starlight gave what she hoped was an encouraging smile, but she wasn’t sure, given her relatively little practice with human facial muscles. Muscle memory did seem to somehow transfer, which was interesting, given that the magic of ascension didn’t confer—not the time. “Come back here if you need anything at all. I don’t have my magic in this world—or my wings, I guess—but I’m not completely useless.” Lyra gave her a thumbs-up (a gesture Starlight wouldn’t be mastering any time soon) and ran into the darkness.
Right. Starlight stood up straight and squinted in the dark until she found Trixie, who’d righted herself and was staring at her, mouth slightly agape. “Okay, let’s go… wherever in Celestia’s name you want us to go, and then we can go back for the fireworks.”
“Um, Starlight?” A familiar voice said from beside her. “I’m over here.” Starlight looked, and there was Trixie, still on the ground, flexing her hands experimentally.
She looked back. The other Trixie was still staring at her.
“How dare you impersonate the Great and Powerful Trixie!” She stomped up to the flummoxed Equestrian Trixie and Starlight. “The nerve! Trixie will eviscerate you! Metaphorically.” She squinted, leaning around Trixie and inspecting her closely. “Even if this is an excellent forgery. Who are you? Talk quickly and Trixie might let you live.”
Broken out of her trance by the death threats (which were useful that way), Starlight leapt unsteadily in between the two magicians. “Oooookay! Everypo— everyone calm down! Let’s just, um, get somewhere else before we—”
“Everypony?” Human Trixie said, comprehension slowly dawning on her face. “You’re from Equestria!”
“Um, duh,” said Normal Trixie. “We just got through the portal. See?” She stuck her hand through the immaterial side, then pulled it out and shook off the mana residue. Human Trixie gaped.
“Trixie!” Starlight shoved her away from the portal, before turning to Human Trixie. Trixie H. “How do you know about Equestria?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Trixie H. asked in confusion. “I mean, we have seven students who spend half their time with wings and tails, and Princess Twilight visits sometimes, and then there were the sirens, and the horse architecture everywhere around the school, and then—”
“Okay, point taken.” That made Starlight feel slightly less guilty about not keeping the Equestrian side of the portal as secure as she could’ve. Even if it raised so many new concerns.
Pony Trixie was returning Trixie H.’s examination. “Humans are so weird.”
Trixie H. jumped back. “We look the same! Stare at yourself!”
“Oh, Trixie will, don’t worry,” Trixie said, attempting to wink and looking more as though she were trying to get a fly off of her nose. “But it’s more convenient to do it with you. So hold still.”
Trixie H. reluctantly obliged. “So, why are you here? And why are you here at night? Also, who are you?” The latter question was directed at Starlight.
“Princess Starlight Glimmer,” Trixie interjected proudly. “She’s Trixie’s marefriend. Or whatever you call them here.”
She had to nip that in the bud. “Sorry, but I’m actually not, though I am a close—”
“Yes you are.”
“I’m not.”
“You aaaaare.”
Trixie H. was watching in baffled amazement. “Are you saying I end up dating a princess? But I’ve never even met you here!”
“That is not what I’m—”
“Yup!” Said Trixie. “Though I guess she’s probably not a princess here. That seems like an Equestria thing.”
Trixie H. looked at Starlight with the expression with which Twilight looked at particularly scintillating math problems. “Trixie appreciates this valuable information! You will not be eviscerated.”
“Trixie’s favorite non-activity!” The two high-fived (pony Trixie with a closed fist).
“But you still haven’t said why you’re here,” Trixie H. continued. “Are you hiding—”
“What the fuck is going on here?!”
The three looked towards the sound of the voice. Out of the darkness emerged a tall girl with orange skin, red and yellow hair, and a black leather jacket. She didn’t look particularly pleased.
Oh thank Celestia, another sane being, Starlight thought in relief. “Sunset! It’s good to see you!”
Sunset Shimmer stopped, her arms crossed irately. “Yeah, yeah, you too. What on earth are you doing here? And more to the point, what is she doing here?” She pointed at the Trixies.
Trixie H. gave an offended gasp. “And Trixie thought that after all we’d been through together, she would finally be free of—”
“Okay, yeah, forget I asked,” said Sunset, and she approached Starlight with her hand outstretched. In the time it took Starlight to remember exactly what Sunset’s magical ability was and to subsequently experience a flash of panic so vivid that the world seemed to light up as if strung in Hearth’s Warming Eve lights, Sunset had already paused and retracted her hand with a guilty expression. “Um… Right.”
Starlight managed to find her tongue from wherever in her stomach it’d retreated to. “Maybe not a good idea, yeah. Thank you?”
“Of course.” Sunset shot Starlight an apologetic glance, stomped over to Trixie H, and grabbed her arm. Her eyes lit up white, temporarily illuminating a swath of the parking lot and causing Starlight to turn away, blinking rapidly. “Nope, not you.” She leaned over to Trixie and did the same thing.
A second later, her eyes dimmed, and she stared at Trixie with her mouth open. “I— you— what? That is so stupid!”
“That’s what I said!” protested Starlight. “Also, that power is so unfair. Do you know how much work I put in to even be able to control minds? Reading them is so difficult it’s barely worth the magic expenditure!”
“Yeah, well, I can only read them, and sometimes inanimate objects—”
“You can read the thoughts of inanimate objects?!”
“—And it’s pretty much limited to… You can control minds?” Sunset looked at Starlight with a mixture of worry and respect. “…Why do you know how to do that?”
“I told you about my past, remember? When we were talking to Juniper?”
“Yeah, like a sentence. You never mentioned that.”
“I sort of tell everyone I know, I guess; it feels like the polite thing to do. I just assumed you knew too.”
“Wait wait wait, everyone in Ponyville knows that the Princess—congratulations, by the way—used to—”
Trixie stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle that echoed off the brick walls of the school. “I’m glad you two are having fun, but we have sales to make! Chop chop! Starlight, come on, help me get the boxes.”
“Aren’t you, like, not used to having fingers?” Trixie H. asked. “How did you do that?”
Trixie shrugged. “Natural talent. Also, what does ‘fuck’ mean?”
Sunset turned to glare at Starlight, who laughed nervously. “Um, Trixie, given everything that’s happened here, I’m not sure it’s a great idea to go through with this. Maybe we should just go back to Ponyville and spend the evening in together?”
Trixie opened her mouth to respond, but Sunset beat her to it. “Oh, it’s too late for that,” she growled.
“Er… why?” Starlight asked apprehensively.
“Because she already got the word out, and if people show up and you’re not here and the portal is open, this is going to get even worse,” Sunset said, pre-empting Trixie again.
“Stop that!” Trixie protested.
“Maybe don’t be an idiot and I will!” Sunset stepped closer to Trixie, her faintly glowing eyes making her look like an incensed cat who’d somehow joined a biker gang.
“Wait, what do you mean she already got the word out?” Starlight asked, feeling rather left behind.
“I mean,” said Sunset, “That she somehow managed to contact someone through Twilight’s journal and tell them about this stupid plan of hers. Also, everyone step away from the portal, or one of you is going to fall through.”
Starlight groaned and turned to Trixie (who was listening intently to Trixie H.’s explanation of human curse words). “When we get back, we’re going to have a conversation about breaking and entering.”
Trixie shrugged. “You’re the one who told me that the castle had terrible security.”
“It wasn’t meant as advice—no, nevermind. Sunset, who in their right mind would get that message from Trixie and just go along with it, rather than telling you or the others?”
“Nobody, that’s who,” Sunset sighed.
Then who…?
Starlight’s question was answered by a faint bouncing sound, which slowly grew louder as she listened. “Oh, come on.”
“You said it, not me.”
A bright, almost luminous pink shape emerged from the darkness. “Hey guys! Are you selling yet?” Pinkie Pie chirped, grinning and hopping in circles around a bemused Starlight. “Sorry about the bouncing! I ate a looooot of vitamins! I lost them in my cupcake batter, but I figured why waste perfectly good batter? Plus, now that this batch is so healthy, maybe I can finally convince Dashie to have cake for breakfast!” She did a cartwheel in the Trixies’ direction and began orbiting them instead. “Ooh! Do you accept payment in Pinkie Pie’s Vividly Voluminous Vitamin Cupcakes? There aren’t a lot of words that start with V, but I made it work!”
Trixie didn’t miss a beat. “Well, you certainly can’t only pay in cupcakes, but I’m sure we can work out an exchange rate, right Starlight?”
“…Um,” said Starlight, who had missed many beats. Sunset was right. It looked like it was going to be more feasible to weather this storm than to prevent it. If only she’d bought a better umbrella.
She groaned. “Okay. Trixie—no, my Trixie—come on. I’ll help you set up. Sunset, I’m sorry about this, but can you help? There are a lot of boxes, and the sooner we get everything over here, the sooner we can leave.” Sunset nodded reluctantly, and Trixie smiled victoriously. “Okay. Okay. …Okay.” And they stepped back through the portal.
Fifteen minutes and an unnerving amount of haphazardly dropping boxes full of explosives later, a fireworks stand was set up in the parking lot to the side of Canterlot High School. Pinkie had somehow retrieved a pair of card tables from inside the locked school and draped a glittery tablecloth over them, and Trixie had unloaded a box full of colorful signs proclaiming the wares to be the best fireworks in this world and listing at least fifteen different varieties, most of which Starlight had never heard of. Another freshly-painted sign announced “Free Vividly Voluminous Vitamin Cupcakes with every purchase!” Somehow, they’d even managed to haul all twenty-four of the boxes over.
“How… does anyone… do anything in this world… without magic?” panted Trixie as she placed the final box on a pile labeled Medium Fountains (Warm Colors).
“Don’t ask her,” Trixie H. said, pointing over her shoulder at Sunset, who also looked quite winded and was sitting on the side of one of the tables. “They get to use magic whenever they want. It’s pretty unfair if you ask me.”
Sunset frowned. “You can teleport, remember?”
“Oh. Right. Well, Trixie isn’t used to her magic working. Which still isn’t fair.”
Starlight tapped Sunset’s shoulder before another argument could begin. “Okay, that’s all set up. You saw Trixie’s memories—how many people are we expecting?”
“Why not just ask her?” Sunset asked.
“I trust you to interpret her thoughts more than I do her.” Starlight glanced over at Trixie, who was excitedly explaining something or other about firework design to an enraptured Trixie H. and Pinkie.
“Okay, that’s not unfair. In that case, it shouldn’t be more than ten or so—at least, that’s what she thought.”
She’d better check. “Pinkie,” Starlight asked, interrupting the lecture. “Exactly how many people are going to be showing up here tonight?”
Pinkie giggled. “Well, I can’t give you an exact answer, silly!”
Of course not. “How about a range?”
“Sure!” Pinkie began counting on her fingers thoughtfully. “Anywhere between… no one and everyone!”
“...Everyone?”
“Yep! I told a bunch of people about it, but none of them have to be here because there isn’t an individual mandate for fireworks yet, so who knows how many will show up?”
Starlight felt as though several of her organs had deflated like spent balloons. Which, for all she knew about human biology, they had. “Great. Thanks.”
“No probs!”
She shared a look with Sunset.
As if on cue, a car faded into earshot. Despite Starlight’s prayers to the contrary, it turned into the school parking lot, drove in a loop, and elegantly backed into one of the many open parking spaces.
Starlight wondered, not for the first time, how those vehicles worked. Magical transportation in Equestria—though thus far usually limited to trains—was considered safe and reliable because it was, well, magic. A properly-cast spell would maintain itself for years given power, whereas a machine would require constant maintenance. Not to mention the risk in prioritizing individual over public transportation, which she never would’ve supported in any hypothetical town she was in charge of. How did the public accept such a clear safety hazard? Were the laws of entropy somehow different in a universe without magic? Was she just biased by virtue of being a unicorn? Would earth ponies be a viable proxy demographic to research in place of humans?
Sunset was snapping her fingers in front of Starlight’s face. She blinked.
Two humans, who at a quick glance could only be Octavia and Vinyl Scratch, were standing patiently in front of her. Octavia raised an eyebrow, and Vinyl waved cheerfully.
“So it would seem,” said Octavia, looking with what Starlight couldn’t help but feel was a judgemental frown at the hastily-constructed stand. “Two cases of chrysanthemums, please, and…” She squinted at a sign. “What on earth are ‘Alicorn Amulet Aerials?’”
“A new creation of Trixie’s!” Trixie answered proudly, vaulting over the fireworks stand to stand beside Starlight. “She was inspired to create them based on, um, certain past experiences. Don’t worry, they aren’t cursed. Probably.”
Octavia blinked. “I shudder to think why you have to clarify that.”
Sunset hopped down from her position on the table. “Not to be judgy, but what do you need fireworks for? I wouldn’t have pegged you as wanting anything here.”
“Oh, I don’t,” Octavia said. “But my partner here, well, she has her aesthetic tastes regardless of my best efforts, and I happen to be the one with a car. As for your ‘probably not cursed’ aerials, I think we’ll pass.”
“Are you suuuure?” Trixie asked, fluttering her eyelids.
Pinkie bounced over. “Ooh! Are you having a seizure? Raise your hands above your head!” Trixie swatted her away.
Before Octavia could respond, Vinyl, who’d been looking contemplatively at some of the boxes, made several rapid hand gestures at Octavia. Some form of silent communication? Starlight watched with interest. It was no wonder Lyra had wanted to visit this world for a longer period! Imagine the types of magic you could create with that much dexterity…
Octavia sighed. “Are you sure?” Vinyl grinned and repeated the gesture. “Oh, very well. But if you set your bed on fire again, I’m not giving you mine. You can sleep on the floor.” She turned back to Trixie. “One—one, Vinyl, I’m compromising—of the aerials, please.”
Trixie fist-pumped. “Excellent! You won’t regret that! And if you do, we won’t be here, so no refunds.” Octavia glared at her. “Hehe. Kidding. That’ll be twenty-one bits.”
“...Bits?”
Sunset smacked her forehead. “Did you seriously make this whole plan and not check whether Equestria and Earth use the same currency?!”
“Well, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem!” Trixie said defensively. “Countries besides Equestria use bits, and it’s all gold anyway, so what does it matter?”
Octavia’s eyes bulged. “Your currency is gold?”
“Um… Yeah, what else would it be?”
“Wait!” Pinkie shouted. Holding up a finger, she took off the bag slung over her shoulder, rummaged around in it, pulled out a lightbulb, and held it above her head. It clicked on obligingly. “I’ve got this! Sunset, what’s twenty-one bits in dollars these days?”
Sunset shielded her eyes from the lightbulb. “Uh, probably about thirty-two bucks, but I’ve only been to Equestria a few times in the past fifteen years, and—”
“Great!” Pinkie held out her hand to Octavia, who looked at it with mild trepidation. Vinyl shrugged, counted out thirty-two dollars from a wallet that Starlight hoped was imitation leather, and handed the money over. Pinkie took it, shoved it into her hair along with the lightbulb, and, with a sound like a cash register, pulled out something sparkly that she tossed to Trixie.
Trixie caught it, and held up a glittering, perfectly-cut sapphire the size of a golf ball. “Huh. That’s probably about right.”
Octavia gaped at her, and this time, Trixie H. joined her. “Where did you get that?” the latter gasped. “That’s like… like…”
Starlight didn’t see what the big deal was. “Are gems really that uncommon here? No wonder you don’t have magical transportation.”
Sunset sighed. “Yes, they are, and Pinkie, we’ve talked about this.”
“Aw, don’t worry, Sunny! These are leftover from ages ago! I didn’t forget your lecture.” Pinkie stood next to Sunset and mimicked her posture. “Pinkie, you can’t just bring magically-charged gemstones back from Equestria! Pinkie, the relative values of precious stones and metal in this world could destabilize the economies of two of the most important potential trade centers in the event of future interdimensional cooperation! Pinkie, you shouldn’t store money in your hair! Pinkie, stop copying everything I say!” She patted Sunset’s shoulder. “She cracks me up!”
Starlight was fairly certain she understood the implications of what had just happened, and she was equally sure that this was the time to get any bystanders out of the way before information that probably shouldn’t become common knowledge became common knowledge. “Okay! Well, thank you Pinkie, I think, but we don’t want to keep customers waiting.” She shot Vinyl and Octavia a look that hopefully wasn’t too panicked. Judging by their reaction, it was.
“Thank you… all… so much for your services,” Octavia said, grabbing Vinyl’s hand. “We should probably be going.”
Trixie nodded. “Of course! The Great and Powerful Trixie is nothing if not an excellent customer servicer. Hm. Don’t repeat that phrase in any reviews of our establishment.” She stared at a wooden crate for a long moment. Then she began squinting.
Trixie H. elbowed her. “You need to use your hands.”
“Ah! Trixie was getting to that part.” She did so, opening the box and placing several colorful packages and tubes into a paper bag, which she handed to Vinyl. “Thank you for patronizing The Great and Powerful Trixie’s Worlds-Class Fireworks! Come again whenever we do this again!”
“Which will be never,” interjected Starlight.
“We’ll see.” Trixie smirked as Vinyl and Octavia walked away and climbed into their car. “Excellent work, by the way, you two!” she said to an excited Pinkie and a less-excited Sunset. “Trixie will consider promoting you to minor assistants if you continue to be so helpful!”
Sunset shook her head. “Nope. One day of that was enough.” For some reason, Trixie H. pouted.
Two more cars were pulling into the parking lot. This was going to be a long evening. But now they had at least some sort of plan, so maybe it would get better.
It got worse.
Starlight stood at the head of a line that was really more like a crowd, listening to the seventh order of the past ten minutes from an irate Photo Finish. Or perhaps a calm Photo Finish; it was difficult to say. A loose system had developed: Starlight took orders and relayed them to Trixie, the Trixies packed orders and passed them to the line, Sunset helped the Trixies and occasionally discreetly bumped into a customer to judge whether giving them magical explosives would result in a major political incident, and Pinkie… well, Pinkie mostly juggled cupcakes and entertained the growing audience. Not that Starlight minded; if anything, keeping everything relatively sane was more important than whatever she was doing.
She’d foolishly hoped that, once things began, the voice in the back of her head telling her what an idiotic idea this was would recede, or at least be quashed by sheer volume of nonsense. This had not happened. In fact, the voice seemed to be continually raising its volume to compete with the crowd. At least now there was variety to the voices in her head.
After she formally took… whatever office she would end up taking, she was going to donate a thousand bits to every pony in Equestria who had to interact with customers on a daily basis. And then throw a brick at the mirror portal for good measure. And possibly a second one at Trixie.
And, while her mind had been meandering, she’d missed another order. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
A young girl with silver hair who vaguely resembled one of the Ponyville schoolfillies gave an annoyed huff. “I said, just give me three of everything.”
Well, at least that was simple enough. “Right. That’s… $465.” She eyed the student, who couldn’t have been older than fourteen. “Are you sure you can pay for all this?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Just because you can’t afford a better storefront or a nicer hat doesn’t mean everyone’s scraping the barrel.” The girl glared at her as she struggled to balance the five bags Trixie had unceremoniously dumped in her arms. “See if we ever take our business here again!”
“There isn’t going to be an–” And she was gone. Charming. Not for the first time, Starlight acknowledged that it was probably a good thing she didn’t have her magic here. Celestia only knew what she’d have done by now if she did.
We’re the Princess of Empathy. This is our job. Deep breaths.
The interactions continued in much the same vein.
“That’ll be $105, thank you!”
“That’s $60, have a good evening.”
“That’s… are you sure about— please be careful with those—“
“$49, thank you.”
“That’ll come to… come to…”
She blinked, arising from the haze of repetition (noticing, to her despair, that the line had only gotten longer since she’d last looked) to stare at the three girls in front of her. “I’m sorry, I feel like I recognize you from somewhere.”
The girl on the left, who had purple skin and hair that would look outlandish if she wasn’t standing next to two equally excessive examples, rolled her eyes. “Typical humans. Not enough blood in your stupid bodies makes it to your heads, and you’re all idiots for it.”
The girl on the right, who had blue skin, an enormous blue ponytail, and a maroon blazer, leaned around the girl in the center to look at the first in confusion. “Um, we’re humans too, right? Plus, we kinda had the same body plans even”—she glanced at Starlight—“before, anyway.”
“Shut up Sonata.”
“Sorry Aria.”
Alarm bells were ringing in Starlight’s head, creating a wonderfully dissonant harmony with the voices. “Er, when you say ‘typical humans,’ do you mean you aren’t…”
At that moment, Sunset, dusting her hands from the silver-haired girl’s ridiculous fireworks order, appeared beside Starlight. “Oh. Hey Dagi.”
The girl in the center—the tallest, and with seemingly more hair than body—smirked. “Shimmer.” Her voice sounded strangely older than she looked.
Maybe that was why she recognized them. “Friends of yours?” she asked Sunset.
Sunset tugged on the collar of her jacket. “...Something like that.”
“Ooh, I know this one!” The blue girl—Sonata—said. “We’re sirens who tried to take over the school with our magic and enslave all the students to help us get through the portal to Equestria and conquer it for ourselves, but Sunny and her friends stopped us and broke our amulets so we had to learn to sing all over again and it was soooo annoying but now we’re frenemies and we meet up when our tours take us near Canterlot!” She beamed at a stunned Starlight, but then her smile slowly melted off her face. “Aw, fishsticks, I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
The middle girl—Dagi? —shook her head pityingly. “And you were doing so well.” She turned to Starlight. “What? Don’t meet a lot of interdimensional immortals? I’m Adagio. This is Aria, this is Sonata.”
Starlight swallowed. “It’s funny you should say that. I’m…” She looked at Sunset, who nodded. “I’m visiting from Equestria, actually. I’m sort of a new princess.” She extended a hand. “Starlight Glimmer. Nice to meet you?”
Adagio raised an eyebrow. “Charmed. You’re handling this rather better than the last princess we met.” She pointedly ignored the hand. Sonata giggled.
The irony of their story being presented to a newly-royal Starlight was not lost on her. “Well, I try to keep an open mind.” She decided that the sirens didn’t need to know about her past. Sunset was probably right that she gave that information out too freely. “And it sounds like Twilight had her reasons at the time.”
Aria frowned (or, she maintained the perpetual frown her face seemed stuck in). “You’re lucky you ever saw her again. We got so close. Stupid Elements.”
“No offense,” Sonata added to Sunset. For some reason, Sunset’s eye twitched.
If Starlight had met these three a year ago, this conversation might’ve gone drastically differently. She felt as though she were looking in a skewed funhouse mirror. With a bias towards hair. “I know the feeling. Should I call you Dagi, or is that just a Sunset thing?”
Sunset’s face bled from its usual orange to a shade of grapefruit. “Oh, please do,” cackled Aria.
Starlight knew she was poor at picking up on social cues, but she wasn’t that poor. “Oh! Are you two…?” She gestured uncertainly between Sunset and Adagio, who was grinning like a shark.
“I don’t know,” Adagio said sweetly. “Are we, Shimmer?”
Sunset looked as though she wanted to recede into her shirt. “It’s… complicated.”
Trixie, who had been glancing over for the past couple minutes in confusion as to why the line wasn’t moving, clambered over the table again. “Hold on, I thought you were dating the human Twilight from this world. What gives?”
“Why would you think that?!” Sunset spluttered.
“Um… because I’ve read your journal? Nopony talks like that about someone they aren’t dating,” Trixie said wisely. “Kinda weird that you tell our Twilight about it, though.”
“Well— Well clearly you didn’t read it very well! I said nothing like that. Besides, you couldn’t tell if I was dating Twilight from reading a journal.”
“Nope!” Pinkie’s voice said. Everyone looked down. She was laying on the ground between the sirens and the others, happily tossing a large gemstone to herself. “We can tell with our eyes, and our ears, and our common sense, and from the fact that you said it one time after you ate too many of my Copiously Caffeinated Coriander Clusters, and probably not with our tongues, but I guess I haven’t tried so maybe that too!”
Sunset glared down at Pinkie, somehow managing to say traitor with her eyes. “Do you want to find out if I can still shift into my demon form?”
Adagio waved a hand dismissively. “That doesn’t mean anything. Don’t be so closed-minded, isn’t that right Starbright?”
“Starlight.”
“Whatever. Shimmer is perfectly capable of… multitasking,” Adagio said. Sunset blushed again. “I’m not a human. Don’t assume I get hung up on whatever ridiculous moralistic trends are in for you lot this season.”
Starlight should probably have let this insanity go, but she couldn’t resist. “So, is Twilight with you as well, or is it more of a sharing situation?” she asked. Sunset looked betrayed.
“Oh please, that whelp is practically still a larva,” Adagio sniffed. “I’ve had flings longer than she’s been alive.”
“Have I mentioned that you’re disgusting?” Aria said, gagging.
“And you’re going to die alone.”
“I have Sona—”
“That might as well be alone.”
Trixie H. frowned, appearing next to her counterpart and surreptitiously stealing her hat. “Hold on, but Sunset is the same age as Twilight! So if they’re together, why would it be weird for you all to be?”
That couldn’t be right. “That can’t be right,” Starlight interjected. “Sunset was Celestia’s student over a decade ago, so she can’t be less than thirty. I mean, I guess that’s not a huge difference if you guys really are over a thousand, but still.”
Trixie furrowed her brow. “...Wait, but if she’s that old, how are she and Twi—”
“Okay! That’s enough of this conversation!” Sunset said, somewhat hysterically. “Great seeing you Dag— Adagio, hope you got what you wanted, but we’ve really got to move this line along!”
Sonata looked heartbroken. “But we didn’t get any fireworks…”
Sunset picked up a box at random, shoved it into her arms, and began to shove her along with it. “Now you did! Have fun! Come back another, less humiliating time!”
“Do we have to?” deadpanned Aria.
“Go suck a tubeworm, Aria,” Adagio said. “See you, Sunny~!”
They walked off.
“Did you know that gunpowder was originally invented by people trying to make potions to extend their lives?”
“Fascinating! Wait, what do you call it?”
“Um, gunpowder?”
“How odd; for us, it’s black powder. I wonder what gun means?”
“...Well, uh, either way, fireworks are actually one of the only things we still use it in! Usually, you want either less messy or more explosive stuff, but fireworks are supposed to burn slowly, and they don’t need to fly high enough that you need anything more efficient. Modern fireworks are barely different from ones from a thousand years ago!”
“Well, our fireworks evolve all the time! Would you believe that I’m the first pony to try enchanting the powder itself, rather than the casings or additives? I think, anyway. We don’t have a lot of pyrotechnicians in Equestria.”
“That’s really cool! I wonder if you could…”
Who was Trixie talking to now? After handling yet another mindless transaction, Starlight turned towards the voices, and saw her specia– her friend talking to a plainly-dressed blonde student whose delighted smile and mismatched eyes clearly identified her as… Derpy? What?
Well, why not? The world—worlds—had gone mad hours ago. Why would it stop now?
Customers be damned to Tartarus. Starlight allowed her head to clunk onto the table in front of her. A strange, human coin pressed into her forehead. She didn’t care.
Please let us be almost out of products. Please let this line end. Or please, in the name of Celestia, let somebody with more of a spine than I have show up and—
“Hi there! I see we haven’t missed too much.”
Starlight reluctantly raised her head to see two figures who could only be the human counterparts of Celestia and Luna approaching.
She perked up immediately and sighed with relief. “Oh thank Cel– er, I’m so glad to see you, you have no idea. I’ve been wondering how to stop this for hours now and I didn’t know what to do; I mean, I have authority in Equestria now, which is crazy, but here it just feels… Please just do whatever you came here to do so we can close up and go home.”
Luna blinked. “Close up?”
“Yeah.” Starlight craned her neck to look around them at the somehow still-seemingly-infinite line behind the two sisters. “Aren’t you in charge of this school? You’re here to shut this down, right? I mean, this cannot be legal, it’s barely legal in Equestria!”
Celestia gave a confused smile, and Starlight barely had time to think how much younger she looked than her pony counterpart before she spoke. “Actually, Miss…”
“Oh, Glimmer. Pr– Starlight Glimmer.”
Celestia turned to Luna. “My, that name is certainly familiar. I’m beginning to think everyone from Equestria was named by the same person.” The two shared a laugh, and Celestia addressed Starlight with a grin. “But no! We’re actually here as customers. Do you have any roman candles left?”
What.
Starlight’s mind seemed to fill with static. She was vaguely aware that her jaw had dropped. I…
The principals looked at her with concern. “Miss Glimmer?” said Celestia.
“You…” she began.
“You are the one taking orders, are you not?” Luna asked.
Okay, that’s enough.
“NO!” Starlight shouted. She realized immediately that she was shouting, felt momentarily embarrassed about the crowd’s shocked looks, and then resolved to go right on shouting. “I am NOT taking orders! You know what? NOPONY is taking orders! We’re done!”
Trixie, Trixie H, Sunset, and Pinkie heard her (along with, presumably, the inhabitants of every street for several blocks) and looked over. Trixie walked over and whispered in Starlight’s ear nervously, “Is this a marketing thing? Because you’re pretty hot when you’re shouting, but I don’t know if—”
Starlight rounded on her. “You! This is your fault!”
Trixie looked resolutely unimpressed. “Is this like this thing with the table again?”
“Yes!” Starlight noticed out of the corner of her eye that the crowd was circling around them, but she didn’t care. “You knew this was a bad idea! I know you did, you’re not stupid, you’re brilliant, and you convinced me anyway because you know I care about you! Well, it’s done working!”
Celestia and Luna were exchanging confused looks. “Is this about something we did?” Celestia asked hesitantly. “We didn’t mean—”
Furious, Starlight glared at them. “And you! You two are authorities here, and you know damn well how important security around that portal is. You should know better! Do you think I would’ve let something like this happen in my cult?!”
An awkward silence fell over the crowd, which she took as a challenge. “Yes, I ran a cult! And I had an IMMACULATE CHAIN OF COMMAND! Unlike this catastrophe!” She was no longer entirely sure who she was shouting at. Fortunately, that was fixable. “Trixie. We’re going home. Now.”
Trixie, for some reason, didn’t look disappointed—she didn’t even look surprised. “You know, if you just—”
“I am a PRINCESS!” Starlight shouted. The pavement seemed to shake with the words, and a wave rippled through the crowd that looked too solid to be metaphorical.
Sunset gaped at her. “...Was that the Royal Canterlot Voice?”
“Yup!” Pinkie whispered to her, perfectly audible to everyone within a dozen yards. “It always sounds louder in this world.”
Starlight ignored them. “I am the Faust-damned Princess of Empathy, and Trixie, I let you get away with so much because I love you, but this has officially gone too far and it’s time I did my job and why are you smiling like that?”
In defiance of circumstance, reason, and everything other than her own personality, Trixie had a smirk on her face wide enough to span Ghastly Gorge. For some reason, Trixie H. looked nearly as smug.
“Trixie…” Starlight growled.
They remained silent. The crowd was beginning to murmur; Celestia and Luna had taken several steps back, though whether they’d been voluntary or induced by the RCV-enhanced shouting was unclear. Just as Starlight was about to begin yelling again—or maybe throw Trixie bodily through the portal and worry about everyone else afterwards—Trixie laughed.
“Starlight,” she said. “Why have you never admitted that we’re dating?”
Most of Starlight’s anger left her, replaced with utter confusion. “...What?”
Trixie leaned dramatically against her human counterpart. “You heard me.”
“Wh– You want to do this here?” Starlight looked nervously around at the crowd of what must have been dozens of students, not to mention Sunset, Pinkie, and an increasingly-curious Luna and Celestia.
“Mhm~”
“Well, um,” Starlight said. She’d said this before, after all, if not in as many words. “We’re not dating. You know that I don’t feel– Well, with my past, it wouldn’t be fair to anypony, especially you, to have to support me in a relationship right now. I know I’m a princess, and I’m getting better with responsibility, but I’m not… I don’t trust myself with that.” Had that explanation always felt so weak? And, for that matter, why was she letting Trixie distract her?
Because I love you, her self of moments earlier echoed in her head against her will.
“Aha!” said Trixie, stepping forward. “So, guilt. We knew that. You think I’m too good for you.” She stabbed at accusatory fist at Starlight, forgetting her new fingers in the heat of the moment. “You think everypony is too good for you.”
Starlight flushed. Yes. How could she not? “Trixie, we need to go home. We can talk about this later.” Whatever this was.
“For you see!” Trixie twirled dramatically, and Starlight, even distracted, saw her face light up for a fraction of a second upon completing the spin without losing her balance. “The Great and Powerful Trixie has concocted this brilliant scheme in order to prove the Wonderful But Self-Effacing Starlight wrong once and for all!”
Pinkie let out a comically dramatic gasp. Sunset was looking more exasperated by the second. Trixie H. looked exactly as smug as Trixie. And Starlight felt a strange mixture of emotions rising in her throat. “...What exactly…”
“Don’t worry, dear, I practiced this part,” Trixie stage-whispered, before raising her voice back to its impressive full volume. “The Insightful and Emotionally-Astute Trixie knew full well that your guilt complex would never let you admit your true desire for emotional and physical intimacy”—Starlight blushed—”and so she devised a plan! Did you really think her foalish enough to engage in this shenaniganery without ulterior motive?”
To be entirely honest, she had. Not that Starlight had judged her for it, of course; she accepted Trixie for her flaws, not despite them, which was the only reason she’d agreed in the first… Oh.
Trixie seemed to take her silence as confirmation. “You may have believed it, but it was all of it mere chicanery! The insanity of Trixie’s plan was not a flaw—Nay, it was by design!” By now, she was performing to the audience as much as to Starlight. “And now, thanks to Trixie’s Great and Powerful brilliance and your unwitting but characteristically excellent assistance, you have proof, once and for all, that Trixie is just as stupid, selfish, shortsighted, and foalish as you ever have been or ever will be! Tell Trixie that she’s too good for you now, Starlight!”
Starlight’s mouth hung open, as did much of the crowd’s. She couldn’t. She may have had hangups about her past—she’d be the first to admit that—but she would also reluctantly admit that she’d done nothing egregiously villainous in over a year, had saved Equestria three times over, and had, somehow, been judged by Harmony itself as a worthy member of quasi-divine royalty.
Trixie, on the other hoof, had just risked interdimensional security—had risked everything—to make a few bits and serve her own reputation. No, Starlight corrected herself; she’d risked everything on a stupid, insane, convoluted plan to convince Starlight to date her.
It was ridiculous. It was shallow and blatantly unethical. It was a violation of everything any other friend of hers would believe in. And it perfectly proved Trixie’s point.
Starlight reached for the part of herself that had always reacted with instinctive guilt at the idea of placing herself as a romantic equal to anypony—and found nothing.
Trixie was right. She wasn’t too good for her. And Starlight was good enough for her in turn. She always had been.
As Starlight stared silently, some of the confidence drained from Trixie’s expression, which, by some cruelty of fate, made her even cuter. “Starlight,” she said, stage persona discarded. “I’ve had to watch you convince yourself that you don’t deserve anypony for months. I hoped I might be able to, well, pester you into thinking otherwise if I made it obvious what I thought about you, but if saving the world and becoming a goddess couldn’t make you believe in yourself, I didn’t know how I ever could. So…” She gestured weakly at the fireworks stand, the school, and the enraptured crowd. “But it worked. You stood up to me and told me I was wrong in front of everybody. You were a princess, for Celestia’s sake!”
Trixie stepped close to her, and placed her hands on Starlight’s arms, her expression so devastatingly insecure that she nearly didn’t look like Trixie at all. “Honestly, I feel like I don’t deserve you. But I don’t want to start this whole thing all over again. So… Be my marefriend? Please? If you want to?”
Thoughts cascaded through Starlight’s exhausted brain. “Trixie… I…”
On one level—a significant level—she was furious. Of course she was. This, this infuriating, performative, unnecessary manipulative nonsense, was the reason half of Ponyville couldn’t stand Trixie to this day. It was something Starlight would’ve done two years ago. It was completely unjustifiable, and it drove her completely mad that, no matter how many times she repeated this in her head, the mare standing in front of her refused to be any less beautiful, and her words refused to be any less the sweetest thing anypony had ever said to Starlight in her long, checkered life.
She should lecture Trixie on responsibility. Tartarus, she should barely want to be friends with her after this. She should report this to Twilight immediately and push for the portal to be moved somewhere less accessible.
So, naturally, she let out a strangled, exasperated groan, and, as the crowd gasped, she kissed Trixie.
Her lips immediately slid off Trixie’s unfamiliar human face.
Oh. Right.
Dammit. Well, it wasn’t as if things could get any more humiliating. Starlight leaned back and carefully placed her hands on Trixie’s shoulders to hold her in place. After taking a moment to smugly admire her shocked expression, she tried again, more slowly. This time, the kiss held.
It felt right. So right that she took nearly a full minute to enjoy the sensation of her strangely vertical body pressing against Trixie’s before pulling back to address the excited crowd, some of whom had begun cheering. “Don’t you all have anything better to be doing?!”
The students, most of whom at least had the decency to look embarrassed, mercifully began to disperse.
Shaking her head, she again turned to Trixie, who—Stars above, she’s beautiful when she’s happy—was staring at her with glazed eyes and an adorable grin. Eventually, she seemed to realize that her lips were no longer against Starlight’s and returned to reality with a start. “Er. Sorry that ended up being so… public. I know that’s more my thing.”
Starlight shrugged. “I’ll probably never see most of these people again. Besides, I have to get used to appearing in public one way or another.”
Trixie giggled. “What about kissing your special somepony in public?”
Starlight gulped. “Foal steps.” She’d have to get used to hearing the phrase special somepony directed towards herself and not immediately pushing down any positive feelings in favor of denial.
“GO TRIXIE! I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT!” shouted an entirely-too-loud voice from entirely too close to Starlight’s ear.
Trixie, on the other hoof, took it in stride and bowed. “Thank you, Pinkie! The Great and Powerful Trixie is glad to know that people in some worlds appreciate the value of a good scheme.”
Starlight turned to see an ecstatic Pinkie, an oddly wistful-looking Trixie H, and a Sunset Shimmer who looked like she wanted to go the way of the departing crowd and return to the presumably more sane parts of her life. Starlight couldn’t exactly blame her. Still, looking at her, a question arose.
“Hold on,” she said to Sunset, who looked up. “You read Trixie’s mind earlier. How did you not see… that?”
Sunset waved her hands about vaguely. “It’s not a precise thing. I saw that Trixie was thinking about you, um, a lot, and I saw that she wasn’t sure you reciprocated, so I didn’t want to pry. I just looked at what she’d done in the past half hour or so.”
Despite having a thousand of what should probably have been prior concerns, Starlight couldn’t help but fixate once again on Sunset’s incredible abilities. The time they could save rehabilitating Equestria’s villains… “Fascinating! You can isolate emotions and thoughts from events, then? What about events heavily influenced by perception? Or dreams? Wait, here!” She placed her hand on Sunset’s bare forearm; the orange woman’s eyes immediately flashed white. “Can you see what I dreamed last night? Does that count as emotion, or as memory? Or is it both?”
Sunset’s eyes returned to a normal color. Her face, though, paled nearly to white, and she didn’t lower her arm when Starlight released it.
Starlight’s brow creased. “...Sunset?” She waved a hand in front of her face.
“...Dust…” Sunset breathed, nearly inaudibly. “Wind and dust…”
What? Starlight nearly put her hand back on Sunset’s arm before pausing and placing it on her jacketed shoulder instead. “Are you…?”
Trixie tapped on Starlight’s shoulder. “Darling—ugh, that sounds too much like your other friend—do you or do you not have a bunch of memories of the time you destroyed the world over and over again that you think about, like, every day?”
Starlight blinked. Sunset did not. Oops.
Before she could panic, Pinkie had bounced over. “Don’t worry! This has happened way worse than this before. You should’ve seen her when she forgot to take off her geode and Celestia shook her hand at the awards ceremony in the spring!” She placed her arm around Sunset’s shoulders and began to slowly walk away from the school. Sunset stumbled along with her, muttering quietly. “She’ll be okay in an hour or so. I’ll have her text you! Well, with the book. Bext you! She’ll want to congratulate you two. Byeeee! Have a safe trip!” She waved happily and turned to focus on helping Sunset.
Starlight gulped.
“That,” said Trixie H, “Was hilarious. Can we keep you?”
Trixie reached across Starlight to swat at her. “Get your own marefriend! You’re younger than me anyway, wait your turn.”
“Fiiiiine.”
“She’s not wrong, though,” Trixie said. “Even if it does mean we need to carry all of this ourselves now.” She looked critically at the lonely fireworks stand and the piles of mostly-empty boxes.
Starlight shook herself lightly. Right. She could apologize to Sunset later. Pinkie said this had happened before. It’d be okay. Everyone would be okay. Though the boxes really were a lot to carry.
Suddenly, she heard footsteps—oddly muffled ones, but, then, humans wore softer shoes—that didn’t originate from her or either Trixie, and turned around.
Derpy, standing startlingly close to her, waved bashfully. “Um, I know you said to leave, but I thought you might want help cleaning up?”
Starlight smiled gratefully. “That’d be wonderful. Thank you.”
Sometime between one and forty hours later, Starlight lay in her bed in her palace room. Trixie lay next to her.
They hadn’t done anything, well… like that. Not beyond one or two dozen more kisses of varying length. But, after all the chaos and exertion, and given the late hour, Starlight hadn’t been able to resist offering the showmare a more luxurious bed. Despite her usual insistence on the ‘comfort’ of her wagon, Trixie’s eyes had lit up at the offer, and now she was curled up at Starlight’s side, using a wing as an awkward blanket.
Starlight wasn’t actually sure if she was asleep. She mumbled occasionally, but, knowing Trixie, maybe she continued to rehearse her shows in her dreams. Hopefully, there would be many more nights like this, and she’d get to become used to her… marefriend’s… sleep patterns.
That thought stuck in her head like a pebble in a wheel. She was dating Trixie. Her stomach filled with butterflies at the thought. Finally.
Accompanying the butterflies was a separate wave of astonishment at the idea that she was in a relationship at all. Her! The pony who hadn’t even had non-brainwashed friends until scarcely a year ago.
Surely, she thought as her eyes lazily alit upon different kites hanging from the ceiling in the dim light, she should be nervous right now. There were so many things she could do wrong, so many new mistakes to make, so many new risks and trials and potential potholes.
Yes, a much larger part of her replied, but I’ll be with Trixie while I face them.
And that, more than anything anypony had tried to reassure her with since her ascension, made everything seem okay.
Soon, she began to drift off, losing a moment here, and a moment there, as her normally unremarkable bed grew more comfortable by the second. But, before she could fully turn over and embrace both her special somepony and the dreamworld, Trixie’s voice reached her ears.
“...Starlight?”
By Celestia, she could listen to that voice for hours. “Myeah?”
“I have seen many things throughout my years, but a threat such as this is… new to me.”
“Twilight, I’ve seen you work magic with more than your horn. Do you not have faith that the same can be done here?”
“Well… I just… I ran the school, with her at my side, for months! And I didn’t see anything! How can I even be trusted to ask what to do now?!”
Starlight sat, uncomfortably still, on a chair in the Canterlot palace, listening to her teacher and the royal sisters argue.
The school had been partially destroyed, and magic restored to Equestria, only two hours prior. It wasn’t nearly long enough for her to digest her own thoughts on the matter—but, helpfully, it was just enough time for the worst cramps she’d ever experienced in her life to set in. Spending three days straight trapped inside a magical sphere with almost no freedom of movement, suspended magically with no need to use her muscles, was not an experience she was eager to repeat.
Three days. It had taken three days for the worst disaster Equestria had seen since Starlight herself to come a hair’s breadth from destroying… everything.
She’d lived through Nightmare Moon’s return, and the Longest Day in a Thousand Years. She’d lived through Discord’s return, and the days immediately afterward before news reached the farthest corners of Equestria and nopony knew if the world was still ending or not. She’d heard of, if not experienced, Chrysalis’s first coup and Tirek’s absorption of almost everypony in Equestria’s magic, and seen the Pony of Shadows with her own eyes. She’d rescued both royal families and her friends from a megalomaniacal queen and stopped a silent takeover of the Equestrian government.
And none of them—not Chrysalis, not Tirek, not Nightmare Moon, not Sombra or the sirens or Discord—had come as close to the total destruction of everything as the ten-year-old filly sulking upstairs.
Except, of course, Starlight herself. But she had enough to think about right now, and, for once, her past was on a back burner.
Cozy Glow, after her nearly-successful plot was foiled, had been easily captured, and was now temporarily held by the royal guard in the highest room in the tower, directly above this one. It was almost funny how easy it’d been; physically, she was nothing more than a pegasus filly. And not a particularly strong one.
It was almost funny. Until Starlight remembered how she’d felt when Cozy tripped her into that magical orb. How she’d felt when the filly explained her plan with that horribly dissonant smile, and Starlight had realized with horror what could happen. What almost had happened.
She resisted the urge to curl into a whimpering, shivering ball. So close. They’d come so close to the end of everything.
Because of a filly. That Starlight had trusted. That Twilight had trusted.
Normally, after something like this happened—and wasn’t that a funny idea, that these world-saving escapades had become normal—she felt accomplished, or at least enough of an adrenaline rush that her feelings had time to sort themselves on their own. This time, she’d sat, helpless, while other ponies barely managed to save the world. That was the furthest thing from an accomplishment.
Shaking her head, knowing that continuing down that path of thoughts wouldn’t lead to anything productive, she returned her attention to the others.
Luna was talking. “Sister, I know you harbor great faith in the ability of ponies—all ponies—to do good. And I love you dearly for it. But… sometimes, we cannot afford to take risks. The safety of millions may depend on it.”
Starlight wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Celestia so dejected. The Princess wore her joy on her proverbial sleeve, but it took truly unnatural circumstances for the opposite to shine through. “I… fear you may be right.”
Twilight, looking equally hopeless—Starlight’s heart burned to see her so, but, being barely more put-together herself, there was nothing she could do—paced about the small room. “What would you propose instead?”
The sisters exchanged glances. “There is,” Luna said, “An obvious choice.”
“Cozy Glow mentioned being in correspondence with Tirek,” said Celestia. “Allowing either one of them continued influence on the world at large risks something like this happening again. If they were to be confined to the same location…”
“...Once their methods of communication are revealed and secured…”
“...They would be unable to conspire to any effect,” Celestia finished, a grim look on her muzzle.
Wait. They can’t be…
Twilight had clearly realized their meaning in turn, and froze before a window. “Do you mean…”
“Until such time as a better option reveals itself, Cozy Glow may reside in Tartarus,” said Luna.
“I– No,” Twilight said, shaking her head as if to dislodge a fly. “There has to be a better option now. We convinced Discord to change his mind, right?”
“You said a moment ago that you feared you were not equipped to take charge of Miss Glow,” said Celestia gently. “If you wish to try anyway, you will have my full support. But, before you decide, I ask you to consider carefully.”
“As you know, creatures bound in Tartarus do not age,” added Luna. “What is best now need not preclude a future change of circumstance, but still it may be best.”
“I…” said Twilight. She looked as if in physical pain. “I…”
Starlight was frozen—now not by the past, but the present. They couldn’t.
But… they could. It was their decision, to begin with, but, more than that, they were right. Painfully, inconveniently right, but right all the same. Cozy Glow had successfully hidden her true intentions and true self from all of them. And yes, they knew that now, but what was to stop her from building up a new set of lies without their ever suspecting? Worse, what if she was able to change in truth, but they were unable to believe her after what she’d done?
And that was just the ponies who knew her. What if she escaped, with the same or worse goals? The most cynical, suspicious pony in Equestria would fall for anything that adorable pegasus said. She’d be impossible to find, and, once she was out of sight, impossible to stop. In Tartarus, she’d be isolated; unable to discern or deceive.
But still isolated.
Could Starlight let that happen? To anypony, let alone a foal, no matter the risks? A foal she, as a counselor, had been responsible for?
Could she still call herself the alicorn of Empathy if she did?
She knew, in her shell-shocked heart, that she wasn’t any more qualified to give input on Cozy than Twilight was. Faust, she was less qualified—she’d been fooled faster and more easily, and had a fraction of Twilight’s interpersonal experience.
“I think…” Twilight said, voice quivering.
But if Starlight didn’t, who would?
“...You’re right. Damn it, damn it, you’re—”
“I’ll do it!” Starlight blurted out.
The princesses looked at her in surprise; it was the first time she’d spoken in an hour.
She stood up, and promptly collapsed onto her barrel on the carpet. Her legs still felt like gelatine; she’d had to teleport into the chair. But, with some effort, she raised herself. Assertive. Like Trixie showed you. “I’ll do it.”
“What precisely do you offer, Starlight?” asked Luna.
As if she’d thought that far ahead. What was she offering? Anything that would keep her student out of Tartarus. “I’m… not sure,” she admitted. “But we can’t send her there. I mean, we can. It’s probably the tactically correct thing to do. But… I can’t.”
Twilight sighed in obvious relief. That was good. Now Starlight felt a bit less like she was arguing alone against two thousand-year-old demigods.
“You will need to determine what you intend before we make any decisions,” noted Celestia. Maybe Starlight was imagining things, but she thought that the sisters too had relaxed, slightly, upon her interruption. Maybe it was a good thing she’d been here?
No. That was ridiculous. She couldn’t claim that until something good came of whatever ridiculous decision she was in the process of making.
“What if…” Her eyes darted to Twilight. “I take her on? As a… student. Like you did with me.”
The sisters exchanged glances, and Twilight’s brow creased. “That wasn’t like this, though. You were willing to learn. Cozy’s done nothing but antagonize the guards and us since she was captured.”
“I was only willing because you stopped me first,” said Starlight. “And because I saw… Well, you were there. It’s not that different. Besides, Discord didn’t want to be reformed, right?”
“Discord is an unusual case,” Celestia pointed out. “Destruction has never been his goal, and his nature imposes limits on him which make working with him relatively safe.”
“Safe and annoying,” Luna grumbled.
“Well, yes. But Cozy Glow has proven herself very different.” Celestia looked piercingly into her eyes; Starlight resisted the urge to hide her face with a wing. “Should you do this, you will be responsible for the most dangerous threat Equestria has seen in years. As a Princess of Equestria, are you prepared for that?”
Starlight nearly giggled hysterically. Nope! Of course she wasn’t prepared! Nopony would be prepared for that! She wasn’t even sure what she was preparing for!
So, bowing, she said, “I am. I’ll—”
There was a crash from the floor above.
The group looked at one another in a panic, and ran for the stairs. Starlight, not trusting herself to run (or, indeed, walk), teleported directly to the entrance to the floor above, horn lit.
Cozy Glow was still bound by magical chains to the same chair they’d left her in. But now, a smug smile had replaced her furious glare. And her guards were rolling on the floor in front of her, doing their best impression of brawling schoolcolts.
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!” shouted Luna, who arrived moments later. The Royal Canterlot Voice nearly tipped Starlight over.
The guards, a white stallion and a teal mare, leapt to their hooves and saluted clumsily. “He started it!” shouted the mare.
“I did not!” yelled the stallion, instantly abandoning his salute and rounding on his partner.
“You were the one who said I deserved to be getting paid less—”
“That’s not true and you know it, you said I didn’t know what I was—”
“Don’t lie to me, I’m not deaf—”
“You bucking—”
“SILENCE,” boomed Luna. She glared at the guards. “I expect better of you, especially when on duty. Report to your superiors immediately at the beginning of your next shifts for disciplinary action.”
“Golly!” said Cozy sweetly, looking concerned. Starlight was disturbed that, even after three days of hearing her evil monologues, her first impulse was still to comfort the pink filly. “I was just sitting here, and these two scary guards just seemed so angry with each other, so I asked them what was wrong! But whatever I said just made them madder! They seemed so darn nice; I wish they knew they didn’t have to fight—friendship is magic, after all! Isn’t that right, professors?” She smiled winningly.
Starlight shuddered.
“You’re gonna what now?”
Applejack’s incredulous expression matched the five other Elements—and Spike—seated around the Cutie Map.
“I’m going to take on Cozy as a student,” said Starlight. Again.
The stunned silence was shorter this time, but not by much.
“Does everypony else think this is as crazy as I do?” asked Rainbow Dash. For once, the others looked as skeptical as she did.
“I figure I just made that pretty clear,” Applejack said.
Pinkie Pie raised a hoof. “Yyyyyup!”
“Obviously,” said Rarity.
“What Rarity said,” said Spike.
“...Maybe?” said Fluttershy. She received five skeptical looks. “Well, um… Yes.”
Twilight remained impartially silent.
Starlight grimaced, and shifted uncomfortably in her throne (which, having been added after the castle grew, was squeezed between Twilight’s and Applejack’s). Since the altercation last night, she’d been doing her level best to justify her decision to herself. Her reasoning, though, felt significantly less evenly matched against seven others.
“Okay,” she said. Again. “I know that none of you are in, well. A forgiving mood right now. And I don’t blame you. But I don’t think this is crazy.”
“How can you say that, dear?” asked Rarity, not unkindly. “I’m all for second chances, but they’re best given to those who wish to, well… use them.”
“Exactly!” Dash said, hooves on the table. “You saw what she tried to do! I mean, even though she failed, she still trapped you in a bubble for three days! She betrayed more ponies than I even knew you could betray at once!”
“And she did it with fun!” Pinkie said—or shouted, since it was Pinkie. “Parties, smiles, cupcakes, concerts… Those are things you do for ponies you love. Not to trick them.”
“And she didn’t care at all for what her plan would do to the animals,” said Fluttershy, shivering. “So many of them need magic. Without help, they wouldn’t revert to normal creatures like the ones in Tartarus, they’d just…” She gulped.
“And that’s besides what it’d do to us,” Applejack pointed out. “I don’t mean to sound self-centered or nothin’, but Sweet Apple Acres couldn’t run without the pegasi planning the weather out day by day. And I reckon the same goes for most of the farms in Equestria. If Cozy’d gotten her way…”
The rest went unsaid. But not unheard.
The trouble was, they were right. Of course they were—and Starlight had thought of dozens of other horrifying consequences of Cozy’s plan that the others hadn’t even brought up. But, when she tried to let herself be convinced by the overwhelming evidence, she couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that they were going about the argument the wrong way.
She held up a hoof to forestall the continuing protests. “I know. Trust me, I do. But, well…” She bit back a wince. She hated using herself as an example. “Do you remember what I did? Not almost did. Actually did.”
“You didn’t know,” said Twilight softly. It was her first time speaking in nearly an hour, and Starlight could have counted on four hooves the amount of times the Princess had spoken at all since last night. She looked… haunted. “You didn’t know what you were doing. You just wanted to stop our friendships, not destroy everything. And nopony in Equestria even remembers that it happened except us.”
“But I still did it,” Starlight insisted.
But the others weren’t listening. Hearing, yes, but not listening. She could see it in their faces.
So, without allowing herself time to consider the emotional ramifications of what she was about to do, she lit her horn, and called to mind the scene that had been plaguing the back of her thoughts for nearly two years—though never more than since Cozy was captured yesterday evening. They wouldn’t listen, so they would have to see. Above the map, the air shimmered and grew less translucent until a flat surface, somehow facing in every direction at once, formed. She concentrated, and colors spilled across it, as if from an invisible bucket of paint. Browns, greys, and blacks swirled together until an image formed.
The Wasteland. The final timeline she’d created.
She only saw the image for an instant before she tore her eyes away—but it was enough. Her horn flickered out, but the spell, which moved as realistically as if it were a window, remained. She’d cast it that way on purpose.
The wind was louder than she remembered. It didn’t sound like a picture, or a memory. It echoed from all sides as if she were still standing in it. She closed her eyes, but all that did was wipe the image of the castle from her mind’s eye and let the wind paint a new one in its place.
She knew it was an image, not a somatic spell, but the wind buffeted her mane all the same. She felt it. And she felt it blow through her ears, through her skull, and through her heart, to scrape at her soul. Like sandpaper on a wound.
It ground at her emotions until they chipped and flaked and blew away, like a bird’s beak pecking at the last scraps of flesh on a skeleton. Starving.
A starving, desperate, lonely bird, in a land of wind and dust.
Suddenly, a flash shone through her eyelids, and they shot open involuntarily.
Oh. Right.
The spell was gone—dispelled, presumably by Twilight. The wind was gone. The memory was gone. She was seated in her home, with her friends. She was safe. They were talking about Cozy Glow. Starlight had cast an illusion spell.
And everypony was staring at her. She shrunk down in her seat. Her eyelids ached. Had they been shut so tightly?
Twilight’s hoof was on her shoulder. Grateful, she focused on the sensation.
“I, uh…” Applejack sounded hoarse. “Think we get the picture, sugarcube.”
Dash’s fur stood on end. “Yeah. Thanks, Twi. That was… long enough.”
Rarity had somehow paled beyond her usual shade of white, Pinkie looked as though she were near tears, and Fluttershy looked… relatively normal, in the sense that severe fright was one of her more usual expressions. Even Spike, who’d been present to see that image in person, had a haze of memories in his eyes that Starlight suspected mirrored her own.
“I’m sorry,” Starlight heard herself say. She managed to clamber back into control of her voice; the argument she’d intended to make was scattered around her brain like a train after a hurricane, but it was there. “That was… reckless.”
“Please, darling!” Rarity said firmly. “We will not allow you to apologizing for exposing us to something you carry with you at all times! What sort of friends do you take us for?”
Unfathomably, unbelievably good ones. Starlight laughed shakily. “Thank you. That means a lot. But I was trying to illustrate a point.” She pointed a wing at the spot above the table where the image had hovered moments before. “I did that. Myself. And maybe I didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t make the outcome any better.” And it doesn’t help the ponies who lived their lives in that world.
Her friends looked at one another. As little as a year ago, she would’ve been unable to say something like that without fearing that, somehow, it would prompt them to suddenly realize what she’d actually done and leave her on her own. It was why she’d always brought it up so often; better to get it out of the way quickly. So said her anxiety. Fortunately, now, she knew better.
“Supposin’ we agree with that,” said Applejack. “That what Cozy did wasn’t any worse than what you did. And I ain’t saying that; I just… don’t know how I feel about all this yet. But even so, that filly’s the biggest and best liar I’ve ever seen, and I’ve met Queen Chrysalis four or five times by now. Suppose Cozy can learn. How are you gonna know when she does? How are any of us?” The others nodded; even Twilight.
But Starlight was ready for that question. “We’re not.” She waved down the immediate and vocal confusion. “I’ve thought about this a lot—not just with Cozy, but with everyone who might be able to learn more about friendship. And… I’m not sure it really matters much.”
Pinkie tilted her head nearly fully upside-down in confusion. “Buuuut how are we going to have any idea if she’s really getting better if she could just be putting on a cute face?” She frowned. “A really, really cute face.”
“And, for that matter, what guarantee do we have that she won’t just do the same thing all over again?” objected Rarity.
Starlight shrugged. “Nothing. Exactly like every other villain we’ve ever reformed.”
“So she can just betray us again?” said Dash. She crossed her forelegs. “How does that help—”
“Discord did,” Fluttershy whispered.
The others fell silent. Starlight’s eyes shot to the yellow pegasus. Was somepony finally on her side here? Not, she chastised herself, that they aren’t being reasonable.
“What exactly do you mean?” Twilight asked.
Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Discord betrayed us. When Tirek tried to take over. And he’s more my friend than he’s ever been.”
“Well…” said Rarity, but she sounded thoughtful. “It’s not quite that simple, is it? Discord didn’t start off with our trust, and he’s always been… rather frank about things. He changed his mind more than he lied to us.”
“But then he changed his mind again!” Starlight said earnestly. “He thought he’d be okay with turning you over to Tirek, but because of his time with all of you, he realized that he valued friendship more than power! So even if it doesn’t work out in the end, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth trying.” She looked down. “And… I know you’re all more experienced with this kind of thing than I am, but I think you might be a little biased here.”
Dash frowned. “How’s that?”
“Because we were her teachers,” said Twilight quietly. Her eyes were still red; Starlight had known that asking her how much sleep she’d gotten would only make her feel worse. “We taught her friendship. Or… we tried. How could we not feel betrayed to see what she did with it?”
Starlight nodded. Exactly.
Chrysalis had been a queen, albeit a tyrannical one, trying to feed her people. Discord had wanted chaos. Tirek just wanted power. But, whatever their motives, they rejected friendship, and they, and everycreature else, were worse off for it.
Cozy was different. Twilight and her friends, and to an extent the entire town of Ponyville, had poured out their hearts to every student in the School of Friendship, and none more than the personal assistant to the headmare. She’d become the star pupil; a beloved example of how much good the school could do. And then she’d taken that love, fashioned it into a dagger, and stabbed her mentors in the back.
Who could blame them for feeling the way they did?
The Elements looked discomforted. Nopony could argue.
Applejack, unsurprisingly, spoke first. “I don’t like to admit it, but… I reckon you’re right. Both of you.” The others made varying sounds of agreement.
“But, um, Starlight…” said Fluttershy. “You were her teacher too. Don’t you feel… well…”
“Like you want to lock her in Tartarus and throw away that stupid key she trapped us with?” supplied Dash.
Fluttershy shrunk in her seat. “I was gonna say ‘betrayed…’”
“Well… yeah,” Starlight said. Of course she did. “But I wasn’t really her teacher; not like all of you were. Honestly, I only met her two or three times before she… Er, tricked me into a magic-nullifying orb.” Which, in retrospect, only made her feel worse. Maybe if she’d only met with Cozy more, she would’ve seen…
No. Nope. Not right now. Regrets were for crying on Trixie over. “But that’s my point. Just because we feel that way doesn’t mean that it’s not worth trying again, or that Cozy has any less chance than Chrysalis or Discord did. And… even if we fail—if I fail—it still matters that we tried. And it might still matter to Cozy, even if she does betray us again. Knowing that, and knowing the alternative, I can’t… I can’t not…” She trailed off.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Starlight had no idea if she’d managed to convey anything approaching a salient point.
She hated how much of her feelings about this were messy, irrational emotions. Surely she should be able to come up with a better justification for her plan than ‘I feel like it’? And surely anypony who felt like she did right now couldn’t be trusted with planning a bake sale, let alone making life-changing decisions? And surely—
“I agree,” Fluttershy said, startling her.
“I suppose when you put it like that… I do as well,” said Rarity.
“It’s not the craziest idea you’ve had,” said Spike, rolling his eyes.
“It’s nowhere near the craziest idea I’ve had!” Pinkie.
“I don’t love it, but this is your wheelhouse.” Applejack.
Everypony looked at Rainbow Dash.
She huffed. “Alright. If you think you’re up for it.”
The corners of Starlight’s eyes grew damp. “I…”
“Starlight,” Twilight said, smiling. “This is what you’re best at. It always has been. And whatever you want to do, we’ll be behind you every step of the way. Right, girls?” There was another chorus of agreement.
Starlight took a deep breath, and tried to will the tears out of her eyes. Someday, she would get used to this. The… trust. Someday, she’d stop being surprised. Someday.
The door shut behind Starlight with an ominous clunk.
It wasn’t any different from the rest of the doors in the castle. Same opaque, irregular green crystal. Same mysteriously quiet hinges. Same ornate frame.
Same megalomaniacal filly who wanted her dead in the room beyond.
“Oh, golly, am I glad to see you!” Cozy beamed from an appropriately small writing desk. “I’d been starting to think everypony had forgotten about me. But I shouldn’t have worried; you’re the Princess of Empathy, after all! You’d never forget about little ol’ me.”
The logistics of Cozy’s residence within the castle had been hammered out with the other Princesses as best and as quickly as Starlight could manage—which was to say, as soon as Twilight had slept for eighteen straight hours. Most of the details, they agreed, would need to wait until they knew more. As a temporary measure, the filly was held in her room by a spell on the door which prevented its being opened by anypony but Starlight or Twilight. And, just in case, Starlight had placed a spell on Cozy herself which would alert her should she leave the walls of the castle.
It wasn’t enough. Nothing could be. But you didn’t make a friend by formulating an inescapable prison; you made a resentful enemy. And Cozy Glow had that niche well and truly filled.
Starlight ignored her… student’s… less-than-subtle taunting. “Good morning, Cozy.” She sat in a larger armchair in the corner, angled towards the writing desk. “Did you sleep well?”
“Like a foal!” Had Cozy’s voice always sounded quite that eerily positive? “This sure is a fancy place you’ve got here. No wonder Professor Twilight has so many friends.”
“…Right.” That… is going to need revisiting. She craned her neck to look at the desk. The arrangements of the materials on it looked suspiciously familiar. “What are you working on?”
Cozy carefully folded the corner of a sheet of parchment covered in dense writing. “Oh, just journaling! I always like to keep track of my thoughts and feelings. Plus, if I ever don’t know what to write, I can do origami while I think!”
“That’s clever!”
“Thanks!”
“So,” Starlight continued conversationally. “Do you always journal in a format that can be used for long-distance kinetocommunicative ritual spells? Or is that just for special occasions.”
Cozy’s eye twitched.
“Of course, if you did, it’d be polite of me to tell you that ritual spells won’t work in any of the rooms in this wing of the castle. We think it’s a defense mechanism.”
Another twitch. “That sure is fascinating, professor.”
Starlight rolled her eyes. “You need to burn the letter for that spell to work anyway. What exactly were you planning to light it with?”
“Oh, I dunno,” Cozy said, smile brittle as glass. “These crystals are pretty hard! Some types spark if you hit them just right, you know.”
If this went on any longer, Starlight was going to contract some sort of illness from whatever artificial sweeteners made up that smile. “You know… You don’t need to keep up the act. It’s not fooling anyone in this castle, and nopony else can see you right now. Pretending to be cute isn’t—“
“I AM CUTE!” shrieked the filly. Starlight nearly slipped off her chair. Careful what you wish for. Cozy leapt to her hooves—in her chair, putting her at eye level with Starlight. “I don’t HAVE to pretend! I’m ADORABLE! Not all of us have to make ourselves into a completely different pony so everypony forgets we destroyed the world, you know!”
Her eyes returned to a more natural size, she smoothed her mane with a hoof, and she sat back down. “I’m trying to write to Tirek, since you’ll just read this if I don’t tell you. I don’t want him to worry when he doesn’t hear from me.”
That… didn’t sound like the Tirek Starlight had heard of. “…Would he worry?”
Cozy snorted impatiently. “Don’t be an imbecile. But friends tell each other that kinda thing. I would think you’d know that.”
Starlight decided not to point out that Cozy’s own scheme had required constant deception of everycreature around her for weeks on end. “Is he your friend?”
“What is this, a psychiatric consultancy?” snapped Cozy.
“No!” Well, maybe a little. “I’ve just never heard somepony call Tirek that before. Mostly just… an evil centaur who tried to take over Equestria.”
“Hmph. Who says he can’t be both?” Cozy resumed writing. “Yes, he’s my friend. And… a lot of things. Even if he says he isn’t.”
Starlight sat up slightly in her chair. The relationship Cozy had alluded to sharing with the ancient centaur was unprecedented—could it be a crack through which she could better see the pegasus for who she really was? “What kind of things?”
“Meh,” Cozy shrugged. “Friend. Weird uncle. A buncha stuff. He doesn’t think of me that way, I know, but it’s hard… Well, after mom and dad…” She trailed off.
Starlight’s ears perked up. That was another thing. Cozy Glow had been the most popular, most successful student in the school, and maybe that was why, somehow, nopony had ever thought to look any closer at her. But, now that Twilight had—pouring over what records the school kept, and asking around the town—she’d found what there was to see of Cozy’s life: nothing.
She showed up to school by herself. Nopony knew more than surface-level details about her past, and, frequently, what ponies did claim to know was contradictory. She had no parents in Ponyville, and no record or registration that could lead to them elsewhere. Neither the six students who shared a connection with the Tree of Harmony nor the Cutie Mark Crusaders had ever seen her go somewhere that could be a home, and Cozy herself certainly wasn’t talking. It was as if she’d sprung out of the ground one day with no connections but what she made herself.
“Your mom and dad…” Starlight began. “If you don’t mind my asking, are they…?”
Cozy looked away—and then nodded.
Starlight stood, and walked to the filly’s side. Her eyes were squeezed shut. “I’m sorry. If you want, you can… talk to me about them? Or to anypony, if you’d rather I leave.”
Cozy’s lip trembled. And then shook.
And then she burst out laughing.
“HA! You– you—” She rolled off the chair and held her hooves to her barrel, giggling uncontrollably. Starlight leapt back, eyes wide. “You’re so easy! N-no wonder they put you in charge of empathy! Princess of believing every little thing anypony says! Ha!” She flipped back onto her hooves, glaring. “Listen, professor. If you want to LEARN, go suffocate your fat, anxious head in a book like your ridiculous friend, and DON’T think you can go poking around MINE! How stupid do you think I am?!”
Starlight, amidst the mental whiplash of going from preparing herself to comfort a crying foal to… this, couldn’t respond.
Cozy pointed a wing at the door. “You know, I think I WOULD rather you leave. Go tell Twilight and every gullible idiot you know everything I said, and LEAVE. ME. ALONE!”
Finding her voice, Starlight managed a “If that’s what you need right now,” and hurried out the door.
Clunk.
She was going to need more preparation. And a plan.
And some help.
With a pop and a flash of light, Starlight appeared inside Trixie’s wagon. She was met with an undignified yelp and a cloud of smoke. Oops.
“STARLIGHT! We—cough—talked about this!”
She peered guiltily through the swirling, pungent fog. “Er… Sorry.”
“Well come on!”
With another flash, Trixie teleported the pair outside of her wagon, along with the smoke, which dissipated in the noonday sun to reveal a coughing showpony.
“I was calibrating my smoke bombs!” Trixie huffed. “I know you like showing off your precision teleportation, but ponyfeathers…”
Starlight fluttered her wings to dislodge any smoke bomb dust. “Does it help if I tell you how proud I am of how far your magic has come?”
Trixie, muzzle slightly blackened, was unimpressed. “No. You tell me that every day.”
“It’s not my fault you’re so easy to be proud of.”
Despite herself, Trixie blushed. Starlight leaned in and kissed her cheek. It only tasted a bit like sulfur. “I’m sorry, Trix. I’ve… got a lot on my mind. Which reminds me—”
“That you still need to tell me exactly what happened at your school?” interrupted her marefriend.
“Well, it’s hardly my school—“
Trixie waved a dismissive hoof. “It will be once Twilight takes over the world.”
“Equestria, and you know that’s just a rumor—“
“What happened at the school, Starlight!”
Starlight sighed. “I’m getting to it. That’s kind of why I came to you first.”
“First?” Trixie’s lilac aura opened the windows to the wagon, allowing the remaining smoke to seep out.
“Yeah. I’ll explain while I help you clean up.”
Fifteen minutes later, the wagon had been reorganized and restored to a relatively normal smell, and most of the broken china magically repaired for the six dozenth time.
Trixie had stopped helping in favor of sitting slackjawed in her hammock around minute three. “Let me get this straight. When you said that one of Twilight’s students tried to get rid of all the magic in Equestria and trapped you in a ball, that was Cozy Glow.”
“Yes.”
“Cozy Glow with the mane.”
“Yes.”
“Cozy Glow with the color-coded teaching schedules.”
“Yes.”
“‘Oh golly gee’ Cozy Glow. Who made us cupcakes that one time.”
Starlight rolled her eyes. “Yes.”
Trixie nodded slowly. “Right.” She thought for a long moment. “You know, if we spun it right, we could probably smear Twilight to the press with the fact that she wanted to send her to hell forever. Maybe if her popularity took enough of a hit, Celestia would have to put you in charge when she retires!”
This is the pony I fell in love with.
At one time, Starlight might’ve pointed out, for instance, that Tartarus was a prison, while hell was an ancient religious concept. Or, perhaps, that Celestia had been fully on board with the Tartarus idea, making it very unlikely that Twilight’s acceptance of it would count against her.
But she’d known Trixie for years now. So she just shrugged. “If she does, I’m making you do the paperwork.”
Trixie gagged. “Blech. Sparkle can have the job.”
Starlight chuckled and carefully levitated herself into the other hammock. It was a bit cramped, but her marefriend had resolutely declined her offer to magically expand the interior into a pocket dimension. “Thought so. But I have to talk to you about something.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry I can’t stay right now. But I want to figure this out as soon as I can.”
Trixie made a ‘nonsense’gesture. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is just as good at giving revelatory advice as she is at being a loving host. Talk away, Great and Powerful Assistant!”
Okay. How do I phrase this. Starlight chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. “You… didn’t used to have a lot of friends.”
Trixie stared flatly at her. “I didn’t used to have any friends. What’s your point.”
Diplomatic as ever, Starlight. “My point,” she said carefully, “Is that I want to talk to you, and some other ponies, about what changed that for them. What convinced them to give friendship another chance. If I’m going to help Cozy, I need somewhere to start. She’s… different, from anypony else I’ve ever seen. But there’s going to be some overlap.”
To her surprise, Trixie smiled. “Well, shouldn’t you know all about that? You were there.”
Starlight winced. She remembered. Against her will. “You mean when I overreacted and left you and you almost—“
“Yes, I was there too.” Trixie, somehow, had always maintained an attitude towards near-death experiences which placed them, as a priority for concern, somewhere between a loose wagon wheel and the politics of Saddle Arabia. Though, to be fair, she was a resident of Ponyville. Maybe Starlight was the odd one out there. “But the Great and Powerful Trixie will jog your memory. It wasn’t that she—I—never wanted friends; I mean, I was a jerk, but I wasn’t like Chryssy or anything.”
“You know she hates it when you call her that, right?” Starlight pointed out. “Our first game night I thought she’d suck you dry. Well, if she still could.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” Trixie smirked victoriously when Starlight blushed. “Besides, she only pretends she doesn’t like it. Anyway. I wanted friends. I was just too selfish to see why I didn’t have any. Until you showed up.”
Starlight knew all that; she thought about it every time she wanted to remember something good she’d done for a change. “Right. But… What was different about me?”
“Your past,” Trixie said immediately, as if it were obvious. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I knew you were like me. Well, you were a supervillain and I was just kind of a bitch, but something like me. We had something in common I couldn’t give up. It was like… like only having one pony who’d care about me forced me to finally care myself.”
At least something good came of the old me. Starlight stared thoughtfully at the ceiling of the wagon. Could she work with that? Sure, she had something in common with Cozy Glow—a truly unfortunate quantity of somethings—but would bringing that up give the filly someone to confide in, or just enable her to act exactly the same as she always had?
It was more than she’d had in mind before, at least. “Thanks. I might be able to use that.”
“No prob~” Trixie bowed, and nearly fell out of the hammock. “Eep! Say, by the way, what’re the odds of you having dinner with Cozy sometime soon, and what’re the odds I might be able to—“
“I’m not introducing you.”
“Awwww. But you never fight evil fillies! And how could Trixie not want to meet somepony who clearly has such correct opinions about Twilight Sparkle? Trixie promises she’ll barely encourage her.”
“I can’t believe I still have dinner with you.”
Do u only talk 2 me when u have a crisis 2 resolve?
Starlight looked in confusion at the book Twilight—and, increasingly frequently, she herself—used to communicate with the human world. Shorthoof? she wrote back. She lay on her bed on her stomach, book and quill suspended in front of her. Conversations via the book could take a while, particularly on the end where writing had to be done by hand, and it paid to be comfortable while she waited.
Oh right. Sorry, displayed the book in glittery red ink. Humans communicate with text a lot more; guess I picked up some of their habits.
She’d considered at length who to contact for advice. Trixie would’ve been insulted if she hadn’t been first, of course. But, since she saw Sunset Shimmer nearly every week anyway, she was a logical next choice.
Don’t worry about it. Write however you like, she wrote back. And I haven’t written about a magical crisis in weeks!
Yeah, but you are now, aren’t you?
Smartass. As Sunset would say. Twilight told you about the incident?
Sure did. Nice to know that someone else’s school is getting blown up for a change. You should hear how Celestia—Principal Celestia, I mean—talks to the insurance companies these days. I swear she can do the RCV sometimes.
Starlight giggled. She’d only met the human version of the princess of the sun once, but it’d been enough to convince her that they needed to facilitate a dinner party between the counterparts one of these days.
Anyway, are you okay? continued Sunset. I heard about Cozy Glow and everything.
Actually, Starlight wrote, That’s why I’m writing. I’m fine, but I volunteered to try and reform Cozy, and wasn’t sure where to start, so I’m asking creatures who… She paused.
Used to be assholes why they stopped? guessed Sunset. Humans had such fascinating expressions.
Yeah. Sorry.
Ha! You should’ve heard my friends here after my demon phase—they stumbled all over their words for a year. But yeah, that’s a good question. It’s funny, I’ve thought so much about how to use my own experience to help people here, but it’s never come up for someone back in Equestria before. Like, officially. The game nights don’t count. Guess you need help from the original Empathy sometimes, huh~?
Neither Sunset nor the human Elements were ever going to let that go. You figured out that was your Element what, like a month before I did?
I’d make fun of you even if it was an hour. Hold on, I need to think for a sec.
Starlight waited, and shifted on her immensely-comfortable bed, and tried not to think about the filly around a hundred feet away who was probably plotting her demise just as Starlight plotted her rehabilitation. Why couldn’t she just have gotten a normal princess job, like… like… Okay, so Equestria didn’t have any of those, but still.
Okay, wrote Sunset after a couple minutes. There was a lot of stuff that made me the way I used to be, but I think the big reason I started to get better was the others’ forgiveness.
Starlight was acutely familiar with that phenomenon. They’re something else, aren’t they.
They really are. I mean, you stop a demon from killing you and your friends, conventional wisdom isn’t to help her to her feet. But fortunately for us, Twilight is just crazy. I wasn’t always that bad, but I had a pretty transactional worldview when I was a foal. And trying to survive in this world, and later at the high school, just made that worse. And if things had gone differently, I probably would’ve gotten right back up after the rainbow laser shtick and gone on being a selfish bitch. I didn’t want to necessarily, it was just… that’s how things worked. You know?
Starlight thought back, with some difficulty, to her thoughts in the mountains after fleeing her village. Yeah.
But then, when I saw they didn’t want to fight and were just worried I might be hurt… Everyone I’d almost killed was right there, but they weren’t mad at me. So I guess I didn’t know what to do. I just knew they were giving me an out from going on fighting and being angry, so I took it.
That makes a lot of sense, Starlight wrote. And it did. She herself had never really even thought of plotting revenge after the… time travel incident; she was too shell-shocked from what she’d almost done to consider the possibility. But, if she had, what could she have done? Plot revenge against the pony who was letting her live in her house? Who let her read her books? Who made her dinner? By the time you can think about fighting again, you’re already in their lives and there’s nothing left to fight.
Ha. You make it sound so sinister, wrote Sunset. But yeah. Pretty much. Does that help? It kinda sounds like you already knew that, so, uh, you’re welcome for nothing! Sucker!
No, that’s really good! Starlight wrote hastily, nearly tearing a hole in the page of the book. Stupid custom unnaturally-sharp phoenix feather quills that Celestia insisted on giving all the other princesses every holiday. Equestria had a lot of holidays. Sometimes you need to hear it from somepony else—or somebody else—to think through it. I don’t know how much more I can forgive Cozy, since it’s not like she has any power left at this point, but thank you.
Rad. Does this mean I have to go back to calc? Sunset doodled a frowning face.
You choose to keep attending that school at your age, Starlight pointed out.
It’s where my friends are! Respect your elders!
After a moment, three sparkling red lines appeared on the page, flanked by a curved line. Of course. Snorting fondly, Starlight added two more lines in black ink, forming a stylized E surrounded by a heart.
It hadn’t been either of their ideas. But the human Pinkie Pie had started signing it by all of their conversations when Sunset wasn’t looking as soon as she’d discovered the two each represented Empathy, and it made Twilight smile so much that eventually they’d started doing it themselves as a joke. Well. It’d started as a joke, anyway.
We are so immature.
We are.
“She did WHAT?!”
Ears flattened, Starlight adjusted the volume on the communication spell significantly downward. It helped, but it didn’t reduce the portion of her vision taken up by Queen Chrysalis’s distorted white face.
“Why does noling tell me anything anymore?! I’m going to have that larvae Ocellus—” Chrysalis trailed off as Starlight raised an eyebrow. “...Commended for her academic performance. Still, she could’ve perhaps sent an emergency memo about the fact that somepony nearly drained magic from Equestria forever!”
“Ocellus was one of the students who stopped Cozy; she’s enjoying some deserved rest,” Starlight replied diplomatically. “And surely you have a better source of intelligence than a schoolfilly.” Not that Chrysalis should’ve had any sources of covert intelligence in Equestria after the treaty, but it was Chrysalis. She’d probably find a much less harmless way to keep busy otherwise.
“Please. Who better to report than someling nopony would expect? Apparently you ponies haven’t gotten any less gullible, after all.” The queen’s performative scoff rippled the enchanted liquid filling the basin that maintained the spell. There was a room in the Canterlot palace specifically designed for long-distance scrying like this, but for more personal calls, Starlight preferred to use Twilight’s. Even if the lighting was terrible.
“I’ll… pretend I didn’t hear that.” Like everything else you somehow think it’s a good idea to tell an Equestrian official. Though, given the embarrassing quantity of the queen’s secrets that Starlight inexplicably found herself keeping, perhaps it was.
Suddenly, the second basin beside the first flickered with a teal glow, and the air above it solidified into an image of Tempest Shadow, sitting in a dimly-lit room which seemed half-filled with dusty oddities and a quarter-filled with unidentifiable machinery. “She’s not wrong,” she pointed out in a smooth voice. “You all really need some sort of warning system. How do you think it feels for your horn to stop working and to only find out two days afterward what in the dungeons of Cunabula is going on?”
“Tempest!” Starlight exclaimed happily. “I’m glad you could make it.”
“It’s Fizzlepop now, actually,” the dark purple unicorn said, with as smile that would make Maud proud. “I know I was on the fence about it, but hearing the scum traders in Klugetown say ‘Fizzlepop Berrytwist’ is too much fun to give up.”
Knowing Klugetown—not that she’d visited more than once, which was one time too many—the term “scum trader” was not a metaphor. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“See?” said Chrysalis, moving in her own room (which, being located in the dimmest intact room of the hive the queen had been able to find, was barely visible) to better face both unicorns. “Automatic alert system. Get on it.”
“That’s… not a bad idea,” admitted Starlight. It was easy to forget that so many of the crises of Equestria affected the broader world. Maybe she could make something like that her next priority as princess. “But this isn’t exactly a friendly call, I’m afraid.”
Tempest shrugged. “I don’t get friendly calls. What is it?”
“At least I’m more popular than some creatures,” grumbled Chrysalis. “What do you want?”
Starlight explained the situation for the third time that day. When she was done, Chrysalis and Tempest glanced at one another, exchanging in it a quantity of cynical and jaded emotions usually communicable only through maniacal laughs, or letters signed in kisses of blood.
“You’re thinking what I am, I take it?” said Tempest.
“Obviously,” said Chrysalis.
This is what I get for asking them. Starlight crossed her forelegs. “I’m not sending her to Tartarus. Or cocooning her.” Tempest opened her mouth. “Or killing her.”
“Glimmer,” Chrysalis hissed. “If that filly had done what she did before we could generate our own love, she would’ve annihilated an entire sapient species. I know that’s something you ponies care about.”
“I’m well-aware of what she almost did,” said Starlight firmly. “Trust me, I’ve had nightmares about it twice already. But my decision is made. You can give me what help you can, or you can hang up.”
Tempest chuckled. “She’s kind of cute when she’s being authoritative.”
Chrysalis, who seemed as though she’d seriously been considering hanging up, nodded. “One of her few redeeming qualities.”
“Chrysalis…” Starlight growled.
“Oh fine. But you’re well-aware of what convinced me, given that you insisted upon doing it yourself,” Chrysalis said. She took a sip of Celestia-knew-what from a mug that was either decorated to resemble a rock or was, in fact, a rock. “I would never give up my throne. You… correctly… pointed out that accepting your ridiculous ideology was the only path conducive to retaining it. So that’s what I did. It was a practical calculation.” She thought for a moment, and mumbled something.
“What was that?” Starlight asked.
“I said, and I was tired of being hungry. Turn the volume up if your hearing is going.” She crossed her forelegs; it was adorable. “But still. Practicality.”
Starlight had more or less known as much. Between their initial confrontation at the hive, the diplomatic summit nearly two years prior, or one of the many other characteristically adrenaline-filled times she’d spent with the queen, she knew her better than any other pony. Still, Chrysalis’s… direct way of putting things never went unappreciated. If Starlight were entirely honest, it was her favorite thing about her.
Tempest—er, Fizzlepop—groaned, head resting on a hoof. “You call me for the first time in ages, and you ask me to talk about feelings. And worse, my feelings. And I thought you cared about me.”
“Hey, it could be worse,” Starlight pointed out. “I didn’t like that either, and then I got made into the princess of feelings. I’ve gotten used to it by now, but still.”
Tempest shuddered. “Good point. Alright. But I don’t… It was a while ago. And there was a storm, and I had a lot going on, and… I’m not you, okay? I have better things to do than introspect. You know I’ve had three separate rats try to buy my horn since I got back here? I haven’t had to blast any of them yet, but if they get any pushier, I’m not sure friendship is going to be enough to get them off my flank, and that’s besides the sharks—”
“Fizzle,” Starlight said gently, as Chrysalis struggled to contain her laughter. “You’re rambling.”
The normally-stoic unicorn snapped her mouth closed. “Uh. I know.”
“You don’t need to talk about anything you don’t want to. I’m just happy to talk to you again—”
“Ugh, don’t make it worse!” whined Tempest. “Fine. I lost any loyalty I had to the Storm King when I realized he wasn’t going to fix my horn. I was going to turn on him as soon as that happened. And then, when I saw him about to defeat you and Twilight and her friends… Well, he’d hurt me. They hadn’t. So I knew I had to do whatever I could to prevent him from getting what he wanted, which is why I went and did something as stupid as… jumping in front of that grenade.”
“Spite,” said Chrysalis approvingly. “Not very tasty, but certainly respectable.”
“I… don’t know,” Tempest said. “Maybe it was just to hurt him. Maybe I was grateful to my former enemies for at least being more honest than he was. Maybe it was… something else. I don’t know. Can we talk about something else now?”
“That’s okay,” said Starlight. “You’ve both been very helpful. I’ll probably call you again in the next few days; Cozy seems like she’s going to be…” She thought back to the filly’s unnerving laughter that morning. “...Challenging.”
“I quiver with anticipation,” deadpanned Chrysalis.
Trixie, Sunset, Chrysalis, and Tempest were ponies Starlight was familiar with—even if she’d only met Tempest in person a couple times since the whole debacle with the Storm King. She’d had to meet with them to hear exactly what they thought about their checkered pasts, of course, but she’d more or less expected what each of them would say. Especially Chrysalis, who, when she wasn’t in disguise, wore her heart—or whatever changelings had in place of hearts, anyway—on her sleeve to a degree she herself didn’t seem to realize.
The last pony she’d scheduled a meeting with, however, wasn’t one she was familiar with beyond the manner in which every pony in a thousand-odd pony town was acquainted with one another, and, as she finished jotting down a series of notes onto a scroll in the castle library, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of anxiety. Most of the new ponies she met these days were those the Map sent her to, or ones she ran across in her capacity as a Princess. Hopefully her social skills hadn’t gotten rustier than they already were.
Before she had the chance to talk herself into postponing her final meeting, she concentrated, and teleported with a pop! to reappear smack in the middle of the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ clubhouse.
“And today’s first order of business is– AAH!” yelped a voice immediately recognizable as Applebloom’s. “What in– Oh! Counselor Starlight! Or, uh, is it Princess Starlight outside of school? Princess Glimmer?”
Starlight spared a moment to look around the clubhouse. She’d met with the self-proclaimed Crusaders many times in her role as counselor, but never outside of a professional capacity. Which… this might be? Was her new ‘project’ professional?
“She always told us to just call her Starlight in the school; why would this be any different?” said Sweetie Belle uncertainly, which was fortunate, as apparently the Princess of Empathy’s train of thought was no more stable than a twelve-year-old apple farmer’s.
“Hey, what if we just alternate between all of them? That way we’re only kind of rude instead of really rude if we guess wrong!” piped Scootaloo. Starlight had somehow teleported directly between all three of them.
She stepped back awkwardly, careful to avoid stepping on a pile of construction paper. Being in direct line of sight of all three Crusaders was a good way for anything, pony or object, to develop sudden and varying mechanical faults. “Er, Starlight is fine! I wasn’t expecting the three of you. It’s good to see you, though!”
The three fillies exchanged a confused look. Applebloom hopped down from the ramshackle podium at the back of the tree house. “You weren’t? Uh, pardon, counselor, but are you sure you ended up in the right place?”
Starlight quickly double-checked the tetradimensional coordinates. “I think so. At least, this is where she said would be convenient to meet.”
“‘She’?” asked Scootaloo.
“Me,” said a voice from the door. All four mares turned, to see Diamond Tiara enter and carefully shut the door.
“Diamond!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed. “We were wondering when you’d get here!”
Diamond Tiara looked as confused as Starlight felt. “You… were? Also, why are you all here?”
“Well, you said to meet us here at four, dint’ya?” said Applebloom.
“I’m pretty sure I just asked if I could use your clubhouse at four,” Diamond said. She took an uncertain seat on the rickety-looking stairs.
Scootaloo waved a hoof. “Well yeah, but we just assumed you wanted to hold a meeting! You haven’t been to one in ages, and you are a nominal member now.”
“Honorary member,” corrected Sweetie Belle.
“Meh, same thing.”
“No it isn’t!”
“Actually,” Diamond interrupted, “I asked because I wanted to meet Starlight here.” She looked down. “...Is that okay? I guess I should’ve been clearer.”
Understanding dawned on the Crusaders’ faces. “Ohhh!” Applebloom said, smacking her forehead. “Um. Right. We knew that.”
“No we didn’t,” said Sweetie Belle. “But that’s okay! We’ll head out for a minute. Er, that is, if you’re still okay with attending a meeting after?”
“I brought over the gavel and everything,” said Scootaloo, eyes as pitiable as a waterlogged breezie.
Diamond nodded rapidly. “Sure! Sorry I haven’t been over more.”
“Aw, that’s no problem!” said Applebloom, beaming. “Come on girls!” She shooed the other two towards the door. “Nice seein’ you Starlight! Counselor! Princess! Uh, whatever we should call you!”
“That was a joke,” hissed Scootaloo. And then the door shut, and Diamond and Starlight were alone.
Starlight blinked a few times. “...Hello.”
“Hi, Princess,” Diamond said hesitantly. She stood up from the stairs and repositioned herself in a somewhat shabby bean bag. “Sorry about that.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Starlight said. She looked around. Finding another bean bag that was definitely too small for an adult pony, let alone an alicorn, she took a seat. “But if you don’t mind my asking, why…?”
“Why’d I ask you to meet here?” Diamond finished drily. “I mean… Look at you.”
Starlight did. It failed to answer her question.
Diamond rolled her eyes. “I mean that you’re a princess. Duh. Have you met my mom? If you showed up at our house, she’d have you stuck inside for three days until you’d felt obligated to invite her to sixteen balls and… and… recommend her perfume line to the Duke of Trottingham or something.”
Starlight had met Spoiled Rich exactly one time, at, fittingly, a ball in Canterlot, and as loathe as she was to agree with Diamond’s dim view of her mother, she couldn’t say she’d seen any evidence to the contrary. Bafflingly, she’d been informed that Spoiled was actually far more amiable than she’d used to be. She had not felt the need to dig up her time travel spell to check.
“I see,” she said eventually. And then, because, well, she’d been a counselor several days a week for nearly six months, “Are things alright at home?”
Diamond snorted. “They’re amazing compared to how they were before I stood up to her. But, um, Princess… why did you want to see me?” She looked suddenly nervous. “Did my parents ask you to? Have I done something wrong?”
“No!” Starlight reassured quickly. And not entirely accurately. “Well… Not recently. This might sound unrelated, but do you know a filly named Cozy Glow?”
Diamond nodded. “She’s one of the CMC’s friends, right? From Twilight’s new school? They mentioned they were helping her with her homework or something a while ago.”
‘CMC.’ I’ll remember that one. So Diamond didn’t know. Which made sense—the disaster had only concluded days prior. “...Yes. She was.”
The tense she’d chosen wasn’t lost on the purple filly. “Was? What happened?”
Starlight was well-aware that Cozy’s plan had not only involved foals younger than Diamond Tiara, but ultimately been stopped by them. And that was besides the fact that Cozy herself was younger. But, somehow, it felt… wrong, to narrate the full story to a foal who hadn’t been involved with it herself. The fact that anypony had been involved was a tragedy, and to add to that number, even by proxy, would be another. At least, that’s what Starlight’s incredibly biased emotions told her.
“A lot,” she said slowly, shifting on her disproportionate bean bag. “I think your friends will want to tell you the full story. But Cozy made some… mistakes.”
“Does this have anything to do with why magic stopped working for three days?” Diamond asked suspiciously. “Princess Twilight’s announcement at the town hall was really vague.”
“...Maybe. But like I said, you’ll probably know soon. But… That’s why I came to you. I’ve been going around to ponies I know—well, ponies and a changeling and a human—who’ve made mistakes in their pasts, and asking them about what convinced them to change, because I want to know if I can help Cozy do the same.” And prevent her from destroying the world. “But they’re all… well, adults. I know from what your friends have said that you used to be a bit of a bully.” Diamond’s expression grew guilty. “Not that I blame you! I mean, you know what I used to be like, or actually you probably don’t, so forget I said that. But, er, my point is that I wanted to hear from somepony your age what it was like to go through that… realization.” She trailed off. She’d never felt that confident with foals—or ponies of any age, but especially foals. At least in the school, they’d had to come to her.
Diamond’s eyes were narrowed, but in thought, or perhaps evaluation, rather than challenge. “Huh.” She adjusted her tiara. It had the mark of a nervous tic. “At least you’re not another grown-up who wants to lecture me and make sure I don’t go back to being a ‘disruption’. I’ve heard that a lot.”
Starlight shook her head. “Nope. I trust your friends when they say you’ve changed. I just want to hear about it, if you’re comfortable telling me—no judgment.”
“And you’re not planning on like… rainbow lasering me, right?”
“Oh, the Elements couldn’t do that if they wanted to!” Starlight chuckled. “Lasers are inefficiently focused light, while the emissions from the Elements of Harmony are better understood as a combination of several types of magical energy which have been polarized in specific ways, but are arranged so that instead of repelling each other and losing focus, they actually…” Diamond Tiara was staring at her, slightly cross-eyed. “Erm. No, we aren’t.”
“Cool,” Diamond said slowly. “But… What exactly do you wanna know?”
Starlight shrugged—a gesture she’d gotten far more use out of since she’d sprouted wings. “You used to pick on the Crusaders. Why did you stop?”
“Well, they helped me!” said Diamond, almost defensively. “Their candidate beat me in the school election, and then they brought me here after I got in trouble with my mom. It was more than anypony else in class ever did for me. Well, except Silvy. Obviously.”
“Wait, back up,” Starlight interrupted. “You got in trouble for not winning a silly election?”
Diamond stomped a hoof. “It wasn’t silly! Mom really wanted me to win, and she gets… upset when she feels like ponies are wasting her time.”
Starlight wondered, privately, if there might be a member of the Rich family who did merit ‘rainbow lasering.’ She shelved the idea. One troubled filly at a time. “You… know that’s not reasonable of her, right?” she asked carefully.
“Well, duh. Or, um… I do now, anyway. The CMC kinda helped me see that. And helped me stand up to her. I’m… grateful, I guess.” She grimaced, as if the phrase had poked her tongue on the way out.
“I can see why,” Starlight said, taking mental notes. “They showed you you deserved better. That’s a good feeling.” She thought back to her ascension. “Even when it takes you a while to really believe.”
Diamond thought for a while, staring out the window. “I’ve never thought about it that way. I guess you’re right.” She giggled. “Funny how you get it better than the Crusaders do. You haven’t even, like, done anything wrong.”
Starlight let out a very un-Princessly snort. “Yeah. Funny.”
Starlight had intended to spend the day gathering input from creatures who’d been in a similar situation to Cozy Glow, and then, somehow, to distill all of the data she’d collected into a foolproof plan.
Instead, she had a scroll covered in so many scribbles and crossings-out (she knew a half-dozen erasing spells, but her head hurt enough as it was) that it resembled some sort of modern painting Rarity would fawn over.
Sure, she was the Princess of Empathy, not of sociological analysis. But the Princess of Friendship got away with it.
She pushed aside a series of worries about whether her chosen domain had cursed her to an eternal life of subjectivity. So she didn’t entirely know how to help Cozy yet. That didn’t mean there weren’t a few things she could start with.
So, after visiting the kitchen to pick up one of the salads she’d usually eat with Twilight or Trixie, she walked down a series of until-recently-disused corridors and knocked on Cozy’s door.
“No.” said a voice from within.
Charming. “I brought you dinner?”
“No.”
Starlight sighed. “You’re not going to escape and get to plan your revenge if you starve to death.”
“I’m not going to get to do anything ever again anyway!” shouted Cozy in a voice that probably would’ve been deafening if it hadn’t come through an inch of crystal.
Well, it was more than ‘No.’ “If you let me in, you’ll get to… not starve to death?”
Silence. Slowly, Starlight pushed open the door, salad held in her aura. Cozy was lying in bed. Or, rather, lying on a single pillow atop the bed. She looked… empty.
Starlight felt a pang. That expression didn’t belong on anypony. No matter what they’d done.
She set the salad on the desk, and looked at the filly, who didn’t acknowledge her entry. “I… assume you’d prefer I leave?” asked Starlight gently. She’d wanted to talk, but…
Cozy didn’t turn. “You can stay. Or you could leave. You’re just going to do what you want, so it doesn’t really matter, does it.”
“That’s not true at all! If you want me to go, I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Leave me here forever?” Cozy finally rolled onto her side to face Starlight. “Please. You’re an alicorn. I’m a filly. You control what happens here, and you want to talk. Why pretend otherwise?”
“Social interaction isn’t about control,” protested Starlight with growing concern. “Yes, I had some things I wanted to say, but I’m not going to make sure that happens if somepony else doesn’t want to hear them. You don’t need to force me to leave for me to leave.”
Cozy looked genuinely confused. “Of course I do. And I can’t. So you—” But she snapped her mouth shut, glaring. “I see what you’re trying to do. It won’t work.”
Starlight closed the door. She would leave, but any insight into Cozy’s thoughts was worth a moment. “What am I trying to do?”
“Please.” There was a hint of the glare she’d grown used to. “Argue with me. Poke at something I clearly care about. Learn more information and use it to manipulate me. The more I talk, the more you win. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Starlight’s first instinct was to protest. Cozy wasn’t wrong, necessarily—but it wasn’t like that. Starlight wanted to know her to help her, not to control her.
Is that any different? asked a voice that sounded uncomfortably like her old self. You want her to accept your way of thinking. You want to win. You want her to do what you want, for your own benefit.
It wasn’t the same! She had Cozy’s best interests at heart—and it wasn’t as if preventing worldwide calamity was a selfish motive anyway.
And isn’t that what we thought? The last time we locked ponies in a room and didn’t let them out until they believed everything we wanted them to?
Starlight resisted the urge to smack herself in the face with a wing, because Cozy was watching, and she didn’t want to give away… Wait. That could work.
Epiphany in hoof, instead of protesting, she simply said, “Yes.”
She was treated to a rare glimpse of a genuinely astonished Cozy Glow. It was adorable. Because what else would it be.
“I want to learn about you so I can help you,” Starlight continued. Cozy opened her mouth to protest. “Which, yes, is a type of manipulation. You’re right.”
Cozy sat up. Starlight hadn’t missed the distrustful, borderline-murderous expression, but after its blank predecessor, it almost made her smile. “Reverse psychology won’t work either, professor,” the filly said suspiciously.
“I know.” Starlight took a seat in the armchair. “So instead, how about a trade? You talk to me—in any way, about anything you want—and I’ll tell you about me.”
It was a gamble. Starlight knew almost nothing about Cozy Glow—nopony did—but she knew she valued information, and she knew she valued control. In her current situation, she had neither. But if Starlight accepted the slight risk that revealing some of her more personal secrets to a marechiavellian foal would entail, perhaps she'd at least know where to begin. Besides, even though she wasn't sure how to apply all of her findings from the day... Well, this had worked on Trixie.
“That’s not fair,” Cozy noted with annoyance. “You don’t know anything about me. I know you don’t. Even what you’d get out of a conversation would be more valuable to you than anything about you would be to me—plus, I already know the important stuff anyway. Your friend left you, you went crazy and started a cult, you tried to destroy the world with time travel, Twilight took pity on you instead of killing you like anypony smart woulda done, blah blah blah. Blah. So what.”
Starlight placed a mental bet on the odds of the source of most of that information being Trixie. She loved the mare, but a lifetime of travel hadn’t given her the most functional sense of confidentiality. “Sure, you know the broad strokes of it. But do you know what I was thinking?”
After a pause, Cozy realized the question wasn’t rhetorical, and rolled her eyes. “No. Duh.”
“I know what you did,” pointed out Starlight. “And I still don’t know much about you as a pony, or why you did any of it, or what you want. We’re starting off even. If we both talk…”
“...Whoever makes better use of their information wins,” Cozy said, eyes narrow.
“Well, I was hoping we could better understand each other and get off on a better hoof…” Starlight trailed off at Cozy’s skeptical raised eyebrow. “Well. Either way. Deal?”
There was a visible struggle on Cozy’s face. But, after a long pause, she giggled. “Golly,” said the filly. “You sure know how to make an evening more interesting. Ramble away, professor. Just don’t be surprised when you bore me to sleep.”
The knowledge that some of Cozy’s mannerisms were apparently genuine tucked away for later, Starlight shifted in her seat, cast her mind back all those years, and took a deep breath. “I grew up in a small town called Sire’s Hollow, far north of here. I have mixed feelings on it now, but, back then, it was the only place I knew, so I didn’t care one way or the other. You’ve probably heard about Sunburst. He was…”
She had several, actually. Nopony else knew, for instance, that she teleported snacks directly from the castle fridge and pantry into Trixie’s wagon, both to practice her precision and because it made Trixie laugh—well, nopony besides Trixie knew. Nopony else knew why Sunset Shimmer somehow remained a physical age that allowed her to attend a high school (Starlight was fairly certain it involved hijacking the mirror portal’s camouflage protocols). And nopony knew that she’d stolen her father’s jacket when she’d ran away from home because she thought it’d looked cool. And then later sold it because she had no money.
Those secrets, though, didn’t explain why Starlight was pacing in a circle about the Cutie Map at 2:30 in the morning. Nor why nopony knew where she was, or what she was about to do.
Starlight swallowed. She knew the secret—it was the reason she was here, and what had been knocking at the door to her conscious mind for months. But, even now, allowing herself to think of it made her nervous.
Starlight could still time travel.
Not a week back in time with Star Swirl’s shoddy spell—anypony could do that. Or, at least, any unicorn with a horn output in the ninety-eighth percentile, an uncommon amount of training, and knowledge of the spell’s existence, which narrowed ‘anypony’ down to maybe half a dozen candidates. Nopony but she and Twilight, however, had ever cast her modified version; the one that combined with the Cutie Map to allow travel to any time or place in all of reality. And nopony but Starlight had ever cast it unaided.
Spells, Starlight lectured an unseen audience by way of anxious procrastination, weren’t just something you cast in an instant and were done with. They were energy, arranged in a specific way and imparted onto a specific thing. Most were simply thrown into the ether and left to work their literal magic, but some took hold in objects, ponies, words, or even concepts, and took effect from there. Her modified time travel spell had been one of them. In such a rush as she was in to enact her revenge, she hadn’t had time to create a spell which could be cast by just anypony; she’d worked her creation into the very fibers of Star Swirl’s scroll, until it was more magic than parchment, and without which there was no hope of casting the spell inscribed on it.
Unless you were a unicorn whose magic output, through some bizarre psychological quirk, scaled alongside your emotions. Unless you were goaded into terrified fury by a purple alicorn and a nightmarish desert of a future. Unless you were so desperate to prove a point that you unthinkingly cast your spell entirely out of your own head.
Or unless you became an alicorn and were suddenly granted access to more magic than almost any other creature who had ever existed.
Starlight forced herself to stop pacing and look at the map, which glowed with its barely-translucent, impossibly-detailed map of Equestria and the surrounding lands.
She’d cast her spell unaided once before, and, ever since she ascended, a nagging feeling in the back of her head had informed her that, if she wished—if she grew insane enough to try—she could do so again.
So she was going to do so again.
Because she was the Princess of Empathy now. And—as had been drilled into her head by Twilight, Celestia, Luna, the Elements, Trixie, and even Spike for so long that she’d finally reluctantly accepted it—that included empathy towards herself. Even if, sometimes, she wished it didn’t.
So, lighting her horn, she called to mind the memory of a spell. A spell so nightmarishly, fiendishly complicated that no pony without a magical artifact, magical rage, or the power of a god could ever have hoped to cast it alone. And she forced nearly as much power into her horn as it could contain.
Despite her trepidation, she couldn’t help but smile as she felt her horn tingle and a wave of electrifying sensation rushed from it down every inch of her body to the tip of her tail. Because she could, she spread her wings, feeling the feathers ruffle from the sheer power coursing through her, and lifted herself several feet into the air with a thought. It was, she knew, for the best that spells like this were cast few and far between. But banish her if they didn’t feel good. Like every voice in all of time and space was singing in harmony, waiting for her to call out the melody.
With loving focus, she aligned the power in just the right way across five separate dimensions—plus one for good luck—and squinted as every part of the castle within eyesight lit up with the light of day as she forced it all out her horn and into the Map. The familiar series of concentric rings flickered into existence above the map, the familiar unearthly sounds and symbols rang all about her as if she were inside a madmare’s clock tower, and, as she closed her eyes, the familiar magical force pulled her into the time stream.
And it all vanished.
Starlight remembered to cast the invisibility spell on herself seconds before the time vortex ejected her unceremoniously into the open air. Last time, she’d wanted to cause a disturbance; this time, it was imperative that nothing go awry. Of course, the time spell itself was very… flashy, but, well. Who really ever looked up?
Blinking, she righted herself, and spread her wings to take over from her flight spell. No sense wasting power. Admittedly, she could probably hover magically for a month before she had to set herself down, but it was the principle of the matter.
Sire’s Hollow.
There wasn’t the same ache there had been when she’d dragged Twilight here over a year ago, now that she’d returned in the present and patched things up with Sunburst. She was sad to see it as it’d been nearly two decades ago—how could she not be?—but it was the sadness of… an old book, perhaps. Not fresh regret.
She ruffled her feathers. Focus. She… Actually, she had as long as she wanted. Time travel required some unusual alterations in one’s typical manner of thinking.
Still, she didn’t want to get trapped in the past, metaphorically or otherwise; she’d done quite enough of that over the past fifteen years. So, after an indulgent minute admiring her foalhood view from a slightly higher altitude, she flew in the direction of her old home.
She landed silently beside her house, not far from where she’d ranted to Twilight about Sunburst. Fortunately, this particular day was months after that, or there might’ve been a very awkward time-traveler reunion.
She’d chosen this day for a reason. Not only was it one of the few that stood out in her memory amongst the haze of misery and loneliness which defined this portion of her life—and thus one of the few for which she could pinpoint the tetradimensional coordinates the spell relied upon—but, of all days, this was one where her… presence would be keenly felt.
She prayed she’d gotten the time right; but, before long, she heard a voice shouting through the walls. Her voice.
“Let me go!”
Another voice. Her father’s; different, but barely so, from the one she’d heard when she’d visited him only weeks ago. “Pumpkin, you shouldn’t go out by yourself! Just wait a bit and I can come with—”
“And what’re you going to do?! Protect me?! Like you did when mom left? Like you did when Sunburst left?!”
Starlight winced to hear her own words, and sent a mental apology, worthless though it was, to Firelight Glimmer.
“Ah… I’m sorry, sweetie, I promise, but your daddy can’t always—“
“You can’t do ANYTHING! You can’t ever do anything! So get out of my way!”
And with that, the door swung open, and Starlight’s younger self burst out, slamming the door behind her. Her pigtails had been cast aside in favor of a messy, unkempt manestyle (which Starlight knew from memory was only partially intentional) in a black maneband, and she wore sloppily-applied eyeliner which was streaked with tears. She sniffed, chest heaving, and shrieked at the closed door, “DON’T WAIT FOR ME TO EAT DINNER! I hate it when you do that!”
Not waiting for a reply that never came, young Starlight ran out the door and towards the nearby woods. Present Starlight quietly took to her wings and followed, keeping a safe distance.
Before long, her younger self had run deep into the forest, which, fortunately, was little like the Everfree, and held nothing more dangerous than the odd badger. Starlight could’ve followed with her eyes closed; she remembered every stump, tree, and cave she’d used to wander amongst, crying, whenever she needed to be alone. Today, it was a fallen tree, whose long-suffering splintered trunk formed a hollow which would be tight for a full-grown pony, but perfect for a filly. And, more importantly, it was sheltered enough that nopony outside of the forest would hear any anguished screams or sobs emanating from within.
Starlight landed a short distance away. She took a deep breath.
This was it. She’d thought of this moment time and time again; as a princess, as a cult leader, as a nervous student, as a hopeful teenager. Now, she could actually do it. And she would. Just as soon as she calmed her nerves…
She stepped on a twig.
“Who’s there?” shouted Young Starlight with a mixture of anger and fear.
Banish it to Tartarus. Well, maybe it was for the best that somepony forced her hoof. Even if it was herself.
She took a deep breath, stepped into view of the hollow, and dropped her invisibility spell.
She was treated to the sight of her younger self’s eyes nearly popping out of her head. “Who— wait. W-what… you’re… m…” Starlight waited patiently. “You look like… m-me?”
“It looks that way.” Internally, she slapped herself. Stupid humorous coping mechanism.
Young Starlight raised a quivering hoof. “Are you my… No, mom didn’t look like you. My… Wait, are you an alicorn?”
Oh. She’d forgotten about that part. “I am.”
Her former self glared, eyes still damp. “Stop watching me struggle and a-answer me!”
Starlight winced. She wasn’t off to a good start. “I…” she began. “Am… you. From the future.” She bowed, lower than she ever had for Celestia or Luna. To not do it would’ve felt ruder than doing it felt vain.
Young Starlight gaped, speechless. So Starlight carefully sat down on what she knew to be a comfortable rock and waited.
Eventually, the filly’s expression hardened. “You’re lying.”
Starlight had anticipated that. Wearing away her foalhood cynicism had been—still was—a long, slow process. So, she’d come prepared. “When you were seven, you stole a whole box of donuts from Royal Icing’s bakery; you were too ashamed to eat them, so you hid them in the woods where nopony would find them. You hate black licorice, even though you keep telling everypony it’s your favorite now. You realized last year that you liked mares. And, right now, you’re…” She swallowed dryly. “Imagining what it would be like if nopony ever had to get a cutie mark.”
The tears in Young Starlight’s eyes had begun to run through her ruined eyeliner again. “Dad put you up to this, didn’t he? He doesn’t believe me when I say I’m fine. Nopony listens to me! He thinks he knows what’s best for me even though he can never h-help!” Her breathing was shortening, coming in quick, high-pitched gasps. “Why can’t he leave me alone?! W-why can’t everypony leave me alone?!”
In a flash of teleportation, Starlight was at her side. “It’s—oh, right, that’s not something you’re used to, get your head on straight Starlight—okay. It’s okay.” She wrapped her wings around the filly, who automatically pulled them closer. “Remember the breathing exercises you and Sunburst taught each other. You can do this. Slow.” Young Starlight’s breaths slowed, though they remained shuddery, and shook her whole body. “Slow. Deep. Calm.”
After a minute, during which Starlight’s wings were thoroughly coated in tears and snot, her younger self had calmed enough to return to an expression of disbelief. “Are you really…?”
“I’m sorry,” Starlight said apologetically. “I know it’s hard to—“
“No, it’s not,” Young Starlight interrupted, voice shaky but consistent. “You… you said my name when you talked to yourself. And I’ve never told anypony else how to breathe like that, or about mares, or… that I’ve been thinking about… that. Not yet.”
Starlight hadn’t given herself enough credit. As much as it felt like bragging—and, accordingly, grated on her anxiety and self-doubt like sandpaper—she’d been a brilliant foal. Of course she could put the pieces together.
“What are you doing here?” her younger self asked. “Why would you… Do I… Um, does…” She looked at risk of starting to hyperventilate again. “Time travel…”
“Breathing, remember?” Starlight said quickly. “And… yeah. Time travel.”
“I’m a princess?” young Starlight burst out, having decided on the most pressing topic.
Starlight smiled, and pressed her wings into a hug. “We are.”
“We, right…” Her younger self scooted herself away and turned, eyes wide and still very red. “I didn’t know ponies could become alicorns.”
“Mhm! When a pony accomplishes a singularly impactful and emotionally-significant deed, they seem to undergo a spontaneous infusion of Harmonic energy which…” Starlight trailed off, and instinctively apologized. “Sorry, you probably don’t want to—“
“Go on!” said the filly excitedly. “That’s fascinating!”
Starlight was struck by a sudden and emotionally-confusing rush of affection for her younger self. Of course she thought it was fascinating. She was curious. She wanted to learn everything, and do even more. She was her.
…At the same time, she was conscious of the risk of the conversation rapidly becoming what Twilight called a ‘depth-first search.’ She hadn’t come to lecture herself on the mechanics of ascension. And even if she had, there were topics which would be far more—Stop that!
She shook her head. “Maybe…” Later? Definitely not. “That’s not why I’m here.”
The temporarily-restrained angst returned to young Starlight’s face. “Then why?”
Why.
Because I had to. Because I couldn’t know I could and leave you, leave myself, alone. Because I wanted to see if I could survive it. Because it’ll be good for me.
But there was a simpler answer—and a far truer one.
“Because you had a bad day.” She gazed at herself with the empathy only somepony who’s experienced the same things as another—the exact same things—could feel. “And I want to hear about it.”
Her former self looked down. “T-that’s a lousy reason for time travel.”
“I don’t think so,” Starlight said gently. “You hate when ponies don’t understand you. I understand you, because I was you.”
“You already know what happened.”
“So?” said Starlight. “You know talking about it helps. If I weren’t here, you’d just talk to the forest.”
“It won’t fix anything.”
“…No,” Starlight said. “It won’t. Would you… rather I leave?”
There was a silence. Her younger self refused to make eye contact with her.
“I went to the fair today,” young Starlight said at last. Starlight repressed a sad smile, and shifted her hind legs into a more comfortable position.
“There was a fair in town, and I got dad to take me. I thought it might distract me from… you know.” Young Starlight sniffed. “It should’ve. There were rides, and games, and so many interesting ponies, and they had those candied nuts I really like. I went on all the rides and played everything I was old enough to, and I ate so much I felt kinda sick. And I just kept… waiting. I’ve been to the fair before. I know I like it. And I waited and waited, and I just kept wondering when…”
“When it would feel good again.”
Young Starlight nodded. “And it… didn’t. I never felt happy. The whole day.”
Starlight remembered. This was when it started. She knew it for what it was, now; with only one friend, and a misguided perception of the loss of that friend, she’d fallen into a depression that lasted… longer than she felt like measuring.
It was one thing, though, to recall it as a distant memory, or to tell Twilight as she recounted stories of her life over a late-night cup of tea. It was another to see the filly who’d just had the second-worst day of her life so far in front of her, barely keeping herself from crying. It… hurt. More than she’d expected. It was the pain of that day, that depression, all over again, and on top of that, even more strongly, the pain of seeing a foal before her she could never truly help. She wondered, for the first time, if this may not have been a good idea.
But the realization that it was possible to fill a day with her supposed favorite things and feel as if her heart stayed behind in her room wasn’t the worst thing to come out of that day. Not in hindsight.
“B-but I’ve thought about it,” continued her younger self. “And I’m glad I went. And I’m glad I didn’t have a good time.”
That was it.
“B-because…” Young Starlight swallowed. “Sunburst loved magic. And he got his… cutie mark for it.”
Starlight knew the answer, but she asked anyway. “Why does that make you happy you had a bad day?”
“Because I don’t want to get a cutie mark!” snapped the filly. “Sunburst left and it ruined my life! It ruined everything! Because he cared too much about magic! He cared about magic more than me!” Starlight had to resist the urge to hug her again. It would only earn her a kick to the chest. “I n-never want to care that much about anything, or the same thing will happen to me! So I’m glad I had a bad day! I hope I have another one tomorrow! And the next day, and the next day, and the next if it means I don’t get a cutie mark!”
As she shouted, a familiar whine built up in the air. Squeezing her eyes shut, the filly cut herself off, jerked her head to the side towards nothing in particular, and screamed as an electric blue beam shot out of her horn, unfocused and unaimed. It cut through the fallen tree like butter, and left the edges of the holes blackened, smoking, and dancing with angry teal flames.
The beam lasted only a second. After it flickered out, Young Starlight’s legs buckled, and she collapsed to the forest floor, panting. In the distance, branches could be heard falling, sliced effortlessly from their trees.
Starlight immediately reached a hoof out to support her younger self, who took it without thinking and leaned against her. Her eyelids were fluttering, and heat could be felt emanating from her horn.
Starlight’s magic had always been powerful, but it was only recently (from her younger self’s perspective) that she’d realized how powerful. She wasn’t just slightly more adept at school, or capable of lifting some extra weight with her corona. A month prior, when a local wizard had been administering mana output tests at the schoolhouse with a wobbly old instrument that looked like a trumpet, she’d shattered it into dust.
She hadn’t been that way before Sunburst left. Certainly, she’d been capable, but, with the small, everyday spells that a ten-year-old unicorn spent their time on, Sunburst had always been the adept. Until he left—until Starlight, amidst the first of many tearful episodes, had nearly disintegrated a wall of her house.
It wasn’t abnormal for unicorn foals to have uncontrollable power spikes, particularly in times of strong emotion; she’d known that even at the time. But for Starlight, they weren’t spikes. They were a plateau. And, with every day she spent in the colorless, aching malaise that had become her life, that plateau rose, and rose, and rose. And with so little control, and so many fragile ponies in town, and one of her primary targets of ire being her own father… There was a reason she spent her worst days in the woods.
Starlight’s heart ached. “You,” she said gently but forcefully, “Have nothing to be sorry for.”
A charred piece of wood, flickering with cold flame, fell between the two ponies, who yelped in unison.
An idea struck Starlight. “Let’s walk along the river, okay?” The sound of the water had always calmed her down, on days like this one. In fact, it was what she’d done today, the first time around.
Young Starlight sniffed. “Okay.”
The first part of the walk passed in silence. Starlight had used a quick dissolution spell to clean up the remaining blue fire, and, before long, the two were walking alongside a rocky brook. It burbled happily and felt almost dissonant with the mood of the ponies beside it, but never enough to be annoying, like Pinkie Pie on some days. Instead, it was a pleasant but unobtrusive companion. Like Pinkie Pie on some other, better days.
Young Starlight broke the silence first, as Starlight had hoped she would. “You have a cutie mark.” Her expression was unreadable.
“Most fillies would be more surprised by the wings,” Starlight observed.
“I brought those up first,” huffed her younger self. “Don’t change the subject.”
Starlight kept forgetting that she was talking to herself, rather than a normal foal. She felt bad, given how much she’d prepared for this day, but it was difficult to force her brain to accept the situation it was in, regardless of its reality. “Well… Have you ever heard of a pony without a cutie mark?” Who wasn’t forced to live that way by you or a walking magic vacuum of a centaur.
“No.” Young Starlight kicked a rock into the stream. “I was gonna be the first. But it looks like I couldn’t even do that.”
Starlight chuckled, and the filly glared at her. “What’s so funny? I wasn’t joking.”
“I know,” said Starlight quickly. “Just… I think you’ve got some firsts in you yet. Even if you get a cutie mark.”
Young Starlight squinted resentfully at Starlight’s flank. “What even is it? A falling star?”
Actually, Starlight had never quite figured out its literal meaning. The marks were funny that way—she should know. “Something like that. It’s for magic.”
“What magic? Blowing things up?” Young Starlight scowled, lifted a rock within her corona, and crushed it into pebbles with a loud crack. The now-many rocks plopped into the stream. “I’ve got a lot of power I don’t want. I can’t do things with it. Not on purpose. That was always…” Sunburst’s thing.
“Yet,” said Starlight. To prove her point—and save them both a potential dunk in the water, since the bridge which had crossed here years ago was long since rotted away—she levitated both of herselves to the other side, where the trail, though more overgrown, continued. “Have you ever heard of a pony who could time travel?”
Her younger self stumbled upon being set down, then turned, eyes hungry, to Starlight. “You—we—invent time travel?”
“Not exactly,” Starlight admitted. She hadn’t been lying when she’d said Star Swirl had done the hard part. Sure, wiring the spell up to the Cutie Map has been fiendishly complex, but it was nothing compared to the cutie mark creation and removal spells she’d devised. One required rewriting a pony’s every physical and magical component while leaving their fundamental self intact, and one was merely very fancy teleportation. “We… perfect it. We’ve created a lot of other spells, though.”
Young Starlight’s eyes lit up for a brief second—but then her face fell. “So… I fail.”
“What do you mean?”
“I get a cutie mark,” the filly said tonelessly. “Just like Sunburst did. I even get it in the same thing. And everypony else keeps getting cutie marks just like us. Nothing changes. You failed.” She looked resentfully at her future self. “Why didn’t you fix it? You can time travel! You could… You could go anywhere you want and do anything to anypony to change things, or create a new spell so ponies don’t have to get cutie marks, or, or something. You’re a princess; you must have so much power. Why… didn’t you change anything? Why do you let it keep happening?”
Starlight’s mouth was suddenly very, very dry. “I…”
I tried. I tried so, so hard. I did nothing for ten years but try, and then it all fell apart, and then it fell apart even more, and I’ve been picking the pieces of myself up off the ground ever since and wondering which ones are still missing.
Her younger self’s eyes—her eyes—bored into her, like a mirror that somehow stripped her of everything she’d learned in the past fifteen years. She could feel everything Young Starlight felt; in memory alone, but the emotions were still there. They would always be there.
How did she tell that to a foal? How did you tell a foal that what they wanted most in the world led to nothing but misery, pain, and death?
She opened her mouth to say something like I’m sorry—something nicely vague that would salvage disappointment and resentment, rather than horror and fear, from this conversation—but she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t. She couldn’t let her former self go on feeling the way she did. Even if she only had this one day. She couldn’t lie.
“I tried,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Young Starlight looked down regretfully at the pain in her voice. “Yeah, well…” She sniffed. “It was a long shot. Getting rid of cutie marks.”
“Not that,” Starlight said. “I’m sorry you feel like this.” Her younger self looked at her warily, having doubtless heard the same thing from every adult she knew, but Starlight had more to say. “I’m sorry you hurt so much that you can only see one end to it. I’m sorry you can’t think of any of the things a foal your age should be thinking of, or care about the things they should care about. I’m sorry nopony knows how to help you. I’m sorry our dad—and he’s sorry for it too—never knew what to do for you. I’m sorry for Sunburst, and all the ponies you couldn’t be friends with, and, and… I’m sorry I ran away.”
Young Starlight looked at her in confusion. “But… I didn’t run away. I’m going home after this. Even if I don’t really want to.”
Starlight drew a deep breath. She knew she shouldn’t be saying any of this—that it would only make things worse—but she couldn’t look into the eyes of the pony in her life who’d suffered most from her decisions and remain silent. “But I did. I ran away. And I stayed alone for years. And I hurt so many ponies, so many ponies, trying to get what I wanted because I didn’t understand that I was the problem. And they deserved better, but… so did you.” At that moment, she felt as if she were two ponies; the one speaking, and the one listening with wide, confused, tearful eyes. She saw herself, and she saw her other self, and, without hesitation, she said what she’d never been able to admit until the sight before her left her no choice. “I should’ve been kinder to you. To myself. And I’m sorry.”
The filly’s jaw hung open. Starlight couldn’t bring herself to look at her, but she could see it in the corner of her eye. She focused on the sound of the water, hoping it would bring her some amount of peace, but it was a whisper beside her own thoughts.
What was wrong with her? She’d known nothing good could come of time travel. She’d known; that’s why she hadn’t let herself do it until her ridiculous, over-emotional ego convinced her it would be better this time. And look how it’d gone. She’d failed to comfort a filly—the filly she should’ve had the easiest time comforting—and ranted about her own selfish past in her own selfish present. Just like she always did.
“I…” Young Starlight said in a small voice. “We hurt ponies?”
We. “No. I did. You’re…” Starlight gestured hopelessly with a wing. “You’re a foal. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Yet,” said her younger self sharply.
Starlight winced. “…You don’t know that.” The lie rang hollow through the trees. “Your future is ahead of you. You could still—“
“No, I can’t,” Young Starlight interrupted. She pointed an accusing hoof at her future self. “You’re from the future, but you obviously didn’t have this happen to you. Based on every theory of time I’ve read, if you went home right now, you’d show up in a world nothing like yours. And you’re a princess, so you’ve probably done something too important to mess with just to try and make me feel better.” Her eyes narrowed. “You have to make me forget this. So I can do the same things you did.”
Starlight’s mouth hung open—partially in surprise, and partially in guilt.
Because of course she had to make her younger self forget this. It didn’t matter if she ended up helping or not (which was a very uncertain prospect right now anyway)—she couldn’t risk what might happen to Equestria if she gave an incredibly powerful filly knowledge of the future, or especially knowledge of time travel. Both of which she’d done.
So she’d erase her own memories. She could’ve done so with barely an effort even before she’d ascended; now, it would be like crossing out a line on a scroll. She’d give her the memories of the evening Starlight herself remembered having, and leave her to wake up, none the wiser, after the time spell pulled Starlight back to the future.
But her young self hadn’t been supposed to learn that.
By now, Starlight had stood gaping more than long enough to confirm her guilt, so there was no sense in hiding it. “…Yes. I do.”
Young Starlight let out a breath that sounded more like a hiss. “I knew it.” Looking at the ground, she set her jaw, and Starlight heard an all-too-familiar whine emerge behind the sound of brook. Warily, she readied a shield spell.
But, to her surprise, the whine faded, along with Young Starlight’s magical aura. When she looked up, she didn’t look angry. Just tired. More tired than a filly her age ever deserved to. “Why come at all, then? Nothing you say will matter.”
“That’s not…” Starlight began. In a certain sense, it was true. But in another, stronger sense, it wasn’t. “It won’t change history, no. Or stop anything I did. Or help you as much as I wish so, so much that I could.”
“Then why?” She’d asked before. Now, it held infinitely more weight.
Starlight looked into her own eyes. That was the question she’d grappled with every day since she’d realized that this was an option. It was the question that’d kept her up at night, woken her early in the morning, and kept her company at all hours of the day—and now her answer would be judged by the harshest critic she’d ever had. “Because it doesn’t matter if I can’t change history. You had a bad day. I thought you deserved a better one. And I know I’m not doing a very good job of it, but I couldn’t know I could help, even a tiny bit, and not try.”
Her younger self looked at her with huge, unreadable eyes.
Then, without seeming to even move, she was hugging Starlight, who tensed in shock. But, after she got over the surprise, she reached down and returned the favor.
“You’re right,” mumbled Young Starlight into her lilac chest fur. “You’re doing a terrible job. But… everypony does a terrible job. At least you understand.” She pulled away, looking determined. “If you’re gonna wipe my memory no matter what, I want to know everything.”
Starlight gulped, remembering what’d happened when she accidentally transferred a partial portion of her memories to Sunset Shimmer. Granted, that transfer had included emotions alongside memories, but still… “I’m… not sure that’s a good—“
“You’re me!” Young Starlight said indignantly. “How do you think you would feel if this happened?”
Exactly the same. Obviously. Even as an adult, the idea of having information withheld from her drove her mad. “That’s fair, but—“
“Don’t tell me I’m not old enough!” her younger self snapped. “Or that I’ll understand when I’m a grown-up! You told me that nothing I want right now matters and that I do something awful for it! It’s too late to not make me feel bad, so tell me what I want to know.” Her glare retreated slightly, tempered by the automatic foalhood panic over having been rude to an adult. “…Please. If you really want me to have a better day.”
In retrospect, Starlight thought, it may not have been wise to assume that she could so easily waltz into her own life and expect her to go along with her tidy plans to act as a mysterious-but-benevolent source of comfort. That sounded like something a normal, mentally-sound foal would do. Not her.
And it was equally foolish, perhaps, to have assumed that she would be capable of looking into her younger self’s knowledge-starved eyes, knowing precisely the emotion she felt, and deny her the most precious thing in the world—particularly when, strictly speaking, there would be no lasting consequences.
But most foolish of all had been her expecting that she would be able to see her former self solely as herself. She’d imagined, as she meticulously planned this trip in her mind, that it would be like talking to a mirror, or her internal monologue. Or a recording. Or Trixie when she managed a voice mimicry spell. But it wasn’t. Try as she might, she couldn’t see the filly before her as anything but a separate pony—and while she could say no to herself a thousand times in a thousand ways, she could never do so to a foal who wanted her help.
…But, so long as she’d resigned herself to that fact, she might as well enjoy it. With a giddy thought to exactly how she would’ve felt to be graced with once-in-a-lifetime knowledge of the future, she allowed herself a conspiratorial grin. “Alright,” she said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Young Starlight shook her head, eyes wide. “I won’t!”
We’ll see. Or, well, I’ll see. On an impulse, Starlight magically lifted the filly onto her back, nestling her between her wings, and began walking in no particular direction. “So, I told you I ran away from home when staying with dad was finally too much. Or, you run away from home. I knew I needed to learn to control my magic, so I decided to look for the nearest university, which ended up being a long way north of here, and stowed away on the train…”
Over the next several hours, Starlight told her younger self everything.
Well, not everything. She left out the most… traumatic details. The agonized screams of the ponies whose cutie marks she removed, for example, were carefully omitted, as were the exact circumstances of the alternate timelines Twilight had seen and later described to her—and especially the one she herself had seen.
But the broad strokes were all there. She spoke of the decade she’d spent on her own; bouncing around Equestria, effortlessly qualifying for each institute of magical study she found and leaving each without announcement the instant it had nothing more to teach her. The ‘friends’ she told less and less about herself over the years, and how it was easier and easier to move on. The libraries she’d broken into, and the wizened old wizards she’d deceived and tricked and sweet-talked into divulging career-defining secrets. The increasing single-minded focus of her quest as she grew convinced that a world without cutie marks was really, truly possible. Young Starlight listened wide-eyed to every word, forelegs tight around her neck.
She spoke of the day she’d finally done it—removed, and then reluctantly replaced, the cutie mark of a terrified test subject who never saw her face—and how she’d frantically penned her manifesto in an ecstatic trance, all doubts and second thoughts accumulated over a decade of failures and setbacks burnt out of her mind in one victorious evening. Those few ponies who read it without dismissing it, and who followed her to the ends of Equestria to the desert she knew was the only place her new world could grow in peace.
She spoke—more fondly than she’d expected, or necessarily wanted—of the blissful excitement of the first year of her village, when ponies still believed in her and before she’d realized what it would cost to ensure their indefinite support.
Her younger self’s grip tightened as she recounted that realization.
She spoke of the Elements’ arrival, and of her fury and despair as the flimsiness of her new world was exposed. Her abandonment of her every ideal and starry-eyed goal in the face of a new all-consuming need for revenge. The hundreds upon hundreds of spells she’d learned, created, and perfected in the following months—through any means necessary.
She spoke of her plan, and the time loop, and the duel, and her surrender.
But most of all, she spoke of her friends.
The forest was dark, and the hour so late that it had swung around to being early again. A quick spell informed Starlight that 5 AM had just passed.
It was also the first lull in the conversation since her account had reached Ponyville.
Young Starlight had begun crying not long after Our Town, and had only become more inconsolable once the story had reached the Crystal Empire—and Sunburst. But eventually, she’d run out of tears, and begun instead to weep questions, which Starlight was only too happy to answer.
Yes, she really made up with Sunburst.
Yes, the Elements really had forgiven her.
Yes, she became an alicorn when she convinced a thousand-year-old shapeshifting monster to stop being evil.
Yes, she was dating a magician who spoke in the third person.
Yes, she was friends with Princess Celestia, and Nightmare Moon—though she didn’t like to be called that anymore—and Princess Cadance, and the spirit of chaos, and another princess who hadn’t ascended yet, and a biped from another dimension.
She’d described every aspect of her life in Ponyville, and every creature in it, forwards and backwards and repeatedly and every way in which her younger self begged to hear about it. And, when she’d done that, she did it again, until the filly on her back was emitting more yawns than questions and her wide eyes had drooped to thin slits.
But it was 5 AM. The sky was beginning to lighten to a dull grey. And they were nearly out of time.
“Tell me… Tell me…” Young Starlight yawned. “About Discord’s girlfriend again. I still don’t understand what she was.”
Starlight chuckled. “I wasn’t even there for that one. Trust me, I’m not all the way clear on it either.”
“Then…” Yawn. “The time you and Sunburst saved the Crystal Empire. Does… Does he still like that game? Whassitcalled…”
“Dragon Pit? He does; I’ve said that three times now,” Starlight said gently. “But… I think it’s about time—“
Instantly, Young Starlight’s eyes were the size of dinner plates again—bloodshot dinner plates. “No! No, no, please, just a bit longer? Please?”
Starlight’s brow creased. She’d never brought her younger self home last night—which meant Firelight would be up at sunrise to look for his daughter, no matter how little he knew she wanted to see him. If he’d even slept at all. She was relatively confident that she could return her young self with no trouble, provided she replaced the memories of both her and her father—maybe with an adrenaline spell to hide the fatigue from missing a full night of sleep—but the longer she waited, the greater risk she took of her doting father raising an alarm. And the more ponies she needed to deceive, the greater the risk of changing something accidentally. They were running out of time.
But… She thought about how little the tired foal on her back had to look forward to the next day. The next week. The next month. The next fifteen years.
With an eye on the lightening horizon, she nodded. “Okay. But we’re really running out of time. So… Choose carefully.” With great reluctance, she began walking in the direction of the town.
Young Starlight was silent as she thought.
“Tell me…” she began eventually, in a small voice. Starlight felt her bury her face in her mane. “Tell me that… I’m going to be okay.”
What else had she been doing for the past ten hours? “Well, you’ll have a lot of friends to look out for you, and—“
“No, I know,” Young Starlight mumbled. “Rationally, I know. I mean… Tell me things will work out. And I’ll be okay. And… you know…” She trailed off, and swallowed.
Starlight’s steps slowed. Carefully, she lifted her former self off her back and over her head with her wings, setting her down before her on wobbly, exhausted legs.
She didn’t know. Not exactly. But… she could try.
So, for what she had a sinking feeling would be the last time, she wrapped her foreleg and wings around the filly, more tightly than she was sure she’d intended. “You’re going to be okay.”
There was a muffled sniff. “R-really?”
“Yes,” said Starlight, and she didn’t know who she was mad at, or why there was a lump in her throat, but she pushed through regardless. “I mean it. Everything is going to be fine.” She stroked the filly’s mane with a wingtip, because it felt like the right thing to do. “You’ll be okay. It’ll all be okay. Y-you’ll…” A tear threatened to spill down her cheek. “You’ll be happy. I promise.”
Her younger self had found her tears. “I don’t wanna forget this.”
I don’t want that either.
“I want to c-come with you. I don’t care if it r-ruins the future. I don’t wanna stay here… I don’t… I…”
Starlight suppressed a sob. I want to take you with me too. For everypony you’re going to hurt, but more than that, I really, really don’t want to leave you.
“Please don’t leave…” Young Starlight looked up at her with damp eyes. “P-please don’t leave…”
Starlight didn’t respond.
They both knew what she’d say.
Instead, she gently lifted the crying filly back onto her back, and secured her with a magical strap. She had an idea.
Young Starlight made a choked sound of surprise. “W-what are you…”
Starlight concentrated, and, in an instant, both of herselves were invisible, which prompted another gasp. “We’re taking the scenic route.”
And, with a beat of her wings, she took off.
The flight was short; the town was barely a mile away. And it was freezing, and probably more than a little nerve-wracking for the as-yet-flightless unicorn sitting on an invisible mount nearly a thousand feet in the air. But when they finally rose above the horizon and Starlight squinted to see the sunrise explode into view, it was worth it.
And when she allowed herself the indulgence of a spell to reflect the awed expression of her younger self into her mind, it was worth it.
And when she landed to see that the filly’s tears had dried—temporarily or not—it was worth it.
And when that same filly looked at her without a trace of resentment, even as the light from the spell which was about to erase every positive memory she’d formed in the past several months danced across her face, and said “You were wrong; you did give me a good day” before she passed into unconsciousness, it was worth it. It was all worth it.
Starlight landed with trembling legs on the floor of the throne room. Behind her, the time spell clicked and clacked itself out of existence. There was no enormous flash of light or broken map this time; she’d revised the spell slightly since her last trip.
Just as she’d expected, the door burst open seconds later, and Twilight skidded into the room, a barely-awake Spike on her back. “Starlight! What in Equestria are you—“
She stopped, concerned expression finding a new target in Starlight’s face. “…Are you okay?”
Starlight lifted a hoof to wipe her tired eyes. She was smiling—she wasn’t even sure that it was entirely a lie—but her hoof came away wet with tears nonetheless.
Was she okay?
Unbidden, a question flitted into her mind. One of the first questions her younger self had asked, upon the initial completion of her story:
Are you happy?
She’d answered yes, of course; what else could she have said? But she’d known it was more complicated than that. It was always more complicated than that.
Then again…
The memory of Young Starlight’s incredulous joy upon hearing about her reunion with Sunburst drifted through Starlight’s head. Then that of her questions. And then her laughter, and her tears, and her curiosity, and her stubborn, anxious insistence upon hearing every part of a future she knew she couldn’t change. Her smile when she saw the sunrise.
Twilight sat on the rooftop of the Castle of Friendship, in a tacky lounge chair which matched Starlight’s own. It was a beautiful day; when Twilight had suggested the pair take a few hours (which, knowing the schedule of both alicorns, was unlikely to mean more than thirty minutes, but it was the thought that counted) to relax in the sun, Starlight had been unable to bring herself to argue.
Unfortunately, given what she’d spent the past week doing, it took very little time for the relaxation to become a pretense for… Well, the only topic of discussion there could possibly be.
“It’s…” Starlight began. She shifted in her chair, using a quick spell to adjust the tint of her sunglasses. How was it going?
For the past eight days, she’d done very little but talk to Cozy Glow—the ache in her throat could attest to that. True to her word, she’d answered nearly every question the filly had posed to her. Her past, her present, her thoughts, her feelings, what she understood of her motives, and everything in between. It was, she thought, a little like her journey to the past to speak with herself—only this time, she was talking a pony with the potential to destroy… all of… Equestria…
Hmm. Well, maybe it was a lot like that.
Either way, there were elements of the relationship, if it could be called such a thing, which she was happy with. Cozy was an excellent listener when she wished to be, and, try as she might, she couldn’t hide how eager she was to absorb every drop of information Starlight could provide her. And, unlike with her past self, Starlight didn’t need to leave out any of the less pleasant details.
In return, Cozy had begun to talk herself. She wasn’t nearly so revealing; even after more than a week, Starlight didn’t know where she’d grown up. But she talked, and she didn’t entirely affect every minute detail of her speech and facial expressions, and she occasionally went entire minutes without cheerily-delivered death threats, so, as far as Starlight was concerned, it was a victory.
Unfortunately, she was acutely aware that it was a partial one. As shakily amicable a relationship she’d managed to establish with the marechiavelian filly, and as stable as she could foresee that relationship eventually becoming, the fact remained that Cozy now knew more about Starlight’s past, present, feelings, and motives (what of her own motives Starlight could even deduce, anyway) than anypony else in Equestria, including Sunburst and Trixie, while Starlight in turn had learned…
Well, it wasn’t as if she’d learned nothing. Cozy detested tea, for one. Great. You’re practically ready to hoof her a diploma. She slept eerily stilly. She had immaculate mouthwriting. She had a frightening sadistic streak, and frequently asked Starlight to recount her more fraught experiences over and over again—or maybe that was just another way to make her uncomfortable—with a grin that looked wildly dissonant alongside descriptions of screaming ponies and hazardous magical experiments. She had a sweet tooth to rival Pinkie’s. Her sense of humor was either affected or indecipherably inconsistent. And she had a severe caffeine addiction.
But in terms of things that could guide Starlight towards actually helping her? Nothing.
Something about her approach wasn’t working; wasn’t enough. She’d known it wouldn’t be enough, of course—this was just a start—but she was increasingly convinced it was a false start. And now, if she was right, she had placed herself in an incredibly vulnerable position in exchange for very little. She hated to think about her student in such utilitarian terms, but it was difficult not to when she knew that Cozy herself was doubtless doing the same at that very moment.
She needed a new plan—a real plan, not a stopgap measure to foster communication. She had communication. That wasn’t enough. So what would be?
Right. She hadn’t answered the question at hoof.
“...Going,” she finished lamely.
Twilight grimaced. “Is it really that bad?”
“No! It’s…” Starlight caught herself preparing to embark on another lengthy and introspective monologue, and, with some effort, stopped herself. “It’s okay. Not great. But okay.” She stared at the fountain on the roof—made permanent by a few alterations to her initial water transportation spell. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy this past week.”
“Starlight!” Twilight said reproachfully. “You’re busy for a good reason! And and important one.” She sighed. “Busy doing my job for me.”
“Twilight!” said Starlight, in exactly the same tone of disagreement. She flopped onto her other side in the beach chair to face her old teacher. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
Perhaps Starlight would’ve been bothered by Twilight’s self-deprecation, in another world. Fortunately, in this one, she was the far worse culprit, and was in the furthest position from judgment. “Look,” she argued. “You still do… you know, friendship stuff, all the time. And a lot of that is what I do too! Are you doing my job for me when the Map calls you?”
“Well… no.” Twilight had the familiar ‘I feel guilty but I’m not making a good enough case for it’ frown on. “It’s just… It should’ve been my job. Er, not that you don’t deserve it or won’t do a good job, obviously! But Cozy was my student, and my responsibility, and you shouldn’t have had to show me what the right thing to do was, and how I was letting my personal biases cloud my judgment. With Celestia and Luna, or with our friends.” She waved a hoof limply. “I feel like… I know Empathy and Friendship overlap, but sometimes it feels like you’d be better at my job than I am.”
Starlight winced. “Yeah… Don’t give me too much credit there.”
Twilight sat up on her haunches, confused. “Why not? You were the only one who stood up for Cozy the day after we stopped her. You prevented us from making what might’ve been a huge mistake! And you were absolutely right to point out that we weren’t in a position to—”
“That’s… kind of what I meant,” said Starlight. “I don’t think I’m any less biased than you were.” Twilight tilted her head curiously, so she continued. “I was Cozy’s counselor at the school. I wasn’t responsible for teaching her how to be a good friend, but I was responsible for her well-being, and… based off some of the things she’s said, especially while she had me trapped, I don’t think I did a very good job.”
Understanding dawned on Twilight’s face. “You want to make up for your mistakes?”
“Yes,” Starlight confirmed. “I know it’s not exactly what everyone else is concerned about right now, and, well, maybe I shouldn’t be either, but I can’t help but feel like she’s as much of a victim here as we are. And… I guess I want a second chance. Almost as much as I want to give her one.”
It was the first time she’d admitted it aloud. She’d expected it to feel awkward—like every time she expressed her own feelings to a pony with a substantial right to disagree—but, instead, she felt… assured. As if she was doing the right thing, for once. It was a novel sensation.
And suddenly, she had a realization. She knew what she was missing with Cozy Glow.
Twilight had her mouth open, and was presumably about to deliver some endearingly wise and erudite speech about how biases that compel ponies to act on behalf of others were an inescapable part of being alive (or else she was yawning), but Starlight couldn’t wait to voice her revelation. “I think I’ve got it.”
Twilight blinked mid-speech-and/or-yawn. “Huh?”
“I don’t need to teach her,” Starlight muttered, half to herself. “That’s not the problem. She knows everything already. Starlight, you dunce.”
“What?”
“She’s not like me, or my past self, or Tempest or Chrysalis or anycreature else. I was looking at it too much like—”
“I can’t help but feel slightly left out here!” Twilight said very loudly.
Starlight blinked. “Right. Sorry. But I figured out what I’ve been doing wrong.”
“It… sounded to me like you’ve been doing the best you—”
“No, listen!” Starlight teleported to her feet, too impatient to take the time to stand up. There was pacing to be done. Twilight would understand. “What was the problem I had when you brought me back from Cloudsdale?”
Twilight assumed the posture of a dutiful student and thought about the question. It was part of their thinking process. “Trauma?”
“Well, yeah, but why did you need to teach me?”
“Because…” Twilight began, before her eyes widened in understanding. “You didn’t understand how to make friends again after so long.”
“I didn’t understand friendship. Neither did Sunset, or Tempest, or Discord, or anycreature, really! Maybe Chrysalis, but she had a whole different way of life in her old hive, so she still had to adjust.”
She levitated herself over the fountain which had the gall to get in her way and immediately resumed pacing. “But Cozy’s different. She understands friendship better than most adults; she passed all of your classes with full marks. Faust, she helped write some of them! She knows exactly how non-evil ponies behave, and chooses not to do that. So I can’t be her teacher. Not like you were with me.”
Twilight nodded, wings ruffling thoughtfully. “You’re right. She doesn’t need information, she needs…” She frowned. “...I have no idea. How would you—”
But Starlight’s epiphany had had the foresight to include this too. “I can’t teach her, because she knows everything, which means that not knowing about friendship isn’t why she’s… Well, you know, which means that something else is the reason she needs to be in control all the time.” Starlight spun on her hooves as she reached the edge of the castle roof without missing a beat. “And the reason she thinks of everypony else like chess pieces, and isn’t comfortable being herself, and thinks other ponies are stupid for not taking advantage of every social interaction to manipulate others, and everything! She can’t stand not being in charge, not for a second, because she’s used to relying entirely on herself, I don’t know why, maybe somepony took advantage of her in the past or maybe she’s just been alone for too long, but whatever it is it means that if she’s ever going to get better she needs to have somepony else to depend on, actually depend on, and since there aren’t any other ponies who know about this and because honestly it was my job in the first place that pony has to be me!” She stopped pacing, mildly out of breath. “I can’t be her teacher. I need to be her counselor, or her guardian, or her… something. I need to be there for her. That’s the only way she’s going to be able to change.” She saw Twilight staring at her. “What?”
Twilight glanced downward. Starlight’s eyes followed. She was standing in the fountain.
Ah. She teleported back onto the rooftop proper and blow-dried her legs with a quick spell. “Oops. I got caught up in the moment. But do you see what I mean? I mean, I’m right, aren’t I?” She looked eagerly at Twilight.
Her former mentor’s brows were knit tightly enough to make an unusually waterproof cardigan. “I… think you just might be.”
Starlight let out a relieved breath.
“I’m not sure,” continued Twilight quickly. “And… To be entirely honest, this seems like it’ll put you at even more risk than where you already are.”
“I know,” Starlight said. “I promise I do, but I really think—”
“But,” interrupted Twilight with a smile, “I think you should do what you feel is right. As much as it means to me that you want my approval—and you have it, now and always—Cozy is in your care, not mine, and you’re as much a Princess as I am. And, more than that, you’re my friend. I trust you.”
Starlight blushed, and felt the usual lump in her throat that came at affirmations like that no matter how many times Twilight repeated them. She was aware of the irony; she couldn’t help but find Twilight’s reverence of the alicorn sisters foalish (if endearingly so), but she hung off Twilight’s every word as if she ruled the world, nevermind Equestria. “...Thanks. I’ll believe it when you say that, one of these days.”
“You already do, or you wouldn’t have stood up to us last week,” said Twilight. “You just forget sometimes. Not that I can blame you. I mean, you’ve met me.”
“I guess you’re right,” Starlight admitted. The urge to pace having been temporarily satiated, she sat back in the lounge chair. “Anyway… I really do think this is it.”
“That Cozy needs… a safe space?” Twilight said. To her credit, none of her skepticism showed on her face. Or perhaps, as unlikely as it was, she didn’t feel any in the first place.
“Yeah, but… more than that.” Starlight thought back to her trip to the past. It had been a harrowing experience for a number of reasons (though she didn’t regret it for an instant), but high on the list had been seeing, with her own, present eyes, exactly how alone her younger self was. It was worth it, in the end, but… it had brought out a protective instinct Starlight had barely known she had. And with Cozy, she didn’t have the comfort of knowing that it would all work out in the end. “She’s a filly. I mean, she’s a lot, but in the end… She’s ten, did you know that?” It was a rhetorical question, but Twilight shook her head anyway. “I did a quick scan a few days ago when she lied about being sick, and can more or less tell her age from her bone health. She’s ten years old.”
“Celestia…” Twilight muttered, mirroring Starlight’s own feelings on the matter.
“Exactly. We can’t… I can’t treat her like an adult.” Starlight swallowed. “I just can’t, for one—no matter how hard I try—but even if I could, it’d be… wrong. She’s a genius, and she’s had to grow up more quickly than anypony ever should, but… Think about what it’d be like to be doing the kind of things she’s done at her age. It took me longer than it should’ve; I was too focused on why she was doing them. But I’ve thought about it now. She’s been living on her own. She didn’t have a single creature she could talk to face-to-face without lying until a week ago. She didn’t—still doesn’t—have anycreature but a thousand-year-old pony-hating centaur who supports the things she’s trying to devote her life to.” Starlight felt ridiculous, and even guilty, for thinking about it that way; a significant part of her mind insisted that to think of Cozy so sympathetically was to ignore the critical context of exactly what she’d done. Fortunately, an even more significant part knew better—and, from her expression, so did Twilight.
“I need… I want better than that for her,” Starlight continued softly. “She deserves somepony who cares about her, no matter what she does. Everypony deserves that. And maybe then… she won’t have to think the way she does anymore.”
“And you think you can be that pony?” asked Twilight. There wasn’t a hint of judgment in the question.
Starlight spread her wings. “Well, Harmony, or whoever, gave me these for a reason. I think I can try.”
Barely an hour later, Starlight knocked on Cozy Glow’s door.
“You’re late!” rang a muffled, irritated voice.
She was; she’d needed at least a few minutes to marinate on her epiphany before jumping into things. She was rash, but she wasn’t that rash. At least, not today.
Carrying a plate of croissants in her aura, she opened the door and entered. Cozy was in her usual position at the desk, and glared at her as she entered. “You said we could talk about your spellcrafting today! Where have you been?”
Starlight set the croissants on the desk. “I’m sorry, Cozy. I had… some thinking to do.”
She’d hoped, foolishly, that her earlier resolution would suddenly reveal a clear and obvious path forward. Unfortunately, it turned out that vagueness, whether it was correct or not, remained vague, and she would need significantly more time if she was going to decide what it actually meant for her to be Cozy’s… whatever she needed.
But she at least had somewhere to start. So, rather than taking her typical seat in the armchair in the corner, she stood by the desk.
Cozy narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.
Starlight swallowed nervously. The amount of emotion Cozy could put into her eyes was enough to overcome the logical knowledge that she had absolutely no power in the present situation. But, on that note… “I’m sorry,” Starlight said.
Cozy blinked, and turned fully away from her desk. “What?”
It was a sincere apology—but also a sympathetic one, an understanding one, and, Starlight hoped, a reconciliatory one. She knew, though, that explaining any of that to Cozy would do nothing right now but provoke more irritation, so she plunged onward. “What do you want to do today?”
Cozy floated into the air like a bumblebee and alit on her bed, suspicion intensifying. “I told you already. I want to talk about how you create your spells. There are almost no books on original spellcraft, and just because I’m a pegasus doesn’t mean I can’t learn about—”
“No, I mean… In general. Out of anything,” Starlight said. She pointed a wing to the door.
The door which remained open.
“You’re my student,” continued Starlight, as Cozy’s eyes widened even beyond their usual enormous size. “You’re going to be living with us, at least for now, and I’m not going to keep you in here. You can go anywhere in the castle you like.”
Ideally, she could do better. If Cozy was going to feel comfortable, being confined in one building, even a bizarrely larger-on-the-inside building like the Castle of Friendship, wouldn’t be much better than a single room. Unfortunately, thanks to the excited stories of their foals who attended the School of Friendship, almost every creature in town would recognize Cozy on sight. And while Starlight had briefly considered offering her a disguise spell… even she could admit that Cozy might not be ready for that.
After a long, long pause, Cozy’s face suddenly smoothed over, as if she’d all at once regained control of her face—to most ponies, it would’ve looked like she’d calmed down, but Starlight knew the opposite was true. That was Cozy’s ‘You are getting no more information out of me’ smile. “Aaaaand?” she asked.
Starlight shifted uncomfortably. She’d fallen into a habit of communicating with the filly in as factual a manner as possible—sure, she talked about her own emotions, but only in an analytical sense, and Cozy’s certainly never entered into it. It had allowed her the luxury of forgetting exactly how distrustful Cozy was of anypony other than herself, and a pang struck her heart at the reminder. This is why I have to do this. “And what? I promise I’m not trying to trick you.”
“I know that. You can’t lie for beans anymore,” Cozy said cheerily. “And what’s the catch? You’re not going to let me wander around the castle myself. You’re not that stupid. So, what spells do you have this time? What do you get out of this?”
Starlight blinked. “Actually, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” She stepped back to the doorway and poked a wing through it. “There’s no catch. You can leave right now if you want.”
Once again, Starlight was struck by the resemblance to her younger self. The colors of their coats were even similar. “Why would I be lying about this?”
“Oh, it doesn't really matter if you're lying.” Cozy’s smile looked as though she were holding the expression at gunpoint. “But the more freedom you give me, the less time until you stop pretending. No thanks. I’ll stay here.”
“...Pretending?”
The smile broke. “You can’t be this ignorant.”
Starlight grinned weakly. “Try me.”
Cozy took off from the bed, wings buzzing with an irritation that matched her face, and hovered barely a foot from Starlight’s face. “You. Can. Do. Whatever. You. Want.” Starlight had enough experience with the filly by now not to jump back or teleport away—she was physically harmless, after all—but it was a close matter. “You can make me do whatever you want. You can send me back in time. You can read my mind. You could make me walk off a cliff with my wings tied and I’d never stop smiling.” She landed, glaring, on the floor. Her head barely reached above Starlight’s legs. “You act like you can’t, but I’m not going to forget, so you can stop wasting your effort.”
Starlight’s train of thought screeched to a halt. She could… Of course she could, she could always do that, but that didn’t mean… Had Cozy been thinking about this the whole week?
Of course she had. Buck.
“Is that why you’ve been going along with our deal?” Starlight asked gently.
Uncertainty flickered across Cozy’s face. “You know it was.”
No. I should’ve. But I didn’t. “I promise I didn’t.” Hesitantly, Starlight walked back into the room; Cozy didn’t protest. “Do you think I’d mind control you?”
“Of course not,” scoffed Cozy. “You’re a pathetic sap who ignores her own strategic instincts. But you might. Or you might borrow your pen pal’s magic rock and read my thoughts. And I’m not going to risk the only thing I have left on might. You gave me a deal. My only move is to play along. In real life, you win. Every single time. So I’ll keep the game, thank you very much.”
For the hundredth time, Starlight wondered in disturbed awe at what a life Cozy must have lived, to think as she did.
How did she break through that?
How did she show a filly that she shouldn’t have to be in control all the time?
And, more immediately… “Cozy, I would never, ever influence your mind. I promise.” For the briefest of instants, she hesitated—that was an enormous promise to make—but she swiftly found that she meant every word. “Is there any way I can show you I’m not lying?”
“Of course not.” Cozy huffed, looking down. “Why in Equestria would I trust you? I’m not your friend. And you sure don’t trust me. Nopony with a brain would.”
“Trust isn’t…” Starlight ran through possible responses like Twilight sorting her color-coded flash cards. She could argue that trust was a strategic decision—a risk accepted in exchange for happiness—but the consequentialist mindset that would lead to Cozy’s agreement was the problem in the first place. She could say that trust was illogical but necessary, but that wouldn’t appeal to her at all. She could say that trust was normal, but what about Cozy was normal?
There was nothing. Not right now. Someday, she would earn Cozy Glow’s trust—she swore it on everything she held dear.
But, for now, she would be patient. “Okay. I understand.”
Cozy sighed with the exasperated relief of one who had won an argument by attrition alone.
“But, you have to admit…” Starlight wheedled. “If you don’t trust me, and there really is no reason for me to play along… You don’t lose anything by telling me what you want to do today, or by leaving this room. Like you said, if I wanted to… mind control you”—she winced at the mere sound of the words—“I could. Our deal wouldn’t prevent that. If you don’t think the patterns of my behavior are enough to stop me, the rules of our agreement wouldn’t be either.”
Cozy frowned, and opened her mouth to argue. Apparently finding herself unable, she closed it again. The process repeated several times.
Finally, she appeared to deflate, and mumbled, “I wanna play chess.”
Starlight narrowly resisted the urge to jump up and down elatedly.
“In the library.” Cozy refused to make eye contact. “And I don’t wanna see Twilight. I don’t want to see you, but I need somepony to play with if you’re not gonna let me write to Tirek. You’re white. Come on.”
For the briefest of instants, Cozy’s leg paused as she stepped over the threshold of her room.
Then, she and her customary glare set off to the library, a grinning Starlight in her wake.
